by M. S. Parker
Damn if the thought didn’t make me hot.
“I think this could work,” he said finally.
“Great,” Bri said dryly. “Now that we have the FBI’s stamp of approval, think we can move on to the next step?”
I hadn’t said much of anything as they’d outlined everything we’d be doing, waiting until the right time to speak. Now was the right time because there was something neither of them had addressed, and it needed to be before we went any further.
“When Clay and I rescued you and your group, we snuck in because we knew we didn’t have what we would have needed to take on a drug cartel. I’m not quite sure our circumstances have changed in that respect.”
Both of them turned to look at me.
“What?” Brianne asked.
“We don’t have weapons,” I said flatly. “So unless you want to go after the cartel with your one gun and whatever knives you can find in Sylvia’s kitchen, I think we might need to rethink the plan.”
“There’s nothing else that will work,” Brianne said with a shake of her head.
“Why not?”
“Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice…” Bri said. “We’ve lost the points of weakness that allowed you two to get inside before. No element of surprise, and there’s no way these guys are stupid enough to leave an unguarded entrance like they did before.”
“It’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not. I scouted the house, remember? No dogs, but lots of guys with guns. Which is why we need the distraction.” Brianne’s voice took on the condescending note that always pissed me off.
“Tess has a point,” Clay said, frowning. “If that place is as heavily guarded as you say it is, do you really think you’ll be able to pull off your part of things?”
“You don’t need to worry about me,” Brianne said cryptically. “I have everything I’ll need.”
“Spell it out for me, Bri,” I said. “Because I’m a part of this, like it or not.”
She looked like she was barely refraining from rolling her eyes. “I have what I need. Weapons that aren’t kitchen knives. Guns, Tess. All right? Are you satisfied now?”
She had guns. As in plural. I folded my arms to keep from making fists. “And when, exactly, did you have time to get these weapons?”
It was Clay who answered this time, and he looked just as unhappy as I was. “It didn’t take her that whole time she was gone to scout the house.”
I was tempted to ask how she’d found someone to sell her weapons, plural, when she’d spent her time in Costa Rica working for Red Care and being held a prisoner. Then I remembered that she and Clay had been searching for me for two weeks. She could have made contact then, though I doubted what she’d acquired had been through legal means.
“I’m sure she’ll be happy to give us a detailed inventory if we really want them,” Clay continued, “but it’d probably just be a waste of time.”
“Exactly,” Brianne agreed. “And we should–”
“Okay, I’m going to stop you right there,” I said, holding up both hands. “Both of you, actually, because I’ve sat here for the last couple hours listening to you going over a plan that doesn’t include me.”
“You don’t have the training we’ve had,” Clay said.
“Bullshit,” I said simply. “You’re both doing that protective thing that makes me want to slap you both.”
The startled expression on their faces would’ve amused me under other circumstances.
“Here’s something I don’t think you took into account when you were figuring all this out. The cartel was after me, but as far as they know, I’m still with Luis. Out of their hair.”
“You’re not going into that house,” Brianne snapped.
“I’m not an idiot,” I said. “I know I’d be useless in the house. But I bet seeing me would provide a hell of a distraction.”
“If you think I’m letting you–”
I didn’t let Brianne finish her sentence. “Would you like to hear my plan before you waste more of our time arguing?”
Her eyebrows shot up. “All right.”
“Keep everything how you have it, with one exception,” I said. “A bigger distraction that will hopefully get more people out front.”
“And I’m assuming that’s where your plan comes in?” she asked.
I nodded. “They’ve dealt with Luis selling us out, and from what I understand, they’re used to people doing stuff like that. I think I should offer them someone else they want.”
“No way are you offering up yourself.” Clay was already shaking his head.
I grinned at him. “Wasn’t planning on it. I figure I can get a better price for you.”
For once, he was speechless.
Brianne let out a low whistle. “Damn, Tess. Maybe you should be the one going into the house. That’s cold.”
“Glad I could amuse you,” I said. “Now, what do you say we come up with something convincing so we don’t sound like we’re faking it.”
Thirty-One
Clay
I couldn’t stop staring at Tess, and I was pretty sure that Brianne was going to kill me for it…or possibly cut off my balls. Either way, I was taking a risk.
Still, I kept looking at Tess. She wasn’t a soldier or an FBI agent. She’d gone to school to be a journalist. Everything that we’d done here had been outside anything she’d ever known, and she’d faced all of it with the sort of unflinching courage that made it hard for me to think about walking away from her when this was all over.
“I have to admit,” Brianne said with a reluctant sort of admiration, “this is going to work a lot better.”
“You’re welcome,” Tess said with a hint of smugness that I felt was well-earned.
“Now that we’ve got that all covered, I think we need to get some rest before we do this. She gave me a pointed look. “I’m guessing none of us have gotten much sleep recently.”
“It’s almost noon,” Tess said, pretending to be oblivious to the tension between Bri and me. There was no way she was that unobservant. “Should we set our alarms for four o’clock? That seems like it’d be a good time to get things started.”
“That will work,” Brianne said. “You take the room you were in before. I’ll take the room the guys were in, and Clay can take the couch. We all get our own space. Besides, Clay looked like he was comfortable on the couch before.”
I supposed I deserved that.
Color flooded Tess’s cheeks, but she met her sister’s gaze head-on. “No, that’s not what’s going to happen. You sleep in whichever room you want, and I’ll take the other one. Clay can sleep wherever he wants. In the other bed, on the couch…or with me.”
Brianne’s eyes narrowed, and she opened her mouth. Tess held up a hand.
“Consider this part of the massive apology you owe me for lying about Clay for sixteen years and lying about a hell of a lot more for a hell of a lot longer.”
Brianne actually flinched, but Tess didn’t back down. She just kept staring at her sister until Bri looked away.
“Agreed.” She pointed at me. “But if you keep me up because you’re defiling my sister, I’ll wear your nuts as earrings.”
Defiling? That seemed…harsh.
“I might’ve seen some earplugs in the drawer by the sink,” Tess said. She held out her hand to me. “Coming with me?”
I took her hand without hesitating. There’d probably be fallout later, but it was worth it if I could be with her for a few more hours.
The moment the door closed behind me, Tess was in my arms. I lifted her up, our mouths crashing together hard enough for me to taste blood when my teeth gouged my lip. She whimpered as my hands squeezed her ass and pulled her tighter against me. I could listen to that sound for hours.
“Clay,” she moaned as she wrapped her legs around my waist, her arms around my neck.
Her back slammed against the wall, and I heard a muffled curse from Brianne on the other
side. I ignored it, far more focused on plundering the sweetness of Tess’s mouth. Her nails scraped my scalp, her splint catching in my hair and reminding me that I needed to be gentler with her.
This, however, wasn’t a memo she’d gotten because she was writhing against me as if it were possible for our two bodies to meld into one. For both our sake’s, I needed to get to the place where at least part of us could manage that particular miracle.
I walked us over to the bed and sat her down, bending over to give myself those few extra seconds of contact before I had to let her go. It was only for a moment, but I didn’t want to stop touching her. I wanted to imprint the feel of her skin on mine. Her scent. Her sounds. I never wanted to have a time when I couldn’t recall every second of what it was like to possess her.
I tugged her jeans off and tossed them over my shoulder, then reached for her panties. A soft giggle made me look up.
“You look so serious,” she said.
I sat back on my heels, a little confused by the comment. “I thought women wanted guys to take sex seriously.”
She propped herself up on her elbows and gave me this soft, searching look that made my chest tighten.
“You told me earlier about the first time you saw me as more than a little kid. Do you know the first time I realized that I liked you as more than a friend?”
I shook my head.
“Get rid of everything but the boxers and come up here next to me,” she said. “It’s not a long story, but I’d rather we were both comfortable when I tell it.”
I did as she asked and stretched out next to her, my skin humming every place it met hers. I put my arm around her and pulled her tight against my side. She rested her head on my chest, her fingers tracing patterns on my stomach. Her touch did little to ease my erection, but I ignored it, determined to hear her story.
“It was my twelfth birthday,” she began. “I hadn’t seen Dad since he’d left almost two years before, and I was sure he was going to show up that day. He’d missed my birthday the year before, but I’d gotten a card from him saying that he was traveling for work and how much he missed me.”
I remembered that party. That’d been when I’d first learned what’d really happened with Mr. Gardener. I’d found Brianne smashing some model airplanes she’d made with her dad, and she’d told me everything, including how she and her mom had hidden from Tess that Mr. Gardener had a new baby and didn’t want anything to do with his first family.
“I know now that Mom and Bri probably wrote that card, just like they probably wrote every card or letter I ever got from him, but at the time, I’d really thought my father still wanted me.”
I kissed the top of her head, wishing I could take away the pain in her voice.
“Kids from school came, and we had cake and ice cream. We played games, and it should have been the best party ever. Except I couldn’t stop waiting for Dad to arrive. But he never showed. You know that, of course, because you were there.”
I thought I knew now where she was going with her story because I knew what happened at the end of that party.
“You found me, crying, after everyone left, and you didn’t tell me that I didn’t have a reason to cry. I’d gotten more than a lot of other kids got for their birthdays, and I knew I should be grateful, but you didn’t say any of that.”
The memory came forward with a rush.
Tess had been even smaller back then, with the sort of fine features that made people think she was some delicate little princess. She’d cropped her curls short a few weeks before her birthday, and when I’d found her that night, they’d been wild, with leaves and twigs all tangled up in them. Sitting there under the weeping willow, she’d looked like something straight out of Tolkien.
“You didn’t try to make me feel better by making excuses for my dad like Mom and Brianne did.” Tess flattened her hand on my stomach, her thumb moving back and forth across the dark hair just above my belly button. “You sat down with me, offered me a tissue, and then told me that if I couldn’t count on anyone else, I could always count on you.”
In that moment, I hated Brianne for the damage her lies had done. Tess should have been able to trust that promise I’d given her. She should have been able to trust me.
Then Tess raised her head, shifting her weight to one elbow to put our faces at the same level. “And then you made me laugh. I never knew if it was because you thought I needed it or because you were embarrassed at saying something so sweet, but whatever the reason, you told me a joke, and it was horrible.”
“I remember.” My voice was rough. “We tried to see who could tell the worst jokes.”
“You won,” she said with a smile. “You were my knight in shining armor that night. Partly because of your promise, but mostly because you made me laugh. You weren’t some goofy class clown or anything like that, and you knew when to be serious, but you also always found ways to make me smile.”
I cupped her face in my hands and sat up as I kissed her. Her words echoed in my mind as she eagerly parted her lips, her tongue tangling with mine. She went up on her knees and moved to straddle me, but I grabbed her hips and flipped us so she was underneath me.
“Let’s see if I can make you smile again.”
I kissed my way down her body as I stripped away the last of her clothes, leaving her bare, nipples tight and skin flushed. I went up on my knees and palmed her small breasts, rubbing my thumbs back and forth across her nipples. Not for the first time, I thought how lucky I was to be the only man to ever see her like this.
A treacherous voice in the back of my head suggested that maybe that wasn’t true anymore since Luis had taken care of her for two weeks while she’d been unconscious. I pushed it back. She hadn’t had sex with him, I was certain of that. If he’d seen her naked while bathing her or whatever, it wasn’t the same thing.
She wanted me to see her like this. Wanted my hands on her body. My mouth tasting her. Wanted me inside her.
I arranged her legs on either side of me, and then spread my body over hers. I kept the majority of my weight off her but didn’t immediately bury my cock in that sweet place only I’d ever been. Instead, I took a nipple between my lips. I worked over the sensitive skin, teasing with teeth and tongue until she thrashed about underneath me. Her nails raked up and down my back, hard enough for me to know she’d scratched the hell out of my skin by the time I’d paid equal attention to the other breast.
“Please, Clay,” she begged. “Want you.”
She tried to shove my boxers down, and I chuckled at her efforts. When her teeth sank into my shoulder, I jerked up to find her grinning at me. My eyes narrowed.
“Aren’t you a little hellcat?” I lightly nipped her jaw. “Better be careful, sweetheart, or I’ll bite back.”
“Please do,” she said with a sultry smile.
I buried my fingers in her hair and tugged. She didn’t need any other prompting to tilt her head and offer me her slender neck. I pressed an open-mouth kiss against her soft flesh, and she moaned. Her hips pressed up against me, and I cursed, the sound muffled by Tess’s neck. When she did it again, I bit her hard enough that she gasped, then sucked on her skin, bringing blood to the surface.
“Clay, we don’t have time…” Her back arched as I bit her again. “Fuck!”
“There’s never enough time,” I grumbled. She was right though. We needed this, but we needed rest too.
She reached down between us, shoving my boxers down far enough to wrap her hand around my cock. My entire body stiffened, and it was all I could do not to spill all over those soft, small digits.
“Let’s not worry about that,” she said, shifting her hips until I felt her slick arousal against the tip of my cock. “I don’t need slow. I just need you.”
Damn if that didn’t do something to me.
I slid inside her, my eyes closing at the feel of her velvet pussy wrapping around me. It was beyond the mere physical pleasure of it. I’d told her before that this was
new for me, and in a way, that was true, but in another way, it was like what we’d always been moving toward. Like this had always been the end game.
Because we were end game.
Thirty-Two
Tess
Brianne said she’d slept, but she still stomped around and scowled as she downed a cup of coffee. I didn’t think it was the lack of sleep. She knew Clay and I had spent the afternoon together, and she was pissed.
Too bad that it was my life, not hers.
I was glad when we finally left for the cartel’s house because that meant we all had something new to focus on. When we were done and safe, I’d deal with my sister.
I didn’t want to think about what that might mean for Clay and me though. Especially not after what we’d shared just a few hours ago. We hadn’t talked about it, but I knew he’d felt it. His eyes had met mine when we’d climaxed, and I’d seen something there that had gone deeper than I’d imagined.
“Are you ready for this?” Clay asked.
I appreciated that he didn’t ask if I wanted to do this but rather if I was ready to do it. Other people might not have appreciated the nuances of his word choice, but I did, and he understood that about me.
“I am,” I said. “This is going to work.”
“It is,” he agreed. He reached over and squeezed my hand but didn’t hold it. I understood. We needed to focus.
“If they make a move toward you, you run,” Brianne repeated her previous instructions. “You don’t wait for me, you don’t wait for Clay.”
I didn’t answer her. If it came to that, I’d make the decision then. And I’d be the one making it. If it was better for me to run, I’d run, but I sure as hell wasn’t letting my sister dictate what my choice would be.
When we reached the block the house was on, Brianne went one way while Clay and I went the other. We’d made a rough estimation of time based on information we’d pulled from some online maps, and we made a point to keep at the same pace we’d used in our planning. As we reached the decided point, I took a slow breath. It was time.
