Damage Control

by Lisa Renee Jones

  I eye him in the rearview mirror, watching as he climbs into the black SUV behind us, and then turn my attention to the door, where people come and go, and I don’t look away. Ten minutes pass, then fifteen, and Seth climbs back inside the car with me, an iPad in his hand. “She rented a room with cash using a fake name, but no identification. She convinced the manager she lost her wallet at the airport.”

  “And we know this how?”

  “The man we had tailing her paid one of the girls at the front desk to get the details for him.”

  “At least we now know she didn’t check in on someone else’s account,” I say, motioning to the iPad. “That has a purpose I assume.”

  “We have footage of Emily at the train station and then in the hotel, neither of which is eventful.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” I say, and even in the shadows of the car, I can see the thinning of his lips, but he swipes the iPad and brings the screen to life before handing it to me. I hit the play button on the video and find a ticket line at the train station at the same moment that Emily leaves the line, her hand pressed to her face, before she digs in her pocket and removes her phone. She dials it and seems to fret about no one answering. Three more times she dials before she rushes toward the exit. The feed cuts to her outside, in front of a drugstore not far from here. She’s dialing her phone again. She paces. But what really gets me is when she squats down on the ground and leans against a wall, her hand back on her head. She’s lost. She’s scared. She’s alone. It punches me in the gut and then twists. The feed shifts again to her going inside the hotel. Her walking to the check-in desk, and after a pleading conversation with the concierge, heading to the elevator bank, the doors closing her inside, and then the video goes black.

  I look up at Seth. “Is this it?”

  “Yes,” he confirms. “Like I said. It’s far from eventful.”

  For him. For Emily, I doubt it’s so simple. It damn sure isn’t for me. “What room number?”

  “Shane—”

  “Room number,” I bite out, depositing the iPad next to me.

  “Room 1211,” he says, “and the garage is your most discreet entry point.”

  “Agreed,” I say. “Make it happen.”

  He says nothing else, starting the engine and cutting us across the road, to the side of the hotel. His cell phone starts ringing. “Nick,” he says, grabbing it once we pull into the garage. “No doubt, wondering what we’re doing.”

  “Make sure that’s it before I get out.”

  He answers the call and there is a clipped exchange, before Seth says, “I’ll explain in a minute unless, there’s a change you have to report.” A brief pause and then he adds, “Just watch the door,” and ends the call. “We’re good,” he tells me.

  “Call me if I have a visitor on the way,” I say. “Otherwise, I’ll call when I have the answers we need.” I exit the car without another word.

  I can be a patient man. I can wait on my adversaries to make the wrong move, or say the wrong thing. But I do not believe Emily is my adversary, nor am I patient tonight. Whoever her enemy is, they are also mine. It’s time for me to meet that enemy, along with the real woman who’s been in my bed. But first, I’m going to remind her why she was in my bed in the first place.

  EMILY

  I force myself to sit on the side of the hotel bed, willing my heart to stop racing as I reach for the hotel phone again, hoping a public line protects me, but feeling I have no option but to take the risk. Six times I’ve called my brother. Six times since I reached this hotel room thirty minutes ago. That doesn’t count the many attempts before I threw away the only phone I had left in a street trashcan. And just like all the times before, Rick doesn’t answer. This time I don’t bother leaving a message. I press my hands to my face. I’ve given up so much for that man even before this hell started, and this is what I get in return. Tears prick at my eyes and I reject them, furious at myself for being so weak. I stand up again. I don’t have time to wallow in a pity party. I need to sleep and plan for tomorrow, in the opposite order. I remove my tennis shoes and hoodie and then walk across the small room to the desk against the wall, where I grab a pad of paper and a pen.

  Returning to the bed, I climb on top, move the mass of pillows to lean on the headboard, and pull my knees to my chest. Pen perched, I start thinking about everything I have to do tomorrow, and how that list varies if I don’t hear from my brother. No. I need to start with a—no matter what—list:

  •  Disposable phones

  •  Clothes

  •  Bank

  •  A place to stay

  I pause. Should I leave town or stay here? Do I dare fly? What if the police are looking for me? I’m sure the hotel has a business center, but I’m afraid to Google my name to find out. What if I trigger attention I don’t need? So, no. No flying. I write that down. Can I take a bus to another city? I add to my list:

  •  No flying. Research travel documentation needed for a bus.

  •  Research big cities nearby.

  I have to be out of here by noon, and I need a change of clothes again. This isn’t a fancy hotel, but surely they can direct me to a store that can deliver. I set my pad and pen aside and sit up, reaching for the phone at the same moment there’s a knock on the door. My heart leaps into my throat. I go still. Completely, utterly still, not even daring to breathe. Another knock sounds and I wrap my fingers around the down comforter.

  “Sweetheart.”

  The familiar rumble of Shane’s deep, masculine voice sends a rush of adrenaline through me and delivers a jolt of too many emotions to name. “I know you’re in there,” he adds, his voice a seduction and a command, a skill he masters as well as he does me. “I’m going to need you to open the door.”

  I give a silent scream, and look skyward. All I went through tonight to keep him out of this, and he’s found me. All the fear, the running, the panic I felt, and he is here and I am still struggling to save him from me. “Sweetheart,” he repeats, the endearment doing the same funny thing to my stomach it always does. “I’m not leaving.”

  I climb off the bed and walk to the door, pressing my hand to the surface and for long seconds we are silent, him there, and me here, so close but so far away.

  “Open up, sweetheart,” he prods, his voice softer now, and somehow, I know he knows I’m right here, right in front of him, but divided by a door I both hate and need.

  “You have to leave,” I say. “Go, Shane. This is my business, not yours.”

  “You are my business,” he replies. “And if I have to sleep in front of your door, I will. Eventually you’ll have to come out.”

  “I could call security,” I say, but I sound unresolved in that threat even to myself.

  “And that would get attention you don’t want.”

  Frustrated, confused, tormented, I raise my voice, giving a guttural, “You’re such an asshole, Shane.”

  “If that’s what holding on to you makes me, then you’re right. I’m an asshole.”

  He’s stubborn. So ridiculously stubborn and I have to make him leave. I push off the door and start pacing, trying to decide what to do. How do I make him go away? I could tell him I’m working for his family, but that would crush him and only make him demand answers. I could tell him I’m working for the Feds and he’d have to back off, but it’s just another lie I don’t want to tell.

  “Emily.”

  At the sound of that name, that only one he has made bearable, I stop in place and face the door. He says nothing more, as if he knows what he’s done. As if he knows that using this name, my new name, will shake me. And he probably does. He knows me in ways that defy a name on paper, in ways no other human being has ever truly known me. I walk back to the door. “Shane,” I say. “Please go away.”

  “Would you go away if our circumstances were reversed?”

  No. My answer is no, and therefore I have to open the door and step into the hallway. I have t
o give him some reason to let me go, and that idea guts me. Because that means being a bitch. Being mean. Leaving him thinking I’m the monster he feared when he first confronted me. I flip the steel lock slowly, softly, as not to alert him I’m about to exit, then inhale for courage. I open the door and in a blink, his hands are on my waist, and his big body is crowding mine, walking me inside the room. Another blink and the door slams behind him. Another and I’m against the door the way I was in his apartment, him in front of me, his powerful legs shackling mine, his spicy, deliciously perfect scent encasing me.

  “You didn’t really think I’d let you get away, did you?” he says, a long dark lock of hair touching his brow, as if he’s been running his hands through his hair, an act of uncontained emotion he rarely allows himself. But if his emotions are freer than normal, his control is still fully intact. He has it. I do not.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  EMILY

  “You should have stayed away,” I say, holding on to Shane’s waist when I should be pushing him away.

  He tangles rough fingers in my hair, giving my head a gentle tug, and forcing my gaze to his. “I won’t stay away. Don’t you see that? And even if I wanted to, which I don’t, you’re a drug to me. The only addiction, outside of success, I’ve ever had.” He kisses me, a deep, intoxicating kiss, his tongue stroking, caressing, his hands under my T-shirt, warm on my bare skin. Sensations spiral through me—he spirals through me, this man who has become such a part of me in ways he can’t understand, in ways I am not sure I understand. I moan with their impact, with the force that is this man consuming me, and I’m struggling to stay sane. In the moment, I shove at his chest, pulling away from his kiss.

  “Shane, wait, I need—”

  “We need,” he says, and suddenly he is pulling my T-shirt over my head, tossing it aside, and his shirt follows. “It’s not you anymore,” he says, his hands back on my naked waist, branding me, seducing me. “It’s not me anymore. It’s us. It has been since the moment we shared that first cup of coffee. Us, Emily.”

  “Shane—” I try again, but I before I can say more he cups my face.

  “No one was ever supposed to matter to me like this,” he declares, and a moment later he is kissing me, his tongue doing a seductive slide against mine before he adds, “No one was supposed to taste this damn good.” Before I know his intent, he’s reached behind me, unhooked my bra, and dragged it down my arms. I flatten my hands on the hard wooden surface behind me, gasping with the contrast of the cold hotel air and the sizzling way his gaze strokes over my nipples. They tighten and knot and my breasts are heavy, my sex clenching. And now it’s him flattening a hand on the door by my head, while his other palm scorches my hip all over again. “And no one,” he adds, “was supposed to look this fucking good to me. So good I think about those rosy nipples in my mouth when I’m sitting at my desk.”

  A shiver runs down my spine and I tremble, but every remnant of fear I’d felt an hour ago is gone.

  No. Not all of it. I fear this man in ways that are not about the secrets of my past. It’s the way he seduces me and makes me forget everything else, even when I should remember. He is power. He is passion. Everything about him is too much. Too extreme. Too mighty. Too right and wrong at the same time. His hand slides between my shoulder blades and he molds me to him. “In case, I haven’t been clear,” he says, his voice a low rasp that manages to be both sandpaper and silk on my raw nerves. “I don’t like the word ‘can’t,’ so could I let you go? Yes. But I won’t.”

  In this moment, I am most definitely consumed by this man. I don’t want him to let me go, even though I know that makes me selfish. It makes me weak, but he is already kissing me again, and he tastes of all the things I crave. Power. Control. Passion. Shelter in a storm raging wildly around me. And those thing are drugs, he is a drug that has me moaning and leaning into him, while I barely resist the urge to touch him, to cling to him. But if I do not resist him now, I never will, and so I do touch him. I shove against his chest and struggle to tear my mouth away.

  “You won’t say ‘can’t,’ but I will. I am. You have to let me go. This can’t change that.”

  “It already has,” he assures me, turning me to face the door, and pressing my hands to the wooden surface. “You just aren’t admitting it yet, but you will. And right now, I have one goal. Reminding you how much you trust me.” Before I can reply, he drags my sweats down, my panties following. In the next, his hand is on my backside, his teeth scraping the delicate flesh.

  “I lied to you,” I say, making a lame attempt to push him away. “That isn’t trust.”

  “That was fear I’m going to erase.” He seals that promise by wrapping my waist, lifting me and shoving aside the clothes pooling at my feet.

  “Shane,” I plead the instant I’m back on my feet, trying to get him to hear me out before I have no resolve left to argue.

  His reply is to turn me to face him, my back resting against the door again. His hands are on my hips, those gray eyes of his dark, unreadable. “I’m right here,” he promises. “With you, where I’ve been since the moment I met you. But what I said earlier is true. Everything has changed.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I came for you,” he declares. “I’m not leaving without you. Will you lie now and tell me you want me to?”

  My chest tightens, eyes burning with the hint of betrayal I hear in his voice and my hands go to his arms. “I hated lying to you, Shane. Please know that. I thought this would end, I could confess.”

  He leans in, his lips at my ear. “Tell me you don’t want me to stop,” he commands. “Tell me what you really feel, not what you think you’re supposed to feel.”

  “You know what I feel,” I whisper.

  “Say it.”

  There is a gravelly, tormented sound to his voice. I desperately need to answer, but if I say what he wants me to say, what I want to say, I will only ensure he won’t let go of me when he has to let go. “No,” I say firmly. “No. I won’t.”

  He leans back and looks at me, his gray eyes sparking with flecks of blue I know to be anger. “Yes,” he replies. “You will because I won’t stop until you give me everything that is real. That is what I want and deserve. And so do you. But that is what we have to be from this point forward. Real. Absolute. Honest.” He lowers himself to one knee, where his mouth presses to my belly, his tongue flickering over the sensitive flesh.

  I pant and my lashes lower, because I know what is coming, what he will do next, and my willpower will soon evaporate, if it hasn’t already. He wants what is real, but that is dark and blood-laden, and he doesn’t deserve it. His hands caress up and down my hips, over my backside. His tongue flicks against me, sweeping into my belly button. I’m so very in this man’s control but the thing is, that is when I feel the safest. That is when I feel like nothing else can touch me.

  “Look at me,” he orders, and as if I have no option, I do as he says. I look at him, and I find the smoldering heat of his desire and mine reflecting in his stare. And feel the connection I share with this man in every part of me. “I’m going to remind you how good we are together.” He cups my sex. “I might not own you,” he says, his thumb stroking my sex, and I feel each stroke in the tingling of my nipples. “But I own your pleasure. And more that we’ll talk about after I make you come.” He slips a finger inside me, then another. “More than once.”

  I try to grab his shoulders, but he is out of reach, forcing me to fist my hands by my sides, and endure the pleasure. Endure. Like this is hell when it’s pretty much heaven. He lifts my leg to his shoulder, his lips pressing to my belly again, his free hand sliding up and down my thigh. And then it happens, that thing that I know will happen, and want to happen. His tongue finds my clit in a tease of a touch. Then another. And another, until he sucks me into his mouth, dragging deeply on the sensitive nub, while those two fingers are inside me. The world fades. There is just pleasure. Just Shane, who does indeed own my pleasure
.

  As if proving that point, his mouth lifts and his fingers stop moving. “Look at me,” he orders again.

  “You’re killing me,” I hiss, lifting my head to stare down at him.

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  “You already did.”

  “Do you want more?”

  “Yes,” I hiss, and knowing he will insist on more, I add, “Yes. Yes. Yes. I want more. Please stop teasing me.”

  “Whatever you say,” he declares, his sexy, sometimes punishing mouth dangerously, wonderfully close to that sweet spot where I need and want him. “You’re in charge.”

  “We both know that’s not true,” I manage, just in time to have his deep, rumble of laughter whisper against my clit, but he still denies me, giving me a darkly amused look. “Do you want control?”

  “Not right now,” I say. “Later I do.”

  His sexy, often punishing mouth quirks and then, to my relief, there are no more questions. There is just a lick of his tongue, which is gone too soon. “Shane,” I plead desperately.

  The sexy laugh that follows tells me that my urgency pleases him, and thankfully, my reward for doing so is his mouth closing over me. His tongue and fingers stroking my sex a moment later. And oh God, the spiral of heat and pleasure is almost too much to bear. It overwhelms me and I can’t think. I can only submit to this crazy, sexy, amazing man, and to the pleasure, so much pleasure. So very much and it’s too much, too fast. I want to fight the ball of tension in my belly moving lower and lower, but it’s powerful, fierce, and in a blink I stiffen, before my body spasms and pleasure rockets through me. A deep, low moan rips from my throat, a sound I barely know as my own, and time stands still. And then it’s over, and my body feels like it’s melting to the ground.

  Shane lowers my leg and catches my hips, lifting me and carrying me across the room, setting me on top of the bed, his body arched above mine. And then he is kissing me, the saltiness of me on his lips, now on mine, before he tears his mouth from mine and declares, “I need to feel you wet and hot around me, and I need it right now. Skin to skin, the way I only let myself be with you.”