As he licked at first one nipple, then the other, he lifted her, allowed the head of his cock to tuck against the soft folds between her thighs before stilling against her.
Lifting his head he stared into her dazed eyes.
“What’s wrong?” She was panting with pleasure as she stared back at him, her nails biting into his shoulders as her thighs tightened around him.
“I want to watch,” he whispered. “I want to see your eyes as I take you, Hannah. Don’t close them.”
She was breathing harshly, heavily, a little whimper breaking from her lips as he penetrated her the slightest degree, stretching the entrance open as her eyes darkened further.
“I love watching you,” Rick admitted. “Watching your face flush, your eyes growing drowsy and dark as I fuck you.”
Her long hair, slick and wet with water, spread around her shoulders like a dark cape that contrasted with the silky smoothness of her pale skin.
He pressed in further, feeling the muscles of her pussy clamp around the head of his cock. He felt the pressure of it wrap around his balls as the need to come nearly broke his will.
He’d barely remembered to slip a condom on, and wished he could take her without one. He wanted to feel her holding him, gripping him, flesh on flesh, and promised himself that one day soon he would do just that.
The tight, hot grip of her sheath was ecstasy itself. It fluttered around his cock as he worked inside her, stretching her, feeling her burn around him.
This was like no other experience he had ever had. It was like nothing he had ever known before. He wanted more. He wanted it to last forever. He wanted to come inside her, sate the hunger, and hold her close as he slept.
“Rick.” She cried his name, her lips moving over his shoulders, his neck, his jaw. “Oh God. It’s so good.”
It was too good. It was paradise. It was heat and life and he had no idea how he could ever survive without her now. He couldn’t imagine letting her go. Couldn’t imagine never touching her again. He couldn’t envision a day that he didn’t have her kiss, her laughter, or her smiles.
Or this. Her legs tight around his waist, her lips at his shoulder, teeth raking, nipping, as he thrust inside her, filling her with his cock. And when she came, she would bite him as she tried and failed to hold back her screams.
“Yeah,” he groaned, feeling her pussy clamp around his cock like a hot little vise, trying to hold him inside. “So sweet, baby. So sweet.”
Hannah cried out his name as he moved harder, faster, shafting into her with a hunger so desperate it shocked him, even now. It shocked him every time, the well of desperation, the aching need and satisfaction she could inspire inside him.
That need was tightening inside him now. Rick could feel the heated grip of her pussy intensifying around his dick as she grew closer to her own release. Her nails were digging into his arms as those sharp little teeth pressed into his shoulder.
God, she was going to come. He could feel the muscles of her pussy growing tighter around him, flexing, fluttering, until with a hoarse cry she gave in to the pleasure. Her teeth locked into his flesh, her body arched into him, thighs tightening, pussy milking him until he had no choice but to follow her over the edge.
His hand slapped against the shower wall as he fought for the strength to hold them both upright. His release pumped from him, sending lightning-hot surges of ecstasy racing from his balls to the base of his spine where they exploded in a feeling so intense it weakened his knees.
He became lost in her. He poured a part of his soul into hers, and swore he felt a part of hers enter him. They were locked together more than just physically. Something more bound them now, and that something more was so unfamiliar, and yet so satisfying, that he couldn’t fight it. He didn’t want to fight it. He wanted to stand there with this pleasure flowing between them forever.
And he might have, but the hot water began to grow cooler, warning him that soon their heated flesh would receive a chill they didn’t want.
Easing his drowsy lover to her feet, Rick supported her as he shut off the shower then disposed of his condom.
Pulling two fluffy towels from the towel holder outside the shower, he dried her off gently. He took his time to make certain the sheen of water was gone before he exposed her to the cooler air outside the shower. Wrapping her hair in another towel, he drew in a deep, satisfied breath as she leaned against the bathroom wall and watched as he dried himself off quickly.
“One fantasy down,” Hannah murmured, her gaze roaming his body as he pulled on clean jeans.
“A shower fantasy, huh?” Rick grinned. He couldn’t help grinning. Damn, but she made him happy. He hadn’t smiled in more years than he could remember.
“Well, I have to admit, you were definitely better than the fantasy, but yes. A shower fantasy.”
Hannah looked like a tempting pixie standing there teasing him with nothing but a towel wrapped around her.
Zipping his jeans, he reached for the heavy robe hanging behind the door when he suddenly froze, his gaze focusing on the cell phone he had laid on the bathroom counter.
Before Hannah could process what was going on, he plunged the bathroom into darkness, flipping off the lights and jerking her back, his hand over her lips in a warning to be silent.
“The alarm,” Rick whispered at her ear as he hurriedly began helping her into her robe. “Someone’s in the house.”
Hannah stared back at him in horror. Someone had managed to break into his house?
“Help will be on the way.” He pushed her farther back along the wall. “Stay here. Stay quiet.”
Help? On the way? He was depending on someone to get out here, from town, to help them? She looked at him, fighting the fear for him that was suddenly overwhelming her now.
She couldn’t lose him. She had just gotten him. She had fought for two years to make him see her, to finally find the emotion in his eyes that she had the past few days. And now, someone was going to try to take him away from her.
Hannah shook her head desperately. “I can help.” She kept her voice as low as possible. “I can use a gun, Rick. Don’t leave me here.”
She couldn’t handle the thought of it. That he would face danger alone.
“Stay.” Rick’s voice was hard, brutal, as he pushed her back into the shower stall. “Please, Hannah. Let me do this. Don’t let me lose you, baby.” He cupped her cheek, his eyes shadowed as he stared back at her. “Please, God. Don’t let me lose you now that I have you.”
She watched, her heart in her throat, fear racing through her system now, as he backed out of the shower and disappeared into the darkness.
Crouching down, Hannah listened, trying to hear over the pounding of her heart and promising herself, swearing, once this was over she was stripping a piece of hide off his ass for leaving her like this, for not taking her with him. As though she were helpless. How many damned times did she have to remind him? That she had three brothers. Older brothers. Marine-trained brothers. She was not a helpless little debutante that didn’t know how to shoot a gun.
Hannah might not know how to deal with stalkers while her brothers were away on a mission, but she did know how to shoot one when he showed his ugly little face.
She’d wanted an excuse to see Rick. A reason to come to him. The attempted break-in had served that purpose. But now, he thought she was as helpless as a child.
Biting her lip she listened intently, sure the pounding of her heart was loud enough for a deaf stalker to hear.
She couldn’t hear a damned thing. Not the creak of a floorboard, a breath, or a struggle. Hannah was in the dark in more ways than one and her nerves were ready to jump out of her skin.
God help her if she lost him. If Rick thought it would hurt him to lose her, then he had no idea what it would do to her, to lose him.
* * *
RICK MOVED THROUGH the dark house, his weapon held steady at the side of his head as he searched for the intruder that had managed
to get in.
He could feel the cell phone in his pocket, a series of silent vibrations assuring him that help was on its way. He’d expected this for two years now, lived in fear of it happening while Kent was home, and now his heart was in his throat because Hannah was here, in the middle of the danger he was responsible for bringing to her doorstep.
A few people might have been capable of getting into his home without setting off the main alarm. But no one could have suspected the silent backup alarm. Its installation was so precise, so well hidden behind the main system, that it would have taken someone who was aware of it to trip it.
And only Rick and the Elite Ops were aware of that system.
His chest ached with the knowledge that only a few people he knew could have gotten past the unique code word he used for that main system. Only one other person knew it. And it was the person he had suspected, the one he had prayed he was wrong about.
He had prayed that Hershel, his former deputy, and Sienna had been the only ones close to him who had betrayed him. He had tried to convince himself during the past two years that the lack of action was proof that they were the only ones.
But now, he knew he was wrong.
At least Kent wasn’t here, he told himself, grieving at the betrayal. His son would have been terrified.
Slipping silently into the living room, he caught the slight shift of movement at the doorway into the kitchen. Tall, lean. The intruder slipped out of the room, heading for the bedroom as Rick followed quickly, silently.
He was almost on the intruder. He could see the slope of the profile, the dark mask that covered the face to hide it from the camera that activated when the alarm went off.
He didn’t have to see the face. He knew who it was.
CHAPTER 8
STEPPING INTO the bedroom just behind the intruder, Rick flipped the lights on, jumping to the side as the pop of a silenced gun went off.
He moved just in time. His own weapon came up but, before he could fire, the figure jumped for the bathroom and horror sliced through his soul.
He raced to the doorway, fear tearing through him as he heard Hannah’s enraged little cry. Rather than fear it sounded like horrified fury as she cursed viciously.
The light flipped on, and he was met with the sight of her being used as a shield for the intruder behind her, her beautiful green eyes glaring at him angrily.
“I told you to leave me a gun!” She struggled against the hand wrapped in the strands of her wet hair until the muzzle of the silencer was jammed beneath her neck in warning, and he stared behind her into Mae’s triumphant gray eyes.
“You almost had me,” she drawled as she drew the mask off and tossed it to the floor of the tub. “How did you know I was here?”
“Because he’s smarter than you are?” Hannah cracked out sarcastically.
“She’s a bitch, Rick.” Mae laughed before jerking viciously at Hannah’s hair and drawing a surprised cry from her lips as she jammed the gun tighter into her neck.
“Why?” he asked her, keeping his gun carefully along his thigh as she stared into his eyes. “Why, Mae? I trusted you.”
She laughed at that. It was no more than he had expected of her.
“You trusted me?” she questioned him in amusement. “That was your first mistake, Rick. Trusting me. After what your father did to me, you should have known better.”
His father. He’d married Rick’s mother rather than Mae. He’d had a short fling with her, and decided, as his father told Rick later, that Mae’s temper was more than he could handle. Weeks later Rick senior had met the half-Mexican Maria Lopez and within months had married her.
Mae had seemed to let the past go easily. She married Aaron Livingston, raised a son of her own, and buried them several years before Sienna’s death. The son was killed in Iraq; his father had had a heart attack a year later.
He shook his head wearily. “This isn’t about Dad,” Rick said sadly. “We both know better.”
“He married a dirty fucking Mexican,” she said, sneering. “He couldn’t even fuck something decent, he had to screw that Mexican bitch instead, didn’t he?”
His mother had been no bitch. She had been kind, filled with laughter. Just as his father had been.
“You’re a part of the militia,” he stated, watching Hannah’s face from his peripheral vision. He knew what was coming. He could feel it. He could see the triumph and the maliciousness in Mae’s face, and he knew.
“Just as Sienna was.” She snickered. “We used to laugh about you, you know. We were good, weren’t we, Rick? We fooled you all along.”
“You fooled me,” he admitted. He’d known all along that whoever the mole was in the department was good, damned good. If it had been Sienna herself, alone, then he could have understood it. She was his wife, she had access to parts of his life and his job that others wouldn’t have had. She and Mae, together, it would have been incredibly easy to fool him.
“And you killed Sienna,” Mae said.
He barely held back the flinch that would have shook his body at the vicious statement.
He stared back at her silently as she laughed with pure pleasure.
“Did he tell you that he killed his wife?” Mae asked Hannah, jerking at her hair again. “His sweet, loving wife. He blew the back of her head off. Did he tell you that? Did he tell you how easily she fooled him? That she was a plaything for the militia? A little camp whore with a taste for cocaine. God, she was so good at fooling him, it was incredible. And so amusing.”
Hannah stared back at him, her gaze desperate, her eyes filled with demand, almost a warning, as he watched her. As though the information Mae was giving her didn’t matter. That Hannah didn’t care that he had killed his wife. That she didn’t care that his wife had been addicted to cocaine, and had betrayed her husband, her friends, her community.
“I’m glad you were amused,” Rick said quietly.
“Was amused.” Mae breathed out with an air of boredom as the gun pressed deeper against Hannah’s neck. “I’m no longer amused. You betrayed Sienna, Rick, and the BCM takes care of their own. They avenge their own. Tonight, you’ll get to watch your new lover die. Then I’ll kill you.”
There was that look in Hannah’s eyes again. The warning.
She had three brothers. That thought hit his mind suddenly. Three brothers that were in the marines. Had they taught her to protect herself?
Rick’s jaw tightened as he fought the fiercely protective instincts rising inside him now. He had to trust her. That was what she was telling him with her eyes. She wanted his trust.
“Tell her good-bye nice and sweet, Rick,” Mae suggested, her smile demented, her gaze filled with fury and malicious hatred.
“Hannah.” He whispered her name, giving a tiny imperceptible nod.
Mae moved the gun a fraction away from her neck, just enough that she could swallow, lift her head the slightest degree. He watched her eyes, saw the acknowledgment in her gaze. And then she went into action.
She jerked, kicked, her elbow went back, and at the same time she managed to surprise Mae enough to push her head forward.
Mae hadn’t expected her to make a move. Had she thought they would just die? Go like lambs to the slaughter?
As Hannah fought, the bathroom seemed to explode. Rick’s arm came up and he fired, just as the bathroom windows shattered, dark figures flying through the openings. Rick grabbed Hannah, jerking her into his arms and pulling her to the floor with him.
He’d hit Mae, he knew he had. The men coming through the windows weren’t the enemy, they were friends.
The Elite Ops rushed through the room, as silent as the night after the crash of the windows. Some grabbed Mae, restraining her, checked her wound, while others raced to secure the house.
It was surreal. Relief washed through Rick with a force that left him weak as he quickly got to his knees, turned Hannah onto her back, and stared down at her in shock.
She was laughing. He
r green eyes were lit with life and love and adventure. And she was laughing.
“Three brothers.” She raised her arms, looped them around his neck as her head lifted and her lips pressed against his in a quick, hard kiss. “Remember, Rick. Three brothers.”
Three brothers. He felt a grin tugging at his lips, felt the lifting of the fear and the pain that had tightened his chest, just enough to allow him to breathe.
“I love you,” he whispered, his hands framing her face as he stared down at her, felt her inside him as he had never felt anything in her life. “I love you, Hannah.”
Her expression lit up his soul. All the love, all the life he could have ever imagined, ever dreamed of.
“You finally saw me,” she whispered.
Rick shook his head at her slowly. “I’ve always seen you, Hannah.”
“No.” She cupped his jaw with her palm, love shining in her eyes, in her face. “You didn’t before, but you have now. Now you have, Rick.” Her thumb brushed over his lips. “I love you.”
She loved him. She had loved him last year. She was going to love him next year. He could feel it, he knew it.
“My luck’s changing,” she said softly. “It’s changing, right?”
“Mine definitely has,” he stated, helping her to her feet. “I finally got lucky.” He wrapped his arms around her, held her to him, and glanced away to see Mae being hustled quickly from the house. “We both got lucky.”
And they had.
Mae was still alive and she wouldn’t see the inside of a jail. At least not a traditional one. She had information the Ops needed. So she’d be taken care of. Her disappearance would be explained away. In the meantime, he had Hannah. If her luck had changed, then his sure as hell had.
He had Hannah, and having her, loving her, was what mattered. His luck had definitely changed.
RECKLESS AND YOURS
Red Garnier
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS