I unstrap the weapon and set it on the shelf running around one side of the tiny space and dress in black leggings before pulling a pink tank top over a sports bra, where my gun should be returned. Instead, I fold my dress, set it on the shelf, and then hide the gun in the folds of the material, out of the sight of anyone who might be nosing around. I walk to the bathroom, and somehow manage to tie my long brown hair back without looking at myself in disgust for even feeling what I feel right now. Every single one of the girls that were pushed in the sex trade have it brutally, horribly worse than me. And now I need that run ten times more.
Exiting the bathroom, I cross the bedroom and open the door, finding Kyle in the living area, his scanner in his hand, his hot, hard body hugged by a snug white t-shirt and black sweats. “I’m ready,” I say, and even to my own ears, my voice sounds strained. “Are you ready?”
“I need to sweep your room and we can go.”
“Don’t you just have to do it again when we get back? I mean, every time we leave, this issue exists, right?”
“Every time,” he agrees, setting down the device. “And yes. This can wait.”
“Thank you,” I say, already crossing to the hallway, traveling toward the door, ready to escape, but just as I reach the doorway, I have a thought, and I face him. And damn it, he’s so close to me that my hand lands on his rock-solid chest, heat radiating up my arm and across my chest. “I’m sorry,” I say, but when I try to pull my hand back, he holds onto it, and I’m struck by the fact that I feel no fear. He doesn’t scare me. In fact, he draws me to him, arouses parts of me I thought would never feel anything again. And he’s done it now, after I’ve mentally relived hell with Michael Alvarez. I don’t understand how that is possible or why, when he slowly releases my hand, when my fingers slide away from him, that I just want to touch him again.
“I left my gun,” I say. “I thought you should know that.”
“I have mine and you have me.”
“I have you,” I repeat.
“Yes,” he says firmly. “You do.”
He’s right. Now, I have to decide what I’m going to do with him, or what I think he intends to do with me. I turn and grab the door, exiting to the hallway and I don’t stop until I’m in the elevator. Kyle is right there with me, both of us in the center of the car, neither of us moving away from each other. And I have this crazy realization that when my hand was on his chest, I was thinking of nothing but him. It was a welcome escape and suddenly, I want to touch him now, but the doors open, saving me from my insanity.
I dart forward, hurrying to the gym door. Thankfully, there is just a keycard and no sign in, and in a matter of two minutes, I’m on a treadmill, Kyle claiming the one beside me. I start running, and push up the speed, pushing my body with it. My mind starts working. I start replaying my plans in my head. My past. My decisions. For forty minutes I do this and I still can’t get my mind around what comes next. Somehow, I shift my thoughts to every moment I’ve spent with Kyle, which feels like many, when I’ve only just met him. He’s close to me. I’m going to let him get closer. He’s either my friend or my enemy, and I have a sudden realization that comes with a lot of self-hate. I know what I have been missing.
I step off the belt and hit the “stop” button and turn to find Kyle, who does the same. “We need to go to the room and talk right now.”
He grabs his towel. “Lead the way.”
***
Kyle
I have no idea what Myla is about to tell me but the minute I open the hotel room door, she’s inside. Entering after her, I shut the door and lock it, only to find her dashing down the hallway toward her room. Considering the urgency of her need to talk to me, I need to pursue, but I force myself to dial Asher. “There’s been no one in our room to create an issue with bugs, right?”
“You’re clear.”
That’s all I need to hear. I pursue Myla, pursue her, rounding the corner just in time to find her disappearing inside her room, but she doesn’t shut the door. Considering that an invitation, I head right in as she exits the closet and points her gun at me.
“Do you know why I didn’t take the gun with me to the gym?” she demands.
“I’m guessing because you wanted to shoot me,” I say, “given you appear to be considering it now.”
“Not you. Them. Him. I hate them all. I hate them so much. And I need you to tell them that. Get your payday. Get this over with.”
I officially have no clue where this came from or where it’s going, but I toss the scanner on the bed and step closer to her. “Stop,” she orders.
“I’m not going to tell anyone that you hate them.”
“You are going to tell them, or I swear to you, I will shoot you. And I’m desperate enough to do it.”
“Put the gun down, Myla. I’m going to help you. I’m here to help you.”
She squats and slides a make-up compact toward me. “Under the lid, there’s a list. I need you to call your FBI friends and give them that list. Then call and tell Juan I hate Alvarez and that I’m plotting to kill him.”
I don’t move, waiting until she stands to ask, “What’s the list?”
“Locations where he’s holding the women he’s kidnapped for his sex trade operation. I have them all. I know I do. And I need to know something good came out of this. I need to save them before he kills me. Or at least know they will be saved.”
“And we will save them. Together.”
“By you calling your friends now.”
I take a step toward her. “Give me the gun, Myla.”
She takes a step backward. “I will shoot you, Kyle.”
“Please don’t,” I say, “because, sweetheart, I’m highly efficient, but I happen to believe I can do a lot more to help if I’m not bleeding. And we both know, I’m not the one you want to shoot, anyway.”
“I’m going to do what I have to do to save my sister and those women.”
“This isn’t what you have to do.” I move quickly then, take two broad steps, and stand in front of her, my hand wrapped around hers and the gun. “Shoot me or let go of the gun.”
“And if I let go?”
“I hold onto you. I help you.”
“Give me a reason to believe that. Call in the list.”
I move then, taking the gun from her in a skilled movement I’ve used dozens of times, then disarm the weapon and drop it on the ground. My hands are on her waist, and I have her against the wall before she can barely blink, my legs shackling hers.
“Damn you, Kyle,” she hisses, her fingers closing around my jacket. “Why can’t you just call in the list and then take your payday?”
“Because you are not a payday to me,” I say. “And because I have to choose who we tell about anything to do with Alvarez carefully. One bad agent, one leak of this to Alvarez, and we’re dead, and so are those women.”
“Oh. Oh, God.” Her lashes lower and lift, her fist balling at her chest. “I…I didn’t think of that at all. I listened to my father’s stories. I’m smarter than this. I had to be smarter than this to survive this long. I should have thought of that.”
“I’m going to help you,” I promise. “But right now, I need you to talk to me. Tell me what set you off tonight, so I know what’s coming at us.”
“What happened was my realization that this fashion business is just going to lure Kara to me. The minute she sees the name “Alvarez” with “fashion”, she’ll think of me, and I don’t know why I didn’t put that together before. He knows that. She’s always been a liability to him. He’ll use this as an excuse to kill her and justify it to me. ”
“And you thought getting killed yourself somehow stopped that from happening how?”
“Then he won’t have a reason to kill her.”
What feels like years of cold, hard ice around my heart melts with the sacrifice in those words, and I cup her face. “Sweetheart. You aren’t going to die and neither is your sister. I won’t let that happen. And Alvar
ez will never touch you again. You have my word.”
“You can’t stop him. At any moment, he could walk through the door and then I’m his all over again.”
“He won’t be walking in, and if he does, he won’t be walking out.”
“It’s not that simple, or I would have killed him a long time ago,” she says, her fingers curling on my chest. “If he dies, those women will be moved and Juan takes over.”
“Not if he’s dead. And we’ll work this out. And we will get out.”
“I can’t leave. He’ll go straight to Kara.”
“Not if he thinks you’re dead.”
“You can do that?”
“Yes. I can do that and I will.”
“Because why? Who are you? And I mean really. Who are you?”
My gut tells me that if I tell her right now, in this moment, it will not be well-received. “A friend,” I say, my gaze lowering to her lush mouth and lifting. “And the man who wants to kiss you. Really kiss you. Can I kiss you, Myla?”
“You’re asking?”
“Yes. I’m asking. After all you’ve been through-”
“He hasn’t destroyed me. He hasn’t beaten me and I don’t like that you think he has.”
“I don’t think he’s beaten you.”
“He hasn’t,” she insists. “I’m not giving him that power and damn it, you better not either by treating me like I’m broken and fragile. So kiss me if you’re going to kiss me or let me go, if you don’t want-”
I cup the back of her head, and slant my mouth over hers, my tongue sliding against hers, stroking, caressing, and the taste of her, one part hunger I welcome, but the other part, the torment, I intend to drive away. I deepen the kiss, my hand pressing beneath her tank top, finding warm, soft skin. My fingers splay over her rib cage, while my mind reminds me that no matter how big she talks, she wants this escape for a reason. She has been abused, used, hurt.
I tear my mouth from hers, my breathing and hers ragged, my hands settling at her waist. “Myla-”
“Don’t do this,” she pleads, “Don’t be the kind of hero I don’t need. Give me something good to remember the next time he touches me, something that gets me through it.”
“I told you,” I grind out. “He will never touch you again.”
“You underestimate him.”
“You underestimate me,” I assure her. “You want to forget? Let’s forget.”
“Don’t treat me like-”
I tangle my fingers in her hair and drag her gaze to mine. “Is that too gentle?”
“It is until you kiss me again,” she challenges, and so I do, holding nothing back. My tongue stroking, taking, demanding, and she rewards me by giving me no fear, but rather a soft moan, and a whisper of “Kyle,” when I nip her lip.
“That’s what I want,” I say. “My name on your tongue, not his. My tongue on your body, not his.”
“That’s what I want too,” she dares, and when she adds, “very much,” there is this sense of her claiming something outside of a world she’d accepted but hated that empowers me, to help her go there, be there. I reach down and pull her tank top over her head, tossing it away. And she is not shy, timid or scared. She tugs my shirt up, but my shoulder strap and weapon, hold it in place. I’m far from detoured though, unhooking her sports bra and dragging it down her arms, my gaze raking over her high full breasts and pebbled pink nipples. And the minute our gazes collide, the fire between us ignites, and we are kissing again, my hand flattening over her back, melting her naked breasts to my chest.
She tries a new approach to getting me naked, shoving at my jacket and I shrug it over my shoulders, letting it fall to the ground, but when her hand goes for the clasp on my shoulder strap, my reaction is automatic. I grab her hand and stop her. “What are you doing?”
“I can’t get your shirt off while your gun is on,” she says, and then gives me an unhappy look. “Did you think that I was going for your weapon?”
“Programming,” I say. “Protect your weapon, always. And you aren’t the only one with a bad relationship baggage.”
“I can accept that and understand it, but now it’s my turn to say quid pro quo. I’m opening the door to trusting you. You need to do the same and trust me.”
She’s right. A hand for a hand. I let mine fall away now, leaving hers at my strap, a move from my gun. She closes her hand over the butt of my gun, daring me to challenge her, her chin lifting, gaze meeting mine as she says, “If you were him-”
My hands slide around her neck, dragging her mouth to mine. “Obviously I need to fuck you fast and hard before I go slow and sexy, just to get him the hell out of this room.” I kiss her, a deep, demanding, stroke of tongue on tongue, I end with a challenge. “Do you want me or my gun?”
“You,” she whispers, her hand sliding away from my weapon. “I want you.”
“That’s the right answer,” I say, stepping back from her to remove my shoulder strap and set it on the ground. “Take your shoes off,” I order, ripping my own shirt over my head.
Her eyes travel my chest and jerk to my face. “My shoes? I thought you’d say take my panties off, not my shoes, but okay.” She kicks them off, while I do the same of mine, and then, one by one, playfully throws them across the room.
I shackle her hips, walking her to me. “I want to be the one to take your panties off, sweetheart,” I say, reaching around her and pulling the tie from her hair, the silky strands waving around her shoulders.
“Too late,” she says. “I was teasing about the panties. I don’t actually wear them with these workout pants.”
I arch a brow. “That’s unexpected.”
“Not really. You wouldn’t like it if things went the wrong places either.”
I laugh, at the adorable confession, my already hard cock just got harder, as my palms caress up and down her hips. “Then I’ll finish undressing you.”
“Does that mean I can finish undressing you?”
“If I finish getting undressed, then I’ll be inside you.”
“And that’s a problem why?”
“It’s not a problem at all, but we do need to talk about-”
“Protection,” she supplies, her hands flattening on my chest. “I’m on the pill, and thankfully he still uses condoms because he’s that paranoid someone is trying to kill him.” Her gaze drops to my chest.” And he kept me to himself. The Juan thing wasn’t actual-”
I cup her face. “You do not have to tell me this.”
“I just suddenly feel like you might think I’m a walking, talking STD. Juan didn’t do that part and never once with Michael without a condom. And I was never given drugs.”
“I want you to talk to me Myla, I want to know who you are and what you’ve been through, but I hate that you feel the need to say these things to me right now, in this moment. That you don’t know I see you, not him. It tells me you feel damaged, or tainted, when he is the one who is damaged and tainted.”
“I am-”
“No. You are not and all I was thinking about when I brought this up, was protecting you, and me being inside you. But in the midst of this, is still good news. When he’s gone, and he will be, you can wash him away.” I caress her cheek. “I want to be the man that washes him away for you. Will you let me be him?”
“Yes. Please. Be him, Kyle. Now. Tonight.”
“Then I’m going to make you remember what it’s like to not know what comes next and yet, know that it will be pleasure. Just pleasure. I’m going to turn you to face the wall.”
“Are you telling me, and then waiting for a reply to find out if I’m going to panic? Or say no?”
“Everything isn’t a test, Myla. This is just you and me. It’s pleasure. It’s getting to know each other’s bodies and as for “no”. You can say “no” to anything with me, now and always.” I don’t wait this time. I turn her, pressing her hands to the hard surface, mine on top of hers, my body framing her smaller, softer one. “What do you feel when I d
o this?”
“I’m not afraid.”
“I didn’t say you were afraid. I asked, what do you feel?”
“Warm all over.”
My hand goes to her belly. “Do you know what I want? I want to hold you like this, and have total trust.”
“I do trust you.”
“No. No you don’t and you can’t because trust takes time, but I’m going to make sure that we have that time.” I sweep the silky strands of her dark brown hair off her shoulder, lightly nipping the delicate skin, then licking the offended area. “What are you thinking now?” I ask, my hands leaving hers and cupping her breasts.
“How good you feel. How different.”
Different from him. Fucking Alvarez is still here. I turn her back around to face me, hands returning to her waist. “Sweetheart. No man likes to be compared to another. I’m here. You’re here. Just us.”
“I know,” she whispers. “I do.”
“I’ll believe you when I stop tasting him on your lips,” I say, my fingers slicing into her hair, my tongue licking into her mouth, tasting her hunger, her reserve that I reject, my cheek sliding to hers. “He’s still here,” I murmur, “but I’m going to fuck him away, and then I swear to you, I’m going to fuck him up so badly, he’ll cease to exist.” My lips find hers, caressing lightly, lingering. “He doesn’t get to be here tonight.”
Her fingers sink into my shoulders, her body swaying into mine. “I want him gone,” she breaths out. “You have no idea how much I want him gone.”
“I do know,” I say, leaning back to let her see the truth in my eyes. “I do understand what it’s like to pretend to be someone else to survive, but you don’t have to do that with me.” My fingers curve around her neck, tugging her mouth back to mine. “I’m going to make you feel exposed and show you how damn sexy vulnerability can be when you’re with me, when you’re safe. When all that matters to the other person, to me, is your pleasure, not mine.” And with that promise, I kiss her, my tongue licking into her mouth, in a silky, hot demand, meant to be a prelude to all the places I intend to lick, kiss, and tease.