An idea hits me and I snatch my journal from the nightstand, scoop up my supplies, and head into the bathroom, making a beeline for the closet. Once I’m in there, I set everything on the bench in the center and then glance around the room, finding a section of Kayden’s clothes with a little extra space. With my wardrobe small at this point, I quickly move my things to his section, pausing momentarily to savor the sight of our things hanging together. I’ve never shared a life with anyone. Of this I am certain. I want to share this life with Kayden. That was never in question, but now it is for him. And no wonder, really. Everything in his life is danger, questions, problems. Closing the door to my questions, remembering everything, is something that isn’t just for me. It’s for him.
Turning to face the area where my clothes no longer hang, I note the concrete wall and decide tape is a good idea. I go to work and start creating a map. The hotel. A restaurant I remember passing. Various places that strike the familiar, if not true, memories. But I have no immediate flashbacks, and a good hour later, when everything is where I want it, even the recreation of the alleyway still provokes nothing more than feelings and random glimpses of non-useful images in my mind. I sit down and set my phone next to me, picking up my journal and a pen, thinking I might jot down thoughts. Instead, I stare at the place where one of the pages was torn, willing myself to remember tearing it out, but I just can’t.
Grabbing my phone again, and thankful that at some point Kayden keyed in a list of important contacts that includes Matteo, Marabella, Nathan, and Adriel for me, I pull up Matteo’s number but hesitate. He’s just so darn sensitive about any suggestion anyone could get past his safeguards. I start to dial Adriel when I spot and laugh at the name “Sasha the Great” that she must have inserted herself sometime tonight. But I hesitate again. Something tells me she and Adriel are a little busy right now.
Matteo it is, I decide, but I bypass the call and settle on the less offensive text message question: Any word on the security concerns I had?
He replies almost instantly: Aside from a ghost or two I can’t get rid of, you’re safe.
I blink and laugh at his joke. Ghosts? Well, I have always thought the castle was haunted. I set my phone down and pick it back up, fighting an urge to type: Are you 100% sure? But that would really agitate him and he’s good at what he does. I know this.
I set the phone down firmly. There isn’t a security problem, anyway. There’s a me problem, and a little thing called blackouts. Why is my mind still protecting me, after that flashback in the club and then today? Just give me back everything and let me get it over with!
I study the wall before me, the images in full color and with street views, and I decide to start with the hotel in Paris. And just like that I’m in the hotel room, and things come to me as memories, not a flashback. This makes me smile. I see the room. The bed. The chair. The fight with David and the moment after he leaves the room, when I yank off the necklace in anger.
“Ah, damn it,” I murmur as it falls to the floor. ”Sometimes I get way too into character.”
I blink. “Way too into character? What does that mean?”
It has to mean I’m CIA, but I still find no memory that solidifies that for me. My hand flattens on the hotel photo. I remember leaving, with a hat and glasses on, then discreetly searching for an address that has nothing to do with David. I inhale and let it out. I used David, who was good-looking and full of himself and clearly using me as well, to get to Paris so that the CIA wouldn’t suspect I was following a lead about my father’s death.
“I’m remembering,” I whisper. Hoping this means I can remember what I did with the necklace, I move on to the image of the chocolate shop. I see myself go inside. I feel like that moment is important. I need to go to the security room and get online.
I turn around and Kayden steps into the doorway, his entrance having evaded my knowledge for the consumption of my memories. He pauses there, his holster gone, dark stubble on his square jaw that tells of the incredibly long day we’ve had. His hair is mussed up, as if he’s been running his fingers through it, which would imply he was fretting. A hint of being out of control that he never allows himself.
“Hi,” I say. “I made a memory wall and—”
I never finish the sentence. In a blink he’s in front of me, his hands on my waist, walking me against that wall of locations that may or may not have played a role in bringing us here to this moment in time.
“I ordered the murder of five people in that meeting today, Ella.”
“I know. I was there.”
“The assassination.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because this is my life. This is who I am—”
“When forced.”
“I don’t hesitate to do what is necessary.”
“To save lives.”
“I ordered the murder of five people,” he repeats. “Why are you okay with this, Ella?”
“Because some people are built for this kind of life—like you are. Because I’m my father’s daughter, and you’re your father’s son.”
“Your father could not have wanted this life for you.”
“My father wanted me to be fearless.”
“I told you on the porch that proposing to you was selfish. I wanted you with me. That’s all that was on my mind.”
“Wanted? As in past tense? I didn’t decline.”
“This is where I should tell you that proposal is void, past tense.” His fingers flex at my waist. “This is where I told myself that loving you means getting you the hell out of here. This is where I promised myself I wouldn’t be selfish.”
“Kayden—”
“But I’m still the same selfish bastard who proposed this afternoon, Ella. I don’t want to let you go. I want you. I need you. I didn’t want to, and I still don’t, because it would destroy me to lose you. I want to convince you that you belong here.”
“I was convinced the moment I met you, Kayden. We were strangers, yet you were familiar and right.”
He repeats what he’d said to me on the phone in Italian.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“You belong with me, and I’m not going to let go of you.”
There’s something odd about the way he says that. “Why would you have to let go of me?”
“You’re CIA. Covert—even more than your father was. As in, part of an elite group most of the agency doesn’t even know exists. My contact wouldn’t tell me the name of the group, if he even knew it. They recruited you right out of high school and paid for your college. Apparently your father had used every CIA exam in existence to train you, and they located those when he died.”
I inhale, memories of my father timing me while I took quizzes filling my mind. “How do you know this?”
“I have a contact here in Italy. A guy named Trigger. He’s hard to reach, which he says is because he’s retired, though I’m doubtful that’s true. He didn’t know your father, but he knew of him. And he knew how to get information on you that no one else could.”
I search his face, and suddenly, his intensity, his edgy dark mood, has me worried. “I know you, Kayden, and there’s more to this. Tell me. Just say it and get it over with.”
twelve
What I know,” he says, tangling his fingers in my hair, “is that your instant worry over being CIA is why I wanted it confirmed. And it is now, but the last damn thing I want to talk about is the CIA. What I want is to be clear: this changes nothing. We are not divided or in danger. We’re okay.”
“Tell me you know that as certainly as you know that I’m CIA.”
“Yes, sweetheart,” he says. “We are absolutely okay. In fact, we’re perfect.”
“I want to embrace those words,” I say, “but the CIA reminds me of my father, and my father reminds me of blood and death—and those thi
ngs are far from perfect.”
“But we are perfect, Ella,” he repeats. “And I won’t let you forget that.” His mouth slants over mine, his lips warm, his tongue warmer, his body hot against mine: passionate, deep, a demand and a caress in every stroke. “You’re mine,” he declares, his voice soft yet fierce. “You’re marrying me, and yes, I’m telling you that. This time, fear and worry don’t win. They don’t get to wake up with you every day. I do.”
Emotion charges though me with that declaration, jolting me with the realization that I was reverting back to this afternoon, and for someone who doesn’t let fear win, I was then. I am now. But before I can say this, he’s kissing me again, and the taste of him is all dark torment and a deep, ravishing hunger for some unnamed thing I still manage to know and understand so very well. It’s about pain, loss, the need for control those things create in him, and perhaps in me. But there’s more. There is need. There is decisiveness. There is a certainty that I’m right for him, and him for me, things that I made him doubt today and never want him to doubt again. But he doesn’t. With each swipe of his tongue, he tells me that he rejects a life without me and wants the same from me.
Desperate to give him that, I shove against him, tearing my mouth from his. “I’m not going there again, Kayden. And really, truly, I was never mentally or emotionally anywhere but here with you. I choose you and I choose us. I will always choose us.”
His eyes darken, then heat. “Then you’ll marry me?”
“I thought you had already decided for me?”
“Will you marry me, Ella?” he asks with a gravelly quality to his voice.
“Yes,” I whisper, so many emotions welling inside me that I’m trembling. “A million times over, yes.”
His lashes lower, relief showing in the way his shoulders ease, the way his expression softens, telling me that this amazing, powerful man was that on edge over me, confirming what I’d suspected. I hurt him today. “Kayden—”
I never finish the sentence. His fingers tunnel into my hair and his mouth slants over mine again, tongue licking, caressing, tasting, his hands now at my waist, moving, touching, and suddenly it’s just not the time for words. I need what he does, what I feel and sense he craves. Body against body. Passion meeting passion. And I stop holding back. I meet his kiss with a demand of my own, with hunger. I savor and use his touch, his taste, to try to drive away the fear that lives inside me, the fear that I can’t deny. Not when it’s what drove my hesitation earlier today, not when it haunts my every waking moment. Fear of losing him. Fear of this being our last kiss, our last touch, our last taste. It has me tugging his shirt up, urging him to remove it. It has me pressing my hands to his warm skin. He feels the same; it’s on his lips. It’s in the way he tears away my clothes while I tear away his. And when our clothes lie on the floor, he gazes at me for several intense, emotionally charged moments that I swear steal my breath, and then as I’ve become accustomed to, he scoops me up and starts walking.
I curl into him, my hand settling on his chest, his heart thundering beneath my palm. Because of me. This man, who I called beautiful, who I thought was too perfect to be real, is affected by me in every way that I am by him. All the emotions, all the desire I feel, I don’t even question him sharing. Nor do I discount what a gift it is for two people to share that same intense reaction to one another. Or what it is like to feel safer with him than alone. I never thought I’d ever feel that—and with that realization, splintered pieces of the past, the damaged parts of my life that formed that opinion, promise to reveal themselves.
He settles me on the mattress, the sweet weight of his body on mine, his hips spreading my legs, the thick pulse of his erection between my thighs. His elbows frame my face, his lips close, his breath a warm trickle on my mouth and cheek. And then it happens, the way it happened that very first night together. We linger there, breathing together, being together, feeling every inch of each other where we touch, and where we soon will touch. Slowly, he pulls back, those blue eyes of his hot with desire, with love. They meet mine and I am naked, inside and out, in every way with this man.
He rolls with me, settling us on our sides facing each other, his hand cupping my backside, his shaft settling between my thighs. “No spankings,” he says. “Nothing to prove, Ella. No point to make. Just us.” His lips brush mine, a seduction and a tease that still manages to be a promise. No, many promises that manage to be both erotic and romantic. Sexy and sweet. And then he is kissing me again, a slow, sensual slide of his tongue against mine, which I feel in every part of me as his fingers lightly caress my nipple, then the side of my breast.
I moan with the sensations rolling through me, with the way he feels so much a part of me, the way I know he wants to please me, to love me. Things no other man has ever made me feel. Even before I knew my past, I knew Kayden was different, a part of me in ways I didn’t understand. His hand slides down to my hip, his lips trailing my jaw, finding their way to my lips. “Where do you want me to touch you?”
“Everywhere, please,” I whisper. “But right now I just want you inside me.” I can feel him grow harder between my thighs, and I grow wetter. “I need to be that way with you right now.”
“You won’t get any resistance from me, sweetheart,” he promises, lifting my leg to his hip, his teeth giving my lip a gentle tug, his tongue licking a soothing, seductive line over my bottom lip before he presses inside me.
My breath lodges in my throat, my fingers flexing into his shoulders with the feel of him stretching me and slowly inching deeper and deeper, until we are fully connected, bodies melded together.
“Is this what you needed?” he asks, with that low, gravelly sexiness in his voice.
“Yes,” I say, barely finding my voice. “Oh, yes.”
“Like I need you, Ella.” He cups my backside, pulling me more snugly against him. “You understand that, right? I need you.”
“I need you, too, Kayden,” I whisper, and he swallows my words, his mouth coming down on mine, hot with a demand that says “you are mine, you belong with me.” And he belongs with me. It is a powerful taste and feeling and I press against him, trying to get closer, to get more of everything and anything that is this man.
Then comes the welcome squeeze of my backside, followed by a deep, intense thrust of his body into mine. I gasp and then pant into his mouth where our lips have parted, my fingers stroking the rough stubble on his jaw. And what follows is this sultry dance of bodies, moving, touching, melding together. It is perfect, and yet Kayden proves that not even perfection is enough with him. There will never be enough of anything with this man.
It is slow, sexy, romantic, and erotic. And yet we aren’t wild and frenzied, although I love wild and frenzied. That would end too soon. There’s just this savoring of each moment between us that creates this burn and ache in every part of me. But it is too good not to take me to that sweet spot that’s the edge of release, where I’m about to tumble over that edge. “Kayden,” I warn, “I’m—”
“No,” he orders, no longer moving, no longer giving me those seductive strokes of his cock. “Not yet.”
I swallow hard and bury my face in his shoulder, breathing deeply, calming my body. He must know the moment I’ve succeeded, because only then does he kiss my neck and whisper in my ear, “I get to own your orgasm for the rest of my life.”
Kayden Wilkens announcing he owns my orgasm isn’t exactly the way to prevent me from having one. “Careful,” I murmur, tilting my head back to look at him. “Or you’ll own it right now.”
He laughs, a low, sexy sound that strokes along my nerve endings, the sound a promise that I’m about to be right back on the edge any moment now. Kayden must know it too, because he doesn’t start moving again. He kisses my neck, teases my nipples, and scrapes his teeth on my shoulder. And then finally, finally, the slow, seductive sway of our bodies begins again.
Twice we
repeat this process, starting and stopping, but there’s a point where we both cave to the inevitable, and he promises, “We have all night for repeats,” before he thrusts us both into oblivion, a place where pleasure and forever live, but nothing else can survive. A place we linger even after the storm of pleasure has become the calm sea of its aftermath, holding each other. Breathing with each other.
“I’d better get you a towel,” he finally murmurs, dragging my head back and kissing me before he pulls out of me and disappears.
I inhale and somehow, of all the things I could remember in this blissful moment, the words You’re CIA are the ones that come to me. But I shove away the million questions I still have about his meeting and this Trigger person. Kayden matters right now. What happened this afternoon matters right now. Remembering that moment when he’d walked out of the office, leaving behind jagged, broken emotions, and fixing it. That’s what comes first.
Kayden reappears, now wearing his jeans low on his hips, sans underwear, offering me the towel.
I accept it and as he takes my arm, helping me sit up, the chill of the stone walls has me shivering. “For you,” Kayden says, indicating his shirt in his hand. “Because it’s cold in here and I like you in my shirt.”
Those words and the look in his eyes warm me even before he sits down and slips the shirt over my head. I settle it over my body, the material soft, while I’m quite aware of it having been next to his hard body. Like I just was. Like I want to be again. “Thank you,” I murmur.