So beautiful.
He licked her once more. Then he rose, crouching above her.
Emma’s breath choked out. So did his. But . . .
He wasn’t close to done. He’d kept his clothes on because that was another way to keep his control. His cock ached. The thing was rock hard, surging, and it probably had the impression of his zipper on it because his cock was about to burst out of his pants.
“Arch your back,” he told her, and his own voice had turned into little more than a growl.
Emma arched for him. She also didn’t let go of her grip on her pillow.
His hands slid under her back. He unhooked her bra. “Didn’t think I’d forget these, did you?” A woman’s orgasm could make her breasts even more sensitive, and he was counting on that sensitivity now.
He bent and blew lightly over her left nipple.
“D-Dean!”
Then he took that nipple into his mouth. He laved it with his tongue. He sucked it. He nipped it lightly.
Emma’s body seemed to quake beneath him. Her hands stayed on her pillow, but her legs lifted and locked around his hips. Her sex was wet and hot, and he wanted to drive deep into her.
Not yet.
He kissed his way to her other breast. Her nipple was a tight, hard peak.
“T-too much,” Emma gasped out when he sucked that nipple. “It feels . . .”
He sucked harder.
When she cried out, it wasn’t in pain. Pleasure.
He deepened the pressure of his mouth. Scored her with his teeth.
Her body stiffened and, a second later, her hips were jerking against the front of his pants. She was riding him as much as possible, working her wet sex against him.
Did she just come again?
Fuck, he thought she might have, and that was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. No, she was the sexiest thing.
He yanked open his pants. His cock sprang toward her, and her wet cream instantly coated the head.
“Now!” Emma demanded. “Now, now, now.”
That same refrain was pounding through his head. He drove into her, and her sex clamped around her. So tight, so hot, so perfect.
He thrust, withdrew, thrust.
Her hips slammed up to meet his.
He grabbed for her hands. Their fingers linked, twined, and stayed there, right near her pillow. Her gaze held his as he drove into her, again and again.
Emma shook her head. “I-I can’t . . .”
She could.
He’d make her.
He altered the angle of his thrusts, making sure that when he withdrew, his cock slid over her clit. Right . . . there.
Her moan was so sexy.
Again and again. The bed rocked into the wall.
His orgasm built, pressing down harder and harder. Closer and closer. But he wanted to feel Emma’s release once more. Wanted her sex to squeeze him hard when she came.
He kissed her. Stroked with his tongue even as his cock sank into her. He couldn’t hold back his climax much longer. Fuck, he’d wanted Emma with him when he exploded—
Her sex clamped around him, squeezing hard.
He didn’t explode. It felt more like he imploded. His world shattered, and he held her in an iron grip as the pleasure pounded and pounded through him on waves that wouldn’t end. That he never wanted to end.
Because he never wanted to be away from Emma. He wanted her with him, for every moment of every day that was to come.
Always, with him.
THE LIGHTS IN Emma’s apartment had shut off.
Wade stared across the street. Lucky bastard. He had a real damn good idea of just what Dean was doing over there, and it wasn’t pulling an all-night stakeout.
“I’ll do a run on the streets,” Gabe said. “You got things here?”
Wade glanced over at Gabe. Yeah, sure, Gabe was the big boss at LOST, but the man was also Wade’s best friend. He owed the man more than he could ever repay.
Will I ever be able to look at him without guilt eating me alive?
Because it was all Wade’s fault. Gabe had been off fighting, protecting his country. The guy had asked Wade to do one thing. One fucking thing.
Keep an eye on my sister, will you? Gabe had smiled as he tossed out the question. I mean, shouldn’t be hard right?
Because Gabe had known how Wade felt about Amy. He’d had a ridiculous crush on the woman for years, but he’d kept a strict hands-off policy with her. Because she was my best friend’s little sister.
He’d kept his distance from the sexy nurse, and Amy had wound up with an asshole boyfriend. When Amy went missing . . . the cops had thought she was just with the boyfriend. They hadn’t searched for her.
Gabe had been sent back home from battle, hurt, nearly broken, only to learn that his sister had disappeared.
Wade had been an Atlanta homicide cop then. He’d stepped on dozens of toes as he tried to search for Amy.
Too late, it had been Gabe and Wade who finally tracked down the man who’d taken her. They’d found her just days after her death.
Because the bastard didn’t kill her right away. He tortured her. All that time, when I was supposed to be watching out for her . . .
“Shit, man, are you doing it again?” Gabe demanded.
Wade blinked.
“Guilt won’t bring Amy back.”
Wade looked away from him, glancing back over at Emma’s darkened apartment. He’d left the force after they found Amy. And after . . . Amy’s abductor had been killed.
“Do you think she’d want you doing this shit to yourself? Letting guilt eat at you to the point that you don’t even have a normal life?”
A normal life. Happiness. Sex. A family?
Some dreams just seemed beyond him.
“I’ve watched you, man. You don’t even try anymore. You don’t flirt, you don’t look for women, you just—hell, you pretend. Pretend that you’re interested in Sarah because you know there’s no chance there.”
Wait, what? “We’re on a stakeout,” he muttered as he moved closer to the window. “Not on some bro-share night.”
“Sarah’s locked down, and you know it. With her past, she’s not about to let anyone get close. And, hell, I don’t blame her. But you . . . you used to be so different.”
Wade shook his head.
“Don’t try lying to your best friend.”
He’d lied for his best friend. When the others had wanted to know how Amy’s killer died . . .
Justice.
“LOST isn’t about death, Wade. It’s about hope. I want you to have some hope. Is that too much to ask?”
He didn’t reply. Just because Gabe had found a woman to love, a woman to love him back, that didn’t mean it worked out that way for everyone. Some people were just meant to be alone.
It was better that way. Safer.
Because when you opened yourself up to someone, you just asked for pain.
His gaze was still on Emma’s dark apartment. “Dean let things get personal with her.” And here he’d always thought the guy might have ice water in his veins. Cool and in control . . . that had been Dean, before the guy met Emma Castille.
“Sometimes, you don’t have a choice.” Gabe’s footsteps were moving toward the door. “We can all get blindsided.”
The door shut behind him. Wade didn’t move. Blindsided.
But what happens when you lose the one you love?
The world shattered. That was what fucking happened.
SARAH PUSHED HER keycard into the lock on her hotel-room door. The light flashed green, and she quickly pushed open the door. Before it shut, she cast one last look behind her.
They never look back . . . that’s why they don’t see me coming. Her father’s voice whispered through her mind.
Sarah threw the two locks into place, then she turned around. She was in a suite, one that had two connecting rooms, one for her, one for Victoria. The light in Victoria’s room was on.
“Victoria?” S
arah called as she headed toward her friend’s room.
A man appeared in Victoria’s doorway.
Shit.
Sarah’s whole body jerked.
It wasn’t just any man. It was the guy from the hospital. Jax. Jax Fontaine. She’d done some research on him since that little meeting. A quick search online had revealed more than she wanted to know about the fellow.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Sarah demanded as she took a few fast-and-frantic steps back toward the main door. “And how did you get in?”
He lifted one brow as he studied her with his light blue eyes. “I came in through the door, of course.”
He was mocking her. And he’d broken in. “The locked door.” Terror was rushing through her. This wasn’t right. The things she’d learned about him . . .
She turned and ran.
Her fingers fumbled with the locks. She always locked both of them. Because of her father. Because hotels weren’t safe. She unlocked the top lock, reached for the second—
He caught her shaking fingers in his hand. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
I’ll hurt you. She drove back with her elbow. Heard a wonderful grunt of pain from him, but he didn’t let her go. Fine. She’d make him drop his hold. Her foot slammed down on his. Her left hand—the hand he hadn’t grabbed—fisted, and she snapped it back toward his face.
But her fist didn’t break his nose. He’d spun her around and pinned her there, holding her with a strength that she hated.
“You are so full of surprises.” His voice was admiring. “Just when I think I can’t possibly like you any more, you have to do sexy shit like that.”
He was insane.
And Sarah knew plenty about insanity. So use it, a voice in her head demanded. Work him, get him to let you go.
But it was as if her body didn’t hear the voice’s commands. Because she tried to kick him again.
He just took the blow.
Her nails went for his eyes.
He caught her wrists and pushed them back against the door. “Can’t have that. I like seeing you too much.”
His body pushed against hers, nearly suffocating her with its pressure, but he was making sure she couldn’t get in another kick or punch or—
“Sarah . . .” His voice was low, soothing. “I really want to rip apart the bastard who put this terror into you—”
“You!” She managed to yell, and, what the hell was wrong with her? She should have yelled first. “Help—”
He kissed her.
She bit him. Tasted blood. Didn’t care.
“Like you even more . . .” He whispered. Then, in a too-fast-to-follow move, he had her hands pinned above her head, held tight with one of his, and his other hand was over her mouth. “I think you’ve got more passion in you than anyone I’ve ever met.” His smile flashed, but as his gaze swept over her face, that smile dimmed. “And more fear.” His thumb began to lightly stroke her inner wrist. He didn’t ease his grip, but the caress . . .
What is happening?
“I swear, I’m not here to hurt you. I would never hurt you.”
She was supposed to believe him? A guy who’d been arrested a dozen times before he was eighteen? A guy who supposedly ran one of the most dangerous motorcycle gangs in the South?
She wasn’t an idiot.
But she was trapped.
You know crazy. Use it. Work it.
That little voice was finally making her body listen.
“I shouldn’t have just come in, right? Yeah, I’m getting that,” he murmured. “You’re not the kind of woman who likes surprises.”
What woman liked breaking and entering?
“What if I told you the door was open?”
She shook her head.
“It was, but I guess that doesn’t matter. I came in because I was worried about you. I mean, first Em goes missing, then I—well, let’s just say I wasn’t too keen on the idea of something happening to you.” He leaned forward, and his nose . . . nuzzled her hair.
She squirmed against him.
“Sorry!” He didn’t sound it. Crazy, demented. “You just smell fucking delicious. A vanilla dream . . . good enough to eat.”
She muttered behind his hand.
“I’m going to lift my hand, but I don’t want you to scream. If you scream, then one of your hotel neighbors will just call security, and I’ll probably get taken down to the precinct and have to bribe my way out of there.” He gave a long-suffering sigh. “Again. And you don’t want that, do you?”
Sarah nodded.
His smile—a true shark’s smile—flashed at her once more. “There you go again, just making me want you more.”
She stopped nodding.
“The door was open,” he told her quietly. “I was concerned, so I came in. I did a search of the place, but nothing looks disturbed. You’ll have to see for yourself if anything was taken.”
Her gaze darted over his shoulder. A ridiculously broad shoulder.
“I mean, a maid could have accidentally left the door ajar, but in light of the case your group is working, I don’t really buy that shit.”
She didn’t, either. Actually, Sarah wasn’t sure if she bought his story at all.
“I came here because something has been nagging at me, and since you’re the shrink, I thought I’d get your take on it.” His brows lifted as he studied her. “Here’s the deal, though, can we skip the whole screaming and cop-calling routine? Let me just tell you my piece, you do your shrink mojo, and I’ll walk, leaving you untouched.”
He was touching her plenty. She tried to say that behind his hand.
“Deal?”
If it got her free . . . Sarah nodded.
He dropped his hold and stepped back.
Sarah didn’t move.
“You’re not screaming.”
Not on the outside. He had no idea that he’d pretty much just brought her past racing back to her. Don’t think about him. Don’t.
The monster who’d been her father.
“Sarah?”
Now this—this criminal was worried about her. Sarah’s chin jutted up. “Say your . . .” What had he called it? “Say your piece and get out.”
His gaze raked her. “I’m not as coldhearted as you might think. Or as the stories say.”
The stories said he didn’t have a heart. Just a reputation for danger and destruction.
“I was there when Julia decided to jump off that roof.”
Don’t flinch, don’t.
He wouldn’t know that she’d once nearly taken the same jump. A different roof, a different time. When she hadn’t been able to handle the terror of her life any longer.
Everything had changed that night.
“I was there, that dick Dean was there . . .”
So he hated Dean, that much was clear in his voice.
“An FBI bozo named Cormack was there . . . he tried to interview me after, pushing for answers I didn’t have.”
She was listening . . .
“And, on the ground, I saw the FBI boss. Elroy.” He lifted one shoulder. “I made a point to learn his name. When a man just watches a sixteen-year-old girl fall six stories, and he doesn’t even move to check on her when she hits the ground . . .” His face hardens. “I make a point of learning who the hell he is.”
Correction. He hated Elroy, and Jax just didn’t seem to like Dean. She was learning a whole lot just from the way his voice roughened as he talked about each man.
“Julia was up there, and before she jumped, she kept saying . . . ‘You.’ Like . . . like she was talking to the killer.”
She edged a bit closer to him. “Tell me her exact words.”
He raked a hand through his hair. “When I first got there, she said, ‘You won’t get me again.’ ” He took a few hard, almost angry steps away from her. “It was weird, but I didn’t think about it much then. I mean, she was on the edge. You don’t have time for a whole lot of thinking right then.”
No.
“But it bothered me. The whole time, she was acting like she was talking to the killer. ‘You want to kill me.’ She said that, too. ‘You want to torture me.’ ”
Julia Finney had already been tortured, tortured to the point that her mind had broken. “Maybe she thought the killer was there,” Sarah said softly. “Maybe he’d gotten to her so deeply, terrified her so completely, that she saw him in all aspects of her life. Everywhere she looked.”
That had certainly been the case for Sarah . . .
No, focus on Julia.
That was the way she got through. By not thinking about her past. By trying to help the other victims out there.
“When Cormack told her that all he wanted was for her to tell him about the guy who’d abducted her, that she was free to go home, she told him, ‘You know everything.’ ” Jax swung back toward her. “ ‘You’ again, the same way. Like she was talking to the killer.”
Sarah took another tentative step away from the door. “But she wasn’t. She was talking to Agent Cormack.”
He stared back at her. “You’re the shrink. I told you my piece, now you tell me what the words meant.”
She didn’t know. She knew the killers. They were so much easier to understand. Darkness and rage and evil, growing inside.
I understand . . . because I’m the same.
So many dark, evil parts, bubbling just beneath the surface.
“Had that poor girl’s mind shattered?”
Her hands fisted.
“Or did she think her killer was on that roof or even down below? Because when she was dangling, when Cormack was trying to pull her back up, I saw her look down. And that’s when she fought her hardest to fall.”
Goose bumps were on her skin. “You want me to say one of the FBI agents did it.”
The gun found at the crypt . . . it was just like the standard-issue FBI guns, only no record of that gun had turned up in the official system. Why? Because it had never been registered? Or because someone in power had erased the trail that would lead to the weapon?
“You want me to say that,” she cocked her head as she studied him, “because you want to be free to go after one of them.”
“Or both.” He shrugged. “I’m an equal-hit kind of guy.”