The only advantage he had right now was that Sullivan didn’t know he wanted payback. Sullivan only thought he wanted back in. He thought he’d succeeded in beating Reid.
The opposite was true, of course. Sullivan had set him up. He had not forgotten that. He never would. He’d say and do whatever it took for Sullivan to think it was all water under the bridge between them.
“Yes,” Reid finally answered. “I remember. I want back in.”
“Good, good.” Sullivan’s voice carried through the phone, a dangerous silkiness entering his voice. “Then you’ll prove your loyalty to me and do as I ask. That is if you want to be back in my graces as you claim . . .”
“I do.”
“According to your brother, you’ve been putting your time to good use and roughing the girl up.”
“I have,” he lied. “Yes, I am. What do you want . . .”
“Good. Wasn’t sure you could do it. You were always a little soft. Guess prison changed you for the better.”
He ground his teeth at the satisfaction he heard in Sullivan’s voice. “Tell me what you want—”
“Kill her.”
The man was insane.
“What?” Reid asked as though he had heard him incorrectly.
“You heard me. I want her dead.”
He sucked in a breath, his mind feverishly working, searching for a way out of this. “I thought you wanted to draw this out and really torture the president. Do you think that’s such a good idea—”
“That’s always been your problem, Reid. You think too much. You think when you should just be taking orders. Maybe you haven’t changed, after all. Maybe you’re still that stupid punk who thinks he’s calling the shots here. Is that what you think?”
“No,” he said numbly, his fingers aching where he clutched the phone to his ear. Never in his life had he so badly wanted to hurt someone. Not even in prison when he’d been at his lowest, when rage had been his closest friend and all he wanted was to lash out. He wanted to crawl through the phone and break Sullivan with his bare hands. “That’s not what I think.”
“Now why am I having a hard time believing you?”
“I’ll do it.” In that moment, he would say whatever lie he had to. “I’ll kill her. Consider it done.”
The sharp gasp behind him had him spinning around. His mouth dried as his gaze clashed with Grace. He shook his head at her, trying to convey that he didn’t mean it, that she didn’t need to be afraid of him, but she backed up a step, and just like that their tenuous truce snapped like a twig.
Sullivan kept talking in his ear, but he could hardly hear what he was saying. All he could see was Grace’s face losing color. “. . . let us know when it’s done. Call Zane and he’ll give you instructions and tell you where we can meet.”
“Understood,” he said, not looking away from Grace. Even from where he stood he could see the fierce hammer of her pulse at the base of her throat. In that moment she reminded him of a frightened doe, prepared to bolt.
“Good. We’ll be seeing each other soon, then.”
He grunted something that must have been satisfactory, because the line went dead in his ear. He lowered the phone to the counter. “Gracie—”
“No.” She held up her hand, palm face out as though that could ward him off. “Don’t call me that. You don’t get to call me that. Like we’re friends. Like you’re actually helping me. Like you don’t mean to kill me.”
“I was lying—”
“Oh, really? To me? Or whoever you were talking to?” She rounded the counter, her gaze darting wildly, panicked in her search for an escape. She made a dart for the door, but he cut her off, light on the balls of his feet. She turned and raced back into the kitchen, positioning herself behind the small island. As if that would keep him from her if he in fact wanted to get to her. He could easily vault the damn thing, but he didn’t want to scare her any more than she was.
He flattened his hands on the island counter. “I was just saying that to appease him. You can’t think after everything that I would do that to you—”
“You’re a liar.” She shook her head, her long braid of dark hair bouncing over her shoulder and partly unraveling. Just like he was unraveling inside. She looked at him with such terror. “Every time your lips move it’s just lies . . .”
“That’s not true. You don’t believe that.” He took a step to round the island.
She pushed that hand farther out. “Stop. Stop right there.”
He hesitated before continuing, all the while talking to her in a low, coaxing voice. “Be reasonable, Grace. You know me. You know I won’t—”
Her face screwed up in scorn. “I don’t know you. I know you’re an escaped convict and you’ve been playing with my head since the moment you walked into my life. I know you belong to a gang of criminals who abduct innocent people.”
Frustration bubbled up inside him. All the ground he’d covered with her, gone. Just like that. And after all he’d done to try to keep her safe.
“Now listen here, Gracie—”
Her gaze performed a quick scan again, landing on the knife near the cutting board. She snatched it up and brandished it in front of her, gripping it with both hands.
He lifted his hands and waved them slowly. “Come on, Gracie . . . put the knife down.”
She shook her head, wisps of dark hair escaping the loose braid. “Nuh-uh.”
He lifted his arm, stretching a hand out toward her over the island. “Hand it to me, Gracie. Before someone gets hurt.”
“Yeah. By someone you mean you.”
He hesitated, studying her carefully before continuing, “What are you going to do, Gracie? Are you gonna use that knife on me?”
“Yes.” She stabbed toward him as he inched another step around the island. “Maybe.” She matched his step, sidling around and keeping herself directly across from him.
“You wouldn’t do that. You wouldn’t hurt anyone.” He kept coming and she kept retreating. He took that as a good sign. She didn’t want to use the knife. That was something at least.
“Don’t be too sure of that. Self-defense is a great incentive. ”
“You don’t need to defend yourself against me. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m trying to help you.”
She shook her head, her knife bobbing in the air. “You expect me to believe you after what I just heard?”
He lunged across the island, grabbing her arm and dragging her around, closing the distance between them. “I think I’ll risk it,” he growled.
She whipped the knife around, pressing the tip of the blade to the center of his throat, directly into the center of his collarbone. It wasn’t the first time anyone held a knife to him. In prison, he’d stared down a shiv plenty of times. He even bore a few scars from when they made contact.
It was, however, the first time a woman pointed one at him. Especially a woman he cared about. Christ. With a jolt he realized he did care about her. He wanted to keep her safe, and it wasn’t just because it was the right thing to do. It wasn’t simply because he wasn’t a killer. He wanted to keep her safe because the idea of anything happening to her filled his heart with a sick ache.
“I’ll do it,” she whispered, her wild-eyed gaze dropping to where the knife pricked his flesh. She flexed her fingers around the hilt, and for one moment he wondered if he was taking a gamble. Her eyes glittered with fear, but there was resolve mixed in there, too. She could easily plunge the knife into him.
She moistened her lips. “Just give me the keys to the van. I’ll walk out of here.”
“I can’t do that.” Tempting as it was to let her go, a pang punched his chest at the thought of her walking away. And it had nothing to do with failing Sullivan.
She wiggled the fingers of her free hand. “Give them to me and no one gets hurt.”
He lifted his throat slightly, offering her even greater access. He felt that prick of the blade. The slight pinch as warm blood trickled down his neck. “G
o ahead then. Do it.”
Her eyes brightened, gleaming wetly, unnamed emotion brimming there. “You said you’d kill me . . . like it was nothing.”
“You heard me lying.” He held her gaze, ignoring the pressure of the knife at his throat. “Look at me. If you think I’m that man . . . if you think I would truly kill you, then do it. Use the knife.”
Her hand started to shake, but she didn’t move the knife away from him. Her lips trembled, and he knew she was waging a war with herself. He leaned in, moving slowly, holding his breathing, ignoring the sharpness digging at his throat. Hopefully he wasn’t about to get his throat cut.
He stopped his lips a hairbreadth from hers. “Gracie,” he breathed.
A whimper broke from her lips, and he dove that last inch in and kissed her quivering mouth, and then it was easy to forget the knife because there was only the softness of her lips. Her taste. The way she opened to him. Her sigh as he licked his way inside her mouth.
He reached between them and covered her hand where she gripped the knife. Her fingers loosened around it, allowing him to take it from her. He watched her silently as he held it between them. He turned the knife over in his hand, the tip grazing her T-shirt. She glanced down at the blade now fully in his control and back up at him.
She didn’t blink, her wide gaze traveling over his face as though memorizing him. Those eyes of hers messed with him. Burrowed deep. And there was that tiny mole at the corner of her eye that highlighted the chocolatey depths, beckoning him.
He arched an eyebrow at her and gripped the neckline of her shirt. Using the edge of the blade, he ripped her shirt right down the middle, the renting fabric loud on the air.
She sucked in a sharp breath. He brought the knife back up, laying it flat between the deep valley of her heaving breasts. Leaning in, he claimed her mouth again. She was ready. Meeting him with open mouth. The kiss went deeper, hotter. It was tongues and teeth and gasps.
He broke away from her and traced the tip of the knife over the lacy cup of her bra, scraping the fabric and watching her nipples harden against the barrier. She ceased to breathe. Her breasts didn’t so much as rise or fall.
“I’d fall on this knife myself before I let it hurt you,” he vowed, holding onto her gaze.
She nodded jerkily.
He dropped the knife on the island behind them and grabbed her by the waist, lifted her up onto the surface in one move. Then they were back at it again, kissing. Savage kisses that he couldn’t temper. Even as his head told him to slow down, his body urged him on. That voice that had always commanded him to stop before had gone silent. The possibility didn’t even enter his head. There would be no stopping this time.
He tunneled his hands into her hair, dragging through her loose braid, unraveling the dark sections of hair. He grabbed fistfuls of the soft, fragrant mass, reveling in it. The back of his fingers brushed her bra strap and his fingers turned, diving to unclasp it. The straps slid down her shoulders, the bra falling away between them. He stepped back to examine her.
He swallowed a moan at the sight of her full breasts. “I’ve dreamed of these.” The same flawless skin as the rest of her except the skin of her breasts looked delicate, baby-soft. Olive-hued with deep plum nipples. “The reality is so much better.” His hands closed over the lush mounds, holding their weight, thrumming her nipples between his fingers.
Her head dropped back with a long gasp, exposing the arch of her throat. Another thing he couldn’t resist. He nipped and kissed and tongued his way up the gentle slope, his hands still molding to her breasts, his thumbs dragging over her nipples in steady strokes.
“More,” she sighed.
He squeezed and massaged the heavy swells, his fingers plucking and rubbing at her nipples until they grew pebble-hard. She pushed out her chest and made these wild little sounds that knocked him over the edge. He dropped his mouth to her chest, pulling a nipple deep into his mouth. She released a small shriek, surging up off the counter. Her hands went to his hair, gripping the short strands and pulling him in tighter, as though she couldn’t get enough of him.
He laved that nipple with his tongue, tasting and sucking and feasting on it like a starving man. She cried out again when he scored his teeth across it.
He turned his attention to her other breast and treated it to the same worship. “Please,” she whimpered, writhing against him. She slid her hand between them and rubbed his dick through his pants. “Reid, please . . .”
He looked down at her, his chest clenching at her desire-clouded eyes, her puffy, kiss-swollen lips. She should look this way all the time.
Just as soon as the thought entered his mind he killed it. No. He didn’t want her to look this way all the time. He didn’t want the world to see her like this. He wanted to be the only one to see her like this. The only one to know her.
Instantly, he was reminded that there was another man. A fiancé who could see her like this anytime he wanted—who probably had and who would continue to in the future. The reality of that crashed over him and fury hissed through him. He should probably respect that. She belonged to someone else. Her fingers clawing through his hair, her sweet sighs and moans for more, weren’t his to have.
Fuck that. Right now she wanted him and he wanted her. He wasn’t going to deprive himself anymore. He’d had eleven years of deprivation. It was time to feast. He would take her and her fuck-me eyes and her warm sweet-smelling skin and have something to remember when he was back in hell.
Nineteen
Grace tensed when Reid paused to stare at her. She fought down the tide of lust that urged her to fling herself at him and beg him to keep doing all the crazy-hot things he was doing with his mouth and hands.
This guy’s hands and mouth were nothing short of magic.
But they’d started things before that got cut short, so she held her breath and waited, watching him, ready for this to end like all the other times. She took a deep breath, hoping that it helped to cool the maelstrom raging inside her.
She lowered a hand to grip the edge of the counter, prepared to slide down and touch the floor, but his hands went to her waist again. He pulled her in close. “Wrap your legs around me,” he commanded.
She blinked up at him. His bossy tone didn’t invite argument, but still she hesitated. A moment ago she was holding a knife to his throat, and then he had turned it on her—proving if he wanted to hurt her he could—and now she was shirtless with breasts that were aching and raw from his mouth and the scratch of his five o’clock shadow.
He yanked her legs up, urging her to lock them around his waist. “You’re thinking too much,” he growled, slanting his mouth over hers, his tongue diving inside her mouth. “Stop,” he hissed into her.
She locked her ankles around him, losing herself in the hot persuasion of his mouth, hardly even aware when he lifted her up and carried her to the bedroom. He followed her down on the bed.
She felt drunk, dizzy from the play of his mouth and tongue. She did exactly what he said. Easily. There was no thinking when he slid down her body, his teeth and tongue blazing a trail between her breasts, over her rib cage, and down her navel. His hands seized the waistband of her boxers and deftly slid them down her hips. This time he didn’t waste time with underwear. He took those off, too, in one swift yank.
Then he was there, his big shoulders wedged between her thighs, his hands spreading her wide for him.
“I’ve dreamed of this, too,” he breathed against her core.
She slid her fingers along his scalp. “You’ve been dreaming of me a lot, then. I wouldn’t have guessed that.”
He looked up at her, his hazel eyes gleaming hotly from where he crouched between her legs. “Since the moment I saw you I pretty much thought about a thousand dirty things I would like to do to you.”
Her breath caught. A thousand? And yet he had held back. Denying himself. Denying her. “Then we’ve been wasting a lot of time.”
He slowly grinned then, darkl
y and with wicked intent. She held her breath, bracing herself as he disappeared between her thighs. The first brush of his tongue against her pulled a soft sigh from her lips. Then he grew more aggressive, stroking her deep and hard with the velvet of his tongue.
She gripped his head with both hands, writhing and twisting under him. She cried out and muttered incoherent pleas. She was close. So close.
He lifted up, his green-gold eyes feral like a lion as he prowled up her body. “The next time you come it will be with me inside you.” Her heart stammered inside her chest as he uttered this.
He hopped off the bed. She sat up, bewildered, watching as he bounded to his bag on the chair. He returned quickly, assuring her he wasn’t gone for good—in case his avowal hadn’t convinced her of that already. Before rejoining her on the bed, he dropped his sweatpants.
She sat up higher, eager for another look at him. The first night she had seen him naked felt like a long time ago. Even though the image of him had imprinted itself on her retinas, the memory still did not do justice to this sight of him. He had a warrior’s body and it made everything inside her melt and turn to goo. Her sex throbbed, almost hurting in her need to be filled with him.
He slid right back in between her thighs, his own rock-solid thighs rubbing against hers. It was shocking for a moment, the sensation of a man against her. It had been too long. And never really a man. Never someone that looked like he was forged by some mythical god to fight epic wars. His hands found her everywhere, her breasts, her stomach and hips. Touching, stroking. She was bombarded with sensations, release rising up inside her again.
“I could touch you all night,” he growled as his hands slid under her, cupping her cheeks, lifting her like she was weightless underwater.
“Please,” she choked. “End it.”
There was a crinkle of wrapper and a sharp tear of foil. He had a condom. At least one of them was still living in reality and thinking. She hadn’t even thought that far. That’s how lost she was.
She propped up on her elbows, hungry to touch him. “Let me.”