Hit Me (The Bailey Boys #2) (21 page)

And Lee... he had given up so much for this, to make it work for her. She owed it to him to finally escape.

Get as far away from here as possible. Disappear, you hear me?

And so she had.

§

She’d dumped the cellphone, every scrap of her old life. There was nothing that could be traced to the old Imelda Sanchez.

No papers. No scrappy notes with a telephone number scrawled upon it.

She was, truly, starting over.

But she did have the memories.

Those precious nights and days they had shared.

The touch of him. That smile that stole over his face and brought out the small boy in his heart. The stories he had told her. The way he treated her: the respect, the fascination and attraction, all the little things he said and did that showed her exactly how he felt.

And one more thing, held safely in those memories: one thing she had memorized.

A number.

She didn’t have a phone, so she had bought one. Used it for a single, cryptic text message:

Contacts.

Then she’d taken the SIM card from the phone and thrown it into the sea, right here from these rocks.

She did not know what had happened back in Puerto Libre, but if Hristo Markov survived, then he had the means to trace her, even here.

And she knew he would, because now this thing was about so much more than simply publicly possessing her.

She had gone against him. She had challenged his
reputatsiya
.

And even Imelda could not do that without consequences.

So now she sat and she watched the ocean and she allowed herself, at least, to dream.

§

I followed dead-end leads for weeks.

A friend of a friend who’d seen her in Italy. Another definite sighting in the south of France. Or Paris. Or Athens.

I’d dug and I’d Googled and I’d paid people far more able than me to do the same.

But there was nothing.

I didn’t even know what I was looking for.

A beautiful Spanish woman, with a fondness for fuck-me shoes and skirts slit up to the ribs.

I didn’t know what name she was using, or what documents she had.

I’d spent time in Barcelona, as I knew she’d lived there for a few months after leaving Tenerife. I’d gone to Tenerife itself, spent long days walking the coast from Costa Adeje, through Playa de la Américas to Los Cristianos. I’d asked in the bars and clubs. This was where she’d grown up. In some ways it made sense that this might be a place to start over, but would she really come back here? Wasn’t it a bit obvious?

Nothing.

I’d reached the point where I was wondering how long I could go on. Was I doomed to become a sad obsessive, laughed at and pitied by others? Already, whenever I spoke to Dean, I picked up that vibe, a steering of conversation towards what would come next.

I needed to straighten myself out, I knew. Get my mind straight. Work out what the hell it was I wanted from life if I couldn’t have the one thing I really wanted from life.

§

And then, a simple yet confusing text message:

Contacts.

The number was unrecognized.

At first I thought little of it. A wrong number. A typo. Some bizarre prank.

But it nagged away at me.

I called back, but the number was unobtainable.

I lay, long into the night, trying to work it out. Slept fitfully, waking and then drifting back into the same dream of Imelda – always of Imelda – a mosaic of images and fragmented memories: the way her eyes widened in climax, as if she was somehow surprised, the way she bit on her lower lip, the way she moved.

And at some point – in the dream or waking between episodes of the dream, I was not even sure – it came to me.

The message, deliberately obscure, presumably from fear that someone might be monitoring such things, not wanting to betray what had been a masterful escape to a new life...
Contacts
.

She’d told me how she’d tried to disguise my existence on her old phone. She couldn’t just add a contact that was ‘Lee’ or ‘Lee Bailey’ or ‘My secret English lover’ – that was what she had said. So she had chosen something that was meaningful only to her.

A place.

Somewhere she had visited a few times, ‘an escape from everything’ she had called it.

That must be it!

But what was it called? ‘Garret-’ something. Or ‘Garra-’

I went to the maps on my phone, found the now familiar cluster on the south coast of Tenerife that was Playa de la Américas and Los Cristianos. Started dragging the map with my thumb, following the coast, for I knew that a place that would soothe the soul as Imelda had described must, for her, be by the sea.

La Caleta? Agua Dulce? La Gambueza? Puerto de Santiago? Los Gigantes? No...

And then there, on the north coast, a series of what were probably fishing ports: Puertito de los Silos, Casa Amarilla, Las Cruces, San Pedro de Daute and... Garachico.

That was it, I was sure. Garachico.

§

She sat on the rocks, the Atlantic Ocean spread out before her, its expanse broken only by a craggy island that jutted precipitously up from the waves.

She wore jeans, a pale t-shirt, her hair cascading down over her shoulders.

It was odd to see her like this, dressed so simply, so much so that for a few seconds I even wondered if it was her.

But I knew it was, and I liked what I saw.

Eventually she turned.

Looked at me, and then away.

Then back at me again.

And slowly, she uncoiled those long legs and stood, turned and stepped carefully over the boulders towards me.

“I...”

“I...”

We both started to speak at the same time, and stopped.

Smiled. Looked away, like nervous teenagers.

Then, primly, she held out a hand for me to shake and said, “Hello. My name is Maria.”

Those dark eyes held me.

Maria
.

A fresh start.

I gently squeezed her hand, gave it a single shake. So very English. “Pleased to meet you, Maria,” I said.

She didn’t release my hand. Instead, she stepped closer, until our bodies were only a handspan apart.

“
¡Hazme el amor!
” I said, softly. “Make love to me, Maria. And don’t ever leave me again.”

And then, at last, she melted into my embrace, and I knew I would never let her go.

Join the PJ Adams mailing list and get future releases for $0.99.
www.pollyjadams.com/about.php

Writing under other names, PJ Adams is a successful novelist, with several novels published by major publishing houses and optioned for movies. As PJ Adams, she writes in the genre closest to her heart, erotic romance – love stories with that added heat, including the international bestsellers
Black Widow
,
Winner Takes All
, and the first Bailey Boys novel,
Trust
. Working as Polly J Adams, she writes best-selling erotica, relationship stories crammed full of explicit sex. Among Polly's most popular stories are the Girls’ Club series, and
Wings of Desire
, the story of a young woman's relationship with the wealthy owner of a New England sex club.

You can find out more about Polly and her writing on
her website
, on
http://www.facebook.com/pollyjadamswriter
and on Twitter
as @PollyJAdams
.

Never trust a man who says, "Trust me."
Jess
.
As soon as I saw him, I knew I was in too deep. He's a gentleman criminal. A cold-blooded villain. Half the city's terrified of him and the other's on his payroll. Now his sights are set on me... but I can't let him have me, no matter how much I'm drawn to him. I can't let myself fall.
I came to London to put things right, not lose my heart to a dangerous crimelord. He says he won't hurt me... but how can I trust a man like him?
Dean
.
I'm in the thick of the biggest gang war London's ever seen: Russian mobsters on one side of me, crooked police on the other. Then
she
appears and changes everything. She makes me feel things I've never felt before and can't allow myself to feel now. But already she's closer to me than anyone has ever been... and I'm starting to suspect she has a secret that could destroy us both.
From the moment I saw her I knew I needed her, naked and moaning under me, but I can't afford to give in to that need. Can't afford to
care
.
Too many lives depend on it, including hers.
Trust
: A steamy, edge-of-the-seat romantic suspense thriller from the author of
Winner Takes All
and
Black Widow
.
This is a standalone steamy romantic suspense novel with no cliffhanger and an HEA.

Trust
is available from:
Amazon.com
,
Amazon.co.uk
and other Amazon stores.

Excerpt

I turned to him and he was looking at me, something in his eyes.

He put a hand to my cheek, and for a moment I thought he was going to try to clean any remaining blood away, but then...

His touch. It was gentle, almost imperceptible. Fingertips on my cheek.

His hand moved to cup my jaw, forefinger against the lobe of my ear, a sudden, electrifying touch as his fingertip tugged on my earrings. My response surprised me, my sensitivity unnaturally heightened.

The adrenaline thing, I realized. Was this the fight or flight phenomenon Dean had referred to earlier? Coming down from the adrenaline rush, the aftermath of danger... he'd said it heightened everything: responses and needs.

He kissed me.

His lips tasted of metal, that coppery tang of blood.

His hand slipped round to the side of my head, fingers sliding deep into my hair, gripping and steering me, as his tongue pressed, almost delicately, between my lips.

I pulled away.

I wasn't ready for this. Wasn't ready for
him
. A man
like
him.

His hand fell away from my head, knuckles brushing against my thigh. He straightened, moved back from me.

Light flashed in from outside, another car's headlight beam sweeping across us. Our limo was following the convoluted road through this old industrial estate, one in a line of dark cars heading away from the fight.

In that arc of light I saw the tension in Dean's jaws, the dark flash of his look. He clearly wasn't accustomed to being turned down.

"I..."

I don't know what I'd been going to say, so I fell silent again.

"You can stay," he said. "No strings. It's late, and I guess you don't have anywhere to go, right? That place I took you to before? There's nobody stopping there at the moment. It's a place we keep, just in case. It's yours for as long as you want."

That explained why the house had been so immaculate. Inside, it had felt more like a show-home than somewhere lived in. Was that really a no-strings offer?

I peered at him in the dim light. He had visibly relaxed, as if forcing himself to do so.

I couldn't work out what it was, what he
had
.

Maybe it was just the adrenaline, coming down from the primitive energy of the fight. Not just Lee's fight, but Dean's too... the way he'd taken the Russian out with a single blow, the way it had taken three of that man Reuben's thugs to subdue him...

Maybe it was as simple as that.

An animal response to danger.

But I knew there was more, too. The complex mix of things that made him what he was. The raw threat of his life, his choices. The protectiveness – the way he'd shielded me from the Russians before, the way he always seemed to be looking out for me, an automatic response for him – but also the chivalry. He was a man who opened doors, who stepped aside for me, who made sure my glass was filled, who made me coffee and talked me down after Russian thugs had waved a gun at me in the street.

And more than anything, it was the way he'd taken my hand back there. Me, a girl who never held hands, a girl who shied away from any kind of display of affection. It had been a protective thing, my hand in his, a sharing of strength and defiance. It had been intimate, a small thing in a big, brash setting.

It had been a statement, one he'd been willing to make in front of those men without hesitation.

She's with me. Don't fuck with that. Ever.

I kissed him.

It was a reversal of his kiss from moments before. It was my hand that went to
his
blood-smeared cheek, my forefinger that brushed against
his
earlobe – a brief contact, but one which elicited a brief tensing in response.

I recognized that thrill.

I recognized the taste of his lips when my mouth pressed softly against his, recognized the soft yet firm pressure of
his
lips.

The roughness of his stubble.

The pressing response of his tongue against mine.

My whole body responded, every sense heightened. Adrenaline or not, I didn't care.

My breasts pressed against him, soft against hard; I felt trapped in the tight constraints of my leather jacket.

More tightness in my belly, and lower down.

He kissed back. After a second or two of hesitation – surprise? – his tongue met mine, pressed and slid.

We twisted to face each other, and his free hand went to my waist, slipping inside my jacket, pulling the fabric of the vest-top suddenly tight.

I became intensely aware of my nipples hardening, pressing against the inside of my bra. Tiny pulses of pleasure, thrilling through me at every touch, every pulling and tightening of clothes, of contact.

He pulled me to him, and I tipped my head back, breaking the kiss to release a long sigh that was almost a moan.

Instantly, his mouth went to my jaw. The scrape of his stubble was electrifying, the scrape of his teeth against the taut skin of my neck, the press of his lips and tongue...

The hand moved up across my ribcage, thumb finding the swell of a breast, sliding around the contour.

He moved to cup that breast, thumb against the hardness of my nipple through the layers of top and bra.