Son of a bitch. Dylan had no more points to argue. Cam clicked off the line and Dylan stood there for a while, staring at nothing in particular.
“He was supposed to fuck her, not grow a conscience,” he finally muttered to himself, fully realizing he was projecting.
Riley had gotten in. Granted, it had taken longer than two nights, but Dylan had always known Cam would fall hard once he finally did fall.
Why it had to be now, with Gabriel’s daughter, was something that the fates could have a good laugh about. With Zane. Who was too fucked up to fall in love.
Enough. It was time to pull his focus back to Riley. It was apparent she needed his help as much as Cam did—maybe more.
He’d dragged himself away from her early that morning. Although she’d admitted her connection to Gabriel to him, he knew she’d never let him help her. No, he’d have to do that the old-fashioned way—by sneaking around and doing so behind her back.
A
fter Cam hung up with Dylan, he remained outside. He stared down at his own arm, where the OA tattoo was nearly gone, but he could still see it, clear as day.
Three days before the murders, he’d sat in the chair with his father and gotten it permanently marked into his skin. He’d been scared as shit, because he knew what it meant: that he was an OA for life.
He hadn’t signed on for that. He’d been told, when he moved in with his father, that he just had to play the game and go to school. But somehow, the deeper his father got pulled in, the deeper Cam had to go, just so he wouldn’t let his old man down in front of the other men.
Your father didn’t sell you out … he’d been trying to save you
.
Howie hadn’t left him in jail to rot after all. But Gabriel had. And Cam would find the reason why, or die trying.
To have suspected it was one thing. To have it confirmed, after all this time, it made him want to grab Gabriel by the throat and not let go.
He’d been waiting thirteen years to hear that, and still, the victory was hollow as hell. His father was still gone, as were Cam’s late teens, and he’d let Gabriel consume most of his twenties.
It was time for his freedom.
His
needs.
He’d done so much good work with Delta Force and the Rangers—important work, work that saved lives. And maybe what he did for Gabriel saved people too, but the not knowing was killing him.
Eventually, Sky would learn all of this. But his gut nagged that the timing was wrong, that he didn’t know enough yet.
He remained outside, telling himself he was simply collecting his thoughts, when really the idea of going back inside the way-too-small room with the very beautiful woman who’d managed to get him worked up while stitching him made him worry.
Mainly because she was already freaked, and climbing into bed with her was really tempting for him.
It was also tempting to go in and talk to her, spill his guts. And he had a lot to process.
Sky was innocent, but not in the way other men might think. Counting her as such would prove a liability he neither needed nor wanted. Because Skylar Slavin was smarter than most of the operatives he’d worked with; she might be recovering physically, but her mind, and her instincts, were sharp as shit. He’d seen that immediately in her writing, as he’d read the book at Dylan’s house the night before he’d met up with her. The way she’d drawn the deep, dark undercover world was too good for someone who wasn’t acquainted with that way of life. It wasn’t firsthand knowledge, but it was as close to it as it got.
She’d be as hard to fool as her father, and about as trusting as Gabriel too, once she got her bearings back.
He was just lucky she was still in recovery mode.
Finally, he went inside, shutting the door quietly. She didn’t stir at all, remained on her side, facing away from him, her hair loose on the pillow, her body tucked into a near-fetal position.
You could lie next to her and still control yourself
.
He did, waited for her to say something, but all she did was turn—in her sleep—into his arms.
He held her cautiously, holding his breath, waiting for her to say something, but she was still in deep slumber. Her face nuzzled his chest and she gave a soft, contented moan as she shifted her legs under the covers, which brought her body closer to his.
The easiest thing would be to kiss her. Run a hand over the soft mounds of her breasts, teasing her nipples until her flesh was warm and supple under his touch.
She shifted, but he didn’t have the heart to wake her, no matter how badly his dick wanted him to.
Her shirt had ridden up high, exposing her stomach, flat, with the softest skin he’d ever touched … or tasted.
He rubbed his fingers together, imagining her taut, pink peaks between them, her sighs of pleasure in his ear.
She sighed then, her leg rubbing his, as if she was inside his head.
When she found out why he’d come for her in the first place, how much he despised her father, she would hate him. But he didn’t do pretend well. No, he was all about living in the real world, but the stark bite of reality would suck beyond belief.
Nothing perfect ever stays that way. The fact that this had taken a momentary turn in that direction should’ve set the alarm bells ringing in his head much sooner than this.
God, he felt like shit, physically and emotionally. He probably had a mild concussion, maybe a broken rib and his shoulder throbbed.
He’d let the bullet stay in longer than he should have. If he hadn’t had antibiotics with him, he’d definitely need to be in the ER. And still, a chill ran through him, a warning that he’d overdone it.
A warning that maybe spending the night here, rather than attempting to go to another location tonight as he’d planned, might be the smartest thing. And lately, nothing he’d done was fucking smart.
CHAPTER
9
A
s a light rain pattered against the hotel balcony, Dylan remained with his head on the pillow as if an outside force was stopping him from rising out of bed and staring out toward Riley’s house.
He’d set up a watch on Riley’s place from his penthouse room a block over, with the help of a telescopic lens. He’d also planted a few bugs throughout her house, but he had a feeling she’d swept for those immediately after he left.
Then again, she was smart enough not to talk business in her house.
She was too smart for her own good. And he couldn’t get the way she made his body hum with satisfaction off his mind.
She hadn’t left her house so far that day. He’d begun to get antsy as hell, wondering if he should just give up on the surveillance, and on Riley herself. He was wasting time here—she didn’t want his help and Cam did. The choice was easy enough.
He could help one without the other.
But he couldn’t shake the feeling that Riley knew a lot more than she’d told him, that she was the key to successfully answering all the unanswered questions that kept popping up.
He shifted to his side, trying to get back into the restless nap he was taking, until his cell rang. Expecting it to be either Cam or Zane, he was more than happy to hear Riley’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” His hand fisted around his cock, instantly hard at the sound of her voice.
“Are you alone?”
“Are you?”
“Not anymore.”
Yeah, that was nice—both her words and the feel of his hand gliding up and down his erection, imagining it was her hand. Her mouth. Her …
Her voice washed over him, a sleek, soft blanket of warmth. “If you were here, Dylan …”
“What would you do to me?”
“You’d be naked. Because I like you that way.”
He groaned, because he sure as shit didn’t mind it either. And he’d been beyond frustrated after being so close to her and not doing anything at all about his own throbbing needs.
No, their fight had taken care of that.
Now Riley wanted to make up, and he was more than prepared to let her.
“Roll on your back, baby,” she murmured, and he followed her directive, spreading his legs. “I like looking at you—all spread out and hard for me.”
If he concentrated hard enough, he could feel the warm, wet drag of her tongue along his rigid length. Feel her hair caressing his thighs as her mouth worked him.
She was touching herself too—he could hear the catch in her voice when he told her, “I would be fucking you so hard right now, taking you from behind, the way I wanted to last night.”
“I would’ve let you.”
Her voice intoxicated him better than a shot of Jack, Johnny, or Jäger. He held himself in check, his body on a taut wire, set to explode—all it would take was one word, one final stroke.
Sweat glistened on his chest and he could barely hear her. “Fucking wish you were here, Ri,” he growled.
“I am … taking you inside of me. Can’t you feel how tight I am, how wet I am for you? All for you?”
That was it. He was pretty sure he cursed as he came, hard, panting, like a twelve-year-old who couldn’t control himself.
He had plenty of control, but there was no point in abusing it. Instead, he kept his eyes closed as he jerked and groaned, his body twitching from the aftermath of the orgasm.
Momentarily spent, he remained in the same position—hand on his cock, phone pressed to his ear. And waited.
She had something more to tell him. She always did this—used the phone to distance them … but somehow it always ended up pulling them closer.
He had a feeling that would be the case this time as well. “I’m listening, Ri.”
Her words came out in a hot rush, and he found himself sitting up in bed, still as a statue. “My dad, he’d told my mom,
If something happens to me, it’s this man’s fault
. And he gave her a name—Charles Sullivan. It took me years to track a CIA agent with that name, only to find out it was an alias. One of many.” Riley’s voice shook—anger, pain, fear, all mixed together and tumbling through the phone line. “And this man … He didn’t just take my father’s life. He took everything, every cent my father ever earned. His investments. Our house. The cars. It was all gone. My mother and I were living in a homeless shelter. Applying for welfare. We slept in a car until my mom got enough steady cleaning jobs to put us up in a rat-hole hotel. He took away my past … my whole life up until that point. I didn’t even know what end was up anymore. I was fifteen and helpless. Watching my mom get sicker every year. I worked long hours after school, stayed up all night studying because I knew the only way out of the squalor was to get a scholarship.”
“What did you think I would do, Ri? Just because I found the files—”
“It wouldn’t have been the first time you screwed up my plans, Dylan,” she told him, and yeah, that was true. Oneupmanship had played a big role in their relationship until that point, with him going out of his way to win at all costs. Even against Riley, the woman he was falling for. Or maybe he wanted to win
because
he was falling for her—a way to put distance between them, to prove to himself that he could still do his job.
A way to prove he didn’t need her.
“I couldn’t let you have this one, Dylan. Couldn’t let you start poking around, because you’d find things out. Maybe even try to stop me. And if I didn’t finish that last arms deal the night I shot you, I never would’ve gotten that lead on Creighton’s whereabouts.”
“How did the arms dealer know?”
“Former ATF agent gone way south of the border. Found there was a lot more money—and fun—on the other side of the law. He’d gotten intel on a really badass new guy in DMH.”
“Dead Man’s Hand,” Dylan said, his throat tight. They’d started out small about ten years earlier—in the last few, they’d expanded from mere menace to major threats. The expats involved were the worst traitors of all, and some of the meanest too, selling any and all intel they had on the United States to known terrorist groups. “How did you find out it was Creighton?”
“About five months ago I heard a rumor that he’d resigned from the CIA. And disappeared, for all intents and purposes. And then he got sloppy, probably for the first time in his career. When I started piecing things together and seeing if it could really be Gabriel who’d infiltrated DMH, I knew there would have to be a reason why he had such a hard-on for them.”
“Was there?”
“DMH was responsible for the murder of his wife, who was also an agent. She’d been trying to infiltrate the group.”
“That’ll do it,” he muttered. “What the hell did you do?”
“I contacted them, told them they had a traitor in their midst.”
“You outed Gabriel to DMH as a CIA agent.”
“Yes.” She paused. “I thought that would be the end of it. That they’d kill him. Maybe torture him first. I lied and told DMH I was in it for the money. But DMH traced me. And now—”
“They want you dead.”
“They want me to work for them,” she corrected. “Which really is the same thing as being dead.”
And then she made a sound that was half laugh, half choked sob. “I wanted Gabriel Creighton to pay, and all I’ve managed to do is dig myself in deeper.” Neither of them said anything and the silence hung between them with the weight of her words and deeds.
Finally, he spoke. “We can work together. You don’t have to give DMH what they want.”
Riley went silent and he willed himself to believe that she was considering it. The only other thing he could think to say was, “Please.”
Even before she cut the line, he knew that wouldn’t be enough.
T
he call had come in less than an hour ago, summoning her. Riley had been waiting for it for a couple of days now, prayed it wouldn’t happen when Dylan was with her.
It was a big part of the reason she had called him instead of going to his hotel room, letting his voice wash over her like a mini-redemption. And then the confession had poured out of her so easily. Always did after Dylan brought her to orgasm, whether with his hands or his dick or his voice alone—this time, it had been her talking dirty to him, bringing him to the brink. Then and only then did she drive away from her house, sure he was far too distracted to notice.