She wanted to ask him why, but the need to kiss him, to succumb to the seduction, was stronger. The brazen, open lust she felt showed in her face, she was sure.
It showed on his as well.
Her body strained toward his. He pulled her shirt up, bent his head to suck on an already stiff nipple through her bra and she attempted to stifle a cry, but couldn’t.
That spurred him on. With one hand, he ripped the bra off. He sucked a nipple hard as his hands moved to pull down her jeans.
She wasn’t saying no, even though her eyes still flashed in anger.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I didn’t know how, Sky.”
She was already splayed for him, and so he slid a finger inside her thong and into her warm, wet heat, back and forth, until she was rocking against his hand.
“What
did
you know?” she managed, her voice breathless—and the way she looked at him, it nearly undid him.
“That you made me feel, whether I wanted to or not. You made me care. Made me want to not let you go.” He thrust a second finger inside her and then a third, watching her writhe in pleasure as she rode his hand. Because he could do that for her, make her feel good—make her forget, like he’d promised.
After that, he would untie her and face the music. Give her the number to a CIA contact who would come get her. Take whatever punishment was waiting for him.
But for now he wasn’t stopping, suckled on a breast while his fingers worked.
“I want to hate you … need to,” she murmured.
“I know.”
“But I can’t.”
He lifted his head. “Me neither.”
He slid down and took her with his mouth, buried his face against her. She squirmed at his tongue’s assault, her cries a mix of
Oh yes
and
More, Cam, more
.
Her body undulated in response to his rough touch and she liked it, heard herself begging as everything shattered in a wild tumult.
And then he was loosening the bonds, taking them away so she was free. He leaned back, sitting between her spread legs as she floated down from her orgasm, unsure of what she would do now. Of what she needed.
What she needed was him.
She stared at him for a long while, then, “Make me understand.”
The way he looked back at her, she knew he would—and he would make it special. Even the room felt special. The blinds were open—there was nothing but dark, moonlit, luminous forest around them, giving the entire room a magical feeling. She watched as he grabbed a condom from the pocket of his discarded jeans and rolled it on. And then she rose up and straddled him where he sat, his palms flat on the bed for support. With a long moan, she took his rigid length inside of her, her emotions jarred, her inhibitions long gone.
Surrounded by the chaos of the past three days, she took him, claimed him as surely as he had their first night together. This was much more intense than it had ever been. More satisfying, with everything out in the open.
When he pushed his hips up hard, driving himself farther inside her, he groaned his appreciation, and she rocked against him, pressing him on.
He murmured something unintelligible. Bucked up into her, his head thrown back. And then, “I’m alive when I’m with you. Never felt so fucking alive.”
She came then, and so did he, a hot shuddering rush she felt even though he wore a condom.
She knew the sun would come up, but for the first time, she wished she could will it away, keep the dark of night, where she wasn’t scared … where she and Cam didn’t have to worry about anything but spending themselves out on sex until nothing else mattered, until the anger and pain abated and all that was left was the knowledge that, despite it all, she surely did love this man.
CHAPTER
15
S
ky lay across his chest, both of them damp with sweat and sex and utterly exhausted from the fray.
“I like the way you yell my name when you’re coming.” Cam looked down at her as her face flushed. “S’okay—I don’t have any close neighbors.”
“Shut up.” She swatted at his chest. “I love this time of night. It’s technically morning but I still call it night because it’s all dark and quiet.”
He agreed. It was why he’d built the big windows in his house—not to grab the morning sun, but the moonlight.
He shifted reluctantly, rolling her gently onto the mattress and rising from the bed. His bandages had long since come loose and although he wasn’t bleeding again, he needed to get himself cleaned and covered.
He headed to the bathroom to do just that. “I’ll do it.” She came up behind him, still naked, and took the gauze and antiseptic from him. “Are you ever going to see a doctor about this?”
“No. I think you’re doing a fine job.”
She simply shook her head as she cleaned and rebandaged all three wounds, and a swell of emotion ran through him.
“Hey.” He pulled her against him. “I’m sorry. You have to know that. And if you need some time, I’ll move out of the bedroom and sleep someplace else. Because I know all of this is raw.”
She smiled, although it didn’t light up her face the way it used to. No, it was a serious smile—her wheels were turning. “I want you to stay. And I want to forget everything else that’s happening until morning. I want this time.”
“Yeah, we can do that. Why don’t you go back to bed?” Because they were safe here. Because they weren’t dealing with what would happen to Gabriel, how she would process what Cam had set out to do with her. He could forget the past—and in the morning, focus on the future. On their next step to figuring out how the hell to save a CIA agent who couldn’t save himself.
S
ky woke to an overcast day. The blinds were still pulled from the large, floor-to-ceiling windows, the mist over the trees adding an almost surreal feeling to everything.
She was naked, wound in the sheet and oh so comfortable, save for a light rumbling of hunger. And Cam wasn’t there, but she heard him moving around beyond the bedroom, as he’d left the door open.
She’d drifted off to sleep sometime after five in the morning, vaguely aware of Cam padding back and forth between the bedroom and, she supposed, the security cameras. He’d promised they’d talk about everything in the morning and she’d fallen into a deep, satisfying sleep.
“Hey, how’re you feeling?”
Cam was at the door, watching her carefully. After what transpired yesterday, she couldn’t blame him for his hesitation.
“Better. What time is it?”
“Almost five.”
She’d slept the day away, except for a brief rise to take her meds. Her body felt better—she’d learned to listen to it since the transplant, but still was pretty sure Liv would consider all of what she’d been through far too taxing.
“I’ll grab you some food—how about breakfast for dinner?” he asked, and she nodded.
She watched him walk toward the kitchen, marveling at his long strides, the way he was so in command of everything.
Lying back against the pillows, she surveyed the large space around her. Like the den and kitchen, it was open and airy, with high ceilings to accommodate the huge windows. Painted a neutral, dark beige, it felt warm, especially with the dark rug and gray comforter. Warm and distinctly male, and that wasn’t a bad thing right now.
Shelves lined an entire wall. Lots of books—classics, new fiction, nonfiction. Movies.
She wondered if he got to spend much time up here, because he’d furnished it as if that was his wish. And then she pulled on a T-shirt and headed for the bathroom to wash up before Cam got back.
The bathroom was large, and the shower a walk-in with sprays set at various angles, and she couldn’t resist turning it on. It was warm and steamy and she got in and relaxed under the water, wondering if she was avoiding what came next with Cam, the decisions that needed to be made.
Now or never, Sky
. They both had a hell of a lot of baggage to deal with—time to find out how much each of them was willing to toss.
He was waiting when she returned to the bedroom. There was coffee. Juice. Eggs and toast. And pancakes. “I don’t eat this much for breakfast—ever.”
“You should start.” He settled next to her, his hair damp from a recent shower, and she wondered if the other bathrooms in the house were as nice as the master bath. She’d investigate later. He flipped through the TV channels while she ate—more than she thought she would, mumbling to him at one point that it was delicious.
Finally, she pushed the tray away, sated. Cam put it on the table next to the bed and turned to her.
It was time to have the discussion she dreaded. And Cam, being Cam, didn’t mince words. “You’re in danger, Sky. I won’t leave you now—can’t have that on my conscience. I’ll figure out why people keep coming after you and then I’ll take my punishment. I’m sure your father’s not going to be happy.”
“I won’t let my father do anything to you.”
“You will not ask for favors for me,” he said through clenched teeth. “First off, I don’t deserve it. Second, I would never put you in the middle—not like I have.”
He wasn’t capable of hurting her—she saw that clearly now. And even though a part of her was still angry at him for lying, she was more so at her father for bringing so much hurt onto Cam.
And if what Cam said was true, if Gabriel had in fact murdered Cam’s father, was there any way for her and Cam to get past that? “There’s something I don’t understand. If he killed your father and you were taking the fall for it, why would he get you out of jail two years later? Guilt?”
Cam shrugged, ran his fingers through his still damp hair. “He let me sit in prison for two years, so when he got me out I’d be grateful. So I’d do anything he asked of me.”
“You think your father’s death was just part of some plan to use you?”
“Would that surprise you?”
“I didn’t think anything could anymore. But honestly, yes. I know you don’t want to hear this, but you don’t know him like I do.” She looked concerned, upset, and he hated that he kept forcing these revelations on her. Ignorance really was bliss in situations like this one. “And I know it’s not over for you—not until you get the truth from my father.”
“I’d like to hear his reasons from his own mouth, yes. This is more than Gabriel killing my father. Like that’s not enough. But fuck, there’s more, Sky. A hell of a lot more.”
“Then tell me. I’m a lot stronger than I might seem. And I deserve to know everything.”
He nodded, even though her words hadn’t formed a question, mainly because he didn’t trust his voice. She was strong but he wasn’t sure he could do this—had never talked about what happened with anyone. Not even Dylan knew the details of that night.
He’d already shattered Sky’s ideals about him enough. For good. And so he turned from her, went to walk out of the room, but her words stopped him.
“If you walk away now, we’ll never get through this.”
She was right, and so he came back and sat next to her. And still, words eluded him.
Sky reached out and took his hands. When she spoke, her words cut right to the heart of the matter. “I know you want to kill him. Literally. But I don’t want that on your conscience.”
“I can’t let him get away with it—you know that, right?”
“I do.” She paused. “If you find him, you can bring him to justice. You have to—I understand that.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not? You’ve been hiding things from me. It’s now or never.
Tell me.
”
The silence spread between them, thick, hot, the way he could still feel the blood on his hands some days. When he spoke, his voice was raw. “The world of black ops missions … it’s one where you think you’ve learned the rules, but they change constantly. There are so many things you’ll never know. Shouldn’t. Since the first night I met you, I never wanted you to know these things about me.”
“Before, you said that you’d been like ice for months. What happened? Was it another woman?”
He wanted to laugh, because yeah, it had been another woman—but not in the way she thought.
He’d gone through some tough crap during his military tenure. Just last year, he’d been involved in a joint task force mission that could only be described as a severe clusterfuck. They’d accomplished half the mission successfully—but only he and another member, a SEAL, had survived along with the ambassador and his family.
More successes than losses, but he’d learned to compartmentalize, to put each mission to rest in his head as soon as he could, to not think about the successes any more than he did the failures.
Overthinking either was equally as dangerous.
“You really want to know what I did on a mission your father pushed me into?” That fateful night when he’d been forced to do something that made him question everything. That made him willing to kidnap her in order to ensure he’d never be in that position again.
“Yes. I need to know.”
She didn’t really. Black ops was about killing and stealing. You asked no questions, told lots of lies—and if you were lucky, you escaped with your life. “I was supposed to kill a man, and in order to get close to him, I had to get close to his girlfriend. She tried to kill me when we were … having sex. I stopped her, but then … her son came in, holding the AK pointed right at me. And the woman, she was so pissed, she started screaming that she’d known when her husband hadn’t come home, even though his meeting had been canceled, that she’d been betrayed. That she’d known it was only a matter of time before that would happen. That he’d turned their son against her. And fuck, I knew the feeling. I raised my gun—I was ready, but instead she swung hers and pointed … and she shot …”
He paused, lowered his head and shook it, his voice nearly breaking when he continued. “She didn’t have to shoot him. But she said,
That’ll teach him to betray me. He takes from me—I take his son from him.
”
“My God, Cam …” Sky put a hand on the back of his neck, so cool against his overheated skin. “What did you do?”
“I shot her,” he said, his voice hollow. “Checked the kid for a pulse, but I knew he was gone. And then I left. Left the house and Morocco, without finishing the job. First time ever. I never heard from your father again—and I was glad. Because I thought it meant I would never work for him again.”