Night Moves: A Shadow Force Novel (21 page)

Well, she couldn’t say he’d never given her anything.

P
retending to take Teddie hostage had been the only way out. It had allowed him and Reid to split up and now they could claim to have no knowledge of the other’s plans.

The marshals would attempt to follow Kell back into Mexico. Except they’d really be following Reid and the wrong car crossing the border, which would make Kell’s life easier.

Once back in Juarez, Reid would put the plan to catch Chambers in motion. Reid was also responsible for keeping an eye out for Crystal, as was Dylan.

And although Kell hated to leave Reid alone, he knew his friend was up for the job. Once Chambers was taken care of and the evidence collected, Kell would untangle the mess with the marshals.

With Teddie’s help, they made the drive without stopping beyond quick bathroom and fast-food breaks.
He kept the news of the hurricane to a minimum on the radio because he could actually feel Teddie tense up when she listened to it.

It took them thirty hours altogether to get to Riley’s house in Florida, because Kell was driving the speed limit, so as not to draw attention to himself. Besides, even with the back-road shortcuts he used, the traffic was still snarled.

But at this point, his was one of the only cars traveling
into
the area.

“We’re lucky—we’ve made it just in time. In a few hours, they’ll close down this road and stop traffic from coming in.”

“Lucky,” she echoed, stared at the darkening sky and paled.

“Stay with me, Teddie,” he told her. “I’m going to get us someplace safe within the next half hour.”

“A hotel?”

“Better,” he said. Finally, he pulled off the main road, toward a sturdy-looking house, and up a slight incline into a garage that locked behind him. “This is a friend’s house. We’re far enough away from the ocean that we won’t have surge. It’s new construction, built to withstand the brunt of storms.”

Add to that the shutters a caretaker had already locked in place and Kell felt they were in good shape.

They’d fly up to New York as soon as they could—or drive, or whatever, and they’d hide along the way. But waiting out the storm here was one of Dylan’s strokes of genius.

Of course, not knowing about Teddie’s storm phobia had been a slight fly in the ointment, but holing
up in Riley’s house was as safe as they could be under the circumstances.

They were not only hiding Teddie from the marshals, but Kell from Crystal, and for at least the next seventy-two hours, he and Teddie would both be unreachable.

He used the code to open the door and went in, with Teddie behind him, to check the place out.

It was cool and quiet and dark. He switched on the lights—no one from the street would be able to see them, thanks to the shutters. Riley had a generator here as well, so they’d be good for quite a while.

Now, if he could just get more than a minimal text from Reid, he’d feel better. The man had to be wreaking havoc with the marshals—it was what he did best and he was often the Delta sent out to cause such disturbances so the rest of the team could work their magic.

Reid was a natural for sure.

Teddie was pacing around, unable to relax as the storm began to pick up a bit. She switched on the TV and he hoped she’d watch a movie instead of The Weather Channel, but he had a feeling that was a pipe dream.

“They’re doing evacuations of this area,” she called out to him when he went toward the kitchen to call Cam.

“Not mandatory, just a recommendation. I doubt the storm’ll hit landfall as more than a Cat One. We’ll be fine,” he told her, and she harrumphed. He pretended not to hear it, opened his phone and noticed he didn’t have any signal. Riley had to have a sat-phone in this place somewhere, and he snuck past Teddie, who
was glued to the TV, and went to search the house for it.

T
eddie remained rooted on the floor by the large TV, watching The Weather Channel like it was her lifeline, even though it was currently scaring the hell out of her.

The wind howled through the shuttered house. Kell was in the kitchen trying to get a signal and she wasn’t sure how much time had passed. She dragged a few pillows off the couch and lay down on the floor.

She might’ve fallen asleep for a little while, only to wake to the sounds of a vicious whistle of wind. It sounded angry and she swore the house shook a little.

But the lights and the TV were still on and Kell was still in the kitchen and they would be all right.

The reporter was talking about gusts of wind up to seventy miles per hour in their area. The perky woman trying to stand out in the middle of a beach warned her not to go outside.

“Don’t worry about that, honey,” Teddie muttered. And she was starting to lie down again when the effects of the storm began to really hit the house.

The TV fizzled out first. She saw it as the last vestige of normalcy before the world ended and felt the panic rise in the back of her throat. She tried to distract herself, until the lights went out a few minutes later, leaving the room dark, although not pitch-black.

Not yet.

She opened her mouth to call for Kell, but no sound came out. She was entirely too focused on the way the
wind whipped the palm trees, how the fat raindrops had begun to pelt the house with bulletlike precision.

And then there was a loud sound, like an engine starting up, and seconds after that the lights came back on. They were dimmer than before, but it was still a very welcome sight. Literally.

“Teddie, hey.” Kell was behind her with a battery-powered lantern he placed on the floor next to her and then he wrapped her in a blanket before settling in next to her.

She pulled the blanket more tightly around her. “Sorry” was all she could manage without fear that her voice would break.

“Nothing to apologize for,” he told her. “The generator should work through the whole thing—the lanterns are for just in case. I guess you weren’t exaggerating when you said you don’t like storms.”

“I thought I’d be okay.” She was so far from that, it was laughable.

He moved away a bit to rifle in a low cabinet on one end of the couch. He pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and held it up. “This could help.”

“I don’t really drink.”

“Then it’ll definitely help.” He handed her the bottle after opening it, and she took it hesitantly, the scent strong enough to make her almost refuse it.

Still, she took a sip, bit back a cough as the amber liquid burned all the way down to her stomach. She let it settle and then took a longer drink and then another, until Kell liberated the bottle from her and took a long swig of his own.

“There’s plenty of food we can eat. I’ll manually light the pilots on the stove,” he said.

“Do you cook?”

“Not well,” he admitted.

“I can help.” The edge was definitely off, but the fear of what the storm would bring remained.

“Good.” He grinned. When he did that, he looked about seventeen. She could almost picture him and Reid in Alaska, at the foster home. On a crab boat.

“I hate that you and Reid are fighting,” she said suddenly.

“It’s not because of you.”

“I know. But I’m not making it any easier.”

Kell didn’t answer right away, took another slug from the bottle. “Maybe you are and you just don’t know it.”

She didn’t push for an explanation, let his words sink in for a few moments, allowing the warm fuzzies from both the alcohol and his statement wash over her.

“Would that be all right with you?” he asked finally.

Instead of answering with words, she leaned in, hesitating for only a second before kissing him, a sweet gentle kiss on the mouth first. And then she lingered a kiss on his cheek while her hand cupped the nape of his neck.

When she pulled back, he asked, “Are you trying to heal me?”

“Is that possible?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly.

“I think … you could heal me.”

“Is this the JD talking?”

“Maybe it gave me the courage I needed.”

“You’ve already got that, in spades,” he told her.
She wanted to kiss him again, but then she swore the house began to shake and she nearly jumped into his lap.

Once fully there, she did kiss him.

K
ell needed to take all Teddie’s clothes off. Immediately. Right here, on the floor by the couch as the storm began its lash of the coast. She’d wiggled against him, held his shoulders like she’d never let him go, and he’d like to think it was more lust than fear driving her.

He nuzzled against her neck, sucking the soft skin there and making her squirm more as his hands went under her shirt. But suddenly, she was intent on taking off his clothes, which could be just as fun. She tugged his shirt over his head, shifted so she could help him out of his jeans, which he somehow managed to kick off while she remained mostly on top of him, and then her hand circled his cock.

Fuck. Yes.

His head went back against the couch—couldn’t really move his hips from the position he was in, but somehow, that made it hotter.

“You have too many clothes on,” he managed, but her only answer was a nip on his shoulder as her hand stroked faster.

She continued kissing and licking her way down his chest, and then she was pushing him to lay down under her, and she continued to head between his legs.

He lay prone on the rug with the house shaking and his body following suit as she spent time on his
nipples, with licks and sucks that went on a straight line to his cock, which was already way too sensitive; he fought the urge to grab her and take her.

This was her party. He’d had his way with her already—and while she hadn’t minded, he wanted her to be okay with all of this.

She continued looking over his body—he wasn’t as scarred as some of the guys he’d worked with but he could easily use his as a map of his life. The skin on his shoulder puckered, a souvenir from a knife fight in his first years on Delta Force. A fight that, for the record, he’d won.

A few, like the scar on the inside of his palm, were from a slipped knife on a crab boat—he’d been lucky not to slit any tendons. And that’s when he’d learned to stitch himself up, because they were thousands of miles from shore and the crab boat wasn’t going back in for a scratch, as the captain had called it.

Her fingers played gently along the new bruises he’d received over the course of the past days, circling them and then brushing them lightly like her touch could make them all better, and she couldn’t know how close to true that was.

“These must hurt.”

“Not so bad.”

“Tough … going to borrow some of that.” Her mouth pressed to his shoulder, a kiss and a soft lick of tongue on his hot skin.

“Anything you want.”

“You’re so beautiful,” she whispered, looked at him with her eyes full of the compliment. No one had ever said that to him before—and holy Christ, she meant it.

He should tell her there was nothing beautiful about him, but he needed it to be true, didn’t want her to see him as a danger … didn’t want her to see the ugliness he’d been born with on the inside.

“Fuck me, Teddie,” he told her, and she flushed at the dirty talk, mouth open slightly. But then she started to strip off her clothes, letting them drop all around him.

Stripped, then hesitated until he brought her back to his attention with a touch, a stroke. First, she uncovered her breasts—soft and firm, a perfect handful, slim torso, and when her pants came off she revealed the blond curls that rubbed against his cock. All he wanted her to do was slip him inside her, take him all the way in.

The wind gusted up, hard enough to shake the hurricane shutters. A loud boom from outside vibrated the floor under him and she started, looked panicked.

“Shit,” she muttered, but he brought her back to the present again, his hands on her breasts, tugging the flushed nipples gently.

“I’ll keep you safe.”

“Does nothing scare you?”

You. The thought of not being with you
. “Nothing right now.” And that was the God’s honest truth.

“Teddie, come on. Fuck me. Right now.” He tugged her onto him, wanting to forget everything as badly as she wanted to block out the storm.

They would do it together.

It was as if the storm was driving them both—her seeking escape and solace but he didn’t care. He wanted
her again, the same way he’d been wanting her from nearly the beginning.

The other afternoon had only whetted his appetite. And he was grateful to the storm for allowing this, for giving them refuge.

“It’s going to be a bad one,” she whispered.

“Then let’s make this good—balance it out.”

She didn’t want to think about the storm anymore, the tension she’d been holding inside needed release, and judging by the way Kell looked at her, he did as well. His smile made her stomach flip, because he didn’t smile often. His hands molded to her breasts, made her arch and moan into his palms, rub against him for a few moments. Then she reached down and guided him inside of her.

She lowered herself slowly, letting him fill her, and it felt so good. Sex had never been this right, and Kell’s strangled groan, his hands on her hips pushing her down the final length of him combined to make her a slave to the sensations.

For a moment, she remained still, feeling him pulse inside her. Her palms rested on his chest, her breathing quickening, and then she began to rock back and forth, taking him the way he’d done with her the other day. Making him writhe underneath her, begging for her to go faster, urging her on. Her belly tightened as she began to lose control, barely able to hang on to him, as he began to move her hips for her, bucking up so his cock drove more deeply inside, and she was hanging on for his ride now.

She couldn’t take her eyes off him. He looked wild and beautiful and he was giving some of that wild beauty back to her. As her orgasm grabbed her, she
threw her head back, her sex clamped around him, and he yelled something—her name, maybe, mixed with a curse or two—as he came hard inside her.

G
rier had trailed him pretty well for the better part of the last hour. Reid lost her for good by letting her think he was staying in a motel across town. It was then that he doubled back and headed to the restaurant he’d been trying to visit that afternoon. He’d suspected that Chambers had asked Teddie to meet him in a place he felt comfortable and protected. The kitchen staff confirmed he had a regular table once Reid offered cash to them.