Authors: Lisa Desrochers
Lee
I seem to have weathered the self-destructive phase of mourning Oliver, though not before I made things totally awkward with Wes. I’ve apologized for getting drunk and throwing myself at him, and he’s apologized for letting me.
Now, when he comes around, he’s stiff and professional. I know it’s because he’s waiting for some signal that I’m all in before he risks his job for me. On my end, I’ve been careful to stop with the mixed signals. There may come a time I’m ready to date again, and if Wes is still available and interested, I’d love if it were him. But I think that’s still a long way off.
It’s the middle of August. Sherm starts fifth grade next week, though it’s hard to believe summer’s nearly over when it’s pushing a hundred degrees today.
I’m in the boys’ section at the Target in Port Charlotte. I needed an excuse for some solitude and Sherm provided it. He’s grown three inches this summer and I can’t send him back to school in high-water jeans.
I’ve got a few possibilities over my shoulder and am thumbing through the rack of shredder tees when a pair of strong hands grip my shoulders and yank me behind the divider where three-packs of Hanes and Fruit of the Loom hang.
On instinct, I reach behind me for my Cheetah before remembering I don’t have a gun anymore. I turn and swing with every ounce of strength I can muster. A grenade explodes in my knuckles as my fist connects with a strong jaw. I grab my hand and cry out.
But just as I’m turning to run, I see who the jaw is attached to and time screeches to a halt.
“Nice, Cheetah,” Oliver says, rubbing his face and sending me a smirk. “Remind me never to invite you into the kickboxing ring.”
His face is clean-shaven and his hair is a few shades lighter—closer to my color now—but those familiar green eyes impale me, spearing straight through my heart.
“You’re dead.” It’s barely anything, more breath than sound.
He lifts a hand and cradles my cheek, gliding his thumb over my trembling lower lip. “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
“Oh my God,” I say, falling into his arms.
“I told you I’d be ba—” he starts, but I cut him off, my mouth crashing into his.
“I love you,” I whisper between kisses. “God, I love you so much.”
A mother with two young boys rushes her kids along when she catches sight of the groping match happening behind the underwear display. He’s solid and warm and real. My Oliver. I’m doing everything humanly possible to climb right into him.
“Wes showed me the article,” I breathe when he draws away minutes later, his gaze burning into mine. “You were shot, then burned. He said there were fingerprints and dental—”
He glances around and stops me with a finger to my lips when we notice one of the boys peek around the corner of the rack at us. “Can we talk about this somewhere where there are fewer ears?”
The jeans that had been draped over my shoulder when I swung at him are in a heap on the floor. I leave them there and grab his hand. He lets me tow him through the store to the parking lot, but when I start toward my car, he tugs me the other direction.
“We’ll come back for it,” he says when I give him a questioning look.
He clicks open the doors of a red Mustang and we jump inside. He reaches past me into the glove box and pulls out my Beretta. “Thought you might be missing this.”
I take it with a shaking hand. “You trust me not to shoot you?”
He shrugs as he backs out of the parking spot and a cocky smile curls his lips. “Didn’t work out so bad last time.”
I start to smile back, but then remember the last time I saw this gun. I scowl down at it. “You pointed this at me.”
“You pointed it at me first,” he counters.
My scowl deepens. “When I thought you wanted to
kill
me!”
He hauls a deep breath and pulls into traffic. “I needed you to let me go. I wasn’t sure you’d just let me walk away. But I never would have pulled the trigger.” His eyes flick to mine, hot and intense. “You have to know that.”
“Where did you go?”
“First, back to Las Vegas.” He slows at a traffic signal and his gaze locks on mine. “Then to Safesite.”
My eyes widen as my heart thuds to a stop. “Safesite? You’re in Witness Protection?”
He nods.
“Oh my God,” I breathe. “Oliver . . . what did you do?”
“Everything.” The light turns and he guns the engine. The car rockets up the highway ramp and he weaves through traffic at a discernibly unsafe speed.
He never drives like this, past the edge of control. I grip the seat and decide not to distract him by asking what
everything
means.
Fifteen minutes later, we’re skidding to a stop in the drop-off loop at the front doors of a hotel. The valet is with someone else and Oliver doesn’t wait. He tosses his keys onto the valet stand and spirits me through the lobby to the elevators. He pounds the side of his fist against the call button repeatedly, looking impatiently at the numbers flashing above the elevators. When one finally dings on the ground floor, he ushers me through before the doors are fully open. By the time we reach the eighteenth floor and Oliver hurries me up the hallway, my bra’s unhooked under my top and his shirt is half unbuttoned.
When we’re safely inside his room, I yank the front of his shirt open, popping the remaining buttons. But then I see the angry red scars from the gunshot.
“I could have killed you,” I say, tracing the wounds. I look into his eyes. “Twice. Wes said your family was looking for you. Did your father find out what I did?”
He nods. “Doesn’t matter, though. I wasn’t going back there anyway.”
I pull him to the bed. “What’s
everything
, Oliver? What did you do?”
He draws away from me and moves to the window, looking out over the lagoon. “I gave the Feds everything I could on my father. They’ve got enough to keep Victor in lockup for the better part of eternity.”
I go to him and caress my hands slowly around his sides to his stomach, pulling his back against me. “Why?”
He turns in my arms and holds me in his deepening green gaze. “It was my only path back to you.”
I swallow the pulsing lump in my throat as I slip his shirt off his shoulders. I brush my fingertips down his chest, over his chiseled abs to the button of his slacks. He watches me flick it open and drag the zipper down, then drops his head and groans as I grasp his solid erection and stroke.
He’s not gentle yanking off my panties, and the next thing I know, I’m pinned between Oliver and the glass of the window. I tug my skirt up as he lifts me off my feet and hooks my knees over his hips. As he drives himself deep, I moan, loud and satisfied. I cling to him, arms around his shoulders and heels digging into his ass. We stand here for a several beats of my pounding heart without moving, just savoring the connection.
He tips his head forward and nuzzles my ear. “I love you too, my Cheetah.”
“Then love me,” I say, my voice rough with need.
He carries me to the bed and lays me across it. Everything south of my waist contracts with the intensity of the rush when he lowers his weight onto me and seats himself to the root inside me. He pulls slowly back, then drives deep again, finding my G-spot and making me gasp. Again and again. He works it, bringing me to the peak and holding me there, right on the brink of the fall.
A desperate, wounded whimper forces its way from my core as he pulls out just before I come.
“There’s my Cheetah,” he says with a wicked smile before he slams himself home.
And then I’m crying out with my climax. He pulses inside me, and the feeling sends a warm shudder over my skin. When I open my eyes and search his out, I find them brushing over my features, as if I’m a rare piece of art.
“You are fucking incredible,” I breathe.
He laughs as he rolls off me, probably because I rarely swear. “Back atcha, Cheetah. But you have way too many clothes on.”
“That’s because you were impatient,” I say, sitting up and pulling my top over my head.
He hooks a finger into the strap of my bra and drags it down my arms. “That’s because you blow my mind. Every. Goddamn. Time.”
I get up and shimmy out of my skirt, then duck into the bathroom to clean up. When I come back to the bed, he’s naked, on his back with his fingers laced behind his head, watching me.
I crawl onto the bed and mold myself to his side. “Explain to me how you’re back from the dead.”
He wraps a strong arm around me and pulls me closer. “The day I left here, I flew from Tampa to Vegas on my fake ID, retracing my steps so if anyone found me, they’d never know where I’d been. I decided to lay low for a day and find out what my family was up to. Turns out, while I was away they started poking into things and found the hemorrhage in the book system. I guess my loving father was convinced I’d rigged it and run off with the cash.” He shakes his head with a bitter chuckle. “The man’s a moron. If I was going to scam him, it would be for a hell of a lot more than half a mil, but whatever.”
“So they were looking for you?” I ask, my fingers stroking his chest.
“Yeah. Which gave me the perfect opportunity. I called Callahan at the FBI.” He looks at me. “He was the guy who took our fathers down.”
“Yeah. I remember.” . . . Better than anyone knows.
“Told him I’d give him anything he wanted. Because everyone already knew Victor was gunning for me, it was easy to sell my murder. They staged the scene then flew me to Washington. I have no idea who the poor stiff was. Anyway, I met with the big guns in D.C. and ratted out Victor from top to bottom. It took the better part of a week, but they finally decided I’d given up everything. They started making arrests last week. Surprised you didn’t hear.”
The last newspaper I saw was the one Wes brought to the house. I glide my fingers up his neck to his face and slide myself up to look into his eyes. He’s really here. He’s not dead. “I never read the news. Too depressing.”
Something cold fingers up my spine with the realization that Wes might have known all along that Oliver wasn’t really dead.
But I forget all about him when Oliver kisses me. He adjusts his pillow and props an arm behind his head. “After they were done with me, they shipped me off to Safesite. Got the platinum treatment for two weeks, then they relocated me to Nebraska, of all places.” He rolls his eyes. “Only five hundred miles from Chicago and I don’t even
like
corn.”
I’m tracing his lips with the tip of my finger and it makes him shudder. “So how did you get from Nebraska to the boys’ underwear section of the Target in Port Charlotte?”
He cocks a brow. “The way anyone would. I got on a plane, then rented a car.”
“Oh my God!” I say when I realize. I pull out of his arms and sit up, staring down at him in dismay. “I just had sex with you and I don’t even know your name!”
“Oliver Anthony Silva.” He grins and holds out his hand. “It’s my very great pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
I take his hand, but stop mid-shake when I register what he just said. “Silva? Mama’s name?”
He nods and his green eyes darken and go unfathomably deep as all the humor runs out of his expression. “Is that okay?”
I lower my gaze to the scar I left over his heart as I think about how Mama would feel. Slowly, a smile inches over my face as an overwhelming sense of peace floods me. “Yeah. I think so.” I lay back down, resting my head on his chest. “So what happens now?” I ask, swirling a finger around his hardening nipple.
“I’ll have to go back to Chicago to testify at some point, though they’re trying to put that off as long as possible, considering I’m technically dead. Showing up there will pretty much blow the ruse.”
I spread my hand against his chest, feeling the beat of his huge heart inside. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
There’s a long second where he doesn’t answer. “There are going to be a lot of pissed-off Mafiosi when it becomes public knowledge that I’m very much alive and very much a rat.”
“They shouldn’t make you go back,” I say, clinging tighter.
“It’s a condition of my protection. I’ve got to testify if and when they need me to.”
“And in the meantime, you have to stay in Nebraska.” It’s not a question. I know all too well how this works.
“I was planning on staying here for a while,” he says, lifting my face so I’m looking at him. “I like the scenery.”
My eyes widen. “If the Feds find out you’re here, they’ll relocate us. They’ll never place us together.”
I cling tighter when he starts to untwine his limbs from mine.
He drops a kiss on the end of my nose and grins at me. “I’m not going anywhere, Cheetah. Promise.”
I let him go and he leans over the edge of the bed. He drags his bag closer and digs in the side pocket. When he brings his hand out of his bag, there’s a ring pinched between his fingers. It’s a large round solitaire in a delicate platinum band; simple and classic.
He rolls toward me and sits up. “My WITSEC Memorandum of Understanding specifically states I can bring my wife with me wherever I end up.”
I can’t breathe as I pull myself up to sit next to him.
“I can’t make any guarantees as far as what this life will hold for us, but I can promise whatever it is, we’re in it together. If you have me, I’ll weather it all with you, from now until the end. That might come sooner than I hope, but I guarantee it will be the ride of your life right up until it’s over.”
Oliver
In my head, when I planned this all out—both times—I pictured her throwing herself into my arms and saying yes, over and over. But that’s one of the things I love about Lee Delgado. There’s not a predictable bone in her body. She always leaves me guessing.
Or hanging, in this case.
It feels like forever that I sit here with my heart on my sleeve—or really my arm, I guess, since I’m not wearing any sleeves. I’ve forgotten to breathe, so I’m probably turning blue. My palms are damp and my throat is dry.
And still, she just looks at me, something devious flashing in those hazel eyes.
“Are you waiting for an answer to some question?” she finally asks, raising her eyebrows. “Because I didn’t hear one.”
I roll and pin her to the bed under my weight. “Will you marry me, Cheetah?”
She gives me the sexiest fucking smile I’ve ever seen as her heels dig into my ass. “What are you willing to do for it?”
I send my cockiest smile back at her as I slide down her body. “Game on,” I say, spreading her wide.
One flick of my tongue over her clit and her fingers comb through my hair, pressing me deeper. Two, and her hands fist, nearly ripping out handfuls of hair as she gasps. Three, and a long moan purrs up from her chest as she rolls her hips and gives herself up to me completely. When I suck her hard and graze my teeth over her clit, she breathes, “Yes! God, yes!”
She says it five more times before I’m done with her. As she lays panting afterward, I slip the ring onto her finger.
All I can do is stare at her. She’s incredible. More than I deserve. I never could have called this; forsaking everything I’ve ever known, turning rat—the only thing I was raised to despise more than the Delgados—for the love of my enemy.
But here I am, the rat on the sinking ship helplessly in love with the siren who sank it.
I reach for the phone on the nightstand and punch the room service button, ordering up a bottle of their best champagne. “And a large pepperoni pizza,” I add when I hear Lee’s stomach growl.
I hang up and pull her to me, holding tight to the only thing left in my world that makes sense. “This is going to be amazing, Cheetah. You and me against the world. Bonnie and Clyde got nothing on us.”
I kiss her and we’re still kissing half an hour later when the knock comes at the door. We throw on the hotel bathrobes from the closet and let room service in. The waiter rolls our feast in on a cart and sets everything up. Once he’s gone, we decimate the pizza in ten minutes flat.
She pulls the tie of her robe loose, then comes over to where I’m sitting in the desk chair and tugs at my knot. Just the look on her face, all sex and desire, makes my balls ache.
I brush my fingers over her tightening nipple. “You have something in mind?”
With a quick yank, the tie to my robe is loose in her hand. “Just a little game I like.” Her smile turns decidedly sinful and her eyes spark. “You might remember it.”
My dick stiffens and my balls pull tight at the memory of the last time I let her blindfold me. Even though it’s against every instinct I have to hand over control, I let her tie the sash around my eyes. I hear her robe hit the floor in a whoosh, and then she’s pulling my hands behind me and tying them together with the other sash.
“You know I wouldn’t do this for anyone but you,” I say when she finishes.
“I’m flattered,” comes her breathy voice in my ear. The pebbles of her nipples brush against my back as she takes my earlobe into her mouth and sucks, then bites.
“Ah, there’s my Cheetah.”
She licks the rim of my ear, then she’s gone.
I slump lower in the chair, letting my knees fall open. “Bring it on.”
Her warm, wet finger slicks over my parted lips, and when I suck her inside, I taste her juices. “I’ll take more of that,” I say when she pulls away.
“You’re not giving the orders. I’m in charge.” She swirls her hot tongue over the head of my rock-hard cock, then sheathes her teeth behind her lips and takes me deep.
“That’s it,” I groan, grinding my hips against her.
I hear her pull the champagne bottle from the ice bucket just before she presses it to the inside of my thigh. The cold, in contrast to her hot mouth on my cock, pulls my balls tight. But the next second I growl in agony as she removes her mouth and grabs my cock with a fistful of ice. She strokes me hard in her icy grip and, “
Oh, Jesus, fuck!
”
She keeps stroking, the ice hard and cold against my skin, and I feel a rush to my groin. It hurts so fucking bad, but she’s got me an inch from coming anyway. My muscles pump with her, but all my insides are a brick of shock. I can’t breathe, my heart’s struggling to beat, and my gut pulls into a hard ball as everything in me clenches.
I start to pant against the pain, but suck in a sharp breath when the ice is gone a second later and her hot mouth closes over me again.
“Christ, Cheetah!” I yank my hands loose and fist them in her hair as I come.
There’s a long moment that I’m totally incapable of moving. Bestial sounds I’ve never made before choke their way up my throat. Finally, when I can breathe again, I untangle a hand from her hair and tug off my blindfold.
She’s still on my cock, her tongue making lazy circles over the head and sending aftershocks through my insides.
“Who taught you this shit?” I pant, stroking her hair. “Because I want to shake the fucker’s hand before I rip his dick off.”
She gives my cock one last lingering suck, then lifts her head and smiles, all fucking sex goddess. “You inspire me.”
I pull her off the floor into my lap. I drain the last of the champagne into our glasses and hand one to her, then turn the dead soldier upside down in the ice bucket.
“I can die a happy man now,” I say, holding up my glass. “To going down in a blaze of glory.”
A crease forms between Lee’s brows. “Don’t say that.”
“If it means I get even a little bit of that,” I say, gesturing to the spot between my feet where she just was, “I’d take on every rat bastard in Chicago.”
“Stop it, Oliver.” She pushes me away when I try to hold her. “I hate that I did this to you.”
“None of it is your fault, Cheetah,” I say when I realize what’s going on inside her head.
“It’s
all
my fault. Every part of it.”
I coax her into giving me her hand and thumb the diamond on her finger. “You couldn’t have known how my father would react to the book losses. Most parents wouldn’t contract a hit on their own kid.”
She pulls her hand away and moves to the bed, leaning against the headboard, her gaze pinned to where she’s picking at a cuticle. “I knew there’d be blowback. I just thought it would be on
us
,” she says, pressing a hand to her chest. “On my family. I was counting on it.”
It takes me a minute to process what she’s saying. “You
wanted
us to take a contract out on you?”
“No, not a contract.” She takes a deep breath and holds it for a second before exhaling. “You were part of my plan to get my family out from under Papa. He was destroying all the good in Rob—turning him into something less that human. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“So you . . . ?” I start, hoping she’ll finish, because I have no clue where she’s going with this.
She sets her glass on the nightstand and slides down so she’s laying on her side. “So I gave Agent Callahan Papa’s books. I’m the reason they arrested him in the first place.”
I remember the stories. The Feds found those books on a raid on the family home after Felix Delgado’d already been arrested on racketeering charges. Lee was forced to testify against her father as a hostile witness for the prosecution. There’s a second I can’t even think, trying to straighten out all the twisted lines in my head. She’s saying she
wasn’t
a hostile witness—that that story was fabricated to protect her.
“You gave your father up to the Feds,” I say as it starts to compute.
“He’s evil, Oliver,” she says defensively. “I don’t think he was always that way, but when Mama died, something just snapped. I don’t know if it was because she was his moral compass, or if maybe she just hid all the violence from us, but . . . I was afraid for all of us.”
If I understand what she’s saying, she’s the one who started the dominoes that ended up with my father in prison. But . . . “I still don’t see how that relates to wanting us to retaliate against your family.”
“Papa was only going to be inside for five years. He left Rob in charge. I’d begged Rob to take the WITSEC deal the Feds offered. Agent Callahan told him it was part of Papa’s plea bargain when he flipped on your father, but really, I negotiated witness protection as part of
my
deal when I gave them Papa.” She gives her head a mournful shake. “But Rob wouldn’t do it. I knew when Papa got out it would be back to business as usual and everything I’d done would be for nothing.”
“So you thought someone trying to kill you kids would force your brother into WITSEC,” I say as the pieces start to snap together.
“I didn’t really think you’d have us
killed
.” She blows out a sigh. “When Papa gave up your father, I waited. I didn’t know if Victor would go straight for Papa in prison, or if he’d come after us. When nothing happened, I decided to come at it from a different angle. I just wanted to stir the hornet’s nest and make you or your father do
something
so Rob would see things were too dangerous to stay in Chicago.” Her face twists. “But then that Yankov guy is in our living room with a gun pointed at Sherm’s head and I thought I’d gotten my family killed.”
I push out of the chair and pace to the window, trying to get my mind around everything she’s saying. All either of us have ever known is the Life—deception, manipulation, violence, whatever it takes to get the job done. Even when I left, when all I was trying to do was protect her, I did it by turning her own gun on her. “How are we ever going to trust each other?”
I realize I said it out loud when she stands from the bed and stares at me, shaking her head. “I didn’t know you then, Oliver. I didn’t . . . I was just trying to protect my family.”
I give a slow nod as the statement sinks in. “And you’ll continue to do whatever it takes. No matter what.”
Her expression hardens into determination. “Nothing is as important to me as they are, Oliver.”
I spin and brace my hands on the window frame, staring into the setting sun until I’m blinded by it. I’ll always come second to a family she’ll lie and kill to protect. Part of me knows that’s the way it should be, but I can’t reconcile that with the ache in my chest.
There’s a rustle of sheets and the bathroom door closes. When it opens a few minutes later, I turn and see Lee, dressed with her long hair pulled back. She holds her left hand up and thumbs the ring. “You’re my family now too, Oliver. I know what I did was crazy, and dishonest, and manipulative, and I can’t promise I’ll never do anything like that again. But the next time I do it, it will be for
you
.” When I don’t respond, she lowers her gaze and shakes her head, moving toward the door. “I’ll go,” she says.
I reach the door a fraction behind her, and it slams shut. I spin her back up against the door and kiss her, letting the intensity of all the lust and regret and loss and love I’m feeling flow through my body into hers.
Slowly, her lips start to move. She rests a hand on my hip. The other is on my shoulder. She draws me closer and opens her mouth, letting me in.
We kiss, deep and desperate, a tangle of battling tongues and wrestling limbs.
I pull away and hold her in my gaze, trying to convey with a look everything she is to me. “Don’t go. Stay with me, Cheetah. Forever.”