Running Wilde (10 page)

She wanted it to be more.

Just this one time. With him.

Vaughn cupped a hand around the back of her neck and drew her in close until their lips were nearly touching. His breath smelled of mint from his toothpaste, and she imagined if she lifted up on her toes and closed the distance between them, the taste would also be lingering on his lips.

“Let’s go to bed,” he said, grazing his mouth over hers.

“Yes.” She closed her eyes and sank into his kiss. “Make love to me, Vaughn.”

Chapter Twelve

Vaughn had never expected to hear those words from her. Even when he’d been in the hospital, doped up on pain meds, and had experienced some of the craziest lovesick dreams of his life, she’d never said those words.

And now that she had, he was…

Nervous.

Which was just plain fucking stupid. He knew sex, considered himself good at it. He could read a woman’s body like a navigational chart, had made a study of it—and hers in particular. He knew how to make her scream and what made her come, but the moment she asked him to make love to her, all of that knowledge vanished. Forget the fact they’d just finished having sex not even twenty minutes ago. It was suddenly like he was a teenager again, fumbling around a woman’s body for the first time.

His heart bounced around erratically as he led her into the bedroom. He sat her on the end of the bed and wordlessly knelt in front of her, gently parting her thighs with shaking hands. If he were going to make love to her, it would be with his mouth and then his body. He wanted to savor every second.

She was already wet. He leaned in and tasted her with one long sweep of his tongue before focusing all of his attention on the little nub that always made her rocket. With a throaty moan, she fell back on the bed as her body bowed toward his mouth.

“That’s it, vixen.” He licked his lips, then went in for another taste. “Come in my mouth.”

“Oh…Vaughn!” His name was a half sob, half gasp. He reached up, found her hand clawing at the duvet, and entwined their fingers.

“Yeah, I’m right here with you, vixen.” He kissed her thigh and slid two fingers into her, working them in and out while he went back to circling her clit with his tongue. He felt her coil tighter and tighter, her legs shaking, and he didn’t let up on his assault. And then it was like a cork popped, and all the tension drained out of her on a soft, sexy moan. He didn’t release her right away but continued his lazy exploration with his tongue until she was panting again.

He was perfectly happy to stay there between her thighs, coaxing her to orgasm again and again with his mouth, but his own need for release was becoming painful, and he wanted inside her. He left her long enough to put a condom on, then returned to the bed and crawled up her body, trailing kisses along her soft skin as he went.

He paused where his trident lay between her breasts, and the surge of primal satisfaction at seeing it there made him grin. “Definitely looks better on you. Right here, between these beauties.” He cupped her breasts, rasped his thumbs over her nipples.

“Hey, SEAL.” She smiled down at him. “Get up here and kiss me.”

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am.” He planted a kiss on the trident, then shoved himself up to take her mouth. She tasted faintly of toothpaste, but under that was a crisp tartness that was all her. He delved his fingers into her hair and took his time with the kiss, drinking her in while he positioned himself at her entrance.

She yielded to him, but there was something different this time than all the other times before it. For once, she was completely open to him, body and soul, and he froze at the realization.

She wound her arms around his neck and pulled him in closer so that every part of their bodies touched. “Don’t stop.”

“Oh, vixen, you couldn’t pay me to.” He laced their hands together, pressed his forehead to hers, and rocked his hips.

It was slow, soft, and more intimate than anything he’d experienced before. Just a quiet moment in their chaotic lives as they explored each other with their hands and mouths. When she orgasmed again, her body squeezed around his, and he was done. He shook and tensed with her as their orgasms peaked together, consumed them, and then faded.

He relaxed on top of her, everything in him shaking from his release and the beauty of the connection they’d just shared. He felt raw, like his chest had been peeled wide open for her examination, and yet so relaxed he was already drifting toward sleep, using her breast as a pillow.

Sage’s fingers twined into his hair, and the sensation was achingly familiar. She’d always played with his hair after sex, and he’d always liked it, had missed it after she left.

He tightened his arms around her. He couldn’t let her leave again. It might break him if she did. “What’s your story, Sage? I wish you’d tell me.”

Her hand paused halfway through his hair. Fuck. Why’d he have to go and open his trap? He hadn’t meant to say that out loud. It was just a wayward thought that his sex-dazed, half-asleep brain processed into actual words, and he shouldn’t have let his guard down enough to allow it to slip out. He fully expected her to clam up and pull away from him again…

But she didn’t.

Instead, she continued combing her fingers through his hair. “Once upon a time, I was sweet and innocent…” She tugged his hair hard enough that he either had to look at her or risk a bald spot. She smirked. “But then shit happened.”

A burst of laughter escaped him. Damn, if that wasn’t a perfect summation of his own life. “C’mon. You were never sweet or innocent, vixen.”

Sage rolled and straddled him, lightly scraping her nails down his chest. “I was so. I wore pigtails and everything. A regular Catholic schoolgirl.”

“Yeah?” He cupped her gorgeous ass in both hands and squeezed. “I’d love to see that.”

“Play your cards right and maybe you will.” She leaned over and grazed her lips across his, then sat upright again when her stomach grumbled loudly enough that he could hear it. She climbed off him. “But right now, I need pizza.”

He propped himself up on one arm and watched her, gloriously naked and unconcerned about it, as she rummaged through the nightstand drawer for the requisite binder of take-out menus found in every motel. “I forgot about your insatiable appetite for after-sex pizza.”

She gave him a look of feigned outrage. “After-sex pizza was our tradition. How could you forget?”

He hadn’t really. Last fall, during the week they’d spent snowed in together, they’d subsided solely on sex and frozen pizzas. He hadn’t been able to eat a slice since without thinking of her.

“I’ll order. Go in and get cleaned up.” He got off the bed and took the binder from her. “The usual?”

Her smile said she knew he’d been lying about forgetting, but she didn’t call him out on it. “Extra pepperoni.” She started toward the bathroom but swung back around. “Vaughn?” She waited until he gazed up from the binder. “You were never going to turn me over to the police, were you?”

No point in carrying on that ruse. It had been paper-thin to start, and now it was all but transparent. He closed the binder and met her gaze. “No, that was never my plan.”

Relief filled her eyes, but she still sank her teeth worriedly into her bottom lip. “So what is your plan?”

At this point, he had no fucking clue. “Let’s take today for ourselves, and tomorrow we’ll figure everything else out.”

She clasped his trident in one hand, then released it after a second and nodded. “Okay.” She drew a breath. “Okay.” Then she grinned and motioned toward his hips. “You keeping that thing as a souvenir or what?”

He gazed down. Ah, hell. Had he really just had an entire conversation with a condom drooping off his cock? He’d been so wrapped up in her he’d completely forgotten to deal with it. “Maybe. Unless you plan to use another one.”

“Oh, I plan to use several more. You might want to order us a couple pizzas,” she added and disappeared into the bathroom.

A thrill coursed through him—the exact kind of adrenaline high he usually got from a good cage-fighting match. But sparring with Sage was better than anything he ever got from the octagon. Better even than the rush of jumping out of a plane or creeping in behind enemy lines.

Jesus, he’d missed her.

And if he only had today with her, he was damn well going to make the most of it.

…

They spent the rest of the day and all night in bed, alternating between sleeping,
eating cold pizza, and making love. It was definitely making love, too, nothing like the hard and fast, angry fuck in the front seat of the rental car. It reminded Sage of their time together before she left DC, when for a short while she’d felt like everything might just turn out okay, when she’d thought she might be done running and could finally be…well, not her old self—because that woman was long gone—but a better version.

That was the problem with being with Vaughn. She’d always felt comfortable around him, like she didn’t have to wear one of her disguises. She didn’t have to be anyone she didn’t want to be.

It should scare her.

It did.

And it didn’t.

God, she was so conflicted when it came to this man.

She rolled over and looked at him. His jaw was shadowed with a heavy layer of stubble, and his dark hair was mussed from her running her hands through it all day. Even now, she wanted to tangle her fingers in it again. He had a bit of curl in his hair, which she liked, and it was so soft, which always made her smile. Vaughn Wilde was not a soft man in any way, and it struck her as funny that his hair was as silky as a puppy’s coat.

He stirred, cracked one blue eye open, then squinched it closed again and groaned.

She laughed. “Good morning.”

“No. It’s not morning yet. It can’t be.”

“Yes, it is.” She kissed his chin. She remembered he wasn’t a morning person, and even though he’d always wakened before her, he’d never been happy about it. “It’s almost nine. How are you feeling?”

He opened both eyes and stared up at the ceiling for a second, as if taking an internal inventory. Then he winced. “Moving’s going to be a bitch.”

“Maybe you should take another hot shower.”

He slid his hand down her waist to her thigh. Squeezed her ass. “I could be persuaded.”

“Alone,” she added. “You don’t need sex right now.”

He stared at her, wide-eyed, like she was crazy. “I always need sex.”

In his mind, that was probably true, but she could tell he was hurting. Always the tough guy, pretending he was okay when he wasn’t. She sat up and dragged her fingers over the deep purple bruises on his ribs.

He hissed out a breath.

She arched a brow and didn’t quite manage to keep the smugness out of her expression. “You either take a hot shower or I take you to a hospital.”

“All right,” he grumbled. “I’m going.”

He got up out of bed, slowly, which gave her time to admire his backside. He was thinner than the last time they’d been together. He’d lost some weight but still had a gorgeous body underneath all of the bruises. All long, lean, well-used muscle with an ass that was made for grabbing. A tribal tattoo covered one whole shoulder, and she remembered tracing all of those intricate swirls with her tongue their first time together in Key West. It had driven him wild, and he’d scooped her up off the bed and fucked her hard and fast against the wall until their neighbors in the next room over pounded in annoyance…

At the bathroom door, Vaughn hesitated and glanced back. “Sage. Will you, uh, be here when I get out?”

The note of vulnerability in his tone jolted her out of her daydream, and she flinched. Oh God. He might as well have taken a chisel to her heart with that question. It would have hurt less. She swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded. She wasn’t planning on going anywhere—for now. But she would. Eventually, she’d have no choice but to run again. Except this time, she’d be leaving her heart behind with him.

He hesitated for another beat, then walked into the bathroom. He came back a second later with her leggings, now mostly dry, and handed them to her. “There’s a Navy T-shirt in my bag. It’ll be big, but it’s all I have.”

“Thank you.” She accepted the leggings, but he didn’t let go right away. Their gazes clashed, and he leaned down, pressed his lips to her forehead.

For some reason, she got the feeling he was saying good-bye. Did he not trust that she’d still be here when he finished showering?

Ouch, that hurt. Then again, she hadn’t given him a whole lot of reason to trust her, but he’d see when he came back that she was keeping her word this time. She wasn’t going anywhere until she absolutely had no other choice.

The bathroom door shut behind him, and she climbed out of bed to find the T-shirt he’d mentioned. It was right on top in his bag, and underneath was his cell phone charger. They’d been too busy to bother plugging it in. She pulled out the shirt, then grabbed the charger and found his phone on the dresser. The screen was black. Battery dead. She plugged it into the outlet at the base of the nightstand lamp and watched the screen go through its power-up.

Of course,
now
they had a signal.

“Where were you yesterday?” she demanded of it and set the phone down on top of the motel’s information binder. She dragged on her leggings and then Vaughn’s T-shirt. It was huge on her, like a dress, but since he outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds, that was to be expected. She gathered the hem and tied it in a knot around her waist. Much better.

She was just turning away to see if she could find anything remotely brush-like in his bag when his phone rang.

Sage shot a glance toward the bathroom door, her heart surging into her throat. What if it was Marcus calling to tell him about her?

She snatched up the phone and started to hit the “ignore” button, but then she hit answer instead. If it was Marcus, maybe she could talk him out of spilling her secrets. At least for a little while. “Hello?”

“Who is this?” a male voice demanded.

A voice she recognized.

A voice that had haunted her for years.

Every cell in her being froze in fear, and she raised a hand to her mouth to cover her cry of surprise. She ended the call and dropped the phone from her numb fingers, backed away from it like it was a ravenous animal crouched to attack.

Vaughn had lied to her.

He hadn’t tracked her down to take her back to DC. He’d tracked her down to hand her over to Giuseppe Bellisario.

He’d lied.

In the bathroom, the shower shut off.

Oh God. She’d made a huge mistake trusting him.

She had to leave. Now.