Authors: Claire Kent
She’d only taken one step toward the door when she heard the key turn in the lock.
With a gasp, she reacted instinctively, ducking down to hide under the desk.
It was probably just Breah, straightening up or something. It wasn’t even four thirty yet, so Kelly couldn’t imagine how she’d returned so quickly, though.
It wasn’t Breah. It was a member of Caleb’s security team, and she heard him talking in his earpiece. “There’s no one here. I told you it was just that damned misfiring sensor again.”
Shit. How stupid could she be? Of course Caleb had some sort of extra security on his office.
The man continued, evidently responding to something said through his earpiece. “I’m not sure how you think someone managed to get onto the grounds and into the house, and then into the office without being caught on camera or triggering an alarm. But you still send me out to check every damned fly that triggers a sensor.”
Kelly wasn’t even breathing, afraid of making any sort of noise. To her infinite relief, the voice got softer as the man evidently backed out of the office, and then the door shut and clicked as it locked again.
She waited five minutes before she dared to crawl out from under the desk, then she took her jump drive, and ran back to her room.
Kelly dreamed of her father that night.
She’d had dreams about him before—a lot of them just after he’d died, when she was just a kid—but the dreams now were rare enough to be memorable.
This one wasn’t made up of a real or coherent narrative. It was all just flickered images and feelings. Nothing she could really make sense of, but the fragmented pieces fit together into what felt like an actual experience.
And it was so concrete, so absolutely visceral, that it might as well have been real.
She could see her father in glimpses and flashes—his broad, laughing face, the lines beside his eyes and his mouth, the hair on his forearms beneath the pushed-up sleeves of his old gray sweatshirt.
She could hear hints and glimmers of his familiar voice, his comforting chuckle, the sound of him clearing his throat.
And she could smell him in heartbreaking wafts. A mingling of coffee and the soap he used and the indefinable, unmistakable scent of Dad.
In the midst of these fleeting, sensory flickers of the dream, Kelly could feel him too. His hand in her hair. On her shoulder. On her back. Until, at the very end of the dream, he was hugging her.
And he didn’t feel like a flickering vision. He was solid, warm, strong, real.
It felt so real.
But even in the dream, she knew he was lost. Knew he was gone. Knew that, no matter how much she clung to him, she’d never be able to keep him.
She was sobbing as she woke up.
As she’d slept, she must have turned over onto her stomach, because her hot cheek was pressed down against the mattress. She turned her head until she could bury her face in her pillow. Choked on the waves of grief, trying desperately to hold them back, knowing she couldn’t cry in front of Caleb, even while he was sleeping.
He’d fallen asleep beside her again after they’d had sex that evening.
But there was no way she could hold back the emotion. She wept in tight, jerky spasms, clenching her whole body to try to keep from making any sound or shaking the bed. It felt like an old wound had been violently torn open.
Felt like her father had just died.
Caleb was sound asleep, just a few inches away. She could feel his presence and hear his steady breathing, although she didn’t dare turn her face to look at him. She needed to be away from him. Needed a real outlet for her grief. Needed something warm and alive to comfort her.
She wished Reese were here. Or Ralph, the dog. Or Breah with her comforting maternal air. Anything other than lying alone beside a cold, sleeping form, strangling on sobs with her face smothered in a luxurious pillow.
She tried to capture the dream again. Tried to see, hear, smell, feel her father—who’d been lost for so many years. Wanted it so much she felt like her chest would implode, but the dream, like her father, was lost.
And all that was left were scattered fragments and feelings.
Flickers that could never coalesce into substance.
Kelly couldn’t seem to stop crying, something she hadn’t done in years. And the large bed, the dark room, the house that wasn’t hers, all felt like they were swallowing her alive.
Her whole body shook with coiled grief and helplessness, and she wasn’t any different than she’d been at ten years old, when her father had been violently, unjustly, unbearably snatched away from her.
Just a body with half a skull, bleeding into the dirt.
It was three o’clock in the morning. Caleb was sleeping. The rest of the world seemed to be sleeping too. Warm and safe and content. With people they loved. With people who loved them.
And no matter how hard she tried to put things in perspective and accept the bitter irony of her life, she still couldn’t make any sense of it.
That Kelly had to lose her father—who had been all she’d really had in the world—who had been the only person who’d ever been truly hers.
She knew she was sobbing too hard, too desperately—it was dangerous and might hint at things about herself that could never be revealed. But she couldn’t stop.
She felt Caleb shifting beside her and knew that even her tightly suppressed sobbing had woken him up.
But before she could think of how to explain this, before she could try to make her mind work instead of simply howling in grief and outrage, before she could even remember why she was in bed with Caleb in the first place, he put his hand on her shoulder and turned her over.
Revealed her wet, crumpled face.
He silently pulled her against his bare chest, and his arms wrapped around her tightly as she buried her face in his shoulder. She kept sobbing because there was no way she could stop.
It was wrong. She knew it was wrong. She knew why she was here and that Caleb was the reason for it. She’d seen the memo on the computer screen not so many hours ago. But she clung to him anyway, let him hold her.
She knew that she hated him and that he was comforting her—and that she desperately needed him. She couldn’t begin to wrap her mind around that truth.
She couldn’t do anything but weep, until she finally cried herself to sleep like a child.
Through it all, Caleb didn’t say anything, and she never looked up at his face. She had no way to read him, no way to understand what he was thinking, why he was doing this. Whether it was a random flicker of his humanity or he was putting clues together in a way that would ultimately find her out.
He was gone when she woke up the next morning.
And, staring at his rumpled side of the bed with bleary, aching eyes, Kelly wondered if she could have dreamed the whole thing.
The next day, Kelly went to meet with a new client. It was the first client she’d seen in almost a month.
She felt like her entire life was on hold until she finished this thing with Caleb, but she’d told him that she wanted to start getting her life back in order, and he would expect her to follow through.
One part of that would be to get her business going again, so she’d touched base with the two clients she’d had in progress—and she’d even managed to line up this new one.
The meeting went well. The retired woman seemed to like her¸ and the sketches she’d made of her treasured pet Pekingese. They went over a schedule, plan, and budget for getting the portrait done, and Kelly headed back to Caleb’s place, relieved the meeting was over so she could focus again on Caleb—and what she needed to do.
During a break, she called up Jack Martin to get an update. He told her he’d planted a few clues about her possible connection to a Russian gang in Baltimore, just so Caleb would believe he was on the right track. She’d told him about the files she’d copied, and sent them to him so he could have someone go through them. He ended by telling her to be careful.
She would have liked to talk to Jack more often, but she was worried about Caleb finding out. She’d nearly had a heart attack when he’d appeared out of nowhere in that dressing room. She didn’t want to risk anything like that happening again.
There was no way she was going to risk revealing herself. Not after she’d gotten so far.
When she arrived back at Caleb’s place, it was after seven in the evening, and he was already home.
She found him in his office, where he was predictably working on his computer.
“How did it go?” he asked, turning away from the email he was writing at her knock on the door.
“Good. She likes my ideas.”
“Did it feel good, to get back into working?” His eyes were thoughtful and observant.
“I guess so. It felt a little weird, to tell you the truth. It feels like so much has happened since I last painted a portrait. It kind of feels like I’m a different person.”
The words were true. She could hardly remember the person she’d been before she’d met Caleb in the park.
“I’m sure it will feel more familiar once you get back into it. Were you nervous about being out?”
“A little. It felt like someone might be watching around every corner.”
“That’s why the bodyguard is there. He won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Yeah, but it’s weird to go around with a bodyguard too.”
He frowned deeply. “I don’t care if it’s weird. This guy sent thugs after you once. What’s going to stop him from doing it again? You need protection.”
“I know. I appreciate it. It just feels strange.” As they’d talked, she’d been drifting toward his desk, and now she leaned back against the edge. “Is everything okay with work?” She nodded toward the computer.
“Yeah. The emails just never end.” He sighed and smiled at her tiredly, rubbing his neck. “Are you hungry?”
“A little.”
She saw the expression change on his face as he scanned her from head to toe. “You have your work clothes on, I see.”
She wore another long, flowing skirt with a lacy bohemian top. Her hair was pulled back in a knot at the nape of her neck. She smiled at his expression. “Got to give the clients what they want.”
“Are your clients the only ones you give what they want?”
“I might make an occasional gesture toward someone else.”
He slid his arm around her waist and pulled her between his legs. “So did you want to eat now?”
She reached out and grazed her fingers over the rough skin of his jaw. “Maybe we can eat afterward.”
He released his breath with a little groan and slid his hand to the knot of hair at the back of her neck, pulling out the clip that was holding it up.
Her hair cascaded down her back in long, thick waves, and she saw the change in Caleb’s eyes as he watched it fall.
It was almost like awe kindling in his eyes, and seeing it there was thrilling and terrifying both.
She leaned toward him instinctively, letting him pull her down into his arms. Instead of kissing her, he kind of buried his face in her neck.
She could feel his hot breath and the press of his skin against her throat. It made her shudder with pleasure, and she let out an involuntary little sound when one of his hands moved up to cup one of her breasts.
She was tired and wasn’t thinking clearly, and his touch, his breath, his need seemed to soothe a hidden, damaged corner of her heart.
When she tensed up at this realization, Caleb pulled his head up and studied her closely, his whole body tight, his desire reined in. “Kelly? Is everything all right?”
It wasn’t all right. After what she’d discovered on his computer yesterday, she shouldn’t want to be close to him like this.
But she did. She did.
She sucked in a breath and tightened her fist into the fabric of his white dress shirt. “Yeah.”
He was breathing so hard he was nearly panting, and the sound of it roused a matching urgency in her own body. He was still holding back, though, studying her face with what looked like concern. “Kelly, something is bothering you.”
She tried to think up a convincing lie, but the words that came out were the truth. “I’m just—this is all new to me. Being with someone like this, more than just a one-time casual thing. It’s new to me.”
In the silence that followed, she felt vulnerable, naked. And suddenly worried that she’d made an amateur mistake, implying a relationship was serious too soon.
But Caleb’s face softened, his expression like a caress. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything but one-time casual sex too. I think we’re in the same boat here.”
She searched his face, not even sure what she was hoping to see there. A small, trembling feeling burst into life when she saw nothing but understanding, passion, sincerity in his expression.
Because he was in this as deeply as she was.
Unable to feel anything she was supposed to, unable to stop herself from wanting so much more of him, she grabbed his face and leaned into a kiss, his jaw rough with stubble beneath her palms.
He responded by tightening his arms around her as the kiss grew deeper.
When his desk chair started to roll, he broke the embrace and helped her off of his lap. “Let’s move this to the couch,” he murmured, standing up and taking her hand to draw her over to the leather couch against the far wall of his office.
He pulled her down beside him, and then slid his fingers into her hair, tilting her head back in the process. “God, you’re so gorgeous.”
She tried to tell herself she didn’t love the sound of the words, the way they made her feel.
He lowered his mouth until his lips glanced across hers briefly, the stimulation light and tantalizing. Kelly sucked in a quick breath and automatically caught his lips again. This time, he pressed his mouth into hers firmly and slid his tongue along the inside of her lower lip.
She opened a little and caressed the back of his neck with her fingertips. His tongue dipped all the way into her mouth at her silent invitation, and then started to stroke along the line of her tongue.
They didn’t usually kiss for this long, but he wasn’t rushing it today. Her body kept responding eagerly, shamelessly, to the stroke of his tongue, the motion of his lips, the way his hands slowly caressed her back. And more than her body was responding.
Finally, Caleb eased her backward until she was sprawled out on the sofa—her legs still hanging over the side—with him propped up over her, trailing kisses along her jaw and the curve of her throat.
Kelly was just starting to get control of herself again, shifting more securely beneath him on the sofa, reaching around his body so she could rub his back through the fabric of his shirt, telling herself this was all for a purpose, when Caleb raised his face again. He looked at her silently for a moment.
Then he started kissing her again.
She moaned into his mouth, in pleasure—and because it was just so wrong.
This time, as he kissed her, he slid his hands under her top, pushing it up until he’d exposed the white lace bra she was wearing.
His lips were brushing against hers, his tongue playing and stroking, slowly and hungrily. He was palming her breasts over her bra, and she arched up into his hands.
Finally, her feelings were so overwhelming that she turned her head to the side, pulling her lips away from his. She gasped and shuddered in the wake of the kiss, and realized that she was clinging to—and hopelessly wrinkling—Caleb’s shirt.
It felt almost like it had been a couple of days ago, when she’d surrendered her control to him, only this time the control wasn’t physical. And it felt so much more dangerous.
He accepted the change of positions and used the opportunity to push her top farther up and over her head. She released him so he could pull it off her arms all the way. He began to nibble his way down her neck, pausing at the pulse in her throat, and then again at the little mole above her right breast.
Kelly lifted up a little, not enough to dislodge his mouth but enough to let her reach behind her back and unhook her bra. Caleb pulled it off for her, the lacy fabric briefly sticking to her hot skin.
She felt dazed and overly warm, and she couldn’t seem to focus on anything but Caleb’s lips, which had now moved down to her right nipple.
Her nipples had already tightened into stiff peaks, and—as Caleb’s mouth closed over one of them—Kelly felt the corresponding tugs of pleasure build toward an ache of arousal between her legs.
She didn’t fight it. Couldn’t fight it.
It didn’t matter what she’d discovered yesterday. It didn’t matter that he was a murderer, any more than if he’d been a saint. He was Caleb, and she couldn’t help but want him this way.
The only sound in the room was the cadence of their heavy breathing and the soft squeaking as Kelly’s bare skin rubbed up against the leather of the sofa. She felt her ass slipping off the seat, so she used her feet on the floor to stabilize her body, hoping Caleb was more secure in his position than she was in hers.
After suckling her nipple for a minute, Caleb released it, moved his head slightly, and nuzzled in between her breasts in a way that made Kelly gasp in surprise.
Her hands grabbed for his head, holding it in place, and she felt the thick hair under her palms—feeling the texture of each wave with a strangely precise recognition.
She felt his teeth against her—the sudden, sharp sensation causing her to gasp again.
He glanced up, into her face, as if he were checking for the reason she had gasped. She could only imagine how she looked—flushed and breathless with her swollen mouth hanging open—and whatever he saw in her face must have reassured him.
He scooted farther down her body and lowered his face again—this time to the top of her belly.
Her stomach was almost quivering with her erratic breathing, and she arched her back again as his lips traced over the sensitive skin there. As his mouth worked on her abdomen, his hands moved up to her bare breasts again, cupping the soft swells of flesh as if he couldn’t get enough of their weight, their texture.
Kelly arched up yet again, her hips squirming in growing need. But, despite her arousal, she was starting to experience a different kind of nervousness as Caleb’s mouth continued lower until it had reached the waistband of her skirt.
One of his hands stroked down from the breast he had been holding until he’d gripped the waistband and slid it down.
Kelly didn’t mind. She didn’t mind that she was nearly naked while Caleb still had on all his clothes, including his shoes and tie.
But she definitely didn’t like the fact that Caleb’s head was all the way down there.
There were some things she just couldn’t allow.
She couldn’t imagine why Caleb would want to waste his time with that, when he could get what he wanted without all the trouble, so she just waited, assuming he’d reposition himself soon and start fucking.
He’d offered to do her once before, but he didn’t normally seem inclined in that direction, thank God.
She lifted her hips at his urging, letting him push her skirt and panties down, first over her hips, then down to her knees. She still had her shoes on, but she was able to toe them off before Caleb pulled her clothes all the way off.
She was naked now, and Caleb raised his head to stare at her for a moment—that familiar look of awe igniting in his eyes.
Kelly just looked away from it, and tried to pull herself up on the sofa some more so her ass wouldn’t keep slipping off and so her stomach muscles wouldn’t have to stretch as much.
“You okay?” Caleb asked thickly. His face was tight and unrevealing, but Kelly could sense the coiled energy pulsing beneath his surface, more powerfully than ever now.
“Yeah,” she breathed, wondering why he was asking this so much today. Before he replied, she figured she might as well get comfortable while she had the opportunity. “But can you get up for a minute?” she added, quirking her lips at him wryly. “I’m about to fall off.”
“Oh,” Caleb muttered, pulling off her until he was sitting on the edge of the sofa. “Sure.”
She lifted her legs up onto the sofa all the way. It was plenty big enough for her to stretch out on. Her naked skin stuck to it a little, but it was so soft and supple that the sensation wasn’t unpleasant. “Okay.”
He stared down at her again in silence. Not moving. Just looking at her—completely naked and sprawled out on his leather sofa.
He stared so long that she started to get uncomfortable. “Caleb?” she prompted, shifting a little. “Weren’t we in the middle of something?”
“Yes,” he agreed, the word coming out with his breath. He adjusted himself until he was over her again, parting her legs some more to make room for his body.
Kelly was about to reach down to unfasten his pants, but Caleb moved until he was too far down for her to reach. His mouth traced over her belly again. Moved lower.
Reached the thin strip of hair between her legs.
Kelly sucked in her breath and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Caleb,” she rasped.