The Asset (18 page)

He gathered me in his arms and cradled me on his lap, caressing my body with his gaze. The contrast between the hot water and the cold air tightened my nipples. My impulse was to cover my breasts.

“Don’t.” He lowered his head and kissed my hands. His perusal was as gentle as his touch and without judgment. “You’re so beautiful.” He kissed one of my breasts. “You’re like a gift from heaven.”

I let out a nervous giggle. “Given that we’re in Heaven, that might be a bit over the top.”

“Over the top?” He smiled. “No, Lia. You just can’t see yourself right now. Beautiful doesn’t begin to describe you. Beautiful doesn’t do you justice tonight.”

If the world had ended at that moment, my life would’ve been perfect. If lightning would’ve struck me down, I would have died a happy woman. God knew, I was already humming with need, buzzing with the thrill of being in his arms, still a little afraid but fully engaged. It was his smile that fueled the fire melting my heart like a marshmallow on a stick.

Ash’s hand claimed one of my breasts. His touch was a promise of joy. He lowered his mouth and secured my nipple between his tongue and his palate. He suckled on it, first gently, then with more suction. Both of my nipples bloomed like spring buds. My body replied with bursts of pleasure to every tug. It was as if he’d found the secret dial to my need.

His hand slid between my legs. His fingers glided over my sex, soft but earnest. I startled, but he held me in place. “Just learning the lay of land,” he murmured between kisses.

“But—”

“Hush, baby, let me do my recon. You’re going to feel really good.”

I could sense his need, not just his physical need, which was strong and tugged on my desire like a powerful magnet, but also his need to be trusted. So I let him touch me.

“There it is.” He appropriated my clit between two fingers and rubbed around it, before stroking it ever so lightly while he kissed me. “Doesn’t that feel good?”

Good? More like superb, fantastic and phenomenal all at the same time. I didn’t know that my body could feel that much pleasure. Moreover, I didn’t know he could crank up my need with nothing but his touch.

His strokes were gentle. His finger meandered. “No, don’t close your legs. If you don’t like it, just tell me.”

It was only a knuckle at best, but his touch sent me to the very edge of an orgasm.

“Christ, you’re so warm and slick.” A shiver rattled his body. “Do you want to show me how you like it? Do you want to show me where you like it best?”

I pressed my face against his neck. “I think you’re doing just fine. Can I... I mean, may I touch you?”

He smiled, took my hand and guided it beneath the water. He hissed quietly when my hand slid over him. He was hard and yet straightened and thickened even more between my fingers. I swear, every part of me sizzled with the contact. The effect I had on him built my confidence. I ran my hand up and down his cock, enjoying the feel of him, growing his bulk as surely as I was growing my own excitement.

He kissed me some more and murmured. “I won’t last too long if you do that.”

“Then don’t.”

His gaze was glued to my face. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.” And for once, I was completely and utterly convinced.

Still caressing his cock, I braced my knees on the ledge at either side of his lap. He brought me closer and, spreading his hands over my ass, took command of my hips. I lay my forehead on his shoulder as he nestled his swollen tip against my sex.

“We’ll take it real slow.” He kissed me. “Say the word, and we’ll stop.”

My body tensed. A moment of sudden panic had me clenching all my muscles. But any fears I harbored scattered as he lowered me onto his cock and entered me. I was stunned. There was no violence to our coming together, no pain. Instead, safe in the fold of his embrace, I expanded and deepened for him, moistening his way with the sort of private oil I didn’t know my body was capable of making. Outside, the spring water bubbled hot, harsh and playful. Inside, my body’s primal spring flowed thick, lush and rich with liquid pleasure.

It was the most amazing sensation I’d ever experienced and it left both of us breathless.

His eyes met mine. “Okay?” he said gruffly.

“Okay,” I rasped, enthralled.

“Just a little more...”

Oh, my God. Having him in me was incredible. We fit nicely, like two pieces of a multidimensional puzzle designed to join together. I felt whole, grounded, centered. He felt solid in me, firmly entrenched, fundamental.

“Jesus, Lia.” The stars sparkled in his eyes. “You feel so good. You’re so wet and tight. Do you want to move for me?” His hands nudged my hips. “I’d really like it if you moved for me. I need you to move for me.”

I rolled my hips and smiled when I spotted the thrill on his face. I rocked on his lap and he grew inside me. I was the earth to his root and he was the root to my tree. He groaned and I moaned, and together we climbed up desire’s steep ladder, three rungs up, one down, trying to prolong the pleasure that raked us, trying to push each other to feel beyond reason, until we were both at the very edge of someplace I’d never been to before. I clung to him as if he was the only rail between me and the abyss.

His face was control’s strained mask. “I want you to come for me.”

“I want you to come with me,” I managed to say as he thrust in me.

“After you—”

“Together.” I whimpered, nearly out of my mind. “I want you to come
in
me.”

“Oh hell, there’s nothing I want to do more than that,” he muttered hoarsely. “Are you sure?”

He was asking a long, complex, relevant set of questions, but for once I knew what I wanted and I couldn’t stop to explain.

“Please?”

The way he bore down on my body had me gasping for breath. There was no holding back now, no illusion of control, no sane way to prevent the blast that launched us into the space we could only share with each other.

I clung to Ash through the journey. I broke through my mind’s boundaries, shattered my old limits and freed myself from my body’s sorrows. My sex grasped, clenched, gripped, experiencing glory, convulsing with bliss. I vaulted from one orgasm to the next, convinced I’d reached my highest peak, only to launch higher, even if I wasn’t sure I could survive the thrill.

And then Ash closed his eyes and shuddered. A quiet groan rattled his breath and escaped between his lips. He came deep inside me, his essence dissolving into my being, his goodness erasing the past, his seed extinguishing my body’s dread, washing away terror with joy and anguish with elation. I came again, for him, for me, for the pure joy of it.

When it was done, I relished every ounce of pleasure he enjoyed, every shudder, groan and caress, every drop he contributed to my being. I couldn’t fathom how I’d survived the pleasure, because every part of me had been touched, kissed and moved, and I wasn’t the same.

He helped me out of the pool, or perhaps I should say we helped each other, because his legs seemed as unsteady as mine even though his hold on me was stronger than ever. I liked the way I smelled—fiery, like molded metal newly steamed from the forge; metallic, like the hot spring itself; strong, like Ash. I liked the way I felt too, clean, inside and out.

Ash enveloped me in a towel he pulled out of the bag and, hugging me to his chest, kissed me. “Jesus, Lia. That was...”

“Good?” I hoped it had been as powerful for him as it had been for me.

“No, not good,” he said. “Incredible, out of this world, extraordinary.”

“Extraordinary is good.” I stood on the tip of my toes and kissed him. “Thank you.”

“For what?” he said, gathering me in his arms.

“For teaching me joy,” I said. “And for bringing me to Heaven.”

* * *

We went back to the cabin and made love several times after that, if only for the pleasure of discovering pleasure itself. Perhaps we were making up for the nights we’d wasted, for they’d been a waste, I was convinced of it now. We slept on and off, distracted from our dreams by the novelty of being together. I’d been loveless and scared of sex most of my life, but now, in between bouts of pleasure, I learned that love and sex entailed different emotions, but when they happened at the same time, as they did when Ash and I were together, they were an extraordinary force.

Somewhere in the early morning hours, when I lay on my side with Ash curled about me on the bottom bunk, I opened my eyes and heard him sigh.

“Such a deep sigh,” I murmured in the darkness.

“If you only knew.”

“What?”

He shrugged behind me.

“No, I mean it, I want to know.”

“It’s sort of silly.”

I kissed his callused fingertips. “Tell me.”

“Okay, but don’t laugh.”

“No laughs guaranteed.”

His arms tightened around me. “I dreamed of this.”

“You dreamed of you and me crammed into a narrow bed in the middle of nowhere?”

He chuckled. “More or less.”

“When?”

“In the jungles of South America, in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. At night, when I lay in my bunk waiting for a mission, or in the field, when we took turns napping. And later in the hospital, when I didn’t think there’d be a day without pain and sorrow in my future.”

I’d felt the same way so many times in my life, and yet here I was, with him, my body delirious with pleasure, my heart brimming with joy.

“You mean to tell me that you fierce warriors of the world don’t spend every free second fantasizing about having wild sex with a triple D centerfold?”

“No, ma’am.” He kissed my ear. “I dreamed of this, exactly this, lying with someone soft and beautiful, craving her body and her craving me. I dreamed of you, even though I didn’t know your name back then.”

I blinked away the tears. My gut tightened. The fear came back, fear that this exquisite moment was just a passing fad; that Ash wouldn’t be in my bed tomorrow; that he’d die; that I’d die.

“Ash—” My throat tightened.

“Stop it, Lia, that part where you tell me off wasn’t in my dream, so don’t say anything. Can’t a guy get to live his dream every once in a while?”

A dream. I was a dream to him. “Whatever you want, you can have it.”

“Don’t make me idle promises,” he cautioned. “I’m addicted to you. If you were one of those prescription pills? I’d be completely hooked on your body and I’d have to have you all the time. Think about it. Despite the excess, I wouldn’t mind more of you right this minute.”

“What excess?” I said.

He tilted my face and found my mouth. His hands came around to stoke need that didn’t need encouragement. He glided into me and pleasure deleted everything but him from my brain.

Hours later, my mind registered the distant sound of a rattling cell, but I was too far into my dreams to care. When I next opened my eyes, Ash’s kisses tickled my face and the tricolor horizon on the window announced the sun’s glorious rebirth.

“Come on, sleepyhead.” Ash propped me up and slid my arms into an enormous flannel shirt. “Got to go.”

“Go where?” I knuckled my eyes, half-asleep.

“To the cottage.” He put on my shoes, picked me up and, still bundled in the sheets, carried me out into the morning chill and perched me on the truck’s front seat. I could sense the change in him as he clicked on my seat belt. He’d gone from sweet lover to all business and I was too woolly to figure out why.

“Your owner is in a hurry today,” I mumbled to Neil, when the dog climbed on the seat behind me. Neil wagged his tail and licked my ear while I smoothed out my tangled hair and tried to make sense of our rush.

Ash got in the cab, drew a handgun from the glove compartment and tucked it in the back of his pants. I frowned. What on earth was going on? I started to ask, but he flew out of Heaven, driving the jarring road as if it was a six-lane highway. The truck rattled like a can full of dominoes and all I could do was hang on for dear life.

His phone rang as we shot out of the gate and turned onto the much smoother country road. He answered curtly. “Report?”

He listened as someone spoke. The lines between his eyes deepened. My stomach sank. I had a bad feeling about this one. Ash’s contributions to the conversation were succinct and sporadic.

“Where?” he asked. “How?” He listened some more.

I cocked my eyebrows and mouthed, “What’s happening?”

He raised a hand and motioned for patience, even though I had none of that to spare. Then he proceeded to test me further by listening for several long minutes.

“Affirmative,” he said after a while. “Negative, not yet.”

By the time he ended the one-sided conversation, he’d been on the phone for a good twenty minutes and we’d arrived at the cottage. There were three vehicles lined on my driveway, including a state-of-the-art RV that I recognized on the spot.

“What’s the deal?” I said tentatively.

Ash parked the truck, engaged the break and looked at me for a second too long. “Don’t be mad at me and try to roll with the punches.”

Something huge was coming down the pipeline. “Uh-oh.”

He bracketed my face with his hands. “Whatever happens, remember this.”

He kissed me, and I don’t mean a peck in the lips. He kissed me in a way that said hello and goodbye, good morning, good afternoon and good-night, please understand, I’m sorry and yeah, another big fat do-try-to-roll-with-the-punches.

For a moment, my brain cut out. I was back at the hot springs and at the brink of bliss. All of that from a kiss? Then he stopped kissing me and I went into immediate withdrawal. Before I had time to react, he handed me his phone. A text message glowed on his screen. It could’ve been copied from a first-grade reader. My stomach plummeted as I read three simple words.

Rat in trap.

Chapter Twelve

Neil barked when we entered the cottage. The small sitting room was crowded. My eyes traveled from one man to the next, trying to make sense of the scene. Manny Rivera sat in his high-tech wheelchair, working on some type of cleverly attached console. Wang Ho paced the foyer’s small perimeter as if guarding the door to the cellar. Will Jackson lounged on my couch, squinting through his thick glasses and playing what looked like a high-tech video game on his laptop.

“‘Good morning, Vietnam!’” Will shouted, startling everybody, including himself. “Well, hello, beautiful,” he shrieked like a parrot.

Eyes bright with interest, the three men leveled their stares on me, a trained, systematic, professional assessment with traces of...what? Curiosity. Compassion? I cringed under their scrutiny. I’m sure I looked quite unhinged, standing at the threshold wearing only a giant flannel shirt and black tennis shoes.

Ash surveyed the room. “Three-sixty?”

“Perimeter secured.” Manny’s fingers punched the screen before him. “No hostile contact on the radar, no prospects for contact for twenty-nine—no—make that thirty clicks.”

Ash turned to Will. “Status?”

“Unchanged,” Will said in a perfectly normal voice. “Target is on the ground, full entourage accounted for, all devices within designated range, visual confirmed.”

Time slowed down to a trickle as one by one, the realizations hit me. All that brainpower in the room. They hadn’t come to Copperhill just to shovel ashes and clear debris. They hadn’t spent all of their time at the ranch either. They’d scouted, secured and monitored the cottage and who knew what else.

“Showtime,” Ash said to Wang. “Bring him up.”

“Bring who up?” I said as Wang disappeared down the stairs.

“Hang on.” Ash leaned over Will’s screen as both men scrutinized the streaming data. “Keep an eye on the monitoring device signal.”

Monitoring device signal
? “Could somebody please explain what’s going on?”

Ash gestured with his stubble-darkened chin toward the foyer. Neil growled. Wang came back, leading a man wearing a hood across the sitting room. I stared, speechless. If the hood wasn’t shocking enough, the man’s hands were fastened with zip cuffs.

Wang guided the man to sit on the chair by the fireplace. My knees were already soft as melted butter, but when Wang removed the hood from the man’s head my heart screeched to a complete stop. I took several wobbly steps backward. I sucked in the air, but not a drop of oxygen made it to my lungs. My back bumped against Ash, who propped me up with a hand to the waist.

“Breathe.” Ash squeezed my shoulder. “Come on, take a breath.”

It took all I had to draw in the air. I forced myself to look, to make sure I was seeing right. The man before me would have been invisible in a crowd. He wasn’t short, thin or ugly, but he wasn’t tall, fat or handsome either. His small eyes could have been brown, hazel or olive, depending on the light. His most notable trait was the way in which he wore his hair, short and spiked to cover his thinning crown. He was average in every way and yet I recognized him immediately: Agent Paul Steiner from the United States Federal Witness Protection Program, a man whose word I’d trusted once, until he failed me.

“We caught Spiky here snooping around,” Manny said. “The son of a bitch tripped the wire like a motherfucking elephant. He pinged it so hard my ears are still ringing. Says he’s a Fed. He’s got the badge and the regulation gun, but he’s missing the suit, not to mention the warrant.”

Steiner assessed me with a cold glare. “Look who’s back on the map,” he said flatly. “If it isn’t Rose Rojas, in the flesh.”

Rose Rojas
. The name hit me like a fist to the gut. My knees buckled and I might have stumbled to the floor if Ash hadn’t been right there to brace me against the blow.

“Easy,” he said.

I pointed at Steiner with a shaky finger. “Don’t call me that,” I muttered. “Don’t you ever, ever call me by
that
name!”

“After all this time, I’m overjoyed to see you again.” Steiner leered. “You’ve given me the runaround for so long that I don’t know if should welcome you back into the fold or read you your Miranda rights. How about I give you the choice right now? Tell these idiots who I am. Tell them to release me immediately. Tell them the truth, Rose, that you and I are old friends.”

Friends?
I had to will my mouth to close and my brain to work. Whatever his definition of friendship was, it wasn’t mine.

“Make it right,” Steiner said. “I don’t know who these thugs are, but it’s to their advantage and yours if they stand down, right now.”

I blocked out Steiner’s presence in the room, grappling with the implications of everything I had just learned. Neil circled around me, interposing his body between me and the rest of the people in the room. My stomach burned with a surge of acid. The fragile panel that guarded my sanity cracked. The fury inside me flared. Oh, yes, no doubt about it, I was so upset, I couldn’t think straight. Betrayal. Ash hadn’t been straight with me. Devious, conniving, underhanded. Was he as treacherous as Red?

Ash tried to hold my hand. “Don’t freak out on me.”

I snatched my hand away from him. “Me? Freak out? Why?” I squeaked like an out-of-tune violin. “Because you went behind my back and treated me like an idiot? Because you ignored all of my warnings and got involved in something that doesn’t concern you? Because you brought this incompetent liar into my cottage?” My stomach squeezed with another realization. “Was this the real reason for last night? You wanted to keep me out of the loop?”

“That’s not true and you know it.”

“You didn’t have to stoop so low.”

“Not another word.” The look in his eyes steeled. “We’ll talk about this later.”

I more or less snarled, “You deceived me.”

“You’re being paranoid.”

“Paranoid? Me?” My nails dug into my palms. “How could it be paranoia when you’ve been keeping secrets and he’s suddenly here?”

I couldn’t help the shudders racking my unsteady limbs. I hugged myself in an effort to stop the shakes. My eyes fell on Steiner again. He looked from Ash to me, watching us intently. If only I could vanish him with my glare.

“Oh, boy,” Will said in Bugs Bunny’s voice. “I think you’re in deep doo-doo.”

“Do me a favor, kid,” Ash said. “Can you try to zip it?’”

“On it,” Will said.

Ash cleared his throat. “I know this is a shock to you.”

“A shock?” I scoffed bitterly. “No, I’m used to people lying to me all the time. Ask Agent Steiner here. You and he should get along fine, because you’re both into lying and scheming.”

Ash’s nostrils flared. His lips set in a straight line as he beamed his sanctimonious “you should know better” glare at me. I didn’t care. He’d lied to me. The look on Steiner’s face did nothing to appease my fury.

“I never lied to you,” Steiner said. “I was only doing my job.”

“How—” My voice broke. I took a deep breath and tried again. “How did you find me?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Steiner said. “I’ve been looking for you since you escaped.”

“Sure you have,” I said. “So you can try to get me killed all over again. What gave me away? Was it the letter I sent you?”

“Letter?” Three deep, crooked lines etched his wide forehead. “What letter?”

“The letter I sent to your office,” I said impatiently.

“It was an envelope containing a packet of something called Red Rush,” Ash put in.

I stared at Ash in complete disbelief. He’d been watching me closely the entire time and he knew, he somehow knew that I’d mailed out that Red Rush packet.

“Red Rush?” Steiner said. “What the hell is that?”

“According to our analysis,” Ash said, “Red Rush is composed of synthetic cathinones that mimic the primary psychoactive active ingredients of delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol, also known as THC.”

“You mean like K2 or Spice?” Steiner said.

“Meaner, stronger,” Ash said. “Red Rush appears to have magnified chemical capabilities that impact the brain along the line of LSD. It’s ten times more powerful than previous synthetic drugs and as addictive as crack and heroin. The envelope was mailed to your office a few weeks ago.”

I was about to freak out. Ash had been on to me the entire time. He had researched and analyzed Red Rush? And he hadn’t mention any of that to me? I clenched my jaw and glared at him.

“Mayday, Mayday.” Will imitated the sounds of machine gunfire and sputtering propellers. “We’re going down.”

“No letter, no Red Rush.” Steiner said. “I didn’t receive anything like it.”

“Then how did you find me?” I said. “How did you figure out where I lived?”

“You forget I’m a Federal Marshal,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you shit.”

Ash rumbled quietly. “The lady asked you a question. I suggest you answer it.”

Steiner took measure of Ash before his stare settled back on me. “Have you forgotten who provided you with your documents? I’d flagged all your possible identities in multiple databases. A few days ago, we had a hit. The Veteran Administration Caregiver Support Program submitted a request for payment with your name on it. I traced it all the way here. That’s how I found you.”

Gunny had taken matters into her own hands. In doing so, she might as well have killed me. My jaw muscles ached.

Ash cursed under his breath. “Does anybody else know you’re here?”

“I came out here on my own, following a hunch,” Steiner said.

“Right,” I said. “You probably left crumbs for Red all along the way.”

Steiner’s glare turned frigid. “You can’t possibly hold me responsible for what happened. It wasn’t my fault.”

“Weren’t you the one who approached me in the first place?” I said. “Weren’t you the one who promised that Adam and I would be safe if we cooperated with your investigation?”

“Wait,” Ash said. “Who the hell is Adam?”

“My, my.” Steiner tsked. “So you don’t know much after all.”

Ash’s demonic glower could have cremated Steiner on the spot.

“I don’t know,” Will sang. “I don’t know where I’m gonna go when the volcano blows.”

“Adam was my brother,” I said, suppressing the pain that struck me when I said his name aloud. “Agent Steiner here said he’d be safe for good if I testified against Red. Only he didn’t keep his end of the bargain.”

“It was a secure safe house,” Steiner said. “Nobody could’ve foreseen what happened. I lost agents and friends in that attack too.”

“I was there,” I snapped. “Remember?”

Steiner’s throat worked up and down and, for an instant, I saw a glimmer in his eyes, a glimmer of...empathy? Then it was gone, replaced by his standard glare. “Whatever happened in the past is irrelevant.”

“
Irrelevant
?” I said, incredulous.

“Irrelevant, yes. You made a deal with the Justice Department and you will deliver on that deal.”

“The deal was off on the day that Adam died.”

“Wrong,” he said. “You’re still alive. The agreement stands. You must do your part. We invested a lot of resources in securing you so that you could assist us in putting Red away. You’re the only one who can provide testimony to convict him.”

“Sure, let’s get Lia killed too, why not?” I curled my lips in disgust. “You’ve been trying to get Red for years. You’ve devoted your entire career to that purpose and yet you haven’t been able to take him down. How is it different this time around?”

“Red has beaten every other indictment we’ve thrown his way,” Steiner said, “but since you testified before the grand jury the last time, we’ve got him on house arrest and monitored 24/7.”

“Great, freaking fantastic,” I said. “If you have Red, then do your job and throw the book at him, put him in jail and leave me out of it.”

“We can’t convict him without your testimony,” Steiner said. “No one else will testify against Red. We’ve already failed to produce you as a witness in court several times in a row. The judge is losing patience and we’re out of excuses. If you don’t show up to testify in two weeks, the charges against Red will be dismissed. He’ll go free. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Yes. My soul turned to ice. I understood very well.

“You are the key,” Steiner repeated. “This might very well be our last chance to put him away.”

Two weeks. The dark hole inside me expanded. Why now? Why couldn’t they rely on someone else? Why did it have to be me?

“I told you everything I know.”

“And now you have to tell it to the judge and the jury.”

“Will Red...” How I hated to say his name aloud. Was I considering Steiner’s idea? No way. It hadn’t worked before. Why would it work now?

I steeled my voice and tried again. “If I were to do this—and that’s a big ‘if’—Will Red be at the trial?”

Steiner nodded. “It’s his right.”

Face-to-face with Red? Was Steiner crazy? I’d never survive that, assuming that Red allowed me the unlikely opportunity to make it alive to the courthouse. My stomach squeezed. Surely my guts were being shredded. I leaned on the wall and bent over my belly.

Ash squeezed my shoulder. “Lia?”

“Don’t touch me.” I shook off his hold.

“A whole lot of good people have died trying to convict this son of a bitch, including your brother,” Steiner said, as if he needed to remind me. “You owe it to him. You owe it to all of those who died.”

I groaned.

“Shut the hell up,” Ash spat. “She can’t handle it right now.”

The tears just sprang out of my eyes. The pain was too much to bear. The jackass really knew how to get to me. Guilt churned inside me along with the fear. I chewed on my lip until it hurt. It was really too much. I could never face Red and hope to live to tell the tale. He’d never allow it. Neil leaned against my legs and whimpered.

“Breathe,” Ash said, rubbing my back. “You don’t have to do what he says. We’ll take it one step at a time. You can make your own decisions.”

I jerked away from his touch. “I don’t want to hear it from you. As for you—” I turned to Steiner. “You’re mad if you think I’ll go back to relive my nightmares. You had your chance. You failed. Adam is dead. It doesn’t matter to me anymore.”