A request he couldn’t refuse, he made sure she saw stars, reached the heavens, and then floated back before he covered himself and entered her. Slow and torturous moves. He needed this to last as long as humanly possible, but Mia kept moving her body and calling his name; it was making it harder to hold back, to savor every second.
Making love lying down was a whole new experience. It changed things from hot and sweaty to ... exactly what it shouldn’t be.
He’d had sex with other women, but they weren’t Mia. They didn’t change his outlook on life. They didn’t make him think, make him feel. Make him regret. With them, it was just sex. What he wanted with Mia as well, but she changed the rules when she ... no, when he got to know her.
When he started to care for her.
When he fell for her.
Mia didn’t change the rules. He did. He felt her tighten around him, and he couldn’t hold back any longer. Together, they moved in tandem like a couple who knew exactly what the other wanted.
And together they called out each other’s names, clutching at each other until they went limp in each other’s arms.
He stroked her hair and supported as much of himself as he could up on his elbows. “Are you okay?” Her eyes were closed, and she wore a satisfied smile.
“Mmm. That was some great congratulations sex. So glad you saved me the work of having to go find it elsewhere.”
Ryan sank deeper into her, and her eyes flew open with a wicked gleam. They didn’t speak, which was a good thing. He was half-afraid he’d say something stupid like, “Come to New York with me.” Or the worst of all—three words, “I love you.”
He was obviously confusing sex with love. He’d never done that before, not even with Sharon. Thinking about his ex-wife while he was still buried in Mia was not the way he wanted to remember their last time together.
“I can’t wait to read Esme and Ollie’s book.” That was a safe subject. It wasn’t personal. Well, maybe a little. It wasn’t emotional, though. Telling her he’d miss her or that he’d be thinking about her every damn day was personal.
“You’ll have to come to a book signing and get an autograph.” He was about to tell her he’d like that when her eyes went wide with shock. “I mean, I don’t mean that. I’m sure we’ll never run into each other again. You’ll be able to buy it on Amazon or something, probably. Maybe. Hopefully.”
She broke their connection and gasped, then shimmied out from under him, scooping up her towel and wrapping it around her body.
He could read her nerves easier than one of those board books he used to read to his niece. She was better at the distance thing than he was, that was for sure. It was why he’d learned to keep his mouth shut.
Study people and not speak. Listen and observe. Mia may have deserved more than that, but if he caved, he’d ruin it. Ruin her.
Slowly, he stood and got dressed then met her at the door. They stood so close one of her drawings couldn’t fit between them. She put her arms around him and grabbed his ass with a flirty smile.
Again, they stared in silence. He tried to keep his face impassive. If she read his sadness, his regret, she’d ask if they’d see each other again. She’d expect him to call her up the next time he was in Crystal Cove.
He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.
With one last touch, he kissed her naked shoulder and whispered in her ear, “It was just sex.”
“What else would it be?”
“My worst fear.” He thought the words were only spoken inside his head, but her hands loosened from their grip on his ass.
“Which is?”
“Something more.” He kissed her forehead and left, not daring to look over his shoulder. Not even after he got into his car. Not even in the rearview mirror after he turned off her road.
It was for the best.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“There are no tears with just sex. No tears with just sex,” Mia told herself as she closed the door behind Ryan.
She knew it was a mistake from the start. Not only from the second he showed up at her door this afternoon, but from the first time they had sex in his kitchen. He was too much of a mystery for her. Too closed off and secretive.
Yet she couldn’t control herself when she was with him. And when she wasn’t. The books, the stories he’d told her about his childhood, the brief moments when she saw compassion and tenderness behind those dark eyes.
It was like there was another Ryan hiding inside, wanting to come out, and she was the only one who could release him. Or, rather, she liked to believe she was the only one. He wasn’t the type of man who’d have another woman back in New York.
The pained look of jealousy when he thought Big Sexy was another man was priceless. For a moment it had given her a glimmer of hope that there were some sort of feelings for her buried deep inside the stoic agent’s heart.
While he was upfront and honest with her from the beginning, the just sex thing hadn’t worked out for her. She screwed up, and her heart got involved.
The tears didn’t listen and fell in steady streams down her cheeks. She didn’t even bother wiping them away and curled into the corner of her couch. It smelled like him.
Soapy and clean, not heavy with fancy cologne like so many of the men she encountered at the bar. Snuggling deeper into the cushions, she held herself tight, trying to stop the ache in her stomach. In her chest. In her entire body.
She’d never cried over a man before. Once in high school, after Richie Wesley broke up with her after they’d been dating for three weeks. At the time, she thought it was the worst pain imaginable. It was a good thing young love didn’t hurt like this, or women would never fall in love again.
Mia wiped her nose with the back of her hand and sniffed.
Love. How could she be in love when she barely knew the man? Two months was not long enough to fall so hard and make her insides feel like they had been ripped into a million pieces.
Remembering how quickly her friends fell, maybe it was long enough. But they’d spent time with their husbands—their then love interests for days, weeks. They’d gone out on dates.
Heck, Lily even got Ty to go to the drive-in. He hated watching movies with people, but their first time out he went to a double-feature.
Grace spent a lot of time at Brady’s house helping take care of his mother, and Ben flew across the country for Alexis. What had Ryan done for Mia? What had she done for him?
They had just sex and then went on their merry way.
She blinked away the tears and noticed the books on the shelf across from her. Okay, so Ryan sent her two small gifts. Two perfectly perfect gifts that meant more to her than flowers or jewelry.
He may know her well, but she didn’t know him, which didn’t explain why she hurt so much. When her tears had dried, she dragged herself to another shower and went to bed. It didn’t matter that it was only seven-thirty.
There was no point staying up when all she wanted to do was close her eyes and either forget she ever met Agent Ryan Thorne, or dream about him for the rest of her life.
OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS she somehow managed to get up and go to her various jobs. The library, the restaurant, her mom’s bookstore. The days dragged on, and she put her best actress hat on when to work.
As soon as she came home, the tears flowed, and she drowned them in the shower. On the fourth day, she noticed the elastic on her wrist and snapped it four times for good measure.
She’d forgotten about it and had allowed herself to wallow in misery long enough. Her feet were tired from rushing around all afternoon at the restaurant, but she needed to get her life back on track.
For four days she hadn’t touched her edits, hadn’t drawn a thing, or written a single word. A brisk run would get her mind back on track so she could focus on her writing career.
However, a run could make matters worse. Running didn’t free her mind, only gave her more time to mentally doubt all her decisions.
“Ah.” She sn
apped the elastic and went back to her room to change into her running clothes. She wouldn’t push herself, but the fresh air would do her good, even if it was still a bit warm and muggy out. She’d take the quiet, shady backroads that led to the coast instead of the main drag, not that it had much traffic either.
Traffic meant there was a tractor taking up too much space in the road or being stuck behind a school bus. Her sneakers laced, and her playlist already streaming through her earbuds, she popped them in and slid her phone into the pocket of her shorts.
Def Leppard filled her ears, and she sang along as she jogged down the stairs. “Pour some sugar on me,” getting lost in the music, she sang and jogged until all she could think about was the music and when she should turn back.
Around the next bend the road came to a dead end and would mark three miles. Six miles would do her in, especially on a humid night, and even more so after waiting tables for five hours. Add the emotional baggage she was carrying around, and she was spent.
U2 came on, and she had to skip the song. Too sappy. Head bangin’ and screaming lyrics or at least songs about anything but love were what she needed tonight. And for the next however many nights, weeks, months it would take to get Ryan out of her system.
Queuing up the Red Hot Chili Peppers, she sang along with Anthony Kiedis, not caring how ridiculous she looked. There weren’t many houses out this way to worry about anyway.
A white van passed her, and she held up her hand to wave, as was customary in a small town. It didn’t matter if you knew them or not. She picked up her speed, jamming away, and as she got to the corner, she saw the white van parked on the shoulder.
The hood was propped open, and one man stood under it while the other talked to him by the driver’s door. She was no mechanic and couldn’t help them with their car troubles, but she could be friendly and offer to call someone.
Rick down at Coastal Tow wasn’t too far away.
Mia turned down her music and took her earbuds out, draping them around her neck. “You guys need me to call a tow truck?”
The skinnier of the two by the driver’s door grinned at her, giving her the chills. She wasn’t a beauty queen like Lily or Grace, but she wasn’t a gremlin either. Her tight tank top was soaked from sweat, and her legs were short, not the kind you longed after like the creep was doing.
She kept her distance and reached for her phone, just in case.
A bigger guy, not a giant, but not too short either, rounded the hood and patted the skinny creep on the shoulder.
“That would sure be kind of you if you could call someone for us.” He continued to walk toward her, taking a handkerchief out of his back pocket and stretching out his hand to her.
Mia inadvertently stepped backward, and a malicious grin escaped the man’s lips.
“Sure thing.” She swiped to her contacts and started dialing Ty, just in case, and the creep bumped into her.
“’Scuse me.”
Her phone dropped to the ground, and he stood waiting for her to get it. She didn’t like the vibe she got from the men, but she didn’t want to run off without her phone either. Gauging her surroundings and her speed, she could scoop it up and run into the woods. She knew the trails and how to get around. She could hide in the brush.
But she was winded, and her speed wasn’t what it used to be. Better to feign dumb ignorance than to show fear.
“No problem. So, you guys from around here?” Make small talk, seem friendly, then when he’s not looking, grab the phone and run. And if he makes any moves, kick him in the balls.
“You are a pretty little thing. You live close by?”
That’s it. Knee to the balls it would have to be. Mia raised her leg and at the same time the creep lunged at her and covered her face with his handkerchief. She struggled and kicked and clawed at him.
And then everything went black.
“YOU HAVEN’T BEEN YOURSELF since you’ve been back,” Heath, his boss, said as they walked together to the conference room. The final paperwork had come through on the fishery. All clean.
He hadn’t gotten any bad vibes from the crew and had actually enjoyed his time there, snooping around, asking questions about the process and offering information about marine life.
He especially liked how the job led him to Mia, even if he’d already known who she was before.
“Looking forward to the next case you have for me.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We still have loose ends to clean up with the Miller-Kaiser case.”
They were behind bars with bail set at a million apiece, while two of their counterparts, brothers Julian and Corey Nettles, had been released after twenty-four hours. The Nettles were into small, petty crimes and had been the lackeys in the case. Ryan didn’t think they knew more than they admitted to.
Julian was a card dealer at the casino and found potential contacts for Miller and Kaiser, while Corey was known for the dirty work. Bigger than his brother and not afraid to get his hands dirty, he was a loose cannon.
In and out of juvie as a teen, two OUIs, a handful of arrests for petty theft, and one for assault. It was a typical drunken bar fight that didn’t do anything more than rile him up for the next fight.
Other than the Nettles brothers, Ryan couldn’t find any other leads. It appeared Miller and Kaiser liked to do most of the money laundering and kept the tax evasions to themselves.
Kaiser was a tech guru and had hacked through the IRS’s system, which was what tipped off the FBI into this case.
Computers hadn’t been Ryan’s thing before, but he’d needed a change of pace after Sharon was murdered. He’d grown up in a simple suburb home, and the hate and evil of serial killers was too much for him.
While sorting out his life, he’d tuned out people and kept his face buried in computers. He’d found he had a knack for coding and before he knew it, he’d earned himself a job in tax evasions and money laundering.
He left the job of hunting down killers to those who could stomach it better. At first, he thought himself a failure, a sissy for not being able to man up. But each dark, twisted case opened too many wounds.
Thankfully his former boss was a good man and gave Ryan permission to switch offices. Heath was briefed on his past, but no one else in the office knew about Sharon. Or Alex. Unless they dug into his file, which no one had any reason to do.
Ryan stopped at the door to the conference room and let Heath go first. Three others were already there. Bill Sutter, who was the master of all things technical; Evan Charles, who ran the unit, and Marcy Lewis, the assistant sent from the gods. They wouldn’t be able to function without her mad organizational skills.
“Good morning, everyone.” Heath took the seat at the head of the table, and Ryan sat next to Bill.
“Coffee?” Marcy asked, even though getting them coffee and food was way below her pay grade.
“Sure. Thanks.”
In typical Marcy fashion, she had a cup ready for him and slid it across the table. “Muffins are on the table behind you.”
Sutter spewed out new numbers from the Miller-Kaiser case, and Charles reported more cover businesses that came up during the confession.
Ryan listened intently and ignored his cell as it vibrated in his suit coat pocket. When it vibrated again and again, he loosened his tie and tried to be subtle about reaching for his phone.
If it was about a case, the team he was with would have been notified. Most likely it was his parents or maybe his sister. He hadn’t called them since he’d been back in New York, but knowing his parents, they knew he was back.
It wasn’t like he could just hop in the car and make the six-hour drive to see them. He’d figured he’d wait until he had some time off before calling them and scheduling a time to stop by.
His cell stopped vibrating, and he mentally counted back to his last visit.
Christmas. He was an ass.
His phone made a different vibration, one signaling a text. Drawing h
is phone from his pocket, he looked at his screen. It was from Mia. He opened the photo she’d sent.
“Fuck.” His heart plummeted to the floor.
“Thorne?”
Mia’s face filled the screen. She was bound and gagged, sitting upright with a furious glare on her face directed at the man taking her picture.
There was no message to go with it.
“I...” He fumbled with his phone to click on his voicemail. Three messages. He hit play and held the phone to his ear.
“Agent Thorne. You have something of ours, and we have something of yours. Care to exchange?”
Not again. This couldn’t be happening again. Ryan dropped his cell on the table and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Vivid memories of the video he was forced to watch of Sharon. And Alex.
They were murdered because of him. And now Mia.
“Thorne?”
“They have a hostage,” he finally said in his monotone voice. The one he’d resorted to six years ago and had been using ever since.
“Shit. Miller? Kaiser?”
Most likely. He needed to listen to the other two messages. Putting his cell on speaker, he set it in the middle of the table.
“Look, asshole. You better pick up, or the bitch dies.”
Ryan hid behind his mask, tamping down the rage boiling inside. Sutter played the next message.
“Let Miller and Kaiser go, or your ass is toast as well.”
“They’re amateurs, which can work in one of two ways for us,” Heath said calmly. Of course, his voice was stable. It wasn’t his ... hell, what was Mia to Ryan? She wasn’t his girlfriend, wasn’t his anything.
Just sex.
“Sounds like Corey Nettles. He’s a mental case with an explosive temper. If Julian is the brains behind this, which isn’t saying much, they’ll keep the hostage safe.” Ryan appreciated Heath not asking his connection to the hostage. “They’re planning this on the whim. They’ve been out of the slammer for less than forty-eight hours, and who knows how long it took them to find any connection to you.” He pointed his stare at Ryan.
Something More (A Well Paired Novel) Page 16