Murphy’s Love: Murphy’s Law Book Three

by Michelle St. James

  “So we’re about ready then,” Nick said.

  “I think so, as soon as the travel logs are ready to go,” Julia said. “Everything else is in place.”

  “You’ve got the anonymous emails and social media accounts set up?” Ronan asked.

  “Done,” Julia said.

  “How will we make contact?” Nick asked. “Doesn’t someone usually have to follow you on social media to send them a private message?”

  “They do,” Julia said. “I’ll reach out to the people on our list with something vague, something that lets them know I have information on high-level corruption and human trafficking. They’ll expect the story to be a dud, but they’ll follow our new accounts long enough to get the data.”

  “How long do you think it’ll take for something to happen?” Ronan asked.

  “Hard to say,” Julia said. “Could be a couple days, could be weeks.”

  “We don’t have weeks,” Ronan said.

  “We won’t wait that long to make another move. Did you talk to Braden?”

  Ronan nodded. “Says Dohan has already been on the Fed’s radar.”

  Nick looked at him. “Really? Why haven’t they moved on him?”

  “Not enough evidence for a search warrant,” Ronan said. “We’re supposed to send Braden the package and let him know once they’re delivered to the press.”

  “I think this might actually work,” Nick said, a note of surprise in his voice.

  Julia drew in a breath. “I hope you’re right.”

  She tried to temper her hope with caution, but she could feel the pieces falling into place. Could see Braden giving an old friend at the FBI a heads-up about the rumors surrounding Yael Dohan and the other high-profile men involved with Manifest. Could see the agent’s ears perking up when more than one person started tweeting about it.

  The evidence they would send to Braden might include something new, something the FBI hadn’t had before. Beyond that, the pressure would be on once the internet was buzzing about it. Getting a search warrant would be easier, prosecutors able to make the case that Dohan was a flight risk once the data was out and he knew he was in trouble.

  Ronan stroked her hair. “Ready for a break? Food? I could order something.”

  She nodded. “Food would be good. And maybe sleep. Want to see if Elise wants something?”

  Elise had been quiet since their decision to come at Manifest in an unconventional manner. She hadn’t argued the point, but Julia wondered if she felt like Declan, if she wanted quick and dirty justice for what had been done to her.

  Julia didn’t blame her, but she still believed this brand of justice was going to hurt more in the long run, that it was going to shut Manifest down for good instead of just temporarily hobbling their leadership.

  “I’ll go ask,” Ronan said, heading for the hall.

  She watched him go and had to resist the urge to put a hand on her stomach.

  That’s the father of my child.

  She hadn’t been as shocked as she should have been by the results of the pregnancy tests. She’d known deep down that it was true.

  She was still trying to process her feelings on the subject. She loved Ronan and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. That had never been in doubt.

  All of her hesitation about their relationship had been about fear, but that fear had been centered around them, around their ability to transition from the adrenaline-infused romance conducted around the edges of the Manifest investigation to a stable, healthy, long-term relationship.

  This was different. This involved not just her and Ronan but an entirely innocent life. If she fucked it up, her child would suffer — the child made out of the love she and Ronan shared.

  What if she was a terrible mother? She hadn’t exactly had a great role model. What if selfishness was hereditary? Or if it wasn’t, what if she’d been so irrevocably changed by her childhood that she couldn’t overcome it?

  They were thoughts that haunted her. She’d come around to risking her heart with Ronan, even if it meant disappointing him in the end, but disappointing their child was something she didn’t know if she could endure.

  29

  Ronan poured whiskey into two glasses as the scent of lavender and vanilla drifted through the living room. Julia had resisted him on the bath, but he was glad she’d finally given in. It had been two days since they’d disseminated the data packages to their online targets, and she’d spent almost every minute of them pacing the house and the beach, tossing and turning in their bed at night, checking and rechecking the anonymous social media accounts.

  All but four of the journalists they’d contacted had replied with a request for information. Two of the ones who hadn’t responded were traditional journalists, which was no surprise. Still, a reporter from the Washington Post and one from the LA Times — a rookie, someone hungry for a story — had accepted the data packages, contacting Julia through the anonymous channels to ask questions about the information as they reviewed it.

  The other journalists, the freelancers, had been less cautious, contacting Julia immediately, asking so many questions she’d spent most of that day glued to her computer, typing as fast as her fingers could hit the keys, Ronan standing over her shoulder to make sure she didn’t inadvertently give anything away that could lead back to them or to MIS.

  By the time she’d finally closed her laptop, her shoulders had been tight, forehead creased with unspoken thoughts.

  “You were right,” she said, entering the room from the bathroom. “I feel better.”

  Ronan crossed the room to hand her one of the drinks. She was wearing a short, silky robe, her skin glistening with residual moisture in the neckline that plunged to reveal the swell of her breasts.

  Her hair was wet, her face dewy and clean. She was always beautiful, but he liked her best of all this way, when she was a little raw, her face as close to open as it ever got outside their bed.

  She took a drink. “Hmmm… thank you.”

  “Let me rub your back,” he said. “It must be killing you after all those hours in front of the computer.”

  “You sure?” she asked.

  He grinned. "It’s not a hardship.”

  He was used to Julia hesitating when he wanted to do something for her. She’d taken care of herself and Elise for so long, she sometimes rebelled against his efforts to pamper her, at least in the beginning.

  “If you insist,” she said.

  She set the drink down and kneeled on the bed, dropping the robe around her torso. His member stood at attention, the sight of her — kneeling with her legs spread, naked under the flimsy robe, breasts flushed from the bath — sending a rush of blood to the tip of his cock.

  His ardor was only dampened by the sight of the wound on her arm, evidence of how close he’d come to losing her. It was healing nicely — with any luck she wouldn’t have a scar — but he still wanted to kill someone every time he saw it.

  She lay on her stomach, offering him her back, and he removed a bottle of massage oil from the nightstand and straddled her hips. It was torture, his shaft nestled between her pillowy ass cheeks, and he shifted, forcing himself to focus on relieving her stress instead of his own.

  He squeezed oil onto his hands and started at her shoulders, rubbing slowly, gently.

  She sighed. “That feels so good.”

  He smiled. “I’m just getting started."

  “My statement stands,” she said.

  He stroked down the length of her back, coating her skin with a thin layer of oil, stroking outward from the elegant line of her spine, pressing harder above the tempting crack of her perfect ass.

  He slid his hands back up to safer territory, rubbing her shoulders more deeply this time, working the knots loose as his hands slid over her silky flesh.

  She sighed again and it was enough to make him stifle a groan, the sound too close to the way she sounded when he first sank into her, their bodies merging in a moment of perfec
t completion.

  He kept up the pressure as he worked his way down her spine, kneading and chopping, pressing and sliding his thumbs through every coiled muscle and tendon.

  He braced himself as he approached the dip of her lower back, his aching body screaming a warning. He was surprised when she lifted her ass to meet his hand, forcing his shaft between her cheeks despite the fact that he’d been doing everything he could to steer clear of the area so he could focus on the massage.

  She turned her head, looking at him over her shoulder. “What are you waiting for?” Her ass inched farther up off the bed in invitation. “I’m already so wet for you.”

  The words let loose the last vestiges of his control and he groaned, standing up to tear the robe from her body. He took her in as he pulled off his sweatpants, reveling in the curvaceous line of her body, the dip of her waist in contrast to the swell of her hips, the cushy invitation of her ass.

  He kneeled between her legs and lowered his mouth to the plump skin of her inner thighs, as delicious as a ripe peach in August, warm from the sun.

  Spreading her ass with his hands, he plunged his tongue into her wet folds from behind, and christ she’d been right: she was dripping for him, her juices making her pussy slick and sweet.

  She moaned as he lapped at her desire from behind, burying his face in her ass and reaching around to stroke her clit with his fingers.

  “Ronan…” she gasped, her hips moving in time to the lapping of his tongue, rising to meet him as her body instinctively reached for release.

  This was what he lived for: the only time she felt totally open to him, all her secrets pushed aside for the ecstasy of their joined bodies, every inch of her body exposed to him even if she still hid parts of her heart.

  He bit at the lush softness of her ass. “Come for me, beautiful. Let me taste you before I fuck you.”

  He plunged his tongue back into her delicious cave, dark and sweet, drinking from her like his life depended on it, wanting to lap up every drop of her precious nectar.

  Her clit was engorged under his fingers, his rhythm becoming faster as she worked with him, claiming the orgasm that wouldn’t be denied. He felt it in the split second before she let loose, a held breath before the exhale, a moment of quiet before the moan that was ripped from her lips.

  Her body shuddered, the luscious taste of her flooding his mouth, his cock growing harder and more insistent as she came. He drank hungrily from the well of her pussy — the sweetest water, the sweetest wine — keeping up the rhythm on her clit as tremors rocked her body.

  He waited until she went limp against the bed to stretch his body over hers. She turned her head, meeting his lips with her own, taking his tongue into her mouth as he positioned his cock between her thighs.

  He reached for the nightstand and the condoms they kept there, although the truth was they weren’t as consistent as they should have been.

  She clasped her hands around his wrist. “No.”

  “You sure?” he asked, close to her ear. The smell of her skin and her sweat and their sex sent another swell of lust through his body.

  “Just fuck me, Ronan.”

  He nibbled at her ear and sat back far enough to lift her hips, then gently pressed her back onto the mattress so that her ass was in the air, glistening and wet and ready for his cock.

  She dropped her head onto the pillow and pushed back, his cock nestling farther into her slick folds, her heat rocking through his swollen head in the moment before he drove into her with a force that almost scared him.

  30

  She cried out as Ronan drove into her, his cock an invader she had no desire to deny. He was so big her channel had to stretch to accommodate him, his massive shaft pushing against the limits of her body.

  A throb picked up at her core, pulsing with need as he sank deeper inside her, his hands digging into the flesh of her hips and he fitted her more tightly against his hips.

  “Please,” she begged.

  “Please what, Julia?” His voice was deep and hoarse.

  “Please give it to me.”

  He dragged slowly out of her, restraining himself against the urge to move hard and fast, to plunge into her over and over again, to impale her on his cock until she came for him again, until he poured his own release inside her.

  He lingered at the top of the stroke, letting his swollen head balance at her entrance before driving into her again. She pushed back against him, her ass cradling the base of his shaft when he sank all the way inside her.

  “Please…” It was a long, low moan, muffled by the pillow near Julia’s face. It was so elemental, so desperate, that it stoked the fire of his own need, the embers he’d been sheltering, starving of oxygen, exploding in a blast of heat that moved outward from his cock, buried inside of her.

  He groaned and pulled out of her before diving quickly back in, stroking through her channel in a rhythm he couldn’t entirely control. He fucked her hard and fast, the last vestiges of his restraint dissipating like ash as the primal needs of his body took over, his only purpose to push her over the edge of her release, to claim his own.

  “Yes,” she gasped, moving with him, pressing back to meet his thrusts, pulling away to give him maximum leverage so he could pound into her again.

  She was going to come. He could feel it in the tightening of her channel, the speed of her own movements as she increasingly set the pace of their parries and thrusts.

  “Touch yourself, beautiful,” he said. “Stroke your clit while you come.”

  She lifted a hand and slid it between her legs, and although he couldn’t see it, the knowledge of it there, of the stroke of her fingers against her swollen flesh, pushed the limits on his control.

  “I’m coming, Ronan.” She cried out as the orgasm took hold, her body trembling as she rocked against his hips.

  The surrender in her voice and the clamping down of her channel on his shaft set loose his own climax and he shuddered as he spilled into her, keeping up the stroke of his cock through her tight and swollen pussy, pushing through the engorged tissue as her body gripped his shaft.

  “Fuck, Julia. You feel so fucking good.”

  He waited until the last drop had spilled into her to gather her against his body, collapsing onto the bed, both of them breathing heavy, their bodies slick with sweat.

  She curled against him, her back to his chest as her breath slowly returned to normal. He wanted to ask her what she was still afraid of, why she could only give him everything when his mouth was on her, his cock inside her.

  He didn’t dare. The only thing guaranteed to make Julia even more secretive was being pushed to tell her secrets. She’d spent a lifetime with only Elise to confide in. It scared the shit out of him that she was still guarding herself against him, but he couldn’t really blame her.

  Breathing her in, feeling her body relax against him, her breath turning steady and deep as she drifted toward sleep, he knew he would wait.

  Forever, if that’s what it took.

  31

  Ronan woke with a start, his heart pounding in his chest. He’d been having a nightmare, one of the old ones featuring desert dust and clay buildings and gunfire that seemed to come out of nowhere.

  He looked over at Julia, asleep under the weight of his arm, and felt his heart clutch in his chest. She looked so peaceful, the furrow between her brows smooth in sleep, her eyelashes casting shadows against her cheeks in the moonlight that leaked in through the windows that faced the courtyard.

  He reached carefully for his phone, not wanting to disturb her, and scrolled past a breaking news alert to look at the time. He’d just registered that they’d been asleep for about five hours when he scrolled back to the breaking news alert, something about it teasing his brain.

  HEAD OF FED RESERVE SERVED WITH SEARCH WARRANT IN FEDERAL CASE

  His pulse quickened and he slid out of bed, wanting to get more information before he woke her. He fumbled around in the dark for his sweatpan
ts, tossed aside in his hurry to feel Julia’s skin against his own, and pulled them up as he headed for the hall.

  Chief whined as he passed the dog’s bed and Ronan signaled for the dog to follow. “Come on, girl.”

  She trotted next to Ronan as he made his way out of his private quarters, stepping into the main hall that ran the length of the house. He could have used the TV in his living room, but he was afraid to wake Julia now that she’d finally settled down enough to sleep. He wouldn’t wake her until he knew it was real.

  He entered the main living room and turned on the TV, careful to mute the sound. He flipped to twenty-four-hour cable news and almost stopped breathing when he saw the headline at the bottom of the screen.

  Yael Dohan Under Investigation For Human Trafficking

  Behind the headlines a young news anchor with short brown hair that looked lacquered into place wore a grave expression as he spoke words Ronan couldn’t hear. Behind him, the station was broadcasting live footage of an old building with elaborately carved cornices and gargoyles. Men and women in black jackets with FBI emblazoned on the back milled around in front of the house, while others exited the building carrying boxes, their lids obscuring the contents.

  He turned the volume up just enough to be able to make out the broadcaster’s words.

  “For those of you just joining us, this morning the head of the Federal Reserve, Yael Dohan, was served with a search warrant around five a.m. Mr. Dohan has not been taken into custody as of now, but federal agents are in the process of executing the search warrant, issued after evidence came to light that Mr. Dohan may be connected to an international trafficking ring.”

  “Holy fuck…”

  Ronan glanced behind him to see Nick standing behind the sofa.

  “Turn it up,” Nick said.

  Ronan hesitated, then decided the volume didn’t matter. He’d have to get Julia anyway, and Declan and Elise too.