“Baby, stop. I’ve wanted you too long. I can’t hold off,” he groaned through gritted teeth, his face beaded with sweat. “I want this so bad, but I’ll lose it right now if you don’t—”
Tenderness and power flooded her. She felt like a sorceress, a quenchantment, a sexual witch who could bring this man to his knees with her hands and mouth. “Good,” she whispered, and caressed him again and again, and, lifting him out of the water, pleasured him with her tongue, just once.
With a harsh shout, he pulled her up and kissed her, hot and wet; then she felt the pulsing of his climax against her skin before the warm water washed it away. He collapsed on her, his face in her neck, tangling his legs with hers; and she ran a hand through his wet curls, feeling utterly content. A woman at last.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, when he finally had his breathing back under control. “I never meant it to go so far. I promised you I wouldn’t—”
Funny, but right now she didn’t care if that creep watched them or not, or if Mitch was a good guy or bad. She just felt—how could she describe such a feeling of total peace and happiness? “You didn’t do it, I did. And I enjoyed every second of it.”
He gave a low, sexy chuckle. “Witch. I think you wanted revenge for this morning—and you got it, all right. That was amazing. Having you touch me like that, after spending half my life fantasizing about it—”
Oh, heady stuff. He’d fantasized about her hands on him, just as she’d dreamed of his hands and mouth on her. And now she understood what he’d meant this morning: bringing him to fulfillment was enough. More than enough.
She pressed the button for the jets to start again, and spoke over the noise, needing to know just what sort of man she’d just seduced. “So who are you, Mitch McCluskey, and what is it you really do for a living?”
He shook his head, still lying on her shoulder. “Tomorrow, I promise. For now, let’s forget it all. I feel too damn wonderful to start up the tension again.”
Their position, the act they’d just shared and his acceptance of her power, made him curiously vulnerable to her. She discovered she didn’t want to know what he was, who he was. Not now, not yet. She just wanted tonight. One more night before her illusions either came to fruition or shattered in her face.
“Okay.” She lifted his face and kissed him. “Tonight.”
He smiled and pushed a lock of hair clinging to her cheek. “I used to dream of this, Liss. It was my constant fantasy, when we swam in your pool. You’d play with me, so innocent and wet and sweet and sexy, and I’d be envisioning you naked like this, looking at me like you wanted me.”
“I did.” She gave him a self-deprecating smile. “Well, I wasn’t naked, but I looked at you like this all the time—whenever you weren’t looking.”
He shook his head against her skin. “How was I so blind that I never saw it?”
“I was blind, too. I never once saw you looking at me like that, either.” She shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you or show you. I never for a minute thought you’d ever truly want me. So many girls at school had a thing for you—the pretty, sexy girls—and I was just the girl next door. I wasn’t like them. I couldn’t risk losing our friendship by telling you or coming on to you.”
He kissed her throat, making her . “Oh, baby, I wish you had, because I was an even bigger coward than you. It was always there for me, too, Lissa—always. It always will be, till the day I die. I never so much as looked at any girl but you, until after you married Tim. Even then, even with Kerin, I felt like I was betraying you.”
With those words, you married Tim, the shadows came creeping back in. Specters of the past, rattling chains on their wrists and ankles, crowned and garlanded with doubts of the here and now. Taking her prisoner without a word. “Don’t. Don’t say it. No promises, Mitch. No more pretty words until you tell me what’s going on. I have to know the truth first. I can’t play the game.”
His smile faded. “Then what was this?”
A click, and the ghosts chained her. “This,” she said carefully, “was sweet revenge, McCluskey. This was me, enjoying sexual power over a man for the first time in my life. I needed to know—”
“What? What do you need to know, Lissa?” he asked, harsh and just a touch bitter. A predator after truth, and all man—a strong, naked, virile man.
And aroused again. The proof lay big and hard on her thigh.
Her nipples peaked against his skin and slid over his chest, hot and wet. With a smoldering look in his eyes he slid the other way, making her moan at the delicious friction.
She pushed him off and looked away, splashing her face, but the heated water only made her more breathless, the heat outside match the pulsing fever within. “So, do you think our good friend has finished his job in there?”
With a leisurely motion he catapulted out of the spa. “I’ll check.” Without bothering to towel himself off, he picked up the case he’d brought in and pulled an odd-looking contraption out of it, aiming it at the door, waving back and forth. “There’s no one there now, if there ever was. Maybe he hasn’t caught up with us yet.” He opened the door and padded out, carrying the case with him. He turned to her, not bothering to hide his aroused state. “Come to bed.” It wasn’t a request. It was a gauntlet thrown down, a challenge issued. Mitch, hard and hot, naked and wet, shooting from the hip. Trust me, Lissa.
Her gaze fixed on his gorgeous body, she uttered in a strangled tone, “I’ll just stay in here a few minutes. I, um, I need to…”
Mitch smiled sadly, with just a touch of coldness, and she shivered again. He said, “Sure,” and closed the door for her.
And for some reason she felt it again. She’d won a battle, kept her pride, but she’d lost something—just a tiny piece of something infinitely precious in the process.
But this time she could identify the loss. Mitch’s heart, Mitch’s trust…and Mitch himself. He was withdrawing from her.
She was losing Mitch. Her Mitch. The boy she’d so blindly adored—the man she’d never been able to put behind her. The one her heart refused to forget.
Oh, how she wished to God she could believe all he’d told her! Oh, how she wanted to know she could trust him. But this could so easily shatter in her face—just like her marriage to T. Tim acted like he couldn’t wait to make love to her—until he married her. And she’d been trapped in a nightmare world of half-formed fears and doubts, walking in the shadows of wondering, Why? Even when she found out the truth about Tim, she still knew one thing—he’d been with almost every girl in town before her. What did more than five years of being unable to want her say about her ability to arouse a man?
If the same thing happened with Mitch, she’d want to die….
With a strangled sob she turned on the spa jets and cried her heart out.
When she came out, wearing the fresh clothes he’d put just inside the door for her, she found a different man in the room. A man wearing dark jeans and a black polo shirt—cool, elegant, almost lethally sexy. He sat leisurely on a swivel chair before the cherrywood desk. He didn’t bother to turn as she opened the door. “You like solitaire?”
Oh, this man looked like Mitch, sounded like Mitch. But this was the man with secrets; this man wore danger carelessly tossed over his shoulder like a jacket on a hot summer night. The tenderness in his voice was gone, replaced by cool unconcern, the blazing need in his face now casual concentration.
This was the man he’d been hiding from her since he came back into her life. Mitch the spy.
The mysterious case was open, a hollow showing where the small laptop computer he now used had been.
But there wasn’t a card game on the screen. The title read:
DIMA—Illegal Migration Issues
Border Control
The Division has the key responsibility to ensure Australia’s border is an effective barrier to persons who have no legal entitlement to enter. It also has responsibility to prevent the travel to Australia and entry of those whose pr
esence in Australia is not in the national or public interest.
Policy and procedures for border control activities are formulated and monitored by the Division and delivered in the States and Territories by Australian Customs Staff.
Unauthorized Arrivals
The Division is responsible for the coordination of entry and removal of unauthorized arrivals, regardless of mode of transport to Australia. DIMA airport inspectors undertake entry processing of unauthorized arrivals at airports, with referral to a senior officer located in Central Office, on a case by case basis.
Compliance and Investigations
The Division undertakes enforcement, deterrence and compliance awareness strategies. These activities include the investigation and prosecution of offences under the Migration Act, the location and removal of unlawful noncitizens, and data matching with other Commonwealth agencies.
She finished reading the screen, saw the official Australian government stamp on it and nodded, squelching the small surt of guilt struggling to make itself felt. “Can anyone see us?”
He jerked his head at the window. “Lead-lined curtains. Lead in the walls. This is our safe house; all the workers here are trained operatives. I called Tim. He and the kids are fine. We’ll call again tomorrow when we have another phone. We need a clean source this guy can’t trace, just in case.”
“Then what was the point of all the pretence with the woman at the desk earlier? Why say our spy could listen in on us or break in?”
He didn’t even look at her. “You’re not the only person with trust issues. I had orders from my boss and the others here. They wanted to see if you’d follow my lead. If you could be trusted to see the bigger picture.”
She felt a slow smile curve her mouth at that. Hmmm. And Mitch was unhappy? Maybe they were checking her out for more than he was telling her right now…. “You could have called me out to talk to the kids.”
He didn’t even turn around. “I tried. You were crying too hard to hear me. I figured the kids were best off not hearing the tears in your voice, in case it scared them.”
She made no excuses. After talking to Tim, he must know as well as she did why she’d needed the release of tears. “All right. But I want to talk to them tomorrow.”
“Of course.” After a short, awkward silence he went on. “I checked the room with the heat detector. No one has been in the room but us since we got here. No one’s close enough outside to use the bugs—at least not for the next five minutes. I can’t guarantee it after that, so we have to watch what we say.”
She aimed a glimmering smile his way. “Heat detectors, huh? No carefully placed hairs on our luggage or invisible powder for fingerprint identification?”
“I don’t do Hollywood stunts. The heat detector tells me if someone’s been here in the past few minutes, where they went when they were here…and to do that, to break in here at all, he’d have to be a trained professional. So my guess is, this guy isn’t.”
His voice was terse. Withdrawn. “How disappointing,” she said with a mock sigh. “Your marvelous whiz-bang heat detector thingamajig doesn’t give you a magical computer reading telling you who it was, and who he works for?”
Her gambit worked: he gave her a slow, reluctant grin. “I’m not Tom Cruise, Lissa. I only get as high as Mission Difficult.” He waved at the screen. “Is that enough for you for now, or would you like more proof our boy’s not what he says he is?”
It was more than enough: it told her all she needed to know. The Department of Immigration controlled illegal immigrants. The gray man had lied to her. Mitch had not. The gray man had pulled a gun on her. Mitch had bolted after the man to protect her. “It’s enough. Who do you say you are?” she asked, soft with meaning.
The phone buzzed once and was abruptly, eerily silent.
“There’s two bugs in your bag, one directional tracker, and we don’t have time to talk. That was Mabel. She’s been watching the road for us. A car just turned into the outer ro could be our boy. He’s had time to get a commercial flight down here by now and track us.” Once more he gave her that look—and something inside her told her he was giving her one last chance. “He’d be within range now.”
The phone buzzed again once, then stopped. “The car’s slowing down outside the driveway.” He said no more, still watching her, the integrity in his deep, dark eyes damning all her doubts.
The next move was hers.
Don’t be a fool. Give him what he needs, at least until he gives you reason not to. She drew a deep breath, and nodded. “What do we do?”
Though he didn’t smile, she felt his body tension relaxing. He closed down the computer, locked it away in a safe in the wall behind the desk and got to his feet. “We go to bed.” He looked at her, hiding all expression.
She pleaded silently; he shook his head, and she sighed in relief. Neither of them could stand another performance of pseudo-sex like this morning. Not here, not now. Not tonight. This had gone way beyond games for both of them.
Thank you. She took his hand and followed him to bed, where they lay fully dressed, still, tense, unmoving. And she felt lonely—lonelier than all her years alone. Mitch was right beside her, yet he’d never seemed farther away.
Then after a few minutes he sighed and drew her into his arms. “I don’t care about tomorrow. I need you now, Lissa. Just let me hold you tonight.”
The whispered words in the dark planted a tiny bud of hope in her soul. “Me, too.” She wrapped an arm around him, laid her head over his thudding heart, and a sense of deceptive, unquiet peace touched her spirit: two children alone, huddling together in the eye of a storm, waiting for the worst to come. “Tonight,” she whispered back. “Hold me. Just hold me.”
And for the first time in years she just fell asleep. She slept wrapped in his arms, feeling safe, feeling cherished—for the first time in so long, not alone anymore.
Six hours later they lay in almost the same position, holding each other close—and the storm broke.
The door burst open without warning; two men in flak jackets rushed in, brandishing guns. “Stay where you are! Federal Police! Put your arms above your heads and don’t make any sudden moves!”
Lissa screamed at her abrupt awakening and shrank against him. But Mitch, who’d been waiting for it to happen, wished only for ten minutes more, another hour, another day. For the time and the courage to make things right with Lissa. To gain her trust before he did what he had to do and risked both their lives to fight for what was right—and to fight for her love.
But time was up. He could only lift his arms above his head, advise Lissa to do the same, and allow the two men with guns to cuff him and take them both in the unmarked dark car to the nation’s capital for questioning.
Chapter
“What the hell is this, Skydancer? The most bloody juvenile way known to man to impress a reluctant girlfriend?” Nick Anson demanded in open fury. “You want to take her to Tumah-ra with you? What alternate universe are you living in? Our work is more importan
t than your love life. And if you don’t know that, it’s time to get out of the game!”
Mitch didn’t flinch; he’d expected it from the moment Irish and Braveheart burst into their hotel room this morning and “arrested” them both. “Of course I know, sir,” he replied, with all the military formality Anson insisted on whenever he was in the Australian headquarters. Complete and total professionalism can save lives. Always keep your distance with operatives. “I didn’t have any choice but to bring her into it.”
“There’s always a choice,” Anson barked. “Don’t be so bloody melodramatic!”
“Someone bugged Lissa’s house, sir. He claimed to be ASIO. He threatened her with losing custody of my sons if she didn’t find proof that I’m a child smuggler and spotter pilot for people smugglers. Then he pulled a gun on her.”
Anson stared at him. “You know that?”
“I saw him, sir. I saw the gun. I have one of the bugs here.” He p
ulled out the plastic bag holding one of the deactivated listening devices from his jacket. “I left the other one working, so he’ll believe Lissa still doubts me. Dust it if you like, but I doubt we’ll get anything.”
“Don’t leave me in the dark, Skydancer,” Anson demanded irritably. “Fill me in.”
With that acerbic demand, Mitch told his superior the whole story, as far as he knew it.
Anson reacted exactly as he had—in utter disbelief. “This has got to be someone’s idea of a joke! Look at this stupid bug—it’s made in Taiwan! And ASIO don’t do smuggling stings. That’s the Feds’ jurisdiction!” His commander looked likely to tear his hair. “This is a script straight out of some rerun of Dragnet!”
“I know, sir.” Mitch nodded. “I knew that at the beginning, but Lissa’s a civilian, a mother whose kids have been threatened. She didn’t know who was telling the truth until I told her and downloaded the proof from the DIMA file on the net last night.”
“Did you use a clean source?”
“I picked up the laptop from here as soon as we landed in Canberra, sir, plugged into my cell phone line.”
“Good. At least that’s one thing we don’t need to worry about.” Anson paced the room, and asked him, “You think this is personal, or a hit at us all?”
“I don’t know, sir. Not yet.”
Anson gave Lissa, standing still and silent beside Mitch, a glance of pure male frustration, and Mitch knew he’d be chewed out later for insisting on her being a part of this conference instead of leaving her outside the room. Too b. “And you had to bring her here. You couldn’t have made up something plausible?”
“No, sir. Not until I know what’s going down with this rogue. He made it clear to me that he wants to hurt her. If I want her to stay alive I have to keep her with me. Lissa and I are getting married next week,” he said simply. “Requesting formal permission to hand in my notice when this case ends, sir.”
Who Do You Trust? Page 12