Midnight Kiss

by Lisa Marie Rice

  But — that wasn’t the way the world worked, was it? As a child she’d managed to deal with her parents’ indifference by focusing on her studies and computers. Like finding a boulder in the road and walking around it. But however indifferent her parents had been, they hadn’t been physically dangerous to her.

  It looked like the Redfield family was dangerous. Not dangerous in the rabid dog sense but in the snake sense. Lying in wait for her.

  She wasn’t going to let them do that.

  Luke kissed the top of her head, though she barely felt it. She heard his words more as a rumbling in his chest than as a voice. “Wow. That’s a lot to take in. I think we should find a safer place for you than here and — where are you going?”

  Hope had slid off his lap and was making for her phone.

  “Hope, honey.” Luke stood up and she marveled all over again at how tall he was. How strong. And yet all his strength wasn’t going to save her from the snakes. Only cunning would. And that’s where she came in. She didn’t have much physical strength but she did have smarts. He cocked his head as she pulled out her cell and made it even more impregnable and untraceable. Before it would have been really hard to trace her phone. Now it was impossible. All communications would be routed through three satellites and there would be a slight time lag but it was worth it. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  She started her search.

  “We have a name now. My –— my uncle told me to contact Jacob Black and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m looking up his number right now.”

  Luke’s hand enveloped hers, stopping her from her online research. He looked her in the eyes, seemingly walking around inside her head. Right now though what was dominant wasn’t what was in her head, it was what was in her heart.

  Rage.

  If you’d asked her, Hope would have sworn she didn’t have any anger in her. She was always even-tempered, forgiving, understanding. Never angry. A wuss, really. Luckily, she’d never been bullied because she probably would have caved in. Even with the Boss from Hell, she’d opted to quit and look for work elsewhere rather than to confront him. All she wanted was the quiet life. To be left alone to work without distractions. Certainly not the distractions of violent emotions.

  Or so she thought. All of that was wrong. She was burning with rage. Her rage could blow up the entire city of Sacramento. All her life she’d felt something was wrong, that she didn’t fit the space life had carved out for her. She could barely articulate her feelings but once, over a lot of wine, she’d confessed those feelings to Felicity, who had completely understood.

  Felicity’s past was an enigma, much of it to her, too. She’d been born under another name and had spent her childhood in Witness Protection, where no one could know the truth of her family. They’d changed names and identities twice. She too had felt completely unrooted, living her life at a distance.

  Hope’s entire life was a lie. Someone — either Court Redfield or his son Bard or both — had had her mother killed. Either her father or her grandfather had wiped Lucy Benson — whose only fault apparently had been to love Bard Redfield — out of existence and had tried to kill her, too. For — for what? An issue of reputation? Her uncle hadn’t mentioned Lucy seeking financial aid from the Redfields. No, she’d tried to bring Hope up as best she could, and had been guilty only of trying to contact the man she’d loved, who was the father of her child, and who she’d thought was dead.

  Men like that — who’d swat away innocent lives simply because they were inconvenient — were the scum of the earth. Men like that had cast a shadow over her that she’d subconsciously felt all her life.

  She switched to her laptop and sent the entire file recorded by her uncle to Felicity, who was surrounded by security guys, with instructions to disseminate it as widely as she could in the company and to forward it to Don Temple at the FBI. She’d worked briefly with Don while she was at the NSA, tracking down a cyberterrorist. Whoever it was who wanted her dead, who had killed her mother, tried to kill her and had murdered poor Kyle and Geraldo would be outed. She knew Don. Don wasn’t going to be swayed by a Redfield.

  She could feel the blood in her face, the heat in her veins. That chill plaguing her was gone. The anger had swept absolutely everything away in a wave of red-hot rage.

  “Look at you,” Luke murmured. “Woman on a mission.”

  “Damn right.” She was typing furiously. “Someone’s been playing with my life since I was a child. That someone killed my mother and killed Kyle and my doorman and whichever Redfield it is, he is going down.”

  “Yeah, he is. No question.” Luke placed his large hand over hers, stilling them over her keyboard. “Don’t bother looking for Black’s number, I have it. Tomorrow we’re going back to Portland and we’ll start focusing on which of the Redfields killed your mother and tried to kill you.” His eyes narrowed as he looked at her intently, features tight and grim. “Four murderers went free under my watch. That will never happen again. Whoever it is will go down, I promise you.”

  He looked deadly serious and she knew he meant every word. After a lifetime of being on her own, it looked like she had … an ally.

  A lover, too.

  Totally and inappropriately, she was aroused. That hot rage had also, um, turned her on. Instead of being meek and mild Hope Ellis, who never took the initiative, who felt a mild tingle — akin to the joy of reaching the next level of Doom — when she liked a guy, this brand new Hope Ellis, who was another person entirely, felt sexual desire bubble up in her and swirl like a whirlwind.

  “Luke,” she said. It was an entirely new voice. Deep and smoky and so unlike her own she barely recognized it.

  But Luke recognized it. He looked at her sharply and understood immediately.

  She’d just heard a story of death. Her mother — dead. Her uncle — dead. But she wasn’t dead. She was alive. Alive.

  Every cell in her body pulsed with life and desire.

  And Luke felt that desire, too. Oh yeah. Eyes narrowed until only a shard of light blue was showing, features drawn, cheekbones dark with color. Luke Reynolds desired her and everything about him showed it.

  They came together like magnets, with an almost audible click, their bodies fitting together naturally, as if they’d done this thousands of times before. When she lifted herself just this much and he bent his head this specific amount, their mouths met and clung. She knew the taste of him now, and the smell of him and the feel of him. He was both familiar and brand new and exciting beyond words.

  He lifted her one-armed and walked backward. “Not going to make it to the bedroom,” he said, his voice thick.

  She could barely hear him above what felt like a hot wind whistling in her head. The bedroom? God, no. That was miles away.

  “Right now.” She sucked on his lower lip. “Right now.”

  Her entire body was on fire, glowing with heat. There was such coldness in the world but there was heat right here, between them. Hope was ready to simply drop to the floor and have sex. Luke didn’t drop to the floor but took two steps to the table. In those two steps, he managed to get all her clothes off. Hope didn’t know how he managed it, all she knew was that their mouths were separated for a moment and she felt cool air on her chest. Her pants — she had no idea what happened to them. By some miracle, Luke was naked too.

  His hand travelled down her body, thumb brushing over a nipple that was so sensitive it was almost painful, over her belly and down. He cupped her, where she was wet for him. Hope covered his hand with hers and pressed down.

  He pushed out a breath, lifted her onto the table and stepped between her legs. Oh God, she was on fire.

  Something crackled and she realized he’d had the presence of mind to put on a condom. The time it took him to put it on, leaning away from her, was intolerable. She needed to touch all of him she could because Luke was life itself. Was heat and light and life. A part of her had been dead all her life and was now fully alive.

>   Luke entered her and she arched her back in pleasure. They were both so excited that it didn’t last long, but then it didn’t have to. They held each other tightly as she convulsed. One hard stroke, then another and he followed her.

  Luke’s sweaty face fell onto her shoulder as he panted, “I’ll get it right

  next time. But we’ll need to be in the bed.”

  She held his head, smiling at the ceiling, happy.

  “Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s go to bed.”

  Luke lay in bed, one hand behind his head, one arm around his woman. She wasn’t asleep but she wasn’t quite awake, either. If she felt anything like him, she was boneless with pleasure.

  Luke felt — well, he felt great. Better than he had in years. If he weren’t feeling so very relaxed, like someone had massaged him nearly to death, he’d have jumped out of bed and gone for a fifty-mile run. Or done a hundred pushups. He felt perfectly capable of doing them except he was really comfortable where he was and anyway, he didn’t want to disturb Hope. He tried to think of her as Cathy but it didn’t fit. Hope was Hope and that was exactly what he felt right now. Hope.

  Frank Glass’s video was now at ASI and they were taking care to show it to a select group of responsible journalists that Summer, Jack Delvaux’s wife, had chosen. Summer had run one of the country’s best political blogs, Area8, until she started writing books. But the fiery investigative journalist was still there and she had the grenade in her hands, finger in the pin, ready to pull.

  Her hands were steady.

  They were safe.

  Hope’s secrets were now out in the light of day and sunlight disinfected. It also set free. She was going to be fiercely protected until the story came out and the Redfields couldn’t hurt her. She had nothing to be afraid of now and soon could get on with her life. Which Luke was determined would include him. No question. He was not letting her go.

  No other woman intrigued him like she did, with her superpower intelligence and that delicate fairy-like beauty. She was pure magic and she was the opposite of heavy maintenance. The few women he’d dated these past years had been like work. A job, and not a pleasant one at that. He’d spent his time slaloming around the poles of their obsessions and dislikes and feelings. They’d constantly sought reassurance about their looks, taking offense when he had no idea he’d said something wrong. Crumbling at the first sign of difficulty.

  Luke had almost convinced himself there was something deeply wrong with him. That he was too old-fashioned, too cold, too hot, too stiff, too loose, too much or not enough. Something. Relationships were so fucking hard and he just didn’t seem to have the knack.

  And then, Hope. Who was as low maintenance as they come. If anything he found himself all but doing cartwheels in front of her to get her attention when she was immersed in her computer, conjuring up God knows what dark arts. It was a little exciting that she was smarter than he was. Well, a lot exciting. He didn’t care, his ego wasn’t bruised. He was a better shot than she was. We all have our talents.

  In a terrible situation, with her life on the line and on the run, Luke had never heard her complain, not once. She rolled with the punches and took what came at her. That was his understanding of the world. That’s the way his parents rolled, facing difficulties head on, without complaint. And as a Ranger, he and his teammates had bitched in funny filthy language all the time about the sand, the food, the showers, but never complained about the real hardships of going on patrol, going into danger day after fucking day. No one complained about that. They’d all been naturally brave and stoic.

  Hope was like that.

  She resonated with him. She’d struck a match that just lit him up, opened him up.

  Including his stomach. Yeah, strange but true. Luke hadn’t felt hunger since, well since the Sigma Phi Five. Food held no appeal and he had to force himself to eat. With Hope, he was hungry. Ravenous, in fact. Hungry for food, for sex, for her company. For life. For her.

  And for the first time in a very long time he thought about the future. His, specifically. And in a positive way. During combat operations, you don’t think about the future and you don’t think about the past, you are fully focused on surviving the present moment. Survival took up his entire hard disk. Trying his damndest to keep his men alive and himself, too, while he was at it.

  The future was this massive unknowable dark mountain far away in the distance that he couldn’t climb because there was the mountain of survival right in front of him. Even back at the FOBs, no one thought of the future. The most you could think of was planning the next mission, the next patrol.

  Right now, the future stretched out before him like an upland meadow in spring. Full of unicorns and flowers and butterflies.

  He smiled to himself at the turn his own brain was taking. Well, not unicorns and flowers and butterflies, no. But he could think about a future where Hope was in his life. Maybe — if he played his cards right — living with him. Maybe even … married to him. That would be great, but a stretch. He wasn’t that big a catch. He was an ex-soldier, ex-cop who would forever be linked to a huge scandal. Someday in the future people would only remember his name, a murder and vicious kids, but it wouldn’t be clear who did what and what role he played. He was the good guy but that was sometimes lost. The parents of the killers had spent a lot of money to muddy the waters and make him out to be an incompetent cop. That kind of mud stuck.

  He had no money.

  True, he was about to join ASI, a really good, solid company full of friends. But it would take a while for him to get back on a solid financial footing.

  Luckily, it appeared Hope didn’t care about that. About any of it. She had what the Reynolds family had always had, an ability to see to the heart of things and not be distracted by appearances.

  So … there seemed to be a real possibility that she would be in his life, maybe living with him. Working with him in the Pearl, at ASI. Yeah.

  Oh, man.

  His stomach rumbled. But first food.

  “I heard that,” she said dreamily, eyes closed. Luke looked down at her, at the delicate profile, the fine features, the creamy skin. A view that could be his for the rest of his life. Would be his if he had anything to say about it.

  He laughed. Another new thing in his life. Laughter. “Yeah? You up for some food?”

  She drew in a deep breath and then her stomach rumbled, too. A cute little girly growl. “I guess I am.”

  Her eyes popped open and their gazes locked. A smile spread across his face. It took a moment for him to recognize what his face was doing, it felt so alien. He’d been doing a lot of that lately, straining some muscles in his face.

  “There’s pancake mix and real maple syrup. I can make pancakes if there’s a mix involved.”

  She frowned, a little line appearing between her dark eyebrows. “I have no idea what time it is but I think it’s late. I think it might be … dinner time and not breakfast time?”

  “Hmm.” The reliable clock in Luke’s head said 8.15 pm. 20.15 in military time. “You’ve never eaten breakfast food for dinner?”

  Hope smiled. “All the time. Especially if I’m on a work jag. Cornflakes and milk are my go-tos, no matter the time of day.”

  Well, cornflakes for dinner for her was over. It was going to be Luke’s mission to make sure she ate well at regular intervals.

  It was good to have a mission again.

  He threw back the covers and headed to the bathroom for a quick shower, picking up a change of clothes along the way. There was a weird sound behind him and he looked over his shoulder at her.

  Hope was sitting up in bed, blankets around her waist. She was staring at him. At his ass, really. Looking like she liked what she saw. He liked what he saw too. Her beautiful face, mouth slightly open as she stared at him. The elegant slender lines of her torso, the delicate collar bones, the perfect small breasts. With aroused nipples.

  His dick rose straight up when he saw that. Totally uncontro
lled and uncontrollable. From zero to hero in a second. He couldn’t have stopped himself if he’d tried. He was half turned toward her and she couldn’t help but see.

  Another one of those flushes rose from her small breasts to her face. She huffed out a breath, as if letting off steam rising inside her and he could feel his dick swell. She turned a brighter shade of pink, a small smile playing around her mouth. A heart beat was visible in her left breast.

  Their bodies were talking to each other. No need for words. But he used them anyway.

  “Don’t really need breakfast/dinner. Or a shower,” he offered. It was hard to keep the hope out of his voice. Because right now the thought of anything that wasn’t rushing over to her, climbing right on top of her and sliding right in, where he belonged, seemed insane.

  She breathed hard, in and out, delectable mouth slightly open. He remembered that mouth. Above all his dick remembered that mouth and he was now officially as hard as a rock.

  She wasn’t talking, just sort of vibrating there on the bed. Was that an invitation? If it was, the answer was yes. He turned completely, his dick flat against his stomach and was about to stride over when she raised a shaking hand, palm up.

  Stop.

  He sighed.

  “You are temptation itself, but I think we need to eat something and check in with Felicity. See how she’s doing. I haven’t heard from her and I’m a little worried.”

  He tried one more time. “We could shower at the same time,” he said sneakily. “Save time, conserve water. A twofer.”

  She smiled at him and he felt like a light had switched on inside him. She didn’t smile enough. Come to think of it, he didn’t smile enough, either. They were going to deal with her situation and then they were going to get on with their lives, which would involve smiling, a lot.

  Hope pulled up the covers and leaned over to get something off the floor. He couldn’t see what it was, but whatever it was, it was going to cover her up and that wasn’t good.