by Jami Alden
In the next breath, disaster struck. Just the thought of replacing his finger with his dick, combined with the way Krista moaned and stroked his cock in answer, was enough to send Sean over the edge, so fast and furious he couldn’t stop it no matter how hard he tried.
His climax thundered through him, and he shuddered against her as his cock pulsed in her hand. His eyes squeezed shut, his whole body clenched as he spilled hotly on the smooth skin of her stomach.
Humiliation rushed through him, chasing away the last wave of agonizing pleasure. He jerked his hand out of her pants and rolled away, yanking his boxers up to cover himself. He sat on the edge of the bed, head bent, unable to even look at her as she lay there stunned.
“It’s okay,” she said. In the same breath he said, “I’m sorry.”
He flinched away from the tentative caress on his back. He shoved himself up on wobbly legs, desperate to get away from her, the harsh panting of her breath, the heat emanating from her skin, the scent of her unfulfilled need.
He stood with his back to her, bracing himself on the dresser across the room, and he heard her swallow heavily and shift on the bed. “I guess I’ll go clean up,” she murmured, and he felt his face flush with another wave of embarrassment.
He didn’t move until he heard the bathroom door click shut behind him. He’d come so hard his muscles were still twitching as he yanked the stiff store-bought jeans up his legs. The rough fabric rasped the gash on his leg and he grasped onto the pain, focusing on it as he cursed himself up one side and down the other for what had just happened.
What the fuck was he thinking? He hadn’t, and that was the problem—he’d touched her cheek and—bam—the little head had taken over for the big head and he was a goner. He’d had almost no trouble shutting everything out, shutting himself down in the entire time he was in prison and in the months since he’d been released.
He’d had no trouble controlling his emotions and impulses, had convinced himself they’d all but disappeared.
And then she showed up and proved to him again just how little control he really had. Why? Why of all people was she the only one who could bring the world into sharp focus, make him feel in a way he hadn’t been able to feel—hadn’t wanted to feel in more than three years?
Make him so crazy that even when they were running for their lives, he couldn’t resist the temptation to reach out and touch and taste until he was losing control, going off like a horny thirteen-year-old before he could even get inside her.
He wished he could brush off his loss of control as a logical response to three-plus years of celibacy. But that would be bullshit, and he knew it. Convicted felon or no, he’d had plenty of opportunities to break the seal and hadn’t had a lick of interest in any one of them. There was something about Krista and only Krista that made her—and his body’s response to her—unique.
Special.
He shoved the word aside before it had time to fully form in his head.
His whole body burned as he heard the shower running behind the closed bathroom door. No doubt she was washing him off her. As humiliating as it was to lose control like that, Sean told himself it was a good thing. Like his body had gotten off a warning shot before he’d succeeded in doing something colossally stupid.
As if nearly being run off the side of a cliff and getting shot at and framed for killing a police officer wasn’t proof enough that Krista Slater was trouble, what had just happened here proved that she was dangerous to him in a way he never could have imagined.
Krista stood under the cold shower spray long after the evidence of Sean’s release was scrubbed from her belly and goose bumps covered her skin. When she started to shiver uncontrollably, she figured she’d better get out before hypothermia set in, but she was in no hurry to face Sean.
Not that he wanted anything to do with her either, from the way he’d rolled away and jumped off the bed right after he’d gotten off. She could understand that he was embarrassed. He was a guy—and not just any guy. Bigger, tougher, with about double the testosterone of your average Joe and an ego to match. Of course he didn’t want to lose control in the bedroom.
And never so dramatically.
Krista tried to ignore the spurt of warmth that flooded her core even as her teeth chattered from her obviously futile cold shower. But there it was—he’d gotten off and she hadn’t, and now she was drawn tight as a bow, restless, nervy, like her skin was about two sizes too small for her body.
Almost desperate enough to march out there and demand her turn. And she might have, might have tried to make him forget his embarrassment with her hands and lips and everything else had his embarrassment not been accompanied by something even more powerful, even more devastating.
Revulsion.
She’d felt it like a physical force when he’d flinched away from her touch. Once the fog of lust had died down, he’d realized whom he was with, who had made him lose control in such a basic, primal way, and he was disgusted. With himself, with her.
And goddamn it, even that knowledge wasn’t enough to banish the need curled so tightly inside of her that it nearly hurt. She considered taking matters into her own hands, so to speak, but the idea struck her as too pathetic, and in the end she knew it would leave her feeling only more depressed and unsatisfied than before.
She couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever, so she pulled her pajamas back on and reminded herself that she faced off against the scum of the earth and their even scummier lawyers every day.
She could stand up against a lone man, even if that man was out there kicking his own ass for touching her.
She strode out of the bathroom with as much poise as a woman who was wearing pajamas and whose teeth were chattering could muster and reached for one of the phones. It was time to take action and get them out of this because God only knew what trouble they were going to get into if they stayed in close quarters for a second longer.
“You can’t make any calls until we activate it,” Sean snapped. “And even then, I don’t want you making any calls. Not yet.”
He’d put on pants, she noticed. And though there were ruddy streaks across both cheekbones, his gaze, when he met hers, showed no embarrassment, no remorse, only challenge.
So he was going to pretend the last ten minutes didn’t happen. Worked fine for her. “We’re stuck in the middle of nowhere with a stolen car and limited cash. Eventually we’re going to need help.”
“We already talked about this. No calls until I can figure some things out.”
At this point Krista was desperate for some information from the outside. “I thought the point of the cell phones is that they’re untraceable.”
Sean shook his head. “I’m not totally up on cell phone technology, but I think the point is that the phone isn’t registered to you. But if whoever’s after you is checking the phone records of people you’re likely to call, it’s possible they could trace the phone back here.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Krista said.
“After what happened tonight, you really want to take a chance?”
Krista blew out a tired breath. “I know I can’t call Mark, but let me call the investigator I’m working with. I didn’t tell anyone I’m working with him, and even if someone did know, he’s got so many sketchy sources he must get dozens of random calls a day. Our call wouldn’t raise an eyebrow even if someone thought to monitor his phone.” Sean wasn’t arguing so she pressed on. “He’s the one who found the information about the bank account. He’s the one who got Jimmy to talk to me—”
“And how do you know this guy?”
“I’ve known him for years, from the time I joined the prosecutor’s office. He’s worked on a bunch of cases for us and has contacts in all the departments—”
Sean’s eyes narrowed. “So he couldn’t be deeper in the system unless he was a cop himself?”
Krista’s shoulders slumped as she sagged on the side of the bed. Though she had no doubts about Kowalsk
y, she could see where this was going. “Actually, Kowalsky worked in narcotics for fifteen years before he went private.”
“No fucking way.”
Krista tried one more time. “But he’s working this case as a favor to me. If he wanted to tip someone off, he could have done it weeks ago when we first started digging. He’s the one who found the information about the bank transfers and got Jimmy to agree to talk to me—”
“Jimmy who ‘killed himself’”—Sean’s long fingers crooked to make air quotes—“before he could tell you anything, and you don’t think your friend could have had anything to do with that? Maybe he didn’t tip anyone off until he found out there was information worth knowing.”
Krista’s mouth pulled tight in frustration. She didn’t believe for a second Kowalsky could be dirty, but at least Sean was entertaining the idea that Jimmy’s death might not have been self-inflicted. “That makes no sense. If Stew didn’t want me to find anything, he could have buried the information.”
“Or someone could have found out he was working with you and convinced him to spill what he’d found.”
His arms were folded across his broad chest, chin tilted at a stubborn angle. He wasn’t going to budge on this. No way was he going near anyone who had even a whiff of law enforcement on him. After everything he’d been through, tonight and the years leading up to it, she couldn’t say his mistrust of the justice system was poorly motivated.
And the one cop they knew they could trust wasn’t an option because Sean didn’t want his sister anywhere near this.
Krista couldn’t blame him for that either. Which left them in their stalemate. “So we’re back to square one. Cops chasing us, limited cash, stolen car, and no one to help us figure out what the hell is going on.”
Sean’s dark brows pulled into a frown and he reached out to pick up the phone. “I know someone who might be able to help us.” But the tight clench of his shoulders and the muscle pulsing in his jaw told Krista this wasn’t a favor he was looking forward to cashing in.
“Thought I might be hearing from you. It’s been a long time, man.”
Tomas “Tommy” Ibarra’s familiar raspy drawl crackled through the speaker of the disposable phone, sounding remarkably alert even though it was the middle of the night.
Ibarra had been in the same class in Army Ranger school as Sean, Jimmy, and Nate. Sean hadn’t been as tight with Ibarra as he’d been with the other two, not that anyone had been able to call Ibarra a close friend.
Ibarra was a good man and an excellent soldier, but for the most part he kept to himself. He was an expert in communications and navigation and Sean knew he could depend on Ibarra as much as anyone else in his company to have his back. Sometimes he would go out with the group if they had a furlough, but even then he’d sit off to the side, back to the wall, nursing his one drink as he kept a careful eye on the crowd.
When he’d left the army about a year ago, Ibarra had moved back near his family but traded in the family business of sheep ranching for the expertise with electronics and telecommunications he’d developed and honed while in the army.
Now he was living in a house that was rumored to be a virtual bunker, off the grid, developing high-end communication and surveillance systems that were virtually undetectable for his government and civilian customers.
Sean hadn’t heard from Ibarra at all until he’d gotten out of prison. But unlike so many of his army buddies who’d crawled out of the woodwork to congratulate him and apologize for not getting in touch sooner—basically saying, without words, Sorry I thought you were guilty, man—Ibarra had sent a terse e-mail:
Sorry you got fucked by the system. Sorry I let it happen. If you’re ever in a jam again, call this number.
Though Sean had dismissed the e-mail like all the other messages with a mental fuck-off to another fair-weather friend, something had made him memorize that phone number. Thank God he had, because if anyone knew how to gather intel while staying invisible, it was Ibarra.
Now Sean was hoping he could help them figure out who the hell was behind the hit while making sure he and Krista stayed under the radar of the police and whoever the hell else was involved.
“Got myself in a bit of a situation,” Sean said. He was sitting on the end of one of the double beds, trying not to stare at Krista’s butt through the clingy fabric of her pajama bottoms as she paced restlessly around the room. She’d been agitated from the second he told her about Ibarra and tried to convince him yet again that they should at least contact Cole before anyone else.
He hadn’t even bothered to argue as he’d dialed Ibarra’s number.
“Sounds like exciting times in Richland, Washington.”
Sean felt the bottom of his stomach drop out.
Ibarra’s laugh rasped through the phone as though he could read Sean’s mind. “Don’t worry, man. I only know because I have specialized equipment, but that should tell you how easy those disposables are to track if you know what you’re looking for.”
“I figured that if the cops are involved, they might be monitoring people we’re likely to call. I don’t think you’re exactly on their radar.”
“I’m not on anybody’s radar, and that’s the way I like it. Now tell me what you’re dealing with.”
Sean gave him a quick rundown on Krista’s cryptic phone call with Jimmy, the questions about Jimmy’s suicide, and everything that had gone down after Krista had shown up at his door.
“Meet me at the gas station just off the Bottle Bay exit on Highway Ninety Five, before you hit the bridge. Should take you about three and a half hours to get here, so call me when you get on the road so I know when to look for you. I’ll see what I can dig up in the meantime.”
As much as Sean had thought he’d written off his former brothers-in-arms, it felt good to have one at his back again. “Thanks, Ibarra.”
“Least I can do. Get some sleep. You’re going to need it.”
Stew Kowalsky checked his watch as he waited for the files from Nate Brewster to transfer to his online backup service. “Come on,” he muttered as he watched the status bar. He was supposed to meet an informant in fifteen minutes, but it would take him at least twenty to get across town, even with the light Saturday morning traffic. It wasn’t like Meester would have anyplace else to go, but he’d sounded a little tweaky when he’d called Stew to tell him he had some information to pass on about a case Stew was working on for the PA’s office. Paranoid and agitated, Meester would scurry off like a rat at the slightest sign that things weren’t going right.
Finally the files finished backing up and he switched off his computer. Normally he would have just left the computer in the office and let the automatic backup happen while he was out, but this whole case with Krista had him spooked. Even though he hadn’t found anything that gave them a solid lead, he didn’t want to risk losing a single byte of information.
He double-checked the lock on his office and did a quick scan of the empty hallway before he headed out.
At first, he’d been happy to do a little work on the side for Deputy PA Slater. Despite the Slasher debacle and the discovery that Sean Flynn had been framed, Slater was still Prosecuting Attorney Benson’s golden child and doing good work for her meant Stew would stay on the short list of investigators contracted by the PA’s office to assist in ongoing investigations.
Not to mention, Slater wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes, and Stew would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit to hoping that maybe one of these times they could have a meeting in person, over drinks or ideally dinner, and move their interaction beyond strictly professional.
But then the shit hit the fan after Jimmy Caparulo’s apparent suicide two days ago. Going against all protocol, Caparulo’s body had already been released for cremation—without an autopsy. This despite the fact that there were footprints in the dirt outside Jimmy’s open window and there was some debate about whether there was enough gunpowder residue on Jimmy’s hands to prove he’d fi
red the gun himself.
Stew had found out all that the morning after Jimmy’s death. In the two days since, all of Stew’s sources inside the department and the ME’s office had clammed up.
And if that hadn’t signaled to him that he and Krista were onto something, the news report that Krista might have been kidnapped by Sean Flynn after he’d shot a sheriff’s deputy sure as hell rang some alarm bells.
No wonder she hadn’t answered any of his calls when he’d tried to reach her with the info about Jimmy.
He wished Krista had talked to him before she’d gone to see Flynn on her own. Stew could have gone in her place, or at least gone with her. Though he smelled something fishy in the story being splashed all over the news, there was no guarantee Flynn hadn’t gone off the deep end and taken Krista hostage out of revenge.
If that wasn’t the case and the story was a cover for something else, that meant they were onto something big. And Krista was in some deep shit.
And he could be, too, if the wrong people found out Stew was helping her.
So far nothing had happened, but he’d had that creepy tingle between his shoulder blades for the past two days that had him constantly on guard.
Even though he had case files piled up and dozens of clients waiting for reports, something in his gut told him that as soon as his meeting with Meester was over, it might not be a bad idea to head out for an extended vacation in some undisclosed location until this whole thing blew over.
He took the stairs down to the parking garage under his building. On weekends it was nearly deserted. There were only four cars besides his SUV. A sudden wave of paranoia hit him and sent his heart racing. He gave the garage a quick scan, paying particular attention to the shadowy corners, but he didn’t see or hear anything. He clicked his key fob to unlock his car and slid his hand inside his jacket to rest on the butt of the Glock 20 10mm he had tucked inside a shoulder holster.