She tightened and released her legs around him, setting a rhythm that he soon obligingly matched. “You were too busy tearing off my shirt.”
“I was.” He held her gaze as he drove himself deeply inside of her again and again and again.
His beautiful eyes were half-closed and he was smiling very, very slightly—for him it was the equivalent of an all-out grin. He knew damn well what he was doing to her. He knew damn well that she was seconds away from total sensual meltdown.
But she could feel his heart pounding and she could read the heat in his eyes. She knew that when she exploded, she would take him with her. He was that close, too.
“Can we pretend tonight doesn’t end when the sun comes up?” he asked softly. “I want to drive as far from here as possible before we stop again and…Nell, I need to make love to you in a bed.”
He needed her. Dear God, he was actually admitting that he needed her.
“I would like that, too.” She laughed. “Understatement of the year.”
Hope filled her. The tiny seed that she’d tried to crush for so long burst to life inside her. He needed her. He didn’t want tonight to end. She never dreamed he’d ever confess to either of those things.
At that moment, anything was possible. At that moment, she didn’t need wings to fly.
She left the ground in an explosion of sensation and emotion that was deliriously intense. She felt herself cry out, heard an echo of her voice shouting his name. She felt him kiss her, possessing her mouth as completely as he possessed her body, felt him shake from his own cataclysmic release.
It was wonderful.
And it was even more wonderful knowing this time that she was going to get a chance—soon—to make love to him like this again.
NELL SLEPT IN THE FRONT SEAT of the car, her head resting in Crash’s lap.
She’d folded up her jacket to use as padding over the lump from the parking brake. She was wearing one of his shirts and a pair of his pants, the cuffs rolled up about six times and the waistband cinched with a belt.
Her golden hair gleamed in the dim light of dawn. He ran his fingers through its baby-fine softness, loving the sensation.
She slept so ferociously, her eyes tightly shut and her fists clenched.
What on earth had he done?
Crash felt sick to his stomach. It could have been from fatigue, but he suspected it was, instead, a result of that look he’d seen in Nell’s eyes while they were making love.
He’d made a mistake and admitted that he wanted more—more than quick, emotionless sex in the shower.
He’d opened his mouth, and now she was no doubt dreaming of their wedding.
He glanced down at her again and had to smile. She looked so fragile and tiny, nearly lost in his too-large clothes. And yet even in sleep she looked like she was ready at any given moment to hold her own in a boxing match.
No, she wasn’t dreaming of their wedding. She was probably dreaming about getting her hands on Senator Mark Garvin and tearing him limb from limb.
He was the one who was dreaming about their wedding.
God help him, he was in love with this woman.
Crash wasn’t sure exactly when he’d realized it. Maybe it was when he walked into that motel room and thought for one god-awful moment that he’d actually shot and killed her. Or maybe it didn’t sink in until she looked him in the eye and bared her soul, telling him that she needed him, that she wanted him, that she ached for him. Or maybe it was when they made love in the shower, and she held his gaze while he moved inside her. Maybe it was the realization that mere sex had never felt remotely like what he was feeling at that moment.
Or maybe it was when he hadn’t been able to keep his fool mouth shut. Maybe it was when he’d told her that he wanted more, and she just lit up from within, her eyes shining with hope. His initial reaction hadn’t been instant regret. No, he was double the pathetic fool. He’d actually been glad. That light in her eyes had made him feel happy.
That was when he knew he loved her. When he’d found himself happy at the thought that maybe she loved him, too.
The really stupid thing was that he’d been in love with her for years. Years. Probably since the very first time they’d met. Certainly during the previous year, while they’d lived together in Jake and Daisy’s house, their beds separated only by one thin wall.
He’d loved her, but he’d refused to acknowledge it, refused to believe that she would want the kind of life she’d have with him.
She was the real reason he’d spent most of last year out of the country.
Somehow he knew that if he’d seen her again, if he’d so much as run into her on the street, he wouldn’t have been able to keep away from her. Somehow he knew that he had no control at all when it came to Nell.
The sky lightened behind him as he drove relentlessly west.
The morning sky was pewter-gray and dull, promising rain or maybe even more sleet or snow.
His future was just as bleak. As hard as he tried, Crash couldn’t see any kind of happy ending for him and Nell.
What he could see was heartbreakingly tragic.
Unless he was able to hunt down and destroy Commander Garvin, USN Retired, the woman he loved was a target. Unless Crash could win, Nell would die.
But Crash would win.
His career might be over. His name and his reputation were definitely ruined. He was wanted by ever law-enforcement agency in the country, and probably some that were outside of the country, as well. He had no kind of life left and what he did have, he didn’t deserve—not after the way he’d let Jake die.
First Daisy, then Jake. There was no way in hell he was going to let Nell die, too.
He was willing to give up everything he had left to save her—and all he had left was his life.
NELL AWOKE TO FIND HERSELF alone in the bed.
They’d stopped shortly after crossing the border into New Mexico, and she had fallen asleep with Crash’s arms around her.
But first, they’d made the most incredible love.
Crash had delivered everything he’d promised and then some. He’d made love to her so thoroughly, so sweetly, Nell had almost let herself believe that he loved her.
Almost.
Now he was sitting, half-naked, in front of a powerful-looking laptop computer that he’d hooked up to the room’s phone system. His hair stood up, as if he’d frequently run his fingers through it, and the screen lit his bare chest with a golden glow.
He pushed his chair back with a sigh and stood up, stretching his long legs and twisting a kink from his back. He turned as if he felt her watching, and froze. “I’m sorry, did I wake you?”
Nell shook her head, suddenly uncertain, suddenly wondering if their night together had officially come to an end. “Have you slept at all?”
“Not yet.” He looked exhausted. His eyes were rimmed with red and he reached up to rub the back of his neck with one hand. “I’ve been trying to find the connection between Garvin and Sherman. But I need to sleep. I’m starting to go in circles.”
He sat down on the second of the two double beds in the room, and Nell thought for a second that he was sending her a message. Their night was over. He was going to sleep alone. But when he looked at her, she realized that he was feeling as uncertain as she was.
“You look like you could use a back rub,” she said softly.
He met her eyes. “What I really want is to make love to you again.”
Nell’s mouth was suddenly dry. She tried to moisten her lips, tried to smile. “The odds of that actually happening will increase enormously if you sit on this bed instead of over there on that one.”
He smiled tiredly at that. “Yeah. I just didn’t want to…” He shook his head, running his hand down his face. “I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
“Come here. Please?”
He stood up, crossing the short distance between the two beds. Nell sat forward, pulling him down so that he was sittin
g, facing slightly away from her. The covers fell away from her as she knelt behind him, gently massaging the tight muscles in his shoulders and neck.
He closed his eyes. “God, that’s good.”
“Did you find anything about Garvin at all?”
“He was definitely in ’Nam in ’71 and ’72—the same time as John Sherman served with the Green Berets.”
Nell gently pushed him down, so that he was lying on the bed, on his stomach, arms up underneath his head. She straddled his back to get real leverage as she tried to loosen the muscles in his shoulders.
“I hacked my way into Garvin’s tax records. He inherited a substantial sum of money in 1972—money his first wife used to buy a house while he was still in Vietnam. I searched the tax records of the elderly relative he claims the inheritance came from, but there’s no record of income from the interest for a sum of money that large. Unless the old guy kept a quarter of a million dollars under his mattress.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“I sent him a coded message that should be easy enough for him to break. I told him I had proof that his so-called inheritance was really the money he’d made dealing in the black market with John Sherman.”
“But you don’t have proof.”
“He doesn’t know that. I need to talk to him, face-to-face, record the conversation, and hope that he slips and says something that incriminates him.”
Nell paused. “Face-to-face? This is a man who wants to kill you.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Billy—”
“I could just go after him. Take him out. An eye for an eye. A commander for an admiral. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve played the part of the avenging angel.”
Nell took a deep breath. “But—”
“But if I do it that way, no one will know what he did. He killed Jake, he killed all those people in that war he started, and I want the world to know it. God, you’re beautiful.”
Nell turned her head, following his gaze, and realized that he was watching her in the wall mirror opposite the bed. The only light in the room was from his computer screen, but it was enough to give her breasts and her stomach and the curve of her rear end an exotic cast.
She looked like some wild, hedonistic version of herself. A naked love slave ministering to the needs of her master. All he had to do was turn over, and he could watch as she kept caressing him, kissing her way down his chest, down to his stomach, down…
She met the fire of his gaze in the mirror, feeling her cheeks heat with a blush. It wasn’t the first time she’d believed him capable of reading her mind.
He didn’t look tired any longer.
He turned, rolling beneath her so that he could look up at her, so that the hardness of his arousal pressed against her.
“This is the closest I figure I’ll ever actually get to heaven,” he said softly.
Nell leaned forward to kiss him and he held her close, telling her again, although not in so many words, just how much that he needed her.
She kissed his neck, his throat, his chest, trailing her mouth across his incredible body as she reached between them to unfasten his pants.
She turned to look, and, just as she’d imagined, found him watching her in the mirror. She smiled at him.
And then she took him to heaven.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I’M NOT GOING.”
“Nell—”
“But you don’t even have a plan to…” Nell broke off, gazing at him wide-eyed from the other side of the car. “Oh, my God,” she said softly. “You do have a plan to get the evidence you need against Garvin, don’t you? And you weren’t even going to tell me.”
It would have been easier if she’d shouted at him.
He tried to explain. “There are some things that are better if you don’t know.”
She turned to look out the window. “The things I don’t know—particularly about you—could fill a book.”
“I’m sorry.”
She looked back at him. “You say that a lot.”
“I mean it a lot.”
“So this is it,” she said. “You’re just going to drop me off here in Coronado, at the house of somebody named Cowboy. And I’m just supposed to hide until you either come back or you don’t.”
The southern-California streets were filled with lengthening shadows and heavy traffic as the sun began to set. Crash had never been to the house that his swim buddy Cowboy shared with his young wife and infant son. But he had the address and he’d checked the map back when they’d last stopped for gas. He knew exactly where he was going.
“Silence,” she said quietly. “With you, silence tends to imply an affirmative.” She turned toward him then, reaching for him. “Billy, please don’t shut me out now.”
He let her take his hand, lacing their fingers together. “I know you want to help me, but the best way you can help me right now is to let me make sure that you’re someplace safe.” He braked to a stop at a traffic light and turned to look at her. “I need to know that you’re okay, so that I can do what I have to do without being distracted—without worrying whether or not you’re in danger.”
“Please.” Nell’s husky voice broke very slightly. “Please tell me what it is that you’re going to do.”
Crash lost himself for a moment in the perfect blue of Nell’s eyes. The car behind him honked—the light had turned green and he hadn’t even noticed. He looked back at the road as he drove, wishing he had an eternity to fall into the ocean of her eyes and knowing that he only had hours left. Minutes. “A guy I know, a SEAL instructor, has a cabin in the mountains, not far from here. I know he’s not going to be using it—the latest class of candidates are going through Hell Week. This guy’s disabled and he does almost all of his teaching in a classroom, but he’s still going to be busy this week.”
“So you’re going to use his cabin to wait for Garvin to contact you?”
He glanced at her again. “Actually, I got a response from Garvin this morning. Via e-mail. He’s accepted my deal.”
“My God. Isn’t that the proof that you need? I mean, if he’s letting himself be blackmailed…”
Crash smiled. “Unfortunately he didn’t send me back a message that said. ‘Yes, I’ll pay you a quarter of a million dollars to make sure that you keep silent about the fact that I not only killed Jake Robinson but also started a war in Southeast Asia.’ No, I’ve got to go face-to-face with Garvin, try to get something he says down on tape. I need something concrete.”
“Face-to…? But he’s going to try to kill you! There’s no way he’s going to pay you all that money to be quiet when killing you guarantees your silence.”
Crash signaled to make a left turn onto the street where Cowboy lived. “I’ll be ready for him. I have enough C-4 in my bag to take out the entire mountain if I have to.”
“C-4?”
“Explosives.”
“Oh, God.”
There was a break in the oncoming traffic and Crash made the left turn into the residential neighborhood. He swore sharply as he saw the cars idling farther down the street. “Nell, kiss me, then laugh, make it big, like we’re on our way to a party. No worries.”
She didn’t hesitate. She slipped her arms around his neck, turning his head, forcing him to watch the road with only one eye as she kissed him full on the mouth. She tasted like coffee with sugar, like slow, delicious early-morning lovemaking, like paradise on earth. When she finally pulled back, she threw back her head and laughed—just as he’d asked. “Who’s watching us?” she asked, nuzzling his neck again.
He had to clear his throat before he could speak. That was such a good performance, she’d nearly fooled him. “I’m not sure exactly, but there’s at least one car that’s got to be FInCOM, one I know is NIS, and one other a little farther down the road, a little harder to pick out, that I’d bet my life savings belongs to whoever’s working for Garvin.”
She kissed him again, eve
n longer this time. “Where did they come from? Are they following us?”
“No.” He glanced in the rearview mirror. None of the cars had moved. “They’re all doing surveillance outside of Cowboy’s house—waiting for me to show up.” He swore again. “They found the one man I know I can still trust. I should’ve known they’d figure that out.”
“Is there some other way you can contact your friend? By phone or at work?”
Crash shook his head. “If they’re watching Cowboy’s house this closely, they’ve surely put a tap on his phone. And they’ll follow him to work. Besides, my goal was to bring you into his house, not just talk to him. But there’s no way that’s going to happen now.”
“So what happens now?”
“We go to Plan B.”
“Funny, I didn’t know about Plan A until minutes ago, and now we’re already onto Plan B. What’s Plan B?”
He checked the rearview mirror again before he glanced at her. “I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
AS NELL GOT AN APPLE from the car and went back across the clearing toward the cabin, she could feel Crash’s eyes on her.
She knew what he was thinking. He was wondering what on earth he was going to do with her.
It didn’t matter how many times she protested. It didn’t matter how brilliantly she argued with him. He was convinced that he needed to find some kind of haven for her, while he went one-on-one with a man they both knew had killed before to keep his secrets safe.
She sat down next to him on the cabin’s front steps. “What’s that?” He’d taken several blocks of gray, putty-colored modeling clay and several spools of wire from one of his gym bags. The clay was soft, so he was easily able to tear it into smaller chunks.
He looked up at her. “It’s C-4.”
She nearly choked on her apple. “That’s an explosive? Don’t you need to be really careful with it?”
He gave her one of his rare smiles. “No. It’s stable. I could hit it with a hammer if I wanted to. It’s no big deal.”
She tossed what was left of her apple into the woods. “I remember watching Western movies where the bank robbers all sweated bullets when they got out the nitroglycerine.”
Tall, Dark and Dangerous Vol 1: Tall, Dark and FearlessTall, Dark and Devastating Page 143