by Tee O'Fallon
Trista’s fingers finally stilled as she intently read whatever article she’d pulled up. He took a few steps closer and froze. Every muscle in his body tightened as he read the familiar headline: Local Teen Dies in Fire.
Annoyance flared in his gut, and he balled his hands at the realization she’d cyberstalked him. The last thing he wanted was for her to learn about the absolute worst part of his life. Or discover that it was still an integral part of him, one that occasionally had him waking in the middle of the night drenched in sweat and shaking so violently his teeth chattered.
“Oh, Matt,” she whispered, then covered her mouth with her hand.
That did it. He could take her derision at what he’d done. Even her disgust. But he couldn’t stand her pity.
“So now you know.”
Whipping her head around, she gasped, her eyes glossy with unshed tears.
“Sheba, kemne.” As he left the room, the dog scrambled to her feet, her nails clicking on the hardwood floor behind him.
“Matt,” Trista called out. “Matt, wait!”
Ignoring her, he strode out the kitchen door into the backyard, grabbing a tennis ball from the grass. Whenever he thought of that horrific night twenty years ago, he felt trapped, and the only things that helped him get past it were fresh air and working with a dog.
Beside him, Sheba cavorted, excited at the prospect of playing fetch. Before the ball even left his hand, she bolted, running at breakneck speed. The ball landed about fifty yards in front of her. She gave chase, grabbed the ball in her jaws, then spun and bounded back in his direction. God, he loved watching her run. The animal was beauty and grace personified, and packed into the most amazing athletic body.
Dropping the ball at his feet, she wagged her tail, her entire body quivering with excitement as he picked it up and heaved it again. He’d known Trista was behind him, but he stiffened as she laid a hand on his back. It wasn’t that her touch angered him. Hardly. It felt good, comforting, even, but he didn’t deserve her touch, and he didn’t deserve to be comforted.
Fuck. He did want her touch, wanted it badly and in every way possible. But not like this. He wanted to enjoy it without an ounce of guilt, and he doubted that could ever happen.
“Matt, I’m sorry.” Her hand fell away. “I just wanted to know what happened. I didn’t mean to make you angry.”
In the distance, Sheba grabbed the ball and spun back toward them. “You have nothing to be sorry for. It’s public information.” Unable to bear the look of sympathy in her beautiful green eyes, he turned and strode toward the other building.
Sheba quickly caught up to him, but Trista was unable to keep pace. He flung open the door and Sheba bounded inside, dropping the ball on the floor and darting around the many desks and chairs, her tail in the air as she gave the place a thorough sniffing.
Hearing Trista’s footfalls as she entered the classroom, he sat on the edge of a desk and crossed his arms, facing away from the door. The rage eating him up inside was directed at himself for fucking up his life. Knowing what she knew now, Trista would never look at him the same way. She would see him for the fuck-up that he was.
The asshole that had gotten his best friend killed.
She stood in front of him, silhouetted by the white instructional board on the wall behind her. Sheba padded to her side and sat, and for a split second, he wanted to laugh at how easily and naturally Trista dropped her hand to the dog’s head, as if she’d been doing it all her life.
“I’m sorry.” Her fingers absently stroked Sheba’s ears, and the dog leaned into it. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Forget it,” he said. “You’re an intelligence specialist. Looking shit up is what you do.”
“You were just a boy.” Her tone was so sympathetic it grated on his nerves. “So was Jerry.”
“That doesn’t excuse what I did.” Unable to meet her gaze, he looked past her, focusing on the row of thick, padded bite suits hanging on the wall.
“It was an accident,” she countered.
“It happened because we were drunk.” Beneath his folded arms, he clenched his hands tighter. “We were two stupid kids, drunk off our asses and daring each other to do stupid things.”
“Tell me.” She took a step closer, and with him sitting and her standing, they were almost at eye level. “I’d like to know.”
As he stared into her clear green eyes, the thick, hardened shell surrounding his past cracked wide open, and he wanted to tell her everything. Why? Why her? Never once had he told any of his girlfriends about what had happened. Not that she was his girlfriend. The answer to his question hit him with the force of a battering ram. He cared what she thought of him.
“Now I understand.” She looked around the room. “Jerry’s Place. What you’re doing here is an incredible achievement. Not everyone could survive such a terrible accident and manage to create something so constructive and wonderful from it.”
Gone was the sympathy in her tone, replaced by something equally annoying. Admiration. He was no one to be admired, that was for sure. She needed to hear it. All of it.
He took a deep breath, then held it a moment before letting it out. “It was Jerry’s birthday, and we wanted to celebrate. We were sixteen but looked older. Old enough to have a set of pretty good fake IDs and buy a six-pack and a pint of Jack. We started out with the beer, then moved on to the hard stuff. That’s when our brains went to shit.”
Sensing his pain, Sheba inched forward to rest her head against his thigh.
“Jerry knew I wanted to be a cop,” he continued, ashamed that he’d managed to fulfill his dream but his best friend hadn’t. “He dared me to sneak into a police station and steal a uniform, so I did. Jerry told me he wanted to be a fireman, and I told him he couldn’t put out a fire to save his own ass, let alone anyone else’s. We relocated our drunk-fest to the nearest park, and the next thing I knew, he’d doused an old storage building with gasoline and lit it up.”
Pausing, he ran a hand through his hair. Despite being totally plastered at the time, he could still recall the vivid images of what had happened next.
“Jerry was so plastered he didn’t realize how much gas he’d doused himself with, and his clothes caught fire. His entire body burst into flames. I tried getting up, but I was so goddamn hammered myself I kept falling on my ass. When I finally got to him, I shoved him to the ground, trying to roll him and smother the flames, but it was too late. He died in the hospital, and it was my fault. My fucking fault. So don’t admire me for erecting this place. I didn’t do it because I’m a good person. I did it out of guilt.”
But he still felt unworthy and probably always would.
Moving to stand between his parted legs, she cupped the side of his face. “It doesn’t matter why you built Jerry’s Place. What matters is that it’s here, and soon it will be up and running, ready to help kids who need it. I don’t need to tell you, you can’t change the past. But you can change the future and make it better for others, which is exactly what you’re doing.” The hand against his face was cool and comforting. “Building this place was the easy part. Finding a way to live with the past is going to be a lot harder, but you have to try because it’s eating you up inside. I’m guessing you don’t think you deserve to be happy, but you do. Jerry wouldn’t want you to suffer like this.”
Matt gazed into her eyes, and for a moment, he could envision what it would be like to be happy again. As soon as he did, the image sparked and caught fire, burning to black ash. Closing his eyes, he exhaled through his mouth. The next thing he felt were Trista’s arms around him, urging his head to rest in the crook of her neck.
One hand gently stroked the top of his head while her other massaged the tense muscles of his back. When she dropped a light kiss on his head, he wrapped his arms around her, spreading his legs wider so he could pull her slim body even closer. He breathed in the shampoo she’d used to wash her hair and the soap she’d undoubtedly rubbed over her smooth, soft
skin. Her full breasts pushed against his chest, stirring an urgent need that zinged straight to his groin. But there was something deeper at work here. In the twenty years since Jerry’s death, he’d never known a single moment of real peace, but he was finding it now. In her arms.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, he sighed. And when she pulled back and gazed down at him with parted lips, he kissed her.
Slipping his tongue inside, he tasted her sweetness, savored it, craving more. Angling his head, he slanted his mouth, rubbing his lips gently across hers. Her fingers sifted through his hair, leaving a trail of tingles on his scalp that spread lower until he felt a discernible pressure against the zipper of his khakis.
Moaning lightly, she opened her mouth, urging him to deepen the kiss. Her tongue met his with an astounding expertise, swirling and tasting him as much as he’d tasted her.
He slid his hands lower, gripping her ass, hauling her against his now-full erection while he shifted his kisses to a sensitive spot just below her ear. When she arched her neck, the tops of her mounded breasts peaked out above the V-neck of her shirt.
It was a temptation he’d be a fool to resist.
Matt slipped his hand along her rib cage to caress one breast, then he slid his hand to her other breast, feeling her heart thudding wildly, matching the tempo of his own. In her eyes, he glimpsed pure, unabashed passion, and in that moment, he’d never wanted a woman more.
He bent his head, dropping kisses on the lush mounds, caressing both of her breasts before flicking at the hardened nipples with his thumbs. Vaguely, he heard another groan, this one canine as Sheba lay down on the hard concrete floor, clearly disappointed at no longer being the center of anyone’s attention.
Just as he slipped one hand under her shirt, his cell phone rang. “Dammit.” Now it was his turn to groan, as he reluctantly released Trista to tug the phone from his belt. It was Jake’s name on the screen. “Hello,” he heard himself growl.
“Hey, buddy,” Jake said. “Sorry to bother you on a Sunday, but…”
Whatever Jake said next, Matt didn’t hear, because Trista had her lips on his neck and was inching her way to his ear. When she got there, her tongue began doing amazing things, invading every groove with hot, wet heat and making the pressure between his legs grow to painful extremes.
Holy hell! Where did she learn to do that? He didn’t really want to know because the idea of her doing it to anyone else had him gritting his teeth.
“Can you hear me?” Jake shouted in his ear.
“Uh, no.” He reluctantly eased away from Trista, giving her a playful grin. “You must have blanked out for a second.”
“I said, he’s dead.”
Matt stiffened. “Who’s dead?”
“Viktor Solonik. The Russian who tried to kill Trista.”
Chapter Seventeen
When Matt pulled his truck around to the back door, Nick helped her inside, handing up the overnight bag she’d quickly packed at Matt’s direction. They were heading to Charlotte, North Carolina, a six-hour drive.
Early this morning, the man who’d tried to kill her—Viktor Solonik—had been found floating in the Potomac, his throat sliced. With the Russian thug dead, Matt had told her his theory that whoever was pulling the strings was tying up loose ends. Since Solonik had botched the job twice, the man had turned into a liability.
The reporter still hadn’t returned Matt’s calls, so they’d decided to take a road trip. Totally against CIA orders.
Sheba poked her head through the open window between the passenger compartment and the back of the truck. Lifting her hand to pet the dog’s head, she realized the animal’s presence was reassuring. Between Matt and Sheba, she felt very well-protected.
“I’ll check in at six,” Matt said to the other man.
“You sure you don’t wanna leave her here with us?” Nick gave Matt a cocky grin. “We love the pixie’s company.”
Matt scowled. “Not a chance in hell.”
Nick threw his head back and laughed. “That’s what I thought. But seriously…” His expression sobered. “Be careful.”
“Will do.”
“Thank you for taking care of Poofy while I’m gone,” Trista said to Nick. “I left kibble and plenty of cans of wet food. He likes to be combed once a day, and—”
“Honey, I got this.” Nick stretched a long muscled arm through the open passenger window and rested his hand on her shoulder. “I have the two-page instructions you left me. I’ll take good care of him. It’s only overnight. He’ll be fine. I promise.” Before removing his hand, he gave her a quick wink.
Glancing at Matt sitting beside her, she noticed his scowl had deepened. What was up with that?
“Later,” Matt said as he cranked the gearshift and the truck began rolling along the grass back toward the driveway. “Stay down until we’re on the main road.”
She lay down on the bench seat with her head touching Matt’s thigh. Something hard dug into her scalp, and she realized it was his gun hidden beneath his untucked shirt.
Directly above her, Sheba stretched her head down, the dog’s black nostrils flaring as she sniffed the air above Trista’s face.
Matt checked the rearview mirror more than once, and they weren’t even on the highway yet. The look on his face was all cop. Funny, but she was getting used to it.
The muscles in his thigh bunched as he gunned the truck onto the road. From her position, she also had a mouth-watering view of his arms. As he turned the wheel, his biceps and the muscles in his forearms rippled and flexed, and she imagined running her fingers over all that firm, steely strength. Even the scars didn’t detract from his masculine beauty, although the way he’d gotten them certainly explained why he’d gone off on her about what fire could do to the human body.
Earlier, in the classroom when he’d kissed her, she’d only just begun to touch him. Even with all that coiled power, he’d been unexpectedly gentle. His lips had been soft, his fingers branding her skin, making her body quiver with anticipation of what it would be like to make love with this man.
“You can get up now.”
When she did, he braked to a stop at a traffic light, then picked up his phone and hit redial. The reporter’s voicemail picked up again, and Matt ended the call. When the light turned green, he gunned the truck toward the on-ramp.
“Maybe he’s screening his calls,” she suggested.
“Maybe.” He glanced in his side-view mirror, then merged onto the highway.
“Let me try.” She grabbed the phone and quickly hit redial before the phone locked up.
“Put it on speaker. If he answers, give me the phone.”
After tapping the speaker symbol, the phone rang four times before Thomas George’s recorded voicemail kicked in.
“This is Thomas George. I can’t answer the phone right now. Please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you.”
A beep sounded, and for a moment Trista didn’t say anything. Matt reached for the phone, but she swiveled in the seat so he couldn’t reach it.
“Mr. George, my name is Trista Gold.” Beside her, Matt shot her a dark scowl, his lips pressing into a hard line. To say he wasn’t pleased that she’d identified herself was an understatement. Too late now. “I’m a CIA intelligence analyst at Langley, and there’s something you should know. Someone tried to kill me because of something I discovered, and I think you might also be in danger. Please, when you get this message, call me back right away, and I’ll explain more.”
“Hello,” a man’s voice came from the phone.
Trista gripped the phone tighter. “Mr. George?”
“Yes,” he answered. “What exactly do you want to explain?”
Matt gave her a quick nod.
“Part of my job entails monitoring online communications involving Russian operatives here in the U.S.”
“What does that have to do with me?” George asked in a suspicious tone.
“I don’t know,” she answered truthf
ully. “You were mentioned in a black net chat room as having discovered something that could ruin everything.” She emphasized the last words. “Does that mean anything to you?” Her question was met with silence. She waited several seconds longer, worried he’d hung up. “Mr. George, are you there?”
More silence, but shuffling sounds came through, telling her they were still connected.
“I’m worried for your safety,” she continued. “These people are Russian operatives, and they said you had to be taken care of.” Again, she emphasized the last words, hoping to get through to the man. “Are you working on a story that has something to do with the Russian government?”
“No,” he answered immediately, followed by a lengthy pause. “But I am working on a story. Something big. Something extraordinarily big.”
“What?” She glanced at Matt. His eyes were focused on the road, but she knew he was listening intently. “Mr. George, someone tried to kill me over this. Twice. We think you could be next.”
An audible exhale came through the speaker, followed by more silence. “Not over the phone. I’ll meet you in person, but come alone.”
The truck’s dashboard indicated it was eleven a.m., and they had nearly six hours of driving ahead of them. “Five o’clock today? Your place?”
“No. There’s a coffee shop on the corner of Central and Louise avenues. I’ll meet you there.”
“Be care—”
The phone beeped, indicating he’d hung up.
Unable to stop herself, she grinned and grabbed Matt’s shoulder. His muscles were tense, the stark, savage beauty of his profile made more so by the clenching of his jaw.
When he glanced at her, his eyes blazed with anger. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“Do what?” She stared at him, wide-eyed and confused. “I just made contact with that reporter. Not even you managed that.”
“That’s not the point,” he said, his jaw clenched. “You gave him your name after I expressly told you not to. We don’t know what the hell is really going on here, and we don’t know if this guy’s phone is being monitored by the Russians, the CIA, or Bugs Bunny. You just identified yourself and announced to anyone listening exactly where you’ll be at five o’clock.”