In a Bad Way

by Karin Tabke

  “I don’t know, but it wasn’t sex per se.”

  “I came, you came, that’s sex.” He rolled over onto her, his warm naked body making all kinds of suggestions to her very much aware body. “Have you ever done that with a guy?”

  “Masturbate with him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No!” Her eyes narrowed. “Have you?”

  He grinned. “No, I’ve never masturbated with a guy.”

  “With a woman!”

  “No.”

  Izzy smiled. “Correct answer.” Then she asked, “How many women have you had sex with in this bed?”

  His dark brows jammed together. “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  Exhaling, Flynn rolled over onto his back. She wasn’t letting him off the hook; she wanted to know.

  “Until tonight, zero.”

  “What? I thought you were Special Agent Stud.”

  “I don’t bring women to my house.”

  “Afraid they won’t leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are things different with me?”

  “You’re not here under romantic conditions.”

  Ouch. “I see; I’m just something to pass the time with.”

  Scowling, Flynn shook his head. “Don’t put words in my mouth. You’re here because I want you here.”

  “So you can keep an eye on me.”

  “It’s more than that, but yes.”

  “And some mutual masturbation on the side is okay?”

  He rolled back toward her. “I didn’t start this, Isa. You opened the door; I walked through, now you want to condemn me for it? Why ruin this?”

  Yes, damn it, she wanted to condemn him for it because it had meant something to her and she wanted it to mean something to him, too.

  “I don’t want to ruin it, I guess I just want to understand it.”

  “What’s to understand? We’re two healthy human beings who happen to have a crazy attraction to each other. When two people have a mutual attraction they act on it.” He ruffled her hair and kissed her nose. “I get it that sex is different for women than men, but why are you so opposed to us being intimate when it’s obvious it’s what we both want?”

  Izzy held her breath, deciding on how much of the truth she should tell him. All of it.

  “Cancer killed my mother, but she had died of a broken heart years before. I didn’t know it until years after we were kicked out that up until the night before we left, my father still went to my mom. She gave him every part of her, but all he wanted was her body. Until she died, she hoped for what he would never give her.”

  “I’m sorry,” Flynn said.

  “I am, too. My mom was a good woman. Hardworking. Orphaned at five, she lived in the streets of Mexico City until she managed to find a way north. At seventeen, she came to this country illegally, looking for a better life. My father took advantage of that.”

  Pressing his lips to the wild pulse in her neck, Flynn kissed her. “I’m not your father, Isa.” His big body moved over hers. “And you’re not your mother.”

  “I know that, but—”

  “Stop fighting it.”

  “But—”

  “Give in to it. God knows, I tried to fight it and lost,” he confessed.

  Izzy inhaled, her breasts digging into his chest. Flynn’s penis swelled against her leg. Desire shot straight to her core, catching her off guard. She stared at him. How could he affect her so deeply when she knew, knew he wasn’t going to stick around?

  The hard planes of his body tightened. His lips dropped to hers, where they hovered. “If you knew how much my dick hurt for you right now, Isa, you would let me in.”

  Her ache was just as deep. Squeezing her eyes shut, Izzy held her breath. Her body shook with want. All she had to do was open her legs and let him in. The wild rush of sensation as he filled her swept through her memory banks. Breath rushed from her lungs catching a soft moan when her hips moved, undulating softly.

  The body wanted what the body wanted. Just this once…

  Flynn took her face in his hands and as he kissed her, her body opened for him. He slid deeply into her, the sensation so sublimely erotic, tears stung her eyes.

  “Jesus, God, Isa, you feel so fucking good.”

  Suddenly she couldn’t catch her breath. Her flesh clung to him, the nerves filling with blood, pulsing wildly. In a slow grind, he seated himself deeper into her. Impaled by him, she felt panic seep into her as an orgasm flared deep within her. She was going to come and he hadn’t even—“Ahhh, Flynn,” she sobbed. Her body spasmed around him, fisting his cock tightly.

  When he moved, she cried out for him to stop. “Don’t move,” she sobbed again, digging her nails into his back as her body continued to come undone around him. “Please, please, I can’t—” she gasped, the orgasm peaking, then, like fine crystal slamming onto a stone floor and shattering, she broke into thousands of tiny pieces.

  As her body quaked beneath him, the residual waves of the orgasm spread to the tips of her toes and the ends of her fingers. The scope of the orgasm and how, with virtually no effort on Flynn’s part, she had come like a sex-starved slave shook her to her foundation. He hadn’t moved a muscle since she begged him not to. He was granite hard inside of her.

  What had she done? Terror gripped her. She couldn’t draw a breath.

  “Pink?” he said, “You okay?”

  “No,” she sobbed, pushing his chest. “I need to go. I can’t do this.”

  Flynn shook his head, still not moving as she slid from beneath him and ran from the room to hers, slamming the door behind her.

  She had knowingly and willfully trapped herself in the same prison her mother had been trapped in. She had become an addict. A slave to Flynn’s body. The depths of her desire for him terrified her. Not just his body, but his heart and soul.

  The door flew open. “What the hell just happened?” Flynn demanded.

  Izzy turned around to face him. He stood furious in his naked glory at the threshold. Every inch of his hard body screamed sex. His cock glistened with her wetness.

  “I need you to leave me alone,” she cried, pulling the sheet off the bed and wrapping it around her nakedness.

  “I need you to tell me what the fuck is going on, Isadora!”

  “I don’t know!” she screamed hysterically. “I don’t know! I’m just—I can’t—” Petrified is what she was. Her emotions out of control. She was being irrational, she knew. Schizoid was a better term. One minute she was screaming Flynn’s name as he gave her a momentous orgasm and the next minute furious with him that she had enjoyed it.

  “How could you take advantage of me like that?” she demanded.

  “What?”

  “You knew how vulnerable I was,” she accused.

  “Hold on a minute, you seduced me for Christ’s sake! What did you think I was going to do? Ignore you?”

  “You should have resisted me!” He was the one without feelings. Not her.

  Jamming his fingers through his hair, he looked at her like she was crazy. Because she was. “Do you know how impossible that is?”

  “You’re the one with all the experience, Flynn,” she sobbed. “You know how I feel. You should have stopped it.”

  “What about how I feel? Did you ever consider I might have something to say about this?”

  “You have no feelings!” she cried accusingly. “You just take and take, giving nothing back. Just like my father did to my mother!”

  He nodded. “Okay, you’re right. I don’t give a shit about anything except fucking you.”

  He walked to the door and grasping the knob, he said, “And now, I officially don’t give a shit about that either.”

  He slammed the door shut behind him. Izzy threw herself on the bed and cried.

  Chapter Thirty

  The storm that continued outside had nothing on the storm that raged within Flynn. Standing at his window, he watched as a car pulled up in front of his hous
e and before it came to a complete stop, Pink ran out to it.

  He didn’t run after her. He didn’t try to tell himself it was better this way because it wasn’t. If it was, the yearning for her would be gone. He wanted her, damn it. Here, in his bed. On his terms, not hers.

  He was hurting. He wanted to be where Pink was. Flynn realized it didn’t matter where that place was as long as she was beside him. Her energy infused him. Made him feel like Superman.

  Swiping his hand across his face, Flynn backed away from the window. He walked down the hall to the room that was still warm with Pink’s scent. Picking up the sheet from the rumpled bed, he pressed it to his face. As he inhaled her sweet bubble gum scent, his dick thickened. He’d fucked it up good. Just like he knew he would.

  He knew she had been confused, afraid, all of the things that go along with the fear of being emotionally wrecked. He recognized those same emotions in himself. Instead of pulling her into his arms and admitting he felt all of those things, too, he’d made sure she’d never want anything to do with him again. Pushed her away with lies.

  He looked around the room, every trace of her removed except her scent. It was hours away from sunrise, he should go to bed, but he knew he wouldn’t sleep.

  He grabbed his cell phone from his nightstand. There was a text from Maddox: Package safely delivered.

  Thnx Flynn texted back.

  When Maddox had called him over an hour ago and told him Pink had called, begging him to pick her up, Flynn stood down and let him. Away from him she was safe from him hurting her more.

  As he poured himself a cup of coffee, Flynn looked down at the trashcan. The pink daisy he had bought when he thought he’d never see Pink again was in pieces at the bottom where she must have thrown it on her way out. He reached down and picked up the fragments of the clay pot and wilting petals. Gently he set them down on the buffet. There was no putting them back together. The pot was in too many pieces and the stem torn from the root base.

  The irony struck him and with it he made a decision. Once this case was closed and Pink no longer in danger, he was putting in for a transfer. He was due. He’d spent the last several years in the Oakland field office and had begun to feel antsy since last year. Meeting Pink had put the brakes on his urge to move on, but for both their sakes it would be the best thing. Out of sight, out of mind. He would do his thing and she would go to law school and do her thing.

  Why, he wondered as he sat down at his desk, didn’t that make him feel any better? Booting up his laptop, Flynn sipped his coffee. He trusted the task force guys to do their job, but he didn’t trust them to watch out for Pink like he would. To that end, he would watch over her, but from afar and she would never know. There was peace for him in that.

  When his cell phone vibrated, his stomach flipped. Was it Pink? Had she changed her mind?

  It was Maddox.

  “Ryker,” he said.

  “Miroslav Bushnik just touched down at a private airstrip in Marin. Word has it he’s meeting up with Sorlov at the club tonight to pick up girls. I’m telling you this, Flynn, as a courtesy because Miss Fuentes has agreed to go in tonight and plant the bug on him.”

  Flynn clenched his phone so tight his knuckles hurt.

  “You there, Ryker?”

  “I’m not sitting this one out,” Flynn said. The last thing Flynn wanted was for Pink to go back to Surf’s Up. Maybe if he hadn’t let her go, she’d listen to him, but he knew how determined she was to find her sister and how stubborn she could be. He didn’t stand a chance. All he could do was stay close and protect her.

  “As long as you don’t make her, we welcome the extra eyes and hands.”

  “Any evidence that the sister was shipped off?” Flynn asked. It was his worst fear.

  “A few bits of info trickling in, but nothing concrete. In all probability she went out with the shipment three months ago.”

  “So what’s the plan to get her back?”

  “We’ve got eyes and ears everywhere, Flynn, but we keep hitting walls. Sorlov’s network has infiltrated every department in the state. He’s got more money than the California budget.”

  “I think Chastain’s daughter might have seen or heard something she shouldn’t have. If that’s the case, she wasn’t shipped off, she was offed.” As Flynn vocalized what had been niggling at him from the beginning, his stomach churned. How could he tell Pink her sister was dead? He wouldn’t, unless he had indisputable proof.

  “You’re probably right. It makes Miss Fuentes all the more valuable to us. She’s smart, Flynn, and willing to do what has to be done to see this thing through.”

  “And you’re just chomping at the bit to throw her to the wolves, aren’t you?”

  “Have some confidence in me, man. I care about what happens to her just as much as you do.”

  “Not even close, Maddox, not even close.”

  Flynn hit the end icon and tossed his phone onto the desk. Jealousy and worry ate at him. Had Pink gotten under Maddox’s skin, too? Was he there with her now? Consoling her?

  Swiping his hand across his face, Flynn headed down the hall to his gym. The heavy bag had Maddox’s name on it today, and it was going to get its ass kicked.

  Later that evening when Izzy stepped out from the hotel, she was surprised to find Maddox leaning against a concrete column near the roundabout.

  “I thought I was supposed to go about business as usual?” she said. “For me that’s taking BART into the city.” Not that she was complaining. The minute she laid eyes on him, relief flooded her. She was still emotionally raw from her encounter with Flynn. Shaky and unsure of herself in a way she had never been before.

  From the day her mother died, Izzy knew exactly what she wanted. With tunnel vision focus, nothing had gotten in her way of achieving her goal of a degree, then getting accepted to Stanford Law. Once she made the decision to find Alex, nothing had stood in her way. Until she met Flynn. Then everything she had worked so hard for didn’t seem to matter any more.

  Part of her was so angry she could spit; the other part of her was so depressed she didn’t care if she woke up tomorrow morning. She’d never felt more alone than she did when she’d gotten into Maddox’s car this morning, looked up and saw Flynn’s silhouette in the window. He knew she was leaving him and he let her go. All hope was gone.

  “I’m not letting you out of my sight, so get used to seeing me,” Maddox called to her.

  Izzy couldn’t help but smile. He looked funny in the black spike wig and bright Hawaiian shirt. He was also wearing white shorts and tennis shoes. She gave him a long appraising look. “It’s a good thing you have nice legs, otherwise you’d totally look redic.”

  “I’ll fit right in with the regulars.” He escorted her to a nondescript Taurus.

  As they drove over the bridge, Izzy said, “I appreciate the ride, but I could have taken BART.”

  “It’s no problem. I live in Berkeley and was going your way.”

  She was more than a little nervous about tonight. Not only would she have to face Andre for the first time in nearly a week, but she also had to get close enough to a very dangerous man to plant a listening device on him. “Are you going to be there all night?”

  “I’ll be watching you like a hawk over a spring chicken every second you’re in there.”

  “Thank you.”

  Pointing to the cup holder, Maddox said, “The bug is in that envelope. All you have to do it take it out and slip it into Bushnik’s pant’s pocket.”

  Izzy picked up the postage-stamp sized white envelope and slipped it into her bag.

  “Before we get there,” Maddox continued, “I’d like to go over a few things with you so we’re on the same page.”

  “Okay,” she said, keeping her voice casual. It was hard not to let the fear creep into her voice. She could admit to herself she was scared. No, more like terrified being a pawn in this subtle game of cat and mouse, in which if she made the wrong move, she could be off the board.
Permanently.

  “First, let’s establish a distress signal.”

  “A sign for when I feel threatened?”

  “Exactly. It also applies to any info you think I should immediately be made aware of. For example, if you recognize any of the men in the photos we went over earlier, including Bushnik, I want to know pronto.”

  “Okay, how about if I rub the back of my neck like this?” She rubbed her right hand behind her neck and realized as she did that it was shaking. Making a fist, she set her hand in her lap. If Maddox knew how nervous she was, he might pull her and that was the last thing she wanted.

  “Perfect.”

  “Andre is going to be angry when I don’t give him the thumb drive.”

  “We’re aware of that, but it can’t be helped. For reasons unknown, we haven’t gotten the clearance to use it, so we’re going to use what we have, the device for Bushnik.” Maddox looked over at her, his eyes serious. “If you feel that you are in any peril at all, Miss Fuentes, remove yourself from the situation or signal me and I’ll remove you.”

  “My name is Isadora.”

  “Isadora, promise me you won’t try to be the hero.”

  “If I leave, then we all lose.”

  “We’ll find another way.”

  “Now you sound like Flynn.” Just saying his name made her tear up. For the hundredth time today, her heart broke when she thought of what could have been. The two of them together would have been epic.

  “He’s a smart guy. If he hadn’t been sitting on your place the other night, I guarantee you, we would not be having this or any other conversation right now.”

  Shivering, realizing once again how close she had come to dying, Izzy rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “I’m forever in his debt.”

  Maddox nodded as they exited the bridge.

  “How long have you known Flynn?” Izzy couldn’t help asking. Despite everything that had transpired, she wanted to know more about him.

  “A few years.”

  “Is he always so… distant?”

  Maddox glanced over at her. “He’s pretty intense. Damn good at what he does, though.”

  “He is that,” she said, mostly to herself.