“They’re going to kill you!” I yelled.
“Anna, they’re going to protect me.”
“Not the FBI!” I shook free of his grasp and pummeled his chest. “Maxim Stein. Bobby. They probably got rid of Charlotte, and when they find out what you’ve done, they’re going to get rid of you and me next.”
“Anna.” He wrapped me in a bear hug, so tightly I could barely breathe. One of his strong arms latched behind my shoulders, the other crossed my lower back. He held me until the shaking finally stopped.
“Baby,” he said in a hard, quiet voice I’d never heard before. “They’re not going to touch you. I’ll die before they hurt you, understand?”
I closed my eyes, burying my face in his chest.
“You can’t die,” I said. “I won’t let you.”
That broke him. He chuckled softly. The sound made me that much more afraid. How he could be so calm right now was beyond me.
I pushed back, and reluctantly, he let me go.
“You hid all of this from me.”
This wasn’t a simple omission. He was tangled up in the FBI now, and playing a very dangerous game that could mean jail or worse. After everything I’d heard tonight, I had no doubts Maxim Stein was capable of really hurting him—us. How could I trust Alec after this?
“I wanted to keep you out of it. If you had found out, you’d be culpable.” He cleared his throat. “I never wanted you to have to carry my burden.”
He didn’t apologize for being protective, and somehow this smoothed some of the sharp emotions raging through me. His concern was staggering. There was no question in my mind that he wanted to keep me safe.
“You didn’t even give me the choice.”
He nodded slowly. “The truth is I couldn’t let you go. I love you, Anna. You’re it for me. I knew I was done the moment I saw you in your car outside Max’s house.”
I stood before him, unable to move. The room was too quiet, my thoughts, too loud. He loved me. He’d hidden the truth to protect me, hidden his past because he was afraid I would turn him away. Alec Flynn was a good man in a bad place, fighting to change the course of his life because he loved me.
“Who said anything about letting me go?” I asked.
One brow arched. “What?”
I took a step back, then another, slowly stretching the space between us until my heel hit the tinted glass wall that faced my apartment across the street. I leaned against it, the way I had leaned against my window the night I’d met him.
My thumb skimmed inside the waistband of my borrowed sweatpants. Ten feet away, his fingers began drumming against his thigh.
“Is there anything else?” I asked. “Any other life-changing bits of information I should know about?”
“I . . .” His gaze lowered to my mouth, leading me to lick my lips. “I love vanilla ice cream,” he said. “And you’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen.”
I smiled. He took a step closer.
He wasn’t smiling.
“No more lies,” I told him.
His movements were graceful. Strong. He moved with a confidence contrary to the uncertainty in his eyes. He didn’t believe that I would still love him, want him, after what he’d told me.
But I did.
“No more lies,” he agreed.
“You hurt me,” I said. “And you scared me. And worst of all, you left me wondering what had happened to you. You can’t do that to me.”
“I’ll spend every day making up for it,” he said. “I swear to you, Anna.”
I believed him.
“What happens now?” The heat was rising in my veins.
Another step. Another.
“I can think of a few things.”
I longed for his touch. My whole body burned for it.
“It was you,” I whispered. “I was fantasizing about you the night you watched me.”
He was close now. His hands slid beneath my T-shirt and closed on either side of my waist, fingers spanning over my ribs. I felt small in his grasp, delicate, but powerful too, because there was no hiding the desire that tightened his features.
“Tell me what I was doing,” he said. “How did I touch you?”
We shouldn’t have been doing this. Not now when so much was happening. Alec should have been with the FBI, and maybe I should have been there with him. But one look at him, and I knew that would have to wait.
My hips pushed forward, moved by an uncontrollable need to be closer. I closed my eyes. With him touching me, everything else faded into the background. Charlotte. Bobby and Maxim. A curtain slid over them, hiding them from view.
“You wanted me so badly,” I said. “No one had ever wanted me so much.”
His breath came in one hard rush, and then his mouth was on my neck, his tongue rasping over my skin. His hands dipped below the elastic waistband, curving around my bare bottom and crushing me to him. I rode his muscular thigh, the pressure teasing my sex. His cock twitched against my stomach, hard and heavy.
“Tell me,” he growled.
“You touched me.”
“How?” When I hesitated, he lifted me higher on his thigh. My hips writhed uncontrollably. “How?” he demanded.
“You put your fingers inside of me.” I turned my head away. “You spread my legs wide, and while you touched me, your mouth was here.” I rubbed my tight nipples. “Then here.” I lowered my hand between my breasts to my now very wet center.
His hand rose up my chest, weighed one breast, then circled the peak with the rough pad of his thumb. I groaned.
“Alec.”
“Keep going.” He stretched the collar of my T-shirt, revealing my shoulder. His teeth scraped the top of my breast, making me jump.
“You made me crazy.” I panted.
I clung to the window as he pushed me back. My feet flattened on the cold floor. A moment later he was easing down my sweatpants, exposing my damp skin to the cool air. My muscles quivered as a flash of heat seared through my belly.
He kneeled before me, and the sight of him there, looking up at me with such devotion made my knees buckle. He caught me, steadied me against the window, while he planted one tender kiss below my belly button. Then another lower, and another below that, until he was gently spreading my legs and worshipping me with long, leisurely strokes of his tongue.
My cheek turned against the cool glass, and though the windows were tinted, someone outside looking in could have been able to see us the way Alec had seen me that first night. He was living out his fantasy, just as I was living out mine, and the realization of this made me that much more desperate for him.
The slow pace became torturous. I longed for speed, the flash of fire. But like always, he was perfectly in tune with what my body needed. With one firm suction from his mouth on my clit, I fell off the cliff I hadn’t even seen coming, landing in a churning pool of sensation. The current pulled at me, lashed at me, had me gasping while my fingers fisted his hair. The only things holding me up were the hard glass and his fingers, still deep inside me.
As the world righted itself, he stood, still massaging my tender inner flesh.
“What else did I do?” His voice was no more than a rough whisper.
My breathing had yet to slow. “You fucked me up against the window.”
I heard his pants unzip.
“Slow at first,” I said. “And deep. Like . . .” I gasped as his hard cock came to rest on my thigh. “Like you couldn’t get close enough.”
He moved my arms around his neck. Pressed my body against the window with his. I was soft in all the places he was hard, and we fit together like two pieces of a puzzle.
“I need you,” he murmured. “I’m not whole without you.”
“You went faster. I came with you inside of me,” I said, flushed and ready. “I’d never felt that before, but you knew what to do.”
“Because your body was made for me,” he said. “Because I was made for you.”
“Yes.” I finally
opened my eyes, and kissed him with everything I had, everything that had been building up over the last hours. Our lips crushed against each other. He devoured me. Claimed me, just as I claimed him.
My heart was beating hard, beating for him, and I was desperate to fill the hole he’d left there.
He lowered, and his cock grazed over my tender skin as he slid into position. I could feel his hot, steely head nudging at my entrance, and his heart hammering against mine. Nothing was more right than this.
“I missed you,” I said.
He lifted me, and I clung to him, ready for that glorious impalement. The stretch, the fire, and our mutual destruction.
“I love you, Anna.”
I blinked, needing to watch his face as he filled me. But something changed in his eyes. A glint of light, a reflection, that tore him away from me. His gaze was fixed on something beyond the glass. It was so intent I turned my head to see what he was looking at.
A light in my apartment had come on.
Thirty-two
In a flash, he’d jerked me away from the glass. I was still wrapped around him, hoisted off the ground, although his grip around my hips and back had ratcheted so tight I could barely breathe.
“Melvin?” I asked. Would he seriously come back to my place after all that had happened?
“Still in the hospital,” Alec answered quickly. For a fraction of a second I wondered how he could know that, but I dismissed the thought as fast as it had come. He’d known the moment Melvin Herman had shown up at my work. Of course he was keeping tabs on him now.
Alec set me down, then tucked himself back into his pants and swiped my sweats off the floor. He kept me behind him, in the shadows.
A dark figure moved across the apartment, making me bite back a scream. It was hard to see details—the only light on was the lamp near the front door. Crouching low, I strained my eyes across the distance, feeling a bolt of anger as my dresser was knocked on its side.
“Son of a bitch,” I said. I searched for my phone to call the police but realized I’d left it in my purse in the car.
“Stay here,” said Alec.
I stared at him incredulously. “You’re not going over there.”
My bed was overturned. The mattress slapped against the glass and then disappeared from view.
“Stay away from the window,” he said. “I’ll be back soon.”
“No.” I grabbed his arm, panic prickling up my spine. “Wait. What if it’s Bobby? He’s dangerous, Alec.”
“He’s not the only one.”
His teeth glinted in the reflection of the streetlights. It was the kind of smirk that made me nervous in all the wrong ways.
“We need to call the police!”
Alec was already striding toward the stairs. “Even if they arrest him, he’ll be out by the end of the night.”
“And if it’s not him?”
“Then it’s your landlord,” Alec said. “Your alarm’s programmed to send an alert to my cell phone if someone tries to break in. Only the three of us know your entry code.”
I pictured my landlord, an old Spanish man with long silver hair. No, this was definitely not him.
Alec registered the concern on my face and kissed me on the brow.
“I’m going to get what I need to end this,” he said.
A confession. If Bobby said he’d had more to do with Charlotte’s death, then this would be over. I didn’t know if he had the FBI wire, but he didn’t seem concerned about it.
He kissed me once more on the mouth and then ran to the stairwell. Heart racing, I sprinted to the darkest corner of the window where I wouldn’t be seen and knelt on the tile, peering across the way. A moment later Alec appeared on the street. He stopped at his car, opened the passenger-side door and leaned in. A silver handgun caught the light as he tucked it into the back of his waistband.
“Shit,” I hissed.
Alec ran across the street, and by the time he’d disappeared inside the stairwell beside the Chinese restaurant, I’d chewed my thumbnail down to the quick.
“Come on, Alec,” I said. “Get in and get out.”
A noise behind me drew my attention. It was probably just somebody downstairs in the restaurant. They were in full swing now; I could see the hostess greeting patrons who walked through the oversize front doors.
I turned back to the window. Someone was still inside my apartment, but the light had turned off. Had Alec done that? Was he trying to catch the intruder by surprise?
Another noise behind me—a clang on the stairs. Someone was coming up. I jumped to my feet and cursed the open room. There was nowhere to hide but the restrooms on the opposite wall near the exit.
It could have been Alec—he might have thought better about his plan and come back, slipping across the street when I’d been distracted by the first noise—but I couldn’t take any chances. Barefoot, I ran for the restrooms, trying to keep my steps quiet. But before I’d reached my destination, the hallway door swung open to reveal a muscular man in a black hooded sweatshirt and jeans. He pushed the hood of his sweatshirt back, showing his buzzed hair and sharp features.
My gaze dropped to the gun in his right hand.
“Anna,” said Bobby. “I’d say I’m surprised to see you here, but that wouldn’t be true.”
I took a step back, a cold fire coursing through me. Was Alec still across the street? Would he realize Bobby was here when he found my apartment empty?
“Are those your clothes?” He assessed the borrowed T-shirt and sweats Alec had given me with a look of disappointment. “I’ve got to say, you’ve looked hotter.”
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I’m glad you asked that.” He moved toward me with a little too much pep in his step. “I’m here for you, Anna. It’s time you and I spent a little quality time together.”
“How’d you know I was here?” I had to keep him talking. That was one of the things my dad had always told me. Keep them talking, get them to lower their guard, then strike when they least expect it.
I sidestepped, trying to keep my moves subtle in hopes that I could skirt past him. He juked in front of me, more agile than I ever would have expected for a slab of meat.
“I was waiting for you to come home,” he said. “You two sure took your sweet time.”
“Well, you know,” I said. “Places to go. People to see.”
He laughed. Deliberately, he cradled the gun, and started flicking his thumb over the safety.
“We have to go,” he said. “There are things we need to do, and this isn’t the place for it.”
I shivered. It was now or never.
I whipped my head to the side, as if I’d heard something to my right. Bobby followed my gaze and in that instant I bolted for the door. With a grunt, he swung back in my direction and snagged my arm. It threw me off balance and sent me careening into a stone pillar. I fell to my knees, the pain ricocheting up my thighs. Before I could rise, he’d hit me on the side of the head with his fist.
The world spun. I blinked, and the decorative tiles made a kaleidoscope pattern before my eyes. A searing pain lit up the back of my skull as he lifted me by my braided hair. I siphoned in a quick breath and kicked out as hard as I could, aiming for his balls. Instead, I got his knee, and with a grunt of pain he wheeled back and slapped me.
I fell to the floor in a heap, black spots taking over my vision. I tasted blood. My cheek felt as though it had instantly swollen an inch off the bone.
“Yes!” Bobby cheered, air-boxing like he’d just won a champion’s belt. “You’ve got some moves. I get why he likes you.” When I could finally look up through my knotted hair, he was grinning from ear to ear.
“Fuck you,” I said.
He laughed again. And then his laugh stopped abruptly. He held the gun out before him and aimed it at my face.
I stared straight down the barrel, the fear turning to ice inside my belly.
Alec, where are you?
Still
training the gun at my head, Bobby pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and dialed three numbers.
“Yes, it’s an emergency!” he said when the attendant answered. “Someone broke into my neighbor’s apartment. There’s a woman there, her name’s Anna. I think she’s in trouble, I just heard her scream.”
Frantically, I tried to make sense of what he was doing. He’d clearly called 911 and seemed to be reporting his own break-in.
“I think it’s this guy she used to date—Alec something. He’s about six three, dark hair, sort of shaggy. She’s scared to death of him. He broke into her work earlier today. She said he has a gun.” He rattled off my address.
“Stop,” I said, but Bobby moved closer and pressed the gun flush against my cheek. I locked my jaw to stop the shaking and focused on the bruises and scabs that covered his knuckles.
“Hurry! I’m going to try to go over there. I’ve got to do something!”
He hung up, grinning broadly.
“You’re sending the police after Alec,” I said. “Too bad he’s going to be gone by the time they get there.”
“I doubt it,” said Bobby. “My associate should be keeping him busy.”
A surge of fury took me at the prospect of someone hurting Alec. I was going to claw Bobby’s eyes out the second I got the chance.
“Your associate,” I repeated.
Bobby’s mouth pulled into a tight frown. “I’ll admit, if he’d just grabbed you earlier at the salon, this would all be a lot cleaner now. And I wouldn’t have had to pay hospital security to let him go.”
“Earlier?” It felt like someone was jabbing an ice pick into my temple. “Melvin Herman works for you? He’s . . . sick.” The last time I’d seen him, he’d been red-faced from pepper spray and begging for me to read a love letter.
“He’s as sick as I pay him to be,” Bobby scoffed. “Come on, you didn’t think we’d put together a backup plan when Alec jumped in the sack with you? It became clear pretty fast he wasn’t going to do his job effectively.”
“But . . .” I shook my head. “I’ve known Melvin for months.”
The Masseuse Page 28