by Low, Gennita
“I want to carry you forever,” he said, simply.
Jaymee felt his tension and understood his desire to keep her close to him. They had almost lost each other. “I love you,” she told him.
“I know.”
He didn’t tell her he loved her too, but she could see it in his eyes. There was a tenderness in them that seemed to make his eyes bluer, and her breath caught at the deep yearning in them. She felt his emotions in the way he held her so tightly against his body. She supposed it wasn’t easy for a man like Nick to say those words, not when he had been trying to sever the ties emotionally the last few days.
They bathed each other slowly, touching and exploring. She kissed him, soothing the fury that rose when he saw the ugly bruises on her in better light. He traced every part of her, as if committing her to memory, growling now and then as he found a scratch here, or a cut there. He handled her with the attention of a mate, with such a gentle touch it made her want to cry.
After the bath, he carried her to bed, babying her, taking care of her every need, as if she were the most precious thing on earth to him. And Jaymee let him. She’d never felt like this before, out of control, yet also still in charge. His hands were demanding, yet caring. His kisses had an urgency that was both passionate and reverent. His mouth found the vulnerable pulse in her neck, coming back to it again and again, as if her heartbeat reassured him somehow. He leisurely explored the hollow in her throat, the dip between her breasts, the womanly curve of her abdomen.
Jaymee returned his touches with the same reverence. His body was strong and powerful, and trembled under her hands. She kissed the back of his neck, traced her lips down the dip of his spine, molded her hands on the male grace of his small buttocks. He turned over for her eager lips, and moaned as she paid attention to the beautifully formed member that grew bigger with every stroke of her tongue and fingers.
Finally, a sheen of perspiration on him, Nick lifted Jaymee astride him, and she pushed down, taking him fully inside her, enjoying this possession of him, taking and giving pleasure, until they were gasping. It was what they needed, what words couldn’t describe. They were one and home. Nothing else mattered.
He lay there quietly, eyes half-closed and filled with passion, as he let her set the pace. His breathing was labored, but he didn’t move, except for the lazy teasing of his long, elegant fingers on her sensitive nipples until she went crazy for him, moving faster and faster as his fingers moved on down to rest where they met. She cried out when he pushed away the folds hiding her sensitive feminine bud and pushed down on it so every move she made gave her the utmost pleasure possible.
Nick wished he could make this go on forever. It’d always be imprinted in his brain, the way she looked on top of him, in the throes of passion. Her head was thrown back, with those wild ringlets all over her shoulders, and as she succumbed to her climax, she sagged forward, her hair enveloping the both of them. He loved the fragrance of her desire mingled with her unique scent, and when she opened her eyes as she braced herself on his shoulders, he was willing to drown in the limpid pools of green. She moaned at every downward stroke and sucked in her breath when she slid back up.
She drove him to the point of madness like that, moving so slowly, seeming to draw every ounce of blood to only one point of his fevered body. Every slick ride down brought shudders of need through him. The pleasure made him clutch the sheets. Not yet. He wasn’t willing to let go yet. Let her take him wherever she wanted. He wanted to please her.
Her breasts swayed temptingly as she rocked, and Nick reached up for them, caressing them until the nipples were hardened and she was gasping and moving faster. Oh please, faster please. He wasn’t sure whether he begged her aloud. It felt so good. Faster, baby, please.
And when her internal muscles began to clench around him, he went rigid, and without thought, held her hips tight as he thrust up in hard strokes. Harder. Deeper. And he was just as lost as she was in the swirl of heat waves that swept through his consciousness as he emptied his whole soul into her.
*
Jaymee fell into a deep, exhausted sleep, and Nick held her for a while before leaving her to go downstairs. She’d told him she loved him. And he hadn’t told her he....
He banished the words even before they were formed. Didn’t what happened today reinforce the dangerous aspects of having a weak link, a switch every two-bit mercenary could find? The knowledge Jaymee could have ended up like Emma turned his stomach and hardened his resolve.
But why couldn’t he just say those words?
No, he could never leave her if he ever did. He would want to stay. An impossible dream.
“Are you sure it isn’t going to be a problem for you to get a team to sweep the area?” he asked Jed in the kitchen. Bob listened to them, sitting quietly at the kitchen table.
“There won’t be, if I’m not here and Jaymee doesn’t say too much.”
“But they’d know you have been here.”
Jed shrugged. “I’ll be long gone.” His eyes were thoughtful when he looked at Nick. “What about you?”
Nick returned the gaze levelly. “I’ll be with you initiating the encryption board, except this time, we’ll be prepared for the bastards.” Revenge was going to be very sweet.
“Yes, they’ll think we’re still trying to decipher it, but we have to move fast.”
They agreed to meet the next morning and after Jed left, Nick sat down at the kitchen table. The old man offered a cup of coffee, and he accepted.
“Seems like we do our best talking at this table,” Bob commented wryly.
Nick’s lips lifted at one corner. “True,” he agreed.
The details he gave didn’t tell much, except Jaymee was caught in the middle and he had to leave, for her sake. Bob didn’t ask any questions, much to Nick’s surprise.
“As long as you don’t leave without saying goodbye to Jaymee, I won’t push for more information. That’s what happened the last time, you know, when Danny just left. I don’t think she can go through another sudden disappearance.”
Nick looked at Bob silently for a second. “I won’t leave without saying goodbye,” he said softly.
Bob nodded briskly. “Now, what else do you want me to do?”
*
Jaymee awakened the instant he rejoined her in bed, and she curled up eagerly against the heat of his naked body. “Where did you go?” she asked sleepily.
“Taking care of details,” he gently murmured against her cheek.
She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, wincing slightly at the stiffness in her wrists. “Are you leaving?” Common sense returned, now that she’d rested. If those men had traced Nick here, the next logical step was for him to leave. His sigh was answer enough. “Nick?”
“Hmm?”
“Why is it not possible?”
“Us, you mean?” Nick caressed her supple body, wondering whether he could ever forget the softness of her skin, her unique fragrance. “I can’t risk you, Jaymee. I can’t have your safety an issue every time someone comes after me.”
“Is it often someone comes after you?”
“No.”
“So, the risk is minimal, right?” she insisted.
There was a short silence. “I won’t risk you,” Nick said in a stilted voice.
“There’s risk in everything, you know.”
But he didn’t want to discuss risks or targets. He wanted to forget, to melt into this woman and dream of sunlight and impossible dreams. He didn’t want Jaymee to argue with his decision. It would only muddle his thinking, tempt him to give in to her. He did what the Programmer would do in this situation--evade and divert. It was for the best.
Turning her over, he covered her sweet, pliant body with his, crushing her in his need for her. When she gasped for breath, he kissed her deeply and pushed her thighs apart with his own.
This sweet oblivion. This unconditional surrender. This generous loving. No, he would never forget her.
*
“Forget you?” Jaymee couldn’t believe her ears at his words. “Can’t you think of something better to say as parting words?”
She wrapped her arms around her, as if that would keep her from hurling herself at him, to beg him to stay. She would not beg. Her chin tilted up and she sucked in air. Her insides were wound tighter than a spool of thread, and her mouth tasted like sandpaper. Somehow, she managed to stay on her feet, although she couldn’t quite manage a smile.
Nick just stood there, a remoteness in his expression that chilled her. She realized he’d already gone away, beyond her reach. And she, too, retreated inside, trying to rebuild the protective wall this man had broken through. Her hand trembled slightly as she reached up to touch him for one last time, pushing back the stray lock of black hair from his forehead, feeling the stubble of his unshaven face, the pulse that beat strongly at his throat. His face remained expressionless but she felt the betraying swallow under her hands. One last touch.
“Take care of yourself,” she whispered, her voice stiff with emotion.
His nod was curt and his slate eyes were wintry as they traveled over her, from the top of her auburn hair to the painted toenails. At the sight of them, they flared with a naked longing that disappeared immediately, and when his eyes returned to hers, they were banked, empty.
“Live for yourself, Jaymee. You’ve been living for others, do it for yourself from now on,” he said, trying to sound gentle, when all he wanted was crush her to him.
He kissed her, hard and possessively, then turned and walked to his red Jeep. Not turning back, he started it up and drove off.
Live? Jaymee covered her mouth with her fist, and she had to bite down hard to control the torrent of pain choking out. Forget and live? Just like hoping he’d turn around and come back to her, that request was an impossible dream.
Chapter Sixteen
All she wanted was to be left alone. But no one would let her be. Mindy bothered her with phone calls. Her father followed her to work. Everyone rained her with conversation, questions, words. It was all strangely disjointed, as if she stood outside observing herself.
She couldn’t even escape to her other house. Strangers appeared one day to “sweep” the place, and like a robot, she followed Jed’s instructions, giving the password and handing them his note. She didn’t mention Nick at all. She couldn’t think about him.
A young man showed up to interrogate her, and it took a few minutes before she realized he was looking for Jed, and not Nick. His description could have fitted either one of them, except for the silver eyes. She’d answered in a detached manner until she remembered Grace, and what Nick had told her about the young girl. So she paid closer attention to the man and his questions. He was young, maybe in his mid-twenties, and very polite but very thorough. When did she meet Jed? How?
Jaymee deflected the questions with the story she and Jed had agreed on, that she’d planned to lease her house to him for a year and he helped with the cleaning and remodeling.
“And you don’t know where he is now?” the young stranger asked, a touch skeptically.
His eyes, a warm, magnetic blue, were cool and quizzical as he studied her from head to toe. Like Nick, there was an air about him that hinted of something underneath that friendly demeanor. The way he stood so still amidst the activity of the other “sweepers” also reminded her a little of Jed. He might be a few years younger than her, but she had the feeling he’d seen a lot more about life than she’d ever known. Another mark against her. No wonder Nick thought she wouldn’t ever be “safe” enough for him. She was so stupid to think she could make it work.
“Nope,” Jaymee answered, looking back at him just as coolly.
His blue eyes narrowed, as if trying to gauge her honesty. “I find it strange you didn’t call the police.”
“I like Jed.” Jaymee cocked her head. “I trust him.” And Nick. And Grace.
“And you don’t trust me,” he stated. When Jaymee didn’t refute it, he added, “Why are you keeping information from me? Jed McNeil and I work for the same people. You obviously know more than you’re telling, what with a clean-up unit here sweeping your house after a bomb scare. I’m not here to harm him, or these guys here would have taken me out already. They know me.”
He nodded towards the people working around her house. Despite what little Jed had told her, Jaymee liked the intelligence gleaming in the younger man’s eyes, knew from instinct he wasn’t sent to harm Jed. However, she’d decided to side with Jed and Grace, and so she stuck with her story.
“All I know’s what I told you,” she told the stranger calmly. “Florida is full of transients. They come and go. Some I like, and some I don’t.”
He did smile then, and Jaymee had to smile back. The look he gave her was cocky and confident.
“Nice. But then I wouldn’t want it so easy. Less of a challenge. I’ll find him sooner or later,” he said. “Thank you for your time, Miss Barrows.”
She wondered whether he was part of this Virus Program Nick and Jed were in. No, she decided, as she watched him walk off to his car. He moved differently from the stealthy, lazy stroll she’d noticed in Nick and Jed. And there was an arrogance in the way he looked and walked that reminded her of a cat on the prowl. She shook her head as he drove off, mocking her own imagination. She hadn’t changed one bit, still putting men into animal categories.
Which suddenly brought her full circle back to Nick. Her big, bad wolf.
With iron determination, she forced the mental picture of Nick away. She didn’t think she could bear having Mindy call her, or having her father following her everywhere, or going through another awkward conversation with anyone who thought she needed consolation.
All she wanted was to be left alone. Was that too much to ask?
Later, she ordered shingles to be stocked at the other house the coming week, and after the call, ran all the way to the now “swept” place to start work on the roof.
For the next two days, she tore at the old roof by herself, digging up the shingles with a shovel. It was good, methodical work, the kind that exhausted her enough to sleep for a few hours at night. When she’d removed the shingles and original underlayment, she unrolled the tar felt paper over the cleaned-off plywood, fastening it down with simplex nails. The task was a two-man job, really, but she didn’t want company. Perspiration poured down her forehead and blinded momentarily, she hit her forefinger with the hammer at full force.
Pain jolted from the finger to every nerve end in her body. Cursing aloud and sucking her injured finger alternatively, she watched the blood blister that had immediately formed. The throbbing shot through her numbness, bringing her whole body alive again. Every feeling she’d tried to block pounced. With a groan, Jaymee sat down onto the roof.
Pain. It ploughed through her like a live current. Physical and mental pain wrapped around her like invisible wires, coiling tighter and tighter until she felt she would burst with the torture. The pain strangled her, made it impossible to move. Hugging her knees, she ground her head against her thighs, moaning and shivering even though it was ninety degrees outside.
Jaymee sat like that for a long time, unheeding of the heat, her eyes unseeing as she stared down at the tangled bushes around the old house. That was what her life was, she realized. An old house in need of repair and new life. So ignored outside, it was being choked by untended growth. She’d spent eight years working to pay for her past and planning to pay for her future. She’d never lived for herself as in the now, and if Nick had taught her anything, it was to live for the present, to enjoy what she could.
She took a deep breath and slowly got up. She felt as if she was a thousand years old. She leaned on the shovel for support, gathering her strength, making decisions. She had to change, to prune away all the tangled growth in her life, or she was going to end up like this old house. By the time her father came home that evening, she’d already booked the tickets.
“I’m taking o
ff,” she announced. “I need to go away.” She waited for the protests.
Bob washed his hands at the sink and joined her at the table. “You deserve to go on a holiday, Jaymee girl.”
Jaymee stared at her father in undisguised astonishment. A month ago, he would have given her an earful about leaving for a vacation. Somehow, he’d changed these last few weeks.
“Where are you going?”
“Europe,” she told him, frowning. “Don’t worry, I’m using my own savings.” The money she’d put away to remodel her old house.
“You’ve always wanted to visit there. How long will you be gone?”
“I don’t know. A month. Two. Till my money runs out.” She paused. “Is it selfish? Can you take care of the business that long?”
“I think selfish is what you need to be right now, Jaymee girl. I’ve been selfish for too long.” Bob shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “I do remember how to run a roofing business, you know, even if I can’t get back on the roof. We can hang on till you come back.”
“The loans are up to date. The only bills are current ones, and the jobs are lined up...”
Bob interrupted gruffly, “I thought we agreed you’re going to be selfish. Now, tell me about your travel plans instead.”
For the first time in a long, long time, Bob Barrows smiled at his daughter and opened his arms. Jaymee slowly walked towards him and hugged her father.
*
The humidity reminded Killian of Jaymee. Sluicing water over his sweaty body after a hard day of hiking reminded him of Jaymee. Eating. Drinking. Sleeping. Every damned thing reminded him of her, and there was nothing for him to do but to endure it.
If Jed noticed his foul mood, he didn’t say anything. Her name wasn’t mentioned once since they’d left. Their assignment had been completed a week ago after they had trapped their targets, and Jed had relayed electronically to Command the decoded encryption board. He had the satisfaction of personally dealing with them, especially two, whose description fitted that given by Jaymee, down to the smell of cologne.