I chose Elizabeth.
I tugged her into my arms and held her close. “We’re going to make this right, Elizabeth. It won’t bring Emily back, but it’ll keep you safe.”
“Just get justice for Emily. That’s all I care about.”
I hugged her close for a long minute.
“I think this will be a huge help.”
***
Another motel room, this one not far from the airport. We were basically back where we’d started.
Amy didn’t say a word from the moment we left Emily’s apartment until we walked into the motel. I watched her set her things on the end of the bed and then pace, moving in a slow circle on the far side of the bed.
“Say it.”
She stopped and looked at me. “There was only one bedroom in that apartment.”
“Yes.”
“The pictures on the wall…they were close.”
“They were.”
“Where did Emily meet her?”
“Afghanistan. Elizabeth was stationed at the same base in Fallujah that I was at.”
“She was a Marine?”
“She was.”
“And she and Emily were…”
I crossed my arms, watching the disbelief slowly melt from her face.
“She was with Elizabeth before you and she went to Paris?”
“She was.”
“And you knew?”
“I did.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? You came home, you were here, with me, weeks before that happened. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it was Emily’s story to tell.”
She stopped, just stood and stared at me as if she couldn’t believe I was just standing there, as if she couldn’t believe that this was actually happening.
“You let me believe for two years that you and my sister were lovers. Why didn’t you try to tell me the truth?”
“Because I couldn’t when it all went down. It would have compromised Emily even more. And after…you wouldn’t answer my calls, Amy. I called you every single day for weeks, and you refused every one of them. And then I sent emails and snail mail letters and you must have ignored all those, too.”
“Not all of them.”
“You never answered any.”
“Because you broke my heart!” She stared at me, anger burning from every inch of her petite frame. “I went to Paris to surprise my sister and found my boyfriend, who was supposed to be in Afghanistan, kissing her! What was I supposed to think?”
“You were supposed to trust us!”
“Trust? Would you have trusted me in the same situation?”
To be honest, I wasn’t sure. I wanted to believe I would have, or that I would have given her a chance to explain. But I didn’t know for sure that that would be the case. You never really know what you’d do in a given situation until you were there.
I shook my head, not sure what to say to her.
“You’re still breaking my heart, you know? She was my sister, the one person who knew me better than I knew myself, the one person I knew better than myself. But you knew more about her than I did.”
“Amy…”
“I lost my sister, but the longer I stay with you, the more I realize that I lost her a long time ago.”
“She loved you. There was never a time I saw her that she didn’t ask about you. You were all we talked about some times.”
“I miss her.”
She said more, but the words were lost in sobs. She wrapped her arms around herself and just crumbled, tears rushing down her face like a river rushing to the ocean, her body shaking with sobs. I went to her, brushed the tears from her face. She buried her head against my chest, her sobs bursting from her lips in hot puffs against my chest. For a long minute she gave in to her grief, sobbing against me as I wrapped my arms around her. But then she pulled away, brushing at her tears with the backs of her hands almost as if she were embarrassed by that normal, healthy show of emotion.
“I need a minute,” she said, waving a hand at me as she strode to the bathroom.
I followed, pulling her back with a hand on her shoulder. She punched me in the chest, a solid punch that hurt more than I cared to admit. She hit me again, another sob slipping from between her lips. And again and again.
I caught her wrists and pushed her back against the wall.
She screamed, struggling against me.
“Stop it, Amy!”
“Let me go!”
“Not until you calm down.”
She pulled against me, trying to free herself, crying out again when I tightened my grip on the wrist bruised by the handcuffs. She pulled down with her arms, then lifted her leg, trying to shove her knee into my crotch. I sidestepped her, maneuvering to the side and pressing my hip into hers.
“You’re hurt. I get it. But you don’t have to do this.”
“You’re an asshole,” she said, trying to buck against me, but I held her too tight. “I hate you.”
“Yeah?” I moved so close that our noses were nearly touching. “Does it make you feel better to admit that?”
“I hate you. I wish I’d never met you.”
“My life would be a lot easier if I’d never met you, too.”
Anger and hurt flashed in her eyes. “But then you wouldn’t have met my sister and become this super spy! Mr. Big Ass, stealing cars and driving to fucking California just for a five-minute conversation!”
“Maybe.”
“If you’d never met me, my sister wouldn’t have gone chasing you to Afghanistan. She would have stayed here and been miserable with me!”
I don’t know how right she was about that. But I knew it was possible. I did know that Emily never even thought about what was happening in the Middle East until I started talking about it.
“Yeah, and I probably wouldn’t have had the courage to join the Army. I wouldn’t have known the woman who made me want to be a better man.” I leaned closer to her. “I wouldn’t have thought of you every minute of every day for the last eight years.”
Pain burst through me, pain that I’d been pushing away, trying to pretend didn’t exist. I watched her eyes, the way she looked at me and remembered what it was like when the only thing in her eyes when she looked at me was love. Now…it hurt to see what the passage of time, what my choices, had done.
My voice softened as I whispered, “If I hadn’t met you, I wouldn’t have thought of you—been fucking cock blocked!—every time in the last two years that a woman gave me that look in a single’s bar, or at the goddamn Starbuck’s…”
“You don’t like coffee.”
I moved my lips along the curve of her jaw. “I hate coffee. But I can’t seem to get away from it. Just like you. I can’t get away from you.”
She moved, found my lips, and slipped her tongue along the edge of my bottom lip. I kissed her roughly, pressing her head hard against the wall, my hand sliding down along her thigh and tugging her leg up over my hip. She moaned against my mouth, pushing away from the wall to kiss me harder. The rush of need that ran through me was almost overwhelming. I needed to be inside of her; I needed to feel her naked body underneath mine. It was as if I hadn’t been with a woman in years, like the frantic moments we’d shared yesterday hadn’t happened at all.
I picked her up and held her ass in my hands, a little surprised by how familiar the weight of her, the shape of her, was to me still. And yet, there was something new and exciting about touching her, too. I pulled and tore at her clothes, using my weight to keep her in place, my hands unable to decide if they wanted to squeeze her tight little ass or slip under her shirt, if they wanted to tug at the clasps holding her bra in place, or press underneath the back of her jeans and search for all those sweet places that held the most intense promises of pleasure.
Her hands were the same, dragging through my hair and then tugging at my shirt. She moved her hips and my cock—oh, my God!—I don’t think I’d ever been quite so hard in all my life. I whispe
red her name against her lips, nibbling at her bottom lip before trying to taste every inch of her lovely throat.
I carried her to the bed, dropping her in the center of the mattress and then tugging at her jeans. She helped, unzipping them as she watched me with a wild fire in her eyes. Watching the heavy denim slide down her legs was the most beautiful sight I’d seen in a very long time. But what was more beautiful was the lace in her pretty panties ripping and disintegrating under my fingers.
I was inside of her before either of us could catch our breath. She cried out, her legs wrapped tight around me, her hips moving roughly against me, setting a pace I had to race to keep up with. She was as desperate as I was for relief, maybe more so. It was rough and it was sexy and it was more than I could have ever imagined. Amy had always been my kryptonite, my destruction. I’d never wanted another woman quite like I wanted her. And this…I would never want another woman like this.
She came in my arms, her body shivering with the pleasure that rushed through her body. I watched, loving the expression on her beautiful face, overwhelmed with the thought that I’d done this, that I could make her lose control this way. It slowed my need, making me want nothing more than to cause that to happen again. I untangled myself from her while she was distracted, removed the last of my clothing, and then gently undressed her. I admired her body for a long moment, my eyes remembering every line, every curve, every little freckle, and the small birthmark on her hip.
I started with her throat, moving slowly over the length of her, kissing and tasting every inch of her. Her nipple in my mouth, the moans slipping from her lips. Then a little taste of her navel, a nip of her inner thigh. Her clit, dancing between my teeth and the tip of my tongue. She writhed against the mattress, her fingers finding my skull from time to time, pushing her harder against the places that really mattered. I kissed her knee, the funny protrusion of her ankle, and tasted her little toe. And then back up the length of her body, loving the curves of her ass, the grace of her back. The super-sensitive skin on the back of her neck.
I would never again experience the height of desire that was burning in me in that moment. I wanted her so desperately, yet I wanted to take my time, to remember this when I was old and unable to pleasure a woman with the same carelessness that I could now. I wanted to always know what this—what true desire—really was.
When I slipped inside of her again, when I set the rhythm, when I took control, I held her hands above her head and stared into her eyes for a long moment, watching the emotions dance as she watched me. We connected in that moment in a way that had been so easy for us years ago, in the early moments of our relationship. I knew then that no matter what happened in the next few days that she never stopped loving me, that her heart had never given up on me. I knew that she was still mine—just like I knew I’d always been hers. From the moment I first set eyes on her, I knew I was gone. I would never feel for anyone else the way I felt for her.
“I missed you,” I whispered, my lips sliding over her jaw, moving up against her ear.
She wrapped her legs around me, meeting my thrusts movement for movement. And when she came this time, I heard the words on her lips.
“I love you.”
And that…that was the perfect moment.
Chapter 9
Amy
I woke to an empty bed, shivering from the cool brush of the air conditioning against my skin. I didn’t open my eyes right away, but waited for my mind to catch up with my body. As I became more aware, I heard the soft tap-tap of someone working on a computer. I peeked out from under my lashes, a soft smile blooming at the sight of Dominic, dressed again in the same jeans and t-shirt he’d been wearing last night, sitting at the small table by the window, studying something on the screen of a small laptop.
“Where’d you get that?”
He glanced at me, his eyes lingering a second on the swell of my breasts.
“I snuck out and bought it.”
I sat up, fear suddenly rushing through me. “You went out? What if someone had recognized you?”
“I was careful.” He gestured to a baseball cap sitting on the table behind the computer. “You’d be amazed what a carefully worn hat can do.”
“You should have woken me.”
“You were sleeping too peacefully.”
I got up, wrapping the dislodged sheet around myself, to stand beside him. The screen of the computer was filled with a bunch of data I didn’t understand, numbers that looked like dates and the names of places with strange names.
“Is that from the thumb drive you got at Emily’s?”
“Yeah.”
He slid his hand over my hip and tugged me down onto his lap. I curled up there, kissing his neck lightly before lying my head on his shoulder.
“Have you found anything?”
“Not yet. But there’s a lot of information here. It’s all the research she’d done in the last two years.”
“What’s this?”
“Sightings of the members of the terrorist cell we knew about. She was apparently cross-referencing it with dates from a couple of files I got for her and other research. I think she was trying to identify the hierarchy of the group, the people who were higher up.”
“The people in charge.”
“Something like that.”
“Did she?”
“I think she might have stumbled onto something she wasn’t expecting.”
“What?”
Dominic’s shoulders tightened a little, tension strumming through him like vibrations on a violin string. I kissed his neck again, partly to try to help relax his tension, but partly because I could. I’d not realized how desperately I missed him until last night, until he whispered those words to me. He was my world when we were together. Without him, I was like a ship that had broken free of its anchor. It was a relief to have him back, to have his arms around me. I felt safe in a way that highlighted how lost I’d been without him.
“Do you think you know who killed her?”
“I think it was this guy, Michael Forney. He was a member of the terrorist cell we took down in Paris. They arrested him, but he came from a family with connections to the government. He was able to make a deal that allowed him to walk after just a couple of months. I think he’s been living in the United States ever since.”
“Why would he come after Emily?”
“Someone was tipped off to the fact that she was still looking at the case.”
“Who?”
He shook his head. “Emily was incredibly careful. If anyone was found out, it should have been me. I did some pretty stupid things…”
“Like what?”
“Like knocking out a couple of CIA agents and stealing files from their surveillance van.”
“You’re kidding!”
“No.” He studied my face a second. “When I left the Army, I took a job with this security firm in Houston. About seven months ago, I was helping my boss out with a personal case. There were these two CIA agents watching her in a white van. I broke in, knocked them out, and searched their computer to see if I could figure out what they were up to. While I was doing that, I found some information that I recognized from the Paris case.”
“You stole it.”
“I made a copy and sent it to Emily. She was still working through it when she died. At least, I thought she was.”
“What was the information?”
He shook his head, his eyes moving back to the computer screen. “Things like this, dates and times, names. Paperwork that named CIA agents who were working the case. Information on people we had yet to identify. Information that was invaluable to what Emily was trying to do.”
“What was she doing?”
“Finishing what we started.”
“And that was?”
Dominic was quiet for a second, his eyes moving slowly over my face. I thought for a second he wasn’t going to explain it to me, but then he sort of nodded, like he’d just been having an
argument with himself.
“While we were in Afghanistan, Emily stumbled over information that there was an ISIS group in Paris that was planning an attack on national monuments. She gave the information to her handlers, and they decided that she would be the best agent to follow up because she had the contacts in Afghanistan who could follow up with the information and because she was the same age as the people in Paris who formed this group. I was chosen to go with her because of how well we’d worked together before. I wasn’t there for intelligence gathering, but rather to be something of a bodyguard for her. A cover. She was the one who was supposed to do all the heavy lifting, so to say.
“When we got to Paris, we set up this whole backstory, working out way into this group of college kids who were already identified by Emily’s source in Afghanistan. We hung out with them, slowly gaining their trust and learning more and more about their organization. We were there about a month, learning more and more every day. These kids—they weren’t the brightest. It was pretty obvious by how careless they were with information that they were the very bottom rung of a much taller ladder. Emily was convinced that we’d just scratched the surface.
“When you came along and her cover was blown, Emily’s handlers arrested the kids we were dealing with and those they gave up under interrogation. Her handlers called it good. But Emily had picked up on a few things that led her to believe that not only was this just the beginning of something huge, but that there might be a CIA agent working both sides.”
“She thought there was a traitor?”
“Yeah. And she thought that might have been the motivation behind reassigning her to Washington. That’s part of the reason she resigned.”
“Do you think she discovered the name?”
“I don’t know. She has so many notes on here…it’s going to take a while to get through it all.”
I kissed his neck. “You’ll find it.”
He ran his hand slowly down the length of my back. “We might need to go to Houston.”
“Why?”
“I think this might be connected to something my boss has been working on for the last seven months.”
DOMINIC (Dragon Security Book 3) Page 7