Hot Secrets

by Lisa Marie Rice

  He’d been coming back from consulting with the Chief Financial Officer of a bank about banking security. Every hair on his head had stood on end and sweat had broken out all over his body. He’d been in battle countless times, survived dozens of firefights and kept his cool. Right then, though, his entire system had gone haywire.

  He was perfectly equipped, by nature and by training, to deal with threats to himself. He had no defenses against threats to Caroline—none. There was nothing in his system that could handle this.

  It had begun to snow, but he’d gunned the engine, running through red lights, taking corners so tightly he’d have tipped over if he hadn’t been a combat driving instructor.

  Smart Caroline. She’d managed to alert him to the threat and to where she was. He’d made a beeline to the bookstore while listening to what was happening inside First Page. He’dparked half a block away and pulled out the loaded Glock he kept in a concealed holder under the driver’s seat, leaping out of the Explorer before it stopped rocking on its chassis.

  He was tackled before he’d taken ten steps, and did some serious damage before he realized he was fighting a SWAT officer.

  Even then, the drumbeat of Caroline in danger pounded in his head.

  “Sitrep!” he’d barked at the first face he recognized. Sgt. Glenn Baker. Good guy with a gun, good guy to have on your side, good guy all around. Except right now he was keeping him from Caroline.

  “Arne Pedersen, thirty-four, rap sheet as long as my dick. Likes beating up on his wife, Anna, who is currently in the county hospital. There’s a restraining order against him—which he has just broken—so with that and endangerment, he’s going away for a long time, no matter what. He’s holding his stepson hostage. Wants his wife. Who is still in a coma. Our medic says he’s hopped up. Here, get a look.”

  Baker put a restraining hand on Jack’s shoulder, then showed him a video feed off his cell, and Jack froze. Huge guy, holding a Ka-Bar to a little boy’s throat. The knife was already biting into the skin, blood seeping from a cut.

  It would take nothing for the bruiser to slice the boy open.

  And there was Caroline, several feet off. White-faced, staring at the man in anger.

  “Here.” Jack handed over his cell to Baker. “It’s an open line.”

  They put the two feeds together—video and audio—and followed what was happening. Baker was talking quietly to his team through his boom mic.

  He suddenly heard Caroline’s voice clearly, talking into the cell. “This is Caroline Prescott at First Page. I’d like to speak with Anna Ramirez Pedersen, please.”

  “Honey,” Jack said in a low voice, meeting Baker’s eyes. “I’m right outside. We’ve got rifles on the guy. The instant you and the boy get down, they’ll take the shot.”

  Baker notified the team and Jack stood away from the line of sight, heart pounding, listening to Caroline orchestrate the takedown. Admiring her courage, wishing for his sake she was more of a wimp, understanding very well that she was saving that little boy’s life.

  At risk to her own.

  But now he was holding her. At the thought he might have lost her, he shuddered again.

  A warm hand against his face. “Jack.” Caroline smiled at him. “Don’t look like that. I’m fine.”

  “I’m not,” he answered, shifting her in his arms so he could open the passenger-side door.

  They’d reached his SUV, the driver-side door still open, snow collecting in the footwell.

  He placed her in the passenger seat—which was dry, thank God—and rounded the vehicle. Once she was belted in with a blanket from the back over her, he took off, trying to make it home as fast as he could before his nerves gave out.

  “Well,” Caroline said, picking at the blanket, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. “That was interesting.”

  He ground his teeth so hard the sound was audible.

  “What’s the matter, Jack?” She placed her pretty hand on his forearm, as she’d done a thousand times before. She often touched him while talking to him—as if judging his reactions through his skin—and he loved it.

  He loved everything she did. He loved everything she said. He loved her.

  “I almost lost you,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Caroline sighed. “Yes, but you didn’t. ‘Almost’ only counts in horseshoes.”

  “And hand grenades,” he answered without thinking, watching her.

  “What?”

  “The whole quote is ‘ “Almost” only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.’ ”

  “Oh. Makes sense.” She reached out to turn his face back to the road. “Pay attention. Just because I tricked death once today doesn’t mean we can’t still die.”

  She was right, damn it. He kept his face turned to the road, though all his attention was on the pale, fragile woman by his side.

  “I thought I was going to lose you,” Jack said, his voice tight. “I don’t think I could live without you.”

  “You’re not going to have to.” Her voice was gentle and soothing, as if he’d been in danger and not she. Except she seemed to be calm and he was all over the place. Skin too tight, nerves twitching, heart racing.

  Mr. Cool, losing it.

  He’d almost lost her. The thought was there, like a burr biting into his skin—making him sweat, making him bleed. He’d almost lost her.

  Jack couldn’t even contemplate living his life without Caroline by his side. This past year had been the happiest of his life. Going back to the bleak emptiness of Before Caroline was unthinkable. He couldn’t do it, simply couldn’t.

  His hands were slick on the steering wheel by the time he drove into the garage.

  Something was happening to him, something big. He felt like he was about to explode if he didn’t do something, something . . . right . . . now.

  But what?

  The answer came when he gave Caroline his hand to help her out of the vehicle, and her skin burned against his.

  What to do?

  Fuck her.

  Get in her and stay in her as long as was possible, because while he was in her nothing bad could ever happen to her. He could keep her safe, keep her his. Nothing else would do.

  He was as hard as a rock, every nerve ending sparking like torn electric wires.

  “Jack?” Caroline’s voice rose, startled, as he headed through the house with her in tow. Nearly running up the stairs, striding fast down the hallway to their bedroom, where he slammed the door behind them with his boot and stood in the middle of the room, breathing hard, holding both her hands in his. “Jack, darling. What’s wrong?”

  Caroline kept her voice low and soothing as if he were a wild animal—and that’s exactly how he felt. He was sure his eyes showed the whites all around like a panicked pony.

  Jack looked at her, at his miracle of a wife. Grace, goodness, and beauty. A woman in a million, and he’d nearly lost her.

  He told her his deepest truth. “I need you,” he whispered hoarsely. “Right now. If I don’t have you right now, I think I’ll die.”

  She stepped closer to him, closer still, until her breasts touched his jacket, watching his eyes all the time. “My darling Jack.” She lifted herself up on tiptoe and awkwardly kissed the side of his mouth. “I’m yours. You know that.”

  His control broke. His hands fisted in her hair and he kissed her hard, almost savagely. He knew he was bruising her mouth but he couldn’t stop himself. It was as if her mouth were giving him life. He would stay alive as long as he was kissing her.

  He picked her up and carried her to the bed, landing on top of her, still kissing her. Somehow he got them both naked, ripping her underwear, but it didn’t matter because then he was touching her silky-soft skin all over—particularly the silky-soft wet skin between her legs—and it blew all his circuits.

  He couldn’t wait—not one second more—and entered her with one long hard thrust. He was so carefu
l with her, always, but this time he couldn’t be careful, couldn’t be gentle; he needed to possess her the way he needed to breathe.

  He pumped in her—hard, fast thrusts that made the headboard beat against the wall—and watched her face move up and down under him, breasts swaying to his beat. Her head was arched back, eyes closed, breathing heavy. Her arms and legs were wrapped around him, holding him tightly. She, too, was celebrating the escape from danger with sex.

  Jack groaned, cupping her buttocks, moving his hands down to her thighs, lifting the backs of them higher. The fit became deeper, tighter.

  He fucked her with the full strength of his body, mindless heat filling his head. He couldn’t slow down, couldn’t do anything but ride her as hard and as fast as he was able.

  Caroline groaned and she tightened around him, one strong pulse. It lit him up and he moved even faster and harder, in an almost brutal rhythm that would shame him later but which now seemed as inevitable as the tides. Simply the way it had to be.

  Another sharp pulse and another. Caroline cried out and he swelled inside her and then exploded, his entire body electrified by something that was more than sex, more than an orgasm.

  This was something he’d never felt before, as if the universe itself were moving through him. He moved his face to the pillow and shouted into it as he came and came endlessly in the strongest orgasm he’d ever had.

  When it was over, he realized he was plastered to his love with his own sweat. He was panting, completely drained. He turned his head to see if she was all right, but he never completed the move because he fell into a sleep so deep it could have been a coma.

  Christmas Day

  “Get up, sleepyhead! We’ve got some training to do. Today you’re going to start teaching me how to shoot. I want to be Annie Oakley!”

  The words came from several universes away and barely made sense to him.

  Someone shook his shoulder.

  Jack didn’t even have the strength to open his eyes. He was under some kind of boulder that wouldn’t let him move his muscles.

  “Jack, wake up!”

  A finger pulled up one eyelid and he saw a sideways Caroline, watching him with bright eyes.

  How could she be bright-eyed when he felt like he’d been hit by a train?

  “Open both those baby browns,” she crooned. “That’s right. Good boy.”

  He could open his eyes, barely, but nothing else could move. He was utterly and completely wiped out.

  His eyes tracked around the room. It was morning, the pale pearly light of a snowy morning filtering in through the windows. How could it be morning when two seconds ago he’d fallen asleep?

  “Get up, get up! We’ve got work to do!” his wife cried. “Training, cleaning up the bookstore, celebrating Christmas . . . and celebrating something even more important. But first—Rambette!”

  She was grinning. He blinked. Her eyes were bright and her color was high. She was dressed for the outdoors, mittens hanging from her parka by their strings. She danced in place like a boxer.

  Jack licked dry lips. “Work?” he croaked. How could she have all this energy when he felt like he’d died a week ago?

  “I’m going to start training seriously, and by God, you were right!”

  Jack blinked, his thought processes fuzzy and slow. “I was?”

  “Absolutely! I need to train harder and I need to know how to shoot. And I’m going to pack heat! I’m going to get myself a pink shoulder holster and no one is ever going to mess with me again. Ever!”

  He smiled. She was so amazingly beautiful right now. “Yeah?”

  “Yup.” She nodded sharply. “And today—I’m going to throw you. For real.”

  And she did.

  If you enjoyed HOT SECRETS, see where Caroline and Jack’s story began in

  Dangerous Lover

  Available Now

  And don’t miss the other books in Lisa Marie Rice’s Protector’s Series

  Dangerous Passion

  Dangerous Secrets

  Available Now

  DANGEROUS LOVER

  Summerville, Washington

  St. Jude Homeless Shelter

  Christmas Eve

  He needed Caroline like he needed light and air. More.

  The tall, emaciated boy dressed in rags rose from his father’s lifeless body sprawled bonelessly on the icy, concrete floor of the shelter.

  His father had been dying for a long time—most of his life, in fact. There had always been something in him that didn’t want to live. The boy couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his father clean and sober. He had no mother. All his life, it had been just the two of them, father and son, drifting from shelter to shelter, staying until they were kicked out.

  The boy stood for a moment, looking down at his only blood relation in this world, dead in a pool of vomit and shit. Nobody had noticed his father’s dead body yet. Nobody ever noticed them or even looked their way if they could help it. Even the other lost, hopeless souls in the shelter recognized someone worse off than they were and shunned them.

  The boy looked around at the averted faces, eyes cast to the floor.

  Nobody cared that the drunk wasn’t getting up again. Nobody cared what happened to his son.

  There was nothing for the boy here. Nothing.

  He had to get to Caroline.

  He had to move fast before they discovered that his father was dead. If they found the body here, the police and social workers and administrators would come for him. He was eighteen, but he couldn’t prove it. And he knew enough about the way things worked to know that he’d become a ward of the state. He’d be locked up in some prisonlike orphanage.

  No. No way. He’d rather die.

  The boy moved toward the stairs that would take him up out of the shelter into the gelid, sleety afternoon.

  An old woman looked up as he passed by, cloudy eyes flickering with recognition. Susie. Ancient, toothless Susie. She wasn’t lost in alcohol like his father. She was lost in the smoky depths of her own mind.

  “Ben, chocolate chocolate?” she cackled and smacked her wrinkled, rubbery lips. He’d once shared a chocolate bar Caroline had brought him, and Susie had looked to him for sweets ever since.

  Here he was known as Ben. In the last shelter—Portland, was it?—his father had called him Dick. Naming him after the manager of the shelter always bought them some time. Not enough. Eventually, the shelters got sick of his father’s drunken rages and found a way to kick them out.

  Susie’s hands, with their long, black, ragged nails, grasped at him. Ben stopped and held her hand a moment. “No chocolate, Susie,” he said gently.

  Like a child, her eyes filled with tears. Ben stooped to give her grimy wrinkled cheek a kiss, then rushed up the stairs and out into the open air.

  No hesitation as he turned into Morrison Street. He knew exactly where he was going. To Greenbriars. To Caroline.

  To the one person on the face of the earth who cared about him. To the only person who treated him as a human being and not some half-wild animal who smelled of dirty clothes and rotting food.

  Ben hadn’t eaten in two days, and he had only a too-short cotton jacket on to keep the cold away. His big, bony wrists stuck out of the jacket’s sleeves, and he had to tuck his hands into his armpits to keep them warm.

  No matter. He’d been cold and hungry before.

  The only warm thing he wanted right now was Caroline’s smile.

  Like the arrow of a compass to a lodestar, he leaned into the wind to walk the mile and a half to Greenbriars.

  No one looked his way as he trudged by. He was invisible, a lone, tall figure dressed in rags. It didn’t bother him. He’d always been invisible. Being invisible had helped him survive.

  The weather worsened. The wind blew icy needles of sleet directly into his eyes until he had to close them into slits.

  Didn’t matter. He had an excellent
sense of direction and could make his way to Greenbriars blindfolded.

  Head down, arms wrapped around himself to conserve what little warmth he’d been able to absorb at the shelter, Ben slowly left behind the dark, sullen buildings of the part of the city that housed the shelter. Soon the roads opened up into tree-lined avenues. Ancient brick buildings gave way to graceful, modern buildings of glass and steel.

  No cars passed—the weather was too severe for that. There was nobody on the streets. Under his feet, the icy buildup crackled.

  He was almost there. The houses were big here, in this wealthy part of town. Large, well built, with sloping green lawns that were now covered in ice and snow.

  He usually made his way through the back streets, invisible as always. Someone like him in this place of rich and powerful people would be immediately stopped by the police, so he always took the back streets on a normal day. But today the streets were deserted, and he walked openly on the broad sidewalks.

  It usually took him half an hour to walk to Greenbriars but today the ice-slick sidewalks and hard wind dragged at him. An hour after leaving the shelter, he was still walking. He was strong, but hunger and cold started to wear him down. His feet, in their cracked shoes, were numb.

  Music sounded, so lightly at first that he wondered whether he was hallucinating from cold and hunger. Notes floated in the air, as if borne by the snow.

  He rounded a corner and there it was—Greenbriars. Caroline’s home. His heart pounded as it loomed out of the sleety mist. It always pounded when he came here, just as it pounded whenever she was near.

  He usually came in through the back entrance, when her parents were at work and Caroline and her brother in school. The maid left at noon and from noon to one the house was his to explore. He could move in and out like a ghost. The back door lock was flimsy, and he’d been picking locks since he was five.