by Lora Leigh
“Don’t push me right now,” he snarled back at her. “Do you have any idea the hell I’ve gone through while trying to find you? Do you have any idea how close I was to not getting here in time?”
“Do you have any idea how close I was to blowing them all to hell and back?” she snapped back. “I might not remember jack shit but don’t think I don’t know what I’m doing. And don’t think I will ever tolerate you disappearing like that again without one word of warning. Not while you’re sleeping in my fucking bed.”
“Wow. He’s sleeping in your bed. Do I get details now or later?” Raisa laughed behind her.
Lilly ignored Raisa. She glared at Travis. “Find a place to talk. Fast. We have things to clear up, love, and we’ll do it rather quickly. Or you’ll wish you’d never seen me, met me, or touched me. I promise you that.”
She turned on her heel and stalked away from him. It was all she could do to keep her hands away from her guns.
That way, she didn’t shoot him just for being a man. For leaving. For not letting her know. For making her fear he would never return.
CHAPTER 17
IN A PERFECT WORLD, she would have known there was security in love. There was a mother’s dedication, compassion, and devotion as she had once believed. There was a family’s loyalty. In a perfect world, there was the knowledge that tomorrow would bring another day to add to the vault of memories and love.
Where had her perfect world gone?
Lilly sat on the bed in the darkened bedroom of another safe house, this one a large apartment in the heart of Hagerstown only a few blocks from the bar she had often met Travis in.
She stared into the dark but it was memories she saw. Her father’s laughter, his gentle voice, and his loyalty. She saw their walks, remembered their talks. She saw her mother, always distant from them, always appearing amused, yet accepting of the bond they had had.
She’d been wrong.
Jared had often stood with Angelica, quiet, intense. Her brother had always been very intense, very studious, but she’d believed he was being protective.
Where had her family gone?
Looking down, she could barely make out the dim outline of her fingers as they picked at each other. A nervous habit she’d had all her life. Her mother had often lectured her over it. Lilly had seen those lectures as loving, as a mother’s concern. But she remembered now the times that her mother had commented that perhaps it spoke of a deeper problem. That perhaps Lilly would feel better if she spoke to a doctor about her problem.
Lilly stared at her fingers. Perhaps it hadn’t been her problem that had needed to be addressed.
She remembered, although she hadn’t wanted to remember before, the horrible fights her parents had once had. Not that she had known what the fights were about at the time. All she remembered were the sounds of the raging arguments that had come from their suite.
They had argued over her often.
How many times had her mother tried to have her confined during those years that Lilly had believed she was safe and secure with her mother’s love, with her brother’s loyalty? That it was all simply threats.
She nibbled at her lower lip as she felt the pain gather in her soul before bleeding through her spirit. Where was that perfect world she had believed existed?
This was why she had chosen a far different life when she’d had the chance. But still, how desperately she had missed her family.
She had forgotten the monsters that existed in that perfect world.
“Lilly.” A soft knock at the door heralded Travis’s arrival.
She wiped the tears quickly from her face as the door cracked open, allowing a slender ray of light to pierce the darkness.
“You have a very bad habit of disappearing when I don’t want you to, Travis,” she told him quietly as the door closed behind him, enclosing them once again in the darkness.
“Can I turn the light on?” he asked.
“I’d much prefer you don’t.”
She watched as he paused, his dark shape shifting slightly before he moved to the bed as though he needed no light to see by.
“Whoever is trying to kill me is someone associated with, or within, my family. Isn’t that right?”
He eased down on the side of the bed. “That’s what we suspect.”
She nodded slowly. “How would they have found me after the first attempt to kill me? A new face, new hair, new eye color, plastic surgery.” She rubbed her fingertips together. “No fingerprints. How did they find me?”
“We don’t know.” He sighed. “That’s one of the things I’ve been trying to find out. So far though, all signs point to the Harrington camp.”
She gave another slow nod. “The first attempt was during the party. Father was in a meeting when I came to the office. I remember that much. He’d been investigating the embezzlement from several companies Harringtons owned or had shares in. The money was going into an account proven to fund terrorism. I had been helping him for months, but those final months, he pushed me out of it. We argued over that.”
“He was trying to protect you?” he asked.
“I think perhaps he was,” she said as she looked down at her hands to realize she was picking at her fingers once again. “Do you think it was Uncle Desmond?”
Her father and uncle had been very close, but she remembered that Desmond hadn’t known that her father worked for MI5, and he had cautioned Lilly against letting anyone in the family know that she was as well.
Even her mother hadn’t known what Lilly was doing.
“Let’s say he’s at the top of the list,” Travis answered. “We’re focusing on him.”
Lilly felt her heart clench at the thought. “Father trusted him. He loved him.”
“The ones we trust the most are often the ones who will betray us first,” he said, gently. “Whoever it is, Lilly, whatever their motive, they meant to see you dead. Today made the fourth attempt on your life, and this one was professionally contracted.”
“How did they find us?” She frowned in confusion, still trying to figure that one out. “My cell was turned off. I didn’t contact anyone. How did they find me?”
“You could have been followed,” he answered softly. “Several of the assailants were in your uncle’s employ. Any one of them could have followed you to the safe house, then returned. It could have taken time to call the others together, to plan a reasonably successful assault. Two days isn’t much time to plan the assassination of four women. One of whom was known to be able to take care of her herself quite well.”
“You could have planned and executed that one within hours,” she pointed out.
“But I’m better than they are.” He chuckled.
Lilly allowed a small smile to touch her lips, but she couldn’t bring herself to laugh.
“They’re my family,” she whispered. “My mother and brother, my uncle. They’re all I’ve ever known for love and security. What the hell happened, Travis?”
He breathed out heavily. “As long as you were the child you were supposed to be, then you were well loved,” he told her. “Perhaps it’s that society, that generation, or just that small clique. I’m more inclined to say it’s a very small clique that believes in committing a child for daring to have free will. Most parents suffer the minor embarrassments and disappointments as a part of life.”
She let her head fall back against the wall behind her and stared up at the dark ceiling.
“Mother never showed me this side of herself. Not to this extent.”
“Or your father never let you see it?” Travis suggested. “He tried to protect you.”
“Maybe.” She moved to swing her legs off the bed but he stretched his arm across her thighs and held her in place.
She was suddenly very conscious of the thin robe and her nudity beneath it. The shower she’d had earlier had done nothing to still the nervous tension racing through her.
She’d wanted to run. She wanted to fight. She wanted t
o find a place to expend the fury inside her before she was forced to return to the house her uncle had rented for the summer.
“Travis, now isn’t a good time.” She still hadn’t managed to forgive him for his absence.
He chuckled lightly. “Bullshit, Lilly. You have all that energy dying to burst free and I’ll be damned if I didn’t miss you like hell.”
“Oh yeah, you missed me so much,” she mocked him. “All those phone calls, checking up on me, phone sex at one in the morning. It was so much fun.”
She pushed against his shoulder, but not really with enough force to dislodge him. When it came to Travis, saying no wasn’t an easy thing to do.
“There was phone sex? Was it good?” Dark, roughened by arousal, his voice whispered across her senses like a velvety caress.
“It would have been if it had been more than simply in my dreams,” she bit out, clearly remembering the anger and fear that had torn through her when she realized she was only days away from being committed.
“I wouldn’t have allowed you to be taken from me like that, Lilly,” he said gently, as though he knew exactly what she thought, what she felt.
“You couldn’t have stopped it. You weren’t here, remember?” she pointed out angrily.
“Lilly, I didn’t leave you unprotected.”
“I protected myself.” She pushed at his shoulder harder this time. “Let me go, Travis. This discussion is becoming boring.”
“Then get unbored.” His voice was harder, though no less sexy. “I didn’t betray you, Lilly, nor did I let you down.”
“You weren’t there,” she snapped furiously. “You didn’t even tell me you were leaving, Travis.”
“Dammit, Lilly, it was a quick trip out. I should have been back before the next night. My sat phone was damaged or I would have gotten your message and returned faster.”
“So what is this relationship then? Or is it not even a relationship? Friends with benefits? Fuck buddies? What, Travis? Tell me the rules now so I at least know what to expect the next time you decide to disappear for however long.”
“You want to know what the hell this relationship is?” He came over her, looming above her like a dark shadow of sensual wrath.
“It would be nice.” Her voice was weak and breathy. She sounded like a damned sex kitten or something. Hell, she was starting to feel like one.
“This relationship is completely monogamous,” he growled as his hand smoothed down her shoulder, her arm, gripped her hip. “And I’m a possessive bastard, Lilly. Did I ever mention that?”
She shook her head. No, he hadn’t mentioned that at all. Perhaps he should have; she would have melted far sooner.
“So that would make this relationship fairly exclusive, wouldn’t you say?” He jerked the hem of her robe to her thighs. “That makes you mine, baby. No friends with benefits. No fuck buddies. Simply fucking mine.”
“Call next time,” she snapped.
“Fine.” His other hand gripped her neck, held her still and kissed her with enough force, enough hunger, to curl her toes.
It was like this with him. Like a fire blazing through the darkest night, stilling the rage and the pain and replacing it with hunger and a sense of emotional security. There was no true safety, not in their lives, not in their line of work, but there was this.
Deep, desperate kisses filled with hunger and heat branded her lips and her senses as pleasure began to wash over her in heavy, heated waves. Travis jerked her to him and Lilly found herself being lowered to the bed as he came over her, his hands tearing at the belt of the robe, at his own clothes. Through drugging tastes of her lips, his head tilting, his tongue thrusting against hers, he managed to divest himself of his clothes and to tear aside the edges of her robe.
She was all but naked now. The dark surrounded them, white-hot hunger and needy groans mixed with his own male growls of arousal. It was like having those ragged edges of her soul slowly repair themselves.
She wasn’t alone any longer. Travis was here. He was touching her, holding her. There was nothing, no one, that could harm her as long as she held his heart.
Heavily muscled shoulders flexed beneath her touch as his hands cupped her breasts, sending surging pulses of sensation rippling through her nipples when his thumbs stroked over them.
Lilly could feel the invasive pleasure throbbing through her pussy, swelling her clit. Her juices gathered on the intimate folds as her nipples swelled, ached, and lifted to his touch.
“I missed you, my Lilly,” he groaned as his lips moved to her neck. “I dreamed of your touch. Of tasting you, having you.”
His lips moved lower, his tongue stroking over a tight nipple as brutally hot fingers of sensation struck at her womb, her clit. Arching against his thigh, Lilly felt the desperate hunger unraveling inside her. This moment in time was hers alone. She didn’t have to share it. No one could invade it. There was no danger here, there was only this. His lips covering her nipple to suck it inside his mouth as his tongue flicked over it.
He drew on the tight bud, suckling it deeply, almost roughly, as she arched to the incredible sensation. From one nipple to the other he moved. The excruciatingly sensitive tip rioted with such extreme pleasure that she couldn’t hold back the whimpering little cry that tore from her lips.
It was incredible. Her head thrashed against the pillow as he licked the hard nubbin, swirled his tongue around it, then sucked it inside his mouth again and fed on the arousal rising inside her.
Lilly’s hips arched as Travis’s thigh wedged between hers and pressed firmly against the mound of her pussy. Her clit swelled tighter, throbbed with pleasure. Her juices spilled from her clenching vagina, her body desperate for his possession, preparing it for the intensity of touch that she needed.
She wanted more than gentle touches, and that was what she was getting. She wanted more than easy kisses and slow caresses. And he would give it to her.
“Sweet Lilly,” he growled as he pulled back, reaching out with one hand to the bedside table and flipping on the low light there.
The soft glow washed over his naked, bronzed flesh. Muscles rippled beneath the skin, perspiration dotted his brow, his shoulders.
Easing back, he stared down her body.
“Touch your breasts,” he ordered, his eyes focused on the swollen mounds as he lifted her hands to them. “Show me, baby, what you like, what you want. Make me crazy.”
Make him crazy? Oh, if this was what he wanted, then she had a lot of experience in touching herself.
She cupped her breasts, her fingers clenching on the mounds teasingly. With her index fingers she raked her nipples, gasping at the pleasure of having him watch.
“Oh yeah,” he breathed out roughly, his eyes narrowing on her now. “Is that how you like it, baby? Slow and easy?”
A teasing smile curled her lips. With thumb and forefinger she pinched at the distended nipples, her breath catching at the thought of Travis touching her so firmly, with his fingers, his teeth.
She bit her lower lip to hold back another moan as she tugged at the tender tips, her shoulders shifting against the bed as pleasure tore through her.
“Ahh, so that’s how you like it, love,” he whispered. “Shall I do that for you, while perhaps you show me other things you might like?”
He moved, sliding behind her as he lifted her before him. Lilly gasped as she found her head resting on his thigh, the heavy width of his cock at her cheek as it rose proud and flush along his stomach.
“There, love.” His hand stroked her breast, cupped it, petted it. “Show me what else you like while I play with your pretty nipples.”
Lilly could feel the perspiration gathering along her neck, her breasts. Fighting to breathe, Lilly felt his thumb and forefinger surround her nipple as he placed one of her hands on her midriff.
“Show me, Lilly,” he growled. “Show me what you want, sweetheart.”
What she wanted? She wanted his touch. She wanted his fingers stroking
her, touching her, possessing her.
She stared up at him as his fingers worked her nipple, rolling it, plumping it, and sending electrical flames of sensation tearing to her womb.
Her fingers slid lower, ruffling the border of curls just below her abdomen. She could feel the folds of her pussy swelling, her clit pounding, as her fingers feathered against it.
“Beautiful,” he breathed out roughly. “Part those pretty folds, Lilly. Let me see your little clit. Let me see how you pleasure yourself.”
Lowering her other hand, she parted the plump folds of her pussy as she used the other to circle the tight bud of her clit. Pleasure was racing through her, excitement sizzling through her nerve endings, as she touched herself with her fingers, while Travis tormented her nipples with exquisite pleasure.
As she looked up at him, her gaze locked with his, and she watched his eyes narrow, darken, as her fingers circled her clit. The pleasure was incredible. It was like nothing she had ever known when she’d touched herself before. It was brutally intense, whipping through her system and sending her nerve endings rioting with exquisite pleasure.
Her fingers stroked through her folds, dipping into the slick dew, returning to run around her clit as his fingers sent waves of pleasure surging through her nipples to her pussy, clenching the intimate folds with brutal need.
Her hips writhed beneath her own touch as her head turned, her lips parting, her tongue licking along the shaft of his cock as it rose before her.
She needed the taste of him. The touch of him. She needed him.
She moved her fingers faster as a hard groan tore from his chest. Her head lifted, her tongue touching the head of his cock, licking over it, tasting it.
She felt as though she were dying of excitement. It was racing through her bloodstream, pounding in her heart. She couldn’t survive this. She was going to die from the intensity of the sensations, but she would die happy. She would die knowing no pleasure could ever be so great.