by Edie Harris
She stared blindly at the bag, afraid to touch it. Through the clear plastic, she could see two American passports, a rubber-banded pile of credit and bank cards, several stacks of twenties and hundred-dollar bills, two wallets—one a man’s, the other a woman’s...and two simple gold wedding rings. Again, clearly intended for one male and one female.
The wipers moved wet snowflakes across the windshield, capturing her attention long enough to note they had merged onto the highway and were making their way toward downtown Chicago.
“This is what I meant, when I said the timing wasn’t right for a new identity yet,” he said quietly. “Open it.”
Nope. She was cool with not opening the Plastic Baggy of Secrets, thank you very much.
“You’re going to have to open it eventually. Might as well be now.”
“Am I?”
“If you decide to run...” He trailed off meaningfully, but his attention never wavered from the slippery road and speeding traffic.
She understood. She’d already been burned, her current alias a dud until further notice, and unless she headed directly for a secure Faraday facility now under her own name, with no stops along the way, she required the means for safe travel. An untraceable name and ready cash were steps one and two, and both appeared to be in the bag.
The wedding rings drew her gaze again. If you run, I run with you. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she cautiously peeled apart the bag’s airtight closure and withdrew the first passport—one with her picture from what looked like a year or two ago, judging by the layers in her hair. She’d been rocking the side-swept bangs then.
“Grace Morgan.” Then she flipped open the second passport to find a postage-stamp image of Vick’s face staring up her. “Paul Morgan.” A knot formed in her throat. “Are we...?”
“Married? Yes. Didn’t think we’d pass as brother and sister.”
A logical statement, given her heritage. While her paternal side placed her firmly in Daughters-of-the-American-Revolution territory, her mother was a Canadian-born Moroccan Jew. Beth and her siblings carried that maternal lineage not only in their veins, but on their skin. Vick, however, was as stereotypically English as they came with his fair skin.
He was right; no Customs official would ever buy them as siblings. But he could have had passports created with different surnames, and instead chose to tie himself to her with this stupid, silly, wonderful, idiotic, lovely bond. Even if it was fake. “Married. Okay.”
“Okay?” he repeated cautiously, glancing over at her as they sped under an I-Pass toll.
She flipped the passports closed, pressed them flat between her palms. “How long have you had these?” The quality of the forgeries was on par with what her brother Adam created, and that quality meant an investment of time and money. Paul and Grace Morgan’s passports, driver’s licenses and credit cards hadn’t been whipped together this afternoon.
He squirmed a bit in his seat before taking the next exit into downtown. “A while.”
Her lips curled upward, almost unwillingly. “A while, huh? Your attention to detail here is so sexy.”
“If you’re talking about the documentation, yes, the quality of work is pretty damn sexy.” His mouth twitched with subdued humor. “If you’re referring to my vague answer, your sarcasm is noted.”
“Noted, but not appreciated.” She tapped the passports against her leg, aiming for a casual tone. “You should answer, anyway.”
“No.”
“Come on, man. I was shot today.”
“I was shot yesterday. Worse than you.”
“It’s not a contest,” she huffed.
“It is when you’re trying to use it as leverage.” Traffic ebbed and flowed around the car as he navigated toward their destination. “You really want to know?”
“Vick.” Going with instinct, she laid a hand on his thigh, just above his knee. Muscle flexed beneath fabric, a delicious ripple of strength under her fingertips. “You must realize by know that when it comes to you, I always want to know.”
He kept quiet as they passed block after block, not speaking again until he pulled up to the Trump International Hotel’s gilded entrance. Shifting into park, he lifted a hand to hold off the valet attendant before settling it atop hers. The rough skin of his palm warmed the backs of her knuckles. “I started working on an exit strategy after Cyprus. For both of us.” He stared down at their hands, but she didn’t dare look away from his arresting face. “My plan was to approach you one year after our night together. I estimated it would take me that long to put all the fail-safes into place, and I wanted to allow enough time for you to process how you felt.” His fingers tightened around hers. “How you felt about me, that is. I was your first for a lot of important milestones, Beth, but being your first didn’t grant me the right to demand you choose me.” He glanced over at her again. “We know each other, but we don’t. Not yet. Paul and Grace Morgan can give us the opportunity to...learn one another.”
He said learn, but she heard love. “Are you asking me to choose you?” Because she already had, many years ago. She’d chosen to fall crazy-hard for the unnamed spy with the busted nose and gap teeth and the scar on his cheek that marked the anniversary of their first kiss.
But perhaps this man, whose name and features were still so new to her, required more consideration on her part. Perhaps she ought to measure him not by the markers of their shared past, but by word and deed from last night onward. Raleigh Vick was an unfamiliar man with a familiar heart, and with these passports, he offered her the chance to fall in love with more than just his heart.
What would it be like to learn Vick? How he took his morning coffee—or did he actually prefer tea? His favorite color. Sports team. What side of the bed he liked to sleep on. If he could cook as mean a steak as he did an omelette.
Shaking his head, he let go of her hand with a final squeeze. “I can’t ask you to choose me, but I can ask you to choose you.”
When he undid the clasp of his seatbelt, she followed suit, frowning. “I’m not sure I understand.”
He sighed, pulling the key from the ignition. The automatic dome light came on inside the car, highlighting the shadows in his handsome face, yet also accenting the faint signs of wear and tear and making him appear older. Or maybe simply his age. “I decided to wait a year to ask you to be with me, Beth, and we never made it. Afghanistan happened, and when I went searching for you—because you damn well better believe I searched for you—you’d already disappeared. I sat behind a desk, day in and day out, slowly healing, and I looked for you. When we discovered your alias, my first reaction was relief.”
Breathing had become difficult. “Because you found me?”
“Because you had finally chosen yourself.” His words were a near echo of Tobias’s from earlier that morning. “You gave yourself over to a life you truly wanted, as opposed to a life you’d fallen into through circumstance. You got out, my darling girl,” he rasped, lifting a hand to stroke gently over her cheek, the caress a remembered one from their distant past. A kiss. An explosion. “It was what I always wanted for you, though I’ll admit, I was selfish enough to also want to offer you that out.” His touch fell away. “Now I can. Choose you, Beth. I did.”
The knot in her chest refused to ease, the knuckles of her right hand turned white from her bloodless grip on the door handle. “You’re mine,” she whispered, shocked by her clarity of knowledge, her faith in him.
“Yes.”
“You’ve always been mine.”
“Always.” With a nod to the patient valet, Vick exited the car, while the attendant opened her door. She slid the Ziploc bag quickly into her purse, following Vick silently through the revolving front doors of the hotel after he shouldered both of their bags and handed over the keys and a tip to the valet.
The front-desk clerk g
reeted them with a pearly white smile. “Welcome to the Trump International Hotel. How can I help you this afternoon?”
“Paul Morgan.” Vick shifted into a flawless American accent carrying the echo of a Texas drawl. “I’m afraid we don’t have a reservation, but we need a room for the next couple nights.” He smiled apologetically at the clerk, who gave a fluttering little sigh that Beth understood only too well.
I hear ya, pal. Those man-dimples indenting his taut cheeks were killer.
The clerk rushed to assure them it was no trouble at all, searching for room availability on his computer. At the same time, Vick turned his potent smile on her, and her blood began a low simmer in her veins. “Honey, I hate to trouble you, but can you find my driver’s license and Visa from wherever you hid them in that bag of yours?”
Beth’s brow rose, but she bit the inside of her lip and rummaged around before producing what Vick needed. “Sure thing...honey.” She set the ID and credit card on the counter.
The clerk glanced between them. “One bed or two?”
“One,” Beth answered decisively, blushing to feel Vick’s gaze burning a hole in the side of her head. As the clerk typed and clicked, Beth leaned over, putting her lips to Vick’s ear. “You said you were mine,” she reminded him in a whisper. If he was, then she damn well intended to make the most of her ownership and live in the moment.
His hand fisted the excess material of her coat at the small of her back, out of sight of the clerk. “Three minutes,” he whispered in return, and the simmer reached a boil. “That’s all the time you have left before I take you, no matter where we are.”
Then he released her to sign the receipt the young man behind the desk had slid in front of him. The card and license were returned to her purse as the clerk handed over a pair of room keys in a sleek envelope, reminding them of the services to which they might avail themselves during their stay, and directed them to the elevator bank.
Her breathing was audible within the confines of the elevator, her face hot as she stared straight ahead at the reflective doors. “So, P.S., not sure how I feel being married to a Texan,” she said suddenly, filling the fraught silence with her shaky, high-pitched voice. “Is this an opposites-attract, red-state-blue-state union? Because we should probably talk about how we’re planning to vote in the next election. I’m more of a social issues gal, myself.”
“Forty-five seconds, baby.”
Beth cursed.
They’d barely made it inside the room when Vick shoved her back against the door and took her mouth with a ravishing hunger. Lips slanted, tongue delving, he bracketed her wrists in unyielding fingers and lifted her arms above her head. She hissed in a breath at the stretch and burn of the wound on her upper arm, but pain faded under the onslaught of his kiss. Passion and need coalesced as he brought the full weight of his body against hers and she felt the steely evidence of his arousal pressing into her abdomen.
Writhing against him, she tugged at his hold. Escape was impossible. “Undress me,” she gasped, catching his upper lip between her teeth when he made no move to heed her.
He growled and ground his hips against hers. “Don’t rush me.” His mouth left hers to trail open-mouthed kisses down her throat, but the collar of her coat impeded his progress. Strong hands fisted the warm wool and, with a series of jerks, freed the buttons to draw the coat down her arms. The coat pooled at their feet, his joining soon after, before he delved both hands into her hair and devoured her.
She whimpered under his assault, her touch lighting from his hips to his shoulders to his jaw. He didn’t give her a moment to breathe, or think, her senses awash in the raw seduction of his kiss.
It would be safer to hold a piece of herself apart. He was a spy, a liar and a stranger, and she’d be one smart cookie to take those factors into consideration. But the truth of the matter was what it had always been: Vick was her spy, her liar, and sure as hell wasn’t a stranger to her. She refused to hide anything, and in doing so offered him everything.
Surrendering with a happy moan, she deepened the kiss, learning him with each enticing lick and heated breath. His hold shifted to wrap around her torso, tightening almost to the point of pain, but she recognized the change, sensing its mirror in her.
Maybe if she held on tight enough, clung hard enough, this moment would last forever. Maybe they would last forever, and their time together would cease to feel less like the stolen moments typifying their past and more like a new beginning.
He’d offered her that exact chance with the fake IDs. Say yes, and she became Grace Morgan, her charming husband Paul never far from her side. They could have grand adventures, traveling the world together, exploring each other’s bodies and discovering how they fit together when they weren’t running for their lives, or taking the lives of others.
Say no...well. Say no, and she would wake up tomorrow as she’d woken today. Beth Faraday, with a target on her back. “Vick?”
His forehead rested against hers, chest rising and falling as he fought to catch his breath. “Don’t think about it,” he murmured, reading her mind. “Don’t think about anything but what I’m going to make you feel.” Large hands moved with surety over her ribs, her back, petting her through her clothing. “Now we undress.”
Boots, then socks, then jeans and sweater and tee, until she stood in the suite’s foyer in panties and a sports bra. The adhesive gauze on her upper arm itched under his regard, but she was far more concerned with the sight he presented in nothing but unbuttoned trousers and bare feet. “No big deal, but you could be shirtless all the time. If you wanted.” She cocked her hip to one side, blatantly ogling. “Just saying.”
“Stop looking and start touching.” Looping an arm around her waist, he lifted her off her feet and covered her mouth with his. He carried her to the king-sized bed as he kissed her, standing at its edge while she knelt on the mattress. “Or don’t, and let me touch you instead.”
Splaying a hand over his bare chest, she held him off. “I want to try something new.” New for her, anyway.
His gaze turned slumberous, sensual. “Oh?”
She could kiss this man for the confidence he instilled in her. From day one, he had allowed her to use him to explore what she could and couldn’t do, what she did and didn’t like. Her fantasies would be his, she knew—she had only to ask. “Yup. So if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stand there and take it like a man.” Her man.
Her lips traced a path around the white bandage stuck to his hard torso, tongue flicking out to taste his skin as she made her way toward his navel. Her lip caught on the trail of midnight hair meandering past the gaping waistband of his trousers, and she pressed a series of light, teasing kisses down, down, until the thin, black cotton of his briefs impeded her progress. “I need you naked. You get to choose who removes the rest of your clothes.” When he hesitated, she shrugged. “It depends if you want my mouth on your cock now, or a few minutes from now.”
His pants and underwear were on the floor before she finished her sentence, revealing an impressively strong body with more than its fair share of battle scars—including a bitch of a surgical scar on his hip and leg that she knew, she just knew, was from Kabul. Her grin faltered, but she focused on the heavy erection standing at attention in front of her. Biting her lip, she slid off the bed, sinking to her knees at his feet. Her hand curved around him, gripping firmly.
His abdominal muscles twitched, and she glanced up when he groaned. “Sensitive, honey?” The more she thought about it, the more Paul Morgan the Rugged Texan floated her proverbial boat. That twang was positively lethal.
“You ought to know better than to tease me.” Grabbing a fistful of her hair, he tugged gently, tilting her head back to smile down at her. His blue eyes glowing like the heart of a flame, he lifted his other hand to stroke a thumb over the curve of her cheek. “What I want
from you...it should scare you.” He sobered. “It scares me.”
“Don’t think about it,” she whispered, offering him his own reassuring words. “Don’t think about anything but what I’m going to make you feel.” Adjusting her hold, she slipped the head of his cock between her lips.
A rush of salty wetness gathered on her tongue, the taste of his pre-come making her mouth water. Her eyes closed as she licked around the head, swirling over a sensitive vein, and salivating at the discovery of his various textures. All that delicacy wrapped tight around a core of iron need, and Beth knew she was holding his heart in reverse.
Stroking him with her tongue and hand, she cupped his testicles and listened to him swear a blue streak. His grip in her hair never forced, but urged instead, guiding her back and forth over his length as she strove to take him deeper. Hips moving in a careful rhythm, he stood over her, a proud, naked god to her penitent worshipper.
Beth had zero problem worshipping Vick in this manner. Resting on her heels, she sucked the crown, tonguing the capped edge before pulling back. “What would you say if I confessed I like going to my knees for you?” Another tidbit she’d learned about herself, but something she doubted she would ever have felt comfortable exploring with another man. Only Vick could be this to her, for her.
A tremor rocked him. “I’d say there is no luckier bastard on the planet.” Face flushed and eyes glazed, he used the fist in her hair to bring her to her feet. “So I’ll warn you now, Elisabeth. I am never letting you go.” Cupping her jaw with hard fingers, he held her mouth open and deliberately laved first her top lip, then her bottom, with the flat of his tongue. Wet and seeking and so hot she feared her legs might collapse under her, his action scrambled her brain, and she barely heard his growled vow. “Where we go, we go together. From now until forever.”
He tumbled her to the bed before rolling onto his back and dragging her atop him in an intimate straddle. “Since we’re in agreement that my bullet wound is worse than your bullet wound—”