When he opened his eyes and turned to face her, his smoldering gaze was gone, replaced by a full-fledged fire. He took hold of her waist and lifted her effortlessly onto the top of the washing machine. The metal was biting cold on her backside. But the temporary discomfort fled her mind entirely when he moved between her parted knees and brushed his fingertips over the strip of hair between her thighs. His light touch blended with the vibrations from the washing machine, sending a shiver of pleasure through her flesh.
Then he cupped a hand to the back of her neck, pulled her face to his and kissed her with a gentle, loving reverence. She threaded her hands into his hair and gave herself over to the moment, her fears temporarily forgotten.
“Before we get any further,” he murmured, “I need you to know that I don’t have protection. I looked in the upstairs bedrooms but didn’t find any.” His hands smoothed over her back, caressing, loving her. “Even if we don’t get to do that part, there’s still so much we can do. Being together like this, it’s enough for me, for now.”
The number one rule of being a female operative was staying on the pill to keep periods predictable or nonexistent, whatever duty demanded. Even so, there were a lot of reasons beyond an unwanted pregnancy to use condoms, and Alicia had never once had sex without one—even though she and John were lovers exclusively for almost two years. That would have been too much of an acknowledgment of exclusivity, too much of a bond.
Tonight, she wanted that connection with him. To trust him the way he’d always wanted her to. She palmed his erection as a deep need settled low in her belly. She couldn’t believe how much she’d missed this sensation of wanting sex so badly that it made her ache, and the idea of bringing John pleasure, of giving him her body to use for his pleasure, was a heady feeling, indeed. If only she could be as sure about her own pleasure. What if she couldn’t come? What if she couldn’t feel any more than this?
She shoved her fear aside, determined not to let it stand in her way anymore. “I’m on the pill. And I want to do this with you. Raw, like this.”
He released a ragged exhale and looked into her eyes. “I’m safe. Tested and fine. I would never compromise you like that.”
“I trust you.” It felt so freeing to say. “I haven’t been tested recently, but I’m safe.” She swallowed, gathering her courage, then added, “I haven’t been with another man since you.”
He looked concerned by the confession, like he worried over her well-being. “Why not? My ego’s going crazy here. Tell me you didn’t wait for me. Tell me that’s not what this was about. What’s going on with you?”
She could have lied, but she was done with that where he was concerned. “It wasn’t about waiting for you, at least not at first. It was a tactical decision. I wanted to take every unwanted emotion I had—my hatred of you, my sexual frustration, my anger at my body—and transform them into power to help me heal. But as time went on, and my body grew stronger, I realized I wasn’t interested in anybody sexually anymore. I stopped thinking about it at all. I felt...”
She shook her head. How could she describe it when she barely understood it herself?
“What did you feel, Phoenix? Talk to me.”
“I felt nothing. I thought that even though I survived the shooting, that part of me didn’t because I wasn’t interested in sex. I couldn’t think about it without thinking about you, so it was just easier to not think about it at all. And after a while I didn’t even have to fight it. That part of me that could feel desire, feel like a woman, was dead inside me. And I’m afraid it’s still dead.”
She expected him to protest her words, to tell her that was all in her imagination. Instead, he didn’t say anything, but placed his index finger in his mouth, wetting it, then used it to part her inner thighs.
At the first touch of his finger on her most intimate flesh, she arched, crying out. The feeling was exquisite—bliss so intense it bordered on pain. She looped an arm around his neck, holding on for dear life. She could feel her nails digging into his shoulder muscles but couldn’t stop herself. She couldn’t do anything but ride out the sensation evoked by his finger’s slow rotation.
“Does that feel like nothing?” he murmured against her skin, his voice thick with gravel. “Does that feel like part of you is dead inside?”
“No.”
“No. Not to me, either.” His voice was thick, rough. His lips glided over her chest, pressing kisses to her scar and the tops of her breasts. His left arm was like a band around her middle, holding her steady like an anchor in a storm, telling her in his own way that she could let go whenever she was ready and he’d be there to keep her safe and steady.
His patient, loving finger dipped lower, gathering moisture, swirling in an unhurried rhythm, never pushing her too far too fast. She pressed her forehead to his shoulder, trying to relax as a gift to him. Trying to let go because he deserved somebody who trusted him enough to let go.
He slid a second finger next to the first, working them in unison in a way that was so masterful that it wrenched another cry from her. “You want to know what this feels like to me?”
With his magic fingers working and the vibrations of the washing machine, words failed her completely. All she could do was cling to him and feel and take whatever he offered, sexy pillow talk and all.
“When I touch you like this, when you wrap yourself around me and let me pleasure you, when you get wet because of me and you make all those sexy little noises that let me know how good I’m giving it to you, I feel like the most powerful man on Earth.”
He punctuated that last word by slipping two fingers inside her.
She whimpered and arched her hips until his fingers were at the perfect angle to bring her pleasure and the washing machine undulations and vibrations rippled up her thighs. On the next noise she made, he captured her lips in a slow, deep, wet kiss.
“You are so beautiful, so alive, when you’re giving yourself to me. Give yourself to me now, Phoenix. Because I remember how it feels for me when you come and it’s even better than this. Even better than feeling like the king of the whole damn universe.”
She was close to that now, so dangerously close. She concentrated on the feel of his fingers and the movement of the washing machine below her, his strong arm anchoring her, his lips on her neck and chest. He worked her body like he really was a god, every pump of his fingers inside her and every swirl of his thumb taking her higher, tighter, closer to the heavens.
Her every thought floated away and her body took over, rocking against his fingers until he took the hint that she needed it just a little harder and faster to get where she was trying to go.
Then his fingers moved, concentrating all their effort on her pleasure center, making way for his hard length, but she was too lost in sensation to fear this part anymore. All she wanted was to take the gift John was giving her, the gift of showing her that she could trust her body to do what it was designed to. Because of course he was going to make her come. Of course, this part of her wasn’t dead because John had brought her back to life. She was alive and whole and in the arms of the man she loved...and everything was going to be all right.
She wrapped her legs around his hips as their bodies merged. His arm held her close as he moved, sinking deeper inside her with each thrust. There was never anything as right as this, as feeling the potent power and strength of his body, hard and huge and perfect, taking the lead, showing her what they were together, teaching her what it meant to trust, to be truly loved by a man.
Her fingers plunged into his hair, holding tight as she started to move with him, driving herself right to the edge of release until she was so close, her body tightened, desperate and reaching.
She snaked a hand between them and it only took the touch of her fingertip to bring herself all the way home.
Her release ripped through her, almost violent
in its intensity and noise. Tears sprang to her eyes—tears of relief and release of so much baggage, she hadn’t even known she’d been carrying it all or that it’d been so heavy on her soul. John drove into her hard and held himself there, gathering her so tightly in his arms she couldn’t draw a full breath, his face pressed to her neck, his exhale tremulous as he joined her in ecstasy.
She stroked his sweat-dampened back and shoulders as he continued to pant against her neck, his body trembling slightly as he came down from his high, but she was too contented to ask him to loosen his hold. She listened to the faint sounds of the storm outside, John’s erratic breathing and the washing machine as it clicked to the start of a rinse cycle. “We didn’t even make it to the spin cycle.”
He laughed a wheezy laugh and shook his head against her neck, then withdrew from her and worked his arm beneath her knees. “I’m going to take you someplace softer than this.”
He lifted her into his arms. She laid her cheek on his shoulder, content to let him carry her into the home theater across the hall. What a change that was. She was content. Possibly for the first time in her life. It blew her mind what that meant. Previously, the idea of giving her power over to a man, of being vulnerable to another person, had been so terrifying to her that she’d never considered that love didn’t work that way.
Love wasn’t about losing control or becoming weak. It was about finding someone who made her stronger, better than she could be alone. Once upon a time, she’d put her absolute faith into her black ops crew. She’d thought that blind trust in others had nearly killed her, but that wasn’t true. It had made her stronger, despite that her trust had been violated by Rory.
What it really came down to was that she couldn’t let Rory’s betrayal continue to dictate her choices and blind her from what she knew in her heart to be true: that she was going to be okay. That loving and trusting didn’t make her weak or endanger her. And that her and John’s connection ran deeper than either of them could control—but she didn’t want to control it anymore. What she wanted was to spend the rest of her life with him.
With Alicia still in his arms, John lowered to the nearest sofa and grabbed a throw blanket. They snuggled in together, breathing and being. Alicia was happier than she’d been in twenty long, lonely months.
John nuzzled his nose into her hair. “I never did tell you what it feels like to me, you letting go and coming for me.” His voice had the oddest quality to it—tender, yet tired and with an undercurrent of deep, abiding emotion.
She lifted his head and looked at him to see the expression that would accompany such a voice.
His eyes were glassy and red-rimmed, and his face had lost the hard, icy edge from a few days earlier. He still wasn’t the same John as before she was shot, but he wasn’t the unfeeling warrior anymore, either. He looked worn-out, but lighter somehow. He looked utterly open and vulnerable, and she loved him all the more for it.
He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “You, this, it feels like...” He shook his head, his jaw clenching so tightly that she could see the ripple of muscles in his cheek. “It feels like absolution.”
“Absolution. I like that idea.” A clean slate. A fresh start for the two of them to build on.
He pressed his lips to hers. “I love you, Phoenix.”
* * *
Absolution. Forgiveness. The washing away of all their sins and transgressions, the doubts and fears and pain they’d caused each other. It was all gone. Rory was probably dead, they’d most likely be able to slip away from the island and disappear into the world at large before Logan’s crew or any of the other federal agencies on the hunt for them realized where they were, and in his arms, he held his soul mate. It was a perfect new beginning.
The power had cut out while their clothes were in the dryer. It didn’t return for two days. They transformed the home theater into their nest, lining the tables and counters with all the candles they could find and piling cushions and blankets on the floor. For two days, their world was candlelight and each other’s bodies and the distant sound of the storm raging outside.
Every few hours, John walked the house, inspecting for storm damage, but other than superficial destruction and one time when a side door blew open, the house remained intact and solid, leaving him to concentrate on relearning Alicia’s body, on cultivating her confidence and talking for hours on end about their lives and childhood and all the topics they’d never seemed to have time to broach before.
After the storm passed, after two days and night of love and laughter and planning for a future together somewhere overseas, the power and phone service turned back on. It was time for them to make a break for freedom and leave Martinique. Logan and his crew were probably still in residence on the island, if they’d survived the grenade explosion, but they had to take the chance. Harry’s plane could get them as far as her condo in Panama, where they could replenish their supplies, secure quality fake passports and get on with their lives together.
It wasn’t precisely an ideal future, because for the rest of their lives they’d be wanted criminals, looking over their shoulders, but that was the price they paid for the choices they’d each made. As long as they were together and free, he was prepared to live with it.
The first step? Returning to the beach for one last check for Rory’s body, though the newscasters on the radio had announced that there’d been no fatalities reported on the island. After that, they were going to risk a trip back to their motel room to grab Alicia’s computer. Not that she couldn’t replace it, but the sensitive information contained therein would further implicate her as a criminal and John wasn’t willing to chance it.
The residential streets surrounding the house they’d stayed in were littered with debris from houses, palm fronds, and ton after ton of displaced dirt and sand. Many of the windows were still boarded up, but people had emerged from their homes and were busy getting their lives back in order.
John and Alicia weren’t the only ones on the beach. Families and solitary men picked their way through the piles of washed-up trash, probably searching for anything of value. John approached them and asked them if they’d found any bodies or injured people on the beach, but they hadn’t.
He returned to Alicia’s side with the news. She hugged herself and looked out at sea. He wouldn’t say she looked regretful, but definitely pensive. He hugged her close. “Are you okay?”
“I am, actually. It would have been great to have the closure of seeing him for myself and knowing for sure that he was dead, but even if he isn’t, his sins are going to catch up with him eventually. And I wouldn’t be opposed to sending an untraceable message to ICE letting them know this was the last island he was spotted on. Honestly, I’m ready to move on. With you.”
“Me, too. How about we get over to the motel and pick up your computer, then get to the airport? I can’t wait to get out of the islands.”
“I have a better idea that’ll get us off Martinique even faster. I’ll go to the airport and start a safety check of the floatplane while you get my computer. We’ll meet on the runway.”
He wasn’t crazy about the safety concerns involved with splitting up, but the idea of going alone, of not having to worry about Alicia while he slipped into the motel, grabbed their gear, then slipped back out, was alluring. And maybe she needed a few minutes of space to catch her breath and acclimate to their new plan. He could respect that. They’d be together again soon enough.
“Deal.”
They walked to the resort on the southern edge of the inlet and requested two cabs. The cabs trailed each other for several kilometers, then John watched the back of Alicia’s head disappear in the rearview window as the road forked, with Alicia headed to the private airport and John to Fort-de-France.
The taxi let him off near a corner market, one of the few that had survived the storm without too much da
mage and that had the news playing on a battery-operated radio. From the radio and talking with the locals, he discovered that five lives were lost to Hannah, mostly in the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, none on Martinique. John’s thoughts turned to Eugene. He decided to call and check in with him as soon as he got to the motel room.
He walked the three blocks to the hotel and stood in the doorway of a boarded-up restaurant, assessing the situation to make sure he wasn’t followed or being watched. When he was sure the coast was clear, he walked across the debris-littered cobblestone street.
He smiled at the motel receptionist as he crossed to the stairs. Without letting down his guard, he made it safely to their room and locked the door, then checked everyplace he could think of where Logan or one of his crew members might be lying in wait to ambush him, but found no one and none of their stuff disturbed. He grabbed Alicia’s computer bag from the floor near the bed, then did a double take.
Near the pillow sat his copy of Michael Jackson’s Bad CD, as if she’d wanted it near her when she slept. Or maybe it was a lucky coincidence. The CD had been his good-luck charm for ages, since college. He thought he’d lost it along with the rest of his bag in the grenade explosion, but somehow, it had survived. Probably thanks to Alicia.
It was a sign of good things to come. It had to be. He tucked it safely in his jacket pocket, packed Alicia’s computer and his police scanner in her bag, and was out the door in moments, anxious to get back to Alicia and on with their lives together.
He smiled again at the receptionist, then pushed through the revolving glass door, his head on a swivel looking for danger. Just as he was thinking this was too easy, and nothing in life was that smooth and simple, from out of the shadows of the boarded-up curry house next door stepped none other than Logan McCaffrey.
Chapter 14
John’s gun was in his hand without him even realizing he was reaching for it. “Logan? And here I’d hoped I’d killed you. What a disappointment.”
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