The Closer

by Rhonda Nelson

  And he thought she was fearless.

  She’d never known terror like that, had never been more afraid of anything in her life. The idea that he was gone—God help her, dead—had took hold and she hadn’t been able to shake it off until he’d moaned and blinked those amazing eyes up at her.

  He reached over and squeezed her hand. “Jess, I’m fine, really. The only thing that was wounded was my pride and it’ll recover. Eventually,” he drawled.

  “It was a damn sneaky thing to do,” she said. “How were you supposed to counter that? You were prepared to meet him face-to-face, not have him hide beneath the bed and blast you all with an incapacitating agent.”

  He shot her a look, smiled. “Incapacitating agent?”

  She cocked her head, darting him a pointed look. “I’ve watched enough crime dramas to know what knockout gas is, smart-ass.”

  “I’ll just bet you have,” he muttered, still grinning.

  “So...what’s the plan?”

  He lifted a brow. “The plan? Other than driving until we don’t feel like driving anymore, I don’t have one.”

  No plan? Wow, they had made some progress, she thought, pleased. “You aren’t going to do anything sneaky, like try to take me back to Shadow’s Gap, are you?” she asked, suddenly suspicious.

  He chuckled and shook his head. “No, of course not. You said you didn’t want to go back, that you wanted to come with me to Atlanta.”

  “Will it be a problem for you?” she asked hesitantly. “You know, with Payne and the others?”

  “Would it matter if it was?” he asked.

  “Not to me,” she said. “But they’re your coworkers and I don’t know what your company fraternization rules are.”

  “Well, considering that each one of them—and nearly every other agent who works for them—all met their spouses on the job, then I seriously doubt they’ll have anything to say about you.”

  Jess felt her eyes widen. “Seriously?”

  He nodded once. “Seriously.”

  She hummed under her breath. “Well, good. I would have gone to a hotel if it had been a problem, but I’d rather stay with you.” She reached over and patted him on the head. “I’ve grown rather fond of my hound,” she teased.

  He rolled his eyes, snorted. “Rather fond, huh? Does that mean I’m going to get a treat later?”

  Jess reached over and cupped him through his jeans, smiling when he jumped and his jaw tensed. “Who said anything about later?”

  “Jess,” he said warningly as she slid the button from its closure and lowered his zipper.

  She bent over and peeked up at him from lowered lashes. “This thing has tinted windows, right? I don’t want to inadvertently give some trucker a show.”

  “Government grade,” he said, sucking in a breath as she freed him. He shifted, hit the back button on his power seat, sliding it farther from the steering wheel.

  Jess pulled her hair out of the way, tucking it over one shoulder, then ran her tongue around the soft rim of his engorged head, before pulling the whole crown into her mouth.

  He swore violently, tensing his legs.

  “Do you want me to stop?” she teased, licking the length of him, the musky scent of man filling her nostrils.

  “No.”

  Good, because she didn’t want to. She loved the way he felt in her mouth, the soft, soft skin, the thick veins running along his long, hard shaft. She wrapped her lips around him again, flicked her tongue against the V of his head, hitting the sensitive spot just beneath the rim of the crown, and sucked hard, dragging him deeper and deeper into her mouth.

  She could feel the tension tightening the muscles in his legs, the sound of his harsh breath gasping between his teeth. His balls hardened, drawing up against her palm and she worked his shaft with the other, chasing her strokes with mouth. She caught the first taste of him on her tongue and sighed with pleasure, then upped the tempo and sucked harder, took him deeper, opening her throat to accommodate his massive size.

  “Jess, I can’t— I’m going to—”

  “Come for me, baby,” she breathed, giving him the same order he’d given her last night.

  As though those were the magic words, he did. She lapped it up, licked him clean, kept feeding at him until the very last bit was milked out of him, then pressed a lingering kiss on the crown of his cock and sat up.

  “I thoroughly enjoyed that,” she said.

  Seemingly shocked, his expression was one of frozen delight. “You, uh...You didn’t have to, you know,” he said, gesturing awkwardly.

  Jess felt her lips twitch. “I liked it better than the alternative,” she said.

  “Oh? What was that?”

  “Getting it in my hair,” she replied with a naughty grin. “My hair is looking especially good today.”

  “Everything about you looks especially good every day,” he said. “But I have to admit, you were magnificent on that runway. You owned it.”

  “You weren’t too bad yourself,” she said, pleasure blooming in her chest at the unexpected praise. She slid him a look. “We make a good team.”

  He smiled, then reached over and took her hand again, giving it a squeeze. “Yes, we do,” he said. He glanced at her, his gaze lingering on her face. “Why don’t you try to get some rest,” he said. “We’re in for a long drive.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she assured him.

  Famous last words, she thought hours later. It was after dark when she awoke, the moon hanging low in the sky, and they were in a parking lot of a popular hotel chain.

  “Hello, Sleeping Beauty,” he teased, sliding a hand over her cheek.

  Jess stretched, yawned. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to play out on you.”

  “No problem,” he assured her, his gaze dropping to her lips. “I’d rather you have plenty of rest for tonight.”

  She smiled. “Gonna need my strength, am I? That sounds promising, though I do hope you’re planning to feed me first. I’m hungry.”

  “I’ve ordered something,” he said, pulling around to the back of the building. He helped her with her bag, then located their room and opened the door. It was a substantial downgrade from the honeymoon suite, but it was clean and comfortable and they were together.

  Win, win, win.

  Their dinner arrived in short order, then they had each other for dessert. Jess was pleasantly exhausted, her limbs still trembling from another one of those magnificent orgasms he always managed to pull from her body, when Griff decided to turn the television on...

  And she saw the pair of them making their runway debut. She sat bolt upright and scrambled to the end of the bed. “We’re on the news? Already?” she asked, her voice climbing. “Damn, that was quick.”

  “There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” Griff said. “I know you’re worried about this being bad for business, but Payne was right. If anything, it’ll be just the opposite. For Rossi jewelry, Clandestine and Montwheeler.”

  They watched the whole piece, thankful when the reporter glossed over how the bra was actually stolen, probably because they hadn’t been given the details. Evidently Payne’s confidentiality warning was effective.

  She sighed and looked over at Griff. “No mention of Ranger Security. That’s a good thing, right?”

  “Definitely.” He’d pulled out his laptop and turned it around to show her. “The bra the Owl substituted is already up to four hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” he said. “And there’s still another day left on the auction.”

  She’d inspected it before they’d left. “It’s a damn fine piece of work,” she said. “Not as good as anything me or my father could make, quite honestly, but still, very good. It’s well designed, the cast is fine and each of the jewels is competently set. If he did it himself
, then that’s impressive. It takes years of practice to be able to execute something to that degree.”

  Griff lifted a bare shoulder. “He intimated that he did it himself, also admitting that it wasn’t as well done as a Rossi.”

  “Well, he got one part of that right, at any rate. Do you think he’s telling the truth?”

  “Payne insists that being a thief doesn’t make him a liar, and he trusts him,” he said. Griff hesitated, seemingly unsure.

  “But you don’t?” she asked.

  “I don’t know him, but Brian Payne is nobody’s fool. If Payne trusts him, then I have to believe that trust isn’t misplaced.” He turned to look at her, his eyes guarded, wary. “Speaking of misplaced trust, I’m sorry,” he said.

  Jess blinked, confused. He was sorry? “Sorry for what?”

  “For losing the piece when I promised that I wouldn’t.” He shook his head. “You trusted me and I—”

  Jess scrambled onto his lap and took his dear face into her hands. “And I still trust you,” she said, pinning him with her gaze. “You are not to blame for what happened, you hear me? You did everything you possibly could to keep this from happening. I don’t know what you could have done that might have resulted in a different outcome.”

  He smiled sadly, a weary grin on his mouth. “I don’t either, but I still feel like a fool.”

  “I’m sure that Payne, Flanagan and McCann all feel like fools as well, but do you think they are?”

  “What? No,” he said, as though the idea was ludicrous.

  She smiled, rested her forehead against his. “My point exactly.”

  Humor lit his gaze and the corner of his mouth hitched up, tugging into a half grin that was extremely endearing and equally sexy. He sighed, almost as though he’d come to some sort of inevitable conclusion. “You’re good for my ego,” he told her.

  He was good for hers, as well. “Ditto,” she said, melting with happiness.

  It was nice to be here with him without the case, without the mission, without any purpose other than to get back to Atlanta. Without a plan, she thought, her grin widening.

  Griff lifted his head and kissed her, his lips sliding mesmerizingly over hers. He tasted like barbecue and hot apple pie, like sin and seduction, like home and, God help her, happily ever after.

  “Hey, Jess?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Would it be all right if I made hot sweet love to you all night long?” he asked, his voice low and husky.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed herself more firmly against him and sighed softly into his mouth. “Oh, hell, yes.”

  * * *

  CLAD IN ONE of Griff’s long-sleeved flannel shirts, her knees drawn up to her chest, hair tumbling over her shoulders, Jess sat on the end of his couch, her gaze riveted to the television. The Owl’s theft of the bra hadn’t been the only thing that had the media in an uproar.

  She was.

  News agencies and daytime talk-show hosts played the clip of her runway appearance repeatedly, rejoicing that Clandestine had allowed her, a “normal” woman, to model their most exquisite, most anticipated piece of the year.

  “Just look at her,” one woman remarked. “She’s got confidence, she’s got curves, she’s gorgeous, but it’s more than that. She’s somehow managed to embody, in just a few short steps, the power of being a woman, of celebrating femininity.”

  “Or it could be that super-hot guy chasing after her, Nina,” her cohost joked.

  The pair laughed and then they launched into their critique of Griff’s performance, which was not getting as much attention as Jess’s, but more than enough to warrant lots of phone calls from friends and family, most especially Justin, whom he was talking to right now.

  “You’re on every channel!” the boy said, his voice going high. “Seriously, dude. Every channel. Like the president.”

  Griff chuckled, unable to help himself in the face of Justin’s awed delight.

  “You didn’t mention that your new job involved escorting supermodels,” he gushed. “I thought you were in the security business.”

  “I am,” he said. “But there are aspects of my job that I’m not at liberty to discuss. Client confidentiality.”

  For which he was eternally thankful. He’d hate to burst his little brother’s bubble and ruin his badass image by telling him that he hadn’t so much been escorting the “beautiful woman” as the bra she was wearing, and that he’d ultimately lost it. Griff grimaced.

  No doubt he’d get his Cool Card revoked for that.

  “Ah...” Justin sighed knowingly, as though that element only added another degree of awesomeness to Griff’s job. He rather liked this big-brother business, a fact he’d decided to share with his mother and sister as soon as this issue with the bra was settled.

  Of course, having that settled unwittingly settled other things—like his relationship with Jess—so there was a part of him that hoped (horrible, he knew) that Payne was wrong about his friend, that Keller wouldn’t keep his promise to return it. Because that would keep Jess at his side, looking for it, and they could keep having amazing sex and she could keep scaring the hell out of him with her insightful little peeks into his head.

  It was unnerving and yet...not. On one hand, it was nice not having to explain everything, on the other it could be damn inconvenient, particularly when she saw something he didn’t want her to see. Like last night, when she’d caught him looking at her and she’d known he’d been thinking about what would happen when they got the bra back.

  “We’re here now,” she’d said. “Stop fretting, stop planning and kiss me.”

  And he had, from one end of her lovely body to the other.

  How unfair, he thought, that he’d never met a woman he could see any sort of future with—and hadn’t wanted to—until now, and she lived in another state, too far to drive on a regular basis, and was too firmly entrenched in her life there to relocate.

  He didn’t have to ask—and wouldn’t have anyway—he knew.

  Because he was in the same position. New job, new life. And even if he could bring himself to leave the job, there was no way in hell he could leave his family again, not after spending years away from them in the military. It would break his mother’s heart. Glory would be crushed and disappointed. And then there was Justin, whom he was only just getting to know.

  It was an impossible situation, with ultimately no good outcome. He didn’t see any way to make the relationship last long term and because of that, logic demanded that they make a clean break when this was done.

  The very idea made his brain seize, his chest spasm uncomfortably, made him want to gather her up and haul her to the bedroom and make love to her until they were both covered in sweat, screaming with release, and he’d ruined her for any other man.

  A beep sounded over the line, alerting him to another call and he asked Justin to hold on.

  It was Payne.

  Dread ballooned in his gut.

  “Hey, Justin, I’ve got to take this call. Business,” he explained. “I’ll check in with you in a day or two, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “That would be great. And maybe we could get together,” he said, his voice suddenly thinner with nerves. “Go to a ball game or something.”

  “Sounds good,” Griff said, meaning it. He quickly ended the call and accepted the other. “Payne?”

  Jess’s head swiveled around and she stared at him, wide-eyed and expectant. They both knew that Keller had contacted Payne last night and had set up a meeting today. It had been hours ago, so many, in fact, that Griff had begun to suspect that Keller had been a no-show.

  “I’ve got it,” Payne said. “I’ll meet you at the office in an hour.”

  Griff released a slow breath. “All right. We’ll see you
then.”

  “Well?” Jess asked. Her voice was neither hopeful nor flat, just cautiously curious.

  “He’s got it,” he said, his gaze tangling with hers. “We’re meeting him at the office in an hour.”

  She swallowed, then offered him a shaky smile. “Dad will be relieved.”

  “I’m sure he will.”

  She pushed to her feet, tunneled her fingers through her hair. “I should probably get packed,” she said. She started toward the back, then stopped, a question in her gaze. “I’ve got time for a quick shower, though,” she said, a wan smile curling her lips. “Wanna join me?”

  More than his next breath, Griff thought. More than anything in this world, or any other.

  14

  “WOW,” GRIFF BREATHED the next morning. “This is amazing.”

  “Thank you,” Jess told him, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. They’d made half the eight-hour drive yesterday, then spent the night at a quaint little B and B Griff had found online while she’d been packing up—a nice surprise, she had to admit—and had finished the rest of the journey this morning. Her anxiety had increased with each mile they’d covered, and by the time they’d driven past the city limits sign, she’d been a twitchy wreck.

  It felt odd having him here in her space. Not wrong, precisely, just different. Probably because she knew it would be the only time he ever visited her house. He would never spend the night with her, wake up in her bed. She’d never cook him breakfast, or cuddle on the couch with him and watch movies when it rained.

  A lump welled in her throat and she determinedly swallowed. She’d known this was the inevitable outcome. He had, too. That’s why he’d joined her in the shower and taken her so hard and so desperately that they’d brought the shower curtain down and made the menagerie of pets in Payne’s apartment above Griff’s howl in response to their own screams.

  They’d reached the end of this magical romance and despite the fact that it was bittersweet, she wouldn’t have missed it for anything. She wouldn’t change a single second of any minute she’d spent with him.