“You know how I feel, Gabriel. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you but…”
He cut her off when his lips descended toward hers. Their lips met, and they sank deeper into the soft mattress.
“I should leave now, as in right this minute. I have things on New Monaco to attend to and yet…” he whispered. His voice conveyed his reluctance and yet she could tell by the look in his eyes that he had to leave.
She hated saying goodbye.
Hated it.
“Leave?” she asked.
Why should she be offended? She couldn’t stay in his life and yet she’d wanted their night of sexual bliss to continue for a while longer. Well, she’d tiptoed around spoiling the moment and he’d just forged right ahead. He’d really stepped in it, this time. He’d stepped in it right up to his knees. Her eyeballs felt as if they were going to pop straight out of her head.
“You’re right. You should go. We need to keep up appearances so everyone doesn’t realize how we really feel about each other. I mean it might damage your public image.”
“To hell with my public image. I don’t give a toss about it when I’m with you. If some don’t like the fact that I am with you they can lump it.”
“The point of the matter is this, I’m defending Tyler and you want his neck to be stretched, and if others think that we’re doing this together, well it might look bad, you know?”
“Well,” he admitted. “There is that.” He smiled at her. “I can’t make that ruin my love for you. My wife was a bitch, but she didn’t deserve her fate. I have to bring her killer to justice.”
“And I will find that killer and deliver him or her into your custody. I can promise you that much.”
“And yet, you won’t promise me what I really want from you.”
“I can’t, my love,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion. “I’m almost jealous of those other women that were in your life,” she admitted.
“What women? You’re the only woman that’s haunted my dreams, my every thought. I thought I’d go mad…I wanted you so badly. You’re in my heart. I’ve never given my heart to any other woman, so do you honestly think I could take what we have so lightly? If you came back to me, you would be the only woman I would ever have for the rest of my life. None could compare to you, Samantha.”
She wetted her lips. “You’re almost too good to be true. I’d say you’re better than a knight in shining armor. You’re a prince.”
“Thank you.” A cheeky glint entered his eyes. “I always knew I was special,” he chuckled, and brushed his lips lightly against hers once again. “Samantha, much as I’d like to stay and continue this, I must run. Really,” he stressed.
He stared back at her. Hesitation danced in his eyes. Coupled with another look that would probably emerge victorious.
Determination.
Shit.
It had only been a few hours. They needed more time. Her eyes flickered to the clock.
“I can’t stay here. I have an important meeting to get to, and, besides, you were the one that fell asleep for two of those hours.” He’d been trailing his hand up and down her back all during their chat.
His hand stopped, and pulled her close. He kissed her and then released her. She reached for him again and pulled him back.
“Samantha.” His voice held irrefutable longing, and yet she could see his point of view. If she kept him from his meeting and she kept stalling her investigation that would clear Tyler’s name they’d both suffer for it.
Heaving a great sigh, she lifted her hands off of him.
“You’d better go,” she said reluctantly.
“Don’t worry, this isn’t the last time we’ll be in bed together.”
“It could be if I ran with Tyler.”
“You won’t,” he said simply. “You’re not someone who could survive life on the lam.”
True.
Sadly, he was right. She had never run from anyone or anything in her whole life, it was pointless to start now, especially when she had so many years left ahead of her.
She watched him and narrowed her eyes. She sighed. He was moving slowly which meant that he didn’t want to leave.
He had to leave. He was right.
She hated it when others were right, and she was wrong.
She slid to the edge of the bed and reached her arms out for him.
“I’ve missed you so much!” Samantha whispered.
He turned back to her and she could see the temptation in his bright blue eyes. He wanted to rip his clothes off and jump back into bed with her. But he buttoned the last button on his shirt, instead.
Close but no cigar, sometimes she just couldn’t catch a break.
“God, you don’t know how much I have missed you, we haven’t had enough time for me to show you just how much,” Devlin promised, pressing his searing lips against hers. Flames of passion crackled between them, and she longed to pull him down the length of her and reacquaint herself with him once again. “Without you my life would cease to have meaning. If you miss me that much, you’ll stay and never leave my side again…not in this life anyway,” he said, sighing.
She didn’t want to go into this again. “You have to go,” she urged. Her voice dropped to the barest of whispers.
He leaned against the mattress, and it took all of her willpower to keep herself from tearing his clothes off his body. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she shivered. The temperature in the room dropped dramatically when his warmth had abandoned her.
She was freezing!
She would have to find something to put on. She followed him to the door. Before he could activate the doors sensors, she reached out for him.
“Be safe,” she murmured, kissing him one last time.
“Me? I’m more worried about you. You’re the one that will be doing all of the work.”
“Oh, I’ll be fine. I’ve got a good crew, don’t you know. I’m also living a fairly charmed life. Don’t fret about me. You just count the hours until we’re back in each other’s arms.”
“What else is there to do?” A smile broke across his face. They could savour the moment now but eventually she’d have to leave him even though her heart would always belong to him.
Always.
She watched with a heavy heart as he slipped out into the dimmed hallway. She hoped that he would make it back down to the surface safely.
Samantha moved over to her luggage and pulled out a pair of slinky pajamas. Once she had them on, she curled back underneath the covers sighed, and drifted off to sleep once again.
*****
Samantha felt herself drifting toward consciousness when something hot and wet licked at her face. She brushed her hand up against it, wrinkling her nose at the smell of foul breath.
Still believing that she was dreaming, she tried to push the offensive creature away from her. She hated it when her sister allowed her dog to sleep on the bed, because he always opted for her bed not Johanna’s.
“Stop it, Ned,” Samantha murmured, frowning. Ned was a little too giving with his slobbery kisses.
Her eyes flew open in horror as realization struck her.
Ned the foundling pup that Johanna had rescued when they were children had died on Earth FOUR years ago.
She screamed. At that precise moment, her eyes connected with two chocolate brown eyes. The shaggy dog tried licking her face again but jerked back when she jolted upright.
She stared around at her unfamiliar surroundings. Then when she saw the gaudily flashing lights above her, she finally understood what had happened to her.
Either she was still dreaming or someone had purposefully put her down in one of the seediest areas of New Monaco, with devious thoughts in their mind. This part of the planet didn’t look like any fairy tale.
She looked down at herself and dismay rang through her. She quickly realized that not only was she by herself in unfamiliar surroundings, but she was also scantily clad.
What made things even worse was that she had none of the weapons that she relied upon so heavily. She was royally screwed.
No communicator, no shoes, and no one to trust.
The shaggy dog had an aura of familiarity to him. In her half-asleep state, she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. But he was different. Special even.
Weird.
But then everything about her and around her always seemed to have an element of weird to it.
“Just freaking terrific!!!” she muttered, pushing herself to her feet.
She sniffed at the air. She’d landed in a heap of garbage. She picked a fishbone off of her stomach and threw it back onto the ground. Her stomach rolled. She didn’t want to think about the other stuff crawling around in the garbage heap.
The pavement was warm under her bare feet and she grimaced as she considered her unusual predicament. She’d kill the person that had put her down here. As soon as she was done with them they would be begging for mercy.
This was some really sick and twisted joke. She would bet money that Devlin’s bodyguards had done this. They’d eyed her with as shitload of contempt.
Rage boiled through her as she imagined how her wrath would affect the person that had perpetrated such an unthinkable strike against her. If it had been one of Devlin’s bodyguards, she was going to give him a bloody earful when they met again.
How could he hire such contemptible little bitches?
“UNBELIEVABLE!” Samantha fumed.
The pavement was quickly turning hotter under her bare feet. As the two suns rose higher in the sky, the heat would only get worse. Of course, they were small suns…so she wouldn’t be cooked…but still…it would be HOT.
It was New Monaco’s springtime. But as the hours passed, the pavement would get quite steamy. If someone had decided to put her down here on purpose they could’ve at least had the decency to provide her with the proper footwear.
At her loud exclamation, a few ruffians at the end of the alley stared at her hungrily.
“Oh, just give me a frigging break! I so don’t need this!”
They were looking at her and licking their lips. She knew what they had in mind. And there wasn’t a hope in hell of them ever getting it.
She had two options, she could run or she could stand her ground and make all of them rue the day that they were born. ‘Course she never ran away from any situation, and she was usually the one that did the chasing.
“Hey, Arnold, let’s say we have some fun with the young filly,” the one grizzly looking man said, teetering from side to side.
It was way too early in the morning for her to be dealing with this.
Yep, she’d throttle that bitchy bodyguard of Devlin’s when she could find her.
The dog beside her let out a ferocious growl and if she had been able she would’ve echoed that growl.
Instead, she braced herself and glanced up, wincing. She was nearly blinded by the early morning sunlight that streaked across the sky. There were three smelly bastards and one of them was slinking toward her.
She was as sober as a baby while they were as drunk as skunks. Come to think of it, they smelled like skunks as well unless that was her wonderful scent she was inhaling.
Being dumped in a garbage heap wasn’t something she ever wanted to experience ever
again.
One of them moved forward and she quickly grabbed his wrist in a joint lock when he tried moving to touch her.
“Haven’t you ever heard the old saying…you can look…but don’t touch? You stupid bastard!”
She wrenched it and pulled it behind his back. She heard something in it give way and snap, and he howled with anger. His two other cohorts seemed ticked off by this and they pulled out their phase pistols.
“You just messed with the wrong people, you little cunt. You’re going to pay for that…in a big way.”
Samantha still held him at the ready as the mangy dog chomped down on one of the other man’s ankles. He screamed out in agony dropping his phase pistol. He moved in to attack the dog, which distracted him nicely.
“Nice doggie. I knew you and I would be great pals. Go and take another bite…he deserves everything you can give him.”
Samantha pulled the man that she was holding and used him as a human shield, just as the third man discharged his phase pistol.
The first man dropped like a sack of potatoes in front of her and in a flurry of movements that even surprised her, she had whipped out of the alley, dodging gunfire all the while.
She heard the dog growling behind her. He let out three loud barks. She couldn’t be certain if he followed her…but she’d welcome him into the fold if he did.
Her breath came in short gasps. Her bare feet thudded against the hot pavement. She ran out into the middle of a busy street, teeming with people and nearly collided with a few of them.
Hover cars whined above her. She stared up and frantically attempted to decide her next course of action. Yesterday had been absolute hell and she decided fairly quickly that today didn’t look so shit hot either.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Samantha dashed madly through the crowd of people. Gunfire rang out behind her.
Shit, did the idiots ever give in?
Her thoughts were all over the place. She ducked as another shot rang out past her, hitting a store window. She bit her lip and glanced behind her. The dog had pursued her. He came up behind her and fell into step beside her.
Her bare feet were getting quite sore, and she really wanted to kick the jerks in their collective asses, though she knew when she’d been beat. She couldn’t go up against a phase pistol. They would eventually hit her, even if they were poor shots. They’d won the first round, but she’d be damned if they’d win the second round.
She wanted to twine her hands around the Red Falcon’s neck, and watch his sapphire eyes bulge right out of his head, his lack of security on his systems had resulted in this.
Someone wanted her to die, and though she thought it was the Amazonian bitch it could have been someone else.
So they’d put her down in the middle of hell central in her pajamas, knowing that she was vulnerable and therefore didn’t stand a chance against anyone that might wish to attack her.
But they didn’t know about her special talents and if she was pushed much further, she was going to unleash them and say to hell with the possible consequences.
Using her abilities out in the open would put her at risk of being hunted by psychic bounty hunters and she didn’t have the training that Charlotte did to avoid them. That’s why she had to keep her abilities a secret.
Only her family could be trusted to not give her away to those that could exploit her. Only her family and Devlin. So where the hell was he? If he had someone watching her every move wouldn’t they know of her current predicament?
But she wouldn’t give up. Even though she was in the middle of a horrible area of town, she would get through it. Then she’d find the nearest communicator and ask her sister to come and get her. Only, one problem remained. She had no money.
“What do you think, bud?” The dog had finally caught up with her.
She glanced down at him and patted his head. He tilted his head to the side. Then, his eyes gravitated to something ahead of him, but she couldn’t see what he had seen. The crowd was too thick. He barked, nudged her side, and in a flash, he was gone.
“Wait! Oh just great,” she grumbled. Her only companion had just left her in the lurch.
With her recklessness and ability to take on anything, she’d survive this hellish morning. She was quickly living her worst nightmare and a burning stitch nagged at her side. She nearly slammed into a man that seemed to be a wrestler and muttered an apology. He merely grunted to her in reply and kept going.
Casinos and brothels lined the strip and her eyes filled to bursting with all of the wanted men and women that she recognized. She’d have a heyday searching down bounties if she didn’t have other th
ings on her mind.
Now, she most certainly had to add Edwina’s name to her hit list. Perhaps, she’d even strangle the life out of her before she treated the Red Falcon to the same thin.
Despite what had just happened between them, the passion they’d just shared she wondered if he was behind the whole thing with Tyler. Maybe he’d finally had enough of his wife—she couldn’t believe that he’d hurt any woman but from what she’d heard, Lady Devlin had been a grade A bitch.
Maybe he just wanted to make her a widow—so he could claim her as his.
Maybe he had been the one that had actually set up Tyler. He had the means and the motive. From what the Red Falcon had relayed to her, Devlin and Lady Devlin hadn’t exactly been on the best of terms.
Even though she knew Devlin was ruthless, she also knew he was a great many things--but a fool he was not. The man had a cunning intellect. All of the lights were on in his head…and someone was always home.
He had probably discovered his wife’s constant infidelities and had realized that perhaps her behavior would stain his untarnished image as a respectable crime lord and undisputed ruler of New Monaco.
No…he couldn’t have done it. Damn, one minute she believed he was innocent and the next…she sighed.
Devlin almost certainly reasoned that her death would ease his troubles a great deal, and implicating Tyler in her murder would work out perfectly. Essentially, he would’ve killed two birds with one stone.
But then her theory was blown all to hell when a phase pistol was tossed in her direction. She quickly caught it, not knowing where it had come from.
Narrowing her eyes, she let out a dangerous laugh. The three men that pursued her stopped dead in their tracks. They almost looked frightened.
“Hello Boys!” she smirked. “It’s payback time, I think!”
They stared at her in stunned surprise, and then fired at her. She lunged behind a hover car, and then peeked her head up. She was a crack and quick shot and rarely missed even when she was drop dead tired.
She hit two of them straightaway. Then she tried taking down the last one but couldn’t seem to get a good lock on him.
Reckless Bounty (Intergalactic Justice Book 1) Page 19