Never Let Her Go

by Gayle Wilson

  “Tell me,” he urged. “Tell me you like me to touch you.”

  “You know that,” she said, her voice slightly hoarse.

  “I want you to tell me,” he said. “Tell me you like it.”

  “I like it,” she repeated obediently. She took a breath, the softness of her breast moving within the hard, callused roughness of his confining fingers. He closed them again, a slightly stronger compression this time.

  Her inhalation was broken. Almost a gasp. And her head had fallen back to rest again against the rim of the tub. The long, ringed column of her neck was exposed and suddenly the urge to press his mouth over it was irresistible. The need to taste the moisture there, both the salt-sharp tang of her sweat and the soapy bath water, was overpowering. Nick raised his body, leaning awkwardly over the tub.

  Her skin was moist and scented. The fragrance was evocative of the nights they had spent in that disordered bedroom, making love through the heat-drenched hours, the only sound the distant noises of this city that never slept and the efforts of the window unit to add a breath of coolness to the conflagration that had ignited between them

  Two people who should never have been attracted to each other. Two people no one else would ever believe were here in the shadowed darkness together. Two people…

  His mouth had found the small hollow at the base of her throat, and he licked the moisture that had collected there, touching it with the tip of his tongue, tasting it. Tasting her.

  Her hand cupped the back of his head, holding his mouth against her body. Inviting what he was doing. Welcoming it. His lips slipped lower, across the shadowed valley between her breasts. His hands shaped the outside of them, bringing their heat against his cheeks. He turned his head, the movement small, his tongue laving from side to side, his late-afternoon beard gently abrading her skin.

  A moan this time. Stronger than the breath she had drawn before. He liked hearing her moan. He liked making her moan. He liked all the noises she made when he made love to her. And that had been surprising, too. He would never have thought she was the kind of woman who made those particular sounds.

  He turned his head, allowing his mouth to fasten over the small bud of her breast that his fingers guided to it. He suckled, hard and strong, giving in to the need to take her into him, a part of her, anyway. Some part of her within him, just as he would soon be within her. Soon

  He turned his head and devoted his attention to the other breast, his mouth caressing there as well. Demanding. He was aware that she had moved. Her fingers fastened again over his. This time, however, she pulled them away and the nipple he had been suckling almost slipped out of his control. Almost.

  She held the hand she had captured, carrying it with hers under the water. He knew what she wanted. She was very good at that. At letting him know what she wanted. What she needed. And he wanted to know. Every need. Every desire.

  His fingers were guided to the soft curls. A true blonde, he thought again, remembering his initial surprise in discovering that Only the first of the many things he’d discovered that night. Like this. How much she liked this.

  Another moan, this one low and deep in her throat. Almost guttural. The sound of it so damn sensual. For all her soft fragility, so incredibly sensual.

  She put her head against his, pushing her forehead into his hair. His mouth was still examining her breasts. Her breathing deepened as he continued to touch her. Small, quick inhalations, building now. Building as they always did. So strong that they created an answering strength and an answering need in him.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He could feel her mouth moving against his hair He wanted it on his body. She did things to him that no one else had ever done. And Nick Deandro had known a lot of women. Never one like this. Never anyone like this particular woman.

  He felt the shivering response begin within her. So quick. Always so responsive. And that had surprised him, too. He had never expected her to be like this. Of course, he had never expected her to want to be with him, either.

  He raised his head, so he could watch what was happening in her face. “Open your eyes,” he commanded softly.

  She obeyed, but the reaction had been delayed, overpowered by the demands of the other. When the long lashes finally drifted upward, it was already over Her eyes were soft, distant, almost too far away Too solitary. Like the bath game she had been playing when he entered the room.

  Two players, he thought He rose, and her eyes widened in surprise, their focus coming back a little from the lonely place he had taken her. He reached down and picked her up out of the bath. Her arms automatically fastened around his neck. Her body was slick, slippery with whatever she had put into the water. It was warm and wet against the coolness of his skin.

  He carried her out of the low light of the bathroom, down the dark hallway and into the shadowed dimness of the bedroom. As he walked, her breasts moved, sliding like satin over the hair-roughened skin of his chest. The bathwater ran in hot rivulets down his stomach and thighs, fingers of sensation trying to caress his growing need.

  The disorder of the unmade bed seemed inviting. He laid her down in the nest of the tangled sheets and immediately lay down on top of her. Her legs opened, welcoming him.

  He was so hard he was mindless with wanting her. He wanted her with him. He wanted to watch her eyes as he pushed into the sweet heat of her response. He wanted to see it happen in her face again while he was there with her. Together. Not a solitary game. Together

  He thrust downward, burying himself in her. Another moan, low and intense. Not protest, he was aware on some level. And he lifted and lowered again. Deeper this time. Searching the depths of her. Seeking the bottom of what he felt. Wanting all that she wanted to give. More than willing to take what she had offered. So willingly offered him. As it had been from the first. As if it had always been meant to be.

  His hips drove against hers. Too hard, he thought, feeling the small, fragile bones of her pelvis under the grinding, pounding movement of his. Too hard. But he couldn’t stop. He wanted her so much. So much. So much.

  The explosion rocked them both. He had wanted to see her, to read her eyes, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t do anything but ride the waves of sensation. Mindless with it But even in the throes of that exultation of sensation, he tightened his arms, holding her to him.

  And when he finally raised his head, the effort it took to accomplish that small movement enormous, her eyes were open, watching him. Slowly, a single tear slipped out of the pools of moisture they had become and tracked over her temple.

  He brushed it away with his thumb. He shook his head, ashamed and embarrassed “Sorry,” he said softly, pulling the words from the unfunctioning morass of emotion his mind had become. “So sorry I hurt you.”

  “No,” she whispered. “You didn’t hurt me. It’s just…” She hesitated, and her eyes moved over his face, and then she smiled at him. “You always surprise me,” she said finally.

  He didn’t understand. He didn’t know how he had surprised her. Other than the fact that he was here. That they were together again. “Is that bad or good?” he asked, his breathing easing a little, and his body beginning to soften. Still within her. Still joined.

  She smiled again, and then her fingers touched the perspiration that had gathered on his upper lip She wiped it off with the tip of one finger and then put that finger in her mouth. “Always good,” she said. “So good,” she whispered.

  “We’re going to have to do something about this,” he said, surprising himself. It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about it before. He had. A lot. But he hadn’t planned to say anything to her. Not yet.

  He didn’t even know if she had had any thoughts in that direction. And he was cautious by nature. That’s why he’d survived in this business so long. Cautious except, of course, for this.

  “Something?” she repeated. Her eyes examined his face.

  “Something permanent,” he suggested and held his breath.
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  She was quiet for a long time. The quietness scared him. He’d never before suggested anything permanent to a woman, and he wasn’t sure that silence was a promising response.

  “Permanent like…?” she asked finally.

  “Permanent like . mortgages, kids, rings,” he said. Way to go, Deandro, he jeered silently. Some damn romantic proposal.

  Again, silence. And he waited, holding his breath.

  “I think you got the order of that wrong,” she said softly.

  “Whatever.”

  With one of those mercurial changes he loved, her eyes lightened The heated, heavy sullenness of passion and even the seriousness of his suggestion were both wiped quickly away. She laughed, loud and unrestrained.

  He realized that he loved hearing her laugh. The open joy of it always surprised him. Like the sounds she made when they were making love. So different from how he’d expected her to be. In every way different.

  “I love you,” he said softly.

  The laughter faded, from her eyes and from the quietness of the room It was gradually replaced by wonder, the dark pupils expanding again into the rim of green. And then she nodded.

  “I didn’t think you knew that,” she said.

  “Slow,” he agreed. “But usually I get there.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “I knew you would. Eventually”

  “You think babies and mortgages are going to work for us?”

  “Eventually,” she repeated, but it hurt him this time to hear the word in that context.

  “Why eventually?” he asked. He brushed an errant curl off her cheek with his fingers. They looked dark and hard against the smooth alabaster of her skin.

  “When this is all over,” she said.

  There was a hint of a question in her voice, but he knew she was right. Now wasn’t the time for any of this. It was too complicated. His life was such right now that he couldn’t do anything about this. Anything other than what he had done tonight. Come to her when he could. A stolen, hidden hour or two in the middle of the other.

  He nodded, almost regretfully, despite knowing all of that. Understanding it, even. It didn’t make it easier to walk away from her. Back into the darkness of the night in which he’d been living for the last few weeks. Even this furtive meeting might screw everything up.

  “I have to go,” he said, remembering.

  “I know.”

  He didn’t move, unable to physically separate himself from her. Unable to force his body away from the heat and wetness of hers. He realized with a sense of wonder that just thinking about leaving was having an undeniable effect on him. An effect that shouldn’t be happening now. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

  “Hmm…” she said, her lips tilting slightly and her eyes again lightening.

  “Hmm…” he repeated.

  “Interesting phenomenon,” she suggested.

  “Phenomenal phenomenon,” he breathed, lowering his mouth to hers. It was the first time he had kissed her tonight. Her mouth opened, aligning with his. Her tongue found his.

  She tasted so good. She shouldn’t. Not after running in this heat. Not after a long day of endless cups of black coffee. But she did. She always did. Honey-sweet tongue moving hotly against his, his arousal growing as they kissed.

  And this time was slow. Measured. So wet and hot from the first that it felt almost like the bath. Like the rich, humid air of the night that surrounded them. Endlessly slow.

  His mouth tasted. Nibbled. Caressed. His fingers explored. Reacted to her reactions. And all the time his hips moved, lifting and sliding in and out of the heat and scent and wetness of her body.

  A long time Longer than he had time for, but that didn’t stop either of them. Nothing stopped this except exhaustion and satiation. He had known that before. And he knew it now again. As slow and dark and powerful as the movements of the old river. As the weight of humidity in the Delta night. Surrounding them as they surrounded and enfolded each other.

  A long, long time.

  HE DRESSED in the kitchen without turning on a light. He thought she would be asleep, but she sat up in the shadowed bed as he came back into the room.

  “When will I see you again?” she asked.

  He couldn’t see her face in the darkness, only her shape, a darker black than the rest. “When I can,” he said. That was the absolute truth. He would come back here when he could. As soon as he could. Because he couldn’t do anything else.

  “Take care of yourself,” she said softly.

  “You know me,” he answered, pushing the nonchalant words out of a throat suddenly constricted again with need. He didn’t have time for that. He had already spent too many hours here. Dangerous even in the darkness.

  “I do,” she agreed. “That’s why I want you to be careful.”

  He walked across and put his knee on the bed beside her. The mattress dipped and creaked under his weight. She reached for him, and they held each other, held tightly. Her body smelled familiar to him. Her hair moved against his face when she turned her head, the fragrance of it, too, moving through his senses. Evoking memories.

  He leaned back so he could see her face. He shaped her cheek with his palm and pressed a kiss on her forehead.

  “Go back to sleep,” he said.

  “I wasn’t asleep. I was thinking.”

  “What about?” he asked gently. His palm trailed down her neck and over her breast, cupping it as he had cupped her face.

  “A baby,” she said.

  The word was so low that he wasn’t sure for a moment what she had said. And when he was, the emotion was there as well. His baby. Suckling the small rose nipple, just as he had tonight. Growing beneath the breasts he had worshiped. His baby.

  “Out of order,” he said lightly.

  “Rings, baby, mortgage,” she suggested, apparently agreeing. “I know. But…”

  “But what?” he asked. They were only delaying. Postponing the moment when he would have to leave. Past due now, and no easier to say goodbye than it would have been at the beginning. Maybe even harder.

  “We didn’t use anything this time,” she said.

  He hadn’t thought about it. Not until now. Another indication of how different this was. He was as careful as he was controlled. That’s how he stayed safe, despite his job.

  “You worried?” he asked. His palm moved, drifting downward, unthinkingly smoothing over the slight convexity of her stomach.

  “No,” she said. “Not unless you are.”

  “I don’t worry. You know that.”

  She took her arms from around his neck, freeing him, but she put her hand over his, pressing it against her belly. “I know.”

  He touched her hair again with his lips. He closed his eyes against the surge of desire. “Gotta go,” he whispered.

  He felt her nod. He stood up, halfway expecting her to say something else, but she didn’t. She was still sitting in the disordered bed, watching him. Finally he turned and walked through the door to the hall and through the dark kitchen and into the blackness of the alley. The same way he’d entered.

  Maybe his mind was still back in the shadowed bedroom, but he thought he was aware, alert. He was checking his surroundings as he moved through the maze of back streets to where he had left his car. His eyes surveyed the darkness ahead of him, checking as carefully as he always did.

  And when the first bullet hit him, besides the heat and the force of the blow, the only thing he felt was a deep sense of surprise because this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.

  Not at all what he had been anticipating.

  Chapter One

  “That’s blackmail, Rob,” Abby Sterling said, her voice low and tight with anger. “And you know it.”

  “You’re the one who put in a request for a change of assignment. I’m willing to grant it,” her boss said. “There’s no blackmail involved.”

  “Not that assignment,” she said sharply.

  In frustration, Rob Andrews ra
ised both hands and ran them across his fifties-style crew cut. He didn’t have much hair left. What was there was gray and so close-cropped that his scalp showed pink through it. When he finished the familiar gesture, he put both palms flat on his desk.

  “Something less stressful,” he enunciated carefully. “Something that will keep you off your feet That’s what you and your doctor requested. This is what I’ve got, Abby. You can take it or leave it. I don’t care. You don’t want something this cushy, I got plenty of people who will.”

  Blackmail, she thought again, but this time she didn’t say it aloud. Rob was right. There would be cops who would jump at the chance. Only she didn’t think she could be one of them. For a world of very compelling reasons.

  “Look,” her supervisor said, adopting his reasoned, adult-to-child voice, “I know you and Deandro never got along—”

  “Understatement,” she broke in before he could finish.

  “Maybe. And maybe you had your reasons. I know he can be a little…abrasive at times.” He ignored her soft snort of mock laughter, and went on. “But you weren’t the easiest person to get along with either, Abby. You made some waves of your own.”

  “I objected to Deandro’s attitude. His ‘I’m going to show all you bumpkins how it’s done’ style”

  “Except that’s exactly what he was down here to do.”

  Abby took a breath. Rob was right, of course. The FBI had been working with the New Orleans Police Department to finish cleaning up the police corruption, the well-documented and apparently pervasive corruption, which everyone from the mayor on down admitted had existed in this city too long.

  There had been numerous arrests after the change in administration, but too many of the powerful, so-called Old Guard in the department had simply gone underground, biding their time until the reform efforts waned. Then, they believed, it would be back to business as usual—drug-running, protection rackets, all their very profitable connections with organized crime.

  Despite the efforts of the last five years, NOPD still had the reputation of being cops on the take. It tarred all of them, even the honest ones like Rob Andrews and Abby herself. So when they got lucky enough to get the goods on a wise guy who was suddenly willing to trade the introduction of an undercover agent into the inner circle of the New Orleans mob in exchange for an agreement not to prosecute him, they had jumped at the chance.