He jerked the car to the side of the road and slammed on the brakes so swiftly the Chevrolet rocked in place. He sat staring forward for several seconds before turning his gaze to meet hers. She felt seared to her core by the blaze of anger in the blue depths.
Her own flare of temper died as suddenly as it had been born and, at something he could apparently see on her face, his faded, also. She couldn’t read his expression then, and realized with a sense of shock that not reading him was the way it should be. Real people had emotions, hidden thoughts, complex realities. Only in a fantasy would she know his every whim, desire, need.
“I don’t like what’s going on, Cait,” he said. “Everything in me hates it. But that doesn’t change what I am. I’m a federal agent, trained to do the very best job I can. I carry a gun, I carry a badge, and if I have fifty other names, I’m still the same man that held you in his arms this morning and kissed his daughter goodbye a little while ago.”
This was all said in a quiet, utterly controlled voice. He turned slowly, put the car back in gear and pulled out onto the highway again. If she hadn’t been staring at him, she wouldn’t have noticed that his hands were shaking and his knuckles were pinched white.
She turned her gaze out the window, inches away from him but feeling miles apart.
“What you want isn’t real, Cait,” he said finally. “You want to know for sure that I’ll walk out of your door in the morning and come back in the evening after work, briefcase in hand.”
“Is that so much to ask?” she murmured.
“Yes, Cait. Damn it. It is. Because you’re not really talking about me having a normal job. You want to know, with absolute certainty, that I won’t skip out on you again.”
Cait felt his words carve a deep score. She raised a trembling hand to her mouth. He was right. But he was wrong, too. “Yes, part of me wants to know exactly that. I don’t understand what we meant to each other two years ago and I sure don’t understand what’s happening now. But I thought you were dead. There wasn’t any uncertainty. Now I know you’re alive. I can’t go through that again.”
“Well, I can’t give you any guarantees, Cait. There aren’t any. I could lie and patronize you, but as you told me, you don’t deserve that.” He looked down at his fierce grip on the steering wheel. She saw him will his fingers to loosen their hold. His lips pursed and he exhaled sharply. “But I’ll be damned if I can drive another mile with a lie on my lips,” he said.
He flicked on the turn signal and whipped the car down a narrow, obviously seldom-used road. Grasses brushed at the underside of the car and sand slowed the tires.
“Where are we—?”
He looked over at her, cutting her words in midquestion. He captured her gaze with the depth of his emotions. Blue fire burned in his eyes before he looked back at the track they traveled.
He said slowly, clearly, “There were too many things left unsaid two years ago, words, promises...commitments. Each one of those preyed on me, knowing I couldn’t go back and tell you how much you’d touched me, how deeply you’d moved me.”
The car swerved a little in the sandy road and he fought the steering wheel for a moment before getting it back under control. She could see the past and present roiling in him, and worse, the dark call of the future. Cait felt her fingers twitch with the urge to touch him, to stop this outpouring, even though a part of her craved it, needed to understand what lay between them.
He forced the car over ruts and sand until the ocean spilled gray and huge before them. No other cars, buildings or any sign of civilization threatened to interrupt their lonely trek down this road. He pulled the car up on a rise, angling it toward the ocean, while the driver’s door hovered at right angles to the road he’d brought them down. Without facing her he threw the car into Park. As it rocked in the second of his abrupt halts, he stretched both arms out in front of him, gripping the steering wheel as if for life.
Still without looking at her, he said, “I know you’re scared about the future, Cait. So am I. I don’t know what happened between us two years ago. But whatever that something was, it was never buried when I thought you’d died.”
This was more truth than Cait had wanted. “Alec —”
“I took on a new name, disappeared from the scene. I holed up in the mountains in New Mexico with nothing more than a computer and a satellite dish for company. And one thing kept me going—the thought of nailing whoever was ultimately responsible for your death. I didn’t spend a few hours, a couple of weeks here and there. I had some trumped-up assignment, sure, but the truth is, I worked eight to ten hours a day, every day, seven damned days a week with only one thought on my mind—making someone pay for stealing you from me.”
She closed her eyes, felt herself spinning, her heart pounding so loudly she could barely hear his next words.
“Because that’s how I thought of it, Cait. I didn’t think of you in a coffin somewhere. I didn’t imagine my world was a darker, gloomier place without you—I knew it was.”
She made some sound and he slowly turned to face her. His features were haggard and drawn, his eyes haunted. He held up his curled hands for her to see. “These hands, Cait. Do you have any idea how many times I could feel your silky hair in them? Could feel your lips brushing the backs of my fingers? Your hand stealing into mine?” He all but flung his hands into his lap. “And sometimes during the night I’d wake up and feel you pressed against my body, your leg over both of mine, pinning me. And God help me, I was grateful for your ghost.”
Shocked that her thoughtless words had provoked this flood, Cait reached for him. He held out a hand to stop her, his jaw squared, his blue eyes tortured.
“I didn’t just miss you, Cait. I ached for you. I hated you for dying on me. And hated myself for failing you. For letting you die. I blamed myself for it every single day.”
He moved toward her now, his anger imperfectly banked, his eyes ablaze with emotion. “Well, I’m not going to torture myself with things left unsaid. I’m not going another mile down that damned highway without you knowing that you turn my brain to jelly and my guts to water.”
He grabbed her and held her at arm’s length, his hands digging into her shoulders, his grasp an odd combination of anger and desperation.
“I can’t make you a promise, Cait, much as I’d kill to do so. I can’t guarantee you a future, or even a tomorrow. But for God’s sake, Cait, let me pretend. Whatever this feeling is—love, passion, desperation, call it whatever you like—just let me pretend it has a chance of survival.”
He hauled her to him, kissing her with angry intensity, lifting her off the seat and into his fierce, savage embrace.
She felt boneless and slack in his arms. The steering wheel dug into her back and her knee jammed against the armrest. And his words hammered in her head like so many drums all beaten at the same time, and the feel of his lips against her. throat and his shuddering shoulders beneath her hands made her ashamed.
“Oh, Alec,” she breathed.
He looked up at her and she could see a sheen of liquid in his eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
He kissed her apology away, sealing it against her lips. His tongue gentled her mouth open and enticed her to respond. She raised violently trembling fingers to his chiseled face as she returned his kiss deeply and fully.
She’d heard far more than she could piece together and it only served to make her more confused than ever. She couldn’t begin to understand her own conflicting feelings for him. His outburst made her feel guilty, though she’d suffered as greatly as he, because he’d understood what she’d refused to see: there were no promises—no guarantees existed. He could be killed as easily tomorrow in a car accident as by a bullet.
“Cait...damn it, Cait,” he said, pulling back from her as if he were drowning. She didn’t let him finish whatever it was he’d been about say. She swiftly lowered her lips to his in a kiss as fierce as his had been. She gripped his shoulders and pulled
him closer still, moaning her understanding of his turmoil, letting him know her own.
“Ah...Cait,” he groaned before sliding her sideways across the bucket seats and pressing her down onto the beige vinyl. His lips followed his hands and his mouth was liquid fire and his hands strong and sure.
They all but tore their clothes open, shedding few articles, desperate to achieve the touch of silken skin. He growled her name and she moaned, quivering beneath his roaming hands. He groaned and she arched her back to grant him even greater access.
He avidly suckled her breasts while his hands cupped her behind, raising her up to push against him. With a curse he opened the car doors, granting them more room, letting in a burst of cold, moist air before dragging her back into his arms and his fevered need.
This was no gentle reacquainting, no careful exploration. This desperate mating was a defiant denial of the time stolen from them, of farewells uttered to an infant daughter, of the uncertain future, of questions that could never be completely answered and wants and needs that could only be addressed here. Now. With the roiling. ocean their only witness and the echo of their mutual passion.
There was no playful exchange, no slow seduction as he drove his fist into his jacket pocket for the wrapper of protection he’d apparently thought to secure before leaving the bag with Allie. He tore it open and donned the condom in seconds flat, somehow without ever letting go of her. He rolled her over him and lifted her to straddle him.
He held her firmly, surely, passionately as she rocked over him, onto him, sheathing his length, crying out as she felt him throbbing within her. He cupped her breasts and moved her with him, entreating her to follow him, to match him, urging her to join his primal demand for release.
As her breathing became ragged and her legs trembled so violently she could scarcely remain upright, he rolled her to her back and after studying her with raw demand, drove into her, fitting her perfectly, molding himself to her body as if nature had created him for that purpose alone.
It was a dramatic mating, as fiery and impetuous as the ocean stretching before them was cold and relentless. They were inflamed in their union, fired by their mutual need. And locked in his arms, rocking to a rhythm uniquely theirs, Cait knew the passion was all the more intense for the danger that waited. The very depths of their passion strengthened the fragile bonds between them, clarified their dreams and hopes, and stripped away a few more of the barriers that continually threatened to trip them.
She craved his thundering body against hers and rose to meet him again and again, pulling him deeper and harder into her. When he would have paused, perhaps to prolong their union, she dug her fingers into his firm buttocks and pulled sharply, holding him deep within her, not wanting him to think, just to be, crying his name, calling for him to join her, to stay with her, to take her into the cold-hot burning flames over that cliff’s edge of madness.
He called her name as he suddenly became rigid, rock hard in the pain that rippled through him like a wall of fire. He shook violently, making her tremble, and he shuddered, making her plunge into the all-consuming conflagration only he could create, only they could find together.
They didn’t say anything afterward, holding on to each other with nearly as fierce an exchange of grips as they had clung to each other in the height of passion. In that rare moment with passion still sending flames lapping along her legs, in her core, Cait understood so much she hadn’t before.
They had never truly been alone together until this moment. Terrorists had lurked outside their bower two years before. Allie had been sleeping in the adjoining room in the motel. In this place only yards from where the ocean met the land, they regained, in the sight of nature and November-gray skies, a measure of what had been ripped from them all that time ago. They had seized a honeymoon of sorts, a single union of primal need, a time of togetherness before the battle to be waged in the days and hours to come.
And though it had begun in tangled emotion, it had ended in purification. Like the phoenix, they had met in fire and now clung together new, fresh, renewed and strangely complete in the aftermath.
No words could ever say as much.
But never were words needed as badly as right then.
Cait longed to give him the simple, beautiful phrase that would lay a foundation for the future, but to say “I love you” wasn’t possible. She had a baby to think about...his baby. And guns, death certificates and the entire concept of being on the run didn’t mesh with the reality of taking care of Allie.
When we’re out of this, she longed to say, but didn’t, wouldn’t, because there weren’t any promises, even if the next few days could possibly be mapped out in perfect harmony. They didn’t know each other. Not really. The passion, yes, and the desire. But what about that host of other things, the knowledge of each other, the shared beliefs, hopes, ideals, values...even if the danger was over, they still wouldn’t know about those so very important things.
Like the cold, impersonal ocean running at the shore, they had come together, a perfect blend of two different elements, but like the stormy, mysterious body of water, they retreated from the very goal they endlessly sought.
Chapter 14
Monday, November 12, 7:45 p.m. EST
Alec took the cup of coffee Cait handed him without being able to look at her. Somehow, in the evening lamplight in their motel room, this one in Fairfax, Virginia, be found it impossible to believe he’d railed at her like a madman earlier that afternoon. He’d said so much, but not nearly enough to make the evening easy. And their lovemaking haunted him, made him feel both restless with a need to escape this hunger and ready to grab her and take her into bed again, tenderly this time, hauntingly.
He’d told himself the magic was buried and gone, but he now knew with every scrap of sweet sanity in him that it was alive. Changed, altered, different, yes, but the essence of the magic wasn’t gone at all. It flared so swiftly between them that the slightest spark could set it off. And somehow he instinctively knew that this notion of magic wasn’t to be confused with lust or passion. Those miraculous feelings only augmented whatever mysterious and rich emotions he held for Cait. And no matter how much she might want to deny it, hers for him.
Passion, desire, protective instinct, simple enjoyment of the way she held her coffee cup or lightly flicked the edge of the cup with her tongue, capturing a stray drop of cream, her smile, her anger, even her skittishness around him...all of those complex feelings and curiosities mingled together to form a nameless, amorphous whole.
And knowing this, feeling it to his very soul, how could he not steal her away, run as far and wide as they possibly could, change their names, change their lives and find a small corner of the world where they could raise Allie, care for each other, keep each other safe?
But if he did that, wouldn’t each knock on the door make him blanch, make him reach for his gun, uncertain, never sure if he would open the door to madness, killers who would once again rob him of seeing her beautiful face, hearing her rich voice, touching her silken skin or drowning in the passion she inspired in him?
How could he walk away from his little girl, cruise into a future without her? He couldn’t. He never would, if he could help it. He’d only just found her, only just begun to dip into that incredible well of parental love. It tore him apart to know that if something happened to him, she would forget him within a matter of days. Just hours.
And if something happened to her? Or to Cait?
He would never recover. No deflection exercise, no revengeful motivation would replace them, nothing could serve as anesthesia to that pain. There was no painkiller strong enough. But there were too many unanswered questions between him and Cait. They bad only ever been together in times of stress and danger. They had a right to know if they could survive in times of peace.
Cait deserved more than living in fear, and he deserved more than living in doubt. He couldn’t just pack Cait and Allie up and run from the situation any more t
han he could fly without benefit of wings. After it was all over, he told himself, there would be time to discover if they had a chance for the future.
Together, he and Cait had already watched the evening news and discovered that police suspected foul play in Cait’s disappearance. His name was bandied about as a possible suspect, though police seemed inclined to discount a dead federal agent as a potential suspect in her kidnapping.
When Alec started to go for a newspaper, Cait again opened his computer and began her self-assigned task of sifting through his years of accumulated information. When he asked why she continued to go back over the notes and memos he’d already ruthlessly searched, she murmured something about still searching for a motive.
“We may not ever understand a motive,” Alec said.
“I still think we have a better bargaining position if we know why this whole thing has happened,” she replied.
He’d handed her the laptop and, at her request, jotted down the passwords to a few of the secret files he’d stolen from his own division. He hadn’t thought about the fact that he’d used variations of her name for the locked files. Cait, Caitlin. Leigh. Wilson. All of the files relating to his search for her killers bore her name, lending them more ominous meaning than they’d had when he still thought she’d died two years ago.
She gave him a long, utterly perplexing look before settling down behind the keyboard and typing in various commands. Before he left the room, he hesitated at the door. He knew the words he wanted to say, the phrases that needed to be said. “This afternoon I told you I didn’t know what we had together, Cait. I still don’t know quite. But I love you. I know that absolutely. And I believe in us. We didn’t have a chance two years ago. But we do now. And if everything goes all right, I want you to take that chance with me. ”
But he couldn’t let the words free. Wouldn’t. He’d asked her to let him pretend, but there was no pretense in what he felt for her. He pulled the door shut behind him, needing to move, needing the sharp crisp air to sting him into rational thought.
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