They all just stood still and watched. The rear window of Butler’s car rolled down and I caught a glimpse of the rage on his face. He must have seen what was coming. He had a gun pointed out. The Wrecker slung two grenades into the back of car and backed away.
I was still amazed at the speed he moved back into the van while Paul Butler’s car was enveloped in a pair of bright flashes, followed by a blossom of yellow, orange and red flame.
I was surprised at how level my voice was as Vesper asked, “Was that what you were thinking?”
I said, “You set him up. You turned him into a loose end and you knew they would dispose of him to fix the problem.”
“Damn, girl.” Noah voice was halfway between shock and admiration.
I laughed. “Welcome to the dark side.”
Her eyes were steady. “I remember the pictures of that young girl, Gina Haddon Tate. When she was alive, and after they found her. I rolled the dice but, inside, I really didn’t want to see him to get away with that.”
I asked her, “The other evidence, all of those files?”
“I’ll arrange for my old SAC in St Louis to come into possession of it. He’ll be able to sort the guilty from the innocent. I trust him.”
I didn’t hear Butler’s end of their conversation, but I thought I caught what was going on. “Did Butler say he had something on you?”
“He did. But it can’t be true. I mean, he may have something, but it would have to be fabricated. I’ve never done anything bad.”
That got a smile from Noah and me when I said, “Not until now.”
She even twinkled back. “This could be kind of a gray area.”
We took Noah to where he said his car was parked. It was a reinforced Hummer painted in dark urban camo. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it was such a caricature it made me chuckle all the same.
He leaned back in the window to Vesper. “You kids fix up for any more adventures and exploits, give me a few day notice and I’ll get out of the country.” He slapped the roof of the car and his eyes sparkled at her. “You’ll be going back to being a good girl now I expect.” As he turned to leave, he hesitated then came over to my window.
He leaned down to ask me, “Did you ever figure out why that Russian wanted to put you and me together?”
“No, but I had an idea.”
“Me, too. Call me sometime, OK?”
I waved as he climbed up into his Hummer.
Vesper looked over at me. I figured this was about as far as our roads ran parallel. I regretted it, but there it was. Whatever I had felt for her, I hadn’t ever been sure that I could trust her. I wondered if she didn’t feel the same way about me. I surprised myself, thinking what a shame it was, to let such a great woman walk out of my life.
But there it was. I held out a hand to her as I said, “Well, don’t think it hasn’t been fun, Special Agent Cross.”
“I’m starving,” she said. “Know where I could get a decent salt beef sandwich on rye?”
“Mustard?”
“English.”
“Pickles?”
“Sweet.”
“You got good taste in a sandwich.”
“Come to think of it, mountain man, that’s not all I’ve got good taste in.”
That look in her eye, I still remember it. The thought of it still makes me hard, too.
I drove into an underground parking lot, near the deli on Broadway.
Just as I was about to get out, she leaned across. “Horse,” and she put her hand to my face. Her fingers turned my jaw. Pulled me to her. Her kiss was soft, soulful and tender, but strong. And long.
It made me ache to know that I was losing her. No woman had made me feel this way before. And I knew that no woman was going to make me feel the way that she did, ever again. However inconvenient and uncontrollable these feelings were, it hurt to know that after today, I wouldn’t feel them again.
Her hand slid down my trunk and I pulled her closer to me, but she peeled her lips away from mine. My cock was rigid. It stood and ached for her.
Her voice was playful, with an edge. “There’s something I need.”
The tips of her fingers stroked my jaw, my chin, my cheeks and my neck. Meanwhile, her other hand opened my belt and the front of my pants.
As she slipped her hand into my shorts, her eyes flashed and her tongue flicked along the width of her wicked grin. She sighed as she opened her shirt and reached in to feel her skin, her trembling pulse and the warm softness of her breasts.
She hauled my cock free and it jumped to stand, tall, hard and proud. Her eyes widened as she licked her lips again. Her fingers slid down to the base of it and she squeezed, staring at it, with her eyes glistening.
Her mouth moved as her fingers held and squeezed the hardening pole. My need for her grew inside me as she looked and sighed with such marvel. I cupped and held the swelling loveliness of her breasts. My fingers drew little gasps from her as I circled her hardening nipples.
When she leaned down, her hands pulled and rubbed the skin, held and stretched it and slid down to stroke and weigh my balls. The warm breath of her voice fanned my twitching cock. “How will I ever get used to you?”
Always the surprise. My whole world flipped. Again. I thought that, like me, she was getting geared up for the farewell firework display. The longing, never again beats and thrusts, the closing climaxes. The finale fuck. I was quite into the idea. In a bittersweet kind of a way. I’m not a bittersweet kind of a guy, not usually, but with Vesper, it seemed, doors had opened to a different kind of Horse.
The light sensation, the first brush of her breath ignited me. My head slammed back into the seat and shook from side to side when he planted her lips on the head it, her tender, wet mouth stretched over the thick shaft. I couldn’t stop my hips from rolling. I held back.
I didn’t want her to choke. Not unless that was her thing. I hadn’t ever thought about that before. She made me go all kinds of places for the first time. And now this would be the last. The last of our first times.
No woman took me in her mouth like Vesper did.
She had to stretch just to get her lips all the way around it. Then, as she slid down along the pulsing length of hot ridges, her tongue slipped down along it, lapped and drew it deeper.
I watched in amazement and swelling joy as her lovely face slid down my shaft, down until her mouth gushed on me. Until my head was nuzzled all the way back in her mouth. Until I felt the back of her tongue and the slope of the back of her throat.
Her lips were stretched wide and almost halfway down my shaft. She made a push and I felt her slip me into the soft, wet grip of her throat. A gasp vibrated from her and into my thick pole.
She pressed farther, deeper. Feeling her surround and hold me, seeing myself swallowed whole, it was a fight to keep my hips from bucking right into her. When her lips reached the very base and she sucked, slowly, all the way back up, I let out a moan.
My fingers ran into her hair and through it. I held her gently. My body wanted to shove her, to push her head down once more. I knew she would like that, but her mouth felt so good on me, and I got a charge out of feeling her hunger. Her urge. Her desperate need.
S HIS COCK filled my mouth and I let him in to stretch my throat, the sense of him, the thought that we could be together lit me inside. A warm, dizzying rush came over me. Light and tender, his fingers ran through my hair and they trembled as he held himself back.
Pressing down, pushing myself farther, and taking more of the impossible width of his throbbing pole over the back of my tongue and past the roof of my mouth, my need for him grew even greater.
What we had been through, the way he had protected me and cared for me, the way we operated together, moved and worked as a team, it was more than the experience and instinct of two people in combat.
Our coming from different sides of the street, our opposite approaches, the way we saw everything from the two facing shores, it made us something more t
han one agent and one professional muscle.
What muscle, though. My fingers shook as I trickled them over the contours of his rolling stomach muscles. While my soft, wet throat stretched to take in more of his hard, tangy, hot pole, my heart banged at the pulses and waves in his huge body. The man was unlike any I had ever known.
Even as I sucked on him, I was torn, wanting him deep inside my soaking pussy and at the same time, desperately needing to drain him dry, to gobble and swallow every salty drop of his seed.
I pressed farther. My nose nuzzled at his stomach. The scent of him made me draw breath so hard, it made a moan in my chest. The taste of him was dark, rich and bad, in the best possible way. When I pulled my lips back up the length to nibble and suckle on the head of his cock, he groaned and the cords of muscle in his pelvis clenched and flexed.
“Vesper,” It was hard to hear him and his voice was just a groan. I’m a good listener, though. “You’re so fucking beautiful.” His mass swelled against the tightening walls of my neck. “I can’t stand the thought of losing you.”
Shaking my head was all that I could do. I wanted to tell him, Don’t! Don’t do it. Don’t lose me. As I dove harder onto his cock, I was saying the words. But it could only have been vibrations in my neck and the flutter of my tongue on the top of his shaft. Still, I was saying it. Don’t let go. Keep hold.
I love you.
My old habits held on hard. As I said the words, in my core it felt good to say them, but all the better that I knew he couldn’t hear me.
His fingers gripped in my hair and yanked. Upwards. He dragged my face, dripping, smeared wet, up to his, “You what?” His eyes blazed. “You say that, after you fucking sent me to jail.” His face glowed with anger. And pain. There was a twist of anguish . He shook me.
“You sent me to jail. Why, because you love me? To keep me somewhere you knew I would be, was that it? What kind of a perverse game are you playing, you treacherous little fuck?”
“I didn’t. I didn’t send you to jail.” My eyes filled with tears. I couldn’t stop them. My head shook. His fingers tightened in my hair as he got angrier. “I kept you out of jail.”
His face reddened. “No. Now you’ve gone too fucking far.” His fingers clenched, pulling my hair tight and his hands shook. “I know you law enforcers see black as white but that’s just fucking insane.”
I had to tell him now. It could be the end of my career. Then end of my life as I knew it. But he had to know.
“Look,”
“No, you fucking listen to me,” he was raging, “After all we’ve been through, and after all you’ve put me through, I’ve had it with your bullshit. I thought we could have a farewell fuck, get lost for a few minutes and move on. I’d let what you did to me go and we’d both move on. But you, with your deranged fucking fantasy…”
“STOP!” I slapped him. Right across the face. He didn’t deserve it, but it felt good. Frighteningly good.
“Listen to me, alright.”
He was starting to move, “I’m done listening to you.”
“Not yet.” I was still. I wanted to slap him again, but I was worried where that would lead. I might not want to stop. The fire in his eyes caught me and set me alight in my pants.
“Listen. The reason you didn’t go down for two murders,” I was going to tell him. I shouldn’t I mustn’t. But I had to. He had to know. “You got a plea bargain from the DA because the forensic evidence got contaminated.”
“Yeah…” he was still angry. But he was listening now.
“The gun barrel, your gun barrel, the barrel that gave the conclusive ballistic link to the two killings, got mislabelled. Somewhere. Somehow. In between the ballistic lab and the evidence locker, that barrel and another got switched.”
He was quiet.
“It got corrected, the mistake was fixed, but the fact that there was a doubt about the security of the evidence meant the DA’s case was weak.”
He was taking it in.
I said, “That’s why he offered you a deal.”
I saw the understanding dawn in his face.
“If you’d consented to one visit, if you’d agreed to see me, I could have told you not to take the deal. To bargain harder. I don’t know if he would have abandoned the case against you completely, but he would have either had to go with a much lower sentence, or risk going to court and losing.”
“He could have taken the gamble.” His voice was sullen.
“It was an election year, Horse. He may have taken the chance, but he had a lot of reasons not to.”
His head went back and the flame danced in his eyes again. “So, Special Agent Vesper Cross, you’re saying that I could maybe have saved myself, if only I’d agreed to see you. That you were my guardian angel. Even though you were the one who arrested me.”
I waited. He had a lot to process and he was angry. Understandably. I made my voice quiet. But it was hard. All I wanted to do was shake him. Hold him. Make him understand. Right then I knew. If I didn’t know it before, I knew it then. This man of fire was everything I wanted. Everything I shouldn’t have, everything I should keep a mile away from, but I needed him so bad.
“No. I could have dropped you the hint, and I would have tried. I thought hard about it at the time. It would have been hard.”
“But I could have gotten a better deal.”
It wasn’t an easy thing for him to hear, and a part of me wanted to just let it go, to leave him not knowing. But I couldn’t stand him thinking I’d been responsible for him going away. Not now. Not any more.
“You could.”
“And,” he was calmer now, “how did that chain of evidence get broken?”
I could hardly get my voice above a whisper. “Someone broke it.”
“Deliberately?”
I nodded. Just once.
“How can you be sure? How do you know that?”
I pulled his face toward me. “How do you fucking think, you dumbass mountain critter? How could I possibly have known that for certain?”
“You…?”
“The precinct evidence locker was manned by a Sergeant… No, I won’t say his name. I’m not going to implicate anyone else. A sergeant in the evidence locker had made a mistake in some evidence they were holding as part of an FBI investigation. It happens. Somebody,” I looked up at him, “Somebody promised the sergeant that it could be fixed, in exchange for him letting m… somebody… take out two gun barrels. Without signing for them. Just for half an hour. I… somebody told him they would just take pictures. Take some measurements.”
“Somebody.”
I nodded.
“When the mix-up with the labels was found out, the sergeant knew that he could explain it, but he would have to admit to his own error, and to letting … somebody take the two barrels out of the locker.” I looked in his eyes. “That was too much of a risk for the old sergeant. Anyway, for him, the mix-up wasn’t that big of a problem.”
“But it would be for the DA?”
“Honestly? When you wouldn’t see me, I tried to think of a way of communicating it to you, but I couldn’t. Not without giving myself away.”
Hunter: Perfect Revenge (Perfectly Book 3) Page 23