Into the Crossfire

by Lisa Marie Rice

  Sam was struck anew by just how different she was from other beautiful women. She simply exuded intelligence and purpose. He’d never met a woman quite as physically gorgeous as she was, but he’d met and bedded his share of attractive women and none of them was like Nicole. Beautiful women had a powerful weapon at their disposal and they grew up using it, often.

  Sam didn’t blame them. The instant he put on his spurt of growth, he’d used his size and strength to get what he wanted whenever he could. Life was tough; no one knew that better than he did. You used whatever goddamned tools life gave you and hoped like hell you came out ahead.

  But Nicole was somehow different, though she didn’t need to be. She had, like, a fucking nuclear bomb at her disposal. The most powerful weapon in the world—female beauty that was off the scale. He couldn’t even begin to imagine any heterosexual male ever saying no to anything she wanted. In essence, she was a princess.

  And yet there was none of that in her interactions. She didn’t assume any kind of female superiority or expect special treatment. She worked hard for everything she got and didn’t whine or look for protection when life got tough.

  Amazing.

  A woman in a million and she’d become his. So he better goddamned keep her safe.

  “Go back a little further,” Sam urged. “Maybe he’s looking for something that came in a week ago, or two weeks ago. Is there anything that could raise a red flag?”

  “No, Sam.” Nicole shook her head. “I keep telling you. I’m simply too new at the game. Confidential or even economically important data is either translated in-house or would be given to a partner of long standing with access to high-level encryption, not to me. Wordsmith is a year old. No one’s going to send me anything sensitive. It’s true that we get a lot of economic texts but as I said, most of them are to comply with European Union rules that require a version in English, and we get the work because, frankly, I charge less than a European translation agency, and the dollar’s really low right now. So we get a lot of legally mandated translations of board meetings, some company prospectuses, the odd literary translation. Some technical stuff.” Nicole lifted her shoulders helplessly. “That’s about it.”

  He wanted to pound the steering wheel, pound someone’s head, pound something. If they couldn’t get a handle on what the fuckhead was looking for, they could never stand down from the Defcon I level of alert they were at now.

  Defcon I was a level that was preparatory to war. Sam didn’t mind going to war. He’d sure as hell go to war to defend Nicole, but he needed to know who he was fighting, otherwise he was just spinning his wheels. Not to mention the fact that you couldn’t keep up a maximum level of alert forever, not unless you were a soldier. Nicole would eventually chafe at staying forever by his side—his left side to keep his shooting hand free.

  Sam was used to worst-case scenarios because in his personal experience, the worst thing that could happen often did. He was alive to danger at all times, but he was also aware that it came off as paranoia to civilians.

  Right now, Sam wanted to keep Nicole in his apartment, lock her up nice and tight till he had a better handle on this thing. He defied anyone who wasn’t Special Forces, and using C–4, to get through his security and even then, he had a built-in emergency signal sent to his cell in case of a breach.

  But he couldn’t keep Nicole locked up in his house forever, much as he’d like to. She wouldn’t stand for it. And the police wouldn’t stand guard outside her house forever, either. Sam could pick up the slack after the police stood down, but he couldn’t station his men 24/7 for an indeterminate amount of time; he didn’t have the manpower.

  If they didn’t figure out what the fuckhead who’d attacked her wanted, Nicole would walk around with a bull’s-eye painted on that beautiful smooth forehead, because she simply wasn’t the kind of woman to cower, to stay put when he said stay.

  “Maybe I was wrong,” Nicole mused. “Maybe I did leave the chair pushed away from the desk and this guy was looking for something else entirely. Like money, or…” Her voice trailed off as she turned to him. “Well, that’s the thing,” she said, blowing out a little breath of frustration. “I don’t know what there could possibly be worth stealing in my office. I never keep money there and there’s just nothing that has much resale value. But maybe he wasn’t looking for something specific, maybe he was just a thief making the rounds of the offices that were easy to break into. God knows mine seems to have an invisible sign that says, ‘This one’s a snap to break into—come and get it.’”

  She slanted him a wry glance.

  “No.” Sam was already shaking his head before she finished talking. “It would be nice to think that, but he wasn’t a common thief, honey. Burglars don’t carry weapons. It’s like a kind of rule. The sentence for armed robbery is more than twice that of burglary. This guy was armed to the teeth.” It had to be asked. “Do you think—do you think he could have been waiting there to rape you?”

  The thought had of course already occurred to him and it was horrifying. Not as bad as the thought of her being killed, but it was right up there in the same ballpark of horrible things in a world in which horrible things happened on a regular basis.

  Nicole stared out the window for a long moment, face somber, thinking. “No,” she said finally. “I don’t think so. I think if somebody wanted to—to rape me…” She swallowed heavily. “I think if that was what he wanted then he’d have been already, um, aroused. I think he’d have made it clear in the first second that’s what he wanted. He held me tightly against him, but I didn’t feel, um, an erection. So, I’d say no, rape wasn’t what he wanted.”

  Sam’s grip loosened slightly on the wheel. It was a miracle it hadn’t snapped off in his hands.

  So rape was out. That was good.

  Now he only had murder to worry about.

  Chapter 11

  They turned off the road to drive down into Sam’s underground garage. The last time they’d done that—was it only last night? It felt like a million years ago—he’d turned off the main road and swooped in, fast, with panache, into his building’s grounds and down to the underground garage. He drove like he did everything physical. With grace and speed and utter confidence.

  Not now. He’d driven them from their office building to his house as if he were ferrying a load of eggs. Driving slowly, braking carefully, taking the turns wide. All in an effort to spare her any discomfort. And she was grateful, because her shoulder was throbbing and there seemed to be an ache in every muscle of her body.

  Once he came to a slow, rolling halt, braking gently, Sam muttered, “Stay put,” and came around to her door, helping her out of the car as if she were an eighty-year-old grandmother.

  She had the feeling that if he could slow down the elevator’s ascent, he would have. His big body was completely still at her side, arm around her waist. She could feel his tenseness. It was only when his bank-vault-level security of his apartment was engaged, the door quadruple-locked behind them, that he relaxed a little.

  “Come here,” he murmured. He turned her into to him, big hand covering the back of her head, the other around her waist. Nicole leaned into him for a long moment, grateful for his strength. It was like leaning into a warm, muscled wall that would stand forever and she simply soaked that strength up.

  They stood in the nighttime quiet, the only sound that of the low wavelets lapping the shore through the open balcony windows. She was so glad he wasn’t the kind of person to keep air-conditioning on all day and all night. The nighttime breeze was warm and welcome, bringing the fresh smell of the sea with it, so much more refreshing than chilled canned air.

  “So, what do you want first? To eat, or to take a shower?” She could hear his deep voice rumbling in his chest.

  It was a tough decision because the instant he said eat, she realized she was ravenous, having skipped lunch and dinner. But the thought of a shower…

  Sam had one of those huge modern showers wi
th a showerhead that looked as if it would release a sinful amount of water that was like a warm massage, a huge, square bronze showerhead that would ease the kinks from her sore muscles, light-years away from the trickle that came from her grandmother’s sixties-era shower that was an exact replica of the one in Psycho, where Janet Leigh was hacked to death.

  She pulled away and looked up at him. From this vantage point, he was all clenched jaws and high cheekbones, heavy five-o’clock shadow and dark, piercing eyes.

  “Shower,” she decided. “Followed immediately by food. I’m really hungry.”

  “Roger that,” he said calmly, and swung her up in his arms.

  “Sam!” Nicole scrambled to hold on to his shoulders. “I can walk!”

  “Yeah,” he rumbled. “I know you can. I, ah, I just—” his jaw muscles bunched and he looked away for a second, breathed deeply, turned back. “I really need to be touching you right now, and this works for me.”

  He stopped on the threshold of his huge bathroom, bending his head toward hers until their foreheads touched. “I was scared shitless back there,” he confessed.

  “Yeah.” She huffed out her breath in a little half laugh, tightening her arms around his neck. “Ditto. Did I mention how grateful I am you picked my lock?”

  That earned her a small smile. “You did mention it, a couple of times, in fact. Gratitude’s an interesting concept. Just how grateful are we talking about here?”

  She smiled back. “Major, major gratitude. Name-your-price grateful.”

  He moved sideways through the door with her in his arms so he wouldn’t jostle her against the doorjamb. Once inside, he put her down by gently removing the arm under her knees, holding her steady as she slid down his body. “If I can name my price, make me a happy man and promise me you won’t ever get into trouble like that again.”

  “I promise,” she said fervently, etching a huge X over her left breast.

  She was steady on her feet, but she hung on to his arms just the same. He seemed to be happy touching her and man, it was reciprocal. Touching him made her feel a whole lot better. Being close to that big body simply radiating heat was enough to dissipate the chill of fear and danger.

  With Sam right in front of her, hands on her waist, looking at her as if he wanted to eat her alive, cold and danger and fear were all far, far away.

  Head bent to her, a serious frown between his eyebrows, as if he were solving the most difficult calculus equation in the world, he started carefully unbuttoning her blouse. The buttons were small and though his hands were huge, they were deft. In a moment, her blouse hung open.

  Nicole stood quietly, making no move whatsoever. Whatever he wanted from her, she wanted to give it to him.

  He lifted his hands to her shoulders. The light linen shirt billowed to the floor. A second later, her bra followed.

  She saw him wince, touch her shoulder and back lightly. “That’s going to be a spectacular bruise tomorrow. Does it hurt?”

  It did, but not so much that she wanted him to stop touching her. “A little sore,” she admitted. “It’s okay.”

  He shook his head briefly, as if to say no, it’s not okay, then reached for the zipper of her pants. He pulled them down gently, together with her panties. He knelt, lifting one foot by the ankle, then the other, taking off her sandals. “Brace yourself on my shoulder.”

  In a moment, sandals, pants and panties were on the bathroom floor. Sam rose slowly. His big hands had encircled her ankle. As he rose slowly, his open hands ran along her ankle, shin, knee, thigh. The skin of his hands was rough. By the time his big hands cupped her hip, the hairs of her forearms were standing up.

  Suddenly, Sam froze, making a low, shocked sound. He even stopped breathing for a moment, eyes fixed on her hips.

  “What?”

  “My God,” he whispered. “I did this.”

  Nicole craned her neck to see. There were four faint bruises on her hips, both sides. She wouldn’t have understood where they came from if his big hands weren’t touching her. The bruises matched precisely with his fingertips.

  A sudden flush raced through her body, head to toe. She remembered exactly how she’d gotten those bruises. Sam had held her hips tightly as he rammed into her the last time they made love, when he’d lost control, just a little. She’d been so excited she hadn’t even felt the grip of his hands.

  She was excited now, completely naked in the bathroom. The memory of their night together, his big body so close to hers, made heat blossom in her, made her bones loosen, started drawing her into a spiral of desire.

  Nicole lifted her face for a kiss, then stopped, frowning when he didn’t meet her halfway. What was this? He didn’t want to kiss her? Since when?

  Sam was staring at her hips, at the small bruises which were nothing in comparison to what was going to be a real doozy on her back tomorrow morning.

  He looked absolutely horrified.

  “Sam?”

  “I did this,” he said again hoarsely, eyes glued to where his hands framed the small dark spots. “These bruises came from me. From my hands.”

  She covered his hands with hers. “It’s okay. I bruise easily, don’t worry about it. “

  He was breathing heavily, face tight with some strong emotion. He raised his eyes to hers and she winced at the pain in them.

  “Is that why you ran?” he asked hoarsely. “Because I hurt you? Because you were afraid I would hurt you some more?”

  Nicole opened her mouth to answer, appalled that he could even think such a thing. She’d run because she was a coward and couldn’t face her feelings for him.

  “No, God no, Sam. I—”

  But he drowned her out, his voice strong and adamant. “Because I don’t do that. Could never do that. I don’t hurt women.” His jaw muscles bunched, he opened his mouth, then clamped it tight, throat working. It was as if he wanted to say more, but nothing else besides that stark statement would come out.

  Nicole started to say Of course you don’t hurt women, but stopped when she looked closer at him. He looked like a truck had run over him. As if something had scraped him raw.

  In Nicole’s world, of course men didn’t hurt women. That went without saying. The man she knew best, her father, had been the most gentle, loving and affectionate of fathers and husbands. She couldn’t even begin to imagine her father raising a hand in anger to her or to her mother. Or to any woman or child for that matter. It was simply unthinkable.

  But that wasn’t where Sam had grown up. Sam had grown up in the feral underbelly of the world—a place of brutality and cruelty, where men regularly beat up women and children, simply because they could. And because no one stood up for them. At some point in Sam’s childhood, something strong in him must have risen up, rebelled against the cruelty and the violence around him, led him to make his stand and forged him into the man he was.

  I don’t hurt women.

  The words had clearly come from the deepest bedrock of his being.

  Looking up at him, at that strong face, now trying to mask how deep his feelings were, something big, something important shifted inside her.

  Sam Reston. At first she thought he was a lowlife, a thug, the kind of man a woman instinctively avoided. Then he turned out to be the sexiest man alive. Last night had been, hands down, the most incredible sexual experience of her life, a potent combination of heat and laughter and pure hormonal overload.

  She’d been wildly attracted to that Sam Reston, the man who had taught her more about sex in one night than in all her twenty-eight years taken together. Attractive and attracted, sex on a stick. That Sam Reston had turned her on so powerfully he’d turned her inside out.

  But this Sam Reston—the man who protested hoarsely that he didn’t hurt women, as if the very blood in his veins would stop if he did…Well, that man was more than an incredibly hot date.

  The feelings he aroused in her were like a complete realignment of her being, right down to the molecular level.

/>   The French had a name for it—les atomes crochus. Where the very atoms that made up your being hooked up with another person’s, so that you were one, permanently, irrevocably.

  The night of amazing sex had somehow sparked off the process, and Sam’s horror at the idea he could have hurt her set it ablaze. The violence in her office had been a defining moment, watching Sam come to her rescue, unflinching even with a gun in his face.

  He’d defended her with his life.

  His hands were stroking her hips, right over the bruises. Gently, so gently, as if he could somehow wipe the bruises away. He watched his hands, face tight and grim, etched in regret at what he’d done.

  There was nothing wrong with what he’d done last night. She’d been with him every step of the way.

  He’d given her so much. Wooed her, seduced her, protected her, defended her. It struck her that she had the power to give something back to him, something he desperately needed.

  His pride. His knowledge of himself as a man who didn’t hurt women.

  “That wasn’t why I ran, Sam,” she said softly, holding his beard-roughened chin in her hand, forcing his head up so she could meet his eyes. His gaze kept going in horror to the small bruises on her hips.

  She took a deep breath, looked at him solemnly, shoulders back, standing ramrod straight.

  He stared at her, unblinking, jaws clenched.

  He was hurting. It was so clear, now that she had eyes to see. This big, strong, tough, magnificent man was hurting.

  She couldn’t stand another second of it.

  His mouth worked and he finally managed to get a few hoarse words out. “So why did you run?”

  “Because I was afraid—” He was already wincing. “I was afraid of what I felt for you. Last night—it was just so intense, it was like there was another woman in the bed with you. When I woke up I ran, because I could hardly recognize myself.”