He dragged her up against him, clamped his arms around her waist and consumed her mouth. As he walked her backwards to the bed, he demanded, “How many do you have?”
“Dunno. Have to read the box.”
He snorted. “We’ll use what you’ve got.”
“Be still my heart.”
He kept sipping at her lips, laughing in between words. “And buy more in the morning.”
“What stamina,” she praised him, taking one packet but shoving the rest into his hand as she kissed his nose, his cheek, his jaw.
“You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet, sugar babe,” he whispered, as her calves hit against the mattress and she sat down. The moonlight streamed over his shoulder, putting his face in shadow. She tore off one packet, fumbled to open it, hoping she could put one on him easily. She’d had no practice since she’d left him.
He put his hands on his hips, facing her and chuckling while she struggled. “Want me to do that?”
“No!” She shrank away from his reach. “I planned this.”
“You better cover me quick, lady.”
She ran her tongue over her lower lip as she saw how his blunt shaft pointed at her. On a whim, she reached over and kissed the tip.
He growled, exasperated. “Now is a good time!”
Undeterred, she smiled up at him as she wrapped her hand around his base and rolled the latex down, down, down to his root.
Then she lay back and stretched up to display her body as leisurely as a stripper on an imaginary pole. “What do you think?” she whispered, eager to hear what he liked about her.
“My memory’s bad,” he rasped and lifted his chin at her. “Refresh it.”
She swallowed hard on the intimate suggestion. Her memory of them together in bed and out was oh, so alive and well. It told her Grant Warwick was a man who liked to watch—and afterward he would show her how very much he appreciated her ingenuity. She wouldn’t fail him.
She smiled at him, a slow hot caress over the outline of his massive body from his head to his lean hips to his sculpted thighs. Lifting her arms like a dancer who had all the time in the world, she curled her fingers in her hair, over her scalp and down over her eyes to open her lips and wet her fingertips with her tongue. She stroked her throat and her chest, then pushed her breasts together to beckon him, her nipples hard and yearning.
He caught his breath.
Gratified, she went on. One hand drifted down his arm, their fingers touched, separated. Ballet lessons helped get your man hard. Who knew? She grinned at him, flexed her thighs. Her body pulsed, swelling.
His nostrils flared. His shoulders flexed. He watched her as if he memorized her every move. He was fit, cut, a gorgeous hunk of man. Hers for as long as she could keep him fascinated.
“I want you,” she pleaded with him as she skimmed her fingers over her stomach and down to her mound, “here.”
He narrowed his gaze and made some savage sound of need. Still he delayed, his eyes flowing over every inch of her.
“Grant, sweetie.”
“Roll over.”
She rose up on one elbow and did as she was told. Writhing on the sheets, she loved his perusal—and hated it. “No more waiting.”
He climbed on the bed, rocking the mattress with his weight. Hands to her hips, he pressed his thighs to hers and ran his big hot hands from her crown to her nape, her shoulders along her backbone and cupped her hips. With precision, he slid his shaft along her seam. Made her bite her tongue in delight as he moved slowly back and forth along her flesh. He prodded her, teasing her with the promise of what was to come. She whimpered and put her forehead to the mattress. She knew he wasn’t going to give it to her yet. He never did take her until he’d tormented both of them with the touch of every bit of her body.
“You’re a witch.” He wrapped his arms around her waist, sliding one hand down her tummy to splay his fingers against her pubic bone. In tortuous circles, he massaged her with a delicate motion.
“I tried to forget what we were together.” She moaned at the agony that had been ecstasy and shut her eyes. The memory of how they made love had never been as rewarding as this fabulous reality. “I failed.”
“No need to remember,” he whispered in her ear, his fingers sinking between her folds. “Only enjoy.”
He rolled to one side and whirled her to the bed. There he covered her with his heat and kissed her tenderly as he slid his cock along her seam and drove right up inside her.
Suspended in the aura of their union, she did not breathe. Did not move.
Neither did he.
Her head reeled. Her body pulsed. She couldn’t seem to find words to describe how complete she felt. How had she lived without him? Without this?
With his eyes squeezed shut, his mouth open in a grimace, he looked like a man in exquisite pain.
But he moved in slow motion and put his eyes on hers.
She rocked with him. In a rhythm that intoxicated her, she clutched his shoulders, arched and reveled in the force of his claim. As if she were caught in a current, she was swept up and washed over a waterfall, her cry of completion a long note of delight.
He followed her with a groan that pierced the quiet of the room. He wrapped himself around her, tucking her close.
Tears dribbled from the corners of her eyes. This was the paradise she couldn’t forget, the one she wished she’d never denied. She smiled and hugged him to her. She rejoiced she’d arranged to see him again. For his forgiveness, she’d decided to take a chance. For years, she’d realized, that to recapture his love, she’d do anything. She’d never had the chance. Until now.
She had no idea how much later he pulled the sheet up over them. Then he kissed her forehead, rose and went into his bathroom to get rid of the condom. The water ran for a while and he came back to sink down beside her. He peeled back the sheet and rolled her to her back. He stroked her breasts and her belly with a warm washcloth followed by the brush of his lips.
“I got carried away,” he apologized as he continued his ministrations.
She ran a hand over his head. “You were gentle, sweetie.”
“I don’t ever want to hurt you,” he said, leaning down to kiss the inside of her thigh.
“You could never hurt me, Grant,” she whispered. “You may be this big brawny guy, but with me you’re a lamb.”
“Don’t spread that around, will you, babe?” He rubbed his lips over hers. His body was taut once more, hard against her thigh, ready to make love again. He paused, his eyes glittering in the moonlight. “I need this, Coco. Need you. I have to make sure you realize who’s in bed with you.”
“I knew a few minutes ago. A few years ago.”
She stared up at him and after the beauty of what they’d just shared, she saw an harsh inquiry in his features that astonished her. This was a fiercer emotion than the jealousy she’d seen when she’d retrieved the condoms. This was deeper. She had to reassure him of her desire for him. Certainly that small declaration in the restaurant that she’d had no one since him was inadequate. And she needed to tell him the whole story of why she’d left him. This might not be the best way to begin but she had to start somewhere. “I haven’t been with anyone since you.”
He searched her eyes. “Why not?”
Her mouth parted at the wild hurt on his face. Oh, sweetie. “I didn’t want anyone but you.”
“Hard to believe, don’t you think? Since you’re the one who left me.”
Truths, Coco. He needs them. In his narrow silver gaze and in his tense body, she saw how raw his wound was. The gaping hole of how she’d hurt him.
She glanced around the room. Swung a leg out of bed. Stood and kneaded her hands. Walked to the window, naked in the moonlight. “I had to leave you that morning in Washington. I couldn’t get on that plane to Fiji with you.”
“So you just let me wait at the gate at Dulles?”
“I had to.”
“Why not tell me before I went there? Call me and l
et me know? I hung around for ten hours, looking at every leggy blonde who came along, hoping it might be you. Why not tell me face-to-face?”
In her career, she had braved a lot of things. Riots, bombs, crazed extremists. Still, she was too chicken to witness the look on his countenance when she told him the truth. She stared up at the moon instead. “I had a job to do. And I was called the night before you and I were to leave on vacation to complete it. The assignment was one I’d taken on well before you and I ever met.”
“So it was work,” he concluded in a sudden and remarkably even tone. “You couldn’t just tell me you had work to do?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Why not?”
She whirled to face him. “Because no one knows about the work I do. No one ever does.”
He digested that for a moment. In the sylvan light, she could detect the feral heat of his gaze and the scorch of his curiosity. “You’re a freelance photographer. You work on assignments for media.”
“That’s what I used to do full-time. Now it’s my cover.”
He got to his feet and in three strides, had her around the waist, her breasts and belly flush to the encompassing comfort of his big hard body. With two thumbs lifting her jaw, he stared down into her eyes and with heartache in his voice, he asked, “What’s your real job, baby?”
Chapter Five
“I work for the CIA.”
Her words ate at him like acid. Ever since he saw the suit, he’d worried. He’d worked the possibilities. He’d listed government and private agencies. Perhaps Secret Service, protecting the President or the currency. Could have been the United Nations or anti-terrorist group. Or NSA. Deepest of deep black organizations. A commercial security firm just like his own, hired by corporations or billionaires with personal problems.
“Since when?” he asked her.
“More than three years ago. After I started to win awards for my pictures and just before we met.”
He pressed her head to his chest and she came so willingly, he thought she might crawl inside his skin and stay there. Okay by him. “You knew who I was, what I did for a living. Hell, I was with the FBI back then!”
She sniffed and gave a laugh, a haughty sound of joy amid the seriousness of her revelation. “An Agency op was going to reveal to a Bureau man who she was? And spoil the competition?”
He hugged her. “You know what I mean. You could have told me. Saved us both a lot of heartache.”
She looked up at him, shaking her head. “We’d known each other only a few months. I knew you were…safe for me to date.”
“You ran a check on me?” Hell, why ask. He knew this answer.
“Standard Operating Procedure. You know it is.”
“Especially when you’re sleeping with the guy,” he teased her.
She grinned. “In those four months with you, I got no sleep.”
“Who wanted to?” He kissed her quickly but drew back and saw that she was still troubled by what she’d revealed. He knew, too, that she wasn’t going to feel totally free until she’d told him everything. Well, he wasn’t going to feel totally free of his anger that she’d left him, either, until he knew all her secrets.
He bent, scooped her up under her legs and carried her back to their bed. He set her down, caught pillows and plumped them against the headboard, then sat and brought her up to rest against his chest. He kissed her forehead. Pulled the covers up to their necks and took one of her hands. “Tell me.”
She bit her lower lip and closed her eyes. “By the time I graduated college, I had put aside the idea of becoming a professional dancer. Too physically demanding. I wasn’t up for it. But there was one other thing I was good at. Photography, especially of Arab people in odd moments. A child with a U.S. Marine eating a chocolate bar. A Palestinian woman hugging an olive tree. A man in the Old City of Jerusalem selling rugs to passersby. I thought I’d use what I’d learned in the Middle East to build a career taking photos unique to the region and the culture. Having Dad’s connections helped.”
“Makes sense.”
“I loved the experience when I was a kid and he was the ambassador to Qunitar and later, to the Egyptians and afterward the Israelis. I wanted to be in the diplomatic corps. But I had taken quite an interest in taking pictures of children at school. So out of college, I got a job at a small non-profit that worked in the Middle East feeding and clothing disadvantaged children. They sent me to Egypt on a project they had just started.”
“Is that when you took those pictures of the children in Cairo without shoes?”
She smiled, clearly proud he knew about them. “How did you learn about those?”
“Not hard. Those pictures wound up in every newspaper from New York to Tel Aviv.”
“I liked the work, but I needed something more. Almost four years ago, I got a lead on a political faction in Cairo that wanted publicity in the West. They were opposed to their own government and they sent me an invitation to come take pictures of their communes.”
“They were communists? Democrats? What?”
“More anti-military than anything else. They thought they had gotten a bad rap from the international press and they offered me safe passage if I would come and take shots. I did.”
“And those won you a few journalism awards. I remember,” he said, smiling at her. “What then?”
“After I finished the project for them, their leaders took me with them on a trip into the desert where they were to meet with other leaders of their network in other countries. I put on a black abaya, dressed like an Arab woman, a devout one with a boushiya to conceal my face. I wore the long black gloves, too, to cover my hands. But that exposure to those at the meeting was the most valuable thing to come out of that visit.” She stared up into his eyes. “I saw more than a dozen leaders of different groups from Middle Eastern countries. All of them associated with each other. Most of them responsible democratic parties.”
“Like the array of parties in European governments.”
“Exactly. The best thing about the event was that they spoke freely about their goals, their leaders, their numbers and their platforms.” She dropped her gaze to her hands. “But there were five in attendance who were different. Although the man who had invited me—Ahmed Suleiman was his name—thought everyone was devoted to democratic principles, these five had recently changed their ideas. Still they had come to the meeting. They were dressed in total black. Two wore balaclavas. All looking forbidding. Surly, gruff. Especially to the women who were there. And as a group, they were friendly to each other, but not to the others. They tried to incite others to join them, proclaiming only they could change the region’s status quo. Only they had the right ideas and the right tactics.”
Grant held his breath. “Which were?”
“Violence. Riots and bombings.”
He tightened his hold on her hand.
“Of course, they didn’t know that one of the women in their midst had a photographic memory. Or that she was a photographer.”
He cursed. “Did they have any idea that you were American, too?”“
“I didn’t think so. I never showed my face or my hair. I only helped to serve tea. Like the other women there. Obedient. Silent.”
“And like them, fluent in Arabic.”
“Afterward, I flew home and went straight to my father. I was so full of what I knew, who I’d met, that I could scarcely think straight. I told him what happened only in outline, never specifics. I’ve never told anyone those, except my control.”
“Good. Good.” Who was her control? And where was he now?
“But Dad thought it best if I went to the Agency and told them. I did.” She rolled her shoulders then, looked away from him, and started to leave the bed. “I need some water.”
“I’ll get it.” Grant left to get her a drink from the tap. When he came back, she had put her nightgown on again and was pacing the floor. Murmuring her thanks, she did not look at him but took the gl
ass and downed the water. Then she turned toward the window. Closing something off from him, he knew. But he could wait. Now that she was his in body, he’d wait for every other part of her to become wholly his.
“They asked me to work for them. My contacts were valuable, unique. They needed me. I agreed.” She downed her water. “I started to work for them and over the years, I’ve helped them identify two of the radicals in the desert that day. I’ve kept my cover as a freelance journalist and kept to myself. Except for you.”
She faced him and the sweet way her gaze flowed over his features salved more of the wound she’d made when she left him. “I didn’t have delicious men in my life until you. I never had a hot affair. No weekends in bed. No breakfasts on the floor as a man made love to me.”
He smiled at her mention of how he’d taken her to a hunting lodge in western Maryland. How they’d spent the entire weekend naked, tangled up in each other. How he’d cooked breakfast tacos and fed her one bite at a time on a rug in front of the fire as he feasted on her delectable body.
Grant sank his hands in her hair. He nuzzled behind her ear, one of his favorite spots on her body of which there were thousands. “I didn’t want any woman ever like I wanted you. Like I still do.”
She sighed against him.
“What happened that you couldn’t come away with me?”
“When I left you at the hotel the morning we were to leave, I had a message on my closed circuit cell phone. I went through my procedure to make contact and got instructions to leave immediately. One of the men I’d been looking for, one of those who’d been at the meeting in the desert had been caught in Madrid. Our guys from the Embassy and Interpol were interrogating him, but they were getting nowhere. I had to go see if I could ID him positively.”
He understood her need to leave him. While he accepted it in theory, he hated the years and the heartache they’d suffered for it. “And were you able to do that?”
“I was. I decided he was one of the five radicals I’d seen in the Egyptian desert and the Spanish police and our men took him away. To a black site.”
Tall, Hard and Trouble Page 15