He’d been gone two years now. Dante was here, warm and whole and alive. And I needed that.
I pressed my lips to his scattering of tattoos, brushing my tongue over the teeny nipple that stuck out just below. He ran his hand over the back of my head, tugging me closer even as I pulled away, moving slowly down the length of his belly. At first he sat up, his hands sliding over my back, encouraging me to stay with him, to touch him in all the places that offered the most pleasure. But then he lay back when he realized what my intentions were.
Hot sex. That’s what this was. And that meant doing things that turned me on.
I ran my hand over his balls, tugging at the thick skin over them. He groaned, his hips moving as I slipped my hand back up and grasped the thick shaft of his cock. I stroked him for a minute, my head resting on his belly, just watching my own hand slide over the most intimate part of this man I was sharing my bed with for only the second time. He brushed his fingers through my hair, tugging it back so that he could see the side of my face. And then I leaned forward, kissing the top of his shaft, making him moan softly as his fingers tugged at my hair.
He didn’t make any noise when I took him into my mouth, doing what Luke had taught me to do all the way back in high school. Luke wouldn’t make any sound either, not until he was close, until he couldn’t hold it back any longer. Dante was the same. He was a completely silent lover until the end, until he was unable to hold on to his control.
I ran my fingers over his balls as I took him into my mouth, swallowing as much of his shaft as I could take. He held my head, encouraging me to take more and more, his hips moving slightly against me, against the mattress. His belly tightened, his legs moving to support his hips. He was struggling with being in such a vulnerable position, trying to hold on even as I drove him close to the edge. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he yanked at my shoulder, pulling me back against the mattress, shoving himself deep inside of me in one, quick thrust. I cried out, unable to do anything but take him and enjoy the shivers of pleasure that rushed through me. We rocked together for a long few minutes, clinging to each other as if we would drown otherwise.
Just as my orgasm began to rush through me, my cellphone began to ring. I bit down on Dante’s shoulder, trying not to scream. He wrapped his arms around me, tugging me impossibly close to him. He cried out, his voice muffled by the pillow under my head. He cried out again and again, his body tense, his muscles hard as rock under my hands. And then, slowly, he began to relax.
My phone rang again, the special ringtone that indicated it was a call from the office.
“I have to answer that,” I mumbled.
“Now?”
He clearly didn’t want to move, but he did, untangling himself from me as he rolled onto his side. I felt his absence instantly, my body aching all over. It took a lot of willpower to turn away from him and pick up that damn phone.
“What is it?”
“There’s been a shooting,” Sam said, never one to beat around the bush. “Marcus’ target.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t have details. But it wasn’t Marcus who called it in. It was Blake Zimmerman. And he’s pissed.”
“Is the target okay?”
“She’s at the hospital. I’m not sure what her injury is.”
“Alright. I’ll head over to the hospital.”
I stumbled away from the bed and started searching for clothing. The suit I was wearing earlier was a jumbled mess on the floor, wrinkled beyond wear. I grabbed a pair of jeans from my dresser, searching around for my bra.
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“No.” I glanced at Dante, the sight of his gloriously naked body distracting me for a second. “If we keep showing up places in the middle of the night, people will start putting two and two together.”
“Would it be so bad for people to know?”
“Yes.”
I tugged on my jeans and grabbed a light sweater. I could feel his eyes on me and it took everything I had to ignore him. Stepping into shoes, I grabbed my wallet and keys off the dresser.
“If you go, lock the door behind you.”
“If I stay?”
I shook my head. “Stay out of my stuff.”
I was gone before he could answer.
The hospital was crowded. It was a Friday night in a large city, drunks and parties gone wrong and teens overdosing, enough to keep any emergency room busy.
I found Blake Zimmerman pacing outside an exam room, his hands buried deep in his front jeans pockets. He was a startlingly good-looking man, tall and built powerfully, his athleticism a power that seemed to just flow off of him. It was almost frightening, especially when his gaze fell on me and I could feel his anger in just the slight squint of his eyes.
“What the hell?” he demanded. “Where was your man?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to find him and ask.”
“Ask? I’m paying you to protect her!”
“But you asked us to stay back, to not let her know we were there. My asset cannot protect her as well that way.”
“I don’t want to scare her.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure this was pretty scary.”
He shook his head, turning his back on me. He ran his hands over the top of his shaved head. I moved closer to him, touched his arm.
“What happened?”
He shook his head again. “She was having dinner with a friend. She went into the parking lot to get into her car and someone fired two shots at her.”
“Was she hit?”
He glanced toward the closed exam room door. “Just a graze on her thigh. They’re sewing her up now.”
“Okay.” I stepped back. “I’m going to go talk to my asset. I’d really like for you to change your mind about the way we’re handling this. If I could—”
“No. I don’t want her to know.”
“But, Blake, she clearly knows that someone’s after her.”
“She doesn’t need to know that all this is connected. I…I don’t want to do anything to interrupt this process.”
“I understand.”
“This baby is extremely important to my wife and me. I can’t put that at risk.”
“Okay.”
I walked off, thinking the guy was an idiot. But I couldn’t force him into something he didn’t want.
Marcus was in the waiting room, sitting at the back of the room where he could see everything, pretending to read a magazine. If I hadn’t known his face, I might have thought he was just another patient waiting to see a doctor.
I sat beside him.
“What happened?”
He shrugged. “Shooter was in a car. He got off two shots. I pursued, but he disappeared in traffic.”
“You didn’t stick around to watch your target?”
“I’m not supposed to get close to her.”
“Yes, but you had no idea if there wasn’t another shooter on the ground. You left her vulnerable.”
“There was no one else there.”
“How do you know?”
“She was surrounded by restaurant patrons within seconds.”
“And one of them could have been a second shooter. You don’t know.”
“I did what I thought was best.”
I dragged my fingers through my hair, lifting it off my shoulders in an attempt to cool myself as my mind raced. My assets are supposed to be well trained. They’re supposed to act on instinct. If he thought chasing the shooter was best…I wasn’t there. I don’t know what the situation was like. But when you’re paid to protect someone at all costs, then that’s what you do.
“Do I need to replace you with someone else?”
“No, ma’am.”
“This target is important, Marcus. You must protect her before anything else. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Let the police chase the shooters. You stay with the target.”
“Even if it means exposin
g myself?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
I slapped his knee as I stood up. “Check in with the office daily, please.”
“I will.”
“And next time something like this happens, I’d rather get the report from you than the client.”
“Sorry, ma’am.”
“And quite calling me ma’am, it makes me feel old.”
He cracked a smile, the first I’d seen on his handsome face. I smiled, too, dropping a wink before I slipped through the triage doors again. Blake was still pacing, still worrying outside the exam room door. I touched his arm, forced him to stop and focus on me.
“My asset has everything under control. Miss Price is perfectly safe.”
He studied my face for a long moment. “If this happens again…”
“It won’t. But if you would reconsider—“
“We’ll stick with things the way they are.”
I nodded, telling myself there was nothing I could do about it. If this girl was hurt because Marcus wasn’t allowed close to her, that wasn’t on me. It was on Blake.
I patted his arm. “Okay. Let me know if you need anything else.”
I walked out of the hospital, my thoughts already back to my bedroom and the man I left lying in my bed.
Chapter 4
Cadence
Blake drove me home, helping me out of the car and slowly up the stairs.
“The doctor said you could take two of these pills as soon as we got home.” He held up a prescription bottle. “Water? Or do you want something else?”
“There’re water bottles in the fridge.”
He went into my kitchen as I settled on the couch, lifting my foot to the coffee table. You wouldn’t think that a flesh wound would hurt that much, but this thing was on fire. My entire leg ached, deep down in the muscle. I ran my hand over the bandage the doctor had put on it, feeling the tender area where they’d placed fifteen stitches.
“You are lucky,” the doctor had said. “A few inches up and to the left, you might have severed an artery.”
Yay.
Blake came back with the water bottle. He handed me a couple of pills and I swallowed them, closing my eyes as I chased them with the water, wishing it was something stronger. I’d given away the few bottles of booze I owned in anticipation of the pregnancy, but now I regretted it. I wasn’t pregnant yet.
“I’m worried about you,” Blake said, settling on the couch beside me. “I don’t like this.”
“I’m not too thrilled about it, either.”
“I’m glad you called me, though.”
I nodded. “I don’t understand why someone would want to shoot me like that. The cops said it was probably a random drive by. Do you think that’s what it was?”
“It’s possible. Those things happen, unfortunately.”
“I know. I just…it was scary.”
“I know.” Blake took my hand and held it for a long moment. “I want you to get out of town.”
“What about the procedure?”
“It’s two weeks before the doctor can do the insemination. You don’t have to be in town during that time.”
“True. But—“
“I have a cabin in Ruidoso. I want you to go up there, try to relax. Start the hormone therapy and prepare yourself for the insemination. Then you can drive back down the night before.”
“But my friends are here.”
“It’ll be safer there.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
Blake squeezed my hand. “I’ll drop the keys off in the morning. Until then, keep your door locked, okay? Don’t let anyone but me in.”
“Do you think I’m in danger?”
“No. But it doesn’t hurt to take precautions.”
He leaned close and kissed my cheek. Then he got up, heading for the door.
“I’ll call you before I come over.”
“Okay.”
He left and I hobbled over to the door to lock it. The pills he’d given me began to kick in as I undressed, preparing for bed. This quiver of fear came to live in my chest, making my stomach a little uneasy. I could see the outline of the man who shot at me. Brown hair. A long, patrician nose. But that was about all I saw. He was wearing sunglasses that were large and hid most of his face.
But he was looking right at me. Like he was targeting me.
Why would someone want to hurt me?
I crawled into bed, careful with how I place my injured leg. Blake’s decision to make me leave town was almost as frightening as the shooting. It was as if he knew something and he was trying not to tell me. And that scared the crap out of me.
Did all this have something to do with Blake? Was it someone who didn’t want me to be his surrogate? But what business was it of anyone but Blake and Annie? Just because he was something of a celebrity…
None of it made sense to me. All I knew was that I was rattled and the idea of getting out of town no longer seemed outrageous.
I slept off and on, often waking in the dark, afraid of something I’d seen in my dreams. I finally got out of bed and made myself a cup of tea. I stood at the kitchen window, looking down on the parking lot below me. My car wasn’t there and that felt strange. They’d towed it to the police impound to check it for evidence. I don’t know what they hoped to find, but I couldn’t imagine there’d be more than just broken glass.
Movement pulled my eyes to the back of the parking lot. There was a line of trees along the back of the lot with just a small section of asphalt behind it. There was a car parked there, hidden mostly from view. But I could see light coming from behind the wheel, like someone was sitting there watching video. I leaned closer to the window and stared until my vision seemed to cross and blur. It had to be my imagination. People parked there all the time to protect their cars from the unrelenting sunlight, especially during the summer. But it was fall now, turning cold. I couldn’t imagine the benefit of parking so far from the building now. But there was clearly a car there, though the light…could have been a trick of the light from the street lamps.
I was growing paranoid. I needed to get a grip.
Blake knocked on the door at just before eight the next morning. I was curled up on the couch, floating on the wave of the painkillers. They weren’t putting me to sleep, but they took the edge off the fear as well as the pain.
I stumbled to the door and smiled when I saw his face.
“Morning,” he said, brushing past me, his eyes moving all around the room. “You okay?”
“I’m good.”
He walked around, glancing out the windows, checking the bedroom and bathroom with little glances through the door. He was making me a little nervous.
“Is something wrong?”
He focused on me. “No, of course not.”
“You’re making me nervous.”
“Sorry.” He came over to me and took my hands, leading me to the couch. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. You know how important you are to our future plans.”
“I know.”
“Really, I can’t tell you how grateful I am. I’ve always wanted to be a father.”
“Yeah?”
“Since I was a kid. I come from a big family—five brothers and two sisters. My parents, they were great. Always there for all of us, always patient and understanding. And I have all these nieces and nephews now. I want one of my own, a child I can give everything I have to, just like my parents did for us and are doing for their grandkids.”
“I understand.”
“What about you? I’ve never asked why you’re doing this.”
I sat back on the couch, running my hand over my injured thigh. “I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to have kids, but I never thought about doing something like this. But when you were talking about it in Dr. Martinez’s office, it just seemed like the right thing to do.”
Blake studied my face for a long moment, his eyes moving slowly over the curves of my jaw. T
hen his eyes met mine.
“I hope this doesn’t offend you, but my lawyer had a private investigator check you out pretty thoroughly when I first presented your name as a possible surrogate.”
I shrugged. “I’d be surprised if you hadn’t.”
“He said that you were raised by your grandmother?”
I nodded. “My mom was a drug addict. She became addicted at a young age and was never able to shake it, even though my grandparents sent her to rehab half a dozen times. Then my grandfather died and she disappeared, showing up on my grandmother’s doorstep five years later, me as an infant in her arms. She swore she wanted to straighten her life out and my grandmother took her in, hoping to help her. But she died of an overdose a month later.”
“That’s tough.”
“I want to be sad about it, but the truth is I don’t remember any of that. I don’t remember my mother or the life she lived. I only knew my grandma and that was all I really needed.”
“It’s good that you had someone who was so willing to take you in.”
“I was. That I understand and I was always so grateful. My grandma…we had a special relationship.”
“It must be hard for you, now that she’s gone.”
I tilted my head slightly. “She was very sick at the end of her life. I think she was relieved to finally pass.”
“What about you?”
I ran my hand slowly over my leg again, thinking how I’d wanted to call her last night when I was in that ambulance and they asked if there was anyone they could call. But that was the first time in a long time that I’d missed her quite like that.
“I have friends. I have people I count on and who count on me.”
“But last night you called me, not one of them.”
I glanced at him, wondering what he’d gotten out of that. I hoped he didn’t think I had some sort of strange crush on him or something. He was cute and everything, but not really my type.
“Should I have called someone else?”
“No, I’m glad you called me.” He took my hand again. “You should feel free to call me any time you need someone.”
“Thank you.”
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