She tilted her head back to gaze up into his face. He was so handsome he took her breath away. His expression was fierce and controlled at once. And vulnerable in a way she hadn’t expected. As if he feared her as much as she feared him.
“When I left…” She pulled in a breath. “I couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to you out there. I panicked.”
She’d thought it would be easier if she left on her own terms instead of risk her heart again and again.
“I know that too.” He ran his hands over her shoulders and then he pushed her gently away from his body. “Something else I know is that unless you walk away right now, you’re mine for the rest of the night.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Olivia couldn’t breathe. She knew she should walk away, the same as she did last night, but she just couldn’t seem to make her feet move. This was Billy Blake, the man she’d loved—hell, the man she still loved—and he was standing here in front of her with nothing but a pair of boxers on his gorgeous body. The Christmas lights illuminated his skin, delineating every bulge and curve of muscle.
Muscle she wanted to touch and lick and feel moving beneath her hands. She vibrated with need, her body liquefying beneath his hot gaze.
“Liv? You gotta go, babe. I can’t take this much longer.”
She swallowed. “I don’t want to go.”
It was his turn to swallow. “You better be sure about that.”
She stepped into his arms again, ran her hands up the smooth skin of his back. “I’m sure.” Terrified, but sure.
His mouth crushed down on hers then and she whimpered at the feel of his tongue sliding between her lips. It had been so long. Too long.
He kissed her hard and deep, and she met him as ravenously as he met her. Their tongues slid and tangled, their bodies pressing together, their hands gliding over skin and muscle. Billy reached for the hem of the T-shirt and ripped it up and over her head. Then he cupped her ass, groaning when he realized she wasn’t wearing any panties.
He picked her up then and she wrapped her legs around his hips, still kissing him, her hands on either side of his face, holding him right where she wanted him. It felt so good to kiss him again, so damn good.
Her heart was ready to pound right out of her chest. And her body… God, her body was on fire. She could come just from kissing him if he kept this up. He was so damn hot, so perfect.
He finally broke the kiss and pressed his lips to her neck. And then he licked a path to her breasts, sucking a nipple into his mouth while she arched her back to give him better access. He was so big and strong, and he held her high while he licked her nipples over and over.
She was spread wide, her body open for him, so that it was no surprise when one of his fingers found the wet seam of her sex. When he reached her clitoris, she thought she would die. He flicked it lightly, expertly, while he sucked hard on her nipple and she clutched his shoulders, arching her hips, animal sounds coming from her throat.
“Billy,” she gasped as he did it again. “Please.”
“Please what, Liv? Please make you come? Please end this torture? Please fill you with my cock?”
“All of it. Please, all of it.”
He took her down to the floor then, placing her on top of the sleeping bag and kissing her over and over while she melted beneath him. Her skin was on fire, her body so tight with anticipation that it hurt.
“Dammit, I want this to last,” he said as she ran her hands down his sides and shoved at the waistband of his boxers. But he gave in to her efforts and kicked the shorts off. And then he was naked and she wrapped a hand around his cock while he groaned. “Livvie.”
“I’ve missed you, Billy,” she said, her throat thick with emotion. “So much.”
Somehow she managed to push him onto his back, and then she straddled him and did all the things with her tongue that she’d been dying to do. She licked her way down the solid wall of his pectorals, over the ridges of his abdomen, until she could press his thick cock to her cheek and feel the heat of him.
But then she took him into her mouth, her tongue swirling over the velvety head, down the ridge in the center. He fisted his hands in her hair and she could feel him breathing hard and fast, trying so hard not to let go, not to come straight away.
She wouldn’t mind if he did. It made her feel powerful to know she could still do this to him, that he was—for the moment anyway—submissive and vulnerable to her touch. She sucked him a little harder then and his back bowed.
“God, Olivia. When you do that—”
He didn’t finish what he was saying, and she didn’t care. She loved the feel of him in her mouth, the salty taste of his flesh, the sounds he made. Her body hurt with arousal, but there would be time enough for her later.
But he reached for her, urged her up until her knees were on either side of his head. Then he buried his tongue in the soft, wet heat of her—and Olivia came unglued.
Her body exploded in a rush of light and feeling, but Billy didn’t stop. He kept licking her, sucking her, forcing her body toward another crisis. Somewhere, in the intensity of what he did to her, she tried to do the same to him. But her rhythm was knocked off balance now and all she could focus on was the pleasure coursing through her.
When she came again, his name on her lips, he flipped her over and sank down on top of her. He braced himself above her, his expression dark and intense as his gaze raked hers.
“Do I need a condom?”
She knew what he was asking. If she’d been with anyone else without one. If she was still on the pill. She shook her head and then he bent down slowly and took her mouth with his own.
He kissed her softly at first, his cock nudging into her slick heat. Olivia wrapped her legs around him and he sank down into her, stealing her breath away with his heat and size and the sheer pleasure of being impaled by him again.
The softness didn’t last. Neither of them was capable of it, really. Not after so long. Billy hooked an arm around one of her legs and opened her wider, pounding into her harder and harder with each stroke.
The pleasure stretched and spiraled, growing tighter and tighter inside her belly, her sex, until she was ready to scream. He got onto his knees then, lifted her to him. And then he brought her legs tightly together and stroked into her until the friction caught at her G-spot and sent her careening over the edge of one of the best orgasms of her life.
He didn’t give her time to recover. He urged her onto all fours and plunged into her from behind. She didn’t think she could come again, but she was wrong. His fingers set up a rhythm against her clitoris that matched the rhythm of his strokes—
And she shattered. This time, he went with her, his body jerking as he came deep inside her.
They collapsed to the floor together, breathing hard and trying to reconcile what had just happened with everything they’d believed up until this moment. Olivia felt hot tears spill down her cheeks. She turned her head into the sleeping bag and tried to hide but her body began to shake with the intensity of her emotions.
“Olivia,” he said behind her, his mouth falling to her shoulder, his arm tightening around her waist. “Don’t cry, baby. Don’t cry.”
“I’m not crying over you, Billy,” she said, trying to convince herself as much as him. “I’m crying because that felt so damn good. I was wound up tight and you unwound me. That’s all.”
His mouth was still on her shoulder, so gentle, so sweet. “I know, Livvie.”
“I should go,” she said, though she didn’t really want to. But if she stayed, she’d end up deeper in love with him than ever. And she still didn’t know what the future held. If she could trust him to be there for her, or if he’d go away and get killed in a warzone. If he’d leave her.
He turned her in his arms then, came up on an elbow beside her and stroked the tears away with his fingers. “Stay with me.”
The tree twinkled and she could see snow falling when she looked up at the window.
Billy was beside her, warm and solid and alive, and something inside her twisted, like a key fitting into a lock. He was the key, she realized. The key to her heart.
And though it frightened her to let him in, even a little bit, she lifted her arms and put them around his neck. “Yes,” she said simply. Because, for her, there was no other choice.
***
Billy couldn’t take his eyes off Olivia. He watched her laughing with Evie, and with Sam McKnight’s fiancée, Georgeanne Hayes. Liv was gorgeous, but it was more than that. There was something about this one woman that tore him up inside and made him willing to do anything to keep her happy.
Anything to keep her.
He hadn’t expected to make love to her for half the night, but that’s exactly what had happened. The best Christmas present ever in his opinion. If he were lucky, he’d take her home and do it all again tonight.
“Looks like you got it bad, Kid.”
Billy jerked his head up to find Sam standing beside him. Sam’s gaze strayed to the women and Billy wondered if the gleam in the man’s eyes as he looked at his fiancée was anything like the way Billy looked at Olivia.
“Pot and kettle, dude,” he said softly.
Sam laughed. “Yeah, no doubt.”
Matt wandered over and joined them. “Y’all hungry? Evie’s been at it since daybreak.”
“Smells amazing,” Billy said. He already knew it would be. Evie Baker couldn’t cook a bad meal.
Matt took a sip of his drink. It looked like a mixed drink—cola and something—but Billy knew better. Richie Rich didn’t drink. Ever.
“Got some news on that recording,” Matt said, and Billy’s gaze whipped to his commanding officer. “Nothing good, I’m afraid. It’s a car radio in the background. The station was DC Metro.”
“So whoever called Olivia was in a car and in the local area.”
“Yeah.”
Billy blew out a breath. “Not helpful at all.”
Matt looked unhappy. “No. And nothing new on Titan either. Mendez is digging. He’s called some of his contacts at the NSA. But there’s nothing, other than a tenuous connection to Congressman Black. It’s his district that will benefit the most if the deal goes through. That’s not enough to stop it. We need hard evidence.”
Sam said, “Congress hasn’t voted yet. We have time.”
“Not a lot, but yeah, we have time.” Matt looked up as the women laughed, his gaze seeking Evie. He stood there for a long minute, about as lost in Evie as Sam and Billy had been in Georgie and Olivia. The only difference, Billy thought with envy, was that Sam and Matt knew where they were headed with their women.
“We need to find Cooper,” Billy said. He wanted to get this over with and behind them so he could figure out what was going on with him and Olivia too. Could he let her back into his life again? Or was it best if they left it at a few nights of hot sex and moved on?
He knew she’d had a shitty childhood, and he knew she didn’t trust easily. He’d been pissed when she’d asked him to give up HOT, but he understood where it came from.
“If he’s still alive,” Jack Hunter said, and Billy started because Hawk had a way of being there and not being there at the same time. He’d been so damn quiet that Billy hadn’t noticed him. But he was sitting on the couch, a beer in his hand, his surfer-boy looks as golden and gleaming as ever—except for a darkness in his blue eyes that said he wasn’t the pretty boy everyone assumed he was on first glance. No, he definitely wasn’t. When it was necessary, Hawk was a cold-blooded killing machine capable of taking out a target from over a mile away with his sniper rifle.
No one said anything for a long moment. The doorbell rang and Matt went to answer it. A few seconds later he came back with Kevin MacDonald and Lucky San Ramos in tow. Lucky looked stone-faced and Kev looked as if he could chew nails for breakfast. Man, Billy didn’t envy Kev this detail at all. It was clear as hell that Kev was in love with Lucky—and that he was determined not to let it show.
As for Lucky, who knew? She didn’t look happy, that was for sure. And why would she be when she was about to put her life on the line searching for the terrorist who’d tortured her?
Lucky went to join the other women while the men sat in the living room with the Christmas tree twinkling, carols playing softly, and the irritation of being unable to find Alan Cooper—or the evidence to blow the Titan deal out of the water—hanging over their heads like a malevolent cloud.
As the afternoon wore on, they tried to put the situation behind them as much as possible. The food was amazing, as always, and the camaraderie with these guys couldn’t be beat. They were brothers, even if they weren’t actually related. Billy would trust his life with any one of these guys, and they with him.
And they all had, many times.
Eventually, it was time to say goodbye. Billy helped Olivia into the truck and they drove the distance back to his house without saying much. There was an awkwardness between them, but there was also heat and want. No matter how desperately he wanted her again, he decided to let her be the one to make the first move. If she fled when they got back to his place, he’d respect that.
Except his cock was half-hard already, remembering the way she’d melted around him last night, her body opening to him, her soft cries of pleasure ringing in his ears. Billy shook his head. He needed to focus, needed to think about what else he could possibly do to find Alan Cooper or discover who was behind the conspiracy.
He pulled into his driveway, still thinking about how he wanted to strip Olivia naked the instant they walked through the door. He’d just gotten out of the truck when it hit him that something didn’t feel right.
Before he could figure out why that was, a gun jammed right up beneath his ribs. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t experienced before so he didn’t panic. He just put up his hands and tried to assess the situation. He could disarm the guy easily, even now—
Except Olivia stumbled around the front of the truck then, her eyes wide with fear as another guy had one arm wrapped around her and a gun to her jaw.
“Do anything, anything at all,” a menacing voice behind him said, “and Miss Reese will die.”
CHAPTER NINE
They were locked in a warehouse. Billy was zip-tied with his hands behind his back but they’d left Olivia free. It was almost an insult, but then she was thankful they hadn’t thought her enough of a threat to tie her up.
The warehouse was empty, except for a couple of chairs and a table, so there wasn’t even anything they could really use to break free.
“I’m sorry, Billy,” she said again.
He’d shut down a long time ago, his expression carefully blank. It scared her that he didn’t show any emotion. How did he do that?
“It’s not your fault, Liv.”
“It is. I didn’t think about my car.” When she’d slid off the road, the car automatically dialed BMW. They’d asked her if she was okay and she’d said yes. They’d asked if she needed assistance and she’d said no. Because she’d known she was close to Billy’s house and she’d intended to walk the rest of the way rather than wait an hour in the car for a man to show up with a tow truck. She’d been too scared to wait.
“Even if you’d told me, I might not have considered that someone would use the tracking information to find you.”
But he would have. She knew it as sure as she knew her own name. It’s what he did.
“I appreciate you trying to spare my feelings, but we both know I’m the reason we’re here.”
“No, we’re here because someone wants to defraud the U.S. Government and put soldiers in danger just so they can make a quick buck.”
He was pacing back and forth, his gaze flashing hot. Even with his arms behind him, he looked dangerous.
“Whoever this is, they have access, Liv. Your average guy isn’t going to be able to use your BMW’s tracking info to find you.”
“You could,” she said.
He gave her a grin that surprised
her. “And who said I was average, babe?”
She sank down on one of the chairs and tried not to hyperventilate. Her heart was pounding hard. She wasn’t accustomed to someone jamming a gun in her face and forcing her into a car. She’d been thinking about what was going to happen when the door closed to Billy’s house, if she’d jump on him and strip him or try to remain cool, when someone grabbed her from behind and slapped a gloved hand over her mouth. She couldn’t even warn Billy.
When the man had pushed her around the truck, she’d been relieved that Billy was still alive. And scared to death because she could see the violence in his eyes. He hadn’t acted on it, however. He’d stayed cool, even when the men had marched them down the road to a waiting car and shoved them in it. If it had only been light out, they might have seen the guys waiting in ambush.
But they hadn’t.
The door opened then and a man came in. Olivia was on her feet in a second.
“Tom! What the hell is going on?”
Tom Howard sauntered over with his hands in his pockets, looking apologetic. “I’m so sorry to put you through this. I’m afraid Alan has lost his mind.” He waved a hand as if he were waving away a fly. “I tried to keep it quiet, but then he disappeared. He’s dangerous, Olivia. Very dangerous.”
Billy had leaned a hip against the table. He looked so casual, as if they were still at Matt and Evie’s place and he was just listening to the conversation.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Olivia said, focusing on Tom again. “But I don’t know how I can help.”
“He sent you something. I’d like to see it.”
“I don’t have it.” Which was true. She’d turned the disc over to HOT yesterday in case they could find some sort of DNA evidence on it that might help.
Tom’s forehead was shiny. He smiled again. “What did you do with it?”
She shrugged. Maybe she should have denied that Alan had sent her anything, but then she knew that the best lies were those closest to the truth.
“There was nothing really on it. Just some notes of Alan’s.” She forced a laugh. “He tried to say the test results were wrong, but there was no evidence of it. I think he probably wanted to give the company a black eye.”
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