Betrayed

by Rebecca York

  “Isn’t the same true for us?”

  “Not if we do it right.”

  He waded into the reeds and looked toward the nearest mansion. A few lights were on, which he hoped would discourage the goons from approaching. At the same time, he was hoping that the house was actually vacant, and the lights were set on a timer.

  He came back to Elena and motioned for her to follow him along the water’s edge.

  A hundred yards farther on, he found what he was looking for, a dock where a large cabin cruiser was moored.

  “Wait here,” he whispered.

  She huddled in the water by the edge of the pier while he climbed out. He looked around for signs that he was being followed or that anyone in the house had spotted them. When he saw and heard no one, he climbed a ladder onto the horizontal planks, staying low as he crossed to the cabin cruiser and climbed onto the long back deck lined with bench seating. At the far end was a custom-made brown tarp with snaps closing the entrance to the interior. He figured it wouldn’t be closed from the outside if someone was in there.

  Still, he was cautious about entering. After pulling a couple of the snaps open, he stuck his head and shoulder inside, waiting for his vision to adjust to the moonlight coming through the windows. Inside was a spacious and comfortable cabin with teak paneling and leather sofas. If it was any indication of the level of luxury in the house, these people were quite well off. And hopefully rich enough to use this property as a vacation escape, not a permanent residence. He saw stairs at the far end of the room, which he assumed led to staterooms.

  Ducking back out, he returned to the dock and looked around again to make sure nobody was watching. After several moments, he returned to the ladder where he found Elena still standing in the water, shivering as she wrapped her arms around her shoulder.

  “Come on. And stay low when you get up here.”

  When he gestured toward the ladder, she climbed up, and he led her toward the yacht, then onto the rear deck. After they were both on board, he crossed to the tarp where he opened more of the snaps.

  “Go in.”

  “Is this okay?”

  He repressed a laugh. “You mean are we trespassing? Yeah, but that’s the least of our worries.”

  She ducked through the opening, and he followed, pulling the tarp closed behind him and securing it with an interior hook at the top right edge.

  “I can’t see much,” she murmured.

  “We can’t turn on any lights. We’ll have to wait for our eyes to adjust. There’s some moonlight coming in through the window.”

  He waited until he could see a little, then walked around her to the companionway, taking the stairs carefully in the dark. He felt his way along the narrow passage to one of the cabins and called softly. “Come on, and watch the stairs. They’re steep.”

  The windows let in more light down here, and he looked around the small cabin, seeing a wide bunk with storage drawers underneath. He began opening them and found various items of clothing.

  When he heard Elena come in behind him, he looked up. She was trying to keep her teeth from chattering and not succeeding very well.

  “We need to get out of our wet clothes. There’s stuff we can wear in here. Nothing that fits well, but it will do.”

  He rummaged through the items and found T-shirts and sweatpants for both of them.

  “We passed a head on the way down the hall.”

  “A what?”

  “That’s what they call a bathroom on a boat. You can change in there,” he said, handing her a set of clothing.

  When she took them from him and turned back the way she’d come, he watched her leave, thinking that he hadn’t planned to spend the night in the same room with her—and certainly not in such close quarters. There were other staterooms on the craft, but he didn’t want to be separated from her now. For a lot of reasons.

  He was trying to protect her, and at the same time, he didn’t entirely trust her. After all, she’d gone into S&D to take something that didn’t belong to her. On the other hand, she’d brought it to him. And then she’d offered to grab the bad guys’ attention while he circled around in back of them. All that had to count for a lot, he told himself.

  ***

  Max and Jack had stayed in the office, hoping for a call from Shane. When he failed to check in, they got out their statewide police scanner. It was all routine stuff, until they caught excited chatter about explosions and a firefight in St. Stephens on the Eastern Shore.

  Max gave Jack a long look as he turned up the volume.

  “That’s where one of our safe houses is located,” Jack said. “I’m betting that Shane went down there with Elena Reyes. He probably thought they’d be out of the line of fire, but it looks like they ran into trouble.”

  Jack’s expression hardened. “And I don’t think we can do anything about it.”

  “From the police chatter, I think he got away,” Max said. “At least there was nobody on the property.”

  “Or the bad guys scooped them up,” Jack added in a low voice.

  “Let’s assume he got away,” Max said. “Too bad we have no idea where he went after that.”

  “And if we go down there and get stopped by the cops, we’re going to have to answer a bunch of questions.” He got out his cell phone and stared at the blank screen, willing their partner to call—like that was going to do any good.

  ***

  Elena retraced her steps, looking along the hallway and finding the bathroom that Shane had mentioned.

  She slipped inside and started to close the door. But that left her in total darkness, so she cracked the door again and began tugging at her wet clothing, the blouse and slacks she’d put on for her trip to S&D earlier in the evening.

  Quickly she pulled the wet blouse off. Her bra was wet too, and she unhooked it, which left her naked from the waist up. The cold had contracted her nipples, and she looked down at them before reaching for a towel on the rack and drying off the upper part of her body. She thought about taking a shower, but the river water seemed okay.

  When her torso was dry, she pulled on the T-shirt, which was a size too big for her. Then she slicked off her wet slacks, panties, and sandals and dried her bottom half before pulling on the sweatpants. When she got the pants on, she pushed up the legs, then draped her wet clothing over the shower rod.

  It felt weird to be wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants with nothing underneath. Trying not to think about that, she turned to get a look at herself in the mirror. The room was too dark to see much, but she used the towel to dry her hair as best she could, then finger-combed it back from her face, thinking that what she looked like when she was escaping from trained killers shouldn’t matter. But apparently she wasn’t strictly using logic.

  Conflicting emotions surged through her. She wanted reassurance that everything was going to be all right. And at the same time, she wanted Shane to know that the current danger had made her admit that her feelings for him ran deep—as deep as she’d suspected.

  Which left her where—exactly? She’d been taught all her life that good girls waited for marriage to sleep with a man. Now she thought that was asking too much, given the circumstances. She and Shane had almost gotten killed. Maybe they still would.

  Back at her apartment with Alesandro, she’d told herself she had no future with Shane. Probably that was still true, but they had now. She focused on that thought as she returned to the stateroom.

  When she didn’t see Shane there, she went stock-still.

  Then she heard footsteps behind her and turned.

  “Where were you?” she asked.

  “Setting up an alarm system. If anyone tries to come through the tarp, they’re going to ring the bell I hung there.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  He gestured toward one of the windows. “It’s a tight squeeze
, but we can get out that way.”

  She nodded, switching her attention back to him. He had put on the other pair of sweatpants, but he was standing bare-chested at the side of the room, wiping off his gun with another T-shirt.

  Probably he’d gotten rid of his wet briefs, the same way she’d discarded her own bra and panties. Knowing she shouldn’t be thinking about his underwear or her own, she focused on the gun.

  “Will that fire now?” she asked.

  “I think so.”

  “But you don’t know?”

  “I can’t be sure, but it will be more reliable when it dries off.”

  She came up behind him, trying not to think too much about what she was intending to do. She’d tried to turn herself into a real American woman. And in many ways she’d succeeded. But a lot of her mother’s values had stuck, which meant she didn’t have a lot of experience with men, the way most women her age would. And what her father had taught her about the value of a son versus a daughter wasn’t exactly reassuring.

  Maybe Papa had thought he wasn’t broadcasting his preferences, but the way he favored her brother had been obvious to her. Alesandro had picked up on it, too, and had always acted superior, even when he’d come to her demanding that she find what Arnold Blake had stolen. Both her father and her brother had little regard for the person she was. But Shane had seemed different from the first. She’d been attracted to him, and she hadn’t known where that attraction was leading. Or she knew what she wanted, but she wasn’t sure he had the same goals.

  But if you stuck to the moment, she was surer of his feelings. At the end of their date, he’d aroused her with his kiss. Then later he’d saved her life, because she had no doubt that those men intended to kill her after they found out where Blake had hidden the information they wanted. Just the way they’d killed him. Maybe that was what they were planning for her brother after they got what they wanted.

  She didn’t want to think about that now. She wanted to focus on the man in front of her. She’d had a vivid dream of making love to him. The dream had embarrassed her when she’d seen him the next day, and she’d tried to deny what she felt for him. Not tonight. At the safe house he’d held her in his arms. That had to mean something. Now she was alone with him after their perilous escape, and she was going to take advantage of that.

  “Shane?”

  When he turned to face her, she reached for him, pulling him close. She felt him go very still.

  “That’s not a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “I almost went too far with you earlier in the car. Well, not in the car, exactly. I was thinking about taking you in to your apartment.”

  The frank words shocked her, but she managed to laugh.

  “If you had, we would have stumbled over my brother, and we could have prevented a lot of chasing around.”

  “Yeah, I was thinking about that earlier. He wasn’t going to tell me why he was there.”

  “But you would have seen from his face that something was going on, and you would have gotten him to admit what it was.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “You’re very persuasive.”

  She heard him swallow. “You’ve just had a bad experience, and you’re reacting.”

  She kept her voice low. “And you’re trying to protect me from myself.”

  Although she was clasping him to her, he kept his hands at his sides. His voice sounded gritty when he said, “I’m trying not to do the wrong thing.”

  She didn’t let herself examine that too closely, even though she was rather sure she knew what he thought was wrong, under these circumstances.

  Instead she said, “Maybe the bad experience has let me admit what I truly want.”

  Chapter 16

  Elena had never thought about seducing a man. She wasn’t even sure of her moves. But she knew that Shane wanted her, even if he wasn’t prepared to admit it. She also knew he felt protective of her, which was probably part of the conflict he must be feeling.

  Before he could come up with another objection, she cupped the back of his head with her hands and brought his face down as she raised her own head toward him.

  She hadn’t been sure what would happen. Or perhaps she’d been afraid that he’d wrench himself away from her. But the danger must have affected his emotions as well as her own. When their lips met, it was as though someone had tossed a match into a pile of gasoline-soaked kindling. Invisible flames rose as heat flared between them.

  She heard him growl her name and felt him gather her closer as he kissed her with purpose, running his hands up and down her back.

  The heat coming off him made her dizzy. She should be afraid, but she kept kissing him, letting him feel all the passion that she’d held inside herself for so long.

  Opening her lips, she invited him to explore her mouth, then did the same with him, absorbing his taste and the way the mouth-to-mouth contact sent shock waves to every part of her body.

  His hands slid down her back, cupping her bottom, pulling her against him so that she could feel a hard shaft pressing against her middle. When she realized what it was, her breath caught.

  He must have wanted her to understand where they were headed. When he caught her reaction to his arousal, he dropped his hands and lifted his head, looking down at her with a mixture of smoldering passion and icy control.

  “You know that you’re playing with fire?” he asked.

  “I know what I want.”

  “You want that inside you?” he asked, and she knew he was trying to end this encounter by making her aware of reality.

  Her mouth had turned so dry that she could hardly speak, but she managed to say, “Yes.”

  “Then take off your clothes.”

  Again, a dose of reality. Was she ready to get undressed in front of him? Or was she going to back away—the way he hoped she would.

  She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of scaring her off. Not because she was trying to score any points, but because what she wanted hadn’t changed, even if he was trying to make her take a step back.

  She did step back, but only a few feet. She kept her gaze on him as she reached for the hem of the T-shirt and pulled it over her head, then let it drop on the floor so that she stood before him naked to the waist, her nipples puckered and her eyes defiantly on his.

  When she started to slick down the sweatpants, he made a sound low in his throat and reached for her, folding her close and rocking her in his arms, his naked chest against her breasts.

  “Sorry,” he whispered.

  “I understand.”

  “You understand what?”

  “That you want me, but you think that making love with me is wrong, so you were trying to…scare me off by acting…tough.”

  He answered with a low laugh. “Yeah.”

  “I’m not going to back off.”

  “And you think we’re safe here?”

  “You think so.”

  When he started to say something else, she raised her face again and brought her lips to his once more, trying to tell him with the kiss that this was the right thing to do.

  They swayed together in the center of the room, both of them unsteady on their feet, maybe from the gentle rocking of the boat.

  He scooped her up in his arms, carried her to the bed, and stood looking down at her before joining her on the horizontal surface.

  She pressed her face to his shoulder and opened her lips, wanting to taste him.

  “Weren’t you taught that nice girls don’t end up in bed with a man unless they’re married to him?” he asked in a gruff voice.

  She’d been thinking that same thing earlier. Now she said, “Nice girls don’t steal secrets from the company where they work.”

  “You didn’t steal from the company.”

  “
That’s a technicality. And it was the wrong thing to say, anyway. I want to think about how you’re making me feel, not what I did at S&D.”

  “How am I making you feel?”

  She considered the answer. “Like all my nerve endings are on fire. Like I want more, but I don’t exactly know how to ask for what I want.” She swallowed. “Or maybe I do.”

  Shocked by her own boldness, she reached for one of his hands and placed it over her breast.

  The light pressure against her taut nipple made her breath catch. It caught again when he began to move his hand, cupping her roundness and stroking against the puckered peak.

  No one had ever touched her like that, and she wasn’t prepared for how wonderful it felt or for the dart of heat that shot downward through her body and found her center.

  “Oh.”

  He rolled toward her, using both hands now, inscribing circles around her taut nipples, drawing closer and closer to their edges, making her tingle with anticipation. As he did it, he watched her face, and the intimacy was almost more than she could bear. She might have turned her face away, but this was Shane touching her, and she wanted to focus on the man as well as the sensations.

  The effect on her was incredible, and when he took her nipples between his thumbs and fingers, tugging and twisting gently, the heat ratcheted up beyond imagining.

  She kept her gaze on him as he lifted one hand, stroking the hair back from her face before lowering his head, taking one distended nipple in his mouth, and sucking on her as he continued to play with its mate.

  She could barely catch her breath as the incredible arousal spread through her. Then he slipped his hand inside the waistband of her sweatpants, stroking downward through the triangle of dark hair at the juncture of her legs and into the folds of her most intimate flesh.

  She had dreamed of him touching her there, but the reality almost took her breath away as his hand traveled a sure path to her vagina. He dipped inside and circled with his finger. When he brought it up again to her clit, she involuntarily rocked her hips.