by Mary Calmes
“It gutted me to see the look on your face—like I betrayed you after all that time.”
We were silent, staring at each other.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“So am I.”
We stood there and I noticed, as I always had, how really beautiful he was. The indigo chips in his deep green eyes framed by long, golden lashes were as stunning as ever. Red rimmed at the moment from welling tears—that was my doing.
“I wonder what you would have done if our roles were reversed in that interrogation room.”
“Hopefully,” he said hoarsely, “had more faith.”
“I would have pushed just as hard,” I admitted, putting myself in his shoes.
“Yes, but you were always better under pressure.” He sighed. “You would have found a way not to become unhinged.”
“Is that what you were?”
“Well, obviously,” he muttered, clearly wrung out. “You were suddenly there and I had so many different emotions running through my head that I got completely overwhelmed.”
And I had read that as desperation to get answers for Homeland, not merely as him wanting to find out about me—which was wrong.
“Were you so unaffected that you kept your wits about you the whole time?”
“Clearly not.”
He turned away from me, head down, and I was close enough to hear his staccato breathing as though he were verging on crying.
“I misread things,” I husked out, stepping in beside him.
“I wasn’t helping, but as I said, I was a bit distraught,” he choked out. “I mean, I knew I made a mess of things, and when I told my mother—”
“Your mother?”
He closed his eyes, swallowing hard. “I called her and told her I’d found you, and she was ecstatic, and so was my father—especially my father, and you’d think it would be the other way around, but he knows what it’s like to live without love and then get it back and—”
My hand between his shoulder blades interrupted him and when I started rubbing slow circles, he swallowed down a sob.
“I’ve been paranoid a long time,” I confessed, leaning in, pressing a light kiss to the side of his neck at the same time that the birds that had been fluttering around in my chest became California condors with enormous flapping wings. I could not remember ever being so nervous. The barest whisper in my brain that he could walk out the door if we didn’t fix things between us had me terrified like I hadn’t been in years.
He couldn’t leave. I was never letting him leave.
“Which has kept you safe, I’m sure,” he mumbled, returning my attention to him.
“What?”
“Being paranoid,” he reminded me. “That has kept you safe.”
“Yes, it has,” I agreed, moving around behind him, leaning into him, my chest resting against his back, my groin at the curve of his ass.
“Well, I’m glad for that,” he rasped, his voice shaking, “but again, the only thing I was looking to do that day was use whatever power I had to get close to you for purely personal reasons.”
“Could you turn around and look at me?”
“I’m torn.”
“In what way?” I asked, my attention captured by the highlights in his gold hair, by the strands of white and wheat, of ash blond and even some brown. It had darkened over the years but was still thick, tapering to the nape of his neck.
“Half of me wants to yell at you because you didn’t have any faith in me, and that’s a poor foundation to start from.”
It was, he was right, but I’d changed my mind after seeing the genuine hurt in his face, in his eyes, and hearing the sincerity of his words. I could be fooled just like everyone else, but of the things I knew, the one I knew best was Efrem, and so I had to trust in him, have faith in him, and that canceled out training and habits and fear.
“And the other half of you?” I murmured, slipping my hand around his throat and tipping his head back on my shoulder.
He shuddered.
“Ef?”
His eyes were closed, and he was breathing heavy, just standing there soaking up the contact exactly like me.
“The other ha-half,” he stuttered, swallowing fast, wetting his lips, a movement that had me riveted, “doesn’t care about blame or anger or anything else but just getting back to where we were sixteen years ago so I can get laid.”
I chuckled, and he gasped as I turned him in my arms to face me.
“You know,” he said, meeting my gaze. “You think it would be such a coup to bring you in and have you spill secrets, but would they even let you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure we all want to know where Hoffa is buried, but—”
“Now wait—”
He snorted, relaxing just a bit. “But really, things you know, that’s above my paygrade, right? Above probably my boss’s, so—would they, the agency, have even let you spill your secrets to me?”
I thought a moment. “You know I don’t know the answer to that.”
He nodded, studying my face.
Another aspect I had not considered at the time, so overwhelmed by his presence.
“You know I used to think, God, will you look at this man, what the hell is he doing with me?”
“You’ve got that—”
But his hand on my cheek stopped me, and on instinct, I turned my face and kissed his palm. I’d done it a thousand times, and after the smile I got, I hoped to do it a thousand more.
“I bet it’s hard for you to come and go like the wind with people staring at you all the time thinking that they’ve never seen such a beautiful man.”
“Hardly,” I mumbled, having trouble thinking with his besotted gaze on me again. I had so missed seeing his face, the love in it.
His thumb slipped across my lips once, then again, and I saw him roll his shoulders, shift his stance like he was uncomfortable or his clothes were suddenly too tight, just like mine.
“I’ve ne-nev—never had a reaction to anyone like I do to you.”
“Same,” I confessed, bumping him back against the wall, my thigh slipping between his that he parted for me.
His eyes closed like they did when he was concentrating, and when I touched my forehead to his, us just standing there, breathing together, breathing each other’s air, he calmed and so did I. It was natural, us, like two parts of one thing, and I felt the birds in my chest settle, roost, and the familiar ache of wanting washed through me.
It was not only his beauty that did it, or being close to him, or knowing that if I reached for him he’d come into my arms, my bed, my life—it was more than all of that. It was the overwhelming sense of peace and home that filled all the cold empty places inside just standing in his space did to me.
He would have never hurt me. I’d made a mistake. “I really am sorry,” I rumbled, the words sliding out of my throat, the regret there in my voice.
He nodded, just barely. “Me too.”
“Thank you for taking a chance and coming here, I’m very happy to see you.”
I was happily startled to see the scowl when I lifted my head, because it was so dear, so remembered, that my heart hurt.
“How did you find me?” I asked, letting my hands that had been settled on his hips fall away and take several steps back giving both him, and myself, room to breathe.
“I followed your friend Trevan. You don’t exist. Even your file that I saw now suddenly is no longer available, and your military file is above my boss’s paygrade.”
“Yes.”
“How did you erase your civilian file?”
“I didn’t do anything, but I have people who look out for me and make certain that I don’t exist on paper. It’s a lot of cloak-and-dagger bullshit.”
He nodded.
“So you followed Trevan?”
“Yes,” he said, taking a step closer, looking me over. “Him, I can find. You just have to know what people to loo
k for.”
“Like?”
“Like him and Ceaton Mercer and Brinley Todd, the marine biologist that he lives with right here in Nahant.”
“Imagine that.”
“And Darius Hawthorne, who nobody used to know but me, who now owns this house.”
“It’s a nice house.”
“It is,” he agreed, stalking closer, within arm’s reach of me. “It’s quite cozy in here for such a big space.”
My pulse was starting to race as I watched his eyes narrow, the drugged, languid quality of his movements and the weight of his stare prickling my desire for him.
“I have something to say.”
“Go ahead.”
“For how I handled things in the interrogation room at the Homeland Security Office,” he said quickly, chin up, “I’ve been placed on administrative leave.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t record even a second of our conversation and didn’t find out any more about Thiago Fanton’s gun trafficking business than when I went in there.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not for you to be sorry about. It was my decision.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I had you right there for the first time in sixteen years. I sure as hell wasn’t going to waste even a second of my time talking about Fanton beyond the obvious.”
I was quiet, feeling worse than I had outside and minutes before. I really had misread the whole situation, and my only defense was that it was Efrem. Anyone else, I would have been able to see clearly, but he was different. He was the only one I couldn’t see objectively, I never could. My feelings for him did more than cloud my judgment; they completely obscured everything else around me and particularly, my logic.
“I just wanted to hear about you.”
“Well, so you know, Thiago Fanton is not a terrorist. He’s a gun smuggler and pimp and basically a crime boss, but he has no agenda beyond making money.”
“Yeah, I don’t care. The other guys in my office can waste their time running that down. I already filed my report that we needed to turn our case over to the FBI because he’s not a homegrown terrorist, just another mobster.”
“They should take him off the streets.”
“I agree, they should. I hope they do, but it has squat to do with Homeland.”
“Right.”
His gaze traveled over me from head to toe.
“You know, Lee already judged my clothes today,” I teased, trying to inject some levity so I could have a moment to get my heart to stop racing, my pulse to stop pounding in my ears, and my stomach to unclench. Ever since I’d seen him, I’d been aroused, my body heating like it hadn’t in over a decade. I’d noticed men, how their clothes fit, how their muscles bunched, all the while craving Efrem, wanting Efrem, needing him….
“And thought what?”
“What?” I was really trying to listen but he was right there, standing close to me, smelling good, looking better, and my capacity to parse words was quickly deserting me.
“You said Lee looked you over, what did he think?”
“I don’t—what do you think?” I could have killed myself for asking, for fishing, for wanting to hear that he found me as alluring as I found him.
“Well, I think you look great. I love the cardigan and the jeans and the boots and all of it, but mostly I was thinking that I’d like it all off.”
I grinned at him, exhaling sharply. “So then, you’re not just here for more answers, there might be something else you want too?”
“There’s a lot more I want,” he husked, lunging at me, taking my face in his hands before he kissed me.
I was six four, and he was three or four inches shorter than me, so we notched together perfectly, easily, like I remembered, my hand on the back of his head, cradling but also keeping him still as I tried to go slow but ended up mauling his mouth.
His kisses were ravenous and hard, bruising my lips as he tried to crawl down my throat, his hands everywhere, clutching my back, digging into my muscles, trying to get me closer.
I shoved him off me and unzipped my cardigan, shrugged it off my shoulders, and let it fall down beside my feet on the floor, joined quickly by my scarf that I hadn’t bothered to take off when I lost my jacket earlier.
“Where’s your bedroom?” he asked hoarsely, panting as his heated gaze took me in.
I pointed to the archway, and he turned, toeing off his wingtips before heading toward it and the hall beyond.
Following quickly, I admired the long lines of him and the ass I knew would be just as round and firm and beautiful as I remembered.
He sped up, and I was right there behind him, and when he took the right into the enormous master bedroom and wheeled around to face me, I didn’t stop, instead scooping him up, throwing him over my shoulder, and carrying him the rest of the way to the California king. I dumped him and then followed, pinning him under me and finding his mouth even as my fingers went to work on his clothes.
He had so many layers still on: sport jacket, vest, dress shirt, and T-shirt. When I growled, he smiled against my mouth and writhed beneath me, pulling my T-shirt out of my waistband and then burrowing underneath and skimming his hands over my skin as he kissed me back just as hungrily as before, his tongue mating with mine, wanting more, taking more, as he bowed up off the bed.
“For fuck’s sake,” I yelled, rolling off him, settling back on my haunches, glowering at him. “Take all that off!”
He laughed, and the warmth of the sound made me shiver and clench my teeth with the swell of emotions, of things remembered, of how we were in bed, and scared that somehow I’d made it all up or made it more and this time, now, would not live up to his, or my, expectations.
Moving fast, he scrambled over to me, hands on my face, touching me, tracing over my cheeks, my eyebrows, my chin, and my lips. “Tell me. Tell me now,” he demanded.
I realized that my hands were shaking. “I—what if it’s not… if we’re not—” My gaze was on his, holding, not looking away, though everything in me screamed out to run.
He slipped his hand around the back of my head, his fingers pressing on my nape, a place he knew I held tension, always, and just the familiar touch soothed me, let me breathe. When he leaned in for a kiss, I met him halfway; the heat of his mouth reminding me that this was the only man I’d ever loved, and he was here, with me, after forever and wasting time worrying was the epitome of stupid.
“We’re good, baby,” he promised. “And I want you so badly—look at my hands.”
His were shaking as well.
I took his both in mine and smiled at him.
“It’s okay, I’m right here, not going anywhere, I swear to God.”
“You don’t—know.”
“I do know.”
I shook my head. “I haven’t been with—”
“And you think I have?”
My eyes met his, and he held my gaze, unwavering, solid, the blown pupils saying all that he couldn’t.
“That’s nuts,” I croaked out. I was never vulnerable, never at the mercy of someone else, but now a simple word from him suddenly leveled me. “You’re telling me that since I was last in your bed, there hasn’t been anyone else?”
“How could there be? How could I settle for anyone but you?”
I nodded quickly, the lump in my throat making speech impossible.
“I was in love with you—and I’ve never stopped loving you.”
Gently, slowly, I eased the tweed sport coat off his shoulders, down his arms and off, then I undid the buttons on the vest and removed that as well. It helped me breathe, eased the constriction in my chest, calmed me slowly as I peeled him out of his layers. After I lifted the T-shirt over his head and off, unveiling the sleek golden skin of his chest that had haunted my dreams, I leaned forward and kissed the curve of his shoulder.
“I missed you,” he whispered, bucking in my hands as I smoothed them over his ribs, easing him back as
I kissed down his throat.
When I reached his chest and the first dark, dusky nipple, I sucked the way I knew he loved, nibbling gently before blowing softly on the taut nub.
“I can’t,” he whimpered, and I heard how brittle his control was and how close he was to breaking down. “It’s been—where is your lube, get it now.”
I had some in my nightstand. I’d been celibate, yes, but there were still those nights I thought of him, selected a memory, and stroked myself off.
“Ef—”
“Get it,” he pleaded, and the look on his face—dazed, debauched, ready and needy—had me scrambling to do as he asked.
I watched him as he rolled off the bed, tearing at the rest of his clothes and pushing his dress pants down, mesmerized at the sight of him in such a hurry.
He noticed me staring. “What’re you doing?”
Diving for the nightstand, I yanked out the drawer and spilled everything on the floor, rewarded by the snickering behind me.
“I’m nervous. Shut up,” I rumbled, having what I needed, following his example and getting back on my feet, standing beside the bed, shucking out of my clothes as fast as humanly possible, needing everything off, my skin hot, almost feverish.
When I was naked, I looked up, and he was staring at me.
“What?”
He held out his hand, palm up, like he was presenting me.
“Honey?”
“Jesus Christ, Darius, look at you.”
I was too busy looking at him. “What do you do, live at the gym?” Underneath his clothes, the man was everything I’d expected, solid, sculpted muscle from the defined six-pack to the carved chest. All of him was chiseled and cut and utterly mouthwatering, and his long fat, dick was hard and leaking and ready for me. His mouth was open as he stared at me, and I had no idea why. “You’re beautiful.”
“No, I’m all the guys at the club, baby. You, on the other hand…. Christ.”
I put a knee on the bed, and he dove toward me, crawling fast, his mouth opening even as his hand closed around my cock.
“You don’t—Efrem!”
He took me in like he’d done it yesterday instead of sixteen years ago, making the suction strong as I watched his cheeks hollow out, heard the sexy moan I’d so missed, and felt his fingers slip around my ass as he urged me to fuck his mouth.