Danger and Desire: A Romantic Suspense Anthology

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “Ah,” Tara cut out, less word than sound. Xander pressed his forehead over hers, one hand by her shoulder and the other bracketed over her hip. She tried to process all the sensations slamming through her—the pleasure-pain of the fullness between her legs, the heat of Xander’s body locked over hers from chest to belly to hips, the sharp intake of his breath.

  And then he began to move, and Tara couldn’t think.

  All she could do was feel.

  Xander pulled back, only an inch before reclaiming the space he’d created. “Perfect. Christ, Tara, you are…” He punctuated the sentence with another thrust. Her pussy was so slick that he moved with ease despite the tight fit. They found a rhythm in seconds, a flawless back and forth that sent pleasure curling down her spine. Xander stayed steady—God, he was always so steady—with his hand on her hip, guiding her exactly where she wanted to be as he fucked her in hard, slow thrusts. Tara arched up to take each one, rocking against his cock in return, over and over until her pleasure became pure need. Gripping her hip harder, he anchored himself deep inside her pussy as she thrust against him, the base of his cock hitting her clit with perfect pressure. Xander’s movements grew faster, his expression so open and intense that it stole Tara’s breath. Her orgasm tore through her, making her tremble and gasp. He stilled on a thrust seconds later, his entire beautiful body going bowstring tight before he exhaled with a shudder.

  Time passed, although Tara had no clue how much. All she knew was Xander’s body on hers, his breath growing slower even as his heart beat steady against her chest. Finally, he untangled their bodies and slipped through a door she assumed was a bathroom, gone for only a minute before he returned to her side. They didn’t speak, but they didn’t have to.

  As Xander pulled her under the covers and tucked her in at his side, she knew there wasn’t a place on the planet she would rather be.

  Chapter 9

  Xander had never had a picture-perfect life. But with Tara lying next to him, warm and curled in at his side, he couldn’t think of a better word to describe the feeling that was coursing through him.

  It wasn’t just that she was perfect, although, damn, she really was. But with her, he felt perfect, too. Like his past didn’t make him. Like all of those bad things he’d seen and done had been part of getting him where he was rather than part of who he was now. Like he was worthy of this, lying here with a woman like Tara in his arms.

  I want all of you, Xander. No matter what.

  His heart clattered at the memory of her words. It would be easy to believe she’d said them in the heat of the moment—after all, the moment had been fucking scorching. But she’d looked at him so reverently, her fingers on his scar and her beautiful brown eyes wide open, that he knew she meant it.

  All he had to do was trust her.

  “You’re very quiet,” Tara murmured, her breath soft on his neck. “You want to talk about whatever’s going on up here?”

  She reached up to glide her fingers over his temple, and the simple touch unlocked him. “There’s a reason I always tell you I’m not a nice guy.”

  She stilled, but didn’t shrink back. “Okay.”

  Xander knew she wasn’t agreeing as much as giving him space to talk to her, and God help him, he took it. “North Point might not be all that far from here in terms of miles, but it might as well be another galaxy in other ways. You’ve kind of only got two choices growing up in The Hill. You either survive, or you don’t. And you learn pretty quick that everyone there will do anything to survive.”

  “How old were you when you learned?” Tara asked.

  “Seven.” He didn’t even have to think about it. Fuck, but he’d know this memory—one of his first—until the day he died. “My dad was never in the picture, really, and my mom worked three jobs, so she left me with Kennedy most of the time. Kennedy’s only five years older than me, but she was more like a mom than a sister.” All those nights she’d done her best to distract him from how cold their shitty, one-room apartment was, or used all her creativity to tape up the holes in his shoes so they could last just a little longer before she had to cave in and scratch together the money for a new-to-him pair from the thrift store three blocks over.

  Xander set those memories aside in favor of the one Tara had asked for. “It was dinnertime, and I was so hungry. School was out, so we didn’t have a guaranteed breakfast or lunch. That day, Kennedy and I hadn’t been lucky enough to get either. We scrounged for change, but there’s nothing you can do with forty cents when you’re as hungry as we were. Kennedy even went next door to ask our neighbor if he could spare anything—just a couple pieces of bread and some peanut butter, a can of beans. Pizza crust, God, we’d have taken anything. But all the guy had was cheap beer.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Tara said quietly, her tone turning the words genuine rather than oh-you-poor-charity-case-you. “No one should ever be hungry like that, let alone a child.”

  She wasn’t wrong, and yet… “It was our normal. Kennedy knew we had to eat. She knew we were out of options.” Xander took a breath, knowing he couldn’t go back once he told her the rest.

  But he felt steady in her arms. He trusted her. So, he said, “We walked about four miles—far enough to get out of The Hill, proper—until we got closer to a more decent part of North Point. We waited in the alley behind this bakery for what felt like forever, until the woman working there took out their trash for the night. There were probably a dozen pastries and bagels that hadn’t sold mixed in with all the rest of the trash. They were as stale and soggy as could be, but Kennedy and I didn’t care. We dug through the trash to find them and we didn’t miss a crumb. We were that fucking desperate.”

  “Oh, Xander. You were just trying to survive,” Tara said, and the truth of it snapped under Xander’s skin.

  “That’s just it, though. I was always just trying to survive. It starts with things like picking through the trash, or sneaking into the YMCA just to get a shower with hot water. But then you start to realize you’ll do anything. You’ll lie. You’ll steal. You’ll hate the people who have more than you. And I did all of those things.”

  The words poured out of him now, unstoppable. “When you grow up like I did, when you are who I am, the lines start out blurry and they only get worse as you go. Good and bad are all second to surviving, and pretty soon, you just forget that there’s a right and wrong. All you know is trying to get through another day, no matter what you have to do to make that happen. I did”—he broke off, his heart pounding so hard he was sure it would break free from his rib cage—“fuck, Tara, I did terrible things. I pushed Kennedy away when she found a way out of The Hill. I let myself believe that the bad things I did were justified, that it was all just the way things worked when you lived like I did. Other people were hurt—badly—by what I did, and I’m never going to be able to erase that.”

  Pulling back, Tara turned to her side, her eyes bright on his even in the shadows of his bedroom. “No, you’re not,” she said, and her honesty hit him with an odd sense of relief. “But that doesn’t make you a bad person.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Xander said, but Tara remained completely firm.

  “I am one hundred percent sure of that. Look, if there’s one thing I know above all others, it’s that you can’t change the past. But all those things you did, even the bad ones, are part of you. They got you here. They made you who you are, and who you are is a good man.”

  Christ, how he wanted that to be true. He ached for it from his breath to his bones. But, still… “It’s hard for me to believe that sometimes.”

  “Well, then let me help you out.” Reaching toward him, Tara ran her fingers over his forearm until she found his scar. “This may be part of you. But this”—her hand slid to his temple—“gave you what you needed to get back to your sister. And this”—her palm unfolded over the center of his chest, so warm and sweet and good he could fucking cry—“made you want to become a cop so you could help people. I
t’s the part that loves your sister and brings Amour dinner and chills me out with random stories about rubber ducks. Yes, you’ve done bad things. But you’re still a good man, Xander. You deserve good things. I will always believe that. Maybe it’s time you did, too.”

  And right there, in the dark of his bedroom with Tara’s arms around him, for the first time ever, he did.

  Tara had never realized that sheer, bone-breaking exhaustion could be coupled with so much bliss. The exhaustion came from having worked twelve to fourteen hour days over the last week and a half, prepping Amour and the Intelligence detectives for their testimony and making sure every single case detail was exactly as it should be, locked and loaded and ready to nail Ricky Sansone to the wall.

  The bliss, she blamed on Xander. Not that she was mad about it. In fact, between the days they’d spent working on the case and the nights they’d spent tangled in both amazing conversation and each other’s arms (not to mention a few other, more provocative body parts), Tara was actually the opposite of mad about it.

  And the whole thing felt too right, too purely, perfectly good, for that to scare her.

  “Hey,” came a voice from beside her, and speak of the sweet and sexy devil. “Am I late?”

  “Nope. You’re right on time,” Tara said, her smile involuntary and huge. She fought the urge to kiss him—not that she didn’t want to, because Xander + that uniform = so, so hot. But since they were standing less than ten feet away from the Intelligence Unit’s main office, and the doors leading in to said space were made of glass (bulletproof, naturally, but super-duper see-through all the same), she figured she should at least try to remain professional and hope that she still had a tiny bit of game in the poker face department.

  One corner of Xander’s mouth kicked up into a smile, and yep, so much for that. “How was the meeting with Judge Waters today?” he asked, pulling the door open for her and following her lead into the open space.

  “Interesting. I’ll fill everyone in as soon as we get started,” Tara said. Thankfully, Isabella, Capelli, Garza, and Sinclair were already waiting. This was definitely something they were all going to want to hear.

  “Well, if it isn’t my favorite dynamic duo.” Isabella shot them a grin from behind her desk, making Capelli tilt his head in thought.

  “That’s quite a clever play on words, actually. Linking Xander and Tara together now that they’re a couple.”

  Garza shook his head as Xander flushed and Tara studied the case board with laser-like focus. “Subtle, dude. So very subtle.”

  “What?” Capelli asked. “Are we not supposed to know they’re a couple? I mean, they’re not making it all that hard to figure out. Plus, there aren’t any rules against it, in this case. Article Nine, Section One Twenty-Seven of the city of Remington’s Code of Ethics and Business Conduct specifically states—”

  “Capelli,” Sinclair interrupted smoothly, saving Tara and Xander from the hot seat. “Maybe we could stick to a more relevant topic of conversation? Just for now?”

  “Oh. Right.” Capelli dipped his head in apology. “Sorry, my brain just…anyway. Let me patch Amour in through the secure line.”

  “Great. Thank you,” Sinclair said. Seconds later, Amour’s face popped up on one of the digital screens. “Hi, Amour. This is Sergeant Sinclair. How are you doing over there?”

  “Okay, I guess,” she said. With her hair pulled back and her face washed clean of makeup, she looked even younger than her eighteen years, and Tara wanted nothing more than to crawl through the screen and hug the poor girl. “I kind of just want this over with. No offense.”

  “None taken, kid,” Garza said, sending his stare in Tara’s direction. “What’ve we got from the judge?”

  Tara’s thoughts fell back to a few hours ago. “Sansone’s lawyer argued against Amour testifying via closed circuit with her identity hidden. He said there’s no credible threat against her, his client would never hurt anyone, pulled out all the theatrics.” She paused to roll her eyes. “I argued that due to the nature of the charges and the testimony she was going to deliver, not to mention the attack and its accompanying threat, there was every reason for her to fear for her life. Judge Waters agreed that even though there’s no evidence that Sansone was behind the attack, our fears are reasonable. Sansone didn’t like it one bit, though.”

  “How do you know?” Sinclair asked, and Tara suppressed a shiver.

  “I saw the two of them talking in the hallway at the courthouse after the meeting. Sansone must’ve been waiting.”

  Isabella’s brows popped. “That’s interesting.”

  “It’s telling,” Garza countered. “He must be pretty worried to show up in person.”

  “Well, he looked furious. He even gave me a menacing look on my way out,” Tara said. Dirty looks were far from abnormal in her line of work, and her creep-o-meter had a pretty high threshold, but Sansone? Ugh, he unnerved her.

  Xander’s shoulders tensed beneath his crisp blue uniform shirt. “Did he say anything to you?” he asked, and wait, why were Capelli and Sinclair leaning in to hear her answer?

  “No.” That awful, dead-eyed stare had been plenty. “Why?”

  Capelli’s pause lasted for less than a beat. “We’ve caught some suspicious activity around the safe house this week. Nothing definitive,” he added, and only then did Tara notice that both she and Xander had jerked to attention. “There’s no overt threat, and Amour’s just fine. Right?”

  “Yeah.” Amour nodded on screen, looking apologetically at both Xander and Tara. “They just told me this morning, otherwise I’d have said something when you guys were here last night. But I’m okay.”

  The way she chewed her bottom lip said otherwise, but that was a hair Tara would have to split later. “What kind of suspicious activity are we talking about, exactly?”

  Garza exchanged a look with Sinclair, then Capelli, before gesturing to the case board on the screen next to Amour’s video feed. “We’re tracking everyone who goes in and out of the building. Because all of the residents have key cards and all guests have to be buzzed in, it’s been pretty easy to do, for the most part. And nearly everyone has a pattern of some kind.”

  “That makes sense,” Xander said. “Work schedules, takeout on Friday nights. The gym, church, even the grocery store—people usually do all those things on a schedule.”

  Isabella nodded. “So, when we noticed one resident’s card being used when she’s normally at work, it tripped our notice. Or, more specifically, Capelli’s notice.”

  Okay, wow. Tara knew the guy was good, but… “You noticed one deviation among hundreds of residents and thousands of comings and goings?”

  “I have an eidetic memory,” he said with a shrug. “I notice everything. If I’m being honest, it’s not as great as you might think. But in this case, it proved useful, because Yolanda Martinez’s key card was being used by someone who is definitely not her.”

  A grainy image appeared on the case board screen. “Yolanda’s card was used to access the building three times two days ago, and none of them were by her. The first was at ten thirty AM, the second at eleven forty-two, and the third at one fifteen.”

  The screen shot of a man built like a linebacker-lumberjack hybrid made Tara’s heart pound. His hoodie, coupled with a baseball cap pulled low over his face, made it impossible to get a good look at any identifying features, but it was easy to see that the guy was just plain huge.

  Also, not Yolanda. “Let me guess. Ms. Martinez doesn’t know this man.”

  “She reported her card missing three hours after its last use,” Garza confirmed.

  “Does he look familiar to you?” Tara asked Amour hopefully.

  She shook her head. “No. I mean, he looks like the right size, but I never saw his face in the first place. I only heard his voice. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Xander said quickly. “We’re still going to keep you safe.”

  At that, Sinclair nodded. “We’ve got
a heightened alert on the building surveillance. Hale and Maxwell are there now. Our guy is smart enough to know where the building’s security cameras are.”

  “He avoided them whenever he could,” Garza added, and Capelli brought up a quick loop of footage on the screen. “But he couldn’t dodge the one in the elevator. He never looks up, but every time, he gets off on the fourth floor, stays for about ten minutes, then leaves.”

  Confusion sent Tara’s brows downward. “Okay, but Amour is on the fifth floor.”

  “There are no cameras in the stairwells,” Xander said, realization in his voice. “He could’ve easily walked up a flight, just to throw off anyone watching.”

  Isabella sent him a look that read I’m impressed. “That’s our theory, too. It’s all just a little too suspicious to be someone casing the building for robberies.”

  “So, what’s the plan, then? We still have a couple weeks before the trial,” Tara said. “We have to make sure Amour stays safe.”

  “We’ll keep doing what we’re doing,” Sinclair said, gesturing to the case board. “Hollister teamed up with Dade for a canvas of the building on the off chance that someone remembers seeing this guy. Once residents find out there was a suspicious person in the building, they’ll lean toward being hypervigilant, which also works in our favor.”

  “Sansone is starting to get desperate, just like we wanted him to,” Isabella said, splitting her gaze between Tara and Amour. “And while I know that sounds frightening, it’s actually a good thing. Desperate means impulsive, and impulsive means sloppy.”

  “It’s still not without risk.” Reaching into one of his desk drawers, Capelli pulled out a necklace, then looked at Tara. “We’d like you to wear this tracker as a precaution.”

  Shock rippled through her. “Me? Wouldn’t it be smarter for Amour to have one?”