Running Wilde

by Tonya Burrows

  “I think you’re projecting.”

  Her breasts rubbed against his chest with her every inhale, and the sensation was short-circuiting his brain. Maybe he was projecting, but he didn’t think so. Not when her tongue darted out to moisten her lips and anticipation filled her eyes. He moved his hand up to cup her jaw, and his thumb strayed over her lips. She opened her mouth, sucked it inside, and a shudder shook through him.

  A more righteous man would ignore such a blatant invitation from a known criminal. Cam would have, but he wasn’t his twin. He’d spent his entire life balancing on the thin blade between good and bad, and right now, he was leaning heavily into bad.

  He didn’t care.

  He covered her mouth with his, and the taste of her flooded his senses with memory. He remembered kissing her like this as vividly as if he’d just done it yesterday. It was the same and yet different. Darker, edgier, and with the bite of desperation.

  She curled her fingers into the front of his coat, but instead of shoving him away, she dragged him in closer. Her kiss became like an attack, and he had no choice but to go on the defensive, parrying the thrusts of her tongue with his, biting her lip in return when she bit his.

  This was a dangerous game. And he was losing.

  He broke the kiss and, breathing hard, stared down into her eyes. “Who are you?”

  She gave a feline smile, and even though he held her caged against the side of the building, he suddenly felt more like the hunted than the hunter.

  She leaned in until her lips nearly touched his again. “I’m whoever you want. The tough chick. The dumb blonde. The helpless damsel in distress.”

  “The con artist.”

  “That, too.” She batted her lashes. “So, Vaughn, do you want the little lost girl, dreaming of her white knight? Or, no, your armor isn’t all that white, is it?” She dragged a finger down his chest, his stomach, and found him hard. She cupped him and squeezed, taking him just to the edge where pleasure and pain blurred. “What you want is the temptress. You want me to be the bad girl.”

  “What I want—” His voice came out coated in rust, and he stopped short, cleared his throat, “—is to take you back to DC and turn you over to the authorities.”

  “Why?” she all but purred and traced the ridge still growing behind his fly. “We could have so much fun together, Vaughn. Think about it. You and me…we could make our way to Cabo.”

  For a second, he actually considered it. Sun, sand, and this woman willingly, happily in his bed again…

  Somewhere close, a horn let out a bleating wail and reality shattered the fantasy like a baseball thrown through glass.

  Cabo.

  As in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

  He captured her wrist and yanked her hand away from his erection so he could think rationally again. “Mexico, where they have so many problems, they aren’t going to bother to look for a little American identity thief. That’s your plan?”

  “It could be our plan.”

  “No. My plan is to take you back to DC.”

  “Oh, c’mon!” She finally gave up on the seduction and pounded her fists against his chest. “Why can’t you just let me go?”

  “Maybe I will.” It was an impulsive response, one he hadn’t meant to say aloud. He cursed at himself and added, “If you tell me who you are.”

  She opened her mouth but snapped it closed again without uttering a sound. “I’m nobody,” she finally said and jerked free of his grasp. She crossed her arms in front of her, hunched in on herself, and in that moment, she looked almost… fragile. It tore at something inside him, and he locked his muscles to keep from pulling her into him, soothing her.

  She sniffled and swiped at her eyes with the backs of her hands. “If you’re bound and determined to take me back to DC, fine. I won’t fight anymore, but just know you’re signing my death certificate.”

  He shouldn’t let it affect him—it was probably just another act on her part—but damn, it did. Watching her deflate in front of his eyes, all of the fight leaving her…it was so wrong.

  His chest tightened. “Sage—”

  “Let’s get it over with.” She turned away. “I’m tired of all this.”

  Chapter Seven

  True to her word, Sage didn’t fight him when he guided her back to the car. She didn’t make a sound, either. Not a word for two whole hours. It gave him a lot of time to stew.

  You’re signing my death certificate.

  As much as he wanted to see her held accountable for the crimes she’d committed, he didn’t think those crimes were bad enough to warrant a death penalty sentence. Unless there were others he didn’t know about…

  Shit. Had she murdered someone?

  He glanced over at her. She was slumped in the passenger seat, forehead pressed to the window as she silently watched the world pass by. Headlights and the occasional streetlamp splashed light over her face, and she looked…resigned. As if all the fight had left her.

  If she had committed murder, that explained a lot. Certainly explained why she was so afraid of facing the authorities.

  She was feisty, strong, and more than capable of taking care of herself in a world that hadn’t seemed to give her a break, but a murderer? He couldn’t reconcile that with the sweet, slightly troubled woman he’d known. Of course, the woman currently sitting next to him wasn’t the same one he’d known, either. She was an enigma wrapped in a mystery, and she was giving him a headache without even opening her mouth.

  He was going to drive himself crazy trying to figure her out, so he shoved her out of his thoughts and tried to focus on… something else.

  Anything else.

  Unfortunately, the only other thing that came to mind was the call from Giuseppe Bellisario.

  The call had all of his nerves jangling. Bellisario wasn’t going to give up until Vaughn did what the guy wanted, and if he kept refusing, things were bound to get ugly.

  Hell, who was he trying to kid? It was already ugly. Bellisario had resorted to threats, and he was terrified his brothers might get caught up in this disaster.

  Headlights flashed in his rearview mirror, too bright and too close for comfort. He glanced over his shoulder—a large SUV was barreling down on them. He switched lanes to get out of their way, but the SUV followed, riding his bumper even though there was no other traffic on the road. A knot tightened in his gut, and he stepped on the gas. The car bolted forward.

  Sage jolted upright in her seat. “What are you doing?”

  “We have a tail.”

  She spun, stared out the back windshield, and her eyes widened. “They’re not being very stealthy about it.”

  “That’s because they want us to know.”

  In the bright white of the other vehicle’s headlights, he clearly saw the color drop out of her complexion. “They found me.”

  He didn’t think so. More likely, this was Bellisario making a point, since he obviously had Vaughn followed. Still, it’d help to know who was after her in case he was wrong. “Who found you? Who are you running from?”

  “I-I can’t—” She covered her mouth with one shaking hand and shook her head. “Please, Vaughn. Don’t let them take me.” Leaking tears, she met his gaze with true terror shining in her eyes. He didn’t think she could fake that level of fear, and he was completely powerless against it.

  “Fuck,” he muttered and jammed his foot harder on the gas. There was no possible way for them to outrun the SUV in this car—not enough power under the hood—but they might be able to hide. All he needed was to put some distance between them and find an exit…

  There.

  The exit let off into the trees surrounding the highway, and there didn’t seem to be civilization anywhere in sight. He turned too fast onto the ramp at the very last second, and the car rocked. Sage didn’t make a peep of alarm, but she was white-knuckling the “oh shit” handle above the door.

  On the highway behind them, the SUV screeched to a halt. He checked the mirror—
the SUV was reversing to the exit ramp. An oncoming Mack truck would be very helpful right now, but no such luck. The highway was completely empty at this time of night.

  “Hang on.” Vaughn ignored the stop sign as he swung into a right turn at the top of the ramp. The car whined at its mistreatment but stayed upright and didn’t die on him.

  He turned onto the first dark road he spotted, drove out of sight of the main road, stopped on the shoulder, and shut everything off. Darkness folded around them, and with it came silence, save for the ticking of the cooling engine and Sage’s ragged breathing.

  “Hey.” He groped around until he found her hand gripping the edge of her seat. He peeled her fingers off the leather and gave them a reassuring squeeze. “Hey, there’s no way they made it up the ramp in time to see us turn. They’re not gonna find us. We just have to wait them out.”

  She didn’t move or say anything for several moments until her breathing finally slowed and evened out. She shifted away, tugging her hand free. “Thank you.”

  He gave her another second to finish pulling herself back together. “You want to tell me what that was about?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t figure.”

  She sniffled, and he heard a shaky smile in her voice. “Nice driving, though.”

  “Yeah, the Navy taught me a few things.”

  She shifted in her seat and finally let go of the grab handle. “Before tonight, I guess I never really knew you were in the military.”

  “Twelve years. Four as a rescue swimmer, eight as a SEAL.”

  “The SEALs are the badasses, right?”

  “We like to think so.” He smiled into the darkness. “But, yeah, we’re the best at what we do.”

  She was silent for another beat. “Have you been out long?”

  “A couple years now.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  He figured her questions were a coping mechanism, a way to take her mind off the fear-adrenaline cocktail currently overloading her system, but he wasn’t about to go into all the reasons he wished he hadn’t left or how much he missed the teams. Instead, he gave the verbal equivalent of a shrug, like it was all no big deal.

  “My brothers needed me.” But that didn’t seem like enough of an explanation, so he added, “A few years ago, we were all in this bar. It was a holiday—I don’t remember which—and there we were, sitting in awkward silence, brooding into our drinks. We spent more time apart than together, only meeting up if we all happened to be stateside at the same time, and it was getting to the point that they felt like strangers to me.”

  He winced at the memory. When it had dawned on him that he didn’t know his brothers anymore, he’d realized something had to change, because as a family, they were failing miserably.

  “What did you do?” Sage asked.

  “Out of the blue, Greer suggested we could go into the private eye business together.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Pretty much, yeah. We had never talked about doing anything like that before. I had planned to stay in the Navy for life and didn’t want to do anything else. But then I looked over at Jude. He had just come home from an up-close-and-personal with death in Afghanistan and several of his friends were missing, presumed prisoners of war. And it suddenly hit me—how close we’d come to having an empty seat and untouched beer at our table instead of our youngest brother.” He still remembered the moment of sheer terror that came with the realization, and how he’d swallowed it down with his beer and reassessed his priorities right then and there. “So when Reece offered the money to start Wilde Security, I agreed not to re-up in the Navy at the end of the year and to try my hand at private investigation. Because my brothers needed me to stay in DC.” And he’d needed to stay for them. They were all shaken by Jude’s close call and were desperate for the solidarity of family right then.

  Problem was, his brothers didn’t need him anymore. Except for Greer, they were all married off now and living happily-ever-fucking-afters. Jude and his wife Libby had even recently announced they were expecting a baby this fall, which was just fucking weird. Not that he thought his youngest brother wouldn’t make an excellent father. If any of the Wildes were equipped for fatherhood, it was prankster Jude, who was still a kid at heart.

  But shit, Vaughn wasn’t exactly good uncle material. He’d probably scare the kid back into its mother’s womb the first time he met it.

  And now that the baby-making had started, he bet it wasn’t going to stop any time soon. Cam and Eva wanted kids, and it was only a matter of time until they decided to go for it. Reece and Shelby…who the hell knew with those two? They were completely unpredictable as a couple and crazy enough to try parenthood.

  Apparently, Vaughn and Greer were the only sane ones left in the family.

  “You’re lucky to have them,” Sage said softly, drawing his attention back to the conversation. “Your brothers, I mean. And your sisters-in-law. You’re lucky.”

  “Yeah, I am,” he admitted, because as much as his constantly growing family sometimes annoyed the hell out of him, he wouldn’t want it any other way. He looked toward her voice, but since there was no moon, he only saw a vague outline of her face and body. “Libby’s pregnant.”

  He wasn’t sure why he said it. Except that when Sage was living as Lark, she’d been one of Libby’s best friends, and he thought it was something she should know.

  “Oh,” Sage whispered, and if he wasn’t mistaken, there was a note of wistfulness in her voice. Maybe even a faraway hint of sorrow. “I’m so happy for them. At their wedding, she mentioned they wanted to start a family as soon as possible.”

  “The wedding.” He exhaled a short laugh. “Seems like years ago now. That blue dress Libby had you wear must’ve broken some decency laws. In all the best ways.”

  “We were in Key West,” she said, and a smile seeped into her voice. “I don’t think they have decency laws.”

  “You had every man in the place drooling all over themselves.”

  “Including you, if I remember correctly.”

  “I don’t drool.”

  “Tell that to my pillows.”

  Which brought to mind the bed in her apartment in DC, where he’d spent a week last November when a storm had dumped a record-breaking amount of snow on the city. He’d told Cam he was staying with Greer until the roads cleared, when in reality he was in her bed, and they had spent the week fucking like rabbits. He’d even made the colossal mistake of falling half in love with her—until he’d discovered everything he knew about her had been a lie.

  Hell, if he was honest with himself, he’d started falling for her the moment he’d first met her in the elevator the night of Jude and Libby’s wedding. She’d brushed him off, and it had rankled, put him in a bad mood, which only got worse when he later ran into Cam and Eva, drunk and all but eye-fucking each other as they waited in the lobby for the elevator.

  They’d looked sweet together, cute in the way only a pair in love could be, and he’d hated seeing it. Not because he envied his twin’s happiness, but because the wedding festivities and all the love in the air had left him feeling restless, lonely, and horny, and the only woman who had caught his eye wasn’t interested.

  After getting a good tongue lashing from Eva for being an ass, he’d spent the rest of the evening in the hotel bar, drinking until he didn’t feel anything anymore. Then when the room started to wobble, he’d wandered out to the beach for some air—and there she’d been.

  Sinful blue dress and all, sitting underneath a palm tree as the breeze lightly rustled the fronds, making them dance in the moonlight. At first he’d thought he was hallucinating, the overdose of alcohol in his system making him see what he wanted to see.

  “Lark?” He’d said her name more to make sure she was real and not a figment of his imagination.

  She’d looked over at him, then drawn her knees up and rested her head on them. “Go away.”

  He’d planned on it, but his
feet had carried him forward over the sand, and he’d lowered himself down beside her instead. “You okay?”

  “If by ‘okay’ you mean ‘a blind idiot’, then yes, I’m okay.”

  Oh hell. Drama. He hadn’t wanted to get in the middle of it. Shouldn’t have gotten in the middle of it—but he’d been drunk and his mouth had worked before his brain told him to leave. “I don’t think you’re an idiot.”

  “Ha. You don’t know me. And if you say you’d like to get to know me, I’ll punch you.”

  He’d grinned. “I won’t say it then, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”

  With a sigh, she’d lifted her head, stared out over the ocean. “You’re cute, I’ll give you that.”

  Cute? He hadn’t been considered cute since he was in diapers, and maybe not even then. Most people saw him the same way they saw pit bulls—a dangerous creature to avoid and, if forced to interact, take extra precautions around.

  He’d scowled at her. “Are you one of those people who think pit bulls are misunderstood?”

  She’d glanced over, eyebrows raised in question, and heat had crawled up the back of his neck. This convo was exactly the reason he never got this drunk—the filter between his brain and his mouth shut off, and all kinds of stupidity came pouring out. “Forget I said that.”

  “Yes,” she’d said and a smile had softened her lips. “I am. Pit bulls are beautiful animals and don’t deserve their reputation.”

  “That’s why you think I’m cute.”

  Her smile had spread into a grin. “Aw. Did I bruise your ego? I’m sorry. You’re the biggest, baddest badass this side of the Mississippi, and you’re absolutely, positively not cute. That better?”

  He’d brooded over the bottle of beer he’d brought out with him. “Now you’re just fucking with me.”

  Something had changed in that instant. He’d been drunk, but he would’ve had to have been dead to miss the spark and flare of lust igniting in the space between them.