“He was poor. No family. No support.” Will shrugged. “Just looking for something better, you know?”
“And the cartels do a great sales job. Family. Security. Money.”
Will nodded. “But this kid, he wasn’t cut out for it. Didn’t have a cruel streak. Life hadn’t hardened him yet. Hadn’t ruined him.”
Cooper tilted her head, felt her stomach drop, and linked her fingers with his. “He tried to help you.”
Will slid a hand up her cotton-covered leg, his fingers tracing idle patterns over the denim. He didn’t meet her eyes. “Yeah.”
“And they caught him.”
“Caught us both halfway down the mountain.”
Cooper closed her eyes against all the ways that statement hurt her heart. To know that he’d tried to get away. That he’d almost succeeded. That they’d dragged him back to face what she knew would be a brutal punishment.
“One way, or another, the kid was dead.” A sob rose with the words, but he choked it back down. “I didn’t even know his name. Wouldn’t tell me.”
Cooper squeezed his hand. She didn’t want to hear the rest. Didn’t need to. But Will needed to tell it and that was all that mattered.
“They gave me a choice. I could snap his neck . . . or they could torture him to death.”
“You snapped his neck.”
He shuddered. “Not at first. Not until the screaming started. Not until—”
“Not until you were sure they would do it.”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I couldn’t listen to it. I knew what they were capable of. That it could last days.”
“You ended it.”
“I ended it,” he echoed hollowly. “And killed a fifteen-year-old kid.”
“It was the right thing to do, Will.”
“How can you say that? How can anyone say that?” he raged, his voice a jagged blade. “All he’d tried to do was help me.”
“And they would have tortured him for it.” She pulled their faces close, pressed her forehead to his, let her fingers scratch along his jaw. “They were going to kill him either way. What you did was a mercy.” She pulled back just far enough to meet his gaze. “For him. But not for you. For you it was just another torment. Another layer of degradation that they forced on you. No one in your life will think less of you or judge you or condemn you for that.”
“Why do you find it so easy to see the best of me, but find it so damn impossible to see the best of yourself?”
She sat back on a sigh. “It’s not the same, Will. The things you did, they were decisions made in the moment. Under the pressure of captivity and torture. But my choices were more complex. Premeditated. You shouldn’t confuse the two.”
“Tell me.” It came out like a demand, but she received it like the invitation it was. And she couldn’t refuse it. Not when he’d been so brutally open and honest with her.
“When I ran, I had nothing. No resources. No friends. No money. Running isn’t easy—or cheap. I might have been able to get lost, take under the table jobs in bars or . . .” She swallowed hard, thinking about what few choices that desperate women had.
“Coop . . .”
She glanced up to find Will staring at her, his expression wrecked and his jaw tight. Like he’d personally failed her. It should have rankled, the idea that he thought she’d needed saving. Two years ago, it would have. But now? Now it slid through her like a hot chocolate on a cold day. A comfort she could so easily come to rely on. She didn’t have to ask, and he didn’t have to say it—he’d never let her face anything alone again. And that made the confession easier, if no less bitter.
“I was lucky. Had a few things I could pawn.” She stared into his eyes. “And one thing I could trade for money or information.”
“You took jobs.”
“Hits,” she said, refusing to soften just what she’d done. “I was picky. Didn’t go after the more lucrative work—women, children. There was plenty to sustain me, and believe me when I say that no one will miss them. Arms dealers. Human traffickers. Cartel leaders. Not all that different from what the CIA and army paid me to do. But . . .”
“But this time you selected the target.”
“And I did it for personal gain. So that I could afford a bribe or a room or a new identity.”
“And so you could try to save Cole,” Will finished for her.
“Yeah. So I could try to save Cole. So I could find a way home.”
“You did what you had to, Coop.”
“Did I?” she asked, her voice raw with doubt. “Or did I just do what I wanted to?” There’d been other choices. That she hadn’t made them, hadn’t wanted to live with them, didn’t erase them. “At the end of the day, I killed people for personal, selfish reasons. How can I go home, how can I face my family, when I know everything I did to get there?”
“I don’t know, honey. But I know they’d want you to come home anyway. I know that they’d rather have the exhausted, imperfect, slightly broken version of you than nothing at all.” He tightened his grip on her thigh, his thumb digging into the seam of her pants. “I know you don’t have to give them details you don’t want to. And I know that you don’t have to do any of that alone.”
“What?”
“Come home with me, Cooper. Come home and let me introduce you to my family. Let them meet the woman who saved my life, who brought me back to them. And then, when you’re ready, take me home to meet yours.” He grinned at her. “Even if you don’t know what to say to them, I do.”
“Oh yeah?” She quirked an eyebrow at him and didn’t fight the grin those words elicited.
“Yeah. Like how their daughter saved me when I was convinced I couldn’t save myself. How when I was dying, she fought for me, when anyone half as ruthless or selfish as she thinks she is would have cut and run.”
Her eyes stung, and his thumb rubbed away a stray tear.
“Or how she sees right through to the heart of me. Understands me in a way no one else ever could.” He grasped her elbows and pulled her off the stool and onto his lap, settling her so that she straddled him, a knee on either side of his hips. He tilted his head, so he could look up at her. “You do, you know. See the best of me. The goodness and decency and strength I thought I’d lost.” He slid his hand beneath the back of her tank top and spread his fingers across her lower back. “But that’s not the reason I’m going to fall in love with you, Coop.”
Her heart stuttered as if he’d reached right into her chest to touch it. The single, gentle nudge changing its rhythm forever.
“I’m going to fall in love you with because you see the darkness, too.” He pulled her down, pressed his mouth to hers once, twice. “But you don’t flinch from it. You’re not afraid of it. Of me.”
“No, I’m not.” She shifted closer, laced her fingers in his hair, tucked a strand behind his half-missing ear.
“You could have killed every last man on that mountain, Cooper. But you didn’t. Because you saw. Because you knew. Because you understood what I needed. Not just closure or justice or revenge.”
“You needed to take back what was yours,” she said, brushing a finger along the edge of his ear.
He shivered. “Yes. And you understood that—I don’t think anyone else could have. So please, Cooper, when all of this is done, let me take you home.”
She smiled down at him. “On two conditions.”
“Name them.”
She brushed her mouth gently against his. “First Sunday of every month my dad hosts a family barbeque, rain or shine. Promise you’ll take me. Promise you’ll be by my side when I explain.”
“Done. The second condition?” he asked.
“Before you take me to meet your family, or go with me to meet mine, take me to bed.”
He stood in a rush, his hands gripping her ass and her legs circling his waist. God, he was strong. Even as his body mended and healed and glued itself back together. It made her wonder what it would be like in a month, in six months. Wh
en his frame had filled out and his confidence had returned. When he no longer worried about accidentally hurting her. When he knew her well enough to know he’d never go too far because she’d never let him.
Anticipation for what was to come, both now and in the months ahead, wound through her, heightening everything.
And slowing it down, too.
But instead of taking her inside, taking her to the queen-size bed tucked into the corner of the tiny villa, he walked her across the veranda and to the sprawling, extra-deep daybed at the other end. He set her down on the edge, the bed swaying gently beneath her. She glanced up and realized that what had looked like simple furniture was actually built more like a swing. Rope secured the platform to the ceiling and mosquito nets fell around the outer edge like a private cloud. Cooper sat back, and the bed rocked—inches, at most—but still enough to add a layer of sexy indulgence.
It made her feel relaxed and lazy. Like they had time and nothing better to do than touch and kiss and stroke.
Will stepped back and just stared, his gaze a slow meander that only made her long for his hands. For his mouth. His skin against hers.
“You’re such a beautiful surprise, Coop.”
She cocked her head to the side. She was oddly touched by that compliment, though she didn’t quite understand it.
“What part of me surprises you?”
He shook his head. “Nothing really. In so many ways you’re exactly how I imagined you . . . just more. More concentrated. More beautiful. More fearless. But my reaction to you?” he said, toeing off his shoes. “That never ceases to surprise me.”
“Come ’ere.” She grasped him by the belt and pulled him close, then slid the leather free of the buckle and opened his pants.
“I like putting my hands on you, Coop. Like holding you down and holding you close. I like that you don’t just take it, you want it.”
“Crave it,” she agreed. Because hell yeah, she did. Loved it when he got a little wild, a little rough. When he treated her like something he had to conquer rather than coddle. “And I love making you work for it, too.” She shucked his jeans down his thighs and took his underwear with them for good measure.
He laughed. “There’s not a shy or submissive bone in your body, Cooper.” He stepped out of his pants, drew his shirt up and over his head.
“You’d have zero interest in pushing me to my knees if there was.” She wanted to reach for him. To trail a finger from his belly button up between his pecs. To grasp his cock, long and full and thick, and stroke him to the very edge. She could do it fast, have him desperate and wild in a blink. But he seemed to have something else in mind, so she resisted.
“True. And I guess that’s where the surprise comes in.”
She raised her arms when he grasped the edge of her tank. He drew it up slowly, the cotton a gentle stroke against her too-sensitive skin. When he discarded it, she stood, bare chested in just the pants she’d slipped on after a shower.
He touched her nipple with a thumb, his caress gentle. Curious. A soft hello rather than a promise of things to come.
“It never occurred to me I’d want to take my time,” he whispered, his thumb moving slowly back and forth. “That I’d want to be gentle. That I’d want to worship as much as I’d want to conquer.” He dropped a palm, warm and heavy, to her shoulder, then let his hand slide down the full length of her arm. “The need you inspire in me—that’s the surprise, Coop.”
Heat flared beneath her skin until it felt too tight, too warm. Like she’d napped too long in the sun and it had left its mark. Because oh God, she wanted those things too. Wanted slow and deep and careful. Wanted him to hold her close as much as she wanted him to hold her down.
“Will you let me love you like that?” he asked, pulling her pants down her legs.
“Yes.”
“As slow as I want? As long as I want?” he asked when he stood.
She reached for him, the longing a deep and building ache. “Anything.”
“I can love you here?” He pressed a finger to her lips, his smile just to the outside of wicked when she sucked it in her mouth and nodded.
“Here?” he asked again, sliding that same wet finger deep inside on a single, plunging stroke that took her to her toes.
“Yes, for fuck’s sake, yes.”
He left his finger where it was, stroking gently, and placed his other hand over her heart. “And here?”
He nudged her clit with his thumb and she came on a sob. His touch, his words, his presence sending her over the edge as easily as if he’d grabbed her hair and spread her legs. Fuck, the things this man did to her.
The things he was promising—she didn’t know how she’d survive them. Or how she’d ever live without them.
“Good.” He added another finger, pressed his thumb more firmly against her clit, and drove her right back to the edge.
She grasped his shoulders, her hips rocking, her nerves singing. “Oh God, I can’t. I can’t.”
“You can,” he assured her, using one large hand against her shoulder to push her feet flat to the floor, to make her take his fingers—three of them now—deeper. “You will. As much as I want. For as long as I want. Until every part of you weeps with need. For me to stop. For me to keep going. Until you’re limp and loose and exhausted. Tell me to stop, Coop. But if you don’t, I’m going to push you until you can’t come even one more time but need it, beg for it anyway. Until I’m sure you’ll always crave it.”
“Damn you,” she said, sobbing as she came, her orgasm longer, more intense, and just as he’d promised, the need for the next one was already building within her. “Please, please, please.”
He pulled his fingers free and with impossibly gentle hands turned her to face the suspended daybed.
Will pulled her hair, already damp with sweat, away from her neck and twisted it over her left shoulder. He set his mouth to work on the side he’d exposed, sucking up a mark as he slid a hand over a breast and down her belly, his fingers skimming, teasing, testing. When he brushed her clit she shuddered but rocked her hips. He smiled against her skin. Kissed the mark she’d carry for days. Then said, “Bend over, honey.”
With a firm touch he guided her down, one hand splayed between her shoulders blades, the other gripping her elbow as he bent her forward and pressed her to the mattress.
“Spread your legs,” he said, nudging her knee with one of his.
She shuffled her feet until they were shoulder width apart.
“Wider.” His hands, warm and rough and unyielding, parted her thighs and set her feet where he wanted them. When he was satisfied, he stepped in close, his cock brushing the back of her legs, the back of her ass. Will settled between her legs, draped himself over her back, and grasped her wrists, pulling her hands away from where they’d clutched the canvas cover on the daybed.
Slowly, he pulled her arms down, trapped her hands on the bed by her hips, and then slowly—so damn slowly, slid into her.
He withdrew on a long, agonizing slide, then pushed back in, the bed swaying just enough to heighten his movements, to make it feel as if everything were slower, deeper, longer.
He set a pace she didn’t believe he’d ever be able to maintain. It was too slow, too gentle, too thorough. But he held her there. Trapped in a slow spiral of pleasure that wound tighter and tighter and tighter but never let up. Never released.
He withdrew on a curse and as he began to slide back in, she planted her feet and shoved. He laughed, let go of her wrists and grabbed her left leg, bending her knee until her leg was folded and pinned to the mattress. She wiggled, but he pushed her up on the bed until her toes only barely brushed the ground.
He slid out, then plunged in, going deeper, taking advantage of the better, wider access she’d granted him.
The orgasm built, slower, but no less powerful, then rolled through her like a lazy tide.
“One more, I think,” he said, and finally, finally she heard the strain, felt him fight
against the urge to plant his feet and snap his hips.
“I can’t.” Her eyes stung, and her nipples throbbed with every drag against the canvas-covered bed. And still, he maintained that infuriating pace. “Please.”
“You know what I want. Give it to me, Cooper. Give it to me because I asked you to. Because I want it. Because you want it every bit as badly. Come again, coat my cock, and I’ll finish this.”
“Please, please just touch me. Make me.”
“No. You’ll do it yourself. Touch yourself. Torture yourself.”
She shook her head but even as she did, the hand he’d let go to trap her leg slid beneath her hips.
She bit off a cry when the edge of her nail caught her clit, the tiny sensation too much, too big, too good.
“Do it again, Cooper. Do it now.”
She did. God help her, she stroked herself until the blood roared in her ears, her vision turned to black, and all she could feel was Will as he moved insider her, her fingers rushing to match his pace.
On a wail, she came one final time as he snapped his hips and shouted his victory.
The bed creaked, and the night air buzzed, and Will pulled her onto the mattress, tucked her head on his shoulder, and placed her palm flat over his heart.
She fell asleep to the skip and skim of idle fingers and the beat of a heart that was every bit as sure, every bit as strong as the man who owned it.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Whaddup, Laz?” Parker answered, his voice artificially chipper and laced with the staying power of caffeine.
Will seriously doubted the guy had gotten so much as a second of sleep in the last twenty-four hours.
“Laz?” Will asked, then immediately regretted it. He’d been gone a year, but he knew better. You never asked. It only encouraged him.
“As in Lazarus. As in rising from the dead. That wasn’t obvious?” His tone easily conveyed his expression—half disgust, half smug self-importance.
“So sorry.” Will grinned. He liked the kid. Always had. ’Course, that was before Parker had started sleeping with his sister. Now he liked him and kinda wanted to break his arms at the same time. “You’re probably a few cups of coffee ahead of me. And anyway, not the reference I thought you’d go for and definitely not the one I prefer.”
Fearless (Somerton Security Book 3) Page 25