I wipe my nose on the back of my hand. “You’re going to be insufferable now, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he says, full of enthusiasm. “Oh my God, I’m gonna be such a giant, chest-beatin’ pain in the ass, you have no idea!”
I glance up at him. His smile could cause blindness. “I have a pretty good idea,” I mutter.
He takes my face in his hands and gives me a deep, heartfelt kiss. I wonder if he’s getting covered in snot, but the kiss is too nice to spend much time worrying about that.
“Whew! You’re a handful, darlin’,” he says when he finally breaks the kiss. “Lucky for you, I dig difficult women. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to fuck you in the shower. Try not to fall apart again until after I come. Blue balls make me ornery.”
He opens the shower door, lifts me up with both hands under my bottom, and walks in.
Still wearing his jeans.
Still inside me.
Eighteen
Ryan
“Take off your pants, you idiot!” Mariana says, laughing softly.
Her laugh somewhat eases the big knot under my breastbone formed by her tears, but I’m still worried. Beneath that tough exterior, she’s as fragile as glass.
All I want to do is make her feel safe. Make her smile. Banish forever those scared little whimpers she makes in her sleep.
I’ve never felt more protective of anything. Or more sure of what I want.
The only problem with what I want is that it comes with so much baggage, it could sink a Navy destroyer.
But I’ve got a plan to fix that.
“If it means puttin’ you down, the answer’s no.” I turn on the water, holding her up with one arm, and adjust the knobs until it’s nice and warm.
She looks appreciatively at the muscles flexing in my biceps. “Now you’re just showing off.”
They’re pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.
I set her against the tile wall, brace my legs apart, and go in for another kiss. Her arms and legs are wrapped around me, and she’s holding on tight. The moment my tongue touches hers, she moans softly into my mouth.
It makes my heart take off like a rocket, that sweet little sound. I love it the way I love football and barbecues and fireworks on the Fourth of July. The way I love Thanksgiving and Buzz Lightyear and guns with high-capacity magazines.
I love it like it’s a religion.
In a way, I suppose it is.
“Goddamn, Angel. You’re so fuckin’ sweet.” My voice is as rough as my breathing. She looks up at me with those big brown eyes, and suddenly, it’s hard to breathe at all.
“You are,” she whispers. “You’re the sweetest man I’ve ever met, and if you’re not careful, I’ll—”
She breaks off and looks away, sharply inhaling.
I’ve felt like this precisely once before, as a senior in high school. I scored the winning touchdown on a game a bunch of college recruiters had come to see me play. My team carried me off the field on their shoulders, chanting my name. My parents were in the stands, glowing with fucking pride. Everyone was jumping up and down and screaming. An entire stadium of fans was losing their minds.
I was a king. I was a god. It was the best moment of my life.
Until now.
“You’ll what, baby?” I whisper. “Say it.”
She swallows hard, blinking.
I drop my head and nuzzle her neck, pressing my lips against the pulse throbbing near her ear. “Be brave.”
“You already know.”
“I want you to say it. Out loud.”
Digging into my shoulders, her fingers tremble. She gazes up at me from beneath long, curving black lashes. “I’ll…fall in love with you.”
You’d think the sound of your heart bursting would be like a wet, messy, booming thing, but really, it’s the gentlest little plink.
I groan and kiss her, hard. She kisses me back with wild abandon, her heart pounding against my chest, her whole body shaking. When she flexes her hips, I instantly lose all control.
I thrust deep into her, so deep she gasps into my mouth.
Then I close my eyes, bury my face in her neck, and revel in the feel of her body and the sounds of her cries as I drive into her over and over again. I’m as helpless to slow down or hold back as I am to stop the tsunami of emotion breaking over me. I’m flying, or falling, or being flung through space at a million miles per hour.
My voice breaks over her name.
Her pussy clenches hard around my cock.
My orgasm tears out of me like a ripcord tearing open a parachute.
I grunt like an animal, my fingers dug into her ass, every muscle in my body flexed and straining, a little voice in the back of my head commenting casually, Well, this should be an interesting development—
“I’m coming, Angel! Fuck!”
She’s coming, too, throbbing hot around my pulsing dick, both of us hoarsely crying out and shuddering.
It’s too late to pull out. I try anyway, but just end up staggering. Hot water cascades between us, spraying our faces and bodies and the walls. Mariana is arched back in my arms, her mouth open and her eyes closed, her skin slick with sweat and water. My biceps and thighs are burning, and I’m still coming, my pelvis jerking compulsively, my cock buried deep and spilling.
Suddenly, Mariana realizes what’s happening. Her eyes fly open. Into my face she shouts, “Tell me you had a vasectomy!”
Hand to God, I don’t know why, but I erupt in laughter. “Do I seem like the kind of man who’d let a scalpel anywhere near his balls?”
Her horrified face tells me that isn’t the right answer.
I give her my most winning smile. “This seems like a good time to discuss how many kids you think we should have.”
During the thundering silence that follows, I hope there aren’t any sharp objects within easy reach.
* * *
“Are we gonna talk about this?”
“No.”
“Angel—”
“Ryan, don’t push me. Do. Not.”
Mariana paces back the way she just came. We’re in the living room. I’m on the couch, and she’s wearing holes in the rug. Suffice it to say, I’m feeling a lot less anxiety about what may or may not have taken root in the shower, so to speak.
I mean, I’m not an idiot. It’s not an ideal situation. If it even is a situation. But it’s also not the end of the world.
I love kids. Being a dad is something I’ve always wanted.
If Mariana lets me live long enough to become one, which is up in the air at this point.
Finally, she stops pacing and crucifies me with a look. “I need to call Reynard.”
Unease clenches my gut. “What you need to do is eat something. I’ll make us—”
“No,” she says sharply, cutting me off. “You don’t get to decide what I do or don’t do.”
I stand and draw in a breath. I keep my voice low and controlled. “I know you’re upset—”
“You know nothing, Ryan Tiberius McLean,” she says bitingly, her eyes as hard as diamonds. “You know exactly nothing about me, not even my last name.”
She waits for me to challenge it, but of course I can’t. She’s right.
I don’t know her goddamn last name.
Heat creeps up my neck.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not putting this on you. I accept full responsibility for what happened in the shower. But we need to be very clear that you’re not calling the shots here. You stopped me from stealing a fake diamond and giving it to a man who’s killed many people for far less, and for that I’m grateful. But my gratitude is where my obligation to you ends.”
My face stings like I’ve been slapped. I take several slow breaths to cool my rising temperature. “Okay, let’s dial this back a notch. You’ve been through a lot. You’re tired and stressed—”
“Don’t you dare patronize me,” she snaps, eyes blazing. “I’ve been through more than you’ll ever know
, more than most people could live through, and I survived. Clawing and biting and eating worms when I had to, eating fucking dirt when that’s all there was. I survived. Long before you, Ryan, I survived.”
Her face is red. Her hands are shaking. I’ve never seen her this angry.
“You don’t know what it means to have nothing, because you were born in a country where you could speak out against the government without being killed. You were born to parents who knew how to read and write, who had opportunities to make life better for their children. You weren’t born a girl in a culture that valued girls as much as horses or cows, good only for buying or selling or putting to work. You weren’t orphaned at six when your parents and almost everyone else you knew was murdered in a midnight raid. You didn’t live for years like an animal in the hills, filthy and starving, hiding from guerrillas who’d sell you to the highest bidder, only coming out at night to steal what you could from the villages. You didn’t have to watch your sister—”
She breaks off abruptly, swallowing a sob.
I’m frozen in shock at her words. “Angel,” I breathe.
She swallows hard several times, swipes at her eyes, then straightens her shoulders, lifts her chin, and pierces me with her gaze.
“My name is Mariana,” she says with exquisite dignity. “I’m a professional thief wanted by authorities in twelve countries for crimes committed in the service of honoring an oath that saved the life of the only man I’ve ever loved. That man is Reynard. If it wasn’t for him, I’d have died a horrible death as a little girl, the worst kind of death a little girl could ever suffer. And now I want to call him. God help you, gringo, if you try to stand in my way.”
My mouth hangs open. I’m stunned, heartsick, and deeply, deeply impressed. If I thought she was a goddess before, now I might as well kneel at her feet and start babbling prayers.
“Yes,” I say, finding my voice. “Of course. I’ll bring the phone.”
We stare at each other across the room, silence yawning wide between us. I want to say more but know any words I could speak would be useless.
I bring her one of the spare cells I keep in the safe in the wall of my bedroom. “It’s a crypto phone. Untraceable. Totally secure. You can keep it.” I turn and head back toward my bedroom, assuming she’ll want privacy.
Shows how much I know.
“Ryan,” she calls.
I stop and look over my shoulder. I washed her jeans and hoodie while she was asleep, and she’s wearing them now, her damp hair loose around her shoulders, her feet bare. Even with no makeup, dressed down, exhaustion seeping through all her movements, she’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen.
She drags a hand through her hair and sighs. “Is your offer of food still on the table?”
I nod, not daring to speak.
She looks at the phone in her hand like she’s looking for answers. She exhales in a gust and lifts her gaze to mine. “That would be nice. Thank you. And thank you for the phone. I didn’t mean to be such a bitch…it’s just that…”
“You don’t owe me an explanation,” I say softly.
There’s a moment where I can tell she’s struggling to find the right words. “I’ve always been alone,” she says. “I’ve always worked alone. I don’t know anything about taking care of other people, or being part of a team. I’ve never even had a pet. Trust isn’t a luxury I’ve ever been able to afford. So this…you…”
She falters, making a helpless gesture with her hands. I don’t want to push her to say more, but I also don’t want her to stop talking.
This is exactly the kind of shit we need to work out.
“You’re like a dream that’s so good, I don’t want to wake up,” she says, her eyes shining. “But I know eventually that I’ll have to. And the longer I stay dreaming, the worse it’ll hurt when I’m finally awake.”
Fuck. If my heart didn’t already burst in the shower, it would shatter into a million tiny pieces now. I have to stand there and breathe for a few seconds before I can speak. When I do, my voice is rough with emotion.
“Life isn’t always unfair, Mariana. Lots of bad shit happens, but good things happen, too, and you need to be able to recognize the good when it comes along. You need to be able to accept it and deal with it, same as you deal with the bad. Love is as real as hate. You know how to survive. But that’s not the same as living.”
She stares at me, swallowing, the color high in her cheeks.
“And if what happened in the shower turns out to have consequences, we’ll deal with it,” I say more softly. “Together. Now make your phone call, woman. I’m gonna make us some chow.”
I kiss her forehead as I walk past her into the kitchen.
The sound of her faint laugh follows me as I go.
Nineteen
Mariana
“Reynard,” purrs a cultured British voice on the other end of the line.
Flooded with the same relief I always feel when I hear his voice, I close my eyes and rest my forehead in my hand. I’m sitting at Ryan’s glass kitchen table, my nose filled with the delicious scent of frying bacon. My heart feels like a grenade with the pin pulled inside my chest.
How do people live like this? How can anyone survive this feeling, this agony of tenderness and hope? It’s madness, I know it is, and yet…
“Hello, Reynard,” I say quietly. “It’s Dragonfly.”
A brief pause follows before he asks, “Are you all right?”
“Yes and no. Mostly yes, nothing to worry about.”
Another pause. “It certainly sounds like something to worry about.”
I chew my lip, thinking. “The job was…difficult.”
This time, his pause is deafening. “Have you completed it?”
I clear my throat. “Yes. And no.”
“How esoteric,” he says drily. “Care to elaborate?”
“I’m just calling to find out if you’re safe. Are you safe? Are you well?”
“Of course. Whatever are you going on about, my darling?”
When I don’t respond, his voice turns dark. “Oh, bollocks. The American.”
I let my heavy sigh serve as my answer.
Reynard turns businesslike, his tone clipped. “If I’m not mistaken—and I never am—your deadline is in forty-eight hours. Do you need an extension?”
“I want you to promise me something, Reynard.”
I can almost hear him pull himself up short. “Good God. That sounds bad. Let me sit down. All right, go ahead, I’m sitting. No, wait, let me get my flask.” Through the phone comes the sounds of a gulp and some lip smacking. “There. Sorted. Tell me.”
I open my eyes and look at Ryan, frying bacon in a pan at his ridiculously enormous stove, and listen to what my heart is emphatically telling me.
“If Ryan McLean contacts you for any reason, I want you to promise to do exactly as he says. No questions asked.”
At the stove, Ryan freezes.
A bristling silence, then Reynard speaks flatly. “He’s taken you hostage. That bloody grinning idiot is holding you hostage, isn’t he?” His voice rises. “He has a gun to your head right now, doesn’t he? Put him on the phone! That colossal wanker! I’ll give that smiling arsebadger something to stew on—”
“Reynard—”
“Does he have any idea who he’s meddling with?” Reynard shouts. “That smarmy, second-rate John Wayne impersonator! That swaggering, insufferable, cock-swinging, pathetic excuse for a man—”
Wincing, I hold the phone away from my ear. Reynard is still going. I wait until I hear a pause, then I put the phone against my ear again and loudly interrupt the tirade.
“No one has taken me hostage, Reynard. No one is forcing me to say anything. I’m asking.”
Ryan stands perfectly still at the stove. It doesn’t look like he’s even breathing.
“Why are you asking?” Renard says, cool and controlled again.
Wavering one final time, I bite my lip so hard, I almost draw bloo
d. Then I jump off the cliff that’s in front of me, hoping against hope that somehow I’ll fly instead of smashing face-first into the ground.
“Because I think we can trust him. And I think we’re going to need his help.”
I’ve stunned two men, thousands of miles apart, into shocked silence. After a while, Reynard makes a sound like he’s choking on his tongue.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I exhale in a gust. “I don’t like it, either, believe me! But it is what it is. We’re going to trust the American. This is the new normal. I just decided right now.”
If Ryan can do it, then I can, too. Gut, you better be on track with this, or I’ll cut you out of my body myself.
“Are you mad? Reynard hollers. “You only have one job left! One! After all these years, freedom is within reach, and you—”
“The diamond is a fake, Reynard. What do you think Capo would do to me—to us—if I gave him a fake? Do you think he’d believe me when I said I had no idea? Do you think he’d be forgiving?”
Reynard’s voice drops an octave. “Who told you it was fake?”
My gaze flashes up to Ryan’s back. He hasn’t moved an inch. From the pan of bacon, smoke rises in billowing gray plumes. It’s started to burn.
For a moment, I fall through a bottomless chasm of pure panic, but I wrestle it into submission long enough to answer. “That’s not the point.”
“Au contraire, my darling, it’s exactly the point. Take a moment and consider who you’re dealing with. This stranger you’ve decided to trust.” He says trust sarcastically, like he’s putting air quotes around it because the concept is so ridiculous. “Take a moment to consider what his motives might be. What his endgame is.” Reynard’s voice turns hard. “Wipe the stardust and rainbows from your eyes and think.”
Anger crawls up my neck in a hot, prickling rush.
I really detest being patronized, and that’s twice in ten minutes.
Wicked Intentions: The Wicked Games Series, Book 3 Page 16