The Agent

by Herkness, Nancy

  Tully reached across the table to lay one of his big hands over hers, his warmth and strength coaxing her fist to unclench. “You’re not wrong, but stalking is cowardly too.”

  “I suppose.” She turned her hand to wrap it around Tully’s. “I want to take a break from worrying about my stalker. Let’s talk about you.”

  Tully gave her fingers a squeeze before he went back to his second helping of dinner. “There’s not much to talk about.”

  “I don’t believe that.” He might affect a simple cowboy vibe, but she saw the shadows in his eyes. However, those were his secrets to keep. For now. Tonight she didn’t have the strength to pry. “What was your favorite subject in high school?”

  His laugh held a note of relief at the easy question. “Nothing. I didn’t much like school. I cut whenever possible.”

  “Because you were bored.” He was too smart to have found it difficult.

  “Didn’t see the point. Until I realized I could get out of town if I went to college. So I worked my tail off to get the grades.” He took a sip of the beer he’d switched to and grinned. “Still didn’t like it, though.”

  “You liked school enough to get an MBA.” And he’d gone to a very prestigious school.

  “A means to an end. The red tape of the FBI didn’t suit me. I needed to learn how to start my own business.”

  “You met Derek and Leland in class?” She would have loved to have seen that first meeting between the three men. Derek, with his movie-star good looks and his sharp financial acumen. Leland, the preppy-faced computer genius who refused to don a suit. And then Tully, the former FBI agent who sported cowboy boots and a gun. “How on earth did the three of you decide to join forces?”

  “Derek and Leland were roommates by pure random chance. We all got assigned to the same first-year learning group. That’s where we discovered that we had one powerful connection.”

  “What was that?”

  “We hated learning groups.”

  Natalie grimaced in sympathy. “Are those like group projects?”

  “Yeah, where ten percent of the group does ninety percent of the work. And you have to pretend that everyone’s contribution is equally valuable. Not only that, it was the same group for every project.” He harrumphed. “We didn’t give a shit that everyone got the same credit but we got real tired of babysitting the lazy-ass members of the group.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Well, it became apparent early on that Derek was a wiz at numbers, and Leland was on a tech level so far above the rest of us that we didn’t speak the same language. So I made the executive decision to give them sole responsibility for those areas of all our projects. Then I kind of ran interference for them.”

  So Tully had taken over the leadership role. She could imagine that his confident physical presence and his FBI mystique had intimidated the rest of the students into obedience. Derek had told Alice that he and Leland had originally been a little afraid of Tully.

  “When our first project came back with a high grade, everyone kind of settled down about the division of labor.” Tully smiled reminiscently.

  “So you decided that the three of you would make good business partners?” She loved this glimpse into the dynamics among these men she’d come to care about.

  Tully leaned back in his chair, his plate once again empty. “That came about in our second year. We’d all done internships at big companies at the top of their industries.” He winked. “Because only the best would do for us.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  “And we hated them. The bureaucracy, the politics, the waste of time and talent. We decided that we had to be our own bosses.” He chuckled. “We might have been a little drunk the night we made a pact to start a consulting firm. But it still seemed like a good idea in the sober light of morning, so here we are.” He shrugged.

  “Now all the business school students want to work at KRG because it’s at the top of its industry.” She echoed his words with a touch of amusement. “Do you hire interns from your alma mater?”

  “Yeah. We all believe in lending a helping hand.” He shrugged again. “It’s not so easy to get started in the world.”

  It was even harder to found a company and grow it into an international powerhouse. The three partners had tremendous drive. She knew something of Derek’s and Leland’s histories, but Tully didn’t talk about his much.

  She was about to ask him another question when he stood and stacked his dirty dishes. “I’m on KP duty. You sit and relax.”

  Evidently they’d reached the limit of his revelations for the evening. She pushed up from her chair and grabbed a couple of cardboard containers. “It will take five minutes to clean this up if we do it together.”

  Once the dishes were racked in the dishwasher and the leftovers stowed in the fridge, Tully stretched and gave a yawn that made his jaw crack.

  That reminded her that he’d done some sort of nighttime training session with a client the night before, and she felt a stab of guilt. “How late did the training go?”

  “Long enough not to bother with sleep,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.

  “You must be exhausted.” Natalie glanced at the microwave’s clock. It was eight forty-five, but what the hell? “Let’s go to bed.”

  He went from good-natured drowsiness to laser-focused lust in a nanosecond, his gray eyes smoky, his smile lascivious, and his body against hers before she even realized he had moved.

  He lowered his mouth to within an inch of her lips. “Now that’s the best idea I’ve heard today, sweetheart.” Then he kissed her in a slow sensual dance that sent desire spreading through her body like a warm tide.

  She grabbed fistfuls of his shirt, a faint aroma of starch rising from it, and tried to wrap herself in him. He seemed to understand because his arms came around her and he pulled her into him so that they were locked together from knee to chest. He felt like strength and safety and sex all rolled up into one.

  One of his hands slid down to her behind, his palm flattened to bring her pelvis even closer so she could feel his cock harden against her. The need to have him inside her ripped through her like a tornado. She tore her mouth away from his to say, “Lift me onto the counter.”

  He went still. “Are you sure about this, Nat?”

  She worked her hands down between them and found the zipper of his trousers, yanking it down so she could stroke the length of him through the confining fabric of his briefs. “Is that a good-enough answer?”

  “Better than a lie detector test. But let’s get some clothes off you first.” He found the button on her trousers and flicked it open before he returned her favor by sliding down her zipper. She kicked off her flats and shimmied out of her pants, leaving just a blue-lace bikini.

  “These are real pretty,” Tully said, skimming his fingers along the fabric’s top edge where it stretched over her hip. “But they’re blocking my view.” With a single motion, he stripped them down to her ankles. Then he seized her waist and boosted her onto the island’s quartz top as though she weighed nothing.

  The stone was cold and hard under her butt, but she didn’t care. “Your shirt. Off,” she said, grabbing his placket to start unbuttoning it. He worked up from the bottom, and when the last button flew free of its hole, he shucked the shirt off so that she could run her hands over the bare skin that covered his beautiful, flexing muscles.

  “God, you feel good,” she said, exploring the ridges of his abs and the bulge of his upper arms.

  He closed his eyes and groaned, but he stood still for her. Until she skimmed her hands down to his belt buckle. He circled her wrists and gave her a sinful smile. “Not yet, sweetheart. It’s time for dessert.”

  He knelt in front of her and pushed her thighs open. For a moment, she felt strangely shy, but then he leaned in and kissed her between her legs and she forgot to care.

  “You taste better than steak, apple pie, and beer all rolled up in one,” he mu
rmured against her clit, the vibration of his words sending spirals of delight sizzling through her.

  He lifted first one of her knees and then the other to hook them over his bare shoulders. The feel of his skin on the backs of her legs and the tickle of his hair against the insides of her thighs stoked the fire glowing in her belly.

  When his tongue licked into her, she lay down on the island, closing her eyes and giving herself over to the sensations because she trusted him with her body. She arched and twisted and moaned while he tasted her from different angles and with different pressures, pushing her closer and closer to climax.

  But she wanted him there when she came so she could clench around him. “Tully, stop! I’m going to come.”

  “And I want to taste you when it happens.” His voice rumbled against her, winding her tension even tighter.

  “But I want to come around you.” She curled up from the now-warm stone to put her hands on either side of his head and pull him up from between her thighs. “It feels intense.”

  “I’m not going to argue with a lady’s wishes,” he said, his lips glistening and his eyes heavy-lidded. He came to his feet with Natalie’s legs still draped over his shoulders, tilting her pelvis upward. He pulled a condom out of his trouser pocket and rolled it on before he eased the head of his cock inside her.

  He grasped her buttocks, his fingers imprinting the soft flesh, and thrust inside her in one smooth movement. She was so wet that he slid in easily and the angle of her hips let him seat himself deeply.

  “Oh, yes, Tully!” she said as her body tightened in anticipation of his next stroke.

  But he surprised her by releasing her butt and leaning farther into her so he could unbutton her blouse and shove up her bra. Her nipples were already hard and sensitive, so his touch sent an electric streak of sensation down to where his cock impaled her. She used her legs to rock her hips against him.

  He made a guttural sound. “Let me play with these beauties a little longer.” He rolled her nipples between his calloused thumbs and forefingers, the dual abrasion pushing her over the edge. She arched up off the countertop as her orgasm crashed over her, squeezing hard around Tully’s cock.

  He started to move and that sent her into another paroxysm of mind-bending pleasure so that she screamed his name as she held on to his forearms like a lifeline.

  And then he was stroking into her in perfect synchronization with the clench and release of her muscles until, with a wordless shout, he hit his own climax.

  Slowly, she became aware of Tully’s big hands splayed on either side of her hips as he braced himself over her with his eyes closed. He huffed out a breath. “That was really something, sugar.”

  He opened his eyes, still glowing with desire. He shifted his weight to one arm so he could feather his finger over her cheekbone. “Your skin gets this pretty flush when you come,” he said.

  She could feel the tight heat in her face. “That’s because you set fire to my blood.”

  “That might be the hottest thing anyone’s ever said to me. Pun intended.” He started to withdraw but she tilted her pelvis to stop him. “Sweetheart, you’ve got to be uncomfortable on that hard countertop. Let me take you to bed.”

  “I just want to savor the feeling a little longer.” Although her shoulder blades were a little sore from being pushed against the stone, she liked having Tully over her and inside her and looking down at her as though he wanted to do it all over again.

  And it kept her from remembering terrible things.

  Natalie sat in bed, watching Tully brush his teeth in her bathroom in his gray sweatpants. His torso was bare, so the lights outlined every curve of his muscles as they flexed with the movement of his arm and shoulder. She liked that he hadn’t closed the bathroom door while he washed up. It seemed homey and normal and she needed that right now.

  Although it was strange to have his very masculine presence in her private space. She’d never had a man in this bedroom. It had been a place meant to belong entirely to her, arranged and decorated to her taste and no one else’s.

  Yet he fit right in. A soft chime of warning pinged in her brain but she shut it down. This whole relationship was about nothing more than comfort and safety and sex. Once the stalker was caught, it would be over.

  Tully finished up, drying his face on the powder-blue towel she’d given him. He looked up from it to catch her gaze on him. “You’re supposed to be asleep, sugar.”

  “Not while I have such a spectacular show to watch,” she said.

  He looked genuinely surprised. “Me washing?”

  “You washing without a shirt on. All those muscles flexing.” She put a purr into her voice.

  He chuckled and struck a bodybuilder’s pose, with his arms curved in at his waist so his shoulders bulged and his abdominal muscles rippled like a washboard.

  “Yum, makes me want to lick those abs.”

  He released the pose and prowled to the bed, crawling onto it to give her a quick kiss as he hovered over her. Then he rolled to the side and slipped between the sheets. “Tomorrow. Tonight we both need rest.”

  He pulled her down beside his body, pillowing her head on his shoulder while his arm went around her back.

  His weight dented the mattress so gravity pressed her into the solid mass of him, her thin cotton nightshirt offering very little barrier to the feel of his muscle and bone and body heat. Tully was larger and fitter than her ex-husband, so it felt different when she snuggled against him. That was a good thing. Yet it also felt easy. And sexy when she crooked her knee over his thigh, her bare leg brushing against the hair that dusted his skin.

  She hesitated to damage the sensual mood, but she’d been thinking about Regina ever since Dobs had told her his wife was pregnant.

  “Tully, I’m worried about Regina. If she’s really pregnant, Dobs is going to keep looking for her.” And Regina had no one to help her. “Who knows what he’ll do if he finds her?”

  His arm tightened around her. “You’ve got enough problems on your own plate and now you’re worrying about someone else’s?” His lips were warm against her temple. “I’ve already sent out my best investigative team. They’ll find her.”

  Hope and admiration flooded through her. He was as concerned about the other woman as she was. “And then what? She can’t come back here because Dobs is already suspicious.”

  “We’ll find her someplace safe to stay until she can sort out the situation with Van Houten. He won’t abuse her ever again. I promise.”

  She laid her palm on his chest so she could feel the beat of his heart against it. “I believe you one hundred percent.”

  He blew out a long exhale. “I didn’t want to mention this tonight, but it’s something you should know. I asked the police chief if Van Houten had filed a missing person report. The answer was no.”

  A tendril of dismay wound through her. “Why wouldn’t he?”

  “I have to assume he doesn’t want the police involved.”

  She wrestled with the implications of that. “Because he’s afraid they’ll find out he abused her? Or because he wants to capture her himself? Or because he’s my stalker?”

  His shoulder moved under her cheek in a shrug. “Possibly all three.”

  “You’re saying it’s not a good sign.”

  “It’s just another piece in the puzzle. But we’re going to forget about it until morning.”

  As she lay beside him, his heartbeat slow and steady beneath her palm, gratitude welled up in her chest. Big macho Tully had shared disturbing information with her instead of withholding it and using the excuse that it would worry her. He thought she was strong enough and smart enough to handle it. A few of the cracks in her soul knitted back together.

  Chapter 12

  Natalie jolted awake to find Tully already out of bed. She had the sense that there had been a noise that awakened her, but all was quiet now. In the dim light, she saw Tully bend to take something out of his overnight bag from where it sa
t on the floor beside her bed.

  “What is it?” she whispered and then jumped when the doorbell chime sounded through her electronic virtual assistant.

  “Stay here,” Tully said. She heard the unmistakable sound of a firearm being cocked. He’d gotten his gun out of the bag.

  He moved soundlessly to the bedroom door, stepping through and closing it behind him.

  Natalie grabbed her phone from the bedside table. It was 4:45 a.m.

  Would her stalker ring the doorbell? Had he gone that insane?

  She didn’t want to face whoever it was in her nightshirt, so she got out of bed and retrieved her clothes from the chair she’d dropped them on. She had her trousers almost buttoned when she heard a cut-off shriek from downstairs. It sounded feminine.

  She fastened and zipped her trousers at high speed before she tiptoed to the door, laying her ear against it. Now she could hear the rumble of Tully’s voice, so she eased the door open and pressed herself against the wall while she sidled to the top of the stairs.

  “It’s all right. I’m a friend of Natalie’s,” Tully was saying in a soothing tone. “If you promise not to bolt, I’ll go get her.”

  Natalie started down the stairs just as Tully appeared at the foot, his pistol held in one hand by the side of his thigh. “Good,” he said with a nod. “I believe our visitor is Regina Van Houten.”

  “Thank God!” Relief rushed through her as she trotted down the stairs. “But why did she come back here? Did Dobs find her?”

  Tully shook his head. “I scared the hell out of her, so I don’t know yet. I figured she’d rather talk to you.”

  Natalie dashed past him and into the living area. Regina sat on the sectional with her hands between her thighs, her shoulders slumped, staring straight ahead. Her dyed-brown hair was rumpled and she had a yellow stain on her white T-shirt.

  “Regina. I’m so glad you’re safe.” The other woman turned to stare dully at her when Natalie sat down next to her. “Would you like something to drink? Maybe some coffee?”