Bare Facts (14 page)

He pulled back, staring down at her. Then he traced one finger over the full globes of her breasts. She shifted her shoulders, waiting for his caress. He took one of her nipples between his thumb and forefinger, pinching lightly.

She shook with need, unable to wait for him.

She reached between their bodies, but he shifted his hips out of her reach. His mouth fastened on her left nipple, suckling her strongly. She undulated against him, her hips lifting toward him. He drew his other hand down her body, his fingers tangling in the hair at her center.

He caressed her between her legs until she was frantically holding his head to her breasts, trying to find her release, but it remained just out of her reach. She skimmed her hands down his body, caressing his hip bone, and then moving her fingers around to his cock.

His breath hissed out as she reached between his legs to cup his sac and caress his length.

“There’s a condom in the nightstand.”

“I’m on the pill,” she said, too busy exploring him to really pay attention to what he said. But she did pay attention to the way his breath caught whenever she scored his sac with her nails.

“I haven’t always been careful,” he said, shifting over her, opening the nightstand drawer and pulling out a condom. He tossed it on her stomach.

“Put it on me.”

“With pleasure.”

She placed it on his tip and then rolled it down his hard length. He groaned deep in his throat. She started to reach lower again, but he caught her hand and stretched it over her head. He lifted her leg up around his hip.

She felt him hot, hard, and ready at her entrance, but he made no move to take her. She looked up at him.

“Watch me take you, Charity, and know that this means that you belong to me.”

He thrust inside her then, lifting her up, holding her with his big hands as he repeatedly drove into her. He went deeper than he had earlier. She felt completely full, stretched and surrounded by him.

He bit her neck carefully and sucked against her skin. She suspected he was marking her as his, because he’d looked up at her before deliberately drawing on her skin. She wanted to do the same to him. To show the world that this man was hers.

Everything tightened inside her until she felt her climax spread through her body. Her skin was pulsing, her body tightening around his plunging cock. A minute later, he came, crying her name and holding her tightly to his chest.

She rested her head on his shoulder and held him. Wrapped completely around his body, she realized the truth of what he’d said. She
was
his. She knew he meant temporarily, but it felt permanent and she’d spent her entire life afraid of permanency. Afraid of being this close to one person because she knew how fragile life was. She knew that it took one careless act to take someone from this life.

And Daniel was playing a very dangerous game, one that she wasn’t too sure she could keep him safe in. That was what really scared her. Not Sekijima or the people he sent after Daniel, but the fact that Daniel didn’t care who was sent after him. He wasn’t going to hide and stay safe.

C
harity knew something was off-balance in her life, and she suspected it was herself. She showered in one of the guest bathrooms in Daniel’s luxury apartment. Anna had knocked on the bedroom door, handed Charity her pants, and then said she needed to see her in fifteen minutes.

It should have been embarrassing but somehow hadn’t been. Instead, Daniel had offered her his bathrobe and directed her to this bathroom.

She soaped her body, lingering over the hickey he’d left between her breasts. Her body ached from his possession and she felt in flux, as if she was between the woman she’d been her entire adult life and a new woman she was meant to become.

It was dangerous, this crazy feeling that she experienced whenever she was around Daniel, because she needed to be completely in control. She wrapped her arms around her waist and sank down against the marble wall of the shower. The water washed over her, and, for a brief second, she let herself go. Let herself believe that she was falling in love with Daniel. Let her mind’s eye remember the beauty of those Yakuza tattoos down his arms and back.

And she refused at this moment to dwell on their significance. On the fact that she was going to have to force Daniel to come clean about his past. And admit to being in the Dragon Lords.

The Dragon Lords were dangerous and far-reaching. For the first time since she’d taken the assignment to protect Daniel, she had some real fear that she might not be able to keep him safe. Until that moment when she’d seen his back, she’d thought there wasn’t any enemy of his that she couldn’t protect him from.

But now Sekijima’s actions took on a new significance: he was sending his assassin squad after Daniel, hoping to take him completely out of this world.

That sobering thought was enough to tinge the happiness she’d felt a few seconds ago. There was no happy-ever-after. Hell, she knew that. She wasn’t the type to buy into fairy tales. Even as a little girl she hadn’t really wanted a white knight to save her. She’d always imagined saving him.

She turned off the shower and toweled dry, refusing to look at herself in the mirror, not wanting to confront herself and see something in her eyes she didn’t want to accept.

She dressed carefully in a clean pair of leather pants. She hated the way they chafed when she sweated, but leather offered more protection than any other material. And the pants were subtle and moved with her skin. Plus, these pants had built-in pockets for all the weapons she liked to carry. She put on a cotton T-shirt and tucked it into the pants, then put on her shoulder holster with the Sig Sauer she always carried.

At the small of her back she fastened a second gun, this one a small pistol. She added a thin throwing dagger next to the gun, then put her earpiece microphone in and listened to the conversations of her friends.

They were discussing the case and she knew when she left the bathroom she had to stop acting like…well, like such a girl. She needed to be focused and all business. There would be no more little dalliances like the one she’d just had with Daniel.

She had an ankle sheath for another knife and one she strapped onto her thigh. She was as armed as she could be, but she had the fear that there weren’t enough weapons to protect Daniel if he was determined to draw Sekijima out.

She pulled her hair back into a ponytail so it would be out of her face and then put on her shoes. Ready as she’d ever be, she left the bathroom, following the sound of the voices.

Anna, Justine, and Daniel were all sitting in the living room. Everyone looked up as she walked in—she hated the silence as they watched her. “Catch me up on what’s going on,” she said.

Justine raised one eyebrow. “The cops will be here in about fifteen minutes to take your statement. I had to bring Sam into it—he’s forwarded the threats Daniel received in D.C. The local cops offered to assign someone to watch this place.”

“I’ve declined,” Daniel said. “The fewer people involved, the better. Sekijima has proved he’s not afraid to strike down anyone around me.”

“True,” Charity said, “and we’re enough protection.”

“You’re certainly armed for it,” Daniel said. “If you’d come into my suite looking like this, I would never have doubted your skills.”

“Is that a compliment?” she asked.

“If you want it to be.”

There was an edge to every word he uttered, and she had to wonder what was going on in his head. Some men were easy to read, but Daniel was always closed to her. She had no idea what he thought or what motivated him.

She shrugged. “This place actually wouldn’t be too bad to secure if you want to set up here to draw Sekijima out.”

“I’ve got a message in to Sam.”

“About?”

“You ladies going back to D.C. I’m changing the focus of your work for me. I just want you to do some research and provide a location for Sekijima if you can find it. No more bodyguard work.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because as you said, Sekijima isn’t afraid to take down everyone around me.”

“You can’t protect us now,” Charity said.

“The hell I can’t.”

The time away from Charity, even for just those few minutes, had reinforced his need to protect her. He’d worked with women before, so he knew his motivation wasn’t her gender.

It was those clear gray eyes. Those eyes that looked out of her face, so fierce and determined to catch Sekijima. Those eyes warned him that if she were caught, she would give nothing away.

Sekijima would revel in that—he’d torture her and Daniel would go berserk. He’d been concentrating on focusing his anger on Sekijima, but if something happened to Charity, he knew he’d take out all of Seattle and everyone from here to Vancouver.

“Enough of this jerking us back and forth. You’re the boss, we’re on the job, and that’s the end of it,” Justine said.

“Call Sam if you want to, but we’re too deeply involved to pull back now,” Charity added.

“Don’t be fooled because we’re girls,” Anna said. “You’re looking at the best in the business.”

Daniel wanted to groan inside where no one could hear it. “I’m not jerking you around.”

“I know,” Charity said. “I…I want you to consider letting us use a decoy for you. We’ll keep you safely tucked away.”

A decoy. Never. He ran from no one and nothing. He shook his head.

“Then we’d better listen to Anna’s plan, because it looks like we’re all staying here.”

He listened to the women talk and look over the plans for his San Juan home. But he knew he needed to draw back, and that if he had any chance of protecting Charity and her friends, he needed to distance himself from them.

And he also knew that Sekijima wasn’t going to give them time to set up anything. Daniel knew his old friend wanted him dead—now. The man was striking at him in increasingly frequent intervals.

“Daniel?

“What?”

“Anna asked if you had the plans for the house.”

“Yes. They are in my study.”

“Will you get them?”

He nodded and pivoted on his heel, stalking down the hall. His mind was frantically racing over the possibilities. He had an old number…the phone was at Sekijima’s older brother’s house. Von had been injured in a car crash as a boy and the once-powerful Gashira Hosa had been paralyzed.

That action had driven both Daniel and Sekijima to revenge and, eventually, up the ladder in the Dragon Lords. Daniel rubbed the back of his neck as he stared out the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. The skyline of Seattle, with the glittering water of the bay, was spread out before him.

He’d always felt so powerful and proud when he’d stood here. Always felt very much a man in charge of his own destiny. But today he’d realized he was still a pawn. Still not the Oyabun of his own life. And it was time to wrest power back.

Time to find his way back into a life that he’d always thought he had. One where he walked alone.

“Did you find them?”

He glanced over his shoulder as Charity entered. She was wearing leather again, and he knew he was developing a fetish for seeing her long, sexy legs encased in that fabric. This weakness, this out-of-control feeling, was exactly why he needed to get away from her.

“Not yet.”

She came into his study and closed the richly colored, walnut-paneled door behind her. Her boot heels made a muted sound against the carpet.

“Where did you learn to walk like that?” he asked, the words torn out of his throat. She moved like a wet dream. All sensuous gliding. Her shoulders back, breasts thrust forward, hips rolling.

“On the catwalk…you like it?”

“I’d have to be dead not to.”

She nodded. “You give nothing away.”

“It’s how I’ve stayed alive for so long.”

She walked around the perimeter of the room, stopping beneath the portrait that he’d had commissioned to go on the wall. It was in the style of the old Japanese master. Large, dominant, and full of fantasy images, it captured for Daniel a feeling of the past.

It reminded him of the old days, and that kept him on his toes, usually. Seeing Charity standing in front of it just reminded him that he wanted her. For the first time he thought of the future in terms as something other than survival.

With Charity he longed to be a different man. The kind who would plant his seed in her belly and then watch her grow with his child. The type who’d build her a big mansion that she could live in and then live there with her. The type who…didn’t have a death sentence hanging over him.

“Daniel?”

“Yes?”

“You are staring at me and I don’t think it’s a good thing.”

Fuck. She messed with his head…“It’s all good. Your walk is definitely not something that a bodyguard should be able to do.”

“Why is that?”

“Because it brings men to their knees.”

She walked over to the large Japanese wood desk and hopped up on the surface. “Will it work with Sekijima?”

Daniel shook his head. “He’d let you believe it was working right up until he slipped a blade between your ribs.”

Her eyes widened but she didn’t show any fear. “He’s not going to compromise?”

“Not at all. He won’t stop until he has me and he’ll use anyone to that end.”

Charity watched Daniel carefully. She’d let him hide things about his past, but no more. When he’d left the room, she’d mentioned to the other women that Daniel had once been in the Yakuza, that he bore the traditional tattooing of a gang member.

Then Anna had started researching him, stumbling onto something that shocked all three of them. Daniel had paid a blackmailer off once before. There on the page it was hard to get all of the details, but the end result was clear. Despite his legitimate business interests, Daniel had definitely done some illegal things.

Things he’d been fined for and warned that jail time was an option if he didn’t clean up his act.

Charity realized that she didn’t know Daniel. She’d thought him a man of honor, a man who lived by his own moral compass, and it had been shocking to find out that wasn’t so.

“Why won’t Sekijima stop?”

“It’s just not a concept he understands,” Daniel said.

“What about you? Do you understand stopping?”

He walked over to her, coming right up to where she sat on his desk. He put his hands on either side of her hips and stepped forward until his thighs brushed against her dangling legs.

“Not with you.”

“Don’t, Daniel. Every time you touch me I forget something important.”

“What’s that?” he asked. His hands grasped her hips and she closed her eyes for a second.

This close to him, it was impossible not to feel surrounded. The warmth of his body, the minty freshness of his breath, the scent of his expensive aftershave…

“That you’re not the man I think you are,” she said, forcing her mind to stay focused. “That you are hiding something from me.”

“You know all my secrets now,” he said. “You’ve seen my tattoos, the scarlet letter that stains my skin from my past.”

God, she ached for him. Even now, even knowing he wasn’t the man she thought he was, she still ached to comfort him. To find a way to make a life with him.

But he was a man who walked on both sides of the law and she was firmly on one side only. On the side of all law-abiding citizens, and it was something she refused to compromise.

“If it were just a stain, you would have moved on,” she said the words softly but they echoed in the room. Echoed in the space that slowly developed between them as he stepped away from her.

“What are you saying?”

“Anna’s uncovered something in your past…another blackmail attempt.” She chose her words carefully because she had wanted to hear the story from him and not make him reveal it because they’d find out another way.

He shook his head, cursing succinctly under his breath. “How did she find out about that?”

“There’s nothing we can’t find out when we start working a case. That’s why we’re so good.” She wanted to grab him by the shoulders and force him to answer the damn questions. Tell her the fricking truth for once.

“That really has nothing to do with what’s happening today. Leave that alone.”

“That? Can’t you be more specific?” she asked, unwilling to let this go.

“Yes, but I won’t be. I didn’t give you carte blanche to poke around in my life. There are things in my past—incidents, if you will—that are better left there. Things even I don’t want to remember, much less have someone like you know about them.” Daniel ran his hands through his hair, ruffling his civilized image.

She didn’t understand him. She knew that protecting her had somehow become important to him, or was that simply a ruse he was using to keep her at bay? Dammit, was she really going to fall for another man who didn’t see her for who she was? How many times did she have to learn that lesson?

She wasn’t stupid, she reminded herself. But when it came to the men she fell for, she felt like an idiot sometimes.

“We’re not going to stop digging. This threat from Sekijima is too dangerous and without full knowledge of why he’s after you…we might make a mistake.”

Daniel stalked away, back to the floor-to-ceiling windows, where he placed his hands against the glass and leaned forward.