Blamed (16 page)

She whimpered under his assault, her touch lighting from his hips to his shoulders to his jaw. He didn’t give her a moment to breathe, or think, her senses awash in the raw seduction of his kiss.

It would be safer to hold a piece of herself apart. He was a spy, a liar and a stranger, and she’d be one smart cookie to take those factors into consideration. But the truth of the matter was what it had always been: Vick was
her
spy,
her
liar, and sure as hell wasn’t a stranger to her. She refused to hide anything, and in doing so offered him everything.

Surrendering with a happy moan, she deepened the kiss, learning him with each enticing lick and heated breath. His hold shifted to wrap around her torso, tightening almost to the point of pain, but she recognized the change, sensing its mirror in her.

Maybe if she held on tight enough, clung hard enough, this moment would last forever. Maybe
they
would last forever, and their time together would cease to feel less like the stolen moments typifying their past and more like a new beginning.

He’d offered her that exact chance with the fake IDs. Say yes, and she became Grace Morgan, her charming husband Paul never far from her side. They could have grand adventures, traveling the world together, exploring each other’s bodies and discovering how they fit together when they weren’t running for their lives, or taking the lives of others.

Say no...well. Say no, and she would wake up tomorrow as she’d woken today. Beth Faraday, with a target on her back. “Vick?”

His forehead rested against hers, chest rising and falling as he fought to catch his breath. “Don’t think about it,” he murmured, reading her mind. “Don’t think about anything but what I’m going to make you feel.” Large hands moved with surety over her ribs, her back, petting her through her clothing. “
Now
we undress.”

Boots, then socks, then jeans and sweater and tee, until she stood in the suite’s foyer in panties and a sports bra. The adhesive gauze on her upper arm itched under his regard, but she was far more concerned with the sight he presented in nothing but unbuttoned trousers and bare feet. “No big deal, but you could be shirtless all the time. If you wanted.” She cocked her hip to one side, blatantly ogling. “Just saying.”

“Stop looking and start touching.” Looping an arm around her waist, he lifted her off her feet and covered her mouth with his. He carried her to the king-sized bed as he kissed her, standing at its edge while she knelt on the mattress. “Or don’t, and let me touch you instead.”

Splaying a hand over his bare chest, she held him off. “I want to try something new.” New for her, anyway.

His gaze turned slumberous, sensual. “Oh?”

She could kiss this man for the confidence he instilled in her. From day one, he had allowed her to use him to explore what she could and couldn’t do, what she did and didn’t like. Her fantasies would be his, she knew—she had only to ask. “Yup. So if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stand there and take it like a man.”
Her
man.

Her lips traced a path around the white bandage stuck to his hard torso, tongue flicking out to taste his skin as she made her way toward his navel. Her lip caught on the trail of midnight hair meandering past the gaping waistband of his trousers, and she pressed a series of light, teasing kisses down, down, until the thin, black cotton of his briefs impeded her progress. “I need you naked. You get to choose who removes the rest of your clothes.” When he hesitated, she shrugged. “It depends if you want my mouth on your cock now, or a few minutes from now.”

His pants and underwear were on the floor before she finished her sentence, revealing an impressively strong body with more than its fair share of battle scars—including a bitch of a surgical scar on his hip and leg that she knew, she just
knew
, was from Kabul. Her grin faltered, but she focused on the heavy erection standing at attention in front of her. Biting her lip, she slid off the bed, sinking to her knees at his feet. Her hand curved around him, gripping firmly.

His abdominal muscles twitched, and she glanced up when he groaned. “Sensitive,
honey?
” The more she thought about it, the more Paul Morgan the Rugged Texan floated her proverbial boat. That twang was positively lethal.

“You ought to know better than to tease me.” Grabbing a fistful of her hair, he tugged gently, tilting her head back to smile down at her. His blue eyes glowing like the heart of a flame, he lifted his other hand to stroke a thumb over the curve of her cheek. “What I want from you...it should scare you.” He sobered. “It scares me.”

“Don’t think about it,” she whispered, offering him his own reassuring words. “Don’t think about anything but what I’m going to make you feel.” Adjusting her hold, she slipped the head of his cock between her lips.

A rush of salty wetness gathered on her tongue, the taste of his pre-come making her mouth water. Her eyes closed as she licked around the head, swirling over a sensitive vein, and salivating at the discovery of his various textures. All that delicacy wrapped tight around a core of iron need, and Beth knew she was holding his heart in reverse.

Stroking him with her tongue and hand, she cupped his testicles and listened to him swear a blue streak. His grip in her hair never forced, but urged instead, guiding her back and forth over his length as she strove to take him deeper. Hips moving in a careful rhythm, he stood over her, a proud, naked god to her penitent worshipper.

Beth had zero problem worshipping Vick in this manner. Resting on her heels, she sucked the crown, tonguing the capped edge before pulling back. “What would you say if I confessed I like going to my knees for you?” Another tidbit she’d learned about herself, but something she doubted she would ever have felt comfortable exploring with another man. Only Vick could be this to her, for her.

A tremor rocked him. “I’d say there is no luckier bastard on the planet.” Face flushed and eyes glazed, he used the fist in her hair to bring her to her feet. “So I’ll warn you now, Elisabeth. I am
never
letting you go.” Cupping her jaw with hard fingers, he held her mouth open and deliberately laved first her top lip, then her bottom, with the flat of his tongue. Wet and seeking and so hot she feared her legs might collapse under her, his action scrambled her brain, and she barely heard his growled vow. “Where we go, we go together. From now until forever.”

He tumbled her to the bed before rolling onto his back and dragging her atop him in an intimate straddle. “Since we’re in agreement that my bullet wound is worse than your bullet wound—”

“Hey!”

“—you’re going to be doing the heavy lifting, darling. Except...” Not telegraphing his move at all, he whipped the spandex sports bra over her head, leaving her breasts to bounce free for his greedy gaze. A second later, her plain cotton panties had been destroyed, ripped at the seams in an embarrassingly swoon-worthy display of rippling male arm muscle. “There. Much better.” Callused palms curved over her breasts, seeming to weigh them as he flicked the pads of his thumbs over her aching nipples.

She shuddered and dropped her hands to his pectorals, letting him support her weight as her spine arched, thrusting into his touch. “Oh, God.” Another shiver, this time arrowing straight down her body to throb in her clit. “Suck on them. Please, Vick. Please put your mouth on me.”

Groaning, he placed a hand between her shoulder blades and urged her upper body toward him. “Nothing gets me hotter than hearing you beg for me.” His teeth closed gently around one nipple, then his lips, and he suckled her, the tip of his tongue flicking with aggravating precision over the sensitive bud. His lips danced over the lower curve of her breast before taking a sweet bite, and again until the same attention was given to the neglected one.

“Good,” she gasped, one hand slipping to hold him by the hair. “Because I love begging you.” Dear God, the man’s tongue was magical. Knees tucked tight against his hips, she writhed against his erection, slick folds sliding up and down in a taunting mimic of what they both desperately wanted.

“Baby. Jesus, baby.” He gripped her hips, slowing her movement. “Don’t make me come before I’m ready.” Fingertips digging into her flesh, he dragged her along his length, the head of his cock a tease against her needy clit. “Fuck, feel that? Getting me all wet.” His accent rumbled rougher as his language grew coarse. “I love it, baby. I love feeling how bad you need me inside you. So empty it hurts, doesn’t it?”

She pressed her lips to his, needing to staunch the flow of his words. Taking them into her mouth until they vibrated in her bones.
Her bones.
Oh, those fuckers had always known the truth of it, hadn’t they? Brilliant bones, telling her to take her spy and ride him, force him to ease the hurt.

Unsurprisingly, he seized control of the kiss, bossy bastard that he was, but he tore his lips from hers before they could lose themselves in one another again. “I need to...oh, fuck, I need to be in you, Beth.” Panting, expression agonized, he groaned. “Condoms. Ah, bloody hell, where are the fucking condoms?”

“I have an IUD.” When his lips firmed, she punched his shoulder, irritation flaring bright to temporarily subsume her dizzying lust. “But you already knew I had one, didn’t you? You know, this habit of knowing all my personal details is turning real annoying, real fast.”

Taking a deep breath in a vain attempt at calm, he lifted gentle hands to her face. “I might know, but I would never ask. I won’t risk your safety just because I forgot to buy rubbers.”

He wouldn’t risk her, but there was no risk at all, not between them. “You’re mine, Vick.” She stroked her thumb over his lower lip before kissing him, her own stamp of possession. “Come inside me.”

Straightening, she gripped him in one hand, positioned him at her entrance, and slowly—oh, Jesus fucking Christ, so goddamn slowly—took him into her body. His thickness stretched her, his length filled her. The fit of him, clasped tight by her inner walls, because this was only her second time having sex in the history of ever, set off a chain reaction of tiny orgasms, each ripple increasing in intensity as she cried his name.

“Beth.” His back arched off the bed when she clamped around him, her hips like a vise as he thrust up into her. Two fingertips found her clit, rubbing with fervor until she came in a maddened rush. “
Beth.
”

She felt the jetting of his release deep inside her, dug her fingernails into his chest as they rode out their orgasms together before collapsing on him in a boneless puddle. “You are...yeah.” Okay, so, full sentences weren’t really happening yet. Good to know.

Shifting them onto their sides, he kneaded her bottom with one big hand, his massage as intimately possessive as his next words. “We can both agree this is mine now, can’t we, Beth.” No questioning, only well-earned male arrogance.

She rolled her eyes before burying her face in the pillow. “I think I might still need some convincing.” Where she found the ability to flirt with any sort of coherence when half her brain cells had been fried by orgasmic pleasure, she had no idea.

“Give me ten minutes, and I’ll be ready to convince you all over again.”

“Only ten, old man?”

“Yes. Only ten.” His hand came down on her ass, stinging sinfully. She moaned, wriggling under his touch, and he chuckled, the masculine sound causing sensual shivers to trip across her nerve endings. “But for now, we need sustenance.”

Her eyes drifted shut as post-sex lethargy caught up to her. “Room service. Yes.” She felt her body drifting hungrily toward sleep, but her growling stomach prompted a response, and she lifted one hand toward the room phone before it thumped uselessly to the mattress. “Cheeseburger, medium-rare, with everything on it except onion. Sweet-potato fries. Hot chocolate.” Her head grew heavy on the pillow, her voice distant to her own ears. “Truffle mac-and-cheese. A bottle of Riesling.”

She heard his faint laughter as consciousness faded. “Anything else, love?”

“Frosted Flakes.” And then she was asleep.

Chapter Thirteen

Vick was halfway through a bowl of Frosted Flakes, leaning against the headboard, when she spoke. “Do you remember when I said Belgium was my favorite of your aliases, because I believed you were telling me the truth?” The question was hesitant, wary.

When he nodded encouragingly, Beth fixed her stare on the empty cereal bowl propped between her folded legs. One of her elegant hands worried the spoon, hands he knew for a fact had once upon a time carried calluses born of regular contact with guns and other weaponry. But when she’d curled her fingers around his cock and stroked—oh, how she’d stroked him—all Vick had felt was soft, smooth flesh. Those hands of hers stated more clearly than any words exactly how much her life had altered over the course of the past year.

He was so happy for her, and yet also completely devastated. Because he knew, perhaps better than anyone else involved, what T-16’s hit could cost in the end.

She glanced up, her expression still sleepy and sated from their earlier loving. “I was sixteen, as you know. Dad and Casey had started taking me out on assignments, because they thought I might have a career in the military ahead of me. They wanted to...test me out. It was mostly observing what they did and how a tactical team worked in the real world. I liked what I saw enough to consider following in Casey’s footsteps.

“In Belgium, though, it was just Dad and me. Our target was a foreign diplomat who, well, wasn’t very diplomatic. And Dad is...have you ever met my father?”

“I have not.” Once a public figure found more often than not waving his magic money wand over Congress’s closed-door sessions, Frank Faraday had grown reclusive in recent years. Now it was Tobias playing politics in Washington. Vick’s intelligence showed that the patriarch’s name only popped up in quarterly company newsletters and for signatory purposes, though he continued to maintain his position as CEO of Faraday Industries.

Beth nodded. “At the time, Dad was, um, battling some inner demons. He wasn’t well, but he hadn’t told any of us yet.”

Vick could only guess at what sort of demons Frank Faraday battled—a man who had swept his entire family into a life of making money from the spilling of blood, including innocent children’s. Beth had been innocent, once upon a time.

“Anyway, he’d been hiding the signs, thinking he could handle whatever came his way. Typical guy behavior, not that anyone thought to ask him if something was wrong. Not even Mom knew, and my parents don’t keep secrets from one another.” Hefting the bowl, she leaned over the side of the bed and set it on the tray that held the rest of their licked-clean dishware and cutlery.

Vick stared at the sleek expanse of warm flesh her bending revealed, the long line of her spine and her entire left side from shoulder to hip suddenly naked as the sheet pulled away. He swallowed around the knot of lust blocking his throat and moved to place his bowl next to hers. “Except for this one, I take it?”

“Yeah. So we’re in position on this rooftop in Brussels, not far from the café where you bought me the coffee earlier that day.” A sad smile flirted with the corners of her mouth before disappearing, and she rolled onto her back with a sigh. “It was late, the sky was dark. I was the lookout. The target eventually came out onto his hotel room balcony for a smoke, and Dad froze. Not, like, in fear or anything, but in the middle of an episode. He was trembling, his words slurred, and he said his vision had gone all blurry.”

Ah. It seemed Frank Faraday’s demons weren’t psychological but physical.
A
pity
, Vick mused, uncharitably, as he stretched out next to her on the mattress. His fingers linked with hers, a punch of pride and possessive satisfaction hitting him in the sternum when she gripped him tight.

Her swallow was audible as she continued her story. “A family as old as mine, we’ve had a few generations to develop a motto. More than one, actually, but the motto I remembered that night was,
A
Faraday never leaves a job unfinished.
I was scared.” Turning her head to the side, she searched his gaze—seeking what, he didn’t know. “I was scared because my dad appeared to be having some kind of fit, and because there was no backup team with us, and I was really just a kid, but mostly I was scared of letting down my family. So I sort of, I dunno,
rolled
Dad out of the way, lined up the shot, and...and killed the diplomat.” Her free hand lifted to stroke over his jaw, rasping across the stubble he hadn’t attended to in almost forty-eight hours. “Afterward, when the proverbial dust settled and we realized that Dad couldn’t do nearly as much as he typically did for the company, things changed. All of us siblings stepped up to the plate, and I’d managed to convince everyone—and don’t ask me how, because I honestly haven’t got a clue—that what I had done to the diplomat in Brussels hadn’t affected me. You know...mentally.

“The reason I love the memory of James Horner buying silly, sixteen-year-old me a coffee so much is because those were the last hours of my life in which I felt like a silly sixteen year old. Swear to God, I didn’t know what murdering that man on his balcony would mean, not for me, not for my family, not for Faraday Industries. I didn’t know I’d spend the next ten years getting better and better at dealing out death, but that’s what happened, and it took me far too long to figure out it’s a choice I would never have made for myself. But—” she cupped his cheek, her hazel eyes imploring, “—it’s a choice I
would
make every damn time for the people I love.”

“Beth.” Her name was little more than a whisper, but it held the entire world of his feelings. Every last bloody emotion he possessed, encapsulated in those four letters like a dragonfly in amber.

“I’m willing to do anything to help my family. But until today, I wasn’t really sure they would do anything to help me.”

Vick’s chest seized at the pain, the doubt, the sheer wonder in her quiet voice. “Oh, baby. Come here.” Needing to soothe the ache her words had instilled and ease the tension in her body, he gathered her close, pulling her to sprawl haphazardly over him on the bed.

Immediately, her arms curled around his shoulders, and his hands found naked skin, one palm petting up and down her spine in slow passes, the other splayed over her hip, his fingertips digging gently into the upper curves of her bottom. He felt her shiver against him, though the luxurious hotel room wasn’t cold in the least, but he thought he might understand the emotional catharsis she experienced, having shared these secrets with him.

Too soon, she lifted her head from his shoulder. Her gaze drank him in, as though he were a book she was hungry to read. “Do you have a family, Vick? Parents, siblings...children?”

“
No.
” He cleared his throat, tried again. “No. Only child, parents retired to Northumberland a couple of years ago.” His mouth was a parched, barren wasteland. It was then he realized exactly how easy it had been to fall for her, his various and sundry aliases never forcing him to share anything deeply personal about himself...except for his continued obsession with her. If they were to be together—and he bloody well meant for them to be together, come hell or high water—he’d have to start filling in the blanks. “I’ve never been married, nor engaged, and I haven’t got any kids that I know of. If I did...” He took a deep breath, because she deserved to know.
She waited her whole life for you.
“If I did, that child would have to be at least eight years old. Maybe nine.”

“I...
oh.
” She blinked rapidly. “It’s been that long for you?”

“Technically, until this afternoon, it had only been two years. But you know that already.”

“And I’m not pregnant,” she said in a rush, a hectic flush heating her cheeks. “Or, I mean, I
wasn’t
pregnant. I didn’t get pregnant. The first time. From when we...and you...oh, Jesus.” Eyes squeezed shut, she blew out an unsteady breath before spearing him with her direct gaze once more. “Should I ask you why?”

“You already know why.”

After studying him for a moment, she nodded, palm flattening on his chest. Directly over his beating heart. “I do.”

Those two little words hit him in the gut, twisting, curling.
Someday
,
baby.
Someday.
But he could only make that promise in the silence of his heart, because there was the distinct chance she would never want to see him again after her brother finished his chat with T-16 tomorrow night—though he’d do his damnedest to convince her otherwise.

The hand on her hip slid down to cup her bottom fully, and he permitted himself one solid, groping squeeze. God, she was perfection. “Shower or bath?”

Her spine curved, pushing her backside better into his grip as her lashes fluttered to shield a drowsy gaze just waking with renewed lust. “What?”

Heat gathered in his lower body at her expression, causing his cock to lengthen, thicken. “We need to wash off the day. I’m giving you the option—shower or bath?”

“Together?” Pink heat stole over her cheeks. “Um, logistically, which one is easier? For sex, I mean.”

Just like that, he was hard. He considered her long legs and strong arms, the weight of her fit body, and imagined shoving her shoulders against the shower wall, grabbing her ass in both hands, and finding home between her thighs for his painful erection. But even as his dick pulsed with wanting that very scenario, he remembered his injury, and his mind wandered to the possibilities of a bath. She could ride him again, hips whipping beneath the hot water. Or he could put her on her knees and bend her over the side, coming into her from behind and letting her tight-as-fuck pussy drive him insane. Not to mention he could have her sit on the edge, spread her legs, and finally get his tongue where it needed to be—”Bath. Definitely the bath.”

With an impish grin, she rolled off him, leaving him swallowing a groan as he hauled his unclothed body from the mattress and preceded her into the bathroom, with its stone and tile and gleaming fixtures. He slid back the clear glass shower door to turn the hot-and-cold knobs for the tub, letting the water from the spigot run over his fingers until it reached a satisfactory temperature before closing the drain.

The heavy, pounding sound of the tub being filled echoed off the walls as Vick turned to look at Beth where she sat on the bathroom counter completely naked yet somehow prim, with her straight spine, clasped hands and crossed ankles. “Don’t you look like a picture.”

Her lower lip caught between her teeth as she grinned. “The naughty kind you’d keep in some private album on your cell phone, you mean?”

“I’d never trust my phone with a photo that precious.” He strode to her, notching his hips between her legs when she shifted to make room for him. His erection brushed over the soft skin of her inner thigh, and his stomach muscles clenched. “But something tells me you wouldn’t mind being naughty and posing for me, would you, darling?” Sweeping his hand up her body, from knee to nape, he tugged her forward, enjoying the sudden unsteadiness of her breathing.

Her gaze dropped to his mouth, tongue darting out to wet her lips. “I’ll be naughty if you tell me to.” Her eyes met his, and she smiled, lopsided and sweet and sexy and not the least bit uncertain. “When it comes to naughtiness, I’m yours to command.”

He shouldn’t have been surprised by it, but he was. The woman he had watched Beth become possessed so much strength and internal fortitude that it was all too easy to ignore the more subtle facets of her personality. Or, at least, the side of her personality she shared with him, her first—and goddamn only—lover. Anything she wanted in the bedroom, he’d kill for the privilege of giving to her.

She wanted him to boss her around, make her beg for orgasm. The psychology behind it didn’t matter, but her preferences sure as hell did, and when it came right down to it, the
real
surprise was how neatly her desires aligned with his tendencies.

Vick had long ago started referring to Beth as his. His assassin, his obsession, his lover, his future. All
his.
She had been his for so long, in his mind, that he now wondered if the possessive bent he considered his natural inclination had developed
because of
her. In the seven years since their first kiss, he hadn’t even considered sleeping with anyone else, and before that kiss, it had been at least a year of unintentional celibacy. James Bond he wasn’t.

But the fact remained that he’d spent the better part of a decade building his sexual fantasies around this woman, and those fantasies had perhaps shaped his current approach to sex, more than the approach had shaped the fantasies.

Hell, he ached to command her, to control her pleasure, and it didn’t take a shrink to figure out why: He could bind her to him with what he did with her, to her, for her. If she needed him, then maybe...maybe this time she wouldn’t leave him.

Because leaving him is what it always felt like, whether their paths in the field had diverged because of his mission or hers. She always held the power, to stay or go, whereas he was a dog on the government’s leash, owned by SIS, and not even his deepest secret—that he loved Beth Faraday to the depths of his soul—belonged to him anymore.

Shaking off the darkness sneaking insidiously into his brain with that train of thought, he dipped his head to lave her bottom lip, the sugar-sweet taste of her, a remnant of their cereal, almost too wholesome to bear. “Damn right, you’re mine.” His mouth covered hers with a familiar ease that did a number on his heart, but he refused to overthink it. This was another fantasy—the fantasy where they had enough time together for the threads of a relationship to weave into place, leaving them thoroughly entwined. Familiarity, with her lips parting under his, was a bloody blessing. “Keep your legs spread.”

She blinked slowly, as drugged by the kiss as he was, but did as she was told. “What are you...?
Oh.
”

He’d dropped to his knees and gripped her sleek inner thighs with bruising fingertips. “I’m going to give you the tongue lashing you deserve, and you’re going to be a good girl and let me.” He used his thumbs to spread her, unable to tear his gaze from the slick folds his mouth watered to taste. How many times had he imagined doing just this?
Oh
,
Christ
,
so many fucking times.