Dark of Night (39 page)

But she was right behind him, and he could feel her watching him from the doorway as he unfastened the makeshift bandage around his arm and shrugged out of his overshirt. His shoulder holster and sidearm hit the floor with a thud as he wasn't quite careful enough with it, in his haste to pull off his T-shirt.

The pain as he raised his arm made his eyes water, but he didn't give a shit. He just pushed it aside—both the pain and his analysis of whether or not it heightened his completely fucked-up sense of pleasure. At other times, he would've been way too far inside of his own head, but not now.

He was completely present, here in this little room, and he hesitated only slightly before he lifted the elastic waist of his shorts over his raging hard-on and slipped them down and off his legs.

He was doing what she'd told him to, and he looked up at her as she made a little sound of approval—a little “Mmm,” as if he were something being wheeled in on a dessert cart.

He loved the way she was looking at him, but the fact that he loved it made him feel self-conscious, so he turned and stepped into the shower. The water was too hot, and he adjusted it before he turned back to reach for the shower curtain.

“Leave it open.”

He put his arm back down, as she added, “Do
not
move. I'll be right back.”

Tracy vanished—he could hear her heading swiftly down the stairs. She was going to get her computer and her phone, as she promised. Jesus, with her out of the room, he was suddenly shaking, his knees actually weak. He knew he should shut the curtain—that doing so would further break the spell, but he didn't move. He didn't want to move.

He knew, also, that he should take himself in hand, literally—and remove sex from the table. But he didn't do that, either.

Instead he stood there, as the warm water ran down his face, down his body. His head and shoulders and arm stung, as did dozens of other little scrapes and cuts all over him, but he didn't care. He just wanted to get clean so that Tracy would touch him again.

Please Jesus, let her come back and touch him again.

His arm screamed as he pushed the water out of his face, squeegeeing it back through his hair.

“I said
don't move.”

She was back, putting her computer on the lid of the toilet, then closing the bathroom door behind her.

As he watched, she opened the mirrored medicine cabinet to peruse its contents, then rifled through both the closet and the cabinet under the sink. Whatever she was looking for, she didn't seem to find it. She didn't seem particularly perturbed, though, as she then took off her shirt and untied the rain jacket from her waist, leaving herself clad only in her underwear. And yes, her bra was, just as she'd described it, a relatively sturdy piece of equipment—white, like her panties—but sexy just the same.

Of course, Tracy Shapiro would've been sexy in a burlap sack.

The clasp of her bra was in the front, between her perfect breasts, and she reached as if to unfasten it as he watched, transfixed, as water pounded on his back.

“Don't look at me.”

He obeyed, averting his gaze, but… “Permission to speak.” His voice sounded rough and almost unfamiliar to his ears. He didn't wait for her to grant her permission, because he was afraid she might say no. “That doesn't work for me. The not looking …”

She changed her directive. “I agree.
Don't
stop looking at me and … Wash yourself.”

He found the soap by feel as she held his gaze, her own hands still on that front clasp. She waited to open it until he was lathering himself, and then there she was, in her incredible, full-breasted glory, her nipples tightly peaked, a rosy shade of dark pink on triangles of pale that were shaped like a bikini top—a contrast to her lightly tanned arms, stomach, and chest.

She smiled then—probably at the gone-to-heaven expression on his face—but then immediately wiped it away as she got back into this role that she was so obviously enjoying playing.

But that moment of reality was jarring. What in hell was he doing here?

This was not a casual hookup with some beautiful stranger. This woman worked with him.
For
him, really, although she'd argued against that point rather persuasively.

He'd always liked her.

And after the past few days, he really,
really
liked her.

He liked her point-blank, in-his-face opinions and questions. He liked her seemingly mindless chatter—because it wasn't mindless. She always had a point, even if it took her a while to get there. He liked her quicksilver smile and her melodic laughter. He liked the way she rolled her eyes and waved off the many things she considered inconsequential.

And he loved her matter-of-fact adventurousness when it came to sex. It shouldn't have surprised him that she'd be into something like this, but it did.

The way she looked naked was mere icing on the cake. Outrageously delicious and perfect icing, sure, but a total bonus.

But icing or no, it seemed unlikely that this was going to end well. How were they going to be able to look at each other when they next went into the office? How—

“Stop thinking,” she ordered him curtly. “I can tell that you're having second thoughts, so just stop it.” She stepped out of her panties and into the shower with him, closing the curtain behind her, cocooning them into what felt like a warm and completely private world.

She pushed her way under the water, gasping as she let it run down her face and her incredible body, as she reached up to push her fingers through her now-wet hair.

“I don't think I can do this,” he said, as he tried to shift back. But there was nowhere to go and his ass bumped the cold tile.

She pushed the water from her face, as if surfacing from a swimming pool, and blinked at him with long, dark eyelashes that were matted and glistening, making her look like a mermaid, escaped from the sea.

“I'm sorry,” she said, one elegant eyebrow raised. “Did I give you permission to speak?”

“May I have permission to speak?”

“No,” she said, holding out the soap to him. “Wash me. And don't stop until I tell you to.”

Wash her.

It was then he heard it. The sound of a motor—a low rumble, way in the background.

In a flash, Decker dropped the soap and shut off the water, pushing Tracy back against the wall, one hand up and over her mouth. “Shhh,” he warned her as she clung to him to keep her balance, as he used his body to trap her more securely against the tile wall.

She was soft, she was slick, and his leg was pressed tightly between her thighs, and Jesus, he was right—the sound that he'd heard was that of the electric garage door going up.

Tracy's eyes were wide as she stared at him over the top of his hand as she heard it, too.

He scrambled out of the shower and grabbed his sidearm, yanking it free from its holster. He had no pants—although he probably wouldn't have taken the time to pull them on, even if he had a pair.

He turned off the bathroom light, listening at the door before throwing it open, and checking the hall in both directions.

It was empty. He sensed Tracy behind him—she'd wrapped herself in a towel. There was silence, but it was brief before the rumble started again—this time no doubt the door was going back down.

“Get your clothes and follow me,” he told Tracy nearly silently, and she swiftly gathered them up before following him down the stairs. “Get ready to run. I'm going to—”

“I'm not going anywhere without you!”

“Yes, you are,” he countered. “It's my turn to give the orders. You're going out the back door—”

“Tracy?” A female voice called from the kitchen.

“Oh, my God,” Tracy said. “Linds?”

And yes, it was indeed Troubleshooters operative Lindsey Jenkins who
came around the corner, her weapon drawn. She immediately raised her hands at the sight of Decker's.

“Whoops,” Lindsey said, her eyes widening even more as she realized he was naked. “Holy shit! Sorry.
Sorry!”
She started to laugh—and disguised it as a cough as she respectfully averted her eyes, and then turned around. “I'm guessing you didn't get the message that we were on our way over… ?”

“Obviously not,” Tracy said. “Shoot, Deck, you're bleeding again.” Apparently she'd missed Lindsey's use of the plural pronoun, because she whipped off her towel and tried to use it to stanch the flow.

And, damnit, blood
was
dripping from his elbow onto the carpet runner on the stairs. Starrett was going to be pissed. Still, it wasn't as bad as it had been.

“Why don't you get some clothes from the truck and throw your jeans into the dryer,” Tracy told him. “I'll see if there are any bandages in the bathroom. If not, we'll improvise. I'm going to finish getting cleaned up and—”

She gasped as she caught sight of the man standing in the shadows, just behind Lindsey. It wasn't Mark Jenkins, but rather one of his SEAL friends. The quiet one. Jay Lopez.

“Oh, good. Hi, Jay,” Tracy said, holding her clothes up in an attempt to cover herself. It didn't work. Deck tried to hand the towel back to her, but she didn't take it. She turned and ran upstairs.

“Hey, Tracy. I'll, uh, do another perimeter check of the house,” Lopez said.

“Good plan,” Lindsey said briskly. “I'll make a quick sweep of the second floor and—”

Deck tucked the towel around his waist, because his arm really wasn't bleeding all that much, and … Jesus, this looked bad—because it looked like exactly what it was.

“Help Tracy,” he ordered Lindsey. “Lopez, don't go far. I want to get out of here as quickly as possible. Meet me in the garage.”

Lopez nodded and vanished.

Lindsey paused as she passed him on the stairs, stopping two steps up from him, so that they were eye level. “I
really
am sorry. But for the record? Tracy's a friend of mine. If you're taking advantage of her? I
will
kick your ass.”

“Help. Tracy.” He said it again, more clearly this time.

She nodded. “I'm going to say the same thing to her, because you're my friend, too. But for what it's worth, Chief?” She smiled, and her eyes sparkled, not just with amusement but with genuine approval.
“Hoo-yah.”

Sophia was pregnant.

Dave stared at her, and she stared back at him as she sat on the bed in the hotel suite, chin held high and defiant. She was crying, but she was wiping her tears away as fast as they fell.

“I'm not sorry,” she said. “You're looking at me as if I should say that I'm sorry, but I'm not.”

“How … ?” he breathed.

She tilted her head slightly and gave him a look, and he laughed—he couldn't help it. Sophia was
pregnant.

“Okay,” Dave said. “Yeah. I know
that
how, but… you're on the pill.” Even as he said the words, he remembered their first time, that first night. “But you skipped a day.”

She nodded. “I didn't think it would matter. And even if it did … I thought…”

Dave nodded, too. That very first night, at the bar in the hotel in Sacramento, they'd talked about the fact that they both wanted children.

Someday.

Of course that was before Anise Turiano roared back to life, like an apparition from hell. That was back when he'd foolishly believed he had a future.

He'd found his own little piece of heaven that night, in Sophia's arms, in her kisses, in her touch. She'd pulled him back onto a hotel room bed very much like this one, where they'd made love for that very first time.

He'd been so careful about making sure he didn't pin her down, even though he was on top. He'd been careful to pay attention to everything she said and did, every sound she made. He'd been careful—except for the part where he completely forgot to put on a condom.

“I remember,” Sophia whispered now, “that night so clearly.”

Dave remembered, too. Time had seemed to stand still as he'd kissed her, touched her, loved her. He'd moved almost excruciatingly slowly, with long, deep thrusts and equally languorous withdrawals. He could close his eyes and still see, burned into his brain, an image of Sophia's beautiful face,
her eyes closed and her lips slightly parted in ecstasy. He'd kissed her throat and the smooth softness of the underside of her chin, tasting her with his tongue as she spread her legs wider to take more of him, all of him.

He'd redefined pleasure that night as she'd come around him, clinging to him and kissing him, her mouth so hungry, so sweet, as her release seemed to shake her to her soul. He'd come, too, practically in unison with her, in a powerful rush, in slow motion as the entire world as he knew it was torn in half, as colors flashed behind his eyelids, as a full freaking choir of angels sang their hearts out.

He'd told her that he loved her, the words damn near ripped from his throat, as he crashed into her, inside of her—no barriers between them.

And then? After the fireworks were over, as he'd tried to gather up and re-form his brain from the shards that had exploded across the universe, Sophia had sighed and breathed his name. “Oh, Dave …”

And any lingering doubts that he may have had about entering a relationship wherein he knew, up-front, that he was his lover's second choice … ?

Completely obliterated.

He'd had no idea at the time that he and Sophia would have such a lasting souvenir from that evening. But it seemed somehow fitting and, yes, even perfect and sweet that they had.

And okay, maybe he
had
had an idea—when he'd realized that he'd failed to protect her. His panic had lasted about two seconds, before she'd reassured him that she was taking birth control pills to regulate her periods. She'd missed a day, yes—hard to keep up with a prescription regimen while being held hostage by crazed neo-Nazis—but it would be, she'd told him, no big deal.

Oops.

“And it's not bad for the …” He couldn't say the word
baby—
he was afraid he might burst into tears. “For everyone's health? That you've kept taking the pills even though you're pregnant?”

She shook her head. “The insert—the information—that comes with the prescription recommends testing for pregnancy if you don't get your period when you're supposed to and … We should probably get one of those home tests to be absolutely sure but… Dave, I'm pretty convinced.”