DOMINIC (Dragon Security Book 3) (11 page)

“Do you think it has answers about Peter?”

“Possible.”

I snatched it from his hand. “I want Sam to take a look at it.”

“Okay.”

“And you and Amy should go to the safe house, get some rest. We’ll figure out what to do about the warrant for your arrest tomorrow.”

He shrugged. “Not my biggest concern. I’m more concerned for the apparent hitmen who thought it was okay to take me out in the middle of a diner parking lot.”

“I’ll have Hayden look into it.”

Dominic stepped back and leaned against the counter, watching me for a long minute. “There’s one other thing.”

“Do I want to hear it?”

“Edgar told me that Emily was convinced someone was watching me. Someone close to someone I knew here.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. I sort of dismissed it because Edgar is a little paranoid. But…”

I knew what he was trying not to say to me. He thought she was talking about Luke.

“Luke’s gone, Dominic.”

“I know.”

“He’s not coming back.”

I’d never really said it out loud before. It sounded so strange on my lips, words that I never wanted to believe, let alone speak aloud. It tore through my soul like a rip in gossamer wings.

He must have seen the pain on my face. He came to me, wrapping me in his arms. I pressed my face against his chest, taking a deep breath of his familiarity. There’d been a flirtation when he first came to work for me, but we’d somehow deposited each other into the friend zone without ever really talking about it. But there’d been lots of hugs, and it felt good to be held by someone. I never really realized how deeply I missed being touched these last two years until someone held me like this.

“We have to be honest with each other. And we have to trust.”

“I agree,” I said, pulling back to look up at him. “We have your back on this. And when it’s all over, I’d appreciate if you would do what you can to have my back on the investigation into Peter’s accident.”

“Definitely.”

I pulled away, almost reluctantly, and grabbed a set of keys out of my bag where it’d been sitting on the counter. “Do you have transportation?”

“A stolen car. We left it about a half mile away.”

I shook my head, giving him a look that a mother might give a recalcitrant child. “We’ll take care of that, too.” I tossed him the keys. “There’s an SUV in the garage. You know the safe house near Highlands?”

“Yeah.”

I just nodded. He came over, kissed my cheek lightly.

“Thanks, boss.”

He was gone as quickly as he’d come, slipping out of the room with that duffle bag over his shoulder. I heard Amy say a polite thank you to Sam.

I wondered what had separated them. And I wondered if she knew how lucky she was. The way he looked at her, the way he carried that engagement ring around for so long. Did she even know? Did she know that, despite Dominic’s cowboy behavior, that he was always at home in bed the moment a case was over, that he rarely indulged in the same behavior Hayden did, going to the bars and picking up the first pretty girl who looked his way? That, despite lots of offers, he was alone every night?

I was almost jealous.

I wondered if Luke was as loyal, wherever he was.

Dominic

“She’s really pretty.”

I glanced over at Amy. “Who?”

“Megan.”

She was. I remembered how struck I was by her sophistication, the way she dressed, and the way she kept her blond hair pulled back from her face. She seemed delicate upon first impression, but that was before one realized that she was a member of the Marine Corps, part of a division that saw more hostility, more one on one fighting in Afghanistan than almost any other. And then, of course, she’d open her mouth and put anyone that even began to suggest that she was a delicate flower right in their place.

Not only beautiful, but also fiercely independent and strong.

“Did you and she…?”

I glanced at her. “You’re seriously asking if I slept with my boss? Do you really think I’m that kind of guy?”

“You don’t seem to have a boss-employee relationship.”

“We’re friends. But, at the end of the day, she’s still my boss.”

Amy wouldn’t look at me. She was staring straight ahead, almost as if she was completely fascinated with what was flying past as the SUV made its way down the highway. Or like she couldn’t bear to look at me and see something on my face that she didn’t want to see.

“Why don’t you just ask?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’ve danced around the subject since Saturday afternoon. Even came out and asked if I had a girlfriend. So why don’t you just ask what you really want to know?”

“And what’s that?”

“Whether or not I’ve been with anyone since we broke up.”

She slunk down in the seat a little, wiping her palms on the top of her thighs.

“It’s not my business.”

“Sure it is.”

“Is it?” She looked over at me. Finally. “Do I have a right to ask?”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“You haven’t asked me anything like that. Don’t you want to know what I’ve been doing since we broke up?”

“You aren’t hard to figure out, Ames.” I reached over to touch her knee, but she brushed my hand away. “Okay…”

“I could have been with half a dozen men since you’ve been gone. There was Ronnie Black.”

“Ronnie?” I laughed. “You couldn’t stand him!”

“But he always had a thing for me.”

“Yeah. So did Justin Foster. Did you do him, too?”

“Don’t be vulgar.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, glaring out the window now.

“What about those boys at the gym? Or that guy who teaches meth at your school? You went to dinner with him once.”

Her eyes were wide when she looked at me this time. “How do you know that?”

“I was special ops, Amy. And I work for a security firm. If I want to know what someone’s doing, it’s not that hard to find out.”

“You were watching me?”

“I don’t think I was the only one.”

Tension came into her shoulders. She reached up and brushed a strand of hair from her face.

“You think Emily was watching me?”

“I do.”

“Why didn’t she ever come talk to me? Why didn’t you?”

“You made it pretty clear that you didn’t want to talk to either of us.”

“I was hurt.”

She chewed her bottom lip, her thoughts clearly roiling around in that pretty head of hers. I reached over to touch her again and, this time, she didn’t seem to mind. I slid my hand over her knee and up along her thigh, wishing she was wearing a skirt.

“So much wasted time,” she said softly. “If I’d gotten over myself, maybe I would have had a relationship with my sister in the final days of her life.”

“We all have regrets.”

“Not you. You were there for her, working with her on this terrorist thing.”

“Yeah, well, maybe if I hadn’t helped her work on it, she wouldn’t have found out whatever it was she did and she would still be alive.”

“My sister would never have let it go. She was like a dog with a bone, you know. She never would have let anything go.”

“But I didn’t need to encourage her so much.”

She laid her hand on top of mine. “I guess you’re right. We all have regrets.”

We pulled into the garage of the safe house a short time later. It was a small ranch-style house set on the end of a cul-de-sac, not far from the San Jacinto River. The refrigerator was stocked, the cupboards full of everything we could possibly want. But I think we were both exhausted from being on the run for so long. I took her hand and led the way to the back of the house where the master bedroom was situated.

“Shower?”

She nodded. I ducked into the bathroom and turned on the water, adjusting it until it was at a good temperature. I turned to find Amy standing behind me, nothing but her t-shirt held in front of her to hide her nudity. Heat rushed through my body as if I was a teenager who’d never been in the same room with a naked woman. I wanted to throw her over the sink, fill her until neither of us could catch our breath. But then her eyes came up to mine, and I could see how exhausted she was.

“Take your time,” I said, brushing a hand over the side of her face.

“Where are you going to be?”

“Close.”

She reached up and kissed me lightly, then dropped the t-shirt as she moved around me to climb into the shower. I watched, a slice of pain rushing up my back in sympathy as she ripped away the bandage Sam had put on her arm. The flesh was still raw underneath, red and a little puffy around the edges. I hated that that had happened to her. I wanted to take her far from all this and protect her, but I felt like I wasn’t doing a very good job of that.

I went into the bedroom and sat on the side of the bed, staring at the burner phone. I called Elizabeth, left a message on her voice mail to let her know we were still alive. Then I hesitated, thinking about Emily and her family, about the way her parents had welcomed me into their family when I first began dating Amy. I owed them more.

“Mr. Greene?”

There was silence. Then… “You have a lot of nerve!”

“I’m sorry, sir, for what happened back in Denton. I didn’t want to do that, but Amy was in danger.”

“From you.”

“No, sir. From the people who killed Emily.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Emily was killed because she was investigating some very bad people. And those people came after Amy to pull me out into the open. And, maybe, because they thought Emily gave her something. I don’t know. But I know that Emily knew they would go after Amy, and she asked me to protect her.”

“There must have been a better way than taking her away from her family in this time of grief.”

“I wish there was, sir. I am deeply sorry for your loss.”

“Is Amy okay?”

“She is.”

Another silence fell between us. This one lasted longer.

“We can’t lose another child, Dominic,” he finally said, his voice changed with emotion. “You do whatever it takes to keep her safe.”

“I will, sir.”

I disconnected the call as I heard Amy turn off the water in the bathroom. I pulled back the sheets on the bed and went to offer her a towel, watching as she wrapped it around herself.

“But, seriously,” she said, “were you really watching me?”

“No. Some friends kept in touch with me, and they told me what you were up to.”

“So, for all you know, I slept with the entire Dallas Cowboys football team.”

I lifted her hair off her shoulders so she would dry her shoulders. “You could have, but I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t like football.”

She groaned. “You think you know so much about me.”

“I do. I know that you can’t sleep unless you’ve had a bath. I know that you like coffee early in the morning, but only two cups because anything more would leave you jittery. I know that you don’t like talking in front of a crowd, but you love standing in front of a classroom of young minds, even when they aren’t really paying attention to you.”

She didn’t seem terribly impressed. She brushed past me and strode into the bedroom, searching through my duffle for her clothes that I’d shoved in there when we abandoned the last car. She paused when her fingers brushed the cool metal of the rifle buried on the bottom of the bag.

“I know you, too,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“I know you like eggs for breakfast, but you hate making them yourself. I know that you call your mom every Sunday—no matter what. I know you only went to college to please your mom, but you hate school. You never should have enrolled in college.”

“If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have met you.”

“You were miserable.”

“Those were the best days of my life.”

She shook her head, finally pulling a pair of dainty panties from the duffle. She turned to look at me, her eyes moist with unshed tears.

“Why didn’t you try harder? Why didn’t you make me talk to you?”

There was anger dripping from her words like fire from a dragon’s lips. She wanted an answer to something I didn’t know how to answer. I crossed to her, but she didn’t want me to touch her.

“I did try. I called and wrote constantly.”

“But you never came to me.”

That was true. I never confronted her face-to-face. I could have. There was time between the day I was dismissed from service to the day I was to report for work at Dragon, but I couldn’t bear the idea of being rebuffed in person.

I couldn’t bear the idea of being in the same room with her and seeing the pain and hurt in her eyes.

Like now.

She turned away, sitting on the edge of the bed to pull her panties on. She dropped the towel and climbed into the bed. I watched as she turned her back on me, curling up against the pillow.

I wasn’t going to let her shut me out now.

I undressed, tossing my clothes onto a chair pushed into a corner, and climbed onto the bed behind her. I felt her tense as I slipped my arm around her, but when I pulled her hip back against mine, she came without much resistance. I brushed her hair out of the way and kissed the back of her neck, my lips brushing here, pressing there. She sighed, her hand moving over my arm where it rested around her waist.

“I made a mistake,” I said softly against her neck, “but it’s one I won’t make again.”

She moaned softly, moving her hips so that my cock slipped perfectly between her inner thighs, pressing up against her ass, her beautiful cunt.

“You’re mine. You’ve always been mine. I don’t want to even imagine someone else touching you like this.”

“Never.”

I slipped my fingers under the front of her panties, slipped them through her silky hair until her clit stood up and blocked my path. She moved against me again when I pressed my finger to that swollen button, making her squirm until my cock was throbbing from the friction created by her ass, that beautiful ass.

“I want to always be the only man who ever made you come.”

She looked back at me, her eyes hooded with need. She ran her hand over the side of my face. “What makes you think you are the only one?”

I groaned. “Because I know I’m the only man you’ve ever been with.”

She brushed her lips against my chin. “But that doesn’t mean I didn’t make out with Billy Hernandez in the back of his father’s Chevy.”

“Yeah? You let him do this?”

I pulled her clit out of its hood, trapping it between two fingers. She cried out, moving hard back against me, forcing my bare cock between her ass cheeks, panties and all. I groaned too, rolling her clit hard between my fingers, making her move again and again. It was doing as much for me as it was her, I think. I stole her lips as she moaned again, swallowing the sound and making it a part of me.

She reached down and pushed my hand deeper into her panties, encouraging me to fill her with one of my fingers. She was incredibly wet, her muscles already vibrating around my finger. She was close to coming, and I wanted to feel it. I wanted my cock buried deep inside of her when she did come.

I pulled my hand away despite the moan of disappointment that fell from her lips. I tugged at the back of her panties, pulling them down just far enough to bare her pretty ass. I ran my hand over it, her perfectly round cheeks, my wet finger slipping between her checks and brushing against her puckered little anus. She wiggled her ass again, teasing me. But then her hand was between her own legs, tugging my cock to her cunt, demanding I come inside.

I did…I slid inside of her. I lay still for a long time, my cock buried as deep as it could physically go. She pushed her hips back against me, settling against the pillows like it was a perfectly normal position to sleep in, her ass pressed back into my hips as her cunt swallowed my cock whole.

I kissed her neck, her shoulder.

“No one else could make you feel this good.”

She moaned in response.