Face of Danger (22 page)

Glorious.

Her body hummed under his mouth, rocking into his lips, a rhythm so natural and elemental she just surrendered to it.

He curled his tongue around her most sensitive spot before slipping in a little deeper. He held her thigh with one sure hand and manipulated her clit with the other.

Mother of God, was
this
what she’d been missing?

She cried his name softly, begged for more, squirmed and writhed and gasped for breaths of air that just weren’t there.

Her orgasm flared under his lips. She transferred her grip from his shoulder to his head, hanging on for dear life as all the sensations coiled deep inside her, throbbing like the low rumble of thunder, building to a crescendo, racking her when she exploded in his mouth.

Endless, unstoppable, overwhelming… pleasure.

She cried out, her head back, her body helpless, her fantasies fulfilled and everything else—
everything—
wiped away by his competent, relentless tongue.

Grabbing his shoulders, she crunched her upper body to see him, sweat and sex rolling off her as the waves subsided and the aftershocks slowed. Until there was nothing left but a tingle between her thighs, a thumping of her chest, a few torn attempts at steady breathing.

He stayed between her legs for what seemed like forever, still kissing, still licking, still adoring her.

How did he know? How did he
know
that was exactly what she needed?

Finally, he crawled up her body, more kisses on the way, until he reached her face.

“I want a shower,” he said, his voice tight.

She widened her eyes. “A cold one?”

“Wouldn’t help. I just want to be clean for you. Because once I get inside you, I don’t intend to get out of this bed again.”

Her body still throbbed with the orgasm, and the heat of the words.

“Come with me, Vivi.”

“I don’t want to do it in the shower on… our first time.”

“I promise, we’re not going to do it in the shower. But I’m not leaving you alone. Sit on the counter and don’t leave my sight.” He kissed her and helped her up. “Come on. I’ve been climbing through the brush and mud. You deserve better than that.”

Oh, God. Did he have to be so perfect? Couldn’t he just be that guy who wanted to fuck and fly?

No. And he never would be. Not to her. “Okay.”

Colt couldn’t get in the shower fast enough and it had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the dirt on his body. That wasn’t what stopped him from taking what he wanted so bad his dick was ready to explode and his balls were so high they smacked his teeth.

Everything had changed in the last two hours.

Able to see Vivi through the glass, he stepped into the vicious spray. He braced his hands on the wall and let the water wash over him; it was cold, but had very little effect on his libido.

So her brush with death made her want to have casual sex.

And her brush with death made
him
realize that there was nothing casual about it.

Because maybe it
was
better to have loved and lost, but it was really fucking stupid to do it twice.

“You never told me you were engaged.”

He almost choked. So he had heard correctly when he’d walked into the room. Goddamn Iverson and her big mouth.

It was time Vivi knew the truth. “You never asked.”

“It seems like something you’d tell a friend.”

A friend with
benes
like he was about to get. “I was engaged,” he said simply. “And I told you before, she was killed in the line of duty.”

“What happened to you?”

He was grateful the watery glass obscured his face through the shower door. Just in case he couldn’t hide the old pain well enough.

“I survived,” he said simply. Even that dark, dark night when he’d played with a Glock too close to his own head. “It was five years ago. I’ve learned to cope.”

“Where did it happen?”

“South Dorchester,” he said, scrubbing so much harder than necessary with the bar of soap. “Drug bust.”
On June 17, 2006. 2:54 a.m.
Not that he relived it every day or anything.

“Have you been with a woman since?”

He rinsed and swiped the glass to make sure she
did
see his look of incredulity. “In five years? Yeah.” Hadn’t felt anything, but he’d done the deed. Until tonight when he’d felt
something
and didn’t want to. “Does it matter?” he asked.

“I’m just curious.”

“I’m still human.”

“So you’ve been with women, but they didn’t matter?”

He popped the door open to remove every barrier. “Where are you going with this, Vivi?”

“I just want to know if it’s difficult.”

Something exploded in his head. “If what’s difficult? To lose your fiancée? To hold the person you planned to spend the rest of your life with as she’s bleeding out on the
street? To know you might have saved her if you’d done something different?”

She paled, staring at him. “I meant… sex. With someone who didn’t matter.”

He closed his eyes, disgusted with himself for losing it. “You know what, Vivi? Maybe this is a bad idea.”

Her jaw loosened a little. “Yeah,” she said softly, reaching for a towel he thought she was going to hand to her but used to cover her naked body instead. “You’re probably right.”

She slipped off the counter and walked into the room, wrapping the towel around her.

“Vivi!” He twisted the faucets and shut off the water.

“Relax, Lang. No killers in the room.”

Holy hell, how had this happened? It didn’t matter how—it had. How could he go in that room and finish what they started, faking that it meant nothing to him? He heard her rustling in the bed, heard the sheets sigh. Or maybe that was her.

Because neither one of them was cut out for casual, commitment-free sex.

And neither one of them really wanted it.

But they really wanted each other, so where did that leave them? Where did that leave Colt, a man who’d sworn off commitments with any woman, not to mention reckless risk-takers who didn’t always obey orders?

He dried quickly, brushed his teeth, picked up a razor, and put it back down again. Fuck it.

He turned out the light and walked into the darkened bedroom. There, Vivi Angelino was in his bed, ready, willing, and probably naked.

Against everything he thought he knew about himself, he dropped onto the sofa with the dog.

He waited, but she never asked him to join her. Because he would have. He would have silenced the voices in his head just to quell the aching in his body. But this was Vivi. And she never did what he expected.

Wasn’t that part of what he—

Yeah. It was.

O
n some level, it was a relief when Vivi and Lang boarded the private plane to Boston, with two other agents acting as “Cara’s” bodyguards. She didn’t want to be alone in that cabin with Lang, not after the sleepless night they’d spent ten feet apart.

You shouldn’t sleep with someone you won’t tell your secrets to, Vivi decided. No matter how badly you want to.

Which meant she could remain the world’s oldest almost-but-for-one-horrific-incident virgin for a long time. Because no one would squeeze that secret out of her, not even Lang.

Who appeared to be hiding a few of his own.

They were supposed to fly into Logan, but changed the flight plan midair—the things the FBI could do—to avoid media, landing at Hanscom airfield outside of Boston.

As she stepped off the plane she inhaled deeply, the
suburban Boston air so different from the salty, swampy smells of Nantucket. Here the earliest hint of the spring thaw gave the air an earthy scent, clean and crisp. It smelled like grass and clouds and home.

“You know I grew up about ten minutes from here,” she said as she and Lang walked toward a car that was waiting for them after saying good-bye to the two agents heading into the Boston office separately.

“Your family’s still there, right? In Sudbury?”

“Well, my Aunt Fran and Uncle Jim still live in the house with my great-uncle Nino. All the seven kids have moved out.”

“Really?” He gave her a sideways look.

Didn’t he know all this? “Well, I’m not one of the Rossi kids, per se, obviously. But Zach and I arrived when we were ten, so it’s our childhood home, post-Italy.”

“I know that, Vivi. That’s not what I was wondering about.”

“What were you wondering about?”

He opened the passenger door of a nondescript black sedan, very much like the one he drove. As if it didn’t scream Fed all over it. “I have an idea.”

She got in and he closed her door without elaborating.

“What is it?” she demanded when he got behind the wheel and started the engine.

“I’m taking you home.”

“What?”

“And don’t call anyone and tell them,” he said, reaching over to stop her from moving. “I don’t want anyone to know where you are until you get there.”

“No one but Nino is home,” she assured him. “My aunt and uncle are down at their condo in Florida for the whole
month of March, and you don’t have to worry about Nino. He won’t call the
Enquirer
and rat on me.”

“Just a precaution,” he said. “You’ll stay there all day and I’ll come back and get you this evening.”

Now that she didn’t like. “Where are you going?”

“Into town, maybe do some sniffing around on RE Global, check on my cases.”

“Without me?”

“Yes.” He held up a hand to stop the argument already bubbling up in her throat. “You need to stay in hiding,
Cara
.”

She didn’t like it, but knew better than to argue right then. And it was fine not to call Nino. He’d be thrilled to see her, as always, probably cooking something and wishing there were still all those mouths to feed.

Just the idea of seeing him, of being home, made her feel better.
Home
wasn’t a brown brick apartment building in Brookline, though she’d lived on the fourth floor of that apartment right off Beacon Street for long enough to grow some substantive roots. Home was that cornflower blue Colonial tucked into rolling hills and surrounded by hundred-year-old oaks, perched over a pond big enough to be called “the lake” by the family that rowed and fished and skated on it with the neighbors.

Home was the Rossi family—where she and Zach had been wedged with just a little bit of force-fitting.

Although home also held some dark memories. The Taylors may have moved out sometime in the last ten years, but the ghosts remained. A road sign indicating the miles to the neighboring town of Concord caught her attention, and those ghosts made a quick mental reappearance.

It had happened the night they played Concord-Carlisle
High. Like it was yesterday, she could hear the echo of her cheerleading sneakers on varnished wood. The roar of the crowd when Kenny Taylor scored for Lincoln Sudbury High School.
Kenny Taylor, he’s our man…. If he can’t do it… nobody can.

And he’d wanted to do it, all right. That night, a little drunk, a little mean, a little rough. The skirt, the panties, the thin arms of a dancer were no deterrent to him.

You asked for it in that cheer-skirt.

Her stomach turned.

“Nobody home, huh?”

She turned to him, blanking out, a million miles and sixteen years away. “What?”

“Unless your uncle Nino drives a brand-new red Mustang or—Jesus, is that purple thing a ’sixty-eight GTO?”

She let out a squeal, her hand on the door before he’d even pulled into the familiar drive. “The Mustang’s Chessie’s, but—oh my God—let me out of this car! Gabe’s home!”

The second he stopped she practically flung herself out. She hadn’t seen her cousin in nearly two years; his life in the very hidden world of black ops kept him underground even on the rare occasion when he was actually in the States.

Before she was halfway down the driveway, the bright red front door of the Colonial opened and Uncle Nino ambled out, his brows drawn over fierce dark eyes, his thinning gray hair uncombed, his body language looking like he would use those meat-hook hands of his to kill anyone who took a step farther.

“It’s me, Nino! It’s Vivi!” She half ran to him, and watched his wrinkled old face change from distrust to joy.

“Viviana! What the hell?”

She flipped at the hair. “Undercover. Movie star. Is Gabe here or did someone just bring his car out of storage?”

She gave him a cursory hug, but his return was much tighter, holding her back pretty effectively, considering he was eighty-something years old.

He opened his mouth to answer, then looked over her shoulder, scowling.

“You know Colton Lang, Uncle Nino. He’s a client. He’s—”

“Gabe won’t like it.”

“So he is here?” She wiggled out of his hands. “It’s okay, Lang’s with me.” She looked over her shoulder at Lang. “You need Nino’s clearance, but I’m going in.” She pushed passed the older man and jogged through the door.

And there he was, glorious, gorgeous, and grinning like Wile E. Coyote.

“Oh my God!” She shrieked so loud it could have broken the chandelier, bringing Lang storming into the house behind her. But she was already being scooped and swooped around by a pair of beastly arms, her cheeks bussed by familiar scratchy whiskers.

“Gabriel Rossi, I love you!”

“Shhhh!” He gave her a squeeze, his amazing muscles almost cracking her back. “No one is supposed to know I’m here.”

“Well, I brought an FBI agent along, so if that is a problem, you better let me know.”

Out of her peripheral vision she saw Lang reholster his gun. Gabe saw it, too, his laser blue gaze slicing Nino. “You suck donkey balls as a bodyguard, old man.” He
took Vivi by the shoulders and inched her away, revealing his always impressive build barely contained in a white T-shirt. “Don’t hire Nino for your company. He couldn’t keep a fly off shit.”

She just laughed. “But you’re not available.”

“I am now,” he said. “And I’m better looking.”

Nino snorted, but Vivi almost jumped out of her skin again. “You left the company? The one that—”

He put a hand over her mouth. “Hush, little cousin. I’m still living covert at the moment. And, buddy, please tell me that you are not a federal officer trying to locate me.”