Hell on Wheels (31 page)

They both fought to get her jeans off, hands frantic, bodies wiggling, mouths hungrily devouring heated flesh. When the stained denim pooled at her feet, she impatiently kicked it away.

“Get inside me, Nate,” she demanded harshly, tunneling her fingers through the soft curls of his hair and pressing him more tightly against her breast.

She didn’t know how he managed it, but somehow he snaked a hand between the frenzied press of their bodies to release those last few buttons of his fly, and…he was there.

He pushed the leg of her panties aside and…oh,
God
he was right there. Hot and throbbing, just brushing against her. Teasing, tormenting.

He groaned against her nipple and then he was pushing, slowly, inexorably, sliding inside her. She momentarily balked at the intrusion, because,
cripes
, he wasn’t your average Joe by any stretch of the imagination.

A frustrated rumble sounded deep in his chest, and she knew exactly how he felt. She wanted that final connection, that full penetration. The place where two bodies joined and worked together to fulfill the ultimate goal of release. She took a deep breath, squeezed her eyes closed, and concentrated on relaxing her inner muscles.

Taking immediate advantage, with one final, forceful jab that nearly knocked the breath from her, he was fully seated.

Behind her lids, her eyes crossed in pleasure/pain. He stretched her, filled her to the very brim, stimulating every vibrating, overly excited nerve ending.

And she was there. Impossibly, unexpectedly, she was at that almost frightening precipice where the body took over and rational thought was inconceivable. She was helpless to do anything but squirm, trying to achieve that last bit of stimulation that would send her careening over the edge.

With his big hands holding her hips pinned against the wall, he pulled back, sliding his length outside of her, and she moaned at the loss.

“Condom,” he growled, and she shook her head with frustration.

“Pill,” she told him breathlessly, aching so badly she thought she’d die if he didn’t get back inside her. “Oh, Nate. Please fuck me,” she whimpered.

And then he was. His hips pistoning wildly as if they were attached to a motor. And she was flying, flung from the highest cliff of passion until her body was nothing but sensation. Pulsing, liquid pleasure started in her womb and spread through her entire body.

“Sweet Jesus,” she vaguely heard him growl before she felt the hot wash of his release as her body continued to rhythmically contract around him, taking everything he had to give her.

***

Lavender.

He’d been right. Her underwear were lavender with little pink bows. Nate had a pretty good view of the flimsy bra dangling by one strap from Ali’s perfect shoulder while his head was pressed against the wall beside hers. He struggled to catch his breath after the most mind-blowing orgasm of his entire life, and his body hadn’t even finished convulsing when self-disgust had him pulling back to look at her.

Geez, Raquel would be sorely disappointed in that performance.

Although…Ali didn’t seem to notice his total lack of finesse.

Her head was thrown back against the wall, her slim throat arched, her beautiful golden eyes squeezed closed, and a deep crimson blush stained her soft cheeks—the telltale color of a woman coming down from a convulsive release.

Still, that did nothing to appease his regret.

“Shit, Ali,” he lifted one hand to smooth damp hair away from the dimpled corner of her kiss-swollen mouth, “I’m sorry.”

She didn’t even open her eyes when she murmured, “For what?”

“For not makin’ it better for you. For…for,
Christ,
for mountin’ y’like a ravening bull.”

Her lips twisted into a smirk. “I seem to recall requesting exactly that.”

“But you deserve—”

“What?” This time her eyes popped open, and he noticed the golden hue had darkened to deep amber in spent passion. “What do I deserve?”

Candlelight
, he thought.
Soft
music. Slow, thorough seduction that starts with a thousand kisses and ends with a thousand more.
But what he said was simply, “Gentleness.”

“Hmm,” she leaned forward, nibbling at his lips. “We can do gentle next time. We both needed that first one to take the edge off.”

And inexplicably, his unrepentant cock begin to twitch and swell. Was it any wonder considering he was still nestled snuggly inside her?

Her smile was one of feminine triumph when she noticed the added sensation.

Yep, next time. Well, next time was going to be pretty damned soon.

Stepping out of his jeans, he lifted her into his arms, encouraging her to wrap her legs around his hips and palming the firm globes of her perfect ass.

“Nate!” she squeaked. “Your wound!”

“I don’t feel nothin’ but you, sugar.” He told her as he stalked from the bathroom, intent on only one thing, the bed.

And, sweet Lord, he wasn’t joking.

The softest, sweetest, most delicious thing he’d ever encountered was Ali, the way she melted against him. And she was his. At least for the night…

Damn. He’d just had her, and he was hard enough to hammer nails at the thought of having her again.

Gently pressing her back against the mattress, he couldn’t fathom breaking the connection of their bodies, so he reached down and with a twist of his fists, ripped the side seams of her flimsy panties. He threw the scrap of ruined material over his shoulder.

“Hey!” she protested, but then totally ruined her attempt at ire when she grabbed his ears and ravished his mouth. Obviously the whole barbarian thing worked for her. Which was good, because that’s exactly what he was.

“Y’have a hundred more. I’ve seen ’em,” he told her when he could draw breath, right before he started in on those thousand kisses. He chose to plant the first one on the delicate line of her collarbone.

“Hmm,” she murmured as she tilted her head back to give him better access, “I suppose that’s true.”

He didn’t quite make the thousand kisses mark. Mainly because at about two hundred she was squirming beneath him and begging. But he did manage slow and gentle, and certainly thorough. After the third orgasm, she went completely boneless. He drifted to sleep with a contented smile on his face and the only woman he’d ever loved softly snoring in his arms.

***

“Shit!” Dagan swore into his cell phone and slammed his hand against the steering wheel.

“Yup,” Chelsea Duvall concurred, her husky voice even huskier over the patchy cell phone connection. Chelsea was the one person inside the CIA who still deigned to speak to Dagan after the
incident
. He was happy to call her friend, though at one point, years ago, he’d been determined to call her so much more. “And it gets worse.”

Great. Worse than finding out the photo of the dead guy depicted one Rocco De Lucca, a transplanted New York mafia goon who’d done as Kid Rock instructed and headed out west. Only Dagan was pretty sure ol’ Rocco hadn’t done so to be a cowboy, baby. Nope. Rocco no doubt found himself in Vegas because there were a lot more legs that needed breaking out that way. Mainly, Dagan suspected, of the gamblers-who-weren’t-making-good-on-their-debts variety.

“The guy has two known accomplices,” Chelsea went on to explain. “One Frankie ‘The Shark’ Costa, and one Johnny Vitiglioni, who happens to be his cousin. Each of them has done hard time, and they all have rap sheets that read like your worst nightmare and that’s before you start talking about all the things they’re suspected of. Jesus, Z, what’ve you gotten yourself involved in this time?”

This
time
. As if he was notorious for finding himself on the wrong side of the equation. He wasn’t…except for that one time, but that one time had been enough to ensure his previously sterling reputation was ruined for all eternity. Even Chelsea, whom he thought still believed in him, obviously couldn’t completely ignore what had happened.

“Thanks for your help, Chels,” he said, ignoring her last question. “I gotta go.”

“Z, I didn’t mean—”

He hung up the phone before he could hear what she didn’t mean, because whatever she was about to say would be a lie. She
did
mean it.

He wanted to scream, “It wasn’t my fault! I was duped!” But what good would that do? None. It wouldn’t change the past. Nothing could.

And his personal problems just weren’t important right now, because Senator Alan Aldus had hired himself a group of thugs to take out Alisa Morgan and Nate Weller, and Dagan was going to do his damndest to make sure that didn’t happen.

Was he putting his neck on the line, trying to redeem himself for what happened three years ago?

Yeah, maybe.

But didn’t everyone deserve a little redemption?

***

“So, how’d you get this scar?”

Nate groaned and pulled Ali more on top of him, lifting her chin so he could kiss the chatter right out of her mouth.

Two hours.

She’d allowed him two blissful hours of the most glorious, peaceful sleep he’d had in years and then she’d awoken him by peppering his chest with sweetly hot kisses.

He was totally on board with the hot kisses, but engaging in conversation while she was naked—Ali was in his arms,
naked
—rated real low on his Things I’d Like to Do Right Now list.

She kissed him back, full-on tongue action that had all thought draining right out of his head. Then suddenly she pulled back, circling the big, puckered scar high up on his right shoulder with a soft fingertip. “This one. How’d you get it?”

He sighed; obviously she wasn’t going to let it go.

“Bad reflexes,” he reluctantly admitted, trying to reclaim her mouth, but the exasperating woman eluded him.

“Bad reflexes? What does that mean?”

“It means I zigged when I shoulda zagged.”

The look she gave him was so perturbed and so darn cute, he couldn’t help but chuckle.

“We got caught in a firefight between two rival drug cartels, and I just happened t’run into a stray bullet.”

She pressed herself up on her arms and glanced down his naked torso. “Just how many times have you been shot?”

“Enough t’know one time is too many.”

“Are you always this evasive?”

“Yep.”

She scowled, and his big stupid heart flipped over because there went her nose again.

“If we start catalogin’ all my scars,” he told her, “we’re gonna be here ’til next week, sugar. Unfortunately, a pretty, scar-free body isn’t part of my job description.”

“Hmm,” she relented and laid her head against his good shoulder. “I think you have a beautiful body, scars and all.

Women, geez, you just gotta love ’em. Somehow they could see beauty in everything. Scars, old dilapidated buildings, newborn babies…

Nate’d seen a few of the latter. They were always wrinkly, tended to be the wrong color, and there was usually something very wrong with the shape of their little heads. He was contemplating this last bit and didn’t realize how long she’d been quiet until she said, “Nate?”

“Yep?”

“How do you do it?”

“Do what, sugar?”

“Your job. Do you ever get used to it?”

Geez, this woman…this woman was determined to rip his heart out every which way.

He didn’t talk about this stuff…
ever
. Not even with Grigg.

But here was this woman he loved, asking him the tough questions, and for the first time he realized he wanted to talk about it. With her.

“No,” he swallowed as a myriad of bloody memories washed over him. So much horror. So much death. He looked at his hands, as he did every so often. They were broad and tough, and he was always surprised to find them unstained by the amount of blood he’d spilled. “You never get used to it.”

She shuddered against him, and he pulled her closer, tucking her head more firmly beneath his chin. Rubbing her crown with his beard stubble, he inhaled the earthy scents of sex and dried blood. Overlaying it all was Ali’s sweetly clean aroma.

“Grigg would never talk to me about it,” she said in a little voice.

“That’s because y’don’t really wanna hear, sugar. Grigg was just protectin’ you.”

“But I
do
want to hear about it. Grigg was the one person I had, Nate. The one person who loved me best, loved me more than anyone. And I didn’t even
know
him,” her voice cracked on the last words.

Rriiippp
. Yep, that would be his heart. Again.

He smoothed her silky hair behind her ear, softly caressing the little lobe. Everything about her was small and soft and he loved it, every last feminine inch. “Y’knew the best parts of him. He kept those for you.”