Risk of a Lifetime (14 page)

She nodded.

“Do you agree the shooting, the bomb, your brakes, and everything else is a mess?”

She nodded again. “What about the staying until it’s settled? When this is over, you’ll leave…I don’t want to…feel like that again.” Hiccups jerked her head like an animated bobble-head.

His insides warmed with the thought she still loved him. Might not be enough to keep them together, but she at least cared what happened to him.

He sighed heavily. They should be concentrating on surviving the night, not rehashing the past. He wouldn’t lie. He hadn’t come back to Crayton for her. He also wouldn’t lie to himself. He still cared. Might even care more than he wanted to admit. But, this wasn’t the time or the place to rationalize what that might mean.

Hooking his thumbs in his jean pockets, he tried to say what needed to be said without making any long-term commitments. “Doesn’t matter if we stay here or if we go someplace else, I plan to protect you to the end. Not because you’re an obligation. Or because you’re just another assignment, so to say. I’m here because I want to be. Because I care about you. I care a lot.”

“No. No.” She shook her head. “If that were true, you wouldn’t be treating me like I’m nothing but a friend.”

“Now, what does that mean?” Raking his fingers through his hair, he tried to keep up with her assumptions. And listen for the beep if the audio detection device sounded.

Her body seemed to sink into the wall instead of against it. She wouldn’t meet his eyes with hers. “You know.”

That was the problem, he didn’t know. Had no idea. First, they were still married. Now, they were supposed to be friends. What the—? “Help me out, Marcy. What am I supposed to know?”

She straightened away from the wall and marched to the kitchen, arms braced on her hips. “You haven’t kissed me once.”

“Yes, I have.”

Sure, they hadn’t been the kisses he ached to give her, because he’d promised himself he’d stay on good behavior. Keep his lips and his hands to himself. Much more of this, though, and his good behavior could go rot in hell. No, this wasn’t the time. The phone might ring and they’d have to go. Of course, they were all packed. And the sheriff still hadn’t called.

“You call kissing me on the top of my head a real kiss?” She pointed to the spot, then regained her previous posture. “Or that peck on my cheek, my forehead? Those aren’t the kisses I remember. That’s how you’d kiss a sister…if you had one.”

She was about to come undone, and his insides reacted with anticipation. Even in her agitated moods, the woman could take him places his willpower couldn’t block. Been a long time since she’d come undone in his arms. He relished the thought of holding her as she gave him her emotions, body, and soul. Everything.

He stepped forward, and she stepped back, landing against the counter. His next step pressed them jeans to jeans, body to body. Then he leaned in, bracing his arms on each side of her. His hardness to her softness. “Does that feel like I think you’re my sister?”

Her intake of breath answered his question even before she shook her head. He couldn’t stop himself from tilting into her even more. His mind had no control over his hands as they slid around to her backside and pressed her against him. Closer and closer. He groaned when she squirmed into him. She blushed, bit her lip, and then something flamed in her gaze.

“For the record, I’ve wanted to kiss you ever since you walked out of that bank the day I got to town.” He brushed his fingers across the parted lips in front of him.

“That still doesn’t account for the way you acted last night.” She whispered, moistened her lips.

“What do you mean?” Sooner or later, he’d figure this out or the phone would ring or the perp would barge through the door or he’d give up and let her stay here. Which meant he’d stay, too. For now, he enjoyed the fact she was mad because she loved him.

She wiggled her fingers, but her hands stayed on her hips. “I laid there all night, and you didn’t try one little thing. No nudging or coaxing. No hands. No fingers. Nooooo…well you get my drift. All you did was go to sleep and ignore me.”

“I was sick.”

“And this morning?”

Should he tell her he almost crawled back under the covers to be with her? “I went to get donuts.”

“Donuts.” She shook her head. “See, that’s what I mean. All you wanted was donuts.”

He narrowed his eyes on her. Best not say what he’d really wanted. “What can I say? I was hungry, and donuts sounded good about then.”

Damn, he thought he really did something wrong. Had him worried for a second. If she knew how hard ignoring her had been, she wouldn’t be worked up right now. The sense of rejection she felt flooded her expression. She thought he didn’t want her any more.

He kissed her lips, soft and tender and slow. She nipped at his lower lip, and his tongue eased between hers as she invited him, teased him.

“We should talk before we…” He brushed his hands from her shoulders down her arms to her fingers. Slid his arms through the looped stance of her own. “You’re the counselor here. Shouldn’t we take this slow, Marcy? Talk and…” The sensible side of his brain nodded yes, but the rest of his brain fought the idiotic, levelheaded idea.

Her hand slid to the back of his neck and eased into a caress. The pressure he liked. The rhythm he liked. He moaned. His no-make-out plan was quickly going down the drain. Gripping her hair in his fingers, his kiss deepened. He grazed against her mouth, her ear, her neck. Hunger for her flooded his body, right along with any willpower he might still have left. Sensibility lost all meaning. Her head fell back, and she sighed, Marcy’s sign of yes.

Control, he needed to regain control. Her thumb stroked up and down the side of his neck in lazy circles. Without thinking, he dropped his hands to her breasts, stroking and circling, as his mouth found hers again. Her firmness pressed against his fingers, against him, pushed him to the edge even before she slid her hand beneath the bottom of his T-shirt. Warmth from her palm grazed his skin, twitched his nerves all the way to his core. Broke what little resolve he had left.

His breaths were heavy. Hers fast. He lifted her to sit on the counter as she tugged her top upward and off. Definitely not what he planned.

“Aw, hell.” He ripped his shirt over his head and flung it to the corner. “Talking is highly overrated anyhow.”

“Highly…” Her fingers fumbled with the clasp on her bra. “…overrated.”

She fell loose in his hands, and his thumbs made their own stroking rhythms as he took his fill. He’d forgotten how beautiful his wife was. Her moans increased with the touch of his mouth, his tongue. She gripped him to her, her nails biting into his shoulders. He slid her closer to the counter’s edge, and she slipped her legs around him.

Damn. They were still dressed from the waist down. Her thighs gripped against his sides as he fumbled with the top of his jeans. Buttons, zippers, he couldn’t get his mind to think. He realized how long it had been since he tasted her skin, and he couldn’t seem to get his fill. She arched and sagged against him, panting.

Bed. He needed to get her to the damn bed. Get their jeans off. His hands slid beneath her bottom and lifted. She looped her arms around him as he carried her toward the kitchen door, her fingers tight in his hair as she tilted his head back to receive the deluge of kisses she planted on his face.

“Oh, Marcy…Marcy.”

“Yes, JB.” She sucked his ear, nipped. “Yes. You’re back. Nothing’s changed.”

Nothing’s changed
blared across his mind. He stopped. Eased her to the floor and unhooked her hands from behind his neck.

Her breathing came in ragged pants as she reached to pull him back. He gently pushed away, took a step backwards. They needed space. Room to feel what was real. What wasn’t.

“What? What did I say?” She grabbed her top from the counter, shimmied it over her head. “What’s wrong?”

“You said nothing’s changed, and you’re right. We’re about to fall right back into each other’s arms.” His own breaths were heavy and deep. “Don’t you see? We can’t do that again. Pretend nothing’s wrong? This time we need to talk.”

She crossed her arms over her sweater. “So talk.”

He recognized her stance. Her tone. She’d already shut down to anything he might say. “Things can wait till you’re in a better mood.” He stepped to reach for his shirt.

“No. Now.” She blocked his path. “You make it sound like it’s all my fault we never talk. How about the times I asked you questions about your childhood? How your day went? How it felt to arrest someone? You evaded every one of those questions.”

She was right. There were things he kept so deep inside himself that they would never see the light of day again. Didn’t mean there weren’t things they needed to face as two people who cared about each other.

“Forget I mentioned it,” he said.

“No. Either we have a conversation right now, or I’ll be damned if I walk out that door with you.”

“Okay. What do you want to talk about?” He’d give her a conversation she wouldn’t soon forget.

She didn’t flinch, just reached out and pressed her fingers against the brand on his chest. “This. I want you to trust me enough to tell me about this and the marks across your stomach.”

That whole topic was off limits. Way off limits. He might not be able to hide the scar, but reliving it was one of those things hidden in a compartment in his mind. “You couldn’t handle it, Marcy.”

“Try me.” She leaned back against the counter. “Or maybe it’s you who can’t handle it.”

Over the line. She’d stepped over his personal line. No one, not even her, said he couldn’t handle something. But there’d be no sugar-coating. This would be a telling point in any relationship they might ever have in the future. He sucked in air and blew it out.

“Jennings, my partner from a couple years ago, was killed while on assignment. Once leads stopped trickling in, the homicide got turned into a cold case. Then, not long after I worked the meth case with Landon, I got a lead. A good lead from a trusted informant. Wilson even agreed I should do a follow up. So I went to meet the guy where he wanted. Waited an hour. He never showed.” JB filled a glass under the kitchen faucet, then chugged it down. Filled it again.

“When I got back to the car, three men with masks were waiting for me. Shoved me in the trunk, right alongside my informant that they’d already killed. They’d took my guns and my phone, but I wasn’t worried. Might take a while, but I figured once I didn’t show up back at the office, the FBI would zero in on whoever was carrying the phone and follow them to my location through the GPS.”

His gut steeled with a double-clutch at the thought of just how damn long it had actually taken. “They found me dumped in an alley, a couple days and a lot of beatings later.”

She’d started to fidget. Grabbed a soda from the fridge. Took a few sips before she sat it on the counter and turned back to face him. “Go on.”

He gulped his second glass of water down. Filled it again. Rechecked to make sure the listening device on the counter was working.

How far should he go with this story? He’d always tried to protect her from the bad things in life. Never wanted to hurt her more than her father’s death and his career choice had already done.

Everyone had said she was fragile. To work around her childhood trauma. But he knew she could be strong when she needed to be. Otherwise, she’d never have made it through the case studies in college to become a counselor. Maybe he’d been wrong to not at least give her a chance to prove how strong she was to herself. Time to give her that chance.

She rolled her hands at him. “I said go on. Don’t worry, I’m okay.”

He braced his hands on either side of her as she once again leaned back against the counter. Stared her in her eyes. “They tossed me in a dark closet and brought me out every few hours to pelt me some more. I fought back. They didn’t like that, so they smashed my hand with a two-by-four. Tossed me back in the closet. I fought back again, so they smashed the other hand.”

She cringed.

He managed a light laugh. “No big wup.”

Gulping down the third glass of water, he realized the toll this telling was taking on him. “The next time I fought back, they started with the knife across my belly until one of them reminded the others that their boss didn’t want me killed.”

She’d pulled her eyes away from his stare. He should stop, but he couldn’t. She’d been right about this being hard for him, so they needed to walk through this together.

He tugged her into his arms and held her tight. “Every time things got bad, I thought of you, sugar. Of the good times we used to have.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Truth was she’d been what made him keep getting up off the floor to throw one more punch. Take one more breath in the cold darkness. Her. He’d have been hard-pressed to come out alive without their memories. “Made it easier thinking about you. The way you look first thing in the morning. Those mewy little sounds you make while you sleep. And your jasmine-scented hair.”

Twining his fingers in the soft strands, he nuzzled his nose against her ear. Lowered his lips to hers and kissed. One long, tender kiss.

She kissed back. Soft and light and sure. Then stared him in his eyes once again. “And the brand?”

He cricked his neck, lifted his eyes to the ceiling, and sucked in a deep breath. That had been bad. A breaking point. “The last time they opened the closet door, they said I’d be happy to know they had their final orders. Come on out, I was going for a ride. I tried to get to my feet, but stumbled getting up. They pulled me out. Held me down on a table. The jerk whose nose I’d broke the day before kept tossing my badge in the air. Then he snapped it into some pliers and held it over a candle flame.”

Feeling in his gut what had been about to happen, he’d focused on a water stain in the ceiling. Focused and focused and focused till he passed out from the pain of the brand. “And the rest is history, as they say.”

She kissed the mark, then eased her hands back around his neck. Caressed the tension from his shoulders. Trailed her finger back down his chest. God, he loved the feel of that. Back to where they’d started, he slipped his hands up under her sweater. She felt good and warm and—