Secret Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 5) (13 page)

Curtis stroked her golden curls,
still
not totally able to believe that she was here with him. Safe and warm and naked under his t-shirt.

“I’ve loved exactly two people in the whole of my life.” Curtis’ voice was shaking with emotion, and she started, knowing that he was totally wide open to her now. “One is dead, the other is here with me. And when I saw you hurting yourself so badly? I – I couldn’t stand it. I thought that I’d lose you, too. And if I had? I don’t think I’d be able to love again, sweetness. Not anyone, not ever.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Curtis,” Tessa said firmly. “I promise you.”

He nodded, started to say something, hesitated again. She waited, knowing that he’d tell her when he was ready.

“I still hate him,” Curtis said softly. “I hate him like poison, baby, and the worst part is that I fucking look just like him. I look in the mirror some days, and there he is, staring right back at me.”

Tessa shivered. She couldn’t imagine what
that
must do to Curtis’ head, and she felt a surge of protectiveness move through her body. This man had been through enough, fucking
more
than enough, and he deserved some peace. He deserved something good in his life, and she sent up a quick prayer that she could maybe be that good thing for him. If he’d let her, she’d work so damn hard to make him happy.

“And he’s here in the city?” she said. “Do you ever see him?”

“Yeah,” Curtis said. “He comes around maybe once a year, just shows up out of the blue. He’s always drunk and he’s always looking for money, either to pay off some debt or to put on some horses.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too. I know how this sounds, and I’m sure it makes me a bad person, but I just keep hoping that he’ll – go away.” Curtis’ eyes were hard, flat. “Like, permanently.”

“I can understand that.”

“
Can
you?” He was surprised. “Even though I’m wishing a man dead? You
get
that?”

“Sure I do. He hurt you, babe. He killed your mother, took her away. He wrecked your childhood, and in many ways, he wrecked your life. You just want him to fuck off, and he refuses to do so.” Tessa shrugged. “What you’re
really
saying is that you want him to leave you in peace, and there are only a few ways that a man like him will do that. Jail, a one-way plane ticket, or six feet under.”

“Yeah.”

“Any chance he’ll be going to jail anytime soon?” she asked hopefully. “Or maybe on a trip around the world, with a long-term stop in Tokyo?”

Curtis laughed now. “I don’t know. Anything’s possible, I suppose.”

“Well.” She curled closer to him. “I guess we can live in hope.” She took a deep breath. “Can I ask you one more thing?”

“Yes.”

“What was your mother’s name?”

Curtis froze now. He hadn’t uttered her name aloud in almost thirty years, and it physically hurt him to think about saying it now. But this was Tessa, and he wanted to give her everything.

“Cassandra.” His voice broke a bit at last. “Cassandra Rose Talbot was her maiden name. Everyone called her Cassie.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“Yeah.” He was quiet for a few seconds. “
She
was beautiful.”

“I know she was,” she said. “I believe you.”

“I wish I could show you,” he said abruptly. “But my asshole sperm-donor destroyed every picture of her in the house.”

“
What
?” Tessa was horrified. “He – he took away every memory you had of your mother?”

“Yep.” Curtis smiled grimly. “That’s the kind of person he is. He just likes hurting people.”

“Oh, God.” She kissed him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry he took her away from you so completely.”

“Me too.”

He wrapped his arms around her body, loving how she just fit his own body, her curves and smallness against his muscles and bulk. She was an angel come-to-life, and he held her like she was the centre of his whole universe.

She
is
the centre of my whole universe.

He kissed the top of her head, and she started to relax against him. All he wanted for her to fall asleep right here, in his arms, just sleep until the dawn.

She was the sweetest, most perfect thing he’d ever had in his bed, in his life, and he was going to hold this miracle close for as long as he could. He’d fucking kill to keep her; he’d die to protect her. Tessa was a wink and a nod from God, a little nudge from the universe that Curtis was, actually, worthy of something good. That he deserved more than he’d had for so long. That he
could
love, and be loved in return.

Tessa was drowsy now, and she felt herself drifting away. She burrowed deeper in to his embrace, wondering at the feeling of safety and protection that Curtis gave her. She’d never felt this before, not in the whole of her life. But she had it now, and this tough, tender man was the one who’d given her this gift. She just hoped that she’d be able to give him something equally beautiful and meaningful in return.

Curtis ran his rough fingers over her silky skin. “Sleep, baby.”

She sighed, a deep, sated sigh, and tumbled in to sleep. Curtis stayed awake for hours, though, just holding her sweetness to him and feeling nothing but gratitude. And love.

Chapter Eleven

Naomi woke up early the next morning, turned over in bed. She didn’t expect Matt to be there, and sure enough, he wasn’t.

She rolled over and stared at the ceiling, already feeling the now-familiar ball of fear and worry tightening in her stomach. For the past few months, she’d woken up to this sensation every single morning. Naomi was afraid all the time, every minute of every day, and it all started here: alone in bed, on her back, staring at the ceiling.

She’d really thought she’d be able to handle Matt’s job. No, she hadn’t been blind or stupid; she hadn’t been playing ostrich. He’d been up-front about King’s Men, and she knew from the word go what they did, and who they were, and what kind of people and situations they encountered. Matt Kingston was no choir boy, and she’d never pretended otherwise.

But
this
, what was going on now?
This
wasn’t how it had been at first. In the beginning, Matt’s team had had work, but they’d been sent out on assignment maybe once a month, and Matt joined them about half that often. Yeah, he’d been involved in some dangerous things, and she’d been worried about that – but she saw now that it wasn’t really the
nature
of Matt’s jobs that was upsetting her now. It was the
frequency
of the jobs.

Now, he was in danger
all the time
, he was
always
in the line of fire. It was his new normal… and Naomi found that as
ab
normal as it was possible for something to be.

She sighed, closed her eyes. No, she wasn’t unique, and she knew it. She thought about the men and women married to and involved with firefighters, police officers, military personnel. They
had
to feel that same bottomless pit of fear in their stomachs; they
had
to share that panic when their loved one walked out the door to a job. They
had
to know what she felt every time she turned on the news, and saw live footage of the aftermath of some violence… including dead bodies.

How did they handle it, she wondered? How did they carry on with things for years, not knowing when or even
if
their loved one would come back? She hoped they handled it better than she did, because Naomi had only been dealing with this uncertainty for a few months, and she was seconds away from tears. Again.

Suddenly, the bedroom door swung open, and she opened her eyes with a gasp.

Matt was standing there holding a tray in his large hands. She saw a cup of coffee, a plate of fruit, a muffin, and a vase with a red rose. She blinked, disbelieving.

“Matt?” she said. “I didn’t know you were home…you were so quiet.”

He gave her that slow, sexy grin, the one that she loved with her whole body and soul.

“I was sneaking around out there,” he said. “Wanted to surprise you.”

“You did?” She struggled to a sitting position, still not quite sure which way was up. “When did you get home?”

“About an hour ago.” He came over to the bed, carefully set the tray in front of her. “I watched you sleep for a while, baby, then went out to the kitchen. Damn near gave the game away when I dropped a fork on the floor, but you slept on through it.”

“I guess I was tired.” Naomi peered up at him, took in the dark circles under his gray eyes, saw how messy his dark hair was, like he’d been running his hands through it over and over. “Long night, babe?”

“Yeah.”

She expected him to leave it at that. After all, monosyllabic was Matt’s conversational style lately, and expecting him to go beyond ‘yeah’ and ‘no’ in his responses was just asking for disappointment. So when he sat down next to her, sighed heavily, and started to talk freely, she almost choked on her chocolate chip muffin.

“It was bad again last night, baby,” he said quietly.

Naomi sat very still. “Bad how?”

“A shoot-out.”

“Where?”

“At a warehouse about fifteen miles outside the city limits. One of Kirk Jensen’s scumbag contractors houses girls there.”

“Girls? To sell?”

“Yeah. The oldest one we found was seventeen. The youngest was eleven.”

“Oh.” Naomi felt sick. “Oh, God.”

“I know.” King laid down now, his muscled forearm covering his eyes. “The assholes didn’t go down without a fight, and they opened fire. Me and the team had to shoot back.”

“Who was there with you?”

“Tex, Tank, Valentina, and Quinn.”

She gripped her coffee cup hard between shaking hands. “Anyone hurt?”

“None of my people, but I killed a man.” King paused. “Another one.”

“I’m sorry, Matt.”

“I am too, but I’m also not. You know? I
hate
taking human life, I promise you… but I
also
have no desire whatsoever to get my own life taken. I do what I have to do to come home to you.”

“I know.”

He lowered his arm now, nailed her in to place with those incredible eyes. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“For – for what?” she faltered.

“For not talking to you. For leaving you all alone. For worrying you. For pulling back and shutting you out.”

She reached out slowly, needing to touch him. And God knows, he needed her sweet, gentle touch. He lifted his chin to meet her seeking fingers, and when they stroked his unshaven cheek, he shut his eyes again, this time in relief.

“Are you going to stop doing all that?” she asked. “Is that why you’re talking to me now?”

“Nope.”

Her touch stilled, and she held his gaze. “No – what? No, you’re not going to stop doing all that?”

“No, that’s not why I’m talking to you now.”

Her brow creased in confusion. “I’m not following. Like, at all. I can’t deal with riddles before my coffee.”

“So you drink your morning energy boost, and let me spell it out for you, yeah?”

She nodded, slurped down some more coffee.

King sat up and turned to face her fully. “I want to ask you something.”

Naomi tilted her head, a bit surprised by his urgent tone. “OK.”

“Now, before I ask, I want to say a few things.”

“OK,” she repeated.

“The first thing I want to say is that I totally expect you to say no.”

Naomi narrowed her eyes at him. “So why ask?”

“Because I want to show you that I’m serious.”

An idea of where this was all going started to blossom in the back of Naomi’s mind. She lowered the coffee now, hands shaking again. Waited.

“I’m serious about
us
, baby,” King said. “Serious about being with you, serious about a future with you. I want to
be
with you, and I mean for good.”

He reached in to his jeans pocket and pulled out a small box. Naomi stared at it, shocked.

King saw her face and smiled. “Maybe gimme that coffee, huh?”

In a daze, she handed it over, and he set it on the bedside table. Then he opened the box, and she gasped at the ring inside.

It was an emerald engagement ring, so beautiful and unusual, her breath stuttered to a stop. Naomi loved emeralds, loved them desperately, and she’d told Matt that just once. Leave it to him to remember, though.

He plucked the ring from the box, held it in his palm. The large stone caught the early-morning sun, stunning even in the weak winter rays.

“Naomi Caroline Abbott,” he said, his voice a soft growl. “Will you marry me soon?”

She blinked at the extra word, one not usually included in a marriage proposal. At least, not the ones she’d seen in movies.

“Uh,” she stammered. “
Soon
?”

“Yeah. Soon.” He grinned at her. “Not now.”

“Um.” Her brown eyes were confused. “Yes? Or… maybe?”

King laughed at the question-answer, the deep, rolling laugh that she loved.

“I’ll explain, OK?” he said.

“Yeah, that’d be good.”

“I want you to think of this as a promise, Naomi, a promise to you. I know you’re scared to death about my job right now, and I’m willing to bet that you’ve been trying to figure out how to stay with me through all of this. Maybe you’ve even thought about leaving me.”

“No,” she said quietly. “I was struggling to cope, that’s true. I won’t deny that. But I wasn’t thinking about ending it between us.”

The ‘yet’ was unspoken, but it hung there between them. They both saw it, both heard it.

“I don’t expect you to accept my proposal, Naomi. I’m not asking you to bind yourself to life with me the way that it is right now. I don’t expect an answer from you – either yes or no – until I totally finish this thing with Jensen."

“You’ll finish it soon?”

“Oh, yeah.” His voice was harsh, and she flinched a bit. “Sooner than you’ll believe.”

“And when you do finish?”

“Then I’ll step away from King’s Men.”

She hadn’t seen
that
coming, not at all, and she stared at him. “You – really?”

“Really. I’ll still be involved, of course, but I’ll hire some more people, and then go back to a more supervisory role and outsource jobs again. I’d have to go out in the field occasionally, just as back-up, but no more than once every three months, maybe.”

“Like before,” she said. “Like how it was in the beginning.”

“Exactly.”

“Oh,” she breathed. Hope was rising in her now, and suddenly she saw a light at the end of the dark tunnel that she’d been in. “So you’re asking me to wait a little while longer.”

“I waited for you once, Naomi,” King said softly. “I waited while you found your way back to me. What I’m asking from you now is that you do the same. You wait for me, right here. And by giving you this ring, the promise that I’m making you is this: when this is all over, and I join you here? I do it fully intending to marry you. To make you mine.” He smiled at her, so damn gorgeous and male. “So I’m not asking you to say ‘yes’. Not right now. What I
am
asking you to do is to decide if you want to wait for me. If you want to make me that promise.”

Tears slid down her cheeks now, but she was smiling.

“From my side, I promise to talk to you about everything that’s going on,” he said. “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen, I’ll tell you what happened. I’ll talk to you about every single job – I’ll tell you as much as you want to hear, and I’ll stop when you say that you’ve heard enough. I’m here, Naomi… I’m
here
.”

“You’re back,” she whispered. “You came back to me.”

“Yeah, I am.” He wiped her tears. “I’m back, and I’m never leaving you alone again.”

She extended her left hand to him, and his heart jumped.

“Naomi? You sure?”

She wiggled her ring finger. “Feeling sadly unadorned here, Matt. Need an emerald.”

He laughed again. He slid the ring on to her slim finger, held her hand in both of his, raised it to his lips. He kissed every individual finger, then just held her hand to his mouth, inhaling her scent and softness.

“I love you,” he said, his voice breaking with emotion. “I love you so damn much, and I promise you, baby, you won’t be waiting long.”

“I love you, too.” Her face was open and warm, and his heart clenched at her trust in him. It had been a long time since she’d directed that look his way. “And I promise I’ll wait.”

His mouth descended on hers now, hot and hard. The desire between them roared to life, so fast and intense, it caught them both by surprise.

King wrenched his mouth away. “God, Naomi. It’s been so long since I made love to you.”

“I know,” she said, breathless. “I’ve been waiting for
that
, too.”

“You about done waiting?”

“Hell,
yeah
, babe.” Her brown eyes sparkled with arousal and joy, and he rejoiced to see both. “I’m
so
done.”

“Me too.”

King pulled her to him roughly, but Naomi didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. He threw her to the bed, lifted his massive frame over her smaller one, pushed her down with his weight. Naomi moaned in to his mouth as he tasted her, ran his tongue over her lips. His hands were all over her now, ripping away her pyjamas, stroking between her legs. He slid his thick finger inside her wet heat, and she arched up in to his touch with a cry.

“You feel so good,” he muttered against her throat. “I can’t believe I fucking made us wait for this, baby. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Matt,” she said, her nails digging in to his powerful upper arms, already so close to orgasm. “I need you…
now
. I don’t want to wait anymore. Please…
please
don’t make me wait.”

And for the first time in months and months, Naomi didn’t have to wait for anything. Matt gave her what she wanted, what she needed – what they
both
wanted and needed. And to her breathless, rapturous, mind-bending delight, he gave it to her more than once.

**

Sarah’s cell rang on the bedside table, startling her and Jax. He glanced at the clock and sat straight up, worried. In his experience, when a phone rang at the goddamn crack of dawn, it was always bad news.

Sarah reached for the phone, and Jax grabbed her wrist.

“You want me to get it, doll?” he said.

She looked at the name of the caller, and shook her head. “It’s Noah.”

“Oh.” Jax relaxed now. “Oh, OK. You want me to go? Give you some privacy?”

“Let’s see.” Sarah swiped the screen and answered. “Hey, sweetie. You alright?”

“Sarah!” Her twin brother’s voice boomed in her ear, and she lifted the phone away slightly. “
Sarah
!”

“I’m here, Noah. No need to yell, OK, hon? I can hear you.”

“Sarah.” Now Noah was barely whispering. “Sarah.”

She gave Jax a pleading look as she mouthed
coffee
. He grinned and pulled on his boxers, headed out to the kitchen. Sarah now gave her full attention to her brother.

“OK, hon.” She adjusted the pillow behind her, and leaned against the bed headboard. “Tell me what’s happening.”

“I want to live by myself.”

Sarah almost fell out of bed.
Jesus take the wheel!
She was not
at all
prepared for this conversation, least of all at goddamn 6:17 in the morning. But she knew that Noah wouldn’t be put off: he needed to talk about things when he needed to talk about them, so she shut her eyes, dug deep. She’d spent years with Noah, taking care of him almost on her own, and she slid back in to that role of patient caregiver effortlessly.