Authors: Toni Blake
Tags: #Fiction, #Erotica, #General, #Romance, #Contemporary
Swept Away (39 page)
He laughed. “Yeah, he’ll be thrilled to know we just spent five days together and that you’re
calling off your wedding because of it.”
She bit her lip. “Okay, maybe I see your point. But I’d still like you to come to the show.”
Her voice was so sweet, earnest—and now he felt bad for bringing it up, because he’d
probably disappoint her. “It’ll depend on my work, if I’m in Miami or out of town. But we’ll
see, kitten.”
She stayed quiet, and he felt like he’d disappointed her already. He shouldn’t have said
anything—he’d just been curious about her pottery. But it probably was a bad idea. For a lot of
reasons.
“Speaking of ten years ago,” she began, sounding cautious, “there’ssomething I always wondered about you.”
Given that Kat didn’t usually lead into questions with so much—if any—care, he couldn’t
imagine what was to come. “What’s that?”
Peering down, he couldn’t mistake the concern in her eyes. “Why did you live with your
grandpa? I mean what about your parents?”
Even now, all these years later, something inside him tensed when someone mentioned his
parents. He hated that he still didn’t have full control over that. And anyone else in the world, at any other time or place—he’d probably tell them it was none of their damn business. But he’d
pried about as deeply into Kat’s personal life as he could over the past days, and they’d shared
some pretty close, profound moments, so a sense of decency prevented him from trying to
withhold the information.
“They left us,” he said simply. And he’d tried to look her in the eye as he said it, but had failed,
instead finding his gaze stuck on an old coconut hull in the sand a few yards away.
Next to him, Kat stayed quiet for a moment, and he felt her fresh horror. “Left you?” she finally
asked.
He swallowed back the old bitterness and sense of abandonment. “Yeah,” he said. “When I
was eight, my dad took off—just went out one night and never came back. He was always saying how much he hated me and Bruno, so I guess he decided he’d had enough. And it was
good in a way, because at least we didn’t have to listen to the two of them screaming and
threatening each other anymore.”
“Threatening?” she whispered.
Get ready for some real horror, kitten. She’d asked—and he didn’t see any reason to sugarcoat
it. “They were always waving something around while they screamed. A knife from the
kitchen, an empty whiskey bottle, one time a hammer. Always saying they were gonna kill each
other, bash each other’s heads in, great stuff like that.”
Her palm pressed warm against his chest, a sweet comfort—yet he wondered if his heart was beating faster than normal and if she felt it. He’d never liked letting anyone see his weaknesses.
And maybe Kat had seen more than most people this week, but this was different. This ran
deep.
“At any rate,” he went on, “my mom held us responsible for making Dad leave. Hell, you’d
think she’d have been glad, but instead it just meant she had to work to keep us fed, something
she wasn’t real into. Sometimes...” She locked us in the bathroom when she left the house. He
could still see the old mildewed wall above the tub, the rust stain around the drain, the little window that had been painted shut, and even when Bruno had pried it open one time, they still couldn’t get out. Not even a fan in there, and it had been hotter than hell on a south Florida
summer afternoon. They’d dripped sweat, started taking turns in the shower, had once run
water and both just sat in the tub, Bruno at one end, Brock at the other, curled up in naked little
balls, trying to talk about baseball and school and their friends like it was a normal Saturday.
Then his mind flashed on the times his mother had locked him in the coat closet, Bruno in the
one in the bedroom. She knew separating them made it much worse—so dark, and even hotter.
And it made them feel so alone. They would yell to each other every now and then.
You okay?
Yeah. Just hot. And I think there’s spiders in here.
Don’t worry, she’ll be back soon.
They would say that last part to each other for hours, trying to believe it each and every time it
left their mouths.
They’d considered running away—Bruno had wanted to, but Brock had been younger, afraid.
They’d walked the half-hour drive to Grandpa’s once, but Mom had come for them that night. Grandpa had known things were bad—Brock was more willing to tell him about it than Bruno
was—and he’d asked his daughter-in-law to let them stay. She’d said no. To this day, Brock
had no idea why, except that maybe she’d just liked having them around to blame for her
pathetic life.
“Sometimes what?” Kat asked.
He looked down to find her still nestled in his arms, eyes brimming with sadness for him, and
realized he was going to edit the truth for her, just a little. There was already enough revulsion
in her expression, and he couldn’t think of a reason to make it worse. “Nothing,” he said softly.
“The upshot is, after a couple more years, my mom left, too. Sometimes she’d do that, just take
off and leave us for a few days.”
Thank God she’d never locked them up then. No, then she only left them without any food or
money, so when they figured out she wasn’t coming home, they’d call Grandpa and he’d come
and get them until she showed back up days later, usually with some ridiculous story about
someone who’d needed her help, a friend in an accident, some bizarre emergency that she
would claim prevented her from picking up a phone for three solid days.
“I can’t explain how, but when she left for good, we knew it. Just felt it. We sat up all night
watching old monster movies on TV—some kind of marathon—just perched on the couch
together, not talking, and I remember thinking about her the whole night. Part of me felt afraid,”
he said, remembering how long it had taken to forget that locked-up feeling, remembering the
desperate pleas inside that he’d never given voice to, not wanting his tough older brother to
hear. Don’t leave, Mama, please. I’ll be good. Don’t leave us here. “But part of me didn’t want
her to come back. And she never did.
“The next morning, we called Grandpa. He picked us up, took us home with him, and we never went back to that house, ever. After a couple of weeks, Grandpa went to pack our clothes and
other things. When the rent was due, he told the landlord to send everything in it—which wasn’t much—to the junkyard, except for a few things we could use, like the TV. And that
was it. We never heard from her again.”
He peered down into her shocked eyes and said, “It’s okay, kitten. It was a long time ago. And
trust me—it was for the best.”
“But you were just a little boy. Both of you. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”
He shrugged. “Bad shit happens sometimes.”
She still looked despairing, and he didn’t like having unwittingly dumped his personal tragedy
on her, so he decided to tell her the rest of the story. “If it makes you feel any better, going to
live with my grandfather was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“He loved you,” she said simply.
And he felt that love all the way to his bones, as real as if it still existed, as if his grandfather
were still alive. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “A lot.”
“He wasn’t the kind of guy who’d walked the straight and narrow his whole life. Hell, you
heard what kind of son he raised. But he raised me, too, and he’d mellowed by then. As I got
older, he confided in me regrets from when he was a younger man, but I’ll admit I didn’t care
much about what he’d done when he was young—I was just glad we had him, glad he was
willing to take in two rambunctious boys at a point in his life when he probably thought those
kinds of responsibilities were behind him.”
“He was probably glad to have you,” Kat offered softly.
“Maybe,” Brock allowed, then added on a laugh, “but we were pretty bad kids sometimes.” “I remember your grandpa being sick when you worked at the gallery.”
“Yeah. Lung cancer. But he still kept right on smoking, right up until well, I can’t say ’til the
day he died, because I wasn’t around for that, but at least right up until the day I left.” His chest
tightened slightly. “That’s my greatest regret. Leaving when he was dying.”
Below him, Kat blinked prettily, then voiced a gentle question. “Why did you?”
I can’t tell you that, kitten. He thought about tossing out the old I-could-tell-you-but-then-I’dhave-to-kill-you line, but this wasn’t the moment for that. So instead he’d just have to lie. “He wanted me to.” And it wasn’t a total lie. Grandpa had told him to go when he’d found out what Clark Spencer had said to him. And this next part was even the truth. “He wanted me to go and make something of myself. He believed in me. Bruno was already into some pretty bad shit by
then, already doing time, but Grandpa thought I was cut out for better things and wanted me to
go somewhere and start a new life and do something good. That’s how I ended up at the police
academy, and then later, Quantico.”
“Did he know?” she asked. “Did he know before he died what you were doing?”
“He knew about the police academy, not the FBI. But that’s enough for me. I talked to him on
the phone a few times from the academy. He wasn’t a real talkative man—just kept saying,
‘That’s real good, Brock, that’s real good’—but I could hear the pride in his voice. So I like to
think maybe he died a little happier because he knew I was gonna turn out okay.”
“I’m sure he did,” she whispered, and as she slid her hand up his chest onto his face, drawing
him down for a kiss, he decided to quit thinking about all that wrenching stuff so long in his
past and concentrate on the lithe, beautiful girl who lay naked with him in a hammock. Hell, he
couldn’t even remember what had taken him down that dark road, but sun, sand, and sex were
far better, so he cast his most wicked grin and said, “Ever done it in a hammock, kitten?”
A small, sensual smile reshaped her face and he was instantly glad to have drawn her back to
the present, too. “No.”
He slipped a hand between her thighs and found her delightfully dewy. “I think you want to.”
Her breath came warm on his ear. “I’ll do it wherever you want me to.”
A jolt of masculine power shot through him, propelling him to roll on top of her and take control. He kissed her, gently bit her neck, rubbed his hardened shaft between her parted
thighs, then eased inside in one long, smooth stroke.
She gasped at the impact, imparting in him still more male control, and he moved in her,
smooth and warm, and listened to her pretty moans combining with the sound of the tide and
the rustle of palm fronds from the sea breeze.
Damn, their sex just kept getting better and better. He didn’t even know how that was possible,
but it did. She was so easy to be with, in every way. At once so sweet and so sexy, saucy but
gentle. At moments wild, at others completely demure. In ways, she was just like the sand—an enigma. Hell, the girly girl with pink sparkly flip-flops and the perfect tan also had clay-dried
hands and broken fingernails. And yet, she was just Kat. His sweet, naughty kitten. A
handful of a girl. But a good handful.
No matter how he tried to stop, he still couldn’t deny how very close he felt to her. He wasn’t supposed to get close to people. Never had. Had thought he never could.
Hell, he didn’t even know how to go about it. He could joke, he could flirt, he could seduce— he could even open up his heart on rare occasions, and he’d done that a time or two with Kat,
not by plan but because of the shit that had happened.
But he didn’t know how to go beyond that—and he didn’t think it was a good time to find out.
He didn’t think it would ever be a good time. The FBI liked his being unattached, and so did
he. If something happened to him, there wasn’t anybody to mourn or cry—and no one for the
government to support, either. It had always seemed wise to keep it that way. And he’d never
once, since the day he’d joined the Bureau, had a reason to think about not keeping it that way.
As for Kat, well she was incredible.
But from his job to her father to every one of the zillion reasons in between, there was a lot to keep them apart. And that would be best for all concerned—for more reasons than he could
name.
So he’d just enjoy the rest of their time together. Take it for what it was. Mind-boggling sex
and good company and, hell, someone who—if there wasn’t all this heat between them—he’d
even consider a friend. Which felt pretty damn weird. Because he got along well enough with
the guys he worked with, might even refer to one or two of them as a “buddy,” but as for real
friends, he wasn’t sure he’d ever had one. Maybe that was why it had pinched so much that Carlos had called him that.
So Kat was his lover. Kat was his friend. He’d hold this week with her as something special.
And he supposed the next time he got into danger and found himself escaping with a fantasy, it
would be a memory instead. Maybe he’d even feel a little wistful about it.
But he was who he was. An undercover fed whose job was everything. A guy who didn’t
think about anything as abstract and hard to understand as relationships, or God forbid, the L-
word. He’d been that guy his whole life, and he’d gotten by okay.
Just then, her hands curled around his ass, tight, pulling him deeper. He instantly wanted to
kiss her, make her feel his affection—he wanted her to know he was making love to her.
But no. If you truly made love to someone, it meant there was love. And this wasn’t that.
Couldn’t be. It’s just sex, dude, just sex. So don’t kiss her right now. Hold something back.
But he kissed her anyway, unable to resist. Kissed her warm and deep until he was as lost in it
as he was in all of her, in her body, in her very soul. He stopped thinking, weighing, or
worrying. He just followed his instincts and urges, let the flawless joy of the moment swallow
him up, and he knew, just for those few minutes, as he plunged deep inside of her—deeper,
deeper—that he was indeed making love to Katrina Spencer. Making love to her for all he was
worth.
“That was perfect,” she said after they’d both come and still held each other tight.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Yeah, it was.”
After heating up the grill that evening, Brock opened the bungalow door to find Kat’s back to
him at the kitchen counter. Wearing her bikini bottoms with that same cute pink strappy top
from the first day, she was shaking her ass to “You Sexy Thing” by Hot Chocolate. He’d come
for the burgers, but instead crossed his arms and leaned against the doorjamb to watch. She
danced her way to the sink, washing off a tomato, then moved to the fridge, wiggling her
bottom enough to turn him half-hard before emerging with a couple of slices of cheese in her
hand.
“I thought you didn’t like seventies music,” he said with a grin. She’d complained about it
more than once over the past days.
She flinched, then turned toward him with a you-caught-me grin. “This one’s okay,” she
replied, resuming slight swaying movements, which he discovered he enjoyed even more from
the front.
When she danced right over to him, grabbing his hands and encouraging him to move with her, he followed his instincts, letting himself find the rhythm on the old tile floor. His hands made their way to her hips, then her rear, and he leaned closer, brushing his growing erection against
the front of her bikini.
She cast a coquettish smile. “I wouldn’t have guessed you for a dancer.”
“Neither would I.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“A scantily clad chick letting me rub up against her to music. That’s the occasion.”
She leaned her head back in a soft trill of laughter, making her breasts rise slightly from her
top.
“But if dancing is always this fun, maybe I could get into it. Maybe when I get home, I should
start hitting the clubs,” he teased.
She gave a haughty eye roll, as if saying it was no skin off her nose. “You might find other
girls who let you rub up against them to music, but they won’t be as good as me.”
He grinned. “Don’t worry, kitten—I would never expect them to be.” And the only girl I really want to rub against right now is the one in my arms.
Good time to shut up. Because even if picking up girls he didn’t know sounded damn empty at
the moment, what he’d already said was close enough to being too much.
Even so, he was still enjoying himself when she handily extracted herself from his grasp and
made her way back to the counter, still moving slightly to the music.
“Hey, hey, hey—song’s not over. Where you going?”
She returned a moment later with a plate bearing two hamburger patties. “I’m hungry,” she said
with a playful smile, “and not just for you. So start cooking, mister.”
As Brock made his way to the grill and put the hamburgers on, he wondered if he’d ever
suffered as many hard-ons in a five-day period as he had since finding Katrina Spencer on this island. Hell, maybe when he was a kid. That had been torture. This had been torture at first, but
had gotten a lot less horrible. God, what a turnaround he’d seen in her. From pushing him
away to having her way with him on the beach this morning.
Fifteen minutes later, Brock flipped the burgers onto the buns Kat had brought out, then joined
her at the table. The last supper, so to speak, and to his surprise, he felt that. They still had the night together and probably much of the day tomorrow, but he’d grown accustomed to sitting
down to dinner with her at the little table in the sand. They ate chips with their burgers, and then more store-bought cookies, and he was amazed at how good such a simple meal could
taste under the right circumstances.
“Thanks for walking up the beach with me today,” Kat said. After sex in the hammock, they’d
finally napped, then Kat had announced her sojourn for sea glass. He’d offered to go, curious
to see the stuff, if there was any to see, and they’d trekked up the shoreline holding hands, still
naked. It had felt at once bizarre and natural—and like an experience it seemed only appropriate
to have with his wild Kat.
“We didn’t find much.” They’d picked up only five small remnants, all green, which they’d deposited in the zipper pocket on his trunks. Only as she’d dropped the first piece in had he
remembered Francisco’s key remained there, too.
“Finding any is like discovering treasure,” she explained, eyes sparkling. “It doesn’t exactly
grow on trees, so I always feel lucky if I find any at all.” Her expression dampened just slightly as she said, “I’ll need to be sure to get the pieces from you before we you know part ways tomorrow.”
He gave a soft nod. Maybe neither one of them was exactly looking forward to “rescue,” but
that was how things had to be.
“By the way,” she said, still looking a little uncomfortable, “I should mention that Ian will
probably come tomorrow.”
He lifted his gaze from his plate to her eyes. “Really?” He had no desire to meet the guy and didn’t like hearing that his last few minutes with Kat on the ride back would be spent with her fianc. He still couldn’t help wondering what the hell she’d been doing planning to marry that
guy. Just to please their families? He knew Kat’s parents were important to her, and he knew
Clark could be overbearing, but... when he thought about it, he still remained stumped that
someone as self-possessed as Kat would let herself be railroaded into an engagement just
because it made everyone but her happy.
“By the time they come, they’re all going to think something is wrong, and everyone will be mad at me for lying about where I went, and Ian’s in pretty close touch with my father, so...
yeah, it’s likely.”
He took a big, annoyed bite of his burger, thinking tomorrow was going to be a real drag. “Tell
me something, Kat. Tell me, straight up, why you agreed to marry him.”
She drew back slightly, lowering the chip between her fingers back to her plate. Maybe he’d
sounded a little gruff.
“I already told you. Because... our families are close and I’ve known him my whole life and
he’s a decent guy who’s crazy about me. It was a mistake, sure, but the only ingredient missing
was the fact that I’m not in love with him.”
“That’s a pretty big factor, kitten,” he said, trying not to sound so brusque, but still firm.
They’d had this conversation before, but he still wasn’t quite buying her answer.
“Well, I sort of convinced myself I was in love with him. Right up until... you.” She
swallowed, suddenly looking a little nervous. “I mean, I just figured out that if I wanted to
sleep with you so badly, I must not be in love. But until then...”
He tilted his head, gave her a come-clean-with-me look. “You’re too smart for that, Kat.
There’s gotta be more, some other reason besides ‘our families are close.’”
He knew the moment he said it that he was right—guilt draped her face.
“Tell me why else.”
Across from him, she bit her bottom lip and let out a big sigh. “You’re going to think I’m
crazy.”
“Probably. But tell me.”
“The truth is...”
“Yeah?”
“My family is having money trouble.”
He felt his eyebrows shoot up. Clark Spencer, in financial trouble? “How is that possible?”
