Wrecked (29 page)

His mouth crushed against hers.

The words died in her throat and anything, everything else she might have died in her throat under the impact of that kiss. If the last one had been soft, sweet, and gentle, this was the opposite. Stealing the very breath out of her and burning her from the inside out. His hand tangled in her hair as he wrestled them away from the desk. She stumbled and fell against him and he caught her, twisting them so that when they went down, it was into the fat leather chair dominating the corner between his desk and file cabinet.

He used it for when he was having nervous clients that he needed to talk down.

He figured it had just about enough room for what he needed to do with Abby.

She had a pretty little heart tattoo on her right breast. It was delicate and sweet, with the word
Zach
etched inside it. There wasn’t any color and that was just fine. It had his name in it . . . she’d written him on her skin, just the way he’d done with her all those years ago.

Tearing his mouth away from hers, he urged her up so that she was sitting astride him. “Unzip me,” he demanded, staring into her eyes.

She swallowed and then eased away.

He caught her hips, reluctant to let her go.

A smile curved her lips. “Zach . . . I need to move a little. This works better if I’m not sitting right on top of you.”

He groaned and let go. Resting his hands on the armrest of the chair, he busied himself staring at the tattoo. That pretty little heart . . . then he hissed as he felt the back of her hand brush against his cock. She took her time and when she finally had his fly open, he was digging his fingers into the leather just to keep from reaching for her.

* * *

Abigale traced her fingers over the thick ridge of his
cock and smiled as it leaped against her touch. Gray cotton covered him and she smiled at him as she hooked her fingers in the waistband of his shorts, dragging them down with a wicked glint in her eyes.

Dragging them down
slowly
 . . .

Swearing, he shoved them down and reached for her, hauling her into his lap and crushing her laughing mouth to his. He guided her legs down on either side of his hips.

“What’s your hurry?”

“Seventeen years worth of hunger.” He tucked the head of his cock against her entrance and stared up at her as he drove straight home.

Her back arched and she bit her lip to stifle a ragged cry.

He wanted to hear her moan, wanted to hear each broken sigh as he fucked her. Instead, he rocked against her a second time, a third time, as he stroked his hand up her middle and circled the tattoo on her breast with his finger. He didn’t touch it . . . the new ink needed time to heal before anybody else went messing with it but damn it, he wanted to press his mouth to that mark.

“I love you,” he rasped, reaching up to tangle his hand in her hair and tug her down. “Damn it, do you hear me? I love you.”

She pressed her mouth to his, her elbows braced against his chest. “I hear you.” She whispered it against his lips, her gaze locked with his. “I hear you, Zach . . . I see you. And I love you. I want you . . . more than I want my next breath.”

Love and desire ripped through him, so desperate and raw and wild, he didn’t know if he could stand it. Twisting his hips, he drove deep inside her, hard, fast. She gasped and when he saw her mouth falling open, he caught her lips with his, swallowing the scream down.

Later, he thought dimly. Later, he’d take her home. To her place. To his. It didn’t matter. Someplace where they were alone and he could make her sigh, make her moan, as he made love to her all night. While he told her that he loved her as often as he wanted.

For now, he focused on working her body into a burning frenzy, which wasn’t hard. She was so hot, burning against him and whimpering into his mouth, her fingers digging into his skin while she swiveled her hips against his, hard and fast.

Faster . . .

Faster . . .

She broke over him with a ragged, breathless scream and when she tore her mouth away to breathe, he buried his face against her neck and let go.

The climax ripped through him, almost painful in its intensity.

And for once, the ache in his heart wasn’t so raw and empty.

He held her as she shuddered and gasped for air. And he felt complete.

Chapter Twenty-three

Glumly, Abigale stared at the door as Zach zipped
her dress back up. “What are the odds that nobody heard us?” she asked.

He was silent long enough that she paused to look back over her shoulder at him.

Strong, warm arms came around her waist and tugged her back against him. He’d already pulled his shirt back on and buttoned it, shoved a hand through his hair. He looked just fine, she’d noticed. And she’d seen a glimpse of herself in the mirror he kept on hand for clients. She looked . . . well. She looked like a woman who’d just spent the past few minutes having sex in a chair.

Her dress was wrinkled, her hair was tangled around her shoulders, and her lipstick—supposedly kiss-proof—wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. He skimmed a hand down her arm and rubbed his cheek against hers before he answered honestly, “Slim to none.”

As the hot rush of blood leaped to her cheeks, she groaned and dropped her head back onto his shoulder. “Damn.”

“We could stay in here until after closing time,” he offered, pressing a hand to her belly. “I can think of a good way to pass the time.”

She slanted a dark look at him. “This place just got broken into not that long ago. A few days, remember?”

“Yeah. I still got the bumps and bruises to show for it.” He sighed and eased away. “And you’re right. I’m not keeping you here after the shop closes up. So we go out now. Face the music.”

Groaning, she held out her hand.

He caught it in his and then, abruptly, swooped down and stole a kiss. “I bet you didn’t see this coming when you were writing in that new journal, did you?”

“No.” She laughed a little and then looked around, spying her bag. She caught the strap in her hand and hefted it up on her shoulder. She slid a hand into the side pocket, pulling the silly little green journal out. “I had a plan to wreck my life. And then you go around and totally remake it.”

He hugged her against him and then, before they could get distracted, they left the office.

Abigale was still blushing as they moved through the main part of the shop. It was empty, save for Javi. He slid them a wicked grin. “Hey, Abby. Zach.” His black brows arched over dark eyes, but he didn’t say anything else.

“Javi.” Zach glanced around. “Where is everybody else at?”

“We wrapped up the last customer forty-five minutes ago.” Javi slid Abigale a look and added, “When Abby came in, I decided to flip the sign to ‘closed.’ Keelie is . . .” He frowned and glanced around.

“Right here.”

Abigale and Zach turned.

Keelie stood in the hallway, head bowed as she tugged a pair of earbuds out. The music was still blaring from them and she took a second to turn the volume down before she looked up. Her mismatched eyes glanced at Zach but her gaze met Abigale’s and held it. “Abby,” Keelie said quietly.

Lifting an eyebrow, Abigale waited.

“I need to apologize to you.”

A few seconds passed before Keelie blew out a slow, steady breath. “I’m sorry . . . and not just because you walked in while I was kissing Zach. And that’s what it was. It was a shitty thing to do, but it was all on my part. He’d never . . .”

When Keelie trailed off, Abigale glanced over at Zach. He was staring at his friend with an unreadable face.
What the hell?
Abigale wondered. Looking back at Keelie, she said, “I know. It was shitty, he’d never, and it’s done. We’re cool.”

“Just like that?” Keelie crossed her arms over her chest and stared at her, defiance written all over her face.

“Just like that.” Shaking her head, Abigale said, “I don’t know why you’re so hostile to me, unless it really is all about him, but I just don’t care that much. He loves me . . . and I figure you know that. I love him. There’s no reason for me to get worked up over something that meant nothing to him.”

Keelie flinched. “Ouch. You know how to twist the knife.” Then, with a short, stiff nod, she turned and headed back down the hall. “It’s over, it was shitty . . . we’re cool. I can live with that, I guess. I’m gone for the night.”

As she strode down the hall, Zach and Abby looked at each other.

Javi called out, “Wait a second, kid. I’m walking you to the car, remember?”

“Home?” Zach murmured, after Javi had slipped out the back with Keelie.

She went to answer:
hell, yes
.

But the weight of the book in her hand reminded her. “Just a minute.” She glanced around, her gaze lingering on the counter. “You got any string?”

He blinked at her. “String?”

“Yeah.” She waggled the book at him. “I finished the plan. Well, everything except the photographers, and hey, I
did
flip off your brother, so maybe that counts. Now I need to do the rest of the stuff in here.”

“And you need string . . . ?”

She sighed and opened it to the page where it read:

Hang the journal in a public place.

Tapping on that page, she said, “I need to hang it up. Ask people to draw in it.”

He skimmed it over and then flipped it to the very front where her plan was. “And when they see this?”

“Welllll . . .” She was blushing as she answered, “It’s not like they know who it belongs to. Let them guess.”

He sighed and then pushed it back into her hands.

While he was gone, she scrounged in her purse for a pen. Tugging it out, she added in a sixth item.

He came just as she was tucking the pen up.

“You sure you want to leave it lying around here for a day?” he asked, eyeing her skeptically.

“Zach . . . you worry too much. Besides, who is going to take it? Javi?”

Javi had just come back into the main room and he looked at them, puzzled. Eyeing the twine, he jerked up his hands. “Hey, I’m not into . . . ah . . . what are you talking about?”

Abigale flashed the journal at him and he leaned in, studied it. “Nope. I don’t do journals.”

“It will be fine,” she said, looking back at Zach.

“Okay.” He pushed a hand through his hair and then reached for it, using the twine he’d dug up and looping it around it, tying it so that the twine kept it open on just that page. Then he rigged it so that it was hanging just off the counter. “We’ll watch it for a few hours tomorrow and then take it down, cool?”

“Sounds good.” Licking her lips, she pulled out a pen and then shoved it into Javi’s hands. “Hey, why don’t you draw on the page?”

He shrugged and flipped it open, found the page and doodled for a minute. When he was done, there was a samurai slashing his sword through the air. “Nice,” Zach murmured. “Hey, it was in a public place. We can take it home now.”

“Relax. There’s nothing in there I’ve got a problem with people seeing.” She flipped to the front and glanced down as though she was reading it for the first time.

Zach glanced down and then back up at her.

Javi turned to leave. “I’m heading out, guys. Locking up, right, Zach?”

“Ah . . .” He cleared his throat, his gaze falling away from her face back to the journal. “Yeah. Yeah, Javi, I got it. Thanks.”

“Zach . . . ?”

He stared at the journal, ran his finger over the sixth line she’d added to her plan.

“What’s this?” he whispered, his voice rough.

“It’s the next step in the plan . . . the one that matters the most, I think.”

He caught her in his arms and hauled her against him.

They didn’t make it home for a while.

Wreck this life: My new plan

1.
Stop worrying so much about the future

2.
Call Roger and tell him off

3.
Flip off the next photographer you see

4.
Get a tattoo

5.
Have a torrid affair with a hot guy

6.
Ask that hot guy if he’d maybe like to marry me . . . up in Alaska

Turn the page for a preview of Shiloh Walker’s

THE PROTECTED

Coming in September 2013 from Berkley Sensation!

“You want me
where
?”

Vaughnne MacMeans stared at the man in front of her and decided she really wished she’d taken more time off.

Granted, she’d already taken three months of personal time. Then two weeks medical leave after the case to end all cases went to hell in Orlando, Florida. Maybe she should have made it three weeks. Her head was still so
not
in a good place after that last job.

She could handle another week off, she thought. Another week. Two weeks. Three weeks. Three months. Three years.

Because Taylor Jones just
had
to be shitting her.

“Orlando,” he said again.

“No.” She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. She didn’t ever want to see that miserable, forsaken, hellhole of a city again. Just thinking about it was enough to give her nightmares. Thinking about what had happened in that dark, squalid miserable building . . . shit, sometimes she woke still feeling the despair of the women around her. She wasn’t even empathic and it had gotten to her.

Of course, a person didn’t have to be empathic to feel
those
vibes. That much misery was enough to screw with the head of any psychic, even if it was just to leave that cloying, dark layer of despair. She’d been caught in the middle of it and even though they’d shut that operation down, it wasn’t enough.

They’d shut down
one
ring. Just one.

Who knows how many more were out there?

“Jones, I don’t know if I can handle going back into that kind of work again,” she said reluctantly. “Not after—”

“It’s not connected to that. It’s not about Daylin, at all.”

Pain gripped her heart at the sound of that name. The wounds were still fresh and the pain was just as hot, just as vivid as it had been months ago. Was it ever going to fade?

Shooting him a narrow look, she took a deep breath and shifted her attention to the wall behind him. “I don’t want to go back there, Taylor,” she said quietly. It hurt to even
think
about it. It hurt to think about that place, to think about those women. To think about any of it. Most of all, it hurt to think about her sister. The girl she’d failed . . .

“As I said, it’s not about the last case.”

She shoved away from her desk and started to pace. An echo of a headache danced in the back of her mind, letting her know that it might not have been a bad idea to take a little more time to recover. Psychics were prone to odd, undetectable injuries sometimes and she’d wrenched the hell out of something, although it wasn’t anything a doctor could diagnose.

Overuse of their abilities could definitely do damage and these headaches were murder.

Still, she had bills to pay, an empty refrigerator, and sitting at home had been driving her insane.

SAC—Special Agent in Charge—Taylor Jones leaned back in his seat and pinned her with a direct stare. If one was to try and find paper documentation of their unit, they’d be hard-pressed to do it. A lot of the agents knew vaguely of Jones and his odd team, and there were rumors, but if one tried to look up the FBI team of psychics, they weren’t going to have a lot of luck. Technically, they didn’t really exist.

Vaughnne still wasn’t sure just how Jones managed it, but he did.

Just then, he was watching her, his blue eyes cool and unreadable, his face expressionless. That blank look didn’t mean anything. He could be madder than hell, he could be amused. Hell, he could have a scorching case of herpes and she wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at his face—she’d seen him facing down drug runners, child rapists, and psychopaths with a taste for human flesh with that exact same expression.

Inscrutable bastard.

“It’s got nothing to do with that last case,” he said again. “It’s in Orlando, yes, but it’s an easy job, mostly monitoring. It’s practically nothing more than babysitting. You can handle a babysitting job, Agent MacMeans.”

Sure she could. The problem was it was in
Orlando
.

Clenching her jaw, she stared at him. Babysitting. She wanted to tell him to shove it up his ass.

“Is there a reason why you can’t do this job?” he asked, watching her the way he might study a suspect before he went in to tear them apart in an interrogation.

Shit.

She was screwed.

She could either take the damn assignment. Or resign. He hadn’t said that, and she knew he wouldn’t force that on her, but she also knew she couldn’t avoid one particular area of the country, either. They were spread too thin as it was and she wasn’t much for playing the chickenshit.

Either she could work and do her damn job, or she would quit and let him make room on the team for somebody who
could
do the job. He danced on a razor’s edge to keep their unit going, anyway.

She’d worked too damn hard to get where she was just to walk away.

She wasn’t a quitter, damn it. Besides, it wasn’t like her particular skill set was in high demand out there, and she rather liked being able to
use
her abilities to do something worthwhile. Somehow she doubted any local law enforcement agency was likely to welcome a telepath into their midst.
Sure. Welcome aboard, and instead of using the police radio, just screech out into our minds like a psycho banshee, MacMeans. Look forward to working with you!

Since she needed to work to live, she had to suck it up, put on her big-girl panties, and deal with this. Moving back to her desk, she sat down and crossed her legs. Absently, she started to swing her foot, one high-heeled shoe hanging off her toes. She was tempted to take it off and pummel Jones across the side of the head with it.

Orlando . . . so many nightmares. So many bad dreams. And the bitter knowledge that she hadn’t been able to save the one person who’d always mattered to her.

“You know avoiding it won’t make it any easier.”

Jerking her attention back to Jones, she stared at him. “This isn’t supposed to be easy,” she said quietly. “But what in the hell would you know about it?”

For a second, though, as she stared at him, she thought she saw something in the cool depths of his eyes.

Then he looked down and it was gone.

“Just tell me about the job, Jones. Just who am I supposed to be babysitting?”

* * *

Gus Hernandez pulled the battered, beat-up truck
into the driveway of the little house he was renting. It was falling apart and instead of paying five hundred a month as the landlady had originally requested, he paid three hundred . . . and did repairs. He was good with his hands and always had been. What he didn’t know how to do, he was able to learn and he’d fixed the place up quite a bit over the past few months.

So far, he’d managed to tear up the rotting boards of the porch and replace those. He’d repainted three of the rooms. He still needed the fix the deck in back and it was an ongoing struggle to keep the yard free of weeds. If he had the money, he’d reseed it, but he didn’t. Most of the work he did was either with scrap he found cheap at his other jobs or clearance stuff at the local hardware or home improvement stores.

He still needed to get more work done around the little place, although what he wanted to do was go inside the dark, quiet house and just sit. For a few minutes, with a cold beer and do . . .
nothing
. He didn’t want to think, he didn’t want to talk. He wanted to do
nothing
. It was a luxury he hadn’t been able to indulge in for a good, long while, though, and tonight would be no different.

Although it was a bright, sunny day, he felt like he had a cloud hanging over him.

Always.

Pulling the truck into Park, he stared at the old place, studied it, made sure everything looked the way it had this morning when he’d left. He hadn’t had a single phone call. Not one. So that was good.

It had taken more charm than he generally cared to exert these days, but he’d managed to convince the lady living across the street to give him a call if she saw anything, and that woman? Old Mrs. Werner was
nosy
. If anybody had been snooping around, more than likely she’d notice something.

It didn’t let him breathe any easier, though.

He didn’t think he’d ever breathe easy again.

Please . . . you must do this for me . . .

Blocking the echo of a woman’s voice out of his head, he pushed the door open. Before he climbed out, though, he reached below the seat and took out the one thing he never went anywhere without.

The butt of the Sig Sauer P250 fit solidly in his hand. Slipping the safety off, he looked toward the passenger seat. A solemn pair of eyes looked back at him. “Come on.”

The boy sighed and slid out of the car. “Do we have to do this every day?”

He’d asked the same question yesterday. He’d asked it the day before. He’d keep asking it, Gus knew. It would only get worse, because the boy wasn’t exactly a child anymore, and that rebelliousness that always crept out during those years between child and adult was getting ever closer.

Still, there were things in life that didn’t care that Alex wanted some freedom. Things that didn’t care that the boy just wanted to live a normal life.

Gus’s job was to make sure the boy
lived
. Period. Staring into a pair of eyes eerily like his own, he said quietly, “Alex.”

That was all he said. Alex’s lids drooped and his skinny shoulders slumped, but he climbed out of the truck, plodding around to stand next to Gus and stare up at the old house.

Alex grumbled under his breath. Gus ignored him as he looked around, eyes never resting in one place. Before he shut the door, he grabbed a bag from the back and slung it over his left shoulder and then pulled out his denim jacket, draped it over his arm and hand to hide the Sig Sauer.

“Are you listening to me?”

“Nope.”

“There’s
nobody
here,” Alex said, his voice sullen, bordering on rude. He mumbled something else and Gus stopped, looked back at him. The anger in the boy was getting worse, flaring closer to the surface today than it ever had.

“We’ve talked about this, Alex,” he said quietly. “You want to be angry with me, you got a right. But remember what we talked about.”

Gus didn’t blame him. The kid had every right to be pissed. Gus wasn’t a twelve-year-old kid who’d had his entire life uprooted and
he
was pissed.

“This is so fucking stupid,” Alex snapped.

Stopping in his tracks, Gus turned around and stared at Alex. “Watch your mouth,” he said quietly. “Your mother raised you better than that.”

Alex sneered. “Yeah, she raised me better but she’s dead—”

The boy’s voice cracked. And as the anger faded away into agony, Gus reached out, hooked his hand over Alex’s neck. “Yeah. She’s dead. But she wanted you safe. And you’ll be safe, Alex. Now come on . . .”

You must promise me . . .

A hard, shuddering breath escaped Alex but then he pulled away, looking at Gus with glittering eyes. The tears he wouldn’t shed still shone in his eyes until he blinked them away. “I told you, there’s nobody here.”

“Yeah. I heard you. We’re checking anyway.”

Twenty minutes later, while Alex oversaw the dinner of macaroni and hot dogs, Gus stood at the sink, trying unsuccessfully to scrub the engine grease from his hands. He’d worked eight hours at the construction site, then picked up a hundred bucks helping one of the guys from the site do some work on his car. He was filthy, he was tired, and he was hot. He wanted to plunge his head under the cool stream of water coming from the faucet, but he just kept scrubbing at the grease on his hands.

The phone rang just when he’d decided to give up. Hurriedly rinsing his hands, he grabbed it, spying Elsie Werner’s number. The sweet, incorrigibly nosy lady from across the street. “Hello, Elsie . . . need me to come clean out the pipes again?”

“Well, now that you mention it, the one in the bathroom is running rather slow,” she said.

Gus would swear she clogged them up just so he could come over so she could ogle his ass. He’d had plenty of women ogling his ass in his lifetime. It wasn’t a new experience. But to his knowledge, most of them weren’t old enough to be his great-grandmother.

Still, the lady was kind. She’d made more than a few meals for him and Alex once she figured out neither of them could do anything more complicated than pizza, burgers and fries, or macaroni and cheese or hot dogs. If she had her way, she would have taught them both to cook.

But Gus was intent on keeping his distance. Very intent. Letting a sweet old lady teach him or the kid how to cook wasn’t the way to keep a cool distance. It wouldn’t help either him or the kid, and, in the long run, it could harm her. He had enough blood on his hands.

“I’ll come by later tonight,” he said. “Although I don’t know if I can fix it tonight. I may need to go to the store for the drain cleaner.”

“Well, that can wait. I wasn’t calling about that, Gus. We have a new neighbor moving in . . . did you see?”

The skin on the back of his neck prickled.

Lifting his head, he looked to the front of the house. “A neighbor, huh?”