FEARLESS (15 page)

Chapter Sixteen

“Are you okay?” Davis waited until they’d reached the third-floor landing and stood at her bedroom door before asking again. He’d been tempted to carry her up there but figured she’d put up a pretty big fuss. She seemed to be spoiling for a fight.

He was in the mood for other things.

Instead of giving him the usual strained answer, she threw open the door and walked inside, each step stiff and her head held high. She’d made it all the way to the chest of drawers before she whipped around to face him. “Do I look okay?”

Yeah, definitely wanting a fight.

That shade of angry red was not normal for her face. Neither was the way she stood there with her hands balled into fists, ready to punch if he said one wrong word, which he feared was inevitable.

Although he was starting to wonder if he knew anything about women, he did know this much. “This sounds like one of those questions women ask and men can’t answer without wandering into jerk territory.”

She leaned back against the chest hard enough to shake the sturdy wood. With arms folded across her stomach she assumed the we-need-to-talk stance.

He despised that pose.

Her eyes narrowed and her head tilted to the side. She’d pulled out every furious-woman gesture. “Is it that you hide your feelings or that you do not have any?”

This was worse than he’d thought. Whatever fury had been brewing at her office after finding Greg had been murdered boiled over now. He’d try to find a neutral topic, but he had no idea what one would be.

“What exactly is going on here?” he asked like the lost guy he was.

“Don’t act like you don’t know. We’ve been over this a million times.” She dismissed him by turning around and searching through the top drawer.

The woman had exactly three shirts and three pair of underwear in this house, but she acted as if she needed to search through her extensive wardrobe for just the right thing to wear. As if he cared about that. As far as he was concerned, they worked best without clothes.

He opened his mouth to point that out, but he stopped when he saw her expression reflected in the mirror in front of her. Lines of strain around her mouth, and eyes almost dead of emotion. Seeing her wrung out drained the coiling anger from his body.

He’d spent the past hour desperate to hold her. Watching her protective instincts kick in as she wrestled Ben out of the line of fire, all while maintaining her aim at the attacker, hit Davis with a dual punch of pride and terror. He thought having her threatened was the worst. But, no, repeatedly seeing her at the wrong end of a gun was the nightmare scenario. Even the memory had the power to grip his heart with a pressure so strong it could burst.

He stood there feeling oversize and uncomfortable. He wasn’t one to suffer from bouts of insecurity. In his line of work that meant death, but she had him shifting his arms and shuffling his feet like an embarrassed schoolboy. The bed was right there, yet well out of his grasp at the moment.

One more glance at her face and her strange sudden fixation on whatever was in that drawer had him rethinking his usual strategy. He could play the angry male or he could try one more time to make her understand he was more than an automaton with a gun.

“You want to know that truth? I have feelings for you I can’t control and can’t shake no matter how hard I try.”

She frowned up at him through the mirror then turned around to treat him to the direct version. “We’re not talking about us.”

“I am.”

“I’m referring to how you act on the job and how you deal with death and danger.”

He wasn’t. Not now. Not after all this time. “I’m talking about being so driven under with my love for you, so desperate to have something real and lasting with you that I can’t get my vision to clear. That’s how I feel about you.”

Her frown eased. “Davis—”

He gave in to the need to touch her as he slipped into the space between her open arms and wrapped his arms loosely around her trim waist. “You have to know how much I love you. I never hesitated to say it and I always meant it.”

Those eyes so sad a second ago went soft and a little cloudy. “I do know.”

“But you don’t fully believe it.” A wild mix of love and attraction zapped between them. This close he could feel her breaths grow short and the frantic beat of her heart. “You think I don’t feel, like I’m immune or something, but with you it never stops. It flips me over and rips me apart.”

She sighed as her hand brushed across his chin. “I love you. That’s never been an issue. The question is whether it’s enough.”

It had to be. “For tonight, let it be. We can figure out the rest in the morning.”

He watched as emotions raced across her face. Doubt, excitement, maybe a touch of hope. He read it in the way she nibbled on her lip to the way her fingers tightened against his skin. When she leaned in and placed a short, almost sweet, kiss on his lips, a heart-stopping need rushed through him.

“Lara?”

Her hand went into his hair and she tugged his face down closer to hers. “Yes.”

The simple word set fire to something inside him that had been smoldering for months. His heart jumped and his hands moved all over her. Touching, kissing, mouths linked and pressing deep. He could not get close enough to her or break away even for a second.

His palms slipped under the hem of her T-shirt and fingertips hit bare skin. Warm and soft just like he remembered. As the kiss crescendoed to a fever, his blood scalded his veins. He couldn’t get their clothes off fast enough.

With a sweep, he lifted her shirt up and off. Before he could lower his arms, she had tugged his shirt out of his waistband and stripped it up his chest. Her lips went to his exposed shoulders and her fingers fumbled at the snap to his jeans.

They were lost in a frenzy of hands and mouths. The heat that had always flamed between them exploded into a roaring wall of need. Turning as he kissed her, he pushed her toward the bed and followed her down when her knees buckled.

The bra came next. With a slip he had it off and on the floor. Nearly shaking with want, he looked down at her, at all that creamy skin that drove him wild. His mouth covered her breast and her back lurched off the bed as he rolled his tongue over the tip. He closed his eyes, enjoying the friction of their bare chests rubbing against each other.

He opened them again when her hand slipped inside his boxer briefs. She touched him as she trailed a line of kisses straight down his stomach. Her hand closed as it slid over him and his breath stuttered to a halt in his lungs.

Another minute of that and his body would explode. Shifting his weight, he reached for the condom he’d thrown on the nightstand earlier in a burst of optimism. The position put her head near his erection and she took advantage. She peeled his pants down and her mouth slid over him. The delicious mix of her hands and tongue put a wrecking ball to the last of his control.

Careful not to hurt her but with more force than he’d intended, he pushed her back against the mattress. He was about to apologize when she pressed the backs of her hands against the bed next to her head and smiled up at him.

On this they were always connected. She was as ready as he was.

A few tugs and he pulled her jeans and panties off. He wanted to spend time kissing her thighs and exploring every amazing inch of her. The screaming in his head wouldn’t let him. It had been so long, so many lonely months, that he couldn’t tolerate another second of not being inside her. He ripped the condom packet open and touched her to make sure she was ready for him.

She shifted, opening her legs wider. “Now.”

That was all he needed and more than he ever thought he’d have again. He didn’t wait another second. He slid inside her. One deep, long push before he could breathe again.

With a final burning kiss, he started to move. His body pressed and her mouth dropped open. The sounds and scents, the feel of her around him all came rushing back. It felt right and perfect and he cursed himself for ever letting her get away.

Her fingers trailed down the deep groove between his shoulders and she whispered his name. When her body tightened around him, he couldn’t find the air to speak. When she told him to move, he did.

* * *

T
HE
COFFEEHOUSE
CLOSED
in ten minutes. Clive stood on the sidewalk, just out of sight from the big front window, and watched his boss take his usual seat at one of the small tables. He glanced around, eyeing up the blonde at the cash register then returning his focus to the table.

No wonder the guy depended on other people to do his dirty work. His idea of blending in included an expensive business suit and wiping his hand through his hair to hide his face.

Amateur.

His stern frown was in place as always, but something was different. He played with the lid of his to-go cup and kept glancing at his watch. His usual controlled affect had given way to jerky moves and an air of desperate panic.

Clive found his first smile since killing Greg Parker. Looked as if his boss had got the message. Clive was no longer taking orders. He was more in the mood to give them.

He stepped inside. Instead of indulging the boss and playing their practiced newspaper-switching game, Clive sat down right across from the man who had yet to transfer the full payment for Steve Wasserman’s extinction. That was a mistake the boss would pay dearly for.

His eyes widened and he glanced around at the few other occupied tables in the place. “What are you—”

“Right now I’m enjoying the look on your face.” It almost made having to deal with the Lara-and-Davis duo tolerable. Almost.

The man’s face flushed to a deep, angry red. “How dare—”

“Relax.” Clive had had just about enough of the sideshow. What had started out amusing was now wasting his time. “You’re a smart man. You know jumping around like that calls attention. Sitting and talking is normal in a place like this.”

The boss’s hand slashed out and his coffee cup tipped. He grabbed it, causing the lid to pop off and sending the liquid spilling down the sides. “There is nothing normal about what’s happening.”

“You do look like you’ve had a hard day.” Clive hoped the man hadn’t slept. That would make some of this annoyance worth it. Not the race through the office building or the clip he’d taken in the shoulder and nick in the thigh, but he planned on exacting revenge for that later.

His boss flicked the coffee off his hand and made a show of wiping his suit blazer off with a napkin. He completed the move by crumpling the wet napkin in a ball and letting it drop to the floor. “This isn’t how we do things.”

“It is now.” Clive leaned back, making sure his gun still pointed at the entitled idiot in front of him. It was almost a shame littering wasn’t a capital crime. “You didn’t give me all the information I needed to complete this.”

“Such as?”

“How do I get into Davis Weeks’s house? I’ve been there and seen the security. I figure your contacts know a trick or two.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“Oh, I do if I intend to lure Davis there for a chat.”

“Why touch him?”

That should have seemed obvious, but Clive spelled it out anyway. “Where he is, Lara is.”

“This job is over.”

Maybe technically but not in Clive’s mind. He liked the title
rogue agent.

The idea of not answering to this guy appealed to him. The thought of him bleeding out all over the coffeehouse floor sounded even better. “I’m afraid not. See, I always finish the work before I move on. You should know that from our past dealings overseas.”

“Keep your voice down.”

The harsh whisper did more to draw attention than anything Clive had done. The man had no idea how close he was to getting shot. “Right now I have a few very annoying loose ends to tie up. Or maybe I should say
cut up.
”

“You had your chance.”

“You’re not hearing me.” Clive leaned in when a college-age student sat at the table two down from them, just in case her earphones proved an insufficient buffer. “I am going to continue my work and you are going to pay me.”

“Why should I?”

That one was easy. “Because I
do
know where you live.”

* * *

L
ARA
TRIED
TO
roll over but her leg was trapped under Davis’s heavier one. Instead of breaking free, she slid her arm across his chest and snuggled in closer. He mumbled something as she tucked her head against his neck.

Even though his love of danger made her skittish and confused, she’d welcomed it the past few days. He’d stepped in and taken charge. He’d protected but never slipped into self-destructive mode. He’d even listened when she’d begged to go along to Hampton and then praised her when she hadn’t got herself killed.

Truth was she loved him more now than she ever had. Deep to her soul where it wiped out the echoing darkness that had settled in at losing him and the child they’d created. She wasn’t even sure how she had lived a life with so few connections and now craved one with him to the point where she doubted she could ever be complete without him by her side.

He rubbed his hand over her arm. Even in his sleep, he had to touch her, comfort her. Maybe the thought should scare her a bit, but all she experienced was a bubbling of something deep in her belly that she suspected was hope.

So much of the man she knew hadn’t changed. He had exchanged one terrifying job for another and chased after someone who he thought might hurt her, never bothering to warn her about the danger. Always the lone wolf.

But she’d seen glimpses of his other side. The sweet side, like in the way he handled Mrs. Winston, shielding her and giving her a touch of excitement and the attention she desperately craved. And his quick acceptance of Ben never would have happened a year ago.

She guessed Davis was angry and confused about the way they’d left things all those months before. He’d said as much and so had Pax. Sure, she’d explained her fears at the time and begged Davis to understand. She’d tried to communicate and even suggested they talk to someone to help them, which he immediately rejected, but she’d never told him the one thing he deserved to know.