Hide From Evil (35 page)

He established a hard, steady rhythm that quickly had her fisting her hands in the sheets as the pillow muffled her moans.

“Oh God, Sean,” she whispered. “Sean, I can’t.”

Her voice broke off and he felt her stiffen around him. She was close, so close he could practically see the steam rising from her as every muscle pulled tight in pleasure.

He slid one hand around and between her legs until he found the slippery bud of her clit. Stroking, circling, he gritted his teeth against his own pleasure, determined to give her hers.

Then she stiffened on a long moan, a tremor running through her as her body squeezed and pulsed around him. He held her hips, keeping himself buried deep until the last quivers drained from her body.

She collapsed forward onto the bed, panting and limp.

Sean was about to give himself a mental high-five when she burst into tears.

She tried to be quiet about it, muffling her sobs in the sheets, but there was no mistaking the quivering breaths and the shudders racking her body that had nothing to do with pleasure.

“You don’t have to stop,” she said when he pulled reluctantly from her body. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong—”

“Total fucking emotional overload,” Sean said gently as he lay on his side and rolled Krista to face him. “Completely understandable, with everything that’s happened.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “It has nothing to do with— I mean, you were— I—”

Her already blotchy face went even redder as she struggled to speak through the tears. “I know you came,” he said, softening the blunt words with a kiss on her nose.

“Oh.”

It was funny, he thought as he stroked his thumb over the curve of her cheek, to see confident, tough-talking Krista so at a loss for words.

She sniffed a few times, swallowed hard, and blinked tear-reddened eyes. “I don’t know what I was thinking. This is a disaster—”

“Krista, I’m not complaining.” He pressed his lips to hers, licked away the salt of tears.

“You don’t have to stay,” she continued, almost like she hadn’t heard him. “I’m used to handling my emotional breakdowns on my own.”

“I don’t have anywhere else I need to be,” he whispered.

And more to the point, he didn’t have anywhere else in the world he
wanted
to be other than right here, his body in an agony of frustrated desire, holding Krista Slater while she cried.

He had a weird, twisting sensation in his gut, kind of like he had the first time he’d jumped out of an airplane into a combat zone.

Big, gray-green eyes searched his, looking for any sign of BS. Satisfied that he meant what he said, she curved her lips in a watery half smile. She stroked his cheek with slender fingers and gave another little sniff. “I wish—” She cut herself short.

“What?”

Her eyelashes flicked down, hiding her eyes from his. “Nothing. It’s stupid.”

“Tell me,” he said with a little squeeze of her hip.

“I just—” She licked her lips and hot color flooded her cheeks. “I wish it could have been different, the way we met. Something normal, like through friends, or even at a cheesy singles bar.”

He tried to imagine what that might have been like, watching cool, classy Krista walk into a bar. How he would have mustered up every ounce of his very limited game and approached her. She probably would have taken one look at him, fresh out of the army and barely civilized, and given him an icily polite “thanks but no thanks.”

Not that he would have taken no for an answer.

He tried to make a joke about it, but as he stared at her beautiful, tearstained face, he got the strange feeling that regardless of how he met her, no matter the circumstances, they would have ended up together like this. All he could croak out was, “Me too.”

He pressed his cheek into her hand and squeezed his eyes shut, and suddenly it was like she was comforting him instead of the other way around. She kissed him, softly at first, and then with more force as his lips parted under hers.

He splayed his hand on her back and pulled her tightly against him, close enough she could feel him, still rock hard and unsatisfied, against her stomach. She hooked one leg over his hip and reached between them to grip him in her warm palm. Jesus, it felt so good, but she was just seconds from her crying jag and he didn’t want her to think he was a totally selfish asshole.

Didn’t want her to think sex was all he wanted from her, even if it was probably better in the long run if she did.

“I’m okay,” he said. “You don’t have to—”

“Shut up,” she said, and rocked her hips so she could rub the tip of his cock against her hot core. Her breath hitched and started to come a little faster, all traces of her tears gone. “I want you,” she said against his mouth. “I need you,” she gasped as she guided him into her body. “I—”

Whatever she was going to say was lost in a long moan as he sank all the way in. His eyes locked on hers as he thrust, not wanting to miss a second of her pleasure. He could feel it in the way she clenched around him, see it in the way her eyes got that blurry, faraway look as he rocked himself harder and deeper inside her.

He could feel it, rippling through her in waves. He could feel his own orgasm building at the base of his spine, feel every muscle tense as he struggled to hold on for just a few more strokes.

She clung to him, her fingers digging into the muscles of his back, and that little sting was all it took to send him hurtling over the edge. Her moans echoed his as her body milked him to a climax so intense he felt like he was blown apart into a million pieces.

The pieces came back together, almost in their right places but just slightly off. And as Sean came back to himself, he felt a wave of unease as he realized there was no going back to life as he’d known it.

Chapter 19

K
rista buried her face in the naked skin of Sean’s chest. She breathed him in, his scent, his heat flooding her, chasing away the cold that threatened to crystallize every cell in her body. He was still inside her, and she wrapped her leg tighter around his hips, held herself even tighter to him in a last ditch effort to close out the world.

He didn’t seem any more inclined to let her go, with his big hand splayed possessively on her lower back as he held her lower half tightly to his.

Why, she wondered again, couldn’t they have met like two normal people? If things had gone differently, maybe they would have met years ago through Cole, or at a bar, or maybe he would have walked into the courthouse to contest a traffic ticket and made her look past the end of her nose for once.

Anything would be better than this. Clinging to each other as they tried to keep reality at bay for a few more precious seconds. “We could run away,” she said, the words slipping from her lips before the thought had fully formed. But it could work. “Ibarra could get us fake documents. Hell, I bet he could even steal some money from one of Maxwell’s bank accounts, or better yet, from my dad. We could go to an island off the coast of Central America where no one would even think to look for us…” Her voice trailed off as she realized how far gone she was. Was she really talking about living as a fugitive, off stolen money to boot?

And did she really think that just because he was the kind of guy who would hold her patiently while she cried, that Sean Flynn would really consider running off to an island with her?

She felt the press of Sean’s lips on the top of her head. “As much as I love the idea of sipping umbrella drinks on a beach with you, we both know that’s not an option. You’ve come too far, risked too much, to turn tail and let those motherfuckers win now.”

“I know,” she said and sighed. “But what now?”

Be careful what you wish for.
She’d gone into this on a quest for truth. Mission accomplished, but so what?

She could practically hear Jack Nicholson screaming in her head. She had the truth, but she wasn’t at all sure she could handle it.

Worse, she didn’t have a goddamn clue what to do now that they’d found it. Maxwell’s fingers were sunk so deep into the fabric of the system, there was no move they could make that would go undetected. If they tried to confront Maxwell in public, they’d be arrested. And if that happened, she didn’t have any hope of either of them making it to the arraignment alive, much less through a hearing.

And if by some miracle either of them made it to trial, Maxwell was sure to use his influence to make sure nothing fell in their favor.

She headed to the bathroom for a quick shower and Sean followed her like it was the most natural thing on earth. It seemed ridiculous to be embarrassed after what they’d just shared, but Krista felt her face heat from more than the water as Sean joined her under the spray.

With the water and soap running in rivulets down his body, Sean was sex personified. However, he seemed all business. And the fact that he didn’t make any overtly sexual moves and seemed so comfortable to share the space with her made the experience somehow more intimate. Almost like they were a couple, easy together, and though wildly sexually attracted, didn’t need to jump each other’s bones every second because each knew the other was going to be around for a good long time.

It was like a glimpse of some impossible future. And Krista felt the burn of tears and the crushing weight of regret at the realization of just how impossible it was, for so many reasons.

I’m falling in love with him.
It hit her with such force she felt her legs crumple underneath her.

Sean caught her and kept her from falling. “Careful, it’s slippery in here,” he said and gave her an affectionate kiss on the forehead as he traded places with her to rinse off. He tipped his head back under the spray and a burst of warmth coursed through her.

The touches, the kisses, holding her while she sobbed, and oh God, the sex…

Maybe it wasn’t all so impossible after all.

She forced her brain away from mooning over the gorgeous naked man in the shower with her. There would be no future for them of any kind if they didn’t figure out how to get to Maxwell. Still, she felt the buzz of optimism for the first time in days as she shared her fears with Sean as they dried off and got dressed.

“He’s too well connected,” she said as she ran a brush over her damp hair. “I just don’t see how we get to him—or Karev for that matter—without running into the same walls. Unless maybe we can turn them against each other—”

“Or better yet, turn everybody against
them
,” Sean said.

Krista shot him a puzzled look.

“Once we figure out what’s in the shipment Maxwell and Karev are waiting for, we use Maxwell’s biggest weapon against him.”

Realization dawned. “Once we get the goods on Maxwell and Karev, we use the recordings as leverage to make sure Maxwell can’t bury it.” Her mouth pulled tight in distaste. “Feels like it’s our own form of blackmail.”

“You’re thinking too much like a prosecutor. But sometimes you need to bend the rules and fight a little dirty.”

Krista cocked an eyebrow at him. “Between the stolen cars, cyber hacking, and breaking and entering, I think I’ve shown I can fight as dirty as I need to.”

“And now you’ll add blackmail to your list,” he said. “You going to be okay with that?”

Krista waited for her moral compass to start spinning out of control, prepared herself to stifle her gut when it screamed that this was wrong, that there had to be a way to work within the law, a way to manipulate the system to turn this around.

But Maxwell had changed the game, capitalized on men’s weakness, and injected the system with his poison. Now they had no choice but to use his own poison against him.

She thought of all the names on the list, all of the videos on that computer. Too many for her and Sean to get to in time.

“We’re going to need more help.”

“Jesus, I’m glad you guys called.” Detective Cole Williams’s voice crackled over the speakerphone. “Sean, your sister is about to kill me, so I hope you have some news I can pass on.”

Sean knew his sister had to be bouncing off the walls with worry, resentful as hell that she’d been dragged into hiding and forced to stand on the sidelines for her own safety. He could only imagine what she was putting poor Cole through. “I’m glad I’m not the one stuck up in a cabin with her,” Sean said with a grim smile. “And yeah, I think you could say we have some news.”

Cole listened quietly as he and Krista laid out everything they’d discovered about Maxwell’s operation and his work with Karev.

“Son of a bitch,” Cole muttered.

“We have just enough time before whatever delivery is scheduled gets all the players on board,” Krista said. “Think you can help us out?”

“Absolutely,” Cole replied. “I can be back in the city in two hours, and I’ll handpick a team to make contact and handle the bust—”

“What about Megan?” Sean broke in. “I don’t want her left alone, and I don’t want her anywhere near this.”

“Of course not,” said Cole. “We’ll have to make arrangements. You know, she thought we were overreacting until my partner called to tell me our house had been broken into. According to Petersen, whoever did it tore it all to shit.”

Sean’s tension ratcheted up a few more notches. He clenched and unclenched his fists, not knowing what to do with everything swirling around in his brain. Jesus, what would have happened if his sister had been home when Maxwell’s thugs showed up? He struggled not to let his brain spiral out of control and tried to focus on the fact that Megan was totally safe, but he couldn’t keep a lid on the anger and anxiety welling up, threatening to send him over the edge.

From the second he and Krista had left the cocoon of the bedroom, he’d been bombarded on all sides with everything he’d been trying so hard for so long to keep shut out. He wasn’t used to this—to feeling so much, to walking around the world with every one of his senses turned up to eleven. Moments like this, it hit him so hard, so fast, his brain short circuited.

“I’m sure we can figure something out. We need whatever help we can get, Sean,” Krista said.