INFORMANT (11 page)

The meal ends and we move to the lounge. The rest of the group from the penthouse—the bodyguards and women and assorted hangers-on—are already there Music is playing and the mood is lively and upbeat. Uncle Juan slips a few bills to the small jazz band and the music shifts to something with a strong Latino beat. We dance.

Mostly I’m with Ricco. The dancing is frenetic, passionate—Cuban, I suppose. Couples twirling and whirling and stomping their feet, separating for a bit and then coming together in dramatic embraces. I don’t know any of the steps but it doesn’t matter. Ricco moves beautifully and even manages to make me look good. My red dress helps. It clings to my hips and flares around my legs as I move, drawing attention away from my awkward footwork.

Ricco is conservative at first, but after a while (or maybe after a few drinks) he cuts loose and I’m glad he does. He is
Dancing With The Stars
material. Absolutely gorgeous to watch. He’s taken off his jacket and tie, unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves. He is handsome as hell—the whole scene looks like a photo spread for GQ—and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Several attractive women grab at the opportunity to be his partner whenever I take a break.

Finally it’s quitting time for the band and last call for the bar. The party winds down. I see a couple of the women slip Ricco their number, but it doesn’t bother me. He’s polite, but there’s no interest in his eyes. Instead, he finds me and pulls me into his embrace. His body is warm, his skin smells of spicy male cologne.

“So,” he says. “Can I bring you back up to the suite with me for a little drink?”

I give a small smile, shake my head. “It’s late.”

“Yes. It is.” There is a pause as Ricco’s dark eyes search mine. “You had a good time this evening?”

“I always like being with you.” This is genuine. I do like Ricco.

“I’m glad.” His expression softens. He lifts one finger and rubs it lightly over my lips. “I’ve been waiting all night to do this.”

He lowers his head and his mouth is on mine. I stiffen slightly. I wasn’t expecting this and I’m not quite sure how to react. We’re friends, but obviously it’s a lot more complicated than that. I’m a CI. That’s what brought me here tonight. Even though I care about Ricco, this is a
job
. How do I play this?

Ultimately my body decides for me. Here’s something I didn’t know: Ricco kisses as well as he dances. Holy shit. I am temporarily stunned and then swept away, suddenly hungry for more. Maybe after the night I’ve had I’m just weak, vulnerable, but I don’t think so. My response is purely physical. My hands lock around his neck. I pull him to me as our bodies meld into one.

Ricco teases my mouth with his own. Then he increases the pressure of his jaw, coaxing my lips apart. His tongue meets mine, gently probing and exploring. His mouth moves against mine with such urgency and naked desire that I nearly groan out loud. I rock against him, instinctively matching the rhythm of his kiss, allowing myself to be swept away. I feel his hands trace my hips, cup my ass. This is awful and wonderful and I can’t stop kissing him back. I know I need to stop, but I can’t.

We hear a tray tip over somewhere in the distance, the sound of glasses shattering breaks us out of the spell we were under. Ricco pulls back slightly. Smiles as he rubs his hands along my upper arms. He looks proud, satisfied.

“You sure you don’t want to come upstairs?”

“No, it’s late. I should go.”

Ricco doesn’t argue. “Shall I drive you home?”

“No, thanks. I’ll just grab a cab.” He nods easily, and then I remember something. “Oh—my backpack’s upstairs.”

“No, problem,” he says. “I’ll get it for you. Be right back.”  He spins away toward the elevators, leaving me alone.

Except I’m not alone. A chill runs through me—that sort of sixth sense that tells you you’re being watched. I turn to see Miguel Diaz sitting by himself, alone at a table in a corner of the deserted lounge. He is half-hidden by shadow, but something about the stillness of his stance absolutely chills me. 

Miguel makes no attempt to disguise the fact that he was watching us. Watching Ricco kiss me. Listening to our exchange. The expression on his face is as calculating and merciless as a jungle cat stalking his prey. The man is beyond scary. I want to turn and run, but I can’t.

“Señorita Porter,” he says. “Come here.”

Somehow my legs carry me toward him. Once I’m there, I see that my purse is sitting open on the table before him. He doesn’t even try to hide the fact that he’s rifled through the contents. My phone is in his hand.
Jesus Christ.

I open my mouth to object, but I can’t. Instead, our eyes meet and we reach a silent understanding. He has all the power here, I have none.

“Ricardo likes you,” he says. His voice is as smooth and dark as fine chocolate.

“I like him, too.”

He nods. “That is good.” A beat, then: “But there is something else. You are more than friends, perhaps? More than just two hard-working students who study together?”

He’s got great instincts, I’ll give him that. Obviously Miguel senses there’s more to my relationship with Ricco than what’s on the surface. All right, he’s good, but I’m good too—particularly since my life depends on it. I give a shy smile and adopt a sing-song tone. I play it young and super girlie. “I don’t know yet,” I say. I giggle and eye my shoes. “We’re friends, but maybe…”

Miguel smiles indulgently, temporarily pacified. I’m no threat. He could crush me like a cornered mouse if he wanted to. He passes back my phone and I have no doubt at all that he’s rifled through the stored contacts and messages. (Good call, Jane. So much for my snarky comments about my phone being compromised.)

“Keep an eye on my son,” he says. “This country is not like Cuba. If there are ever any difficulties, I want you to know you can come to me.”

I nod and glance at my cell. He’s added himself as a contact. Just a single letter: M.

It’s all I can do to keep my hand from trembling. I realize in that instant that my life will never be the same again. Am I soaring up in the world, or plummeting down? Impossible to say. Either way, everything’s changed. I’m holding in my hand a direct line to one of the world’s most vicious drug lords, just the touch of a button away.

I tuck it into my purse, ready to go. It’s been a long night.

Day Twenty-Two

Early Morning

It’s two-thirty in the morning when I stumble, exhausted, through my front door. The lights are off and no one’s home. The answering machine is blinking so I cross the room and hit the button. It’s my mom. Her boss had her work overtime, so she missed her bus. Ronnie picked her up and she’s spending the night with him and Jess.

Up until that moment, I’ve held it together. Kept calm, carried on, and all the rest of that poster slogan bullshit. But that message sends me over the top. I’m suddenly furious. I hate the world and everyone in it. I hate Agent Reardon and Miguel Diaz. I hate my mom’s goddamned boss—he
knows
the last bus runs at 11:55, and that if she misses it she won’t have a way home. But if she stands up to him, she’ll lose her job.

That is the main problem with being poor. It’s not about doing without. It’s not about eating hamburger instead of steak, or buying secondhand clothes. And really, who gives a shit if you watch TV on a flat screen or not—the show’s the same. The problem with being poor is that you’re always forced to make choices you don’t want to make. Forced to do things you don’t want to do. Forced to depend on people you can’t depend on. The trade-offs are endless.

But that’s my life. Unless I take serious steps to change it, Kylie Porter will never exist. I’ll never be anything more than a baby bird sitting in a nest with its beak open, with other people constantly forcing their shit down my throat.

This is what I’m thinking when there’s a knock at my door.
At two-thirty in the morning.
Someone is knocking on my goddamned door. What the fuck is going on now?

Ready to kill, I stomp across the room and glare through the peephole.

Beckett.

I throw open the door and am about to vent all my nasty, vile frustration—dump it all over him—but he grabs me before I can make a sound. He clamps one hand over my mouth, while with his other hand he roughly brushes aside the bodice of my dress and plucks the mike from my bra strap. Abruptly releasing me, he takes it into the kitchen. He carefully places the mike on a shelf in the freezer and then shuts the refrigerator door. We are now soundproofed, I assume. Beyond reach of the DEA’s listening devices.

When he returns to me, I read the same stormy fury on his face as I’m sure is reflected on mine. We are twin mirrors of rage. But Beckett’s fury comes from an entirely different source. 

“Were you with Ricco?” he demands.

WTF? My jaw goes slack with shock. After everything I’ve been through—I was nearly
killed
—that’s what he cares about?
Was I with Ricco?
He set this whole thing up and now he’s
jealous?

I can’t take any more. I just can’t. I’ve never hit another human being in my life, but suddenly I am pummeling Beckett. I am pounding his chest with both my fists. Hoarse, ugly sobs issue from my throat but I can’t stop them. I am outside of myself, watching my actions as though from far away.

I don’t know how long this lasts. One minute? Five? Ten? The next thing I know, Beckett has me up against the wall, my wrists pinned above my head. He is as frantic, as lost as I am. He’s kissing away my tears, stroking me with his free hand, murmuring my name over and over.

Then I am lifted up and cradled in his arms. He is holding me as if I weigh nothing at all. I am floating, anchored only by my cheek against his chest. The feeling is beyond wonderful. I lift my arms and lock them around his neck. His grip tightens. We do a complete three-sixty in the living room, turning around in a circle, before he stops.

“Where’s your bedroom?”

That’s it. Just: Where’s your bedroom?

He doesn’t ask for permission to seduce me. There are no pretty words. No promises. No soft stroking. He is going to take me, and I want to be taken. This is our foreplay. It’s not gentle and it’s not romantic, but it’s ours. Yeah, it’ll be complicated and downright ugly as hell to deal with tomorrow, but right now this is what it is. Safety, security, sex—all three are bundled up together in Beckett, inextricably wound. He is my curse and my salvation.

I point the way to my room. He carries me in and we fall together on my bed. His arm snakes under me, locking around my waist in an iron embrace. His body covers mine, pins me beneath his. I am trapped by his weight, his strength, his presence.

He kisses me.

Unlike the first time our mouths met, this is no gentle kiss. His lips claim mine in a kiss of unyielding, crushing possession. I offer no resistance. Just the opposite is true. I kiss him back, hard, sensing the same urgency within him that I feel within myself. His tongue sweeps into my mouth, skims my teeth, dances with mine.

I should be breathless. Instead, for the first time in hours, I feel as though I can breathe again. Kissing Ricco is a calculated, guilty pleasure. But Beckett? Kissing Beckett has become necessary to my very existence. He is the oxygen that fills my lungs and fuels my soul. I
need
him.

I let myself go, kissing him with all the aching longing that has flooded through me from the moment our hands accidentally brushed at Romano’s and I was knocked off-balance by a heady physical awareness of him. I kiss him with all the pent-up sexual energy I’ve stored from the moment I felt that intense sexual current pulse between us. Blue eyes. I’ve wanted him from the start. Now—for the moment, at least—he’s mine, and there is no holding back.

Flames of desire coil through my belly. I am on fire, desperate. The deeper our kiss, the more my hunger grows. My need for Beckett is ravenous, insatiable. I press my body against his, expressing without words the primitive urge to meld our bodies into one. My breasts flatten against his chest, my thigh slides between his.

I feel Beckett’s cock harden against my hip, his bulging erection—evidence of his own raw desire—boldly announcing itself. His physical reaction fills me with quiet power, daring me to reach for what I want. Breaking off our kiss, I grab at his jeans and clumsily work the button and zipper free. My fingers lightly brush his erection as I tug the denim down his slim male hips.

I reach up and pull off his flannel shirt, sending the garment sailing carelessly to the floor. His t-shirt follows. Next I reach for the waistband of his cotton boxers and slide those free. Beckett responds in kind, tugging at the zipper to my dress, caught in a similar frenzy to rid me of my clothing. Bra, panties, hose—all unnecessary obstacles to our lust fall to the floor.

We are naked. Beautifully, gloriously, and completely naked. Our bodies bathed by the faint glow of the streetlight outside my room. I press my lips to the velvety coarse skin of Beckett’s throat. My fingers lightly trace his biceps, his muscular shoulders, the smattering of dark hair across his chest. We move our hands over each other’s bodies in rabid exploration, touching, tasting, licking, biting. We can’t get enough. We fall against one another in a passion so intense it is almost anger.

I am dimly aware of my clock radio crashing to the floor, magazines knocked from the nightstand, pillows thrown aside. None of it matters. Our need swells and grows.

This isn’t lovemaking. It’s an explosion of lust. Or maybe an implosion. Either way, we need this force, this energy. We are breaking through the wall of denial we so painstakingly constructed, brick by brick, to keep ourselves apart. Now that wall is crashing down, tumbling in jagged pieces all around us. It is beyond exhilarating. It is as close as to flying as I’ve ever come.

Beckett tears his mouth from mine, his breath coming in hot pants against my throat as he says, “We have to slow down. I won’t last. I want this to be good for you.”

“This is good for me,” I rasp back, my hand trailing down his stomach toward his erection.

He lets out a shout of laughter, followed by a vivid oath. Before I can reach my goal, he scoops me up and sets me on my knees opposite him on the bed. We are out of arm’s reach. My hair cascades over my shoulders in dark disarray, my lips feel swollen from his kisses. Beckett is not touching me, but his gaze burns across my skin like a wicked, scorching caress.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he says, and there’s a rawness to his words that makes me believe them, even though I don’t.

“So are you,” I say.

He smiles slightly, shakes his head, dismisses it. But I mean it. 

He is just inches away from me, so devastatingly, overwhelmingly male. So impossibly strong and handsome. Burnished skin, broad shoulders, muscular chest, rippled stomach, slim hips. And as thrilling as that is, I can’t pull my gaze away from his sex. His shaft is long and thick—far thicker than my own two fingers—and stands firm and erect against his belly. Nervousness floods me. I’m not a virgin, but Beckett looks like more than I can handle.

I lift my hand, and then hesitate as my courage vanishes. My eyes search his. “Can I touch you?”

“I will lose my mind if you don’t touch me.”

I reach forward and wrap my hand around his cock, taking in the length and breadth of him. The skin of his penis is silky to the touch, yet rigid as well, a stiff rod pulsing with a life and virility all its own. Strange and fascinating and totally foreign. I tighten my grip experimentally and draw my palm up and down along his length.

Beckett clenches his jaw and draws in his breath in a sharp hiss. His body quivers as though straining with the effort of holding himself back.

My worried gaze shoots to his. “Am I hurting you?”

He gives a rough shake of his head and closes his eyes. “No. I like it too much. That’s the problem.”

Before I can untangle the meaning of his words, he wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me beneath him. I am stretched out flat on my bed. Bracing himself on his elbows above me, he captures my lips with his, thrusting his tongue into my mouth as his groin presses into my belly.

Pleasure sparks within me and I hungrily return his kiss. We are back to where we started: naked flesh meeting naked flesh. Heat builds in my belly and drifts lower, pulsing between my thighs. I arch my back, eager to give him whatever he wants. My body craves his touch more than it craves air.

They say all sex is the same sex. That might be true for some people. It doesn’t apply to me and Beckett. We are more than just the joining of our bodies. The word ‘magic’ comes to mind, though I’m embarrassed to admit that here. Regardless, there is a sense of homecoming, of such deep fulfillment, that I can’t adequately put it into words. And when it’s over, when we have spent ourselves and lie ragged and breathless in a lover’s embrace, when our skin is slick with sweat and the scent of our lovemaking perfumes the air, I fall into an exhausted sleep, more supremely content than I’ve ever been in my entire life.

*   *   *

Beckett and I wake at the same time. I worried there might be some lingering embarrassment once morning came, but there isn’t. He smiles and pulls me against him so that my head rests on his shoulder. We blink the sleep from our eyes.

He looks totally incongruous in my bed, tucked between my faded sheets with their field of tiny purple violets. My comforter edged with white lace. It’s all so girlish and ridiculous.

I look around my room, seeing it the way he might. The badly worn little girl furniture, second-hand when I got it over a decade ago and in much worse condition now. The shrine to my father, the stuffed animals, books I read years ago—Harry Potter sits shoulder to shoulder with Dr. Seuss and the Gossip Girls—posters of exotic places I want to visit but doubt I ever will, pictures of friends with whom I’m rarely ever in touch anymore.

This is the room of someone who’s moved on with her life, but hasn’t bothered to clean up the mess she’s left behind. The only things I use are my bed, my desk, and my mirror, where I do my hair and makeup. That’s cluttered with a messy assortment of powders, creams, lipsticks, brushes, blow dryers, and curling irons. It’s awful. I suddenly realize that my room reveals more about me than my nakedness does.

Then Beckett turns to face me, and all the excuses I’m about to make for the state of my bedroom are driven from my thoughts.

“Oh, my God,” I say. “What happened to your eye?”

His left eye is totally swollen, the skin surrounding it blooming with hideous shades of yellow, purple, and green. I didn’t notice it last night in the dark, or maybe it wasn’t as bad then, but now…

He brings up his fingers and lightly touches it. Winces. Then he sighs and shakes his head. “I fucked up.”

I’m up on my elbow, concerned. My heart is racing. Did one of Miguel Diaz’s men do that? “What happened?”

He gives a smile so sad and so sweet I can feel my heart cracking just looking at it. “You should have seen Reardon last night. I thought he was going to draw his gun on me.”

I blink. “Wait a minute.
Reardon
did that?” Agent Reardon—Beckett’s DEA boss, a cop’s cop if there ever was one—lost his temper? Gave him a black eye? I can’t imagine it.

“Yeah,” Beckett says, his expression grim.

“What happened?” I repeat.

He glances at me, then studies the ceiling. I wait impatiently until he collects his thoughts enough to admit, “It was my fault. I was totally out of line. I was in the van outside the hotel when everything went sideways. It sounded like Diaz’s crew found the mike on you. I went crazy. I don’t know what happened—I just lost it. I had to get you out of there. I thought—”