Internal Affairs (10 page)

Sara stared at their joined hands for a moment, not sure what she was supposed to say, how she was supposed to feel. One part of her was wearily grateful to finally understand what had gone wrong. Another part wanted to tear at him for pushing her away
instead of letting her in on what he was thinking and feeling. And still another part of her—the weak, wanting part—was whispering at the back of her brain, saying that he’d changed, that they might have a chance, after all.

Yeah,
rationality said,
just so long as he spends the rest of his life on a low dose of sodium pentothal.
Which so wasn’t an option. It was too bad that was what it seemed to take to make him a functional human being.

“My father was a smooth talker,” she said slowly, wanting to get the words right and give him the same level of honesty he’d finally given her, drugged or not. “Good apologies aren’t enough, though. What I’m looking for—what I deserve—is someone who’s willing to be honest within each moment, not after the fact.” Forcibly recalling herself to the task at hand, she let go of his hand and reached for the pentothal and another syringe. “Lie back. I’m going to hit you with another dose, see if we can’t get you to remember the important stuff.”

He sat up, caught the hand that she’d reached toward the drug and once again twined his fingers around hers, hanging on as though he never intended to let go, ever again. “No, don’t. I don’t think it’s a good idea to try again until morning. Besides,” he continued before she could argue the point, “I need to tell you something.”

She told herself to pull away from him, but couldn’t. Instead she looked at him, found herself trapped in his eyes as she whispered, “What?”

The moment the word left her lips she damned herself because she knew—even if he didn’t—that she’d just given him permission to break her heart all over
again. She hadn’t shut him down when she knew she should. Instead, she opened the door a crack.

“I’m not the same man I was,” he said, his words ringing with quiet conviction. “I may not know what I’ve done over the past few months—and trust me, that scares the hell out of me—but I’m sure it involved lots of time alone, probably in that crummy apartment we visited today. Logic says I was cracking code and hacking whatever al-Jihad and the others told me to, but I know from experience that jobs like that involve lots of sitting and thinking.”

She told herself she didn’t care, that this was just more smooth talk, but couldn’t keep from asking, “Thinking about what?”

“Death,” he said, which wasn’t what she’d expected him to say, and had her jerking her eyes to his in surprise. He smiled grimly, and continued. “And life. I don’t remember what I was doing or why, but I guarantee I was thinking how sometimes someone dying is just crappy bad luck, and it doesn’t mean the people left behind should stop living.”

Emotion balled hard and hot in Sara’s throat, but she forced it down, swallowing before she said, “It sounds like being dead was good for you.”

He gave a bark of surprised laughter and swung to sit on the edge of the mattress facing her, his knees bumping hers, his face too close, his eyes too intent. “I think it was. The guy you met as he was bleeding all over your living room the other day? That’s the man I want to be with you, once all this is over. If you’ll give me the chance.”

What was she supposed to say to that? She didn’t have a clue, knew only that her body was telling her one thing, her head another. And her heart? Well, it had long proven unreliable when it came to Romo, so she didn’t figure it should get a vote.

Experience and logic told her that the smart answer was to tell him no, they wouldn’t be together ever again. But she couldn’t help thinking that he really wasn’t the same man she’d known before; she’d recognized it even before he’d made the claim. Whatever he’d done over the past months, whoever he’d become, it had changed him, making him simultaneously more open and more complex, as though his experiences had forced him to accept the part of him that had mourned his dead partner and nearly killed her killers, and later had sent him after the street punks who’d menaced him and Sara in a similar alley.

It was that violence she sensed inside him now, a wildness he hadn’t harbored before, or had buried so deeply she hadn’t seen it. Somehow in bringing that part of himself to the surface, he’d found the rest of himself, too. She couldn’t regret that. But she also wasn’t sure she could trust it.

“Please,” he said. “Let me make up for everything I did wrong.”

Something quivered deep inside her, as she wondered whether he was seeing her as a means to atone for more than just the mistakes he’d made in their relationship. Because of that, because of so many things, she couldn’t say yes. She didn’t know if she dared try again with him, didn’t know if she could trust him going
forward. But at the same time she was viscerally aware of the hours passing, of the countdown al-Jihad had imposed on them. It seemed pointless to worry about things that might or might not happen in the future, when she wasn’t entirely sure there was going to
be
a future. Yes, she believed that Romo would never willingly allow al-Jihad to harm her—she’d known that even before he’d told her about Alicia, and knowing about his guilt over his dead partner only added another layer of determination. Romo would protect her or die trying. But that was the problem—so far, the terrorist leader had proven untraceable and indefatigable; if he promised to target her, then he would. And he would most likely succeed, unless they somehow managed to outwit his plan. But how were they supposed to do that?

Romo didn’t remember what he’d done or who he’d worked for, and he was probably right that she shouldn’t repeat the pentothal dosing so soon after the first injection. If she were a trained anesthesiologist, maybe, but she was a pathologist. Keeping her cases alive had never been an option before, much less a priority. She didn’t dare take the risk. Which left them—where? They were out of plans, out of ideas. She couldn’t contact her friends for fear of endangering their lives more than she already had. Romo couldn’t contact his superiors until and unless he remembered who they were, who he could trust.

Despair rose up inside her, threatened to overwhelm her. How was she supposed to think about anything but the danger?

Except that she wasn’t thinking entirely about the
danger, was she? Maybe because the situation was so dire, her mind locked on to Romo’s plea, his offer. Could there be a future for them? Did it really count as giving him a second chance when he’d changed so thoroughly?

Men don’t change; they just say they have,
said her inner cynic, who’d learned that lesson early in childhood.

But even though she knew that was true, Sara found that she couldn’t bring herself to care about the future just then, didn’t really believe she had one. As far as she knew, she had another day or two at the most, and—assuming that they didn’t figure out what Romo’s mission had been, and use it to bring down al-Jihad—then she’d be headed into protective custody and WitSec relocation at best, a body bag at worst. Most of those options didn’t involve her being in Bear Claw beyond the thirty-some hours they had left on their clock, one way or the other.

Given that, logic said they should be focusing on other ways of coming up with Romo’s mission and figuring out what information he was supposed to be delivering. Or better, who—if anyone—he could trust within law enforcement, and how he could use that to trap the master terrorist within his own plot. But logic also said they’d tried all the avenues they could for now, that they both needed to rest and recharge. They were as safe as they could make themselves. They needed a break.

And she was rationalizing, she knew. Because, deep down inside, she’d already made her decision.

“No,” she said, voice soft because his face was still
very close to her own. “I can’t promise to give you another chance once all this is over.” She leaned in, closing the distance between them so her words were a breath across his skin as she said, “I will, however, agree to give you the next six hours or so to make your case.”

His dark green eyes widened a moment in surprise, then blurred dark, almost black with passion as he closed the final inches between them. His lips brushed against her cheek when he whispered, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Probably not.” She reached up and cupped his stubbled jaw in her palms in a gesture that twisted her heart with its awful familiarity, and the brutal heat and longing it brought. “But at this point I don’t really care anymore.” She blinked hard, and was faintly surprised to feel tears well. “I missed you so damn much,” she whispered, her voice breaking.

And even though she knew she was giving in to the weakness and the heat, she couldn’t bring herself to care as his lips crushed down on hers in a kiss that washed away indecision and brought with it only heat. Only desire.

Only him.

It had been more than a year since the last time Sara and Romo had been together, but those months telescoped to a bad dream at the first touch of his lips, the first soft caress of his tongue against hers. His taste filled her, buoying her with impossible joy that was only slightly tempered by the knowledge that the heat was born of desperation and danger rather than the love and respect she’d once thought they shared. Then even that moment of regret was gone, swept away on a rising tide of need as his lips slanted across hers and his tongue slid along hers in a move that brought a sharp stab of desire deep within her.

The dim light coming from the bathroom lent an air of romance to a room that was anything but romantic. Or maybe the romance was in the moment, in the impossibility that she was once again twining her arms around Romo’s neck, that his hands were once again sliding down her body on either side, then up again, cleverly working beneath her shirt to touch skin on skin.

She’d wept at his grave. She’d left flowers, more for
herself than him. It was impossible that she could be touching him again, but his taste was achingly familiar, sharp and edgy, and potently male, like the man himself—Romo the crusader, the warrior. An island unto himself.

Pushing that last thought aside, along with the small, weak part of her that wanted to argue that he really had changed, that he was an entirely different man now, she lost herself in the moment, in the press of his hard, masculine body against hers. She rose against him, twined around him and they eased down to the mattress together.

In deference to the healing wound on his shoulder, they lay on their sides, face-to-face, kissing and touching. Sara’s blood spun through her, warm and effervescent as her body shaped against his. She worked her hands beneath his shirt, relearning the warm, yielding flesh she’d touched three days earlier when she’d tended his wounds and marveled at the heat of him.

He groaned, his breath coming fast. Hers was, too, and as they met for another kiss, she felt his excitement as her own. It had been a long time since she’d been with anyone—after a couple of attempts to reenter the dating scene after she and Romo had broken up, she’d turned her attention to her work out of necessity. She didn’t ask whether he’d been with anyone in the interim, didn’t want to know. And in a way it didn’t really matter, because this was the first time for this new—and apparently improved—version of him.

She sensed the differences in him even on the most basic of levels, as he drew his hands along her spine, across her hips and up again to her breasts, where he
shaped her most sensitive flesh with gentle, inciting caresses. Pleasure spun through her. She arched against him, rubbed her body along his, wanting to share the powerful sensations. Always before he’d been a thorough, demanding lover. Now, though, he let the moment linger, let the sensations turn soft for a moment before bringing her back to flashpoint with a kiss and a whisper.

She clung to him, shuddering with the enormity of emotions that went way too far within her. All she’d wanted—all she’d been prepared for—was to reconnect with the man she’d loved, and who now claimed he’d cared for her but hadn’t known what to do with the feelings, or the fear brought by those emotions. She wasn’t ready to open herself to him. Not yet. Maybe not ever again.

Buffering herself against the poignant connection, she turned her face to his and kissed him openmouthed, hard and hot, demanding that he respond in kind. Heat leaped between them, flaring to lust between one heartbeat and the next. He caught her in his arms and held her close, so their bodies shaped one into the other with no gaps, no distance. She could’ve wept with the mad joy of holding him, and wanted nothing more than to hang on forever, never letting him go.

He’s not yours to keep,
her inner cynic reminded her, though even that part of her sounded vaguely sad about it.

He paused midkiss and pulled away to look at her with eyes gone dark and serious. He cupped her face in his hands. “Sweet Sara,” he said, voice husky with emotion. “I was such a fool.”

And there, she realized, was what she’d needed from
him back then. Not the apology, but the owning of what he’d done, what he’d forced her to do in response. And with that acknowledgment, somehow, it was finally, really and truly okay.

Her lips curved and the tears receded, giving way to true pleasure and a sense that she was, for the first time in a long while, exactly where she wanted and needed to be. Yes, terrible danger waited for them beyond the anonymous safety of their hotel room, and there seemed little certainty of success in what they needed to do. But at the same time, somehow, they’d found each other again, had found the connection they’d lost along the way.

Her smile widened. “Hey, Detective,” she said, as she’d called him before. “Welcome back.”

The creases beside his beautiful eyes deepened and his voice was husky when he said, “It’s good to be back.”

They left the rest unspoken, because for the moment, just being back was enough for both of them.

After that, she stopped comparing the Romo she was with now with the one she’d loved before. She stopped thinking or planning, stopped analyzing and let herself simply feel. A quick dip into her badly battered handbag yielded the two condoms she carried as much from habit as optimism. She returned to the bed and sank back into Romo, into a kiss that quickly morphed into a hurried race to shed clothing, albeit with some care for his bandages.

His body was lean and tough, roped with capable muscles that slid effortlessly beneath a layer of slick skin and textured with masculine hair. She touched him with her hands, with her mouth, and was surprised to
find that they didn’t fall back into any sort of rhythm from before. It truly was as though they were coming together for the first time, though with the benefit of some familiarity. She found a new scar along his ribs, another at his hairline, and told herself not to think of where they’d come from, or what he might’ve done to his attacker. But that fear added poignancy to their next kiss, and brought a sharp edge to the pleasure as he touched her with clever, inciting fingers, bringing her to a point hovering at the edge of madness and keeping her there as they twined together, bound by need and remembered loneliness.

In that moment there was no past or future, there was only sensation. The world coalesced to the feel of skin on skin, the taste of him on her lips and tongue, the sound of his harsh groans, his voice whispering praise and pleasure. Foil ripped and he dealt with the condom, then returned to her, touching her once again, bringing her up until need coiled hard and hot and joining with him was as necessary as her next breath.

“Romo,” she said in invitation, in demand. It wasn’t a plea, though. She was done asking.

She arched against him, heard him catch his breath as he shifted, rose above her and paused a moment, poised to join his hard length to her body.

“Sara,” he said, and stayed motionless until she opened her eyes. She found herself trapped in the openness of his expression, the intensity and unexpected tenderness when he said, “If you remember nothing else about me, remember this—you’ve been in my heart all along, even when I was too stubborn, too scared to admit it.”

Tears skimmed along the surface of her soul, adding an aching sweetness to the moment when he shifted and slipped inside her. There was a pang of resistance, a stiffness of muscles long unused; then there was nothing but the feeling of him, of the two of them together. He filled her, surrounded her. Completed her, though she’d always hated the word, and the concept. She was fully complete on her own. But she was more than that when she was with him, she knew, and damned herself for the knowledge.

Twining her arms around his shoulders and turning her face into his neck as he thrust home, she told herself that it was just for tonight, no future or past, no expectations. If she expected nothing, she couldn’t get hurt again, right? Then her body started moving in time with his, in a rhythm as ancient, natural and life-giving as the act of breathing, and she wasn’t thinking anymore. She was feeling.

They surged together and apart, together and apart, loving each other without calling it love. The tempo increased from a slow wave to a slap of flesh on flesh, a building burn of intensity. Sara closed her eyes and pressed her cheek to his, giving herself over to the moment, to the man. Heat spiraled within her, took her over. She burrowed into him, clung to him, shuddered with him as they chased each other over the edge into madness.

The orgasm gripped her in a wave of sharp-edged pleasure, stealing her breath and her thoughts. She bowed back, crying his name as he cut loose within her and came, shuddering in her arms.

Pleasure suffused her, took her over, held her motion
less for an eternal moment that ended far too soon. Because once it ended, once the madness dimmed and reality returned, she found herself wrapped around Romo, clinging to him as though he were the only solid object in the universe they’d found themselves in. She might as well cling to quicksilver, she knew, because he wouldn’t stay put, wouldn’t be tamed, no matter what he said about being a new, improved version of himself.

But even as she thought that, she couldn’t help the wistful wondering of
what if?
What if he’d truly changed? What if they made it through the next few days somehow? What if there actually could be a future for the two of them, a second chance that wasn’t really a second chance?

“Hush,” he said, kissing her brow.

She frowned up at him. “I didn’t say anything.”

His lips quirked upward in a smile. “You’re thinking very loudly.”

That startled a laugh out of her. “Sorry to disturb you.”

“No problem. But do me a favor and don’t overthink it quite yet, okay? Tomorrow will be here soon enough.” There was a trace of sadness in his words, as though he, too, recognized that they were out of options and plans, that there didn’t seem to be a next strategy to try.

He shifted to his side, and slid from the bed to use the bathroom. When he returned, he slipped in beside her and gathered her close, fitting them together back to front. Looping an arm around her, he linked their fingers over her heart and simply held her as the hotel quieted around them and night took hold.

They dozed for a bit, ordered room service near midnight, made love again and then slept, exhausted. Sara dreamed of him as she hadn’t done since the funeral, which had put a final end—or so she’d thought—to any prospect of them being together ever again. She woke early, just as the sun was starting to lighten the world beyond the window. The dim light showed her his stern profile, gone soft at the edges in postcoital sleep.

He slept sprawled on his stomach, with his face smashed into the soft hotel pillow and one of his hands loosely holding one of her wrists, touching her in sleep as though he feared she might disappear on him.

How many times had she watched him like this, and wondered what he was dreaming? Always before, she’d known he had secrets that drove him, corralled him. Now, knowing about what had happened to him in Vegas, she thought she understood better why he’d had a hard time accepting that he’d fallen for her, and that their relationship should follow the more or less natural progression from dating to lovemaking, to nights spent at each other’s places, to living together.

In retrospect, she was almost surprised they’d gotten that far. Him moving into her house had been his idea, one that had seemed more than reasonable given that they spent most nights there together anyway. It had, again, seemed more than reasonable for him to keep his own apartment for six months or so, in case it didn’t work out, or it turned out they needed more space than offered by her little house. At the time it had all seemed perfectly logical. Now she realized it had been more of
a test than she’d realized at the time. He’d been challenging himself, experimenting to see whether he could live with her and still hold a piece of himself apart.

It’d be different for us this time,
she thought, though the words rang hollow inside her own skull. That hollowness weighed on her, prompting her to lean in and touch her lips to his, waking him with a kiss.

His lips curved under hers and he kissed her back thoroughly, wonderfully. Humming her pleasure, she moved into him, but he didn’t take it further, instead easing away to look at her, his green eyes serious and searching. “Morning,” he said, but what she thought he meant was,
Do you regret last night?

“Morning,” she returned, and let the warmth in her soul turn her lips up in a smile that she hoped answered his questions.

Instead of easing, his expression grew darker. He sat up, pulling the sheet with him to pool in his lap. “Sara, we need to talk, and you’re not going to like what I have to tell you.”

Something froze inside her. Fear flared.
Oh, God. What now?
Whatever it was, she could see from his face that it was serious, and very bad.

Feeling suddenly too naked and vulnerable, she slipped from the bed, taking the comforter with her as a shield. “Let me get dressed.” She grabbed her clothes and escaped to the bathroom, where she glared at herself in the mirror. “Don’t,” she said harshly, “be an idiot.” That was the only pep talk she could come up with, because she didn’t know what was coming next. It might be some sort of dangerous plan she wouldn’t like—at this point
she almost hoped it was, because the alternative was something along the lines of “it’s not you, it’s me.”

Grimly determined not to lose her cool, she washed her face and brushed her teeth with the toiletries they’d had sent up with their room service meal. She heard Romo’s voice out in the other room, and assumed he was ordering breakfast, or at the very least, coffee. Neither of them was at their best before caffeine in the morning. By the time she returned to the main room, he was dressed once again, and had pulled the bed to rights, albeit without the comforter she’d dragged into the bathroom.

Trying not to feel as though he’d tried to erase the evidence of their lovemaking from the hotel room, she returned the comforter to the bed and sat cross-legged at the foot of the mattress, facing him. “Did I hear you calling down for breakfast?”