The Masseuse (28 page)

“If I’d gotten to her faster . . .” He shook his head. “We weren’t supposed to meet until later that night. I was going to take her to the police. I told her not to leave her house without me. She didn’t know what Bobby was capable of.”

Like assaulting a woman and leaving her at his uncle’s house for Alec to clean up.

“If you’d gone to the police with her . . .” I twisted the hem of my shirt. “If they’d taken Maxim into custody, he would’ve thrown you under the bus. You would go to jail, Alec.”

He was still. Stone still. Still enough to tell me he’d already considered this.

He had been trying to make things right and would still be punished for it. I thought of the wreck he’d been when he’d shown up to my apartment. I’d been correct—he had come to say good-bye, but not because he was leaving me for Charlotte. Because he was going to jail.

Despite the bad things he’d done, he was a good man. This was clearly eating him alive.

I moved closer to him, put a hand on his arm. The muscles beneath clenched, then relaxed.

“What happened to Charlotte isn’t your fault.” I paused, a deeper fear clawing up my spine. “Do you think Bobby had something to do with her driving off the bridge?”

He scratched a hand over his jaw, still staring forward.

“I watched you,” he said absently. “The first night after I met you, I came here and looked through this window, and saw you undressing. You’d done something to me at the house. I couldn’t explain it. I’d never felt that way about anyone.”

I swallowed, throat hot as he turned to me and moved closer, a dark heat in his eyes.

“It’s my stalker magnet.” I laughed weakly.

“Something changed that night,” he continued. “The thought of Bobby laying a hand on you, or Max fucking with you . . . I couldn’t let it happen. I couldn’t let them near you.”

He was closer, caging me against the window. He didn’t touch me, but I could feel his warm breath on my lips, his chest inches from mine. A flush heated my skin. My body yearned for contact. A rhythm had begun pulsing in my sex, keeping beat with my accelerating heart. Behind me, the window was hard and cold, but in front of me was fluid fire.

“I couldn’t look away,” he whispered tightly. “Your back was against the window, just like this, and you began to move. Just a little. I had to watch closely to make sure I’d seen it at all.”

I was trapped in place, mesmerized by the growl in his voice. I was afraid of what he’d done, afraid for him and for myself as well, but the fear only heightened my arousal.

“Your fingertips skimmed your shoulder.” He showed me how, just a light brush of his thumb down my neck to my collarbone and out. My pulse beat wildly. Automatically, my head tilted to the side, exposing more flesh to his caress.

“I wanted to kiss you there,” he admitted.

His lips ghosted a trail down the same path, never once touching my skin. Staying a breath away.

“Your face turned to the side, like it does when I make you come.”

I was breathing hard now, and my hands were fisting in the baggy sweatpants that hung off my hips.

“Did you touch yourself and think of me?” he murmured. “It drove me crazy wondering.”

I shuddered with the memory of the first time I’d wanted to be with him. Moisture dewed on my hairline. My sex clenched. Without my panties, I was acutely aware of the dampness between my thighs.

“Alec.” My heart hurt, but my body still wanted him. I couldn’t give in to the need without the rest of me feeling whole.

“Anna,” he said roughly. “I knew then I had to have you. All of you. Not for Max, not just for one night. For good. I needed to be someone you’d want. Someone worthy.”

His hand lowered over my waist, and my abdominals quivered in anticipation. Still, he didn’t touch me.

I did want him. I wanted him so badly it hurt.

His face tilted, and his lips brushed gently over mine.

“Before I saw the lawyer in New York, I made copies of everything and took them to the FBI,” he said. “Very soon Force will crumble, and Maxim Stein with it.”

“Y
ou . . .” I blinked. “You what?” I put a hand on his solid chest and pushed him back. My body was still humming with need. The blood was pounding in my ears. Either my brain was about to explode, or I was going to tear his clothes off. It could have gone either way.

As if searching for something to grasp, his hands clawed through his hair, then wove behind his neck. Then shoved into his pockets.

“I’m turning Max in,” he said. “Too many people have been hurt.
You
could’ve been hurt. And Charlotte . . .” He turned away, shoulders tensing as a shudder raked through him. “Whatever loyalty I’ve shown Max won’t mean jack if he gets in a bind. I always knew it. I just didn’t care until I met you.”

I was still trying to catch up and couldn’t think of anything to say in response.

“That night you came to Max’s house, the FBI had put a wire on me,” he said. “I think Bobby may have had more to do with Charlotte’s death than he’s saying, but they needed him to admit it on tape. My fists were just about to convince him to talk when I saw you on the monitor.”

The wall I’d been leaning against outside Maxim’s office shook as Alec had rammed Bobby into it—I remembered the way the window overhead had rattled.

“What did you do?” I finally managed.

He turned, streetlights gleaming in his eyes.

“The right thing. It just took me a while to get there.”

“What did you do?” I said again, feeling the tremor start in my heels and work its way up my legs. Higher it went, through my core. Higher, into my chest.

“Anna—”

“Stupid man!” I shouted, covering my mouth. The words came out anyway. “You stupid . . . crazy . . .
stupid
man!”

I lunged at him and grabbed his shirt in my trembling fists. His hands wrapped around my wrists while I tried to shake some sense into him. His brows came together, his mouth made a tight straight line. I kicked him in the shin and he hissed in pain.

“They’re going to kill you!” I yelled.

“Anna, they’re going to protect me.”

“Not the FBI!” I shook free of his grasp and pummeled his chest. “Maxim Stein. Bobby. They probably got rid of Charlotte, and when they find out what you’ve done, they’re going to get rid of you and me next.”

“Anna.” He wrapped me in a bear hug, so tightly I could barely breathe. One of his strong arms latched behind my shoulders, the other crossed my lower back. He held me until the shaking finally stopped.

“Baby,” he said in a hard, quiet voice I’d never heard before. “They’re not going to touch you. I’ll die before they hurt you, understand?”

I closed my eyes, burying my face in his chest.

“You can’t die,” I said. “I won’t let you.”

That broke him. He chuckled softly. The sound made me that much more afraid. How he could be so calm right now was beyond me.

I pushed back, and reluctantly, he let me go.

“You hid all of this from me.”

This wasn’t a simple omission. He was tangled up in the FBI now, and playing a very dangerous game that could mean jail or worse. After everything I’d heard tonight, I had no doubts Maxim Stein was capable of really hurting him—
us
. How could I trust Alec after this?

“I wanted to keep you out of it. If you had found out, you’d be culpable.” He cleared his throat. “I never wanted you to have to carry my burden.”

He didn’t apologize for being protective, and somehow this smoothed some of the sharp emotions raging through me. His concern was staggering. There was no question in my mind that he wanted to keep me safe.

“You didn’t even give me the choice.”

He nodded slowly. “The truth is I couldn’t let you go. I love you, Anna. You’re it for me. I knew I was done the moment I saw you in your car outside Max’s house.”

I stood before him, unable to move. The room was too quiet, my thoughts, too loud. He loved me. He’d hidden the truth to protect me, hidden his past because he was afraid I would turn him away. Alec Flynn was a good man in a bad place, fighting to change the course of his life because he loved me.

“Who said anything about letting me go?” I asked.

One brow arched. “What?”

I took a step back, then another, slowly stretching the space between us until my heel hit the tinted glass wall that faced my apartment across the street. I leaned against it, the way I had leaned against my window the night I’d met him.

My thumb skimmed inside the waistband of my borrowed sweatpants. Ten feet away, his fingers began drumming against his thigh.

“Is there anything else?” I asked. “Any other life-changing bits of information I should know about?”

“I . . .” His gaze lowered to my mouth, leading me to lick my lips. “I love vanilla ice cream,” he said. “And you’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen.”

I smiled. He took a step closer.

He wasn’t smiling.

“No more lies,” I told him.

His movements were graceful. Strong. He moved with a confidence contrary to the uncertainty in his eyes. He didn’t believe that I would still love him, want him, after what he’d told me.

But I did.

“No more lies,” he agreed.

“You hurt me,” I said. “And you scared me. And worst of all, you left me wondering what had happened to you. You can’t do that to me.”

“I’ll spend every day making up for it,” he said. “I swear to you, Anna.”

I believed him.

“What happens now?” The heat was rising in my veins.

Another step. Another.

“I can think of a few things.”

I longed for his touch. My whole body burned for it.

“It was you,” I whispered. “I was fantasizing about you the night you watched me.”

He was close now. His hands slid beneath my T-shirt and closed on either side of my waist, fingers spanning over my ribs. I felt small in his grasp, delicate, but powerful too, because there was no hiding the desire that tightened his features.

“Tell me what I was doing,” he said. “How did I touch you?”

We shouldn’t have been doing this. Not now when so much was happening. Alec should have been with the FBI, and maybe I should have been there with him. But one look at him, and I knew that would have to wait.

My hips pushed forward, moved by an uncontrollable need to be closer. I closed my eyes. With him touching me, everything else faded into the background. Charlotte. Bobby and Maxim. A curtain slid over them, hiding them from view.

“You wanted me so badly,” I said. “No one had ever wanted me so much.”

His breath came in one hard rush, and then his mouth was on my neck, his tongue rasping over my skin. His hands dipped below the elastic waistband, curving around my bare bottom and crushing me to him. I rode his muscular thigh, the pressure teasing my sex. His cock twitched against my stomach, hard and heavy.

“Tell me,” he growled.

“You touched me.”

“How?” When I hesitated, he lifted me higher on his thigh. My hips writhed uncontrollably.
“How?”
he demanded.

“You put your fingers inside of me.” I turned my head away. “You spread my legs wide, and while you touched me, your mouth was here.” I rubbed my tight nipples. “Then here.” I lowered my hand between my breasts to my now very wet center.

His hand rose up my chest, weighed one breast, then circled the peak with the rough pad of his thumb. I groaned.

“Alec.”

“Keep going.” He stretched the collar of my T-shirt, revealing my shoulder. His teeth scraped the top of my breast, making me jump.

“You made me crazy.” I panted.

I clung to the window as he pushed me back. My feet flattened on the cold floor. A moment later he was easing down my sweatpants, exposing my damp skin to the cool air. My muscles quivered as a flash of heat seared through my belly.

He kneeled before me, and the sight of him there, looking up at me with such devotion made my knees buckle. He caught me, steadied me against the window, while he planted one tender kiss below my belly button. Then another lower, and another below that, until he was gently spreading my legs and worshipping me with long, leisurely strokes of his tongue.

My cheek turned against the cool glass, and though the windows were tinted, someone outside looking in could have been able to see us the way Alec had seen me that first night. He was living out his fantasy, just as I was living out mine, and the realization of this made me that much more desperate for him.

The slow pace became torturous. I longed for speed, the flash of fire. But like always, he was perfectly in tune with what my body needed. With one firm suction from his mouth on my clit, I fell off the cliff I hadn’t even seen coming, landing in a churning pool of sensation. The current pulled at me, lashed at me, had me gasping while my fingers fisted his hair. The only things holding me up were the hard glass and his fingers, still deep inside me.

As the world righted itself, he stood, still massaging my tender inner flesh.

“What else did I do?” His voice was no more than a rough whisper.

My breathing had yet to slow. “You fucked me up against the window.”

I heard his pants unzip.

“Slow at first,” I said. “And deep. Like . . .” I gasped as his hard cock came to rest on my thigh. “Like you couldn’t get close enough.”

He moved my arms around his neck. Pressed my body against the window with his. I was soft in all the places he was hard, and we fit together like two pieces of a puzzle.

“I need you,” he murmured. “I’m not whole without you.”

“You went faster. I came with you inside of me,” I said, flushed and ready. “I’d never felt that before, but you knew what to do.”

“Because your body was made for me,” he said. “Because I was made for you.”

“Yes.” I finally opened my eyes, and kissed him with everything I had, everything that had been building up over the last hours. Our lips crushed against each other. He devoured me. Claimed me, just as I claimed him.

My heart was beating hard, beating for him, and I was desperate to fill the hole he’d left there.

He lowered, and his cock grazed over my tender skin as he slid into position. I could feel his hot, steely head nudging at my entrance, and his heart hammering against mine. Nothing was more right than this.

“I missed you,” I said.

He lifted me, and I clung to him, ready for that glorious impalement. The stretch, the fire, and our mutual destruction.

“I love you, Anna.”

I blinked, needing to watch his face as he filled me. But something changed in his eyes. A glint of light, a reflection, that tore him away from me. His gaze was fixed on something beyond the glass. It was so intent I turned my head to see what he was looking at.

A light in my apartment had come on.