An arm wrapped around her waist. In a flash she dropped the letter, seized the wrist, and cocked it hard to the side. Half a second later she smelled the delectable aroma of bay rum aftershave, and her grip slackened.
“Ow,” Max said, though he slipped his other arm around her waist.
She took a deep breath and tried to slow her heart, jackhammering with the spike of adrenaline she would’ve used to fight. “Jesus, Max, I could’ve killed you.”
“I know, my love.” His lips touched her neck and he mumbled into her skin, “But you didn’t. Thanks.”
Val leaned her head back, exposed more of her neck for him. With each kiss, she felt her foul mood lifting, a warm, erotic blanket wrapping around her. “I thought your conference didn’t end for another couple days.”
“It was boring. I left early.” His hands drifted underneath her sweatshirt and slid up her rib cage, onto the mounds of her breasts, where his fingers took turns gliding over her nipples. Horny bastard. She bit her lip and smiled.
“The board will be angry you played hooky from yet another financial conference. They might consider firing you, for real this time.”
He laughed. “God no. If they had the stones to do it, I might be worried. I’d have to find another hobby.” His hands stopped their sensuous path across her chest; one slipped out of her sweatshirt and picked up the letter she’d dropped on the bed. “Second thoughts?”
“No.” She sighed. “I don’t know. The kids…saw her. I assume it was her anyway. They said, ‘We love Nana.’”
He rested his head on her shoulder and hugged her from behind. It was meant to be comforting; in almost any other situation, it would’ve worked. “That’s good, right? Maybe you should give her a chance.”
“Because you’ve had such good luck trusting your family?”
She felt his breath catch for half a second and immediately regretted her words. Even alluding to his horribly abusive father was a low blow. Sometimes she wished she considered and dissected her words more before she spoke, like Max did. “I’m sorry,” she said to him.
He kissed her cheek—apology accepted. “I wish I had the chance to reconnect with my mother, is all I’m saying. But I know the circumstances are different—your mom had a choice, and mine didn’t. Do whatever you’re comfortable with.”
How could he be so sensible about family after the nightmare that was his childhood? Well, she was tired of staring at the letter and wondering what could be. “I guess I could ask her to stay for a couple weeks. If it gets weird or she asks for money, I’ll kick her out.”
Max chuckled. “There’s my mushy-hearted wife.”
Dropping Danielle’s letter on the nightstand, he lifted her gingerbread batter–stained sweater over her head and tossed it to the side. Val’s skin prickled where his fine dress shirt and thousand-dollar suit vest pressed against the bare skin of her back. He pulled out the elastic band holding her strawberry-colored hair in a messy ponytail, and it spilled across her bare shoulder in loose waves.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he said as wound her hair around his hand, then gently pushed her head down until her naked torso lay atop the bed’s foot.
“It’ll be a disaster,” she muttered into the comforter, her mouth beginning to water in anticipation of what he’d do next.
Max leaned over her, his clothed chest against her bare back. He wedged his hands between her skin and the sheets, slid his fingers across her breasts and down to her hips as he made a trail of agonizingly slow kisses along her spine. “If you’re nervous, I could stay home. Quit my job. We could do this all day.”
“We could not do this all day.” But God, she wished they could. He eased her sweatpants and panties off, dragging her socks and slippers along with them, until she lay half on, half off the bed, completely nude. “If you stayed home, you’d be even more bored, but also exhausted—”
She gasped when he reached between her legs and caressed her clitoris, already wet for him. He leaned over her again and kissed the back of her neck, his fingers stoking a fire in her belly that threatened to immolate her when they’d barely begun. She hadn’t even seen his face yet since he’d returned, but she didn’t need to. She knew him—his scent, his taste, his touch, his voice, his walk, his thoughts, his past, his secrets, his everything. He was a collage of everything good and a little bad in the world, all the most interesting parts, as if brought to life by some force that made him just for her, and she for him.
He whispered, though his voice was clear with his lips against her ear. “I’ll do the dishes, you’ll take out the garbage. We’ll sneak away, once, maybe twice a day—”
A long sigh flowed from her lips. She clutched the sheets as all rational thought fled her mind.
“And fuck our brains out.”
Oh, that sounded nice. His chest slid up and down her back, his breath burning her neck in rhythmic puffs. His tongue flicked her ear. A moan rushed from her chest and out her mouth in a gush of lust. He excelled at pleasing the woman before himself, using everything he had besides his own manhood to delay his own climax and the trance that followed, which seemed like a strange sexual dysfunction to anyone who didn’t understand what they could do. Already she was close to falling over the edge into one of her visions, but this was the best part—the act of lovemaking. At its most primitive level, her body craved the finale, but her mind begged to stay in this moment, with Max. Yet he excited every inch of her flesh with his touch, pulling her further toward the climax as she fought with herself to remain in the present.
“Yes…I’d like that,” she said, breathless. “Every day—”
In a blink, her cheek left the mattress when he lifted her upright, his hand stoking the fire between her legs into an inferno. She leaned back against him, her moans growing into screams she couldn’t control as the passion inside her grew unbearable. With his free hand, he turned her head toward him and smothered her mouth with his, muffling her cries—can’t wake the kids—and the taste of him was enough to send her over the edge—
“Get up!” Sten yells in my face as sirens blare all around us. “Goddammit, Shepherd, GET UP!”
I struggle to stand but my legs won’t hold my weight. Blood trickles down my forehead and into my eyes. I can’t get up.
Sten is frantic. He pulls on my arm but can’t drag me far. He’s limping. Specs of blood splatter the body armor he’s wearing.
“Get up—” Sten’s head jerks sideways as a bullet strikes his temple.
Blur.
Max grabs fistfuls of clothes from a dresser drawer and shoves them into a duffle bag.
“Fine, just run away,” I say, my voice shaking. I tremble with rage, and there are tears on my cheeks. I don’t know why. “Run away like you always do.”
“I can’t do this anymore,” he says. His face is haggard and his eyes are red like he’s been crying, too, though his anger has overwhelmed his sadness. “We’re never going to find her. They will always be one step ahead, and I can’t…I can’t.” His voice chokes up. “I’m sure that, wherever she is, they’re treating her well.” He zips up his bag.
“You fucking coward,” I say. “Get out and don’t come back!”
He brushes past me, wiping tears from his eyes.
“When I find her, I’ll tell her Daddy gave up!”
Like cigarette smoke, the image faded. After a second of confusion, Val realized she’d been moved to the bed, onto her side with her naked chest pressed against Max’s clothed one. He propped his head up on one hand while his other hand stroked her shoulder.
“You okay?” he asked. He knew her visions were generally awful, filled by and large with predictions of future death and mayhem. The less traditional methods of copulation offered less intense prophesies, though; why, neither of them knew. But the ecstasy of being intimate with him far outweighed the unpleasantness of what should have been an orgasm but was instead some strange “anatomical abnormality,” as Max called it, that caused them trouble to no end. Since she and Max made love often enough to make Dr. Ruth blush, she’d learned to process the visions with a more objective eye, like a detective observing a crime scene. She could change what she saw, after all. They were only glimpses of what could be.
“I’m okay.” Val didn’t always tell Max about what she saw, and he didn’t press. She preferred to come to grips with the visions before filling Max in on anything she thought he needed to know. She definitely preferred he not know that Sten still haunted her future, even though she hadn’t had any contact with the dirty cop in over five years. Some things it was better her husband didn’t know.
Val sat up. “And no, we can’t both stay home.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’d get bored, and you know it.” She shimmied to the foot of the bed and began unlacing his wingtips.
He leaned back and folded his arms behind his head as she popped off his shoes. “Come with me, then. We can travel together.”
“What am I supposed to do with the kids while you’re in meetings all day?” She unbuttoned his pants, pulled them off, and let them drop to the floor. “They behave for you. Not for me.”
Max chuckled. “They get that from you.” He watched her slide his underwear down his legs and toss it away so he lay naked from the waist down. She crawled over the bed, back to his side, and grasped his hard cock. She enjoyed the firmness and warmth in her hand, the way it slid up and down her palm with ease, the ridges rolling over her fingers, the wetness at the tip. It was the definition of his manhood as well as his vulnerability, the source of his curse, and the thing she wanted most at that moment. Leaning down, she took it into her mouth and gave it one long, delicious suck. A faint moan escaped his chest. Just a taste of him wouldn’t do. They’d been apart for three days, after all.
“I know what you need,” he said as if he could read her mind, his eyes dark and heavy.
She straddled his waist and guided his cock until their flesh was joined. He let out a soft sigh, the rising and falling of his chest growing faster as she rocked her hips into his. At the same time, she popped open the buttons of his suit vest. “What do I need?”
His fingers burned a path up her thighs. “A nanny.”
“This again? Max, please. I don’t need help.”
“Yes you do.”
She worked the buttons of his dress shirt free and ran her hands along the tight folds of his abs, up his meaty pecs, and through the small patch of black chest hair. Not an ounce of fat cushioned his lean torso. Oh, not to have suffered the bodily consequences of squeezing out two children. Even after three years of consistent exercise, she still couldn’t get rid of the small hill of flesh below her belly button, or get her breasts to fit comfortably into her pre-pregnancy bras. Strangely, he seemed to want her even more in her plumped state.
Val leaned down and kissed the center of his chest, right above his heart. “I don’t need a nanny,” she said, kissing her way up to his ear. “We’re getting along just fine.” Sitting up, she loosened his tie and slipped it around her own neck, letting the blue silk drape between her breasts. “We’re already bringing one virtual stranger into our home. Another who’s not even related is out of the question.” The children had never been out of either Max or Val’s sight. Leaving them alone with anyone else was too dangerous. “No one can be trusted. No one.”
Max grabbed her wrists. Looking down, she saw her hands had balled into fists. “Relax, Val. They’re not going to bother us again. If they still wanted our kids, they would’ve taken them by now. Lucien gave them what they wanted. It’s over.”
Lucien might have given Northwalk Val’s eggs and Max’s sperm so the evil cabal could make their own Alpha child, which was still horrific if true. But her continued visions of her and Max fighting over their lost child told her there was at least a chance Northwalk hadn’t succeeded. Max thought it was over because that’s what he wanted to believe, but she didn’t buy it for a second. She was about to say so, like she always did, when he pulled her down to him with his tie, kissing her slow and deep, his lips lingering on hers—his way of changing the subject, like he always did.
“‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’”
“Don’t quote Shakespeare at me, or whatever the hell that was.”
“Hamlet, Act Three.”
“Whatever, nerd. I’m not protesting, I’m stating a fact. The vast majority of the parenting world gets by without nannies. We can, too.”
He sat up. “We can, but you’re obviously not enjoying yourself anymore.”
She pushed the shirt down over his strong shoulders so he could slip out of it. “I’m enjoying myself right now.”
“And if I hadn’t come home tonight, you’d be anxious about the letter, folding laundry, and going to bed early,” he said as he shrugged the fabric off. “I think you’re the one who’s bored and dying to get out of the house. We can’t watch them forever, Val. Eventually we’ll have to leave them with someone else.” Finally as naked as her save the tie around her neck, he grasped the flesh of her back and pulled her chest to his face, nuzzling the skin between her breasts. “I’m tired of arguing about it. We’re getting a nanny.”
His lips fluttered against her nipple, then moved up her shoulder and across her collarbone. Val rested her cheek against his wavy black hair and cradled his head in her arms, holding on to him as he moved through her. She loved this part, when his lust overcame his other senses and he lost himself in her, free for a sweet moment of his always-churning mind while his body devoured hers. Thank God she could give him this, something beautiful and safe, somewhere he felt loved and unburdened by his past, a place he could lose himself in pure joy.
With a grunt like a wild animal, he flipped her onto her back, hitched her legs up, and drove into her. Max stared into her eyes with his gorgeous hazel ones, a frenzy of passion and love flowing from him into her until she matched his hysteria. She wet his lips, his jaw, his ear, and his neck with a continuous line of desperate kisses.
“Don’t stop,” she breathed against the furnace of his mouth, clutching his firm, smooth ass. “Don’t stop.”
The fever in his eyes grew. She saw him try to hold on as she had tried when he’d made love to her with his hand, until he lost the sweet battle. He shuddered before his eyes drifted closed, his taut body going slack on top of hers as he slipped into the trance of a prophetic vision. Barely a second later she fell over the edge with him—
I’m standing on the balcony of Max’s old house, the balcony where he threw his father to his death. The sky is overcast, the water is black. All the glass is cracked and trash is strewn everywhere. At my feet I see a weathered newspaper with a headline that reads: “President Barrister Declares War.” Before I can check the date or read the article, the brightest light I’ve ever seen bursts in the sky and mushrooms upward. I hear and feel a rumbling that grows louder, shattering the glass around me, until a shockwave hits and I’m engulfed in flames.
Blur.
“It’s really not that bad,” Sten says as he walks a lap around our cheap hotel room.
“Yes it is.” Wearing only a bra and panties, I pick up a half-empty bottle of whiskey from the floor and take a long drink. “Yes it is.”
Sten rolls his eyes. “Here we go with your goddamn hysterics again.”
I ignore him to concentrate on drinking the liquor as quickly as possible. I bet if I focus on breathing through my nose, I can shotgun it—
Sten grabs my arm and yanks the bottle from my lips. “Stop it. It’s not that bad.”
“Maybe you can live like a slave, but I can’t.”
I must have hit a nerve, because anger flares behind his eyes. His grip around my wrist tightens until the pain becomes too much and the whiskey bottle drops from my hand, thudding against the stained carpet at our feet. I whimper but refuse to ask him to stop. I’ll let him kill me if he wants. I almost wish he would.
He seizes my other wrist and slams me down on the bed, the mattress groaning underneath the force. Pain jolts through me from deep cuts and bruises all over my body.
“I never took you for a quitter, Shepherd,” he says, his mouth about an inch from mine. “There are ways to resist. At the very least I thought you’d want to have one more quality meeting with your mother. Your efforts so far have been frankly pathetic.”
Angry tears leak down my cheeks. I want to spit in his face, but I want release more. I can’t think.
“Show me where they are.” I stare hard into his black eyes. The fire’s still there, but the anger’s been replaced with something else—hunger. “Show me.”
He knocks my wrists against the mattress as if the act will make them stay there, then drops to the foot of the bed and rips my underwear off. I close my eyes, empty my mind, and think of nothing as he unbuttons his jeans, hitches my legs around his waist, and shows me what it’s like to truly use sex as a weapon.
Blur.
A middle-aged woman’s gray eyes widen as she stares down the barrel of a gun in disbelief. Her red hair, streaked with gray, frames a delicate face lined around the eyes and mouth with age. “You don’t understand—”
BOOM BOOM BOOM. Three shots to the chest. She collapses to the ground and spits up blood for a moment before going still.
Val gasped as if she herself had been shot. She blinked, trying to push the last image out of her mind, but it refused to go quietly. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. That woman couldn’t be—
“Val?” Max touched her face, and she flinched as her thoughts snapped back to the present. “What’s wrong?”
“I think—” She buried her face in his neck, relishing the feel of his skin against hers as she concentrated on slowing the hammering of her heart. “I think I saw—” Steel blue eyes. Red hair cut in a long bob, streaked with gray. And she’d smelled menthols, the kind Danielle Shepherd liked to smoke.
Val met Max’s concerned eyes and choked out, “I think I saw my mother being murdered.”