Killian
Her words fall like deadly spikes between us. Her eyes are dark green haunted pools. I want to tell her the truth. The whole truth. But at what cost?
I have no problem speaking ill of the dead when they deserve it. But the chance that adding to her guilt will push her out of my reach? Fuck, no.
“You’re wrong. We didn’t kill him. You left him—”
“When he needed me the most.”
I swallow the knot of fury that surges through my gut. “On the campaign trail, maybe. But nowhere else. We both know that. Tell me your marriage wasn’t already over when we met. Tell me you didn’t have divorce papers drawn up and tucked away in your underwear drawer ready to file.”
She gasps. “How the hell do you know about that?”
“I’m a spy, baby. That’s what I do. I went looking, and I found them. I don’t mind admitting that was the fucking highlight of my second visit to your house.”
She shakes her head, the weight of her remorse winning out against the outrage of my admission. Her lashes sweep down, and she swallows. “I may have been on the verge of filing those papers, but I was still his wife when we…”
“You didn’t cheat on him. He was dead when we got together.”
Her laughter is filled with bitterness. “And how quickly after that did we happen? Jesus, I fucked you at his funeral, and we both know I wasn’t using you to lessen my overwhelming grief. How many kinds of bitch does that make me?”
“Who the fuck cares how you used me? I don’t. You’d already said goodbye to him long before we put him in the ground.”
“He wouldn’t have been in the ground in the first place if he hadn’t suspected something was going on between us. He wouldn’t have been at the hotel, in that alley, if it hadn’t been for us.”
The door I keep locked on my guilt attempts to crack open. “We had dinner that evening, baby. That was all.”
“That wasn’t all, and you know it.”
I sigh, take the water bottle from her, and put it next to mine on the desk. I stay silent to avoid corroborating that truth. We spent that evening barely eating and eye-fucking each other a dozen different ways across the table in the hotel restaurant. I have no idea what we talked about, or even if we talked at all.
The torture of not being able to touch her, of sitting opposite her with a hard-on the size of Texas, when all I wanted was to bend her over the table and fuck the shit out of her, had driven me seriously nuts by the time I put her in her car and sent her home to my brother. But my reason for staying at the Arkansas Grand Hotel was because of the connection to the op I was working on. The op that directly involved my brother.
Matt’s call to me that night had been pure coincidence, but as usual, our conversation descended very quickly into taunts and insults and, on my part, a subtle probing into his activities that had raised his suspicion. Did I subconsciously intend for that to happen? For my brother to panic and seek out the man I was tailing in the hotel? Probably. I’m not enough of a saint to rule my soiled hands out of the equation.
“I knew he was tracking my phone. I didn’t think he would follow me there though and get himself killed in a random shooting.” Her voice is racked with pain.
It wasn’t random. I swallow the words and pull her into my arms. There’s no way I’m telling her Matt had been taken out by a well-aimed shot to the head in a merciless execution that may have been indirectly my fault.
I may have gotten used to carrying the guilt but I’ll never be rid of it.
Because how the fuck do I tell her that I was on a covert mission when I visited my childhood home that day? A mission to find out whether Matthew Knight, my brother, was involved in the sex ring that involved several high-level members of the government.
When his name was first flagged by the analysts at Fallhurst, I had a hard time reconciling the above-average asshole of a brother I grew up with and Congressman Matthew Knight of Arkansas suspected of turning a blind eye to the bone-deep corruption going on under his nose. But even before I closed the file of intel on my brother, the seed of conviction was growing. I knew he wasn’t above such heinous acts, although trafficking sex slaves, a disturbing number of them underage girls and boys, was taking things to a whole new level.
But the Knights were notorious for turning a blind eye if it would benefit them. Hell, I did exactly that when I clapped eyes on Faith Carson and decided she would be mine even though she didn’t belong to me.
Randall and Patricia Knight, my much-esteemed parents, were the same. Both from a long line of families that preferred to be the money and power behind politicians, they thrived on manipulating the candidates they endorsed for their own gains. And they were wildly successful at it, right up until they were embroiled in voter-tampering charges. The convenient explosion at our luxury cabin in the mountains of Montana served the dual purpose of ending their lives and killing the rabid speculation as to their guilt before their case could go to trial. I never discounted the fact that they orchestrated their deaths much like they’d orchestrated their lives. Much like they’d tried to orchestrate mine.
Perversely, it was that tiny possibility of their innocence that propelled Matthew up the polls when he decided to run for a congressional seat six months after their deaths. Like the sleazy political animal he was trained to be, he’d changed the narrative of my parents’ lives, spotlighted their hard work, and all but wept on camera for his loss. All the while knowing, like me, that Randall and Patricia never gave an inch unless there was something in it for them.
Matt learned to play their game before he was out of diapers. I blatantly refused. And earned myself a long stay in hell for it. In the middle of my junior high year, I went from private school to inner city public school without so much as a heads-up. My parents held a charity benefit for underprivileged kids, during which they self-effacingly shared their desire to like the common man by sending their second child to a school in a dangerous, gang-ridden neighborhood. To this day, they don’t know I barely escaped being knifed on my second day. Or that I eventually earned my safe passage to and from school by helping the gang leader build and maintain his burgeoning online porn business.
When my parents decided to go a step further and sabotage my college scholarship to MIT, I hitchhiked to Cambridge and camped on the dean’s doorstep with my acceptance letter. He listened to my story with heavy skepticism but decided to give me a chance. I faked a résumé to land a part-time job so I could pay for my board, and I never went back home.
Matt took the option of tripling his hate for me for not being there when my parents were plunged into disgrace. I didn’t lose any sleep over it. When I learned my parents had left everything they owned to him, I didn’t lose any sleep over that either. In fact, except for the rare occasions when our paths crossed, I barely thought of my brother at all.
Until his name came up at the agency. Next to a prominent Arkansas businessman named Grant Carson. Faith’s father. Another man whose true character she had no clue about.
I decide that bundle of emotional C-4 is best left to tackle another day. “He’s gone, baby. We need to move forward with our lives. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you deny yourself that life because you think what we did was wrong.”
“You can’t—”
I slam my mouth on hers. Because enough already. I’ve denied myself for long enough. Over four years apart and a whole twelve hours since she was back in my arms.
Like last night, the kiss is everything I dreamed it would be. And so much more. She attempts to resist me. Of course she does. Her mouth remains closed, and she struggles in my arms. I propel her against the wall, trap her with my body, and spike my fingers into her hair to hold her still. My tongue takes a glorious swipe across her lower lip. That’s when I feel it. That hint of a moan. That tiny shudder that shakes through her. The faintest parting of her lips.
I swipe at her mouth again, and damn if that doesn’t make my cock swell to epic proportions. The thought that I could blow my load just by performing this small act is both humbling and hysterical. I flick the tip of my tongue between the seam of her lips, and she shakes again. I keep up the pressure for a minute. Until her breath emerges in heavy pants and her thighs squirm harder against mine.
I raise my head the tiniest fraction. “Let me in, sweetheart,” I rasp against her lips.
She makes a sound in her throat. A dying attempt to fight the inevitable. Her hands are still hanging by her sides, but her fingertips flutter against my thighs, as if she’s resisting the urge to touch me.
“Touch me, baby,” I urge. “Please. Dear God, I need you so much.” I’ve never been afraid to beg. Not with her. Not when I realized very early on that it was a perceived weakness she could never resist exploiting. She may consider it a flaw. I consider it a strategy that gets me what I want.
I get what I want now as she gives a ragged moan and her glorious lips part to allow me entry. My racing heart slams harder as I taste her lips properly for the first time in a hellishly long time. We both gasp when our tongues meet, slide, and greet each other in a dance so heady that stars explode behind my closed eyelids.
The flutters along my thighs turn to grazes, and then I feel the imprint of her fingers on my pants. Testing. Kneading. Relearning everything she left behind.
I don’t dare move or risk breaking this spell. But my cock demands closer contact. My mouth craves a deeper taste of hers. Fuck it. I grab her hips, tug her into me, and shamelessly rub the length of my cock against her belly. Her hot gasp feeds my arousal, and I roll against her again. That earns me a full-body shudder.
I pull back a fraction and stare into her semi-glazed eyes. “Feel that? It’s all for you, baby. Take it. God, please take it,” I plead against her mouth.
She continues to stare at me for a long moment. Then her hands move from my thighs to my hips. She reaches between us. I hold my breath. I plant kisses on her swollen mouth. And I hope. Her fingers drift higher to graze my fly.
Christ.
Once she decides, she doesn’t beat around the bush. My button pops, and she takes control of my zipper. I fuse my lips to hers in a desperate, silent plea for her not to stop. She kisses me back as she slowly lowers the fastening.
My cock springs free. Eager and desperate. She takes me in her hand, and it’s all I can do not to shout. “Yes,” I groan instead, weak and useless as I pant for her. “Yes.”
Her hand glides over me, warm and smooth and heavenly. I pump to meet the next downward glide simply because I can’t help myself.
Her moan of approval makes me almost smile. Except I’m caught in the web of the magic she’s weaving, helpless to her ministrations. I give her a minute to remember how I like it as she continues to pump me. “Harder,” I command impatiently as I drop kisses along her jaw to the delicate skin beneath her ear.
She fists me immediately, knowing exactly what I want. I’m slick from the pre-cum drenching my swollen head. She catches a thick drop in her palm and spreads it over my length. Then she increases the rhythm. The sensation threatens to blow the top of my head off.
“Sweet Jesus…”
“Killian.” Her voice is a husky, powerful siren’s call that drags me from the sweet curve of her neck. I pull back a little until I can see her eyes. She’s waiting for me, her stare as bold as the grip she’s using to detonate my world.
“Fuck, you’re so beautiful.”
Her eyes turn a moss green and her nostrils flutter, but she doesn’t say a word. Eyes glued to each other, we stare into our impure souls and breathe into each other as she pumps me faster, falling back into the rhythm she learned all on her own to drive me out of my mind. When my vision starts to blur, I blink hard. I don’t want to lose sight of her gorgeous face, miss a moment of each breath she takes. “Yes, baby, just like that.”
“Hmm…”
“Feels so good. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop…”
The weight of the climax bearing down on me threatens to disable me completely. My head drops forward. Our foreheads meet. Almost hypnotically, our gazes descend, and we watch what she’s doing to me. She pushes my pants further down until she gets access to my balls. She cups them in one hand without slowing the strokes of her other hand. Expertly, she rolls me between her fingers, stretching and fondling, dragging me ever closer to the edge. My balls tighten, pulling upward in preparation to blow.
“Jesus, I’m going to come.” My voice is almost indecipherable, my whole world focused on the beckoning rapture.
Yes,” she breathes, and pumps me harder, urging me on with hungry pulls I can’t resist.
I capture her nape and fuse my lips to hers one last time before my world turns a lovely shade of purple bliss and I erupt like a fucking fire hose. I’m aware I’m shaking like a leaf and groaning like a fucking idiot. But I don’t care. I continue to fuck her sensational hand until I’m utterly spent. My cheek slides past hers until my head rests against the wall. She rests hers on my shoulder, and we just…breathe.
An eternity later, I attempt to lift my head. “That was amazing. Thank you.” I brush my lips on her cheek. She stiffens a little but doesn’t pull away. Progress.
I want nothing more than to take her back into my arms, but I don’t push my luck. I straighten, tug my T-shirt off, and use it to clean us up. I’m still semi-hard, and I catch her watching as I put my dick away.
“Come wash up with me?”
She nods. I walk her into my bedroom and through to the master bathroom. I throw my soiled shirt in the laundry and turn on the tap at the sink. I hate that she’s washing my essence off her skin, but I’m a little more worried by her silence.
“You okay?”
She bites her lip, avoids my gaze in the mirror, and soaps her hands.
“Talk to me, baby.”
Her mouth flattens for a second. “I’m not sure talking works. All we’ve done so far is fight and…”
“Make each other feel good? Yeah, I see how that’s a problem.”
She grimaces. “You know what I mean. We can’t keep doing this.”
“I beg to differ.”
She stares solemnly back at me.
I sigh. “We’ve been off for a while. Rebooting is bound to have a few hiccups.”
She flashes me an irritated glance. “I’m not one of your computers, Killian.”
I hand her a towel to dry her hands. “No. You’re way sexier than any of them can ever hope to be.”
“I’ll be sure to tell Betty that when we go back in.”
“Shit. Please don’t. I don’t need her cranky. Not today.”
She almost cracks a smile. Almost. She turns from me to hang up the towel.
“How about we call a truce and go keep our appointment with Betty?” I suggest.
“Okay.”
We finish cleaning up and return to the study. She takes the seat next to mine and drinks from her water bottle as I fire up my air-gapped computer. An alert pops up on the screen. A single name jumps out at me.
“Fuck.”
“What is it?” she asks.
I take a deep breath and reread the info. I don’t want to alarm her unnecessarily. But the tension gripping my neck and the icy rage flooding my system tells me I didn’t read the name wrong.
She moves closer. “Killian, what is it?”
Resigned, I turn the screen toward her. Let her see for herself. She gasps at the first name highlighted by Betty. I watch her face grow pale, her eyes widen with shock.
“Is this intel correct?” Her voice is husky with disbelief.
“Yes. Paul Galveston passed through passport control at Dulles Airport six hours ago.”
Her breath shudders out, and her gaze swings from the screen to mine and back again. “How can that be? I…I shot him. He’s dead. He has to be.”
I drag my hand across my face, refusing to let the unsettling news disturb me. “It’s okay, baby. We’ll deal with this.”
“How? In the last twelve hours I’ve found out that two of our former team members have been hunted down, tortured, and killed. And now I find out the man who was behind it all, the man I thought I killed is still alive?” Her voice is shaking. Her whole body is shaking.
I reach for her. “Faith—”
She jerks away from me but doesn’t rip into me for using her given name. “I thought I cut off the head of the monster. But nothing we did in Cairo worked, did it? God, it was all for nothing?” There’s a new, peculiar note in her voice, way beyond the horror of discovering that Paul Galveston, one of the major players in the sex trafficking ring and one of the three men we were sent to Cairo to hunt down, is still alive.
I frown and watch her face grow paler. “No, it wasn’t for nothing. We crippled their operation.”
“Crippled isn’t the same as dead. It isn’t the same as definitively taking them out so they don’t get a chance to peddle children again!” She turns her back, hiding her expression from me. “God, I’ve been hiding for four years while they’ve just carried on buying and selling children?”
“You can’t blame yourself for this.”
She whirls around to face me. “Did you know he was alive? Is that why you’ve been trying to keep me here?”
I rise from the chair and cup her chin. “If I knew he was alive, I would’ve hunted him down and ended him for what he did to you.” The naked rage in my voice is abundantly clear. The moments after I found her covered in blood and the race to save her life after what Galveston did were the worst of my life.
She swallows, and her gaze moves back to the screen. “What about the others?”
Raj Phillips and Moses Black. Owners of Phillips Black, Inc. Millionaire shipping and export magnates by day, sex traffickers by night. Along with Galveston, the two men were the unholy trinity that comprised the US-based arm of a global sex trafficking ring.
Paul Galveston, the half-Egyptian son of senior senator Bernie Galveston of Arkansas, used his father’s connections to smuggle girls from Morocco, Egypt, and Eastern Europe into the US via his private air charter business, with support from the shipping arm of Phillips Black. Legitimate contracts secured to send aid shipments via Europe to Africa were clandestinely used to ship sex slaves back to the US. That was bad enough to begin with.
What we discovered when we arrived in Cairo—that all three men, and whoever happened to be in the mood for it, freely availed themselves of their underage victims—gave Faith nightmares for a solid week.
And then things took a turn for the worse. “As far as I know, Raj is still on the run. But Black is dead. You have my word on that.” I didn’t miss my first shot. Or the three that followed.
Her lips thin in a grim line. “Galveston has to know he’s on the watch list, but he’s not even attempting to hide.”
“His father is a powerful man. He still believes he’s untouchable.”
Her jaw clenches. “What if he’s never stopped his activities? Can you find out?”
“Yes. Do you want me to?”
A wave of pain flashes across her face, and she shuts her eyes for a moment. “I want to say no, let the agency take care of it. But I can’t. Killian…those kids…”
I walk over to her and slide my hands up her chilled arms to cup her jaw. “You don’t have to deal with it. I can put us on a plane in the next hour, and make us disappear. Just say the word.”
Her gaze returns to the screen. I watch steely resolution, and something else I can’t quite define, settle on her face. “He needs to pay for what he took…for what he’s done.” Green eyes meet mine. “I want you to find out what he’s up to.”
The selfish bastard inside me that wants to keep her safe and all to myself groans at her decision. But the part that wants the Widow, his sexy, dynamic partner, back is elated.
I ignore the two emotions warring within me as I nod. “Okay, I’ll work on it.”
“What can I do?”
I caress her cheeks with my thumbs. “Nothing for now. You need to catch up on your sleep. Go rest. I’ll come and get you if anything comes up.”
She steps away, picks up the bottle of water, and heads for the door. With her hand on the handle, she pauses and looks over her shoulder. “Killian?”
“Hmm?”
“I’ll need to brush up on my shooting skills. The next time I have him in my sights, I don’t want to miss.”
“If you want to brush up, I can make it happen. But you won’t be getting anywhere near Galveston. Tell me you get that.”
Her gaze drops for a moment. “I get that you want that reassurance. But…it looks like we both underestimated him, so—”
I shake my head. “No. He’s mine.”
“Why don’t you find him first? Then we’ll take it from there.”
Her tone isn’t argumentative. In fact, she’s the coolest I’ve seen her since she’s been back. I’m not sure if that reassures or terrifies me.
I find myself nodding. She walks out and leaves me standing there, staring after her. Unable to deny the gut instinct telling me that there’s something more going on with her. Something I don’t know about.