Chapter Seventeen
Hours later, Mel, wrapped in Danny’s tux coat and with her feet professionally rebandaged, stood between Danny and Jamie, watching the crime scene wind down. Sonja and her mercs had been carted off in police vans; Mitch in a police-escorted ambulance. John and Aidan had given brief statements to the press, before John and the rest of the family had retired to their Woodside estate. The Ellen, dead of all power but thankfully still in one piece, had been hoisted into the dry dock and swept with flashlights and high beams for secondary explosives. All the party guests had given their preliminary statements and been handed one of Aidan’s cards with an appointment time for a full debrief scrawled on the back.
“You done?” Mel asked, as Aidan rejoined them.
“We—” he gestured among the four of them, then pointed to where Nic and Cam stood a few feet away “—still need to debrief.”
The prosecutor and ASAC were squared off, arguing over something, and Nic in prosecutor mode had Mel’s brain rewinding even further back, to the beginning of their disastrous evening. “The customs agents at the airport?”
“Lynch paid them off,” Nic said, breaking off the argument with Cam and coming over to them, the irritated ASAC in his wake. “They’re in custody now.”
“Debrief,” Aidan repeated.
Mel barely stopped her internal groan from reaching the outside world.
Jamie, not so much. Grumbling, he slung an arm low around Aidan’s waist. “It’s Christmas Eve, Irish. Debrief can wait until tomorrow. Or better, the day after.”
“Whiskey, we need—”
“To forget this day happened, at least for a little while.”
With the adrenaline wearing off, and the chilly winter breeze kicking up, Mel couldn’t agree more. She leaned into Danny’s side, stealing some of his warmth. “Listen to your fiancé, hermano.”
Aidan’s eyes narrowed. “That’s one thing I’m not forgetting. Husband and wife, since when?”
“Oh, that’s my cue!” Danny said, in that over-the-top way that made Mel smile or roll her eyes. Right now, as he ushered her away from the curious stares of their friends and toward an approaching limo, she definitely smiled. “Would you look at that? Our ride’s here.”
Jamie’s laughter and Aidan’s “Tomorrow!” echoed as she and Danny slid into the limo.
“Where to, Mr. Talley?” the driver asked.
“The marina,” Danny said. “But take the long way.”
Mel waited for Danny to raise the divider and turn up the Christmas tunes before shifting in her seat and flicking the end of his dangling bowtie. “I’m surprised this thing survived the evening.”
He ran a hand up her thigh and over her hip, angling her toward him more. “You want to put it to good use?”
“That why you told the driver to take the long way?”
He waggled his eyebrows. “Maybe...”
Absently weaving the bowtie through her fingers, she cast her eyes aside. As much as she wanted what his wandering hand and teasing voice promised, there were things they needed to talk about, needed to say, after what they’d just lived through. “Daniel—”
Finger beneath her chin, he raised her face, forcing her gaze. “You’re as bad as Aidan with the need to debrief.” She frowned and Danny leaned forward, kissing the frustration away. “I just want to make love to my wife.”
She leaned back, cocking a brow. “Debrief after?”
He sighed dramatically, rolling his eyes. “Yes, SAC Cruz. We can debrief all you want tomorrow.”
Tightening her hold on his bowtie, she hauled him nose to nose. “Or the day after,” she said with a wink. “And it’s just Ms. Cruz now.” He started in for another kiss, but Mel shot up a hand, palming his cheek, needing to say one more thing. She waited for his eyes to lift, his dark pupils and irises a molten pool of black. “I’m sorry I was late tonight. And I’m proud of you.”
He smiled, the brightness blinding, and before she regained her senses, she was flat on her back, laid out on the long bench seat, their bodies pressed together. Danny swiped his thumbs over her cheeks and set about devouring her lips. She kissed him back hungrily, all the pent-up tension of the past week apart and the fear and desperation of tonight cresting, until the wave crashed into laughter. From relief, from love, from the lightness Danny brought to her life.
Danny wrestled her free of his jacket, deftly worked open the tattered remains of her silk blouse, and unhooked the front clasp of her bra. She didn’t hold back the sigh of relief—having been in that damn thing for far too long—and Danny stifled his own laugh between her breasts, the joyous sound going right to her heart.
She ran her hands through his dark curls, inside the back of his shirt collar and over shoulders that had borne more tonight than she’d thought possible. She’d never underestimate him again; and she’d show him just how much that strength turned her on. She raked her nails over his skin, turning his laughs to moans, then arched up off the seat, pressing one breast into his greedy palm while he worked the nipple of the other with his tongue and teeth, teasing it into a painfully pleasurable state. Wanting, needing to be closer still, she hitched her thigh around his waist and dug her heel into his ass, rocking their hips together and teasing the both of them. His straining cock bore down on her clit, right where she needed him most.
“Too many clothes,” he mumbled against her skin, reading her mind.
“You picked a lock and helped defuse a bomb tonight. I think you can solve this dilemma.”
“Smartass.” Grinning, he lightly popped her ass then levered up, one knee in the seat, the other foot braced on the floor, as he shucked out of his shirt.
She caught the bowtie midair and looped it back around his neck, drawing him down so she could run her hands over his bared chest. Springy black hairs tickled her fingertips and lean, toned muscles rippled under her palms.
He clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth while working down the zipper of her pants. “Do I need to take the bowtie away from you?”
“Just you tr—” Her words died in a strangled moan when Danny dipped a hand inside her pants and palmed her through her silk underwear. God, she missed this; had to do something about shortening the gaps in between it. They’d only been together a little over a year, married just a few months; they needed time together, to grow and get to know each other better, to know them better. There was no question she wanted to spend the rest of her life with this man, had married him with that certainty, but there was so much good to discover and enjoy still.
Like the feel of Danny’s long, nimble fingers pushing aside the silk and teasing her folds, gathering moisture on the way up to circling her clit. He swallowed her needy whimpers in another devouring kiss, and by the time they came up for air again he had her writhing.
“You know what I regret most about tonight?” he asked as he continued to tease.
She growled and ran her other foot up the back of his braced leg in an unmistakable message. No more teasing. “That you’re not undressing fast enough?”
The pressure on her clit let up and he withdrew his hand, moving off enough to finish undressing her. His hand lingered on her bare ankle. “That I didn’t get to see you in that dress, and those shoes.”
He shot her that devilish smirk, then sank to his knees, spread her thighs and buried his face between her legs, tasting the most intimate part of her.
“Christ, Daniel,” she hissed, unable and not in the least bit wanting to stop rocking her hips.
He kept at the delicious torture, alternating between flicking her clit and tongue-fucking her opening, until she couldn’t take it anymore. She was on the edge and needed him there with her before she jumped. There’d been too many solo dives lately.
She clenched her fingers in his hair and hauled him up for another kiss, humming as she tasted herself on his lips. Their tongues slipped against each other’s, tangling, and when she heard that telltale unzip of Danny’s pants, she used her feet to help push them and his boxers off. Danny came back down on top of her, and they both groaned when his rock-hard erection came into contact with her aching center.
Returning to her senses faster, she made her move. Bracing one foot on the seat, she flipped them off the bench and onto the floor, Danny landing on his back, her straddling his waist. Stretching his arms out above him, she tied his wrists with the bowtie.
He wriggled beneath her. “Naughty.”
Giving him a devilish grin of her own, she skirted a hand between their bodies and took his length in her hand. “Nice,” she corrected, then lowered herself onto him, wrangling a strangled hiss from his lips as he arched his neck and thrust up into her.
It didn’t take but a few lifts and thrusts to find their preferred pace, a steady rock that would get them to the edge fastest, neither of them particularly concerned with drawing this out tonight. They needed the reconnection, the tandem jump, more than anything.
She let her head fall back, hair brushing her shoulders, and Danny levered up, looping his bound arms over her head. Fingers tangling in her hair, he nipped up and down her neck. She closed her eyes and reveled in having him wrapped around her, inside her—the heat between them chasing the last vestiges of the night’s fear and terror away. As their movements became frantic, she clutched his shoulders, meeting him thrust for thrust, and Danny brought their faces nose to nose. When she opened her eyes and met his glittering black ones, they were burning with the light she relied on, that connected them as sure as the thread between their hearts.
“I love you, chica.”
“I love you too, Daniel.”
They jumped over the edge together, laughing.