Just Over the Border of Missouri

Durango stared up at the ceiling, aware of Gracie sleeping beside him. She made a soft mewling sound that wasn’t quite a snore but not the most ladylike thing, either. It might have amused him under other circumstances, but at the moment he found it a little annoying.

She’d lied to him.

Durango couldn’t get passed the lies. Every time he looked at her, he saw the awkward woman who worked in his office, the woman he’d dismissed on most occasions until recently. She was helpful, the one he turned to whenever he needed a new assistant when he needed something found, when he needed information on an employee. She was the one everyone went to; the one who knew almost as much about Mastiff as Kyle. But he’d never really seen her until Kyle died, and she lied to the police on his behalf.

Why had she done that?

She lied and told the police she hadn’t seen any tension between him and Kyle the night she died. But the truth was, he was arguing with Kyle when Gracie walked in on them that night, arguing over some stupid party he was supposed to attend but had bailed on. He couldn’t even remember why now. It was one of those stupid things that they say is for charity but was really just a chance for all the rich assholes who run that city to get together and pat each other on the back. He hated those parties. But he should have gone that night. Maybe . . . He should have done it for Kyle.

Gracie lied to the police and saved him from getting his ass arrested right there and then. When he paused to thank her at Kyle’s funeral reception, he wasn’t sure why it happened. He kissed her. But, again, hadn’t it been her face slipping through his mind that had stopped him during a stupid, unplanned sexual encounter outside a bar that same night, the night Kyle died? The night she interrupted their fight? What was it about her that had suddenly wormed its way into his thoughts that night?

She’d worked for them for three years. She was there from the beginning, this mousy, unassuming little thing who somehow became the backbone of the whole company. People thought he didn’t pay attention, but he knew the operatives went to her whenever they needed something they couldn’t obtain legally. He knew the tech guys bounced ideas off her. He knew the financial department checked in with her whenever they needed something they didn’t want to go to Kyle or Durango about. She was more an executive at Mastiff than he ever was even though her title and her pay scale suggested she was somewhere closer to the bottom of the business hierarchy.

What was it about Gracie?

And this woman who practically ran his business was there under false pretenses. A fucking FBI agent! She was there to prove he was a killer, yet . . .

Yet, she was here, on the run with him.

Why?

He turned onto his side on the double bed and studied her as she slept peacefully beside him. In sleep with her hair tangled around her face, she looked more like the Gracie he’d known. But the clothes were wrong. Gracie wore bulky skirts with odd waistlines and wide pockets, blouses that fit loose and added to the appearance of lumps that the skirts created. But this woman wore a pair of low rider jeans that fit tight, revealing long legs and slender hips, her soft cotton tee pulled up just enough to reveal her flat tummy and perfect navel. He traced his finger around her navel, a piece of perfection he’d seen once before. The memory of it was burned in his mind, the taste of her a touch of nirvana he’d never let go.

He couldn’t consolidate that moment with all he knew now. Sure, he’d known there was something off about Gracie. There were moments when she seemed too confident, too aware. And that afternoon when he managed to partially strip her of her homely clothing, he’d seen the perfection she hid underneath. He knew there was more to her story than she was telling, but he’d never imagined it was this. That she was a spy out to perpetuate the nightmare he thought he’d escaped when he was acquitted of Sarah’s murder.

He hadn’t even known her real name.

Was any of it real? When she came to his condo and read him the riot act for the way he’d been behaving, for his relationship with Hyde, was that the fed talking, or was that the woman he thought was his friend? When she lied for him, was that a fed protecting her case, or a friend protecting another friend? When she kissed him, was that an undercover agent protecting her identity, or was it something more?

And when she pulled away, was that because he’d called her by a name that wasn’t her own?

Margaret Grace Franklin. He studied her face, thinking it fit her. But so had Gracie.

He pressed a hand to her flat belly, an ache settling in his balls that couldn’t, or wouldn’t, listen to the struggle going on his heart. No matter what she might have told him, no matter what she might have done, his body still wanted her. He’d wanted her since that afternoon when he tasted her for the first time, when he brought her to orgasm and burned to allow her to do the same. He still wanted her. He wanted her in a way he hadn’t wanted any woman since Sarah. It scared him a little, that need. And it pissed him off because it clouded everything, making it so hard for him to judge if he could trust her.

His fingers slipped down, brushing the tender area just above the top of her jeans. The sight of her naked with just a thin bathrobe covering her wet body yesterday had made him angry because of the way his body responded. His taste buds flooded from the memory of her juices tingling on the tip of his tongue, his cock remembering the brief touch of her fist wrapped around its shaft. If things had been different, they would have spent the night in that musty old house, but they wouldn’t have done much sleeping.

But he couldn’t allow himself to get distracted like that, could he?

He sat up, pulling his hand from her, forcing his thoughts to shift to a cold shower, and some food he really didn’t want and wasn’t sure he could keep down even if he managed to swallow it. There was one thing that he couldn’t forgive even if he could somehow reconcile everything else she’d lied to him about.

She’d seen the killer. She’d known for five years little details about him that he could have used to find him before Kyle died, before Hyde was murdered, before his assistant and Felicity had met up with the Harrison Strangler. She’d known, and she’d kept it to herself.

That was unforgivable.

“Durango?”

She reached for him as he rolled toward the edge of the bed. Her hand rested on his wrist, her fingers applying just enough pressure to get his pulse to rise. She pulled herself up, resting her chin on his shoulder.

“Go back to sleep.”

He tried to brush her off, but her grip on his wrist tightened. She brushed her lips against his shoulder, the heat of her breath washing through the thin material of his shirt. And then she moved closer, her lips finding a swath of flesh low against his throat. He closed his eyes, his body responding with a fierceness that startled even him.

“Stop, Gracie.”

But she didn’t listen. She moved higher on his throat, her lips hot and soft, just moist enough to create a contrast of heat from her flesh and coolness from the air touching the moisture that she left behind on his skin. It sent a shiver through his body that landed deep in his balls, creating a stiffness he couldn’t deny. And she knew it quick enough, her hand releasing his wrist to move around his belly, slipping possessively down along the front of his jeans.

He grabbed her wrist, pulling it up against his chest where she instead became aware of the crazy pounding of his heart.

“You wanted me before,” she whispered in his ear. “Why not now?”

She was creating a fever in his mind that stood up and nodded defiantly. Why not now? His mind wanted to know, too. He struggled for a second, trying to remember as her tongue began to play with the sensitive lower lobe of his ear. And then he stopped trying.

Durango flipped around, grabbing her by her wrists and pinning her to the mattress, her hands caught above her head. She looked up at him, excitement dancing in her eyes as she licked her bottom lip, all innocence and naivety gone. Once again, he was reminded that this wasn’t the Gracie he’d once thought he knew.

Suddenly raging with a primitive anger that came out of all the frustration and fear and grief he’d been carrying around for most of his life, he wrapped her thin shirt around his fist and jerked, ripping it at the seams. Fear joined the excitement in her eyes, but she didn’t make a sound, her eyes never leaving his. He drew a nipple between his teeth, the soft groan slipping from her lips only adding to the pleasure of the feel of her pliant flesh in his mouth.

He bit her breasts, her ribs, her belly, the red marks of his teeth on her pale skin an artistic masterpiece. She moved against him, her hips rising against the weight of his body, her wrists fighting his control. He ignored those movements, wanting to inflict pain on her with excruciating patience. Every moan, every little grunt, only fueled this need. It was a punishment, a bit of torture that was fucking satisfying!

His mouth remembered the taste of her as he reached the top of her jeans, the musky scent of her need impossible to ignore. He bit her there, too, through the thickness of her jeans, forcing her hips to press hard against his face, her moan coming from deep in her diaphragm. If he hadn’t known it before then, he knew it now. She wanted him as desperately as he wanted her.

He let go of her hands only because the need had grown so intense that he simply couldn’t ignore it anymore. There wasn’t time for games now. He yanked at her jeans, forgetting to unsnap them in his fevered rush. They caught on her hips, refusing to budge. She reached down to help him, doing a little dance on the bed to help as he yanked them from her body. She was wearing the teeniest pair of panties he’d ever seen, this thong that was basically a string with a triangle of cloth that barely covered the narrow line of hair that pointed directly to her swollen clit. He made it all disappear with jerks and tugs, not sure the panties had survived his ministrations. But she didn’t seem to care. She was sitting up, her hands all over him, pushing his shirt up over his head, her hands tugging at his jeans like it was Christmas morning, and his pants were the wrapping paper on her most anticipated gift.

He grabbed her hips and twisted her around, shoving her face down into the pillows as he raised her hips high. Her ass was slightly flat, but round at the bottom, the kind of ass that was good for holding onto in certain positions. But like this, it looked like a sculptor’s perfect model, the kind of ass that could only be made by a master artist’s hands.

Her cries were muffled when he forced himself inside of her, no preamble, no warning. Her fists curled around the thin fabric of the pillow cases and her hips pressed back into him, her cries turning into something more like moans as he began to move, thrusting in slow, awkward movements at first, then settling into something like a heavy bass beat. He closed his eyes for a moment, the feel of her warm, moist body closing in around him almost more than he could handle. He hadn’t had this much trouble controlling himself since he was a teen experimenting with a pretty schoolmate in her bedroom. But he was an experienced man now. He got control, and then he took them both for a ride he knew she would never forget.

He opened his eyes, watched her hands clench and unclench against the pillows, listened to the muffled sounds that came from her throat. When she turned her head, he reached down to tug the hair from her face, loving the sight of her slightly open mouth, her closed eyes, the unmistakable pleasure on her pretty face. He’d imagined this moment for weeks—maybe even months if he was honest with himself—but nothing in his imagination could have prepared him for how erotic it would prove to be.

So fucking beautiful!

He held on as long as he could, wanting to watch the dance on her face for as long as possible, wanting to savor every thrust, every shiver of pleasure. But then she began the upward rush, that long ride to the top of the hill, and then she crashed, her body clenching around his, her cries changing in sound and intensity. No man will ever admit that it was a rare moment to be this aware of his lover’s orgasm, but it was a fact that sex, despite the intimacy of the mechanics, is a solitary act. But Gracie’s pleasure was unmistakable, her body’s response to her peak like a brick against the head. If he’d missed it, he truly would have been the most selfish lover on earth.

And the knowledge of her pleasure knocked him out of that place in his head that allowed him to remember he was a man and not an out of control adolescent. His thrust grew more intense, harder and quicker, the pain and the pleasure of this act mingling in his lower belly with a warning he was barely able to heed. He pulled out, spilling his seed across her back as he collapsed against her, his head resting on the pillows above hers, his heart pounding, and his breathing threatened to send him into a dark cloud of hyperventilation.

It'd been a long time since this act had taken so much from him. But it’d also been a long time since he’d felt this fucking good.

She wiggled under him after a few minutes, and he rolled onto his side, his hand sliding over her hair, tangling his fingers in its tresses as he forced her head back. He studied her eyes for a moment, not sure what it was he was looking for. A little piece of the Gracie he’d known, maybe. Whatever it was, he didn’t find it.

“You’d better get in the shower,” he commanded. “We need to be on the road within the hour.”

She obeyed without argument, her body moving a little slower than it had the day before. He watched her go, his cock responding to the sight of her hips swaying despite everything. He lay back and threw his arm over his eyes. This was going to be a long few days if he couldn’t learn to control himself.

When he heard the water come on in the shower, he couldn’t help himself. He got up to join her.

He didn’t have to be happy with the lies she told to take all the pleasure he could from her body.