Ace Is Wild (28 page)

He turned over almost before the words were out of her mouth. Apparently his self-control wasn’t at full strength, either. It didn’t take her long to forget about her libido.

The skin of his left thigh was a twisted, scarred mess, and there was a round, knotted scar just under his left shoulder blade. Even though Daniel was an emotional black hole to her, she could still feel his pain. “How did this happen?” she wondered, not realizing she’d said it aloud until he answered.

“I trusted the wrong person.”

That explained a lot. “You were shot?”

“One bullet almost killed me, the other shattered my femur,” he said. “It took half a dozen pins to put it back together.”

“I’m sorry,” Vivi said softly.

He glanced over his shoulder at her, then quickly away. “It’s not your fault.”

No, but she was paying for it. He didn’t trust her. True, her situation was unique, and it would take a lot for a man who believed in tangible evidence to accept her definitely intangible talents. But she’d started at a disadvantage, because Daniel came from a job that taught him caution first, and the one time he’d strayed from that rule, he’d paid a heavy price.

She squeezed out some lotion, warmed it between her palms, and put her hand on his thigh.

He jumped. “What’s that?”

“Lotion. I don’t have any massage oil.”

“It smells like you.”

“It could be worse.” She began to rub, and Daniel began to squirm.

“Not really,” he said.

Her hands slipped off him for the fourth time. “You need to lie still. I can make it stop hurting—”

“That’s not where it hurts.”

“Fine.” Vivi sat back on her heels, exasperated. “Where does it hurt?”

Daniel rolled over and pulled her down on top of him.

Vivi braced her hands on either side of his head. She didn’t do anything about their contact from the waist down. “This is a bad idea,” she said while her brain was still in charge.

“You knew we were going to end up here.”

There was only one answer to that. She kissed him. Daniel kissed her back, and her knees went to water. Need shot along her nerve endings and . . . nothing else. Daniel was still kissing her, pausing only long enough to peel off her tank, which was the right kind of progress. But something was wrong. Maybe she was thinking too much—hell, why was she able to think at all? She pulled back, then slipped to one side and sat up. Daniel didn’t stop her, and she could tell from his eyes that he wasn’t concentrating. At all. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Aren’t you supposed to wait until we’re done before you start criticizing?”

“If you’re going to be distracted the whole time, I think I’ll save us both the trouble.” She had to climb over him in order to get off the bed. She was straddling him when he put both hands around her waist and stopped her.

“I feel like we have an audience,” he said, looking over her shoulder.

“You think the spirits are listening in?”

“No, I think your grandmother is.”

Vivi snorted out a laugh. Probably not a response that was going to get her what she wanted, but she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. “You’re having performance anxiety? A man who prosecutes major criminals in open court, a man who has to think on his feet and make split-second decisions with guns pointed at you.”

“Yeah, but I’m not naked for that stuff.”

“You’re not naked for this,” she pointed out.

“Not yet, but I’m going to be.”

“Not at this rate,” she pointed out. “I can’t believe you’re going to let an imaginary granny run you off.”

“You don’t believe she’s imaginary.”

“But you do.” She got off the bed, picked up her shirt, and whipped it back over her head, mimicking, “I knew we were going to end up here,” to herself. “Just like a lawyer, all talk and no action—”

Daniel grabbed her from behind, spun her around, and put her against the wall, not hard enough to knock the breath from her, but she lost it all the same because he just stood there for a minute, his body hot and hard on hers. His eyes were hot and hard, too, staring into hers with an intensity that had every nerve ending in her body humming so that when he put his mouth on hers she nearly shot to orgasm.

She ran her hands up under his shirt, across his nipples, and then down into his briefs, so she could close her hand around him.

He threw his head back, the muscles in his neck corded, looking like he was in pain. “Stop,” he gasped out.

“Make me,” she said, taking her mouth to his neck, his jaw, any exposed skin she could find, using her teeth and her tongue—and her hand—until he was groaning with the effort of holding back, until his chest was heaving and he caught her wrist and made her stop.

The look in his eyes went beyond intense, became a threat, a promise to make her suffer just as much. She sent him a look back, raised brow, half smile, a look that said,
Bring it on
. And he did, pulling her bra down around her waist because he was in too much of a hurry to unhook it. Not that she minded when he took her breast into his mouth, working the peak with his teeth and tongue, slipping his thigh between her legs at the same time, high and tight so her own restless movements helped shoot her to peak.

When she could breathe again, when the last aftershocks had faded and her eyes focused, he was there, watching her, still intense as he unsnapped her jeans. He peeled them off, along with her panties, slowly, never taking his eyes from hers as his hands slid the denim down her thighs. His fingers lightly brushed the backs of her knees and made her quiver, the more so when he bent to slip her feet free.

He stayed there for a moment, on one knee, his hands bracketing her hips, his breath washing over her, warm and heavy, and she knew if he took his mouth to her there the pleasure would be too much.

He stood, cupping her bottom and lifting her in one smooth motion, slipping into her before she could do more than gasp in a breath at the feel of all that hardness, that heat. And then he began to move and the world narrowed down to Daniel, his hands, his mouth, his body on hers and in hers, every part of him stroking every part of her until pleasure built again, not as fast and explosive as the first time, but more intense. She slid over the second peak, felt it flow through her until she imagined the glow coming off her was enough to light half the city. She dropped her forehead to Daniel’s shoulders as he drove himself deep one last time and stayed that way, pulsing inside her and setting off just an echo of her orgasm.

There was no getting to the bed that way, but he moved his hands and let her feet drop to the floor again, probably afraid he’d drop her since she could feel his muscles quivering. She thought he’d want distance—if what they’d just shared had been half as intense for him as it had been for her, Daniel would need to reestablish his boundaries. But he only stood there, curled around her, his forehead against the wall as his breathing began to ease.

Vivi was in no rush to move, either. Her muscles were as shaky as his, her knees felt like they might buckle at any moment, and it took all the strength she could muster to keep her arms locked around his waist.

“Maybe we should . . . I think we ought to move to the bed,” he said, so uncharacteristically hesitant that Vivi felt a need to lighten the mood.

“Just to sleep, right?” she asked him. “Because any more of this and I won’t survive.”

“I did all the work.”

“You keep wanting to be in charge, so I let you.”

“I’m not complaining.”

“It sounded that way.”

Daniel chuckled, taking her hand and pulling her across the room, toward the bed. “Any time you want to be in charge—when we’re having sex—just let me know.”

Chapter 19

“MIKE SENT ME AN E-MAIL,” DANIEL SAID THE NEXT
morning.

Vivi dragged herself out of bed, trying not to groan. She was stiff all over, and not just from the wall. Daniel had let her be in charge. Twice. He claimed his thigh was still sore. He didn’t look sore this morning. He looked . . . satisfied, relaxed. Smug.

“I guess my massage did the trick,” she said, coming up behind him, bending until her head was close to his so she could see the laptop screen.

“Right, it was the massage.” He looked over his shoulder at her, which put their faces about an inch apart. He could have kissed her. He didn’t.

There was the boundary she’d expected last night, Vivi thought as he faced forward again. Daniel was all business again, focused on the task at hand. She knew there were still people trying to kill him—kill them. Not right at the moment though. You’d think he could take a minute to . . . What? Tell her that it wasn’t just sex, that he had feelings for her? That she was good in the sack? What kind of reassurance did she expect from him? she asked herself. Hell, they weren’t even dating, and once this thing with the contract played itself out, and if they were still alive, they’d both go back to their old lives. And their old lives didn’t intersect. She’d known that all along.

It still took her a minute to focus on the e-mail Daniel brought up on his computer for her benefit. “One broken nose, one broken leg, no more agents. You’re on your own.” By the time that sunk in, Daniel had his cell phone to his ear.

“This is a good thing, right?” Vivi said to him while he was waiting to be connected. “No more feds after us.”

“I have some questions,” Daniel said into the phone, and since she couldn’t give him any answers about the e-mail she figured Mike what’s-his-name had come on the line. Daniel confirmed it by turning the phone so Vivi could listen in. She didn’t need him to make the universal signal for “be quiet” to know she shouldn’t talk.

“Didn’t you get my e-mail?” Mike said, gruff, short-tempered. “Took me ten minutes to type the damn thing.”

“Got it, understood it,” Daniel said. “You left a few things out.”

“Didn’t take a genius to know what you’d do next,” Mike told him. “We had the cops alerted to let us know if anyone connected to your old cases made a complaint.”

“Mrs. Hickman called the police, the police called you, and the hit men heard all about it because they were listening in on the police band.”

“Which is a large part of the reason we called off our operation. We’re trying to protect you, not play informant for the bad guys.”

“What’s the rest of the reason?”

“You’re being a pain in the ass.”

“Nothing new about that.”

“Except you don’t work for me anymore. You stay on the street you won’t have to worry about the job you do have.”

Vivi felt Daniel tense. It didn’t show in his voice. “Nothing will happen until Sappresi’s in jail,” he said. “They won’t jeopardize a case involving a dead FBI agent.”

“Nope, but after that they’ll cut you loose. And yeah,” Mike added, “this time we might have contributed to the hit men finding you, but the longer you’re on the street the higher the probability they’ll take you out.” And he disconnected.

“You caught all that, right?” Daniel asked Vivi.

“I caught it.”

“I need you to think long and hard about what you’re doing.”

“Still trying to get rid of me?”

“I’m giving you the facts and asking you to make a choice,” he said. “I’m done running.”

“In other words, you’re going to make yourself into bait and go fishing for a hit man.”

“Something like that.” Except the bait usually got eaten, and Daniel had every intention of coming out of this in one, uninjured piece. And there was no way he’d let Vivi get hurt. It was enough to have Patrice on his conscience. “It’s only a matter of time before the hit men catch up with me. Mike is right about that. If I sit around and wait, it’ll be on their terms. I intend to make sure I’m in control when the time comes. It’s not going to be easy, and I can’t watch your back and mine at the same time.”

“How will you even find the hit men, let alone get one of them to spill his guts?”

“No idea.”

Vivi crossed her arms. “No, game plan is my thing. It sounds like I better stick around and show you how to do it, Ace.”

“Fine with me,” Daniel said, “just as long as you know who’s in charge.”