Charity's Passion (18 page)

"Where are we going tonight?" I ask. Justin kisses my head again and I know that's a pre-emptive apology for something I don't want to hear. "What?"

I hear a low snicker. "I won't tell you, not tonight, not anytime at all. You won't know where we're going until we get there."

I shove him away hard. "You don't trust me?"

He laughs at me. "You know that's not it. What I told our families about our trip, that was not all bullshit. This is a gift from me to you, time away from all of this."

He gestures with his hands at the whole world.

"And
when
we get back, because we will be back after we finish Marker, you will have a wedding to plan. I'm going to make this as exciting as I can for you."

"You're a good salesman, Justin, but not that good." I'm smiling at him. "You're afraid of me slipping up to someone about where we're going to be."

He shrugs. "Two birds," he says easily.

I smack his arm—hard!

"Fifty-five minutes," He reminds me; my talking is only giving me less time. "Just necessities, we can get what we need while we're there."

We each grab a small bag and toss in some clothes and our bathroom things, and we're downstairs getting in the car with Tony ahead of schedule for once. I can't believe I did this as quickly as I have, but Justin never seemed worried at all. He believed I could do what needed to be done.

Tony doesn't ask a single thing for the entire car ride, following some prearranged protocol. He knows where to leave us and nothing else, I'm sure of it. And he'll never tell a soul where or when we started.

We park by the Hawker and thank Tony. For the first time that I can ever recall, we wait for Tony to leave before boarding. "He shouldn't even know what direction we fly in," Justin explains.

Shain does not help with the bags, not this time, and there's no Anne playing stewardess for us. This is a bare bones flight.

Justin makes sure I'm sitting and comfortable. Shain leans out of the cockpit area. "Do you have the flight plans?" he asks.

Justin winks at me.

Jesus Christ! Shain doesn't even know where he's flying us yet.

This is going to be a long night. Wherever we land, that won't be the end of the trip; he's being way too careful for this flight to be all there is.

Justin talks with Shain just for a second, careful not to let me hear, and then he returns to the seat next to me with a smile that I know is a lie. He looks tired and I know it's because of the night we have started.

His head rolls toward me. "Get some sleep now if you can."

Yeah, I don't see that happening.

A few hours later I wake up to Shain telling us we will be landing shortly. How the hell I fell asleep I don't know. I'm sure it had something to do with complete exhaustion and the release of stress from the previous events.

Justin is stretching through a deep yawn next to me. "Did you sleep?" I asked concerned.

He yawns again while he nods. "Not as much as you, but I was out," he adds in a sleepy voice. "You dropped in seconds. It was impressive."

I laugh briefly, feeling a serious stiffness in my neck.

By the time I'm fully awake, we've landed. It didn't take long before I see a sign that reads Bangor Intl. We rent a car at the airport and begin driving north toward Canada.

Okay, this is where we leave the country. Good.

Only we don't.

Before any border gets close, Justin has me pull the battery from both our phones. A few miles later he pulls into the driveway of a house and waits.

"What are we doing?"

He only smiles.

Moments later the garage opens and we pull in.

"Don't say anything important," Justin says flatly. "They won't ask, and they don't want to know anyway."

"They?"

"You'll see," he answers. "They’re Panther staff, nothing to be afraid of. They have a job to do and part of that job is to not know why they're doing it."

I can handle that.

The door inside the garage opens and a woman and two men step out and watch Justin and I emerge with our bags. One of the men stays at the door, but the other brings the girl with him straight to the car.

Like most Panther staff, they're absolutely terrified of Justin. Their trembling smiles and greetings are embarrassing to watch. They'd rather move around him unnoticed.

"You know where you're going?" Justin asks them.

"Yes Sir, absolutely," the woman answers.

"Good. Make sure to enjoy it as much as possible, but stay safe," he tells them.

They seem to relax, as if realizing Justin is not the monster they've heard about.

I notice two bags in the floor, and the couple gets past us, grabs a bag each, and climbs into the car Justin left running. I don't understand yet, but they back the car out of the driveway and leave.

"Come on in, Mr. Sanders, Mrs. Sanders. I have your things inside," the remaining gentleman says.

As I wonder who the hell he's talking to, Justin smiles and leads me in by my hand. Apparently my name has changed and we were married on the plane while I slept.

Fuck it—
its good practice.

"We won't be long," Justin whispers into my ear.

Inside, on a busy kitchen table there are two stacks of papers and at least four passports. Suddenly it's clear; Justin and Charity are still heading into Canada in their rented car. The Sanders are heading someplace else—and we're the Sanders.

"Those two will cross the border and change names before their hotel to make it appear as if they're hiding. Everything is ready for them," the stranger says comfortably. He hands Justin a set of keys from his pocket. "The Sanders vehicle. It's a Kia two blocks up, ready to go. The left pile is hers."

Justin slides the pile closer to me. "Take out everything from your purse, anything that has ID information, license, credit cards, the phones and batteries, receipts; then replace them with these new ones."

We quickly become the Sanders, even on paper while this stranger watches.

"I will personally deliver these to the office," the stranger tells us as he takes our real things and stuffs them into a bag. He holds his hand out toward Justin and there's a burner phone in it. "Good luck."

Justin takes the phone and shakes his hand.

A short walk up the block and we're in a Kia heading west from what I can tell.

"Well that was fun," I blurt out, "very cloak and dagger. You certainly know how to entertain a girl."

Justin's sexy laugh rolls through the inside of the car and I feel a huge change in him. "That was the worst of it," he says. "We have a lot of bouncing to do, but do you realize as of right now we are safe? No one knows where we are or where we're going. Even the Panther team doesn't know."

"What about that guy back at the house?" I ask.

"He's a ghost," Justin says. "He doesn't exist anywhere, completely untraceable, and completely loyal to Panther—and he has no idea where we went the moment we left."

Now I understand his change. The tension is gone, not all of it, this isn't over, but for the first time in weeks or even months, Marker can't find us.

It washes over me next. It's like the aftermath of an orgasm, a warm blissful feeling. I didn't expect this rush of emotion, and it hits so quickly that before I know it I'm crying softly. Justin grabs my hand and smiles with me.

Y
esterday was the first day not spent traveling and our only day in Cancun, Mexico. It seemed like an interesting place but certainly not one of Justin's favorites. He equates it to New York—only hotter—a busy city with beaches. He promised me that it was a good place to get lost in and he was right.

Just in case Marker could somehow track us, we're blurring our trail. We never showed up to the room we had reserved, and we paid cash for the vacant room we found at another hotel, so the
Sanders
name vanished after renting a car at the airport. During the day, abusing our new safety a bit, we slept, shaking off the exhaustion of the long drive and an even longer plane ride.

Last night I made him get us on a dinner cruise for something fun to get our minds back in order. It was a nice, much deserved break from reality, taking us from Cancun to Isla Mujeres
 and back on a four hour loop. We ate until we were full, drank until we were drunk, and danced until our feet hurt. I'd forgotten how well Justin can move his amazing body on a dance floor, it has been that long.

For a little while last night I got to be that naive young girl looking for a new life and finding love in the arms of a real man. Our bodies were grinding together, his eyes were on me and nothing else, no looking over his shoulder, no deep thoughts behind his gaze as he made sure I knew there wasn't another soul in the world.

Thank God, after all we've been through Justin still looks at me just like he did when I met him, sitting next to me in the office the Grill concerned about the red marks on my neck and fixing my hair so he can make sure I'm okay. I still see him exactly as I did that night, like some beautiful savior that makes me swoon with nerves and lust.

I swear he's magic.

The thing is that he always finds a way to let me know somehow that he believes completely that I matter more than everyone, even himself. Sometimes he does that with just his eyes; last night he did that with his body while we danced and celebrated our temporary freedom.

Wherever we touched, the perfection of him melted my flesh into a wet heat building between my thighs. The sweat that dripped from my body was only slightly from moving to the music, most of it was passion and pent up desire.

The tequila wasn't hurting either.

Before long I was smothered in urges, needing him so much that I didn't think I could wait. His hot mouth moved along my neck and ear to drive me mad, and the way his hips moved against me was less like a dance and more like a slow, hard fuck.

I had let my hands drop from his tight lower back to the curve of his ass, digging my fingers in when I could to pull him against me.

My warrior was screaming, clit throbbing for attention right there on the ship's dance floor. I took every chance to rub myself on his hard thighs but I needed more than that to release me.

Justin made me wait, teasing me, teasing himself. He wanted it just as badly. His engorged manhood was trying to rip through his clothes to get at me.

Finally I couldn't wait and I reached for it and grabbed it right there in the crowd, jerking it through his pants between us. His moan was clear and understandable in my ear.

When he could talk, he said to me, "I'm going to have you now. One way or another—even if I have to have you right here in front of everyone."

That's when he finally took me by the hand and dragged me off the floor in search of some dark corner. People were everywhere, some talking, some doing exactly what we were trying to do, which heightened the excitement.

We found a small door marked for crew only and we opened it. It was loud inside, and hot, but exactly what we were looking for. One wall was full of pipes that hissed and clanged. Justin lifted me up and slammed me against it between the pipes, his tongue searching my mouth as I wrapped my legs around him. All gentleness had left his dangerous hands as they slid under my skirt, groping my bare thighs and thick ass, squeezing me tightly.

I went back at him with the same fervor, tugging his hair with one hand and scratching his chest through his shirt with the other.

I'm addicted to his cock and I wanted it right there. I wanted him to fuck me sweaty in that tiny, hot room.

There was too much noise to hear it, but I felt it when Justin tore my underwear off, tired of them being in his way. Seconds later my hungry warrior devoured his fingers in a loud scream that blended into the banging, hissing room. My inner walls clamped down on him, squeezing in rapid bursts that threated the start of my orgasm.

Justin didn't let me moan; his mouth closed on mine.

When he pulled away, he slid his wet fingers from me. I grabbed that hand and brought his fingers to his mouth, diving them in. "Taste me!" I demanded.

As he sucked his finger dry of my juices, he crushed me harder into the wall, growing wild and enraged as I'd hoped. I unwrapped my legs from his waist and forced him to let me down. I grabbed at his pants like a starving women, unbuckling his belt, fighting his zipper until his swollen mass came free and I dropped to me knees, running his cock across my face as a tease.

Justin punched the wall above me for release as I filled my mouth and throat with him, sucking hard as I pulled it back out again. "What do you fucking do to me?" He growled.

I yanked his pants to his ankles and stroked his balls while I fed him to me, feeling it swell at the excitement. A sweet, salty mix of precum swirled over my tongue and I let out a deep moan that I know made his cock vibrate because he was punching the wall again.