Deadly Deception (SCVC Taskforce) (25 page)

But these past few days, Thomas had watched Ronni trying to escape reality and forget the past. It seemed to be working for her, but neither worked for him. Not this time. Living in the moment was an excuse, a coping mechanism that allowed you to not face the pain. For the first time in a long while, he needed to face his mistakes and failures—all of them—and make up for the pain he’d caused.

Absently, his finger traced Ronni’s scar again.
Not all wounds heal
.

Ronni shifted, his touch waking her. Her voice was still sleepy. Sexy. “Thomas?”

Seeing her scar, his guilt had reached a new level. “ʻPain heals. Chicks dig scars. Glory lasts forever.’”

She rolled over and faced him. To look him in the eye or so he couldn’t see her scar? “What are you talking about?”

He couldn’t meet her gaze. “Nothing. Just a stupid movie quote.”

Draping one of her legs over him, she outlined his pecs with a warm finger. His cock started to throb.

But then she asked, “Do guys, um…do they dig scars?” It was almost a whisper. Pain, fear, it was all there. “Like mine, I mean.”

“I do, but
that
scar…”

He couldn’t finish. It was too much. Staring at the ceiling, he ignored the way she laid her cheek on his chest and sighed. As if she were relieved he wasn’t grossed out by it. “That scar is nothing.”

Not true. That scar was
everything
. Everything between them.

“By the way…” Her top leg wound between his, distracting him again. “I know the quote.
The Replacements
, right? It’s the only football movie I ever liked.”

“Let me guess, because Keanu Reeves was the quarterback?”

She chuckled. “Didn’t hurt.”

“You really do dig sensitive beta males, don’t you?”

“When they look like him? You bet your ass, I do.”

He smiled, but his heart wasn’t in it.

She continued to toy with his chest, her foot tickling his calf. “Why did you join the DEA?”

Hello. Where was this going? “Why do you want to know?”

She gave a small shrug. “Just curious. You would have made a good FBI agent.”

“Black isn’t my color. Besides the DEA has the best dental plan. True fact.”

Another heavy sigh. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“I know there’s a reason—something in your past—that made you join the DEA rather than the Bureau.”

Some scars never healed. And it was time to admit he’d failed more times than he cared to admit. “Growing up where I did…drugs were everywhere. Not like on the streets and in the gangs, but a glamorous side of it all. Someone close to me OD’d. Heroin. I could have prevented it, but I didn’t.”

She rose up on her elbow, her hair falling over her shoulder. “How old were you?”

“Doesn’t matter. I knew he’d fallen off the wagon. Knew he was getting high. I should have…”

He swallowed hard, resisting the memory of finding his dad on the bathroom floor, and scrubbed a hand over his face. “It was a long time ago.”

Ronni studied his face. “An addict has to want to change.”

“He did. Every morning, he’d get up and say he was starting fresh, but by nightfall, his internal demons would eat at him.”

“Every morning? Was this someone in your family?”

He could see the gears in her head churning. His personnel files didn’t mention it, so she wouldn’t have known from reading those. Most of the free world never knew what had happened that early Sunday morning. His mother knew people who knew people and kept his dad’s drug addiction and overdose quiet. Guts roiling, he gave a curt nod. “My dad.”

Ronni’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m so sorry, Thomas.”

He hated pity. Hated the fact he was pinned to the cot and couldn’t jump up and walk away. “Like I said, long time ago.”

“You couldn’t have prevented it.”

He started to shift her off of him, but she held onto his arm. “I won’t tell anyone,” she said. “But if you ever want to talk, I’m here.”

All the air whooshed out of his chest. Instead of fleeing, he closed his eyes and held onto her. Face the past. Face the mistakes. “Logically, I know I couldn’t have stopped him from overdosing, but in my gut…”

“It’s your heart, not your gut, insisting you could have saved him. I know. I deal with the same emotions all the time.”

“But you saved your brother.”

“And I lost my mom and all the others. They’re still in my dreams, haunting me.”

He eased back down on the cot and she laid her head on his chest once more. Didn’t speak. Just held her.

After a few moments, she reached up and kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For this.” She motioned at their naked bodies. “It was…sticky, but I loved it.”

They were both sticky, the honey drying on their skin. “How about I wash you off?”

The honey house had a big, deep copper sink. The two of them got up. Thomas turned the hot water on full blast. Ronni scrounged up a couple of clean towels from one of the drawers.

When the water was warm enough, Thomas soaked one of the towels and carefully worked it over her gorgeous skin. She was toned, yet curvy in all the right places. An amazing women, inside and out.

He was thinking about their talk, her scar, and other things when she grabbed his hands and placed them on her breasts bringing him back to the moment. The golden mounds were works of art, and his mouth watered just thinking about sucking on one.

Seeing the gleam in his eye, Ronni took the other towel, wet it, and went to work. The warm washcloth did a number on him, her hands lingering and teasing his skin. His erection was at full mast in seconds and she laughed, going down on her knees and wrapping her luscious lips around it.

Sensations rocked him so hard he had to lean back and grab the sink. “Fuck.”

She sucked him deep, retreated, her gaze lifting to his. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open, but keep them open he did. He didn’t deserve this. Didn’t deserve this type of heaven from her.

She gave it to him anyway, sucking and teasing and licking until he thrust forward, matching the rhythm she’d started. Each time she brought him close, she backed off again. What the fuck?

“You’re…killing…me,” he said through gritted teeth. He could barely get the words out, it was such sweet torture.

In response, she squeezed his sack. Removed her mouth long enough to say, “You deserve it, my badass Boy Scout.”

Teasing him? She was goddamn teasing him…

Her mouth went around him again and the world exploded.

He detonated in her mouth, his whole body arching from the force. His mind blanked out and thunder cut through the early morning skies, an exclamation point.

In the aftermath he had to lie down. If this was living in the moment, maybe it wasn’t all bad.

Ronni still had honey in her hair, so she stood over the sink, trying to wash it out. Thomas lay in bed, floating in contentment, watching her ass.

“So what is it with you and movies?” she asked, using the towel to scrub her hair between her hands.

“Growing up in tinsel town, you either learn to embrace the Hollywood glam and glitter or begrudge it. My mother dreamed of being in the movies, so we spent a lot of weekend afternoons going to see the latest releases.”

“Did she want to be a movie star?”

“Movie, television, she’d have taken anything. She actually got walk-on parts here and there, so she was always waiting for her big break, but it never happened.”

It sounded sad, and his mother wouldn’t have wanted that. She’d had a full life, and still loved the movies. “Her cousin won roles in a few cable TV series. It was exciting. We visited her on the set a few times.”

Ronni gave up on her hair, turned. “And hence, your fascination with movies.”

He sat up, enjoying the view, and his erection decided he was ready to go again. “Did you just say ‘hence’?”

“God, I did. Obviously, I’ve been hanging around Adam too much.”

She gathered her clothes and started dressing. So much for a second round. The storm was slowing down, the eastern sky lightening a shade. A shame their night was over already. “You said last night you had stuff to tell me.”

Drawing on her underwear, she nodded. “I’m still suspicious of Jacob. He’s keeping tabs on me and Melanie said he’s former Army Intelligence. That wasn’t in any of the research I have. Adam was in a foul mood yesterday once he returned from the bank, but he pulled off a bible study meeting like it was nothing, then went back to this weird, depressed state. I wonder if he’s off his meds.”

Thomas hated seeing all her glorious skin being covered up. “I talked to Coop and he gave us twenty-four hours to come up with something.”

“You talked to Cooper? At the convenience store? Oh.”

“Oh, what?”

“Nothing. I just thought you went there to get…never mind.” The last piece of clothing—her shirt—fell into place. “We need to check the salon. I think they may be hiding the guns and teargas there.”

“Melly’s salon?” He considered it. “Guess it’s possible.”

“Also the cash. The salon is the connection between the farm and the outside world. The perfect meeting place to exchange money, drugs, and guns, whatever.”

“Good call. How do we get back there without raising eyebrows?”

Ronni fluffed her corkscrews. “How else?”

He smiled. His partner was as smart and resourceful as she was beautiful. “You’ll be on your own, so play it tight. I’ll have hell to pay for disappearing yesterday, so I doubt Jacob and the other guys will let me out of their sight. Try to give Coop a heads-up once you’re there. He can back you up if Melly catches you snooping.”

She sat next to him on the cot. “What you said about my scar…you mean it?”

Thomas’s stomach tightened all over again. “If I could take back what happened, I would.”

“But you can’t. You have to live with it, just like I do.”

He shook his head. He couldn’t live in the moment.
Not with this
.

“It happened. You can’t take it back. It wasn’t your fault.” She repeated the phrases she’d told him before. Then reached out to pinch his side as she grinned at him. “God, Thomas, you act like you’ve never made a mistake before. What did that gal say in
The Replacements
? Quarterbacks are the biggest babies of all? She was right.”

He met her gaze, dared her to make fun of him. “I’ve screwed up plenty of times, but never like I did with you. You nearly died because of me.”

“All those missions on the secret ops teams for the Department of Defense, you never made a mistake in the field?”

He shook his head. It was cool in the honey house, but he was sweating. “Small things, yeah. No one ever got hurt on my watch. Ever.”

“Thomas.” She skimmed his jaw with a finger. “You act like
you
stabbed me in the back rather than Valquis.”

My scar
. He pushed off the cot, snatched up his sweatpants, and tugged them on. “I might as well have.”

“God, you
are
a baby!”

He stiffened. “I should have stopped Valquis before he got upstairs.”

“Everyone thought he was dead. Do you have psychic powers and know when a man rises from the grave now?”

Her eyes danced with a teasing light. He started to argue, realized she might be right.

But…

But what, Thomas?
You have this amazing woman willing to forgive you. You just had mind-blowing sex with her and told her your deepest, darkest secret. You’re deep undercover with her and she’s getting busy teasing you.

How hard would it be to loosen up, rather than dragging out the old guilt and remorse and ruining this moment between them?

Tightening the drawstring of his sweatpants, he conceded. He had his mojo back with Ronni. Things were good. It was time to let it go. “We have until sundown tonight to come up with some proof for Cooper. Let’s do this.”

She came to him, kissed him lightly on the lips. “I’ll go back to the house and see if Melanie will help with my hair. Watch out for Jacob.”

He kissed her back, rubbed her arm. “Be careful. I know you think Adam may be innocent, but he’s still our number one suspect. I don’t trust him.”

“I know.” She pushed away, tweaked one of his nipples as she walked past him, and headed for the door. There she glanced over her shoulder at the rows of honey jars on the shelves. “I will never look at honey the same way.”

He watched her go, loving the saucy swing of her hips and sound of her light laughter. Ronni was back.
His
Ronni was back.

But when the shit hit the fan with Adam, old wounds were going to be ripped open again. Could she handle it?

Adam, you cocksucker
. Thomas yanked on his T-shirt and grabbed his shoes.
Whatever you do, you better not hurt her.

You do, and I’ll kill you.

Chapter Twenty-six