Manhunt in the Wild West (11 page)

He should know. Been there, done that. He could’ve told her that running didn’t help, though. The memories always caught up in the end.

At the same time, he knew that wasn’t what she wanted or needed to hear just now, so he let her keep going, let her check his head a second and third time, get him an aspirin, draw him a glass of tap water. She needed to be doing, he knew, and maybe a piece of him needed to be done for, just for a few minutes.

He hadn’t been fussed over in a long, long time.

When she was done, when she finally ran out of frenetic energy and just sort of stalled, standing there in the bathroom, staring at the bloodstains on her sleeves, he reached out and took her hand.

It was shaking.

“Come here.” He tugged and she all but collapsed, practically going to her knees on the tile. He caught her on the way down, feeling the pull of bandages as he gathered her against him, her body cradled between his knees, her head against his chest. “Hold on to me for a few minutes.”

She sobbed a broken word—his name, maybe—and clung.

Then, as he’d figured she would, Chelsea burst into tears.

C
HELSEA HADN’T MEANT
to lose it, had been trying not to, but the moment he touched her, the moment she leaned into his warm, solid bulk and felt his arms come around her, all bets were off.

She’d been trying to be brave when she wasn’t really. She was a wimp who’d gone into pathology because she couldn’t deal with life-or-death situations, a poser who read about adventures and imagined herself in them, but had avoided the offers of real-life adventure that’d come her way. She’d complained about her boring, normal life sometimes, but when she came right down to it, boring was better than dangerous.

“I don’t want this,” she said into Fax’s chest, her sobs giving way to shuddering breaths. “I thought I did, but I don’t. I want to wake up and realize this was all a dream. I want my old life back.”

He said nothing, simply held her, and his silence was as eloquent as a shout, one that said,
There’s no going back.

She’d broken the law, broken her friends’ trust, and his. And al-Jihad wanted her dead.

“What do we do now?” she said, her voice cracking on the misery of it all.

“We rest,” he said, ever practical. “We’re safe enough here for the moment, and neither of us is at our best. So let’s rest for a few hours, and then we’ll see where we’re at.”

She nodded, but didn’t speak, and when he rose, it was the most natural thing in the world for her to rise with him, still tangled around him.

They moved into the main room together, and there was no discussion of the second bed. Instead, they lay down together, wrapped in one another, still fully clothed. He kicked off his shoes, then used his toes to shove hers off her feet. Pulling the hotel-issue coverlet over them both, he urged her into the hollow formed by the curve of his body, and his weight on the mattress. “Get some sleep. We’ll overthink the rest later.”

She’d slept so little the past three nights that it was easier to comply than to argue, and besides, she didn’t really want to argue. She might not want to be in the situation she was in, but that didn’t change the fact that she wanted to be near Fax. She wanted to touch him, taste him, curl up with him, be with him.

There would be no future with a man like him, but foolish though it might make her, she wanted whatever the present would allow. So she cuddled up against him and laid her sore cheek against his chest. They pressed together, fitting so perfectly it made her heart ache.

The contact warmed her when she’d been so cold for too long, made her feel safe when she knew she was vulnerable. She wanted to touch him, to run her hands along his body, but she knew he was right that they needed to rest, so she let herself sink into the warmth, knowing she would be cold again all too soon come morning.

She slept, warm and secure, surfacing a few hours later, opening her eyes briefly when Fax left the bed and headed for the bathroom.

“Do I need to get up?” she asked when he returned, her voice drowsy.

“Not yet,” he answered. “Go back to sleep.”

The mattress dipped beneath his weight, rolling her into him. His body heat surrounded her, cocooning her in the illusion of safety. On one level, she knew she should wake up, that they needed to talk about what was happening, and what they should do next. But on another level she had no desire to do anything but sleep a little longer, put off reality for a few more hours.

So she slept.

She was awakened some time later by a sound. Through the blinded window she could see that day had gone to dark outside, making it nearly pitch inside the room. Tensing, she strained to identify the noise that had roused her.

It hadn’t been a footstep or bump in the night, she realized as her mind supplied the memory. It’d been Fax’s voice.

“What’s wrong?” he said from very close beside her, having apparently awakened when she did.

“You were talking in your sleep.”

She waited for him to deny it. Instead, after a long pause, he said simply, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

Which meant he knew what he’d said, or at least what he’d been dreaming about. She wasn’t sure whether that made it better or worse, considering that the word she’d heard had been another woman’s name.
Abby.

She didn’t have any right to feel hurt. But that didn’t stop the emotion from coming.

“Who is she?” she asked, not really sure she wanted to know. She’d assumed all along that a man like him was alone in the world, that there was nobody waiting for his mission to end. The way he’d talked about his mother and brothers had only reinforced that impression, as had her suspicion that he and Jane had been lovers at some point.

But none of those people had been named Abby, and he hadn’t spoken of them with the intensity he’d used just now, when he’d called her name.

He was silent for so long she didn’t think he was going to answer. Then, finally, he exhaled a long, sighing breath and said, “She was my wife. She miscarried and bled out five years ago next month.”

“Oh.” That was all Chelsea could muster at first—a single syllable that didn’t begin to cover her horror, both at having asked the question and having opened an obviously unhealed wound. She could hear the pain in his voice, feel the tension in his body. “I’m sorry,” she said finally, though that seemed pitifully inadequate.

“I left the PD and went undercover with Jane’s team six months later,” he said as though that explained everything, which she supposed it did.

“You must have loved her very much,” she said, empathy warring with jealousy.

Instead of answering, he leaned away from her and snapped on one of the bedside lamps, casting the two of them in warm yellow light. He stayed there at the edge of the mattress, propped up on one elbow, looking down at her with something unfathomable in his cool eyes. “Not exactly.”

The doctor in her noted that he looked less tired than before, his eyes sharper, his color better. The woman in her, though, focused on his words. “You didn’t love her?”

She wasn’t sure which would be better, to hear that he’d loved and lost his wife or that he hadn’t loved her, yet had married her and they’d started a family. And no matter how much Chelsea tried to tell herself this was none of her business, her heart said otherwise.

“I loved her,” Fax said. “She was my high-school sweetheart. We stayed in touch while I was in the military, and got married once my service was up. I came home and joined the local PD. I worshipped the damn ground she walked on…Unfortunately, she didn’t feel the same. Or maybe she did, once, but it didn’t last.” He paused, grimacing. “The baby wasn’t mine. She didn’t even tell me she was pregnant, which begs the question of whether she’d planned on abortion or figured I wasn’t going to be part of her future plans.”

“Oh,” Chelsea said, taken aback. She’d assumed he was cold and hard because that was what his profession demanded. Now, she could only assume that his natural reserve had other layers to it, layers that made him even less available than she’d thought.

He nodded as though she’d asked the question aloud. “Yeah. Let’s just say I’m not lining up to try the happily-ever-after thing again.” Something flashed at the back of his eyes and he added, “In case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t,” she said faintly, lying to herself as much as him. “You woke me up talking about her. That was all.”

There was a great deal more and they both knew it, but instead of hashing it out, they just stayed there, staring at each other as the small circle of yellow lamplight and the night beyond cast a layer of intimacy over the scene.

Heat kindled in her belly, so much hotter than the comforting warmth of before, a greedy fire that made her want to reach out and drag him close. She wanted to sink her fingers in his hair, in his clothes, wanted to breathe him in, inhale him whole until they were bound to one another, for the duration of the night.

There was no future for them, she knew, even less hope of it than before, now that she knew his work wasn’t the only reason he held himself aloof. But if she’d learned anything from the events of the past few days, it was that things could change in the blink of an eye. They could both be dead tomorrow.

Given that, there was nothing she’d rather do than rise up on her hands and knees and cross to him on the wide mattress, watch his eyes fix on her, and see the heat flare within them.

When she did exactly that, he brought his hands up to her shoulders as if in protest. But he didn’t pull her close, didn’t push her away.

“Chelsea,” he said, voice rasping. “Be sure this is what you want.”

“I’m sure enough,” she said, which was the honest truth. She wasn’t positive of anything anymore, but she knew if they didn’t take this moment, this chance, she would regret it for the rest of her life. Now was not the time to be a wuss.

He held her away for a long moment, until she was starting to worry that her “almost” wasn’t enough, that he didn’t want her enough to take the chance.

Then, when she was just about ready to draw back and stammer an apology, his fingers tightened on her shoulders and he drew her close, sliding her up his body where he lay partway propped against the headrest of the motel bed.

He held her there for a few seconds, his breath whispering against her lips, his eyes searching hers for—what? She didn’t know the answer, wasn’t even sure of the question. But somehow he found the reply he’d been seeking, because he whispered her name, making the two syllables sound as dear as they ever had in her entire life.
“Chelsea.”

Then he framed her face in his hands and crushed his lips to hers, and there was no more talking, no more discussion. There was only the heat they made together and the perfection that might not be forever, but was exactly what both of them needed just then.

For all the times Fax had told himself to keep his hands off Chelsea, that she deserved a man who could give her all the stability and safe adventures she deserved, when it came down to it, he was the cold, greedy bastard Abby had called him in the single fight that had marked the end of their marriage and had brought on the miscarriage that had killed her.

She’d demanded a divorce out of nowhere, or at least that was how it had seemed at the time. She’d accused him of wanting everything his way, saying that he’d chosen the military, then the police force over her. She’d claimed he’d given her no choice but to have an affair, and said he couldn’t blame her for going elsewhere for the love and single-minded attention he’d been unable to give her.

Well, he damn well did blame her. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a kernel of truth to what she’d said.

He wanted what he wanted and did what it took to get it.

And right now, he wanted Chelsea.

She was softness in his arms, sweet flavors in his mouth and soul as he eased her down atop him and their bodies aligned. He held on to that sense of sweetness as he kissed her, trying to give her back the humanity she gave him, fighting back the beast inside him, the cold-blooded killer who took what he wanted and to hell with the world.

One kiss spun into another as he shaped her body with his hands and lips, relearning the curves of a woman, and recognizing the ones that were hers alone.

For all the times he’d sat in the hell of solitary confinement and imagined being with someone, he’d forgotten the reality of the sensations of sex, the heat of it. Or maybe he’d remembered correctly, and Chelsea wasn’t like any of the other women he’d been with before.

It was a daunting thought, and one he brushed aside almost the moment it was formed, reminding himself to stay in the here and now, because there was no guarantee of tomorrow.

He tasted that knowledge on Chelsea’s lips and heard it in her soft, wanting sigh. Part of him had regretted telling her about Abby, but he realized it was all for the best, because at least it put them on level footing, with understanding and expectations—or the lack thereof—on both sides.

Then she smiled against his lips and shifted to get her hands under his shirt. Splaying her fingers over his abdomen, she murmured, “You’re thinking too much. I can feel it.”

“I want this,” he said, uttering the words before he was really aware of thinking them.

“Me, too. So why the hesitation?”

“I don’t want to take advantage.”

“Of?” Her eyes held a glint of humor, a hint of impatience that made his blood burn hotter, even though that should’ve been impossible.

He was tempted to kiss the wickedness off her face, turning the humor to heat, but he held his baser self off a little longer, saying, “You and me. Us. The situation.” He gestured to the window, not at the night, but at the figment of the cops and terrorists who were looking for them even now, and would find them before too long. “We wouldn’t be together like this if it weren’t for some pretty extraordinary circumstances.”

Her expression saddened a little. “And we won’t be together after all this is over, one way or the other,” she finished for him. “Don’t worry, I get it.”

He cupped her face in his hands and looked deep into her eyes. “Do you really? Or is this just part of some spy fantasy, an escape from what’s really going on?”

But for the first time he couldn’t read her every thought from her expression, leaving him off balance when she said simply, “Does it matter?”

Before he could even think to formulate an answer, she leaned in and touched her lips to his, slipping her tongue into his mouth at the same time she slid her hands beneath his waistband.

And then he pretty much stopped thinking at all.

C
HELSEA FELT THE CHANGE
in him, knew the second he got out of his head and into the moment, because that was when he leaned into the kiss and opened to her, deepening and intensifying caresses that only seconds earlier had seemed hotter than was possible. Before she could brace herself, buffering against too much sensation, her body flared higher and higher still, driven by his clever touch and the raw need she tasted on his lips.

Earlier she’d been the instigator, seeking to push him past his hesitation before he talked them both out of giving in to the needs of their bodies. But now he was the one doing the pushing, heating her up and over her inner barriers before she was even aware of their existence.

Always before for her, sex had been part of a relationship, an outgrowth of love. Here, though, it was all about the physical sensations, about sex rather than love. And if a small piece of her wondered whether there might be some love on her part when there was zero expectation of that on his, the heat quickly rose up and swept away the worry, leaving nothing behind except the sensation of his lips on her skin, his body against hers.

Leaving nothing but
him.

They stretched across the bed together, twining arms and legs and tongues until there was no clear end to one of them, no clear beginning of the other. There was only them, and the heat they made together.

His skin was a tough expanse of maleness, roughened in places with faint tracks of masculine hair. Wanting more of him, needing more, she pushed his shirt aside, rucking it up under his arms until he chuckled and eased away so he could pull it off. While they were separated, he skimmed what was left of her shirt down over her arms and off, and released the catch of her bra.

Naked from the waist up and bathed in the yellow light coming from the bedside lamp, she would’ve blushed and covered up if it hadn’t been for the look that softened his hard blue eyes—a sort of wistfulness she hadn’t seen from him before.

“You’re perfect,” he whispered harshly. And although he was looking at her breasts when he said it, she had a feeling he was talking about more. Then he looked at his own chest, which was sharply defined with muscle and bone, and marked with a half-dozen scars of various size and ugliness, along with a ripe bruise, no doubt acquired earlier in the day. “I’m not exactly perfect,” he said ruefully before looking at her once again. “Far from it.” And this time she was positive he was talking about more than just their bodies.

Emotion jammed in her throat at the suspicion that he felt things far more deeply than he let on, and that he, too, knew they’d found something together that didn’t come along every day.

Rather than ruin the moment with analysis, especially when she wasn’t sure she was going to like the answer she came to, she lay back on the bed and smiled an invitation, offering herself to him, no strings attached. Aware that he was watching, she shimmied out of her pants and panties, leaving herself naked beneath the soft light.

She let him look, aware that he seemed to have stopped breathing as she stretched out an arm and snagged her purse off the nightstand beside the bed. From her wallet, she pulled out a condom—one of two she kept in there as part of her “just in case” stash.

Holding it up, she tilted her head and smiled at him.

“Chelsea,” he breathed, only her name, but in a tone that suggested she’d just given him a gift beyond measure.

He stood then, rising from the bed to strip out of his remaining clothes. His motions were efficient and practical, like the man himself, but the play of muscle beneath his skin was an erotic dance that made Chelsea’s pulse pound a greedy beat. She’d wanted him this way since the first moment their eyes had locked. She was done with waiting for the time to be right.

The time was now, right or wrong.

“Come here,” she breathed, and he made short work of donning the condom over his proud, jutting flesh. Then he joined her in the center of the bed and covered her body with his.

He might’ve thought to prolong the moment with another kiss or some teasing caresses, but she took that inclination away by reaching up and pressing her lips to his, pouring herself into the moment and making her urgency known.

No less urgent himself, Fax kissed her long and hard as he touched her, shaping her body with his hands, sliding his fingers along her torso and hips, then inward for a long, soft rub against her center, where she was wet and wanting already.

She arched against him and cried out, her wordless plea muffled against his lips. He heard and understood, though, and shifted to poise himself at the entrance to her body.

Then he paused, waiting.

Want spiraled to a tight core within Chelsea, centered on the empty void where her inner muscles pulsed, waiting for him.

She opened her eyes and found him braced above her, looking at her. When their eyes met and the connection clicked as it had done from the first, then and only then did he nudge his hard flesh against her, into her.

His solid length invaded her, filling her and setting off an explosion of pleasure and sensation.

Chelsea gasped and arched against him, digging her fingernails into his back and reveling in his hiss and the fine tremors she could feel in his muscles.

When he was seated to the hilt he paused again and looked at her, and this time she couldn’t meet his gaze, she just couldn’t. The feelings he brought out in her were too huge, too raw, so she leaned up and pressed her cheek to his, closed her eyes, and hung on for the ride as he withdrew and thrust, withdrew and thrust.

The two of them surged together, racing each other to the peak while dragging one another along at the same time. The heat built and meshed within Chelsea, a building urgency in search of an outlet, concentrating at the point of contact where he filled her and withdrew, filled and withdrew.

The orgasm slammed into her unexpectedly, a freight-train hammer of pleasure and greed that gripped her, controlled her, made her arch against him and scream his name, not Fax but Jonah. She hung on to him, used his strength as an anchor while the pleasure washed over and through her. She felt him stiffen against her, inside her, and heard him give a hoarse, wordless shout. Then they were clinging together as the passion slowed and faded, leaving them limp and breathing hard, survivors of a mad rush to the finish.

And what a finish,
Chelsea thought with the few brain cells left in her head unscrambled.

Where always before she’d come on a tug and roll of pleasure, this orgasm had left her flattened and defenseless, stripped bare by feelings that were too huge to deny, too important to cope with. That, and the knowledge that the two of them were a fleeting thing, a union of flesh and convenience.

The realization chilled her and made her cling to him a little too hard. She could tell it was too much because he stiffened, then he pulled away. He pressed a kiss to her cheek, but didn’t look at her as he stood and headed for the bathroom, weaving slightly on unsteady legs. He shut the door behind him, leaving her utterly alone.

Feeling utterly rejected.

F
AX LEANED ON THE EDGE
of the sink and closed his eyes, totally undone by what had just happened between him and Chelsea.

He’d tried to hold a piece of himself back, tried to keep hold of the shell protecting himself from the outside world and vice versa, but all of his defenses had failed in that last moment, when Chelsea had grabbed on to him and let herself go, and he’d been unable to do anything but follow where she led.

“Idiot,” he muttered, glaring at himself in the mirror. Worse, he’d been irresponsible, letting down his guard way too far when neither of them could afford for him to make a mistake.

Chelsea wasn’t Abby, not even close. But trusting her not to cheat wasn’t the same thing as trusting her to have his back. She wasn’t Jane, didn’t have Jane’s physical or emotional tools.

Cursing, he cleaned himself up. Then, wrapping a towel around his waist in a feeble bid for the armor of clothing, he made himself leave the bathroom and face Chelsea, knowing she was likely to be beyond furious over the way he’d boogied it out of the bed they’d shared.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he began the moment he hit the main room, guilt making his tone more defensive than he’d intended. “I know that probably looked pretty bad.”

“It
was
bad,” she agreed levelly. She was up and dressed, and had already pulled the bed more or less back to rights, as though she was trying to remove any reminder of what they’d just done. “But I’m a big girl, I can deal. We both needed some skin-on-skin after what we’ve been through together. Doesn’t have to be any more than that.”

Her voice sounded reasonable, but her shoulders were tight, her jaw was set, and a flush stained her cheeks and throat.

He wanted to tell her it hadn’t been like that, at least not for him, but he stopped himself because what was the upside of explaining? It wasn’t like things could go anywhere between them from here. It was probably better to have her mad at him, for both their sakes.

“Sorry,” he said again, but didn’t contradict anything she’d said.

“What now?”

It took him a second to realize she’d shifted gears, that she was asking about a plan, not a relationship. He was selfish enough to be relieved, wise enough to know that just because she wasn’t talking about what had just happened between them, it didn’t mean the issue was dead.