Navy SEALs Complete Series: 3 Books + 3 Novellas (Tempting Navy SEALs) (142 page)

There was no hiding now. Not now, not ever. He was instinct, a male claiming his female; more animal than man, as he fought to hold to him the one person he knew he could no longer survive without.

“I’ll not let you go again, Maggie.” He was on autopilot and he knew it. Hated it. Only Maggie could do this to him, and that was why she had terrified him two and a half years before. This was why he had let her run when she had believed there was no hope for the emotion she needed from him.

“Oh God, Joe. I can’t live without you again.” She was moving
against him, gripping him, writhing against him. “I’ve always loved you, Joe …”

Sanity disintegrated beneath her words. His head lowered, his lips covering the sensitive point between neck and shoulder as he began to move. Hard. Fast. Deep. He was fighting to breathe, feeling her tighten around him, hearing her cries in his ears, and finally feeling her dissolve around him.

Sweet and tight, the hot clasp of her cunt began to milk at his erection, long contractions of pleasure that had him slamming inside her, his back arching, his neck tipping back as he felt his semen pouring from him. Thick, hard jets of ecstasy spurted inside the flexing depths of her pussy as he cried out her name. He heard his own voice, guttural, unnaturally hoarse, as he tried to drive deeper inside her, to fill her womb, to tie her to him in the most fundamental, primal way possible.

She was his. Only his. And for Maggie’s sake, not to mention his own, he hoped she realized that.

Maggie was stepping out of the shower hours later, her body pleasantly sore and aching, a delightful reminder of Joe’s loss of control and the feel of his semen spurting inside her.

As she dried, she rubbed the towel over her belly slowly, thoughtfully. She had always wanted children, had dreamed of having Joe’s children. The knowledge that life could be growing inside her now sent an exciting shiver up her spine.

She had never allowed herself to hope, or to dream, that this could actually happen. But in the hours since that first shocking display of primal domination, Joe had done nothing to regain that control. No sooner than he had spent himself inside her, he had her back in the bed, moving over her, and claiming her again. And he hadn’t stopped until morning was well on its way and a hunger for food had driven them to the kitchen.

They had showered together, though Joe had finished quickly
and rushed to leave the small shower stall, swearing that if he didn’t get away from her, he was going to kill both of them taking her.

Maggie smiled at the thought as she dressed, pulling a pair of silken panties up her sore thighs before easing into her bra, and then jeans and a T-shirt.

She had a feeling that anything requiring much exertion was going off her to-do list for the day. Which meant the hike she had been thinking of talking Joe into was definitely out.

Sitting on the small stool in the corner of the bathroom, she pulled on her socks before rising and padding into the bedroom. She slid her feet into laceless sneakers before moving for the closed bedroom door and pulling it open.

Stepping through the doorway she came to a stop as first Joe, then Craig, moved from the kitchen. Both men were carrying coffee cups and had their weapons hanging on their belts. Joe had been armed for the past week she knew, but never so blatantly.

“Maggie.” He paused just inside the living room, his brown eyes watching her worriedly. “Come on in, honey. Get some coffee.”

Craig shot him a startled glance at the endearment.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

Craig Allen was part of the DEA unit Joe commanded before Grant’s death. He had been unaware of her involvement with Joe before her marriage, just as everyone else had been.

“We have some information.” His expression wasn’t comforting, but at least he wasn’t pretending they were strangers.

Unconsciously, her hand dropped to her stomach as she fought the nervousness rising inside her. Joe’s eyes followed the movement, his nostrils flaring as his cheekbones flushed with lust. Response trembled up her spine, sending a small tremor through her body as he watched.

Maggie swallowed tightly, drawing her gaze from Joe to Craig, who watched them both suspiciously.

“I can do without the coffee for now, then.” She breathed in deeply, feeling an insidious sense of disaster building in her chest.

“Come here, baby.” He obviously didn’t care what Craig saw or thought.

He crossed to her, drew her into his arms, and kissed her cheek comfortingly.

“It’s going to be okay,” he promised.

Maggie glimpsed Craig’s expression. Surprise definitely, and suspicion. But the cold calculation that lurked behind both made her nervous.

“What’s going on?” She let Joe lead her to the couch, sitting down nervously as Craig took the chair across from them.

“Your house was trashed yesterday.” Craig wasn’t one to beat around the bush, either.

As he sat down, his hazel eyes watched her closely, looking, she knew, for a guilty, frightened response.

“It was Grant’s house.” She shrugged. “If they just got around to trashing it …”

“It wasn’t trashed in the typical fashion,” Craig broke in. “The carpet was ripped through most of the rooms and pulled back. We’ve had a team going through it, but we’ve found nothing beneath any of it. We got there before every room was hit, but we’ve found nothing, and we know whoever went through it didn’t find anything.”

“The carpet?” She shook her head in confusion. “Why rip away the carpet?”

“They were looking for hidden pockets in the floor,” Joe said as he curved his arm around her shoulders, his fingers rubbing at her arm in comfort.

She glanced at him with a frown, shaking her head. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“The carpet could have been carefully cut to blend in with the
nap of the material, but could be pulled away to access a hidden safe or loose boards in the floor where objects can be hidden,” Joe explained.

Maggie glanced back at Craig. He was watching her closely, doubtfully. He thought she knew where the information they were looking for was hidden. God, she wished she did.

“Did you check all the rooms after you saw where they were looking?”

Craig nodded shortly. “We had a team stripping carpet all night last night. We found nothing.”

Maggie rubbed at her forehead. Where would Grant have hidden that information?

“It could have been a lie,” she finally whispered, turning to stare at Joe dismally. “The journal was a lie, Joe. He could have lied about the information.”

“He had it, Maggie.” Craig informed her coldly.

She couldn’t sit still. She had fought to calm the fear rising inside her for the past week, to take one day at a time and pray the information would be found. Rising to her feet, she paced across the living room, listening distantly to Joe and Craig discussing the search the night before.

The house Grant had been so proud of would be a mess. The two-story brick colonial design had been a major buy for him. He had bragged about that house incessantly. Because it was better than Joe’s. Because as much money as Joe’s family obviously had, they weren’t real fond of sharing, because Joe’s house was so much smaller, so much less classy. She remembered how he would laugh about that. How Joe’s house, right down to the dank, unkempt basement, was so much less superior than the one Grant had managed to buy.

She paced to the edge of the room, turning back to stare at the two men as they continued to talk. Joe was frowning thoughtfully,
his eyes narrowed as Craig explained the areas searched and how in-depth it had gone.

Grant wouldn’t have hidden anything in his own house. He would have known that was the first place they would look. He was smarter than that. He was demonic. He would have found a way to hurt Joe, even in this. She was actually surprised he hadn’t tried to frame Joe instead of her.

“We found several hidden caches of cash. Some drugs.” Craig was shaking his head. “And some more journals. Man, he was sick, Joe.”

Maggie watched Joe’s expression even out, become distant. Grant had nearly destroyed a part of Joe. The two men had been friends for most of their lives. Joe claimed him as a brother, a confidant. He hadn’t known the cruel, bitter side to Grant that she had.

“Any clues in the journals?” Joe leaned forward, balancing his elbows on his knees as he watched the other man.

“Pretty much what we found in the others.” Craig shrugged. “Different topics, same shit.” He shook his head wearily. “We really didn’t know him, did we?”

Grant had often laughed over that. How the others didn’t really know him, had no idea how much smarter he was, how he could always stay one step ahead of them. Especially Joe. Poor dumb Joe, he would snicker, who would never know how easy he was to fool, how easy it was to use him. Right down to the car Joe had treasured. The ‘69 Mustang Joe cherished …

The Mustang. Grant had hated that car. He always sneered when he spoke of it, with an edge of smug satisfaction.

That taunting, self-satisfied gloat had always entered his voice.

She turned from the two men slowly, praying she appeared casual as she moved into the kitchen, toward the coffeepot. She didn’t know Craig well enough, and she could be wrong. And, oh God, if she managed to lead Joe to the information after all, he was never
going to believe she had nothing to do with Grant’s illegal activities.

She pressed her hand to her stomach, breathing in deeply when she paused by the counter. If he didn’t believe in her, he would never have dared to risk a pregnancy with her, she thought with a surge of hope. Joe was very family-oriented. Even though he had many disagreements with his family, she knew he loved them and she knew he was fiercely protective of them.

She hated this. Hated the position Grant had placed her in. He was so lucky he was dead; if he weren’t, Maggie believed she would have been tempted to kill him herself at this moment.

As she reached for a coffee cup she heard the two men in the living room moving for the front door.

“Let me know what Johnson says,” Joe was saying as the front door opened. Maggie knew the “Johnson” in question had to be the DA she had met at the police station.

“Will do, and you watch your ass,” Craig grunted. “Hopefully this will be over soon.”

“Hopefully,” Joe answered just before Maggie heard the door close.

She left the cup sitting on the counter in front of the coffeepot as she waited. Within seconds, she felt him. First, it was just an impression of strength, of warmth, then his arms were coming around her waist and his lips were pressing into her hair.

“What’s wrong, Maggie?” His voice was husky, the dark undertone of arousal threading through it.

She breathed in roughly.

“Grant wouldn’t have hidden that information at the house.” Her heart was racing in fear. “It would have been too easily found. He didn’t work that way.”

“I figured as much.” He kissed the top of her head again before pulling away and allowing her to turn and face him.

Meeting his gaze wasn’t easy, but she did. She found the dark chocolate depths of his eyes filled with warmth and a question. The suspicion she had feared wasn’t there, but that did little to temper her fears.

“What did you remember, Maggie?” He tipped his head to the side, watching her closely as she clenched her fingers together in front of her.

“You’re so sure I remembered it? Not that I already knew it?” She was slicing her own throat, and she felt the breath strangling in her throat from it.

A small smile quirked his lips.

“I deserved that,” he admitted with a small nod of his head. “I’m not stupid, baby. You lived with him for two years. It’s only logical that you may have heard of something that you’ll eventually remember.”

“Not that I was working with him?”

“Maggie.” He reached up to push back the strands of hair that had fallen over her face back behind her ear. “I don’t believe you were involved with this, so let’s stop tiptoeing around each other and finish this up. If you’ve remembered something, then let me know. We’ll get this taken care of, get the danger off your back and start our lives together.”

She inhaled with a trembling breath, tears filling her eyes at the gentleness in his voice.

“Your car,” she whispered. “Grant was always going on and on about that Mustang. While you were talking to Craig, I remember how smug he acted the last time. The expression on his face. I think he might have hidden the information in that car someplace.”

His eyes narrowed as he rubbed at his jaw.

“He helped me put that car back together,” he finally sighed. “We worked on that for months.”

The painful knowledge that the man he believed was his friend had betrayed him still lingered in his eyes, in the tight grimace in his expression as he turned away from her.

“He would have hidden it where you would never think to look,” she pointed out. “He didn’t expect to get killed. This was insurance in case he needed to buy his way free of a conviction,” she said slowly. “The last few months, before he was killed, he was so certain he was suddenly better than you were. I never thought he would go this far.”

She had thought he was insane, not criminal. She should have known better, she admitted. Grant had dropped enough hints, she just hadn’t wanted to hear them.

“We’ll head back to Atlanta tonight.” He nodded abruptly. “The Fuentes family will know by now that I’m the one watching you. They’ll be watching my house. I doubt very seriously Grant was the only spy they had in either the Atlanta Police Department or the DEA. So we’ll go in quiet, check out the car, and if it’s there, we’ll head straight to the department from there.”

“What about Craig?” she asked nervously.

Joe’s broad shoulders tightened before he turned back to her.

“Craig’s my backup,” he sighed. “But at this point, I’m not trusting anyone else with your life.” His expression hardened as he faced her. “We’ll go in alone. I’m not taking any chances.”

“And if the information is there?” she asked him. She could see the doubt in his eyes that it could be.

“If it’s there, then we’ll do just as I said.” There was a fighting tension in his body now, a readiness that assured her he was planning, plotting out each move from here on out.

“And where will that leave us? Your DA, Craig, and everyone else involved will believe I knew where it was all along, Joe.”

“We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” he growled. “And
we won’t. The DA doesn’t give a shit one way or the other as long as he gets what he wants, and neither do the Feds. And I’ll make certain they don’t want you.”

Which didn’t reassure her on the fears rising inside her. But did it really matter? The main objective was to see if the information was there. If it was, then she would deal with whatever came later the best way possible. The way she had always dealt with unpleasantness. Straight ahead. She was going into this with her eyes open. Joe was here to get the information. If he believed in her, then he would trust in her. If he didn’t … Well, if he didn’t, then she would face it, and she would survive, just as she always had. The main thing was to get the proof needed and get Fuentes and his men off her back.

She nodded slowly. It was only a matter of hours before dark, and the trip to Atlanta wouldn’t take long.

“Do I need to pack?”

He shook his head. “No need. If the information is there then your part in this will be over. The DA won’t need your testimony or much of a statement. I’ll bring you back here until we’re certain it’s safe.”

But where would he be? Suddenly, she felt as distant from him as she had the first day they had come here. On the periphery of his life, a job, and nothing more. And the thought of that truly terrified her.