Obsession: Loving An Alpha Male (21 page)

“Talk to me, baby…”

I moved my face from his hand and leaned away from him.

“This is hard for me,” I said finally.

“I know it is…” Josh replied back, but I shook my head.

“You can’t possibly know or understand. I just don’t want to talk about it… I can’t.”

It was Josh’s turn to sigh deeply. He looked at me and surprisingly I kept his gaze. I didn’t want to talk about this. I didn’t want to try and explain what happened. And I didn’t want to hear the question I knew he would ask… Why didn’t I leave?

“Sweets, you have nightmares about this fucker choking the life out of you. You’ve been in hiding for five years. You’ve changed your name and worked odd fucked up jobs just to stay hidden from him. To me that’s unacceptable. I want him, Sweets. And believe me when I tell you, I will find him. My hands are itching to get to him, Sweets. The question is when I get my hands on him, what am I going to do? I want to choke the life out of him. I want to rip his fucking throat out of his neck. And the more I see and witness the hurt and fear in your eyes, the more I want to kill him.”

“Josh, you can’t,” I said quickly, feeling the fear creep in me but for different reasons.

“I can’t what? You know I only have to find his address, and that will be that, Sweets. He’s not fucking hiding, baby. He’s living his life. Hell, he could be doing the same thing to another woman like he’s done to you.”

I shook my head. “So what do you plan to do? Are you going to stop him, arrest him if I tell you? No, I know nothing good will come of me telling you. As a matter of fact, you’ll probably want to kill Noah more.”

We had our showdown for a moment, as we both didn’t waver our gaze.

Finally, Josh said to me, “You’re right… If you tell me what happened to you, I would probably go find him tonight. I take it though you don’t want me to?”

“No, of course not!”

“What do you want then? Do want me to arrest him? You want to press charges?” He asked me.

“I’m sure the statute of limitation is over. Besides, I don’t have any evidence, and he’d probably beat it anyway. I told you he’s connected.”

“Sweets, I’m sure I can think of something. Don’t worry about how I get him. If you want him to get arrested for the shit he’s done to you, I can make it happen.”

I folded my arms around my chest.

“But, I have to tell you what he’s done to me.”

“Fuck, Sweets, this isn’t a tradeoff…” He placed both his hands on the sides of my face. “I’m not trying to force you to tell me what happened. I want you to tell me on your own. I want you to trust me enough to do that, baby… I just don’t want to see you in pain.”

“I know.”

He moved in closer to me and kissed me.

“I would do anything for you, baby…”

I smiled. “I know that, too…”

“So whenever you’re ready to talk to me. I’ll be there… and whenever you want that son of a bitch to pay for what he’s done, I’ll make that happen, too.”

I shook my head, smiling. “Who are you?”

His gaze never wavered as he said, “I’m a man with many hats, talents, and titles that will give his life to protect yours.”

He helped me down from the counter, took my hand and pulled me back to the couch, grabbing two more beers from the refrigerator as we walked. We sat down, and he opened mine first and then his.

I just held the bottle in my hand and looked at him. He took a long pull from his bottle, sat it on the table in front of the couch and took a deep breath. I had an idea what he was going to say, but the way he was acting, how he was preparing himself, I was a little frightened.

Josh ran his hands through his hair then looked at me.

I helped him by saying, “So are you FBI?”

He shook his head. “Not exactly.”

“CIA?”

“Used to be,” he replied.

I frowned. “Okay then who? NSA, ATF, DOD?”

“It’s not a cut and dry answer. Just let me start from the beginning, okay?” I didn’t reply, so he continued, “I’m an operative for the United States Government. I’ve worked for and with all of the agencies you’ve mentioned, as well as others you didn’t and probably know nothing about. Our government has quite a number of special units, and their sole responsibility is the threat of terrorism that could affect the U.S. in any way. That means overseas, our borders and our own soil.

Each of the units specializes in certain skills. Some teams hunt, some gather Intel, and others do both. Then there are others that are the crème of the crop. They handle tough sensitive cases and will be called upon to protect the U.S. at all costs. And to answer your question, my team is the latter.

I was sent here to investigate Howard and Bradshaw Investments for a tip we received, and we needed to gather Intel, which is why I was sent in. I’m typically not the guy that would go under cover. But from time to time, I have been the one that finds who we’re looking for, interrogate them and put them away.” He stopped and asked, “Are you following me?”

I nodded.

I asked, “How long have you been doing this?”

“Working for the government?” I nodded again. “I’ve been doing this for over a decade. But my need for investigative work started way before then. I was in high school working with my father, helping him on some of his cases. He’s a detective for the DC police force, as you know, and has been for a long time. Sometimes he would come home with a case, and we would sit down and work through it together. It was twisted, I know, but I had the knack for seeing things in a case that aren’t visible. I’m good at looking at details, I can tell if a situation is wrong or that someone is lying. Call it intuition or gut instincts, I just know. So my dad and I would work his cases all the time.”

“Did your dad close the cases you worked with him on?”

“Yeah he did… Don’t get me wrong, my father is who I got my investigative skills and intuition from. He had a high success rate, which is why they would give him the hard cases. The missing kid cases, cold cases, things like that. He would come home, and we would lay a case out and try and figure out who’d done it. So anyway, once I graduated from college, I went into the FBI. Worked there for a while, then went to the CIA. That’s when I got noticed for the skills I possessed. I can speak various languages fluently, and I possess a number of skills that I can’t begin to tell you. I’ve been overseas for a long time working with the Military and our government. The next thing I knew, I was recruited for a special unit and given a team to run.”

“Is that what you were doing before you came here, to Pittsburgh?”

He nodded. “Yes. I’ve been on a job for almost a year.”

“A year! Jeez Josh, wasn’t that dangerous?”

He shrugged. “It can be… but that’s the nature of the job.”

I scoffed. “You make it seem like you’re just a librarian or something, and all you’re at risk of getting is a paper cut.”

“No, I’m not saying that at all. If you want to know if I’ve been shot at, I would have to say yes. Multiple times. Being in some countries overseas is very dangerous. But I’m smart, Sweets. I know what I’m doing, and I don’t ever do something that would put my life in extreme danger.”

“I find that hard to believe.” I rolled my eyes, knowing for a fact this man would rarely turn down a job.

“It’s true. First, let me tell you I’m very good at what I do. I never enter into a situation blind. I know everything there is to know about who I’m looking for, where I’m going and how to achieve my goal. If there is something, anything, I don’t like about a job, I won’t go, and if I’m already on sight, I leave as quietly as I came.”

I shook my head. “Josh, you can’t tell me that’s the case all the time. I know there are times where you can’t walk away as you say.”

I stood and moved from him. What he does for a living I knew would and did freak me out. No, I’m not saying I was afraid of him; I’m afraid
for
him. I watch too much television, movies, and I read entirely too much. If he worked for an agency that he couldn’t even tell me the name of, I knew he was working under the radar. And that meant if something happened to him, I would never know.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I heard him say, and I turned and looked at him.

I folded my arms. “Yeah, and what’s that.”

He stood. “And it’s not going to happen.”

I stared at him as I watched him walk toward me. He touched my arm, and I moved it.

“Don’t–”

“Kenya–”

“You’re minimizing this, making me sound like I’m overreacting, when you know I’m not…”

“Sweets–” he said, but I didn’t want to hear it.

I moved from him and started cleaning up. “No! Look, Josh, I think you should go,” I said roughly, grabbing the pizza box that was still half full.

I mean, really, why did he buy so much?

I threw the box in the fridge, and as I slammed the door, I felt his arms move around my waist.

“Josh, let go,” I said softly as he pulled me to him.

He held on tight to me.

He said, “I don’t want to let go, and I’m not going anywhere.”

“I can’t do this,” I said, still keeping my voice low.

“Which part?”

I turned around to face him, and he loosened his grip for me to do just that. I looked up in his eyes.

“What you’re doing, I know it’s honorable and patriotic and keeps the U.S. safe. I just can’t go through something happening to you. I mean, you can’t have a plan for everything. You can’t be one hundred percent sure no one would stab you in the back or give you up. You could get killed, Josh, and I wouldn’t know anything about it.” He sighed and closed his eyes, so I continued, “But I can tell you love what you do, and as you said before, you’re good at it.” I laughed uncomfortably. “I should be pissed at you for keeping that kind of secret from me, but hell, I guess I did the same thing, so I understand. I just don’t think I could be in a relationship with you knowing there’s a huge chance I would never see you again.”

“Kenya, the chances of that happening is slim.”

“But, it’s there.”

“Yeah, so is me losing my life in a car accident, or getting robbed, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That shit can happen just as easy.”

I pushed away from him, “Ugh…” I exclaimed. “You know that’s not the same thing. Josh, the odds are ten times worse than you getting in a car accident. And please, you getting robbed, that’s a big joke. No one in their right mind would approach you with a knife or a gun. You probably know so many ways to kill someone with your hands it’s not even funny.”

His smirk on his face made me even madder.

“Sweets…”

“No… Josh, there’s nothing you can say to me…”

“I love you…” I stared at him not moving and not breathing. I know he said this to me before, and I’d yet to say anything about it. “Did you get that?”

“Yeah, I got that,” I replied softly, my heart starting to beat out of control.

I looked away from him, but I heard and felt him moving closer to me.

“Well, get this too, I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to spend another day without you, so if I need to make some changes to my life to fit you in it, I’ll do it.”

“I can’t ask you to do that, Josh.”

At this point, his hands were cradling the sides of my face… I watched him as his tongue stirred heat within me as he wet his lips slowly… bastard!

He said to me, voice full of the same heat that flowed through me, “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you, and I mean it. You mean that much to me to make changes in my life. But I won’t let you go. I won’t leave you alone. I need you. I want you. I fucking crave you. Loving you is like a drug to me… You’re my obsession, so don’t say that shit again.”

He planted his lips to mine with a kiss so sweltering hot, hard, and forceful. His tongue making a sweeping plunge in my mouth full of passionate demands gave me promise of what I knew was to come. When we separated for air, I moved back slightly, and he looked at me. I knew he was holding on for dear life, but I didn’t want to be distracted, and I still had things to say.

“How will you make this work?” I asked in between collecting my breath.

“You want to talk about this now?” He replied, and I nodded yes. “Baby, I can’t concentrate and tell you what you want to hear.”

“Yeah, well, you better figure it out and do it quick.”

I pulled my t–shirt over my head and tossed it on the couch. I felt him reach for me, and I smacked his hand.

“Start talking…”

He growled his frustration, and I smiled at him. I removed my bra and shimmied out of my shorts and underwear. I was feeling adventurous and sexy and horny as hell. It could’ve been the beer I consumed, or it could’ve been this feral of a man in front of me, but I laid on top of my bed, and as he entered my bedroom I opened my legs to him and slowly traveled my hand to my sweet spot. I was saturated already from his kiss, and I knew by his eyes he could see that from where he was. I took my finger and circled myself to gather some of my juices then I started circling my clit.