Stripping Her Defenses (15 page)

“And what did you mean to do, you freakin’ caveman?” she snapped.

Grinding my still present erection into her, I answered as she gasped. “Made it so you think of me all day. Remember me inside of you. Daydream of me fucking you.” Leaning forward to whisper in her ear, I finished, “Think of me loving you. Because I do, Kara. I always have, and I always will.” Raising my head back up, I looked into her watery eyes.

She bit her bottom lip nervously before saying, “Riley… even if you can get past what I have to say when we do sit down and talk”—she paused to take a deep breath—“I’m not sure you’ll still want to be with me after I tell you everything. There are things you don’t know about me now. Things that might make you decide you don’t want a future with me anymore.”

“Bullshit.”

Suddenly outraged, she slapped both palms against my chest. “Listen—”

Shifting my weight to prop myself up on one hand, I used my other hand to grab her face by the chin, firmly enough so she knew I meant business, although gently enough to avoid accidentally bruising her. “No, you listen. Is your name still Kara Sullivan?”

She whispered, “Yes.”

“Are you the girl I met in Chemistry class?”

She whispered, “Yes,” again.

“Are you the woman I married, vowed to love through sickness and health, better or worse, till death do us part?”

Tears were now flowing from her eyes, and it seemed to me that I was finally getting through to her because this, “Yes,” came out as no more than a croak.

“Then listen to me and let it sink through that thick skull of yours that there is nothing—absolutely nothing—that would keep me from wanting you. You could have stage four cancer, and I’d be sitting by your hospital bed. You could be paralyzed from the waist down, and I’d be pushing your wheelchair. You could gain a hundred pounds, go prematurely gray, and become a wrinkled prune, and you’d still be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

“I get that you’re scared, babe. Tonight, when I come back, we’re finally going to talk. You’re going to tell me whatever it is you think is going to push me away, and then I’m going to prove to you once and for all that I’m not going anywhere. Understand?”

When she nodded her head, I breathed out a small sigh of relief. Then I leaned down and kissed the tears off her cheeks before kissing her lips.

“I have to go to work. I’m sure you do, too. And I pray to God that it’s not at that fuckin’ strip club.”

She shook her head this time. “I own a boudoir photography studio.”

A rush of relief filled me. “Thank God. With one more night of you up on that goddamn stage, I might have started shooting people.”

She laughed, and the smile on her face warmed me in places I’d felt cold in only days before.

“I’ll call you when I’m on my way here. Give me your phone so I can put my number in it.”

I gave her another peck on the lips then moved off her to let her up to get her cell phone. Once she handed it to me, I dialed my own cell phone number, allowing it to ring twice before I hung up, which would give me her number in my call history. Programming my number into her phone, I handed it back to her, got up off the bed, and grabbed my pants, pulling them on.

“I’d stay longer, but I have to get back to the hotel and shower before reporting in.”

“Reporting in?” she asked hesitantly.

I shook my head in response. “Not now. We’ll talk about that later.”

“Okay, but you could shower here, you know?”

Giving her a look with a cocked eyebrow, I asked, “You still shower with that fou-fou shower gel shit?”

“It’s not fou-fou!”

“Yeah, I’d rather not smell like some fuckin’ flower.” I tied my boots, got up from where I’d been sitting on the bed, then walked over and reclaimed her mouth.

When I had her breathless, I pulled away, placed a kiss on her forehead, and then said one sentence that I hoped like hell would be true.

“See you tonight, babe.”

Chapter

14

Riley

Freshly showered and dressed, I knocked on Jaxon’s hotel room door. After a moment, in which I knew somebody had checked the peephole, I heard the lock disengage and the door opened to reveal Bobby Baker, who had a huge smile on his face.

“Heard you caught yourself a pretty little kitty.”

“Shut the fuck up, Baker,” I replied without any heat and a small smile. I wasn’t surprised Declan had opened his big mouth and told the others about Kara. My brother might specialize in interrogating others out of their secrets; however he liked to run his own mouth way too much sometimes.

Walking into the room, I gave a chin left to the rest of my team who all seemed to be waiting on me, except for my brother. The big mouth was missing.

“Where’s Dec?”

Lucas coughed, as if he were trying to cover up a laugh. Giving Jaxon a sideways glance, he answered, “I believe he was enjoying some
Candy
. He should be here soon.”

In other words, he was balls deep
in
Candy from the club. Or, at least, he had been, and now he was rushing to get his ass here before Jaxon sent him to a mission in Antarctica where his dick would get frostbite before falling off. That threat wasn’t something I’d conjured up, either. Jaxon had actually used those exact words to Dec on more than one occasion.

Shaking my head, I sat in one of the available chairs by the door and thought about how my brother was a moron. I didn’t get him at all. He’d been chasing tits and ass since after he figured out what to do with a hard on. How could he not see what he had back home in the pretty redhead with a will of steel? Sure, Teagan was standoffish and seemed to enjoy their fuck-buddy status, but it amazed me how Dec had yet to realize the woman was perfect for him.

Little Miss Teagan might think she was closed off; however she gave herself away from time to time. Like the time right before we’d left to come here when she’d sung the song I’d been playing on the guitar. It was moments like that when she momentarily dropped those impenetrable walls of her, and I could see inside to the woman who wanted love, even if she said she didn’t believe in it.

As movement to my right caught my attention, I turned my head to see Baker plopping his ass in the chair next to me. “Sooooo… found the old ball and chain, did ya?”

Lucas laughed. “Yeah, shaking her ass and flashing her tits on the stage. I thought Sullivan was going to go all caveman and drag her away. It was a fuckin’ miracle he didn’t blow our cover. Of course, after seeing what she had to offer, I can’t say I blame him. I’d want to drag her off the stage, too, if I could.”

“Stuff it up your ass, Lucas. I can’t wait for the day some woman’s got you by the balls.”

“Not happening, man,” he replied darkly. “When I find my girl, I’m not letting her drag me around by my dick. I’m going to show her who’s boss. If that means chaining her ass to my fuckin’ bed, that’s what the fuck I’ll do.”

I was a little surprised at his vehemence. “You make it sound like you’ve already got a girl.”

He shrugged. “Something like that.”

Baker leaned forward, fascinated by the news that Lucas had just shared. “When did this happen?”

“A while ago,” Lucas vaguely replied.

Baker’s eyebrows shot up. “What’s a while ago? After our mission in Mexico?”

Lucas shrugged. “Before then. Actually, I’ve known her most of my life.”

Looking over at Baker, I could see that answer had confused him just as much as me. In all the time we’d known Lucas, he’d never mentioned having a girl back home.

Looking back to Lucas, I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Then where is she, man? How come we’ve never met her? You keepin’ her locked in your basement or something?”

Lucas’s face became shadowed with an emotion I couldn’t quite read. It wasn’t anger, it wasn’t regret, but maybe something in between? “No, but maybe when I find her, I’ll do that. If she’s chained in my basement, she can’t up and fuckin’ disappear on me.”

“She’s missing?” Baker asked, suddenly worried.

“Something like that,” Lucas mumbled.

“For how long?” I asked.

“Five years,” Lucas mumbled again.

“
Five years
?” Bobby barked out. “How the hell do you lose your girl for five years?”

Lucas shot him a murderous look. “Excuse me, asshole; how long was it before you found Belle? Fifteen years?” Shooting that glare my way, he then snapped, “And what about you, Sullivan? Closing in on ten or some shit?”

“Eight. Now stop being a jackass,” I barked back. “We’re just concerned because it’s not common for someone to fall off the grid so far that you can’t utilize the resources we have to find them. Baker couldn’t find Belle because she’d changed her identity. I didn’t actively look for Kara for personal reasons. If you can’t find your girl, it tells me she might be in some serious shit.”

Lucas’s shoulders dropped a little, and he ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stick up in different directions. “I know, man, but I keep comin’ up with nothin’.”

Jaxon’s voice was the next to speak. “You should have come to us for help if you thought she was in trouble. After this mission is over, we’ll talk about you not doing just that.”

No one liked being reprimanded by their Commanding Officer, especially in front of their team. It was apparent in Lucas’s curt nod that he hadn’t appreciated being put in the spotlight like that. However, I understood Jaxon’s frustration. Lucas had proven himself as an asset to our team on more than one occasion, although he was a loose cannon. He liked to try to handle shit on his own instead of allowing us to take his back with the unit, facing whatever the problem was as a true team. If he wasn’t careful, it was going to bite him in the ass big time one day.

No one had a chance to say anything else, because Declan’s dumb ass finally decided to show up. I thanked God he had the smarts to take a quick shower. If he’d shown up covered in perfume or lipstick marks, Jaxon would have throttled him. Still, his clean appearance and lack of evidence of what he’d been up to didn’t mean Jaxon hadn’t caught on to where he’d been.

“Did you make sure to brush your teeth after eating Candy, Sullivan? I’d hate for you to get a fucking cavity.”

Dec didn’t even bother to look chastised. He gave Jaxon a huge, shit-eating grin and answered, “Yes, sir.”

Dec was lucky because Jaxon decided to move on with our meeting instead of busting my brother’s chops.

“Our Intelligence Officer managed to verify some of Ice’s information about the pattern of missing women and also agreed it was most likely they were being taken by someone below the border. They dug in and cross-referenced any known movements of the Rivera Cartel during those time periods and managed to get a hit matching the routes to several of the missing women’s cases. There are enough matches that it has to be more than coincidence.

“They’ve sent the known whereabouts of the remaining higher ranking cartel members, but the bad news is most of them stay behind the safety of the Mexican border.

“Now, here’s the good news. Intelligence also managed to find out about a tip the DEA received on one, Julio Medina, a high ranking soldier. Apparently, Medina is supposed to meet a well-known drug king in Louisiana tomorrow. The DEA is already in motion to stake out the meeting and take both players down.”

“What’s our game plan, boss?” Declan asked.

Jaxon leveled us all with a stern look. “We’re kidnapping Medina from the DEA. The meet is supposed to take place in a warehouse just outside of the New Orleans city limits on the north side. I had the Intelligence Officer look up the closest federally contracted detainment facility, and it’s in St. Tammany Parish. We’re taking them before they reach that jail.

“Preparations are already in motion. The jet is being fueled, and we leave at zero-five hundred hours. We’ll get there, stake out the area, set up, and then wait until this meet is supposed to take place at night fall. Transportation is already being put in place, and I’ll give you those coordinates on our flight there.

“When we get Medina, we have to keep our head on straight. This mission cannot be about retribution. This is an information gathering mission once we get our target. A safe house is being set up as we speak near here, so Declan can interrogate him for the players involved in the sex slave ring.

“I know you all want justice for Baker’s woman, for Laura Moore, and for God knows how many other women who have disappeared, but we do not have the luxury of fucking this up. This could be our only chance at this kind of inside intel, and we need it if we have a hope in hell of shutting down at least a leg of this operation. Am I understood, gentlemen?”

We all gave Jaxon a heartfelt, “Yes, sir.”

Just as he opened his mouth to presumably dismiss us, my cell phone rang in my pocket, causing Jaxon to shoot me a withering glare.

Feeling the burn of my Commander’s eyes on me, I answered the phone anyways because it was the ring tone I had assigned for Kara. We might have been apart for eight years, but I didn’t think the woman would call me when she knew I was working unless it was an emergency.

Needing to stay somewhat professional in front of my team, I answered the phone with an abrupt, “Kara?”

A sniffle came through the line. “I’m so sorry to call you while you’re working, Riley, but you were the first person I thought of.” Her voice cracked at the end.

While I stood quickly, ready for action, I saw out of the corner of my eye Declan do the same. “What’s wrong, baby?”

“I got to my studio and found it destroyed,” she sobbed.

Chapter

15

Kara

I’d had a shit day.

It was a total good mood killer kind of shit day, which sucked since I had been in the best ‘morning after’ mood of my life. Then I went to work and found my assistant, Lisa, standing outside my studio’s front door, panicking on her cell phone.

At first, I thought this might be the ‘I’m three days late for my period’ panic because, when your other job is stripping at After Midnight, and you love said stripping job, you
do not
want to get pregnant. This panic gripped Lisa at least three times a year since I’d known her, and every time she did, she called her boyfriend Big Jim and gave him shit.