Taken by Surprise (21 page)

* * * *

"Have you lost your mind?" Michael exploded into the bedroom. The door hit the wall with a thud, the force sending it back to slam shut behind him as he advanced on Rhonda.

To her credit, she didn't turn tail and run. Not that she could've gotten far in the tiny bedroom. She didn't cower in the face of his anger either, which surprised him. When he got like this, he scared the shit out of himself.

Instead, she threw him for a complete loop by facing off with him. She did a 180 in the middle of the floor, squared her shoulders, and thrust her chin in the air. "If you follow that question with one that even remotely sounds like you're adding stupid to the mix, I swear I'll deck you."

"You're not stupid." Crazy, maybe. Maddening, definitely. She was also confusing, stupendous, and the most desirable woman he ever met. But stupid? Never.

"I'm glad you realize that, at least."

The indignation in her blue eyes set Michael off even more. "You know what else I realize?" He moved a half step closer, then another, then another, until he started to crowd her personal space. The righteous anger in her eyes gave way to a flash of trepidation as she backed up, gulped, and acted as though she meant to answer him. He didn't give her a chance.

"I. Am. Not. Preston." He emphasized each word as if it were its own sentence, wanting to make sure she understood. "I have never called you anything remotely close to stupid, and never will."

"Good, I'm glad we got that straight." She might be backing up, but she was obviously far from backing down.

Michael didn't intend to back down either. "Do we, Rhonda? Because I'm not so sure you've got it straight in your head."

"Maybe if you would stop treating me like he did, then I wouldn't get so confused."

She could have followed through with her threat to deck him, and Michael wouldn't have reeled from the punch as much as he did from that statement. He stared down at her, unable to comprehend the implication. Disbelief smacked him so hard he froze. He couldn't have gone much farther anyway. Already, he'd backed her against the wall without realizing it.

Michael fisted his hands on either side of her head, caging her between his arms as he glowered down at her. "Explain to me how I have ever treated you like that bastard."

Rhonda stared up at him for a moment, silenced by the dangerous calm he managed to infuse in his voice or by the absurdity of her own accusation? He couldn't be sure.

"You're controlling me, Michael. Telling me what to do, taking matters into your own hands without consulting me. You're making the decisions, and I'm supposed to just go along with them."

"Christ, Rhonda." Michael threw back his head, breathed deep, and leveled his gaze on her again. "I've been protecting you. Everything I've done, every decision I've made has been to keep you safe."

"I never answered you when you asked if there was any room in my new life for you." She bulldozed over him. Had she even heard what he said? "The answer is no."

Michael saw her lips continue to move, but the pulse drumming in his ears drowned out all other sounds. The pain in his chest took up so much room it left no space for oxygen. It felt torn apart, his heart ripped out. Standing so close to her became too much. He dropped his hands, stepped back, and turned away.

"You didn't hear me, did you?" she asked much softer than before.

"I think I heard you clear enough." He heard her too clearly if the pain in his soul served as any indication. He couldn't remember ever feeling a hurt this deep. "I don't like it. I don't understand it." He didn't believe her, not really. She cared for him, far more than she apparently wanted to admit to him or even herself. Not so much, however, to hold on. "I'll accept your decision. I'm not having much luck with pulling in a helo to get you out of here, but the second I can, I'll have you back in Silver Springs with Lucas where you belong."

Lucas. The thought of her son only twisted the double-edged blade deeper in his gut. He loved that kid as much as he did Rhonda. She thought he ensured the kid's safety for her. He did, of course, but he also did it for himself. He had already been sick with worry over what Phay might be doing to Rhonda. No way could he have concentrated enough on the mission at hand to get her out of that compound if he left half his mind in Silver Springs with Lucas.

Rhonda sighed, a rush of exasperated air that made him turn his head, albeit reluctantly, to look at her over one shoulder. She hadn't moved from where he'd left her, back pressed to the wall. The anger that added color to her face and neck drained, leaving her paler than normal. Shadows of memory, regret, and likely things he still didn't know about turned her amazing blue eyes the color of dark rain clouds.

"You didn't hear everything I said," she persisted. "I don't think you would be so quick to send me away if you did."

Feeling utterly defeated, baffled out of his mind, and tired beyond measure, Michael raked a hand through his hair as he turned fully back around. "What do you want from me, Rhonda?"

"A partner." She seemed to know she was pushing her luck with him right now, because she chewed her bottom lip in a nervous gesture he rarely saw her make.

"A partner," he repeated, figuring he looked about as dumbfounded as he sounded. He wanted to keep her, and she wanted a partner. He wondered idly if he prayed to the god of confusion if he would find an answer to how something that seemed so cut-and-dry could be so damned difficult. "That would require me to be a part of your life."

"It would require you to talk to me about things, work with me, and allow me to make decisions with you rather than you making them for me." She sighed again, shook her head, and gave a half-humorless laugh. "I accused you of treating me like Preston because you've made me feel that way lately. He controlled so much of my life. How much I worked, what I bought, where I went, even the level of happiness I could experience from day to day. The worst of that is I let him. Whether you did what you did to protect me or not, you've been in control of everything since, well, the night Lucas and I ran into you at the movie theater."

Michael would've laughed at that if he'd been able to breathe around the emotions clogging his throat. If she only knew how out of control he'd felt since that night. Hell, how out of control he had felt since the moment he first laid eyes on her!

"You wedged yourself into my and Lucas's lives by promising friendship. You and I both know you were after more even then. I told you I needed time."

"I tried to give it to you."

"You did, and controlled the pace from that point forward, right up until the moment you stopped coming around. I never really had a say in any of it, Michael."

"I thought Preston was too much of a wimp to control anything." When her lips twitched, he realized how jealous that sounded, the pointlessness of the comment.

"You don't get it. It was all indirect. Someone needed to bring in the money when he didn't. Someone needed to forgo purchases so he could buy whatever suited his fancy, or stay home with Lucas when he went fishing or digging for rocks. His
not
doing things he should controlled every aspect of my life. Statistics say the biggest downfall in a marriage is communication." She shrugged. "Maybe that's true, because we stopped communicating long ago. We led different lives, separate lives in the end. We didn't work together for anything, not even the most mundane items, and certainly not in making any life-altering decisions."

"Like whether or not you would be safer if I left you alone while a notorious drug lord attempted to take me out." When Rhonda shuddered visibly, Michael winced. "Sorry."

"No, Phay wants you dead. He made no secret about that. I never faced any life-altering decisions like that with Preston, thank the gods. But yes, that would be the kind I would've liked to have some say in with you."

"I'll admit that maybe I went about that all wrong." She'd already pointed out more than once his choice hadn't done either of them a bit of good anyway. Phay had still gotten to her, still used her in a ploy to get to him.

"And I'll admit taking the trip to Thailand might not have been one of my brightest ideas. Not when I knew a drug lord who had already targeted several citizens in Silver Springs ran the hub of his operation out of the neighboring country." She narrowed her eyes at him, angled her head. "You haven't mentioned that, by the way."

"I lumped it in the same category with the things I have to be pissed about."

"Well, thanks for not taking me down a notch or ten."

"You're welcome." He wanted to touch her, to pull her into his arms and ignore everything else in favor of establishing a peace between them again. He jammed his hands into his pockets. "I never intended to take control of your life. I never wanted to hold you back from establishing your independence."

"I believe that."

Michael saw she did, but she needed to believe more, understand more. "There are things I simply cannot discuss with you, decisions I have to make that I can't leave open for negotiation."

She licked her lips. His cock flexed involuntarily at the sight, bringing back to the forefront of his mind the image of her on her knees with those wicked lips locked around his shaft.

"Like whether or not you will listen to my ideas of how to get to Phay."

"I listened out there, Rhonda. We all did. I agreed you might be right. It's highly likely Phay never left that compound." He doubted they would have even considered the possibility if she hadn't brought it up. At first thought, it seemed like suicide on Phay's part. Deeper consideration, however, showed Michael the ingeniousness of the plan.

"But you stopped listening there, too."

"I did."

"And you won't listen now if I try to talk to you either."

"I'll listen to you talk all night long, sweetheart, just not about that. You don't know what you're suggesting." He did, and the mere idea made his blood turn to ice in his veins.

"I'm attempting to suggest a way to make sure that when you go after Phay this time, you get him and not just more of his replaceable minions who do his bidding."

"By putting yourself right back in the prison I pulled you out of. I lost a man getting you out of there, Rhonda. Stone did, too." The color drained from her face, and he realized what he said, how it sounded. "Shit." He moved to her again, grabbed the tops of her arms. "I didn't mean for that to come out like it's your fault. If anyone is to blame for Dregs and Peterson's deaths, it's me."

Rhonda shook her head. "If anyone is to blame, it's Phay," she argued. "He's taking credit for too many lives, Michael. He's ruthless, with a blatant disregard for morality. He'll stop at nothing to get what he wants, whether it's revenge, whether it's you, whether it's me. He's got to be stopped before he hurts anyone else. More, he's got to be stopped so that we can go on with our lives."

"Our lives." Michael's heart tripped, filled with hope. "Sweetheart, you've got to have some mercy on me because I can't keep up here. First you tell me there's no room in your life, and then you start talking about being partners and living our lives together."

"I told you that you didn't hear everything. I said no, there isn't room in my life for things the way they have been. I belong with you. I've known that for a while now. But that doesn't mean I have to accept things the way they are."

Michael cupped the side of her face, loving the way she always leaned into his touch, the way her eyes turned to slits as pleasure stole her expression. "I had a plan the night I ran into you and Lucas at the movies. Before that night, I didn't know if anything would ever become of us. Running into the two of you there, well, it felt right. That's when
I
knew you belonged with me."

"You never told me that."

"You would've run if I did."

"You're probably right."

"I thought some plans were too important to be sacrificed. My intent to have you, to convince you that we were meant to be together, to become your friend and give you the time you needed until you saw things my way, it was all too important to me. So much so that I ignored Roumduol's threat, went after Phay's cartel in Silver Springs, and kept you and Lucas, too."

"Then you ran." Her lashes glistened with moisture.

Michael grazed the pad of his thumb over her eye, wiping away the tear that didn't fall. "I sacrificed my plan. I sacrificed you. I can't do it again, Rhonda. I love you too much to let you go again."

Chapter Eleven

Michael caught her chin, angling her lips toward his, and kissed her with all the emotions she saw in his expression, felt in his touch. He took her mouth like he owned it. Plundering, diving deep, his tongue tangled with hers, twisting her senses in a tornado of needs and thrills she couldn't ignore. His fingers found the tie holding her hair and he tugged it out, detaching a couple of strands from her scalp in the process.

"Sorry," he said against her mouth. But then he licked the edges of her lips before plunging his tongue between them again, and she forgot all about the sharp darts of pain. His hand buried in her hair, he massaged her scalp, her nape, holding her tightly as he consumed her soul through the kiss.

The man's broad shoulders were definitely made for hanging on. Rhonda flattened her hands on them and did just that as he lifted her off her feet. He carried her to the bed, laid her in the center, and bent over her, all the while keeping the kiss going, keeping her senses spinning with ecstasy. Whips of passion lashed at her insides, striking her breasts, her pussy, leaving her body tingling with intense desire.

She dragged her hands from his shoulders to his chest, marveling in the powerful play of muscles beneath her palms. She wanted to feel his heated flesh without the barrier of his T-shirt. Anticipation heated her blood. The idea that his body might soon become her playground made her the closest to giddy she had felt in a good long while.

Michael eased back, the seriousness in his exotic eyes stealing her breath as effectively as the tenderness of his touch. He grazed his thumb over her eyebrow, her temple, and down her cheek in a featherlike caress she feared would destroy her.

"I want you," he whispered.

Rhonda covered his hand with hers. "You have me."

The corner of his lips twitched, and he nodded once, straightened. He towered over her, pulling his T-shirt from the waistband of his BDUs.

"Wait!" Rhonda bolted up, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and getting to her feet. "I want to do this."

He caught her wrists in his hands as she gathered his T-shirt in her fingers. "Your feet, sweetheart, you need to sit down. I know you must be in pain."

"Feet? What feet?" Her body pulsed with a need so acute she barely remembered she had feet. "Besides, you weren't so worried about that earlier."

Regret and apology etched a frown on his handsome face. "I know, and I should've been. I don't know how I could've forgotten."

"I do." Rhonda pointedly licked her lips, delighting in the soft sound of his chuckle.

"Yeah, okay, there is that."

"There's this, too." Rhonda pushed a hand beneath the hem of his T-shirt, moaning her appreciation as she danced a finger around the rim of his belly button before following the narrow trail of wiry curls up his washboard abdomen. Already half blind with lust, she closed her eyes as her hands roamed his chest. She explored him like a blind woman reading Braille, studying every bump of muscle, absorbing every ounce of heat that sizzled into her flesh. Dense muscles flexed beneath her palms as she skimmed them over his pecs. Tiny beaded nipples beckoned attention as she grazed her thumbs over their taut peaks. She smiled when he drew in a sharp breath.

Opening her eyes, she fixed her gaze on his torso as she peeled the T-shirt over his head. Tanned skin and dark, springy hairs formed a combination that left her dry-mouthed. She had never seen a man more powerfully put together. The pulse throbbing at the base of his neck claimed her focus. She rose to the balls of her feet, leaning in to cover that vein with her mouth, following it with her tongue.

"Do you know how many times I've fantasized about doing that?" She looked up at him through her lashes, found his exotic eyes heavy-lidded and locked on her. "I can't tell you how often I wished I were bolder, that Lucas hadn't been with me the day we met." The memory of her gaze locking on the V-shaped patch of his tanned flesh covered by thin, dark curls left exposed by the unbuttoned neckline of the solid white shirt he'd worn had spawned many an orgasm.

"You wouldn't have undressed me in the middle of a grocery store," he challenged gruffly.

"No," she admitted. She dragged her teeth lightly over his collarbone, smiling at the shiver she felt run through him. Rising slightly again, she put her mouth to the artery pulsing warmly at the side of his neck. Nipping, licking, she followed the muscular path to the curve of his shoulder, brushed a tender kiss to the gash where the bullet had narrowly missed penetrating his flesh.

"But I wanted to." She couldn't stop touching him now, couldn't wait another millisecond to get him completely naked. Abandoning her perusal of his torso, she went to work on his pants, finding the buttons easier to manipulate this time. Practice makes perfect, she thought in sheer delight as she shucked his BDUs off his narrow hips and curled her fingers around his rigid cock.

"Christ, Rhonda." He sucked a breath through clenched teeth, head falling back, eyes closing even as his hands tightened almost painfully on her upper arms.

She eased back to look at him fully in the light that slipped off the ceiling to dabble over his naked flesh. The man possessed a body that had to make him irresistible to women. Yet, she knew by his own confession that he had never been married, never came close. She wondered, though, how many found him enticing enough to fill a night. How many tried and failed to wedge their way into his heart?

"I can't do this again." He gave her a gentle shake and released her arms. With a skill and precision that gave her some clue as to the answer of her unspoken questions, he undressed her and planted her back in the center of the bed so fast her head spun. Only when he climbed onto the bed with her, wedging his strong hips between her spread thighs did her mind settle enough for her to think again.

"Do you know how many times I've fantasized about doing that?" He held himself off her, weight braced on his hands on either side of her head. A flicker of a smile toyed with the corner of his lips as he turned her earlier question around on her. "More, do you know how many daydreams you've inspired, how many times you stepped into the starring role of your own creations?"

The books she wrote were her creations, the erotic scenes she let her characters play out. "That's what you get for reading so much." It touched her beyond measure that he read her work, everything she authored. He didn't seem to care that she steeped every story in romance, even if most held a certain level of suspense. "Besides, I thought you had a reputation to protect." He swore her to secrecy, claiming being caught reading a romance novel would be bad for his image.

"Whenever I get caught, I just put it off as research."

Rhonda's belly gave a delicious anticipatory roll at that. "Oh, have you learned anything from this research?"

"A few things," he responded vaguely. He shifted his full weight to one arm as he touched her with the other.

Rhonda felt nothing vague in the way his slightly calloused fingers started a dance on the side of her neck just below her ear, leaving a fiery path in their wake as they tangoed to her breast. He watched her, gaze locked with hers, as he covered her breast with his larger hand, weighed, massaged, and then found the nipple with a thumb and forefinger. The pressured sensation of the pinch sent erotic lust whipping through her womb.

"Michael," she gasped, writhing as he did it again. He managed to position himself above her in such a way that prevented her from being able to reach his cock. She felt the engorged head brush teasingly along the soaked folds of her pussy. Maddened by the torment, she tried to thrust her hips up, only to discover she couldn't get enough leverage to reach his cock, to draw his thick length inside to soothe her ache.

"Shh." He chuckled devilishly, keeping his own voice to just above a whisper now. "You wouldn't want all those guys out there to hear you, would you?"

The idea sent wicked sparks of excitement tingling through her to join the arousal pulsing in her system. "Shouldn't you be out there with them?" Not that she could let him leave her now any more than she could calm her own hormones. Sweet gods of orgasm, she would surly die of sex deprivation if he stopped touching her now.

"I think you and I were both pissed enough when we stormed out of there for them to give us a wide berth for a little while longer." As he whispered, he released her nipple in favor of rekindling his dance down her front. The tough skin of his hand pleased the smooth skin of her rib cage, her side, her hip. The concoction of rough and soft contrasted in a feel that took control of her movements, urging her body to slither into the touch. "I've got an assignment to complete that doesn't concern them, one that's gone unfinished for too long now."

"And w-what assignment would that be?" Rhonda could hardly whisper the question, could scarcely manage a breath deep enough to push the words from her lungs. She burned, white-hot flames licking at the inner walls of her channel, climbing to consume every extremity within her.

"Making you squirm." He tickled a finger over her hip bone, slipping it between their bodies to follow the crease of her leg.

She twisted her lower body as best she could pinned beneath his weight, urging him to complete the path to her pussy. She swallowed a whimper when he stopped just shy of where she most needed his touch.

Rhonda bit down on the growl that filled her mouth, turned it into a sound of reason, hoping to remind him of the pleasure he'd already given her. "You made me squirm in the forest."

"Making you come." He continued as if he she hadn't spoken at all, torturing her further by gliding a finger along the sensitized flesh of her pussy lips.

"Already did that, too." Would do it again, she thought desperately, if he would put that finger inside her creaming cunt. He had her hormones wound so tightly, had her teetering so close to the edge already, she might go off with the simplest pressure to her engorged clit.

"While I'm inside you." Once again, he acted as though she hadn't spoken.

To her intense irritation, he didn't make good on his words either. "That you didn't do."
But you can do it now
. She fought not to scream at him. Damn it, hadn't she suffered enough wanting him for so many years and not being allowed to take? Forget that she'd brought much of that affliction on herself by denying them both the chance.

"See?" His exotic eyes sparkled, momentarily giving him the look of a teacher who'd received the correct answer from his prized student. "I told you I hadn't yet accomplished my primary mission."

"So, what are you waiting for?" Rhonda wriggled her hips, lifting them as far as she could off the bed. She gained enough leverage to feel the length of his erection stretching tantalizingly long and stupendously wide along the weeping slit of her pussy. "Completion is less than a thrust away." He only needed to pull back his hips slightly, angle his cock down a fraction, and he would be poised to fill her.

"You aren't ready yet."

The finality in his tone made her gasp in exasperation. "Says who?"

"Me. I want you begging, Rhonda." He lowered his head, swiping his tongue over her tender nipple before enveloping it in the hot moisture of his mouth. He sucked her breast, the pressure a magnanimous treat to the needy orb. His tongue circled the pebbled surface around her nipple, flicking over it back and forth, back and forth. Any reprieve she thought she'd found mounted once more into a splendid torment.

"I want you mindless with the need to feel me inside you." His breath scalded her moist flesh, bringing goose pimples to the surface of every inch of her body.

She already felt ready to beg, mindless with the desire to say anything, do anything that would quell this wild rapture claiming her very being. Her senses filled with the taste of dark passion as he indulged her with a fleeting kiss.

"I want you so caught up in the passion, the pleasure that when I finally push inside you, it takes you by surprise." He rocked his hips, sliding his shaft through the wet coating between her pussy lips, but not penetrating her center.

Rhonda knew Michael could be ruthless in his attempts to uphold the law he swore to serve. How could she not realize he would be equally ruthless in bed? Her hands curled around his biceps as she stared up at him, marveling at his strength and willpower. He had to be teetering on the edge the same as she. Yet, the only signs of his struggle to hold himself in check came in the rigidness of his cock nestled between her legs and the bead of sweat on his forehead.

How could she tell him passion already held her hostage? Caught up in him, she could think of little beyond the wonder that this was Michael saying these romantic words to her. This was Michael touching her, driving her up a precipice she only encountered once before, in the forest beneath his hands, and even then it didn't feel like this.

He seemed determined to drive her higher. He shifted, hands moving to her hips to turn her onto her side even as he climbed from in between her legs to kneel on the bed behind her. The absence of his body spreading her thighs came with an almost debilitating sense of loss. Her body started to grieve, finding reprieve only when he settled a knee between her legs once more. His hands glided down her back, over her buttocks.

Every muscle in her body tensed in the next instant when his finger slipped between her butt cheeks, grazed over her anus. Rhonda stilled, heart hammering so loudly she wondered how he couldn't hear it. As he leaned over her, his lips brushing over her shoulder, down the side of her arm, she fought not to jerk away from him.