The Defiant Hero (41 page)
“I’m really close, too,” she whispered, moving still so slowly, taking the time to completely caress every last inch of him. “But you know, Sam, sometimes I think all you have to do is look at me, and I’ll come.”
That was it.
It was over for him. Sam felt his release rocket through him in that same exquisite slow motion. “Alyssa!” He heard her name as if torn from his throat, heard her answering cry, like some primal call and response, felt her body tense around him, as she, too, exploded with passion.
Sam held her tightly, long after the last powerful waves of pleasure had faded, long after she’d collapsed on top of him.
“Oh, damn,” she said, and he tensed.
Please God, no. No regrets or recriminations. Not now. Not yet.
Not ever.
“The room’s spinning again.” She lifted her head to look at him, using her free hand to push her hair back from her face. “It wasn’t spinning a minute ago.” She smiled at him. “At least not this way.”
Thank you, God.
Her smile was the smile of his dreams. “Do you think if you took a break,” she asked, “if you maybe had a little of that ice cream that’s in the freezer to restore your energy, I could convince you to—”
“Yes.”
She laughed. “Now how do you know that I wasn’t going to suggest—”
“I don’t know for sure, but I’m sure as hell hoping,” he countered. “Maybe if I’m really lucky, you’ll have the bed spins all night long.”
Her smile widened. “How about I get you that ice cream? Start getting your energy level back up?”
As he laughed, she climbed off of him, got to her feet. And nearly fell on her face when the handcuffs on her right wrist tethered her to him.
Sam caught her, steadied her, even as he cleaned himself up. God, she was naked. He just wanted to touch her. He just wanted to run his hands, his mouth, his tongue across every inch of her smooth, perfect body.
The hell with the ice cream. He was already half aroused again.
But he let her tug him into the kitchenette, taking the opportunity to watch her walk, naked, across his hotel suite.
The refrigerator was one of those mini ones, low to the ground, and she bent over to open the little freezer section, taking out the dish of ice cream. She handed it to him, but he set it down on the table, far more interested in using his one free hand to touch her. Her back, her shoulders, her arms, her breasts, those incredible legs . . .
She looked back in the main part of the fridge. “What’s this?” There was only a bottle of Coke and a quart of milk in there and . . . “Chocolate syrup?”
She reached in and pulled out the squeeze bottle of Hershey’s that he’d picked up at the 7-Eleven. “Don’t tell me you put this in your milk.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
She laughed as he pulled her closer. “Do you really?”
“Milk, ice cream, corn flakes, you name it.” Sam shrugged as he nuzzled her neck. “I’m not proud. I’m a chocolate addict.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Come to think of it, I have seen you with peanut M&M’s on more than one occasion, haven’t I?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“Want some of this on your ice cream?” She held out the syrup.
He answered her by taking the bowl of ice cream and putting it back into the freezer. How could he eat ice cream when all he wanted to do was touch her? He pulled her back into his arms, skimming his hands down her body.
“Hmmm,” she said.
Oh, he liked the sound of that. He liked the way she was looking at the syrup, looking at him. His body was responding enthusiastically, even though it was still just a little too soon. But give him fifteen more minutes with Alyssa Locke and a bottle of chocolate syrup . . . Oh, baby, he’d be ready for anything.
She opened the top, squeezed some of the syrup onto one finger.
He took her hand, looked directly into her sea green eyes, and slowly licked her finger clean.
Alyssa shivered.
And Sam knew that no matter how much he’d loved chocolate in the past, from now on, it was going to hold an even more special place in his heart.
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Eighteen
“EXIT HERE,” MEG said.
Nils glanced at her, and in the dim dashboard light, her face was grim.
This was it.
The moment of truth.
He knew she was going to have him drive down some deserted country road. She’d order him to stop the car, order him out. Probably threaten to kill Razeen if he didn’t. Probably mean every word she said. Maybe even do it if provoked.
Nils had known this was coming. He’d figured she’d try to ditch him before dawn, and dawn was on its way. In less than an hour now, the sky was going to start turning light.
He’d done some war gaming in preparation—which was really just a fancy way of playing what if. But he’d run a bunch of different scenarios in his head. If Meg did X, then he’d respond with A. If Meg did Y, he’d do B.
And if Meg tried to ditch him in the middle of nowhere, he’d do his damnedest to control the situation. To make sure she dumped him near enough to a place where he could get his hands on a car. He could hot-wire damn near anything and be in pursuit of her—without her knowing—in a matter of minutes.
If he were in control of the situation.
He’d also prepared by taking a nap. While the five minutes he’d caught by the side of the road had helped a little, he’d needed several hours of sleep in a row to erase the ringing in his ears and the radio voices in his head, to make him sharp enough to deal with this or any other situation.
And so had Meg. She was exhausted, too.
She’d been desperate to keep moving south, but he’d convinced her that getting killed in a car accident wouldn’t do Amy and her grandmother a damn bit of good.
So he’d slept, right there in the driver’s seat, in the shade of a rest area, for three blessed, revitalizing hours.
Nils had awakened to find Meg fast asleep, too, draped across the parking brake, her head in his lap, her handgun on the floor in front of her.
“Don’t do this,” he said to her now.
“Go right at the end of the ramp,” she ordered.
That would take them away from the bright lights of the truck stop and gas stations that were next to the highway. But Nils saw a small sign that indicated the town center was to the right. Five miles.
Where there was a town, there were cars.
He made note of the odometer setting as he quickly took the turn, praying that Meg hadn’t seen that sign.
She turned and looked at him now. “I’m sorry, John. This is as far as you can go.”
“Meg, please, you’ve got to trust me.” Nils knew that on some level she trusted him enough to move toward him in her sleep. Surely that was a start.
Now that they were here, actually playing out the scenario in which she kicked him out of the car, he didn’t want to play along. He didn’t want to do it this way.
Christ, maybe he should just overpower her. Take her gun. Tie her up and take her, kicking and screaming, to the authorities. She’d probably be charged with some major felonies, but, damn it, at least she’d be alive.
The moment he stepped out of this car, the moment he left her alone, things could go wrong in a dozen different ways.
Razeen could wake up.
Nils might not find a car in enough time.
Even if he did, even if everything worked perfectly, he could lose Meg. Catching up to her with the kind of head start she was going to have wasn’t going to be easy.
He drove as quickly as he could, wanting to get as close to the town as possible before she ordered him to stop the car and get out.
“Why should I trust you,” Meg countered, “when you’ve never trusted me?”
Huh? Nils looked at her. She was serious. “Are you kidding?” he asked. “When have I ever not trusted you? In Kazbekistan—”
“You trusted me not to blow the whistle on Abdelaziz’s escape. Big deal.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It was.”
“You know what I remember most clearly?” Meg said. “Out of all the things we did, all the conversations we had, both in K-stan and in Washington—there was only once that you actually told me anything real about yourself. It was when we talked about the Vietnam Wall. Do you remember that day?”
“Yes.” He’d never forget it. He’d kissed her, right there on the lawn of the Mall, failing her test.
“You told me that your father and your uncle both served in Vietnam. You told me their lives had been changed by the experience—and that your life had been changed by it, too. You told me more about yourself in those few sentences than you’d told me in weeks of nonstop conversation.”
“How can you say that?” he countered. “I told you my entire life’s story—”
“Except the part about your father serving in Vietnam—oh, you also took some liberties with the part where your mother died. That was pretty different in the version you told me in DC. Which is it, John? Did she die recently, or did she die when you were seven—or was it six years old?”
“Seven,” he told her.
“So you either lied three years ago, or you’ve managed to remember the details of the lie you told me today.”
“I altered the truth three years ago because I didn’t want your pity,” he told her. “I don’t want anyone’s pity. That’s all I had after she died. Goddamned pity.”
“So you lied about your mother. Or—excuse me—you altered the truth. How about the rest of what you told me?” she asked. “What other truths did you alter? What other secrets about yourself have you kept hidden?”
He laughed. “Don’t be melodramatic. I don’t have any secrets. I don’t know what else you want me to tell you. My life was boring. I grew up on eastern Long Island. Big deal. I went to a private high school, got into Yale, joined the Navy. There’s nothing to hide.”
Meg was looking at him with those eyes that seemed to see into his soul. She didn’t say a word, she just sadly shook her head.
“What?” Nils could see the faintest glimmer of lights flash through the trees, off to the right. Meg didn’t see it because she was looking at him, but the town was out there, just to the north. He pulled to the side of the road on the pretense that he wanted to give her his full attention. Taking the car out of gear, he pulled up the parking brake and shifted in his seat, subjecting himself to the full brunt of her accusing eyes. “What?”
“You described this near idyllic childhood—except your father went to Vietnam, and came back a different person. What did you say about him during that one time the truth leaked out? That even though he hadn’t died, he’d lost his life over there. Yeah, John, that’s what you said. Your life couldn’t have been this episode of Father Knows Best that you pretend it was. Oh, and throw in the fact that your mother died when you were seven. Seven—you were still a baby. And your poor father—here’s a man who’s back from a terrible war, probably just barely keeping it together, and I’m supposed to believe that his wife dies and your life is perfect?”
This was so not the time to lose his cool, but Nils felt a flare of anger. “What do you want to hear, Meg? You want me to tell you that my father drank too much some of the time? So what? Four billion other people’s fathers drank too goddamn much. It’s nothing new. It’s no big deal.”
She wouldn’t back down. “I don’t believe you. I see these flashes of this incredibly sensitive man peeking out through this, this . . . slightly bored, macho facade you’ve put up. I don’t believe you weren’t affected by—”
“When he didn’t drink, he was perfect, okay? That’s the way I want to remember him. That’s the part of my life that I tell people about. I say what I say, and if they choose to interpret it a certain way—”
“But what about the people who ask for the real story?” she implored him.
“No one asks.”
“I asked. More than once. But you didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth.”
Nils didn’t know what to say to that. Because she was right. He rubbed his forehead, trying to banish the worst damned headache of his life.
“You’re not the only one who lied,” Meg continued softly. “Three years ago, in DC, you asked me if I loved you, and I didn’t answer. I lied by omission.”
He looked at her. Was she saying . . . ?
“It wasn’t just about sex that night,” she told him. “It was more than that, and it would’ve been beautiful, and in the end, that was why I let you go. I was afraid that if you did stay the night, I’d have to face everything I was feeling.”
Nils’s heart was in his throat. “Meg—”
“Let me finish. Please. I need to tell you this.” She drew in a deep breath. “I’ve thought about it a lot since then.” She laughed shakily. “If you want to know the truth, I’ve analyzed it to death, trying to figure out exactly why I let you leave. The best I’ve come up with is that even when I first met Daniel, uncertainty and, well, fear, I guess, was a part of what I felt for him. I loved him, but I was always afraid—afraid he was going to leave me, afraid I wouldn’t live up to his expectations. You name it, I was afraid of it. Then later, when I found out he’d been unfaithful so many times . . .”
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