Unmasking Kelsey (15 page)

Kelsey caught his breath with a rasping sound, his eyes closing briefly, and even through the hot veils of passion he realized something. But nothing could have stopped him in that moment, and when her body sheathed him totally with its tight heat, he forgot everything but spiraling hunger.

She moaned deeply, arching up to meet him as he began moving, the feverish heat inside her burning until she couldn’t stand it. She lost control even as he did, matching his hot rhythm with her own wild response, hearing his groan and her own whimpering cries and feeling the primitive need to fuse their bodies together until nothing could ever tear them apart. He could never be hers except by his own will, but her body claimed his for all time and she knew there would never be another for her.

The hot, sweet tension coiled unbearably and yet she wanted it to last forever. But her body surged toward release, desperate, driven, and
when it came at last in a blinding, shattering explosion she cried out wildly, barely hearing Kelsey’s ragged groan of pleasure.

His weight was wonderful, and Elizabeth murmured a protest when he would have left her. He eased up on his elbows, still breathing roughly, gazing down at her flushed, contented face.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked huskily.

In a dreamy voice, she said, “I didn’t notice.”

Brushing a strand of her silver hair back, he said, “Dammit, why didn’t you tell me?”

Elizabeth didn’t pretend to misunderstand. Smiling a little, her eyes darkened, she said simply, “You would have changed your mind again.”

Even though his mind and instincts had balked at the thought of Blaine Mallory having been Elizabeth’s lover, Kelsey had never even considered the possibility that no one had been. And when he told her that—somewhat severely—she laughed and raised her head to kiss his chin.

“Thanks a lot.”

Kelsey shook his head helplessly. “You’re just so damned beautiful! If I’d been around, you wouldn’t have gotten out of
high school
without me as your lover.”

“But you weren’t around,” she murmured, smiling. “And I was never much impressed by the sexual revolution. If it didn’t feel right, then it obviously wasn’t right for me.”

He shook his head again, bemused. “If I’d been thinking at all a few minutes ago, I would have thought you’d had at least one long-term relationship behind you. You were so—so natural.”

“Because I belonged to you,” she said matter-of-factly. “I felt completely natural.”

He was obviously troubled by that, and she lifted her head to kiss him lightly.

“Stop brooding,” she ordered in a gentle tone. “I love you too much to ever regret this. Ever. No matter what happens.”

“Elizabeth …” He lowered his head to kiss her, the first tenderness almost instantly becoming something else, and they both felt the stirring of need again.

Raising his head, Kelsey half closed his eyes and caught his breath when he felt her inner muscles immediately tighten around him. A bit thickly, he said, “For an inexperienced lady, you sure know what you’re doing.”

Elizabeth smiled a slow, unconsciously sultry smile. “Just doing what comes naturally.”

Kelsey approved wholeheartedly.

“W
HERE THE HELL’S
my shoe?”

Folding the quilt neatly, Elizabeth gave him an innocent look. “I think it flew down into the hall. You didn’t seem to be paying attention at the time.”

“I was being seduced,” he retorted, going to the edge of the loft to look downward.

Hearing his half-conscious curse, she said, “Horses
do
leave evidence of their presence, I’m afraid.”

Kelsey looked at her. “Uh-huh. And, of course,
my shoe would have to land in the middle of some of that evidence.”

“Life’s like that.”

His humorous, slightly pained expression became suddenly intent as he looked at her, and Kelsey came back to her and framed her face almost completely in one large hand. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” he said quietly, “but it must have been something terrific.”

Elizabeth swallowed hard and smiled up at him, her heart aching. “I’m glad you think so. Just don’t brood about us anymore, all right?”

“I can’t help it.” His fingers were moving, stroking her face almost compulsively. “I want to stay with you. I want to sleep with you and watch you in the morning. I want to see you smile and hear you laugh. I want to
be
with you.”

It was not something she could help him with, and Elizabeth knew it. Only Kelsey could decide if she fit into his future. She could love him and wait for him to work his way through what he was feeling. And she was very aware that he could decide, in the end, to leave her … because he had
to. Because that elusive part—or parts—of him would be unable to be content in her settled life.

Thinking of that now, as she had several times before, she said slowly, “There’s something I want you to know, Kelsey. I wasn’t lying when I said that if you left me, I’d understand. I’d understand because you were right when you said earlier that I made myself fit here. I was very young and I didn’t really have a choice, but it was a painful struggle. I
know
what you’re feeling … if only in a small way. I know how hard it is to rein something wild. Even now, after ten years, I have to let it out sometimes.

“But you … You’ve been in a dangerous business for fifteen years, nearly half your life, and what you’ve learned to be in that life isn’t something you can just walk away from and dismiss. It’s a part of you, a very strong part. A part I love. Don’t change. Don’t change for me or anyone else.”

With difficulty, he said, “And if what I am drives me away from you?” Something he had reluctantly already faced, though it hurt terribly.
The possibility that he might one day have to leave her.

“Then you can’t let that tear you apart,” she said steadily. “You said—you didn’t want to be remembered as the man who tore my life apart. You won’t be, no matter what. I love you too much for that to happen. But there’s something
I
won’t be remembered as, Kelsey. I won’t be remembered as the woman who tore
you
apart.”

After a moment of gazing into her determined eyes, he lowered his head and kissed her gently. “I’ll try to keep that in mind,” he said huskily. “Just don’t let me hurt you.” It was a rough, strained plea.

She touched his cheek fleetingly and then turned toward the stairs. What could she say to that? Nothing. “It’s getting late; it’ll be dark soon. Let’s get your shoe out of the muck and go up to the house.”

Her words were light, and ten years of controlling a tendency to wildness kept her expression serene. Elizabeth knew she would hang on to that control as long as necessary. She would not, for
one instant, show him the ache she felt. He would never leave her willingly; she felt that and was warmed by it. He would fight his own nature to stay with her, if she let him. But she wasn’t willing to let that happen.

If he came to terms with himself and discovered that he loved her too much to leave her, and if he emerged from that struggle whole and healed, she would be happier than ever before in her life.

But if he found, in the end, that what he needed she couldn’t give him, she would wave good-bye and provide a place here he could come back to if he wanted. Here in her tame life. And she’d never let him see the scrapbook full of memories she was already lovingly putting together in her mind.

She wouldn’t be remembered as the woman who tore Kelsey apart.

He carried her over the threshold. He also carried her up the stairs to her bedroom, and except for a couple of forays down to the kitchen to stave
off starvation, they spent the entire night in bed together.

Kelsey awoke in the hours before dawn, vaguely aware that this particular time seemed to be his own personal witching hour; it seemed that just before dawn he was always facing things he would rather have avoided. But he woke to find himself holding Elizabeth tightly and possessively, and even though she slept deeply and was obviously undisturbed by the strength of his embrace, he forced his arms to relax a little.

And, because he had to, because he knew despite her control that Elizabeth did indeed need a promise from him, he faced himself once more. He allowed himself to remember the memories of fifteen years, beginning with his father’s death. And, like still photographs flipping rapidly through his mind, a complete picture of those years emerged.

He remembered the bad things, of course. Friends lost, assignments that had snowballed beyond his or anyone’s control and had gone haywire. Harried interludes of time spent in
dangerous places doing dangerous things. Countless brushes with death. Roles assumed easily at need and just as easily discarded. The face of every criminal he had helped to capture, and some who were killed.

He remembered crowded, dangerous cities and vast, lonely oceans and breathtakingly beautiful tropical islands. He remembered glittering parties and silent stakeouts and cold jails. He remembered partners who had saved his ass. He remembered too many eleventh-hour rescues, too little sleep, too many guns. Food that tasted of cardboard eaten hastily in cars or dark motel rooms or on the run. Hours spent hunched over a computer keyboard looking for any single tiny item of information required to topple some criminal kingpin.

And … no real regrets.

He regretted lives lost, and there had been times that, looking back now, he regretted he had not acted more quickly or more effectively. But for what he had done with his life, he had no real regrets.

And now?

Kelsey held this warm, vital woman in his arms, thinking of her falcon’s eyes and practiced control, of the tenderness and love in her that could explode into a passion so total it could—and did—steal his breath and stop his heart.

“I won’t be remembered as the woman who tore
you
apart.”

Something inside him shuddered, swaying on an uncertain foundation.

It was a long time before he slept again.

“Do you think it will work?” Raven asked quietly, her voice so low that only her husband heard.

Sitting beside her in the efficiently soundproofed and decidedly luxurious cabin of one of the company Lear jets, Josh took her hand and didn’t answer for a moment. His tumultuous courtship of Raven having altered his life in many ways, he no longer felt the need to pilot himself whenever he flew somewhere; though he was still habitually cautious as most wealthy men had learned to be,
his obsession with keeping control of the smallest details of his life was virtually a thing of the past.

“You’d have a better idea of that than I would, darling,” he reminded her at last.

Raven sighed, her worry about Kelsey increasing even as the miles between them and Pinnacle lessened. “I told you what Derek said when he called me. Kelsey’s right on the edge this time; he may not be up to playing another role.”

“I could go in with Zach,” Josh noted after a moment in a very neutral voice.

Her eyes were grave, her smile understanding, but Raven shook her head. “On the edge or not, Kelsey would
never
allow that to happen. If something went wrong, you’d be worth more to the major than anything or anyone else he could get his hands on. You know that, Josh.”

Josh knew, but he grimaced faintly. “I guess. Well, maybe Kelsey’s partner can go in.”

“Derek’s good,” Raven acknowledged. “But he doesn’t have Kelsey’s chameleon nature. Derek is Derek—no matter where he is or what he’s doing,
he’s always the same. Kelsey is whoever he wants to be.”

“Which is why he’s on the edge this time?”

“That’s what Derek thinks, and I agree. I knew it would happen someday. For the first time in fifteen years, someone important to him has looked Kelsey in the eye and asked who he is—and after so long, he isn’t sure.”

“It makes sense.” After a moment of silence, Josh said. “What
is
his other name?”

“I don’t know.”

He looked at her. “Really? And you worked with him for five years?”

“Uh-huh.” She smiled a little. “Hey, it’s a secretive business, remember? You learn early not to ask too many questions.”

Josh sighed and glanced toward the rear of the plane, where Zach and Teddy were deep in conversation. Then he looked back at his lovely wife and smiled, his normally rather hard blue eyes softened. Soon they were glowing, as always when they focused on her. “Well, whoever he is, we’ll help Kelsey. We all owe him a hell of a lot. I
know he doesn’t care about that, but I’m glad it’s our turn to back him up.”

“If we can,” Raven reminded.

“Oh, we can. It only remains to be seen how
much
we can, and how well we can.”

Hagen, who considered himself a veritable maestro with all matters secretive, clasped his pudgy hands together over his straining paunch and stared broodingly at his spotless desk. This situation, he decided silently, had all the earmarks of a truly nasty mess.

The military’s mess, of course, and he had expressed all the proper pious sympathy when he had called General Ramsey to commiserate. Being Hagen, a smile creased his cherubic face when he thought about that satisfying call; he and the military were more often than not at loggerheads, and it was enjoyable to see them squirm.

Still. It was a serious matter, a potentially deadly one, and quite a number of lives were at risk. That sobered him.

It probably wouldn’t have surprised Josh much that Hagen knew much more about the matter than anyone—including Rafferty and Sarah—had seen fit to tell him.

He had his sources, after all.

That Hagen had decided privately not to send anyone else into Pinnacle despite the nuclear threat was primarily due to his knowledge and understanding of all the persons already present or en route to Pinnacle.

Regretfully, he acknowledged the fact that he was unlikely to be able to utilize the talents of Long and his men on any future problems; though Sarah Lewis still worked for his agency, the only real tie remaining between that talented and inventive group of extraordinary people and his agency—was Kelsey.