The Wrong Hostage

29

TIJUANA

SUNDAY EVENING

SILENCE GREW, STRANGLING GRACE. Numbly she watched Faroe circle her, blocking any escape to the hallway. She couldn’t move. She could barely think.

Then rage burned through the numbness.

He could have made this easy.

He didn’t.

“I misjudged you,” she said through thin lips. “You’re brilliant, ruthless, skilled in things I’d rather not imagine, and a blind idiot who couldn’t see the truth when you put your arm around it!”

Faroe picked through her words, looking for meaning. “I don’t understand.”

“Ya think?” She glared at him and thought of how sweet it would be to just smack the ignorant, arrogant man.

Faroe blocked Grace’s open hand before her palm hit his cheek. Then his fingers circled her wrist and held it, restraining her without hurting her.

Shocked, she looked at her hand as if it belonged to someone else. “I wanted to smack you, but I can’t imagine I actually tried to. What’s happening to me?”

“Good things.”

“Good? Good? I tried to hit you!”

“I didn’t know how hard I was pushing you. Now I do.” He kissed her hand and gently forced it back to her side, held it there, keeping her close. “You’re too tightly wrapped, amada. You’re going to explode if you don’t let out whatever is eating you alive.”

“Whatever is-my son is a hostage! Isn’t that enough reason?”

“I thought so. I was wrong. Tell me the rest of it.”

She tried to wrench her hand out of Faroe’s grip. He was too quick, too strong. She tried to turn against his grip. His arm circled her, held her still.

Close.

“And the next time you want to clock someone,” he said, smiling slightly, “don’t think about it. Just do it. That way your body language won’t telegraph your intentions.”

He was only inches away. She could feel his breath across the damp strands of hair that clung to her face. The dreamy, delicate kiss he brushed over the curve of her neck made her shiver. In the shadowy light his expression was calm, focused, and his eyes watched her much too intently.

She wasn’t as good at cat and mouse as he was.

“A long time ago, you told me that you weren’t a very good liar,” he said. “Remember?”

“No,” she lied.

“You said you doubted that you could fake anything important, particularly not in bed.”

A ripple of emotion went through her. She closed her eyes so that she wouldn’t betray herself.

Her lies.

“That was a long time ago,” she said in a low voice. “Things change.”

“Not everything. Not your core.”

His hand opened the button at the neck of her robe, then dropped to the sash. The bowknot came undone with a single tug.

She grabbed the lapels of the robe, holding it closed. Part of her wanted Faroe so much she ached. Part of her still wanted to smack him. All of her was in chaos. Caught between conflicting emotions, she trembled.

Faroe’s left hand tugged at the edge of the robe and pulled it slowly aside. The terry cloth was rough against the back of his hand. Her skin was smooth, warm, her nipples dark pebbles eager to be touched.

“You were right,” he said. “Your body doesn’t lie.”

“Damn you,” she whispered.

“I can live with damnation if I have you.”

He shifted so that both hands cupped her breasts, teased her nipples. Then his right hand slid down and across hot curls, found moisture, dipped lightly, then again. Heat spilled into his hand.

“This is truth, amada,” he said against her lips. “In this we don’t have secrets and never did. That’s why you haunted me. No other woman came close to what you gave me in those few days.”

Grace didn’t have to say there had been no other man like Faroe for her. The truth was hot and wet in his palm.

“See?” he murmured, brushing kisses over her lips, her chin, the taut tendon in her neck. His free hand took one of hers and pressed it against his erection. “No secrets. I want you. You want me. Same as sixteen years ago. One look and neither of us looked anywhere else.”

Her eyelids lowered halfway as she slid her palm down his hard length. She didn’t try to conceal the hunger shivering through her.

“The only difference between now and then,” he said against her mouth, “is that I’m smart enough not to let you slip through my fingers again. This time I’m going to see where it goes.”

Grace took his kiss and gave it back to him with interest, until both of them were breathing raggedly and struggling to get closer still. Then she tore her mouth away.

“Is this what you want?” she asked.

“You know it is.”

“Is it all you want?”

He smiled almost sadly, kissed her eyelids, tasted the faint salt of tears she hadn’t shed. “No. I want the rest of the truth. Sixteen years ago I believed you set me up. It was the only thing that made sense, until after the trial, when I was quietly told the setup came from my side of the street.”

She leaned her forehead against his chin. “I know. Now.”

“My fault,” he said, rocking her slowly in his arms. “I went crazy when they put the cuffs on me. I had a lot shorter fuse back then. Prison taught me to keep a lid on it.”

She almost laughed wildly. She really hoped he’d learned, because when she told him about Lane…

If she told him about Lane.

When she told him about Lane.

This gentle, tough, sexy son of a bitch was right-they couldn’t face Hector when there was a time bomb ticking between them.

“Amada, I don’t know what you want from me,” Faroe whispered into her hair.

She lifted her head and looked at him. He saw clarity and fear, sadness and determination.

“I want to make love with you,” she said. “I want to forget for just a little while what year it is, what hour. Then no more secrets. But you have to promise me one thing now.”

“Name it.”

“No matter what the secret is, you won’t walk away and leave Lane in Hector’s hands.”

“I can’t think of anything you could say that would make me do that.”

Her smile slipped and turned upside down. “I can. Your word?”

“Yes.”

Grace didn’t wait for Faroe to change his mind. She undid his jeans and slipped a hand inside, burrowing and rubbing until she freed him from his clothing.

And all the while she kissed him the way she wanted him, hard and deep and hot. Now.

“God,” he said hoarsely.

After that he saved his breath for what they both wanted. He pulled a condom out of his jeans, unwrapped it, and sheathed himself. Then he lifted one of her legs around his waist. She made a wild, hungry sound and climbed him until she could feel his erection sliding close to home. A wall slapped against her back. She welcomed it because it forced her closer to him.

She came when he entered her, came again as he drove into her to find his own fierce climax, came a third time while he leaned against her and tried to breathe past the wet fist squeezing him, pleasuring them. She gave a final shudder, tried to speak, couldn’t. Her legs slid bonelessly from him. She would have kept on going to the floor if he hadn’t been holding her between himself and the wall.

He laughed as he felt his own strength returning, but the bed was still too far away. He let them slide down the wall onto the thick rug, and began moving inside her again.

Her eyes opened. They were dark, dazed by spent passion and the new need building in her.

In him.

“Joe?”

“Like I said, amada. For some things, once just isn’t enough.”