Captive Curves (6 page)

He caught my gaze again, seemed content just to hold it while he studied my reaction. I had a million questions to ask him, but only one that mattered.
 

Did you mean it? Did you really desire me or was it all an act?
 

Even if I could get the question past my lips, I couldn’t ask it here. A library patron was starting down the row, her toddler trailing behind her.
 

“I need to talk to you.” I glanced at the woman and back to Dean. “But not here.”
 

He dropped his gaze, the sigh leaving him so reluctant that I was sure he would deny me. Feeling my cheeks color, I told myself I was a hundred shades of foolish. He was here to return the necklace, nothing more. Taking a ragged breath and holding it, I turned back to my cart.
 

The woman passed us, her little boy looking back to notice the first tear sliding down my cheek. His face grew sad, his little hand creeping up to wave at me.
 

“Tonight…after sunset.” Dean pressed something cold and metallic against my palm and then he brushed a strand of hair from my cheek. “Your place.”
 

I turned just in time to see him exit the row and make a hard right toward the front door. I looked down at the object in my hand -- a silver rooster’s head, its interior hollowed out to slide over the end of a walking stick. Realizing I’d seen it before, I tightened my grip. My other hand darted up to cover the pendant of my grandmother’s necklace.
 

Feo and his boss were dead.
 

*****
 

I went straight home from the library, my mind racing ahead of my feet. Inside the apartment, I flitted around, my attention drifting time and again to the patio’s sliding glass door and the patch of sky I could see through it as I waited for the sun to sink below the horizon.
 

With no social life, everything in the apartment was already clean. I made a light dinner but found myself picking at it. With my nerves in ruin, I gave up trying to eat, bound my hair in a knot and took a shower hoping the heat would ease some of the tension running through me.
 

Half an hour after sunset, I sat at my small dining table and stared at my front door for at least another thirty minutes until a light knock sounded at last.
 

“It’s open.” I forced my hands into my lap, willing them to fold calmly around each other instead of the constant wringing they’d suffered since I got home.
 

The door opened and Dean stepped through it with a scowl on his face. Shutting it quickly, he turned the deadbolt and threaded the security chain. Seeing the patio door open, his scowl deepened. He cut through the small living/dining room and secured the patio door before drawing its curtains.
 

A few more steps brought him to the table where he stood glaring down at me. “Don’t do that again.”
 

Stunned by his reaction, I brushed nervously at a wisp of hair before I met his gaze. “I didn’t think there was anyone alive to come after me. Was I wrong?”
 

His face relaxing, Dean pulled one of the chairs away from the table, pointed it in my direction and sat down hard. He brought one leg up, his ankle resting atop the opposite knee as his hand squeezed his shin. “Not exactly. Every man in that house but me is dead. I told them I killed you because you fucked up on the delivery.”
 

I shifted in my seat, my gaze dancing around the room, meeting his for a second, moving away for a few more seconds before returning. I’d been too shocked seeing him at the library to notice any changes other than his hair being shorter. Now each glance revealed something new. A small line had been gouged into his right cheekbone. Half an inch below the right corner of his mouth, another new scar ran a thin line to disappear under his chin. A certain gauntness hid just below the surface of his muscles and the hollow of his cheeks.
 

He was still drop dead sexy, maybe even more so, but it was clear that not all of the last six months had been kind to him. I wanted to ask him if he was well, but I wasn’t sure I wanted him to know I cared enough to ask. I chose another question instead. “How is that ‘not exactly,’ then?”
 

“They might have thought I was lying, that the press reports were faked. They could have had their own contacts in WITSEC or the DEA. They certainly knew I was lying at the end.”
 

The end…
I drew a deep breath in. “How did they die?”
 

“Painfully.” His gaze shut down and I knew that was all the information he would give me on the topic.
 

“You could have told Hollman--”
 

“No, and you won’t tell her, either, not until I’m sure you’re safe and don’t need WITSEC.” He ran his hand along his shin, his fingernails dragging along the denim of his jeans so hard they would have dug burrows if it had been his skin. “And I wanted to make sure you’re doing okay.”
 

“She could have told you how I was doing.” I was glad he hadn’t asked anyone in WITSEC, but I was desperate to know if his visit was more than some kind of health and welfare check. I pressed my hand against my stomach, as if that could stop the knots twisting through it.
 

Dean’s hand balled into a fist and he shook his head. “She could tell me you’d found work, that you had an apartment in a safe neighborhood…she couldn’t tell me whether you’re adjusting, if you’re thinking about going back to school…if…”
 

He finished with a shrug and a fresh scowl.
 

Something was gnawing at him, but he seemed reluctant to let it out. That meant it was gnawing at both of us. I gave him a little prompt. “If what?”
 

His gaze skipped around the room. There was little to see. I’d furnished it with mismatched pieces from Goodwill and other second hand shops. There were no pictures, certainly no photographs. A few books from the library rested on a bookshelf next to a few I’d picked up from a used bookstore. The apartment looked like what it was -- a way station, not a home.
 

“If you’re making friends, opening up--” His attention jumped back to the bookshelf, his right brow lifting slightly.
 

Making a quick mental inventory of my to-be-read pile, I felt a rush of blood to my face. I put my hands on the table, hoping to divert his attention. “Some acquaintances from work. It’s hard to make friends when I’m trying to concentrate on remembering what name to answer to.”
 

Frowning, I tilted my head to the side. “But I guess you know what that’s like, Dino.”
 

The little twitch of his mouth and the way his eyes slid back in my direction told me he was no longer thinking about the hot little romance on my bookshelf.
 

“So, now you’re all up to speed.” I finished with a flat little smile.
 

“You said you had questions.” He tossed the smile right back at me, his gaze still shuttered. “What do you want to know?”
 

My question hadn’t changed, neither had my inability to ask it.
Was it all a game or did you want me -- do you want me now?
 

Lifting my shoulders, I looked away. “You’ve answered them already.”
 

“All of them, lit--” He froze and I felt my heart do a back flip.
 

My eyes slowly shut, heat instantly coalescing low in my stomach at the words he had just stopped short of saying.
Little dove.
 

“Have I answered all of yours?” I whispered, my eyes still shut.
 

“All the ones I’ve asked.”
 

How the hell could he sound so self-possessed when I was splintering inside? I looked at him knowing I was starting to cry but unable to stop the tears. “What haven’t you asked?”
 

“Do you hate me?” His voice was level but both of his hands gripped his leg, one at the knee and the other wrapped around his ankle, the knuckles white from how hard he was squeezing. “Do you think I made the wrong choice?”
 

I blinked at the question. “Do I think saving me was the wrong choice?”
 

What kind of question was that!
 

“How I saved you,” he corrected. His voice had finally started to crack and he shut his mouth with a snap, his jaw flexing as his teeth started to grind.
 

My expression widened, the muscles around my eyes stretching as far as they could go. “You had another option?”
 

When he shrugged, I wanted to hit him.
 

“Answer me!”
 

His mouth opened then closed, making him look like a fish that had just jumped from its bowl. Seeing him flounder sent a small thrill shooting through me. Whether as Dino or Dean -- Ramirez was a man who knew the right word and when to use it. He’d had mere seconds to save me from Feo. He’d stared down
Jefe
after the door had been busted in and walked me out of that drug house with a duffel full of the old man’s heroin. He’d clearly fought other battles in the months since we parted and he had survived.
 

Yet here he was…at a loss…at last.
 

I repeated my demand, gently this time. “How can I answer you, Dean, if you don’t answer me?”
 

Dean shook his head. “I don’t know if there was another option, I’ll never know. What I did wasn’t based on training or reason. Fuck, thinking wasn’t part of the equation.”
 

He put his foot on the floor, braced himself with a hand on each knee and stared straight into my eyes. “It was pure impulse spurred by desire.”
 

I gave one slow nod as the answer sank in and then I closed my eyes. I couldn’t look at him and still say what I wanted to say. “You want me to forgive you?”
 

“Yes.”
 

I took a deep breath in, let it out with a glacial slowness. “For stripping me naked and tying me to the bed?”
 

He swallowed so hard I could hear it. “Yes.”
 

“For touching me when I pleaded with you to let me go?”
 

“Yes.” His voice cracked at the admission.
 

“For letting Manny watch?” Finishing the question, I opened my eyes.
 

Dean looked, for a second, like he was going to throw up but then he swallowed and nodded, some of the color returning to his blanched features.
 

I tilted my head, my chin angling up in partial denial. I was close to crying again, my nails digging into the palm of my hands as I fought not to. “And for abandoning me to strangers?”
 

He sucked a deep breath in. Exhaling, it sounded like my question had punctured his lung. When he spoke again, every word came out raw and bleeding. “You can’t -- you shouldn’t. I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”
 

“That’s for me to decide,” I whispered. I had already forgiven him, long ago. I forgave him during those early months when I waited each day for him to reappear. I forgave him again the week I cried myself to sleep thinking he would stay away and that I meant nothing to him. And what was the hope that had blossomed when I saw him at the library but another manifestation of that forgiveness?
 

I stood up, my legs shaking so badly I thought they might give out. “You want forgiveness, I want something, too.”
 

“Anything--”
 

I raised my hand to silence him. “This isn’t about earning some kind of absolution…”
 

Dean rose, took one long step forward and gripped my shoulders. “Tell me what you want.”
 

Even now I was incapable of saying the words. He was too damn beautiful -- the depthless green eyes, the sensuous, mobile lips. I was lying to myself if I believed he wanted the same thing -- wanted me.
 

Impulse. Desire.
 

He had said those words, more than once.
 

Impulse…desire…
 

Dean pulled me to him, his arms circling me as his mouth dropped to my throat. He murmured something, the words drowned by the thunder of blood in my head. He pressed his lips to the hollow below my ear.
 

“This…” He placed another kiss that had my whole face tingling. “This is what you want.”
 

In danger of being completely subsumed by my need for him, I tried to extract myself from his embrace.
 

“Water…” My throat and mouth had gone suddenly dry, parched by nerves. I pushed weakly at his chest. “Are you thirsty? Do you want a glass?”
 

He cinched me tight against his chest, his lips hovering at the corner of mine. “There’s only one cup I want to drink from, little dove.”
 

A jolt of need shot through my body. My knees abandoned me. Swooning like some idiot girl-child who had never been fucked, I clutched at his arms. My grip tightened as he gently bit the bottom corner of my mouth and I tried not to grind or moan.
 

“Let me take you into the bedroom.” His husky whisper sent a shiver through me. His hands gripped my ass, pulling me to him so that his hips molded against my soft lower stomach. “Let me do it right this time.”
 

His cock, thick and erect, pressed against my belly. I remembered the slide of it inside me, stretching my pussy as I rode him. The fat head had been like a battering ram gently wielded. I mewled like a hungry kitten at the thought of the merciless pleasure Dean would deliver once unleashed.
 

I managed a shallow nod and he scooped me up, overturning one of the dining room chairs. He carried me into the bedroom, placed me on the mattress on my back and covered me with his body. His fingers threaded through my hair, holding my head immobile as he ravaged my mouth.