“That’s real classy, Jace. And for your information, I wasn’t going to shack up with Ramsey. I was trying to find out why he would involve Ryan in this shit.”
Jace took a threatening step forward. “Don’t bring Ryan into this, dammit! This isn’t about a kidnapping. This is about you and your fucking trust issues!”
Determined not to back down, Dayne closed the distance between them until she was looking right up into his face. “It is about a kidnapping, you idiot! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Yuri has nothing to do with any of this beyond the weapons. It was Antonio that ordered the kidnapping, and Antonio that put a separate contract on me. Antonio sent people after you and arranged the snipers at the park. That’s how they knew where we were even though you lost them before you got there. He’s been hazing us this whole time! And I’ve been buying into his bullshit because I was too stupid to listen to my gut instincts.”
“So what has your gut been telling you?”
“To leave you and Ryan and save my own ass.”
The gold flecks in his greenish brown eyes shot sparks. “Then what are you waiting for. Go!”
His actions belied his words. Even as he told her to leave, his hands closed around her biceps in a vise-like grip. Before she could react, Jace lowered his mouth and covered her lips in a hot, drugging kiss.
Shock rendered her still and silent for the span of two breaths, before a wave of heat consumed her. She yanked her arms from his grip and flung them around his neck. The half-remembered kiss on the beach had nothing on the wild flame of desire driving her to meet his onslaught and fight back with her own. He tasted divine, of things she couldn’t name, of abstracts like danger and safety and loyalty and all the things that made up the tenuous balance of morality intrinsic to Jace McKay.
It was several moments before the sensual fog in her brain cleared enough for coherent thought.
“Ramsey’s angry with me,” she murmured against the softness of his mouth.
He paused briefly, brushing a teasing kiss against her lower lip. “Why?”
“Let’s just say I refused his hospitality.”
His dark chuckle lasted long enough for him to draw her T-shirt over her head and toss it aside. Once their lips met again, the time for conversation was done. She was lost in him, surrounded by him. The scent of him in her nose, the taste of him on her tongue and the heat of their bodies mingled together. The intensity was astonishing. Lips molded together, teeth clicking as their kisses grew deeper and became more desperate.
His hands roved over her body, smoothing, teasing, and enticing her along the path of desire. Her belly shrank reflexively as his hand deftly unfastened her cargos. A large, warm palm settled on the sensitive skin below her belly button. She squirmed, desperate to feel him closer.
Her hands twisted in his clothes, pushing them away until she reached bare, warm skin. Jace was hard and hot and male. It was just as she remembered in her half-forgotten daydreams, and yet more real than she could’ve ever imagined.
“Tell me you need this, Dayne,” he rasped. “I need the words.”
“Please Jace, take me to bed. I need you.”
He made a low sound of hunger and swept her into his arms. She held tight, lips still whispering over the salty sweetness of his skin when he carried her to the bed. Soft mattress at her back, hard man above, every muscle strained toward the completion he offered.
She was wet, so wet, hot and ready for him. Her body was screaming its desire as he spread her legs to accommodate his bulk. In that moment, when both were poised on the edge of reason, he stared into her eyes with startling intensity. She could not have looked away had she wanted to.
The joining was wild, a melding of not only flesh but soul. They moved together in perfect cadence, bodies synchronized, every nerve straining for fulfillment. Long before that goal, before climax, before she was lost to the mindless primal dance, Dayne knew that this one moment in time would change everything, and she wasn’t a bit sorry.
Chapter Eighteen
“Do you remember that day on the beach?”
Dayne idly traced the lines of Jace’s spine while she waited for an answer. He seemed to be considering her question. Lying belly down across the bed, his wide shoulders left barely enough room for her. Enjoying the feel of his supple skin, she quickly became distracted by the beauty of his body.
He looked as if he’d been fashioned by a sculptor before God covered him in satiny caramel-colored skin. She lightly ran her fingers up his spine, bumping over vertebrae, sliding across hard muscle and ending on the soft pink tissue around the healing shoulder wound. For all his male perfection, he was riddled with scars.
A rose-colored slash beneath his left shoulder blade, a set of five pale lines on his right side and a pale dent just to the left of the small of his back were only the tip of the iceberg. Yet, every one of those physical imperfections was symbolic of the life he lived. Without his scars he was nothing more than Oliver standing on her doorstep using a cheap pickup line. That was what made him most attractive. Jace was a real man. He wasn’t a cardboard cutout that worked out at the gym and honed his body to look good in front of a mirror. Every muscle, sinew, and bone beneath her hands was useful. They kept him alive.
“I remember everything.” When he finally spoke, his voice was a delicious rumble. “You smelled like coconut.”
“Coconut and sweat maybe. It had to have been days since I had access to a shower.”
“I liked it.”
She was glad he couldn’t see her expression. The grin on her face felt idiotic. She couldn’t imagine how it looked. “If you liked it, why did you stop?”
“It wasn’t the right time.”
“Because of Ramsey?”
“You always had a blind spot when it came to that Russian bastard, but no. I didn’t want to be one of your regrets. If this had happened a year ago, I would’ve been.”
Dayne mulled his words over in her mind. Would she have regretted him? Probably so, and he would’ve regretted her too. That’s what he wasn’t saying.
She sucked in a deep breath and asked the necessary question. “Will you regret this tomorrow?”
He rolled to his back, stacking his hands beneath his head. A devilish smile played at the corners of his sexy mouth. “The only thing I’ll regret tomorrow is not being able to make love to you at least a dozen more times tonight.”
Make love? Was that what this was? Shit! How did she know if he meant it or if it was just a phrase? Should she ask? Or was she sweating details for nothing?
“I was angry with you in Texas,” he confided, his gravel tone low and warm. “You refused to see that the lies Vitale told were putting us in danger.”
“You were right about him. You were right about a lot of things.”
He laughed, the sound tickling her fingers where they rested against his skin. “I could get used to you saying that.”
“Don’t count on it.” She thought about the way she’d left things with Ramsey. It hadn’t been pretty.
“What are you thinking?” he prodded.
“Nothing, everything, I’m not sure what to think.”
“Why not?”
“The whole reason that arms deal fell apart a year ago was because I stopped sleeping with Ramsey.”
Jace went still, staring down the length of his chest at Dayne.
“He got angry when I stopped spending a few extra nights in town while I picked up the shipments.”
“And?”
“He accused me of sleeping with you. I denied it. But I don’t think he ever really believed me.”
“Then we parted ways.”
“Yes, and he figured it was over. But he never stopped hating you. He still hates you.”
“Enough to have someone put me in the ground?”
“You’re not that easy to kill, Jace.”
“Not unless I’m at the top of a hit list with a huge bounty on my head and a lot of assets after me.”
She rocked back, drawing her legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. Resting her chin on her knees, she sighed. “I think Ramsey sent Antonio the contract on Kiryll.”
“Why?”
“Because Ramsey tried to convince me that Kiryll was killed by a disgruntled buyer after stealing weapons from Yuri.”
Jace’s belly laugh told her he agreed wholeheartedly with her opinion of that particular theory.
“Ramsey also said Yuri’s selling Dragunovs to a dirty Fed.”
He went still. “Tyra Cantwell. That’s what she’s been up to. She’s buying weapons from Yuri. That’s why she was there the night I shot Kiryll.”
“Ugh! Tyra Cantwell? That’s who you met earlier?”
His chuckle told her he wasn’t a bit sorry. “She’s a good source.”
“And a good lay, or so I hear.”
“Not that good.”
She lobbed a pillow at him. “You’re pissed about Ramsey Vitale and you’ve been fucking that government whore?”
“Not since the beach in Texas.”
Dayne blinked, stunned speechless by the admission.
“I haven’t been with anyone since that day.”
The ramifications of what he was saying hit her hard. She watched, wide eyed, as he sat up. His rock hard abs rippled beneath his skin as he leaned forward, tugging her closer.
“I never thought…”
Her words trailed off as he began kissing her in earnest. He covered her body with the hard length of his, every inch of their skin molding together until she couldn’t decide where she ended and he began.
The world fell away. Hit lists, conspiracies, and dirty agents took a backseat to the sweet longing between two people who publicly couldn’t stand each other and yet privately couldn’t live without.
Before, their lovemaking had been wild, wanton, a primal claiming of two people. Now it was slow and deliberate. He watched her face, eyes searching her expression for the truth as he entered her body and brought her to the brink where pleasure and pain mingled into something exquisite. Dayne hid nothing, wanting him to see exactly what she felt when he thrust into her body.
She cried his name when she climaxed. The sound of it breaking over her lips was the sweetest thing Jace had ever heard. Emotion swept him in a warm tidal wave that drowned out the mindless ritual of sex and transcended into something more. The very substance of their souls blended, and when his own climax overtook him he knew beyond a doubt that he belonged in this moment with this woman, with Dayne.
He wondered what she was thinking when he rolled to his side, taking her with him. Her body fit perfectly alongside him, every curve a match for his until they lay like two pieces of the same puzzle. He had never been a romantic. He didn’t know much about the words women loved to hear after sex or how to let her know he never wanted another woman as long as he lived.
She’d asked about the beach, more than a year past. Jace remembered it. It was difficult to forget something that had been such a defining moment in his life, though the whole incident had begun with a colossal disagreement. Just the two of them on a spit of sand in South Texas, his plane and two cases of AK-47’s in the background. He had admired her mix of bravery and recklessness from the get-go. But kissing her had changed everything.
“What are you thinking?” she whispered.
“I was thinking about Texas.”
“Still?”
“Do you remember what the argument was about?”
“You were sure that Ramsey was stealing the guns from Yuri.”
“I still think that.”
“You were right.”
Having her agree with him was nice, but he’d never really minded their arguments. “Do you think Kiryll was helping him?”
“It’s possible. Although Kiryll never seemed that clever.”
“Or he was just really good at hiding it.”
“What does all of this have to do with a hit list, Jace?”
He paused to put it all together in his head. “I think Tyra Cantwell and Yuri had a deal for the Dragunovs, but when Tyra went to pick up the goods they were already gone.”
“You think Ramsey was double crossing Yuri?”
“Yuri gets upset, Kiryll gets nervous and tells Vitale he’s going to tattle to his brother.”
Dayne stiffened. “Kiryll would’ve figured he was safe if he told the truth. Yuri loved his brother.”
“But Vitale couldn’t let Yuri find out he’d been stealing so he put a contract on Kiryll.”
“You get the contract and boom; he’s got a two for one. Kiryll’s dead and you’re at the top of Yuri’s shit list.” She fiddled with a loose strand of her hair, thinking it through. “So where does the actual hit list come in?”
Jace sighed. “I don’t know. That was what I hoped to find out from Tyra.”
“Bitch,” Dayne grumbled.
His chuckle slid into a groan as he looked at the clock. “You want the first watch?”
“No,” she said on a yawn.
“All right then. I’ll wake you in a few hours.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Hey Dayne, are you and Jace getting married?”
It was Ryan. That voice couldn’t possibly belong to anyone else. No other person she knew of could be so disgustingly cheerful and inquisitive at the ungodly hour of eight in the morning.
“Go away, Ryan.”
“Jace said I should get you up.”
She covered her head with an extra pillow. “Tell Jace he can go to hell.”
“Maybe when he gets back.”
The pillow came off. “Where is he?”
“He went to get breakfast. I’m starving. Aren’t you hungry?”
“No.”
“I am.”
Ryan climbed onto the bed and flopped across the pillows. He propped his chin on his chubby fist and stared her right in the eyes. She wanted to go back to sleep. She needed to go back to sleep. Her body was beginning to rebel against the treatment she’d been giving it lately. Considering the long day ahead, that treatment wasn’t going to improve anytime soon.
“So, are you Dayne?”
“Am I what?”
“Are you going to marry Jace?”
“I’m not a marrying kind of girl.”
“What kind of girl are you?”
“The tired kind.”
Unable to keep still, he’d started wagging his feet back and forth. The bed followed suit, Dayne bouncing up and down with the mattress. It was annoying. Almost as annoying as the questions she couldn’t answer.