Down in the wine cellar, Grier went through the dossiers one by one while she waited . . . and waited . . . and waited some more. . . .
Finally.
"Why didn't you tell me," she said, without looking behind herself.
Daniel took a long time in answering, but he didn't disappear: Whenever he was around, she could feel the slightest of drafts, and as long as that was brushing the back of her neck, she knew he was still with her.
I thought you would hate him. And then you and he would have no one left.
"So you knew what happened."
Daniel came around the table, one hand planted on his hip, the other buried in his blond hair so that the curls went halo on him. I was high when it all went down . . . so I just thought it was so funny, Dad bursting in with three guys in black. I figured it was his version of an intervention--all comic-book hard-core. But as they put the needle in my arm, he started to scream and that's when I realized . . . it wasn't funny.
Daniel's eyes met hers. I'd never seen him that way before. To me, he was always so aloof and unemotional. It was . . . the reaction I had been looking for all my life, the visceral love I'd been after. See, I was like Mom, not you and him. I wanted more than that chilly disapproval and I got it, only it was too late. . . . He shrugged. In retrospect, I was too needy, and he didn't know what to do with a son who wasn't cut from military cloth. Oil and water. I should have handled it differently, but I didn't.
"And neither did he."
It's not anyone's fault. It just . . . was.
Grier leaned back in her chair, thinking of the way their family had aligned, she and their father on one side, Daniel and their mother on the other.
It wasn't his fault, her brother said with a kind of stern tone she'd never heard from him before. The way I ended . . . he screamed, Grier . . . and then as I was dying, I heard him say, over and over again, Danny boy . . . my Danny boy--
As Daniel's voice broke, she was compelled to get up and go to him. Before she knew what she was doing, she put her arms around . . .
Herself.
Please don't hate him, he said from the far corner, having shifted quick as a blink.
"Please don't run," she countered.
I'm sorry. . . . I have to go . . .
He disappeared before her as if he couldn't hold his emotions in any longer, his despair lingering in the cold spot he left behind.
She stood for a time, staring at the vacant space he'd just occupied. She and her father had been two of a kind, and in their intellectual accord, they'd locked the others out, hadn't they. Her mother and brother had taken to their addictions while she and her father had been in lockstep with the law and their careers and their external passions.
She'd known it on some level . . . and maybe that had been part of her drive to save Daniel. Her brother's addiction and her efforts to pull him out of it had been the link they hadn't found outside of childhood: She had always blamed herself--and for a brief moment tonight, she had blamed her father.
Now . . . she was angry at that man with the eye patch. Viciously angry. If Daniel had lived, maybe they'd have figured it all out. Forgiven each other, all three of them, for the past. Moved along to . . . something that their family had had only on the surface. After all, privilege and money and breeding could cover up a multitude of problems--and didn't ensure that the closeness on a Christmas card was actually more than a pose once a year for a photographer.
Shaking her head, she went back to her seat and stared at the dossiers.
Isaac was going to even the score for her family, she thought. By being the one who brought down that maniacal bastard who had killed her brother and all but ruined her father.
Flipping through the photographs, she recognized each of the men now, because she'd gone through the pages over and over again while waiting for Daniel to show. There were a hundred or so pictures, but only a total of some forty men, with multiple shots illustrating them through the years. Out of the lot of them, there were five that she recognized--or at least thought she'd seen before. Hard to know . . . on some level, they looked so similar.
Isaac's picture was in there and she returned to it. The photo was a candid, caught on the fly. He was looking directly into the camera, but she had the impression he didn't know he was being photographed.
Hard. God, he looked so hard. As if he were prepared to kill.
The birth date under his name validated the age she knew him to be, and there were a couple of notes about foreign countries he'd been to. And then there was one line that she kept coming back to: Must be provided moral imperative. She had seen the phrase under only two other men's profiles.
"How are you holding up?"
Grier jumped at the sound of Isaac's voice, the chair under her butt screeching across the floor. Grabbing her chest, she said, "Jesus . . . how do you do that?"
Because, all things considered, she would have preferred not to get caught staring at his picture.
"Sorry, I just thought you might like a coffee." He came over, put a mug down, and then retreated back to the doorway. "I should have knocked."
As he paused between the jambs, he was now just in the hooded sweatshirt he'd used as a pillow, his shoulders oh, so wide beneath its gray expanse. And considering what the last forty-eight hours had been like, he looked amazingly strong and focused.
Her eyes went to the coffee. So thoughtful. So very thoughtful. "Thank you . . . and sorry. I guess I'm just not used to . . ." A man like him.
"I'll announce my presence from now on."
She picked up the mug and took a sip. Perfect--with just the right amount of sugar she liked in it. He'd watched her, she thought. Saw how much she'd added at some point, even though she hadn't been aware of it. And he'd remembered.
"You lookin' at me?" When she glanced up, he nodded down at the dossiers. "My picture?"
"Ah . . . yes." Grier tapped the phrase. "What exactly does this mean?"
He walked over and leaned in. As he stared at the details under his face, the tension in him was palpable, his big body tight all over. "They had to give me a reason."
"Before you'd kill someone."
He nodded and began to walk around, going over to the wine bottles. He took one out, looked at the label, returned it . . . moved on to another one.
"What kinds of reasons did they give you?" she asked, well aware that his answers about this meant way too much to her.
He paused with a Bordeaux cradled in his hands. "The kind that made it seem right."
"Like what."
His eyes flipped toward her and she had a moment of pause. They were so grim and hollow.
"Tell me," she whispered.
He put the bottle back. Went a couple of feet farther down the wooden racks. "I only did men. No women. There were some who could do the females, but not me. And I'm not going to give you specific examples, but the political-affiliation nonsense just wasn't enough for me. You kill a bunch of people or rape some women or blow some shi--er, stuff . . . up? Very different story. And I needed to see some proof with my own eyes--video, photograph . . . bodies that were marked."
"Did you ever refuse an assignment?"
"Yes."
"So you wouldn't have killed my brother."
"Never," he said without hesitation. "And they wouldn't have even asked me. The way Matthias saw it, I was a weapon that worked under prescribed circumstances, and he took me out of his holster at appropriate times. And you know . . . I realized I had to leave XOps when it dawned on me that I was no different from the people I was killing. They'd all felt as if whatever atrocities they were committing were justifiable. Well, so did I and that made us mirror images of each other really. Sure, an objective viewpoint would have agreed with me over them, but that wasn't enough."
Grier let out a long exhale. He was what she'd always believed in, she thought.
"How so?" he said.
With a flush, she guessed she'd spoken aloud. "I always told Daniel . . ." She paused, wondering if she had the stuffing left in her to go there. "I told him that it was never too late. That the things he'd done in the past didn't have to define his future. I think toward the end, he'd given up on himself. He'd stolen from my father and me and his friends. He'd been arrested burglarizing a house and also on felony theft of an auto and then while trying to hold up a liquor store. That's how I got involved with doing pro bono. I was in and out of various jails for the five years before his death. I felt like I wasn't helping him--but maybe I could someone else, you know? And I did . . . I did help people."
"Grier--"
She waved him off as her voice hitched. She was finished with crying. There was going to be no more of that and no more dwelling on what couldn't be changed. "Do you want to go through this now?"
As she indicated the dossiers, he shrugged and went to the door, settling into a lean against the jamb. "I really just came to check on you."
In the still air, his low-lidded eyes warmed her from the inside out. Such a contradiction he was . . . between his trained-killer job and his Boy Scout heart.
She glanced down at his picture. "You look like you're tracking something here."
"I was about to get on a plane, actually. I had the feeling someone was watching, but I couldn't tell from which direction. I was waiting at an airbase to go overseas." He cleared his throat like he was sweeping the memory from his mind. "Your father's passed out upstairs. He spent about two hours on the phone, as far as I can tell."
"It's been that long?" She glanced at her watch, and as she shifted her wrist around, she became aware of all the kinks in her body. Stretching her arms over her head, her spine popped. "How are things going?"
"I don't know. Before he lay down, he told me that as long as we can make it until tomorrow night, we're in business. He's pulled multiple contacts from the CIA, NSA, and the presidential cabinet, and we're meeting right here so that I don't have to move. The missing piece is Jim Heron--we're still waiting for him to get back--although if we have to, we'll go forward without him."
"Have you gotten a . . . response? You know, from them."
"No."
Fear tickled across her ribs and hit her heart like a battery charge. "Can you last until tomorrow night."
"If that's the way it has to be, yes."
He seemed so sure, and she needed to believe in that confidence: It would be a tragedy beyond measure for him to be cut down now, when he was so close to the freedom he sought.
Strange, that someone she had met only days before suddenly seemed so important to her.
"I'm proud of you," she said, running her finger down his photograph.
"That means a lot to me." Pause. "And thank you for showing me the way. I never would have been able to do this without you."
"Without my father, you mean," she countered softly. "He has the contacts."
"No. You're the one."
She frowned, thinking that was a funny way of phrasing it. "I want you to answer something for me."
"Name it."
Her eyes flipped up to his. "What are your chances. Realistically."
"Of getting out of this alive?"
"Yes." When he just shook his head, she frowned at him. "Remember, we're so done with the whole `shelter the little woman' routine."
"Fifty-fifty."
Well, didn't that give her a knot in her throat. "That bad, huh."
"Do you want something to eat along with the coffee? I'm no chef, but I saw some leftovers in the fridge and I can work a microwave." When she begged off, he tacked on, "You have to eat."
"I'd rather have sex with you," she blurted.
Isaac coughed. Actually coughed, like someone had punched him in the solar plexus.
"Sorry if that's too blunt." She shrugged. "But social graces are waaaaay down my list of things to worry about right now. And I have a feeling I'm not going to see you after tomorrow night, either because you're swept up into federal custody or because . . ." She took a deep breath. "I want a proper piece of you before you go. Something to remember you with that's in my skin, not just my brain. Upstairs was so fast and furious . . . I want to pay attention and remember."
He was silent for a long time. "I'd think you'd want to forget as much of this as you can."
"Not you . . . I don't want to forget you." The corner of her mouth lifted a little. "Although I don't think I could."
When he stayed where he was, she pushed her chair back and stood up. The distance between them took three strides to cross, and as she came at him, he straightened; then he tugged his sweatshirt down like he was tidying himself up.
Grier rose onto her tiptoes and touched his face, putting her palms on his five o'clock shadow. "I'm never going to forget you."
As he licked his lips, like he was hungry for exactly what she was after, she took his hand and drew him deeper into the wine cellar, pulling him fully inside, shutting them in together.
Unlike the first time, when she'd been all wound up and seeking only more of the cyclone, this was about him, the man, not her own internal buzzing.
This was all about him.
As she leaned in to kiss him, he put his big hands on her thin wrists and held her off gently. "This didn't help upstairs."
"Yes. It did. You just didn't believe me."
"Grier . . ." Her name was a combination of confusion and desperation: why spelled with five new letters instead of the usual three.
"I don't want to talk anymore," she murmured, fixated on his mouth.
"You sure?"
When she nodded, he bent down and pressed his lips against hers, drawing her into him. He was fully aroused, more than ready for her, and yet he moved her back.
Before she could protest, she heard the click of the lock sliding into place and then those warm hands slipped under her shirt and slid around her rib cage, going to the small of her back. As she felt a gentle, lifting pressure, her feet came up off the floor and she was carried over to the table.
Pushing the dossiers to the side, Isaac laid her out flat, his palms moving to her breasts as he bent over her and kept their mouths fused. Her yoga pants were off her legs a moment later, but instead of tossing them, he put them over the chair she'd been in. Smart. No telling whether she was going to have to get dressed fast in the middle.
A subtle pull and her hips were right at the edge of the table . . . and then he broke their kiss and sank down onto his knees.
If she'd thought she'd seen his eyes burn before, it was nothing compared to what they were doing now. Frost had never been so hot.
As she got an idea where he was headed, she sat up. "But I want this to be for both of us--"
"You said you wanted to remember something." His palms slid up to the tops of her thighs and squeezed. "So lie back and let me do my thing."
That tongue of his made a reappearance--and didn't that make her get on board with the plan.
"G'on now," he murmured with that Southern drawl. "Lie on back and let me take care of you. I promise to go slow . . . real slow."
His hands drifted down to her knees and spread her legs . . . and she gave herself up to him. Following his instructions to the letter, she felt the hard table against her shoulder blades and the cool air on her thighs and a wild heat in her blood.
As he stared at her from beneath his brows, he looked as if he were going to consume her.
And she was ready to be his meal.
Ducking his head, he went right where she needed him, putting his mouth on her sex through the thin silk panties she wore. A rush of delicious heat bloomed and her hand snapped out, grabbing the pants, dragging them over, putting them in her mouth to keep herself from calling out.
If it felt this good already, she was going to get noisy: Yes, the door to the cellar was heavy and her father was supposedly asleep, but she didn't want to take any chances.
Isaac groaned against her as he nuzzled at her through the silk, and then he ran his tongue up the fragile strip that covered her. On a curse, she arched hard, her nails scratching the wood beneath her as his hands dug into her thighs and her teeth bit into the cotton. And then there was nothing separating them. One moment his mouth was on the silk; the next, she felt a yank on her hips and heard a tearing sound as the panties gave way--
Oh, God . . . his wet tongue slipped into the heart of her and dragged upward, parting her, sliding slick against slick.
He did go slow.
As his big palms locked on her hips and held her down, he took his sweet time, kissing her and sucking at her, that tongue of his working its magic, only to be replaced with the hot, locking suction of his lips. All the while, he stared up at her, watching her breasts surge as she writhed under his mouth.
Abruptly, as if he needed to touch what he was seeing, his hands went under her shirt again and honed in on what he seemed captivated with. Unleashing the front clasp of her bra, he took possession of her on both sides, his thumbs rubbing at her nipples.
Her breath pumped in and out of her open mouth, and just as she was about to orgasm, Isaac inched back and licked his glossy lips.
"Come for me," he said. "I want to feel it."
And then he was against her once more, his tongue penetrating her--which was all it took. Her release rocked her, rolling out from her sex and taking over every inch of her body. As the swirl of sparks consumed her, she was dimly aware of him groaning, as if he felt her clenching pleasure firsthand.
He didn't stop there. Swirling, lapping, sucking . . . he kept going, spreading her legs even wider, holding her in place as he marked her memory as sure as he marked her sex. She would never forget this--
One of his long fingers, or maybe two, eased inside, and the pressure and stretching sent her right over the edge again. As another orgasm fired off, her hands locked on his forearms, her nails sinking into his flesh as her spine torqued and that blast of pleasure flooded her from the inside out.
And still he didn't stop.
He was hot and he was wild and he was relentless.
He was the lover she would never, ever forget.
Much less get over, she feared.
Oh, sweet Jesus . . .
Isaac looked up from between Grier's legs and nearly climaxed just at the sight of her. She was all woman undone, the remnants of her white panties around her hips, her black shirt around her throat, her bra halves lying to the sides. Her breasts were tight at the pink tips and her face flushed and her belly moving on a rhythm of surges and relentings as she worked herself against him.
Those pants in her mouth were one of the sexiest parts of it.
And the taste of her was even hotter than that.
Isaac could have stayed where he was for hours, but with each passing moment he ran the risk of an interruption and he wanted to finish this properly.
Rising up and looming above her, he bent her knees to her chest, his cock twitching on the edge of orgasm at the sight of the glistening heart of her all swollen and open for him. There was no ditching his pants--he pushed them down just enough to spring his erection . . . which wept at the tip as he thought of where he was going. Sweeping his hand over his wet mouth, he brought his palm to the head of his shaft, slicking himself up even more before he curled the end of his spine and brought them together.
Pushing in, he watched as he made the connection, seeing her part to accommodate his girth, hearing her moan as he went deeper and staked his claim.
"Oh, f--" The gentleman in him swallowed the curse. The caveman in him had to keep talking. "Look at you. . . . I want to leave something behind . . . in you."
His eyes shot to hers as he began to move, pulling in and out, in and out . . . and then he went back to looking at where they were joined, the gloss on him making his balls tight. Bending down to her breasts, he sucked a nipple into his mouth and worked it with his tongue . . . until the rhythm below made keeping that lock on her impossible: He'd meant what he'd said about going slowly, but the good intention didn't last. The sex had a momentum of its own, and it wasn't long at all before the table groaned under the force of his thrusts and he had to grip her waist to hold her where he wanted her.
As she went rigid under him, Isaac came hard as well, clamping down on his molars to keep from making noise, his lids squeezing shut even though he'd wanted to watch her face as what he was doing to her took her to another release.
With his body jerking into hers and him filling her up . . . he was as satiated as a man in the desert who'd had a sip of water.
He wasn't nearly finished with her. She wanted memories? Roger that.
Keeping them joined, he tugged the pants out of her mouth, scooped her up, and brought her lips to his, kissing her deeply as he easily carried her weight off the table. Positioning her against the smooth door, he gripped the back of her legs and started moving once again. With her hands tangled in his hair, and the blazing heat and urgent energy taking over again, the kiss couldn't last--and he didn't last much longer than the seal of their lips did. He came hard into her, collapsing against her as her own orgasm milked at him.
Recovery was a luxury he didn't allow himself much of, because he was well aware of his weight against her and the fact that her back was pressing into something hard and also that her father was in the house and . . .
So many damn ands with them.
Isaac slowly eased her down until her feet were on the ground, and as he slipped out of her, he didn't like the cold air on his cock. Her sex was much better . . . far, far better.
As he kissed her, the way her lips moved over his told him that in a different world, in different circumstances . . . this definitely would have been a beginning for them--in spite of all that should have kept them apart like family and money and education.
But that was not their reality, was it.
"Let me get you something to clean up with," he said quietly as he tugged his pants back into place.
After he kissed her again, he ducked out the door, and as he shut her up inside, he paused and bowed his head. He'd lied to her.
His chances were nowhere close to fifty-fifty: Matthias was absolutely, positively going to get him. The question was just how much talking he could do into the right ears before his old boss came out of the shadows and claimed him. One thing had always been true about the head of XOps: Matthias never gave up. Ever. And even if his world was crumbling around him, he would still take his vengeance. Somehow, someway.
That wasn't going to stop Isaac from taking a shot at spilling the beans, however.
Much better to die having tried to do the right thing . . . and leave his woman thinking something less than bad of him.
Much better.
