Crazy Wild (20 page)

A weary sigh left him before he turned and met her gaze.

“You don't owe me anything.”

She nodded slowly in agreement. She didn't owe him anything, but she couldn't forget what he'd been through, the look on his face in those photographs as he'd watched J.T. Chronopolous die.

“And I can't be bought,” he said, his voice a little firmer, his gaze more direct. “Not like this.”

“I'm not buying.” She didn't know how to explain everything to him, how to tell him what she needed, what she was feeling—which was awful, and scared, and so horribly alone. “I'm . . . I'm trapped.”

She wasn't going to cry. The last thing she wanted was his pity. She'd weighed her options and her chances in Prague—and she'd miscalculated everything.

She hadn't really expected to die.

She hadn't expected to meet anyone like him at the end.

“Cesar Raoul Eduardo Rivera.”

A slight grin twitched the corner of his mouth, and his thumb slid across the back of her hand again. “Nobody calls me that, not even my mother.”

“Creed,”
she whispered, letting the name fill her heart, feeling the strength and warmth of his body so close to her, but not close enough, not yet. It had been so long since she'd had anyone of her own, and she didn't want to die with the sins of Karlovy Vary still on her. “Please.”

PLEASE
. Geezus.
Everything Creed knew, everything he stood for was telling him this was just one big mistake, but
God,
being with her felt so right.

And she'd said
please,
which tore him up. What was she thinking, to ask a stranger for sex? Because she had to know that's where it was going to end up—the two of them hot and naked and all over each other. He didn't see any way around it.

His gaze went over her again, up the length of all her fishnet-covered curves to her face.

Yeah, she knew. He could see it in her eyes.

He was doomed.

He brought his hand up to her face and gently cupped her cheek, then leaned sideways and pressed his mouth to her temple, just to feel the softness of her skin—and she was soft, incredibly, seductively soft, so female. He slid his mouth lower, closer to her ear. Her hair was damp and cool where a stray tendril curled onto her cheek. The flowery scent of her hair spray had faded. In its place was a more complex mix, a light, windblown muskiness that said “woman” to him, one-hundred-percent pure girl; a deeper, unnameable essence that was simply, irrevocably
her
—and the trace of fear he'd known was there. He could always smell fear; from fifty yards he could smell someone's fear.

He'd smelled J.T.'s, and it had smelled like his own, the scent binding them across the short, muddy stretch of the guerrilla camp that had separated them—separated life from death.

But this—he squeezed his eyes shut—this didn't have anything to do with J.T. This was about her and what she made him feel.

He breathed her in, letting his mouth roam even lower, down to the delicate angle of her jaw and the tender skin of her throat, lower still across her shoulder—and satisfaction flowed into him. Her clothes, what little there were of them, and her skin, smelled like him, from his coat. He inhaled more deeply. He liked smelling himself on her. He liked it a lot.

Moving back up, he nuzzled his face into the curve of her neck, and his satisfaction deepened, a new scent coming into play. She was trembling, her pulse fluttering, and she was softening ever so slightly, becoming . . . amenable.

Please,
she'd said, and he'd wanted to devour her.

He'd won her tonight, through strength and cunning and skill. Fought for her and won.

He wasn't completely uncivilized, not here in this place, not like he'd been in other places, at other times—but he'd still won her, and he wanted to claim what he'd won.

Smoothing his hand up into her hair, he lifted his head and met her gaze for one more moment. It was her last chance to stop this, and when she didn't, he lowered his mouth to hers and gave himself up to the biggest mistake of his life. It was the sweetest thing he'd ever done—to sink into her kiss, to lick her mouth and feel her teeth with his tongue, to lave her lips and hold her close. The smell of her was like a balm to his soul, soft skin, warm scent, sweet woman sighing in his mouth and firing up
all
of his cylinders. He pulled her close, loving the feel of her, the life of her.

It had been too long since he'd done this, lost himself in a woman.

He was in so much trouble. Where the hell was Dylan? Or Skeeter? He needed the cavalry, right now, somebody to come and save him—because he wasn't going to save himself. Not when Cody Stark tasted so beautiful, like sex and heaven.

No way. Not tonight.

I'M
worried about Creed being upstairs with that woman,” Skeeter said, flipping open the wallet she'd just pulled out of Creed's coat. “I think it's just asking for trouble.”

They were working fast, getting everything out of the pockets, seeing what the jungle boy had come up with for the night. Dylan figured they had about five more minutes before Royce and his gang made it to the main office.

“Trouble?” He looked up from a folded piece of stationery. There was a phone number written on the front, along with a few words in Dari on the back. “What have you got?”

“Bruno Walmann's wallet.”

He grinned. Creed was damn good. “You said yourself that she was done in. There's no way in hell she can get away from him, not here.”

“Well, that's the problem,” she said, setting the wallet aside and digging her hand a little deeper into the same pocket. “I don't think she wants to get away from him.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, watching her pull out a blocky-looking wristwatch.

Her eyes lit up. “Yikes.”

“Put it on the desk and forget it,” he ordered. The last thing he needed right now was for her to get sidetracked on the tracking device somebody had used to chase down Dominika Starkova. A.k.a. Cody Stark.

With obvious reluctance, she set the tracker aside and dug back into the pocket. “She didn't take her eyes off him, not from the instant you guys walked in,” she said, pulling out a soft, crumpled-up bit of something that was very white.

What in the world?
he wondered, watching her untwist the small item.

“What is that?” he asked when she held it up and he still didn't have a clue what it was.

Amazingly, Skeeter took off her glasses to give the thing a closer inspection before she answered him. She stretched it out a little, and a funny look came over her face before she lifted her pale blue eyes and met his gaze across the length of the desk. He could just see the end of her scar under the brim of her hat, where it cut across her eyebrow, but her nose was so cute—kind of short and kind of a button—and her cheeks were so baby soft, there was no help for it, he felt like a pervert. When all a guy could see was her body, black leather, and tattoos, it was easy to forget how young she was.

But that face. God, twenty years old or not, scar or no scar, that face made her look like jailbait, and “jailbait” was looking utterly dismayed by the thing in her hand.

“This . . . this is what I'm talking about,” she said, giving the thing a little shake where it dangled off her fingertips, her voice rising a bit at the end. “This is
Tuesday.
Saturday's cousin.”

Oh.

Oh, shit.

He didn't have to ask what Creed was doing with Dominika Starkova's underwear in his pocket. He was a guy. He knew—and he couldn't believe Creed was going there.

Well, Creed wasn't, not on this op. No way in hell. Women like Dominika Starkova ate jungle boys for lunch. Hell, she'd been running with the Russian Mafia for months.

Son of a bitch.

“Don't worry,” he said, his words strong with conviction. “They're not going to be up there long enough to get into trouble.”

Skeeter arched a brow in his direction, her expression one of pure incredulity.

“Okeydokey, Mr. Know-it-all, but the way they were looking at each other it sure looked to me like they needed Commando Condoms 101 and a safe sex lecture. Didn't you feel the vibe coming off the two of them? Fifty bucks says he's already kissing her.”

Dylan didn't know what bothered him more: Skeeter referring to him as Mr. Know-it-all, or the word sex coming out of her mouth.

“Creed is a professional.”

“Creed is a man.”

He wanted to ask her what she knew about men, but he didn't dare for fear of what she might say. He didn't want her knowing anything about men—especially men with women's underwear in their coat pockets.

What in the hell was Creed thinking?

C
HAPTER

21

B
LACK SATIN,
soft skin, silky mouth
—Creed was going down in flames. Everything was moving so fast. They were up against the door, and she had her tongue in his mouth and her hand halfway down his pants, and he was nearly electrified with pleasure.

Geezus
. How could he have forgotten what this felt like? How incredibly, mind-blowingly good it felt to have a woman touching him?

He needed to slow things down a little, though, help her out. She was a panic attack in the making, all over him—which he loved, but at this rate, and if she actually got her hand all the way down his pants, it was going to be over in about two minutes whether he figured out how to get her out of her fishnet or not.

And he had just enough clearheaded thinking left in his brain to know he didn't want that. It would be so freakin' stupid to come in her hand, when he had the chance to come inside her.

Just the thought sent another wave of heat surging through his body. He rocked against her, all but begging her to find those last few inches down to home base.

But the fishnet—
cripes
. No zipper, no buttons, no snaps, no nothing, and not enough stretch. How did she get into the thing? Paint it on?

“Cody, I—” He was starting to ask that exact question when something gave way, some little cut thread at the top, and suddenly the whole bodysuit was unraveling faster than he could keep up.

“Oh,” she said, grabbing for her waist, but she was way too late.

Oh, yeah.
This was amazing. He had a handful of black thread with more falling off of her every second, and the more he tried to stop it, the faster it came undone. It was like watching a runaway train, and in less than a minute he was left holding a whole lot of ruined fishnet, and she was left with her outfit in shreds.

He loved it.

“Wow.” She looked even more naked with only half the fishnet—and what was left wasn't going to last long.

He let the ruined part fall and slid his hand around her waist. She was so soft and sleek, nothing but smooth curves. He followed them around over her hip to the small of her back and lower, onto the little triangle of black satin with the word
Saturday
racing across her ass.

She stretched up on tiptoe to kiss him again, and it was all so perfect.

So almost perfect.

Something was wrong. He could feel it. He'd had desperately hot and fast sex before, and yes, he'd had it with a stranger once—a memory which regularly played on his surefire fantasy hit list. That night in the women's bathroom at McDaddy's Bar and Grill, him in the last stall on the right with Miss February and a condom, had been every twenty-year-old homeboy's dream come true.

But this was different. The stakes were higher, incalculably higher, and he knew a whole lot more about Cody Stark than he'd bothered to find out about Miss February.

Women came onto him all the time, and those women had moves, moves Cody Stark didn't have. Her kisses were too short, and her hand never had made it to where it needed to go. If this was a “kiss me, Creed, please” seduction, she could have given him a long, slow, wet, deep, drugging kiss, unzipped his pants, and had him on his knees.

But she hadn't.

So he slowed things down. He didn't want everything to go so fast that she didn't have any fun. Once with Miss February had been enough. He was older now, wiser, and he wanted to play with Cody Stark all night long.

And then he was going to want to take her to Mexico.

Shit
. He could see it all now: weeks on the run, making love on the beach, and a Butch and Sundance end.

What in the hell did he think he was going to get away with? And when had desperately hot sex turned into making love?

He was so screwed up, he needed a warning label.

And she needed a little help. So the next time she went for his mouth, he slid his hand up under
Saturday
, pulled her close, gave her one of those long, slow, wet, deep, drugging kisses, and felt her die a little in his arms. She groaned, such a sweet sound, and it did nothing but make him harder.

He wasn't just going to take her. He was going to make her his.

Sliding the black satin straps off her shoulders, he pushed her push-up bra down, and when she tried to go all shy on him, he bent his head and sucked on her until she went molten in his arms.

This was all working out so well. He had her breast in his mouth, and his hand all over her ass, and when he slid his fingers between her legs, so slowly, so gently, and pressed up against all the soft wonderfulness of her most private parts, she trembled all over.

“Creed,” she whispered his name, and her hands went to his shoulders, then slid up into his hair, holding him.

Yes, everything was working perfectly, until he slid down her body and pressed his mouth to the juncture of her legs, and she balked.

“No, I . . . What are you doing?” she gasped.

What was he doing?

Well, now there was one for the books. In the not-so-distant past of his teenage years, he'd known seventeen-year-old good girls who'd known exactly what he was doing and loved it—and bad girl Dominika Starkova didn't know what he was doing?

Maybe he'd misunderstood.

He started to pull down her panties, those black satin ones, and she clamped her legs shut tighter than a vise. Fortunately, his other hand was still in there from the Saturday side, so there were some compensations.

“I . . . I don't like that,” she said, but she didn't sound too sure to him.

Taking a deep breath—but not getting off his knees, because he still had high hopes for this pivotal part of his plan to “make her his”—he rested his forehead on her stomach, her lovely, silken stomach.

“Have you ever tried it?” he asked.

“N-no. Well, once, maybe . . . almost.”

Sweet Jesus
. His eyes closed on a silent invocation. When he opened them, he let his gaze linger on the few dark curls he'd revealed, and his heart slowed for the space of a breath.

Virgin territory.

He and Cody had fallen way out of the boundaries of desperate hot sex. It was impossible to have truly desperate hot sex with someone who was so inexperienced they'd only “once, maybe, almost” been gone down on, and there was really only one way for a guy to screw up what was basically a fairly straightforward deal and turn it into a “once, maybe, almost.” Some idiot lover of hers, of which she couldn't have had very damn many, hadn't liked it—which boggled Creed's brain. He was pretty much riveted by all the possibilities between a woman's legs. Everything was so soft, always warm, smelled like sex, and tasted better.

What wasn't there to love?

“Come on,” he said, rising to his feet and snapping her panties back up around her butt.

“Ouch.”

He grinned and took her hand in his to lead her farther into the loft. His bad girl wasn't so bad after all, and why that should have him grinning like a fool, he didn't have a clue.

“Where are we going?” she asked, staying close to his side. He noticed she'd rearranged her bra back into place. Damn.

“For a long hot soak in a waterfall.” He needed it. The night hadn't been without its fair share of dings. Edmund Braun had gotten one good hit in. He'd cut himself on a frozen edge of that friggin' fire escape, and played a game of real rough-and-tumble leading Reinhard Klein and his gang through South Morrison.

She'd had her hurts, too, and he felt bad for having forgotten them. He should have taken care of her before he'd started taking her clothes off.

“That's what I've been hearing?” she asked. “A waterfall?”

“Uh-huh. With a jetted pool. It'll feel great.”

CODY
believed him. After the way he'd held her and kissed her, she was inclined to believe every word he said. It was absurd, she knew, and something she'd definitely thought she'd outgrown, but she felt like she had a crush on him, a mad kind of crush on the maniac wild boy who'd been dragging her around and saving her life all night—the kind of crush that left her a little dizzy and overly thrilled and thinking he was way too cute to be real—which was so much easier than thinking about everything else, about the men after her . . . about actually making love with him. She didn't think her reaction to him was that captor/captive attraction that sometimes happened.

They hadn't been together that long, only a few hours.

But cute? This was the man who had killed Hashemi and broken Edmund Braun. There was nothing cute about him, except for his long, surfer-boy hair, the dreamy, washed-out color of his eyes, and the erotic fullness of his lower lip, nothing except the arch of his cheekbones, the lines of weariness marking his face, and the short scar across the bridge of his nose. If cute had a hard, rough edge, it was Creed Rivera.

She was worried about the sex, though, real worried. Everything had been going great, until she'd been such an idiot. She couldn't afford knee-jerk reactions. She was running out of time. And as far as oral sex went, she knew lots of men liked it, liked giving it—her ex-fiancé, Alex, being the exception, for reasons he'd taken great pains to explain. Hell, by the time he'd gotten done, she hadn't blamed him for not liking it. So she'd spent four years in the approved missionary position, and the sex had been okay, because she'd been in love and had loved being so physically close to him, to share all that time under the covers. She hadn't realized what a truly sanctimonious bore he'd been until long after he'd left her and she'd been swept up into Sergei's world.

Of course, if Alex hadn't left her, she never would have left Wichita and gone halfway around the world to find a father she'd never known, looking for adventure and some relief from her broken heart.

Women settled for too little too much of the time, but here she was again, willing to settle for anything Creed Rivera would give her, because even though she rather desperately wanted to have sex with him, what she wanted wasn't about sex.

She needed redemption, and he was her last chance, and those facts far outweighed any moral disquietude she felt about making love with a virtual stranger. It wouldn't be the first time—and that was the problem, the sin that ate at her. She wanted Reinhard Klein and what he'd done to her, what she'd let him do to her, wiped off her slate, or at least pushed back into history. For whatever future she had left, she wanted Creed Rivera to be her memory of what could be shared between a man and a woman. She wanted a hero. She wasn't going to call it love, any more than she could call what Reinhard had done to her rape—and even though she tried not to, she hated herself for that.

She could have told Reinhard no and taken the consequences. But with Keith O'Connell's body hanging from the rafters behind her, and the air filled with the scent of gunpowder, and his blood everywhere, a pool of it on the floor, the taste of it in the air, terrifying her, horrifying her, she'd taken the easy way out.

Except it hadn't been easy. Reinhard made her skin crawl and her stomach churn, and every time she'd had to be in the same room with him after Karlovy Vary, she'd wanted to scream.

The only easy thing she'd done since her father had delivered her to Sergei Patrushev was kiss Creed Rivera and be in his arms.

She followed him down a short flight of stairs, into the main living area. There were a lot of large, looming shadows in his apartment, and as they passed beyond the first set of them into the wan light coming in through the windows, she was able to see what they were.

“Trees,” she said, looking over her shoulder, then back all around, flabbergasted. “You have an apartment full of trees. Huge trees.”

Palm trees, some of them scraping the ceiling which was maybe thirty feet above them. A couple of the palms seemed to actually disappear up into the ceiling. There were ferns everywhere, and giant philodendrons, the kind that came from the tropics. Her only excuse for missing all of this at first was that it was dark and she'd been so focused on him. He hadn't turned on any lights, which was fine with her. She didn't want to have to face anything too clearly. But she had noticed how warm and humid it was when they'd first entered his apartment—or maybe loft was a more accurate description. There didn't seem to be any walls, anywhere . . . only trees.

“Skeeter's been running an experiment in here for the last couple of years,” he said, “and I think the plants have won.”

“Where do all the stairs go?” Looking around, she could see three swooping iron staircases, freestanding, winding up through all the vegetation. The whole place was simply amazing.

He nodded toward the staircase closest to the windows that took up one whole, huge wall on the far side of the room. There must have been a hundred feet of thirty-foot-tall windows, if not more.

“That one goes to my bedroom. The other two lead to a bedroom and an office, all at different levels. The kitchen is behind us on the main floor, and the bathroom is up ahead.”

“With the waterfall.” Unbelievable.

He grinned down at her. “With the waterfall.”