Dirty Little Lies: A Men of Summer Novel (11 page)

“I’m not running, sugar,” he assured her, lust throbbing in his voice. “I never was. I was just waiting on you to find your courage and come looking for me.”

Find her courage? She should be jumping from his bed and running for her life. There wasn’t a chance in hell she’d ever take all of him.

“Yeah, that courage thing,” she muttered, breathless.

“Teasing time is over, Grace.” His voice was a demand now rather than a sexual croon. “Are you going to run and hide or take what you want?”

Take what she wanted?

Her panties were wet at the thought of taking him—meanwhile, her head was screaming at her to run, to put as much distance between herself and the intimidating flesh she couldn’t take her eyes from.

“Need some help making up your mind?” A growling demand should never accompany a question, she thought, disconcerted as she felt his fingers curve around the back of her neck, pushing her head down slowly.

She licked her lips again.

“Do that to my cock, baby,” he groaned. “Lick that pretty little tongue over the head and show me how hungry you are. Then I’ll show you how hungry I am.”

She’d bought a vibrator and imagined she was pleasuring. But she was so out of her league here.

His fingers slid down the shaft, gripped the base of the heavy flesh, and angled it to her lips. “Show me how good you are, Grace, then I’ll show you how good I am,” he promised.

Grace whimpered, but still, her lips parted, her tongue swiping over the bulging crown as she collected the little bead of moisture awaiting her. The flavor of it sank into her taste buds and made her instantly hungry for more.

No, she wasn’t hungry; she was ravenous.

She wanted more—now.

And she really wanted him to show her how good he was.…

*   *   *

Ah, fuck!

Zack’s head slammed back into the pillow, one hand fisted in the blankets next to her, the other tensed, the effort it took not to tighten on her fragile neck straining his control. She didn’t just lick over the sensitive, engorged head of his cock; she sucked it inside her mouth, and devastated his senses.

Her tongue swirled, it investigated the flared curve, tucked itself beneath the ridge, then found the hypersensitive spot of flesh below it. She sucked at it, drew her lips over it, and when he stared down at her, the combination of shy curiosity and sensual wantonness had him gritting his teeth to hold back his release.

“Son of a bitch,” he cursed, jerking his hand back from her neck to clench the fingers of both hands in the sheets beneath him.

It wasn’t that she was doing something no other woman had ever done to him. She wasn’t. Why the pleasure was this extreme, didn’t make sense. He didn’t want it to make sense. He wanted to luxuriate in it.

In the feel of her sucking at the wide, painfully hard crest, the way her fingers stroked the throbbing shaft, the flush of arousal in her face, and the green of her eyes—so dark, they looked like summer moss.

And she was his. He’d always known she was his. Some primal sense had locked on her the moment he saw those pretty eyes, and whether he was meant simply to protect her as he had tried to do when she was younger, or hunger for her as he’d done the past few years, a part of him had always known she belonged to him. Even when he hadn’t wanted to admit it.

“Damn, Grace.” The words tore from him, strangled and hoarse from the effort it took to hold back his orgasm.

She stroked along the shaft to the tight sac of his balls, caressing and stroking, the pads of her silken fingers rubbing against the sensitive spheres as her mouth tightened on the throbbing head, taking more of him.

His thighs tightened violently, his jaw clenching until he could feel his molars threatening to crack as he watched her take him. She didn’t hurry. Oh, hell no, not Grace. Each sensual draw of her mouth on the head of his cock, each stroke of delicate fingers along the wide shaft, each caress to his balls was done with exploratory relish. With devastating curiosity.

There wasn’t a chance in hell he could hold on to his control much longer. He hadn’t anticipated her taking him up on his dare. He never imagined she’d do more than run for her virtue once he challenged her.

Sweet, shy little Grace? Tactful, polite, she was the epitome of genteel southern femininity. That gentility was currently sucking his dick like a favorite treat and enjoying every second of it.

And he was loving it, too. Loving it so much that he didn’t hear missed the ping on his phone next to the bed. He didn’t know anything past her mouth on his cock until the sound of Jazz’s voice on the stairwell interrupted the incredible pleasure she was giving him.

“Zack, get the hell down here before I come looking for you!” Jazz called out again. “Now! I just got a report trouble’s headin’ this way, and we have some plannin’ to do.”

Grace jerked her head up, shocked at the sound of Jazz just outside the bedroom door. A gasp left her lips before she jumped from the bed and raced for the bathroom, ignoring Zack’s curse.

Oh God, what was she doing?

How would she survive what he would do to her when it was over, the danger gone and the traitor apprehended? She’d be broken inside, because losing Zack after giving herself to him would destroy her.

And it would be all her fault.

chapter eight

Grace sat at the marble-topped dining room table, her hair still a little damp, a cup of half-drunk coffee at her elbow. Dressed in jeans and a tank, her feet in white sneakers, she carefully went through the hard copy files Zack had put together, which she’d spread out before her.

The amount of information Zack had gathered regarding his parents’ and her father’s activities before their deaths was impressive. According to several sources within the Kin as well as at the Brigham Agency, her father, Benjamin Maddox, and his lieutenant, John Richards—along with John’s wife, Andrea Nicole Brigham Richards—were investigating the possibility of a traitor within the Maddox family.

An inventory of Maddox–Kin mountain strongholds showed missing supplies—weapons, ammo, several maps of the most heavily guarded footpaths across the mountains. More worrisome, though, had been the evidence of tampering done to steel chambers that had been thought tamperproof and held not only gold but also geographic coordinates for Kin escape routes in the event of foreign occupation and less traveled paths through the mountains, as well as Kin patrol rotations across those routes.

One less critical chamber had also been breached, with a large amount of the cash hidden there taken, along with maps of a particular sector of the mountains that was considered one of the hardest for the Kin to patrol.

That sector had shown evidence of trespassing on many occasions over the past two decades by small groups attempting to hide their presence. In one case, several years before, individuals dressed in Middle Eastern clothing had been glimpsed by a mountain hunter. By the time the hunter had made a cell phone call to Cord and a team was deployed to the area, the trespassers had disappeared.

The hunter, an old friend of Vince’s though not part of the Kin, had been found not far from where he’d called, his throat sliced. A thorough canvassing for several miles in all directions resulted in only a few tracks. Tracking dogs followed the scent trails to a mountain stream where the hunter had died, only to lose all trace of it.

The area was difficult to traverse even at the best of times. Sharp cliffs, hidden ravines, and unbridged passes made it treacherous. The intruders weren’t Kin, and evidence had been found that they were armed and that someone was using that sector of the mountains to lead possible homegrown or foreign terrorists toward D.C. or New York, maybe both.

Benjamin Maddox, along with Zack’s parents, had quickly gathered all the information in the remaining chambers, stored the data in digital files, then caused all trace of the hard copy to disappear along with a vast amount of gold before attempting to slip from the county to D.C. to report their findings to the Brigham Agency.

They died before making it out of the county, their truck exploding on one of the less traveled mountain roads.

After twenty years, an extensive ongoing search for the information Benjamin had secreted away and for the traitor he’d identified turned up nothing. Not even a suspect or a hint of where her father might have hidden the digital files he mentioned in a letter that arrived to his brother the day after his death, in which he listed everything he’d taken and why.

The letter was short, to the point, and in Grace’s estimation, hurriedly written.

“He knew the risk of trying to get out of the county,” she muttered. “He knew who was behind it, or at least suspected it—and they had to have known he was on to them.”

She’d been only five when her father died, twelve when her aunt Sierra died, and now at the age of twenty-four, she felt as though her entire life had been a lie.

“Why didn’t Uncle Vince tell me any of this?” Lifting her head from the papers, she stared at Zack where he stood next to the glass wall looking out into the backyard.

“To protect you,” he stated, never glancing back at her or shifting his position, leaning against the glass, arms folded across his chest. “As you grew older, Vince seemed to think you’d attempt to take up your father’s investigation. The rumor they put out that your father and my parents were attempting to hide the missing Brigham daughter and her son was already in play, so he let it continue. No one knew who my mother was when Dad brought her to Loudon. She’d changed her hair color, wore colored contact lenses, and rarely dressed in the style she’d used before they married.”

It was no wonder her uncle hadn’t encouraged her interest in Zack. He’d known she would learn the truth if she pursued him.

Zack had never been the focus of the traitor’s interest.

Her aunt Sierra was suspected of knowing the location of the files, according to Lucia during interrogation, and she was killed when she refused to give that information up. Sierra’s daughter, Kenni, was tracked for over eight years in the belief she might know where it was as well.

Now, after Luce swore her daughter was not only working with her but also knew where the files were hidden, the focus was on Grace. The eight-week investigation by the Brigham Agency into her mother’s accusations found no evidence to support the claim or disprove Grace’s innocence, which resulted in the order to have her brought in for interrogation.

“Hurt someone enough, and they’ll tell you anything,” she whispered aloud sadly after reading the particulars of the interrogations, knowing the pain the subjects must have suffered. Especially Luce. She was still her mother, and the thought of the questioning she underwent left her heart heavy.

“It’s not just the pain.” Zack shifted his shoulders before straightening and turning to face her. “Hallucinogenics created to ensure the subject reveals memories, thoughts, anything tied to the subject they’re being questioned over, are used. There are milder forms of hypnotics that ensure the subject responds to any question while remaining lucid. Those drugs can be more painful than a beating, more dangerous than electroshock.

“The Clans created to protect the back roads and inner sections of the country from infiltration and terrorism, both homegrown and foreign, are vital to the protection of the United States. They’re all under threat if that information gets into the hands of the traitor suspected to be in the family of the main Clan. It could destroy the second-phase defense of the country. That second phase is the last hope if we’re invaded.”

And national security trumped innocence every time, she remembered her cousin Cord stating with mocking disdain.

When Vince had learned that Grace knew his daughter was alive and hiding behind the identity of kindergarten teacher Annie Mayes, he said that Grace was far too inquisitive for her own safety. There had been little amusement in his tone, and now Zack knew why.

Grace wasn’t just inquisitive; she was also damned nosy, and she put things together far too swiftly. As she’d been going through the files, Zack was able to see how quick she actually was. While reading information from one file, she’d mutter a connecting bit of information she’d seen maybe two or three files back.

She was like her father.

Benjamin had possessed an uncanny ability to solve a certain kind of puzzle. Interlocking information, Vince had once called it. Benjamin could work on several mysteries at a time, and as each detail came through, he would file it away in its proper place until he could form a perfect, precise reconstruction of events.

Many of those missing files were ones Zack’s father had kept hidden as Benjamin’s second.

That talent had most likely been what led him to inventory key store chambers and determine that vital information was being stolen. Once Benjamin had copied and hidden the information that had yet to be compromised, Vince suspected his brother knew the identity of that traitor or at the least had a solid suspicion, and rather than fighting it out on home ground had tried to make his way to D.C. and the Brighams instead. Grace’s father had suspected a close relative or key Kin member as the traitor, but he hadn’t revealed a name in that letter.

“No one knew your mother was a Brigham?” Grace asked, then lifting her gaze from another file. “Did Dad know?”

“He had to have known,” Zack assured her. “He and my father were too close, as close as brothers, I suspect. I know Vince knew. He suspected someone from the Brighams was involved, since they were headed to D.C. first, so he jerked me out of sight and placed me with Toby Rigor. I wasn’t even aware my mother had any family until I was eighteen and introduced to Alexander Brigham.”

And boy, had that gone over well.

Stiff, angry, and so full of himself, it was insulting, Alexander Brigham had glared at Zack and informed him he looked too damned much like his father.

Any association with the other man would have ended there if Zack could have made the choice. Unfortunately, Alexander Brigham demanded a certain amount of time be spent with the family; otherwise, both the Maddox and Rigor families would be sanctioned for hiding his sister’s son during the years after her death. And thus Zack learned exactly why his mother had been so desperate to escape her family.