Second Nature (When Seconds Count) (9 page)

“
Did I hurt you?” His thumbs drew tiny circles in her hair as he caressed her temples. It was a small thing, but to Thalia it was a gentleness she had never experienced. She shook her head, not sure if her voice would betray the sudden emotion welling inside her.

“
I know my timing is shit, but my brain, I…I completely lost it when I saw that look in your eyes. Please tell me you’re on some type of birth control.”

S
till catching her breath she gave him a silent nod, not quite sure what to make of her lack of concern. She had never once had unprotected sex, but something about holding a piece of him within her felt strangely…right. “I didn’t think of it either, I….I’m clean.”

“Me, too.” Grant’s lips curled into a grin. “
I’ve, uh, never gone bareback before. That was…intense.” He wiggled his hips and she could feel him hardening within her. “Feel like taking a shower?”

Her mind reeled with detailed visions of what he could do to her there, the hot water sluicing
between their bodies. She pushed them away, forcing herself to focus on the conversation her body had completely hijacked. She needed to get up. Shaking her head, she pushed at his chest, but he didn’t budge. “I really need to make that phone call.”

Grant shook his head. “You’re not talking to anyone before you talk to me.” He
pushed himself up and slowly withdrew from her body, creating an instant emptiness she was all too familiar with. He tugged her to her feet and into his arms, cupping her bare ass and pulling her against his still stiff cock. “I’ve got dinner warming in the oven. Come on. We’ll eat and chat,” he said, giving her ass a playful tap. “After we shower.”

At the mention of dinner her stom
ach rumbled. She ignored it and pushed from his arms then paced to the window. “You don’t understand.”

Grant watched her pace, her limp a little less pronounced than it had been earlier in the day. He ha
ted the haunted look in her eyes. She was in trouble. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know it was big trouble. While he watched her sleep, he’d decided he didn’t care what kind of trouble she was in. He was going to help her.

“I was supposed to meet someone tomorrow. If I don’t show up, which obvio
usly I’m not going to, I need to let them know I won’t be there. Reschedule or…or something.”

Grant
sat on the edge of the bed and crossed his arms over his chest. He’d really hoped to put this conversation off until they’d had something to eat and a nice long fuck in the shower, but it didn’t appear as though it was going to happen that way. Apparently they were going to do this naked and hungry, and still horny as hell, because he wasn’t about to shut her down now that she was finally talking. “And this would be a different someone than who’s trying to kill you?”

Thalia shook her head. “No. I mean yes.” He watched as a chill shuddered up her spine. “
I’m pretty sure those were Hamisi’s men at the beach, though I have no idea how they found me. The man I’m supposed to meet tomorrow will think I’ve played him if I don’t show up. For more reasons than I can say, I can’t afford for that to happen. He will kill me if I don’t at least try to set up another time to meet.” She shook her head and ran her hands over her arms. “He’ll kill me anyway, but....”

That’s what he was afraid of. In an instant he
stood in front of her, his hands clamping gently around her arms. “First of all, no one is going to kill you. I won’t let that happen, but you have to talk to me. What do you have that Don Lalia would send Hamisi to kill you for?”

He watched as familiar emotions of doubt and mistrust swirled
in the expressions on her face, felt the surrender in her posture as she let out a long, heavy breath. “A thumb drive.”

He
had prepared himself for a lie, but he could see the truth in her eyes when she spoke. “I’m guessing that’s what you are supposed to deliver tomorrow?” She nodded wordlessly and, although in his gut he already knew the answer, he needed to hear it from her. “Who are you supposed to meet tomorrow, Thalia?”

“Kafeel Jauhar
.”

Grant closed his
eyes and took a deep breath. How in the hell had she gotten mixed up with someone like Jauhar? He was literally the epitome of human waste, and the very thought of her doing any kind of business with him made the blood sizzle in his veins. Good or bad, he had to know. “You work for him?”

Thalia pulled
away from him and walked to the bed, her fingers trailing over the tangled sheets. “It’s complicated,” she said as she sank to the edge of the mattress.

Grant clamped down on his need to shake some sense into her and paced to the window
instead. “So un-complicate it for me. Because after losing my island, my boat and Salina, I’d like to think I’m at least helping the right side here.” He saw the shock on her face at the mention of his contact. “That’s right. Salina is dead. She was gunned down right after she took the tracking device out of your arm which, by the way, is how they found you. So tell me she didn’t die helping a shit-bag like Jauhar.”

“It’s not like that!”

“Then tell me what it’s like, Thalia!” Grant kept his distance, sure that she would bolt if he crowded her. Or worse. He was still naked after all.

“I…
shit
…” He didn’t move when she pushed from the bed and began to pace like a caged animal. In a strange way she was. She may not be an operative, but they were very much alike. They had the same sense of survival and need for control. Suspicion was second nature to them both, and he could feel her struggle to give him the trust he demanded.

Against his better judgment, something inside him pushed him to comfort her. Understanding her better than she could possibly imagine, he needed her to know she could trust him. W
hen next she pivoted away from him, his hand reached out and encircled her wrist, pulling her back to him. She wouldn’t turn to face him, so he wrapped his arms around her waist and hugged her back to his chest. “You can trust me, fossa. I just need to know that I can trust you.”

“Oh, that’s rich coming from someone who w
on’t even tell me his real name,
Silas.
” She tried to twist away from him, but he was determined not to let her push him away. “I know
nothing
about you and I’m supposed to trust you? Let me go!”

Grant carefully and tenderly tightened his grip. Not t
aking the chance that she wouldn’t try to crack his skull open with the back of her head, he nuzzled his chin tight against her neck and whispered into her ear, “And yet you just sucked my cock and let me fuck you without a condom.” She tensed when he let one of his hands trail down between her thighs. A flash of lust flooded his cock and he ground it hard against her ass as he slipped his fingers through her wet folds. They glistened with the combination of her arousal and his seed as he held them up in front of her. “You enjoyed it. You can’t deny this thing between us anymore than you can say that Thalia is
your
real name.”

“It is
my real name.”

It was a nickname. Not a complete
lie, or he would have pushed her further. Looking down over her shoulder, he felt her rapid heartbeat against his chest as he swirled the pearly fluids around her nipple. “It doesn’t matter. I am a lot of things to a lot of different people. I’ll be glad to play twenty questions with you later and give you as many answers as I can, but right now…” He lifted her breast, trailing his hand up and over the ripe swell to the long line of her neck. With his thumb he turned her head to meet his gaze and lightly pressed his lips to hers in a lingering kiss. “Right now, I am the only one who can help you. I need to know what I’m dealing with.”

He
r body relaxed against his, the feel of her in his arms felt better than anything he had ever known.
God, please don’t let her be on the wrong side.
He wasn’t a religious man, but he would promise anything to any deity to know she wasn’t one of those he’d spent his life fighting to destroy.

“Jauhar murdered
the only family I had, and I plan to kill him.” Her confession was made in such a quiet whisper Grant nearly missed it.

“So
this is personal. Not business?” He held back the hope in his heart for just a breath until she nodded, her head falling back against his shoulder as she blew out a breath of relief.

“He wants the thumb drive
. He won’t stop until he has it.”

“So you were just going to hand it over.” He could see where this was leading and he didn’t like it.

“Yes
.” She turned in his arms and pressed her forehead to his bare chest.

“What then? You think he will just let you walk away?

“No. I don’t know how, but I’ll find a way to kill him once I get close enough to do it.”

Gr
ant let his head fall forward, pressing his lips into her hair as his hands idly caressed the skin on her back. “What’s on the thumb drive?”

Thalia shrugged. “
Shipping data, I think. None of it makes very much sense to me. It’s full of codes and numbers, but I recognize some of the dates and locations.” His arms instinctively tightened around her when another chill ran through her and she shivered against him. “Jauhar killed my uncle. If I have something he wants, I have to use it to get to him. He’s going to kill me anyway. I just want the chance to take him to hell with me.”

“He’s not going to kill you.” He wouldn’t let that happen.
There was more to it, he was sure, but she had said enough for now. He got the picture.

As his fingers played along her spine, tracing the raised lines of skin that crisscrossed in a telling pattern beneath his fingertips, he knew there was one more question he had to ask.
His blood raced through his veins when he pictured her shackled and bleeding as her
uncle
, or any other man, marred her skin and tried to break her fierce spirit. He could just as easily picture himself putting a bullet between the sick fuck’s eyes, whoever he was. He wasn’t sure if he could handle the truth, but he forced the question out anyway. “Is your uncle the one who did this to you?” He purposefully traced his finger over the most prominent lash mark.

She drew back from his embrace, her brows furrowed in confusion. “What?”

Grant loosened his grip and let his fingers trail down her arms. “The scars on your back. You were beaten. Is he the one who took you from your family?” It was possible, would even be twistedly normal, for her to call her captor
uncle.
Some slaves were raised by their captors and beaten into respecting, or even seeing their captor’s torture as love. Although, knowing what he knew of her, she didn’t seem the type to remain loyal to such a person.

“A slave?” He watched as the meaning behind his question dawned. “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t a…a sex slave. Or any other kind of slave.
Issa would never do that.” She rested her hands on his stomach and gave him a small, sad smile. “I was in a car accident, or at least that’s what Issa and the doctors told me when I woke up. I really don’t remember.”

“A car accident?” His bullshit meter was pegged in
to the red, but when he looked into her eyes he could see she believed what she was telling him.

“Yes. A car accident.” She turned from his embrace and paced to the closet. Opening the doors, he watched as she shuffled through the miscellaneous ite
ms of clothing. “I was seventeen, I think. I woke up in a strange bed, in a strange house surrounded by strange men. Issa, my uncle, said a drunken truck driver ran my parents’ car off the road into a ravine, north of Mumbai, killing them instantly. I was thrown through the windshield. I guess the glass cut me up pretty badly. I really don’t remember. When I woke up I didn’t remember anything except my first name.” She pulled a blue and white dress from one of the hangers and held it up. “I still don’t.”

Seventeen.
“You have no memory of your parents or your childhood?” He wasn’t sure if he felt relieved or even more skeptical as he bent and scooped up his jeans from the floor. Something felt off about the timing, about the whole damn story, but he couldn’t quite get a grip on it.

“No.
I don’t.” She let the dress drop and reached up to cup her arm. “They really put a tracking chip in my shoulder? Those bastards.”

“Your parents, they were American?”

Thalia nodded, hissing when she pulled the bandage away from her skin. “My mother was half Indian. She was Issa’s sister. We were in India on vacation to visit him.”

He pushed
aside the weird feeling in his gut to dissect later. Taking her hand, he pulled her toward the bathroom. “Come on. We’ll take a shower, I’ll change your bandage, and then we can figure out what our next step is while I feed you.”

She followed him into
the bathroom without argument which, when it happened, never ceased to amaze him.

“I’m sorry about Salina.” Seemed she was going to be in a perpetually apologetic state with him. She might as well get comfortable saying it. “I’m sorry about your boat and, well, everything.”

Wrap
ped around her back, his smooth chin resting on her shoulder, she felt Grant shrug as she leaned her face into the spray and rinsed away the soap suds. “She was an asset, not a friend.”

“That sounds a little harsh.”
She had no problems with killing someone like Jauhar or Hamisi. She may have lost some of her more delicate senses toward death, but she didn’t think she would be able to compartmentalize the loss of someone who helped her like Salina had.

Grant shrugged. The heat of his tongue traveled up the side of her neck before he
sucked the water from her earlobe, sending shivers racing over her skin despite the blissful heat of the water. “I really don’t care about anything else right now except this.” The sharp edge of his teeth raked against the outer shell of her ear; she would have fallen to her knees if his thick arm hadn’t been wrapped around her, holding her up.

She both hated and loved how quickly he could reduce her to a spineless puddle
of lust with just one look or touch. She wanted to explore
him
, find
his
weaknesses.
Surely he has one.
Resolved to keep things on an even playing field, at least for the moment, she spun away and pushed him under the spray, ignoring his grunted protests. Scooping up the soap, she lathered it into a washcloth. The muscles in his back rippled and tensed as she slowly caressed his skin, taking notice of the multitude of scars that marred his sculpted frame.

A sex slave?
Grant’s questions wormed their way back into her thoughts. Thalia knew one of Jauhar’s biggest enterprises was human trafficking. Although she had never met Jauhar, Issa had warned her to never allow herself to be alone with his men or trust them. She never understood why Issa would do business with someone so vile, but she never questioned his counseling. She only wished he’d taken his own advice.

“Why did
my scars make you think I’d been a slave?” Hot water sluiced down his back, rinsing the soap from Grant’s body, her lips laying claim to the skin on his shoulder as she ran the wash cloth down his back. “Is that something you’ve seen before?”

“Yes
.” Her fingers followed his spine then trailed along his shoulder blades and around his sides to his chest. Scraping her fingernails across his flat nipples drew a rewarding hiss from his lips before he continued. “I’ve seen pictures of women and children who had been branded and whipped. The marks on your back look like some of them.”

The spray from the shower head hit her face when he turned in her arms. Backing her against the wall, Grant leaned down and placed a wet kiss
on her forehead, then her nose.

“Branded?”
she asked, trying desperately to hold on to her thoughts as his hands cupped and kneaded her breasts, gently twisting her sensitive nipples in return.

“Yeah
,” he breathed, sucking her earlobe into his mouth again, nipping it with his teeth. “Sometimes the slaves would have their owner’s initials burned into their skin as a mark of ownership.”

Thalia’s blood ran cold as the hazy images from her nightmares surfaced in her thoughts
and the suffocating feeling pressed down on her chest.
No. Not here. Not with him.
Grant pulled back and looked at her. His eyes, dark with need, suddenly filled with concern. Something Thalia didn’t think she would ever get used to seeing. “This conversation is not working for you either, huh?” His hands slid from her breasts and framed her waist. He lowered his head and sucked on the skin between her neck and shoulder, his hips flexing to push the head of his shaft deep between her wet folds. “I say we not talk at all for a bit.”

Thank heavens for the tim
ing of her stomach. Just as her lungs began to seize, a loud growl echoed off the tiled walls. Grant laughed and shook his head. “Looks like I’ve been overruled.” He reached over and cut the water, and then helped her step out of the tub before he handed her a towel. She forced herself to breathe as she dried off; trying to think of a way to get him out of there so she could pull herself together.

“Hey, are you okay?” Grant’
s hands cupped her neck, his thumbs tilting her chin up to him. She nodded silently and looked over her shoulder at the toilet.

“Right
.” He smiled and kissed the tip of her nose. “I’ll, uh, give you some privacy and go check on dinner. Come to the kitchen when you’re done and I’ll redress your wounds before we eat.”

Again she nodded
, her lungs clawing for air as she forced her lips into something resembling a smile. When the door finally closed behind him, her knees hit the tile and she fell to her side, gasping for breath as a single tear trailed down her cheek and splashed onto the floor.

Jesus
fucking H. Christ! Car accident my ass.
Grant stood outside the bathroom door and listened as Thalia fell apart. It took everything he had not to bust through the door and gather her in his arms, but he already knew her well enough to know she would only kick him right back out.

“Fuck!”
He didn’t know what had set her off, but he would damn sure find out. He threw his towel onto the bed. Forgoing his boxers, he picked up his jeans and pulled them on, then sprinted to the room at the end of the hall. Once inside, he closed and locked the door behind him. One thing about being who he was, he had access to all kinds of neat toys and contacts.

He mumbled another curse as he took a seat in front of the bank of computer screens and picked up the phone receiver in front of him.
It seemed the more answers he got from her the more questions he had. Typing in a password, he accessed the system and pulled up the central departmental search engine as he dialed a number he pulled from memory.

“
Diver.”

“I ne
ed you to find something for me,” Grant barked at the familiar voice on the other end of the line. As he spoke, he quarried Jauhar’s file from three different bureaus and hit enter.

“Lieutenant! I thought y
ou were chasing hangovers and pussy in the Caribbean. Or was it Fiji? You miss me that much?

“Get you
r hand off your dick and listen up.” Grant didn’t have time for social niceties. Thalia would pull herself together quick enough, and he needed to have this wrapped up when she came out.

“Shoot.”

“I want everything you can find on two unknown Americans killed in a car accident in Mumbai ten years ago. They had a daughter, seventeen, first name Thalia, last name Brezlin, or some derivative. She’s twenty-seven now, five-ten, black hair, grey eyes.”

“Okay.”
He could hear Diver’s fingers flying across his keyboard in the background. “Tango-Hotel-Alpha-Lima-India-Alpha.”

“Correct
. I’ll get you additional specifics when I can. And find anything you can on a tango, first name Issa, India-Sierra-Sierra-Alpha. May or may not be a relative in Mumbai. Add Mozambique and Madagascar to your search grid.”

“So you are chasing pussy.” Diver
’s chuckle grated on his nerves. He was in no mood for jokes. “Okay,” Diver drew out the last syllable in feigned agitation. “Perky as usual I see, Lieutenant. I’ll dig up what I can.”

“Call me as soon as you get anything.” Grant
paused before he set the receiver back in the cradle. “And Diver?”

“Yeah
?”

“
The Lieutenant is dead. Don’t use that name again.”

Silence weighed heavy on the line
. Grant thought he’d lost connection just before Diver cleared his throat. “Okay boss, but I don’t really know what else to call you. Except maybe asshole.”

“
Fuck off.” Grant disconnected the call. He wouldn’t hold his breath for the off chance any of her story panned out. He didn’t think she was lying. No, she believed every word of it. He had nothing to say it wasn’t true except the uneasy feeling in his gut, which he’d learned long ago to trust without fail.

On auto pilot, he dug through
the desk drawers until he found a blank flash drive and popped it into the port. With a few clicks, he downloaded the files and logged out, not bothering to look at the information. He snatched a backpack from the back of the door and stuffed the drive and one of the two laptops in it before he left the room, locking the door behind him.

He could hear Thalia moving around in her bedroom as he passed by on his way to the kitchen. He understood the unyielding need to go to her, to fix whatever was wrong. And he didn’t like it. For the first time in his life he cared about someone beyond himself, and a part of him knew he was fucked for it. Caring made you weak, a soft target. Ten years living with a drunk and three years in the foster system taught him that. The minute you cared about something it was gone, or worse — used against you.

Still, a bigger par
t of him, a deeper part which seemed nonexistent before Thalia washed up on his beach, reveled in the thought of somehow keeping her in his life. She was important.

And the sex!
Christ.
He had literally just had the fuck of his life. She had taken everything he had to give. Everything he’d meant to hold back but couldn’t. He knew he could be dominant and a bit rough when it came to sex. Apparently more than normal with her. Knowing she had a past that was probably steeped in sexual abuse, he’d thought it best to tone down that side of himself, at least until he knew more. When she had swallowed his dick, something inside him drove him to a madness he’d never experienced, or ever be able to explain. He would never get enough of her.

If she was a slave and she truly had no memory of it, he could be stepping into a minefield every time he touched
her. He couldn’t ignore it. There was no way in hell now that he’d had her that he would be able to keep his hands off her. They would have to discuss what had set her off. Which would probably set her off in a completely different, furious kind of way. His little mongoose didn’t like to show her weaknesses.

He grinned as he pulled out a saucepan and grabbed the milk, butter
, and a couple of limes from the fridge. He actually liked it when she went a little feral on him. Her eyes turned that wild shade if silvery blue, her chest heaving as she reined in her initial savage instincts to tear into him. The only time she was ever more magnificent was when she came apart beneath him. Something he planned to see again very soon, and very often.

A new thought splintered his attention
. His dick twitched against his thigh when he thought about the fight she was going to put up when he told her she wasn’t going to be making that call to Jauhar. She was crazy if she thought he would allow her to continue with her disastrous plan for revenge.

No way in hell was he going to
let that bottom feeder get within a hundred feet of her. She would just have to refocus her need on something else, because it wasn’t going to happen. Oh, he’d kill the mother fucker, slow and painfully, but she would be well out of reach when it happened.

He stirred a little flour into the melted butter in the pan, mixing in a little rosemary and pepper before adding in the milk and some crumbled parmesan. He loved having contacts in high places with fully stocked kitchens, especial
ly when they owed you a favor.

“Smells good.”

His well-honed reflexes had his gun drawn from his waistband and pointed mere inches from Thalia’s face before he had even blinked. “Sonofabitch, Thalia! Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

She froze and stared down the barrel of the gun in Grant’s hand, her heart rate hitting the stratosphere. Swallowing was pointless. Her mouth instantly dry, she slowly reached for the glass of water
sitting on the island bar in front of her.
Jesus.
He was like a damn ghost. She hadn’t even seen him move. Between the gun and the sight of his ripped, bare abs, she thought she would choke on her tongue before she took her first sip. After spilling nearly half the water down the front of her dress, she managed to gulp down enough to satisfy a horse before carefully setting the glass back onto the counter. “I wasn’t sneaking.”

She watched as Grant gathered himself and tucked the gun back into the front of his blue jeans. He grabbed up a hand towel and
stepped around the bar. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.” She stood paralyzed as he wiped the front of her dress, unsuccessfully ignoring the wave of heat that pooled between her legs when his hand lingered on her breasts.

She cleared her throat and snatched the towel from his hands. The last thing she needed
was to seem more pathetic than he already thought she was. “It’s okay.” She dabbed at her dress as he walked back over to the stove. “I can see the calming qualities of almost having your head blown off.” She threw the towel onto the counter and slid back onto one of the wooden bar stools, twining her fingers together in her lap to keep them from shaking. “You should think about marketing your approach to spas and yoga instructors.” She caught his critical gaze and lifted her chin. “Besides, I think we’ve already established that I know my way around a gun.”