Wicked Pleasures (5 page)

T
HREE HOURS LATER
,
Regina lay back in bed, one word dominating her mind and one word only:
Wow!

“I should have gotten a bigger box.”

She heard Linc’s voice, but it took her a moment to register what he’d said.

Condoms. He was talking about the box of condoms.

She smiled in lazy satisfaction and curved against him, feeling more liquid than solid. “Mmm.”

He slid his arm around her and stroked her bare back from nape to bottom, making her feel like a contented cat.

“Well,” he said.

She waited for the rest, watching as the headlights from a passing car shifted across the ceiling. “Well what?”

He chuckled softly. “Just…well.”

His fingers played against her bottom and she found herself arching into his touch, inviting him to go as far as he dared.

“Worth waiting for?” she murmured.

“Oh, yeah.”

She rolled to lie on her back and they both stared at the ceiling. She didn’t know what had happened to the pillows or the top sheet. She didn’t much care, either.

Every part of her tingled and shimmered, like the surface of a still pond someone had just thrown a stone into.

Stone? Try a boulder.

“How about you?”

She slowly turned her head to look at him, incapable of erasing the silly smile on her face. “How about me what?”

“Worth the wait?”

“Oh, yeah,” she repeated his words. “In more ways than one.”

His hand found her thigh and he rested it there, making lazy circles with his fingers. She liked that he wanted to keep touching her.

“How do you mean?” he asked.

Regina squinted at the ceiling. “Let’s just say it’s been a long, long time since I had sex.”

“Me, too.”

She laughed. “I think our concept of time may be a little different. I’m talking, um, years.”

“Oh.” He folded his other arm to support his head. She watched him, fascinated by his every move. “Years?”

“Mmm.”

She wondered how he might interpret that. Would he think her frigid? Hard to get? Too busy? Or, worse, undesirable?

“You win,” he said.

She laughed. “Hands down, I think.”

A heartbeat of silence and then he asked, “Bad relationship?”

Regina’s smile faded, but didn’t disappear altogether. Which was a first. Usually when she reflected on that time in her life, it was difficult to find any reason to smile.

“Yeah,” she said.

Her time with Billy had been like one long nightmare. She supposed in the beginning, things had been good. He’d been two years ahead of her in high school. She’d been flattered he’d even looked at her, much less demonstrated any interest in her. He’d asked her to his senior prom, took her for long rides on the back of his motorcycle. Her mother, of course, had never liked him. But like most girls her age, she hadn’t listened to her mother. If anything, it had probably made her even more intrigued by the bad boy she was convinced had a heart of gold.

Her chest tightened at the memories.

“You haven’t had sex since high school?”

Regina laughed so hard at the question, she was left with tears in her eyes. She hadn’t been aware she’d spoken the words rather than merely thought them.

“And did he?”

“Did he what?”

“Have a heart of gold?”

She fell silent for a long moment. “No.”

She’d ultimately determined his heart had been as black as coal and just as hard. But it had taken four years of living together after high school, multiple brushes with the law and a couple of physical altercations for her to finally admit her mother had been right.

“It’s amazing what a female can forgive,” she said quietly. “You know, if the guy has the right story.”

In Billy’s case, he’d been raised by an abusive, drunken father after his mother had disappeared when he was eight.

But when it was clear that rather than steering clear of the model his father had set, he’d instead followed it…well, she’d wanted out.

“Did you leave?”

“Yes. Across town. Got my own little apartment, a good job and started taking night courses.”

Of course, Billy hadn’t let her go that easily. He’d shown up on a regular basis at her place like a mewling cat in need of a bowl of milk. And, despite how much she wished she had done otherwise, she’d given it to him, believing him when he said she was the only person in the world he had. The only one who understood him.

“More like the only one stupid enough to believe everyone in the world deserves to have at least one person to trust.”

Then came the bank robbery.

He’d been arrested before for armed robbery. He’d even served a short stint before his attorney had sprung him on a technicality. But this time people had been hurt. Killed.

When he was arrested, she’d been surprised at the relief she experienced that she’d no longer be responsible for Billy.

Responsible for him. That was, she’d come to understand, the way she’d felt.

Of course, he hadn’t viewed his arrest as the end. He’d given her a list of things to do. And she’d done them. At least the ones that didn’t require her having any interaction with him. She’d closed up his apartment and let his father know what had happened.

Then came his phone calls asking her to visit him.

She had. Once. To tell him it was over.

He’d been livid. He’d pounded the Plexiglas in the visitors’ room trying to get at her. His response had surprised and terrified her.

His last words to her before guards dragged him away were, “I’m going to get you, you fucking bitch. You’ve betrayed me. When I get out of here, you’re the first person I’m coming after.”

She shivered now at the memory.

“Cold?” Linc asked.

He reached for the top sheet bunched at the foot of the bed and covered her.

How different Linc was. How thankfully, blessedly different.

She cuddled against him, absorbing his warmth, accepting his affection. “Thank you.”

He slowly rubbed her back under the sheet. “You won’t want to thank me when you hear what I have to say…”

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
, Linc couldn’t believe he’d almost come clean about the true reason behind their meeting. He’d been a moment away from revealing he not only knew her ex and their situation, but that he’d been tailing her for the past week, hoping the SOB would show his face so he could send him straight back to hell where he belonged.

Then Regina had gazed up at him with those big green eyes and he’d choked, incapable of saying a word that would change the way she’d looked at him in that one moment.

He sat at the Lazarus conference table half listening to the meeting agenda move forward between his other five partners, kicking himself. Things were going to be difficult enough when Regina found out the truth. And he wasn’t dumb enough to think that she wouldn’t. He was convinced at some point—possibly very soon— Billy was going to turn up and then Linc would be forced to show his hand.

It wasn’t going to be pretty. His thoughts went back to last night.

“What?” she’d said in the same drowsy, sexy voice she’d employed while sharing her past.

“Hmm?”

“What do you have to tell me? I hope it’s not as ominous as it sounds.”

She’d shifted closer to him, pressing her sex against the side of his leg in a way that made him forget everything but the need to feel her surrounding him again.

“We only have one condom left,” he’d said, kissing her senseless.

“Linc? Does that get the green light from you?” Darius asked.

He blinked at his friend and partner, for the first time in a long, long time having missed what was said.

Damn. He was losing it.

The others seemed equally surprised as Dari repeated what he’d apparently missed and Linc gave his thumbs-up.

The meeting was drawing to a close. He glanced at Jason where he sat across from him. He raised a brow, as if to ask if now was the right time for the subject they’d discussed to be put on the table.

Jason gave a small shake of his head and then business was concluded.

Megan caught the exchange and looked between the two of them with open curiosity.

Now would have been the perfect opportunity for Jason to bring up the topic of pushing up plans for the opening of the Baltimore office. Why hadn’t he done it? Linc gave an internal headshake. As far as he was concerned, there was no time like the present for seeing to business, unfinished or otherwise.

He grimaced. Right. If that was the case, then he should have come out and told Regina the truth last night.

As soon as the meeting was adjourned, Jason beat him to the door, disappearing down the hall before he could talk to him. Instead, Linc found himself next to Megan.

“What’s up?” she asked as the others moved around them.

“With?”

She quirked a smile at him.

Megan was a beautiful woman. In more ways than one. And more than capable of holding her own against any man. He wouldn’t dare presume to game play with her—she’d outmaneuver him easily.

“Something going on with Jason?” she asked.

Normally he might tell her to ask him. But in this case he knew that advice was faulty.

“We spoke about opening the Baltimore facility early.”

Her brows rose. “Really?”

He didn’t answer because he knew one wasn’t required.

He also knew he didn’t have to ask her not to say anything. His and Jason’s conversation had not been in confidence. It had concerned business, no matter the personal motivation.

“I see,” Megan said. “Thanks.”

“Sure.”

She began to drop back to enter a different part of the compound. “See you at the Barracks later?”

“Maybe.”

She laughed and shook her head before turning around.

Linc checked his cell phone for Regina’s location. She was still at the Beth El for classes, where she would be for the next hour or so before heading to work at the diner.

Of course, he didn’t really need to check his locator for the information. She had casually told him her schedule this morning over breakfast.

He remembered the way she had looked, all dewy and pink from the shower, her hair up in a towel, wearing a University of Colorado T-shirt as she cooked up eggs and toast in her small kitchen. He’d felt himself harden all over again.

He had to remember to pick up more condoms later.

His cell phone rang as he reached the door to the parking lot. He recognized the number and answered after the second ring.

“What you got?”

“The subject in question suffered a home invasion seventy-two hours ago and is in ICU in an induced coma due to head trama.”

He silently listened to the remainder of the report.

Damn.

Damn, damn, damn, damn.

He closed the cell phone and climbed into his SUV, wishing he had said something to Regina last night. Because then he could share the information that her ex had probably broken into her mother’s place and nearly beat her to death…

R
EGINA CROSSED THE
street from where she’d parked her car to the diner, watching for oncoming traffic. The hair standing up on the back of her neck had little to do with the honk of a car horn and everything to do with that uncomfortable sensation of being watched again.

She spotted a dark SUV parked up the way. Linc? She couldn’t be sure. Dark SUVs were a dime a dozen in the military town.

Besides, what would he be doing there?

She half smiled to herself, last night returning to her in all its vivid glory.

Wow…

The word was still all that came immediately to mind whenever she thought of sex with Linc. What he could do with…well, everything—his mouth, his teeth, his hands and…other areas of his anatomy—was incredible. She ached in places she hadn’t known existed…and sighed in others.

And having breakfast with him had seemed the most natural thing in the world.

How was it she hadn’t realized how dull and gray her life had become? Then again, maybe it took color to point out the contrast. And in that case, Linc was a vibrant, brilliant red.

She entered the diner to hellos from the owner, staff and some of the regulars and then crossed into the kitchen and the lockers in the back. The smell of fresh-brewed coffee and sizzling burgers teased her nose.

“You’re early,” Trudy remarked, leaning against the wall as she put her things in a free locker.

“Yeah, finished my errands earlier than I’d planned. Figured I’d do some class work before my shift started.” She looked at her. “Unless you need me now?”

“No. We’re good.”

She smiled.

“I’ll leave you to it, then.”

Regina sat down on the bench and fished her cell phone from her purse. She dialed her mother’s home number, received the dreaded answering machine again and then sat for a moment before calling Information for the number to the supermarket where she worked.

Seeing as it was a supermarket, and her mother worked as cashier, contacting her there wasn’t something she’d ever done. Their conversations took place after she got home.

Within moments of getting the number from Information, she was on hold for the manager. When her call was finally answered, she introduced herself, which is as far as she got when the woman interrupted her.

“I’m so sorry about what happened, honey,” the manager said. “When Deputy King stopped by yesterday to tell us the news, we were all in shock.”

Regina’s heart skipped a beat.

“I don’t understand…”

Silence. “You don’t know?”

Every unvoiced fear she’d had over the past couple of days lurched forward, making her dizzy. “Know what? I haven’t been able to get a hold of my mother at home, so I called to see if I could catch her there.”

“Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry to be the one to break this to you. Your mother is in the hospital…”

L
INC WATCHED AS
R
EGINA
rushed out of the diner as if the devil himself nipped at her heels. The sight of her surprised him because he’d just watched her go in a few minutes ago.

Now, she nearly ran straight into the stream of oncoming traffic, seemingly unaware of her surroundings. She looked spooked and anxious.

Linc got out of his SUV and hurried in her direction, meeting her when she made it safely across the road and was trying to find the right key to unlock her car door.

“Regina?” he said.

She looked at him but didn’t seem to register him immediately.

“What is it?” he asked, gently taking her arms and turning her toward him. She dropped her keys and wildly tried to pick them back up, but he held fast, forcing her to look at him.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s my mom,” she said. “She needs me.”

He glanced toward the diner where the owner and other staff stood in the window looking out at them. He considered taking her there, surrounding her with people with whom she was familiar. Instead, he picked up her keys, handed them to her and steered her toward the park at the end of the block. She walked as if she was in a trance. Once there, he sat her on a bench and then took the spot next to her.

“Tell me what happened.”

She did, outlining much of what he already knew. A part of him was relieved she’d received news of her mother without his having to tell her. But a larger part was afraid what she planned to do now.

Chances were, Johnson had tried to beat Regina’s whereabouts out of her mother. And since she was in the hospital, odds were good he didn’t get what he was looking for. So it was within the realm of possibility that she was left alive for a reason—Billy might be waiting for Regina to show up at the hospital.

Then again, there also existed the possibility that he’d gotten the information and was even now on his way to Colorado Springs.

“I’ve got to get to her…” Regina said, shivering despite the heat.

He put his arm around her and pulled her closer. “Did you talk to the doctor?”

She shook her head. “No, I spoke to a ward nurse. The doctor wasn’t available.”

“Did you leave a message?”

She nodded.

“I think it would be a good idea to wait to hear what he has to say before doing anything.”

She nodded, but he wasn’t sure she registered what he’d said.

They sat for a long minute silently, caught in a gauzy cocoon while the world continued to turn around them. Kids played on swings, an elderly woman walked by with one of those too-cute yippy dogs. Somewhere nearby the tinny music from an ice-cream truck sounded. Summer filled the air.

But all of it stopped just short of the air immediately surrounding them.

Regina’s cell phone rang. She anxiously searched her purse before finding it in the pocket of her uniform.

“Hello?”

Linc waited, listening to her part of the conversation that was obviously with her mother’s doctor.

“I see. Okay. Yes, yes, I’ll call tomorrow.”

She thanked him effusively and then slowly hung up the phone.

“He said she suffered severe head trauma and that he’s induced a coma. She’ll probably be under for at least the next forty-eight hours, when he’ll assess whether she needs to be kept under longer.”

Linc disguised his deep breath of relief.

“He said it wouldn’t be any good for me to make the trip right now. She wouldn’t know I was there anyway. But he’ll call me daily with an update and they’re not allowing visitors.”

Thank you for sensible doctors.

They sat for a few more moments before he finally said, “Come on. Let me take you home.”

It appeared to take an instant for her to interpret his words. “What are you doing here?”

He held her gaze.

Damn. He hadn’t considered the consequences of his actions when he’d rushed to her side. He’d only known an intense need to help her…to protect her from whatever she was experiencing.

“I’m sorry, that didn’t come out the way I intended,” she said quietly.

“That’s okay. I was in the neighborhood checking on a job and I came to see if I could catch a cup of coffee with you over lunch,” he said.

Was it him or did her questioning gaze linger a little longer than it should have? “Oh.”

“Come on. Let’s go.”

She resisted. “But I have to work…”

“I’m sure they’ll understand. How about we stop at the market on the way so we can buy the fixings and I can make you one of my world-famous Dagwood sandwiches?”

He got her walking back toward their cars. “World famous?”

“Yeah. You questioning my talents?”

The spark returned to her eyes. “And if I were?”

“Well, then, I guess I’ll just have to prove it to you…”

T
HAT NIGHT
, R
EGINA
couldn’t have said what would have happened had Linc not been there when she’d needed him. Her mother was the only family she had. If something happened to her…

She closed her eyes tightly. Something had happened to her. What remained was whether or not she’d pull through it all.

“Here. I didn’t know if you took it with sugar, so I added some honey.”

Regina opened her eyes to look at Linc. She accepted the cup of green tea and tried for a smile. “Thanks.”

He sat down on the sofa next to her. His mere presence made her feel better. She didn’t feel so alone.

As promised, earlier he’d made his sandwiches and she proclaimed that if they weren’t already world famous, they should be. Of course, she didn’t dare say she’d barely tasted the delicious meal. He even talked her into having a beer. That, combined with the shock, had made her drop straight off to sleep when he suggested she lie down for a bit.

Now, four hours later, he’d made her a big mug of green tea.

“Did you stay here the entire time?” she asked.

He easily stretched his arm across the back of the sofa. “No. I had some business to attend to. I used your key. I hope you don’t mind.”

She didn’t. She sipped her tea and then smiled at him. “I guess that makes number three, then.”

His expression was curious.

“Three times I’ve fallen asleep on you.”

His chuckle touched her in places his hands had the night before. “Yes, but this time it was at my invitation.”

“Ah. So then it’s okay.”

“Yes.” He fingered her hair at the back. “How do you feel?”

“Curiously like I got hit by a truck.”

“That’s shock. Hopefully it’ll pass by morning.”

She nodded. “Part of your Marine training?”

“Something like that.”

She sipped some more tea then placed the cup on the table. “I feel like I should go home. Be by her side. Studies prove comatose patients are still aware of their surroundings.”

“Naturally comatose patients. Not medically induced.”

She knew that. Still, it didn’t seem right somehow for her to be sitting here so far away while her mother was lying helpless in a hospital bed.

“Maybe you can call and ask a nurse to put the phone next to her ear. Speak to her for a few moments so she can hear your voice.”

She felt her smile down to her toes. “Thanks.”

He raised a brow. “For what?”

“For…well, for everything. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there for me earlier.”

“No thanks necessary. I’m just glad I could help.”

She settled more comfortably into the sofa. Outside, the sun was dipping over the Rocky Mountains to the west. She hadn’t turned on a lamp yet and the apartment was awash in golden-yellows and purples.

“Magic hour.”

“Excuse me?”

She gestured toward the window. “That’s what my mom always called this. You know…twilight.”

She pulled her knees up to her chest, remembering Saturday afternoons spent, just the two of them, either hiking outdoors or browsing the library or baking. Her mother would tell her stories about her as a little girl and about her father.

Her favorite had always been about magic hour. It had been during one that her mother had known her father was meant for her.

They’d met when they were in their early twenties, doing what others their age did. Well, for the most part. Her mother was already working full-time at the supermarket. And her father was a Marine back on leave. They’d met while he was buying a box of condoms and she’d been the cashier to check him out. (Of course, Regina didn’t find out what he’d been buying until she, herself, was twenty—her mother had said she hadn’t remembered what he’d bought before that.) Her father had asked her mom out on a date, and she’d refused. Then refused the second time he asked. And the third.

The fourth she accepted.

They were supposed to go to a movie, but had lingered over hot dogs at a local drive-in place and then went for a long walk instead, talking about everything.

Then came Magic Hour.

It had been in that moment, as twilight fell, that she’d looked into Regina’s father’s eyes and known with everything she was that he was the one.

Regina sighed now. It hadn’t been merely the story that had touched her, but the wistful expression on her mother’s face every time she told it.

“It must have been hard on her when your father passed,” Linc said quietly.

“Yes. She was devastated. She put up a good front for me, but…I always knew. When my dad died, a part of Mom died along with him.”

She hadn’t been aware she’d moved while she told the story, but now found herself curved against Linc’s side, his arm around her, his breath soft against the top of her head. All she would have to do is look up and she’d be in perfect kissing position.

She did. They were. And he kissed her…