Eagle's Heart (22 page)

Stubborn, Salomeh turned her head to the side, but his hand drifted to her face. He ran his fingertips over her jawline, over her brow bone and cheeks until he had coaxed her into looking at him again.

“Why should I believe you?” she asked. “When you first met me, you lied—”

“I didn’t lie, exactly,” he said, “I just didn’t divulge everything you may have wanted to know.”

“You said you were a consultant for the city,” she said, raising her head to better glare at him. He pressed her back into the pillow with one hand.

“I am, technically. In my position as investigating agent on the Albanian and Balkan Gangs Squad, I have been utilized as a consultant. The task force is located in New York City, and I live…well nowhere, really. Just traveling from case to case as needed.”

“You didn’t tell me you had information that could clear my name,” she said.

He sighed. “That information is tied up in an investigation that has been going on for years. Using it to help you would mean admitting that we were gathering the information to begin with, which would undermine the case. I didn’t want to get your hopes up without clearing things with Yates and Henderson first, which I had planned on doing ASAP.”

She nodded curtly. She couldn’t argue with that logic, despite the troubling implications.

“That makes sense, but what about how we had so much in common? You made up all those interests because you knew they were things I would like,” Salomeh pressed on.

“I had no idea what you liked. It’s not like I went digging through your trash. I was just trying to figure out how someone like you could be connected to Birdie, and before I knew it, sparks were flying. Trust me, that was just as surprising for me as it was for you.”

Salomeh looked away and then back, biting at her bottom lip to stanch the flood of emotion. She felt her throat closing against the words that hurt her but had to be acknowledged if she were to forgive him.

“You only slept with me to get information from me,” she said finally, shame flooding through her. Not at what she had shared with him, but because it had meant so much to her. “Do you know what that feels like? The way you touched me, the way you made me feel: all of it was based on deception.”

Julian leaned down and placed his forehead lightly against hers. He had her completely hemmed in, but Salomeh didn’t feel frightened. She felt hopeful.

Please say the right thing, she thought. Please don’t be just another box checked off in a list of terrible situations.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Please believe me when I say that I brought you to my apartment that night because I had no other choice.”

That was not the right thing.

“God, did they force you to sleep with me?” she asked, squeezing her eyes shut. And then she heard Julian chuckle.

“Stop acting like you’re Quasimodo. I had no other choice because I’d met the most amazing woman I’ve ever known,” he said. “You’re like a Venus flytrap, lush and inviting and impossible to escape.”

Salomeh scrunched her nose in distaste. “Am I supposed to find being compared to a weird-looking, mucus-lined carnivorous plant poetic in some way?” she asked. “I thought you were supposed to be good at sweet-talking people.”

His face was close enough that Salomeh could see the dimples start to form in advance of the mischievous smile she had first seen on the rooftop. And then his face was even closer, and she felt his mouth against hers as it curved into that grin. She found she was smiling too as if it were contagious. His lips were strong and unyielding as they clung to hers. Desire curled through Salomeh, and she leaned up into the kiss, tilting her head and parting her lips to give him better access. He groaned, licking into her mouth. His weight pressed her back into the bed as he explored her mouth with frenzied caresses of lips and tongue, nipping and licking as if he would never taste her again. Salomeh was lost in the sensation, bracing herself to meet his passionate kisses. Julian finally pulled away and flopped onto his back beside her, his chest heaving as if he had just run a lap around the motel.

“Do you see?” he asked. “How I can barely control myself around you? I’m supposed to be explaining, and instead I can’t stop touching you.”

“Is that an excuse for what you did?” she asked, without malice.

“It’s not an excuse; it’s a confession,” he breathed.

He rolled on his side to face her again. The look he gave her was serious and thoughtful, and as good as he was at lying, she knew that it was honest.

“Sleeping with women for information isn’t my modus operandi. I made love to you that night because every part of you called out to me. Not to be cliché, but for the first time in so many years, I felt something real. Something I wanted more than work, maybe even more than revenge.”

“Are you going to tell me you were a virgin until that night too?” she teased, her voice playful. Her heart was soaring. He’d said the right thing, finally, although she hadn’t known what it was until the words were out of his mouth.

Julian raised his brows at her and moved so he was on top of her.

“Do you think a virgin could make you scream like that? Not to be cocky, but you were pretty loud.”

She laughed, but when she glanced up at him, the expression on his face was anything but joking. No one had ever looked at her in such a way before.

“What can I do to prove how much you mean to me?” he asked, his voice rough.

She threw her arms around his neck, both of her hands laced into his hair. “Kiss me,” she said. “Just kiss me.”

She raised her head to meet Julian’s as he brought his mouth back to hers.

Their kiss was explosive. The initial connection Salomeh had felt during their first night together was back but magnified exponentially by the truth of his feelings. She could feel his tenderness in the restrained way his hands moved over her body. His fingers skimmed down her sides, leaving an electrified trail of sensation in their wake. His hand brushed over her stomach as he pushed her shirt up, and she gasped into his mouth.

Julian growled and then transferred his kisses to her neck, sucking the sensitive skin there as he cupped both of her breasts. He placed a ring of sweet kisses around her neck where she had seen ugly bruises forming when she’d looked in the mirror the night before. He nibbled his way up toward her ear while his thumbs flicked at her hardened nipples. She arched under him.

Salomeh loved the terrain of his muscled torso beneath her palms. She realized now that he didn’t look this way out of vanity or pride but because his body was a weapon. He had used it to protect her more than once, and that heightened her appreciation of it. She pushed away from him to gain better access to the furred expanse of his chest. She kissed trails from the pulse at his throat over the ridges of his pectorals, lapping at his small, flat nipple. He groaned aloud, and she felt his abs tighten as she kissed her way toward his waistline, but he gently pushed her onto her back again.

“As much I like where that was heading, let’s save that for a time when your head isn’t bandaged,” Julian said in a voice strained with need.

Salomeh wriggled impatiently and then pulled her shirt off and threw it to the floor. “You want to stop
now
?” she asked impatiently, lust pulsing through her in delicious waves.

“I didn’t say anything about stopping,” he said with a wicked smile. It faded as he ran his palm across the bruise that had blossomed on her side where she had been punched.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to hurt you, Salomeh.”

“I’m sure. I want you,” she said. Her gaze fastened on the bulge in the crotch of his jeans. “Definitely sure,” she added.

He gave her a quick kiss on the lips and then focused his attention on her nipples. He nipped at one before sucking it into his mouth, his tongue lavishing it with attention.

Salomeh began to rock under him as the pleasure filtered from his mouth and spread through her body. Julian smoothed his hand up her thighs, his index and middle finger finding their mark. Salomeh cried out. His hands were calloused and had touched her enough now that she knew the particular feel and weight of them. The familiarity, the knowledge that it was Julian, her Julian, massaging her clit, made it a million times more erotic. His tongue flicked roughly at her breast as his fingers made slick little motions between her legs.

“Oh,” she whispered, barely able to speak as little shocks of pleasure forced her body to jerk this way and that. “Julian…”

“Yes, zemer?” he asked before nipping at her collarbone. She shuddered at the contact.

“Are you ever going to tell me what zemer means?” she asked.

“The last lie I have to clear up. It doesn’t mean warrior princess,” he said as he lifted away from her to tug off his pants and underwear. He slid back between her legs, and Salomeh could feel the heat of his heavy cock against her thigh. She clutched at his shoulders, holding him as she positioned her clenching pussy near his length.

The thick head of his cock brushed against her folds, and the too-brief contact made her moan with need. He slipped one hand behind her neck to cradle her head and forced her to look up at him.

“Zemer means ‘darling,’” he said, pushing his cock into her just a bit and then retreating. “It means ‘honey’ and ‘dear heart’ and ‘sweetie.’”

He teased her with his thrusts, abbreviated strokes matched to each term of endearment that drove her crazy with need.

“It means that you are mine,” he said, finally sliding into her completely, grunting as she stretched around him. He hitched one of her legs to his side and began an excruciatingly slow pattern of entry and withdrawal, his thick member creating a friction that drove Salomeh insane. She could feel each inch of his cock as it slid across her inner walls, only stopping when he was lodged inside her to the root. His head rubbed against some exquisitely sensitive area deep inside her, teasing at a pleasure so intense it was almost painful. And then he slowly pulled out, the flared fullness of him creating a different type of erotic sensation as it caressed her from within on the downstroke.

Mine, she thought, allowing the meaning of his words to warm her, stoking the blaze already fueled by Julian’s passionate caresses.

He changed the angle of his thrust and hit a spot that made her gasp, but still continued with his slow, torturous rhythm.

“Oh God, Julian,” she said, impatiently lifting her hips against him, trying to increase the pace of their union. His words, combined with the controlled passion of his lovemaking, had driven her to the edge. Her entire body felt charged and nearly ready to explode, and her pussy clenched tightly around his dick as he moved within her, creating an even more overwhelming sensation.

“I’m
trying
to go slow, zemer,” he said. His breath came out shakily, and she knew he was close to losing control. “If I wasn’t holding myself back, I’d probably succeed in giving you the concussion you missed out on yesterday.”

He ran his hands over her body as he continued to stroke into her, and then lifted her other leg and moved it across his body so she was in a sidesaddle position. He began pumping his hips faster, changing the direction of his stroke in a circular motion so he was drilling into her.

“Is this better?” he asked with a devilish smile.

Salomeh didn’t bother to answer. Julian completely filled her, gliding against places that left her unable to articulate beyond yips and cries.

Julian burrowed himself more deeply with each thrust, building a rising crest of sensation that was so pleasurable as to be nearly unbearable. Salomeh looked up into his eyes then. The intensity of his gaze as he made love to her and the honesty of his ardor joined forces, propelling a blast of desire from her core to every extremity of her body, curling her toes and arching her back until the tension within her was broken by a hoarse cry of release.

As her orgasm roared through her, Julian cried out too. It was a turn-on, hearing the helpless cries wrung from his lips as her pussy clamped his cock in the waves of her desire, and as the wetness of her release coated him and made his thrusting even more slick and sensual. He clenched at her hips to brace her as he pistoned into her with abandon, his rigid member throbbing within her as he rode one of the pulsing waves of her climax.

“Yes, Julian, like that,” she whispered, newfound pleasure whirling through her from his increased pace She cried out as another orgasm crested, an aftershock that was less intense but still powerful enough to have her writhing mindlessly against Julian.

“Fuck,” he cried out, shuddering his own release. His face was beautiful as it contorted in the throes of ecstasy, long lashes shadowed against his ruddy cheeks as he squeezed his eyes shut.

Salomeh held on to him tightly, a surge of emotion riding on the tails of her orgasm. He pumped a few more times as he came down from his climax and then collapsed beside her on the bed and pulled her into his sweaty embrace.

“I hope you realize that there’s no faking that,” he panted as he nuzzled into her neck.

“All right already, I’m a believer,” Salomeh said, running her hands over his back.

They were quiet as they both waited to regain the ability and desire to move. Salomeh drifted into a shallow sleep. She could feel Julian smiling against her shoulder as he dozed, and she did the same, but her elation began to dwindle as she realized that great sex hadn’t changed most of their problems.

“Julian,” she said, and he raised his hand to her mouth to stop her from speaking. She pulled it away and continued. “Not to kill the afterglow, but what do we do now?”

“I knew you were going to ask that.” He sighed, standing up and tugging her off the bed. “Let’s go shower.”

“I was talking about the Birdie-trying-to-kill-us situation,” she said.

“So am I. I do my best thinking in the shower,” he said. “And two heads are better than one.”

“You’re lucky I have a soft spot for annoying consultants,” she said as he herded her toward the bathroom.

“Am I ever,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Excuse me?”