Release (8 page)

“
Be prepared
. That’s my motto,” Sean said as he removed his damp peacoat in the foyer. Genevieve tensed when she saw the leather gun holster he wore, but then he took it off and hooked the strap beneath his coat.

He attacked his wet boots next, moving with a brisk jauntiness, as if he’d been infused with energy. She considered saying something about not being certain yet about where she’d spend the next few days.

But he seemed so
happy
. She found she didn’t have the heart at the moment for bringing up such a tense subject.

“You were never a Boy Scout,
boy
,” she murmured humorously instead as she removed a small white bag and appreciatively sniffed at the rich ground coffee inside. She glanced into the foyer and saw Sean had paused in the process of removing his black leather lace-up boots. He smiled at her, the effect as potent and warming to Genevieve as swallowing a slug of premium brandy.

“Nah, but it was even more of a crucial motto to live by where I grew up,” he teased as he kicked off his boot. He turned and started keying in the code to the alarm system. She watched him over his shoulder, her hand frozen in the process of removing a round loaf of seeded Italian bread.

“Sean, is that really necessary?”

He shrugged before he hit the final button and the mechanism beeped softly.

“I’m paranoid. It’s one of the hazards of the profession.
Lawd
, it’s coming down out there,” he said cheerfully as he entered the kitchen. He noticed her amused expression. “What? Is there some law I’m not aware of that says I have to be in a bad mood because of a snowstorm?” He reached into a sack and withdrew a bottle. “We’ve got wine. We’ve got coffee. We’ve got Salvatore’s good olive relish so I can make you some muffuletta. Mmm, mmm.
Good
food,” he enthused as he withdrew a small paper bag and handed it to her. “Look what they had at the market, girl. That’ll cheer you up. I won’t say a word if you eat every one of ’em while you’re all snuggled up out there on the couch, either.”

Genevieve paused in the process of withdrawing some romaine lettuce. Her eyes leapt up to meet Sean’s. He wore a crooked grin as he watched her, his blue eyes lambent and warm. She hastily took the bag of gourmet bing cherry chocolates and set it on the counter, averting her gaze.

She didn’t know what to say. He knew they were her favorite treat, knew she craved them whenever she was a little blue. She’d once told him how she occasionally bought the treats and ate a whole bag of them while she read a trashy novel in bed. She recalled how he’d been fascinated by her revelation of that small intimacy.

The fact that he’d remembered—the repetition of that benign, personal secret in his husky voice—made her lose her already unsteady emotional footing. It had struck her as sweet. Precise. Intensely sexy.

So
Sean-
like.

Genevieve couldn’t tell if Sean knew he’d struck a chord deep inside her or thought he’d erred somehow, but he didn’t say anything else as they unloaded the remaining groceries, both of them careful not to run into each other or make contact in the small kitchen.

Heat rose in Genevieve’s cheeks. Tension grew in her muscles.

She exhaled in relief when she finally put away the last item—a plastic bag of Italian tomatoes. She hurried into the living room, sighing in disappointment when she realized that thanks to the fireplace, it was no cooler there than the kitchen.

The frigid windowpane felt wonderful pressed to her flaming cheek. She saw him approach in the glass, his reflection cast from the golden glow of the lamp onto the gray gloom of the stormy day. Her mind shouted out a last desperate warning to flee.

But there was nowhere else to go.

She couldn’t run from herself. Her desire followed her wherever she went, how well she knew.

She closed her eyes, blocking out the faded reflection of his sober, concerned face when he wrapped his hands on her upper arms and massaged the muscles through her sweater.

“What are you always runnin’ from?” he murmured softly.

“You know.” Suppressed emotion caused her chest to spasm when he pressed his mouth to her jaw. She felt his body ghosting hers from behind.

“I know you better than you know yourself, girl. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. And while you’re here with me, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he rumbled near her ear. She shivered and he drew her into his arms . . . softly, like he thought she might break.

“Genny.”

She lifted her head slowly, letting it fall back on his chest. If only she was as comfortable—as at home—with her desires as Sean. She opened her eyelids. Meeting his gaze through the hazy reflection in the window somehow seemed more manageable than looking at Sean himself at that moment.

“Why didn’t you let me near you? Why didn’t you ever let me say I was sorry?” he asked.

Dread swelled in her chest. “For what?” she rasped.

He turned her gently. His blue eyes looked aflame. “You’ll never know how much I regretted it.”

“Don’t.
Don’t
say anything else.”

The plea had popped out of her throat. Her heart hammered out a wild warning. Another convulsion seized her rib cage and he pushed her cheek to his chest while she shook in a paroxysm of emotion. He pressed his mouth to the top of her head.

“You were far too precious to be treated like that. I wouldn’t have wished that for you, Genny. Not for us. And it was the first time I’d touched you. Gawd, girl, I’m
so
sorry. I just wanted you so much. It’d been so damn hard not to have you . . .”

She’d clenched her eyes closed when he’d started speaking, as if to shut out the truth, but she opened them now slowly.

It hadn’t been the confession she’d expected.

She lifted her head off his chest. His face looked rigid with strain.

“You said I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to do. Well, I don’t want to talk about that night, Sean. I don’t.”

“We’ve got to talk about it
sometime.
”

She took a deep, steadying breath. “Do you want to stay here with me for the next couple nights?”

His mouth fell open. “You
know
I do, but—”

“Then don’t plan on talking about what happened on that night, not about Max . . .
any
of it.” She met his incredulous stare without flinching. “I
mean
it, Sean. The minute you say a word about it, I’m leaving. Those are my terms. Take it or leave it,” she said sternly.

“All right.”

She blinked, a little surprised by his quick concession.

“Well . . . all right, then,” she muttered dubiously. Her eyebrows shot up when he gathered her closer in his arms. Genevieve suddenly became aware that she was pressed tightly against the length of a long, hard male body. Sean kissed her temple. His lips felt warm and firm next to her tingling skin.

“What d’ya want to do now that that’s all decided, girl?” he asked gruffly near her ear.

 

 

 

He still ached a little, but Sean forced a smile when he saw Genny’s dazed expression. He’d been trying to tease her out of their somber mood, desperate to do anything that would remove that haunted expression in her storm-cloud eyes.

Sure, he’d been teasing, but if she’d said she wanted to begin a sex marathon then and there that only would have ended when he had to be hospitalized for dehydration, Sean would have been happy to comply.

And all too ready, he thought wryly when he realized he’d grown stone-hard as he held Genny in his arms. Never mind that she’d looked fragile enough to shatter just moments before. Sean knew from personal experience that he became nothing better than a beast when he inhaled the fragrance of Genny’s clean hair or caught the sweet, womanly scent at her neck. Genny’d always made him hyperaware of the drastic contrast between his need to be tender, to cherish, and a primal mandate to make her completely his own.

He knew for certain he wasn’t a beast though, because animals weren’t capable of regretting their hunger.

He reluctantly backed away from her, releasing her from his embrace.

“Don’t . . . don’t you have to go down to the office?” she asked when several feet separated them. She touched her cheek distractedly and gazed at her wet fingertips, her brow wrinkled perplexedly.

Poor girl. She hadn’t realized she’d been crying.

“I need something to eat first.” He stretched. What started as an affected yawn turned real. “Then maybe a little nap. I never really slept last night.”

His words seemed to make her awkwardness and confusion evaporate. “I’ll just heat up the coffee you brought and fix us something for breakfast, then.”

He stayed in the living room when she passed him, sensing she needed some time to herself. He wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of allowing her the opportunity to rebuild her defenses, but what choice did he have? None, if he didn’t want to hurt her more.

Just like he hadn’t had any choice in agreeing not to talk about the night Max, Genny, and he had spent here together.

Seeing her like this—so fragile and sad—made him feel like pulverizing whatever it was that upset her. Too bad
he
was the no-good trash who was responsible for her distress.

A familiar bitterness had seized his gut when she’d said earlier that she was involved with another man. First Max, now some other asshole was claiming what nature had clearly decreed was
his.

What the hell? Was he cursed or something? For most people, actually finding a mate who perfectly suited them was an unattainable fantasy. Sean had been lucky enough to find Genny, but fate always seemed to dangle her just out of his desperate reach.

’Course it hadn’t been
fate
that had alienated Genny on that New Year’s Eve. No,
Sean
had done that in spades.

He collapsed onto the couch and dug his fingertips into his eye sockets. His eyelids burned with fatigue.

Genny might have responded like a man’s fantasy come to life that New Year’s Eve in bed, but Sean knew as well as anyone there had been an unhealthy franticness to her desire; that she’d behaved in a manner that wasn’t consistent with her beliefs and values.

He knew it, because it’d been the same for him. Not because he’d broken a personal code—not in the general sense. He’d enjoyed a couple of ménage à trois in his wild, hell-bent youth and the radar on his moral consciousness hadn’t even blipped.

But because it’d been Genny—because it’d been
them
—yeah. It’d been a sacrilege of sorts.

She’d been another man’s wife and he’d never so much as kissed her. But somehow, it hadn’t been Max who had allowed Sean to make love to his wife that night. It’d been
Sean
who had permitted another man to touch her in his presence.

Sean had seen her hesitation on that night, but he’d sensed her inner fires even more. He’d made a conscious choice to quiet her uncertainty by feeding the flames until all doubts were burned to dust.

He hadn’t been satisfied until he’d created a fever of lust in her. He’d treated her like she was the most experienced, voracious female he’d ever bedded, forced her to submit again and again to the desire that raged between them like an unquenchable inferno.

And every time he saw a trace of the uncertainty in Genny’s eyes, he’d coaxed the flame higher yet again, never content until her ravaged, reddened lips shaped a plea for more.

Sean hated himself for that. It’d been his own doubts he’d seen mirrored in Genny’s soulful eyes. But he’d let his baser instincts rule him instead. And he’d paid for it.

Genny had even more.

Max had paid for his machinations with his life, but Sean had a hard time feeling sorry for him.

Max Sauren . . . whose clever, cool gaze had seen so much.

Max.

The man who was never truly content unless he held a trump card over everyone that was close to him.

Sean should have suspected that Max had been up to something. He’d come to understand Max’s obsessive need to collect secrets. Max was fond of keeping the more crucial ones—his greatest treasures—in a leather-bound, high-security carbon attaché case he’d been given upon retiring from the CIA.

Max used to be uncommonly proud of that particular gift.

He’d been told by the director of the CIA that the attaché case was a replica of the “football,” the high-security, bulletproof case that followed the president of the United States everywhere he went. The president’s contained the codes for a nuclear missile launch. Max’s secrets may not have been crucial to every living creature on the planet, but they were explosive enough when it came to certain individuals.

Sean’d been so preoccupied by his feelings for Genny that he’d been blindsided by what Max had pulled on that New Year’s Eve. He’d been caught in the big cat’s trap, and he’d unintentionally dragged Genny into it with him.

He knew Max had planned to use the videotape he’d secretly made of them making love that night to blackmail him. What Sean didn’t know was whether Max had planned to use it to control his wife, as well.

Had Max shown Genny that recording? If Max had, it certainly would explain the disquietude and anxiety he saw in Genny’s eyes sometimes when Sean looked at her.

The question of what Max had said or done to Genny in those days following that New Year’s Eve haunted him. He may have his doubts about the evidence Albert Rook had shown him after Max was killed, but Sean dreaded the idea of questioning Genny about it.

And if Max
had
shown Genny the videotape?

Well . . . Sean figured he might have killed Max for less.

CHAPTER
FIVE

T
he pleasant aroma of eggs, toast, and coffee, the warmth from the fire and encroaching drowsiness caused Sean to abandon his morbid thoughts for more practical matters.