Safe in His Arms (3 page)

She blinked back the tears that made her vision swim.
“
Great, so I doubled your usual quotient?” Her bitter words trailed off when he bent his head to kiss her. He moved slowly, as if giving her a chance to refuse his invasion. She stilled, the urge to reject him overruled by a dark flame of desire. His lips slanted over hers in an undemanding kiss, tongue gently probing, lips caressing her mouth. She answered it, wanting to remember the taste of him, to recapture the essence of the mysterious man who had become so enormous in her memory. Releasing her wrists, he drew her closer and she slid her hands up the taut muscles of his arms, gripping them for stability.

He drew away too soon and she wobbled on her feet, panting, staring up in a confused swirl of emotion. “I haven’t forgiven you.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t even know who you are,” she said hoarsely.

“That’s because I don’t exist.”

* * *

Ankles and wrists bound together, lying naked on her side, Rebecca Cavanah was the hottest thing he’d seen in a long time. She was his mark, which meant mixing business with pleasure was a no-brainer. As far as he was concerned, he was going above and beyond the call of duty, watching the leggy bombshell 24/7 for the wedding weekend.

She was perfect—long legs, firm tits, a dimpled smile. She had the girl-next-door sweet beauty, which made her interest in whips and chains all the more intriguing. “I should tell you I have extensive training in torture techniques,” he told her, watching her wriggle. “Oh yeah, aren’t I supposed to give you a safe word or something?”

“French fry!” she blurted, as if she’d been waiting for him to ask.

He hid a smile. “French fry it is,” he said, picking up her flip-flop and smacking it against his palm as she squirmed in anticipation.

Two hours later, her bottom was a deep purplish red and he’d brought her to orgasm four times. She lay limp, her eyes closed, making a soft humming sound in her throat. He untied the rope around her wrists and kissed the red marks it had left. “So, what’s your fantasy—master and slave? Sir and slut?”

She rolled on her back, her breasts spilling apart. “Not exactly.”

He straddled her and took her nipple between his thumb and forefinger and pinched, causing the relaxed tissue to instantly harden again. She rolled her head back and forth. “No more…I can’t come again, Zac.”

He pinched harder. “I decide whether you can come or not.”

“Yes, sir,” she whispered.

“Ah, so it’s a ‘sir’ you want?”

She bit her lip and blushed. “Actually, I’m more into bad girl spanked by big daddy or naughty young wife taken over her husband’s knee.”

It was only his months of government training to extinguish all physiological signs of reaction that kept him from gaping at that news. “So you do, actually, want a husband?” he teased.

She giggled. “Only if he spanks.”

He slid off her and nestled down next to her, pulling her into the curve of his shoulder.

“—for real. I would want a husband who spanks for real. Like if I was bitchy or didn’t clean the bathroom. Or to end a stupid argument.”

This time he chuckled.

She slapped his arm. “Don’t laugh at me!”

“I’m sorry. It’s just…that’s adorable! What man wouldn’t want a wife he could spank to end an argument?”

She made a raspberry sound with her lips. “Twenty-five years and you’re the first one to ever lay a hand on my ass.”

He grinned at her. “Well, we’ll have to make up for lost time, then won’t we?”

* * *

Zac’s phone buzzed, an unfortunate interruption. “That’s our food,” he said, reluctantly releasing Becca from his embrace to answer the call.

“Yeah,” he spoke into the mouthpiece.

“I’m outside.”

He took the fake nanny’s laptop and cell phone and stepped outside, shutting the door behind him. He didn’t want Becca and Parker to see Marcus, the San Diego desk agent who had shown up with a pizza and groceries and stayed for a brief exchange of intel.

“Here’s your laptop, and your travel bag.”

“Thanks. What do you know?”

He shook his head. “Probably the same thing you do—she was the professional known as Angel. No info on who might have hired her or why. If the target was El Demo, it seems strange she’d be watching his daughter—you’ve been watching her for seven years without a lead.”

“Let me know what you get from the laptop or phone.”

“I will. Beatty wants you to report. He’s sending over some agents to watch the civilians.”

“Negative. I’m not leaving them until I know who ordered the hit and why.”

Marcus shrugged. “How are you going to explain that to Beatty? If he finds out you’ve got something personal here, you’ll be out of the country on the next plane.”

He stared over Marcus’s shoulder at the trees, silhouetted in the darkening sky. He had earned his reputation as “the ghost” by being fluid—following his gut, moving with the current to avoid capture, survive torture, or disappear like the wind. But where Becca and Parker were concerned, a mulish resistance clouded his judgment. He’d rushed in too quickly that evening, killing the one person with the answers. Now he was going to sabotage himself again by showing his hand to Beatty. But he just couldn’t trust them with anyone else. And now that he’d made contact with them, now that they knew he existed…walking away from them was going to kill him.

He refocused on Marcus, who knew his secret because he’d pulled the favor from him of faking his death and setting them up on a pension. Marcus had access to most government databases, and could create identities for people or make them disappear at the drop of a hat.

“I don’t know,” he said, exhaling. “Let me know as soon as you have anything.”

Inside, Becca had turned skittish again. “So you still haven’t told me what’s going on,” she said as he unpacked the food.

He glanced pointedly at Parker and quirked an eyebrow. Parker caught the look. “She wasn’t really a nanny, was she?” he asked.

The hairs on Zac’s arms stood up. “No, buddy, she wasn’t.”

The boy gazed up at him with his mother’s eyes—round and green, with a smattering of freckles across his nose. The rest of his face looked like his own—the same the bone structure and shape of the mouth. His heart tightened. There was an undeniable biological response to looking at the face of your own child. The urge to protect him was equal or even stronger than the need he had to keep Becca safe. It was that urge that had sent him flying into their apartment the moment he’d reviewed the security videos and identified the nanny as a hit woman.

“Who was she?”

“Bad guy.”

Parker nodded wisely, stuffing pizza in his mouth. “Thought so,” he said.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Becca said automatically. She turned a narrowed eye on him. “But
why
would I have a bad guy for a nanny?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out.”

Becca sank into a chair, looking like she wanted to puke. She rested her head in her hands. After a long silence, she lifted her head and asked, “When can we go back to our apartment?”

“Not for a few days, and only if we know it’s safe.”

“May I go to work?”

“No.”

Becca’s face flushed and she stood up. “Look, do you have some kind of credentials I could see?”

He considered her. He had a whole stack of ID tags with credentials—FBI, CIA, local police badges, Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard IDs. He had an ID for any situation in which he might find himself. He didn’t want to show her a lie, though. She and Parker were the only people in his life who were real. And he wasn’t in their lives—he couldn’t be in their lives, but for this tiny sliver of time he was with them, he wanted to be real. He shook his head. “No, because I don’t exist.”

“Right, and the organization you’re with probably doesn’t exist either?”

He grinned. “You catch on fast.”

She blew her breath out with exasperation, sending the wispy hairs around her face flying. “We’re not staying,” she said.

Oddly, he was turned on by her defiance, the plucky lift of her chin, a slight pouting of the already full lips. Was it because he imagined disciplining her for it? The memory of their play as dominant and submissive rose afresh. He chose to ignore her defiance, though, rather than trigger the “we’re prisoners” discussion again. Redirecting the conversation, he asked, “Do you have any homework, Parker?”

“Nope.”

“Do you think she was there because of this family member I have?” Becca asked, reverting to their previous discussion.

He frowned and nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t know how yet. That’s what I have to find out.”

Parker finished wolfing down his food and now sat looking sleepy. “May I please be excused from the table?”

“Eat two more carrots,” Becca said, shoving the bag of baby carrots at him.

“What time is your bedtime?”

“Eight o’clock.”

Zac made a show of looking at his watch. “It’s just about bedtime—did you bring a book to read?”

“Yep. I brought
Ricky Ricotta’s Mighty Robot
.”

“Ooh, that sounds good. Do you read that or does your mom read it to you?”

He shrugged. “I can read it, but she reads faster.”

“May I read it to you tonight?”

“Sure,” he said, sliding off his chair and trotting to his backpack. “Which room is mine?”

Zac’s eyes slid to Becca. He knew which bed he’d like her in, but that was probably not going to happen. “Let your mom decide.”

There were two bedrooms—a master bedroom with a king bed and a master bath, and a second bedroom with two beds.

“We’re sleeping in there,” Becca said immediately, pointing to the second bedroom.

* * *

“How was that?”

She made a soft humming noise.

“You could have taken more, couldn’t you?”

She lay on her belly, her ass throbbing from the spanking he’d just administered, her pussy throbbing from the pounding it had taken afterward, her limbs limp with satiated passion. She blushed and nodded. “Do you think…maybe you could use your belt next time?”

His eyebrows shot up, grin widening. “Now?”

She ducked her head, hiding her face in the bedspread and chickening out. “No, I mean, maybe later.”

He stood up, fully comfortable in his nudity, his chest and arms bronzed a golden tan from the sun. He was all lean muscle and moved with the agility of an athlete. He pulled his belt out of the loops of his discarded pants and wound the buckle end around his fist. A thrill of cold fear shot through her, but she remained as she lay, her bottom exposed to him. This is was their last night together—when else would she have the chance to play with a willing participant?

Chapter Two

Hearing Zac talk to Parker the way a father talks to a son was like a knife through her heart. She hated him for it—hated him for doing it so well; hated him for not doing it for the first six years of Parker’s life; hated him for making her long to have a man like him in their lives.

Her thoughts were so tangled, she couldn’t possibly begin to make sense of them. The looming question ought to be whether they were they safe with the man who had just murdered someone in their apartment, but instead her mind swirled around her bitterness at his abandonment, and a gnawing ache to feel his arms around her again.

He watched her now, with a steady, absorbing regard that sent a tingle right down to her toes. It was that sort of attention that had made her two nights with him incomparable to any other coupling. He had read her so well, delivered her every desire, sensed her limits. And if she had ruined one-night stands for him, he certainly had ruined all other men for her.

“I’m ready!” Parker called out, standing in the doorway in his Spiderman PJs.

“Did you brush your teeth?” she asked.

“Yep.”

Zac stood up. “Okay, let’s see this robot book of yours.” He followed Parker into the room and they curled up on one of the beds together.

“How about if I read one page and then you read one page?” she heard Zac ask.

“Okay!” Again, the innocent eagerness. No judgment or anger from Parker. No
where have you been?
or
where do you get off waltzing into my life and playing daddy?
But then, Parker had recognized Zac—had called him a spy guy. With a fresh rush of sick, she wondered if he’d made contact with Parker without her knowing. She stood up and cleared the table of the remains of their dinner. She’d only been able to eat a few carrots, herself. Keeping one ear on Zac and Parker, her thoughts rounded again on her immediate dilemma. Whether Zac was for real or not, she needed to get to her phone and notify someone of her whereabouts—her sister, maybe—so she could call the authorities if she and Parker never resurfaced. Of course, if Becca didn’t call into work in the morning and Parker never showed up at school, it might trigger some sort of investigation anyway, which could be an excuse to get her sim card and battery back from Zac.

She finished her obsessive scrubbing of already clean counters in the kitchen and, hearing nothing but quiet from the bedroom, went to look. They were snuggled together on the bed—Parker asleep in the nook of Zac’s arm. In the second before Zac had looked up, she thought she’d seen him gazing at Parker with something akin to longing. Seeing her, he carefully extricated himself from the sleep-heavy limbs of their son and stood, his lean, muscular body unfolding with a panther-like grace.

She waited until he’d shut the door before she demanded, “Have you made contact with Parker before?”

He shook his head.