14
ALEX RUBBED HIS EYES and leaned back in his desk chair, tired of working and tired of being alone. Avoiding Yasmine sucked. Not having her around sucked, not making love to her sucked, and leaving all his lies hanging between them sucked most of all.
He couldn’t focus on work until he told her the truth—that much was becoming painfully apparent. He needed to call her, go see her, find the guts to tell her everything and ask her forgiveness. Maybe once she finished being pissed off at him, they’d have a chance. Or maybe not, but he had to tell her regardless of the consequences.
He had just picked up the phone and started dialing her number when the doorbell rang. Alex put down the phone and went to the door, his heart pounding in his chest when he saw that it was Yasmine.
As if she’d been reading his mind.
“Hey,” he said when he opened the door.
“Hey, yourself.” She smiled and reached for him, stood on tiptoes to give him a long, hot kiss.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“I hate not seeing you at the office, and I was in your neighborhood for an exercise class and thought I’d stop in.”
“I’ve missed you,” he said as he closed the door behind her.
She shrugged off her green leather jacket, and he took it and hung it on the coat rack. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“No, I was just sitting here thinking about you, actually.”
She flashed a smile. “You were?”
“Yeah,” he said. “We need to talk.”
She slipped her fingers into his belt loop and pulled him toward her. “Did I mention that I’m really, really horny?”
This was where he should put some distance between them, stay his course….
“I’ve been thinking of you all day.” She slid her hands around his waist and gripped his ass, massaging as she talked. “Thinking about what I’d like to be doing with you.”
“Oh, yeah?” His cock went erect against her, and when he recalled her peep show performance, he wanted, more than anything, to have her again.
He’d never met a woman so hot, so right for him, so absolutely tempting….
He summoned his deepest reserve of willpower, but a voice inside his head said this was his last chance with her. That the one thing that could best remind her how right they were together was to make love to her.
He knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t stop himself from this wanting that wouldn’t be controlled. Not when the woman he wanted more than air was right here in his arms, warm and willing.
He gave in and kissed her, a kiss that was all wanting and hunger. He dragged her over to the couch, and they fumbled with buttons and zippers, undressing in a frenzy until it was just skin on skin. Yasmine pushed him back onto the couch, climbed on his lap.
The pent-up desire of the past few days apart had them all over each other like starving people, and Yasmine’s naked body was his feast. He devoured her breasts, savoring her hard nipples in his mouth, but he needed more—needed to drink her juices, taste her all over.
He stretched out on the couch and urged Yasmine on top of him with her legs straddling his neck, but she turned around, found his cock as she offered him her p-ssy. And as he thrust his tongue into her, she took him into her mouth, giving him twice the pleasure he’d imagined, twice the intimacy.
He drank her in until she was quivering against him, but if he let her continue pleasuring him, he’d explode. And so he had to stop. Had to work his way inside her. He lifted her off and sat up, then pulled her onto his lap. In his wallet was a condom, and Yasmine found it before he did, slid it on him, and he eased into her slowly, savoring her sweet tightness.
Cupping her ass, he set the rhythm of her rocking hips, and he watched the pleasure play across her face as he quickened their pace.
Her flesh against him, his flesh inside of her, their shared pleasure—it was perfect. It was what he’d always imagined sex could be with the right woman. This was as good as it got, and more than he should have taken.
Banishing the truth edging in on his fantasy, he pulled her closer and held her face in his hands as he kissed her through the last delicious thrusts. Her body tensed, tightened around him, and she cried out in release.
His own orgasm came on the heels of hers, almost violent as it shuddered through his body. He clung to her, spilling into her, wishing this closeness wouldn’t end.
When they’d both caught their breath, he kissed her deep and slow, then eased her onto the couch beside him, tucking her against his body, where she fit all too perfectly.
“I’m glad you stopped by,” he said.
She smiled. “I noticed. I like the way you say hello.”
“I didn’t mean for us to get carried away like that, but we seem to have a certain effect on each other.”
“What’s wrong with getting carried away?” she asked, nudging him with her hip.
“Normally, I’m all for it. But I need to talk to you, and I’ve been putting it off too long.”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you, too,” she said. “I was going to wait until New Year’s Eve, but after what just happened, I think now is as good a time as any.”
She turned her body toward him and sat up on her elbow, looking him in the eyes.
“What’s up?” he asked, fear churning in his gut. What if she was already on to him, and he didn’t get a chance to come clean first…?
“This might sound crazy, but you and me—us, this thing that’s happening between us.” She sighed, smiling as she traced a finger along his lower lip. “I think I’m falling for you.”
The fear in his stomach turned to stone, and suddenly he couldn’t remember how to breathe. The words, spoken aloud, made perfect sense, and he knew in that instant he was falling in love with her, too. But she didn’t even know his real name, or the impact he’d had on her life.
He’d never meant for it to happen this way.
“I’m falling for you, too, Yasmine. But you have to hear me out.”
Her smile faded. “You sound so serious.”
He sat up and pulled her up with him, holding her hands in his. “This is serious,” he said, then took a deep breath. It was now or never. “I haven’t been honest with you, and I need to explain why.”
“What haven’t you been honest about?”
“I’m not who you think I am,” Alex said.
She expelled a nervous laugh. “What? You’re really a secret agent, infiltrating my life to see if I’m hacking into government computers?”
When he didn’t laugh, her expression went from tentative to concerned.
“Not exactly,” he said.
“Kyle? What the hell does ‘not exactly’ mean?”
Damn it, he hated himself right now.
“My name’s not really Kyle,” he said as he held her hands tighter, hoping she wouldn’t run away, forcing himself to breathe evenly. “It’s Alex. Alex DiCarlo.”
She blinked and shook her head, as if her brain was circling his words, trying to make sense of them. Did his name sound familiar to her?
Did it linger in her mind as a sentence in the worst chapter of her life? Did she ever see his face in her memory, on the witness stand?
Her mind registered the words, and she jerked her hands away, then crossed her arms over her chest.
“Why the hell did you lie to me about your name? Who’s Kyle Kramer?”
“Just a name I made up. I lied because I didn’t want you to recognize me,” he forced himself to say.
“I don’t get it.”
“Do you remember the FBI agent who testified against you during your trial?”
Two vertical creases formed on her brow. “Sort of. I mean, I have a vague memory….”
Her eyes widened as she stared at him. And her mouth opened as if she were about to say something, but no words emerged.
“Do you recognize me now?”
“You’re the one?”
“That was me. I testified against you. I worked on the case and gathered the evidence that helped convict you.” He said the words in a gush of air before he could stop, lose his nerve, forget all about honor and honesty so he could hold on to this woman.
She sprang up from the couch, her gaze searching him for some hint of his old appearance. “You? But you don’t look the same.”
“I grew my hair longer, it got bleached out in the sun, and I got colored contact lenses.”
He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her, get rid of that growing look of betrayal darkening her features, but it wouldn’t do any good.
“Why? Why are you here in disguise? Sleeping with me, pretending you’re someone else!”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I lied to you. You were one of the suspects in a case I was investigating before I left the FBI. I had to know if you were really involved, and I had to know if I’d really let myself miss the facts because of my attraction to you. I’ll admit, there was some desire for revenge involved at first. If you were guilty, I wanted to be the one to prove it, out of some stupid sense of pride.”
“And you slept with me to find out the truth?”
“No. Not exactly.”
“Are you still an agent?”
“No, I was forced to resign six months ago.”
“For your creative investigating methods?”
“I didn’t intend to sleep with you. At least not at first, not until I realized how attracted we were to each other.”
“Why are you all of a sudden coming clean?”
“Because this has become a hell of a lot more than a weekend fling. I know you’re not involved in any illegal activities, and I just want us to have a real chance together.”
“Why the hell are you still investigating me if you’re not an agent anymore?”
“I lost my career over this case. I needed to know the truth—”
“You bastard,” she said, her voice barely controlled as she grabbed her clothes from the floor and started putting them on.
“Let’s not end it like this. Please don’t leave. Stay and talk to me.”
“Still hoping I might know something that could get you your job back? Or are you angling to get another farewell screw?”
“No, I just want a chance to prove to you I’m not a bad person.”
“And then what? We can reminisce about old times? You can remind me what it was like during the trial? How you were so busy lusting after your sixteen-year-old suspect you could hardly pay attention to the facts of the case?”
“That’s not true. I was just doing my job, and I never let anything interfere with that.”
Finished dressing, she tugged her boots on and grabbed her coat from the rack. “I can’t believe you just slept with me, before you told me your big fat secret. What the hell kind of move was that?”
“A damn stupid one. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking with the right head.”
She jerked open the door and turned back to him with fire in her eyes. “Go to hell,” she said. “And when you get there, don’t even think of calling me with a weather report.”
He watched as she closed the door, the weight of failure sitting on his chest, making it hard to breathe. He couldn’t have messed this up any more than he already had. Couldn’t have made things much worse or had any crappier timing.
Damn it, he’d screwed up.
And yet, even in his failure, he felt a tiny sense of relief that he’d been right all along. She wasn’t involved, wasn’t the criminal he’d suspected. He hadn’t let his attraction to her cloud his judgment, as had been claimed. He’d been right.
It was cold comfort.
YASMINE DROVE HOME with tears streaming down her cheeks, a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and her foot too heavy on the gas pedal.
She’d been so stupid.
Everything made more sense now. The eerie feeling that she’d known Kyle—Alex, whatever the hell his name was—from somewhere before, his odd behavior at his apartment that first night, as if he was trying to hide something from her, and his midnight use of her computer.
She’d been an utter and complete fool.
She’d let down her guard, had sex with him as though he was the last man on earth, and even let herself start falling in love with him.
With a guy whose name she hadn’t even known. A guy who’d once testified against her. A guy she’d been foolish enough to think could see past her surface, when really he’d been obsessed with the way she looked for a decade.
She should have trusted her instincts. He was just like every other guy who’d been mesmerized by her appearance to great detriment. And maybe she’d brought that on herself, unwilling as she was to change the way she looked. Maybe she liked being pretty, but she hated that no one bothered to look deeper.
When she pulled into the parking spot in front of her apartment building, she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten there. She went to her apartment and undressed without thinking. Went into the bathroom and turned on the shower, undressed and got in to wash off every trace of Alex DiCarlo from her body.
She jerked the shower curtain closed and submitted to the assault of the showerhead’s spray of near-scalding water. She wanted to wash away the past week, wash away the emotions, wash away all the hope she’d managed to build up in such a short period of time.
How she’d let herself be lied to so brazenly, seduced so thoroughly, she couldn’t begin to understand. And how could a relationship built on lies have felt so good and so real to her? How could she have had the feelings she did for a man she barely knew, if it was all lies?
The lengths he’d gone to—changing his name and his appearance, insinuating himself in to her workplace and then in to her bed—horrified her. Her stomach churned, and she closed her eyes as the water sprayed her face, washing away tears.
To think of how far she’d gone in their sexual relationship…. Her face burned as she recalled the peep show. She’d never put herself so far out there, never acted with such a lack of inhibition. Alex had made her feel comfortable enough to do almost anything, and now everything they’d done embarrassed the hell out of her.
She didn’t want to remember any of it.
Old memories crowded out new ones as she tried to picture Alex ten years ago. She’d been so young, so scared, so far in over her head back then. Remembering the time of her trial always brought back a feeling of loss. She’d known she was losing a year of her life, a year that should have been filled with senior portraits, parties, prom, football games—all the normal stuff kids did.
She’d lost it all.
Instead, that year had been filled with a drab white room in a drab beige building. Windows with bars and kids with scars, both internal and external, that kids so young shouldn’t have had. She hadn’t fit in with most of those kids.
And they’d sensed her privileged upbringing. Persecuted her for it.
Maybe she’d deserved it.
She’d spent the year being stoic and reclusive, trying to keep to herself and fending off the harassment of her less-privileged peers. For months a group of girls had threatened her and jeered at her, until one day they’d caught her in a rest room and cut off all her hair, hair that had hung to her waist back then, too. She’d grown it back and still wore it that long partly as an act of defiance and partly as a security blanket.
And now in the shower was when her hair felt heaviest, weighed down with water, and she imagined cutting it all off again. Imagined letting go of it, becoming someone new, the way Alex had.
But she wouldn’t. She was who she was, and she’d never disguise herself. She’d learned to live with her scarlet letter, and her hair was a part of that, too. It made her unmistakably recognizable to people who’d seen photos of her in newspapers all those years ago, and she’d gotten to a place in her life where she didn’t care anymore.
She’d gotten past being the subject of an FBI investigation. It was a part of her, but it was in the past. Just like Alex. He was a ghost from her past that she needed to put to rest, and one way or another she’d get over him and move on.