I suck in air, my chest tightening, before I breathe out. “Where is she now?”
“Married to an ex-ATF agent and working in New York City. You can take comfort in knowing that Ricardo didn’t know that. He was told she’s active FBI, which means they dismissed her as a problem they think only you can re-invent.”
“Oh, thank God.”
He studies me, his eyes too keen, too knowing. “You’re protecting her.”
“She’s my sister,” I say, choking a bit on the word sister, “and I might not want her in my life, but I love her.”
“Then we’ll keep her away. You have my word because I understand being angry at family, but still caring if you lose them.”
“You do?”
“My father was murdered, too.”
My chest tightens just a little more. “How?”
“He crossed the line, and played a little too dirty, for his own benefit, not that of the FBI, and in the process he double-crossed the wrong person. He was point blank assassinated.”
“My God,” I whisper. “How can your story be so like mine?”
“They hired me because they knew I’d have this connection to you and they expected me to use it against you.”
“Will you?”
“Never would I ever use my father, who I never even talk about, against anyone.”
“Then why did you tell me?”
“Because I want your trust.”
“And what will you do if you get it?”
His hand comes down on my leg, intimate, wrong. Right. “When I earn it you won’t ask that question.”
“I wish you could earn it,” I say, and my hand goes to his and I tell myself it’s to push him away, but I don’t even try.
“I can and I will,” he says, leaning in, or maybe I lean in or we both do, but we are close, our faces, our lips, and our breath. “Maybe not tonight or tomorrow, but I’m not going anywhere.”
“And then what?”
“And then, everything changes,” he promises, and suddenly his lips brush mine, a barely there touch that I feel, oh how I feel it in every part of me, before he pulls back and then he’s gone, leaving me swaying and grabbing hold of the cushion.
“Fuck,” he curses, standing up and giving me his back, just long enough to run a rough hand through his hair and to face me while I try to calm my racing mind and heart. “That can’t happen,” he says.
I blink. “What? I didn’t try... we didn’t…” Confused, heat and embarrassment assail me and I stand up, rushing toward the bedroom, running this time, but I simply don’t care. But I also don’t escape. He’s there before I make it into the bedroom, stepping in front of me, his hands settling at my waist, branding me, scorching me.
“If we happen now, you’ll question why. You will fear that I’m setting you up, and fear is not what I want from you.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
“I could tell you trust again, which is true, but right now, in this moment, what I want is you. Every part of you naked, every way I can get you. Beneath me, on top of me, under my tongue, and many other ways.”
“You can’t say that to me.”
“And if I’d given you some generic bullshit answer you wouldn’t have believed it, I would have scared you just as much as actually doing what I want.”
“I wouldn’t have let you.”
“We’re fire, sweetheart. We both know it. It’s inconvenient, but it’s undeniable, which means we’re going to have to find a way to deal with it because I meant what I said. I’m here. I’m not leaving.”
My hands go to his wrist. “Let me go.”
“I’ll stop touching you, sweetheart, but I’m not letting you go.”
He releases me and steps around me, leaving me cold in every place I was hot only moments before. I dart forward into the room and shut the door, but I don’t stop there. I rush into the bathroom, and I shut that door too, as if it protects me from him or anything. Then I’m standing at the mirror, though I don’t remember moving toward it, and I relive the past in random flashbacks. Me at fifteen, yelling at my father on the eve of his murder. Me and Kara hiding in a closet, huddled together, crying while we prayed the men in our house would go away. Then me and Kara under an umbrella at our parent’s graves. Then me just over a year ago, in the restaurant the first night I’d met Michael Alvarez. To the moment when he’d sent Ricardo to find me in the bathroom at Shivers, right after I’d been waiting on his table.
Pushing off the door, I open it and gasp to find a man with a long scar down his cheek standing in front of me.
“What are you doing in here?”
“Mr. Alvarez requests your company, which means I’ll need your phone, and I’ll need to search you.”
“What? No. No. I don’t agree.”