“Come for me, sweetheart.” He buried his face in the crook of her neck, kissing the salty sweat from her skin and feeling her heart thunder against his lips. He wanted to tell her more, tell her everything. Who he really was, what he really did, how he really felt, but all he could say was, “I want to feel you come all around me.”
She grabbed his ass as if begging him to make the pleasure stop and simultaneously pleading for more. He chose the second option, pistoning his hips faster. Harder. His balls pulled tight against his body, aching for release. And just when he thought he couldn’t take any more, her thighs clamped around his hips, her back bowed, and she gave herself over to passion, crying out his name.
Feeling her body coil and release around him, feeling her bathe him in her ecstasy, forced his own release. He could no more hold back his orgasm than he could hold back the rising of tomorrow’s sun. He let go…of everything. Every doubt. Every fear. All his pain. And came into her.
The whole time, she held him like she never wanted to let go.
Chapter 18
The dream began as it always did. With Julia nudging him awake…
“Ozzie. Ozzie! You have to go. There are rules about fraternizing on the job, and I don’t want to get caught.”
“I’ll leave before sunup,” he assured her, tossing aside the warm, damp sheets to search for a breath of air. The hotel’s AC units hummed nonstop, but they held little sway over the staggering heat and humidity of the Malaysian night.
“No.” She punched his shoulder. “Get up, Ozzie. I’m serious.”
He groaned and opened one eye, seeing his clothes in a heap over by the door. He had given his all for the last two hours, and his aching muscles and heavy eyelids told the story. As did the rumpled sheets and the musky scent of sex filling the room.
Yep, he had shown Julia Ledbetter the time of her life. And now she was kicking him out. He should be used to it, but the truth was, it stung.
Every damn time.
With a grunt, he pushed to a stand and padded over to his pile of clothes. Finding his boxer briefs, he pulled them on and turned to find Julia luxuriating in bed.
“That was fun.” She bit her lip and smiled coyly. “We should do it again sometime. You think you’ll ever get another assignment to assist the Secret Service?”
By do it again sometime, she didn’t mean take his number and try to make a go of it. She meant if their paths happened to cross, she wouldn’t mind a repeat of the night’s Olympic sexual performance.
He wanted to snarl and snap. Instead, he flashed her an easy smile and said, “We can only hope, right?”
She giggled, lifting her arms over her head and stretching. “Yes, we certainly c—”
BOOM!
A terrible, earsplitting sound.
A blinding white light.
The acrid smell of smoke and burned skin.
And inexplicable pain…
Ozzie opened his eyes to see his own hot, wet blood spurting from what remained of his leg. Curling tendrils of pungent vapor filled the room. On the burning bed was Julia. Her hair was gone. So was her flesh. And her eye sockets, empty of her eyeballs, seemed to stare at him accusingly.
If he hadn’t seduced her, perhaps she would be in the bath instead of the bed. If he hadn’t seduced her, maybe she would still be alive.
Terrible guilt drove a dagger into Ozzie’s gut. He blinked at Julia’s charred remains, watching her, the whole scene, morph in front of his eyes.
Gone was the hotel room. Gone was the smoldering bed.
Now he was inside the garage of his childhood home. And Julia had become his mother. He was four years old, standing at the door leading into the house, clutching his security blanket and staring at his mother’s long, blond hair pressed against the rolled-up window of her car. Her face looked blue. And puffy.
He had always thought her a beautiful angel, but she didn’t look beautiful now. She looked scary with her mouth open and her eyes bulging. She seemed to be accusing him of something. Of spilling the paint on the rug. Of scaring the cat and making it scratch her. Of not being a good boy.
He held his blankie to his mouth and started to cry, unable to look away.
And then, once again, the scene changed. His mother’s face was replaced by others. Others wearing looks of pity or affection or indifference or seduction. Familiar faces. Dozens of faces. Flashing in front of his eyes like a skipping movie reel.
Then the reel stopped, and there was Samantha. She stood before him, ethereal and wavering. An image reflected in water. She smiled that sweet gap-toothed smile as she waved good-bye, turning from him. Walking away. Not looking back.
He thought he knew pain. But nothing compared to the feel of his heart exploding inside his chest.
“Ozzie! Ozzie!”
He came awake with a start, blinking at the sight of Samantha hovering over him. Moonlight still streamed in through the window, showing the alarm in her chocolate eyes and glinting off the curling curtain of her dark hair.
“You were having a nightmare,” she whispered, her brow knit with concern.
Yes, he was. A familiar one. And it didn’t take Freud to figure out what it all meant. The two women who had died on his watch—and all the others who hadn’t seen enough in him to want to stick around—they were his failures. Proof that he…
But Samantha, she was a new addition.
He rubbed his chest where his heart still ached and wanted to spill his guts when she said, “Was it the accident? Do you…” She scooted down until she was stretched beside him. Her head on his shoulder, her arm tight around his waist. “Do you want to talk about it?”
The cold specter of the dream slowly subsided, leaving nothing but pain, guilt, and recrimination behind.
In his heart of hearts, he knew there was nothing he could have done to save his mother or Julia. But that didn’t stop the string of what-ifs that plagued him. What if he had only done this. Or what if he hadn’t done that. What if—
“Ozzie?” Samantha’s cool fingers smoothed the lines from his forehead and gently cupped his jaw.
“Like you said,” he told her, grabbing her hand and kissing her fingertips, “it was just a bad dream.”
She nuzzled his neck, tossing a leg over his waist. The feel of her silky skin, the decadent heat of her snuggled against him, chased away the last of his chills, warming his body, his soul.
She would leave him just as his nightmare foretold. And yes, it was bound to break his heart when she did, but in the meantime…
“Want to help take my mind off it?”
She pushed up on her elbow, a shadowed grin flashing down at him. “What did you have in mind, cowboy?”
He trailed his hand over the small of her back, past the tattoo he had kissed and licked earlier, until he palmed her plump, delicious ass. “Cowboy, huh? Well, cowgirl, you fancy taking a ride?”
“Thought you’d never ask.” She giggled and claimed his lips in a hot kiss that scorched away any lingering memory of the dream.
*
There was a new sort of desperation in the way Ozzie held her, in the needy, guttural noises he made.
The nightmare had shaken him.