The Survivor Page 13

  And that’s how he felt about Bess.

  He didn’t know why he liked her best out of all the girls he’d ever met. He didn’t know exactly what it was that made her special, the yin to his yang, the nut for his screw—no pun intended.

  She completed him…and Lex knew he’d never be the same without her.

  BESS WRAPPED HERSELF as firmly around Lex as she could and savored the feel of him against her. Soft, sleek skin, smooth muscle over bone, masculine hair abrading her chest, the long hard length of him buried deeply inside of her.

  And that mouth, she thought, the ultimate instrument of her sexual torture. Full and beautiful, carnal and wicked, and the things he did with it.

  He flexed beneath her, filling her up completely, and she found his mouth once more, kissing him deeply. She pushed her hands into his hair and aligned their bodies more tightly. He was big and hard and wonderful and she loved the way he made her feel, petite and tiny, protected and safe.

  Strange, that last, Bess thought, because she’d never been afraid to live alone, had never minded it at all. She’d always been confident in her ability to protect herself. So what exactly did he make her feel safe from? she wondered, and knew something important lurked in that revelation.

  He pushed up again and the thought vanished from her head like ether.

  “Do you have any idea how good you feel,” he said, his big hands slipping up her back. “Do you know how crazy you make me?”

  She laughed. “I’ve got a pretty good idea,” she said. “Because I’m in the same fictional mental hospital, just in a different padded room.”

  She felt him chuckle against her lips and let the sound melt against her tongue.

  “I’ll share my padded room with you,” he said, flexing up into her again and upping his tempo. “So long as we can continue to do this.”

  She tightened around him, loving the delicious drag and draw between their joined bodies, the water swirling around them, the steam rising over them. From the corner of her eye she saw Honey lying on the rug near the door and she grinned.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Honey’s out here,” she said, chuckling.

  “Is she watching us?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” he said. “She’s a smart dog.” He leaned forward and circled her nipple with his hot tongue, then pulled it into his mouth and suckled deeply. She felt that tug all the way to the heart of her sex as though an invisible thread connected the two, and she gasped at the pleasure arcing through her.

  “Ah,” he said. “That’s better. If you’ve got time to look at the dog, then clearly I’m not doing this right.”

  He flexed more deeply into her and she came down as he went up, settling into a mind-numbingly wonderful rhythm.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Bess told him, leaning forward to kiss his mangled shoulder. “I’d say you were doing better than average.”

  “Average?” He feigned outrage, anchoring his hands on either side of her hips. “Average?” he repeated. “Damn, woman. I would hope you’d expect more of me than that.”

  She chuckled, felt the first bit of climax quicken in her womb, take root deep in the heart of her sex. Her clit throbbed and she sighed, working herself more firmly against him.

  “I’m not worried,” she told him. “I’m sure you’re going to give m-me your b-best effort.”

  He smiled up at her and his grin was so wicked she felt it tingle her nipples. “You’re playing with me, aren’t you? You’re purposely trying to drive me insane.”

  “That’s the best way to keep you in that little padded room with me,” she told him. “So I can tear your clothes off and do bad things with you.”

  He laughed again and pounded into her, pushing her higher and higher toward the peak of ecstasy. “There’s a better way, you know? An easier way.”

  She bit her bottom lip and felt her lids droop as the orgasm came nearer and nearer. This wasn’t going to be a huge explosion of sensation, Bess realized. It was going to build and build and then erupt slowly and linger. It was going to sap her strength and make her melt and go boneless.

  “How’s that?” she murmured,

  “Just ask.”

  And with that little comment, he pushed her over the edge and she went free-falling into bliss. She moaned long and low, the sound almost inhuman. Her head suddenly became too heavy for her neck and she sagged forward against him, letting the pleasure wash through her. She tightened around him over and over and the sensation detonated additional little fireworks in her womb. It went on and on and she thought she was going to pass out from the joy of it, from the perfection.

  A moment later she felt Lex stiffen beneath her and he pushed harder, deeper and then harder still. He raced toward release and then flung himself over the edge and made the rest of the fall with her. His long growl of masculine satisfaction resonated in her soul, and he cradled her closer, unable to get enough of her. He slid his fingers along her spine, feeling every ridge and bump, and then drew back and kissed her again.

  There was something heartbreakingly tender about the gesture and it took her a moment to discern what it was. The desire was there—the desperate all-consuming hammering need. But there was something else, as well. Something tender and special, something she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

  Affection.

  Tears burned in her eyes and she determinedly blinked them away.

  Time was something we didn’t want to waste back then, Vernon had said. And she didn’t want to waste any more of it, either.

  A strange noise reached her ears and she leaned back and looked at Lex.

  A frown furrowed his brow, then comprehension dawned and his gaze slammed into hers. “Yeager’s phone,” he said, scrambling forward.

  Bess moved quickly out of the way and, not bothering to grab a towel, hurried after him into the house. She found Lex in the kitchen, completely nude, Yeager’s cell phone next to his ear.

  “It was his mother again,” Lex said. “She’s left a voice mail.”

  She watched his expression go from alert attentiveness to lethal. “She’s helping him,” he said, swearing hotly. “She’s in Alpharetta, on her way to Roswell, and wants to know why he hasn’t checked in.”

  Bess frowned. “Roswell?” Dripping wet, she grabbed her map off the kitchen counter and started comparing it to her client list. Judith Henkins, Bess thought and an image suddenly loomed large in her mind. The counter, the Coca-Cola sign. It had been in her old store next to her house.

  Oh, God.

  He disconnected. “Bess?”

  “I know where it is and she’s going to get to it first.”

  “Oh, hell, no, she isn’t,” Lex said. “Call your contact now and let them know what’s going on. Evidently she’s been extremely nice, telling people that she was your grandfather’s sister, and no one has asked any questions. She just ridiculed her son’s conspicuous approach and told him to call her immediately. I’m going to contact the police and see if I can get them to delay any phone call he might make to her so he can’t alert her to the fact that we’ve got him and are now undoubtedly aware of her. If she feels cornered, who knows what she might do.”

  Bess nodded and grabbed her phone, then quickly dialed Judith’s number and swore when she didn’t get an answer.

  “Dry off and get dressed,” he said. “You can keep calling her from the car and we’ll alert the police over there, as well.”

  She was so upset she knew she wouldn’t have thought of that. Her nerves stretched to the breaking point, Bess made quick work of getting back into her clothes and didn’t bother trying to do anything to her hair. Three minutes later they were in the car, Honey looking mystified, and headed toward Roswell.

  “How long does it take to get there?” Lex asked her.

  “About twenty minutes if we don’t have any traffic issues.”

  “And from Alpharetta to Roswell?”

  She felt sick. “Abo
ut ten to fifteen.”

  He muttered a hot oath.

  “We’re not going to make it in time, are we?” she said, frantically dialing Judith again. “We’re going to be too late.”

  Lex practically stood on the gas, grim determination in every line of his face. “Not if I can help it.”

  13

  EVEN THOUGH HE KNEW THAT it wouldn’t have made a difference if they hadn’t been at her house having sex, Lex nevertheless felt a bit guilty all the same. Logically, he knew that until that call had come in, they’d had no idea that Yeager’s mother had been in on the scheme with him, or that she’d been going around, canvassing the northern part of the state. No one had called because she’d been nice, nonthreatening and polite.

  In between frantically dialing Judith, Bess had made a few calls to some of her other clients and they’d all confirmed that an older woman, who’d claimed to be her grandfather’s sister, had been coming by. She’d given the same “rare books” spiel as her son, but she’d delivered it with a jar of homemade strawberry preserves and a smile.

  Lex hadn’t met her—yet, he qualified—but anyone who was capable of canvassing an area with the intent to steal something of value from someone who didn’t know its worth was a particularly nasty kind of thief. She wasn’t any better than her low-life scum of a son, Lex thought.

  Bess growled an angry sound and disconnected her cell phone, then hit Redial again. “I can’t get her,” she said. “But I have to keep trying.”

  “We’re almost there. Just a few more minutes.”

  “She’s not answering because she’s not in the house. The bitch has already gotten there. Oh, Lex. What if we’re too late?”

  “So long as she’s not hurt, it’ll be fine, Bess,” he reassured her. “We know who the woman is, we can find out where she lives. If we miss her here, we’ll make sure to get her at some point between here and her house.” In fact, he’d call Payne now. He should have already done that, but was afraid his boss would wonder what they’d been doing with the downtime between dropping Yeager off and now, and he really didn’t want to go into it while Bess was in the car.

  He would have to at some point, he knew, but…not in front of her.

  He dialed Payne and quickly brought him up to speed on the situation. “We’re about two minutes out, but Bess can’t get Mrs. Henkins on the phone and suspects that it’s because Yeager’s mother has already arrived and they’ve gone out to her shop. I’ve called the local police and alerted them, but would like some Ranger Security backup en route now to Mrs. Yeager’s house.”

  “Done,” Payne told him. “Anything else?”

  “No, that should get it.”

  “Update me when you can,” he said. “And tell Bess I said we’ll make this right no matter what.”

  Meaning that he’d personally give Mrs. Henkins the value of the book if he botched this. Lex whistled low and had a whole new dimension of respect for his boss. He told Bess what Payne had said and, to his horror, saw her bottom lip tremble.

  Oh, God, no. Not tears. Anything but tears. “Hey, hey, hey,” he said soothingly, reaching over to put a finger against her lip to quell the quiver. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to take care of this. Do you believe me?”

  “I want to,” she said. “But I’m so afraid that this psychotic woman is going to do something horrible and hurt Mrs. Henkins.”

  “Bess, she’s managed to charm everyone else. She’s wily enough to know that you get more flies with honey than you do vinegar.”

  “I know, but—”

  “So she’s not going to change her MO now. It’s working for her. Mrs. Henkins is going to be fine. I promise you. I have a gut feeling about this.”

  That cracked a smile. “You and Elsie,” she said with a weak eye roll. “I’m surrounded by amateur psychics.”

  “I’ve never claimed to be psychic,” he said. “I just try to pay more attention to my instincts. If I’d listened to them in Iraq I wouldn’t have taken those hits to the shoulder and nearly died.” There. He’d told her. She’d heard it at Vernon’s, of course, but that was different. That wasn’t him trusting her enough to share it directly.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything, Lex,” she said. “I know you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “It’s not easy,” he admitted. “I thought for sure that I was going to die, was completely convinced that my life was over.” He swallowed. “And you want to know the terrible part? When they told me I could medic out, that I could leave, I was happy. I was relieved.” He swallowed. “Because nearly dying had made me a coward.”

  She whirled on him, her eyes rounding with outrage. “A coward? Are you insane? Nearly dying didn’t make you a coward! It made you appreciate life enough to want to take yourself out of the line of fire! It made you want to live! That’s not cowardly, you fool. That’s called self-preservation.”

  He wished he could look at it that way, Lex thought skeptically. It would be so much easier to live with what had happened.

  “Let me ask you something, Lex. How long were you in the military? How many years? How many tours of duty?”

  “I spent four years in ROTC, then eight years in active service. Four tours of duty in that time.”

  “Because we’ve been at war. Because your country needed you. Did you ever at any time turn around and run from your enemy? Did you hide and watch other people die to save yourself?”

  He recoiled, horrified. “No,” he said. “Of course not.”

  “Do you know why?” she asked. “You know why you didn’t do those things? Because you’re not a coward, because you are a man of honor who fought for his country and sacrificed a part of himself for it.” She shook her head and a tear slipped down one cheek. “Don’t ever call yourself a coward again, because that’s not who you are at all.” She was quiet for a moment. “You know who was a coward? A selfish coward?” she asked him, and he knew what she was going to say, thanks to Vernon.

  “My mother,” she said. “I told you that my parents were dead, but I didn’t tell you what happened.” She released a small breath. “My father died in a car accident when I was seven. A year later, to the day, my mother put a bullet through her brain. Because she was too afraid of living on her own and too wrapped up in her own grief to care about me. She was a coward, a weak selfish one who was sick, I know, but it still applies. She was a coward. You, on the other hand, simply wanted to live.” She smiled sadly. “And there’s no shame in that.”

  The pain in her voice, the sadness in her eyes would have brought him to his knees had he been standing. No wonder she didn’t let herself get attached to people, Lex thought. Because people, even her grandfather when he’d died, always let her down. That’s why no one had ever snapped her up. That’s why she hadn’t married. That’s why she’d put him off with her I-don’t-have-any-expectations speech.

  Because she didn’t.

  And she never let herself hope that anyone was going to be different—even him—because in her life it had never happened.

  He didn’t know when he’d felt this helpless. He didn’t know how to comfort her. Didn’t know how to make it right for her.

  But he wished he did.

  “Turn here,” she said, gesturing to a long rutted driveway on his left. She peered ahead. “The white car is Judith’s. The blue one I don’t recognize, so it’s probably Yeager’s mother.”

  Anticipation spiked as he pulled in behind the blue car, deliberately blocking it so the driver would have a hard time pulling out.

  “Are you armed?” she said.

  He nodded. To his shock, so was she. She pulled a pistol from her purse and slipped it beneath the waistband of her jeans. “Bess, where did you get that? You—”

  “I know what I’m doing, Lex,” she said, and there was a cool assurance in her voice that told him it was the truth.

  He shook his head. Was there anything this woman couldn’t do?

  “Let’s go,” she said. �
�I’m sure they’re in the shop.”

  Determined to do some part of his job correctly, Lex took point and put himself between Bess and the shop. Honey, of course, did the same thing for him. He really should have left her in the car, but didn’t have the heart. She could sense his tension and had been nosing his elbow the entire way here.

  “Mrs. Henkins?” Lex called as he walked carefully into her shop.

  “Yes,” the older woman called.

  Bess came around him, ducking beneath his arm. “Judith, I’ve been trying to call.”

  Judith looked momentarily confused. “Bess?”

  The woman with her—Mrs. Yeager—whirled around and smoothly pulled a gun from her purse. “Well, well,” she said. “You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you? You just had to interfere.”

  Seeing the gun in Mrs. Yeager’s hand, Judith gasped. “Mrs. Ogletree! Put that gun away at once!”

  “I wouldn’t have had to draw it at all if they hadn’t shown up.” She glanced at Bess. “Now someone is going to get hurt and it’s going to be all your fault.”

  BESS’S HEART DROPPED to her feet and, for one terrifying moment, she thought she might faint. Then Lex found her icy fingers and gave them a squeeze and the comfort from that one gesture restored her in a way she would have never believed. A peace came over her like a long shimmering veil.

  “I’ve got this,” he whispered, and she knew it was true. She knew in that instant that everything was going to be fine.

  “Mrs. Henkins, my name is Lex Sanborn and I’m with Ranger Security. My firm was hired by Bess after someone broke into her shop and stole the external hard drive from her computer.”

  “It doesn’t matter why you’re here,” Mrs. Yeager sneered. She held up the book and wagged it significantly. “I’ve already got it. It’s too late. She’s going to sell it to me.”

  “I never said that—” Judith protested.

  Mrs. Yeager whirled on her and wagged the gun in her face. “Whether you sell it to me or not, I’m taking it.”