The Beach Alibi Read online

  "That's not it," he said, looking at her once again.

  "Then the mistake was me thinking that after what we've shared tonight, you might want to know me better." She shrugged. "Wishful thinking and all that, I suppose."

  "No, Emma. It's not wishful thinking. I do want to know you."

  "It can only work both ways, Kelly." She hesitated, want­ing to say the right thing, wanting to assure him of . . . some­thing. Her allegiance. Her sincerity. She wasn't even sure what emotion it was binding her chest so tightly.

  "I trusted you tonight not to let me get hurt. Can't you trust me not to hurt you?"

  He shook his head as he answered. "I'm not sure I can trust anyone that far. Not anymore."

  "Not even the other guys on your team?"

  "I trust them."

  "Then trust me. Think of me as a junior member."

  He chuckled lightly at that. "That's not as simple as it sounds. I share a locker room with them. And I'd rather not picture you with a hairy ass."

  He was so cute when he grinned that she had a really hard time not jumping into his arms. She wanted to share more with him than physical bliss. And to get there, they had to talk.

  She turned to take down two mugs from the cabinet above the coffeemaker. Kelly John moved in behind her, bracing his hands on the countertop, effectively imprisoning her with his size and a strength that might have intimidated her had she not figured out how gentle he was hours ago.

  She started to object, to put him into his place, but he nuz­zled the skin beneath her ear so sweetly that all she could do was sigh.

  "You gotta know, Emma. Trust doesn't come easy for me anymore." He laughed deep in his chest; the rumble tickled her back. "I'm pretty blown away by the fact that you man­aged to get to me as completely as you did."

  "It's good to know you're capable of letting your guard down," she said, and shivered because of what he was doing to her ear.

  "Surprised the hell out of me." He nuzzled lower, work­ing his way down her neck and toward her shoulder where the neckline of her dress barely hung on.

  No. No, no, no. She was not going to let him distract her to the point of losing sight of what she wanted.

  "But it surprised me even more how much I found my­self wanting to tell you everything. About the team I led in Nicaragua, and the end of my military career."

  "You can tell me now." She held one of the mugs so tightly she wondered if it would crack before she could pour. "I'll pour your coffee—"

  "I don't want any coffee. I only want you."

  His words hung in the room with a bitter desperation; she set the cup on the countertop and turned in his arms. Before she could say anything, his hands were at the hem of her dress, pulling it up her thighs, over her hips, bunching the fabric at her waist and baring her below.

  She couldn't think to stop him as he dropped to his knees. She could only close her eyes, spread her legs, and grip the edge of the countertop as if nothing else would keep her from falling.

  He parted the lips of her sex with his thumbs, ran the flat of his tongue through her folds. He circled her clit, sucked the hard knot into his mouth, released her before she could cry out, and moved deeper between her legs.

  It was a wild and crazy ride and she wanted him with her. Wanted him inside of her. Wanted him to know the same beauty, the Tightness of what she felt with his tongue pushing deep.

  She grabbed the shoulders of his jacket and urged him up. He was frowning when he stood, yet she couldn't afford the time it would take to explain.

  All she knew was that she needed him out of his clothes, his pants around his knees, his thick cock sliding into her, soothing the nerve endings that had her on fire.

  She reached for his belt buckle. He beat her to it, chuckling as she whispered, "Hurry, hurry," and shuck­ing down his pants. His erection thrust forward beneath the lowest button on his shirt, and she thought she would die.

  He was thick, ripe like a plum and almost as purple. She wanted him in her mouth, but later, later. Right now her need was as elemental as need could possibly be.

  She hooked a leg around his hips; he cupped her bottom, lifted her, spread her open, stopped only to growl out, "Are you sure?"

  She'd never been more sure of anything, and she begged, "Yes, oh, yes. Fuck me, please."

  He plunged deep and hit bottom. She cried out, leaned back, braced her upper body weight on her elbows while he held her lower half, his fingers digging into the backs of her thighs as he filled her with a fierceness that frightened her, that thrilled her.

  Because it was the fierceness of a man's emotion, and she knew she was falling in love.

  "Your body is fabulous, did you know that?"

  Emma didn't care what Kelly John thought or even whether or not he answered since she was talking mostly to herself. She couldn't get enough of touching him.

  His skin, and all the textures of his hair—on his chest like fine silk, in the pits of his arms, coarse like straw, and cushioning his penis, thick and wiry.

  He was a mosaic of hard and soft, of unexpected dips and crevices, bumps and scars, a patched-up, stitched-up, Humpty Dumpty map of the life he'd lived. He made her feel like the time she'd served behind bars had been spent in a spa.

  "Well, your body is pretty fucking hot itself," he finally answered from where he lay beneath her.

  She sat straddling his thighs, and was doing her best to learn all she could of how he felt, using her fingers and thumbs, the heels of her palms, her knuckles.

  At his typically Kelly John comment, she gave up her ex­ploration of his amazing abs and the silky dark hair that covered them, crossed her arms beneath her bare breasts, and sat back.

  "You'll catch more flies with honey than with that filthy mouth of yours."

  "And who was it begging for it in the kitchen a while ago?" He reached up and pulled her hands away from her breasts. "Seems your mouth isn't much cleaner than mine, sweetheart."

  God, what they'd done in the kitchen. So hard and wild and out-of-her-league explosive she'd barely been able to walk to the bedroom once they were done.

  Thinking of it even now, she felt the rising heat of a blush, certain it was staining her face, glad the only light shining over the bed came from the bathroom door left ajar.

  His directness, his bluntness excited her, left her nearly unable to breathe.

  He was so unlike the men she knew and dated, so in­tense, larger than life . . .

  It was just as she'd determined earlier. From here on, nothing in her life would ever be the same—even knowing how far they had to go.

  And because of that. . .

  She laced her fingers with his, pinned his hands on the mattress at his shoulders, leaned forward, glared down. "You think that was dirty? You haven't heard nothin' yet."

  He laughed. The sound rumbled through her limbs, into her belly where it took hold and blossomed. "You sure talk tough for a naked woman."

  "You want tough?" She gripped his hands harder, squeezed his fingers tighter, pushed him down into the mattress with all the strength produced by her months of weight lifting. "I'll give you tough."

  "Bring it on, woman."

  "Fine. But don't say I didn't warn you."

  He bucked his naked lower half up against her. His penis slapped against her belly. "I'm shaking in my combat boots."

  "As well you should be, considering I'm about to take you down," she said, though from her vantage point it didn't seem his boots were what was shaking.

  "Yeah, you and whose army?"

  She sat back, narrowed her eyes, and glared down. If it was a battle he wanted . . . "It won't take an army to ask you what I want to know."

  He stilled. He response was slow in coming, and then was a deep, "Uh-oh."

  She crossed her arms over her chest. "Waving a white flag already?"

  He didn't respond, but she heard the pop of his jaw as he ground his teeth and braced for the blow.

  "I want to know what the h
ell happened to make you give up on the idea of love."

  Ten

  He lay there unmoving, wondering when his heart would start beating again, when his lungs would voluntarily ex­pand.

  When his muscles would relax so he could move off the bed and out the door, grab his clothes from wherever he'd left them, and find a sewer where he wouldn't have to worry about spilling his guts.

  "Did I ever say I believed in love in the first place?" he fi­nally asked, losing the really nice erection he'd had going on at the mental image of the rats and the stench below the street. At the thought of leaving here for there.

  Of leaving here at all.

  "Oh, Kelly. You're too passionate for me to believe other­wise." She rushed on before he could stop her. "And don't feed me that line about having sex and not relationships."

  "It's not a line."

  "It is when you use it on me as an excuse to get out of telling me the truth."

  He shifted up onto his elbows, not liking the idea of bolt­ing, but knowing if she didn't drop it. . . "I did tell you the truth."

  "Right. That thing about the body bags."

  "That's not truth enough for you?"

  "No, Kelly. That's your truth. It's the reason you give yourself for not getting involved."

  "It's a pretty damn good one if you ask me."

  "Why don't you let me decide that? Why not give me a chance to use my head and decide what I'm willing to risk?"

  Why was she yammering on? Why couldn't she let it go? He didn't think he'd ever known a woman so bent on hav­ing her way. "You wouldn't know what you're risking. You don't know what I do."

  "Do cops' wives know? Firefighters' wives?" She paused, let that settle. "I can't know if you don't tell me. And if you don't tell me something, anything, give me a hint at least of where you're coming from, how will I ever know who you are?"

  He snorted. "You want that? To know who I am? What I've done?"

  "I want to know you," she said, her voice soft, gentle, her fingertips swirling lightly through the hair covering his abs. "I want to know you."

  Would talking help? Would it hurt? Would it make any difference? He'd never thought so before. He didn't think so now.

  But he didn't want her to force him to find his clothes. He didn't want her to send him on his way. He didn't want to leave—not because of the rats and the sewer, but because this and no place else was where he wanted to be.

  Fuck it, but he did not want to have to do this. He did not. He did not. He did not.

  But he knew then that he was going to.

  "I can't tell you a lot of it." The missions he'd run were called black ops for a reason. "It's not you, and it's not any Skull and Bones brotherhood. It's just that a lot of what I've done doesn't exist."

  "Black ops."

  He rolled his eyes at Miss Know-It-All. "Idon't talk about those days before Hank found me. I won't. I can't. Except to say that I saw too much. I did too much."

  He bit down on his tongue but was way too late in doing so. "I killed a man in cold blood."

  She remained unmoving for a moment that seemed to last forever. And when he was opening his mouth to answer the rats who were calling his name, she slid from his lap to the bed.

  She stretched out alongside him, her toes tickling his calf, her hands clasped between her breasts, her breath warm on his shoulder.

  "What happened?"

  "It wasn't enemy fire. It wasn't friendly fire. It was me thinking about it long and hard beforehand." He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them just as quickly.

  He would much rather look at her ceiling than at the memories etched into his eyelids. Memories of the whites of Randy Shield's eyes as the garrote bit through his neck.

  Kelly John swallowed hard, cleared his throat. "It was me knowing that it was either take him down or lose my en­tire squad."

  "Because of what he did."

  A nod, though he doubted she could see. "He'd broken rank, betrayed our trust. It was kill or be killed."

  "Then you did what you had to do."

  "Or so I've spent a hell of a lot of years trying to con­vince myself." And, all the while, hating himself for taking a man's life. Hating the other man for the greed and the weakness that left so many lives ruined.

  His might not be at the top of the list, but it sure as hell felt that way deep in his gut. "It would've been better if I'd never trusted him in the first place. He was new in country. New to the outfit. I should've known better."

  God, to put even that much into words, to look back and relive, to wonder and doubt and hate. He raised the arm nearest Emma, draped his wrist over his eyes.

  He couldn't say anymore. Couldn't look at anymore of the past.

  Beside him, Emma snuggled nearer, laid her head on his biceps, her palm in the center of his chest. She didn't say anything. She didn't rub or stroke or caress.

  She simply held the echo of his heartbeat close and warmed him with her soul.

  It was almost dawn when Kelly John woke, surprised he'd slept at all. Even more surprised to find himself spooned up against a very naked Emma beneath her quilt.

  The four hours of shut-eye he'd had felt like eight. He'd slept so deeply, rested so completely that he doubted he'd even dreamed.

  Now, of course, he was hard beyond belief with the need to pee. He eased away from her softness and warmth, and immediately felt the loss.

  A loss that startled him since he was used to sleeping alone.

  He flipped off the bathroom light before pushing open the door. He wanted Emma to sleep until he could get back and wake her up right.

  The frosted glass window was gray with the beginning of the day, and he saw well enough to do his business. He even remembered to put the seat down once he was done.

  The thought almost made him laugh. And since when did he laugh when standing naked in a bathroom, his dick in his hand? All he knew was that last night, the moment he'd stepped through Emma's door, his world had somehow righted.

  He padded his way across her bedroom's hardwood floor, crawled under the quilt on his hands and knees, and waited until she stirred and rolled onto her back before scooting up to straddle her body. "Morning, sleepyhead."

  "It's not morning," she groused. "It's dark outside. Go away."

  He chuckled to himself, leaned down and kissed the pooch of her belly just beneath her navel, doing it again when she groaned.

  "Stop kissing my fat. Go away."

  "Sounds like the efficient Emma Webster is not a morn­ing person."

  "What time is it?" she grumbled. He felt her squirrel around to look at the clock. This time when she groaned she shook the whole bed. "You'd better have a damn good reason for being down there. It's not even six o'clock."

  He dipped his lower body, slid his cock up the length of her thigh. "Is that a good enough reason?"

  She waited until her body had stopped trembling before she told him, "No. It's not."

  It was, and she knew it. Hell, he knew she knew it be­cause she hadn't been able to keep her voice from cracking. Still, he was game to play by her rules. He'd be claiming his prize his way in the end.

  He scooted lower, kissed her lower, his balls tucked tightly against her leg, the soft hair not waxed away tickling his chin.

  She pushed against his knees where his legs held hers to­gether, where he'd restricted her movement in a teasing upper hand.

  When she pushed a second time with more force and a fierce growl, he let her have her way, lifting one knee then the other and setting her free.

  She spread her legs wide, pulled her heels toward her hips. Her knees tented the quilt and gave him room to do his work. Work that was so much more pleasure than effort.

  She smelled incredible. Salty and sweet, like the sun-warmed sea. He nuzzled the lips of her sex and breathed her in, feeling his cock bob up into his belly, feeling the exten­sion of his erection thicken all the way to his ass.

  He circled her clit with his tongue, flicked it with b
utter­fly touches, sucked it into his mouth with just enough pres­sure to bring her hips off the bed—and then he let her go.

  He'd make sure she came later. He had too much of her yet left to eat.

  His weight braced on his elbows, he slid his thumbs through her folds, pulled back the hood protecting her clit. She was bare, fully exposed, laid open from her belly to her sweet, juicy entrance.

  He waited, doing nothing but nuzzling her tender thighs, letting her arousal build and race like wildfire. He could taste it on the surface of her skin, that electric sizzle, that metallic tang.

  He could smell it, the shift in her scent from budding to rich and ripe. And now he was the one who could no longer wait. He sucked at her flesh there, thick with the rush of blood through her veins, and thrust his tongue inside her.

  She arched up, begging, writhing, her flesh sweet with her arousal's moisture. He returned his mouth to her clit, used her slick cream to wet his fingers, to slide one then a second into her body as far as he could.

  He drew on the hard knot, sucked it between his lips, pushing his thumb inside of her, circling a finger over the bud of her ass. She exploded. He felt her spasms every­where he touched her.

  She shuddered, shook, clenched up tight, closing around his fingers, her contractions pushing, pulling, gripping, and calming at last.

  An at last that he hated to see happen. He loved knowing how much pleasure she took in his touch. And even if her completion meant it was his turn to get started.

  As if reading his mind, she stretched her legs, reached down between his and cupped his heavy sac. The only thing she said was, "Mmm," but he thought he might unload at the deep throaty sound.

  He didn't move, just sat back on his heels and let her stroke him. The head of his cock felt like a ripe apple ready to burst from its skin. When she thumbed the slit in the tip and swirled the beaded moisture, he was done for.

  He pried her hands from his body, moved them to her breasts, and crawled up to straddle her ribcage. He didn't say a word. He couldn't.