Allison Brennan - Sudden Death

“I know, it’s ugly.”

He kissed her scar. “All better.”

She’d turned her head away from him. He turned her head back. Her eyes watered. Oh, God, no. He couldn’t take tears. Not these kind of tears.

“Sweetheart, if you think a little scar is going to bother me, you don’t know me.”

As he said it, he realized that they didn’t know each other. Not the details. He didn’t know where she was born, where she grew up, if she had brothers or sisters, why she and her mother didn’t get along.

But he knew her heart and her mind. He could predict with relative certainty what she would say or do. He knew the important stuff. Her compassion was endless and her sense of right and wrong well formed. She was worthy of love. To love and be loved. Jack didn’t know if he was worthy of her.

Megan stared, eyes probing his, and he kissed her. He didn’t care, he would do anything to keep her in his life.

He might not know everything about her, but he knew that she fit with him. He wasn’t good with emotions or explaining his thoughts and feelings. That was why he’d been estranged from his family for so long. He was a man of action. Do it, don’t talk about it.

But something about this scar bothered Megan deep inside. She’d been flip yesterday when she told him about being shot in the back. But she wasn’t flip about it now.

He kissed her lightly on the cheek, and adjusted their bodies so that she was spooned closely against him, his arms tight around her, his lips on her ear.

“Tell me.”

“I have one kidney.”

“I know.”

It took her a minute to speak. He didn’t move. He wasn’t going anywhere. Neither was Megan.

“I was ambushed. I wasn’t watching my back when I should have been. And took a bullet. It’s only one kidney, and it’s gone, and yeah, it still bothers me, but I’m fine.”

The way she said it made it sound like a betrayal, but Megan didn’t say more. She took one of his hands, the one that had been lightly caressing her breasts, and kissed his palm. Her tongue sent jolts of lust down to his hardening cock.

“You were going to show me the difference between having sex and making love.”

“I am.”

He kissed her neck, turning her on to her back so he could have easier access to all her soft skin. Lips to lips, lips to neck, lips to breast. His hands kneaded her shoulders, her arms, her thighs.

“There is not going to be an inch of your skin I don’t taste,” he whispered, his voice rough. “From your head …” he kissed her eyelids, his tongue trailing down to her ears, then to her neck. “To your painted toes.”

He slid off the bed and Meg groaned from the sudden chill. Then his mouth was on her toes and she gasped. Electric bolts jolted her body as Jack sucked her toes, licked the bottoms of her feet, kissed her ankles. The backs of her knees. And higher.

True to his word, Jack tasted every inch of her flesh. Slowly.

And slowly, they brought each other up and over the edge once again.

After killing Ethan and Lyle Hackett, Karin walked a mile to the hotel she’d checked into the day before under one of her aliases, Erin Hunter.

She’d always liked that name. Hunter. It suited her. Erin the Hunter. Erin. Hunter. Huntress. She grinned.

It was late, but the hotel was brightly lit and she wasn’t positive that her late-night dip in the ocean had washed away all the blood. She slipped in through a side door, using her card key, and rode the elevator up to the penthouse suite. She deserved the penthouse. She’d ordered champagne when she first arrived, asking the staff to deliver it while she was gone. It was still cold, sitting in a stainless steel cooler filled with cold water.

She stripped, shoving her bathing suit and sarong into the black bag. The bag had to be disposed of, but she needed to destroy the evidence first. A heavy dose of bleach, then toss it in the ocean or a lake. She hadn’t wanted to take the knife, but after Ethan cut her, she had no choice. She worried about her blood on the floor, but hoped either the crime scene investigators didn’t test the small square where the knife had fallen, or that there was so much contamination they couldn’t differentiate her blood.

Even if they were able to test it, her DNA wasn’t in any database. Still, she didn’t want it to be, and now she would have to be far more careful in her work.

First things first. She had her own vengeance to seek. Then she could go back to business as usual.

She showered and scrubbed her body under water as hot as she could stand it. Shampooed her hair twice. When she stepped out, her skin was pink and she felt fabulous. She stared at her reflection, took out scissors, and cut her hair yet again. She wished she didn’t have to do it, but hair grew and having a straight, short bob instead of shoulder-length curls would help with the disguise.

Next, she took brown hair dye and colored her hair again. The dye wouldn’t stay as well on the blond she’d used yesterday, but all she needed was to change her overall appearance and this light brown was closer to her natural color.

The end result was pretty good, a golden sort of brown. A little lighter than she wanted, but different enough from the woman- Rose- who’d been seen drinking in the bar with Lyle Hackett.

She slipped into a luxurious white hotel bathrobe, the logo embroidered in gold on the lapel.

Time to celebrate.

She popped the cork off the champagne, poured herself a glass, and walked out onto the balcony. It was chilly on the coast this late at night, even in southern California, but she didn’t care. She breathed in the salt air, the breeze raising goose bumps on her damp skin.

She’d take these hours to rest, and then she’d watch the police and the FBI run around in circles. And when the time was right …

… she’d finish the job. She had Ethan to thank for her new skills. She could hardly wait to use them.

“To Ethan,” she said to the ocean and drained her champagne.

Megan was awakened by the hard, naked body wrapped around her.

Jack’s arm was draped over her, the blankets were on the floor, and the sheets a tangle around them. She would have been freezing if she wasn’t lying next to a self-charging heater.

“Your phone’s ringing,” Jack said. “I didn’t think I should answer it.”

She jumped up and found her phone in her purse, which she’d dropped on the small desk when she first came in the night before. Before the spontaneous swim, before making love to Jack.

She missed the call. It was from Hans. Suddenly, she was mindful of her nakedness.

“You’re blushing,” Jack said.

“How can you tell?” she asked, looking around for her shirt. She found the cami she’d worn the night before; it was still damp from the pool. She opened her small suitcase.

“You’re beautiful.”

Her skin heated even more. At the rate she was going, she was going to look like a cooked lobster inside of two minutes.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” Jack said.

“I … we … it’s complicated.” Megan pulled on a T-shirt.

He chuckled. “If you mean to say that you and me having sex complicates things, yeah, maybe a bit, but I like complications. Especially one like you.”

He stretched like a satisfied cat, his long, hard body only partly covered by the sheet. She turned her back on him. She couldn’t look at him, not like that, without remembering exactly what they’d done together last night. How he made her feel not only during sex, but after. How he’d held her. Kissed her. She’d never felt so comfortable with a man, never felt so alive, so sexy, so desired.

She pressed Send on her phone to return Hans’s call. He answered immediately. “Meg?”