Melissa James - Who Do You Trust?

The man known to the backstreet hacker as Damon caught the printed sheets from the Department of Immigration, and slowly read them through. “The department wanted to keep the kid in some refugee facility until they sorted out what to do with her, but McCluskey got clearance to take her to a Tumah-ran family living in Darwin. God knows how he managed that—this kind of clearance could only come from the top brass. What the hell’s he up to?”

“I don’t know, man. I did my job.” The hacker held out his hand expectantly for the envelope Damon held in his fist.

Damon handed the envelope to the other man, with a slow grin, and walked to the door. “This was a transnational crime. No matter how he got the clearance or who got him into Tumah-ra, he broke the law—and someone in high places is covering up for him. It seems Ex-Squadron Leader McCluskey’s sins are finally about to catch up with him. One way or another.”

The hacker turned back to the computer, placing the envelope beside him, and Damon clicked the silencer on in time to the clacking keyboard. Then, with consummate casualness, he turned and shot the hacker through the head.

The next five shots took out his hard drive.

Within seconds Damon walked out, carrying the hacker’s every disk, as well as the envelope containing both his money and the only trace of his fingerprints in this cheap backyard office. He changed his shoes in the yard, and gave the previously unused runners to a grateful drunk in the alley behind the house.

All bases covered—for now.

Mitch was finally kissing her….

And oh, how he kissed her.

In dreams her gentle hero, her wandering prince, kissed her in exquisite tenderness and dainty persuasion, showing her how precious she was to him. Then he’d hold her and tell her he loved her and ask her to marry him. Then he’d sweep her up in his arms and carry her to the bedroom…and the loving would be as sweet and tender as the kiss.

Welcome to the real world, Lissa….

Either the sun had shifted a million miles closer or Mitch’s kiss was hot enough to burn her alive. She was plastered against him from breast to thigh. His kiss ravaged her with a hunger bordering on desperation. He plundered her mouth with lips and teeth and tongue, intense, overwhelming, insatiable. His hands glided, cupped, caressed every inch of exposed flesh, exposing what wasn’t open to his search with low impatient growls every time he found a barrier, pushing aside what he could, tearing what he could not. As if he had to know every secret inside her, right here, right now.

This fevered need to devour her—all of her—did not just come from temporary male deprivation. She knew it, could feel it: the fever, the need, was all for her. He kissed her as if he couldn’t get enough of her…and she moaned, matching kiss for kiss, touch for touch, meeting his need with her own, because she couldn’t get enough, either. He was melting her from the inside out. Every flimsy barrier she’d erected against his potent magic puddled like heated rain at her feet. Her body was on fire, her breathing ragged, her breasts swollen, nipples hard. Her belly was a rippling lava pool of heat. She wanted to eat him alive, drink him inside her, suck him in through her very pores….

Drag him to bed and love him all day and night.

“Can you feel me?” he growled too soon, moving his arousal against her without shame or compromise. “I’ve been this hard all day, knowing I was finally going to see you again. I’ve been in pain since I saw you in the garden—and right now I’m ready to explode at one more touch—just one. So don’t push me, Miller, or I’ll show you here and now, where our kids could come in any moment, how much I don’t want you!”

She staggered back, groping for support. Her body was flushed with heat, her lips swollen, throbbing with a pleasure bordering on pain—the sweetness of pure feminine sexuality she’d never known. She couldn’t speak; she could only watch him, her eyes wide, her pulse pounding. Waiting for the rest of what this new, totally foreign, frighteningly male Mitch had to say.

He followed her like a stalking panther in the jungle grass, moving with sinuous grace and pulsing heat until he stood before her. Breathing. Just breathing. Hot and hard and ready to mate.

Her knees almost collapsed beneath her.

He only touched her chin, yet she felt trapped, helpless, made weak by her own wanting and the once-sure knowledge, untested until now, that Mitch, her Mitch, would never hurt her in a physical way. “So let’s get this straight,” he said softly, his heated breath caressing her face. “No woman would make my boys a better mother than you. I’m not ashamed to admit that—but I want you as my lover, no matter who else benefits from it or how much I need you for the kids. I want you. I want you in my bed as well as in my life. I want you for me. You’re like a foreign fever inside me there’s no shot for. I always did and I always will want you. Totally. Constantly. Always.”

Shooting straight from the hip. No sweet words. No half promises. No winning smile. Just Mitch.

I can’t speak pretty words. I only speak what I know.

She groped for a chair and sat before she fell down. As soon as she could stop shaking, she whispered, “If…if that’s true, why haven’t you ever told me?”

He crouched before her; she could see him trying to gauge her reaction. “When you were fourteen, your parents would have stopped our friendship, or Old Man Taggart would have sent me back to the orphanage. Then, when you were sixteen, I was going to tell you, but you started dating Tim first. Then you were engaged—then married.”

She felt tears well up. Tears for all the years lost, all the innocence forsaken. The belief in herself she’d never gotten back since she married Tim Carroll, the childhood friend she never should have married at all. “It’s too late, Mitch.” She choked on the words so badly they came out as a whisper.

“Why?” he asked, just as quiet.

How could she explain? There were only bald words—words she couldn’t utter. She swiped at her tears, wishing he’d turn away so she wouldn’t humiliate herself by having him watch her crying.

He brushed at her face, more of a caress than a wipe of her tears. “What did he do to you, Lissa-My-Lissa?”

With the nickname he used to give her in private—coined from one of her beloved Anne of Green Gables books—he melted her. She bit her lip. “Please, let’s not talk about it now,” she murmured, soft and husky. “It’s not worth it.” I just want to forget.

“It’s worth talking about if it’s stopping you from taking another chance on life,” Mitch argued quietly. “It affects my life, too. And the boys’ lives, as well.”

He had a point; but she’d kept silent so long about her marriage, she didn’t know how to speak. “Not yet.” She twisted her hands in her lap. “Please. I’m thinking about it. You shocked me, saying it like that so fast, but—I’m not saying a final no. I realize how much is at stake for the boys. And…and for you.”

He pulled her hands into his, kissing each abused finger, slowly and tenderly. She trembled, watching the intimate, sensual act, as if they were already lovers. “I’ve waited this long. I can wait a little longer. Take your time. I know it’s hard for you to trust me. I’ve been away too long. I’ll go play with the kids.” He smiled at her in strong, masculine sensuality. “But you will be mine,” he said softly, getting to his feet. “And when you are, there’ll be no divorce. It’s forever this time.”

Her gaze lifted in teary challenge. “And will you be mine, or is this marriage-and-forever proposal only a one-way contract? You know, like—you owner, me slave?”