Chapter Seven
Greenbriar
Jackson stiffened, unprepared for the shock of her touching him. For the feel of her hands on his waist, her thighs brushing his, her breasts pressed against his chest. Something in him snapped to life. Awareness. Heat.
Thinking about how good the hot water felt wasn’t even possible.
Not when it was eclipsed by the feel of her soft warmth molding perfectly to him.
Just like it had all those years ago. She’d had a tempting figure, even as a sixteen-year-old girl, developing quickly with lush curves.
But now she had the svelte, toned body of a woman and was just flat-out gorgeous.
He was tired and sore and reeling from how things had fallen apart, the utter catastrophe at the airport. But at that moment, standing there with her touching him, he felt a quiet joy seeping through him, and it was a total blindside.
His hands slid down her spine as though they had a mind of their own. That immediate pull to her was still there, the same as it had been whenever he entered her orbit, gravity sucking him in. And he didn’t resist it.
Jackson stared at that heart-shaped face and those intelligent eyes that had haunted him for years. An overwhelming urge to take her mouth and stake a claim rushed over him.
Before he could act on it, Christina rose on the balls of her feet and crushed her lips to his.
Every cell in his body caught fire at the contact, and the sweep of her tongue across his poured gasoline on the flames.
He was supposed to stop this. Put professional responsibility ahead of personal desire.
Instead, he did the absolute worst thing.
He kissed her back, like a man possessed.
His fingers slipped into her wet hair, his palms cupping her face, and he couldn’t get enough of her mouth. Her taste. Her tongue.
A needy groan escaped him. It’d been so long. So very long since he’d been with a woman. Nearly three years. But it was more than a primal reaction. This wasn’t just any woman. It was Chrissy. Kissing her was like coming home.
Pent-up need surged through him, exploding into something he couldn’t rein in, and his thoughts scattered like shrapnel.
He clung tighter to her and cursed between kisses—at her, at himself, at this awful situation. But having her back in his arms gave him a rush that was stronger than adrenaline in his blood.
She kissed him with such a heady mix of honey and heat that he wanted to lose himself in her.
Breathe her into his lungs. Relish the sweetness of this moment—that had finally come after what felt like an eternity of wanting.
She curled an arm around his neck, and he pinned her body against the wall.
Muscle memory had his hand dipping low to catch her leg under the knee.
She moaned in his mouth. Sighed his name.
And the past clawed through him. Every conversation. Every cuddle. Every caress.
Once they’d taken their friendship to the next level as teens, there wasn’t a moment when he hadn’t wanted her.
Stealing kisses between classes, knowing exactly how many minutes they had before the bell rang.
Taking her fast in the back seat of his truck.
Or slow in his bedroom, where they could savor every second that they were connected, stripped bare and joined as one.
What he wouldn’t give for one more day with her. One more hour when she was his again.
Jackson deepened the kiss, craving more, unable to hide it, and drew her closer. In return, she tortured him, rubbing her curves against him, pressing her hips to his, her hands roaming over him, making every part of him turn rock-hard. He slid his hand across her thigh, brushing her wound.
Flinching, she gasped in pain.
The sharp sound brought him back to reality. Terrified by the track his thoughts had taken, how the automatic response of his body to her had overridden everything else, he set her away from him. The sudden loss of her heat and softness was a jolt, kick-starting his brain.
She looked dazed and unsteady at first. “It’s okay.” A sexy smile danced on her lips. Her eyes gleamed with desire. “You didn’t hurt me.” She put her palm on his chest. “I want you, Jackson.”
Words he’d longed to hear for twelve years twisted his heart into a knot. Why did it feel like a punch to the solar plexus?
His gaze fell over her dainty lace bra—see-through from the water—and then he looked at her injuries. Gashes that didn’t even require stitches.
Something about it was off, niggling at the back of his brain. One gunshot resulting in a surface wound might be lucky.
But not two. No way, no how.
He backed up until her hand dropped from his chest and his spine hit the shower wall. “Explain this to me,” he said, gesturing to her arm.
“What?” She stared at him, her brow wrinkled in confusion, her lips swollen from kissing. “What are we talking about?”
“Why didn’t Aguilar kill you? That man murdered several law enforcement officers without blinking, but he didn’t kill you when he could’ve. Twice. Explain it to me.”
She recoiled. “On the boat, I told you he wouldn’t.”
“You did. But tell me why he wouldn’t kill you.” Presumably, that was the reason Aguilar had been sent.
“Would you have preferred it if he had?”
“Don’t.” He shook his head. “Don’t do that. Tell me why.”
She hesitated. “He’ll torture me first. To find out everything I told you, to gauge the exposure for the cartel.”
A good answer.
The best lies were half-truths. Kehoe had taught Jackson that. Surely he’d taught Christina the same.
Part of him wanted to accept her response. Leave well enough alone. Simply go back to kissing her. Make love to her.
But he couldn’t. “Let’s say I buy what you’re trying to sell. Aguilar still could have incapacitated you. Seriously injured you. Instead, he took two precise, nearly impossible shots, only nicking you. Do you have any idea what kind of skill, what kind of care that takes? Explain it.”
“I can’t.” She folded her arms over her chest. “I don’t know what he was thinking. I’m not a mind reader.”
“I want to believe you, but…” He shook his head.
“What is there to doubt? I gave you proof I’m Kirk’s asset.”
On the surface it looked like proof. “You told me about cases we’ve worked on. Things the mole already knows. That isn’t concrete confirmation.” Maybe he’d been too hasty to believe her and should’ve doubted every word out of her mouth sooner.
“You think I was never an asset, that the mole told me what to say? Or that I was working for Kirk and, what, turned at some point while on the inside?”
Either way, it would make him a sucker and her the enemy.
“I’m not sure what to think. But Kirk Kehoe was more than my supervisor.
He was my mentor and my friend. I’m going to get to the bottom of what happened to him.
Then I’m going to make the cartel and those responsible for his death pay.
Anyone who gets in my way is going to regret it. Anyone.”
“The depots are the cartel’s main hub. It’s a huge vulnerability for them. I didn’t have to say anything about them.”
All unverified. “Supposedly filled with cash, drugs and weapons. All of which could be moved and vanish before we seize them.” She hadn’t given him anything to act on regarding the depots. No addresses. No intel on the type of security at the sites.
Not that she’d had a chance. If she had disclosed details when they had her in custody, the mole on the task force could’ve warned the cartel, provided she was on the right side of this.
He was putting everything on the line and wanted to believe her, but he couldn’t operate on blind faith.
A crestfallen expression flashed across her face. Her eyes turned glassy. A needle of guilt pricked him, but he had to reel in the automatic response to comfort her.
“I warned you at the US marshals’ building,” she said. “Told you that you weren’t prepared. That anyone near me would be in danger. I tried to convince you to stay behind. But you still doubt me? You think I’m lying?”
She’d been an Iron Warrior, as much as any biker wearing the club cut, long before she was inside the cartel.
During her formative years, the club, her family was an outlaw gang, doing dirty deeds.
She was a woman comfortable in a world rife with deceit and treachery.
How else could she have survived for so long inside the cartel?
“I don’t know, Chrissy.” Shrugging, he glanced at the wounds on her arm and leg.
One traitor had gotten close and deceived him.
He couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t vulnerable to it happening again with her.
So much had happened so quickly. He needed to sort through it, piece by piece, until it made sense. “It’s just—everything doesn’t add up.”
“No one calls me Chrissy.” Something about her hardened, retreated, and suddenly she was like a stranger. “Not anymore.”
He’d thought he knew her twelve years ago, but he didn’t know her now.
What if she was a double agent?
What would be the end game?
Only one thing came to mind: protect the mole on the task force by drawing suspicion away from them to someone else. Was she setting him up to be the fall guy?
If she was, he was playing right into her hand. An asset found every angle and knew which ones to exploit. “Why did you kiss me?”
Straightening, she jutted her chin up in the air. “Why did you kiss me back?”
I lost my mind. Temporarily. He fled with her and protected her.
Then she hooked him even deeper with the lure of more intel, promises of depots that might not even exist. Now she was kissing him and he was kissing her back.
He was already compromised. If he slept with her, there might not be any way to salvage his career.
“It was a mistake. I allowed myself to succumb to an old temptation.”
“An old temptation? That’s what you think of me.” Hurt slashed across her features, and an equivalent pain he despised feeling ripped through his gut. “Did you ever love me? Or were you just having fun with me back then? Because I was convenient. What was I to you?”
His head registered the redirection on her part, but his heart welled with so much resurrected emotion he wished it would simply stay buried.
“You broke up with me. Not the other way around. Remember? Even though you knew what you were to me. What our relationship meant.” She had been his whole world.
He couldn’t imagine a future without her.
But none of it had stopped her from cutting him off.
“Yeah, I knew.” She glared at him. “You were sowing your wild oats with biker trash.”
The familiar words stole his breath, dragging him back to that night. The last one they’d shared together. In his room. Christina had sneaked out the window as the sun came up, and she was supposed to climb down the trellis and wait for him so he could drive her home.
As he finished dressing and looked for his keys, his dad had barged into his room. Chewed him out because he knew she’d slept over. By the time Jackson had climbed down the trellis, Christina was gone. “You heard my father? Everything he said?”
“Every. Single. Word.” She looked ready to spit nails at him. “And that’s what you thought of me, too, that you could discard me like used Kleenex when you were done.”
“No. That’s not true. I loved you.”
“When your father called me trash, told you to have your fun with me but not to get serious, or attached, what was your response?”
Shame licked at Jackson’s insides, and he lowered his head.
“Nothing,” she said, stepping toward him.
“That was your response. But your silence spoke volumes. You didn’t defend me, didn’t fight for our relationship, and it told me all I needed to know.
Everything the club said about you, about the almighty Powell family, was true.
More importantly, your silence told me a future with you wasn’t possible. ”
He replayed the breakup in his head. When he’d found her, she was so distant.
So quiet. He’d tried to kiss her, but she pulled away from him.
Gave him an ultimatum. “That’s why you demanded I introduce you to my parents.
Invite you over for Sunday supper. Why you wanted us to talk to them together and tell them about our plans. ”
It had felt like a test, only he hadn’t realized what the consequences would be if he failed.
That her decision would be final.
“I thought we had time for that,” he said. “No need to rush.” Get his parents to warm up to the idea first.
If only he’d known the wrong choice meant the end of them.
“But it didn’t feel like rushing when you slept with me?
” She tilted her head, eyes narrowing. “Wasn’t rushing when you snuck me into your house.
Up a trellis and through a window, never bringing me in through the front door.
To your bedroom, where you could sow your wild oats with me, again and again. ”
“It wasn’t like that,” he said. She made it sound dirty. Being with her, not just sleeping with her, but talking to her, holding her hand, listening to her laugh, loving her, had been the highlight of his life. To this day. “We were in a relationship.”
“Were we? Your parents didn’t seem to know it, and any time we were outside of school in front of grown-ups in town, you wouldn’t touch me.
” Her eyes blazed with fire, but her voice was cold as ice.
“You wanted to have your cake and eat it, too. Sleeping with me when it was convenient while appeasing your parents. For a rock-bottom price. All it cost was my dignity. You have the nerve to stand there and say you loved me. I think you’re the one who’s lying. ”