Chapter 26 #2
“There’s nothing for you to say, but you need to hear the rest of it.
” He took a deep breath, determined to push through it.
“I used to lie awake at night thinking about them, imagining what the baby would have been like. We would have had a little girl.” To this day, every time he thought about the tiny little life that never was, his chest tightened with so much despair he thought he’d die.
He reached into the box on the table and pulled out a pink origami crane.
“These were for a mobile I was making to hang over her crib.”
More tears rolled down Victoria’s cheeks.
He used to cry over what he’d lost, too.
Now he was all cried-out. “After losing them,” he continued, “I tortured myself with guilt until it nearly ate me alive. I took down all the photos of her and of us. It was too painful to look at them. Finally, I left the Army and joined the FBI. I drove myself hard, taking every risky assignment I could.”
“All this time,” she said, shaking her head, “you’ve been putting yourself in constant danger to try and make up for what you mistakenly believe was your fault.”
Being in the psychology biz, he shouldn’t have been surprised that she’d cut right to it. Luckily, Morrison had always been there to pick up the pieces. Including that fateful night in Chicago. “Until recently, I couldn’t see what was happening to me, what I was becoming.”
“What is it you think you were becoming?” she asked, lacing her fingers with his.
Kyle compressed his lips, acknowledging the truth in ways he never thought he could. “Numb. Dead inside. I couldn’t let myself care for anyone again.”
“I understand.” She tugged her hand from his. “You’re telling me you can’t open yourself up again.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, and that’s not why I’m telling you all this.
” Over the years, everyone—his brothers, his mother, his boss—all pounded into him that it was time to let go of the past, but it hadn’t been.
Not until now. “Maybe that was true, once. When I met you, you lit something inside me I didn’t think was still there.
” Something that made him believe he could move on with his life.
If only circumstances hadn’t intervened and separated them.
She gave a deep sigh. “I know what we have is still new, but you know I can’t ever give you children. I can never give you the baby you lost.”
“I’m not about to lose you again.” He pressed her hand to his lips. Children or no, he could never let her out of his life now. They’d come too far to let fate rip them apart again. “No matter what.”
Her forehead creased, but it was the intense worry radiating from her eyes that bothered him most. “Do you really mean that?”
“I do.” He leaned in, determined to kiss away her doubts. “Let me show you how much.”
He kissed her lips, her face, her neck, savoring the warm silkiness of her skin. She let her head fall back, uttering a sexy little sigh that shot straight through him like an erotic arrow.
Unable to wait a moment longer, he picked her up and carried her upstairs to his bedroom. As much as he wanted to rid them of every stitch of clothing, he wanted to savor this, to make her ache for him as much as he ached for her.
Gently, he laid her on the bed and sifted his fingers through her coppery hair, cradling her face as he kissed her more deeply. Kissing her was like drinking from the sweetest fountain known to man.
She slid her hands up his back beneath his sweatshirt and tugged it over his head. He did the same with her sweater and the rest of her clothes until she was completely naked. And absolutely beautiful.
He kicked off his sneakers and shucked the rest of his clothes. She bestowed him with a beatific smile, echoing the blissful emotions he’d been depriving himself of out of some misguided sense of guilt.
He settled between her thighs, and when she locked her legs around the backs of his, hot flames licked at his body, igniting his soul and setting his heart on fire with the need to tell her the words they both needed to hear.
Not yet, the overly cautious part of his heart warned. He might not be ready to say it, but he could show her. With his hands. With his body. And his heart.
Kyle kissed her slowly, softly, murmuring, “I don’t know what I did to deserve you.” Because in his mind there was so much grief, pain, and death he’d caused. Silently, he thanked fate for giving him a second chance.
“You’re a good man, Kyle Gates.” She stroked his cheek, her touch softer than an angel’s, or so he imagined. “The best I’ve ever known.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say that her standards must be incredibly low. Instead, he skimmed his knuckles down the side of her ribcage, then back up, stopping to caress her silky breast and rubbing the tip of her nipple with his thumb. “What do you want? Tell me.”
“To be on top.” She grinned, turning his insides to mush. “I’ve never done that before.”
He would have laughed but understood there was so much more to her response than mere playfulness. Yuri was such an egomaniac, he would never have given a thought to pleasuring his wife or letting her take charge.
“My pleasure.” He flipped their positions so fast she gasped, then giggled, a sound that tugged at every remaining thread holding his heart together.
Straddling him, with her creamy thighs on the outside of his and her breasts beckoning for his mouth and tongue, left him struggling with the need to take her hard and fast. But she wanted to be in charge, so he’d let her.
As she leaned over and kissed him, he positioned his rock-hard erection beneath her, ready for her to take him inside her warm, slick folds. He held her hips loosely, wanting to bury himself in her beauty and the goodness that was an inherent part of who she was.
Slowly, teasingly, she lowered herself onto to his aching body. “Ohh, Kyle.” She gripped his forearms and undulated against his balls.
“Baby, you’re driving me absolutely out of my mind,” he said gruffly, barely able to keep from pistoning hard and fast into her hot, wet warmth.
“Good,” she breathed, her breasts bobbing with her movements. “So, so good.” Her thighs tightened around his. Her nails dug into his arms.
When she licked her lower lip, he nearly came. The only things stopping him were his hands fisted tightly around the bedsheets. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to make her happy, to give her what she deserved, including those passionate moments that had been taken from her.
Her breaths came louder. She rocked faster against him, up and down, her inner walls squeezing him tighter. Finally, she arched her back and neck. “Oh!”
Watching her in the throes of a beautiful orgasm sent him spiraling downhill, his mind exploding and yet oddly peaceful, as if this was always the way it was meant to be. He gripped her buttocks, holding her tightly against him as he let go, his body spasming with the force of his release.
Breathing raggedly, he wrapped his arms around her back, feeling her heart hammering against his cheek. When their heartbeats slowed, he pulled her down on top of his chest. Strands of coppery hair trailed down his ribcage.
She sighed, snuggling closer and nuzzling his collarbone.
The look on her face was so serenely beautiful he couldn’t imagine her not being here with him.
She was filling the hole in his heart, the gaping one that had been gradually expanding over time.
She’d barely been in his house for an hour, and already he was heading down the path of no return.
To fall in love with Victoria would be a lifelong commitment.
The phone still clipped to his belt on the floor dinged with an incoming text.
Two seconds later, his phone dinged with another tone.
Something—or someone—had set off the driveway sensor.
He rolled off the bed to snag the phone.
The text was from Jack. Both his brothers and his boss had just pulled into the driveway.
What would his boss be doing at his house, let alone on a Sunday and with both his brothers? Something was wrong.
“Stay here,” he whispered, dropping a kiss on Victoria’s forehead, then quickly stepping into his jeans and tugging on his sweatshirt. “Everything’s okay.”
“Are you sure?” She sat up, using the sheet to cover her breasts.
“Yeah. It’s work.” Not bothering with shoes, he padded in his bare feet downstairs to the front door.
Sure enough, through the small glass panes at the top of the door he watched his boss and brothers get out of Jack’s SUV.
He opened the door and stepped aside to let them in.
“To what do I owe the honor on a Sunday?” he asked his boss, then looked from Jack to Deke.
The look on Mike’s face—all their faces—was grim. Neither Jack nor Deke said a word, deferring to their boss.
“What’s wrong?” This impromptu visit on a weekend was so off, it pinged his bad-shit radar louder than a platoon of army tanks.
Mike looked around Kyle’s shoulder. “Is Victoria Kelly here?”
“She is.” While Victoria had been packing at her apartment, he’d notified his boss by phone where he was taking her, so he already knew she was here. He looked to his brothers for an inkling as to what was going on.
“My CI flew in today like he said he would.” Mike lowered his voice.
“He and Nikolai Lebedev had a chat this morning over a bowl of caviar and shots of Beluga.” He paused, but kept flicking his gaze around Kyle’s shoulder.
Whatever had brought them here had something to do with Victoria and something he didn’t want her to overhear.
“Is this about Yuri?” Kyle asked. “If that sonofabi—
“It’s not about Yuri.” Mike shook his head, the look on his face darkening steadily. “This is about the accountant. We know who it is.” His boss’s gaze fixed on something behind Kyle.
He turned to find Victoria dressed and standing by the sofa at the bottom of the stairs, digging her nails into the seat cushion. “Honey, can you give us a few minutes?” He didn’t know how much she’d heard, but this was still confidential FBI business.
She stood rigid, if anything, gripping the cushion tighter. Rather than look at him, she seemed to be staring directly at his boss.
“Actually,” Mike said, “she can stay.”
“Mike?” He looked back to his boss, whose lips had twisted into a deep frown Kyle had only seen on rare occasions. “Are you sure you want to talk about this in front of—”
Then it hit him. Why they were here. On a Sunday. Looking as if the sky was about to come crashing down.
If it were humanly possible and still be alive, he felt every ounce of blood drain from his veins into a river on the floor.
God, no. It can’t be.
Bits and pieces of evidence he’d cataloged into a mental report but never made the connection to, suddenly fit together like a horrific jigsaw puzzle.
The laptop he’d seen in Victoria and Yuri’s house the night he’d picked her up for the New Year’s Eve party—the one they hadn’t found when they’d executed a search warrant.
The framed photo of Victoria’s mother on the hallway table. That had been in the house, too. If Victoria had never returned to the house after he’d left her at the hospital, how could she still have that photo?
She couldn’t. Unless she’d gone back to retrieve it.
And the laptop. Which explained why they’d never found it.
The floor beneath his feet fell away, and he was free-falling into the worst nightmare he could imagine.
The future he’d been wishing for…that gaping hole in his heart that had finally been filled with hope… Gone in an instant.
He turned back to Victoria, hoping and praying he wouldn’t see what he knew to be true.
“Kyle, I’m sorry.” Her blue eyes shimmered. “This wasn’t my fault. I didn’t have a choice. I wanted to tell you. I just didn’t know how.”
After ten years of searching, the answers he’d needed were staring him in the face. He couldn’t believe the words he was about to say.
As he said them, his heart cracked wide open, the pieces shattering all around him in piercing, painful shards.
“You’re the accountant?”