Chapter 3 #2
And then the car passed by without any fanfare, not even braking as it continued down the side street and off into the dead of the Wyoming night.
“Kylie. It’s okay. We’re safe.”
Her breath escaped in a dizzying whoosh. Afraid that if she opened her mouth to respond, she’d do something stupid like start to cry, Kylie simply nodded, but holy crap, she wasn’t going to be able to keep it together much longer.
Her boss was dead. Murdered. Fagan was after her; he knew who she was. He wasn’t going to stop until he found her, and when he did, he was going to—
“Kylie, look at me.”
Under any other circumstances, she’d probably have bristled at being bossed around. But somewhere between the blood and the bullets and the bad guy, everything had hurtled out of her control, and God, why couldn’t she breathe?
“I…I…”
Nope. No go. Her chest squeezed, constricting as if all the air had been sucked out of the car and replaced with liquid cement.
A tremble worked its way up from her very center, and the ripple effect made her shiver and sweat at the same time.
Devon’s fingers slid from where they’d been resting over her lips, hooking gently in her hair as he put his face directly in her line of vision.
“Hey. Hey.” His whisper was soft, so unlike the one that had come before to quiet her and so very unlike his rock-hard demeanor that Kylie blinked, her panic slipping just an inch.
“There we go, yeah,” Devon murmured. “Look at me.” His thumb found the spot on her jaw just below her ear, smoothing a slow circle over the skin there, and the movement snagged enough of her attention to keep her shaking in check. Sort of.
Devon leaned in, his chest covering hers in strong, steady warmth. “Whoever was in that car was just passing by, okay? See—no lights. No sounds. Nothing out of the ordinary. It wasn’t our guy.”
Kylie’s heartbeat continued to slam, the white noise whoosh of her blood pressing hard against her eardrums despite her desire to be tough. “F-Fagan could still be coming. He could still find us.”
“He could. But we wouldn’t be sitting here for a second if I thought he would. Nothing’s going to happen to you. Not on my watch.”
This time, Kylie’s blink was one of slow realization. “So, we can go?” Please, God, she just needed to get out of here, out of this car and this state and this whole situation.
“I don’t think Fagan’s close by,” Devon said, although he didn’t let go of her. “But I want to give it a few more minutes, just to be on the safe side.”
Her throat knotted. “Devon, I can’t. Please, I need to—”
“Breathe,” he finished, and funny how her lungs got on board with that quiet, commanding voice. “I need you calm, Kylie. I need you with me. So, can you take a breath for me, nice and slow?”
With him. Right. She could do this. She could.
She inhaled, hating the way her chest wobbled and hitched, but at least the air got partway into her lungs.
Devon’s voice was smooth and calm, his body steady on hers. “There you go. Perfect. See, we’ve got this.”
“Mmkay,” Kylie murmured, although she still wasn’t convinced she was anywhere close to okay.
Which must have made two of them, because Devon didn’t budge. “What’s your favorite thing to eat for dinner?”
“What?”
The question was so ridiculously out of place, but still, he didn’t take it back. “Mine’s chicken Parmesan, although it’s tough to go wrong with a good, old-fashioned New York strip steak with roasted potatoes.”
“Um.” Kylie took a breath and thought for a second. “I guess mine is spaghetti and meatballs.” Her stomach let out a rumble at the thought, and wasn’t that just embarrassing, considering her midsection was less than a foot from Devon’s ear right now.
“That’s a good one,” he said. “S’pose you’d have a nice bottle of red with that, huh?”
“Maybe.” Her muscles let go a little against her seat, and she leaned into the heat of Devon’s palm, still firm and strong and sweet against her cheek as she thought about the food, the bright flavors of tomato and basil bursting across her tongue.
“Yeah. Pinot noir. Or, no, Chianti. That would be a perfect match.”
Kylie didn’t see his smile as much as she felt it moving toward her in the shadows.
“I’m not much of a wine guy, so I’ll take your word for it.
But, here’s what I want you to do. Every time you get scared, I want you to close your eyes.
” He paused long enough for her to let her eyes flutter shut for a trial run, but then his words continued, low and hypnotic.
“Good. Just like that. Then I want you to picture that dinner in your mind. The spaghetti and meatballs, the wine. All of it.”
Kylie’s laugh was as soft as it was involuntary. “Really?”
“Yes, really,” Devon said, his smile hanging just slightly in his voice. “Red and white tablecloth, garlic bread—there can even be candles on the table, okay? You can see it, right? In your mind’s eye?”
She nodded, her shoulders going lax. “Yes.”
“Okay. Now every time you get scared, or you think something bad might happen, I want you to grab onto this picture in your head. Because once we get you safe, you’re going to have that dinner.”
“Do you promise?”
Somewhere, in the logical part of her brain, Kylie knew Devon couldn’t promise she’d be okay any more than he could promise her the moon on a pie plate.
But between the quick, calculating actions he’d taken to get her away from Fagan and the slow, soothing circles his thumb was tracing over her jaw, she couldn’t deny the truth.
If Devon said yes, she’d believe him.
“Yes. I promise, Kylie. I’ll get you safe.”
Something about the way he said her name made her open her eyes, recognizing all at once how his body pressed against hers, his chest to her chest, his mouth not even an inch away.
Heat roared through Kylie’s belly, quickly turning to slick wetness in her panties, and even though it was insane, she lifted her chin to close the space between them.
Devon exhaled against her mouth, but whether it was shock or something deeper, Kylie couldn’t be sure.
Want like she’d never, ever felt flared to life in her blood, driving her to search, to take.
And she did.
Kylie reached out, wrapping her arms around the muscle-covered expanse of Devon’s shoulders.
The leather from his jacket created just enough friction on her bare forearms to turn her want into a demand, and she didn’t hold back.
Devon’s fingers flexed at the hinge of her jaw, his mouth resting on hers with just the barest brush of contact before he pressed against her harder with a groan.
Oh, God. Yes. Yes. Kylie swept her tongue over the seam of his lips in a bid for more, and all at once, he gave it.
His mouth parted, but not to let her in.
No, Devon’s lips slanted over hers with the clear intent to take, and he kissed her hard, desperate.
Wild heat built between her legs, her pussy clenching with need beneath the damp satin of her panties.
Digging her fingers into his hard, leather-clad shoulders, Kylie matched the intensity of the kiss, even as it grew along with her want.
She moaned, parting her mouth, her thighs, her everything so Devon could kiss her, touch her, take her more fully.
But then she realized he’d stopped kissing her back.
Devon grated out a low curse, pushing himself back to the driver’s seat in one fluid motion. “Kylie. We can’t…I need to keep you safe.”
She blinked, her cheeks burning even though the rest of her chilled from the sudden non-contact of their bodies. “Oh! I, uh. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“No. This is on me. Adrenaline can do crazy things. You’re not used to that, but I should’ve known better. It’s my job to know better. I overstepped.”
“I’m here too, you know.” Kylie pushed herself to sitting, her moxie slowly coming back online. “It takes two to tango, and all that.” Kissing him might’ve been impulsive, but she wasn’t about to deny having wanted it.
“Still. I was way out of line,” he said, his unshakeable demeanor falling right back into place as he swept the parking lot with one last glance before hitting the car’s automatic ignition button. “We’ve waited long enough to be safe for now, but we need to get moving now that you’re calmer.”
Kylie’s gut sank to her boots. Of course, he’d just been trying to calm her out of her panic-induced lather, nothing more.
God, had she seriously been so jacked up on adrenaline that she’d tried to devour him like an all-you-can-eat buffet?
She must be out of her freaking mind, not to mention a few other parts. “Right. Sure.”
He eased the car out of the gravel lot, doing the exact speed limit as he re-traced their path over the access road. But once again, Devon skipped the pleasantries of the highway, opting instead to turn onto a two-lane state route that, by the look of things, was a hell of a lot less traveled.
“Where are we going?” she asked, and the unyielding set of his jaw sent the tension winging right back into her shoulders.
“We’re going to get out of the immediate area, then find a place to rest and recon for a few hours. I need to get a plan into place.”
“A plan for what?”
Devon didn’t hesitate. “For keeping your brother off that plane.”
Okay, she couldn’t possibly be hearing right. “What? Why?”
“Because if Xavier Fagan knows enough about you to track you through the DMV, then by now, he knows who Kellan is, too.”
The thought of Fagan going after her brother turned Kylie’s stomach into a corkscrew. Still… “If anyone can take care of himself, it’s Kellan.”
“I know.” Devon’s gaze hardened as he lasered it through the windshield and into the predawn. “But if Kellan gets on that plane, he’ll lead this asshole to you like a homing beacon. We’ve got to take Plan B.”
Already, she hated the sound of this, but no way was she going to stay in the dark. “And Plan B is?”
“First, we’re going to figure out how to run the murder you witnessed up the right chain of command so we can take Fagan down. But you’re right. If we stay too long in one place, he has a better chance of finding us.”
“Okay,” Kylie said, trying like mad to process the thoughts flinging themselves around in her already overstuffed brain. “So, what does that mean, exactly?”
Devon turned, his copper-colored stare as fierce as it was determined.
“It means Kellan’s going to figure out how to get you into protective custody, and then we’re going to nail this guy to the wall.
In the meantime, since your brother can’t come to you, I’m going to take you to your brother. One state at a time.”