16. Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Sixteen
Carys
H e walks us back to the bed, and we’re shedding clothes at a frantic pace, desperate to be as close as possible. When I’m naked, the only thing still covering any part of me is my cast. Most of the time, I don’t even notice it anymore. It’s amazing how I got used to the awkwardness of hauling the dull ache around. I suppose the physical ache matched the constant longing in my heart.
He runs his fingers along the plaster, and his head is bent over my arm. He kisses above it and every finger on my hand. “I hate that this happened to you. That I wasn’t there to protect you.”
I don’t want to fight so I don’t tell him I’m not sure if even he could have prevented anything. A broken wrist was probably the best outcome given the circumstances. A bomb and a gas leak are volatile and unpredictable. Could he have smelled the gas? Sure. Known about the bomb? Extremely doubtful.
“I’m okay,” I whisper. “I’ll heal.” I run my hand along the top of his head, and my palm rests on the back of his neck.
He glances up so our gazes connect, and there’s so much love and sadness in his icy-blue depths that my breath catches. “I’ll find the person who caused this.” He brings my cast to his heart. “And I’m gonna rip their fucking heart out.”
His words shouldn’t make my knees weak; he means them. I don’t want any more trouble. While I understand his need to balance the scales, we’ve got a baby in Cape Verde. I’m not willing to raise Lucas in the world we both grew up in. Saying any of that is another route to a fight.
“I don’t want to talk.” I skim my knuckles over his cheek. “I want to be so close to you that I don’t realize where you end and I begin.”
He doesn’t need to be prodded twice. His lips capture mine, and he slides me onto the bed, his body covering me. The graze of our skin is an ecstasy I’ve dreamed about for months. At first, when I closed my eyes, he appeared, sometimes like this, all over me, waking up my body. Other instances the dream would be the two of us in bed, chatting as though we had all the time in the world. To know I’ll get both tonight heightens my desire. Whatever happened to lead him to my hotel room doesn’t matter. He’s here, slipping his fingers inside me while his thumb circles my clit.
“Oh, God, that feels so good,” I cry out as his teeth graze my nipple before he takes the whole thing into his mouth. When he parts my legs and his tongue flicks across my center, I buck against him, as my hands dig into his scalp. He’s always known how to pleasure me, how to bring me to the brink, and then over it again and again. “Please, Finn,” I plead.
At that, he rises over top of me, and our gazes connect. A key sliding into a lock; a puzzle solved. When he enters me, even that isn’t close enough. All those months spent apart make me want to cry from the pleasure now, and the pain of before. He presses his forehead against mine as he moves inside me.
“I missed you so much.” He kisses my temple before angling his lips over mine again.
His pace is exquisitely slow, as though each touch of our bodies is a gift and something to be savored. His hand snakes under my ass, tightening our seal. He presses my core against him with each movement. I raise my hips, the friction ratcheting me closer and closer to orgasm.
“Oh, Finn,” I murmur, unable to get out anything else.
He lifts his head from my neck, gazing at me, his eyes filled with unmistakable desire. “I want to watch you come.”
“I’m almost there.” My voice is strained. “But I don’t want this to end.”
He pushes into me a little harder, and I dig my nails into his biceps, so near to toppling over the edge, my vision is blurry.
“Are you—are you close?” My words are garbled and sluggish.
“Yeah, Carys.” He kisses me. “Come for me, baby.”
Our gazes are locked, and he rocks us one last time. I cry out, my body spasming around him, and I clutch his arms as though I might fall through the bed.
He thrusts into me two more times, and then he’s pulsing inside me with his face pressed against my neck. I wrap my legs tighter, locking him in place. A sigh of contentment escapes me. I can’t remember when I was so happy.
The questions I realize I should be asking him float through my mind, but instead of speaking, I run my hands along every inch of his body as we cuddle in bed. He’s here, and we’re together. Nothing else matters.
“I’ll have to call Evander so he can stop the search. I should tell Jay to prep the plane to go back to Cape Verde.” My voice is sleepy to my ears. When did I last have a restful, uninterrupted sleep? A year? More, maybe.
Finn kisses my temple, but he’s gone tense beside me.
“You don’t want me to do that?” I peer up, trying to read his expression.
His fingertips dance along my spine, and he sighs. “I’m not coming back with you.”
I sit up, clutching the sheets to my chest. “What?”
He follows my lead, the sheet pooling around his waist when he leans against the headboard. His defined, muscled body is a distraction even now. Will I always respond like this to him? We’re in the middle of a crisis, on the brink of a fight, and the urge to straddle him, worship him with my hands, and pretend he didn’t say those words is overwhelming.
“I don’t even know where to start.” He meets my gaze, and unlike before, there’s a steely resolve. “I’ll tell you whatever you want as long as you promise you’ll go back to Cape Verde. You can’t stay with me.”
I let out a frustrated noise and move farther away from him. “No. I’m not making that promise. But you will tell me everything.”
He rubs his crown and then crosses his arms. Any hint of the yielding lover is gone. He’s in full business mode. He climbs out of bed and starts sweeping the room for bugs. “Evander must suspect I came here willingly.”
I clench my jaw. “He does. Did you?”
He shrugs and keeps checking the places a listening device could be used. “It’s complicated.”
Once he’s satisfied, he tugs on his boxer briefs and sits on the edge of the bed. When we’re touching, my brain doesn’t function. His distance is a relief and an annoyance. “You understand that’s not an answer I’m going to accept for anything.”
He draws a hand down his face, and then he levels me with the full weight of his gaze. “Evander’s not as clever as he thinks.” Then he continues with a story about the FBI, a deal with Zahir for a reduced sentence, a jailbreak that almost didn’t happen, the inclusion of Kimi and Lorcan, and then meeting Pierre-Jacques, the head of the PLA.
My mind bends and weaves around the information he’s dumping on me. There are so many problems with this plan, I’m not sure where to start. Instead of speaking once he’s done, I climb off the bed and dress. “They’re going to reduce your sentence to three years?” It’s better than the twelve consecutive life sentences he was supposed to serve, but it’s not the happily ever after I envisioned when I hired Evander.
“If I help take down the PLA.” Finn doesn’t meet my gaze, and I wonder whether he’s thinking the same thing as me. The deal is very good—maybe too good. It’s easy to give exceptional deals when the FBI doesn’t believe the person they’re dealing with will survive to cash it in. “You can’t stay.”
“Why not? As far as I can see, the danger is to you.” If he’s in danger, I don’t want to leave. Even if I trust Lorcan, I’m not sure I trust Kim, and I don’t trust the FBI or CIA. “You need someone who has your back.”
“Kim and Lachlan are doing that.” Lorcan’s new name gets stuck on his tongue for a moment.
“I’m not leaving. I’m not leaving until you can come home with me.”
“Apparently, you didn’t listen to my whole story very carefully. The PLA knew you were in Ireland before I did. They tried to frame you for crimes you didn’t commit. They were probably meeting with Valeriya when she was murdered. Pierre-Jacques practically invited you to lunch tomorrow.” He thrusts out his arms, annoyance sparking off him. “The FBI and the CIA are both okay with you being here.”
“If I’m here, I can help you get to the bottom of whatever is happening. They want me here for a reason.”
“Which means it’s not safe.”
“You think I’m safe in Cape Verde?” Throwing this in his face might not help me and acknowledging the danger causes my stomach to roll with anxiety. Jay and I left Lucas, Sofia, Luciana, Rosa, and Lena on the island because they were safer than here. None of us knows if that’s true. “My hotel was blown up a few weeks ago by a remote-controlled bomb. The day the FBI raided the Van de Berg offices in Chicago, someone sent me a confetti bomb. It appeared real.”
“A bomb threat you never fucking told me about,” Finn growls.
“It didn’t seem important then,” I mutter and rub my temples. Not exactly the truth. The threat was important, but I needed to be out of jail to address it and to talk Finn out of a murderous revenge spree if he found out who’d done it.
“Not important,” he scoffs. “A threat to you outweighs anything else. You got me? I went to jail believing you were safe. Protected. Both you and Jay woulda known that wasn’t true.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t exactly run your plan to turn yourself in by me, did you?” The memory of seeing him outside the glass window in handcuffs causes my stomach to flip. He blindsided me.
“The safest place for you is on the island.”
I clench my jaw and stare him down. “The safest place for me is with you.”
“That’s not true.” He shakes his head, but his resolve is weakening.
I hold up my casted wrist. “The last time we were together, I was grazed by a bullet. You saved me from something worse.”
“I can’t always save you. There’s a scar next to your heart as proof.”
Shit. Shit . Stupid. I walked into that one. I’ll lose this battle, and he’ll send me home if we end on this note. I crawl across the bed and straddle his lap, so we’re eye to eye. The physical contact causes a shudder to go through me. We stare at each other in silence, and both of us are convinced we’re right.
“Sometimes.” I test out my answer. “We have to save each other.”
He searches my face then he cups my cheek. “If anything happened to you because I let you stay, I’d never forgive myself.”
“Would you forgive yourself if you shipped me home and something equally bad happened?” It’s a low blow, but we’ve never been on the same page about my safety versus our happiness. At every turn he’ll choose my safety, and even now that I have Lucas, I’ll grab my happiness wherever I can.
When Finn’s not with me, I can almost convince myself I can be happy without him. As soon as we’re breathing the same air, I realize I haven’t taken a long, deep breath since we were together. Being without him is a slow suffocation.
His jaw tightens, and he breaks eye contact. His hands form fists at his sides.
“Would you forgive yourself if you sent me back and Lucas was hurt because they want me here, and I went home instead?” Cracking his resolve in half might be cruel, but I’m not any safer in Cape Verde. When I think about our situation too much, panic creeps up my throat. I left my baby on the island, and while I’d never admit this to Finn, he is safer there than here. I’m not convinced the same applies to me. “There are no guarantees.” I caress his jaw and rotate his chin to force him into eye contact. “As long as we’re together, we know the score, right? Safe or unsafe, we’re in it together.”
“You have to fire Evander.” His voice is rusty, as though the words were dragged out.
I frown. “Fire him? Can’t I tell him I found you?”
“The fewer people we have to explain ourselves to, the better.” He lifts me up and sets me back from him. “I can’t think straight when you’re this close.” A strained chuckle escapes. “Maybe I’m thinking about the wrong things.” He smirks.
I can’t disagree. He’s a drug to my system. The more I get, the more I want. “That’s it? You don’t want to explain yourself?”
“Is he gonna believe I agreed to work for the PLA without a fight? That I’d rather do that than go with you?”
I flush. He might have if I hadn’t been so confident otherwise. “This is why we need to keep each other in the loop. I could have convinced him of that if I’d known I needed to.”
There’s a light knock. “Housekeeping,” a female Irish voice seeps through the wooden door.
“Kim,” Finn mutters as he grabs his clothes off the floor and gets dressed.
“Kim has an Irish accent?” Not a surprise, really. I had an inkling this is what was going on with Lorcan and Kim. “You can’t go yet.” I follow Finn toward the door.
He takes out his phone, and a few seconds later, mine vibrates on the bedside. “My number.” He pops open the door, and the openness of his expression turns wary. “Be there in a sec.” He shuts the door before I can catch a glimpse of Kim. “Fire Evander. Tell him he’s shit at his job. Whatever you need to do to get rid of him. I’ll be in touch.”
My stomach drops, and I put my hand on the door before he can open it again. “If you’re lying to me—if you don’t come back for me—I’ll never forgive you.”
“I gave you my number.” He searches my face. “We’ve got lunch tomorrow with the PLA. You can stay—for now. At the first sign of more trouble than I can handle, I’m shipping you outta here. You got me?”
I nod. Does he realize I won’t leave regardless of what he wants? May not matter, because I can’t imagine him admitting a situation has gotten out of his control. I throw my arms around him, desperate for one last embrace. He squeezes me tight.
“I love you,” I whisper.
“I love you too.” His voice sounds hoarse.
He hasn’t uttered those words to me in months, and my chest expands in relief before he pulls away and disappears out the door.
I press my back against the wood and sigh. I don’t have a plan if he doesn’t call me tomorrow with a time to meet him. Honesty. That’s what I’m banking on.
The door vibrates against me with a knock. I check the peephole before opening it to Jay on the other side. He slips past me when I give him room to enter. For a moment, he gazes around the room.
“So, he found you, huh? But he didn’t stay?” Jay pins me with his gaze. “What’s going on?”
I shut the door and frown. “How did you know he was here?”
Jay’s eyebrows lift. “For one, these walls are thinner than they look. You two are never quiet, much less after you haven’t seen each other in months. For two, I opened my door as he was going past. He muttered, ‘do fucking better,’ as he walked past me.” He shrugs. “Probably lucky he didn’t stop to deliver a right hook with it as well.”
“I have so much to tell you.” I nod toward the one cramped chair in the corner of the tiny room. “You should sit down.”