Page 3 of Engaging his Enemy
“Good work. You trace all the money?”
“Every last dime.”
The intercom on the phone buzzed. “Moto, you’ve got a call on line one.”
His head dropped to his chest and he forced himself to breathe. “Take a message.”
“She says it’s an emergency.”
“Jesus Christ,” he grumbled under his breath, punching the blinking light and answering the phone. “Damn it, Davina—”
“Shut up and listen,” she snapped. “I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this. I swore to God in heaven I wouldn’t give you the freaking satisfaction of stooping to this level, but your incredibly selfish attitude leaves me no choice. If you can’t find it in your heart to help Ben, if you truly hate yourown brotherso much because of some stupid misunderstanding that happened years ago, then come back for your son.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“But Ben—”
“No, Zach. Wyatt isyourson. At the very least, you owe it to him to meet him face-to-face. Just don’t stay too long or else he’ll figure out what an egotistical, self-centered jackass you are.”
The phone went dead in his hand. He took it away from his ear and stared at it. The clock ticked loudly on the wall. Davina’s baby had been his child. His child, not Ben’s. Sweat broke out across his body as an image appeared in his mind, a pregnant Davina in the distance, waddling down the high school steps as Ben gloated in Moto’s ear.“We’re getting married.”
He hung up the phone with a trembling hand and covered his mouth with his fingers.
Mac cocked his head and eyed him questioningly. “What’s up?”
“I need some time off.” He swallowed against the panic that rose in his throat like bile. “All the information on the kidnappers is there. I printed it out. I gotta go.”
“Where are you going?” asked Trace.
Nothing scared Moto. Not gunfire. Not a steady stream of tangos headed his way. But this was fear, sure as the blood was draining from his head and weighing down his feet like concrete in his boots. He looked from one man to the other. “I’m going home.”
2
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…
The world as Zach knew it was over. His parents were dead, killed in a snowy collision with a tractor trailer on their way to pick Ben up from a party where he’d had too much to drink. The horror of it was too difficult to bear, the desperate need to connect with another human being too much for Zach to control.
The funeral ended just hours before. Davina was fitted beneath him on his bed, her skirt around her waist, the sweet heat of her groin through her cotton panties and the gentle touch of her fingernails across his fevered skin tempting him to steamroll over the line he’d sworn never to cross.
She was sixteen to his eighteen, a year and a half into a relationship her parents had never wanted to be—for this very reason. And he’d tried, oh, how he’d tried to resist her, but the pain of loss was raw and demanding a desperate response, an act of love to fill him up where grief had drained him completely.
Her hand slipped beneath his shirt and skated over his lower back, then lower, cupping his ass through his dress slacks. His hips jerked forward in response, the sensation of his eager erection against her willing body almost too much to bear, even through their clothes. He looked into her eyes. “We have to stop.” He didn’t even have a condom.
“I love you.” It wasn’t the first time she’d said the words, but this time they meant something different. She wanted to make love with him. Or was she only saying that to offer comfort in his time of need?
I shall fear no evil. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me…
Images from the last few days assaulted him, the pain of grief threatening to drown him before he took her mouth in a desperate kiss that instantly chased the darkness away. More than a year he’d wanted her like this, hundreds of days of careful control insisting he force his hands to his sides even as he longed to stroke her tender flesh.
She unbuttoned his dress shirt, those nails scraping his chest as she went. He wasn’t capable of stopping, hadn’t the will or the desire to push away the one person he needed now more than he’d ever needed anyone.
She moved to her own shirt, unbuttoning her blouse, exposing a plain white bra with a satin bow in the middle, her breasts burgeoning from the top of the garment as if she’d outgrown it long ago. He buried his face in her cleavage, inhaling the scent of her heated skin and all she was offering.
His hand reached up to cup her breast, and her breath caught in her throat with a tiny moan of longing. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered reverently, wrapping his arms around her to undo the clasp of her bra and exposing her completely to his hungry stare. Her nipples were dark, the tips protruding like glorious peaks from perfectly shaped mounds, and his lips went to them of their own accord, tasting her with his tongue before sucking her fullness into the depths of his mouth.
Her back arched and her legs trembled. There was no going back. The hardness of her nipple against the roof of his mouth felt like it was meant to be there, his tongue and jaw knowing how to caress her without ever having been told. She writhed beneath him, her hips insistent against his as her breath came in little spurts and gasps.
