After she showered and threw on one of Mac’s T-shirts, she sat on the edge of the bed and looked at him.
Now what? She had so many questions.
When hadn’t she had questions? But this time, he’d given her a bone, and dammit, she wanted answers.
Since he’d passed out belly down, she caught sight of his phone sticking out of his back pocket. She slid it out and held it in her hand. It would be so easy to call her boss or her client, to grab the vial and Mac’s phone and get out of there.
She could even call the police or the FBI if she wanted to, could turn over the virus to the government, so at least it would be safe.
Could she even be certain what he said what true? Did he really work for the government, or had that been just another in the string of lies he’d told her?
But Mac had asked her to trust her instincts. Wasn’t that what she’d been doing all this time, why she’d agreed to stay with him? Because of her inherent belief that he couldn’t possibly be doing something that could potentially harm millions of innocents?
Instinct was screaming at her to trust him, to wait this out until he woke up so she could finally hear the truth.
She needed to hear the truth about this government thing.
She bent down and pulled off his boots, then pushed at Mac to roll him over. He groaned, but cooperated, flipping onto his back.
“Let’s get you undressed,” she said, not sure if he even heard her. She worked on his jeans, undoing them and struggling to drag them off his legs. The rest was easier. When she had him na**d, he climbed onto the pillow without a word or waking.
With a sigh, Lily pulled off the T-shirt and climbed into bed, shut off the bedside lamp and scooted next to Mac. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her against him.
The answers she sought could wait until morning. She snuggled closer to Mac and closed her eyes.
Mac didn’t want to wake up. Lily’s warm body was nestled against him, the sun wasn’t shining through the windows yet, which meant it was early. Too damn early to be awake.
Yet he was awake. His mouth felt like cotton. And his head hurt. Goddamn, what truck ran over him last night? He lay there trying to find his brain cells, because he couldn’t remember a thing. Maybe he’d just go back to sleep for a while longer. He inched closer to Lily, burying his nose in her hair and inhaling her sweet scent. He could so easily drift off again.
God, he felt drugged.
He blinked his eyes open. Drugged. Recall inched its way through the fog. Oh, yeah. Last night, Lily drugged his soda, ran off with the virus and he chased her on the bike. It was all there, on the fringes and a little fuzzy, but he remembered now.
He must have been insane to chase her on his bike while he was as drugged up as he’d been. Then again, he hadn’t really had much choice, had he? He’d needed to get the virus back.
He’d needed to get Lily back.
The important thing was, she was still there with him.
She’d stayed. He did remember asking her to trust him, to give him a chance to explain it all. How many times had he asked that of her? It was so unfair. He’d been unfair to her this entire time. He should have come clean right away, instead of waiting so long to tell her.
He would have to tell her the whole story today. The secret was out now.
But not yet. Not when it was still warm in bed, and even warmer pressed up against her sleeping body. They were spooned together, her butt nestled in his crotch. His hand rested between her breasts. He smiled at the thought of waking up this way, with his nose buried in her neck, knowing the first thing he was going to smell in the morning was Lily’s sweet skin.
Just breathing her in turned him on. Waking up with her ass against his c**k was better than any alarm clock, making him rise to life in an instant. The blood rushed south and his shaft finally started paying attention to where it was—nestled between the legs of a very hot woman.
He leaned up on one elbow so he could see over her shoulder, then dragged the sheet down to her waist, uncovering her breasts. Like the rest of her, they were perfection—round, with pink ni**les that perked up when he moved his palm over them. He cupped one, teasing the pink crest with his thumb by drawing slow, lazy circles around it until it puckered.
Lily moaned and arched, but her eyes stayed closed. He continued to toy with her nipple, captivated by the way it hardened as he rolled it between his fingers. Even better was her response, the way she wriggled her ass against his cock.
Oh, she was awake, of that there was no doubt, because she was moving against him now, but not in any kind of frenzy.
It was more of a slow awakening, and he enjoyed these little sounds she made. Moans and sighs that signaled she was still waking up and enjoying his touch.
He slipped his c**k between her legs. She was wet, her slick folds hot and welcoming as he surged between them.
Though eager to be inside her, he liked this lazy morning lovemaking and didn’t want to get too wild and crazy. Not yet, anyway.
Just having this intimate contact with Lily was enough.
He positioned his c**k at the entrance to her pu**y and entered her with care, not penetrating with a hard thrust. Instead, he eased inside her inch by inch, feeling her melt around him in greeting as she pulled him inside.
Sex with Lily was usually so wild. Making love to her this way, being able to listen to every sound she made, every breath she took as he thrust with slow precision, was a nice change. He felt everything, from the way she pulsed around him, to the way their bodies seemed to fit perfectly together— from his chest against her back to her thighs tucked against his.
He should have known it wouldn’t last. Not when the passion they shared kicked up a notch. He tried to hold back, to take things light and gentle. But Lily pushed her ass against him, widening her legs to give him better access and gripping the sheets for leverage so she could push off, move forward, then grind back against his cock. Her light breathing and delicate whimpers had turned into deeper, needier moans. She wanted more.
So much for slow and easy. If she wanted to pick up the pace, he’d be more than happy to oblige her.
“On your stomach,” he said, pulling out and tossing a pillow in the center of the bed.
She rolled over, situating her lower belly on the pillow, which lifted her ass high in the air.
“Mmmm,” was her only reply.
Palms braced on either side of her shoulders, he dropped down on top of her, sliding his body against hers to feel that skin to skin contact. She moaned, lifting her ass against him. He positioned his c**k at the entrance to her pu**y and drove inside. Her tight walls grabbed onto him and sucked him in, squeezing and quivering around him.
Oh, yeah. But he wanted deeper penetration.
“Come on, baby. Up on your hands and knees.” He swept his arm underneath and helped to lift her. She flattened her palms onto the mattress and spread her legs, bending down and lifting her ass in the air. She cast him a sexy look over her shoulder as he slid inside her pussy.
He started slow, but Lily wanted more, backing up against him, f**king his c**k with deep, forceful thrusts.
His woman was awake, and she was hungry. He gripped her h*ps and plunged hard. She tilted her head back and let out a groan of pure delight, her fingers grasping the covers in a tight hold. She arched her back and held on while he gave her exactly what she’d asked for.
Juices poured over his c**k as she grew wetter with every thrust. He bent over so he could reach her clit—she was so wet, so hot, and he could barely hang on as her walls tightened around him.
He surged forward, rubbing her cl*tas he did. “Come on, baby,” he whispered against her ear. “Let go.”
She groaned, pushing back against him with wild abandon, shaking her head from side to side. “Mac.”
“Yeah, I’m right there with you. Now let go for me.”
He felt it before she cried out—that sweet spasm that let him know she was coming. He went at the same time she did, jettisoning come inside her, planting his h*ps against her ass while she shuddered against him in ecstasy. She was shaking as she came, her whole body one giant vibration from the inside out, rocketing him, too.
Panting, he held onto her middle, pulling her upright so her back pressed against his chest. They were both wet with perspiration from their efforts, Lily’s heart beating wild and fast against the palm of his hand.
He pressed a soft kiss against her neck. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” she said back. “I need a shower.”
“Me too.”
They showered together, and Lily got out first. She dried off and dressed, then said she was going downstairs to start breakfast. While he dried himself, she said, “After breakfast, I want some answers.”
He nodded, realizing he was going to have to give them to her.
Grange was going to have his hide. He was going to be in deep shit for telling Lily the truth, but at the time he’d had no choice. Maybe he could blame the drugs.
Screw it, he thought as he climbed into his jeans and pulled a T-shirt over his head. He trusted Lily.
He went downstairs. She already had breakfast going, so he grabbed a cup of coffee for fortitude.
“Need any help?”
She shook her head. “I’ve got it covered. You can pour us some juice.”
By the time breakfast was on the table, he had a pretty good idea what he was going to tell her—everything. He owed it to her after jerking her chain this entire time. And she’d stayed with him last night instead of running off again. She’d had access to his phone and she could have called in the cops, or her boss, or anyone she’d wanted to. Instead, he woke up this morning to find her snuggled up asleep next to him.
She’d trusted him enough to stay, and that meant he owed her the truth about the whole deal. But first he wanted to get this meal down. He was starving.
Lily didn’t press Mac for the details, opting to stay quiet and eat her breakfast, and let him do the same. She felt guilty enough over the whole drugging thing last night, and wanted to make sure he had some caffeine and food in his system to clear the last of the sleeping pills out.
Inside she was hopping up and down and dying to know if Mac was really going to tell her the truth, so his first words came as a shock to her.
“I got into some serious trouble while you were away at college.”
She gave one nod of encouragement and let him talk.
“I was twenty-one, working dead-end jobs and stealing on the side. I was damn good at it, too. But not good enough.
Got mixed up with the wrong people, and ended up involved in this grand theft auto ring. I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into, and once in, had no idea how to get out. I got caught. Cops hauled me in and I was looking at some serious jail time. With no family and no money to back me up, I was screwed and going down fast. My life was over.”
Lily’s heart broke for him. Mac never could catch a break.
“But it was my own damn fault. I could have straightened up, and I didn’t. I chose the wrong path and had no one to blame but myself for screwing up. So I stood up and took it like a man, told the public defender I wanted to plead guilty and accept the consequences of my actions. He told me I was insane.”
Lily was about to say the same thing.
“Then a miracle happened. A guy by the name of Grange Lee walked into my life and changed it forever. A tough ex-military general, he made me an offer that seemed too good to be true.”
“What kind of offer?” she asked.
“General Lee was putting together a crack team of specialists, sworn to secrecy and bound to work for the United States government, a department within the Department of Justice. In exchange for wiping out all the charges against me, I could work for him.”
“Doing what?”
“The United States government is stolen from all the time. Things that they can’t recover. Things that the government tries to retrieve by conventional means, but for some reason can’t get back because either the court system is flawed or the bad guys have really good lawyers. Some things they just can’t get confiscate the legal way.”
Lily snorted. “As both a cop and a PI, I’ve seen that happen all too often. And it’s frustrating as hell.”
He nodded. “Tell me about it. Anyway, Grange laid it all out for me. Told me what I’d be doing…what we’d all be doing. No one outside a single branch of the government even knows we exist. It was risky and it was dangerous and if we were caught at it, the government, and he, would deny our existence.”
“In other words, you had to be really good at what you did, because if you got caught in these thefts, you would go to jail and they wouldn’t be able to bail you out this time,” she said.
“Right. But hell, it was worth the risk. I wanted a chance to turn my life around, to do something right for a change instead of f**king up like I had been.”
“So you said yes.”
He smiled. “I said hell yes. Grange made the arrangements, the charges disappeared, and I left with him.”
“Sounds so simple.”
“It wasn’t. He worked me…all of us. He’s one tough son of a bitch. And he knew he had a half dozen lazy, young, good-for-nothing criminals on his hands. So he had to show us the way. It was like boot camp. We got up at dawn, did physical conditioning, had rules and regulations. There was no partying, no drinking, no smoking, no women—”
“Shocking. How did you survive?” she asked, tongue in cheek.
“Nearly died the first month,” he teased back. “It was awful. You never heard a bunch of grown men whine like babies more than we did. But little by little he turned us into the men we were supposed to be—the men he knew we could be. He broke us down, then he built us up again. He taught us that we weren’t worthless, that we did have something of value to offer. He made us stronger, mentally and physically. There wasn’t one among us who wasn’t whip smart to begin with, so he made us take classes. The ones who didn’t have their high school diplomas got them in a hurry or else. Some of these guys should have gone on to college.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I wish you could meet them, Lily. I’ve never had brothers, until I joined Wild Riders. I’ve never been closer to a group of guys before.”
Now what? She had so many questions.
When hadn’t she had questions? But this time, he’d given her a bone, and dammit, she wanted answers.
Since he’d passed out belly down, she caught sight of his phone sticking out of his back pocket. She slid it out and held it in her hand. It would be so easy to call her boss or her client, to grab the vial and Mac’s phone and get out of there.
She could even call the police or the FBI if she wanted to, could turn over the virus to the government, so at least it would be safe.
Could she even be certain what he said what true? Did he really work for the government, or had that been just another in the string of lies he’d told her?
But Mac had asked her to trust her instincts. Wasn’t that what she’d been doing all this time, why she’d agreed to stay with him? Because of her inherent belief that he couldn’t possibly be doing something that could potentially harm millions of innocents?
Instinct was screaming at her to trust him, to wait this out until he woke up so she could finally hear the truth.
She needed to hear the truth about this government thing.
She bent down and pulled off his boots, then pushed at Mac to roll him over. He groaned, but cooperated, flipping onto his back.
“Let’s get you undressed,” she said, not sure if he even heard her. She worked on his jeans, undoing them and struggling to drag them off his legs. The rest was easier. When she had him na**d, he climbed onto the pillow without a word or waking.
With a sigh, Lily pulled off the T-shirt and climbed into bed, shut off the bedside lamp and scooted next to Mac. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her against him.
The answers she sought could wait until morning. She snuggled closer to Mac and closed her eyes.
Mac didn’t want to wake up. Lily’s warm body was nestled against him, the sun wasn’t shining through the windows yet, which meant it was early. Too damn early to be awake.
Yet he was awake. His mouth felt like cotton. And his head hurt. Goddamn, what truck ran over him last night? He lay there trying to find his brain cells, because he couldn’t remember a thing. Maybe he’d just go back to sleep for a while longer. He inched closer to Lily, burying his nose in her hair and inhaling her sweet scent. He could so easily drift off again.
God, he felt drugged.
He blinked his eyes open. Drugged. Recall inched its way through the fog. Oh, yeah. Last night, Lily drugged his soda, ran off with the virus and he chased her on the bike. It was all there, on the fringes and a little fuzzy, but he remembered now.
He must have been insane to chase her on his bike while he was as drugged up as he’d been. Then again, he hadn’t really had much choice, had he? He’d needed to get the virus back.
He’d needed to get Lily back.
The important thing was, she was still there with him.
She’d stayed. He did remember asking her to trust him, to give him a chance to explain it all. How many times had he asked that of her? It was so unfair. He’d been unfair to her this entire time. He should have come clean right away, instead of waiting so long to tell her.
He would have to tell her the whole story today. The secret was out now.
But not yet. Not when it was still warm in bed, and even warmer pressed up against her sleeping body. They were spooned together, her butt nestled in his crotch. His hand rested between her breasts. He smiled at the thought of waking up this way, with his nose buried in her neck, knowing the first thing he was going to smell in the morning was Lily’s sweet skin.
Just breathing her in turned him on. Waking up with her ass against his c**k was better than any alarm clock, making him rise to life in an instant. The blood rushed south and his shaft finally started paying attention to where it was—nestled between the legs of a very hot woman.
He leaned up on one elbow so he could see over her shoulder, then dragged the sheet down to her waist, uncovering her breasts. Like the rest of her, they were perfection—round, with pink ni**les that perked up when he moved his palm over them. He cupped one, teasing the pink crest with his thumb by drawing slow, lazy circles around it until it puckered.
Lily moaned and arched, but her eyes stayed closed. He continued to toy with her nipple, captivated by the way it hardened as he rolled it between his fingers. Even better was her response, the way she wriggled her ass against his cock.
Oh, she was awake, of that there was no doubt, because she was moving against him now, but not in any kind of frenzy.
It was more of a slow awakening, and he enjoyed these little sounds she made. Moans and sighs that signaled she was still waking up and enjoying his touch.
He slipped his c**k between her legs. She was wet, her slick folds hot and welcoming as he surged between them.
Though eager to be inside her, he liked this lazy morning lovemaking and didn’t want to get too wild and crazy. Not yet, anyway.
Just having this intimate contact with Lily was enough.
He positioned his c**k at the entrance to her pu**y and entered her with care, not penetrating with a hard thrust. Instead, he eased inside her inch by inch, feeling her melt around him in greeting as she pulled him inside.
Sex with Lily was usually so wild. Making love to her this way, being able to listen to every sound she made, every breath she took as he thrust with slow precision, was a nice change. He felt everything, from the way she pulsed around him, to the way their bodies seemed to fit perfectly together— from his chest against her back to her thighs tucked against his.
He should have known it wouldn’t last. Not when the passion they shared kicked up a notch. He tried to hold back, to take things light and gentle. But Lily pushed her ass against him, widening her legs to give him better access and gripping the sheets for leverage so she could push off, move forward, then grind back against his cock. Her light breathing and delicate whimpers had turned into deeper, needier moans. She wanted more.
So much for slow and easy. If she wanted to pick up the pace, he’d be more than happy to oblige her.
“On your stomach,” he said, pulling out and tossing a pillow in the center of the bed.
She rolled over, situating her lower belly on the pillow, which lifted her ass high in the air.
“Mmmm,” was her only reply.
Palms braced on either side of her shoulders, he dropped down on top of her, sliding his body against hers to feel that skin to skin contact. She moaned, lifting her ass against him. He positioned his c**k at the entrance to her pu**y and drove inside. Her tight walls grabbed onto him and sucked him in, squeezing and quivering around him.
Oh, yeah. But he wanted deeper penetration.
“Come on, baby. Up on your hands and knees.” He swept his arm underneath and helped to lift her. She flattened her palms onto the mattress and spread her legs, bending down and lifting her ass in the air. She cast him a sexy look over her shoulder as he slid inside her pussy.
He started slow, but Lily wanted more, backing up against him, f**king his c**k with deep, forceful thrusts.
His woman was awake, and she was hungry. He gripped her h*ps and plunged hard. She tilted her head back and let out a groan of pure delight, her fingers grasping the covers in a tight hold. She arched her back and held on while he gave her exactly what she’d asked for.
Juices poured over his c**k as she grew wetter with every thrust. He bent over so he could reach her clit—she was so wet, so hot, and he could barely hang on as her walls tightened around him.
He surged forward, rubbing her cl*tas he did. “Come on, baby,” he whispered against her ear. “Let go.”
She groaned, pushing back against him with wild abandon, shaking her head from side to side. “Mac.”
“Yeah, I’m right there with you. Now let go for me.”
He felt it before she cried out—that sweet spasm that let him know she was coming. He went at the same time she did, jettisoning come inside her, planting his h*ps against her ass while she shuddered against him in ecstasy. She was shaking as she came, her whole body one giant vibration from the inside out, rocketing him, too.
Panting, he held onto her middle, pulling her upright so her back pressed against his chest. They were both wet with perspiration from their efforts, Lily’s heart beating wild and fast against the palm of his hand.
He pressed a soft kiss against her neck. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” she said back. “I need a shower.”
“Me too.”
They showered together, and Lily got out first. She dried off and dressed, then said she was going downstairs to start breakfast. While he dried himself, she said, “After breakfast, I want some answers.”
He nodded, realizing he was going to have to give them to her.
Grange was going to have his hide. He was going to be in deep shit for telling Lily the truth, but at the time he’d had no choice. Maybe he could blame the drugs.
Screw it, he thought as he climbed into his jeans and pulled a T-shirt over his head. He trusted Lily.
He went downstairs. She already had breakfast going, so he grabbed a cup of coffee for fortitude.
“Need any help?”
She shook her head. “I’ve got it covered. You can pour us some juice.”
By the time breakfast was on the table, he had a pretty good idea what he was going to tell her—everything. He owed it to her after jerking her chain this entire time. And she’d stayed with him last night instead of running off again. She’d had access to his phone and she could have called in the cops, or her boss, or anyone she’d wanted to. Instead, he woke up this morning to find her snuggled up asleep next to him.
She’d trusted him enough to stay, and that meant he owed her the truth about the whole deal. But first he wanted to get this meal down. He was starving.
Lily didn’t press Mac for the details, opting to stay quiet and eat her breakfast, and let him do the same. She felt guilty enough over the whole drugging thing last night, and wanted to make sure he had some caffeine and food in his system to clear the last of the sleeping pills out.
Inside she was hopping up and down and dying to know if Mac was really going to tell her the truth, so his first words came as a shock to her.
“I got into some serious trouble while you were away at college.”
She gave one nod of encouragement and let him talk.
“I was twenty-one, working dead-end jobs and stealing on the side. I was damn good at it, too. But not good enough.
Got mixed up with the wrong people, and ended up involved in this grand theft auto ring. I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into, and once in, had no idea how to get out. I got caught. Cops hauled me in and I was looking at some serious jail time. With no family and no money to back me up, I was screwed and going down fast. My life was over.”
Lily’s heart broke for him. Mac never could catch a break.
“But it was my own damn fault. I could have straightened up, and I didn’t. I chose the wrong path and had no one to blame but myself for screwing up. So I stood up and took it like a man, told the public defender I wanted to plead guilty and accept the consequences of my actions. He told me I was insane.”
Lily was about to say the same thing.
“Then a miracle happened. A guy by the name of Grange Lee walked into my life and changed it forever. A tough ex-military general, he made me an offer that seemed too good to be true.”
“What kind of offer?” she asked.
“General Lee was putting together a crack team of specialists, sworn to secrecy and bound to work for the United States government, a department within the Department of Justice. In exchange for wiping out all the charges against me, I could work for him.”
“Doing what?”
“The United States government is stolen from all the time. Things that they can’t recover. Things that the government tries to retrieve by conventional means, but for some reason can’t get back because either the court system is flawed or the bad guys have really good lawyers. Some things they just can’t get confiscate the legal way.”
Lily snorted. “As both a cop and a PI, I’ve seen that happen all too often. And it’s frustrating as hell.”
He nodded. “Tell me about it. Anyway, Grange laid it all out for me. Told me what I’d be doing…what we’d all be doing. No one outside a single branch of the government even knows we exist. It was risky and it was dangerous and if we were caught at it, the government, and he, would deny our existence.”
“In other words, you had to be really good at what you did, because if you got caught in these thefts, you would go to jail and they wouldn’t be able to bail you out this time,” she said.
“Right. But hell, it was worth the risk. I wanted a chance to turn my life around, to do something right for a change instead of f**king up like I had been.”
“So you said yes.”
He smiled. “I said hell yes. Grange made the arrangements, the charges disappeared, and I left with him.”
“Sounds so simple.”
“It wasn’t. He worked me…all of us. He’s one tough son of a bitch. And he knew he had a half dozen lazy, young, good-for-nothing criminals on his hands. So he had to show us the way. It was like boot camp. We got up at dawn, did physical conditioning, had rules and regulations. There was no partying, no drinking, no smoking, no women—”
“Shocking. How did you survive?” she asked, tongue in cheek.
“Nearly died the first month,” he teased back. “It was awful. You never heard a bunch of grown men whine like babies more than we did. But little by little he turned us into the men we were supposed to be—the men he knew we could be. He broke us down, then he built us up again. He taught us that we weren’t worthless, that we did have something of value to offer. He made us stronger, mentally and physically. There wasn’t one among us who wasn’t whip smart to begin with, so he made us take classes. The ones who didn’t have their high school diplomas got them in a hurry or else. Some of these guys should have gone on to college.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I wish you could meet them, Lily. I’ve never had brothers, until I joined Wild Riders. I’ve never been closer to a group of guys before.”
