She sat down on the side of the bed and tugged at his arm until he sat too. She could feel him vibrate with his desire to get moving, but the question was—in which direction?
“Which will it be?” he’d asked. And she answered him.
“John,” she said quietly. “Listen to me. Listen carefully.” She put her hand over his. It was pale and slender, almost half the size of his but she knew it was as if she’d put a stake through his hand. He was frozen in place by her hand on his. “Do you know, I admire your courage tremendously. It’s the kind of courage I simply don’t have.” He started to speak and she placed a finger across his lips. “Shh. Hear me out. As I was saying, I’m not brave at all. You’re not going to catch me with a gun in my hand, going after the bad guys. But I can do this, John. No, I have to do this. Paul Carson probably killed his wife. If he did, he has to go to jail. If I refuse to testify, I’m condoning murder. If I refuse to testify, our system crashes. I must do this. I must. It’s my duty as a citizen. I am honor-bound to do it.”
His hand tensed under hers and he bowed his head, broad shoulders slumping. Suzanne knew she’d used the one argument he couldn’t refute. He was a former navy officer, the son of one. Duty and honor were bred in his blood and bone.
John rose, slowly, as if he were an old man. Their eyes met. This moment changed everything. He was about to set in motion a process that would separate them forever.
The tears that had been threatening were now flowing down her cheeks, but she met his gaze head-on. She wasn’t backing down, and he knew it.
John reached for something in his duffel bag. A cell phone. He punched in some numbers.
“Bud. John here. Listen up. There’ve been developments.”
It happened fast. Within twenty minutes, they were heading back down the dirt road, which led to a secondary road feeding into the highway. John had made an appointment with Bud and the federal agents at a spot about fifty miles away.
Suzanne knew what was going to happen, because John had explained it carefully, eyes blank, face hard, no expression at all in his deep voice. Midnight Man.
She would be taken into custody by federal agents. It was a federal case—trafficking and smuggling—and they’d been on Paul Carson’s tail for the past fifteen years. Bud Morrison would accompany her. John had explained that Bud would be there as ‘liaison’ between Portland PD and what he called ‘the feebs’, but she’d heard him on the phone arguing, insisting on Bud’s presence. Bud would be there, at least in the beginning, because she knew Bud and would be reassured by a familiar face.
John was doing his best to protect her even when she would be taken beyond his reach.
The FBI would debrief her, which was a fancy term for questioning her. She would be taken to a safe house until the District Attorney could put together a case for a grand jury. After testifying, she would be kept in another safe house until the trial. The FBI’s job stopped then. The U.S. Marshal’s Service would take over, giving her a new identity and placing her in the most anonymous setting they could devise. And that was where she would spend the rest of her life. In hiding.
She’d never see her parents again. Technically, they weren’t supposed to know anything about what had happened to her. To them, she would have disappeared off the face of the earth. But John had promised her he’d let them know, discreetly.
Taking care of her, again.
She’d never see John again. Scant hours after realizing she loved the man, he’d be taken from her forever. There would be no other man for her. How could there be? Having known John, having loved him, she couldn’t even contemplate loving another man. No other man could ever measure up.
Her life was ending with each mile the SUV ate up, bleeding away just as surely as the lifeblood bled out of someone who’d been in a fatal accident.
She blinked back tears. She didn’t want to cry, she wanted to see everything, grasp every second of this life before it ended. The night was still, the stars brilliant in the icy sky. A beautiful night to be the last night of her old life. Suzanne shivered and huddled more deeply into the comfort of John's sheepskin jacket, which he’d insisted she put on. It smelled of him, a musky male scent she’d carry with her forever.
His profile was hard and clean, the only signs of tension the muscles jumping in his jaw. Suzanne eyed him hungrily, wanting to hoard images of him to add to her pitiful stockpile. A few days. They’d only had a few days. Despite her best efforts, a lone tear coursed down her cheek.
With a vicious curse, John wrenched the steering wheel and brought the SUV to a sudden halt by the side of the road. He stared ahead, breathing hard, and then lowered his head to the steering wheel.
“Fuck.” His voice was the merest whisper. He turned his head, eyes bleak. “I can’t do this, Suzanne. I can’t give you up to them.”
“You have to.” Her heart was cracking open. There was no question of holding back the tears now. “You have no choice.”
They moved at the same time. She launched herself into his arms at the same moment he opened them to haul her onto his lap.
They kissed, violently, hungrily, a meeting of lips and tongue and tears. Her tears. He wasn’t crying but she could feel his muscles tense as rocks beneath her hands.
He was holding the back of her head tightly, while eating at her mouth, as if he could fuse them at the lips. His tongue was deep in her mouth. She’d take the taste of him to her grave.
“Don’t go, goddammit. Stay with me.” His voice was thick and gravelly. The words came out between biting kisses. “I. Can’t. Stand. To. Let. You. Go.”
His hard hands moved up under her sweater. He didn’t bother loosening her bra. He just shoved it up together with the sweater and bent her over his arm. Cupping his hand around her breast, he held it for his mouth, opened wide over her nipple. He suckled her hard, biting and sucking, pulling at her with the strength of his mouth. Just like that, she surged into climax. She had no idea she was ready; the orgasm—a hard, tight one that left her unsatisfied—took her completely by surprise.
She could see his cheeks working on her breasts and had a flash of an alternate future. She could see herself on a sofa with John sitting beside her. She was holding their child, feeding at her breast. A child who would never be born.
With shaking hands, crying with desperation, Suzanne sat up and fumbled with the snap of his jeans. She needed him inside her more than she needed her next breath. She rarely took the lead with a man, and never with John. But now, right now, she’d have clawed her way through concrete to get to him.
Their hands tangled as they raced to unbutton, unzip, open. She toed her own shoes off, and pulled her pants and panties down and off. She left the sweater and jacket on. No need to get naked. All they needed was the bare minimum uncovered, for him to…
Ah!
There he was, enormous and hard as stone. She whimpered as she put her hands on him, feeling the steely strength. That penis had been the source of such delight for her, but now wasn’t about pleasure or sensuality. Now was about being connected with him in the most elemental way possible. Now was about feeling him inside her, moving, a part of her.
She opened her labia herself and positioned herself over him. Though she’d already had an orgasm, she still found it difficult to give him passage. But she persisted, even when it became slightly painful, because the thought of not having him inside her was unbearable. Finally she was straddling him, completely impaled. His rough pubic hairs scratched her sensitive inner thighs. Her vagina adjusted itself slowly to him. She imagined that if things had worked out differently and they could have lived together, they would have made love so often she would eventually be permanently stretched to accommodate the size of his penis.