Shadows and Silk (9 page)

“Quiet, sugar. Your brother’s spies will know what we’re doing back here.”

Her teeth nipped at his earlobe, and his eyes almost rolled back at the pleasure.
He tightened his grip in her hair and pulled her back so they were eye to eye.

“
Let’s get one thing straight, baby.
As far as
you making the moves
four years ago, I
figured at least one of us ne
eded to show some common sense, so don’t get cocky.
Considering
common sense is
something I’ve never
heard
of you possessing,
it was left to me to
try to
be the voice of reason.”

“Yes, I can see that now,” she said,
fluttering
her eyelashes. “Nothing but common sense would’ve had you fucking me on
a
front porch
in the dead of winter
that had just been shot to shit
.”

His eyes narrowed at the way she so casually tossed off what had happened between
them. He’d known from the moment he’d picked her up at
the
hotel that
morning
she’d made some kind of decision regarding
their current circumstances
.
She hadn’t protested
at
his touch,
and she’d been tempting him like crazy,
but she hadn’t let him get
too
personal either.
That was going to change. By this time tomorrow, he planned to get as personal as
two people could.

“Then taking you on a beach under the hot sun should be a nice change of pace for
the both of us.
Don’t think you can play me, Darcy. When I take you, I’ll have all of you.
No holding back, sugar.
”

“Don’t think you can play
me
, Brant. When I give myself to you, I’ll give exactly what I want you to have and
no more. We’ll both walk away satisfied.
I’m no longer
the naïve girl I once was.
Now either finish what you started
,
or I’ll do it myself.
”

Brant took hold of her wrists and kept them bound behind her back with one hand. She
pulled and struggled against him
, but it was a subtle reminder that she couldn’t wrap him around her little finger
like she did everyone else.
He was the one in control.

“Don’t threaten me, baby,” he whispered against her lips. “I’ll tie you to my bed
and pl
easure you for hours before I
let you get off.”

The tension
skyrocketed between them, and the plane
felt
very cramped all of a sudden. He needed her.
Desperately.

Darcy melted against him, and she nipped at his bottom lip before sucking it into
her mouth. She kissed her way around to the corner of his mouth and up his jaw, her
hot little tongue teasing him to the point that he swore he felt every stroke
along
his cock.

“I didn’t get to taste you last time,” she purred in his ear.

Come boiled in his balls at the thought, and he squeezed his eyes closed and tried
to think of anything else so he wouldn’t embarrass himself.

“I wanted to so badly,” she said. “To wrap my mouth around you. To lick and stroke
and suck until you spilled down my throat.”

“Jesus—Darcy,” he moaned. Perspiration broke out on his skin and he worked his free
hand between them to loosen his pants and relieve the pressure. The thought of her
mouth around him was too much to bear.

“Let me,” she begged.

He didn’t have the strength to say no, so he released her hands. She stroked him through
his jeans and he dropped his head back against the seat in pleasure. That’s when he
felt the prick of the knife at his throat.

He opened his eyes and stared into the furious blue of hers. “I loved you once,” she
said. “And maybe what I felt for you isn’t as
distant
as I’d like it to be. But gone are the days when you or anyone else will dictate
my pleasure
. Like I told my brothers, I can take care of myself.”

She lied.
To herself and to him.
He could see the love she had for him was still there. In the way the blue of her
eyes softened and her gaze got a little sad. Or maybe that was disappointment. Who
the hell knew?

“Maybe you can take care of yourself,” he agreed. “At least for a while.”

He gripped her wrist, and it went limp in his ha
nd as he hit her pressure point
. The knife dropped into his other hand, and he stabbed it into the seat next to them.
“But there will always be someone out there you’ll lose against. It’s the way of the
world. Trust no one and take care of yourself. That way you’re never disappointed.”

Darcy pushed out of his lap and dropped back into the seat across from him. “If you
believe that, then you’re worse off than I thought. What about my brothers?
Your own family?
Are you waiting for them to stab you in the back? They love you.”

“It’s a stupid word that no one knows the real meaning of,” he spat out. “It’s a fucking
fairy tale. I prefer to face reality.”

“So you believe Cade and
Bayleigh
are delusional?” she asked sarcastically. “Your sister and my
brother are just caught up in the
fairy tale
, and eventually they’ll realize their mistake and go their separate ways? Too bad
they’re about to bring a child into the world to share their misery. When’s the baby
due? Another three weeks, right? I guess it’s too late now to tell them the truth.”

“You’re pissing me off, Darcy.”

“I guess I wouldn’t want to do that,” she said, all innocence. “Not when you have
my knife.”

“Cade and
Baylei
gh
made a promise to each other,” he said.
“
They’ll see it through because that’s the kind of people they are.”

He hated that she was backing him into a corner. Maybe love was an option for some
people. Or even the illusion of love.
But not for him.
It wasn’t worth the cost in the long run.

“And that’s all it is? A promise with nothing but vows behind it?”

Darcy
stared out the window and
fiddled
with the rings on her
left hand, a nervous gesture he’d rarely seen from her
. But the sight of those rings—rings he’d picked himself, even though he’d known he
shouldn’t make it so personal
—made him feel as
virile
as any male laying claim to a mate.
He knew he couldn’t love her
the way she wanted
. But he needed her anyway.

“You’re living an illusion
,” he said softly.
She looked up, and what he saw in her
face
only made him more determined to
make her see
the truth.
“You think you love me. I’ve seen it in your eyes since you were too young to know
any better. But you’re fooling yourself if you think it’s real.
Nothing is forever, sweetheart. And human nature is a fickle thing.
You’re asking for heartbreak if you think you can give a person everything you have—your
heart and soul—and not expect them to trample it to dust.”

“
I know.
It’s what I got from you,” she said,
the aim of
her arrow hitting true. “But I still believe in it.
I guess if I’m guilty of living an illusion, then you’re just as guilty of living
in the past. You must have loved her a lot.”

Brant’s fists
clenched
tight
, and his nails bit into the palms of his hands
. The last thing he needed was for Darcy to find out about Vivian. On second thought,
maybe that was the best way for h
er
to see the truth. The fact that he’d killed his wife would shatter any illusions
Darcy had
of true love
.

“I need to change clothes,” he said
abruptly
. “We’ll be landing in another hour.”

Brant
grabbed the clothes he’d hung on the back
of the door and
escaped
into the bathroom. He couldn’t force her to see the truth
, a
nd he couldn’t let himself give into the illusion. Not even for Darcy
.

***

Darcy struggled to push away the anger—the envy of knowi
ng another woman had gotten the love she’d always wanted
.
She couldn’t remember her brothers ever talking about Brant being in a relationship,
and he sure as hell never brought a girlfriend around whenever he visited her family.
But there had been someone
. And Darcy wanted to know what the woman had done to him.

She grabbed her knife out of the seat and put it back in the sheath inside her boot.
Declan was going to have questions about the damage to his plane, and she’d never
hear the end of it if he learned the truth.

Her body was strung taut, and her silk panties were soaked with the need for fulfillment.
Damn him for bringing her so close, only to ruin it at the last minute.

She was lying to herself. She’d never stopped loving him. And the attraction between
them
was even stronger than it had been four years ago. They’d both changed individually,
and those changes had
only
intensified the sexual chemistry.

The glimpses of danger she saw in him didn’t scare her away. She loved the way he
touched her, the way he demanded that she surrender. Even now, her breasts felt full
and heavy and her clit throbbed, begging for attention. And there was nowhere she
could
go to
find relief. Not without him knowing.

She gathered her files and went to the long conference table that sat on the opposite
side of the
aisle
.
If anything, Declan always made efficient use of his time and work space
, so his plane was set up much like a boardroom
.
Maps and photographs lay in rigid order on the mahogany surface, and she added the
new pictures she’d found after Declan had left her hotel room earlier that morning.

More women were dead. The body count had only
increased
over the past months
since
she’d been deciphering the glyphs. The problem was they were always a step behind.
Ramos hadn’t put the drug
Rabbit
out on the
worldwide
market yet. It wasn’t even the exact
same
drug the del Fuego cartel had been distributing four years ago. But it was still just
as deadly.
Even more so, if such a thing were possible.

The Sinaloa cartel and Ramos had made their name and fortune from cocaine distribution.
And once he’d successfully taken over the del Fuego cartel and moved the labs, he’d
had the scientists experiment with the original formula. They’d targeted individual
women at first.
Mostly
American
tourists
.

The core of
Rabbit
was the same. It was a date rape drug, plain and simple.
It was
topical
, which is what made it different from other date rape drugs. Only a small amount
had to touch the skin for it to be effective—easy for anyone to administer by jostling
or bumping the victim in a crowd
or dancing too close at a club
. It took less than a minute to take effect—for the vicious heat to take hold and
the lust
to
compromise
all
rational
thought
. It was a drug that made the victim seem like the willing, even though those who’d
survived had heard their own screams of refusal in the backs of their minds even as
they’d welcomed the next waiting man into their arms.

But Ramos had decided to cut the drug with a little cocaine, and the results had tripled
the death count. The cocaine added a violence and adrenaline rush to the victim
. The crime scenes had been horrendous. She’d seen some of the photographs. At least
the ones Declan had cleared her to see. The damage a hundred and twenty pound woman
could do to a full grown man—several full grown men—with the right mix of chemicals
in the system was jaw dropping. The victim had killed more than one of her attackers
before her body had finally overtaxed itself and she’d gone into cardiac arrest.

Ramos had had to readjust several times over the last year before he had a sal
e
able product, and it looked like he’d finally found the right amount of cocaine to
lace in the drug. It was just enough to make the victim think she was having a good
time, and keep her
alive a few hours longer than the original drug
.
Until her heart finally gave out
from exertion
.
The lust didn’t dissipate over time. The more orgasms you had, the more you wanted.