AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And going through with the kiss.
The kick of heat was instant and fiery hot. The way it always was with Rachel. She’d become sort of his benchmark for stellar kisses, and this one didn’t disappoint.
On a sigh, a steamy, sultry sigh of pleasure, she sank into the kiss, and the dreamy feel of arousal showered over him. Yeah. Definitely a benchmark.
The problem with that?
This kind of mouth-to-mouth contact only made him want a whole lot more from her.
Jericho slipped his arm around her waist, tugging her closer. And closer. Until they were body to body. Definitely more. But a certain part of him was urging him to take things up a notch. He did. He deepened the kiss and got another jolt of heat and memories when he took in her taste.
Jericho angled his body for more of that contact. More deepening of the kiss, too, and he was about to lower his mouth to her neck when he heard a sound he couldn’t ignore. The rapid beeps of his security system.
“Hell,” he grumbled. “Someone’s coming.” In the same breath, he gave the voice command to turn on the monitors.
Jericho watched the feed load while he drew his gun. Then, he immediately re-holstered it when he saw the familiar beat-to-hell pickup truck making its way to the house. Once, the truck had been red, probably, but now it was more of a bleached-out salmon color and was older than the driver himself.
“Who is that?” Rachel asked, the alarm in her voice. She picked up the gun he’d given her the night before.
“That’s Marco Morelli,” Jericho grumbled. “And normally he doesn’t have such bad timing.”
Rachel looked at him, and there was still some of the heat from the kiss in her eyes. “Maybe it’s ideal timing. You know we shouldn’t be playing around like that.”
He did know. That didn’t mean though that he hadn’t wanted to play around just a little more.
“Marco wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important,” Jericho reminded himself. “Or unless Ruby sent him.”
If it was the latter, it meant his boss wanted Marco to check on him and get a personal debriefing as to what had gone on at Stronghold.
“Spike, stand down security and open the garage door,” Jericho instructed.
As expected, the garage door opened, Marco pulled in and got out of his truck while Rachel and Jericho continued to watch his movements on the cameras.
“He’s the operative you were telling me about?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah. The theoretical child of Jack Reacher and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” he supplied.
Jericho understood the skepticism he heard in her voice. Marco looked, well, like a been there, done that rock star with his black hair, rugged face, and piercing blue eyes. He was not only heavily muscled, he was also well over six feet tall. Marco could kick ass even when said ass was a whole lot bigger than him. And he fought dirty, too. Maybe something he’d learned in military special ops. Or later, when the CIA had recruited him.
“Especially The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo vibe,” Jericho said. “He has superior hacking skills and an often surly mood.”
Marco came in through the mud room and held up several white paper bags in his right hand. He also had a backpack hooked over his shoulder. “I’m hungry, and I’m not eating Pop-Tarts,” he insisted. “I picked up some breakfast sandwiches from the diner in town.” He glanced at Rachel as he walked past Jericho and her. “Rachel,” he added as a greeting which still had a hint of surliness to it.
“Ruby sent me,” Marco added a moment later.
He plopped the bags on the counter, his never-miss-anything eyes taking in the info on the laptops they’d been using. Marco kept it at a glance, but Jericho knew the man’s incredible memory meant he’d seen, and processed, what was on the screen.
Marco set the backpack on the floor and dumped out the contents of the bags. Six foil-wrapped sandwiches, some hashbrown patties, and enough bacon in a clear plastic container to feed a bunch of starving teenagers. Marco put some of said bacon on a sandwich that was already loaded with that particular breakfast meat, and he started to chow down.
“I’ll get you some coffee so you don’t choke on all of that,” Jericho said, heading to the still half full pot. “So, bad or good news?”
“Bad if you’d hoped that Paulie would be arrested for the two murders and the attack,” Marco was quick to answer.
Jericho groaned, and Rachel had a similar reaction.
“What’d you find?” Jericho asked.
“Footage of many security cameras which clearly aren’t secure if the feed can be accessed.”
