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“We need that proof Grant hid and the Fuentes family still believes you have that.” Joe took his seat across from her, watching her steadily. “You don’t know where it’s at; that means your life is still in danger. And the Navy needs that mole. There’s too much at stake here to risk a trial on what little evidence we have of the two aiding and abetting Diego. If we want to shut down this cartel and that drug, then we have to do it here.”
Ahh, so the truth was emerging, perhaps.
“You’re using me…”
“Hell no!” Anger flashed across his expression. “You are not bait, Maggie. No matter what you think. I told you I’d protect you, and I meant it.”
And she didn’t trust him, not even for a second. Fear raced down her spine as she stared back at him, suddenly wondering to what lengths he would go to in capturing the Fuentes men. But she knew the lengths he would go to, she reminded herself. He blamed the Fuentes family for what happened to Grant, rather than blaming Grant himself.
“And this information the federal prosecutor thinks I’m hiding?” she asked, not bothering to hide the mockery in her voice. “Have you just given up on it, Joe?”
He tilted his head as he regarded her for several seconds.
“You don’t know where it’s at. That’s a dead end.”
“Oh, you are so good.” She would have cried if it didn’t hurt so damned bad. The truth was there in his eyes, the suspicion, the calculation. Others might not have recognized it, but Maggie saw it and knew it for what it was. “Do you really expect me to swallow that line of crap, Joe? Do you think I’m that stupid?”
“On the contrary, you’re not stupid at all. Suspicious,” he chided her with a quirk of amusement. “But not stupid.”
Maggie ignored the coffee sitting before her, the smell of it suddenly as unappetizing as the lies passing his lips. Standing slowly to her feet, she stared back at him impassively, fighting to hide the pain exploding inside her.
“You’ve changed, Joe,” she whispered. “I never pegged you for a liar. An asshole and a prick maybe, but not an out-and-out liar. Congratulations, you did the impossible. You made my opinion of you sink lower than it was two and a half years ago.”
Turning on her heels, she moved to stalk from the kitchen, to put distance between herself and his games, his lies. She hated lies. She hated herself. Because she wanted to believe him, she wanted to trust in the arousal and the warmth that had heated his eyes, just as she wanted to believe that he could trust in her, just once. She was a fool.
“No, you don’t.” She came to an abrupt stop as he jumped from his chair, his hand reaching out to catch her upper arm as she moved to pass him.
The shock of his flesh touching hers, the heat and strength in it, nearly drove the breath from her body.
“Let me go.” She jerked against his hold, feeling the anger growing inside her, the hurt burning through her heart.
“I won’t let you go, Maggie,” he suddenly snarled, jerking her around, as his free hand buried in her hair, his fingers locking into the strands. He jerked her head back and stared into her eyes fiercely. “I won’t let you go and I won’t let you die. Lie to me all you need to. Fuck it. I’ll get Fuentes in the end, if I have to kill him to do it. But I won’t let you go.”
“You don’t have a choice.” She pushed against his chest, desperate to escape him, to break free of the hard temptation of his body. “I don’t belong to you, Joe, not anymore…”
“By God, you always belonged to me. Always.”
Before she could stop him his head lowered, his lips covered hers, and time came to a stop. There was only Joe’s kiss. His lips moving against hers, his tongue licking, piercing her lips, moving between them in a fierce, dominant kiss.
Her fingers curled against his chest, then spread out, nerve endings soaking in the feel of him, remembering, relishing the rasp of the short, crisp hairs on her palms, the fiery warmth beneath his flesh.
Against her lower stomach she felt his erection pressing intently through the material of his jeans. His arms enfolded her, his kiss intoxicated her.
“Joe,” she whimpered as his lips slid to her cheek, to her jaw. “Don’t do this.”
Don’t make her feel again. Don’t make her ache for all the things she knew she couldn’t have. Don’t make her love him more than she already did.
“I dreamed of you.” The arousal and the anger pulsed in his voice as he nipped at her ear. “For more than two years, I remembered what it was like to feel you beneath me, to hear the soft little catch in your voice when you came beneath me, the feel of your body tightening around me. I remembered, Maggie, and it drove me insane.”
She whimpered at the pain that enveloped her, the raking fingers of need, regret, and sorrow that filled her.
“This won’t fix the past.” She tightened her fingers on his biceps, feeling the power and the tension that vibrated in his body. “It won’t solve anything, Joe.”
He wanted to punish her. She could feel it pulsing in the air around them, feel it in the rake of his teeth along her neck, the nipping little kisses, and the press of his erection against her.
Even as her head screamed out a warning against his touch and the probability of heartbreak down the road, she felt herself relaxing, leaning into him, the response he had always commanded from her leaping through her system.
“I know one thing it will definitely solve.” One hand slid down her back, gripped the swell of a buttock, and lifted her to him.
