Crashed, p.14
Crashed, page 14
“I want to touch you,” he whispered against her lips.
“I ... Travis, we can’t.”
“I know ... I just want to touch you. Let me.”
She lifted her head and stared into his eyes, fell so, so deep into the endless blue-green. Gripping his wrist, she hesitated. Then, cheeks flaming, she nodded and dropped her head onto his shoulder.
He nuzzled her as he spread his hand wide over the dip of her waist but he didn’t do anything else.
He just rubbed his lips over her skin and murmured to her, voice too low for her to hear, but the rhythm of the words, the cadence of his speech was both erotic and soothing. Soon, she lifted her mouth to his, needing more of his taste.
Isabel found herself rocking against him and he slid his other hand down her back, fingers sliding under her shirt to splay wide over her bare skin. She shivered and pressed closer, only to gasp as she felt his fingers trailing up over her bare thigh.
He’d pulled her skirt up and she’d never noticed.
“I’ll stop if you want,” he murmured. “Just tell me.”
“I don’t want you to stop.” Brow pressed to his, she gripped his biceps and watched him as he circled ever closer to the drumbeat that seemed to have settled between her thighs.
She whimpered he grazed one finger over her clitoris, a harsh growl escaping him. “Baby ... you’re so wet.”
Her cheeks flamed red.
He stroked lower, the hand on her spine urging her closer while the other teased her more and more.
She whimpered and thrust her hips against him. “Travis!”
“More?” He nipped her earlobe.
“Yes!”
He thrust his finger inside her.
She came apart.
Travis lifted his head to watch.
The flickering flames from the firepit were just enough to paint her in a soft golden light as she flung her head back and rode his hand, the folds of her sex squeezing tight around him as she rocked and squeezed and panted, throaty cries breaking free, muffled by the way she bit her full lower lip.
She’d never looked more beautiful.
As she started to come down, he stroked her, soothing her with gentle touches. She sank into him, cuddling close.
His heart twisted inside his chest as she rubbed her nose against his neck.
When she finally stirred, he eased his grip on her, braced for embarrassment, censure.
What he wasn’t ready for was the way she lifted her head and curled her arms around his neck right before she planted a long, slow, lazy kiss on his lips.
“That was ... lovely,” she said with a sated sigh.
“You’re lovely.” Cupping her cheek in his hand, he rubbed his thumb over her lower lip.
Her gaze fell away, but she smiled and sank back into him, resting her head on his shoulder. “I should get back to the house.”
“Probably.”
She stroked her hand up his back, dipped into his hair. “You never did tell me why you’re getting out.”
He controlled the urge to flinch, to tense up, just as he controlled the urge to prevaricate or lie. He shouldn’t have said anything to her, but she’d already figured out the biggest secret in his life—how, he didn’t know. And wasn’t it better to put it to bed so she’d stop wondering?
“It’s time,” he said. “I’ve gotten reckless or gotten too old. I’ve had two bad injuries in just a couple of years and if it keeps up ... ” He shrugged, letting the words trail off. When she didn’t say anything else, he added, “It’s just time.”
“Why did you even get into it?”
He sighed and fisted his hand in her hair. “If I tell you, will you let it go? No more questions?”
Chapter 14
Isabel’s gut tightened as he dragged his hands down his face and turned his gaze out over the water.
Travis had never had any problems meeting her gaze. That he wouldn’t now told her that she wasn’t going to like what he had to say. Her muscles tightened, but she already had a sinking suspicion about what had put him on the road he’d been walking all these years.
“Miles came to me a couple of months after ... after we last talked that summer.”
“I know he was involved in you finding out about the pregnancy,” she said in a flat voice. It had taken her a long time to move past that, to forgive the other man, but in the end, she’d let it go—not for Miles, but for herself. Not being able to forgive him had caused her more harm than anything and she’d been tired of carrying rage and bitterness inside her. But even now, she could feel the fury rising up in her throat. Had he told Travis ...
“He didn’t tell me anything about what had happened to you,” Travis said.
She jerked her head up, not even certain when she’d lowered her gaze.
Travis was staring at her and she felt the dull rush of color flood her cheeks, hold and cold chills alternating as the old, familiar shame washed over her. She willed it down, knowing she’d have to deal with that later. She’d fought through it, would again. Survivors of rape never truly recovered—they dealt with it, learned to live with it...or some did. She had. For long periods, she could even forget. But there were times when it crept back.
While that slippery, greasy knot of shame twisted in her gut, she held her stare.
“We’re not talking about me,” she replied in a hard, flat voice.
She expected him to push.
But he didn’t.
His gaze fell away and he looked back out over the water. As he shoved to his feet, the movement easy and graceful despite the injury in his side, she swiped a shaky hand over her mouth and forced air in, blowing it back out in a controlled manner. She’d spent years in therapy, working with an anonymous counselor Miles had arranged and she still relied on the breathing exercises, still did the yoga routines that had helped her gain control of the panic attacks and rage.
Now, she used the breathing to steady out as Travis paced over the shoreline and stared out into the night before walking back to her a couple of minutes later.
Rage simmered in his eyes.
“I’m not going to ask. You don’t need to talk. But I have to say this—I know he hurt you—that Beresford fucker. I saw you flinch from him the night I ... that night,” he bit off. “If I hadn’t been so fucking angry, so jealous, so fucking blind, I would have figured it out sooner, and I’m ... no. You don’t want or need apologies from me and they won’t fix shit. But I’m not stupid. I know what he did. And if I could get my hands on him, I’d destroy him. I’d hurt him, make him beg and then I’d kill him, painfully. And I’d enjoy it.”
At that moment, he was a stranger.
Brutal, ruthless, capable of the torturous murder he’d just promised.
Isabel’s breath caught in her throat.
Then he blinked. A long, steadying breath escaped him and when he looked back at her, she saw the Travis she’d come to expect over the past few days, different from the boy she’d fallen in love with, but not a deadly, remote stranger capable of a cold-blooded execution.
Which one are you?
“I know what happened,” he said again, far more calmly now. “And I know about your father. Rage was eating me alive after Miles told me you’d helped them uncover what Wilson Steele was doing, that you were going to put him away. You and your sisters, your mom, you had to go into witness protection—then your mom ended up dying ... ” He paused.
“She killed herself,” Isabel said softly. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself, the dull, scarred-over wound of that particular betrayal a nagging ache. “She was always weak. I’m not saying that because she ended her life. I understand that some see suicide as a way out—sometimes, you are trapped in impossible situations and fuck knows I understand that. For others ... hell, I know depression. I know the pain it can cause—I’ve lived with it for years and it can be cancerous. But she was weak in other ways and she put us in harm’s way because of it.”
She heard a harsh breath but didn’t look his way.
“Some people don’t understand that the wounds you don’t see can be every bit as painful and unrelenting as those we carry on our skin.” She thought of the scars on her belly, scars he would have seen if there had been light, if he had maybe been a little less ... focused on other parts of her anatomy earlier. Even as she thought it, her throat tightened. She’d have to tell him, she realized. If they pursued this any further, she’d have to tell him. He deserved to know.
She thought, bitterly, of the occasional articles she’d seen about his family. Even when she’d tried to tell herself she was over him, done with him, she’d never quite been able to cut that thread and when she’d see the infrequent tabloid spreads on his older brother Zach over the years—and later, his wife, Abby, or more recently, pieces on his kid brother Sebastien and the gorgeous movie star he’d married, Marin, she’d read them. She’d hoarded pieces on Trey, because out of all the brothers, Travis was naturally closest to his twin.
But only rarely had there ever been a mention of the most reclusive Barnes sibling, and never any pictures. There had been nothing on Travis in years.
One thing there had been?
Frequent mentions of the family.
Abigale Applegate Barnes was expecting her first child within the year.
Within a month of that announcement, there had been another—Marin Lassiter-Barnes was also expecting.
Trey and his wife Ressa? They had two kids together—one from Trey’s first marriage and a child Ressa had brought into the mix. They’d been featured in some magazine a year earlier.
The Barnes were all about the F word ... Family. With a capital fucking F.
Aching, she turned away and placed a hand on her belly, the one that would never carry life.
Tears pricked her eyes and she blinked them.
“Stephen Beresford doesn’t concern me,” she said in a voice that came out cool and controlled, so calm she should have been pleased with herself. But she didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to spare. “He’s still got another three years of his mandatory agreed sentence before he’ll qualify for probation and after that, he’ll be on parole five years. Miles will have him monitored and I’m no longer so easily cowed.”
“You were never easily cowed,” Travis said, a thread of anger still underscoring his voice. “And what happened to you wasn’t your fault.”
“I know that...now.” She went to him, unable to keep her distance when he looked so fierce, so angry. For her. Stroking her hands down his arms, Isabel peered up at him. “I talked to a counselor for years. Miles made sure of that. And I know it’s not my fault. As to being easily cowed ... ” Now, she managed to smile. “You’re right. I wasn’t. But I was easily controlled—my sisters and my mom were always my weaknesses.”
Her twin sisters, Mary Kate and Ellen, always would be her weakness, but Miles had kept them safe all these years. He’d continue to do so, too. Miles had already made arrangements with the agent who’d take over once he passed. He’d come to her not long after his oncologist had told him his prognosis.
After she’d gotten over the shock, he’d explained the plans he’d already laid out.
And here was Travis, another piece of Miles’s machinations, although this was a personal matter for her old friend. She should have expected it. He’d never forgiven himself and he wouldn’t rest if he didn’t fix this.
Her heart squeezed in her chest and some part of her almost laughed, even, thought maybe she’d tease the old bastard, ask if he’d haunt them both if they refused to give him what he wanted.
But in her heart ...
Isabel sighed and tucked that thought away. She was having too many realizations today, far too many.
“Enough of me,” she said as the wind kicked up over the water and blew her hair back. “This is supposed to be about you.”
“I can’t talk about how I got into it without discussing you, though.”
At those words, she turned, the knot in her gut drawing tighter. It was like that knot pulled some latent anger out of hiding and she had to struggle to lash it down. The anger wouldn’t help. She knew it wouldn’t.
And she tried to control it. Oh, she tried.
Tension still arced between them, heady and intense, and all it needed was a spark.
“Elaborate,” she ordered.
He inclined his head.
“I went to Miles a year after he came to see me, tell me that he’d ... been wrong about you.” He cleared his throat. “I was drowning. I’d been planning on going to law school or maybe medical school after college, but ... ” He shrugged, a restless twitch of his shoulders. “I’d already lost interest in both of those fields and ended up switching my majors. Criminal justice and accounting. Accounting ... well, it was easy and let me really focus on criminal justice. I guess some part of me already knew what I was planning. Once I’d graduated, I went to Miles and I told him I wanted in.”
“And he just let you,” Isabel said with a disbelieving scoff. She sank back down onto the Adirondack chair she’d occupied earlier, her entire body feeling far too weary now, older, as if she’d aged a few years in the span of the past ten minutes. “You with that pretty-boy, semi-famous face fresh out of Malibu? He just let you into the FBI? Agents have to blend, Travis. You don’t blend.”
He bared his teeth in a savage smile. “You’d be surprised. And there are various places they need people to blend, Iz. Every Day Average Joe isn’t going to blend into the places a pretty boy fresh out of Malibu can ... at least not without a hell of a lot of training and work.” Scraping short, neat nails down his jawline, he added, “And as to a semi-famous face ... we found a way around that.”
“Yeah?” She snorted. “Like what? Erasing yourself?”
His eyes went hooded and she half-expected him to change the subject.
Instead, he paced closer to her seat and he bent over, bracing one hand on the arm of the chair. He wrapped the other around her wrist. She let him, curious. He guided her fingers to his hair. “Feel behind my ears.”
She did so and when she felt a thin, narrow scar, she stiffened. “What’s that?”
“Surgical scar.” A ghost of a smile danced on his lips. “One of several. I’ve had a couple of different plastic surgeries, Iz. Minor changes, just enough to confuse facial recognition scans—otoplasty to alter the position of my ears, and slightly change the shape of my earlobe and the helix.” He let go of her wrist and reached down, brushing the tip of his finger over the upper arch of her ear. “This part. Ears are as unique as a fingerprint. Changing mine meant there wouldn’t be any way of linking me to my twin that way. I also had work on my jawline—it’s more square than it used to be. A few years later, I had work done on my nose. A Not long after that, my cheekbones.”
“Didn’t your family notice?” She was appalled, disgusted to think he’d had such drastic changes done to his body, all so he could work for Miles. And why?
“They did.” He lifted a shoulder. “They were told I’d been in a car wreck while traveling in Europe.” Rubbing his nose, he added, “As to later surgeries, I let them think there were complications and I was having issues with headaches and breathing a few years ago and the doctors did the nose work then, claimed they’d missed something and had to fix the damage which explained the nose work. They didn’t really notice the cheekbones. I ... haven’t been around a lot.”
“Must be hard lying to your twin, your brothers ... your mother,” she said. And she could hear the anger pulsing in her voice. She couldn’t hide it any more than she could hide the shaking in her fingers when she shoved her hands into his hair. “Why did you do this to yourself, damn it? Why?”
“I had to.” He went to his knees in front of her, closing his hands around her wrists. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Explain it to me,” she demanded, tears burning her eyes again and she couldn’t hold them back. “Make me understand.”
Her voice cracked and the pain he heard was like claws dragging into an open wound. He’d rather take another bullet in his side, deal with another infection that left him shaking with fever and out of his head than be the cause of this pain—her pain. Again.
And he knew he was going to add to it.
Letting go of her wrists, he shifted his hands to her face, cradling her cheeks so he could look into her eyes.
“I hated myself after what I did to you,” he said, emotion roughening his voice. “I couldn’t stand to look at myself in the mirror. There were days I couldn’t even stand to face my twin because it was another damn mirror. Every day, I thought of the pain in your voice when you called, thought of the messages you’d sent me, thought of how alone you’d been when you testified against him ... and how alone you’d been when that Beresford fuck had touched you. And I couldn’t do shit to help you. But I had to do something. I couldn’t help you, but maybe I could help somebody else.”
Tears spilled out of her eyes.
He stroked them away with his thumbs, felt the callouses rasp over skin satiny soft and smooth. “I thought maybe there were others Miles hadn’t tracked down. So I went to him. But you’d been thorough and you helped break that ring into pieces. It had turned into an obsession by that time. I couldn’t help you. But I’d damn well help the next girl like you. I’d stop the next Wilson Steele, the next Stephen Beresford. If I did that, maybe I’d sleep at night. So I called Miles. He wouldn’t talk to me. I went to the address on the card he’d left me. He wouldn’t see me. I booked a hotel room and called every damn day, leaving a message with his assistant when he wouldn’t take my calls. It took him two weeks but he finally talked to me. I told him I wanted in.”
“And he let you in,” Isabel said. “Just like that.”
“No.” Travis snorted. “Not just like that. I ragged him for weeks. He threatened to have me arrested, threatened to have me hauled back to California. I told him to do whatever in the hell he wanted. I’d just come back. Finally, he told me I wouldn’t be of any use to him because of my ... pretty-boy, semi-famous face. I told him I’d take a sledgehammer to it if that would help.”
