The Rookie: A Romantic Suspense Standalone (The Intelligence Unit Book 1) Read online

  Weren’t they?

  Xander scooped up Tara’s hand, his warm, steady presence instantly loosening the tension in her shoulders. “If he doesn’t, then you’ll roast him in court with Amour’s testimony. Either way, he goes to jail for a really long time.”

  “How do you do that?” she asked, little shivers moving through her as he skated his thumb over the soft spot where her index finger met her palm.

  “Do what?”

  “You make it so easy for me to breathe,” Tara said, capping the words with a soft laugh. “That sounded a lot less weird in my head. But you always seem to know exactly what I need.”

  The honesty of it hit her right in the chest, turning those shivers into pure want, and she slid closer to him. “In fact, I’ll bet you know what I need right now.”

  Xander’s pupils flared, turning his stare dark. “Tara.”

  “It’s you,” she said, because she knew he’d need the words. “You said you wanted to do this right. And this”—Tara leaned in to brush her mouth over his, lingering just long enough to capture his exhale with her smile—“you and me, right now? Doesn’t just feel right. It feels perfect. So, please, Xander. Give me what I need. Let me have you.”

  They tangled together in an instant, his hands in her hair and her arms around the beautiful bulk of his shoulders. Xander didn’t kiss her gently, and she didn’t want him to. One slide of his tongue had her opening readily, giving him full access. They shared control, though, with her answering every taste and every stroke, building the intensity of the kiss. Tara sent up a prayer of thanks that she’d stopped by her apartment to change into a pair of jeans and a tank top, and she used the much easier maneuverability to her advantage as she pressed forward, hooking one knee around Xander’s hip and pushing his shoulder blades against the center of the couch.

  “There,” she murmured against his mouth. “That’s better.”

  Xander gripped her hips, settling her directly over his lap. There was no missing the distinct and—ohhh, God, yes—rather sizeable length of his cock notched against the seam of her jeans, and they both moaned in unison at the contact.

  “Fuck, Tara.” His mouth found her neck, stringing hot, greedy kisses there that made her pulse trip. Vaguely, Tara realized she should probably try for at least some decorum. But then Xander lifted one hand to skim his knuckles over her nipple, and screw decorum.

  She wanted his fingers. His mouth. His cock, pressing deep inside of her, filling her up and making her scream.

  She wanted fucking everything from this man.

  Tara arched into Xander’s touch, one hand on his shoulder, the other lower, over his opposite bicep.

  A wicked glint moved through his eyes as he pulled back to look at her, and oh, the dark and dirty look only made her want him more. “You like that?”

  “Yes,” she said on a breath that turned into a gasp when he grazed her nipple again.

  The glint intensified. “You want more, though. Don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Tara thrust against him, her knees locked over either side of his hips. The friction sent need throbbing through her that doubled in intensity when his knuckles made one more pass over her nipple, now clearly visible against the thin cotton of both her bra and her tank top.

  “You want me to take this off you,” he said, his certainty keeping the words from becoming a question as he hooked his fingers beneath the hem of her tank top. Not trusting her voice, Tara nodded.

  The tank top hit the floor less than a second later. Her nipples were hard points against the pale pink cotton, and Xander bit out a curse that sounded like a benediction.

  “Christ. You’re so goddamn pretty.” He looked nearly awestruck, his gaze on her practically reverent, and Tara’s heart raced even harder.

  “I want to show you more.” Sliding from his lap, she took only enough time to unbutton her jeans and lower them over her hips, then her thighs, then finally kick free of them. She returned to Xander’s lap, giving him a full view despite the closeness of their bodies.

  His hands circled her rib cage, guiding her into a motion she wanted desperately to find. “You want me to touch you.” One thumb edged higher, to the front closure of her bra. Yes. Yes. She rocked harder against his cock, warmth filling the spot between her legs.

  “You want me to suck your perfect tits.” His mouth was so close to her nipple that Tara could feel the heat of his breath, and holy shit, she was going to explode if he didn’t touch her.

  One palm coasted lower, fingers splayed over her hip as his thumb slipped just beneath the edge of her panties. “You want me to make you come, just like I promised you I would that first night.”

  It hit her in that moment that he wasn’t just talking dirty for the sake of turning her on, even though, sweet Jesus, it was working. No, even though he’d been able to read her like a billboard from the minute they’d met, and she’d given him every indication with her body language that she wanted everything he’d promised and more, Xander was still asking for permission. To touch her. To taste her. To make her come so hard, she forgot everything she knew but his name.

  Tara didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” she said. Covering his hand with hers, she moved it to the clasp of her bra. “Yes. I want all of that. I want all of you. And I don’t want to wait.”

  One turn of his wrist had her bra open, another sweep had the thing off her shoulders entirely. Replacing one hand over her hip, he cupped her breast with his opposite hand, holding her steady as his lips closed over her nipple.

  “Oh my God,” Tara cried, sensation ricocheting through her. Using his hand on her hip, Xander guided her back into motion, and even through his jeans, his cock felt like heaven and sin all wrapped up together.

  His fingers inched farther beneath her panties, making her pussy clench with need. She lifted up slightly, just enough to give him both space and permission.

  He took both.

  With one deft movement, he found her center, two fingers sliding home.

  “So tight,” Xander grated, his face flushed with uncut lust. “Jesus, Tara. You feel so fucking good.”

  Need sparked in her belly, demanding and hot, and she chased it with a thrust. Xander returned his attention to her nipple, his lips creating just enough pressure to make her breath go tight in her throat. Between the firm pull of his mouth above and the steady push of his fingers below, her need became a full-on scream. In time with her thrusts, he flipped his hand, burying his thumb over her aching clit. Release built like a hurricane inside of her, far from slow or sweet. Xander dared her closer with every wicked touch, and Tara gripped his shoulder, her breath spilling out in needful bursts.

  “Take it, baby.” He stilled his thumb over her clit, letting her movements against his hand dictate the movement and pressure, and there, there, oh fuck, right…there. “Let me be what you need.”

  Her orgasm pulsed through her, greedy and bright. She rode out every wave, weightless with pure pleasure, until her body and breath began to reset. Xander eased his touches, scaling back and eventually shifting his arms around her rib cage. The desire in his eyes still held a question, and Tara nodded, as sure as she’d ever been of anything.

  He shifted his weight, keeping her close as he found his feet and walked them both down the hallway. Placing her on his neatly made bed, he stepped back, tugging his shirt over his head and his jeans over the lean muscles of his hips and legs, leaving only his boxer briefs in place before joining her on the bed.

  “Wait,” Tara said. Immediately, he stilled, but she shook her head to reassure him. “I’m just going to need a minute with all of”—she gestured to his seriously beautiful body and grinned—“this, please.”

  “You can take whatever you want,” Xander said, turning toward her so she could do exactly that. Setting her hands on his shoulders, she mapped his body with her fingers. Lean muscles. Hard planes. Warm skin. Tara took it all in, half hypnotized and fully turned on.

  Only when she got to the scar
on his forearm did he flinch ever so slightly. She looked at him in the soft light spilling in from the hallway, her voice as steady as her touch as she said, “I want all of you, Xander. No matter what.”

  For a second, he didn’t speak or move, his expression unreadable in the shadows. But then he nodded, allowing Tara to continue. She stroked her fingers over the scar, smooth in some places, puckered in others. But she never faltered, letting her hands roam over his arms, his chest, down the muscled plane of his abs. The trail of dark hair leading down from his navel rasped against the pads of her fingers, the need in her belly jolting back to life as she slid past the waistband of his boxer briefs to wrap her hand around his cock.

  Xander sent her name through his teeth with a hiss. Using her free hand, she undressed him completely, using the freedom of motion to find a steady rhythm. A moan tore from his throat, and he thrust into the circle of her fingers to meet every stroke. Wetness bloomed between her legs at the sight of his pleasure, and she widened her knees to try and offset the emptiness she felt there.

  Watching her, he pulled back with a curse. “I need to be inside you,” he said. “Right now.”

  Yes. She must’ve said the word out loud—or, God, maybe he was just that in sync with her—because he moved to his bedside table to (hallelujah) grab a condom and put it on as quickly as he could while still getting the job done properly. Tara used the opportunity to slip out of her panties, letting her knees fall open so Xander could fit between them as she eased all the way back over his bed. He filled her with one long thrust, their bodies completely joined before they both went still.

  “Ah,” Tara cut out, less word than sound. Xander pressed his forehead over hers, one hand by her shoulder and the other bracketed over her hip. She tried to process all the sensations slamming through her—the pleasure-pain of the fullness between her legs, the heat of Xander’s body locked over hers from chest to belly to hips, the sharp intake of his breath.

  And then he began to move, and Tara couldn’t think.

  All she could do was feel.

  Xander pulled back, only an inch before reclaiming the space he’d created. “Perfect. Christ, Tara, you are…” He punctuated the sentence with another thrust. Her pussy was so slick that he moved with ease despite the tight fit. They found a rhythm in seconds, a flawless back and forth that sent pleasure curling down her spine. Xander stayed steady—God, he was always so steady—with his hand on her hip, guiding her exactly where she wanted to be as he fucked her in hard, slow thrusts. Tara arched up to take each one, rocking against his cock in return, over and over until her pleasure became pure need. Gripping her hip harder, he anchored himself deep inside her pussy as she thrust against him, the base of his cock hitting her clit with perfect pressure. Xander’s movements grew faster, his expression so open and intense that it stole Tara’s breath. Her orgasm tore through her, making her tremble and gasp. He stilled on a thrust seconds later, his entire beautiful body going bowstring tight before he exhaled with a shudder.

  Time passed, although Tara had no clue how much. All she knew was Xander’s body on hers, his breath growing slower even as his heart beat steady against her chest. Finally, he untangled their bodies and slipped through a door she assumed was a bathroom, gone for only a minute before he returned to her side. They didn’t speak, but they didn’t have to.

  As Xander pulled her under the covers and tucked her in at his side, she knew there wasn’t a place on the planet she would rather be.

  10

  Xander had never had a picture-perfect life. But with Tara lying next to him, warm and curled in at his side, he couldn’t think of a better word to describe the feeling that was coursing through him.

  It wasn’t just that she was perfect, although, damn, she really was. But with her, he felt perfect, too. Like his past didn’t make him. Like all of those bad things he’d seen and done had been part of getting him where he was rather than part of who he was now. Like he was worthy of this, lying here with a woman like Tara in his arms.

  I want all of you, Xander. No matter what.

  His heart clattered at the memory of her words. It would be easy to believe she’d said them in the heat of the moment—after all, the moment had been fucking scorching. But she’d looked at him so reverently, her fingers on his scar and her beautiful brown eyes wide open, that he knew she meant it.

  All he had to do was trust her.

  “You’re very quiet,” Tara murmured, her breath soft on his neck. “You want to talk about whatever’s going on up here?”

  She reached up to glide her fingers over his temple, and the simple touch unlocked him. “There’s a reason I always tell you I’m not a nice guy.”

  She stilled, but didn’t shrink back. “Okay.”

  Xander knew she wasn’t agreeing as much as giving him space to talk to her, and God help him, he took it. “North Point might not be all that far from here in terms of miles, but it might as well be another galaxy in other ways. You’ve kind of only got two choices growing up in The Hill. You either survive, or you don’t. And you learn pretty quick that everyone there will do anything to survive.”

  “How old were you when you learned?” Tara asked.

  “Seven.” He didn’t even have to think about it. Fuck, but he’d know this memory—one of his first—until the day he died. “My dad was never in the picture, really, and my mom worked three jobs, so she left me with Kennedy most of the time. Kennedy’s only five years older than me, but she was more like a mom than a sister.” All those nights she’d done her best to distract him from how cold their shitty, one-room apartment was, or used all her creativity to tape up the holes in his shoes so they could last just a little longer before she had to cave in and scratch together the money for a new-to-him pair from the thrift store three blocks over.

  Xander set those memories aside in favor of the one Tara had asked for. “It was dinnertime, and I was so hungry. School was out, so we didn’t have a guaranteed breakfast or lunch. That day, Kennedy and I hadn’t been lucky enough to get either. We scrounged for change, but there’s nothing you can do with forty cents when you’re as hungry as we were. Kennedy even went next door to ask our neighbor if he could spare anything—just a couple pieces of bread and some peanut butter, a can of beans. Pizza crust, God, we’d have taken anything. But all the guy had was cheap beer.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Tara said quietly, her tone turning the words genuine rather than oh-you-poor-charity-case-you. “No one should ever be hungry like that, let alone a child.”

  She wasn’t wrong, and yet… “It was our normal. Kennedy knew we had to eat. She knew we were out of options.” Xander took a breath, knowing he couldn’t go back once he told her the rest.

  But he felt steady in her arms. He trusted her. So, he said, “We walked about four miles—far enough to get out of The Hill, proper—until we got closer to a more decent part of North Point. We waited in the alley behind this bakery for what felt like forever, until the woman working there took out their trash for the night. There were probably a dozen pastries and bagels that hadn’t sold mixed in with all the rest of the trash. They were as stale and soggy as hell, barely edible, really, but Kennedy and I didn’t care. We dug through the trash to find them and we didn’t miss a crumb. We were that fucking desperate.”

  “Oh, Xander. You were just trying to survive,” Tara said, and the truth of it snapped under Xander’s skin.

  “That’s just it, though. I was always just trying to survive. It starts with things like picking through the trash, or sneaking into the YMCA just to get a shower with hot water. But then you start to realize you’ll do anything. You’ll toss your moral compass out the fucking window. You’ll lie. You’ll steal. You’ll hate the people who have more than you. And I did all of those things.”

  The words poured out of him now, unstoppable. “When you grow up like I did, when you are who I am, the lines start out blurry and they only get worse as you go. Good and bad are all second to surv
iving, and pretty soon, you just forget that there’s a right and wrong. All you know is trying to get through another day, no matter what you have to do to make that happen. I did”—he broke off, his heart pounding so hard he was sure it would break free from his rib cage—“fuck, Tara, I did terrible things. I pushed Kennedy away when she found a way out of The Hill. I let a madman convince me that revenge would make me happy, and I lied and stole and worked the system to try and get it. I let myself believe that the bad things I did were justified, that it was all just the way things worked when you lived like I did. Other people were hurt—badly—by what I did, and I’m never going to be able to erase that.”

  Pulling back, Tara turned to her side, her eyes bright on his even in the shadows of his bedroom. “No, you’re not,” she said, and her honesty hit him with an odd sense of relief. “But that doesn’t make you a bad person.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Xander said, but Tara remained completely firm.

  “I am one hundred percent sure of that. Look, if there’s one thing I know above all others, it’s that you can’t change the past. But all those things you did, even the bad ones, are part of you. They got you here. They made you who you are, and who you are is a good man.”

  Christ, how he wanted that to be true. He ached for it from his breath to his bones. But, still… “It’s hard for me to believe that sometimes.”

  “Well, then let me help you out.” Reaching toward him, Tara ran her fingers over his forearm until she found his scar. “This may be part of you. But this”—her hand slid to his temple—“gave you what you needed to get back to your sister. And this”—her palm unfolded over the center of his chest, so warm and sweet and good he could fucking cry—“made you want to become a cop so you could help people. It’s the part that loves your sister and brings Amour dinner and chills me out with random stories about rubber ducks. Yes, you’ve done bad things. But you’re still a good man, Xander. You deserve good things. I will always believe that. Maybe it’s time you did, too.”