Chapter 34

It was almost midnight by the time Aaron finally made his way to Hope's apartment. The guys had come back and reported that Leech's home was surprisingly empty whereas there were indeed three people in the Fairchild mansion, one in a room near the kitchen, and another two upstairs, one who looked child-sized.

He'd called Frazer. According to him, Eloisa's live-in housekeeper had a six-year-old son, so chances were they were the other people in the house.

Cancel the dawn raid.

Hope had gone to bed. All the lights were off except for a thin strip under the kitchen cabinets that he suspected she left on for them so they weren't disoriented—which was sweet, especially considering how strung out she'd been tonight and the fact they were supposed to be elite operators, not little kids scared of the dark.

He grabbed a glass of water and headed silently up the stairs. Hope's room door was shut, and the light was off. He hoped she was getting some rest. The strain of the past few days was starting to tell.

He resisted the urge to knock on her door to check on her. The last thing he needed to do was disturb her rest or put himself in temptation's way.

She'd invited him to spend the evening with her. Had she meant hanging out watching TV? Or had she meant…

Nah.

If only.

He shook his head and walked into his room. That was his overactive imagination at work and the fact he hadn't had sex since the dawn of time. Plus, the fact he was absolutely attracted to the woman, and it wasn't simply her blonde good looks. Her grit, her drive, and the fact she struggled so hard not to be a nice person. It made him smile when it shouldn't affect him at all.

He stripped off his holster, comms, shirt. Tossed them on the desk and pulled out his phone which he plugged in to the charger. He grabbed sleep pants and a towel and headed for the shower. He scrubbed himself clean and, afterwards, quickly dried off and headed back to his room.

The shower had woken him up, and he paced for a few minutes, checking for updates from Frazer or Novak.

Beasley was still in surgery. His odds were poor.

The man's "bodyguards" had been under the impression the guy was in his office when it turned out he'd snuck out via an interior door and secretly left the building.

Aaron sat on the side of the camp bed, which creaked ominously under his weight. He spied the gaming chair at the desk and decided that looked sturdier and more comfortable for reading, so he picked up the box that held the files from Hope's family's murders and set it on the floor beside the desk.

He started with the police reports, which described the Harper home scene as chaos and severely compromised by EMTs and cops after almost everyone in the local vicinity traipsed through it. He read the interview detectives had done with Hope while she was at her mother-in-law's house in Southie, raw with loss. The interviewing officer wasn't particularly sympathetic. In places he was downright cruel, describing Hope as robotic and uncooperative.

Then Aaron read her written statement of how she'd come home after making partner at her law firm only to find the two people she loved most in the world, dead or dying. He felt sick thinking about it. And how Leech had been Johnny-on-the-spot.

Occam's razor had been applied.

Next, he read Leech's statement taken from the hospital bed that Brendan Harper had put him in. Leech's nose had been broken and his one cheekbone shattered. Though under arrest Leech had stayed in the hospital until his surgeries were finished, BPD covering its own ass despite having twenty witnesses to say Leech resisted arrest.

Leech claimed that he'd received a call around 5 p.m. inviting him to dinner at Hope Harper's home. He claimed he thought they were friends after spending so much time together over the previous four months. He'd planned to give her a massive bonus, maybe pay off her mortgage in gratitude for all her hard work. When he'd arrived, he claimed Hope had answered the door and pushed past him and then waved down the EMTs. He'd had no idea what was going on. He described how she'd had blood on her hands, clearly attempting to incriminate her rather than himself.

He recounted how she'd begged the EMTs to revive her child. Begged.

According to phone records, Leech had indeed received a text with the dinner invite and Hope's address. The text had come from a burner that had never been traced or recovered.

Hope swore under oath she hadn't texted the guy.

Was it possible that Blake Delaware had texted Leech before he'd left for the airport and then destroyed the phone to give Leech an alibi? Leech had gotten away with murder before. Perhaps he'd gotten cocky.

It was technically possible that Hope had texted Leech from some unknown phone and used the release of the suspected serial killer as a scapegoat to murder her husband and kid, as Leech's lawyers had claimed at one point. But most people didn't commit murder to get rid of an unwanted partner, and certainly not a beloved child. Divorce existed for a reason. The murder angle only made sense if you were comfortable taking someone else's life. The way Leech was comfortable.

The last thing Aaron looked at were the autopsy photos, and even though he'd been in law enforcement for six years and there wasn't much he hadn't seen, the red petechiae in Paige Harper's blue eyes about shattered him. He flicked through the photos quickly. The girl had not been sexually assaulted, which was a small mercy. Leech often said to anyone who'd listen that he didn't hurt children. A lot of pedophiles said the same thing. They loved children. They'd never harm them. The kids liked what was done to them. They enjoyed it. They instigated it. Mutual pleasure or momentary weakness—Aaron had heard it all, and it turned his stomach.

Danny Harper had been a fit, good-looking guy. The autopsy had revealed scrapes on his knuckles and a bruise on his jaw. The single stab wound just below the ribs had led to massive internal bleeding, but he'd taken his time to die—in slow increments, all the while knowing his daughter was dead beside him and his wife's life was about to be completely blown apart.

Hope had admitted they'd argued the night before over her representing Leech.

The ME hadn't been too clear on Paige's time of death. It had been a warm afternoon, so the body hadn't cooled much. Danny had died on the operating table.

Aaron knew that part of Hope's guilt would lie in the belief that if she'd gotten home earlier, if she'd skipped the celebrations at her firm, even though she was the guest of honor, she might have prevented the attack, or she might have arrived home in time to at least save her husband. He didn't know if he could have coped with half of the pain she'd endured. It made his fiancée's betrayal look like a fly in his beer.

And that wasn't quite accurate because the betrayal had wrecked him, but the comparison was stark. But Aaron would rather his ex find happiness with his brother than end up on a slab. No contest. No fucking debate.

The cat began scratching at Hope's door. He hesitated a moment but didn't want the meowing and scratching to wake her if she was asleep. The woman deserved some peace. He closed the folder and went silently into the hall to let the cat inside. He had his hand on the doorknob when it opened.

Hope stood there in a pretty blue silky sleep shirt that barely reached her knees. Her face was pale, eyes dark and haunted.

Lucifer darted inside.

Aaron's heart thudded. He opened his mouth to explain about the cat when she reached out and put her hand around his wrist. Tugged him until he took one step, then another. Once inside the room she closed the door and ran her hands up his bare chest, up to his collarbones.

She stood on tiptoe and brushed her lips over his. "Aaron."

His resistance crumbled. He pulled her to him and crushed his lips to her, devouring that mouth of hers which had slowly been driving him mad with lust. She tasted like toothpaste and smelled like summer. He wrapped his arms so tightly around her body it was as if he was worried she might try to escape. Instead, she wriggled closer and sank her hands into his hair. The material of her shirt was smooth as satin and stirred his senses. Their tongues tangled as his hands greedily roamed the soft curves. Need rose up inside him. Damn, he wanted this woman.

A noise on the street jerked him out of the moment.

He pulled away, breathing hard. Caught her hand to stop her touching him.

The silky material clung to the hard peaks of her breasts. He desperately wanted to see her naked but knew if he did, he'd be lost. "This is wrong."

But God help him nothing had felt this right in years.

She blinked, a look of hurt entered her gaze.

"I want you, you know I do, but if anyone finds out, I'll be reassigned back to Quantico." And have his ass justifiably kicked. She was off-limits no matter how much he desired her.

"And your perfect service record will be blotted." She ran her lips over his jaw, reaching up to nibble his earlobe in a move that almost brought him to his knees. "No one has to know, Aaron. I won't tell anyone."

"I'll know." He thought about how upset she'd been earlier. "I don't want to take advantage."

The word liar screamed through his veins.

"I think I might be taking advantage of you." She smiled at him then, a smile full of womanly knowledge. She didn't look vulnerable or lost right now. She looked like a siren. She slid her hand slowly down his stomach and then wrapped her fingers around the hard length of him through his pants—a part of him that clearly had not gotten the off-limits message.

He gritted his teeth as sweat broke out on his brow.

She kissed him and swallowed his groan, touching him, stroking him, making him shudder with need.

"Couldn't we have one night? One night where no one but us has to know?" Her gray eyes were dark in the moonlight.

Would one night really be so terrible? He knew Novak and Charlotte Blood had gotten together during that Washington op. And Seth had definitely been getting busy with Zoe during their escape from the drug cartel. The idea of missing out on this connection with Hope… Of always wondering what it would have been like…

He didn't think she'd ask him again if he said no tonight. He didn't think she'd give him a second chance.

"Wait here." He carefully eased open the door and went into his room, grabbed his Glock, his cell, and his comms in case something happened he needed to know about. He dug into his wash bag for a strip of condoms everyone on the team carried for reasons other than sex with the person they were responsible for protecting. But, fuck, Hope wasn't the average civilian. She was in the trenches, and she wasn't scared of Leech or dependent on Aaron for anything except overseeing her security detail. The team were so good they could do the job blindfolded.

He couldn't stand the idea of not taking this chance to be with her.

He closed his door and slipped quickly into Hope's room. She stood by the window stroking her cat and turned as he came inside. He turned the old-fashioned key in the lock with a quiet snick.

The cat jumped down and ran under the bed.

"I thought you'd changed your mind," she said softly.

He walked toward her and closed the drapes. Showed her what he had in his hands. "Getting supplies."

Her eyes went wide, and her lips curved. "I hadn't thought that far ahead, but I am grateful for your preparedness. Not sure how my head of security would feel about sending someone out for condoms at this hour."

He didn't want to think about being her head of security right now. He placed the gun, phone, comms, condoms on the table beside the bed.

"You only have to ask anyone on HRT, and they'll have condoms tucked away somewhere."

She coughed out a laugh.

"Not because we're all having sex every five minutes." It had been so long for him he didn't even remember the last time. Well, not the last time that had felt amazing, anyway. Encounters had become mundane, going through the motions because his body wanted it, but his mind hadn't been engaged, and definitely not his heart. "They're useful in survival situations for carrying water."

Hope pulled a face. "Have you drunk out of one?"

Aaron grinned at the image that evoked. "No, but I would if I had to."

She wet her bottom lip, and like that, he was hard as stone.

"We don't have to do this though, Hope. If you've changed your mind?—"

She grabbed him and pulled him down by his hair to kiss his mouth with a clash of tongue and teeth.

He hesitated only a moment before resting his hand on the slippery material that hugged her body. He smoothed his hands up and down her sides, the side of his thumb brushing the side of her breasts. She quivered as he tasted her mouth. He pulled her against him, let her feel what she did to him.

She moaned, and it was the hottest sound he had ever heard.

She smelled like vanilla ice cream, and he wanted to lick every inch to see if she tasted like it too. He lifted her, and she surprised him by circling her legs around his waist and pressing her center against his rigid cock.

Sweat burst out of his pores. He was never gonna last. He was going to embarrass himself and leave this woman, who he guessed hadn't had sex with anyone in all the years since her husband had passed, disappointed and unsatisfied.

To hell with that.

He eased her down onto the bed.

He was an elite operator who ran marathons for fun in his spare time. He had no intention of disappointing this woman, but he needed to start running the show.