"Condom," he growled. "We need a condom. I can't last...especially bareback, like that."
All she wanted was him inside her, and at that moment she couldn't care less about protection, but he lifted her off with his hands on her waist and set her aside so he could go get a condom.
He was back in an instant, already sheathed, and rolled across the carpet with her, then inside her. He moved over her, looked down at her face, and the tenderness in his eyes almost brought her to tears. He touched her hair, pushed it off her face, pulled one strand from her mouth. He leaned down and kissed her then, thrusting into her with long, slow moves, touching deep inside her, and she came, hard, fast and sharp, startling her. It was intense, almost painful. He swallowed her cry, heaved against her, hips driving, pumping.
"I'm coming, Marli," he told her, voice low and rough, then he was pressing into her in hot, heavy pulses, and she came again, this time longer, softer waves of heat that slid down her legs and made her weak.
She couldn't move, couldn't breathe.
She held his big, heavy body tightly, stroked his damp back, the curve of his tight butt, his thick, powerful shoulders, fighting back tears. God, she loved this man with all her heart. She choked on the words that wanted to escape from her, swallowed hard, her throat aching.
He buried his face in her neck, breathing hard. She so much wanted to hear him tell her he loved her, and squeezed her eyes shut as she hugged his body.
Trey rolled away to drop the condom into the wastebasket, then rolled back to look at Marli, all sexy and naked and tousled. "Come on," he said, taking her hands and pulling her to her feet. He drew back the covers, and she crawled between them. He slid in, too, and pulled her against his chest.
"So what happens now?" she whispered.
"We go to sleep." But he was afraid that wasn't what she meant.
"No, I mean to us."
He tried to come up with the words to tell her without hurting her, but he wasn't very good at that kind of stuff. "There is no us."
She immediately looked down, shuttering her eyes from him. She plucked at the white sheet wrapped around them. "I know." She lifted those beautiful eyes and pinned him with her gaze.
"Will you at least tell me what happened to you, Trey? Before we go back to our own lives. If nothing else, it really does help sometimes to talk about it. It hurts me to know you're hurting. Maybe I can help."
He looked at her long, his heart thudding in his chest. He wanted to. He owed it to her, and she was right. He needed to talk. He'd been to see that counselor the bureau had sent him to, but it had been too soon, and he'd been resistant to having his head shrunk.
He reached behind him and propped the pillows up so he was sitting. She snuggled against him, all warm and naked, sliding one leg across his thighs.
God, where to start. "About seven months ago, my wife told me she was pregnant."
Marli tensed and started to draw away from him. He held on to her as she tipped her head to look up at him. He swallowed at the stunned hurt on her face.
"You have a wife and a child?"
Chapter 21
Seven months earlier
San Diego, California
"Hey, guess what?"
Trey's partner, Bill, looked up. "What?" he asked, a donut halfway to his mouth.
Trey grinned. "Lisa's pregnant. We're gonna have a baby."
Bill's mouth dropped open, then his face split into a huge grin. He dropped the donut, jumped out of his chair and went over to slap Trey on the back.
"That's fantastic!" he said. "Congratulations!" Happily married, with two children, Bill was the kind of guy who thought everyone should be married with children. "When is she due?"
"August," Trey said. He rubbed his face, but smiled. "It was a bit of a surprise, but what the hell." Little by little, he was getting used to the idea of being a father. He pictured himself with a son, playing baseball, taking him to Padres games. Or maybe a little girl. He wasn't sure what he'd do with a girl, but, hey, maybe she'd play baseball, too. He grinned.
"I never thought I'd see the day," Bill said. "Wasn't sure you had it in you."
"Screw off." Trey grinned. "Come on, we've got work to do. I'm off to Brawley today."
They'd been immersed in the Sheldon Barnes case for weeks, desperate to find this guy before he killed again. Trey had gathered so much information on Barnes he felt as if he knew him better than he knew his own brother. They didn't technically call it profiling since they were field agents, not profilers, but that's what he was doing. He wanted to know what made this guy tick, what gave him an adrenaline rush, because Trey sure got a rush from figuring out what went on in a psychopathic, narcissistic murderer's mind.
In Brawley, he met Sheldon's mother, Wanda Barnes, a thin, tired-looking woman. Her hair was faded, but he could tell it had once been a pale gold blonde, just like the three women victims.
"He called me the other day," she told Trey nervously. "For some reason he wanted to know if I knew where his ex-wife is."
"Sheldon was married?"
Wanda nodded. "Her name is Teresa. Teresa White. They got married when they were only seventeen. She was a mousy little thing--her father had just died and her mother was falling apart. I think she thought Sheldon would look after her." She gave a sharp, mirthless laugh. "Guess she found out pretty quick that wasn't gonna happen, because she just up and disappeared one day."
"Where'd she go?"
Wanda shrugged. "I never knew. Never cared. But after Sheldon called, I went and paid a visit to her ma." She scowled. "That woman's a mess. Hammered all the time. But she says Teresa's living in El Paso. And..." She hesitated.
"What?" Trey probed gently. He met Wanda's eyes with reassurance.
"Debbie White says Teresa has two kids. Eleven-year-old twins." She frowned. "Teresa's married to someone else, but it was eleven years ago she was married to Sheldon."
"You think the kids are his?"
Wanda shrugged, still frowning. "Jesus, I don't know. But if they are, Sheldon deserves to know about it."
"Did you tell him?"
Wanda shook her head. "I don't know how to get hold of him."
"Are you going to tell him? If he calls?"
Wanda's mouth twisted. "You're just full of questions, aren't you? Hell, I don't know if I'll ever hear from him again."
"You will," Trey said confidently. "You will."
Trey went next to visit Sheldon's older brother Peter in the nearby state penitentiary, then talked to cousins and other relatives in the Imperial Valley area and found out Sheldon had occasionally shown up looking for money or a place to stay. He traveled to El Paso to talk to Sheldon's ex-wife as well. The two boys had never met their father, their mother having fled her relationship with Sheldon when she was pregnant. She'd never known if Sheldon knew about the boys, but figured he didn't, since he'd never showed up looking for them. She, too, hadn't seen him since then, and had been horrified about the news stories she'd been seeing on television. Horrified and frightened.
"You need to know his mother will probably tell him about his sons," he cautioned her. "There's no reason to think he'd come here, or that he'd have any intention of harming you. But..." He couldn't help but eye her flaxen hair.
Trey had decided to drive all the way back to San Diego that night, rather than stay over in a hotel, and arrived home after midnight to an empty house. Where the hell was Lisa? A four months pregnant woman out partying? Weird.
He grabbed a beer and wandered into the bedroom. The computer monitor was still on, so Lisa must have been doing something on it earlier. He touched the keyboard, the screensaver disappeared and her e-mail program appeared. He reached for the mouse, intending to close it and shut down the computer, but his eyes were drawn to rows of e-mails from the same sender...