"We said we weren't going to have any more secrets."
"Between you and me. Not between us and the world." He draws a breath, looking away from me as if to gather himself before turning back to meet my eyes. "I'll tell you whatever you want about how Deliverance works. You know that."
"I do."
"So, do you want me to tell you now?"
"No. Maybe. I don't know." I sigh, then run my fingers through my hair.
"That's not what's bothering me."
He nods. "Yeah. I know." He stands again and starts to pace, obviously frustrated. "Tonight--this party--maybe I should have sent you back to New York. Maybe you should be at your own house tonight."
I shudder, feeling suddenly cold. "You don't want me here?"
"Oh, baby, no." He stops in front of me and reaches down, taking my hands to pull me to my feet. "I want you with me more than anything. But I planned this party for one purpose only--I need to talk with Henry Darcy. I need to find out if he has any idea who's behind Deliverance. And I need a woman on my arm when I talk to him."
"Why?"
"Because I have to make sure he sees the playboy, not the man who might have set him up with Deliverance. I need him to talk to me, but I want his attention split. And a beautiful woman is an excellent distraction. This has been my camouflage for years, baby, and if I step out of character, I risk everything."
"Which means the woman on your arm can't be me." The statement is rhetorical; obviously I can't be the woman at his side. Even so, he opens his mouth to answer. I lift my hand to cut him off. "No. I get it. I do."
About a year ago, Henry Darcy hired Deliverance to rescue his kidnapped daughters. He'd jumped through all of the hoops to contact the group, and as far as Dallas and his team knew, Darcy was ignorant of the identity of the individual players in the vigilante group. For that matter, he didn't even know the name "Deliverance." Or, at least, the team had assumed he didn't. It was, Dallas explained to me, an internal code name only.
That's the way all Deliverance operations work. Contact is made through a very complex system that Dallas hasn't yet described to me. But the bottom line is total anonymity.
So when Henry Darcy revealed publicly that the vigilante group that had rescued his girls was called Deliverance, Dallas and the team were more than a little concerned. What else did he know? Was he a threat?
Apparently, Dallas decided that the best way to find out was to host a party, invite Darcy, and chat the man up. He wanted a sexy woman beside him as a visual diversion, so that whatever questions he asked or conversations he started would come off as simple chatter, not the interrogation of a man who masterminds an elite international vigilante group.
I draw in a breath. "I understand why you need a woman by your side," I repeat. "But understanding it and liking it are two different things."
"I know, baby. I do." I can see the pain on his face as he looks at me. "But I'm not willing to give it up. I can't give it up. Not Deliverance as a whole, and not the women I use as camouflage."
His words are blunt and brutally honest, and I want to cry out, Not even for me? But I can't manage to force the words out. How can I ask him to be someone other than who he is? The leader of Deliverance. A man with a mission.
Maybe I don't entirely understand or agree with what he does, but it's part of who he is. It's there at his core.
And, dammit, I want the man. The full man, with all of his hopes and dreams and flaws. Not half the man. Not a man who compromised for anyone. Not even for me.
With a sigh, I shake my head. "I'm not asking you to. Really. I didn't even mean to open the Deliverance door. It's just that I--well, I didn't like you touching them. The blonde. The chick with the tattoos. And I didn't like that you've fucked Christine."
"I haven't fu--"
"You know what I mean."
"Yeah. I do."
He tilts his head, studying me. "Not that long ago, you liked it a lot. So did I. You watched another woman take my cock in her mouth and it got you off."
I nod, because he's right. Hell, just the memory of the game we played that night--the pictures he sent me, the things he demanded of me--make my body thrum. I lower my eyes to the ground, and softly admit, "I think I came harder than I had in a very long time."
He sits beside me once more, then puts his hand lightly on my thigh. He moves his thumb lightly back and forth, stroking me. "But?"
"But that was then. That was before we were together." I look up and meet his eyes. "That was when I had even less claim on you than they did."
"That was never the case."