by Elle Kennedy
“No, I’d like you to leave.” Irritation scurried up her throat. “As much as I enjoy our verbal sparring sessions, I’m not in the mood tonight.”
“And why is that?”
She didn’t answer.
“We’ve been doing this for a long time, haven’t we?”
His contemplative tone made her glance over, but his face remained devoid of emotion. “We have,” she agreed.
“You think it’s ever gonna end?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When I kill you.”
His answering laugh was low and husky. “If you were actually going to kill me, you would have done it a long time ago.”
She took another drag, the nicotine burning a path straight to her lungs. He was right. She’d had ample opportunity to eliminate this man, yet she still hadn’t gotten around to doing it. After each meeting, she’d convinced herself that the time hadn’t been right. Told herself that she wasn’t done toying with him yet.
After the Monte Carlo job, she’d started to question her vacillation. But the answers continued to elude her.
“You can’t seem to kill me either,” she pointed out.
“That’s because I’m not ready for you to die yet.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I’m not done tormenting you.”
Noelle rolled her eyes. “Aren’t you tired of being such a vindictive asshole?”
“Aren’t you tired of being such a coldhearted bitch?”
“Not really.”
Morgan sucked deeply on his cigarette. “Well, me either.”
They both fell silent, their gazes fixed on the sleeping city below them. A light breeze swept over them and sent Jim’s spicy scent floating in her direction.
Noelle’s shoulders stiffened as she inhaled the familiar scent. She hated this man with every fiber of her being. She’d spent years dreaming about bringing on his downfall.
So what the fuck was she doing standing on this balcony with him as if they were two pals sharing a midnight smoke?
Mouth tightening with anger, she stalked away from the railing and put out her smoke in the glass ashtray on the window ledge. “Finish your smoke and get out,” she told him.
“Eager to get rid of me, huh?”
“Yes.” She headed for the sliding door, then halted without turning around. She was quiet for a moment, resentment burning in her veins like jet fuel. “You deserve to die for what you did to me, Jim.”
“It’s nothing you wouldn’t have done yourself, baby.”
“You’re wrong. I never would have done that to you.” She paused. “At least not back then.”
“If you say so.”
She reached for the door handle, still keeping her back turned. “One of these days I will do it, you know. Kill you.”
He chuckled. “I’d like to see you try.”
• • •
“Did the People’s Revolutionary Front kidnap my daughter?”
Orlov suppressed his annoyance as Leo Karin’s tortured voice came out of the telephone speaker. The prime minister had interrupted him during a conference with his military advisors, whom he’d had to usher out of his office in order to take this call.
Outside the House of Government, the media loitered on the sidewalk in hungry swarms, cameras and microphones and unceasing questions being flung at anyone who entered or exited the building. The reporters were having a field day with the Karin girl’s abduction. The story had dominated the news ever since Berezovsky and the guard’s dead bodies, along with the bullet-riddled car, had been discovered by the militsiya officers. To make matters worse, Erik Baronova had just reported his wife missing as well, proof that Orlov’s mysterious enemy had made another inconvenient move.
“We’re still investigating that possibility,” Orlov told his superior. “I receive hourly updates from Durov, but at the moment, the investigation is not in the ministry’s jurisdiction.”
“Your ministry is charged with maintaining national security and ridding our country of terrorists,” Karin snapped. “If terrorists took Anastacia, then it’s your job to find them!”
Orlov bristled, not liking the other man’s tone, but he forced himself to speak in a respectful manner.
“We’re doing all that we can, Mr. Prime Minister. My people are working closely with the militsiya, and if we receive confirmation that the PRF is directly involved, then I assure you, I will launch a military assault and extract your daughter from Mironov’s clutches. I will even call in the reserves, if need be.”
The man on the other line relaxed, appeased by the promises Orlov did not intend to keep.
Oh no, because when he found the girl—and he would find her—she would die. Just as she’d been supposed to die before Berezovsky botched the task.
“Keep me apprised of the situation,” Karin said hoarsely. “Find my daughter, Dmitry. Find her.”
“We will, Mr. Prime Minister. I guarantee it.”
Whether she’d be found alive . . . well, that was an entirely different story.
After the call was disconnected, Orlov immediately got Kirill on the line. “Have you located the targets and the people who took them?”
“Not yet, sir. I’ve got every available man on the job. They’ve scoured the road where the Lincoln was hit, interviewed the residents in the area. I’ve spoken to every informant we have, put out calls to a dozen government agencies. Whoever these people are, I don’t think they’re working in an official capacity.”
“Then who the hell are they and why are they doing this?”
“I suspect they’re private contractors. As for what motivates them, I’m afraid I’m as in the dark as you are. But I assure you that we are doing our best to locate them.”
“Well, work harder,” he snapped. “I want them found, Kirill. I don’t care what you have to do to make that happen, understand? Just find them.”
• • •
Juliet and the men convened on the sagging front porch that morning to discuss their next course of action. They could have held the conference inside, but Alisa Baronova was driving them all nuts with her shrill voice and constant complaints, and they’d been eager to get away from the woman.
Juliet had officially had it up to here with Baronova. You’d think that the woman would show a little gratitude that someone cared enough to keep her safe, but no dice. All she did was whine—about missing her salon appointment, about not being able to use her cell phone, about the nice breakfast Ethan had prepared for her. And when she wasn’t bitching about being at the safe house, she was griping about her husband, who apparently spent every waking hour in his government office.
Juliet wasn’t sure she blamed the guy. If she were married to that whining shrew, she’d hide out in her office too.
Baronova could take a few lessons from Anastacia Karin. The teenager continued to impress Juliet with her quiet acceptance of the situation. The girl was even doing her homework, for Pete’s sake. Earlier she’d dumped the contents of her school bag on the living room table and was huddled over a textbook at the moment, solving math problems.
Still, Juliet knew they couldn’t keep Stacie and Baronova here forever. It was time to move on Orlov, which was what she was currently attempting to convince Ethan of.
“I already told you, I don’t care who he might be working with,” Juliet said in aggravation. “Once I kill him, you can feel free to keep investigating, okay?”
Ethan scowled at her. “And how do you propose to kill him? Just waltz into the House of Government and shoot him?”
“Yes, Ethan,” she said sarcastically, “that’s precisely what a professional like myself is planning to do. Jeez.”
Liam, who was sitting on the broken wooden swing near the front door, chuckled in amusement. “What are y
ou planning, then? Hitting him at home?”
“Maybe.”
He looked dubious. “You really think you can break into the defense minister’s guarded estate?”
She wrapped her bare fingers around her coffee cup, hoping the hot liquid would warm her up. Lord, it was so cold out, her teeth were actually chattering. She fucking hated this country.
“If I can get my hands on the blueprints and security plans, yes,” she answered. “But right now I’m leaning toward getting to him in public.”
The three men donned identical frowns.
“How?” Sullivan asked.
“Well, Orlov is scheduled to attend a fancy-pants fund-raiser at a veterans’ hospital in three days. I’m thinking we go after him there.”
“If he actually shows up,” Ethan pointed out. “Stacie’s kidnapping is dominating every news outlet in the country. I read online earlier that they’re forming an interagency task force to head up the search.”
“The Ministry of Defense doesn’t investigate abductions. Orlov’s got an entire military to run, which means convincing his rich friends to open their wallets to fund the country’s defense. He’ll be at that fund-raiser.”
“Fine, say he is. What would you want to do?”
She sipped her coffee, thoughtful. “We’d have to recon on the area, find out how many agents Orlov typically travels with.”
“They’ll set up a tight perimeter,” Liam spoke up. “And if Orlov’s the paranoid type, he’ll probably have snipers positioned in the area.”
“So we take them out. Or, more specifically, you guys will take them out. I’ll be inside, waiting for him.”
“Is it an invitation-only event?” Sullivan asked.
“I think so, but it won’t be a problem snagging an invite.” She went thoughtful. “I’ll have to pay a visit to Noelle’s designer friend in Minsk. I didn’t exactly pack a cocktail gown.”
“You’re not going to that party alone,” Ethan said firmly.
“It’ll be easier to get close to him if I’m a single woman with money to spend and not part of a couple,” she replied, equally firm. “You can play sniper.”
He looked ready to argue, but Liam cut him off before he could.
“Right now, it doesn’t matter who plays sniper. We still need a helluva lot more manpower if we decide to go ahead with this public assassination plan.”
Juliet stifled a sigh. Just what she needed, more operatives joining the fold. But her lone-wolf approach had already been compromised, thanks to these men, so a few more faces weren’t exactly going to make a difference now.
And if she were being honest, a part of her was touched that so many people were willing to help her, especially since none of them had a personal stake in the matter.
Feeling awkward, she cleared her throat and glanced at the men. “I just realized . . . I never even thanked you guys for coming halfway around the world to back me up. So, uh, yeah . . . thank you.”
Sullivan snorted. “How much did it take outta you to say that?”
She scowled at him.
“All jokes aside, you’re welcome,” Liam told her, his blue eyes taking on a serious glint. “Ethan told us about what happened to your brother, and . . . well, we’ve all got people we care about, people we’d fight till our dying breath for. I like to think that if I lost someone important to me, you all would back me up too.”
“Bloody right,” Sullivan said firmly.
Juliet swallowed a rush of emotion, then glanced at Ethan. “I’m sure Abby will agree to help out, but can you check if Morgan can spare anyone else?”
He released an unenthused breath. “I’ll see what I can do.”
• • •
A few hours later, Ethan finally got Juliet alone. He’d been hoping to get her to reconsider this foolish plan of hers, but he wasn’t exactly going about it the right way, considering what he’d just pulled her into the bedroom to tell her.
“Morgan is sending the A-Team,” he said with a sigh. “Abby and the others will be here tomorrow morning. D and Noelle are still in Madrid, watching Kozlov. Do we want to bring them in?”
“Nah, they may as well stay put and keep Kozlov out of harm’s way. We’ll go over the details tomorrow when the others arrive, and if we think we might need the extra bodies, we’ll send an SOS to Spain then.”
“All right.” He paused. “This plan is crazy, by the way.”
“Well, it’s the only one we’ve got.” She flopped down on the bed and settled into a cross-legged position.
“How are you going to do it?” he asked curiously.
“Kill him, you mean? I’ll get him alone and then I’ll shoot him. Which is a damn shame—I haven’t used my ten-inch Bowie knife in ages. But a neat bullet to the head will produce less blood than the knife.”
Ethan wasn’t sure whether he was turned on or scared shitless. His past girlfriends hadn’t spent much time discussing which weapons produced cleaner kills—that was for sure. And yet while Juliet’s ruthlessness unnerved him, the fact that she was so deadly excited him like nothing else.
“I wish I had a better cover in place, though. Normally I don’t do up-close kills without months of prep.”
“What kind of prep?”
She paused thoughtfully. “Well, I probably would have positioned myself in the ministry itself. I’d have worked there for about six months and gained his trust. Eventually I would make my move, and then disappear and nobody would ever know it was me who killed him.”
He frowned. “You’d put that much time into a job?”
“Six months is nothing. One of Noelle’s other chameleons, Bailey, stays undercover for way longer. She spent more than a year on her last job.”
“That seems excessive.”
“Not really. See, it’s not always about the end result. It’s easy to blow someone’s brains out, but a lot of our clients require zero-to-minimal fallout, which means doing things right, no matter how long it takes. But I don’t have the patience when it comes to Orlov. I want him dead.”
“Because of Henry?” He hesitated. “Jules . . . would your brother really want you to do this? If he’s as compassionate and good as you say he was, then wouldn’t he want you to—”
“Henry’s the one who asked me to kill Orlov.”
Ethan was startled. “Are you serious?”
“That was the last thing he said to me,” she admitted. “‘Kill him.’ That was his goddamn dying request. Don’t get me wrong, though—I would’ve killed the bastard even if Henry hadn’t begged me to do it.”
“To avenge your brother.”
“Damn right.”
He cocked his head. “Would you kill someone to avenge me?”
“If I say yes, are you going to make a huge deal out of it?”
Ethan hid a smile. “Should I?”
“Nope. Because it doesn’t mean what you think it does.” She shifted awkwardly. “Look, I like you. I respect you. And if someone took you down, I’d go after them. But that doesn’t make you special or anything.”
“Hmmm. I see.” The smile continued to tug at his lips. “Would you do the same for Sullivan or Liam?”
“Probably not.”
“Then that makes me special.”
He pounced on her before she could object, pushing her onto the bed as his mouth came down on hers.
She kissed him back so passionately that his cock went from semierect to harder than a flagpole in a matter of seconds. Christ, he couldn’t get over how incredible she was. So willing, so fiery, not an ounce of shyness about her. She always kissed him as if she had one minute left to live and she wanted nothing more than to spend it with him. But he supposed that made sense, seeing as she lived a life of danger where any move she made could result in death.
As Ethan slid his tongue through he
r parted lips and explored the warm recess of her mouth, his hands slipped beneath her sweater to cup her firm breasts. Son of a bitch, he still hadn’t feasted his eyes on her breasts yet, he realized, and the desperation that surged through him made him determined to rectify that.
He swiftly tore his mouth off hers and shoved her sweater up to her collarbone, groaning when her skimpy black bra was revealed.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” she murmured. “We have to scope out the hospital.”
Story of their fucking relationship. Stolen kisses and vehicular trysts and a mind-blowing quickie with Sullivan ten feet away. But although Ethan knew they couldn’t linger in here for too long, he refused to deprive himself of a taste.
With another groan, he unhooked the front clasp of her bra, baring her breasts to his eager eyes. His breath instantly caught, his erection hardening to a whole new level. She had the prettiest dark pink nipples, rigid with arousal, and her skin was so creamy and soft, he never wanted to stop touching it. He admired her flat belly and surprisingly defined abdominal muscles, then frowned when his gaze landed on the puckered red bullet holes and the neat row of transparent stitches.
“How’s your wound? Still hurting?” he asked roughly.
“Just an ache every now and then.” A mischievous smile lifted her lips. “But not as bad as the ache between my legs.”
He laughed softly, bringing his gaze back to her chest.
Juliet’s breathing grew labored as he squeezed those perfect mounds and feathered his thumbs over her puckered nipples.
“The door’s not even locked,” she protested, trying to rise. “We . . . we can’t . . .”
When he captured one nipple between his lips, she quit talking and sagged back onto the mattress. Ethan flicked his tongue over the distended bud, then suckled gently. His head was spinning, heart thudding, cock aching. He was beyond turned on—starvation had set in, and the only way to cure it was to devour this woman whole.
Her breasts bore pink splotches by the time he finished playing with them, and when he finally lifted his head and peered into her eyes, all he saw was a haze of lust shining there.
“Get inside me,” she growled.
This time he’d come prepared. In the blink of an eye, he produced the condom he’d tucked into his back pocket, then unzipped his pants and yanked them halfway down his legs. Juliet dealt with her own pants while he sheathed himself, leaving one pant leg on and the other off, and when he hurriedly plunged into her tight core, she wrapped those legs around his hips and gave an upward thrust that made him moan.