by Pam Godwin
“You?”
“Who else? These men who are hunting you…they’re connected to the team in Texas. But I can’t trace their employer. Who is it? Who hired you to seduce me?” At her silence, he asked, “What’s on that hard drive?”
“Help me retrieve it, and I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me how you’re connected to it, and I’ll think about it.”
“What?” Her breath hitched. “You will? You’ll help me?”
“No. Fuck.” His jaw flexed, and he swiped a hand down his face. “I can’t, Lydia. I spent a year embedded in the Romanian mafia, searching for the traitor who sold that hard drive. Darius Skutnik knows me. He knows my face, my disguises, my loyalties. My cover’s blown. Bridges burned. And besides, I don’t get involved in political or government affairs. Not anymore.”
“Then why are you here? Why are you following me?”
His expression clouded.
“Is this about revenge? Do you want an apology?” She cupped his strong jaw, holding his gaze. “I won’t give it. I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry for meeting you or fucking you or learning how strong and resilient you are. You scare the bejesus out of me and fascinate me and turn me on like no other. If I were a normal girl with average problems, I would chase you and date you and do all the normal-girl things with you. Because this? You and me? It’s real.” She lowered her hand. “You wanted the truth. That’s my truth.”
She pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth, immediately regretting her verbal ejaculation. She’d said too much, overexposed herself, and couldn’t take it back.
How many times would she stumble and fall over this man?
Maybe this was the last time. Maybe he would try to kill her now, and she would finally learn to keep her guard up around him.
“I’m not interested in normal girls.” His finger traced circles on her thigh, invoking goosebumps.
In the span of an eternal moment, her life flashed before her eyes. She lived, and she died, but she didn’t regret. He’d woken her from a long, cold dead sleep, and she wouldn’t change that for anything.
Slowly, his hand dipped between her legs, going straight to the stiletto like he knew it was strapped there. Of course, he knew. She’d rubbed it up and down his leg while they were dancing.
He made no attempt to take it as his fingers crept upward, seeking something softer, warmer, more welcoming.
A tremor crashed through her, and she rose on her toes, trying to slow the climb of his hand. “What do you want from me?”
“This.” He kissed her, deeply, possessively, and sank a finger between her legs. “This greedy pussy’s been leaking all over my jeans.”
She whimpered, her hands clenching on his shoulders, pulling.
“I want your surrender.” His chest pressed against hers, his teeth scraping her gaping mouth as if he were trying to crawl inside her. “Give it to me.”
She was already careening toward it before he added another finger, and another, dipping inside and plunging to the knuckles. His tongue knifed through her mouth, assaulting, owning, and twining her fear and need together.
As if he had all the time in the world, he played with her ache, teasing her soaked flesh, and mounting her lust until she clung to him, moaning and panting against his hot lips.
He seduced her with his mouth, his smoldering looks, and oh God, his touch. His fingers unfurled ribbons of heat within her, clenching her inner muscles, and dribbling past flesh that had become far too hungry for him. It was stupid and irresponsible and…
“There.” She widened her thighs to deepen the thrust of his fingers. “Please, Cole.”
“Good girl.”
“We both know I’m not, but I love the way you lie.”
He slapped his free hand against the wall above her and bowed in, twisting his fingers between her legs. Then his thumb circled her clit and broke the dam.
Her body split apart in waves of orgasmic pleasure. Shimmery stars seized her vision. Trembling bursts of electricity washed up her legs and rendered her senseless, boneless, until noises she didn’t recognize tumbled from her mouth.
He continued to stroke. His fingers. His tongue. Hot and aggressive, he pulled her under and submerged her in the sweetest delirium. Her head tipped back. Her eyes fell shut, and her flesh rippled with unadulterated, carnal bliss.
She shook, stunned and overcome, high on ecstasy and thoroughly mortified.
Mortified, because the voice that broke through her haze didn’t belong to Cole.
“Don’t move, motherfucker.” Mike stood behind Cole, aiming a knife at Cole’s stomach and a gun beneath his jaw. “How do you want to die?”
“Buried three-knuckles-deep.” Cole had the audacity to wriggle the knuckles still buried inside her.
Mike’s lips pulled back, baring his teeth, his eyes blazing with fury.
It was one thing for her to get naked with Cole in Texas when seduction had been part of the mission. Mike had been passionately against it but went along with the plan because there’d been no other way.
But this was a whole other thing. She had no explanation for why she was pressed against him in a dark hallway with her dress shoved to her hips. No explanation would assuage Mike. This had nothing to do with the job. Cole wasn’t even supposed to be here.
Mike didn’t kill unless it was the only option. But given his current signals—flushed neck, bulging veins, wild eyes, grinding teeth, and not one but two weapons drawn—he saw only one option. Cole’s lifeless body.
This wasn’t a bluff. Mike was going to kill him.
Heedless, Cole removed his hand from between her legs and held up his soaked fingers, stretching them apart to display the thick, milky strings of her come. “She’s a gusher.”
“Mike.” Pulse racing, she clasped the hand that held the blade against Cole’s stomach. “Don’t do it. He’s baiting you.”
“I’m going to fucking kill him.” He pushed against her grip.
“No, you’re not.” Cole slipped a sticky finger between his lips and groaned with satisfaction. “She won’t forgive you if you do. You don’t want to lose her.” He licked another digit, his eyes shutting briefly. “Goddamn, when a woman tastes this good, I imagine you’ll do anything to keep her.”
He curled his tongue around the next finger, and the next, slurping with relish.
“Stop antagonizing him.” Her hand started to sweat around Mike’s grip, battling over control of the knife.
The gun beneath Cole’s jaw was less concerning. Mike wouldn’t fire it and risk getting them arrested.
“I would’ve left some for you to taste.” Cole flicked a menacing glare over his shoulder at Mike. “But you’re dipping into this pussy every night, aren’t you? That’s why you’re itching to gut me. You don’t like to share. I get it. I don’t share, either.”
“Enough.” She pushed at Cole’s chest, attempting to upset his balance.
He jerked, and they all moved at once. She went for the knife at Cole’s stomach. Mike fought her grip, trying not to cut her as Cole swiped the stiletto from between her legs. In a blur of motion, he twisted between her and Mike. His torso tensed, flexing with the snap of his arm as he stabbed the blade toward Mike’s shoulder.
She opened her mouth to scream, the sound cutting off as the dagger sank. Blood spurted, not from Mike but from the neck of someone else. A man with black hair.
Her heart stopped. Mike spun away, and Cole stabbed the knife again, cutting through the throat. Blood spilled over his hand. The man dropped to the floor, and she stared down at a face with a crooked nose.
Vincent’s man.
Her hands trembled, her pulse thrashing in her ears, sounding out the muffled thump of the music.
Goddammit, she was smarter than this. She didn’t get distracted. She didn’t let assassins sneak up on her.
“Get out of here.” Cole wiped the stiletto on the dead man’s pants and handed it to her. “Go!”
The cha
tter of feminine voices sounded around the corner. People were close. A whole nightclub of people. Anyone could step into view and sound the alarms.
“Come on.” She concealed the knife beneath her dress and tugged on Mike’s clenching hand. “We need to go.”
Cole bent over the body and dragged it into a shadowed corner. She looked up, scanning the ceiling with surging panic.
“There are no cameras.” Cole met her eyes, his voice thundering with command. “Get the fuck out of here.”
Heart hammering, she held his gaze for a moment longer, and he stared back, forging the connection in fire.
They needed more time, more moments. If only he would agree to help her, if they could find a way to trust each other…
“Let’s go.” Mike gripped her elbow and led her away.
They walked straight out of the club without stopping or looking back. Outside, the summer night air wrapped around her. She didn’t breathe until they reached a less-congested part of the busy street. There, a few blocks from the nightclub, they lingered in the shadows without speaking.
Patrons milled along the stone walkways, flitting in and out of the nearby bars. The alleyways between belched a thousand unbearable stenches caused by calls of nature. She thought she might throw up, not from the rank air but from her unbearable nerves.
Huddled in a dark doorway with Mike’s arm around her, she had a direct view of the discotheque’s entrance. Her neck grew taut as she waited for the sound of sirens. Her molars clenched painfully as she waited for Cole to step outside.
Ten minutes passed.
Fifteen.
He never emerged, and the polizia never came.
“He hid the body and found another exit.” Mike clasped her hand and pulled her down the street, getting them out of there. “If he’s smart, we’ll never see him again.”
She didn’t want that, did she? Her chest constricted. “He just saved our lives.”
“If he hadn’t distracted you, you wouldn’t have needed saving.”
Good point.
Walking alongside him, she twined their fingers together and acknowledged the guilt stabbing her insides. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.” He glanced at her sidelong, the anger still alive in his eyes. “What did he say to you?”
Lowering her voice, she recapped every word she’d shared with Cole. When she fell quiet, his expression darkened, and he quickened his gait.
She jogged to keep up, wobbling in the heels. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” He stopped abruptly and turned to glare at her. “He followed you across Europe for six months. You haven’t just become his mission. You’ve become his obsession.”
London, England
Eight months later
Lydia had become a dangerous obsession.
An obsession that had brought Cole to this tattoo parlor to do something he never fathomed.
Why?
She was an anomaly. A goddamn mystery. He knew so little about her, and that only made him crave and crave and crave. His thirst for knowledge demanded he unravel her.
Who was she? Where had she come from? Why was she always on the move?
Why am I still following her?
It had been fourteen months since she’d saved his life beneath the stonecutter. He’d given her the location of the hard drive, and she wasn’t even trying to infiltrate the Romanian mafia.
Instead, she visited strip clubs, nightclubs, fluttering from venue to venue in red-light districts across Europe. Dancing. Or attempting to dance. She had terrible coordination.
Still, he loved watching her. Stalking her. He couldn’t let go of this infatuation.
She and Mike never used the same last name twice. Their identification documents were forged. They paid for everything in cash, traveled light, and spent little, sleeping on trains and staying in low-rent hostels and dingy hotels.
They must’ve had a plan, but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure it out.
“Almost finished.” A twenty-something Englishman wiped a towel along Cole’s forearm, admiring the artwork. “You ready to see it?”
He hadn’t looked at his arm. Not once in five hours as the tattoo gun stabbed into his skin. He couldn’t bear to watch the inked symbol of Danni slowly disappear. He just wanted it gone.
Out with the old obsession, in with the new one.
Breathing deeply, he turned his gaze on the fresh ink.
From wrist to elbow, a deadly snake coiled tightly around his arm, leaving no unmarked skin between the tight spiral of its thick, scaly body.
It was a diamondback rattlesnake, commonly found in the Chihuahuan Desert where he’d met Lydia.
Warmth spread through his chest as he held it up for a closer inspection. Shocking bursts of red poked out from beneath the twisting, winding predator. Red feathers.
He turned his arm, revealing the head of a red swallow peering out of the snake’s constricting hold.
His lips twitched with morbid satisfaction. “It’s perfect.”
“Ace.” The tattoo artist grinned. “You got a pet snake, mate?”
“A pet bird.”
“Ah.” The man’s eyes twinkled as if he comprehended the meaning.
He didn’t. Cole didn’t even understand it.
As the Brit wrapped up his arm, the TV on the wall streamed endless commercials, each one to the tune of a Christmas jingle. It was the first week of December, and the holiday season was choking the life out of the air.
Blinking lights, glittery ribbons, peppermint coffee, swarms of shoppers, singing, and laughing—the spirit of Christmas forced itself on everyone, everywhere. He couldn’t escape it. Not even here. Sitting in a dark, grungy tattoo parlor on the outskirts of London, he felt it jabbing under his skin.
He despised this time of year, for it only served to remind him just how goddamn lonely he was.
He’d turned thirty-eight this year. Thirty-eight Christmases, and he’d spent half of those alone. He should’ve been used to it by now. But he couldn’t forget the holidays he’d shared with Trace and one he’d had with Danni. Those were good times. The best.
Maybe that was why he hated Christmas so much.
“Hell of a time to be an American.” The tattooist nodded at the TV, which had switched to a world news report about American politics.
It was an election year in the states, and though the election had ended a month ago, the country was in an uproar over who had unofficially won. The President-elect wasn’t a politician. He was a business magnate, software developer, and philanthropist.
His presence in the White House promised to shake things up. Maybe that was what the country needed, but Cole didn’t hold out hope. He knew too much about the collusion and cronyism that existed within the U.S. political system.
“Can you turn that off?” He flicked a hand at the TV.
“Sure.”
Christ, he was in a mood. If he were honest, his head hadn’t been in a good place for months.
He needed to see her.
No, he needed more than that. He needed to feel Lydia’s warmth under his hands, taste her cherry lips on his tongue, and hear her husky voice whispering his name.
He longed to make contact with her, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t the only one watching her. Whatever she was involved in, people were hunting her. They would’ve been tracking him, too, but he kept himself hidden.
Until eight months ago.
In a total lapse of sanity, he’d approached her in that nightclub in Rome. He’d done it to protect her. Mike had left her alone with a damn assassin in the building.
Dancing with her had gone too far. He’d needlessly and recklessly indulged. Holy fuck, he’d indulged in every inch of her luscious body.
He couldn’t do that again. He couldn’t be seen with her. Couldn’t get involved.
He told her he wouldn’t help her, and he meant it.
When he finished his transaction at the tattoo parlo
r, he returned to Central London and walked the streets, soaking in the historical ambiance while evading the Christmas shoppers. He was looking for something, searching for a distraction from his thoughts.
Lydia was somewhere in the city. According to Romero, she’d arrived yesterday by train.
He told himself he wouldn’t walk by her hotel this time, that he wouldn’t watch her from the shadows. But he knew it was a lie. She was the only reason he’d flown in this morning.
Wandering aimlessly with his hands tucked in his pockets, he kept to the side streets, kept his feet moving, tried to keep his thoughts away from the object of his obsession.
Late into the early morning, the foot traffic died down, the tourists all tucked into their temporary beds.
Was Lydia out dancing in some dodgy nightclub? Or was she in bed, too? With Mike?
His stomach buckled, roiling with acid. The undetermined state of her relationship with Mike twisted him up. He tried not to think about it, but his imagination was a bitch.
So was his jealousy.
It awakened toxic memories. Memories of the months he’d shared Danni with Trace. He wouldn’t do that again. Not with any woman. No matter how fucking lonely he was.
His breaths quickened, forming angry white clouds in the chilly air as he strolled across Westminster Bridge. He stopped at the center with no one around and stared down at the inky water of the River Thames.
He needed to give up this pointless quest and return to the states. Better yet, he should go to Colombia and spend the holidays with his friends. His family.
For a moment, he tried to imagine it—sitting around some elaborate Christmas tree at the Restrepo headquarters, drinking, opening presents, and celebrating togetherness. He wanted that, longed for it, right up until everyone paired off and went to bed.
Where would that leave him?
Alone and pining for the love he’d lost.
Fucking pathetic.
He laughed aloud, and the ache in his voice caught on the cold breeze, tumbling toward the river. He sounded insane—in his mind and out loud. Even the voice in his head thought he was nuts.
Maybe he was having a breakdown? Or going through some sort of mid-life crisis?