by Elise Faber
A nod. “Unscathed except for a broken leg,” he said. “Laila’s having him sit tight, hoping he’ll get tetchy until we interrogate.”
“Who’s on guard?”
“One of us at all times.”
“Good,” I said, in approval.
He lifted a syringe. “Yup.”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Speaking of rest, you need more.”
“I’m fine—” He stuck the plastic nozzle into the port on my IV. “I don’t want to sleep—”
“Go to sleep, little one,” he sing-songed.
I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t hit that plunger.”
He depressed it anyway, and I felt the slight sting of the medicine enter my vein, the pain that had crept in during the conversation fading, my eyelids feeling heavy.
They dragged down.
I went under.
Even with Olive’s special healing compound and all of KTS’s medical tech, it wasn’t until four days later that I had managed to sit behind the double-sided mirror that looked into the room where Daniel was being held.
He was handcuffed to a bed, his leg in a cast.
I looked to Olive, who’d only allowed me off bed rest if she could push my ass here in a wheelchair and then back to my quarters again the moment I looked peaky—her word, not mine. At least she’d relented two days before to allow me into my own room. Now, if only I could convince Jess to sleep next to me instead of the cot she had brought in.
I was desperate to hold her in my arms.
But she’d refused, not wanting to hurt me.
Damn stubborn woman. I fucking loved her so much.
Through the glass, I watched Daniel shifting on the bed, his cast awkward and unwieldy. I glanced at Olive. “Weren’t you working on a rapid bone-healing product?”
She sniffed. “Like I’d waste it on him.”
“I was thinking more like he’d be a great guinea pig.”
Olive’s lips quirked. “You make a good point.”
Lily and Hannah were in with him, Jess manning the recording equipment next to us. She had her headphones on, but instead of looking at the video feed, she was focused completely on the computer in front of her. I noticed it wasn’t a KTS laptop and instead appeared to be some standard machine anyone could pick up at any big box store.
She typed rapidly on it.
“What is it?”
Her eyes met mine. “He hasn’t given us a thing. For a fucking week, we’ve been in here, using every trick at our disposal, but he hasn’t slipped up once.”
That wasn’t a surprise.
We were trained in counter-interrogation techniques.
Taught to withstand all sorts of psychic manipulation.
He wouldn’t be easy to break, especially when he basically had the playbook for how we operated. It’s why he’d been so successful, why it had been such a struggle to get ahead of him. He knew everything about us.
But we knew him, too, knew that at some point we’d find the lynchpin to get him to move.
“But I think . . .” Jess continued typing, fingers clicking on the keyboard. “I think he might have just given us something.”
I studied Daniel’s face for any indication that he might have felt like he’d fucked up, but the man was just as relaxed as he’d been standing in that clearing seemingly having every advantage—a bomb inside, copious weapons pointed into the house, just waiting for us to either be blown up or to be mowed down.
He smirked at Lily, yawned, and reclined back on the bed, his arms crossed.
As though he were bored.
Or . . . just biding his time.
My nape prickled. I wanted to think I was wrong, but I didn’t think I was. A certainty filled my gut. Daniel was going to delay and draw this out until his contacts inside KTS here got him out.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
“What is it?” Olive asked.
“I’ll wait until Lily and Hannah are back in here.” They seemed like they were all but done. Same as everyone else, they weren’t getting anywhere in that room. We needed to regroup.
We needed . . . to set a trap.
“Moldova!” Jess exclaimed.
I shifted my gaze away from the room and onto the woman in my heart. “What about Moldova?” I asked.
“He was taunting Laila about a mission there earlier,” Jesse said. “But Laila didn’t bite, and I didn’t understand until I pulled up the mission files. It took me fucking forever, since I was trying to access them via that—” She pointed at the laptop.
“Speaking of which, why are you using that?” I asked lightly. “I’m sure the tech guys could get you any computer you want.”
“I don’t want any computer. I want one that’s fresh and untouched by our guys.”
Ah.
“What do the mission files say?” Olive asked.
“That Laila was never there,” Jess said. “She was on a mission with Ryker’s team before they were together.”
My brows rose. “So, who was there?”
I saw a glimmer of a smile—the first I’d seen since I’d awoken in the infirmary—but it wasn’t amusement necessarily. It was predatory.
“Who?” I asked again.
“See for yourself.”
I glanced at the screen, read the list of five names, and smiled.
Chapter Thirty
Jesse
Leo and I went back to his room after we’d shown Olive, Hannah, and Lily what we’d found.
We’d research the agents.
Track them down.
And then we’d move in.
What we wouldn’t be doing was leaving Daniel unattended. Laila and Ryker and Hannah would all be quietly calling in favors from their trusted contacts. We’d move on all the targets we identified simultaneously, and we’d get some fucking answers.
But for now, we couldn’t let anyone know that we had a lead.
We didn’t want the rats scurrying for cover.
The moment that door to the surveillance room closed, Leo hopped out of the wheelchair that Olive had insisted on, snagging the laptop from my hands and starting toward the sleeping quarters.
“What are you doing?” I exclaimed.
He glanced back over his shoulder. “Walking.”
My teeth clicked together. “You’re supposed to be riding.”
Slowing, he held a hand out. “Come on, baby,” he said, sidestepping the wheelchair when I pushed it toward him. “Let’s go to bed.”
Stubborn man was tired.
Why he didn’t just use the wheelchair was beyond me, but I wasn’t going to delay him getting his rest any further. I simply parked the chair, took his hand, and walked back to his room with him.
I touched his cheek when he paused with his hand on the pad, the lock clicking, the door sliding open. “I’ll see you in the morn—ah!”
He swept me up into his arms, the door slamming closed behind us, protests tumbling from my lips because the man had just been fucking shot, had survived a multiple hours-long surgery, had been unconscious for three days.
The last fucking thing he needed was to be hauling my ass across his room.
“I’ll see you now,” he said, tossing me on the mattress.
I didn’t even bounce before he was on top of me. I couldn’t push him off me without risking hurting him . . . and I didn’t want to push him off. I liked him on top of me. I loved the heavy weight of him, the hard planes of muscles, the rigid length of his cock pressing between my thighs.
“Leo,” I moaned.
His eyes scorched me. “You promised me that the next time you moaned my name, I’d be inside you.”
Heat flooded my core.
My thighs clenched around him.
And then his mouth was on mine, his tongue delving deep. He kissed me like he wanted to absorb me into his body, or maybe that’s how I felt. Because his mouth on mine made me whole. One hand was in my hair, his other on my ass, his legs between mine and
all the gloriousness of him pressing down on me.
My lungs were screaming when he backed away, and I was shaking, straight up trembling from toes to thighs to tummy to fingers, quaking with need, reaching for him again.
I needed his kiss.
He flicked open my jeans and stuck his hand inside, spearing two fingers around my clit, sliding them through my folds, and thrusting them into my pussy.
I screamed.
He kept moving, yanking my shirt up, tugging my bra up.
His mouth was on my nipple a second later, his fingers working my pussy, pleasure flooding through me, taking me dangerously close to the edge with just that little bit of effort. Sparks in a forest fire. Lightning suddenly turning the night sky bright.
“Leo,” I moaned.
He groaned, kissing his way across my chest, sucking my other nipple deep, then moving down my torso, yanking his hand out of my pants, tugging my pants down. “I said, I need to be inside you when you do that again.”
“Then get inside,” I snapped, reaching for him.
His chest was a wall of glorious muscle, and I sat up to lick my way across it while his arm hooked around my waist, yanking me to the edge of the bed and depositing me there while he leaned back to shove down his pants, to kick off his shoes.
“Off,” I moaned, pushing up his shirt, yanking it up and over his head, forgetting all about his injuries, not that he seemed slowed by them in the least.
He paused to haul it off over his head.
I didn’t pause. I was at work on the tight, black boxer briefs.
And thank fuck, they hit the floor, his cock springing free, hard and straight with moisture glistening on the tip. I leaned forward, licked it off.
“Fuck!”
A burst of movement, and then I was launched backward onto the bed, Leo on top of me, his eyes blazing, his jaw tight, sweat sheening his forehead.
His cock nudged my entrance, started to push in.
“Wait,” I exclaimed.
He paused, expression sobering. “You don’t want to?” he asked, gently cupping my cheek. “Is it too soon?”
Love filled every inch of my soul.
God. He was just so wonderful.
“No, baby,” I said and watched his face fall. “No,” I hurried to say. “That’s not what I meant. No, to the too soon. Yes, to the I want to. I just . . .” I was naked with the man I loved between my thighs, his cock an inch inside me. It would be so easy to just keep going.
But I wasn’t on birth control.
“You need a condom,” I blurted.
His mouth dropped open, and my lips parted on a disappointed groan when he pulled out and turned toward the nightstand, possessions hitting the floor as he searched through the drawer.
Then he was sighing in relief, or maybe that was me.
Either way, he was tearing the condom open with his teeth, rolling it down the length of his cock, nudging me back. “Tell me you’re with me,” he said, or maybe begged.
“Get inside me,” I demanded, wrapping my thighs around him.
He didn’t wait.
He wasn’t particularly gentle.
He thrust deep, and I gasped at the intrusion, my pussy clenching, my head falling back. “Leo,” I moaned.
“Fuck, baby,” he said, stroking into me, fast and steady and driving me perilously close to the edge of pleasure. “That was as good as I imagined.” He nipped my bottom lip. “Do it again,” he demanded, gripping my ass in one hand, pounding into me, and changing the angle.
Just enough so that every nerve inside me stood up at rigid attention.
My breathing hitched.
I moaned his name again.
And then again.
And all the while, he kept moving, mercilessly driving me up and up and up until my orgasm barreled through me with the force of a Mack Truck.
I was blind. I was limp.
I was a being of only bliss.
“Jess,” he groaned, his lips on my neck. My name on his lips sparked another wave of pleasure, my pussy clenching around him, and then he thrusted once, twice more before stiffening, my name tumbling out again and again as he stroked into me until he was spent and limp and collapsed on top of me.
“I love you,” he murmured.
“I love—” I froze, reality slowly intruding. I shoved him—as gently as possible—off me. “Oh my God! Your chest. I— Are you hurt?” Panic wove through me, and I spotted my cell on the ground, reached for it. “I need to call Olive. She or Linc need to check you out and make sure—”
His mouth curved.
His arms banded around me, knocking my phone to the mattress. “God, you’re beautiful,” he rasped, cupping my cheeks.
“Leo—”
A chuckle. “Not until I’m inside you.”
My mouth dropped open. “Leo!”
Fuck, he was sexy when he smiled like that.
And no sooner had that thought crossed my mind than his mouth was on mine, making the worry drift away, forgetting his injury and Daniel and the other bad guys that were out there.
It was just me and Leo.
Our kisses. Our bodies. Our courage in finding a way out of the darkness. In finding a way to each other.
For now, that was the only thing that mattered.
Chapter Thirty-One
Leo
The knock at the door was insistent.
Jesse finally slept in my arms, and despite the ache in my shoulder from the exercise I probably shouldn’t have participated in—twice—but exercise I wouldn’t ever regret, I felt better than I had in a long time.
No more fear yanking me down into a black hole of what-ifs.
No more thinking about all the things that could go wrong. Because they could go wrong, they had gone wrong. Everything could change in an instant, and lying to myself about the feelings I had for Jesse wouldn’t make a difference.
I loved her.
And even if all I felt was friendship, losing Jess would be devastating.
There was a reason I’d come to Georgia, why I’d left my team and joined hers. I couldn’t live without her.
So, I wasn’t going to.
Luckily, she’d forgiven me because otherwise, I would have had to go on a campaign for her heart, and that might be—
The knock came again, just as I was realizing that I was lucky that she’d forgiven me, but also that she deserved her man to campaign for her heart, whether or not I’d already won it. She deserved the romance and caring, and I knew that I owed it to her to prove to the world how much she meant to me.
So that she would never ever doubt my love for her.
Carefully, I slipped out of bed, snagged my boxer briefs, and yanked them up, moving to the door and tugging it open before whoever was on the other side could knock a third time.
“Jesse’s sleeping,” I snapped before I even saw who it was.
Who it was—for the record—was Hannah.
Her brows lifted, her gaze dipping down and back up. She whistled softly. “Damn, Jess did good.”
I glared.
She shrugged. “As I’ve said before. I’m gay, not dead. I can appreciate the pretty.”
I snorted, closing the door behind me so my team leader didn’t wake up my woman. “What do you need?”
“First”—she inclined her head to the wall, and I saw she’d brought the wheelchair back . . . joy—“humor Olive because it makes Linc’s life easier.” A pause, her hazel eyes waiting for an answer. Stifling a sigh, I nodded. “Second”—those eyes went deadly, demonstrating in a heartbeat why this woman led our team—“if you hurt her again, I will cut your balls off and shove them down your throat.”
Jesus, the way her gaze dropped down to my crotch had that particular body part attempting to suck itself back into my body.
But also, I was a fucking KTS agent. I didn’t cower from threats, though my hands were clenched into fists at my side, trying to resist the urge to protect my dick from her laser-eyed gla
re. Instead, I held her gaze and said, “I will destroy anyone who hurts her, even if the fucker who does it is me.”
Silence.
Our stares locked.
Then Hannah smiled. “Good.”
The door to our section of the sleeping quarters clicked open, and Lily strode through, her face breaking into a smile upon seeing us.
She strode over to me, lifted her hand for a high-five. “You did the deed!”
I snorted, rolled my eyes, even as she grabbed my palm, so it smacked against hers.
“Lily,” Hannah warned.
She tossed her ponytail over her shoulder and smirked at Hannah. “I didn’t mean them commencing bang o’clock. Which obviously . . .”
Hannah coughed.
Lily cleared her throat. “I meant”—her eyes came to mine, sparkling with humor—“that you finally admitted that you’re in love with Jesse.”
I narrowed my eyes at her.
She smiled innocently.
“It was your idea to lock us in the conference room, wasn’t it?”
Lily blew on her knuckles, buffed them on her shoulder. “Someone needed a push.”
“That was more than a push,” I muttered, “that was toppling us into a snake pit.”
Hannah snorted.
“You weren’t any better,” I grumbled. “Considering you were texting every minute with advice.”
“Well, your dumbass wasn’t going to get there alone, was it?”
That was true.
“I can be a little stubborn.”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “She didn’t want to let you go, you know. Even when she told you to go, she didn’t really want it. She wanted you to fight for her, to look into yourself and see that she was your person.”
“I know.” A beat. “Now.”
Lily laughed, slinging her arm around Hannah’s shoulders and squeezing tight. “He’s the muscle of our team, not the brains.”
Chuckles rose in my throat. “I should probably be offended by that—”
“But you’re not gonna be.” Lily smiled, dropped her arm, and hugged me tight, pressing a kiss to my cheek. “I’m glad you finally got your head out of your ass. I wouldn’t want to lose you”—a poke to my middle—“or your abs.”