Every Last Breath

by Juno Rushdan

  She’d listed classified operations, and he needed to know why.

  He faced her, almost bringing their bodies flush. His physical awareness of her was so palpable, desire was a live wire crackling through him. But after reading the ASD card, he was reluctant to lay a finger on her. Better to let her initiate contact in the same manner he’d let her determine their proximity.

  “I don’t want you to have the wrong impression about me from my emergency responder card.” She wrung her hands but met his eyes. “I don’t want you to think you can’t touch me. You can. I want you to, if you want to. I-I know you wouldn’t hurt me.”

  She put a palm flat on his sternum. Her slender fingers feathered across his chest, stroking him like he was a piece of fragile glass that might break.

  The gentleness was startling. With a target, he stayed numb. Impervious. But when she touched him, a tenderness he didn’t know he possessed—and couldn’t afford to keep—bloomed.

  This was just a means to an end, nothing more. He couldn’t forget that.

  “In your journal,” he said, keeping his tone curious rather than accusatory, as gentle as he knew how, “why do you have missions written down?”

  The color bled from her face. She lowered her head, curling her fingers against her chest. If only he had a playlist of moves to loosen her up. Maybe he needed to act naturally but take everything down from a ten to a two. He brushed his knuckles up her arms, forcing himself to go slowly, and looked for the subtlest indication that his advance was unwanted.

  She relaxed in degrees—her clenched hand opened, fingertips skimming his thighs, and she looked up at him. “There were whispers Novak’s death wasn’t suicide. A couple of nights ago, I started thinking about other missions where something had gone wrong.”

  “Why all the drawings?” he asked.

  “I have trouble sleeping.” Her voice was a whisper. “Doodling relaxes me.”

  Inching higher, he caressed her shoulders. Her genuine warmth, her vibrancy reeled him in, daring him to act on baser impulses. “But why a maze with the head of a bull at the center?”

  “It’s from the Greek myth about Daedalus and the Minotaur. The king of Crete had Daedalus, a brilliant architect, construct a labyrinth the Minotaur—a violent monster, half bull, half human—could never escape. Those missions are pieces of a puzzle, like working your way out of a labyrinth. Only I’m missing a clue.”

  What if with enough time and resources, she could find the mole?

  He reached up and hesitated, giving her a chance to retreat, and when she didn’t, he cupped her face. The silkiness of her skin sent a jolt through him.

  She gave a shy smile and shivered with an enticing vulnerability that made him ache. Made every muscle in his body tighten with an appetite that was both familiar and foreign.

  Ah, hell. He needed to rein things in, not take this too far, so he dropped his hand and propped his forearms on the wall above her head. She ran a palm up his torso, angling her face toward his shoulder and—with a long, deep inhalation—smelled him.

  Chapter 06

  Wolf Trap, Virginia

  Thursday, July 4, 8:40 p.m. EDT

  With Gideon standing close, his arms resting on the wall above her head, the urge to smell him was overwhelming. Before she could stop herself, Willow drew her nose to the crook of his shoulder and inhaled.

  God, he smelled good, warm and lemony. Not a sharp citrus, but closer to the mellow freshness of the citronnelle soap Ivy and her wife had brought on their last visit, and there was a manly hint of musk that made her toes curl. There should be dryer sheets that smelled like him.

  Her cheeks burned hot with shame. Whenever she stood too close to someone, she had that mortifying compulsion. Crammed elevators were the worst. She avoided them at all costs.

  “Did you enjoy that?” Gideon asked.

  Slamming her eyes shut, she couldn’t bear to look at him and see ridicule, or worse, pity. “Smelling you? Or the way you smelled?”

  “Both.” His breath licked her face, sending a rush of tingles through her.

  She wanted to absorb the air, taste him on her tongue. Pressing her lips together, she risked looking up at him. A bright smile spread across his mouth. Lightness filled her like helium in a balloon, and she laughed, comforted he wasn’t staring as if she were a weirdo.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t help it when I’m in very close proximity to someone.”

  He lowered his arms. “So it’s not just an effect I have on you. I’m a little disappointed.”

  “Don’t be. You affect me.” Oh boy, did he ever.

  His gaze dipped to her mouth. “I liked it. The way you smelled me. Indulge any time.”

  Relief bloomed in her chest, and the pull toward him intensified.

  “I thought you had to use the bathroom. What are you doing down here in my room?”

  “I was curious. About you.”

  Her fingers slid over the sculpted muscle of his arm. She was not only still touching him but had groped her way to his bicep. She dropped her hand, grazing his. Long fingers stroked hers in a feathery caress, drawing her belly tight, and she ached for more.

  Now primed, she could handle lots more. She clutched his hand, not wanting this to end, and met his gaze. His eyes were mesmerizing, pale yet vivid in color at the same time.

  She was staring but couldn’t stop. He leaned in, bringing his mouth close.

  Panic bubbled up inside her. Affection was welcomed, but the last time a guy had kissed her, it’d felt like an angry eel had been unleashed in her mouth.

  “A ten-second French kiss transfers eighty million germs.”

  That gross fact had stopped any other guys from attempting to swap spit. Not that there had been many who’d tried. With her long work hours and sick father, she didn’t get out much.

  Gideon looked amused. She hoped he wasn’t laughing at her.

  He caressed her lip with his thumb, and something inside her loosened, while other things tightened. “I’ll take my chances,” he said. “You’re worth the risk.”

  There went that little tug to him again. “The study also showed that the more partners kissed, the higher the likelihood of them having a similar profile colonizing their tongue.”

  “So you’re saying if you like the way I kiss, I should do it a lot.”

  Is that what she was saying?

  His gentle fingertips stroked the hollow of her throat with titillating lightness, and butterflies collided in her belly. “Are you afraid of me now?”

  She liked this side of Gideon. Liked it a lot. “No.”

  “Do you want me to stop?” His voice was gruff and low, his hair tickling her face.

  “No.” An overwhelming need for more, of him and from him, rushed over her.

  He lifted her chin and brushed his lips across hers—a sweet, devastating tease that drew her closer with anticipation—and his tongue slipped inside her mouth.

  She stiffened, but the unhurried press of his lips, the caress of his tongue, the firmness of his hands had her melting. The mash of mouths and unsettling amount of saliva she’d experienced in the past couldn’t compare to this sensual onslaught. She’d taken Gideon for a man who tore into things rather than savoring them, but she couldn’t have been more wrong.

  His fingers trailed down and caressed her breast through her clothes, his mouth growing hungrier, feeding her own appetite for him. Everything inside her was turned on, lit brighter than a one-hundred-watt LED bulb.

  A groan rumbled through him, and with startling abruptness, he broke off the kiss. She rested her head back on the wall, uncertain what to do, hoping the moment wouldn’t end there.

  “Are we going to have sex?” Whenever she’d been alone with a man in a bedroom, he kissed her and endeavored to have sex with her. But this was different. Gideon was
different.

  He drew back slightly. “Do you want to?”

  “I’m not sure.” She swallowed thickly. Did she want to be a notch on his bedpost, become a for one night only girl? “I tried it once, and it wasn’t pleasant. He just shoved it in, grunted on top of me for a few minutes, and then it was over.”

  Simon had smelled like oatmeal. It should’ve been the first indicator sex would be equally as horrid. His eel-tongued kisses should’ve been the second.

  Gideon’s brows drew together. “You’ve only been with one guy?”

  “Yes.”

  Gideon pulled away, letting her go and stepping back toward the door.

  “What’s wrong?”

  A loud banging erupted from the top of the stairs. “Willow! No boys in your room!”

  The one time she managed to get a guy she wanted in her room, her father was spoiling it.

  “Willow! What are you two doing down there?”

  Sighing, she adjusted her clothes. “Gideon wanted to see my room. We’ll be right up!”

  “I bet he wanted to see your room. Get up here. Now!” Harsh knocking resounded.

  Her father must be slamming his baseball bat on the floor.

  “I’m twenty-five,” she said to Gideon. “You’d think he’d stop treating me like a child.”

  “Why did you write Babel, my mission to get Daedalus?” His cold eyes shot to her book.

  The warmth in him had evaporated, replaced with a lethal edge of menace. He’d reverted to the hard, killing machine who stalked the halls of the Gray Box. What happened?

  “Nothing went wrong on that op,” he said. “I completed the mission.”

  She smoothed her hair with a trembling hand. “You eliminated the target, Daedalus, which was your primary objective, but you failed to retrieve data he had on a jump drive.”

  Rocking back on his heels, he crossed his arms, gaze pinned to the floor.

  “You never completed your debriefing because…” His wife had been killed. The shock had thrown everyone off, and the detail had been overlooked by Daniel, the analyst assigned.

  “Willow!” Hammering resonated through the wood floor above.

  She wished she’d given her father the glass of whiskey.

  Chapter 07

  Wolf Trap, Virginia

  Thursday, July 4, 8:55 p.m. EDT

  The Daedalus mission had fallen through the cracks.

  Young operatives didn’t lose spouses to death. Divorce took them. Most black ops agents screwed up their marriages with secrecy, disappearing on missions for unspecified periods of time. It was tough on partners and incomprehensible to regular civilians such as in-laws.

  The car accident, Kelli’s death, had shaken everyone. What no one else at the Gray Box knew was that his wife hadn’t been in the vehicle alone. The cop on-site had told Gideon the cause of the accident was a combination of rainy road conditions and distraction while driving.

  At first, he hadn’t understood, but the cop painted the picture for him. His wife in the passenger’s seat, no seatbelt on. Male driver, also deceased, with his privates exposed.

  Gideon had later stumbled on the divorce papers inside her Jeep’s glove box and had paid her best friend a visit, demanding the truth. The affair had gone on for two years.

  The guy had also been married with kids but had decided to leave his wife for Kelli.

  Gideon had just gotten back from the Daedalus mission and hadn’t seen her in weeks. When he suggested that they both take time off to spend together, she’d shot him down with excuses. One of many was that her Jeep needed an oil change and tune-up, and she insisted he handle it and had taken his truck.

  After learning Kelli had died while giving her lover a blow job, he hadn’t bothered reading the police report. Maybe it was time he did.

  “Willow! Come upstairs!” Her father banged something hard on the floor.

  She hung her head and wrapped her arms around her waist, hugging herself. Gideon ached to finish what he’d started but stuffed his hands in his pockets, retreating to the doorway.

  The usual disconnect wasn’t there. When he looked at her, he didn’t see a target or a mission. Only an exquisite woman, tender and sweet, ready to open herself. She was giving him the precious gift of her trust—a miracle and a mistake inextricably tangled.

  He was a bad man, who did bad things for a living.

  Screwing to get off was easy, but he wouldn’t screw over Willow. He was capable of gruesome, cold-blooded stuff, but there was a line he wouldn’t cross. Not with her. He respected her too much. Where in the hell had his sudden pang of conscience come from?

  Tomorrow, he’d swap targets with Maddox and contend with Ares.

  “We should go upstairs,” Willow said, not looking at him.

  “I’m sorry.” He wanted to say more but lacked the right words. “Your father sounds anxious.” Gideon understood and wouldn’t want his daughter in a basement with a guy like him either. Stepping out of the bedroom, he extended an arm for her to walk ahead, and she did.

  At the top of the landing, her dad had a baseball bat on his lap. “No boys in your room.”

  Willow hurried up the stairs, her movement graceful, not making a sound. She slid around her dad and wheeled his chair down the hall.

  Gideon came up behind them, hovering between the kitchen and living room, while she settled her father in front of a dining tray, facing a forty-inch television.

  “There are rules for a reason. You’ll respect them,” her dad said. “No boys downstairs.”

  “Gideon isn’t a boy.” She handed him a fork, her face flushed and lips a deep pink from kissing. “He’s a coworker, Dad.”

  “Bullshit. If that boy can whip out nerd code, I can shit gold.” Her father took the fork.

  “I’m not an analyst, sir. I manage problems of a physical nature.”

  “Physical, huh?” Her father eyed him hard. “Any good at it?”

  “He has thirteen commendations,” Willow said.

  Gideon schooled his features, not letting his unease show. Thirteen included his time at the CIA. Was his entire personnel file logged in her head? He hoped she didn’t try to hack into the sealed parts, if she hadn’t already. The idea of her reading the redacted sections made him squirm on the inside. Willow caught him staring at her.

  “I’m not a stalker,” she said. “I remember facts, figures, dates.”

  Her dad nodded. “Do yourself a favor and stay away from this one. Everything gets locked up in that steel trap upstairs. It’ll come back to bite your ass in the middle of the night. Her mother had the same thing, woke me up at all hours. Steel trap.” He stuffed a forkful of food in his mouth and gagged. “Don’t misunderstand. You shouldn’t be sleeping with my daughter.”

  Willow smoothed down her skirt. “Dad, stop. He isn’t interested in sleeping with me.”

  Mr. Harper threw his fork on the plate. “I don’t want you sleeping with my daughter, but why aren’t you interested? Think you’re too good for her?”

  “No, sir. She’s beautiful and brilliant and has a big heart. She’s too good for me.”

  Willow’s wide eyes met his. The urge to touch her, to taste those lips again, rushed up like a riptide, but he eased himself toward the door.

  “I like this kid. He’s got good answers.” Her dad smiled. “You drink whiskey?”

  “Yes, sir, but not tonight.” Gideon put his hand on the doorknob, fighting the desire to stay. “I need to get going.”

  “You’re welcome back to have a drink with me. The ole warden”—he hiked a thumb at Willow—“won’t deny me, if I have company.”

  “Dad.” Willow waved a hand at him. “You’re giving him the wrong impression, making our home sound like jail.”

  “Sorry.” The old guy cleared his throat. “Let me clarify; I
hate ambiguity. Visiting hours here in the slammer are anytime you bring a bottle of whiskey.”

  Gideon chuckled. “Willow, what time should I pick you up tomorrow?”

  “No need. I can drive my dad’s van.” She lowered her head. Chocolate-brown wisps of hair stroked her cheeks. He itched to sweep them from her face and smooth them into place.

  “Nobody drives Betty but me.” Her father ate another painful bite of food.

  “I’ve been leaving at five to work on the program.” Still, she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  Gideon wanted to slug himself for messing with her emotions. The cause was just, the method proven to produce results, yet he felt lower than pond scum. And not the stuff that floated at the top but the sludge at the bottom.

  He opened the door. “Can we make it eight?” The garage where her car had been taken opened at six. He wanted to be sure the inspection was thorough.

  “Okay.” She finally looked up, her gaze crashing into his. The unguarded look on her face, the beautiful honesty in her expression, took hold of him like a prisoner.

  His judgment was clouded, and his presence was only doing damage. He needed to get out of there, away from her. Gideon stepped across the threshold.

  “Good night.” He closed the door, took long strides to his car, and peeled off.

  Hurrying away after reeling her in rubbed him all kinds of wrong. Guilt and self-loathing knotted in his chest. Tomorrow, he’d talk to her and at the very least give a better apology.

  He drove to the storage unit he’d opened while Kelli was alive and believed he still worked for the CIA, since the existence of the Gray Box was classified. Whenever he’d come home with injuries, she’d ask questions and search his things. His heavily filtered answers pushed their marriage from troubled to terminal—although the demise was probably inevitable the moment he’d agreed to marry Kelli. With her dogged determination, it was only a matter of time before she’d find his go bag hidden in the house, so he’d moved it to the storage unit.

  Every operative had a go bag with international passports in different names and cash in a variety of currencies. Sometimes missions kicked off with no notice, and you had to be ready.