That fucking last job.
Russia.
Damn it.
They’d been so deep in their cover of husband and wife that during that last job, the public kisses, the handholding, the public displays of affection that had been a part of their ruse had come close to spilling over into the privacy of the apartment base they called home.
She’d almost surrendered to the desire she’d seen in John’s eyes every time he looked at her. Almost surrendered to the craving want for him that consumed her.
Four weeks out of job completion and they’d come so close. So close. Close enough they’d tempted fate and gone to bed naked one night.
In case their target was suspicious about them, they’d told each other. In case someone was monitoring their apartment, their married-couple cover would hold up.
It was a bullshit excuse. Their apartment had been clean. Dani had swept it herself.
But they’d climbed into bed naked all the same.
The second, the very second their naked bodies had brushed between the sheets, the ruse had been shot.
They hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other.
Had spent long languid hours exploring each other’s mouths with their own. Longer hours exploring each other’s bodies the same way.
And in amongst the exploration and kissing, they’d murmured of leaving the life they led behind together. Of escaping it all…
If it hadn’t been for a call from the director with new intel, those long hours would have—she knew without a doubt—ended with John inside her.
For the next four weeks, they’d skirted each other. Avoided touching even in public, even as their eyes spoke of pleasure beyond comprehension. Pleasure and dreams and a fantasy two trained killers without hearts were never meant to long for.
And then John had received a call from the director.
And she’d gotten her call from the director.
They’d ended their ruse of a happily married couple and their working relationship with Dani sinking her blade into John’s side, between the second and third ribs, while she’d straddled his naked hips.
Marriage over.
She’d failed to kill him.
He’d failed to retaliate in kind as he’d fought back.
But he’d left her half dead with a promise he’d finish her off if she came at him again.
To this day, she questioned why he’d let her live.
He could have killed her.
But he hadn’t.
Shattered, beyond numb, she’d finished their assignment in Russia without him.
By the time she checked in with the director, John Tennant was no more.
He’d left Russia. Left ASIO.
Disappeared.
For reasons that petrified her, his disappearance had torn at what was left of her soul more than all the lives she’d ended.
The fact he hadn’t put a bullet between her eyes the second he saw her here, in the town he’d made his home for four years, worried her.
But that worry hadn’t been powerful enough to stop her doing what she wanted to do to him the moment she watched him stride into the pub.
Kiss him. Feel his breath fan over her teeth, her tongue. Feel his hard, agile body against hers.
Feel his heart beating next to hers.
Oh God, if this was the very last thing she ever experienced in her life, if he pulled his Glock and shot her dead now, right now, she would still die knowing she was exactly where she wanted to be.
With her husband.
A man once Australia’s most dangerous spy.
Closing her eyes, she relaxed into John—no, Charlie’s body. Smoothed her hands up his back, tangled her fingers in his hair and deepened the kiss.
Sought out his tongue.
Held her breath when he kept it from her, his body stiff, his hands gripping her hips with punishing force.
Oh, no. No, he was going to—
He slid his tongue against hers.
She moaned before she could stop herself.
At the sound, Charlie groaned and took completely possession of her mouth.
He hauled her harder to his hips, his groin. His tongue battled hers, the hunger behind the assault making her head swim.
It was never good to be this vulnerable, this open. It could only end in grief and pain. But she had no defense against the effect John Tennant—Charlie Baynard—had on her.
Never had.
From the second she’d laid eyes on him in the director’s office in Canberra all those years ago.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about!”
At the laughing encouragement, uttered by the gay heli-musterer Ryan Taylor—a man currently dating the recently outed and newly appointed deputy prime minister—Charlie pulled away from the kiss.
For a split second, Dani wanted to turn to the heli-musterer and break his jaw.
Instead, she sought out Charlie’s eyes. Searched their hazel depths.
He returned her scrutiny, his expression revealing nothing.
If it wasn’t for the fierce way he gripped her hips and the rigid length of his erection grinding against the curve of her sex, she would have no clue what he was feeling.
To be honest, she still didn’t. Not on an emotional level.
On a physical one, however…
Did he need to fuck her as much as she needed to fuck him?
Or were there other physical activities on his mind?
Her heart tripped faster at the question and its missing answer.
“John,” she whispered, staring at him.
Without a word, he released her. Let her go and stepped back. An abrupt distancing.
Ryan protested. “Boo.”
The doctor, Matt Corvin—once targeted in Somalia by militants while working as a Doctor Without Borders doc, and whose ex-fighter pilot wife was eight weeks away from giving birth—smacked the heli-musterer up the back of the head, knocking Ryan’s cowboy hat off in the process. “Shut up, Taylor.”
Dani registered all this without taking her gaze from Charlie.
Charlie, for his part, only looked at her as well.
“Charlie.” She emphasized his new name. Her intel told her he’d had it for four years. “Take me home.”
His nostrils flared. A fraction. Enough to tell her he was fighting with himself. A minute tell she used to tease him about during their mission in Russia.
The mission that had started it all.
Man, how different would her life be, his life be, if the Australian PM hadn’t insulted the Russian president during a G8 Summit?
“Please?”
He frowned at the word. Please wasn’t a word she’d used often in their interaction. Not unless it was part of their ruse.
That she did so now could end their reunion.
Reunion. Huh. Not exactly the correct word for what this is.
Hitching the strap of her bag—in which was her favourite knife, her favourite sub-compact Berretta, her second favourite pair of sunglasses and her favourite lip gloss—farther up her shoulder, she shifted on her feet. The tiny scalpel nestled in its harness in the waistband of her jeans, just below the base of her spine, pressed into her flesh. Reminding her why she was here.
It wasn’t to kiss her one-time partner.
“Take her home, Baynard,” Evan Alexander—a man once slotted to receive the Order of Australia before a helicopter crash almost killed him—ordered. The fact he spoke at all impressed Dani. Every bit of intel she had on him stated he was introverted, reclusive and quiet.
Take me home, John, she repeated in her head, watching her ex-partner.
She didn’t want his friends, the men he’d allowed to get to know him—even if it was only a small part of what was essentially a lie—to be exposed to their interaction any longer than was necessary.
Coming here, surprising him at the pub… Well, she’d always used her flair for the dramatic as a way to unsettle her target.
&nbs
p; And now she’d found him, now she had him again…
“C’mon, baby cakes,” she murmured, letting her lips curl. “Aren’t you just dying to know what’s going to happen when we get there?”
His nostrils flared again. The tiniest reaction to her goad.
And then he snared her right hand—the closest one she had to a dominant hand—and flung a grin at his friends. “Consider me out of action for the rest of the weekend. Don’t come knocking. In fact, forget I even exist.”
Ryan threw back his head and laughed. Matt echoed him. Evan rolled his eyes and smiled.
“Ready.” Charlie tugged her hard and fast to his body, overtly smutty delight on his face, ice in his eyes. “Wife?”
Dani couldn’t stop herself swallowing. Nor could she stop the wholly primitive constricting of her sex.
Damn it. John Tennant, Charlie Baynard, whatever the hell he called himself now, still pushed all her buttons.
Coming here, letting him know she was here, actually interacting with him, might be far more dangerous than she’d thought.
Slicking her tongue along her bottom lip, she oozed as much sinfully evocative presence as she could. “Ready.”
“Lacky,” he shouted over his shoulder without tearing his stare from hers, “make sure those pastries get to the cop shop, okay?”
“Sure thing, Senior Constable,” the man behind the bar called back.
With a slow grin, Charlie touched his trigger finger to her bottom lip, winked and then pivoted on his heel and strode through the pub, pulling her along behind him.
She drew level with him by the time they made it to the door, flicked her wrist out of his grip with practiced ease and slid her hand down his back. Slipped her fingers between his body and the waistband of his trousers.
Inched them lower.
Hot, smooth flesh. Nothing but hot, smooth flesh.
No boxers. No briefs.
No blade either. Or 9mm semi-auto.
Nothing but Charlie’s skin under her fingers.
Wow.
Had he really changed that much in the last four years?
Was the man beside her now not the man she’d come all this way for?
And why was that idea far more disquieting than it should be? Why did the idea of an unarmed John Tennant make her heart race in a way it never had before?
“Have a good one, Senior Constable,” a voice yelled behind them as they reached the door. “Give ’er everything ya got.”
Charlie flung a grin over his shoulder, his unreadable eyes catching hers as he did so. “I plan to, Lacky.”
Dani’s breath caught.
Whoever this man was, whatever he called himself, he was still the ruthless, dangerous man she’d known.
Thank fucking God for that.
Brutal heat slammed into her the second they stepped from the pub. Not even the shade of the building’s awning offered any real alleviation from the extreme temperature.
The glare from the sinking sun, a ball of blood-orange fire unlike any she’d seen in any part of the world, stunned her eyes and, without thinking, she reached into her bag for her sunglasses.
The world turned to a hot blur of red and brown and blue. Excruciating pain detonated in her wrist, followed instantly by her back and the back of her head as she was slammed against the outside wall of the pub.
Smashed against it by Charlie.
He pinned her there, one crushing hand ramming hers—the one she’d reached into her bag with—to the wall beside her head, the other wrapped around the base of her throat.
Cold hazel eyes drilled into hers. His body pressed hard to hers, one corded thigh driven between her thighs, imprisoning her against the brick wall.
A muscle in his stubble-covered jaw ticked. “Uh-uh, sweet cheeks.”
Lust hotter than the day rushed through Dani. Lust and fear and relief. He was still the man she was after.
Staring into his eyes, she cocked an eyebrow. “Sunglasses, baby cakes. I was reaching for my sunglasses.”
He didn’t move.
Held her that way.
His grips on her wrist and throat didn’t relax. The steely length of his thigh muscle ground harder against her spread sex.
Her clit responded to the ungentle pressure. Her body responded to her imprisonment. Adrenaline rushed through her. Her heart quickened and then slowed. Her breath did the same. Her stomach clenched. Her nipples pebbled.
Charlie’s fingers around her throat closed tighter. “If you’re here to kill me, Dani, you’re going to need more than sunglasses.”
She twitched her lips, rolling her hips to rub her clit harder to his thigh before she could stop herself. “You must be happy to see me, John, because I know you don’t have a gun in your pocket. Or at your back. And the Glock on your hip isn’t big enough to be rubbing against my—”
“Baynard?”
The harried shout right beside them, along with the thumping thuds of booted feet on the wooden floor, made Dani jump.
Charlie released her with fluid speed and turned to the man—the doctor—now hurrying from the pub.
“What’s up, Doc?” Charlie called at the man’s back just as Matt ran down the steps leading to the road.
Matt skidded to a halt and spun to face Charlie. “We’ve got an emergency. Out on Cobar Road. A road train hit a 4WD. Family of four trapped inside. The road train has flipped. The driver is also trapped.”
“Shit.”
Dani blinked. The open concern in Charlie’s voice surprised her. When had she ever heard him speak with such a tone?
Without looking back at her, he ran.
Dani blinked again.
What the hell?
“Sorry, Mrs. Baynard,” another voice uttered beside her as Evan suddenly burst from the pub and ran after Charlie. “You can have him back later.”
Dani stood motionless. Watching the three men all run in the same direction across the red-dust covered road. Heading…where?
More pounding footfalls vibrated through the wooden floor and she turned to her right to find Ryan sprinting from the pub.
“You too?” The question left her before she realized she’d uttered it.
He half-turned, jogging in a nimble backwards gait. “The road train was carrying over 200 head of Farpoint Creek cattle. While your hubby, Evan and the doc deal with the accident, I’ll make sure the livestock still alive are okay.”
“Oi, De Vries?”
At Charlie’s shout, distant but still commanding, Dani jerked her stare away from the heli-musterer.
Her ex-partner pointed at her, still running for his unknown destination, but now in a backward jog like Ryan. “Think about why you’re here,” he called, his expression unreadable. “And then think about if you still want to be here by the time I get back.”
He spun around and took off, his threat—for that’s what it was—hanging in the dusty air.
Dani stood motionless, watching the four men go.
Ryan threw himself into a beat-up ute. Matt and Evan climbed into a 4WD. Red dirt and dust spewed up from their spinning wheels and both vehicles sped away.
By the time it settled, Charlie was no longer visible.
For some reason, Dani felt…cheated.
Unsettled.
Discombobulated.
Which concerned her immensely.
She didn’t like feeling any of those things. But what she disliked most of all was the new John.
Charlie Baynard.
She didn’t like that he seemed the kind of person everyone liked. A nice guy.
The kind of man she’d thought she’d glimpsed under the ruthless spy exterior years ago.
At least when she’d believed her ex-partner was still a ruthless assassin, the reason for being here was easier to come to terms with.
But now…
Now the thought of Charlie dead tore at something she didn’t think she still had—a heart.
Shit.
Note from Lexxie
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About Lexxie
Award-winning romance author Lexxie Couper started writing when she was six, and hasn't stopped since. She's not a deviant, but she does have a deviant's imagination, and a desire to entertain readers with her words. Add the two together and you get erotic romances that can make you laugh, cry, shake with fear, or tremble with desire…sometimes all at once.
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eBooks by Lexxie Couper
Visit Lexxie’s website at
http://www.lexxiecouper.com
Dare, a Contemporary Romance series
1. Triple Dare
2. Dare Me
Stimulated, a Contemporary Romance series
1. Blowing It Off
2. Revving It Up
3. Switching It On
4. Plugging It In
Dangerous Desire, an Erotic Contemporary Romance series
1. The Bad Boy Next Door
2. The Good Girl In My Bed
3. The Bad Boy In Cuffs
Farpoint Creek Cattle Station, a Contemporary Romance series
1. Outback Princess
2. Outback Cowboy
3. Outback Master
4. Outback Lovers
Heart of Fame – Stage Right, a Contemporary Romance series
1. A Single Knight
2. Compliance
3. Balls Up
4. Lust’s Rhythm
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