by Elle Kennedy
And now . . . now the woman was yet again diving headfirst into another Jim Morgan adventure. For Callaghan.
Love made women so damn weak. Destroyed them like a slow-moving cancer, eating away at healthy cells, attacking organs, taking what was once an intelligent, independent human being and turning her into a pitiful, sickly shell of a woman no longer capable of surviving on her own.
Once upon a time, Noelle had almost been destroyed by love too. But she’d managed to save herself, emerging on the other side stronger and more powerful than ever.
She just hoped Isabel was smart enough to do the same.
“Did you know Abby and Kane got married?” Isabel’s change of subject was more than a little abrupt.
“I did.” Noelle watched as the other woman began to pace the reddish brown rug in the center of the bedroom. “Big fucking mistake, in my humble opinion.”
Isabel laughed without much humor. “There is nothing humble about you. And I think you’re wrong. I think Abby made the right decision. Kane loves her.”
“For now.”
“Forever.”
“Oh, honey, don’t tell me you believe in fairy tales.”
Isabel quit pacing and sank down on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know what I believe in anymore.”
The note of sorrow in her voice evoked a twinge of discomfort. This wasn’t the kind of shit Noelle talked to her girls about. They didn’t discuss feelings or do one another’s hair or have fucking pillow fights. They talked business. She gave them an assignment, they went out and accomplished their task, then came back to brief her. End of story.
Noelle put out her cigarette in the ceramic ashtray on the window ledge. “I’m already going above and beyond for Jim by tapping my sources to locate Lassiter. Anything more than that—I’m sorry, but I have no interest in wasting my time trying to find that bastard.”
“You hate him.” Isabel suddenly looked perplexed.
Noelle didn’t answer.
“I mean, you really hate him. Loathe him even.” The blonde’s tone grew more and more troubled. “I assumed it was some sort of rivalry, that maybe you’d crossed paths in the past and rubbed each other the wrong way. But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”
“It’s whatever you want it to be, Isabel. Now, I need to make a few calls.”
“Is that your subtle way of ordering me to leave?”
“I’m not trying to be subtle.” Her jaw hardened. “Leave, Isabel.”
Her operative’s lips tightened. “You’re a real bitch—you know that?”
You don’t know the half of it.
Noelle waited until Isabel was gone, then headed for the walk-in closet. She hadn’t had a chance to change since she’d arrived at the ranch, having been ushered into the living room by Isabel as if the damn sky was falling. For fuck’s sake. Jim Morgan was off the grid—hardly a national emergency.
She unzipped her knee-length leather boots, extracting two knives and a small derringer pistol from the custom sheaths sewn into the footwear. Her fitted black jacket was next, a garment that was nearly as dangerous as she was; it, too, housed a multitude of weapons.
Her tight pants and tank top, she kept on, but she didn’t bother removing the various surprises underneath.
It was always prudent to be prepared around the man she was about to see.
She moved soundlessly. She’d been trained by the best, after all. Trained to be invisible, trained to be deadly, trained to protect herself at all costs. As the memories rose to the surface, they brought forth a surge of fury. These days she didn’t get hung up on the sorrow or the grief associated with her loss.
Just the rage.
The hallway was bathed in shadows. No light spilled beneath any of the closed doors. Callaghan and Jim’s other man, the rookie, had crashed for the night. Isabel was in the room next to the den and wouldn’t hear much from all the way over there. Not that it mattered. If Noelle didn’t want anyone to hear her, then they wouldn’t.
She slid into his bedroom without making a solitary noise.
And yet his eyes snapped open the moment she closed the door.
“You’re wasting your time, baby.” His raspy voice cut through the silence, those black eyes glimmering in the darkness. “I’m not in the mood to service you tonight.”
With a chuckle, she approached the bed. “Not what I’m here for, honey. I just wanted to see you like this. Weak and pale and hurting.”
D’s features hardened into steel. Such handsome features too, completely unsuited for this man. His face ought to be feral to match his personality, and yet he was handsome—sharp cheekbones, straight nose, strong jaw, and well-shaped mouth.
“Take a good long look,” he mocked. “But we both know I could snap your neck in a heartbeat, honey. I might be pale, and I might be hurting, but I ain’t weak.”
Oh no, he wasn’t. Derek Pratt—if that’s what he was still calling himself these days—was power personified. A warrior, just like her. Heartless, just like her.
They watched each other for a moment. Shadows danced over the rugged planes of his face and the well-defined muscles of his bare chest. When her gaze lowered to his groin, she glimpsed the unmistakable bulge beneath his pants. A dark thrill shot through her. It’d been far too long since she’d had this man. Five months, if she recalled correctly.
“You just gonna stand there like a mute, or are you gonna say something?” he taunted.
She shrugged. “What do you want me to say? Would you like me to agree to help your boss?”
“Ah, so that’s why you’re here.” He slid higher on the bed, his abdominal muscles tightening and rippling. “You want me to beg you to help Morgan.” D laughed. “Not gonna happen, baby.”
“No?”
“Hell, no.” A note of challenge entered his voice. “So if you’re not here to blow me, then get the fuck out.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. Her relationship with this man was . . . complicated, to say the least. But boy, did she enjoy it. D was a worthy opponent, the male version of herself—cold, callous, empty. How this game had even started still eluded her, but each time they crossed paths, a new move was made, a new strategy employed.
Slowly and methodically, she climbed on the bed and straddled his rock-hard thighs. “Blow you, huh? Is that what you want me to do?”
The erection pressing against her ass made her pussy ache. Fuck, she was wet. She wanted him. No, she wanted his submission.
But men like D . . . men like Jim . . . they didn’t submit. They resisted and fought until their last breath.
“I don’t want a damn thing from you,” he said with a soft chuckle. “Stay, go, disappear from this earth—I don’t give a shit, Noelle.”
Offense prickled her skin. Narrowing her eyes, she grabbed hold of his zipper and dragged it down. Son of a bitch thought he could win this round? Well, he could think again.
“Interesting,” D murmured as she encircled his stiff shaft with her fingers.
“Is it?” she murmured back.
“You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”
The cryptic exchange was nothing new. Noelle had spent enough time with him to know there was an ulterior motive to his every action, a hidden meaning behind his every word.
She was exactly the same way.
His eyelids closed as she pumped him. He always closed his eyes, and they always stayed closed, no matter how hard she tried to achieve the opposite result.
Her hand moved up and down his cock in a lazy tempo. He didn’t make a single sound, but his breathing grew irregular, his impressive chest rising and falling as he began thrusting into her hand.
Licking her lips, she dipped her head and took him in her mouth.
He jerked, fisting the sheets with his hands.
A salty drop seeped from his tip and coated her tongue. Fighting a smile, she laved him with her tongue, then sucked hard, grazing her teeth against his sensitive underside. Each time he tried to take cont
rol by pushing deeper into her mouth, she retreated and enjoyed his answering curse.
Her body tingled with feminine power. This was where men were weakened. Women were destroyed by love, but men, well, they were destroyed by sex.
Wrapping her hand around the root of him, she brought him closer and closer to the edge, using her mouth and tongue and hands, long licks and sharp pumps that elicited husky sounds from deep in his chest. His cock filled her mouth, big, throbbing, pulsating with need, but she refused to let him come. Not until she made him beg.
She squeezed his cock, hard enough to hinder his impending release.
D’s eyes flew open. His expression glittered with menace. “Finish me.”
“Ask me to help.” A smile stretched across her mouth.
“Fuck you. Finish me.”
“No.”
“Fine. Then I’ll finish myself.” With a growl, he uncurled her fingers from his dick, shoved her hand away, and replaced it with his own.
Annoyance slammed into her as she watched him jack himself.
“Stop,” she said tersely.
His defiant look triggered another wave of indignation. “No.”
He jerked his cock faster, harder, his breathing becoming erratic once more.
But he didn’t let himself go yet. He just continued to stare at her with those heavy-lidded, challenge-riddled black eyes. “Well?” he taunted.
Her blood boiled, her jaw so tight it hurt. She didn’t want to surrender to him.
So she didn’t.
“Fuck you.” With a shrug, she climbed off the bed.
His voice stopped her before she could reach the door. “Help us find Morgan.”
Surprise jolted through her. She turned around and met his eyes. “Interesting.”
“Isn’t it, though?” D assumed a prone position again, propping his muscled arms behind his head. His still-hard cock jutted out proudly, but he seemed indifferent to it.
“Why should I care what happens to Jim Morgan?”
“Because you do. Deny it all you want, baby, but you don’t want him to be dead. You can’t torture and toy with a dead man.”
Noelle smiled. “Who says that’s what I’m doing?”
“Oh, let’s not play any more games tonight.” D smiled too, a wide, feral smile, white teeth shining in the darkness. “Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on here.”
She met his gaze head-on. “Meaning?”
“You’re only fucking me to stick it to Morgan.”
“Believe what you want.”
“I’m wrong?”
“I fuck you because you’re hung like a stallion and you make me come.” She paused. “And to stick it to Jim.”
D’s laugh was surprisingly genuine, bordering on mirthful. “Good. Then you’ll help us track him down.”
She pursed her lips for a moment, then flashed him another smile, this one loaded with smug satisfaction. “Well, if you insist.”
• • •
Trevor was pouring himself a cup of coffee when Noelle marched into the kitchen wearing a cornflower blue sundress that made him gape. Who would have thought the woman actually owned a dress, let alone one that wasn’t black? However, the skimpy not-black dress wasn’t as shocking as the words that came out of her mouth.
“We’ve got two objectives. Locate Jim, and track down whoever ordered the attack on your compound.”
Trevor glanced at the big cedar table on the other side of the country-style kitchen, where Isabel, Ethan, and D were seated. Isabel looked as bewildered as he felt. Ethan, confused. And D, utterly expressionless, as usual.
“I take it you’ve decided to come on board,” Trevor said drily.
Noelle brushed past him and prepared a cup of coffee. “On two conditions.”
Intrigued, he joined the others at the table. “Which are?”
“One, I call the shots.” She took a long sip, eyeing him over the rim of her mug. “We do things my way, and when I give you an order, you follow it.”
Un-fucking-likely. He wasn’t about to take orders from this woman, no matter how vast a resource network she possessed. But when he looked over at D, the dark-eyed man gave an imperceptible nod.
Trevor was hit by another dose of shock. Since when did D agree to take orders from anyone, let alone a stranger? The man barely listened to Morgan as it was, and Morgan was his boss.
“What’s the second condition?” Trevor asked suspiciously.
Noelle hopped up on the counter, luring every male eye to her bare legs. Smooth and shapely, the color of peaches and pale honey.
He quickly looked away, but not before he saw Isabel watching him with a strange expression on her pretty face.
Was that . . . jealousy?
“I want a favor in return. From you.” Noelle locked gazes with him. “Carte blanche, Callaghan. Whatever I ask of you, you do it.”
What the fuck?
Tension rolled through the kitchen like tumbleweed. D’s shuttered eyes made it impossible to decipher his feelings on the matter. Isabel was easier to read—she didn’t like Noelle’s caveat one bit.
Trevor wasn’t thrilled about it either. Carte blanche? Did he really want to owe this woman a favor, and one he couldn’t refuse?
Who says you can’t refuse?
Good point. He could always agree to her terms, then tell her to fuck right off when she came to collect. What was she going to do if he refused, kill him?
“Don’t test me, Callaghan.” Noelle’s blue eyes gleamed knowingly. “And feel free to ask Isabel what happened to the last man who reneged on a deal he’d made with me.”
He let out an annoyed breath. “Fine. Whatever you want, Noelle. You’ve got yourself a deal.”
“Good.”
He figured the nods they exchanged had sealed the deal, but the blonde clearly disagreed. She set down her mug and slid off the counter, her strides downright predatory as she made her way toward him.
Noelle wasn’t a tall woman, but her presence was commanding. She loomed over his chair, extending one deceivingly delicate hand.
Trevor eyed her outstretched palm. After a beat, he reached out and shook it. Her firm grip surprised him. So did the way she held on for much longer than necessary, running her red manicured fingernails over his palm.
He was the first one to pull away. Shit. He was thirty-three years old. He’d experienced battle, taken countless lives, witnessed atrocities no human being should ever have to see, yet those ten seconds under Noelle’s touch actually terrified him.
“Anyway, I’ve already left a message for Jim,” Noelle said, “so in the meantime—”
“How?”
She turned to glare at Ethan, the source of the disruption. “How what?”
“How did you leave Morgan a message? On his cell?”
The edge of her dress swirled around her knees as Noelle walked over to the sink. She grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the window ledge above the counter, some fancy European brand Trevor didn’t recognize.
“How old are you, darling?” She appraised Ethan like she was planning on purchasing him. “I didn’t realize Jim hired children for his crew.”
Ethan visibly bristled. “I’m twenty-five, ma’am.”
A peal of laughter flew out of her mouth. “‘Ma’am.’ Oh, that’s priceless. What a sweetheart you are.” The amusement faded sharply. “I have other means for contacting your boss. I don’t know if he checks that particular system anymore, but let’s hope he does.”
She didn’t offer any further details, and Ethan didn’t push. In fact, the rookie avoided her gaze completely as he reached for his coffee.
“In the meantime,” she continued, “we locate Lassiter. We know he specializes in recruiting soldiers and assembling assault teams. What we don’t know is who hired him.”
“Morgan has a lot of enemies.” Trevor spoke up. “At this point, I can’t even hazard a guess as to who would want him dead.”
Noelle chuckled. Probably,
he assumed, because she counted herself among those who wanted to see Morgan six feet under.
“I’ve already got one of my girls looking into the Lassiter thread,” she continued.
“Paige?” Isabel joined the conversation in that no-nonsense tone she used when talking business.
“Who’s Paige?” Trevor asked.
“She’s our tech geek,” Isabel explained. “The female equivalent of Holden, I guess.”
At the mention of Holden, Trevor experienced a pang of sorrow, but he forced it away. Holden had texted when he’d arrived in Montana, safe and sound. For now, there was no point in worrying about him and nothing Trevor could do to make things easier for the man.
“I’m also bringing Juliet in,” Noelle said, glancing at Isabel. “In the event that Lassiter needs a little convincing. I was told he has a weakness for beautiful brunettes.”
Trevor was about to point out that Isabel was perfectly capable of transforming herself into a beautiful brunette, until it registered that Noelle had placed a helluva lot of emphasis on the word convincing.
Good call, then, keeping Isabel out of it—because if Eddie Lassiter so much as touched Isabel in a less than professional capacity, Trevor would kill the motherfucker.
Okay. Whoa. Maybe he ought to get the murderous thoughts under control.
Silencing his inner caveman, he focused on the woman who’d commandeered his entire operation. “I need to call a few contacts,” he told Noelle. “There’s a private military company based in Texas that has worked with Lassiter before. They’ll probably know how to reach him.”
Noelle shrugged. “Knock yourself out.”
He scraped his chair back and stood up, doing his best not to gaze too long in Isabel’s direction. He’d been making a pointed effort to keep his distance. He hadn’t lied before—he was sick of listening to her excuses.
Not only that, but he was sick of the way she made him feel. Gina had never aroused these kinds of troubling emotions in him. He was tied up in knots. Frustrated. Desperate for Isabel. Goddamn it, desperate. To hold her, kiss her, bring a smile to her lips.