After having dinner and setting up camp at a city motel, Strike had told her to put on her fancy dress and pulled her from the room into the street, which they’d been walking on for at least twenty minutes.
Going up one block, they came down another, until her head was spinning. Though she couldn’t figure out where they were in relation to where they’d started, Rora was sure she’d seen the same business names more than once.
“Where are we going, Strike?” she asked, her heels beginning to nip her feet. “I’m getting cold.”
She wasn’t really worried about her feet or the temperature, she just hated to be out of the loop. Tossing an arm around her shoulders, he pulled her close to him, but didn’t slow down for her, which caused her a new set of problems.
He hadn’t let her bring a jacket, she’d been wearing one when she got to their room door, but he pulled it from her and tossed it to the bed telling her it wasn’t allowed. He was wearing a jacket, one with a leather hood that he had pulled over his face. It seemed like some bullshit that she wasn’t allowed one. If it was just to present a better view of her breasts, she’d kill him. But given how little interest he’d ever shown in her body, Rora was confident that his motive wasn’t sexual.
Since finding out about the blonde, Rora’s playfulness had cooled. She hadn’t minded pushing his buttons when it was just a joke. But her games had backfired big time when he’d actually followed through with the beauty. She still felt sick when she thought about him enjoying that perfect female form.
It was a double joke on her though, because it proved that not only was he fully able to enjoy a woman, it proved he had no interest in enjoying her. A stripper with possibly loose morals had probably been all kinds of naughty and that was what he liked.
Rora was no saint, and she’d enjoyed her share of sexual escapades, but when it came to flat-out being bad in a break-the-law kind of way, her experience was on the light side. Except aiding and abetting Exile, a known criminal, was adding a little weight to that file.
“Strike, why—”
She shut up when he grabbed her hips and turned her sideways to push her into a wide communal entrance. He urged her on, up the stairs, and onto the second floor. “Don’t use my name in here,” he said. “Don’t ask any questions. Just go with whatever happens.”
Knocking once on the first apartment door, he didn’t wait for a response, and instead opened the door and pushed her inside first. Nice, so if they’d been shot at, she’d have been his human shield. Inside was a large room, sparsely furnished. The three suited men inside stopped talking to each other and turned to examine her and Strike.
An air of tense intimidation constricted her breathing. She’d never been in a meeting like this and didn’t even know why they were here this time.
Doing as Strike said, she said nothing, and expected him to look after her. So when he nudged her forward with a shoulder, she stumbled and looked back at him. But he was looking over her head at the men in front of them.
While she was looking the wrong way, Rora didn’t expect anyone to touch her, but someone grabbed her wrist and instinct made her pull back. “Hey!”
“Go with him,” Strike said, still staring out one of the guys.
“Wha… what?” she asked, but the one who had hold of her pulled her across the room, and all she could do was let herself be dragged, glancing back at Strike for any hint of what was going to happen. But he gave her none.
“Torres,” Strike said, stopping the guy who had ahold of her wrist. “You hurt her. You die. You know it’s that simple. All I need is one word from her and I’ll take down your whole organization.”
Torres pulled her through a door at the back of the room. He yanked her forward so he could move behind her and lock the door. The sound of the lock sliding into place made her gasp, but he didn’t reassure her. Thrusting her against the door, he opened her arms to press them to the door and kicked her feet apart to begin frisking her.
Panting to keep up with her quickening pulse, Rora wanted to tell him to take his hands off, especially when one slid under her skirt to check her inner thighs. Torres must have been satisfied because he grabbed her shoulder and pulled her into the room only to push her toward the bed.
“Get on the bed,” he said.
Rora was horrified to see him open a drawer to pull out a set of handcuffs. “No,” she said and tried to get to the door, but he sidestepped and got into her path. Seizing her arm, he slapped one cuff on and wrestled her backward, forcing her onto the bed. “No! Get off me!”
“Please,” he said, trying to pull her other hand to the headboard. “Put your wrists together!”
“No,” she said and fought harder, kicking at him and fighting against his strength.
With his hands on her arms, trying to pull them up to the top of the bed, she was trapped in a small space. Remembering what Strike had said about keeping her chin up, she elevated hers and took a chance to dig her teeth into Torres’s knuckles when he got her other wrist into the cuff.
Screaming out, he leaped away, but it was too little, too late, her wrists were both in cuffs, around the top bar of the long headboard.
“You bitch,” he said, cupping his bleeding hand.
“Come near me again and I’ll skin you,” she snarled, rattling the cuffs on the bed.
He wouldn’t be the only one; she’d skin Strike when she got her hands on him too. A laugh startled her. The bleeding Torres stepped aside, and another man appeared in the doorway that she assumed led to a bathroom or a closet.
“We’d expect nothing less from Exile’s woman,” the new entrant said. Her eyes flicked from him to Torres and back. “You are a powerful woman, Kero.” The name made her fixate on him, had he just called her… what had he called her? “Exile assured us we would be safe from you, but you understand that we had to take precautions… I understand that few women would appreciate being restrained on a bed. But you understand that with his history, we have to assume that you have the power to hurt us.”
“I didn’t come here to hurt anyone,” she said and followed all other eyes that fell to the bleeding wound on Torres’s hand. “He should’ve asked nicely.”
“He should have,” the stranger said. “Let me learn from his mistake. My name is Isaac Burke, and I have what Exile wants.”
Burke nodded at Torres who went to the drawer where the cuffs had been and opened it to take out a metallic case, four inches long by about one and a half inches wide. The whole thing was less than a half-inch thick. Curious, she wanted to ask what it was, but Strike had told her not to ask questions.
Torres put it on the bed beside her, not that it was possible for her to pick it up. But she did shift, lifting her thigh to lay it over the item. Whatever it was, Strike needed it and as far as she knew, that meant Benjamin needed it. So she’d protect it in any way she could right now.
“Is that it?” she asked. Even though her heart was beginning to calm down, she was no less angry. “Are you going to let me go?”
“With Exile on the other side of that door, we have little choice,” Burke said. “But we would be foolish not to take this chance, while we have you alone.”
“Chance?”
The men exchanged a look and then Burke stepped toward her, becoming suddenly serious. “What’s the point?”
It was so unbelievable that it was almost laughable and for half a beat, a laugh did threaten her lips. But her patience with presumptuous men who assumed she was an idiot was wearing thin. Her eyes dropped to focus straight ahead between the two men and her voice became an unfamiliar cold drawl.
“If I tell him that you hurt me, what do you think he’ll do?” It was interesting that the men didn’t respond. When she let her attention slink upward, she saw the fear in the look they were exchanging. “He didn’t send me in here to answer your questions. Let. Me. Go.”
“Kero, we’re worried about the safety of the world,” Burke said. “We have to know what—”
“If I scream, and you make him force his way in here, he won’t kill you quickly. The word mercy won’t exist to him.”
“Kero—” She breathed in as if to scream. “Ok,” Burke said, gesturing at Torres. “Ok, we’ll let you go.”
Torres dashed over to unlock the cuffs. As soon as she was free, she pulled back her fist and punched Torres on the jaw. Pain burst in her knuckles, but she didn’t care. The prick had scared her; she’d probably never been so scared.
“Gentlemen,” she said, scooping up the metal tin.
“You’re his perfect equal,” Burke said when she strode past him.
Rora had to pause to give Torres a chance to catch up and unlock the door, so she turned to Burke. “Exile has no equal,” she said. “Underestimating him will be your downfall.”
“We did it once before. The global economy hasn’t recovered since,” he said. “We won’t make that mistake again.”
She nodded once, just as Torres opened the door. Going back into the previous room, she kept her chin up, striding between the two suited men to head straight for Strike, who had zeroed in on her, probably trying to figure out what was in her head.
Rora decided she wasn’t going to make it easy for her accomplice when she stopped in front of him, close enough that her chest touched his when she breathed in.
“What happened to you?” one of the guys said behind her, though they weren’t talking to her or Strike.
Strike curled his fingers around the metal box she was holding. Rora wrapped her other hand around it and shook her head. “Not a chance,” she whispered, and the slight curl at the corner of his lips seemed proud and… something else.
“Looks bad,” another voice behind her said.
“She bit me,” Torres said.
“Crazy bitch,” the other voice said.
Her expression must have changed because Strike’s did in response to whatever he saw on her face. “I’ve got this one, baby,” he murmured and stroked a hand down the back of her hair as he moved past her.
Rora heard the cry and the crack and spun to see the speaker on the floor, his temple squashed into the floor by Strike’s boot that was on his face. Strike put an elbow on his knee and leaned on it as he bent to address the man.
“When you think of Kero, I want you to think of one word: respect,” he said, giving a polite tutorial. “Show her anything less than the utmost respect at all times, and I’ll make you wish you’d chosen to piss on the President’s wife during the inaugural address instead. My woman’s a few rungs above that first bitch. You respect Kero. Show deference. And never, ever, call her names. You’re on my shit list now, that’s not a fun place to be. Expect all of your offshore assets to vanish before you get to bed tonight.” Shoving his foot away, he stepped back and snarled at all of them. “And don’t ever forget that biting isn’t her only talent.”
Marching away from the men, Strike came to her, threw an arm around her neck, and led her out of the apartment block. They got to the corner and turned before she spoke. “You know I don’t really have any talents, don’t you?” she asked, languishing in the buzz of adrenaline.
“Are you kidding? Two minutes alone in a room with the NSA and you got them eating out the palm of your hand,” he said, tugging her closer to plant a kiss on her head. “I’m impressed, Kero, and more than a little jealous.”
She didn’t ask about the name or why he was jealous because she was too shocked. “The… the NSA?”
“Torres and Burke are NSA, the other two were DARPA,” he said. “What you’ve got there in those hot little hands is a matter of national interest… or it was until we blackmailed it out of their vault.”
“Black… you blackmailed them? And I… Oh my God, I assaulted an NSA agent! I bit him! I hit him!”
“Shit, now I am jealous,” he said. “Open hand or closed?”
Stuttering, she couldn’t feel any oxygen reaching her lungs. “Closed.”
“Ooo,” he said, hissing in appreciation. “A hot woman committing multiple felonies while absconding with state secrets… talk dirty to me, baby.”
Forcing him to a stop with the whole strength of her being, she blinked her wide, terrified eyes up at him. “Strike,” she said. “I could go to jail forever.”
He smiled, a slight sinister sparkle met his eyes and he growled at her. “Yeah, baby,” he said and lunged forward in a dip.
All of a sudden, his mouth was on hers. The hot hungry need of his tongue plunging into her mouth made her forget about the item in her hands, and everything she’d just done.
His mouth opened wide to lick and suck at hers with such force that it pushed her back a step and then another. He scooped his loose hands under her ears just as her back hit a wall and with his fingers curled at the back of her jaw, Strike kept her position steady while giving her space to respond under the constant movement of his lips and head that ducked to meet hers one way, then the other.
He bent his knees to come at her mouth from beneath then kissed her so hard that her chin rose until her head went all the way back, making her neck hurt. He was over her, his form dominating hers. Yet, their bodies never met, this was a meeting of mouths, his hands barely touched her, all he wanted to do was taste her.
“Mmm,” he said when he backed off, leaving her in midair, panting, her body in need of his shield. “Don’t think I’d let them hold you.”
“You weren’t wrong about being bad turning you on,” she managed to breathe out.
He hummed at her again and grabbed her hand. “Business is good, Cupcake,” he said, striding away.
Their arms were fully extended before she was yanked away from the wall and forced to run across the street with him.
His reaction to how she’d followed him into sin, the kiss, his attention, it was unexpected, and she didn’t think she’d recover from it in a hurry. Rora hadn’t signed on to be Bonnie to his Clyde, but his allure might be too powerful for her to resist.
ten
Strike rushed Rora all the way back to the motel and pulled her up the stairs to return to their room. When they got there, and the door closed, she immediately turned to him, expecting… something.
But the first thing he did was put his hand around the box in her hand to try to take it from her.
Rora held onto it. “Is this all you want?” she asked, tightening her grip.
“Yes,” he said, his brows snapping down in a frown.
“I risked my life for this, my liberty. I think I should know what it is.”
Impatience was making him edgy. “It would take too long to explain,” he said and tried to take it again.
Rora swung her arm around to extend it behind her. “Then I want something.”
“Want something?” he snapped. “I could just take it from you.”
“Hit me? Crack my bones? Do that squeeze thing and knock me out? Yes, you could.”
“Then hand it over,” he said, trying to reach over her, but she put her hand on his chest and pushed back. “Ro, don’t fuck with me.”
“Or what?” she said, smacking his chest with the heel of her hand. “What are you gonna do about it, big scary criminal? I’m not afraid of you.”
“And that’s been your problem from the beginning,” he said, moving forward, pushing her deeper into the room. “You should never have made it this far.”
“But I did,” she said and smacked him again. “No thanks to you. You put me in danger tonight. You didn’t tell me the truth. You set me up. I was so mad at you, Strike. So goddamn mad.”
Showing his teeth for a second when her legs hit the bed, he leaned over her until her back was arched at an awkward angle. “Yeah? Show me,” he said. “How mad were you, Cupcake? Show me. Give me what I deserve.”
Fueled by arousal and caught up in adrenaline, she shoved him hard with both hands. The box fell somewhere to the floor before she brought her hand across his face in a cold, hard slap. His head snapped to the side, not far, but enough tha
t she knew he’d registered the hit.
Immediately feeling regret, she sucked her lip into her mouth and worried it hard in her teeth. “Strike,” she whispered, sliding a hand up his arm when he stayed in that position with his head tilted away and his eyes closed. “Strike, I—”
“Damnit,” he whispered through his teeth. She held her breath, sealing it in with her chewed lip. “Even that didn’t make me hate you.”
She was still trying to figure him out when he yanked one arm out of his jacket sleeve and then the other. It seemed that he was mad at something, and all she could guess was that she was the cause. Tossing the jacket across the room, he kicked the box aside and grabbed her arms, his strong fingers biting into her when he suddenly flipped her around a hundred and eighty degrees.
Rora was lost, confused, drenched by the heat of the want pulsing through her body. His palms slid down her shoulders, down over her breasts to cup them in his strong hands.
“Strike,” she whispered, pushing back against him.
But he didn’t let his hands linger, he swept one arm around her pelvis and pushed the other between her shoulder blades, forcing her to bend over in front of him, planting her hands on the bed. The pace of her heart vibrated through her throat and down to her thighs, and only sped when he gathered her skirt, bunching it over her hips, pushing it higher, out of his way to expose her ass.
She didn’t stop him when he took the elastic of her panties and drew it down her legs to her knees. “Open wider,” he said, and she shuffled her feet apart.
The moment his finger slid into her, she breathed out. “Strike,” she whispered.
Her bliss was broken when he smacked her ass hard. “No names,” he hissed. “No words.”
Having never made love in silence, she didn’t know if she’d be able to do it, but she’d try if that was what he needed. Pulling her lower lip with her teeth, Rora whimpered and moaned when another finger slid into her. He kept fucking her with them for over a minute. Curling and bunching, varying pace, he tormented and teased her with his fingers, using a third and sometimes a fourth on her clit.
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