Seek and Destroy (TREX, #5)

by Allie K. Adams

  “Maybe because you named the poor thing Peepers.”

  “He’s a big boy. He can handle it. Here we go.”

  “Talk to me.”

  She pointed to the monitor farthest to the right. “Here. Surreal tapped into the feed at SeaTac Airport last night around eight. He must have been watching the feeds until we showed up. Whew. I thought he’d piggy-backed on my feed.”

  David had no idea what she just said. “Uh, is he still watching the feed?”

  She shook her head. “He got what he came for. I talked to JT. She said nothing on that laptop could be traced back to TREX. No IPs. Nothing programmed into the scrambler. As soon as he tries to log into the computer and fails, it will throw a static charge through the hard drive.”

  “And that will do what?”

  “Fry it. The laptop will be worthless. If the scrambler is connected, the charge will take that out, too.”

  That little tidbit gave him a sigh of relief. “What now?”

  “I’ve left all the tracers out there. Every site I know of and a few I didn’t until tonight. There is nowhere he can go inside the system I won’t know about.” She yawned and stretched. “I need a shower.”

  “I’ll watch the monitors. You go.”

  With a crooked grin, she studied him. The look she gave him hit him straight in the chest. It was an overwhelming pull, an electrical surge that shot all the way down to his cock. “And if we get a hit? Will you know what to do?”

  He grabbed his glass and took a drink. “Nope.”

  She adjusted her glasses. “Then no need for you to watch the monitors. Besides, if we get a hit, my system will begin the trace. He won’t be able to go anywhere without us knowing his every move. So now,” she sighed and yawned again. “We wait.”

  FOURTEEN

  Charis stared through her glasses at her foggy reflection in the mirror. Her hair, still damp from her shower, hung loosely down past her shoulders, tickling where her robe didn’t cover, soaking through where it did come into contact with the soft material. The little black robe stopped mid-thigh. The cool silk felt incredible against her skin. She found it buried in the back of the closet, never having reason to wear it.

  She ran her fingers through her hair. Making a mental note to pick up a few supplies tomorrow—she’d never had a male houseguest before—she gave herself another assessment. “This isn’t a relationship,” she told the anxious reflection. Her nipples puckered in protest. Apparently, they thought differently. “And he is not staying over like a boyfriend would.”

  This time her body argued by tingling, warming to the thought of them spending another night wrapped in each other’s arms. It sent a shiver ripping through her.

  “Besides,” she reassured the woman behind the foggy glass, ignoring the growing want for the man somewhere on the other side of the door. Applying lotion to her freshly shaved legs, she continued. “No sex now that we’re on the mission.”

  Well, elevator incident aside. Technically, they weren’t on the mission when they’d attacked each other at HQ. The memory of how fast he made her come had her burning, half in mortification, half in the want for him to do it again.

  She slowly opened the bathroom door and peeked out. She didn’t see him anywhere, which sent her insides into a fit of hiccups. She left the bathroom and padded down the hall into the kitchen. The floor was cold and hard against her bare feet. Another mental note—find wherever she put her slippers. No one in their right mind lived through a Montana winter without a good pair of insulated deerskins.

  She flipped the gas on the front burner and went in search of her teapot. A nice cup of steaming hot tea would be perfect after such a long and trying day. Day? Try week. She wasn’t used to so much action.

  Interesting way to put it. Her body throbbed in anticipation of David finding her in her little silk robe, of his hands on her body, him ripping it off her and taking her right here in her kitchen.

  Another shiver pinched her nipples into hard little pebbles. She had to stop thinking like that. He made it very clear while they worked on this op they would not be fornicating. Period and the end.

  Opening and closing just about every cupboard in her kitchen, she came up empty-handed. Just where did she put that darn thing? She huffed and got down on her knees to dig through the cabinets. There had to be something she could use to boil water if her elusive teapot refused to come out of hiding.

  “Finally!” She pulled out her teapot with a triumphant smile. “Aha. You thought you could evade me, my little friend.” Her mood picking up, she filled the pot and placed it over the blue flame.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  She whipped around, her heart thudding. When she spotted David standing there, looking so damn mouthwatering, she had to swallow. “Where did you come from?”

  “The bedroom.” He rubbed his eyes and let out an enormous yawn. Stretching his left side, then wincing as he attempted to stretch out his right, he slipped onto the barstool at the island and rested his head on his hands, his elbows on the counter.

  “Were you sleeping?” He didn’t answer and didn’t need to. His disheveled hair and wrinkled clothes told her as much. With heavy-lidded eyes he stared straight ahead and let out another jaw-popping yawn. “You look like you must have been dead to the world.”

  “You were making enough noise to wake the dead,” he threw back, his voice gruff.

  Okaaay. So Mr. Grumpy didn’t like to be woken up. Good to know. “I promise to be quieter. Go back to bed.” Disappointed to say the least, she hid her reaction. The thought of going to bed with him tonight had her insides humming with energy. The connection they shared couldn’t be denied, and she hoped it would be enough for them to have a repeat performance of Hawaii.

  Obviously she was alone with that one. He didn’t even notice her little silky number. It made her feel damn sexy and hoped it would do the trick. At least make him notice her. Acknowledge her. Something.

  Apparently not.

  “I’m up now. What time is it?”

  “Almost ten-thirty.”

  He blew out a breath. “What are you doing?”

  “Making tea. You want some?”

  He shook his head, turned and studied the room behind them. Charis did the same. Her front door opened to a mudroom, which opened to a short hall. A few more steps into the living room off to the left. To the right the formal dining room, which opened to the kitchen. The island had two steps—the lower level housed the gas stove, the upper an extended breakfast bar. The hall to the right led down to the two bedrooms.

  “What do you think of my house?”

  He grunted and turned back around. “It’s a house.”

  She ignored his terseness. “I love it. I’ve been thinking about painting the living room, though.” The carpet, off-white and boring as hell, matched the off-white walls and the off-white ceiling. Even the trim matched in off-white. It looked so neat and orderly, just the way the old Charis liked it. After the past week, she was so done with the old Charis. The new Charis wanted bold colors.

  “Good. The color scheme you have needs some work. It looks like a hospital in here.” He looked at her. “Unless you really have a thing about playing a doctor.”

  She thinned her lips at his comment. How could he make fun of her assignment as his personal physician? She saved his life, damn it. He could at least show some gratitude.

  Her water started to boil. Before she grabbed another pot and smacked the ass over the head with it, she wrapped her fingers around the one on the stove and jerked it off the burner.

  And promptly kicked boiling water all over her hand and up her forearm. She gasped at the pain and dropped the pot, which splashed boiling water up and down her freshly shaved legs. She cried out and jumped back. She then screamed when the oils from the lotion took the heat in and started to cook her flesh. The intense pain made her scream again.

  David had her in his arms and inside the bathroom before she took her next b
reath. He dropped her unceremoniously into the tub and turned on the shower, cranking the knob all the way to the ‘C’.

  She screamed again and tried to escape the torture. He pushed her back down. “Stay. The cold water will counteract the burn.”

  “D-D-David. I-I’m f-f-freezing!” Now not only was her skin raw from the fresh burn, the cold water peppered her with painful goose bumps.

  “Just a few more minutes. You’ll thank me later.”

  “I d-doubt t-t-that.” She was going numb from the icy pricks of water beating against her. “P-Please!”

  “A little longer.” David had the biggest grin on his face.

  “T-Turn it o-off!”

  “A little—whoa!”

  She got a hold of the front of his pants and pulled him in on top of her. Ahhh. Warmth. They then both broke into a fit of giggles as the freezing water soaked them. “This,” she snuggled closer to him, using his hard body as a shield from the water, “is much better.”

  “So says you.” He tried to push back, reaching for the knob with his right shoulder since he needed his left to hold his weight. He couldn’t stretch enough to get to it. He tried again, this time tightening his face to cover the obvious pain it caused. Muttering a curse when he couldn’t reach it, David paused and pulled his arm back.

  “I can get it,” Charis offered.

  “I got it.” He bit off, pissed. His left arm shook as he struggled to hold himself up. He shifted and reached for the knob. His right shoulder had completely stiffened up on him.

  “It must be the cold—”

  He eyed her. The look caused her breath to catch, her words to pause in her throat. Shame. Oh, David. He looked like she’d just discovered his deepest darkest secret. She let him go and he pushed himself off her, turned and flipped off the water. Without looking at her, he spun around and left the room.

  She pulled herself out of the tub and glanced down at the pile of black silk. Another little sexy number bites the dust. Why did she always end up in the water? She grabbed a towel out of the linen closet and dried herself off before drying off her glasses.

  The burns hurt, but she’d manage. The cold water trick really did work. She opened and closed her right hand, studying the redness of her skin where the boiling water had burned her. It didn’t look deep enough to be serious, thank God.

  She wrapped the towel around her and headed for the bedroom to find her PJs. Her heart skipped when she entered. He’d already peeled out of his wet clothes and had on the bottoms to a pair of plaid flannel pajamas, the silky curls of his chest hair still glistening with water. He sat in the chair facing the closet and when he spotted her in the full-length mirror, looked away.

  The pajama top rested on the bed. Not wanting to ask him where the flannel PJs came from, and fighting the urge to rush over to him, she went to the bed and threw the top over her head. She’d just as soon run around naked. But if she did, he’d see the scars on her torso and curl his lip in disgust. She couldn’t bear him to look at her like her previous lovers. He didn’t seem to mind them last night, but they had other things to focus on, like trying to put the other in a sex coma.

  After dropping the towel to the floor, she glanced over her shoulder. He just sat there, looking so beaten she felt beaten, too. Without another thought, she went to him, placed her hand on his right shoulder. He lowered his gaze, tried to move his shoulder out of her grasp. The frigid water worked against him. His mobility visibly decreased. He couldn’t even move far enough to be free from her hand.

  “Don’t.” He grabbed her hand and jerked it off his shoulder.

  “Let me help you.”

  “I don’t need your fucking sympathy.”

  It broke her heart to see him hurting like this. “I don’t feel sorry for you,” she lied. He looked into the mirror, met her eyes. “I took a massage course in college. Let me see if I can get it to loosen up.”

  He let her hand go. She got to work, gently massaging his shoulder, caressing his flesh, all the while trying to keep herself from humming at the feeling of being skin-on-skin with him. “My burns feel better.”

  He grunted and closed his eyes. Some of his muscles spasmed before relaxing. “Ah, yeah. That’s it. Jesus, Charis. That feels amazing.”

  You’re telling me. “I got an A in the class.”

  “I can see why. Oh yeah. Right there. Now a little more—riiight there. Hmmm.” He cracked a smile. Her heart lifted. “No one’s ever offered to give me a massage before.”

  She found that hard to believe. Who wouldn’t want to touch him, have an excuse to run their fingers over his amazing body? “I had an ex-boyfriend who hated my massages.”

  Opening his eyes, he glanced at her through the mirror. “Was he an idiot?”

  “Well,” she stated with a smile. “Yes. But that aside, he said it hurt.”

  “Like the delicate pretty boy type, do you?”

  No, she liked the TREX spec ops type. She liked the mocha-haired, sexy brown-eyed type. She licked her lips to stop herself from dribbling down her chin. The touch of his skin against hers caused little electric jolt of energy to surge through her limbs, centering in her core. “He was the only one, though. All the rest liked them.”

  “All the rest?”

  Eyeing him, she grinned. Yeah, like she’d had so many. “I’ve had my share of boyfriends. Been engaged twice.”

  “Engaged?”

  She nodded. “Fiancé number one was more interested in what everyone else thought of him than of what he thought of me. Randy was a charmer in public, but in private...” She shook her head. “Jekyll and Hyde, that one.”

  His muscles tensed beneath her fingers. “Did he hurt you?”

  “Oh God no,” she answered quickly. The tension now in his neck and shoulder would take her another fifteen minutes to work out. Serendipity. “Randy just wasn’t the man I thought he was. I’m sure I was less than perfect to him. Besides, I was only nineteen. That’s way too young to get married.”

  He made a noise deep in his chest. “Go on.”

  “We parted amicably once we realized we weren’t compatible.” When he couldn’t get her to come, he’d taken it as a personal challenge. She hated sex with him. After her accident, he wouldn’t look at her, not as a lover. He never could get over how much her scars deformed her.

  “Compatible enough to get engaged.”

  “But not compatible enough to actually go through with it,” she countered. “He ended up marrying some swimsuit model who didn’t speak a lick of English. Last I heard she was in rehab. Again.”

  “And fiancé number two?”

  “Ah, Erik. He sure did love his money.” She worked deeper into his shoulder to ease out the tension brought on by the story about fiancé number one. “He even made us go Dutch the night he proposed.”

  “What an ass,” he declared sharply. He rolled his shoulder as she worked out the kinks.

  “Tell me about it. That one,” she said and squinted, looked to the ceiling for something nice to say. “We didn’t part so amicably. Two days after our engagement I caught him buying lingerie.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It wasn’t for me.”

  “How do you know?”

  Oh, she’d known. Even before seeing the other woman, she’d known. After being rejected by fiancé number one when he’d seen her scars, she’d been too embarrassed to show them to Erik, too worried he’d reject her the same way. So they’d made love in the dark. When he saw her midsection for the first time, he’d told her to cover up.

  “He was shopping with the woman the lingerie was for.” She shook her head. She still remembered seeing them standing in Victoria’s Secret at the mall. Not one to make a scene, she’d waited behind the clearance rack of lacy things until they left. The outfit he’d purchased had been a two-piece, and several sizes too small to fit Charis.

  She knew after the reaction her scars drew from both fiancé one and two no one would ever want her.
It still stung to know she had a body that repulsed the opposite sex.

  David never said anything about her scars. He saw them when he cut her out of her dress, and as he dragged his hand across her midsection on his way down to caress her, play with her, he felt them.

  She kneaded deeper, shaking off the idea this man would soon reject her if he really saw her scars. “Randy told me to keep the ring and wear it as a symbol of friendship.”

  “What a crock.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Ring from number two?”

  “You should have seen the size of the rock. Not that I really care about that sort of thing, but it was hard not to notice. Actually,” she paused at the memory. “I didn’t wear the ring the whole two days we were engaged. It was too big.”

  “Did he want it back?”

  “Oh yeah,” she laughed. “When he heard I pawned it and took the money to visit my grams on the other side of the state, he threatened to sue me. Luckily, Chris and Logan were with me when he decided to pay me a visit to get the money for the ring. They persuaded Erik to leave.”

  His mouth fell open. “He really did that?”

  “Apparently, he’d already promised it to the girl I saw in Victoria’s Secret. ‘So sue me’, I told him. I highly doubt Judge Judy would have ruled in his favor.”

  “Good girl.” He looked at her and winked. The simple gesture made her skin hum.

  “Thank you.” She worked out the remaining kinks in his neck in silence. After several minutes of invasive quiet, Charis spoke again. “Tell me something about you, David.”

  “I don’t like talking about myself.”

  “Come on. You know just about everything there is to know about me. You’ve got to give me something.”

  He took so long to answer she didn’t know if he would turn high tail and sprint out of the room the same way he retreated out of the bathroom. “I used to be married.”

  Her hands tensed and from the slight grunt that escaped his lips, it hurt. She loosened up and continued with the massage. He had a life before her. “Go on.”