by Avery Flynn
“Okay, give me the USB,” she said.
He pulled the tiny flash drive from a small pocket secreted in his boxers waistband and handed it over. She plugged it in. After that it was just watching nonsensical numbers flash across the computer terminal as the bug Lexie had crafted downloaded.
The team hacker promised it would only take about ten minutes for the action to complete so she’d have full access to the resort’s entire surveillance program. While that happened, he and Bianca had nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs.
That made it the perfect time to fire the opening salvo in Operation Spill Your Guts. Just the idea of it made his left eye twitch, but if that’s what it took to get Bianca to see there was more to them then just orgasms, he’d do it.
“So what do you want to know?” he asked.
“About what?” she asked, her attention focused on the program’s downloading window on the computer’s screen.
“Me.”
She turned and gave him an appraising look that made him feel more naked than he thought possible, considering he was dressed only in his underwear. “When did you start hanging out with Markos, Keir, Lash and Duke?”
Okay, an easy one. I can do this.
“I’m gonna go with since birth on that one. I can’t remember a day without them. The Romany community I grew up in is close-knit.” That was one way of putting it. More like their particular sect valued isolationism above all else. “We keep to ourselves and take care of our own—as much as we can anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
In a heartbeat he was back in his room, listening to the sound of his mother’s quiet pleas filtering in through the thin walls, followed by his father’s mocking response and the smack of a backhand on a good night, and the thud of a body hitting the wall on a bad night. Bile rose in his throat. He’d buried the memories so deep that digging them up was like experiencing them all over again.
He closed his eyes and scrubbed his palm over the short hairs on the back of his head as if he could shove the memories away. “No outsiders meant no outside help.”
“No cops or social workers you mean,” she said, her voice soft.
He looked up into her understanding eyes. Of course she’d get it. Being born into a rich family hadn’t insulated her from interfamily craziness. “Exactly.”
“And your dad…”
“As you know, was a real piece of shit who loved to beat the crap out of my mom—except in the rare cases when it was my smart mouth that needed to be silenced.”
Barsali Hazard had been a real bastard. Big. Mean. Creative. He used all three of those attributes to force others to his will. That wasn’t just the case for him and his mother, but for others in the community as well.
“And there was no one you could turn to for help?”
“Not anyone with a badge, that’s for sure. Not that it would have made a difference. My dad didn’t believe the regular rules applied to him, not when it came to honoring his marriage vows, providing for his family or anything that had to do with not taking other people’s property.”
“He was a thief?”
“Not in his mind.” A bitter chuckle tore from his throat, laced with all the pain he’d denied existed for most of his life. “He was just taking what he wanted. He was a real law-of-the-jungle type of guy.”
Bianca walked over and into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head on his chest. They stood there like that for a moment. It shouldn’t have helped, but it did. It was as if the energy he’d spent keeping the lid on all the bad memories had exhausted him in ways he hadn’t realized.
Holy shit, you’ll be writing some touchy-feely self-help book next. Man up, Hazard.
“Is he still alive?” she asked, her breath warm against his chest.
“No clue. After I left, I never went back and he never came looking for me.”
“What about your mom? Did she come after you?”
“She couldn’t. She was six feet under by my fourteenth birthday and we broke into Devil’s Dip Gym a week or two after.” And his life had changed forever because of Freddie Atlas.
She squeezed him tight. “So you were as alone growing up as I was.”
“Pretty much.” As weird as it seemed, it was true. She may have been born with a silver spoon in her mouth compared to his wooden one, but at the core they were more alike than different.
“Thank you. I know the past twenty-four hours hasn’t been easy.”
“Is that all it’s been? It feels like a lifetime.” Between Tamara showing up in his living room and lying about them still being married to this moment, it seemed like forever.
“Look, when we get back to Ft. Worth—”
The sound of walkie-talkie feedback silenced whatever she was going to say next. Taz whipped his head around to the security room’s closed door.
“Yeah, man, I’m in the room now,” a man’s voice filtered in from the other side of the door. “I told you I was just grabbing something fast from the cafeteria. Jay-sus, Bob, do you have to be on my ass about everything?”
The computer dinged.
A download complete message flashed on the screen.
The click of the lock turning in the doorknob sounded.
There wasn’t time to consider, only react.
He grabbed the USB and pushed Bianca toward the door on the other side of the room. She pulled open the door and rushed inside, Taz close on her heels. He pushed the door shut right as the other one opened.
Bianca
Bianca held her breath. Fuck. If something could just go as expected sometime soon, that would be great. As it is, she and Taz were trapped in the resort’s small computer server room. There weren’t any windows or exits other than the door they’d come in through.
She pressed her ear to the door. No sound came through. Letting out a soft exhale, she turned to Taz and pressed a finger to her lip and jerked her head toward the door. He nodded.
Easing the door open a crack, she sent up a silent prayer to whoever was in charge of things to please, please, please let something go right. Through the narrow opening, she spotted the guard sitting in front of the wall of video screens next to the computer now running Lexie’s tap-in bug. An unwrapped foot-long hoagie, bag of chips and two liter of soda sat on the desk. The guard took his nine millimeter from his holster and sat it down next to his food. Then, he sat back in the chair and loosened his belt before reaching for his sandwich.
She pressed the door shut and leaned against it. Someone up there had it out for her today. Taking a quick look around, she took in the precise layout of the computer racks, the raised floor tiles with the anti-static finish and the digital wall thermometer that read sixty-nine degrees. Okay, finally good news. Whoever had built the server room had followed the standard guidelines Lexie had insisted on when creating the B-Squad’s secure computer server room. That meant the room was soundproof.
“He’s settling in for the long haul,” she said and pulled her cell from her chemise’s decorative pocket.
“Calling in a 9-1-1?” Taz asked.
She nodded. “Lexie and Marko are on surveillance duty, but between the rest of the team’s devious minds, they’ll be able to come up with something to spring us without alerting anyone that we were here.”
BIANCA: TRAPPED. NEED A DISTRACTION TO PULL THE GUARD FROM SECURITY ROOM.
LEXIE: ON IT. GIVE ME FIFTEEN.
She put the cell on the shelf. Nothing to do now but wait and try not to think about everything Taz had revealed. From the few bits and pieces he’d let slip before, she’d known his childhood hadn’t been great. She hadn’t realizes just how grim it had been. It explained why he didn’t like sharing any more than she did.
They were quite the pair. Both of them were all jagged edges but their sharp points fit together seamlessly—at least that’s what it had seemed like in the cabana. But after all they’d been through in the past twenty-four hours with Tamara, Taz’s almos
t still-married status and getting hit with Genie’s Wish, it made it hard to figure out what was real and what was fake.
Not when it comes to what really matters.
She knew what she had to do, and she had to do it now before she lost her nerve and took the easy way out.
“Do you have the contacts in?”
Taz turned to face her. “No, why?”
Heart hammering in her chest, she stretched up on her tiptoes and looked into his eyes. The scent of his sandalwood soap surrounded her, this close in, and she had to fight to remember the point of all of this. “No dilation.”
“You either.”
Desire, unaided by anything chemicals beyond the testosterone punch of Taz’s pheromones, unfurled in her belly, warming her skin and making her nipples pebble. “We have fifteen minutes, and I want to know if that connection we felt in the cabana is true.”
His lips curled in a dangerous, predatory grin. “What do you have in mind?”
She hooked a finger in his waistband. “Let me show you.”
Chapter 12
Taz
Taz captured her wrist before she could take down his boxers. If she thought sex was all there was between them, was their only connection, then he wasn’t going to just give in that easily. She was going to have to work for it.
“That is not how this is going to go.” He pulled her hand away and the elastic of his boxers snapped back against his lower abs, leaving a satisfying sting.
Her pink tongue darted out and wet her bottom lip as she looked up at him with her big brown eyes. “Oh really?”
“Really.” He encircled her other wrist and raised her arms high over her head as he spun her around so her back was to the wall.
The move yanked up her sheer nightie so the ruffled hem stopped directly above her glistening pussy. The bare lips beckoned him with their heady scent to take a long, leisurely lap of her juices. Then another and another until his mouth was soaked with her desire and she was crying out in ecstasy above him.
“Already so wet for me.” He shoved his foot between hers and knocked her stance wide. “I could look at that pretty pussy of yours for hours, taste it, suck on your clit, and make you come again and again until you were begging for a break.”
“Big talk.”
“You know it’s not just talk with me, Kitten.” He adjusted his grip so he was holding both of her wrists in one hand. Then, he glided the backs of his fingers down the soft underside of her extended right arm. “Do I need to remind you about that night in Houston? Or the time in New York?”
She bit down on her full bottom lip and undulated her hips.
“I see not.” He traced a circle around the hard peak of her nipple straining against her nightie’s sheer material before dipping his head down and taking it in his mouth.
Bianca moaned and writhed under his touch as he sucked her nipple, pulling the sensitive nub to its limit then releasing it. Turning his attention to her other nipple, he repeated the circle-suck-pull routine as he slipped his free hand between her wet folds. God, her softness was so hot to his touch. He released her nipple with a soft pop.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have time for that, do we?”
“No,” she said, her breath a regretful, breathy whisper.
His hard cock, extending from the opening in his boxers, had no problem with the compressed timeline. Pre-cum made the swollen head slick. His balls were already tight against him. Genie’s Wish or not, this was how it always was between them. Beauty, brains and a brazen attitude, she was everything he’d never realized he was looking for until he’d found her. There was no way in hell, even after all the shit that had gone down in the past twenty-four hours, he was letting her go.
“You want to know if this is real with us?” He stepped between her splayed legs, released her arms, tugged her thong to the side and cupped her ass in his hands before lifting her up.
She locked her legs around him and arched her back so only her shoulder blades were pressed against the wall. The move drew him in close so the sensitive underside of his cock rubbed against her exposed sweet pussy. The pleasure just from that skin-to-skin contact was so intense, his vision went black for a moment. The urge to plunge inside her warm depths racked his body, but he held off—just barely.
“After six months you still don’t know?” he asked, using his hold on her ass to rock her tender flesh against him. “Are you that scared?”
She buried her face in his neck. “Yes.”
The sound was so plaintive, so unlike the Bianca he knew, that it froze him. He stopped moving his hips and he wrapped his arms around her, bringing her in close to him so there wasn’t an inch of skin he wasn’t touching in an effort to comfort her.
He turned his head to try to get a look at her face. “Why?”
She leaned back a little and looked up at him with watery eyes. “I don’t know that I could come back from losing you.”
That gutted him. Tamara. The marriage. Not telling her about his past. Before, he’d thought none of it mattered, but it had. By not sharing, he’d left her wondering, thinking that this thing between them was just that—a thing. It wasn’t. It was forever.
“You are a total badass, you could survive anything—but you don’t have to. I’m not going anywhere.”
She blinked away the wetness and grinned up at him. “Me either.”
“Glad that’s finally settled because you’re stuck with me.” He dropped one hand back to her ass and rocked against her slippery core once. “Today.” Twice. “Tomorrow.” Three times. “Forever.” And then slid deep inside her. “Never forget that.”
Taz pressed his face into the curve where her shoulder met her neck and used his free hand to hold hers. His teeth nipped at the tender skin and he slid into her wet pussy in one deep thrust after another. Pleasure ricocheted through his body. Her back arched like a bow, pressing her to him. Their fingers intertwined, staying bound together even as their bodies separated and joined at an ever-quickening pace.
His thighs burned. His balls ached. Sweat slid down his spine as he tilted his hips and changed the angle so he could slide deeper.
Bianca clenched around his cock, pulling at him, drawing him in and not wanting to let him go. Her legs trembled and she tossed her head back as her orgasm overcame her.
His climax started like an electric ball of energy in his lower back, enlarging in waves until his entire body buzzed.
“I love you, Bianca,” he groaned before withdrawing and entered one last time, burying himself to the hilt just as the charged sphere snapped. His orgasm hit like a bolt of lightning and he spilled into her, filling her, loving her.
“I love you too, Taz,” she whispered into his ear.
Still trying to catch his breath, he turned and lowered himself to the floor, taking Bianca with him. They’d barely made it down before the cell phone vibrated, alerting them to an incoming text. Lexie must have figured a way to spring them.
Bianca
Bianca unwound herself from Taz and walked on jelly legs over to the shelf where the cell phone was resting.
LEXIE: BE READY. ELISA AND MARKO CAME UP WITH A BEAUTY.
Picking it up, she pivoted as she pocketed it. Taz sat on the floor, one arm propped up on a raised knee, with his eyes closed and his lips curled in a post-orgasmic smirk. The sight of him took her breath away—not just because of how he looked, which was pretty damn good, but because he was right. They might never be the tell-each-other-everything couple, but that was okay because they were in this together for the long haul. It wasn’t because of Genie’s Wish. It wasn’t just a honeymoon high after they’d gotten together after the Bisu Manor mission adrenaline rush. It was because they belonged together, they loved each other. The truth of it settled deep in her bones, a certainty as solid as the Rocky Mountains.
“I don’t know what’s about to go down,” she said, “but Elisa and Marko came up with the plan.”
Taz opened his eyes and shook his
head. “Oh God, those two working together is never a good thing.”
“They only burned down one empty warehouse.” She almost got the whole sentence out without cracking a smile.
“Exactly.” He let out a weary sigh and stood up.
She had to hand him that one. The explosives expert and the con artist were a match made in trouble heaven, which was why it was a Godsend that the two couldn’t stop snarling at each other when they weren’t up to their elbows in the shit together.
Holding up a hand to silence him, she cracked open the door an inch. The guard was still at his spot in front of the video screens. The sandwich, chips and soda were history.
“Holy fucking shit on a rye bread cracker,” the guard yelled and jumped up from his chair. He grabbed his walkie-talkie next to the empty chip bag and turned it on. “I don’t know what the hell is going on, Bob, but it looks like aliens landing on the south beach.”
“Are you drinking, Jerry?” came the question out of the walkie-talkie.
“Fuck you Bob. Just get your skinny ass down there.”
The guard hot-stepped it out of the security room.
Bianca counted to ten and then walked out of the computer server room, dying to know how in the hell Marko and Elisa had managed an alien invasion from their spot on the Sutherland yacht anchored a mile from the island. She paused in front of the video screens and couldn’t help but chuckle.
“You’ve got to see this,” she said.
Taz stopped next to her, entwining his fingers with hers. “They outdid themselves this time.”
The manual labor was all Lexie, but the twisted idea had Marko and Elisa written all over it. Somehow they’d managed to isolate a handful of aliens from a movie and superimpose them onto a static shot of the resort’s south beach. If she didn’t know better, she might have had the same reaction as Jerry the guard.