by Lora Leigh
Instead, he forced himself to simply stand there, to do no more than watch her.
She stared around the room, her gaze touching on the silent computers, the darkened maps, the blank expanse of screens where satellite images had once been displayed.
And she looked lost. She looked as though she didn’t know where to turn, or where to go now that this part of her life was over.
Elite Operations One was over. The last agent had fulfilled the eight year contract he’d signed. Several had been under twelve year contracts, but they were finished now as well. Five men had gone their own way to live their lives in the sheltering hearts of the women who had ultimately saved them.
And where the hell did that leave him? Where did that leave Tehya?
She had dedicated six years to the Elite Operations. Pulled in at the age of twenty-four because of her contacts overseas, her practical knowledge in communications, and had eventually been given the codename Enigma. She’d been a last minute decision made more by the agents than by Jordan and she had immediately completed a team that hadn’t known they weren’t whole.
If it had been left up to him, she would have never wasted those tender years of her life within this mountain. She wouldn’t have wasted her life staring at computers, or immersing herself in the lives and the missions that had been played out beyond the steel and cement walls surrounding her now.
She should have been living. She should have gone to college, married and had a house full of babies instead of hiding on the secretive, secure base of Elite Operations One.
As he watched her, she pushed her fingers through the long, heavy strands of red-gold hair that fell to her hips. He rarely saw it unbound anymore. For years she’d kept it in a tight plait, or a ponytail.
Had she worn it loose in the past years as she did tonight, then he wondered if he could have kept his hands off her for so damned long.
That hair tempted, it teased, it dared. And Jordan wasn’t a man that could turn his back on a dare.
In the six years she had worked with the Elite Ops, he’d done his best to stay the hell away from her, but he couldn’t deny she had made herself an integral part of the unit.
Tehya was the backbone of the communications center, along with Kira Richards. She had also acted as his personal assistant, and he’d been damned if he could think of anyone who could have fulfilled that job nearly as well.
It was Tehya that kept the files intact, mission information flowing, his coffee hot and plentiful, and his dick spike hard.
It was hard now. His balls tight and throbbing, his muscles tense with the effort to stay the hell away from her, to ignore the silent invitation he saw in her eyes too often.
It was an invitation he wouldn’t see any longer after the sun rose one day. She would be heading out, leaving the base to begin a life of her own. To learn how to simply be Teylor Johnson, a woman that had spent her life working in the back offices of a central database company. One of those nameless, faceless drones that other workers rarely, if ever, saw, but depended upon for the various files and information she was responsible for.
She would be out of his life. And hell if he knew how to handle that thought.
Watching, Jordan’s fingers clenched as she turned, her lush hair moving in a wave of silk, tempting his fingers to tangle in the long, rioting curls.
Those long strands swayed around her then as she slowly shook her head and sighed. A slow, heavy sound of regret before she turned and left the dimly lit room, unaware he watched, unaware of the hunger he allowed to tighten his expression.
There had only been a few times had he ever come truly close to Tehya. She had gone covert with him several times because of her ability to hack her way into any system and her overseas connections. His identity had been that of Jordan “Black Irish” O’Reilly, a white slaver, terrorist, and weapons supplier.
During those brief operations, Tehya had slid so smoothly into the role of Irish’s lover, Enigma, that it had been almost terrifying. Cool, yet flaming hot. A woman of intellect being held against her will to a man that she didn’t know whether to love or to hate. The man who had kidnapped her and trained her as his sex slave until she came to his bed at the age of eighteen.
The story was fiction, but the thought of Tehya in his bed now was enough to make him sweat.
She made him fuck hungry. He lived in a hellacious haze of lust at times, so damned hot for her it was all he could do to keep his cock in his pants.
Fantasies of her, naked, her eyes dazed with lust, her face flushed as he teased, tempted and sated the lust that he knew would explode between both of them. Watching her creamy flesh flush. Seeing her eyes dilate and darken. Hips arching. Pussy saturated with her juices, swollen and clenched tight as he worked his dick inside her.
His nostrils flared at the fantasy he couldn’t ignore, as the heavy steel door below slid open. It closed behind her as she passed through it, heading for the resident suites further up the mountain.
The communications room was the lowest level of the base. Ten stories beneath the mountain above them, heavily secured and completely hidden.
Residential suites were a single story beneath ground level, each set of rooms outfitted with a bedroom, bathroom and small sitting and meal preparation area. The Elite Ops agents were well taken care of. They were the heart and soul of the non-government, non-military, secretive group of undercover operatives. Operatives who were now gone with the exception of himself and Tehya.
Jordan had seen each operative off with a sense of envy that even he couldn’t deny. Despite his determination to remain single. To remain a doting uncle, brother, and son, still, he’d been envious of the lives his men had waiting for them. The wives, the children. The freedom to laugh and to love.
It was a freedom Tehya hadn’t sought out, though each year he had lived in fear of it, wondering if he could let her go when she made the request.
Hell, letting her go now was something he was finding impossible to do. He was the reason she was still here. He had kept her busy, kept her working, ensuring she had been delayed and the last to leave. Ensuring he didn’t have to release his grip on her until the very last possible second before the new team moved in to take over the base.
And why had he kept her there? He’d avoided her this entire, final week. He’d watched her from afar, jacked off at night when the fucking lust was close to breaking his control, and kept telling himself he could let her go.
And still, he was fighting it. Still, he was trying to find ways to hold her here when he knew he had finally run out of time.
Shaking his head at the futility of the hunger tearing at his control, he pushed his hands into the pockets of his pants and finished his final inspection before leaving himself.
The next morning would see him walking from the base, perhaps for the last time.
He had the option of returning and heading the new team, with the new commander working as his second in command. Killian Reece had no problems with Jordan assuming command of the base and operations as he continued the covert role of Jordan O’Reilly.
It was a decision he had less than a month to make. He could go another twelve years or he could back off, find a place for himself within the world as a civilian and find a life.
The only problem was, he couldn’t imagine life outside this mountain, without Tehya running his life to some extent. Without her tormenting him with her pert smile and sassy as hell comebacks that made his dick harder than hell with the need to fuck her into submission.
Son of a bitch.
He shifted the hardened length of his cock as he stepped into the elevator at the end of the steel and iron walkway and pushed the button for the residential level. The thought of her leaving had that need ripping through him with a force that damned near cramped his dick. His had the urge to go to her, to jerk her to him, lift her, wrap those incredible legs around his hips and pound into her.
She would walk out those doors when morning c
He doubted it.
He had every intention of going straight to his own suite, he assured himself. Every intention of ensuring he didn’t tempt himself further where Tehya was concerned.
Instead, he found himself at her door. Dick hard, pulse pounding, his body tense, unrelenting in the pure addictive-like hunger pouring through his body.
He hadn’t told her goodbye. It would hurt her if he didn’t say something before she left in the morning. He couldn’t do that to her.
He couldn’t do it to himself.
Pressing his finger to the button that would announce his presence he waited. Rather than her voice coming over the small intercom, the metal door slid open instead.
And there she stood.
The black silk flowed over her full breasts. The long red-gold hair spilled around the creamy perfection of her face.
She was thirty years old, but she barely looked twenty-five.
Vivid emerald green eyes watched him warily, but the nipples beneath that silk hardened, peaked and pressed against the material as though reaching for the hungry depths of his mouth.
Damn, he should have gone straight to his own suite. He should have never stopped.
He was going to do exactly what he had told himself he wouldn’t do.
He was going to fuck her.
“Jordan.” His name was a caress on her lips. The soft, sultry sound was filled with an aching huskiness, a question, a hint of hope.
“Are you packed?”
That wasn’t what he wanted to say. He wanted to reach out and rip that damned gown off her body, push her back into the room and thrust into the sweet, hot depths of her pussy.
Damn, she would be tight. She hadn’t had a lover in the six years she had been with the unit. He knew she hadn’t. He’d kept such close surveillance on her that he would have known the second she would have so much as entertained the thought.
She’d given her life to the Elite Operations, and what did she have to show for it? She had no family, no friends, no connections or roots. He was throwing her to the wolves.
“I’m packing,” she finally answered as she turned away, but not before he caught the flash of hurt in her eyes. “Is that all you wanted?”
Hell, no it wasn’t all he wanted.
A soft, supple leather covered the couch and recliner that faced the wall-mounted combination television/computer screen. A small lap table sat at one end of the couch, the wireless keyboard and computer accessories aimed for the screen.
A colorful western throw was laid over the back of the couch. A cup of tea sat on the coffee table, still steaming as she moved back to it.
A bookshelf filled with books covered one wall. Interspersed with the books were small figurines she’d been given over the years for Christmas or her birthday. Tiny, collectible dragons. Pocket dragons she called them.
She hadn’t packed them. The books were still on the shelves, boxes in front of them with only a few books enclosed.
“You have a ways to go,” he said as he looked around.
The room was incredibly neat. Even the packed boxes were stacked in neat little piles awaiting morning and the team that would load her belongings and transport them to the storage facility she had requested they be taken to.
“I’ll be ready on time.” She shrugged.
Those wild green eyes flicked over him, making his cock harder, reminding him of all the things he couldn’t have. All the things he refused to allow himself to have.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t have her. He could, and God knew he wanted her until his body felt on fire from the need. But he knew he would only end up destroying both of them if he took her, if he allowed the dominant possessiveness that rode him, free.
“What do you want, Jordan?” she finally asked as she sat down on the couch, one leg tucked beneath the other as she wedged herself into the corner of the cushions. “You’re standing there as though you should be doing something? There’s nothing left to do anymore.” And the regret she felt echoed through his entire being.
No, there wasn’t.
He felt his jaw tighten as he fought back the need to go to her, to push her back along the leather cushions as he came over her.
Five seconds, he thought. He could have her laid on the couch, that piece of nothing gown she wore pushed to her hips and his dick buried between those luscious thighs in less than five seconds.
And he would be making the biggest mistake of his life.
She was, essentially, a co-worker. He was her superior, even though the Ops were, for the moment, disbanded. She was a woman that needed more than he could give her, more than he could allow himself to give any woman.
“Jordan, if you don’t stop standing there staring at me as though you’re ready to strangle me, then I just may begin to worry.”
She didn’t sound in the least worried. She sounded irritated, restless, a bit frustrated. But worried wasn’t in there.
“Do you need help packing?” he finally asked.
He wasn’t ready to walk away. Come dawn, the transport detail would be here to load her belongings and ship them out. She would be following behind in whichever of the expensive, fast little sports cars was still parked in the base garage. He’d given her a choice of the vehicles, where he hadn’t made the offer to the other members of the unit.
“I don’t need help packing.” There was a snap to her voice now, a sense of impatience and frustration that threatened to light a fuse to his already short temper.
“You’ll leave it to the last damned minute and have the transport detail packing boxes and running late while you bark out orders,” he ground out as that frustration began to eat at him, to get the better of him. “Dammit, Tehya, they’re on a schedule.”
“As if I’m ever late getting anything done.” Her eyes narrowed, an assessing, curious light glittering in them as she watched him.
He hated it when she stared at him like that. As though she suddenly glimpsed something in his gaze or in his expression that was another piece of a puzzle she was putting together.
He wasn’t a damned puzzle. He was a fucking horny man and he was trying damned hard to keep a handle on the lusts raging through him.
What the hell did she expect from him?
“Do you want me to help you pack?” His arms went over his chest as he glared at her now, channeling all the frustrated lusts into irritated anger.
Anger was a hell of a lot easier to deal with than a redheaded little rogue determined to drive him crazy inside.
“No. Actually, I don’t need your help.” She came to her feet slowly, like a cat slowly unwinding from a favorite bed.
She didn’t stretch, but she didn’t have to. Laziness wasn’t a part of her demeanor at the moment.
“You need someone’s help,” he growled as he stared around the living area once again. “What about the other rooms? Are they ready to load?”
Her eyes narrowed further. “Everything but the living room. Would you like to check, daddy, and make certain I’m following orders?”
The sweetness of her voice almost had his balls shrinking. Intimidation from a five foot four piece of dynamite? It shouldn’t be possible.
But he knew this little piece of dynamite could pack a whallop when it wanted to.
Unfortunately, common sense didn’t seem to be his forte tonight.
“Don’t call me ‘daddy’, Tehya. I’m well aware of your feelings when it comes to fathers.”
She distrusted them. She even watched the men she had worked with for years with a suspicious gaze once they’d become fathers.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Jordan,” she replied with a cute little drawl that in no way detracted from the danger glittering in her gaze. “I have no feelings one way or the other where fathers are concerned. I never had a father, so how should I know how they’re supposed to act. Sperm donors don’t count.”
She had little more than a sperm donor. One that kidnapped her mother, impregnated her, then attempted to raise Tehya to become a brood mare for her half brother.
“You’ve had weeks to prepare for this,” he reminded her. “You should already be out of here.”
Something flashed in her eyes then, something he could have sworn was grief.
If it was, then it was the same grief that seemed to be growing inside him as well. A well of furious denial when it came to walking away from her. She cast him one of those cool little looks of warning retribution as she stood, facing him.
“I dare you,” she suddenly stated, her eyes narrowing as she stared back at him.
Every muscle in his body tightened dangerously.
God no. Don’t let her dare him, not where he could sense that dare was going.
“Excuse me?”
“Are you not hearing so well, Commander Jordan?” A red-gold brow arched slowly as her arms crossed over breasts, pumping the delicate mounds up, making them so damned tempting his mouth almost watered.
“I dare you to actually touch me,” she explained, that note of anger in her voice causing his jaw to clench in determination. “You’ve been a complete prick for six years now, alternating between ignoring me and ordering your men away from me until it’s made me ready to pull my hair out. Be a man Jordan. See if you can handle it. See if you can handle me.”
There were some challenges a man couldn’t ignore no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he wanted to. This was one of those challenges.
Be a man?
She had no idea the man she was tempting.
“Don’t push this,” he warned her, his fingers curling to fists at his sides. “You may not like the consequences.”
“Or you may not,” she replied with an edge of pain-filled mockery. “What’s wrong Jordan, afraid you can’t walk away from me as easily as you’ve walked away from the little bimbos you’ve been fucking for the past six years?”
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