Elite Ops Complete Series

by Lora Leigh

  Nik wondered if Maddix was aware of it.

  On second thought, Maddix wasn’t a stupid man; he probably was.

  Leaving the house, Nik walked back to his Harley, swung on, and twisted the key. The engine flared to life with a heavy, deep roar.

  Maneuvering out of the wide driveway, he headed for the security gates and what he considered freedom beyond. Hell, he’d prefer to pledge the rest of his life to the Elite Ops than to live like this. Accepting deceit and selfish bickering such as what he’d glimpsed in Maddix Nelson’s life.

  The man hadn’t raised his son with the same values he lived by; that was for damned sure.

  But Mikayla had those values.

  Where the hell had that thought come from?

  Nik felt his enter body tense, tightening involuntarily at the thought of the too-small, too-fragile woman he had held in his arms the past week.

  He hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind, nor had he been able to keep from watching her. He was spending more time tracking her than he was tracking a killer. And that wasn’t even Nik’s job. His job was to figure out why she was lying about a man who hadn’t, or at least who swore he hadn’t, committed murder.

  This was turning into a hell of a job, and one that was clearly going to take more time than Nik had anticipated. His commander, Jordan, was already questioning how much longer it could possibly take. The team had already been sent out to the next mission without Nik. That was something that hadn’t happened in all the years they had fought together.

  It was something that shouldn’t be happening now. Except Nik couldn’t seem to pull himself away.

  The bruises on Mikayla’s face were only now beginning to fade a bit. He knew that because he spied on her. As disgusting as it seemed to him, he couldn’t help but watch out for her, to check up on her.

  Someone much larger, much stronger, had dared to attack her in the darkness. Because of what she had seen or because of what she thought she saw?

  Nik knew the surrounding area was divided on the subject of Maddix Nelson committing murder. Many thought he was capable of it. Some thought he was capable, but that in the case of Eddie Foreman he hadn’t actually acted. Others thought the idea absurd but were amused by the battle being waged over it.

  And at least one night, someone had decided to put a stop to the small woman who had instigated that battle.

  A cold, hard knot of rage formed in Nik’s stomach at the thought of the harm that could come to her. Something dark and protective welled inside him despite his battle against it.

  Hell, he’d lost enough in his life. Did he really need to allow himself to become attached to a woman he knew he could never allow himself to have fully?

  He could fuck her. He could take that shining innocence she had saved for so long and mar it with the darkness that lived within his soul, but he couldn’t keep her. For a brief moment in time he could let the warmth and light that flowed through him when he touched her fill his soul, but he would have to walk away soon.

  His life wasn’t his own for two more long years, and even then he couldn’t call it his own. There was no chance that once that time was past he could ever live a life even resembling happy.

  He’d made enemies. He’d walked a line that no man could walk and expect to find peace later.

  He was known in many dark corners of the world as a killer, a purveyor of war and destruction. And he wanted to bring that into the life of a woman who seemed to vibrate with warmth?

  And yet how could he walk away?

  His jaw ached at the force of his teeth grinding together. His hands flexed deliberately around the handgrips of the motorcycle handlebars as he turned toward town and the shop he knew Mikayla would still be working in.

  Creating dreams. That was what she did there.

  She created dreams in the form of dresses for both the innocent as well as the jaded. In each stitch of each design that she created herself, she lived her own dreams.

  Dreams of romance and adventure, dreams of candlelit nights and passion.

  And he knew, in a back room of her own home, she was creating her own dream. The first fragile form of a white gown that she would one day wear as she walked down the aisle herself.

  He’d seen it when he had slipped into her home. His fingers had touched the fragile lace of the underskirt she had begun as his eyes had memorized the sketch on the table.

  Mikayla was making her wedding gown. A creation of satin and lace, of beads and ivory. A gown she would wear for the man who would claim her heart forever.

  Nik couldn’t allow himself to be that man.

  There was a part of himself that clenched in fury at the thought of any other man claiming that place in her life, though Nik knew it was a place he could never claim himself.

  Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.

  His job here was to find out why Mikayla Martin was lying about what she had seen.

  His opinion was, if she was lying, then she was the best damned liar he had ever laid his eyes on. Or simply a woman he wanted more than he had ever wanted any other woman.

  The potential for destruction was only growing.

  Mikayla stared at the plate-glass window of her shop, feeling the tears that threatened to flood her eyes.

  “LIAR.” The word was brilliant crimson. The defacer wouldn’t be caught. Mikayla had been through this too many times now to even bother calling her lawyer to once again demand the security tapes from the bank across the street. They always showed the same thing. Whoever used the paint wore a now-familiar black face covering. They had run across the street, painted, and run back while Deirdre and Mikayla were closer to the back of the store.

  “LIAR.” The letters were like a brand on her soul as the door opened and Deirdre stepped out with a bucket of hot sudsy water, a scraper, and sponges.

  “I’m sorry, Mikayla,” Deirdre said softly as pedestrians walked by slowly, whispering.

  Everyone whispered.

  “It’s not your fault, Deirdre.” It was her own fault, she thought. She must not have been careful enough when she stopped by the new foreman’s house, a friend of her father’s, and tried to discuss Eddie Foreman with him.

  That or he had called Maddix Nelson after she had left.

  “Luke Nelson told some of the guys at the bar that his father had hired a private investigator,” Deirdre said as Mikayla dampened the window, then went to work with the scraper. “Have you seen anyone?”

  She shook her head. No one had talked to her. A part of her wished they had, then that evening wouldn’t seem more like a too-vivid nightmare than reality.

  There were days she had wondered if it had even happened. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Eddie Foreman was indeed dead, then she would almost be convinced she had imagined the entire thing.

  “What about Nik Steele?” her friend asked. “Have you seen him again?”

  “Coming and going.” She scraped at the stubborn paint as Deirdre began working on the other side. “I haven’t spoken to him again.”

  “Not since your brothers cock-blocked you.” Deirdre snickered.

  Mikayla knew what her friend was trying to do. Deirdre was trying to ease the hurt. This had happened so often now that there were times Mikayla wondered if it even hurt any longer.

  “I don’t want to talk about that, Deirdre.” Perhaps she had made a mistake in telling her best friend about the deck fiasco with Nik Steele.

  “Of course you don’t.” Deirdre grinned. “Then you might have to admit you miss him.”

  Of course she missed him. There was no doubt about that. But the sane part of her brain realized that the absence was for the best.

  “Doesn’t matter.” She finally shrugged, keeping her eyes firmly on the job at hand. “Some things are better off unknown.”

  Nik Steele was better off being one of those unknowns. Like aliens, the mysteries of the universe.

  As she watched the water smear across the red, mixing wit
h the color, looking like blood running in rivulets to the sidewalk, the image of Eddie Foreman flashed in her mind.

  She swallowed tightly, her heart thudding sluggishly at the remembered fear.

  “Mikayla, you don’t mean that,” Deirdre said softly.

  “I mean it,” she whispered as she fought to shake off the nightmarish image of Eddie Foreman’s dead body. “He’s a bad boy, Deirdre. I’m the good girl. Doesn’t that suck? Sounds like a recipe for trouble if you ask me.”

  “Sounds like a recipe for some incredible sex to me, but I’m prejudiced toward the idea.”

  The dark rasp of his voice sent a rush of sensation up Mikayla’s spine. She swung around, her gaze hitting directly in the center of his chest before lifting, slowly, to those incredible light blue eyes.

  What had ever made her believe his gaze was icy? It was hot. Filled with hunger, with sex, with trouble.

  Deirdre was so dead. That wench had totally betrayed her.

  Blood rushed to her face, heated her body. That was all well and good, but the flush afflicting the flesh between her thighs was terribly uncomfortable. It was lush, damp, so heated. The need for touch began to rock her system, to travel across her nerve endings and throb in areas of her body that she was certain shouldn’t be throbbing.

  “You weren’t supposed to hear that,” she muttered irately, turning back to the window, scrubbing at the paint, promising to make sure Deirdre paid for this one. Somewhere, sometime.

  “We need to talk, Mikayla,” Nik stated as he moved closer, the heat of his body surrounding her. “Could you leave the cleanup to your assistant?”

  “No, actually, I can’t.” She was too close to proving just how thin that layer of her good-girl persona was. It was barely skin-deep, and the flames burning beneath it were melting it away as quickly as a fire softened butter.

  He had an effect on her she knew no man should have on a woman. He made her weak. He made her need things she knew she shouldn’t need.

  She had plans. Her plans did not include having her heart broken, her future forever marred, by the man she couldn’t have.

  “We could always discuss this on the sidewalk.” He turned, leaning his back against an unpainted section of the window, crossing his arms over his chest. “I could tell you in detail exactly what I had planned last week when your brothers decided to become inquisitive and protective. For instance, I didn’t have time that night to tell you how soft your pretty thighs are.”

  Mikayla froze. For one horrible second she could only imagine who was standing behind them. Her breath stopped. Her eyes widened; then she sneaked a peek around them, nearly giving a hard breath of relief when she saw no one.

  Her gaze jerked back to him.

  “Come inside and talk to me, or we’ll talk out here.”

  “You don’t want to talk,” she hissed.

  “Talking is the last thing on my mind,” he assured her, his fingers curling around her wrist, his eyes locking onto hers. “Isn’t this where the bad boy kisses the good girl in public and begins sullying her pristine reputation?”

  There was a twinkle of amusement in his gaze, but it was hesitant, as though in teasing her he was enjoying something he hadn’t expected to enjoy.

  “Sorry, someone else already took care of sullying that pristine reputation. At least, the honesty part of it.” She sighed as she attempted to pull her wrist from his grip. “Let me go, Nik. I don’t have time for this. I have a window to clean.”

  “And I have a discussion I want to have with you. Come along, sweetheart.” He pulled her into the shop as she stared at his back in amazement.

  The black T-shirt he wore stretched across the hard, well-defined muscles, catching her gaze. Otherwise, she assured herself, she would have never followed him, at least not without the fight she should have given him, into her office.

  As the door closed behind them and he began to turn, her lips parted to inform him of her opinion, in blistering detail, of his high-handed tactics.

  He was quicker than she. Between one breath and the next he was lifting her to him, his lips catching hers, his tongue slipping between her lips with rapacious demand, with hungry sexuality.

  And she wasn’t fighting him. She didn’t have the strength to fight him. Instead, her fingers gripped his shoulders, her lips parted further, and her tongue stroked against his, tasted him, drew him into her like the sweetest nectar.

  It was exquisite. The taste and the feel of him.

  It was like drowning in dark heat and forbidden hunger, and for precious seconds Mikayla allowed herself the sheer luxury of having exactly what she wanted, exactly how she wanted it.

  She wasn’t going to fall in love with him, she promised herself. This was not going to mess up her plans for her future, because she simply wouldn’t allow it to.

  It was just a moment out of time, she promised herself.

  She could have this moment.

  She could have his lips on hers, his arms wrapped around her, holding her against the rock-solid heat of his chest, feeling his heart beat against her breasts, the hard outline of his erection beneath his jeans, pressing into her lower stomach.

  God, she wanted him.

  Straining closer, she fought for a deeper kiss, more touch. She wanted to feel him against every inch of her body. She needed him at this moment like she needed the very air to breathe.

  Just for a moment.

  “Such a good girl,” he murmured as his lips sipped from hers, his hands shaping, then cupping the rounded curves of her rear as he lifted her, pressed her against the wall, and let her feel him.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be fighting, Mikayla?”

  The hard wedge of his cock pressed firmly between her thighs, hot, thick, a solid weight of arousal behind the leather pants he wore.

  The thin silk of her stylish short skirt rode up her thighs, leaving only a narrow band of silk between the leather and her dampening flesh.

  Her panties were no barrier. She felt too much; the sensations traveled too deep.

  “I am fighting.” She bit at his lips for not kissing her, for daring to pull away from her.

  At the nip, he seemed to freeze, then a harsh growl of hunger tore from his lips and he was kissing her as though the sheer act of thrusting his tongue inside her mouth, stroking against hers, mimicking the act their bodies were suddenly desperate for, would somehow assuage a hunger Mikayla knew she was never going to be free of.

  His hand slid beneath the skirt, calloused fingertips touching bare flesh only a breath from the elastic band of her panties.

  She wanted his fingers there. She wanted them sliding beneath the material. She wanted him touching her.

  Rocking against the press of his erection, she allowed her fingers to bite into his shoulders as his lips slanted over hers, the hunger deepening, the need tearing through her.

  She couldn’t have him.

  She couldn’t have this.

  She wanted it.

  She wanted it with a force threatening to drive her insane as she suddenly found herself free of him, standing against the wall, staring back at him in shock.

  His hair was loose and flowing along his shoulders. Had she done that? Slipped the leather strap free of his hair?

  She must have. It was tangled in her fingers, the warm leather gripped in her hand as she stared back at him, drawing in deep, ragged breaths.

  He was no less affected. His eyes blazed with need.

  No man had ever burned for her like this. Mikayla had never inspired great passion until now.

  And God help her, if she didn’t have more of it, then she just might do something she rarely did.

  She was going to cry.

  “How much do you want, good girl?” His fingers slipped just beneath the edge of her panties, feathering over the swollen, curl-laden flesh that dampened further at the feel of his touch.

  “How much?” How much did she want? She wanted everything. All of it. She wanted to forget why s
he was supposed to protest, and take everything she could get.

  “A little?” He breathed a kiss over her lips as his finger feathered against the curls with the lightest caress. “Or a lot?” His finger slipped past the curls of her swollen sex and slid gently between them.

  Her lips parted on a gasp of shock, of exquisite pleasure.

  “So which do you want, good girl?”

  CHAPTER 6

  Nik wanted it all.

  Staring into Mikayla’s exceptional violet gaze, he watched the slumberous sensuality take over as his finger rubbed against the snug entrance of her slick, heated pussy.

  He wanted nothing more than to slip his finger inside her, to feel the tight grip of intimate flesh, the ripple of pleasure as it raced through the velvety flesh.

  Instead, he only caressed the clenched entrance. He only touched her gently, easily.

  “You should wax here,” he suggested, watching her eyes flare again, watching the mingled shock and hunger as it raced through her. “You would feel the lightest breath of a touch then. Your sweet, sensitive flesh would be bare for me, Mikayla. No matter the touch of my fingers, my lips, my cock. You’d feel it as though each nerve ending were naked to my touch.”

  The sweet, heated flow of her juices trickled against his fingertips, slickening them further as a little gasp of breath parted her lips.

  “Please.” The little plea was a rasp of sound from her throat.

  “Please what, sweet baby?” He brushed his lips against hers.

  “Please, don’t do this to me.”

  He stared down at her, seeing the confusion, the pleasure, in her gaze, and he knew in that heartbeat that it had taken everything inside her to make that plea.

  He heard the words, just as he felt the response in her slender, fragile body. She was arching to him, reaching for him, her body shuddering as it fought for orgasm, even as she whispered the plea that he let her go.