by Lora Leigh
“Do you expect Ascarti to be at the party tonight?” she asked as she moved away from him, no doubt to hide the hurt that he hadn’t returned the words of love she had whispered.
His heart ached at the refusal. There were days, nights that he worried about the question himself, but refused to answer it.
He was prepared, but he also knew better than to tempt the future. He wouldn’t make plans, he refused to delve too deeply into the unfamiliar emotions that sometimes assailed him. Not until it was finished. Not until he knew he wasn’t going to lose her, or God forbid, that she, his men, and their families, were left without his protection.
He almost grinned at his thoughts. As though he could control any of it. But it sure as hell made him sleep better at night knowing he had done all he could to cover all the angles he could think of.
“I don’t expect Ascarti to be at the party tonight,” he finally told her. “He won’t show his hand so easily. Nor would his handler.”
“His handler?” She turned back to him, those thick, luscious waves of red-gold curls flowing around her as those mysterious green eyes narrowed on him. “Sorrel’s dead.”
Jordan gave a sharp nod as he moved to the bar, aware of her gaze following him as he passed her to prop himself on one of the bar stools.
“Sorrel’s dead,” he agreed. “But Ascarti isn’t a man who can work alone, nor is he capable of leading his men effectively without a powerful commander.”
Giving her that information wasn’t something he wanted to do. Tehya, like anyone else, was more comfortable putting a face to the demons that chased her. Unfortunately, he couldn’t give her that option yet.
She sighed heavily.
“I think I knew that,” she answered, her voice bleak. “Then that leaves us wondering who the hell is pulling the strings.”
He inclined his head in agreement before going to her again. This time, he didn’t give her the option of pulling away from him.
Gripping her waist, he lifted her onto the bar and stepped easily between her hips. Her position was perfect to angle the engorged length of his cock against the heated mound of her pussy as her gaze darkened in immediate arousal. Her face flushed, her expression softening as the powerful waves of need he knew she felt began to wash through her.
He knew she felt it. He felt it. It was like tidal waves of hunger, almost impossible to resist.
Sliding his fingers into the heavy length of curls to cup the back of her head, Jordan held her still for his kiss. A taste of the perfection of her lips before he had to become a dead man and live in the shadows away from her.
To save her.
His tongue flicked at her lips, feeling them part as his lips slanted over them and he pulled her to him. The feel of her arms sliding around his neck, holding him to her as her fingers threaded through his hair, had his cock stiffening to the point of pain.
He’d fucked her most of the night, drowning his senses in every touch, every kiss, every whispered moan he could pull from her until they had collapsed in exhaustion close to dawn.
And still, he wanted her.
He needed her just as much as, perhaps more than, the first time he’d had her.
“Damn.” Dragging his lips back from hers, he stared down at her, his breathing harsh, the impulse to pull her jeans to her ankles and fuck her like a man desperate for that connection was almost impossible to resist. And he had to resist. The party was only hours away and he would need all his senses intact to end this here and to ensure Tehya’s future.
A future in his arms. The thought whispered across his mind before he could pull back from it. Before he could force himself not to consider the future or where either of them would be.
Don’t jinx it, he warned himself. Only today exists. That possibility of tomorrow arriving was slimmer for men like him than for most. Especially now. And he couldn’t allow himself to forget it.
“Your dress is on its way.” He couldn’t let her go, couldn’t pull his hips from beneath her thighs. “The party’s in a few hours. You’ll be coming in with Kell and Emily. Watch for anyone too curious, anyone attempting to get too close to you or to draw you away. If anything, anything out of the ordinary happens…”
“Then I let Kell or one of the others at the party know.” She gave a quick nod before her gaze darkened with concern again. “And you’ll be careful?”
“I’ll be careful. More importantly, Tehya, I’ll be close. You won’t be alone, baby. Never. I promise you that.”
When was the last time anyone had worried if he would be careful? She made his chest get that funny melting sensation in it whenever she did something so female, and so incredibly caring as worrying about him. Even though the last thing he wanted her to do was worry.
As he’d told her, there were other eyes watching. He never placed all his bets on one plan, or one set of eyes. He’d pulled in friends, two teams completely unconnected to the Ops or anyone associated with them. Independent contractors in a manner, men he knew he could trust his life to. Even more, he could trust her life to them.
Glancing at the clock behind the bar, he restrained the sigh of regret that pushed at his chest.
“It’s time.” He kissed her gently on the lips before lifting her back to the floor. “The Senator’s staff will be returning within the hour.” And he had to be out of there before anyone saw him. Otherwise, the trouble they had gone to in setting up his “death” would be wasted effort.
He couldn’t afford that. Tehya’s life meant more to him than his own, and taking this threat out of it once and for all was more important to him than even she knew.
He lowered his head and his lips touched hers again as Jordan used every resource of control he possessed to keep from picking her up and lifting her back to the bar where he could love her in a way that would have her screaming when she came around him.
He contented himself with the knowledge that she had a bar at her own home, and he knew well exactly how to use it. He would have his chance once this was finished, and that was all that mattered.
Pulling away from her, he cupped her cheek for a moment, his lips quirking at the worry, the concern in her expression and the fear in her pretty green eyes.
“Smile for me, love.” He gave his voice the faintest hint of the Irish that he’d picked up from his father.
Her lips twitched at the sound of it.
“I’ll stop worrying if you promise to talk Irish to me the next time you make love to me,” she offered.
They both knew she was lying, but hell, whatever it took to get her back in the bed.
“That’s a deal.” A quick kiss to her lips, just one more taste before he had to leave her and return to the dark shadows that awaited him.
A kiss into which he swore she fed all the love she believed she felt.
If the illusion was preserved, pampered, and taken care of, did it matter if it was an illusion, Jordan asked himself again as he slipped from the study and made his way to the basement, where Noah, Micah, and Nik awaited him.
With them was one of the two-man teams, his youngest nephew, Rory Malone, and a former Army Ranger with whom Jordan had worked in a few past operations overseas, Turk Gillespie.
“Commander.” Turk nodded as Jordan stepped into the wine cellar at the back of the basement and closed the door behind him.
Low lighting and racks of wine stacked throughout the room gave it a shadowed atmosphere. At the very back, the door leading to an old tunnel and a hidden exit was open.
“Status?” He started with Turk and Rory.
“Casey and Iron are watching Ms. Talamosi,” Turk answered. “The chip you placed in the belly ring she wears is working perfectly. Everything’s in place if anyone makes a move on her.”
“Ascarti’s warehouse was hit and the weapons confiscated,” Noah informed him. “Ascarti wasn’t there, but we managed to get a jig on one of his bodyguards at a bar last night when he used his credit card to pay for drinks. He’s currently
sleeping off a hangover in a motel, so we haven’t managed to follow him to Ascarti yet.”
“I want Ascarti taken out at the earliest opportunity,” Jordan informed him as he forced back the fury that rose each time he thought of the bastard still living.
“We already guessed that.” Noah nodded.
“One of the mercenaries working with Ascarti, Mark Tenneyson, has made several drive-bys along the street in front of here,” Rory reported. “We’ve tried to track him, but we keep losing him. So far, we’ve not seen anything or anyone to indicate someone else is pulling the strings.”
“I agree with Jordan, though,” Nik stated. “This setup with Ascarti is just a little too damned handy. Something isn’t ringing right with it.”
“John and Bailey, Travis and Lilly will be covering Tehya at the party,” Jordan mused. “I have the tracker on her and we have every access to her I can come up with, covered. They’ll move tonight, before they believe John and Travis can get a plan in place to have her covered. This is their best bet, there’s no way they’ll find a better opportunity to grab her, especially with the information both John and Travis have put out there.”
Jordan prayed it would be enough. From the moment they had set this up, they’d pushed every contact they had and placed pressure at each pulse they could find leading out from the men they’d identified as a threat.
This party was the only chance they would see in the near future of grabbing her. Word going out was that a team would arrive in the morning to whisk her to an undisclosed location, where her identity would be so completely altered that there would be no finding her.
Whoever was tracking her, whether it was Ascarti or others, wouldn’t want to risk being unable to find her, or identify her again.
“Our contact in Afghanistan also reported finally.” Noah leaned against the wall, his dark face covered with a closely cropped beard to hide the scars he carried, frowned pensively as he crossed his arms over his chest. “It seems Tehya’s identity and her location were betrayed by an anonymous party to a low-level criminal formerly in Sorrel’s employ, Thaddeus Alchoni.”
“Thaddeus is a French-born aristocrat identified as a runner and informant for Sorrel,” Micah continued when Noah glanced at him. “Our contact there called me and reported that word went out to Sorrel’s men within hours of his death ten years ago, that any information concerning the wife or the child that escaped was to be reported to someone they called the Marquis. Alchoni sent the information via a mail service Sorrel had set up years before his death for use by informants who couldn’t meet with him. We have someone trying to track that now, but so far, there’s no further information.”
“Why didn’t we know about that order when it went out?” Jordan questioned, his voice harsher than he intended at the thought that he had overlooked an important detail in Tehya’s safety.
“Because it wasn’t an organization-wide order,” Noah picked the conversation back up. “That order only went out to a few of their higher-level informants. Those who weren’t identified as part of the organization after Sorrel’s death.”
“It was well hidden, just as Lilly’s mother and many of her fine friends managed to hide what they were doing,” Micah growled.
It had amazed them, all the secrets they had learned once their operative, Nighthawk, had been allowed to return to her former life after she was nearly assassinated.
How the some of the impossibly rich conducted their personal lives, manipulated their bloodlines, and bought and sold their women as though they were no more than pets or breeding stock.
Men would choose their mistresses, future wives, or their son’s playthings as young girls, then arrange with their fathers, or even their mothers, for specialized training or interests to be introduced into their lives.
The girls that rebelled were sent to a clinic in Switzerland that had often used torturous practices to ensure they never rebelled again.
They created puppets out of their daughters and monsters of their sons. And if the reconditioning didn’t work, then men like Sorrel had arranged “accidents” so skillfully that even their parents never suspected, in many cases, why their sons or daughters had died.
Finally, Jordan turned to Rory. “You and Turk back up Iron and Casey from here on out. I want everyone ready to move on this if so much as a breath of wind thinks to blow the wrong way.”
“You have a bad feeling about this, don’t you, Jordan?” Noah probed.
His nephew had worked with him often enough, knew him well enough, that he picked up on it instantly.
“Something’s not coming together,” Jordan admitted. “I’m certain they’ll strike tonight, but I’m damned if I can believe it’s Ascarti.” He gave a hard shake of his head. “I can’t pinpoint it, Noah.” And that was so rare that Jordan knew it was usually indicative of a mission going to hell at the last minute.
Noah’s eyes narrowed. “We’ll make sure we’re all on our toes.”
They would anyway, Jordan knew. But that feeling was never wrong.
Looking at the men watching him, for the first time in his career as a SEAL and then an Elite Ops commander, Jordan was second-guessing himself.
“Turk, you and Rory head out and meet up with Iron and Casey to coordinate your places. Be prepared for anything. I want, at all times, eyes on Tehya in some way. If, by any chance, she is taken, then I want to know where she’s at every second.”
Rory gave a sharp nod, though his gaze was concerned as it met Jordan’s, then Noah’s. Rather than saying anything, he turned and he and Turk left the wine cellar quickly via the hidden exit that opened into a sheltered, overgrown ravine nearly a quarter of a mile away.
“Micah, you and Nik cover the gardens outside the ballroom tonight. Get in place so you have a clear view of the doors in case Tehya’s taken out.”
“We also have the gates covertly wired for security and wireless cameras covering the perimeter,” Micah assured him. “We’re prepared, Jordan.”
Jordan nodded briefly. As they left, he turned to Noah, his second in command on this job.
He’d been tempted to take the women who, in his mind, were his wife, as Fuentes and Sorrel believed that if he broke the wedding vows he was known to cherish, then his loyalty to his country would follow.
But Noah, Nathan Malone as he’d been then, had never broken those vows. Even in the years after his rescue, before his wife had known he’d survived, after years of believing her husband was dead, neither of them had betrayed the vows they made when they married.
They were happy now. Their son, Riordan Nathan Blake, Nate as they called him, was six, in kindergarten, and driving his parents crazy. Noah lived and breathed for them.
“You okay?” Noah asked quietly, his darker blue eyes probing as he watched Jordan.
CHAPTER 19
The dress was absolutely beautiful, and Nik’s wife Mikayla was one of those serene, at-peace souls who seemed to bring comfort to everyone around her.
Long, heavy blond hair was pulled back into a braid, her classically pretty face emphasized by the smile on her lips and the laughter in her eyes. And the sheer adoration present whenever she talked about her husband and their daughter.
Tehya knew Nik had lost his first wife and only child before he came into the Ops. The haunted pain she had always sensed in him had evaporated after he met Mikayla Martin, though. And now, she was still taken aback every time she saw him smile.
“I knew this dress would be absolutely perfect for you,” Mikayla commented as Tehya stepped out of the large dressing room/bath attached to the guest room and let Mikayla see her creation.
The floor-length, tissue thin, dual-layer white-and-violet silk whispered from the shoulders to the cinched waist, where it then fell in soft clouds of material to her feet and the matching four-inch heels.
Tiny violet sequins were sewn in patterns of soft falls of intricate detail along the shoulders and again in a gentle wave to emphasize her breasts. More
had been placed at the cinched waist at her hips and again at her midriff.
The bold splash of color drew attention to her eyes and the soft light tan on her skin. It also managed to give her an air of frailty, despite the height of the heels.
“Absolutely beautiful,” Mikayla sighed as she moved around, bending and fluffing the material here and there as she checked for whatever it was a clothing designer and maker checked for.
Whatever she was looking for, she must not have found it. When she straightened and rose, there was a look of supreme satisfaction on her face. “I am proud.” She sighed again as she fluttered her fingers against her chest. “You look like a fairy princess, Tehya.”
“Well, I don’t know about that.” Tehya stared into the full-length mirror. “But the dress looks damned good, Mikayla.”
Mikayla gave a little light laugh and a wink. “The dress complements the girl, is what I always say. It takes more than a pretty dress and a little makeup to do what you do to that dress, Tehya. And it takes a girl just as unique to catch the eye and the heart of the commander Nik and Noah feared would come home in a body bag if he went back into the Ops as a field agent rather than a commander, as he was considering.”
Tehya ducked her head. She hadn’t known he was considering such a thing. If Noah had discussed it with Nik though, then she knew for a fact it had been a possibility.
The fact that Mikayla believed Jordan was in the SEALs was besides the point. If he’d returned to the Ops as a field agent, rather than a commander, then the chances of that would be higher.
She knew Jordan. And she had sensed his discontent in his life before the Ops unit disbanded was riding higher than he let on. But she hadn’t expected that decision.
“What makes Nik think I have his heart?” That question was uppermost in her mind.
Mikayla’s smile was soft when she glanced back at her. “I’ve only seen Jordan a few times, Tehya. Each time I’ve seen him, until these last weeks, he’s been tense, cold. But now, it’s like there’s something different about him. It’s Nik’s opinion he’s in love.”