Hard to Protect (Black Ops Heroes)

by Black, Incy

  And gave himself a mental slap.

  Never going to happen. No way would he take this woman to bed. Even if he survived the encounter, he doubted she would. Someone, or something, had damaged her. No woman wrapped herself in that many layers of frost without good reason. She may have crossed him, and for that she would pay, but he didn’t want to break her, for Christ’s sake.

  He’d shattered Diana, and in return her death—suicide—had shattered him. A joyride through hell he preferred not to repeat.

  No, he’d cajole the whereabouts of Treherne’s brother from her in a way that didn’t require physical contact or, at least, not deep physical contact. The odd affectionate caress he’d allow, purely as a sign of friendship. He had a feeling she could do with an ally. “What would have to happen for you to agree to have dinner with me?”

  “Both ice caps would have to melt.”

  He choked back, Well, you would know, and widened his grin. To hell with his reservations. This wintery beauty shared none of Diana’s frailty. The Doc could take care of herself.

  Game on.

  Chapter Two

  Berwick had been prepared for his manhood to take a hit. What he hadn’t anticipated was that other parts of his body would also suffer.

  Bloody skanky King’s Cross bar—he’d likely need antibiotics later. The cheap-grade whisky stripped the enamel from his teeth. The solitary smoking incense stick was insufficient against the stink of stale sweat, kebab grease, and other soilings his nose dared not identify. But beneath the ribald—okay, filthy, but still quite funny—chants of the hammered soccer fans, at least his humiliation couldn’t be overheard.

  A castrating week of having every one of his calls, texts, and schemed hey-fancy-bumping-into-yous rejected, and he’d been forced to admit he wasn’t just losing the game; the Doc was kicking his arse.

  A play he refused to let stand. Even if it did mean—much to his disgust and for the first time in his life—he had to seek advice on how best to thaw a woman.

  “I’ve got to be this close to being slapped with a harassment charge,” he growled, the space between his pincered thumb and forefinger wafer-thin.

  Zac McAllister—the callous bastard—sniggered. One of the boys but every inch a woman, Freya Dervish—Fray—gorgeous, dangerous, and the best damn sharpshooter in the Service, snorted into her drink.

  “Don’t know why I’m asking you,” he muttered sourly in her direction. “The only thing that turns you on is a hand-tooled Remington set with precision Leupold sights.”

  Fray laughed. “Which is what it’s going to cost you for me not to share widely that the mighty Will Berwick and his fearsome sword have been rebuffed.”

  “If one word about me being ordered to shag the Doc gets out, I’ll shoot you.” Angel Treherne had already suggested—wrongly—that he might be impotent. He wasn’t about to give her an excuse to wield an ice weapon of her own and make it a reality. You both know the Cube’s rules: what’s said within the Assassin unit stays within the Assassin unit.

  “Okay, calm down,” Fray said. “But, if your little Angel-of-the-Arctic is not falling for your sweet seduction, how about kidnapping her? Wearing ski masks, Zac and I snatch her, rough her up a bit, and you ride to the rescue all handsome and heroic. Voila.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” His snarl was out of character. He didn’t give a damn. Not when “roughing up” Angel Treherne was exactly what some perverse part of him hankered to do. Especially since she’d become a challenge.

  Hankered to tousle her very proper French braid into wild disarray. Hankered to explore and tease all over. Hankered to fuck hard, until they were both physically spent to the point of obliteration, the scent of their sweat and sex rich in the air.

  Christ, and he’d claimed she did nothing for him.

  He leaned back to ease the burgeoning thickness afflicting more than his chest, emptied his glass, and raised three fingers at the bartender to signal another round.

  “Then your only option is to get her to trust you. Give her something of yourself she can’t resist,” Zac advised, his voice tight. “Try pulling a little-boy-lost something or other. Women always fall for that.”

  “Not me,” Fray protested, the look she shot Zac bollock-shriveling. “He’d be better off going with a wanna-take-a-walk-on-the-wild-side approach. Works for me every time.”

  Zac treated Fray to a smile that did not reach his eyes.

  And that’s when he knew he was on his own in solving his Angel problem. That in reaching out to his closest friends for advice, he’d made a huge mistake. He’d rekindled an old antagonism between Fray and Zac, which he had thought they’d long laid to rest.

  Both knew his history. They’d been there to witness his spiral into hell. And though they had fought to drag him free of the tragedy that was Diana, neither could agree to what degree his choice of profession had contributed to his ex-fiancée’s decision to kill herself.

  Fray—who’d never been a fan of Diana—maintained zero contribution. Zac, always a strong defender of Diana, disagreed. He insisted the demands of the Service could sever the strongest of bonds. That the constant pressure on a lover never to ask about their partner’s operational duties led to feelings of exclusion and aloneness.

  Will was now inclined to agree with Zac. Pity he’d learned that lesson too fucking late for Diana.

  He drilled an impatient glare at the busy bartender, sliced a gesture across his throat to cancel his original order, and gestured that he wanted the whole bottle, not just another measure.

  He’d never had to pretend to be wicked, and he sure as hell wasn’t doing pitiful, but gaining Angel Treherne’s trust wasn’t such a bad idea. If only he hadn’t spent the best part of the last three months doing his best to piss her off—and bloody well succeeding.

  No matter how hard she’d tried to hide it, his persistent this-is-a-waste-of-time attitude had strained her professional discipline. Hence, the pleasure it had given him to adopt it. Anything to get a rise out of the woman who didn’t know when or, he suspected, how to let go.

  Though why he cared about liberating her from all that rigid self-control was beyond him. A brain dysfunction probably. An unanticipated side effect of the shooting. Along with—

  As if on cue, pain stabbed his abdomen. The effort of hiding his grimace had black dots dancing his vision. He was supposed to be arse-kicking fit, not popping some Chinese herbal remedy just to keep himself on his feet. Only Zac knew about his lingering pain, and rather than rat him out, he’d stepped in to help. Best brother-in-arms ever.

  He snatched the bottle of rich amber fluid the bartender placed before him, and with a savage twist of his wrist, dispensed with the stopper. No way was he ready for defeat.

  “You know something,” he gritted from behind clenched teeth. “I believe I’m about to get all the advice I need from this little baby. You two go do something useful like getting me a copy of the Doc’s confidential file. Which I want hand-delivered to my front door by midnight. And, if you get caught—which you had better not—tell Butters I threatened to fire you for refusing an order. Bastard might appreciate the irony of that and let you off, though I wouldn’t count on it.”

  Will waited for Fray and Zac to exit the pub before pouring himself a drink. He could do without their anxious but unspoken censure of his fondness for Scotland’s finest export, and neither did he want either of them to catch the way his hand trembled.

  Seven years since he’d buried Diana, and his fury—at her, at himself, at the Service, at life—had yet to abate.

  Diana had been spirited, her effervescence infectious. Always laughing, often hilarious, forgiving, sweet, beautiful inside and out.

  He and Zac had competed fiercely for her attention when she’d burst into their lives at university. More than a handful of punches had been thrown, the close friendship—more brotherhood—they’d shared since childhood had barely survived. Eventually, they’d agreed to stand down and let Diana
decide, and Will had nearly fallen to his knees in grateful prayer when she’d chosen him over Zac. Christ, had he loved her… Until the rage set in. Rage that she’d sought solace in another man’s bed. Rage that she’d denied him the chance to understand what was broken between them and fix it. Rage that she’d seen suicide as the only way out.

  He downed a shot. Winced at the burn. Refilled his glass. And went all out for another hit…then another.

  In his head, he’d made his peace with Diana. In his heart… Not so much.

  …

  Her mind had cracked.

  It was the only possible explanation for why she was sitting in the dark beside Will Berwick—a man more annoying than an elusive boot nail pricking your sole on a ten-mile hike—in the Dress Circle of the London Coliseum Theater. On a date that, ordinarily, she would never have agreed to, because it contravened the therapist/client guidelines set out for her profession.

  Guidelines she respected, but Berwick clearly did not, given the deluge of calls, texts, and emails from him she’d received this past week. Seventy-nine cajoling requests from him for a date, seventy-eight sharp refusals from her. Most men would have gotten the hint.

  Not Berwick.

  Though after tonight, when she unleashed Operation: Prime Bitch, he’d surely get the message to leave her the hell alone, if only on the grounds of their professional relationship.

  Like she needed the added complication of any man’s hot attention right now, with her life fast unspooling as if she’d hooked a vile-tempered bull shark on the end of her line.

  Six anxiety choked weeks of not knowing whether Rhys was dead or alive—because he hadn’t made contact to reassure her he was safe. Pressure from Bastard Butters: the threats, interrogations, nasty attempts to intimidate her, his refusal to believe she had no clue as to Rhys’s whereabouts, not that she’d ever betray her brother if she did.

  The too many foul secrets, past and present, she was harboring—

  Sweat slicked her skin, her pulse raced like a gelding in full-startle, her throat narrowed. Calm… Breathe… Control… You’ve got this… Exhale… Inhale… Exhale… Inhale…

  Angel dragged her supreme snow queen persona to the fore. With his life—and hers—at stake, Rhys was counting on her to stay strong while he “fixed things.” How? She had no idea, because, again, he hadn’t shared.

  His threat to make public the contents of the files he’d stolen would protect them both from an “accidental death”—the affliction that seemed to befall anyone in the know about the horrendous side effects of BT11, the drug Rhys had developed at the behest of the Ministry of Defense.

  At least for now.

  But his threat wouldn’t hold those shady bastards at the Ministry of Defense at bay forever. Rhys knew too much. She knew too much. Together, they posed a risk to the Establishment that would not be tolerated long term. Their only guarantee of life would be to disappear. Something she’d already taken steps to arrange, which she would share with Rhys when he deigned to make contact.

  A perky little thought that had her throwing a side glance at too-damn-good-looking-for-his-own-good Will Berwick. How deeply involved was he in what was going on? He’d shown no hint of liking her during all his months of therapy, and yet now he was pursuing her like a hound that had caught the scent. Which was highly suspicious considering it coincided with Rhys’s disappearance.

  Her pulse quickened—not at the obvious threat Berwick posed, but that an errant part of her had dared feel flattered by his attention.

  She snapped her eyes back to the ballet performance. She did not find Berwick attractive—lie.

  Her skin did not buzz exasperatingly when he was near—lie.

  Her mind never speculated—so unprofessionally—about his rumored ability to ignite a triple orgasm—lie.

  She’d never fixated on his athletic body reclining on the sofa in her office, his T-shirt pulled tight across hard-defined muscle, the worn denim of his jeans throwing into sharp relief the length of his legs and the rest of his long self—lie.

  And she’d never allowed—again, so unprofessionally—the irrational bitch inside her to rise, just because she both resented and rued the fact he was a client and therefore out of bounds.

  Liar, liar, panties on fire—just as they always were when she found herself in this dangerous man’s close orbit.

  But not after tonight. Not after she laid it on the line that she wanted not even the thinnest shaving of whatever the hell he was offering.

  Emboldened by a flush of fresh resolve, she cast another side glance at the man complicating her already out-of-control life. From his pained expression, Berwick found ballet as mind-numbingly tedious as she did. Leaning across the velvet armrest upon which their elbows had earlier warred for space, she whispered, “You’re loathing every second of the performance, aren’t you?”

  Eyes fixed forward, he nodded.

  It was dark enough for her to risk a rare grin. Good, served him right for violating the confidentiality of her personnel file. He must have done so, for how else would he have come across the little fiction she’d created that the ballet would appeal to her—which it most certainly did not.

  She subjected him—and herself—to a further fifteen minutes of torture before leaning into his space again. “I hate the ballet. Shall we leave?”

  He snatched up her hand. And the speed at which he moved? She couldn’t rule out teleportation.

  Tripping to a graceless halt outside the theater, she yanked her hand free of his. She’d given him a reprieve, not permission to touch. Besides which, her palm burned. The back of her hand, too, around which his long fingers had fastened as he’d dragged her in his wake.

  Berwick, apparently so thick skinned he was immune to her unspoken reprimand, reached forward, cupped his fingers around the back of her neck, his cheeky thumb sneaking the opportunity to caress, and eased her sideways.

  Forty thousand volts shocked her body. She slapped his hand away.

  “It’s tourist busy, Doc, you were blocking the way.” He dipped his head and leaned in close. Close enough for his breath to heat the sensitive area just behind her ear. “And I would never have pegged you as skittish.”

  “I’m not.” Her sizzling nerve endings called her a liar; so, too, did his arched brow and hypnotic green eyes, which delved and delved, refusing to release her.

  You’re supposed to be channeling prime bitch… Convince him these ice fields are not worth exploring. Not worth cultivating. That you are forbidden territory.

  Rhys had warned her to trust no one. That they would find not one ally either at the MoD or within the Service. Something she’d started to believe after her brother’s lab had been burned to the ground, two of his technicians dying in the flames.

  With a brusque shake of his head—she may have imagined Berwick’s momentary disappointment—he stepped back abruptly, breaking her trance.

  The biddies on a night out behind him squawked like hens when he backed into them. He apologized, reangled his body—hers, too, his hands on her shoulders—and must have flashed the grannies one hell of a smile, because eight pastel-colored raincoats beneath brightly hued, bobbing umbrellas emitted giggles and threatened to swoon at his feet.

  No smile for her, though, when his gaze returned to her. Just a frustrated scowl. “Why did you lie? You do realize those bloody tickets cost the equivalent of a small mortgage.”

  It tortured her eyelids, but she refused to blink. “Don’t blame me. You’re the one who decided on the ballet.”

  “Yes, because I wanted to surprise you, and it was the only hobby listed in your file.”

  “First off, I don’t like surprises. Second, I could hardly leave the personal interests section of my application to join the Service blank. The selection panel would have found it odd,” she told him, all snottily regal.

  “So you don’t have any interests?”

  She shrugged. “None worth publicizing.”

  “Ha
rdly public. We’re talking about your Service file here.”

  Her pulse might have steadied, but her skin continued to burn. Why’d he have to stand quite so close? Why’d he have to look so…so…undiminished and less than contrite. It was obscenely attractive.

  Relaxing her elbows, she let her pashmina slide from her shoulders to loop across her lower spine. The late-October drizzle, whisper light, felt spectacular against her skin. “Exactly, and look how easily you gained access to a supposedly confidential file. If you’re out of pocket, serves you right for snooping.”

  His lips twitched. “I’m a spy. What did you expect? But point, and slap on the wrist, taken.” He tilted his head slightly to the side and grinned. “You know, Doc, the way you never hesitate to put me in my place, I think I could get to like you.”

  Unfortunate, when the whole point of tonight’s farce was to discourage his attention. “A sentiment that will never be reciprocated, I assure you.”

  The delighted biddies snorted in chorus and started nudging each other. “Lovers’ tiff,” one wheezed, reaching into her bag for a family-size packet of fruit-drop candies, which she promptly passed around.

  Berwick’s grin widened.

  Good Christ, the man was lethal and way too confident wielding that weapon of mass female destruction.

  “Look, it’s early yet. How about dinner? I know a great little Italian—”

  “No. Absolutely not. I did not accept tonight’s invitation to stoke your ego, Berwick, but rather for the opportunity to make a couple of things clear. One, I do not like being hounded. Two, I don’t date men like you,” she declared, all bitch. “Our conversations are always snippy, and tonight’s been no different. I see no benefit in prolonging the discomfort. Please leave me alone.”

  The evil grannies cackled like loons.

  “I’m far from uncomfortable… And I assume you do date?”

  To keep her head from exploding, she scanned the night traffic for the telltale orange light of a vacant cab. “That’s none of your business.”