Hard Target

by Tibby Armstrong

  Seeming to return to himself, Simon slipped his robe on and jerked the tie closed as he faced her. “What’s up?”

  “I never betrayed you.” Her words surprised them both. Simon blinked at her and she rushed on, not knowing where the guts to bring all this into the open finally came from. “During the questioning they accused me of giving you my password. Tried to get me to admit to collusion. I…I told them I couldn’t imagine how you’d gotten the data. They hammered at me. Presented fact after fact until I couldn’t think. I told them about when we hacked into each other’s home machines.”

  A great weight lifted as she admitted the worst of what she’d done. Simon’s stare remained dispassionate, though the arms he crossed protectively over his torso told a different story.

  “I’m so sorry. When you wouldn’t see me… Wouldn’t even look at me that day in the courtroom…” Remembrance elicited high emotion and she pressed her fist against her chest. “I thought you had used me.”

  “You should have known.” Simon’s jaw worked in tight little motions.

  “Yes. I should have. I have no excuse for that mistake, but I never lied to you. I never went to them or gave them your key. And now you have proof of who planted the evidence against you.” Alex crossed the room to him as she spoke. Finally, she stood in front of him. “I’ve risked so much for you over the past several days. Can’t you try to forgive me? Trust me more than you did last night with the information about Lily? At least enough not to shut me out of an op that’s critical to my career?”

  He blinked, then his gaze shuttered. What she saw there made her want to beg—a cold detachment and unwillingness to let her in.

  “Are you sure you don’t want the shower first?” he asked with casual coolness.

  Though she knew he simply couldn’t cope right now—not with her and not with the coming mission, something in her snapped. Years of wanting to be with him, yet believing he’d either lied to and manipulated her or cast her out of his life without so much as a backward glance—just like her mother—came roaring to a head.

  Without consciously knowing why or how, she found herself aiming a slap at his handsome face. Flesh smacking loudly against flesh, he blocked her with his arm. In a series of trained movements, he kept her at bay. A leg sweep he dodged. An elbow he ducked. He let her strike out again and again. Tiring her. Forcing her toward the bed. When he had her against the frame, he caught her around the middle, spun her around, and pinned her arms to her sides.

  Trapped, Alex head-butted him in the chin. A loud clack of his teeth and a grunt, as well as the pain shooting through her skull spelled satisfaction. He cursed and ripped open her shirt. Her breasts spilled out and he grasped the flesh in his hands. Alex arched into his touch. Lust replaced anger. The energy of their fight morphed into arousal. Pushing her ass into Simon’s erection and her breasts into his palms, she moaned.

  Hot breath caressed her ear. “Bend over the bed.”

  The high, swinging mattress, she knew, would bring her to just the right height for fucking. Squirming away, still panting from their fight, Alex shrugged out of her ruined top and did as Simon commanded. Cool air met her flesh as he hooked his fingers into her shorts and slid them down to her knees.

  Another slither of fabric. A press of heated flesh to her pussy. The silken touch of his cock nudging for admittance. He pressed a hand to her lower back, simultaneously holding her down and using her for leverage. One slow, relentless push seated him inside her—stretched her walls and filled her with shameless need. Though she knew he fucked her only because he was just as far gone with lust as she, she didn’t care. He was where he belonged, inside her, bringing them both to heights of unimaginable pleasure.

  The tangle of silken sheets rasped against her nipples when each bump of his hips to her ass sent her and the mattress swinging forward. He wrapped a hand over her shoulder, hauling her closer when she slipped too far away. Alex clutched the sheets in her fists and rode the swell of an orgasm that took her too quickly for her to conceal a cry of dismay.

  She pictured Simon standing above her, dominant and glorious, his skin shining with sweat and his face colored with passion. Eyes glazed with need, lower lip between his teeth, he’d look down at the curve of her hips and swell of her ass, transfixed as his glistening cock reemerged and disappeared between her pussy lips.

  Flesh slapped with each impact of his hips to her ass. Wet sounds betrayed her arousal even if he didn’t feel her walls clenching with need. Tugs of pleasure caught at her clit, shoving her toward another release. She arched upward and he fell forward, clasping her to him. Breath harsh in her ear, he fucked her harder, losing control of his movements as he brought her over the edge with him.

  The musk of Simon’s sweat and her sex cushioned Alex in afterglow. For long minutes she forgot about Downing, arguing with Simon, and how much she wanted her promotion. Nothing existed but the man pressed against her, breathing into her hair and stroking his palm along her waist.

  “God, I feel boneless.” She laughed, self-conscious.

  “Mph.” Simon breathed into her ear and peeled himself away before rolling to lie sideways on the bed.

  She lifted her head. One arm thrown over his eyes, sweat dripping from his brow and spiking his hair, he appeared relaxed. Sated.

  “I’m going to make you trust me,” Alex whispered.

  Lifting his elbow, he opened one eye to look at her like some emerald-eyed dragon she’d awakened from a thousand-year slumber. The challenge in his gaze said he doubted her, but the glance he flicked to her lips said he’d like nothing more than for her to succeed.

  Chapter Twelve

  Simon downed the tiny glass of water and tried to make it appear as if he threw back a shot of vodka. He’d already ordered six of the drinks from Ryan over the past hour and held up his finger for another shot. Undercover, the agent adjusted the sleeve of his bartender’s tux and braced one forearm along the bar.

  “I think you’ve had enough, sir.” Ryan spoke loud enough for his words to carry among the museum’s genteel crowd.

  “How ol’re you?” Simon muddled the question as he leaned unsteadily over the bar to grab at the agent’s sleeve.

  It was a question to which Simon had wanted the answer ever since he’d seen the way the man looked at Alexandra. The other was, Have you slept with my ex? but he couldn’t risk blowing their cover, so he stuck to a safer subject.

  Ryan barely blinked. “Twenty-eight.”

  Swaying on his feet, Simon studied the man, trying to see him the way Alex might see him. Dark curls fell above chocolate-brown eyes. Women loved chocolate… Simon thought of his own eyes. Green. What did green eyes look like? He struggled to think of something flattering but only came up with grass and mold. Glaring, he dropped his arm heavily.

  They were equal in height, but Ryan had the build of someone who had started working out with weights at an earlier age. Simon’s muscles were leaner in comparison to Ryan’s bulky swagger. When he’d been reading books with the appetite of a nerd-in-training, Ryan had undoubtedly been in the gym doing squats and having bench-pressing contests with his buddies. Well, at least he could probably best the man at chess, and Alex loved chess.

  “You gonna get me that drink?”

  Ryan turned away. “You go use the gents and I’ll have something for you when you get back.”

  Waving his hand and making a pftft sound, Simon aimed some of the resulting spittle at the back of Ryan’s tuxedo jacket, then turned to take in the revelers. Dressed in glittering black and white for the event, donors and their guests enjoyed pâté and chitchat under the five-story-high skylights. Though draped with white scallops of material, the ceiling showed slices of night sky between the strips. Somewhere, up there, Alex made her way to the roof of the small wing along the MoMA courtyard using every ounce of climbing skill she possessed.

  Knowing he had only minutes to rendezvous with her, Simon wove unsteadily past Gun and Jenny who chatted with
David and Kyra. All four pretended not to see him, but Simon saw them stiffen with the effort not to glance his way. David had procured them the tickets to the event with the promise that he’d find a way to kill them all—after he fired them—should anything cause his name to end up in the papers.

  Simon staggered into the men’s room and pretended to use the urinal while another man preened in the mirror, applying, of all things, eyeliner.

  You look Goddamned gorgeous, he thought. Now scram.

  As if hearing Simon’s thoughts, the man flicked a glance his way, then put his nose in the air and walked out of the room. Not wasting any time, Simon pulled on his gloves, reached under the vanity and found the very long steel pole the FBI’s undercover janitorial operative had duct-taped there for him. Somehow he had to get this thing up to the fifth floor and return to the second floor to let Alex in without anyone seeing him.

  Taking a deep breath, he grabbed the pole and peeked out the door. As promised, Jenny had spilled her drink while walking from the event toward the ladies’ room. One of the janitorial staff had roped off the area and slowly mopped the floor, his back to Simon. A side hall led toward a series of escalators that in turn led up to the fifth floor. Simon sprinted up them, the pole jutting like a lance from his fist.

  At the top of the fifth floor escalator he paused for good measure and took a roundabout route to the gallery where the painting hung. The empty upper floors echoed his footsteps and he cursed his patent leather shoes. At the gallery, he jammed the precisely measured pole under the edge of the nearly concealed fire barrier.

  Silence made his ears ring, the only accompanying sound a faint buzzing from the lights. Somehow the emptiness of the galleries, devoid of human sound and movement, made the walls feel stark despite the splashes of color in the artwork. Tonight would be the time for Alex to get a good view of Monet’s Water Lilies, but their timeline was too compressed for a side trip.

  Heart pounding a tad more than perhaps it should have, Simon inspected the pole briefly before leaving the way he’d come. More useful behind the scenes with his technology skills, he’d only engaged in a very few undercover operations. Sure, he had an encyclopedic understanding of explosives, firearms and spy craft in general, but he’d gotten little opportunity to put it to practical use. When he thought about it, he supposed he was, in effect, as green as his eyes.

  “Can we kill the inferiority complex now?” he muttered to himself as he traversed three escalators toward the second floor. “James Bond wouldn’t think this shit.”

  No, James Bond would relish the opportunity to get frisky with Alex in the upper gallery. His dick wouldn’t have shriveled at the thought of being hauled off in a pair of handcuffs either. Breathing deep, Simon attempted to channel the fictitious soul of his childhood hero as he approached the little café on whose second-floor terrace Alex now stood in a beaded silver evening gown.

  Without time to contemplate how the hell she’d descended fifty stories from the adjacent building in that getup, he made a snap decision that if she could rappel in fuck-me pumps he could at the very least give the appearance of not pissing himself over a couple hours in a jail cell.

  “Ready?” he mouthed.

  She held up one finger and took off the shoes, then straightened and nodded.

  Saying a silent prayer to anyone up there who might be listening—Hello, Mom and Dad?—he pressed the safety release bar on the door and pushed. When the alarm didn’t sound he breathed a sigh of relief. He’d never been so glad in his life someone had forgotten to do their job. He wouldn’t have to go to jail after all and they wouldn’t have to pull the fire alarm.

  He grinned broadly. “Hiya, Jane Bond.”

  Without reply, Alex pushed the length of the frame through the door at him and stalked to the red fire box. On her way past she jerked a towel from a nearby tea cart and covered her hand. Simon frowned, not quite able to process her actions when she yanked down the white bar to sound the alarm. Black ink sprayed outward, hitting the towel and marking it rather than her arm as the alarm strobes began flickering.

  What the fuck? As the repeated shriek of the alarm pierced his ears Simon couldn’t think or utter anything else. The words issued from his mouth as he caught up to Alex at the first escalator. Hefting the unwieldy frame he had more than a little trouble mimicking her sprint.

  “The door alarm is silent, Simon,” she said.

  As Simon processed Alex’s response, he felt the IQ Fairy descend from her gilded cloud and begin to strip him of his intelligence.

  “I’m a moron,” he said. “I knew that.”

  “That you’re a moron?” she tossed at him.

  “No. About the alarm. I’ve never thought I was a moron until now.” He adjusted his grip on the frame. “I think all the sugar in your kisses rotted out my IQ.”

  Alex stumbled, forcing Simon to skid to a halt lest he smack the frame against the high arch of her derriere in that skintight gown. Maybe she’d wear it for him again later when he could fully appreciate it.

  Though he knew his mind wasn’t nearly where it should be—meaning on their mission—Simon didn’t attempt to reorient his attention. When his cock twitched with interest at the sight of Alex’s legs beneath her hiked-up gown, the sound of her bare feet slapping against the wood floors and the pumping rhythm of her derriere, he felt more like James Bond than he ever had.

  Fifth floor reached, fire barriers all down, the only route open was the one leading directly into the gallery with their Picasso. Alex lost no time taking up position on one side of the painting while Simon leaned the frame against the wall before following suit at the other side.

  “One, two, three,” she said.

  They lifted in unison and dislodged the heavy-duty hooks. If an alarm hadn’t been tripped before, he knew one would be now. Good thing the FBI had managed to reroute the security camera feeds or they and their mission would’ve been an exercise in futility.

  Alex propped the painting, holding it steady, while Simon unrolled a small tool set he’d secreted in his jacket’s inner pocket. The fire alarm continued its honking wail, but somehow it’d become part of the background noise—a soundtrack to his actions—with his attention entirely absorbed on dislodging the painting from the frame.

  A popping vibration accompanied the last point of contact and the still-mounted canvas fell free. Alex caught it in gloved hands and Simon swapped the real frame for the fake. The thing seemed so gaudy and heavy compared to the other frames surrounding the artist’s works, it was more than obvious this particular piece had hung in a private collection. The owner apparently had a larger appetite for status than art.

  “Three minutes,” Alex said.

  Simon dropped the mini screwdriver and swore under his breath. He had three minutes to reattach the frame and return the painting to the wall. A blur of motion in his peripheral vision gave him new appreciation for the phrase, heart in your mouth. Ryan stepped fully into view and Simon pretended he hadn’t just pissed himself as he continued to seat the painting.

  “They’re on three.” Ryan grabbed the original frame to haul it away.

  “Floor three?” Alex asked, obviously as flustered as Simon.

  Well, at least he wasn’t the only uncool person in the spy trade.

  Nerves making him a little hysterical, Simon chuckled at his own inner monologue as he fastened the last piece of hardware. He handed the tool kit to Ryan to take with him and stood to rehang the painting he was beginning to think of as the doorway to his own personal and private hell. By the time he and Alex completed the positioning of the work, Ryan was gone and the fire door had crashed closed. They were trapped. Simon’s heart raced harder. The world wobbled and his stomach heaved.

  Alex stepped up to him, grabbed him on either side of the head, and jerked his mouth down to hers. The alarm receded a little and the sick feeling in his stomach turned to something more pleasant the moment their lips met. Soft, pliable and smelling of the outdoors,
she anchored him in the moment.

  He palmed her ass and lifted her, as they’d talked about, and found a clear space of wall away from the Picasso. Dress hiked, she reached between them and unzipped his pants. The vibration of the metal teeth opening stirred something within him and he moaned into her mouth.

  The sound of rending material forced his attention to her cleavage. She’d torn her own dress and he realized he wasn’t being nearly rough enough for the amount of unfettered passion they were supposed to display.

  “Fuck me, Simon,” she groaned in his ear.

  His hands slid along thighs she’d wrapped around him and found her naked pussy. No panties and that gown, this woman and this body, made his cock unfurl until he ached to do just as she’d demanded. Palming her ass, he lifted her upward at the same time she pulled him from his trousers. Her legs tightened as he brought her down and sheathed himself in her blazing heat.

  “Oh God, Alex.” He let his head fall back and pumped his hips.

  She fit him perfectly. Everything about her belonged in his arms. The tug of her pussy around his cock sparked a thrill of neurons from his solar plexus to the base of his spine. He entered her harder now and felt her shoulders jostle against the wall with each thrust. The sound of grating metal blended with the screech of alarms and she screamed out his name.

  Then, they were on him. Pulling her away from him. Throwing them both to the ground. He lashed out like an animal. Protecting her with his body, covering her in a different way. A baton hit him at the base of his spine and he grunted, but he refused to let go. Refused to stop protecting what was his.

  “Simon!” Alex’s voice swiped at the red-hued haze. “Stop resisting.”

  Simon came to himself long enough to realize Alex struggled beneath him. The dress had twisted around her thighs, hobbling her, or she likely would’ve found a way to unseat him by now. Her meaning was clear. If he caused too much of a fuss she wouldn’t be able to get him out of jail as easily.