The Fifth Doctrine: The Guardian Series Book 3

by Karen Robards

  “Franz. If he used a last name I don’t remember it.” Her target was the desk chair. She started laying out on it the items she would need in the morning to become Lynette. A glance at the dresser told her that he’d placed the fake scar and the ChapStick as well as the phone on it with the rest of his gear. “Or at least, Franz was what he called himself when I knew him.”

  “And when was that?” he asked.

  “A long time ago.”

  “You gonna tell me?”

  Bianca hesitated.

  He said, “Let’s see, what was it you just said? You can’t trust me, I can’t trust you? Works both ways.”

  Tell the truth until you can’t: it was one of the rules. “I did a bank robbery with him once. He didn’t recognize me tonight, but I remembered him because of his hand.”

  “His hand?”

  “His left hand was missing its ring finger. The stump was—ragged looking. He told me it had been chewed off by rats. That made an impression, and I remembered it when I saw it.”

  “You must have been pretty young for something like that to make that strong an impression on you.”

  “I was.”

  He waited, but she busied herself with shaking out Lynette’s wig and settling it on a corner of the chair back.

  “How young?”

  She shrugged. “Seventeen? Eighteen?”

  “You were part of a gang at seventeen?”

  “Bank robbery’s not usually a solo activity.”

  “Who else was in the gang?”

  “I don’t really remember.”

  “Bianca.”

  He hardly ever called her that, either. That was almost worse than having him call her baby. She looked around at him: mistake. Their eyes met, and the charge that had been there between them from the first, the electricity— Oh, God, there it was again, sparking away. Damn it.

  “You can tell me, you know. Anything.” His eyes crinkled at her. Too impossibly handsome. “I don’t judge.”

  Keep it light.

  “Really?” Turning, she made big eyes at him. He nodded. “Okay, then. When I was ten years old—” She took a deep breath and blurted, “I joined a tribe of cannibals. We ate our way through South America, and then I torched their village and ran away.”

  His mouth tightened. “When we jumped off that building, you told me ‘don’t let go.’ Then you wrapped your arms around my neck and left me holding on for the both of us. You trusted me with your life.”

  “Don’t let it go to your head.” Because her pulse had picked up the pace, because her breathing had quickened, because her insides were softening like a damned toasting marshmallow, her tone was brusque. Getting busy with something, anything, else, she turned back to what she’d been doing, shaking out her Lynette pants before draping them over the chair back. Dislodged, the wig fell to the floor.

  Before she could pick it up, he retrieved it and held it out to her.

  Which brought him close. Too damned close.

  She felt the sexy clear down to her toes.

  Time to stop this in its tracks.

  “Thanks.” She restored the wig to its perch and turned with the intention of walking away, only to discover that he was planted foursquare and solid in her path. Shirtless. Brawny. Beautiful. Exuding a whole Magic Mike cast’s worth of studly vibes. She frowned—up, always with the up—at him.

  “Good job with the throwing star back there, by the way. I was looking in the wrong direction, and that guy would’ve shot us both if you hadn’t picked up the slack. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “That would be because, like I told you before, you don’t know anything about me.” She grabbed hold of every ounce of composure she could muster and brushed past him. He caught her arm. She shot him a warning, don’t-mess-with-me look, and found that the look he was giving her in return was almost—tender.

  Butterflies took wing in her stomach.

  Oh, God. No.

  “There’s an easy fix for that,” he said. Trailing goose bumps in its wake, his hand slid down her arm to capture her hand.

  “What are you talking about?” In sheer self-defense, something very near to hostility laced her voice. She gave her hand a (not quite full strength) yank. He didn’t let go.

  “Me. Getting to know you. Here’s how it would work. You could tell me things.”

  “No.”

  “Nothing earth-shattering. Little things. Like what you eat for breakfast. What your favorite color is. Where you like to go on vacation. If you like to watch sports or the news on TV, or if Say Yes to the Dress is more your thing. What makes you happy.”

  “No.”

  “You say that a lot.” He smiled at her, a heart-stopping smile that did funny things to her insides. “Makes me wonder if you ever say yes.”

  His eyes captured hers, held. They were golden brown, intense.

  She found to her dismay that she didn’t even want to look away.

  The heat they were generating was enough to make her mouth go dry, make her skin flush, make her think about shedding some clothes …

  No. No. No.

  She tried to come back with something smart, something that would cut through the sexual tension that shimmered like a magnetic field between them. Keep it light, she told herself fiercely one more time—but she couldn’t.

  Just like she couldn’t do what she knew she easily could and pull her hand free as he lifted it to his mouth, pressed his lips to its back. That slight touch of his mouth sent quivery tendrils of longing over her skin.

  Just—say—no.

  “Are you coming on to me?” How blunt was that?

  “God forbid.” There was that smile again. She tried steeling herself against it, only to discover, as he turned her hand over to press his mouth to her unresisting palm, that she was fresh out of inner steel. “You ever think that maybe I just want to get to know you better?”

  “What’s the point? After tomorrow we go our separate ways,” she said. He kissed the sensitive skin on the inside of her wrist. Swoon. Oh no. “This job will be over.”

  “Just because the job is over doesn’t mean we have to be over.”

  That we was what did it: it was the trumpet blast that brought down what remained of her once-mighty walls. The guys she’d been with up until now had always been just that: guys she’d been with. As far as she was concerned, they’d been strictly easy come, easy go. Fungible. She’d always been cool, detached, one foot out the door. She’d never, not once, been even close to getting serious. She’d never been part of a we.

  The prospect that now, possibly, she was made her heart start to knock in her chest.

  Face it, he made her heart start to knock in her chest.

  Holy hell. This was bad.

  “There is no we,” she said. Her throat was tight, which made her voice come out low and harsh. But she didn’t try to move away. And her eyes—she didn’t want to think about what he must be able to read in her eyes.

  She was afraid her heart might be in there somewhere.

  “Looks like maybe there is,” he said, which pretty much told the tale. Then he leaned in and kissed her.

  21

  She was lost, just like that. His mouth was firm, and warm, and amazingly expert, molding itself to her lips, then parting them and invading with a hungry intensity that sent her reeling. That kiss hit her like a double shot of whiskey rocketing straight through to her bloodstream. She was instantly high, instantly dizzy, instantly weak in the knees. There was nothing she could do to stop herself from being intoxicated by it, nothing she could do to stop every one of her five senses from being inundated by sensation, nothing she could do to stop herself from kissing him back. His mouth slanted over hers as he deepened the kiss and it was on, no questions asked, no quarter given. Her heart pounded and her breathing went all ragged and her bare toes curled against the thick pile of the carpet. She didn’t know if he pulled her tight against him or she went into his arms, but somehow her arms woun
d up around his neck and his arms wrapped around her like he was never going to let her go.

  He kissed her like he meant it, like kisses were promises and he was making them. She already knew how good he was at kissing, but these were next-level, slow, deep, hungry kisses that made her bones melt. They robbed her of common sense, of resolve, of any vestige of rational thought. If she’d had any idea of calling a halt it got bulldozed by the sheer drugging sweetness of it, by the heat of his mouth, by the intensity of her own response.

  Chemistry, that’s what they had.

  Of the written-in-the-stars, meant-to-be, kismet kind.

  Fierce and violent, the storm started up again outside. Lightning flashed, thunder roared, rain pelted down. But as far as Bianca was concerned, the real tempest was right there in that small hotel room with them. The earth moved. Stars trembled. Electricity crackled. The air around them turned to steam.

  She’d told Evie he’d swept her off her feet. Turned out, she hadn’t lied.

  Figuratively, with his kisses, and literally, when he said in a voice gone all hoarse and gravelly with passion, “Just so you know, I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life,” and she, blown away by the romance of it, shaken by the intensity of her own desire, unwisely answered, “I want you, too,” at which point he picked her up and carried her to bed.

  And she let him. No, didn’t let him. Actively, enthusiastically participated, curling her arms around his neck and pressing her body against his and kissing him like she’d die if she didn’t all the while.

  When he laid her on the bed and came down on top of her, the weight and heat and friction of his body drove her wild. This was what she wanted, what she needed, what she craved.

  He was what she wanted, what she needed, what she craved.

  So she slept with him. She wanted, and she took. It was a mistake and she knew it was a mistake and she did it anyway. Thus she deserved the whirlwind that she reaped. Short version: he rocked her world. Fireworks exploded behind her closed lids and her body went up in flames and for the first time in her life she truly understood what all the fuss was about when it came to sex.

  They did it multiple times, with the same result: she was swept away on a riptide of passion that made her lose control, made her cry out and cling to him, made her reevaluate everything she’d ever thought she knew about herself. A passion so intense that it left her defenseless, vulnerable, exposed.

  Finally, exhausted, replete, she fell asleep in his arms.

  And then she woke up.

  It was, she knew without having to check, close to 4:00 a.m., because her body clock worked like that: she’d meant to wake at that time, and so she did. That gave her plenty of time to morph into Lynette, get to the rendezvous with Park and scope out the scene before the actual meeting took place.

  The fact that a whole bunch of people were hunting her through the streets was problematic, but she’d survived manhunts before. Actually, so many times she’d lost count.

  All she had to do was get the ChapStick to Park and not die, and her part in saving the world (and not incidentally herself) was played.

  By that time her eyes had adjusted to what was kept from being utter pitch blackness by the faint glow of the city at night creeping in around the edges of the closed blinds. Filtered through thin curtains, there was just enough light to allow her to see the outlines of things.

  For a moment she lay perfectly still, staring straight up at the ceiling, coming to terms with the reality of the situation in which she’d put herself.

  Naked, she lay on her back in the lumpy double bed, with Mr. Tall, Dark and Dangerous, also naked, wrapped around her like a too-warm, too-heavy taco shell as he breathed stertorously in her ear.

  Clearly, romance was not dead.

  He was sound asleep, which was good.

  They’d had sex, which was bad.

  His hand was on her breast, his thigh imprisoned both of hers, and his head rested in the hollow between her neck and shoulder.

  She remembered how he’d wound up in that position: they’d finished with yet another truly mind-blowing round, and he’d barely managed to shift the bulk of his weight off her before conking out.

  At the time, she’d been so exhausted and so woozy with afterglow that shoving him the rest of the way off her had not occurred to her.

  Now it did. Only now something more subtle was required.

  Slowly, carefully, she lifted his hand from her breast. Tucking his arm down beside his chest, she slid out from under his sack-of-wet-cement-heavy thigh, and rolled out of bed and to her feet, all to the tune of the rhythmic rattle and rasp of his breathing.

  She needed a moment, just a moment, to sort things out on her own before he woke up and she had to deal.

  Turning to look at the man in the bed—the smokin’ hot, stark naked, total disaster of the man in the bed—she covered her face with her hands and did her best not to totally freak.

  She peeked through her fingers. He was still there.

  You deserve a break today. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like she was going to get one.

  What have I done? The classic morning-after question.

  The less-than-classic answer: broken one of the rules.

  The one that said keep emotion out of it.

  She was very much afraid—no, she was sure—that she’d done let emotion in.

  Lowering her hands, she took one more look, and felt her stomach knot and her blood pressure spike.

  Emotion was her Achilles’ heel.

  No, time to get real.

  Love was her Achilles’ heel.

  Because she’d never really had it, she yearned for it like an addict yearning for crack.

  Sex was one thing. A normal, natural instinct, regrettable but, really, no big deal. Although she had a feeling that the kind of physical combustion that had exploded between her and Colin was rare.

  But she was afraid—terrified, really—that maybe there was more to it than that. That maybe her extraordinary physical reaction to the things they’d done had its roots in something totally apart from mere sex.

  The thought that petrified her was that—maybe—she’d let herself fall the teeniest, tiniest bit in love with him.

  Appalled, she examined the evidence from all angles, then sucked it up and stared the cold, hard, immutable truth in the face.

  She had.

  No. No. No. No. Oh my God, how life-shatteringly stupid can you get?

  Wait. Stop. Do not come unglued. Do not lose your shit.

  Find your center. Be calm. Reflect.

  Remember: for every action, there is a corresponding overreaction.

  Damn, damn, damn! Holy hell! Sweet merciful crap!

  Clamping down on her own personal welcome-to-the-apocalypse moment as best she could, Bianca found her Je heart Paris tee where it had landed on the floor. Pulling it on, she padded over to gather up her Lynette-wear. If anything remained that was certain in her life, it was this: dealing with the fallout from her latest really bad decision would be much easier if she was dressed.

  On the way to the bathroom, she scooped up his phone. By now, Doc should have replied to the message she’d sent.

  As she passed the bed, Colin flopped over onto his back. She froze, certain he was awake. But his eyes stayed closed, and once the flop was done he didn’t move. His breathing quieted, but remained deeply rhythmic.

  She could see him just well enough to ascertain that he was still asleep. Her eyes slid over his profile, with its high forehead, straight nose, beautifully cut mouth, determined chin. They lingered on the heavy muscles of his shoulders, his corded arms, his wide chest, his taut abs. The sheet interrupted her view at that point, but it didn’t matter: she knew what was there.

  Just the thought was enough to make her go hot all over, all over again.

  Oh no. No, no.

  Instead of hanging around compounding her problem, she tore her eyes away and stole off to the bathroom. Softl
y closed the door behind her and turned on the light. And immediately got a good look at herself in the mirror on the opposite wall.

  Her hair was mussed, her cheeks were flushed, her lips were rosy, her eyes were bright. She looked like a woman who’d just had a really good time in bed, which, in fact, she had, the complications of the aftermath notwithstanding.

  The thing that really got her was, she was smiling. The slightest curve of her lips, but it was enough to make her think, I look happy.

  Because she was happy. It had been so long since she’d actually been happy that she almost didn’t recognize the feeling.

  It’s this—thing—with Colin, she thought. Thing meaning relationship, her inner precision-meister clarified. Which left her instantly alarmed.

  There is no relationship. I can’t be in a relationship. There is no place for a relationship in my life.

  “In love” just wasn’t happening. Not even the teeniest, tiniest bit.

  Stay calm, get on with what you have to do, and maybe the feeling will pass.

  Words to live by, she thought devoutly, and put her Lynette-wear and the phone down on the counter by the sink as she heeded her own advice. In something less than ten minutes she’d used the facilities, taken a quick shower, dressed in her Lynette-basic black sweater and loose black pants and pulled her hair back into a ponytail in preparation for the Lynette wig. Her Lynette makeup, cheek prosthesis and the tape for the wig were still in her bag in the closet. Fetching them would require leaving the bathroom, which would almost certainly involve her first postcoital encounter with the current scourge of her existence. The mere thought made her antsy, which was annoying and pathetic at the same time. Seizing on any excuse for delay, she picked up his phone.

  She tapped in the code, saw Doc’s reply: On it. Short and sweet: her kind of message.

  She typed thx and was clicking off when she noticed that a few almost microscopic flecks of powder remained on the screen. Had it not been for the brightness of the bathroom light catching on some of the reflective particles in the powder, she might never have noticed them.

  But notice them she did.