When his vision tunneled an hour later—with no better idea for how to get rid of Greer or find Coen in the pile of compounds—he dropped the axe and headed inside for a cold arse shower. He’d challenged her, tried to cow her into submission with his body. Boy, had that backfired. She hadn’t turned away. She’d met him boot to boot, so to speak, and dressed him down as though he’d been fully clothed.
He’d never been so rock hard in his entire, sordid life. He’d never been so near taking what he wanted, consequences be damned.
Calculate the repercussions. Minimize them. That was his job. Only when he stood too close to Greer she dulled the ramifications of his actions to background noise.
Despite her innocent eyes, Greer saw more than most. She knew he hid things. If she knew half of what he beat into his closet every morning, she’d have fled when she had the chance. Seeing exactly what she did to him should’ve made her run. Her stubborn little feet hadn’t moved.
Zeke secured the barn door, smiled at his car parked in the far corner—see, he smiled—and then climbed the stairs to his safe house, which didn’t feel quite so safe with Greer here.
At the sound of clanking glass his senses prickled. What was she up to now? Probably rigging a booby trap or looking for tools to hot-wire the car. He ascended the last three steps more slowly. His head stayed on a swivel, ready for her attack. Only he wasn’t quite so ready. This woman’s booby trap outdid all the scenarios he’d conjured.
Greer stood on her tiptoes. Her left arm gripped the edge of an open cabinet, while the other reached the top shelf. The hem of her shirt caught at the ample swell of her bottom. His black boxer-briefs clung, exposing every dip and curve. She stretched and grunted from the effort. Her finger grazed a drinking glass and pushed it farther into the recesses.
He definitely should have sent her packing. His feet carried him into the kitchen, while better judgment urged him back to the chopping block.
“Oh, hey.”
She whipped around with her hand over her heart like she had many times in the past day and a half. Like he scared the shit out of her. That couldn’t be right though. She stood up to him when grown men and wiser women had doubled down on retreat.
“What are you doing?” he snapped. Ever the charmer.
Onions, spinach, carrots, mushrooms, and chicken littered the counter, along with pots and pans, cutting boards, and a big-arse knife.
Huh?
“Cooking lunch.” Her nose scrunched. “Dinner really. It’s almost four p.m. I mean, only old people eat this late, but since you didn’t have breakfast or lunch…” She bobbed her tiny shoulders and swatted a strand of white blonde hair from her brow. “I just figured you were hungry. I am, and I ate breakfast.” Her fingers toyed with the hem of her shirt. “I ate some lunch too. I didn’t know when you’d come back. Or if you’d come back at all.”
“You’re rambling.”
“I know. I felt bad for running you out of your own home.”
“It’s not my home.”
“You know what I meant.” Her hands bracketed her hips. There was the gusto.
“You felt bad?”
“Yes.”
“Bad enough to leave?”
Her pretty pink mouth formed a thin line.
“Guess not.” He nodded to the cabinet. “And there?”
“Oh, I can't reach the glasses.”
Greer gave him a doe-eyed, please-help expression that looked totally out of place on her usually determined features.
Zeke stepped back, grabbed the back of the dining chair, and dragged it between them. “Problem solved.”
She flashed him a crooked smile and hopped onto the chair. Too late he realized her round bottom would be within biting distance. Damn her, but she still had to stretch to grasp a glass in each hand. His extra-large shirt flagged with the movement, giving him a clear peek of her abdomen.
Still on the chair, she turned with both glasses hugged between her breasts and stared down at him. “Thanks. You go get cleaned up and dinner will be ready soon.”
“What are you up to?”
Her head canted. The shorter strands of her hair fell over her forehead. “Are you always this hesitant when someone does something for you?”
“Yes.”
“No surprise there.” She hopped off the chair and hurried around him to the sink.
Zeke’s gaze followed her. She filled one of the glasses and then extended it to him. He stared at it for a long time.
Greer put the cup to her lips and took a hefty sip. “It’s not poisoned.” She grabbed his hand and put it in his palm.
“I can get my own drink.”
“Good for you. Can you wash your own ass?”
His eyebrows rose on that one.
“Well?” Her hand flipped palm-up in question.
“I can.” His gut burned, but he couldn’t decide if it was with annoyance or amusement.
“Good. Go do it. You stink.” She fanned the air between them and crinkled her nose.
“Fine, woman. But I’m locking the door.”
“I’ve already seen you naked.” A smirk skewed her pretty mouth. “Get over yourself.”
“Tossing my words back at me. Cute.”
Her mouth formed an O and she covered it with her flitty hand. “Cute? Was that a compliment?”
Zeke turned away and stalked to the bathroom. He deflected. It’s what he did. The coping mechanism had gotten him through some dire shit. Yet somehow, Greer penetrated that shield. That revelation and the chilly water kept his dick at bay during his shower. He liked puzzles, was good at them, really good, but this one required more hands-on manipulation to figure out. A bad thing for them both.
When the cold reached the marrow of his bones Zeke cut the water and grabbed a towel.
“Hey?” A thin knock on the door followed the reedy, feminine voice. It obliterated the numbness he’d worked so hard to attain.
“What?”
“Your clothes.”
Zeke looked at his damp body, and then at the door. He’d never lived with anyone, not since childhood anyway. He’d never had to account for nudity.
“What about them?”
“I brought you some…so you don’t have to traipse through here in your towel to get them.”
He scrubbed the towel over his head and face on his way to the door. The lock snicked under his hand and the door swung wide. Greer jumped. Again her hand clutched her heart, only this time a neat stack of his clothes lay between them.
“Who said I’d use a towel?” His hung in front of the goods. By the look on her face no one would know it.
Greer launched the stack at him like a javelin. They bounced off his wet chest. He caught a pair of pants. The underwear and shirt plopped to the ground.
“I was trying to help.” She yanked the knob from his grasp. The door rattled against the frame.
Zeke wiped the grin off his face. Why was disarming bombs, hand-to-hand combat, leaping from airplanes, and tormenting Greer Britton so much fun? A shrink might have an answer, but it wouldn’t be the right one.
He dried, dressed, and left the bathroom, heading for his desk. The dining table arranged with two settings and a full spread pulled him up. Greer’s expectant gaze nailed his bare feet to the floor. She stood between the table and kitchen counter with her hands folded meekly in front of her—his—oil splattered, food-stained T-shirt.
“Salad. Sautéed chicken and vegetables. And an apple crisp for dessert.” She gestured to the table.
His stomach grumbled, but his intuition howled louder.
“What are you up to, Greer?”
“Helping out.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it’s the truth.”
“But are your reasons altruistic?” Zeke shook his head.
“Whose ever are?” Her arms went wide.
“Fair point.”
Bull’s eye. He’d saved her, but only to spare his conscience—
which already had plenty to deal with—and to cull information.
Reluctantly, Zeke sat. He waited for Greer to do the same before picking up the utensils she’d ordered on a precisely folded napkin. They ate in silence. She cut little bits off the hunk of meat and pulled the tender morsel from her fork with her lips. She blotted her mouth. She sipped from the glass. The difference between Greer Britton on the training grounds and the woman before him made chewing difficult.
“You said your dad recommended you for US Elite, but why the military to begin with?” She opened her mouth, but he couldn’t hold back any longer. “A woman like you has no place in the military.”
Greer dropped her fork and knife. They clattered onto her plate. “Really? Well, just get it off your chest. Tell me how you honestly feel, then maybe I’ll get to the heart of your scornful—”
“It has nothing to do with your ability as a soldier.”
That quieted her tirade, but did little to dull the resentment in her blue gaze.
“You performed better than 97 percent of the men who applied for Elite’s top ops.”
“But?”
“But Elite is 98 Percent male. Male soldiers. Male trainers. Male officers. The military is at, what, 85 percent these days? You have no business being surrounded by a horde of battle ready, horny bastards months away from their last proper lay, and miles away from the families and responsibilities that separate them from base instincts.”
Zeke shoved away his plate. “If Chad had been your trainer at Elite, things would’ve been bad for you.” Just speaking the man’s moniker raised his hackles.
“Worse than getting abducted by the Stas, drugged, and sold to the highest bidder?”
“Much worse.” That son of a whore had collected bids on who would bag Greer first. Fifteen men brazenly scrawled their names on the dry erase board in the men’s locker room, while the rest dropped green. By bag, they didn’t mean have sex with. They meant blind her with a black bag, constrict the cord so tight that it almost strangled her, while he—the winner—raped her.
Maybe she saw the rage in his eyes. Maybe she figured out that the rumors were true. Either way, the taut line of her mouth relaxed.
“I always wondered how a man trained as well as Chad could shoot himself in the leg while cleaning his sidearm.” Her breaths stabilized. She caressed her narrow throat. “Thank you.”
Warring emotions coursed through Zeke’s veins. Veins that normally felt little except the adrenaline of battle quaked under the offensive her words and her manners provoked. He wanted to throttle her and kiss her, hold her and run for the hills, all at once.
“I have work to do,” he said.
Zeke didn’t flee the barn, but in short order he put the room and desk between them. Wisely she didn’t follow. The chaos of the kitchen kept her busy for a while. Long enough for him to get lost in the maze of information at his fingertips.
During his days as a bouncer he’d hacked into the Stas database under the guise of reviewing security footage to look for a thief. The information didn’t do him a lick of good without the key. His hope had been that Greer would have that and more information from her time undercover. After all, she’d…
She walked out of the loo with a towel wrapped around her head and wearing the sleep clothes he’d bought for her before he’d gone to the club to extract her. He popped the top onto the highlighter, immediately pushed it up with his thumb, and snapped it again, in a ritual he hadn’t been aware he’d undertaken. Why he’d bought her spaghetti strapped camisoles and tiny cotton shorts he didn’t know, but he could castrate himself for it. His suddenly tight jeans might just save him the effort. He dropped the marker and folded his hands together.
The noise drew Greer’s attention. “Always with you and those looks.” She scoffed and continued on toward the bed. “What now?”
“You made nice with the head of security at Sable.”
“And?”
“I find it hard to believe you two spent so many hours in the control room not screwing and you still managed not to get any information from the deal. You must give marathon blow jobs.”
“And you must be the biggest asshole I’ve ever met.” Greer yanked the towel off her head and tossed it onto the pillow he’d used the night before.
“So what did you two do in there?”
She muffled a scream with both hands. When the noise died her fingers spread wide. Her palms lifted to the sky as if evoking the powers that be to either strike him down or give her strength. Finally her clear gaze found his.
“We talked.”
“He’s a fifty-year-old bald Russian. What did you have to talk about?”
“I know it’s hard for you to understand, but some people talk to hear the sound of their own voice. Yep.” She nodded. “Shocking, I know. Some people even talk to work through a problem.”
“Did Buzzy?”
“His wife of thirty-two years found out who he worked for. She threatened to leave him and move to California to be near their daughter if he didn’t get out. Buzzy knew they’d never let him leave, not alive anyway.”
“So why didn’t you help him?”
She waggled a finger at him and grinned. “This you’ll get. It took me three weeks of just talking about nothing, inane things, to get him to trust me enough to open up.” The finger stopped its back and forth. “Nope, take it back. You wouldn’t know about that last part.”
“And then Buzzy and his friends delivered you to the gentlemen’s club.”
“No. He wasn’t with the guys that…dragged me from my bed. I was about to broach the subject of helping him leave when I was taken.”
Greer walked to the desk and fiddled with dog-eared edges of plans for the club where she’d been held. “When I was taken, I wondered if they’d heard our conversations. Mine and Buzzy’s. I wondered if…”
“He’s fine. I looked him up.”
“You did?”
“He has the system key.”
“Not much good it would do without the database.” Greer sighed.
Zeke turned the screen overloaded with open windows to face her.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” He pulled the laptop back around, enlarged a screen from the ten or so across the bottom, and committed the address to memory.
Before he could stop her, Greer skirted the desk. “No.” Her yell shook the screen. She leaned over him and reached for the computer.
His hands shot out and encircled her wrists. “Don’t.”
Her wide blue gaze left Buzzy Loren’s address and met his stare. “You can’t bring him into this.”
“He’s already in this. He’s the bad guy, Greer.”
“He’s not a bad guy. He—”
“He’s killed people. He’s a bad guy.”
“You’ve killed people.” She didn’t try to escape, but instead pressed into his hold.
“I never said I was a good guy.” On the contrary. Right this second the only thing he could think about was pulling her onto his lap, burying his hands in her hair, and kissing her mute, ripping the knickers off her bottom, and ramming himself home again and again until she found her voice in the throes of orgasm.
“But you are.”
“Am I?” Zeke let his gaze rake her bent legs, her hips, her torso, her breasts.
“You are.”
“Not hardly, but I’m good enough that I’ll give you the chance to stop right here and walk away.”
Her too-proud chin jutted. “When I have a mission I don’t stop.”
Zeke stood to get the thought of her legs around his waist from his mind. He pulled her arms wide and pressed his chest over her, trying his best to daunt her. His voice dropped a thick octave.
“Is your mission to get good and fucked on this desk tonight?”
Pink lips parted, but she suppressed the gasp. Her gaze sliced to the desk, and then back to him. The black of her pupils trampled onto her innocent blue irises.
Fuck.
He needed her to screech at his crude words, not stand her ground.
“That’s not going to work on me, Saulter.”
“It’s not a bloody tactic.” Zeke shoved her left hand against his throbbing erection. He held her wrist in a vice grip, ready to remove it if she latched on in anger.
Greer didn’t move. She didn’t clamp down. She didn’t shrink back.
“If we're going to find Derrick, if we're going to get answers, you have to let me in just a little,” she breathed.
“Are you going to let me in first?”
“Yes, but not in the way you want… or the way you think you want.”
She lifted her hand from his crotch. Zeke released her, but her tiny hand encircled his wrist and guided him toward her chest. Her heart thumped under his fingers. He just stared at her, unable to speak or think.
“You see, I say I’m a virgin, but my cousin raped me when I was twelve.”
Zeke jerked as though she’d socked him in the jaw. Something earthy and raw fought for life inside his chest. It burned hotter than the oils they’d poured on his chest. It seared deeper than the fire that had licked his bubbled skin and charred his nerve endings.
“Why are you telling me this?” His hoarse rumble hardly formed a coherent sentence.
“I’m giving you a very secret, very personal part of me.”
Conflicting emotions battled inside him. On one side retreat sounded the only route for survival. On the other, invasion lit the only path for redemption.
“In hopes that I’ll help you?” he whispered.
“Or maybe that you’ll see sharing is cathartic. Or maybe in hopes that you’ll trust me.”
“Trust isn’t easily earned.” And habits weren’t easily broken.
“I know.” She gave a hollow chuckle. “I think with you it’s never earned.”
There was a hell of a lot of truth in that. But wait… “You said your cousin raped you, as in your cousin the president's son?”
7
Greer may as well have sliced her heart open and let the blood trickle out one drop at a time. She didn’t talk about this, not with anyone, but nothing short of an equally grand gesture would get Zach on her side.
Prisoner Mine Page 7