She stretched her arms over her head and let out a mighty yawn. Her older-than-the-hills pullover inched away from the waistband of her pajama bottoms. A flash of pale, silky skin turned his mouth into a desert.
“Speaking of the ravenous horde,” he said, or rather rasped, “are they still asleep? Did I wake them?”
She glanced down the hall, her dark hair falling over her shoulder in a silky curtain he longed to touch. “The lights are off in their rooms. I think I was the only one who heard. You know, since we share a wall.”
Ah, yes. The shared wall.
The wall he had stared at for the last five nights while they waited for things to get sorted so they could come out from hiding and return to Chicago. The wall he might have, just maybe, pressed his ear against a time or two in the hopes of hearing her…what? Snoring? Breathing? Pleasuring herself?
He stifled a groan.
“So?” She cocked her head. “Will you?”
“Will I what?”
She frowned like his IQ had dropped fifty points in the last five seconds. Which, if he was being honest, it had. It did. Anytime she was in the room.
“Will you make breakfast? I know it’s my turn, but—”
“Say no more.” He lifted a hand. “It’s done.” Because even if breakfast duty was at the top of precisely no one’s list, he was glad to assume the responsibility if it would get Emily out of his room. After having her so close for so long, he definitely needed some alone time with his John Thomas. “A traditional English breakfast it is,” he added when she seemed to need additional reassurance.
She wrinkled her nose. “I can get on board with the sautéed mushrooms and the roasted tomato, but I’ve never understood beans for breakfast.”
“They’re good for your heart.”
Even from across the dim room, he saw her eyes ignite with mischief. Emily enjoyed pushing buttons, saying things that were hysterically crass. He assumed it was because she fancied keeping the people around her off-balance. “The more you eat, the more you—”
“Good God!” he scolded before she could finish the hideous children’s rhyme. “Grow up, will you?”
She drove him completely barmy. But she also made him laugh. And in his line of work…bloody hell, in his entire sodding life…laughter wasn’t something that came easily.
“So stuffy,” she complained. It was a familiar accusation.
“I’m not stuffy. I’m English, darling.”
“My point exactly.”
“Hurtful.” He crossed his arms and thrust out his chin. If he wasn’t mistaken, her eyes alighted on his bare pecs, then traveled briefly over the sleeves of black, winding tattoos that covered his arms from his shoulders to wrists.
Is that interest I see in her eyes? he wondered hopefully.
He wasn’t bad to look at. He knew that. Not that he had to fight the women away with sticks or anything, but neither did he have to look very hard for a willing bed partner. Alas, whatever brief flicker of intrigue he thought he saw in her eyes disappeared before he had the chance to study it.
“Will you be happy to leave home today?” she asked, still lingering in his doorway.
“England isn’t home,” he assured her, his mood dropping into the loo. The good to come of that was that his John Thomas followed suit. So, apparently there were two cures for his flag flying at full staff. One, a swift rub and tug. Or two, talk of the country that had betrayed him. “It hasn’t been for a long time.”
She considered him for a moment more, then nodded and turned to knock off back to her own room. Before she disappeared down the hall, she got in a parting shot. If he had known how portentous her words would be, he might have stayed in bed with the blankets over his head. “Someday you’re going to tell me what happened here.”
Chapter 1
Emily Scott was having a good day.
She’d pawned breakfast duty off on Christian. She was wearing her favorite sweatshirt, the one Paulie Konerko had signed after he helped the White Sox win the 2005 World Series. And she was on her way home. Back to the world of baseball and deep-dish pizza, towering skyscrapers and a lake so big and blue it looked like an ocean.
Add to that the fact that she would no longer have to stay cooped up in a tiny cottage with four of the most testosterone-packed males on the planet, and she’d go so far as to say her day wasn’t good; it was Tony the Tiger grrrreat. Which was why she should have been prepared for things to start circling the drain.
Long ago, she’d discovered that good days were the ones she should worry about, since life liked to rise up and bite her on the ass when she least expected it.
Case in point: she found herself blinking in slack-jawed astonishment when two hours after she finished scarfing down Christian’s delightful English breakfast—minus the baked beans, natch—he opened the front door of his uncle’s cottage only to have a microphone shoved in his face.
“Are you Corporal Christian Watson?” a redheaded woman in a yellow pantsuit demanded. “Is it true you were the SAS soldier captured during the Kirkuk Police Station Incident?”
“Where have you been, Corporal Watson?” a man in a raincoat and cabbie hat demanded, holding up a digital recorder. “What have you been on about since you left Her Majesty’s Special Air Service?”
Emily got a glimpse of half a dozen other people gathered on the cottage’s front stoop—a honking big camera on the shoulder of one man—before Christian slammed the door shut and twisted the lock. His face was a thundercloud when he swung back into the room.
“Bloody, fecking hell,” he snarled, then followed that with a string of profanity so blue it would make a sailor blush.
Why did curse words sound better coming out of his mouth? Oh, right. Because everything sounded better coming out of his mouth. That accent!
Turning to the trio of men behind her, Emily found their expressions mirrored her own. In a word: shock. In two words: rampant curiosity. And in three words? Well, what the fuck? came to mind.
“What in the ass?” Ace asked, adjusting the straps of his backpack more comfortably on his broad shoulders.
They all had backpacks stuffed with the essentials needed to flee the country—basic toiletries and a change of clothes. Usually included in their “essentials” was an array of handguns, knives, and other pointy or bangy things which, when used correctly, resulted in death. But they’d had to leave their arsenal behind during their initial attempt to hop the pond a few days prior. Since then, Emily had wondered if the men felt naked without their customary repository of combat blades and sidearms.
“I mean, seriously, what in the ass?” Ace repeated.
Colby “Ace” Ventura was a former U.S. Navy pilot turned operator for Black Knights Inc., the covert government defense firm founded and privately run by none other than the president of the United States himself—now the former president of the United States—and staffed by some of the blackest of black-ops warriors on the planet. The firm Emily had gone to work for after she bugged out of the CIA. Although, in reality, it was probably more accurate to say the Black Knights had taken her under their wings after the fiasco with her former boss had forced her out of the CIA.
For the record, she wasn’t one of the blackest of black-ops warriors. She was their office manager, having come along on this mission in a failed attempt to keep them organized, on task, and out of trouble.
“That’s one way of putting it,” she said. “Another way of putting it would be to steal the timeless words of Ricky Ricardo.” She exaggerated her expression. “Christian…you got some ’splainin’ to do.”
All those hours parked in front of the television as a kid watching reruns of I Love Lucy while her parents were out doing who the hell knew what had paid off with a spot-on impersonation.
Unfortunately, her flippancy was wasted on Christian. “Shit,” he hissed,
followed by “Bloody, fecking hell.”
“You said that already.” She tried her best to lighten his mood. Anytime she thought of the vulnerability she’d seen in his eyes in that first second after she woke him from his nightmare, her silly, squishy, far-too-soft heart turned over. “Try something else. I like to go with bugfucking dickmunch or son of a bee-stung bitch. But I might also suggest—”
“Sod off, Emily.” He glowered at her. Really, Christian could glower like nobody’s business. “Now is not the time for your scathing wit.”
“No? And here I was thinking any time was a good time for scathing wit.”
“There are bloody reporters outside.”
“Yep. Saw ’em with my own two beady eyes.”
This time he gifted her with a put-upon grimace. The man seemed to have a vast arsenal of sexy sneers and bone-melting scowls. And truth? She enjoyed each and every one of them.
They gave her a glimpse at the real man beneath the carefully styled hair, the designer clothes, and the expensive whatnots. The man who was down and dirty, gruff and gritty. The man a part of her couldn’t wait to meet.
Only part of her, you might ask? Yes, only part of her. The wild part. The careless part. The crazy part that didn’t have a thought in its ditzy, horny little head except Yowza! Gimme, gimme, gimme!
As you might imagine, that was the part she tried like hell to ignore, choosing instead to focus on the other part of her. The sensible part. The rational part. The practical part that didn’t dare give him any more sexy ammunition to use against her already panting libido.
“What do we do now?” Ace asked.
“Back door,” Angel said, already turning. Angel was a former Israeli Mossad agent turned fellow BKI badass. Emily didn’t know much about him other than that he was a big ol’ question mark, his past even more shadowed than Christian’s.
“Right. Good idea.” She hustled after him. Unfortunately, before they reached the back door, they heard the sound of voices coming from behind it.
“Trapped,” she whispered, her heart kicking into overdrive. She would have liked to think the sudden uptick was a product of their increasingly alarming situation. But the truth was, it was at least partly due to Christian having come to a stop directly behind her, close enough that she could feel the blast of his body heat.
Once again, the wild, careless part of her tried to rear its ugly head. And who could blame it, considering Christian’s looks were those of the high desert. Harsh. Dangerous. Stark. Like an oasis in the sand, his eyes glittered and shone.
Intensely masculine, that’s what he was. Carnal. Primal. Six feet, three inches of big bones and hero hair and a tempting little chin dimple. The kind of guy who was attractive because he oozed confidence and testosterone and power. A breaker of hearts. A slayer of vaginas. He could get most women sweaty just by breathing.
Lucky for her, she wasn’t most women.
Fine. So maybe she was. Because, seriously, not lusting after his hot bod was kind of like saying to herself, See that fat, furry bulldog puppy? Do not think he’s cute. Still, whether she wanted to jump his bones was neither here nor there, since she’d learned not to mix business with pleasure. Once bitten, twice shy, baby.
“This is bad,” he muttered, taking a step back. The wild, careless part of her wept while the sensible, practical part of her rejoiced.
“Worse than bad,” Ace agreed.
“We need to calm down,” Angel insisted in that precise way he had. Jamin “Angel” Agassi’s diction was some of the best Emily had ever heard. But his voice? It was a wreck. Likely due to the fact that he’d had his vocal cords scoured after he left Israel to avoid voice-recognition software.
Talk about ew, not to mention ow.
“Right.” Ace nodded. “Before we get overly excited, we need to know what we’re dealing with.” He lifted an inquiring brow at Christian. “Is it true? Were you the one captured during the Kirkuk Police Station Incident?”
Emily turned to study Christian’s face and saw the muscle twitching beneath his right eye. As far as she could figure, it was his only tell and happened when he was really pissed or really annoyed. Which, okay, meant it happened a lot when she was around.
“Yes,” Christian said after a five-second beat. “That would be me.”
“Holy hobbling Christ on a crutch,” Ace swore, running a hand through his blond hair.
“What?” Rusty Parker, a.k.a. the only civilian in the group, asked. “What was the Kirkuk Police Station Incident?”
Rusty was a former marine who had worked one summer as a CIA asset before he up and moved to England to become a charter boat captain. Emily had helped him out of a jam that summer, and they’d kept in touch ever since. When she and the other members of BKI had needed help fleeing the country the week before, after they had screwed up their mission to bring down a notorious underworld crime boss known only by the code name of Spider, Rusty had been the first person she called.
Poor guy, she thought now. She wouldn’t have dragged him into this if she’d known how much trouble she was going to cause him.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “I’m with Rusty. What was the Kirkuk Police Station Incident?”
Christian shook his head. “We’ve no time for this.”
“Sure we do. Since our only exits are blocked by reporters, we have all the time in the world.”
Christian blew out an exasperated breath that caused a whorl of hair to fall over his brow. It tried to distract Emily, but she refused to let it.
“Fine. But let’s bloody well make this quick, okay?”
“We’re all ears,” she assured him. “Fire away.”
That muscle twitched beneath his eye again. It was joined by one in his jaw. “It was near the end of the Iraq War, after major hostilities had ceased and before the incursion of ISIS into the country. I was sent in to keep an eye on a group of Iraqi policemen who were running a crime unit with rumored links to corruption and brutality in the city. My job was to gather enough evidence against them to warrant a takedown.”
“Oh, I remember reading about this.” Rusty narrowed his eyes in thought. “There was a shoot-out at a roadblock, right?”
Christian nodded, and that dadgummed whorl snagged Emily’s attention. Again.
Down, girl, she admonished her recalcitrant libido.
“Unbeknownst to me, the policemen I was tasked with surveilling had sniffed me out. I was setting off from the city to deliver a situation report to my commanding officer when I was stopped at a roadblock. At the start, I thought I could talk my way out of it, yeah? But things got quite serious quite quickly. They pulled their weapons and began shooting. I pulled mine and did the same. Took a round to the gut that put me in sad shape. But before they managed to overwhelm me, I slotted two of the wankstains.”
He said it so casually. Before they managed to overwhelm me. But Emily knew Christian. It must have been one hell of a fight.
“They took me ’round to the police station, where they questioned me for eight hours,” he added.
Questioned. Ha! A nice way of saying he had been interrogated and likely tortured. Visions of beatings, stabbings, and oxygen deprivation bloomed in Emily’s mind. It was enough to have her breakfast threatening to reverse directions.
“Is that what you were dreaming about this morning?” she asked. If the hoarse screams that had jolted her from a dead sleep were any indication, Christian’s eight hours in the hands of the Iraqis had been brutal.
The look he shot her was quick and definitive, the facial equivalent of Shut your trap. But it was too late. Ace glanced back and forth between them, a shit-eating grin spreading across his handsome face.
“How would you know what he was dreaming about this morning, hmm?” Ace widened his blue eyes. “Is there something the two of you would like to tell us? Like, maybe you’ve finally had en
ough foreplay and it’s time to get down to the main event?”
“Foreplay?” Emily scowled. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Oh, sure you do. All that one-upping? The verbal sparring? That’s foreplay, luv.”
She waved a hand through air still tinged with the smell of bacon and buttered toast. “Whatever. One-upmanship is nothing more than good, clean fun. And maybe some ego management on my part.” She gifted Christian with a squinty-eyed stare, indicating his length with her hand. “I mean, you’ve seen him, right? The clothes. The hair. The smile. Someone has to keep him grounded.”
“Rrrright.” Ace nodded.
She rolled her eyes and turned to Christian. “Tell him.”
Christian lifted an eyebrow that asked, Tell him what?
She thinned her lips and widened her eyes. Her expression said, Tell him I’m right.
Instead of siding with her, Christian said, “Can we please circle back ’round to the bloody subject? In case you’ve forgotten, there are reporters outside preventing us from catching our flight and getting off this sodding rock!”
Did he think their bickering was foreplay? The idea had an unwelcome trill skipping up her spine. Muscles that had no business clenching—specifically those at the tips of her breasts and between her legs—did just that.
She didn’t delude herself when it came to Christian. And despite her protestations to the contrary, she did want him. I mean, who wouldn’t? But he’d given no indication he felt the same. In fact, he found her as vexing as a housefly. His words. Not hers.
Which was fine and dandy.
It was!
After all, there was that whole “no mixing of business and pleasure” edict she was determined to live by. And even if there wasn’t, the two of them were oil and water.
He wore designer clothes and drove a Porsche. She preferred yoga pants and sweatshirts, usually from the discount rack at Target. There was an air of mystery surrounding him, depths she dared not plumb. And she? Well, she was pretty much an open book.
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