Beneath the Fire (A Guardians Novella)

by Victoria Paige

  “You’re mine, Lucy,” Nathan whispered. At that moment, as they both reached their climax, Lucy agreed.

  ***

  They ended up on the couch. Lucy was partially on top of him, her head tucked under his chin, her right leg shoved between his.

  “I don’t want to share you,” Nathan said finally. Those were the first words that were said between them after he had taken her against the wall.

  “Are you saying, you want us to be exclusive?” Lucy verified.

  “Yeah, babe that’s what I mean.”

  Lucy played with the light sprinkling of hair on his chest, not sure how to phrase her next statement. “I’m not ready to have a boyfriend, Nathan.”

  “Why the fuck not?” Nathan growled and Lucy felt the rumble against her cheeks.

  She sighed. “I want to concentrate on my studies. It’s not a good time for me right now. Uh... there are things about me that I’m not ready to share.”

  She felt him stiffen. He took a deep breath before exhaling deeply. “Whatever it is, we can face it together, Lucy.”

  Now why did he have to say the perfect thing? It’s not that simple. I have to go to Mexico and stop my dad from selling innocent women into the sex trade, Lucy wanted to yell.

  “It’s a bit complicated, Nathan.”

  “So tell me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I just can’t,” Lucy muttered. Suddenly feeling the walls closing in on her, she pushed up against Nathan to leave, but he wouldn’t let her go, and instead, hugged her tighter.

  “Stay. OK. Don’t tell me,” Nathan whispered soothingly. “We can take it slow. I won’t ask you anything until you’re ready to tell me. But please, Lucy, can you... just be mine, OK?”

  Lucy looked up and gazed into Nathan’s sapphire blue eyes. They were hazed with so much tenderness and she felt her heart squeeze. She was falling in love with him. How did this happen so fast?

  “If that means you scaring off every guy I talk to, then no,” Lucy said sternly. She had to set boundaries after all. Come to think of it now, Nathan did look like he had glared Tom off earlier.

  Nathan scowled at her. “I can’t help the way I am. But I’ll try to rein it in.”

  “That’s not good enough Nathan,” Lucy said quietly.

  “I’ll work on it,” Nathan said, grinning down at her.

  “Smiling at me isn’t going to work either,” Lucy said, trying to pinch him. It was close to impossible, the man defined washboard abs to a tee. “I’m serious, Nathan. Do not scare off my male friends.”

  “As long as they maintain a one square foot clearance from you, I won’t tear them apart,” he promised.

  Lucy rolled her eyes, but decided to let it go because there was a hint of teasing in his voice. She shifted on top of him and traced the intricate dragon tattoo that snaked across his clavicle and down the top of his left shoulder.

  “You never told me when you got this,” Lucy murmured.

  Nathan gave her a crooked grin. “Five years ago when I was seventeen—I was involved in some crazy shit back then.”

  “Do you regret having it done?”

  “Heck no,” Nathan replied. “My mom was pissed off as hell. But it was a phase of my life that I had to go through.”

  “Will you tell me about it?”

  “Babe, I will,” Nathan said seriously. “Once you start opening up to me. That’s the deal.”

  Lucy sighed. That probably meant she would never know.

  ***

  Nathan parked his bike in the underground parking of Artemis Guardian Services (AGS), a company that dealt with small team surgical incursions and other undercover work outsourced mostly by government agencies like the CIA and FBI. The missions were usually done under the radar because of political sensitivity. He had been with AGS for almost a year. Contrary to what Lucy believed, Nathan was not twenty-two years old. He was twenty-four. He had a degree in criminal law but had decided against becoming a cop or joining the FBI. He had joined the AGS to become a Guardian because seven years ago, when he was a bare-knuckle fighter in underground tournaments, an intriguing man by the name of Viktor Baran had approached him and left him his card.

  There was something about Viktor, the head of the AGS, that Nathan found hard to resist. The man exuded some kind of lethal energy and danger. Nathan wanted to be him. Nathan had gone into the bare-knuckle fighting circuit as a form of rebellion. He did not need the money. He came from money. His father was Nicholas Stark, an extremely successful venture capitalist. But that was all his father was good for: his business and a string of illicit affairs. His mother had refused to divorce him and instead became an alcoholic. But Viktor had left him a simple statement that changed his life: “Once you have your shit sorted out, kid, come see me.”

  And here he was, seven years later. His first mission had been a rescue assignment—in Russia no less. A couple of Guardians were being held prisoner and his current mentor, Maia Pierce, was one of the hostages. Gorgeous chick, he had a big crush on her when he first met her— she had a jealous fiancé though. Jack McCord would glare off any man that made the mistake of looking at his fiancée in a less than appropriate way.

  Shaking his head, he flashed his badge at reception and made his way to the second floor—the first subterranean level. Lucy Cortez was his first undercover assignment and he had already broken the first rule: get close to your subject, but do not get too personal. Fuck. Nathan was pretty sure he had already fallen in love her.

  Maia was already waiting when he entered the briefing room.

  “Hey, Pierce.”

  “Stark,” Maia replied. “How’s the subject?”

  Man, Pierce got straight to the point, Nathan thought. He did not respond immediately but took his laptop out and booted it up.

  “I still haven’t detected anything suspicious in her email,” Nathan said finally. “Except she exchanges very cryptic messages with a certain fatheranton337.”

  “What do you mean cryptic?”

  “His recent email said, ‘two weeks to cancun,’” Nathan said. “I know she’s going to California to visit her mother during the spring break. So I don’t know why a friend would say something like that and not elaborate.”

  “What else?” Maia prodded with interest.

  “The email before that just said: ‘say eight marys,’” Nathan said. “This I find strange and it reeks of being a coded message. Lucy’s Catholic which may explain the religious subtext.”

  “Interesting,” Maia said, a frown marring her features. “How about her phone?”

  “Nothing. Calls are mostly from her mom.”

  “Nothing indicating that she is in contact with Francisco Cortez?”

  “Nope.”

  “So in three weeks, we’re pretty sure she would not lead us to him?”

  “So far, it’s a dead end, but I sense we’re not aware of another angle. I’m baffled by those odd emails, but there’s something else,” Nathan said. “I see a trace for a chatroom, but I could not gain access to it. That website is fucking Fort Knox. Might be worth having Tim take a look at it as well as trace the owner of the email. I’ve already sent it to his queue.”

  Tim Burns was their lead data analyst.

  “Excellent. I’ll escalate it,” Maia said thoughtfully. “Senator Bauer is getting impatient. He wants results and is coming down hard on the FBI and AGS to make some progress.”

  The Braga Cartel had made the crucial mistake of kidnapping Senator Bauer’s illegitimate daughter. Despite not acknowledging his daughter publicly, the Senator obviously cared for the girl and relentlessly pressured the FBI to find her. They did, but not after the damage was done. The girl was catatonic when they rescued her and was looking at years of therapy down the road. Senator Bauer had approached AGS to shut the Braga Cartel down. Viktor had informed him completely shutting a cartel down took years and heavy resources, but they could conceivably get to Francisco Cortez, who was
personally running the white slavery portion of the business.

  “Bates is going to be disappointed.” Maia grinned at him.

  Nathan felt his muscles tense. Bates was his coach on the lacrosse team and was a friend of Maia’s which was how he was able to get on the team. “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve got enough, we can track her remotely if we have to. I’d hate for Miss Cortez to get attached to you,” Maia explained with a shrug.

  Either Nathan took too long to respond or the expression on his face gave him away. Maia’s eyes narrowed. “Are you withholding information, Stark?”

  Shit. He had to come clean. “I slept with her,” Nathan said quietly.

  Maia’s face turned red with fury. Her eyes turned icy, blasting him with an arctic stare that could have frozen him in place.

  “What the FUCK, STARK!” Maia yelled. “How could you be so stupid? God!”

  Maia shot out of her chair and started pacing the room. “That was not part of the plan. You were only supposed to hang out with her. She’s twenty for heaven’s sake. You do not sleep with her to get information.”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “What?”

  “She’s twenty-one,” Nathan repeated.

  “Fuck you, Stark,” Maia’s voice was still raised, and probably people walking by the briefing room outside could hear her. “She’s not some fuckwad dictator we have no problem hanging out to dry. We should not mess with her emotions.”

  “That’s the risk we took when you sent me in,” Nathan bit off.

  “Sleeping with her was not part of the plan,” Maia retorted.

  “Don’t you think I know that!” Nathan yelled back at her. “It’s not only her that’s getting burned.”

  Maia’s eyes widened. “Damn. Are you in love with her?”

  “I don’t know,” Nathan replied stonily. And he didn’t. He cared for her now, that much he knew.

  “It’s a simple question, Stark,” Maia pressed.

  “I don’t know, OK!” Nathan shouted. “I don’t fucking know!”

  The door to the briefing room opened and Viktor walked inside. “What the hell is going on? The entire HQ can hear you guys.”

  “Stark slept with Lucy Cortez,” Maia said quietly.

  “Fucking hell,” Viktor muttered.

  Nathan continued to stare into space, not looking at the older man.

  Viktor stalked directly into his line of vision. “You will not see her again.”

  “It’s too late,” Nathan whispered. “It’s fucking too late. She’s mine.”

  Maia rolled her eyes. “What is it with men and their “mine” bullshit?”

  Viktor smiled derisively at Maia. “You should know Maia, McCord probably hammered the word into you enough times.”

  Maia jerked her head toward Nathan, reminding Viktor of the immediate problem.

  “You do realize you’re emotionally compromised,” Viktor said levelly.

  “I can handle it,” Nathan grated out.

  Viktor folded his arms across his chest. “How are you going to explain to her why you have to drop out of school?”

  “I was hoping to wait after spring break to do that,” Nathan said. “She’s hiding something, it will be a mistake to pull me out now.”

  Viktor and Maia exchanged looks, but it was Maia who spoke. “Until this mess with Francisco Cortez is over, you cannot break cover. You’ll have to find a way to justify not seeing her when you’re on assignments. Your parents do not even know what you do. ”

  “No, they think I install security systems,” Nathan replied.

  “That cover is getting overused,” Viktor muttered.

  “Mine is unique,” Maia quipped. Her cover was a marketing executive for a pharmaceutical company.

  “Unless this goes the distance with her, Stark—” Maia said.

  “Look, I get it,” Nathan cut in tersely. He understood, damn it. Guardians rarely had families of their own because of the strains of their work. That was why he was drawn to the AGS too. They were his family because his own didn’t give a damn about him. Except now he had Lucy. And yes, it had gotten more complicated.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lucy sat on the grassy lawn on campus. Nathan’s head was on her lap and she was idly sifting her fingers through his thick dark hair.

  “How was lacrosse practice this morning?”

  “Grueling,” Nathan grunted. His eyes were closed so she took the opportunity to study his face. His skin was naturally swarthy from playing sports outside, his dark brows were set closely to his sapphire blue eyes, which were lashed just right. He had a strong angular jaw and his lips were full but masculine. Right now he was sporting stubble and that made him look extremely sexy.

  A group of guys was playing football not too far from them. One of them recognized Nathan and called out.

  “Hey, Stark! Wanna join in? We could use another one.”

  “Nah!” Nathan replied. “I’m good right here.”

  The guys made some cat calls that caused Lucy to blush, but Nathan just chuckled and tilted his head back to gaze up at her. “Yes, I’m good right here. Give me a kiss, babe.”

  “I don’t think so,” Lucy retorted.

  “Why not?” Nathan asked innocently.

  Lucy playfully covered his mouth with her hand and turned his head. “You are incorrigible. You know if I kiss you, your friends are only going to tease us more.”

  “So?”

  Lucy shook her head. Nathan was hopeless. But she loved his playfulness.

  “This was how we met, remember, Lucy?”

  “Yes, how can I forget? You threw a football at me and hit my soda, drenching me all over.”

  “Not my fault my friend couldn’t catch it.”

  “You just wanted to meet me,” Lucy said smugly.

  Nathan grinned at her. “You looked so cute all decked out in a pink sweater reading whatever on your iPad. Your lips were sucking on that straw and it was giving me a hard on.”

  “Nathan Stark!” Lucy said in mock horror. “Seriously.”

  Lucy remembered being mad as a wet hen, pun intended. Nathan approached her with a wide grin on his face and had not, in anyway, looked apologetic at all, despite the words that came out of his mouth. And his method of drying her up was something else.

  “You copped a feel, if I remember.”

  Nathan burst out laughing. “I was helping you dry the soda that spilled all over your chest.”

  “My boobs, you mean.”

  Lucy remembered shrieking every unladylike expletive at Nathan that day. And he had just laughed. She had packed up her stuff in a snit and hightailed it back to her apartment. Nathan, sweaty and all, had followed her home. She realized how stupid it was to let him. What if he had been crazy or worse a psycho? Then he would have known where she lived. Unfortunately, she was too ridiculously attracted to the devastatingly handsome stranger following her to remember about personal safety.

  “You stalked me.”

  “Well, yeah I wanted to know where you lived,” Nathan said.

  “You asked for my number.”

  “Took a while for you to give it to me. You slammed the door on me, remember?”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t take the hint anyway because you were waiting for me the next morning.”

  Nathan just grinned.

  “Stalker.”

  Lucy had wondered how he knew what time she left for her classes. And was kind of weirded out for a while until Nathan admitted he had caught her name on her school badge that was dangling off her purse. He knew someone at admissions and had gotten her schedule. Lucy replied that what he had done was illegal, but of course he just shrugged it off. And this bothered Lucy about her relationship with him. He was obviously used to things going easily for him and judging from his motorbike and his apartment, he looked pretty well-off. All he had to worry about was going to school and playing sports.

  Lucy herself had money. The settlement from her paren
t’s divorce had been huge. She had a trust fund, which she had come into when she turned twenty-one. She was funneling the money to help Leo finance his operations with ryker569 covering her money trail. But she doubted if Nathan would understand her cause. When it came down to it, they were really from different worlds. Maybe that was why she enjoyed his playfulness, it was an escape from the reality of what she was about to do.

  “Babe, where did you go?” Nathan murmured, frowning.

  “Nowhere. I was just wondering...” Lucy trailed off.

  Nathan pushed up from her lap and sat cross-legged in front of her. He took hold of both her hands. “What are you wondering about?”

  “We’re so different, Nathan,” Lucy said sadly.

  “Where is this sentiment coming from?” Nathan asked sharply.

  “There are just things you might not accept about me.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” he growled this time. Nathan’s jaw had clenched. Suddenly the carefree boy she thought she knew had disappeared. In his place was a different Nathan. Not a boy, a man. Not an easy-going boy, someone who looked dangerous.

  “Never mind,” Lucy said slowly, puzzled by this change in his demeanor.

  “Talk to me, Lucy, don’t shut me out.”

  “Why did you take up economics?”

  Taken off-guard by her question, Nathan frowned in confusion. “What?”

  “Why did you take up economics?” Lucy repeated, a tad irritated. It was a simple question.

  “Well, so I could be an investment banker or a venture capitalist I suppose,” Nathan replied cautiously.

  “In short, you want to make money.”

  “Isn’t that why people work?” Nathan asked.

  “Not everyone. Eva wants to be a nurse because she wants to help people.”

  Nathan sighed. “And how about you?”

  “I want to help governments make the right decisions when thinking about the global economy, not about the good of one nation. That’s the only way we can avoid strife and war and oppression.”