Beneath the Fire (A Guardians Novella)

by Victoria Paige

  “I’ll ride with you, pretty girl.”

  Maia snorted. “Don’t get your hopes up, boy, I’m engaged.”

  Nathan snickered. Pierce was a riot.

  Lucy got back into the driver’s seat while Nathan climbed into the passenger side. He decided to let her drive for now.

  “Here,” Lucy slammed a map at him. “Make yourself useful and navigate. I can get us to Altamira.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “So, you’re FBI?” Lucy slanted her eyes at the man beside her. Nathan. But not the Nathan she knew. “Is Nathan Stark even your real name?” Lucy wanted to cry, she really did. She could feel the tears burning behind her lids. She realized the implications of Nathan showing up at this moment: their past five weeks together was a lie. He used her to get to her father. But she refused to shed a single tear on a man who had betrayed her.

  “No, I’m not FBI, but with an agency that’s close enough,” Nathan said. “And yes, Nathan Stark is my real name.”

  “You’re a good actor,” Lucy said bitterly. “You certainly had me fooled.”

  “Lucy, whether you believe it or not, I really care about you—”

  “Don’t!” Lucy said, her voice cracking. She felt her tears pool before a stream streaked down one side of her cheeks. “Damn it!”

  “Lucy babe—”

  “Don’t. You don’t ever get to call me that,” she said, hiccupping on a sob. “Not anymore! God, why did you have to ride with me?”

  Nathan kept quiet, but she could feel his eyes searing through her. He sighed. “You have every right to be angry—”

  “You think?”

  “Shut the fuck up and listen,” Nathan growled, his tone indicating that he wouldn’t tolerate getting interrupted again. Lucy wiped her tears with the back of her hands. So much for not crying.

  “My assignment was to get close to you,” Nathan said. “Our first meeting was premeditated, that I will admit to. But Lucy, the weeks that followed, it became something else. I started to fall for you. Hard. I didn’t know it then, but by the time we slept together, I had developed feelings for you. Those feelings are real.”

  “You expect me to believe you?” Lucy asked acidly. “How can I trust what you say, Nathan, when we’ve based our relationship on a lie?”

  She shot him a scathing look and felt satisfaction when he flinched.

  “I’m not expecting you to trust me immediately,” Nathan said. “Just give me another chance.”

  “Why, so you can get to my father?”

  “No, damn it! I don’t care fuck all about your father,” he said angrily. “If we wanted to nail your father down, we would have gone after him, not try and help you get the girls out.”

  This was true, Lucy thought.

  “How did you find us anyway?”

  “Pierce, my partner, figured out who ryker569 was.”

  “What? How?”

  “Apparently she’s familiar with his MO,” Nathan said. “Besides, he’s her future brother-in-law.”

  “Get out!” Lucy exclaimed. “Seriously?”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s crazy. So what now? Are we going to get swarmed by the FBI when we reach the border?” Lucy asked anxiously. “Are we going to be taken away in handcuffs?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Obviously, what my brother and I have done is considered obstruction of justice. We could have just tipped off the Feds instead of undermining their authority.”

  “You watch too many movies,” Nathan said, chuckling. Lucy fell silent. His voice was warm and affectionate, it just melted her heart. But the shock of finding out who he was, was tearing at her. She had no time to process anything. She felt raw.

  “Besides, like Pierce said, we went rogue,” Nathan said gravely.

  “What did she mean by that?”

  Nathan sighed. “When we found out from Brett what you guys were really up to, you could say I flipped out. I was coming after you whether they allowed me to or not. Pierce felt responsible for me, and now she’s caught up in my mess.”

  “What are you saying? That you guys weren’t sanctioned to come after us?” Lucy asked, worry creeping up her throat.

  “Nope. Nobody at HQ knew. Well, they probably know now,” Nathan said wryly.

  “Oh my god, could you lose your job?”

  “Probably.”

  “Could you get thrown in jail?”

  “Probably.”

  “Nathan!” Lucy cried.

  “Take a right turn here,” Nathan said calmly like he didn’t just drop a bombshell on her. “Look, I probably won’t get thrown in jail, but there’s a likelihood I’ll get fired.”

  What had he done for her? What had she done to him? Lucy’s thoughts were racing.

  “Babe, I’d ask you to look at me but you’re driving,” Nathan said softly. His hand reached out and patted her leg. She involuntarily lowered her right hand and gripped his left hand. “If I have to do it again, I would. I would do anything. Anything to keep you from harm. I just wished we could have been honest with each other and I could have helped you sooner.”

  “I don’t want you to go to jail,” Lucy wailed suddenly.

  “Glad to hear that.”

  “Nathan, it’s not funny.”

  “I agree. But, I’m sure it won’t get that bad, that’s ultra-worst case scenario.”

  “You promise?”

  “Does that mean you forgive me?” Nathan asked, hope lightening his voice.

  “Not that fast, buster.”

  “Babe—”

  “We can’t just go back to the way we were.”

  “Lucy—”

  “We’ll have to start over—”

  “I don’t care how many times we start over,” Nathan said fiercely. “No. Let me finish. I understand that you don’t trust me. I get it. But I don’t want you to shut me out. I was doing a job. My one mistake was I got emotionally involved, and right now I don’t give a fuck if I just killed my job. Because I have a feeling if I lose you, I won’t give a shit about anything anyway.”

  “Nathan—”

  “I love you, Lucy. Just know that while you try to figure out how you feel about us.”

  Lucy’s heart swelled with the words that just wanted to tear out from throat, but she held them back. She’d let them stew, let the words vacillate before it felt right to say them back.

  ***

  “Trust goes both ways, Lucy,” Nathan broke into the silence of what seemed like an eternity. Though his was the worst transgression, he couldn’t let it go that Lucy kept secrets from him too. It ate at him. But he understood her.

  She glanced at him. “I don’t have any other secrets.”

  “Good.”

  “Do you?”

  Nathan sat silently, before his lips curved up. “I’m not married, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  Lucy mentally rolled her eyes. “You’re hedging. I bet you have more secrets that you can’t tell me.”

  “Couldn’t is the key. I would if I could.”

  “Does it have anything to do with your job?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it like you could tell me, but you’d have to kill me.”

  “Something like that.”

  “OK.”

  “OK?”

  “Yes, you’re like the CIA, right?”

  “Uh, kind of.”

  “OK.”

  “OK? So you’re fine with me having the job I do?”

  “Are you happy doing it?”

  “Uh, yes. Unless it keeps me from you. I’ve been enjoying it very much when you’ve been my assignment.”

  “Do you have a choice whether to accept an assignment or not?”

  “Yes, sometimes.” Where was she going with this.?

  But Lucy remained quiet after that last question. He instructed her to take the ramp towards Gonzales/Mexico 81. He looked out his window, a dark chasm of nothingness outside, with a sky full of stars. His ey
es started to droop. He had not slept in more than 24 hours. Shit. Pierce was driving. He wondered if she was OK.

  He decided to check on her.

  “Stark? Everything alright?” Maia said when she answered her phone.

  “Yeah, just wondering how you’re holding up driving.”

  “We might stop for a break in a bit and figure out if we want to head into Monterrey. Some cops or whoever may be in Francisco Cortez’s pockets may be waiting for us.”

  “Fuck. You’re right.”

  “I’ll text you when we’re pulling over.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Lucy was fumbling for her phone when he ended the call with Maia.

  “Lucy, what the fuck?”

  “Call Eva.”

  “What?”

  “Call Eva!” Lucy repeated, shoving her phone under his nose. “She’s at Leo’s house.”

  “Shit. You’re right. Code?” Nathan said tersely.

  Lucy rattled off the code to her phone. Of course, Nathan already knew the code to her phone. The perks of his job was the ability to stalk his own girlfriend and it would be classified as “acceptable.” Scrolling down to Eva's number, he pressed call.

  “Lucy! How did it go?” Eva answered on the first ring.

  “You got Nathan here.”

  “What?”

  “Listen. No time to explain. But you need to get out of the house. Francisco Cortez knows everything and that Leo instigated this operation.”

  “I want to talk to Lucy.”

  Nathan sighed and handed the phone to Lucy.

  “Eva?... Yes, I’m fine. Nathan?... It’s a long story... Leo got shot... yes... listen, you need to leave the house and don’t forget the medkit. Check into a motel. Do not use your real name. Text me the address... We’ll come and get you ... OK... love you too, Eva...”

  The brooding silence resumed. In the darkness, all he could see were the shadows on her face, sometimes getting illuminated by a random car’s headlights. Her eyes were firmly fixed on the highway, like she was staring off into the distance.

  “Lucy?”

  She grunted a short response.

  “What’s bugging you?”

  Silence for a beat and then. “If you were asked to go on another assignment, like if you were required to get close to say, a supermodel...”

  Nathan started laughing.

  Lucy glared at him. And at that moment, he couldn’t help himself, he leaned in and kissed her deeply. He captured her lips with his, darted his tongue out quickly to taste the inside of her mouth. He groaned, god he missed her.

  Lucy pulled away, shocked. She switched her attention back to the road. “That was not fair.”

  “I’m not apologizing,” Nathan replied.

  “You did not answer my question.”

  “I wouldn’t accept the mission.”

  “You accepted your assignment with me.”

  “I wasn’t attached.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know we’re still attached,” Lucy said sarcastically.

  That’s it.

  “Pull over,” Nathan said quietly.

  “What?”

  “Pull the fuck over!” Nathan roared and he must have freaked her out, because the car immediately swerved and skidded onto the shoulder.

  “Jesus, Nathan,” Lucy yelled. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Nathan slammed out of the car and ran around to her side, yanked the door open, pulled her out and cut the engine.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We’ll be quick,” Nathan said tersely.

  “What?”

  Nathan pushed the back of the driver’s seat forward and bundled Lucy into the backseat, immediately following her and pulling the door shut behind him.

  “You need to be fucked hard.”

  “Are you insane, we’re on the side of the road!”

  Thankfully it was pretty isolated.

  He hauled her under him, settling between her legs and ground into her crotch with his rapidly hardening erection.

  “Oh god...” Lucy whispered.

  “Yes baby, feel that, feel what you do to me,” Nathan whispered hoarsely before his lips crushed her soft ones, driving deep into her mouth with his tongue. After a hard, punishing kiss, he relinquished her lips and trailed kisses from her jawline to her ear. “Tell me you want this.”

  “Nathan...”

  “If you don’t want this, I’ll stop.” He ground his hips into her again.

  “I want you! Oh...”

  “You want me inside you, babe?”

  “Yes ... I need you inside me ... Nathan.”

  Good. Because the past 24 hours had him on the brink of his sanity, the thought of losing her raising his instincts to bury himself inside her to feel that she was alive and his to protect.

  His fingers deftly unfastened her shorts and pulled down the zip, he leaned back and pulled it off, taking her panties along with it. He looked at her nakedness before him and realized he was breathing hard.

  “This is going to be rough and quick,” he warned.

  Lucy nodded and lay flat on the backseat. Damn, he had not done this since high school. Nathan unzipped his cargo pants and freed his erection. “I’m going to raise your legs up high, brace your hands on top of your head so I don’t give you a concussion.”

  Lucy laughed nervously.

  “Relax babe I got you, but this is going to go deep.” He leaned one knee on the seat. His other leg in a lunge position with the foot braced against the side of the car. Without another word, he wrapped Lucy’s legs around him, pushed her thighs up high and slammed inside her. Her moist heat grabbed his cock immediately in a tight squeeze and he felt like he would lose it right then.

  “Fuck, baby I miss this.” He wrapped his left arm around her and with his right hand braced against the window frame for leverage, he pumped inside her fast and hard, punctuating each thrust with a deep feral grunt. The cramp space only added to the eroticism, both of them folding into each other, joining in one explosive moment when they both yelled in passionate release.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “That was crazy,” Lucy whispered. Nathan took over the driving. Maia had just texted them the exit for the stop over in Ciudad Victoria.

  Nathan shot her a sexy half-grin. A satisfied half-grin, much like the cat that had his cream and licked every drop of it. He had fucked her in the backseat of the car, on the side of the road, with bad guys after them. It was reckless. No, it was stupid. It. Was. Hot. Who was she? Who was this person she had become?

  “You’re a bad influence,” Lucy muttered.

  “You’re not regretting what happened, are you?”

  “My father’s men could have shot you in the ass!”

  “Babe, there were no headlights for miles. We took five minutes,” Nathan replied with amusement. “I would have loved to have taken longer but like you said, bad guys are after us.”

  “My brother better not find out we did it in the backseat of his car.” Lucy laughed.

  “Sorry to blow your bubble, Lucy, but I’m sure we’re not the first ones to bless that backseat,” Nathan said with a smirk.

  Lucy shuddered at the thought. Definitely TMI for her. The last thing she wanted to picture was her brother doing the nasty. Nathan held out his right hand to her and she cautiously laced her fingers with his. He raised his hand and kissed their linked fingers.

  “I can still feel you.” Lucy touched her womb. Nathan had powered into her so hard, she had felt him touch the end of her sex. It was an odd sensation, like he had branded himself on her.

  “Good.”

  “We were supposed to start over, um—slowly.”

  Nathan’s smile softened, his eyes sought hers in the dim light.

  “That was incredible, babe. Thank you,” was all he said.

  ***

  The two vans and Maia’s SUV were already at the designated stopover by the time Lucy and Nathan pulled in. It was a 24 h
our rest stop with a gas station and convenience store. It was quite busy, so it was easy to blend in. The eight women were walking around, they looked a bit dazed and subdued. None of them looked older than twenty.

  Nathan lifted his chin at the guys before he walked up to Pierce, who was still sitting in the van. Her eyes were closed. She did crack an eye open when she heard his approach.

  “Hey,” was all she said.

  “You OK?”

  “You asked me that earlier.”

  “Touché.”

  Her phone buzzed. The caller id said: Jack

  “Are you going to get that?”

  “I’m almost afraid to.” Maia gave a short laugh. “Viktor left a couple of messages too.”

  Nathan nodded. “Yes, he left me two. I haven’t listened to them yet. I also missed calls from a New Park City number, I think it’s your Jack.”

  The phone stopped buzzing.

  “How is it going between you and Lucy? Have you cleared things up?”

  We just fucked like crazy on the side of the road.

  “We’re getting there. She said at least we’re on the right side of the law.”

  Nathan’s phone started ringing: Viktor

  They stared at each other.

  “Put him on speaker, might as well get it over with,” Maia sighed in resignation.

  Nathan answered the call.

  “You both are in deep shit,” Viktor’s gravelly voice came through the phone. “Where are you?”

  “We’re in Ciudad Victoria,” Maia said.

  “The girls?”

  “We have them.”

  “FBI should be at the Laredo border by now. Do you need them to move in?”

  “No, I think we got this,” Maia replied, giving a short nod to Nathan and he shrugged.

  “You better call Jack. He’s already at Laredo, and if I’m not mistaken, he’s also foaming at the mouth.”

  “Fuck,” Maia whispered.

  “I’ll deal with you two when you get back,” Viktor promised and then hung up.

  “That’s it?” Nathan asked, confused.

  Maia grinned. “Viktor is unpredictable. He doesn’t care if you break the rules as long as he doesn’t know when you’re doing it, and it’s best if you get results.”