Ready for Anything, Anywhere!

by Beverly Barton

  “You just let rip, sweetheart. I’ll do my best to grin and bear it.”

  All inclination toward laughter had disappeared by the time he scooped her up and carried her into the bedroom. So had any pretense that he was a passive player in the game. He was rock-hard and hurting when he dragged down the silken coverlet.

  Stretching her out on the pale-blue sheets, he stripped off her lacy camisole and briefs. The need to possess her made his hands unsteady as he shed his own clothes, but he managed to fish a condom from his wallet.

  A strangled sound came from the bed. Throwing a quick glance over his shoulder, he saw Mallory propped up on one elbow.

  “What’s that slogan?” she choked out as he joined her on sheets as soft as snow. “‘Never leave home without them?’ Reminds me of a certain financial institution that shall remain nameless at this … Oh!”

  Cutter smiled at her breathless gasp and shifted his weight. They fitted together perfectly, her mouth within easy reach of his, her breasts flattened against his chest. He shifted a little more to the side and stroked his hand from her breasts to her belly and back again.

  She was incredible, he thought while he could still think at all. Her skin was smooth and creamy and flushed with heat. Her belly hollowed under his palm. The pale hair of her mound was soft and silky to his touch.

  Cutter fully intended to draw out the foreplay as long as possible, priming her, testing his own limits. But when he found the slick flesh between her thighs, his mind shut down and his body took over. Fitting himself against her, he locked his mouth on hers and sank into her wet, welcoming heat.

  They found a rhythm as old as time. Mallory’s skin grew damp with sweat. Her nipples ached from Cutter’s nipping, sucking kisses. She rolled atop him to return the favor and had contorted to work her way down to his chest when her entire body went taut.

  She jerked upright. Hands, teeth and thighs clenched as her climax slammed into her. Wave after wave of pleasure ricocheted through her belly. She thought she heard Cutter groan. She knew his muscles bunched under her bottom just before he thrust upward.

  She collapsed onto his chest seconds later. Or maybe it was hours. She didn’t have a clue. The only reality that penetrated her sensual haze was the hammer of his heart under her ear.

  Mallory floated slowly back to earth, vaguely aware of the cold air prickling her backside.

  Flopping onto the mattress, she dragged up the tangled sheet and nuzzled into Cutter’s side. She must have dozed a little before she came awake with the scent of their lovemaking teasing her nostrils. Burying her face in the angle between his neck and shoulder, she touched her lips to the warm skin.

  “Mmm. You taste salty.”

  “I am salty. And thirsty.” Easing his arm free, he leaned over her and dropped a kiss on her still-tender lips. “How about I retrieve the wine?”

  “Great idea. Bring the other goodies, too.” She scrambled upright and hooked the sheet under her arms. “We’ll have our own private picnic.”

  Cutter did as asked. He brought the dessert tray and pot of still-frothy whipped cream first, then went back for the wine. Mallory had bitten into her second truffle when he returned.

  “You are not going to believe how wonderful these are,” she gushed. “The first one was mocha, flavored with Cointreau. This one is chocolate, hazelnut and rum. Here, take a bite.”

  Smacking her lips in exaggerated ecstasy, she offered him the remaining morsel. He bent to take it, but she didn’t see her playful mood reflected in his expression. He’d turned thoughtful during his two trips into the sitting room.

  Okay. All right. So he wasn’t into postcoital picnics. No big deal.

  She reached deep inside for something blasé to cover the awkward moment and came up empty. When he stood beside the bed and looked down at her, though, she knew the moment had stretched too thin to simply ignore.

  “Is something wrong?”

  He hesitated a few seconds too long.

  “Wait,” Mallory said, her heart sinking. “Don’t tell me. I can guess. You’re having a sudden attack of conscience.”

  She’d hit the mark. She could see it in his face. Dismayed, she shook her head.

  “I should have known this little romantic interlude was too good to be true. That you were too good to be true.”

  “Mallory … ”

  “You’re married, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Engaged.”

  “No.”

  “In love with a twenty-two-year-old cowboy from Montana.”

  “What?”

  If she hadn’t been so mortified by his withdrawal, she might have derived immense satisfaction from his stunned expression.

  “Hey, I saw Brokeback Mountain. I pretty much fell in love with Heath Ledger myself.”

  His mouth opened. Snapped shut. In a tone that sounded like glass grinding, he refuted her allegations.

  “Did it feel like you were in bed with someone nursing a taste for twenty-something cowboys?”

  “I don’t know. Let me think about it for a minute.”

  “Oh, for … !”

  Tangling a hand in her hair, he tugged her head back. His eyes weren’t cool any longer, she noted.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, my taste runs to twenty-nine-year-old blondes who run around losing passports, sinking rental cars and smearing chocolate all over their lips.”

  When he proceeded to kiss away the aforementioned chocolate, Mallory’s doubts subsided. Temporarily. Only after he broke the kiss to lick at the corner of her mouth did her thoughts reengage. Curious, she cocked her head.

  “How did you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “How old I am. Was that just a lucky guess?”

  “I must have overheard you give the information to the gendarme at Mont St. Michel.”

  “I don’t remember giving my age,” she said, a frown gathering. “My name, yes. And your cell phone number. Not my age.”

  Impatience flickered across his face as a sick feeling churned in the pit of Mallory’s stomach.

  “Oh, God! You knew.”

  Dragging the sheet with her, she scrambled to her feet. Strawberries and truffles spilled everywhere.

  “You knew all about me, didn’t you? You did read the papers, or saw the reports on TV. You knew about me, yet you sat there at the table and listened while I spilled my sad little tale.”

  He didn’t try to deny it. He couldn’t. The truth was stamped all over his face.

  “Yes, I knew who you were.”

  Her chin lifted. She’d indulge in some serious self-flagellation and name-calling later. Right now she just wanted him gone before she burst into tears.

  “Glad I gave you some fun, Mr. Smith. Now get out of my room.”

  “Listen, Mallory, I did know who you were, but … ”

  “But what?” she jeered. “You lied about not reading the news stories because you wanted to see if they were true? If I was hot as they said? Well, now you know. They’re true. Every one of them.”

  “To hell they are.”

  “You can go home, sell the latest chapter in this squalid serial to the tabloids, make millions.”

  “Dammit, just listen a moment! I didn’t see any TV specials or pore through the tabloids. I studied the dossier put together by the outfit I work for.”

  “You got a dossier?” Her face went slack with surprise before morphing into a full-fledged scowl. “On me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? You’re a wine broker, for pity’s sake. Why would you … ? Oh!”

  Swirls of conversation came back to her. Reeling, she recalled how Cutter had cleverly pumped her for information about her job at the Department of Commerce.

  “Oh, Lord! How much of an idiot can one person be? This has to do with my job at the International Trade Administration, doesn’t it? What did you think you could get from me, Smith? Preferential status on ITA’s market listing? Inside information on y
our foreign competition?”

  Cutter came within a breath of telling her the truth then. Not because of his mounting guilt for taking advantage of her vulnerability. Or the odd, indefinable emotion that had jolted through him when she’d pressed her lips against his puckered flesh.

  It wasn’t love. He’d only known the woman for all of two days. People didn’t fall in love that quickly, except maybe in movies. Like Brokeback Mountain.

  Christ!

  No, he wanted to level with her for purely professional reasons. Mallory Dawes didn’t have any knowledge of the disk tucked in a pocket of her suitcase. Cutter would stake his reputation on that. Correction, he’d stake what was left of his reputation after pulling an 007 and hopping into bed with his target.

  She might, however, be able to help him determine how the disk got into her suitcase. For that, he needed her full cooperation.

  Before he could read her in on the situation, though, he had to clear it with OMEGA’s director. Lightning trusted his agents’ instincts, gave them complete authority in the field, but this particular op involved the President of the United States.

  “Mallory, listen to me. Please.”

  He figured he had all of thirty seconds to convince her he didn’t rank right up there with Congressman Kent as a total sleaze.

  “I did receive a dossier on you, but it had nothing to do with the wine business or your job at the International Trade Administration. I can’t explain what it did concern. Not yet. You’ll have to trust me a little longer.”

  Her chin jutted. Fury put bright spots of red in her cheeks. “Give me one good reason why I should.”

  She had him there. Cutter didn’t think she was in any mood to appreciate a reference to the hours they’d spent together. Or to the fact that they both still wore each other’s scent on their skin. All he could do was curl a knuckle under her chin and tip her face to his.

  “I can’t give you one, sweetheart. But I will. As soon as I make some calls, I promise. Just trust me a little longer, okay?”

  “I’ll think about it.” Her eyes stormy, she jerked away from his touch. “Now get out of my room.”

  Chapter 9

  The coded signal came in just as Mike Callahan was about to turn the control desk over to his relief.

  It was only a little past four in the afternoon, D.C. time, but it was late evening on the coast of Normandy. Mike had taken Slash’s report several hours ago. He’d figured on grabbing a few hours sleep while his field operative did the same.

  His pulse kicking up a notch at the unscheduled contact, Mike nudged his relief aside and brought Slash’s digitized image up on the screen.

  “Thought you were locked down for the night, buddy.”

  “I was. I am.”

  Sliding into his seat at the console, Mike noted the rigid set to Cutter’s jaw. Someone or something had gotten to him.

  “What’s up?”

  “I want to read Dawes in on the op.”

  “Roger that.”

  Callahan didn’t question the abrupt change in plans. He trusted Cutter Smith’s instincts implicitly. He should. The two of them went back a long way. Over the years they’d shared ops, beers and the occasional night out with whatever females they happened to be involved with at the time.

  Those years had forged bonds that went beyond friendship. Danger had further hardened the bonds to tempered steel. On one memorable occasion, Slash had manned a Black Hawk helicopter’s 20mm cannon to hold off more than fifty enraged rebels while Mike scrambled for the hoist cable that would extract him from the sweltering jungle. On another, Mike had jumped in a Navy jet and flown halfway across the world to accompany Slash on the agonizing medevac flight home after a certain traitorous bitch had left him bleeding, burned and unconscious.

  Neither of them talked about that long, horrific flight. Or about the woman Cutter had later tracked down. Some things didn’t need discussing. Reading a target into an operational mission with such top-level interest, however, did.

  “I’ll have to run this by Lightning.”

  “I know.”

  “He’s going to want to know the rationale.”

  “Tell him … ”

  Slash’s hesitation was as uncharacteristic as his scowl. Mike waited a beat, wondering what the hell had happened in the scant hours since his last report.

  “Tell him I’m convinced Dawes didn’t know the disk was in her suitcase. I want to work with her, see if she can shed some light on how it got there.”

  “You sure she’ll cooperate? She might not take kindly to learning that you’ve had her in your sights all this time.”

  “She’s already tipped to the fact that I have more than a friendly interest in her.” He paused again, then added a gruff postscript. “Considerably more, as it happens. Things, uh, got personal tonight.”

  Mike had spent too many years undercover to react to that bit of news, but he had to work to hold back a low whistle. The only other time Cutter had led with his dick instead of his head, he’d wound up in a burn ward.

  “You sure you know what you’re doing, buddy?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.” Cutter stared straight into the camera. “Get back with me as soon you talk to Lightning.”

  “Will do.”

  Mike didn’t need to check the electronic status board to know Lightning wasn’t on site. He’d departed some hours ago to participate in a charity sports event at the Army-Navy Country Club. Wearing his Presidential Envoy/millionaire restaurateur persona, Nick Jensen and his wife, OMEGA’s chief of communications, were knocking tennis balls around the court at something like a thousand dollars a whack.

  So was Nick’s executive assistant, Mike remembered with a sudden kink in his gut. Gillian had called up to advise Control she’d be at the country club with Nick and Mackenzie.

  “You’ve got the stick,” Mike instructed his relief. “I don’t want to catch Lightning in midswing and throw him off his game. I’ll deliver Slash’s request in person.”

  Shrugging into his red windbreaker with its Military Marksmanship Association patch on the breast pocket, he dug his car keys out of the pocket of his jeans and descended to the tunnel that led to OMEGA’s specially shielded underground parking facility.

  His tan Blazer sat in its usual spot. The vehicle was only two years old but had already logged over a hundred thousand miles. Mike knew it was good for another hundred-plus. Drew McDowell, code name Riever, owned and operated a chain of classic car restoration shops in his civilian life. Drew had personally replaced the rods and adjusted the timing. The Blazer could go from zero to sixty in three-point-six seconds.

  The acceleration came in handy when Mike wasn’t in the field, working an op for OMEGA, and had to eat up road between his Alexandria condo and the Firearms Training Unit at Quantico, where he taught agents from a half dozen federal agencies the fine art of blowing away bad guys.

  The familiar stink of the solvent he used to clean his weapons after a shoot permeated the Blazer. Mike kept a complete kit in the rear well—bores, brushes, rods, gun vise, wood and metal polish—all the tools of his trade. He carried his Mauser 86sr in a concealed compartment, as well. NATO snipers trained with a military version of Mauser, which featured a ventilated stock to dissipate heat and a detachable box for quick switching from high-to low-penetration rounds. Mike’s had been custom built to his specifications.

  Exiting the garage, he opened the car windows and let the brisk September air blow away the stink. Fall was in full swing, he noted absently as he negotiated the pre-rush hour rush. The oak and chestnut trees had already begun to turn. Fat yellow mums nodded from pots and planters along Massachusetts Avenue. His eyes shielded from the bright sun by mirrored sunglasses, Mike cut over to the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge to avoid the usual logjam on 395 and cruised along Memorial Parkway. As always, the solid bulk of the Pentagon stirred memories of his years in uniform.

  His first months had been rough. He’d arrived at boot camp with a chip
the size of Rhode Island on his shoulder and a mouth to match. It hadn’t taken long for a lean, wiry DI to cut the new recruit down to size. By the time Mike graduated from boot camp, he’d found a home and the family he’d never had.

  He’d started in law enforcement, a rookie cop with few skills except the ability to put every round dead center at the practice range. That skill had served him well after transferring to an ultrasecret, highly mobile Special Ops forward insertion unit.

  Mike would still be in uniform if Nick Jensen hadn’t convinced him he could serve his country just as effectively in a different capacity. The transition was a wrench, but Mike had never looked back. OMEGA was every bit as tight as his Special Ops unit.

  And Nick Jensen made one helluva boss, he thought as he pulled up at the gatehouse of the hallowed Army-Navy Country Club, a scant mile south of the Pentagon. Two guards manned the gate, along with a civilian-type Mike immediately identified as Secret Service. Wondering which of the President’s numerous progeny were participating in the tennis tournament, he flipped open the ID case that cleared him for access to any government installation.

  With a respectful nod, the guard activated the wrought-iron gates. “Welcome to Army-Navy, sir.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tucking away his ID, Mike navigated the winding road that cut through the superbly manicured grounds. Founded in the early 1920s to provide recreational facilities for military and civilians assigned to the nation’s capital, the sprawling complex covered more than five hundred acres of wooded Virginia countryside. Mike played an occasional round of golf at the club, but didn’t go out of his way to rub elbows with the generals, admirals, senators and foreign ambassadors who made up the bulk of the membership.

  The indoor/outdoor tennis courts were some way past the redbrick, white-pillared clubhouse. A festive crowd had gathered to watch the matches underway on all four outdoor courts. Cheers rose with every returned volley, while groans abounded after each missed shot.

  Nick and Mackenzie were hard at it on court number three. Mike could see the sweat streaking his boss’s dark-gold hair. Mac had drawn her mink-brown mane back in a ponytail that whipped from side to side with every strong-armed swing. They were matched with a hook-nosed reporter from the Washington Post and his partner, an angular, gray-haired woman Mike recognized as an undersecretary of defense.