The man drives the same station wagon he bought when he got married, for God’s sake.
Wylder sighs at that and shakes his head, seeming disturbed.
“Is this…is this about you people bribing him or something, because if it is, he won’t do it,” I warn, praying that my words don’t cause trouble for him. “Uncle Jon is way too honorable for that and—”
“It’s not about me bribing him! I don’t bribe people to do shit, Danny. I do my business my way, and if there are people in the way…I move through them.”
Oh my God.
“No! Christ. I’m not going to hurt them, okay, so stop trying to hyperventilate over there,” he snarls, shoving his own plate away in disgust.
I think I may have offended him or something, but come on. What else did he expect with the way he’s talking?
“Look, I didn’t mean to offend you or anything. It’s just…I know that a lot of people would see Jon’s position as…but he’s not like that, okay? He doesn’t do that stuff, no matter what. A few years ago, this biker gang was trying to strong-arm him into helping them with one of their buddies’ convictions. They threatened Sarah and the kids, but Jon…Uncle Jon sent them to Daddy and told them to go to hell.”
Which turned out so bad for those guys, because dead to rights they followed them, and my daddy, well, let’s just say no one in that gang left his property without a toe tag or a wheel chair in their immediate future.
Wylder smirks at the inference in my words, and I share a rare smile with him because, yeah, my daddy is a badass, no matter how old he gets. Go Navy.
“What is this about, Wylder?”
“Bear. My name is Bear,” he says quietly before looking at me and sighing loudly. “I heard it through the grapevine the Irish are going to strong-arm him. Don’t freak out! Christ, you women…”
“But I have to tell Daddy and—”
“And nothing. Your father took a special assignment last week, thanks to me, and as far as my intel goes, he’s still sitting pretty in an Afghani village out in the middle of nowhere,” he finishes somberly, confusing me all the more with his words.
“What? Look, I don’t understand any of this,” I say, truly adrift when his eyes go hard as granite.
“Your father and uncle aren’t what you think they are, Danny. Your father left active duty while you were little, but he started up again when you went to college, and he’s been doing it ever since. He isn’t just a SEAL. He’s very good at gathering intel, from what I hear, and together with your uncle, who gets a lot of good intel from his sources, they run a unit known as Night Bird.”
The news has me reeling, and I feel a big part of me start free-falling as he watches me.
Truth be told, I am not tracking a word he’s saying, because I am caught up in the news that Daddy is still working special ops. It was never a big deal to me when I was little, but the older I got, the more I appreciated how much he’d sacrificed for me by leaving a job he loved.
“What does this have to do with me, Wylder?”
“Night Bird is currently engaged elsewhere, but they’ll be back soon, and your father and uncle will look for you.”
“No shit! I told you that, asshole. I tried to warn you.”
My yell is all frustration because, darn it, this whole thing is just so strange. And way too coincidental. Just thinking about it now is so eye-opening.
“Did they take me because of Dad and Uncle Jon?” I ask, connecting dots in a mad scramble to hook onto something to explain this.
Not that it needs explanation, because it happens every single day, doesn’t it? Women just vanish and no one ever finds them. Some people just have bad luck where an asshole sees them and thinks ‘oh yeah, she’d make a great whore for the brothel down in Mexico.’
I get that, but thinking that way leaves everything so unfinished, and I need things to be neat and tidy.
“No. They took you because I saw you one day and liked your hair. Wolf and I both loved the color, hence Lori being snatched as well,” he admits, shrugging as if him liking my hair hasn’t ruined my life.
“You liked my hair?” I ask slowly, trying to calm the anger boiling up within me.
God, please no, I beg as I get angrier by the second.
“Yeah, but it wasn’t a huge deal. At least until I walked into that place and saw pictures of you.”
“Wylder! You…you don’t—”
I stop mid-sentence because I can’t scream at my jailer, but come on!
“It isn’t my fault! Christ, Danny, do you think I wanted to walk in there and take responsibility for a woman whose father is one of the most feared black ops men in the country?” he snarls.
That has me pulling back with a startled blink, and I kinda get what he’s saying as I think it over. Yeah, no, I get it. Which sucks because it hammers home the fact that Wylder took me, knowing the shit it would bring down on him when Daddy came looking guns a-blazing.
Dammit, I don’t want that thought in my head because the more it hits home, the more I start seeing him in a different light, almost a soft light that has my feelings going haywire.
I so can’t like Wylder. I can’t. The man is mad hot, built like a sex god, and he’s got a nasty sense of humor that makes my less human side stand up and purr.
If I add thinking of him as an actual person, I’m in danger of seeing him as more. Which is bad. It’s all bad! I don’t do the whole love thing, just ask my last—well, first and late boyfriend, to tell the truth.
Flynn was gorgeous and nice and all the things a girl could want. He was great, and he felt a lot for me. We were together for a whole year, and I even gave it up for him, the notion that we could be more than just good together making me want more with him in a bad way.
The sex was…good. I say good because I truly, really did adore Flynn, and I don’t want to do him wrong by calling him a dud between the sheets. But it didn’t really spark my engine the way it could have.
Things got sketchy after that because he started doing the whole I love you and I want a future with you thing. I’d have been down with that since I was more than comfortable with our relationship.
Things were cozy, and I get that isn’t exactly the way people see relationships, but to me, I was content, and that meant everything. The big snag came about when he confessed his undying love.
I didn’t feel love like what he was feeling, all that tingly, passionate stuff that people gush about, and I told him so. Cue a huge argument that had him screaming the vilest things at me.
Talk about quick about-face on the love front. From there, it was all about how terrible of a girlfriend I was. About a year ago, I bumped into him at the Coffee Hub, and it went okay.
He even thanked me for making him see that what we had wasn’t the real deal. Harsh, but I was just so glad he didn’t hate me anymore that I hugged him, pretended to care when his pregnant wife waddled up and made me touch her belly.
Not that I didn’t care. I was happy for him, ya know? I just wasn’t happy for me, because it hurt to know that I lost a great guy because I’m all duddy on the emotions front.
At least I thought I was. Now, I am not so sure, I think with dread as I look at Wylder and something in my chest goes squishy.
“Dammit. That’s not fair! How am I supposed to plot slitting your throat if you become a human being to me?” I rage, totally forgetting that he told me not to give him ideas.
Infernal man.
See, that damn sense of humor is also doing me in because he grins at the gripe and spreads his palms in surrender.
“Sorry. Should I be more unlikable? Maybe string you up in the basement and beat you every six hours?”
“Why?”
“Why what?” he asks, pushing my glass forward and taking his own.
Wylder has this weird thing about staying hydrated, so I pick up the glass and drink, grimacing at the lack of sugar. The man has a hatred for sugar that goes against every American particle in
my body.
“Why did you take me if it would cause you problems?”
Please be nice.
“You sure you want the answer?”
No, but I’m not exactly living off smarts these days and we both know it, so what the heck.
“Yes.”
Another grin springs forth, and I groan internally when he deliberately lets his eyes go half-mast and all sexy and seductive, licking his lips in a way that has my skin going tight.
“Sex. I wanted you the minute I saw that ass, and I thought why the hell not! I could have declined, and you’d be in freaking Guatemala giving head to some fat asshole with crabs, but I didn’t like the thought of it. Simple truth, I want you, Danny. I want to fuck you and take every part of you in a hundred ways that may not be legal or moral.”
Oh God.
“You’re not ready for me though, so I’ll wait.”
Direct hit to the squishy part of me, I think, hating that he does it so easily.
“Besides, you’re going to be with me forever anyway, so what’s a few weeks waiting for you to get horny?”
My stupid bubble deflates so fast it gives me whiplash, and I’m left glaring at him, lip curled to show my disdain. Not that I am not nervous. I am. I am always nervous around Wylder. Only now it’s all about not showing him how cute he is.
Sick.
“You’re a pig, you know?”
“Oink, oink.”
“I do not like you.”
“Who are you trying to convince, me or yourself?”
Ya know, I totally get what other women don’t see in the man.
“In your dreams, asshole.”
“All the time. Last night, I was biting your nipples so long you came like a geyser,” he quips, and I close my eyes in defeat.
“Why are you still alive?” I groan, falling back with a sigh that is all disgust.
The quip, meant to be all longsuffering moan, has him stiffening and those blues coming at me hard as flint. Just like that, the funny is cut dead and I am looking at the criminal with no mercy for anyone.
“I’m still alive because no one and I mean no one fucks with me, Danny. Remember that, baby, and you’ll live a long and happy life. Now, about your uncle. I got word he’s going to be hooked for a shipment that the Irish don’t want on the radar.”
“He won’t do it,” I whisper, blinking rapidly because, truly, the mood change is always so fast and mercurial that it leaves me slightly afraid of responding afterward.
“I know, but that’s going to be a problem.”
“I’m not telling you shit about Jon, so if that’s the tree you’re barking up, Wylder, then you may as well start slapping me around now.”
Is this why he got all nice and soft with me, I wonder, my suspicious mind clinging onto the thought with tenacity, so much so that I feel somewhat dazed by the need I feel to shove him back into the box I put him in and labelled deadly killer, handle with caution and disdain.
That pisses him off, and I know it because he doesn’t go all deadly still and cold. No, his blue eyes start firing and shooting sparks at me, and his jaw starts ticking with the force of his grinding.
“I don’t fucking hit females! Get that shit through your head.”
“But you trade in flesh.”
Shut up, Danny. Just shut up.
God, oh God, why did you make me this stupid, I ask, pleading with him to keep my mouth shut because I sure can’t.
“I do. But that’s my business, not yours,” he says with deadly calm.
My skin flushes and goes icy all at once, and I swallow so hard he hears it and huffs impatiently.
“This shipment could get your uncle killed, and as much as I don’t want to give a shit, Danny, I could help him and keep him alive.”
“How?”
Be suspicious and very careful, Danny. Something doesn’t smell right in this soup, and you can’t forget it.
Wylder shrugs as if it’s a simple equation and not the rocket science I’m making it out to be, which proves that I’m just a citizen while he’s a filthy, lying criminal with no moral ground to wade through.
“If I can get him to turn a blind eye without the Irish having to approach him, I can tell them I got it all through using another agent and they won’t latch onto him.”
Oh shit! Oh God, help me, but the words bring relief instead of horror at the ramifications of what he’s saying. Basically, he wants me to tell him how to convince Uncle Jon to let things go, to break the law.
If I knew how to do that, I’m pretty positive all the ethics I’m sitting on would crumble so fast I’d be kicking the stuff to the curb myself. If I knew, but the truth is that I have no idea how he can do that. Uncle Jon isn’t a fool, and the truth is that he’d go nuts and just focus on Wylder and his people like a bloodhound on the fox’s scent.
“Which is all well and good, but how the hell do you expect to do that? Uncle Jon won’t do it, Wylder.”
He grins, his teeth gleaming white, and a calculating gleam hits his eyes.
“Well, you could call him and tell him about our wedding, Danny.”
“What!”
Don’t yell at the ‘could be’ murderer and psychopath, Danny Bright.
What my harpy says back makes me fear for my sanity because no one should hear their inner voice pipe out ‘no hablo englese.’
Wylder’s smile gets wider, and I want to curse through the shock he’s just dealt me when he gives me another lip lick and hums in a way that has me suspecting him of dirty thoughts. Pig.
“Well, you and me. Engaged. It would be the perfect cover, baby, and just think, with me in the family, your father and uncle will never have to fear car bombs or random shootings.”
The drawl is soft and said in a seductive tone, but I’m chilled at the innuendo in the words and tremble deep inside.
“Please don’t hurt my family, Wylder. Please. They’re innocent people who just want to do good in the world. They have no ties to organized crime, and they aren’t about to start now.”
“But they’ll listen to you and the hot CIA agent you’re madly in love with.”
My snort is dark, my revulsion more than clear when I meet his eyes and give him a once-over.
“No one in their right mind would look at you and believe you’re one of the good guys.”
Oh, if wishes were lemon drops and dreams were tequila, I think. I could so be down with a badass spy with a bad-boy side and naughty intentions.
“Aw, shucks, Danny. I got feelings, ya know?”
“Yeah right! You’re just a thug.”
“With a heart of gold who doesn’t want to see the mother of his children hurting when her entire family is taken out by the Irish mob and Mexican cartels.”
Icy. Dread. In. My. Veins.
Because he’s dead serious about this, and I can’t escape the thought that if I don’t do this, my family will all die and it would be on me. It’s not my fault, but it won’t matter when I am standing at multiple grave sides, crying over a loss I know will kill me.
“Talk.”
He smiles, his satisfaction clear when he strokes his chin thoughtfully and gives me a tender look.
“If your uncle were to, say, get a call telling him about how much you love me and, say, how I got wind that an operation I am working needed some help in the form of leeway…”
Ah, no. He wants me to lie to Uncle Jon to get him to blind-eye criminal activity. This could be bad for Uncle Jon, really bad. And I’d be right there for fingers to point at because I understand Wylder perfectly.
I have to lie, and if Uncle Jon finds out…
Not only that. I have to tell all the people I love that I am here willingly and completely negate the kidnapping. The slate would be clean, not only for Wylder but that human trafficking pig who took me in the first place.
Oh, the injustice!
“If I do this, you have to promise me no one I love will get hurt, Wylder.”
Not
that I have room for negotiation. We both know I don’t, but I am grateful when he nods. The word of a criminal is no great thing, but I need something to hang onto, and I cling to the vow he’s making, wanting to trust in him and believe that his intentions are somewhat good.
“You have my promise, Danny.”
“And I am not the mother of any children coming from you, asshole. Not even close,” I snarl.
That smile. God.
“We’ll see, Bright. We’ll see.”
Chapter Five
Danny
I’m a ball of dread as I step out of the room in the attic and follow Wylder down a long corridor and down a flight of stairs. The house is gorgeous, and I can’t help noticing how perfect it all is when I catch sight of the living room once we get downstairs.
The place isn’t fancy in the decorative sense. Instead, it’s functional and comfortable all while looking expensive with soft couches in a light beige and ottomans with woolen throws.
I’d be in my element, checking it all out, if not for the fact that I’m following my arch nemesis into his office to make a call, two calls, I would rather eat glass than make.
“Remember.”
“Yeah, okay. We’re in love, blah, blah, blah, and you’re so into me that you’re devastated by the thought of Uncle Jon being hurt in an operation you’re involved in. I get it, okay? I know what the score is.”
He nods, as if secure in the knowledge that I’m going to stick to the script, and pushes me into a seat. It’s been two days since we had our little talk, and this morning is the culmination of hours of rehearsal, all out loud while he critiqued my every facial expression and word.
The man is a menace and irritating as hell. I’m either too sweet to be believed or I’m a lousy liar with not a shred of acting skill. I threw a vase at his head last night when I couldn’t control my rage a moment longer and got so scared I hid in the bathroom behind a locked door until he started laughing and I heard him leave the room.
I did not sleep last night, thanks to visions of being throttled in my sleep, an overreaction, I know, because he needs me to do this and, darn it, he knows it.
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