Trained for Seduction

by Mia Downing

  “Don’t,” Jake warned, and his guard slammed the butt of his gun into his side again.

  Kate looked the guard up and down, as if assessing him. “Treat my asshole boyfriend right, and I’ll reward you.”

  “Yes? How.”

  She reached up and traced a finger along the guard’s lips. Chase tensed, not knowing what game she was playing, but oh, did she ever like to play with fire. “I’ll make you scream for release in every language you know.”

  “Don’t!” Jake warned again, and the guard hit him with the back of his hand. Chase expected her to react as Jake righted himself, blood running from the corner of his mouth. But she held her ground and merely glared at the abusive guard.

  “You, too, don’t treat him that way. Not if you want what I have to offer.” She ran her hands over her pink bra, touching her nipples, then she slowly buttoned her shirt, her eyes never leaving the guards. “Do I make myself clear?”

  Jake’s guard licked his lips. “Who are you to bargain?”

  She then fixed her jeans, and when she was finished, she crossed her arms over her chest. So calm, so cool. Chase had never been prouder of her.

  “A willing woman is more fun. How nice you treat my boyfriend determines how much I give. How willing I am. And you just saw how willing I am, for the asshole. Imagine how willing I can be, for you,” she whispered.

  Chase swore a pin could have dropped in the tent. Every man was on the edge of his seat. He didn’t know if she was smart or stupid for this, but at least she was laying the groundwork for Jake to get decent treatment. Until they discovered who he was, that is.

  “Then we should get back and give your boyfriend the deluxe cell.” The guard motioned for her to walk. She didn’t put her hands in the air. She held them by her sides and walked like she was a model on the runway.

  The guards followed, hypnotized, until one realized he should really be in a little more control of Jake. He jabbed Jake in the back with the barrel of the gun, Jake put his hands in the air, and off they went.

  “That’s it.” Chase rubbed his hand over his face. He didn’t know what to think at this point. “On standby until the bomb is triggered. We’ll monitor the borders just in case Kate can’t get the bomb in place. We’ll need to call for extraction if that happens.”

  “I don’t know if I should be envious of you, sir, or wish you luck.”

  Chase didn’t know, either. He was so proud, so in love, so…scared. If she died, that’s what his last memory of her would be. Fucking hot. So scary smart. And then he smiled. If she died, it would be with honor. A part of him had feared she’d be afraid, she’d be weak. She was anything but, and he loved her more for it. As her boss, he wouldn’t want it any other way.

  Chase sat in the chair and put his feet up on the chair in front of him. Ready to wait. “Don’t envy me, Ryan. She still has to come home. And I think she’ll have no problem handing me my ass after today.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The walk to the compound wasn’t far, and Kate knew she could easily run the distance to the extraction point in the allotted time. For once, she was grateful for all the running they had made her do. They entered a simple, two-story home through the ground floor. The area was an unused sort of rec room, with a makeshift prison cell in the corner.

  The guards shoved Kate first into the cell and then Jake. They locked the door and walked away, keys jingling.

  “We’ll be back for you later, pretty girl,” one called over his shoulder with a leer that made her shudder.

  “Where are you going?” Kate demanded, glad they were leaving. She couldn’t act the hussy any longer. She turned to Jake, the adrenaline feeding her anger. “Anderson, this is your fault.”

  “Me?” He put his hands on his chest and looked innocent, a trickle of blood still at the corner of his mouth.

  It was the innocence that got her. He was supposed to be her friend, not the person who fingerfucked her and destroyed what little relationship she had with Chase.

  “Yes, you,” she said on a hiss. And then she hauled back and hit him square in the jaw, as hard as she could.

  Jake groaned and sank to the ground, holding his face. “Sweetheart. Why?”

  “Oh, that hurt.” She shook out her hand, the pain blinding but also serving to drink up some of the adrenaline she had surging. Now she knew why men fought. “You never said hitting someone like that would hurt.”

  “There are reasons we don’t do more than spar. That’s one.” He leaned back against the wall, still on the floor. He groaned as he crossed his legs at the ankle and looked up at her. “So why did you hit me?”

  “That was for making me come.” She took the steps forward, arms crossed over her chest, and straddled his legs, looming over him. Embarrassment heated her cheeks, and she glanced away, hating the pity in his eyes.

  “I hope you don’t hit Chase like that. As much as the two of you go at it, he’d be black and blue for making you come.”

  She kicked him half-heartedly with the inside of her foot. “How do you know that?”

  “I know Chase.” He raised his hands in surrender. “Don’t hit me again. We lived together for a bit. I know he’s horny as hell.”

  “In Paris.”

  “Yeah.”

  Ooh, Jake had mentioned Paris in the office. Her embarrassment waned just a bit. “So what happened?”

  “You have to ask him about that. I’m sworn to secrecy.”

  Spies and their secrets. Kate snorted and stepped away from Jake. The cell was small, with a pail in one corner, probably for whatever needs they may have. Jake’s long legs stretched across the entire area. She had to step over his feet to lean against the bars of the cell, the metal cool against her cheek as she looked down on him. “You crossed the line, Anderson. You took it too far. Chase is going to hate us.”

  “No, he’s not.” She gave him an arched brow, and he said, “I know, because you sorta whispered his name in my earpiece when I shoved my hand down your pants.”

  “Oh my,” she whispered, horrified. The whole team now knew she was sleeping with Chase. “He’s going to be so pissed. You, he’s going to kill, and I hope he doesn’t choose to snipe you. I hope he kills you with his bare hands. But he’ll hate me even more. We should just bag this and let them kill us, right now.”

  “Shh, calm down, sweetheart.” He patted his chest. “Come rest. Chase will be doubly pleased, because he won the pool the entire team set up.”

  Kate sank to the ground near Jake, still refusing to give in and put her head anywhere near his chest. Even if that’s what she wanted to do. Put her head down and sob. “He won? What? Why?”

  Jake nodded. “Half the team bet you were sleeping with me, the other half that you weren’t but would definitely after this mission, and there was a side bet on what color bra you were wearing today. I think Ryan won that one.”

  “They bet on my bra color? Oh, my God, you men are pigs.” She ran a hand through her hair and pulled it into a ponytail. “So how did he win?”

  “I put his name in the hat.” Jake tossed up his hands in defense. “He gets pissy because they never put his name down for these things. He’s the boss. They’re not supposed to bet on him. But I knew I had a sure thing, and no one would believe…” Jake shrugged.

  “No one would believe? What’s wrong with me that no one would believe?” She was fucking hot now. How dare he?

  “Nothing is wrong with you, sweetheart. I’ll bet when we board the plane to go home, every man on the team will have their phone number ready for you, even the married ones. But they don’t expect Chase to play, not at work, not ever. That’s my job.”

  Her anger faded to just a niggling sense of pissyness. “How much did he win?”

  “Five hundred bucks.”

  “He had better take me somewhere really good.”

  Jake patted his chest again. “While I’m down here, why don’t you come here, and we’ll rest a bit.”

  She looked
down the hallway in the direction the guards had gone. “What if they come back?”

  “They won’t. It will take time to decide what to do with us.”

  Kate lay her head against his chest, exhausted. Though Jake smelled like Chase, his body was nothing like Chase’s. He had a larger frame, his muscles thicker, and his skin tanner from being outside. He put his arm around her shoulder, and she found it hard not to relax against him. She looked up at him with a mock glare. “I’m still really angry with you.”

  Jake leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. “I told you I would only go as far as needed. Unfortunately, the guards had taken aim, so I shoved my hand down your pants. It was that or fuck you—or die.”

  “You didn’t have to say I was wet,” she wailed.

  “For the guards to believe us, yes, yes I did.” He held her closer. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t want you to die. I didn’t want to die, either, because Chase would have dragged my soul back, stuffed it in my body and killed me again if you died because of me.”

  Now Chase thought she was wet for Jake. He’d never believe she was wet for him, even if she did whisper his name. When Jake touched her, she had thought only of Chase, his hands, his mouth. It was the only way she could rationalize kissing Jake. It had worked in Chase’s office, and it had worked today. Only her plan had backfired. “I hate you.”

  “I know you do.” Jake kissed the top of her head. “But I know Chase better, and he’ll be okay.”

  Yes, Jake knew Chase better than anyone. “You know him so well. Sometimes, I don’t understand at all what makes him tick.”

  Jake sighed, his eyes closed. “Chase is very complex, sweetheart.”

  “If I ask you something, will you tell me?” She looked up at him.

  Jake opened one eye, and his expression became guarded. Just like Chase’s. He opened both eyes then and stared at her, using that same stare Chase did when he wanted to suck information from your soul. “Depends on what it is.”

  “Will you tell me about his ex? He’s said he has done love before, and he’ll never do it again. I need to know what drove him to be who he is now.”

  “You sure you want to know?”

  She nodded.

  After a moment, Jake said, “Diane was a bitch, but Chase loved her. Worshipped the ground she walked on. She couldn’t understand why he couldn’t tell her every little detail about work, about his life, and she became jealous. Petty. She didn’t like his…” He frowned. “She didn’t like his more adventurous tastes in sex, let’s say.”

  “That he’s dominant.”

  “Yes. You would know by now, wouldn’t you?” Jake gave her a knowing look at made heat creep up the collar of her shirt. “You’d think he would have disclosed that before he married the bitch, but there you go. He’s an asshole.”

  “Maybe he thought he could change. Or she could change.”

  “People don’t change.” Jake shrugged. “And so she belittled him, made his life a fucking misery until one night, he couldn’t take it any longer and cheated on her.”

  Oh, Chase. “How could he?”

  Jake shrugged again. “He wanted to get caught, so she’d leave him, because he had tried to get her to give him a divorce before and she wouldn’t let him out. She drove him to want to control everything, everyone, because she made him lose control in ways I’d never seen him before.”

  “That’s no excuse for an affair.”

  “No, not an affair. He had sex, once. He’s never discussed the details with me—that’s not Chase. But I know he planned it out, every detail, because that is Chase. And the guilt had to have driven him crazy, because he stood behind his vows.

  “She had cheated, too—many, many times—and he forgave her, so don’t think he was the only villain in this marriage. But you have to understand how desperate he was to do what he did.”

  She understood even more so why Chase had needed that level of control last night. He couldn’t take the tension of the impending mission, couldn’t take the danger he’d put both her and Jake in. And that dark, wild sex was his way of taking the control back and owning it. Owning her.

  “I make him lose control, too.” She winced. “I think he hates me for that.”

  “I don’t think so.” Jake shifted and curled his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer. “I think he loves you.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Jake. He told me flat out not to go there.”

  He smiled. “As I said, he’s not one to talk about these things. But I know him. If he didn’t care about you, he never would have let you stay with him after that first weekend.”

  “He doesn’t love me.” Chase couldn’t love her, could he? She thought of the desperate tone as he commanded her to tell him she loved him. That was a control thing, though. He wanted to control every aspect of her, even her love. Didn’t he? Isn’t that how control worked? “He sent you here. Us here.”

  “Yeah, that’s part of his job.” Jake hesitated, making sure the guards were gone, and he finally said in a low voice, “I shouldn’t tell you this, but you need to know. You were supposed to be here alone, and there was no chance. Do you understand me? No chance. None. And you would have had to do much, much more than he was willing to let you do, and then he would have had to let you die for it. He will be happy you came in a clearing under my hand after what was supposed to go down.”

  A chill washed over her. She originally was going to seduce the madman, not Jake. Chase had known that, and somehow, he’d arranged for Jake to be there instead. The original plan had her dead as a doornail at the end, but this plan…she had a chance.

  She trembled, and Jake held her tighter. “Why couldn’t he have come, instead of you?”

  “Because he’s way too valuable. I don’t think you understand who he is. What he is. He’s more than either of us, sweetheart.” Jake sighed, but she got the gist of what he was trying to say without details.

  “My job—I was asked to do it, not told. He found a way to send you if I went. He’d rather watch you kiss me and know that if we had to do more, like today, I’d take care of you. He knows come hell or high water, you’ll leave here with me. But he couldn’t tell you all that. God help him, he wanted to, but he couldn’t.”

  She sucked in a breath, unable to believe what she was hearing. He did care, as a boss, as her lover, boyfriend, or whatever he was. Now she understood why he was so hurt that she couldn’t trust him fully, wouldn’t believe in him. She could easily follow the path of his downward spiral to last night, when he fought so hard to keep himself in control.

  But she’d never had anyone to believe in before. Her father had been crazy. “I’m such a bitch.”

  “You didn’t know.” Jake stroked her cheek. “He’s not used to being able to talk about these things. He’s never been in a position to share his thoughts or emotions. Guys don’t do that normally, but he’s even less likely.”

  Jake paused, drew in a deep breath, and blew it out. “This is a bad decision on my part to tell you this. And what I’m about to tell you, if I find out you used this against him in some way, shape or form, I will hunt you to the ends of the Earth and kill you. Do you understand?”

  She’d never heard Jake sound like this before—conflicted, stern, deadly. Kate swallowed, unsure if she wanted to hear what he had to say. But she nodded.

  “Chase is the bravest man I’ve ever met. He’s been to war, he’s faced death, and he’s the best damned boss I’ve ever had. But the one thing in this world Chase is terrified of is his uncle, the general.”

  Jake stared at the wall. “I’m not going to tell you about Paris, but I will tell you, when we returned, his uncle ripped him to hell and back for something that wasn’t his fault or his doing. Chase had no control, but his uncle is a judgmental bastard.

  “I was there. I got the same ass kicking. But when we left, Chase threw up in the parking lot. He blamed it on food poisoning, but I know Chase. I’ve seen him with his uncle after
that, and every time that man judges him or pushes him, he’s physically ill.”

  Oh, Chase. Her heart ached for him. She’d sensed turmoil when it came to his parental units, but she hadn’t been sure. “We went to dinner with them, and Chase didn’t look so well afterwards.”

  “No, I’m sure he didn’t, because that’s when Chase found out what they had planned for you. And he called me afterward and met with me in his office to ask me to do this. I doubt Chase stood up to his uncle, but he must have done something, because I’m here, with you. He did that, for you. He didn’t have to. Agents sometimes have to take one for the team. He could have just walked away, but he didn’t. That’s why I think he loves you.”

  Kate hugged Jake tighter, wishing he were Chase. But somehow, hugging Jake felt right, because she knew he felt her pain.

  Jake shifted her against him and embraced her tighter against his chest. “After Paris, he cheated. After the divorce, he went to the dark side, if you will. Hell, I was already there, but he joined me. There were many, many satisfied women, and we did it together, as a team. He shared, I shared. He got high off it, drunk. It was like…I dunno. I enjoyed it, sure, but he lived for it.”

  “He wanted that control.” After learning about his uncle, she could now see the beginnings of the downward spiral, how his life began to implode and he had no control over a shred of it.

  “He needed the control,” Jake corrected. “Big difference, because he couldn’t stop himself if he wanted to at that point. I just went for the ride and made sure he was safe.”

  “He said he had done extreme things.”

  “I had hoped not, but it doesn’t surprise me. He was in a very dark place, honey.”

  “He said he doesn’t need to do that anymore. Not with me.”

  Jake kissed her forehead again. “That’s good to know. See how good you are for him? You’re helping him heal.”

  It boggled her mind, thinking of Chase so desperate. But it also intrigued her to think of him loving a woman with Jake, the pleasure they’d give her. Chase was damned good in bed, and Jake…she trembled a bit, remembering how he’d kissed her, his fingers… How would she feel to be sandwiched between two gorgeous men that cared about her?