In Safe Hands (The Safe House Series Book 1)

by Leslie North

  She waited for him to flush, to squirm, to show her a sign that the chess match tipped in her favor. Alcohol led to truths, and if there was anything she learned being her father’s daughter, it was to exploit an opponent’s weakness. Alexa poured his shot and passed it to him before pouring one of her own. She knew she should slow down but found that she couldn't…not when every subsequent attempt melted another tempting layer off Damian Stone's impenetrable armor.

  “Volkov—”

  He had gone back to her family name, a surefire defensive move that advertised everything his gaze fought so valiantly against.

  “You called me Alexa before.” She repositioned herself on the armrest so her bare feet snuggled warmly under the chair cushion and the hem of her skirt skimmed his thigh.

  “Before, you weren’t—”

  “This tempting?”

  “This drunk.”

  “Your pupils dilate when you’re not being straight with me.” She raised her shot glass for a toast. “What shall we drink to?”

  Damian's eyes traveled down the pattern of her dress. Shot glass still perched in his grasp, he quipped, “To the people in charge of witness wardrobe.”

  "To fence posts that take all day to fix," added Alexa.

  “To pre-law daughters who work the system for their fathers.”

  She waited for the combustible heat to rise in her chest, but it never came. Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe she had just tired of the game. She relaxed until her knees parted, a thin, gauzy poppy pattern skimming her knees the only barrier between what she most wanted and the worst possible decision of her life.

  “To protectors with hidden agendas.”

  Alexa found the spoken accusation balanced the charged ions between them, set them on equal grounds of distrust.

  “To tattoos we regret,” he said, his tone probing, not quite a question. His expression was cold, but his eyes swam with some deep, tortured emotion. Even if he wasn't joking, Alexa was too far-gone to bristle at the remark.

  "How about to survival?" she amended.

  Damian tilted his head in agreement. A truce.

  They downed their drinks. Tequila scorched her esophagus like a forest fire. Alexa gasped wetly as she surfaced for oxygen. Damian set his glass down on the little table beside them. The liquid line remained, untouched.

  She reached for his glass.

  His hand clamped her wrist. She marveled at his mastery of duty over temptation.

  Her feelings were less certain about his mastery of her wrist. He held it ensnared in his fingers, his thumb brushing unconsciously along her pulse point. Alexa willed her heart not to dash beneath his touch, but before the mental order had even registered, she knew it was a wasted effort. Was it possible for him to feel her pulse, to realize what he did to her? Knowing how much she wanted him gave him the match advantage, the perfect check. She should look away before she gave herself away. The game made her head spin, and Damian still hadn't ceased his stroking.

  "Do you have any tattoos?" she asked.

  "That's classified information," he answered.

  Alexa pouted. “I thought we reached a truce.”

  “Truce implies two willing parties.”

  “You’re still holding me. We passed willing the moment you contemplated what was under my dress.”

  Damian released his grip. He rifled out of the chair and paced like a mountain lion tethered by a snare. When he spoke, his voice was gruff, strangled. “Go to bed, Alexa.”

  Had her sarcasm not been lubricated by the alcohol, she might have stood and fired out a one-liner about the irony of him passing judgement on her study of law when he could barely find the law, himself. But the wine and tequila swirled beneath her skin and her eyes drifted one long, lazy crawl down, down, down his marvelous physique to the very stiff, very real evidence that she had not just imagined how much he wanted her, too.

  Checkmate.

  She slid from the leather armrest and took three unhurried strides to stand before him. Her eyelashes sank to half-mast, her body now organizing a mutiny over control. To preserve the advantage, she needed him to come to her, to kiss her, to play into her fantasy of having him and unlocking all his answers.

  “Bed is good,” she purred.

  “Alone.”

  The alcohol in her stomach turned toxic. Muscles in her gut churned around his rebuke as her mind played the word, over and over. Alone. Alone. She focused on his lips, still glistening from the tequila she thought he hadn’t tasted. His mouth wasn’t a tight line, like she remembered, but soft and generous from this angle. She wanted to remove her gaze from his lips but found she couldn't.

  The source of her fixation must have been obvious. He brushed a hand across his lips and backed up one step.

  “I thought you…” She hated that her voice emerged wounded, vulnerable. Alone.

  Damian must have heard the same pathetic song. When he spoke, his voice had enough strength for them both.

  “In another lifetime, when we aren’t enemies.”

  She turned on her bare heels. The room overspun. Her stomach rolled. The stinging in her sinuses felt like a hive of angry bees, threatening tears she refused to let him see.

  “Alexa?”

  She paused on the first step to the loft; she didn’t turn around, wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  “In another lifetime, we wouldn’t have made it through breakfast.”

  In typical cop-interrogation fashion, his words were ambiguous, leading her to draw conclusions her addled body craved. But everything crowding the air between them—the fractured notes of his softer tone, the acquaintance of their bodies for the first time, disguised as food prep, the needless confession when he had already won the match—conspired to reveal his true meaning. She would have become his sustenance.

  In another lifetime.

  Damian’s pocket buzzed. He fished for his cell.

  “This is Stone.”

  One beat passed then four. Alexa started up the stairs. She didn’t pause until Damian’s voice came again, this time tight, frigid, anything but ambiguous.

  "What do you mean we’ve been compromised?"

  CHAPTER 6

  "Compromised by whom?" Damian demanded.

  Another of Rockwell’s agents, Samson, paused. Too damned long.

  "Apparently by you, Stone. The Feds found money transferred into your bank account to the tune of five hundred thousand dollars. The two of you need to get out of there. Now.”

  Damian cursed. His gaze ascended to Alexa, perched damned near high enough to give him a view he’d been fighting against all night. She stared at him with wide, fearful eyes beneath a displaced strand of blond hair. He wanted nothing more than to climb the steps beside her and move it back into place.

  "Who made the transfer?" he asked.

  "It was a wire transfer. Anonymous. Feds think you sold out Volkov’s daughter."

  Damian turned away from the temptation on the stairs and crossed into the foyer. He heard the pad of footsteps as she followed; he ignored her, parting a hole through the drawn blinds. The property was dark. It would be lit up soon enough.

  "How long do we have?" he asked Samson.

  “Five minutes, tops."

  “Thanks, man.” Damian ended the call and headed straight for his reserve bag, stacking and counting food provisions and assessing his cash reserve. “Grab what you can, Alexa. Two minutes.”

  To her credit, she asked nothing more and cleared the remaining steps almost before he could blink. By the time he had raced through his mental checklist—ammo, first aid, the kinds of black market tools that made Rockwell’s men the best in the business—Alexa stood behind him, bag in hand.

  She was dressed in jeans and a small hooded sweatshirt that teased her naval when she moved. She must have been wearing next to nothing beneath that dress to change out of it so quickly. He shoved the thought from his mind. He could be horny or free, not both.

  “Come on.”

/>   Damian shouldered his pack, and reached for Alexa's hand. She accepted it, fingers trembling in his. He pulled her out into the night.

  They tore across the yard and up the steps to the car parked on the street. Alexa piled their bags in the back as Damian took the driver's seat and started the engine. The destination he had in mind wasn't far, relatively speaking. Though he was glad he had stuck to his rule of no alcohol, the reality of their situation drenched him like a bucket of ice water to someone who had become intoxicated by another, far more illicit drug: the five-foot-eight, captivating drug beside him that was becoming increasingly difficult to refuse.

  They peeled out and raced down the road. His plan was to take rural back roads and keep off populated roadways until morning—for everyone's safety. Alexa stared wordlessly out the windshield. After a quick double-take, Damian leaned across her and tugged her seatbelt loose.

  The back of his hand grazed her right breast.

  His groin tightened into an intense ball of need.

  She snatched the buckle from his hand and clicked it into place.

  He resumed a death-grip on the steering wheel, unable to determine why he didn’t just ask her to buckle. Control of the situation, maybe. Always control. The gesture was not only awkwardly parental but undermined all the trust they had somehow foraged over tequila and a dance of words where he had stripped her of her clothes a hundred times over. What he wouldn’t give to make a hard brake by the side of the road and touch her with a single-minded deliberateness to show her that some men are worth trusting.

  Jesus, Stone. Focus. Your job is to keep her alive, not sexually satisfied.

  His brain circled words, conversation, anything that might recapture that tentative trust. She deserved to know what was happening.

  “Feds were coming for you. They wanted to take you from me.”

  "Why would they want that? I'm safe with you."

  She could not have said anything so disarming had she told him that she was once the president of her sorority’s virginity club. That she believed the safety he promised drove a zing of desire through him faster than the V-8 under his power.

  "An unauthorized money transfer showed up in my account. A friend called to let me know. It doesn't look good."

  "So what, they think you're taking bribes?" Alexa's voice shook. "Are you?"

  He could see she might easily believe he would. She clearly had a history with cops on the take.

  "No," he said. "The only person capable of setting me up like this is Rockwell."

  Grave silence hung between them, punctuated only by the revolutions of the engine and the gravel popping the undercarriage.

  "Someone's trying to flush me out," she said.

  "Yes."

  "Where are we going?"

  "I have a back-up plan for something like this. Even Rockwell doesn't know where we're headed."

  It was a testament to the brotherhood shared between the houses that Samson had called him immediately. Something didn't smell right, and they had all been trained in one way or another to sense when things didn't add up. For one thing, Samson knew that Damian, were he inclined to take a bribe, would never be so stupid as to use an account they both knew was monitored. It was complete theatre, but who was pulling the strings?

  Alexa shifted in the seat beside him.

  “Are you okay?”

  She nodded.

  Damian pulled a bottle of water from his bag and passed it to her.

  "Drink this. I need you to sober up while I call Rockwell."

  "Call Rockwell?" Alexa repeated incredulously. "Isn't he the person we're trying to avoid? The person who set you up?"

  "Rockwell wouldn't do this," Damian said calmly.

  Alexa looked at him as if she thought he had completely lost his mind.

  "But you just said Rockwell…"

  "… is the only person capable of setting me up like this. Someone must have found a way to access my account through his servers."

  Alexa looked as if she wanted to argue, but Damian pushed the bottle at her insistently until she took it. He tapped the Bluetooth button on his dash and voice-dialed Rockwell.

  Unanswered rings filled the car.

  His superior wasn't picking up. Not a good sign. Either something had happened—somebody had gotten to him—or the situation was dire enough that Rockwell had also been forced into hiding. Damian hung up the call with frustrated hiss. Moments later, he tried again.

  Nothing.

  Alexa watched him from the far corner of the passenger seat, the hood of her sweatshirt drawn up over her hair. He knew she probably had a million and one things to say about their situation, but appreciated that she was aware enough to know that things were not looking good for them. She didn't speak until Damian turned off the empty highway and into an abandoned rest stop an hour later.

  "We'll be safe here for the night." He pulled his handgun from concealment, no longer wary of Alexa knowing where he kept it, and checked the cartridge.

  Alexa’s head turned on a swivel, no doubt looking for a motel or even a cabin on the property, but she would be sorely disappointed.

  "Don't tell me we're sleeping back there." She pointed to the backseat.

  Damian nodded.

  "Together?" she demanded.

  “Yes.”

  "How is that supposed to work?"

  "It works like this: we do it, because we don't have any other choice. Tint is darker back there."

  "You are the worst bodyguard ever," she informed him indignantly as she crawled into the back.

  Damian tried not to take the comment personally—the sharp smell of tequila still lingered on her as she moved past him. He also tried not to stare at the shimmy of her ass through the narrow gap between the bucket seats of his imported sports car.

  He glanced at the rear view mirror more times in the three-minute span it took her to settle into a comfortable position than all of the times he watched for an unmarked Fed vehicle since leaving the safe house. He had almost made the worst mistake of his career when she spread her knees and invited him in. Damian vowed to himself, there in the near-midnight dark back seat, that he would not let his hormones overpower his duty—no matter how willing certain parties may be.

  But the dark had a funny way of distorting promises.

  By the time he joined her in the back, Alexa had rearranged her slender limbs to take up as little space as possible. No way she’d get any sleep like that.

  "Here." Damian shifted to lay half beneath her, half to the side, positioning his larger frame so it provided another surface for her to recline against. Alexa sank into the arrangement and accepted her fate, though he could tell by the tense line of her body that she was anything but relaxed.

  "I'm won’t try anything," he whispered.

  "That's disappointing," she muttered, turning over so that her side pressed against his chest. Her body’s curve fit against him too snugly, too perfectly, all the way down to the swell of her hips and beyond. Damian stifled a deep groan and brought his hands up reflexively to shift her away from his hard-on, though he stopped himself at the last instant.

  Easy, Stone. Remember the mission. Keep Alexa Volkov safe—with or without the assistance of headquarters—or even the existence of a proper roof over their heads.

  Alexa burrowed deeper into him.

  "Stop moving," he ordered, his throat constricting.

  "What if I move in my sleep?" she retorted.

  "I won't be held responsible for what happens."

  She stilled immediately.

  Damian sighed. He hadn't meant for his voice to be so abrasive, but the woman was starting get underneath his skin. He was starting to feel that same itch he knew he wouldn't be able to scratch. Not with her. Ever.

  Alexa turned once more on her side to face him. Her pale face glowed in the light from the rest stop, angelic despite her insistence on behaving exactly as if she hailed from the other side of the Biblical line.

  Dam
ian felt the world melt away. Lines, he reminded himself. Lines were important to draw here, now more than ever.

  "You're always responsible for what happens," she said. "Isn't that your thing? Strictness and responsibility? A complete adherence to the rules?"

  "Thank you for noticing," he said.

  The shared backseat brought their faces so close together he felt every gust of breath the woman took. She even took a few of his. He fought the urge to study her lips, but there weren’t many other diversions so chaste. Everything about her expression reminded him of what human faces were meant to do at this proximity. It was magnetism at its most irresistible.

  "You were the consummate professional until you tried seduce me," Alexa whispered.

  Damian's whole body tensed. He cut his eyes in protest.

  "I absolutely did not."

  "Really? You didn't put your hand on my thigh—here—" The woman took his hand and maneuvered it over her jean-clad leg.

  He drew in a sharp breath, reeling from his hand’s proximity to the apex of her thighs. His erection turned iron, painful against the tight crease of denim.

  "—or grab my arm—here?" She slipped her wrist into his other hand.

  Damian pulled it away abruptly. He kept his hand on her thigh—it seemed like a logical placement for it, considering how crowded the car was starting to feel. At least, that was what he told himself.

  "If I was to seduce you, Volkov, rest assured that there would be no try," Damian hissed through his teeth.

  Alexa arched her eyebrow at him from beneath her drawn hood and the static sweep of her fragrant hair. "No?"

  "When I want a woman, I make my intentions known. I don't play games—especially not with witnesses under my protection. Especially not…"

  “The enemy?”

  His word, tossed back at him, sounded wrong. They weren’t true enemies. They were enemies of circumstance.

  "I know, I know. Another lifetime." she said quietly.

  Not another one. This one.

  His hand clenched reflexively on her thigh, drawing a gasp from her. Her sweatshirt had bunched up again, revealing a taut, warm stomach underneath. His hand relaxed against her bare waist.