Bound to Serve (Dangerous Liaisons #1)

by Julie Castle

  His gun hand lowered an inch, and he cocked his head to the side. “You think I’m stupid enough to believe you?”

  “Baby,” she said. “It was always for you. Always. I felt guilty because you were the man I loved, and I got you killed. And I felt guilty when I saw you with that bitch Lola.” She let herself cry now. Let herself feel the weight of all of these years of guilt and now the betrayal of knowing it had been a lie all along. She’d grieved for him, spent years a shattered mess, all for nothing. “I thought you must never have loved me.”

  Now James’s expression turned forgiving. “I always loved you. That’s why it hurt so much to see you with him.”

  “But don’t you see?” She came forward one short step, just close enough for him to feel her physical proximity. “That’s how I felt when I saw you with Lola. I don’t want him.”

  “And I don’t want her,” he said. “But I can’t just take your word for it. You have to prove yourself to me.” He gestured for her to come closer. “Kill Condor. Kill him and we can finally be together again.”

  Every fear Condor had about Bridget and James now stood in front of him. It had been easy for her to never consider betraying Delta Star—let alone him—when James wasn’t offering his love. But Condor had worried from the beginning that her loyalty might crumble if James turned out to be alive. If she found him and her heart still yearned for him.

  Now she stood side by side with James. The man had told her he still wanted her. Now she had to prove she still wanted him.

  Condor just had to trust her.

  “First, kick that bastard’s gun away,” James said.

  She went to Condor and spared him a brief glance, but her eyes were like ice. He couldn’t see inside her. Couldn’t be sure what she intended. She kicked the gun away…but not far. Only far enough that it was out of reach, not out of sight. Had that been intentional?

  “Stay right there,” James said. “I can’t let you have the gun, not yet, baby, but you put your hand around mine and we’ll pull the trigger together.”

  “Okay,” she said, her voice low, soft, submissive.

  He came behind her and wrapped his arms around her. With his free hand, he trailed a possessive gesture across one of her breasts, then trapped her in his embrace.

  “Here we go.” He lowered the gun. “Wrap your hand around mine. I’ll hold the gun. You put your finger on the trigger.”

  Condor could spring to his feet and run for his gun. Weakened though he was, it was still close enough to see. But he’d be unlikely to get a shot off before James shot him. Not like this.

  He had to trust Bridget. If they wanted to get out of this alive, he had to.

  “Before we shoot him,” she said. “Kiss me.” She smiled. “To make it official.”

  James frowned. “That easy?”

  “I don’t expect it to be easy.” She lowered her head. “I know I’ve been bad, and I deserve to be punished. Only kiss me if you feel I’ve been good.” She looked up at him. “Master.”

  Now James looked interested. The side of his mouth curled up in a half-grin. “You have been bad, and you will be punished. But maybe it’s okay to give you a taste of what you’ll get if you’re good.”

  He leaned down and kissed her neck, her ear, then turned her face toward him to take her mouth—

  She bit his lip. At first the sensation must have been what James wanted, but then she bit down hard enough to draw blood, and he screamed, tried to jerk away, but she was ready for him.

  She spun around and knocked his gun arm up to prevent a wild shot from hitting Condor.

  Fury washed over James’s face. He brought his gun hand back down, but she maneuvered his hand arm back around so that his effort to overpower her used his momentum against him, and his arm spun in a circle and back up so that the shot fired into the air.

  “You bitch!”

  He stopped trying to outmaneuver her—he’d never been as skilled at hand to hand combat as her—and instead used brute strength to shove her off her feet and to the ground.

  She hit the concrete hard enough to knock the wind out of her. But as soon as she was down, Condor was up. James brought the gun down, and she heard a terrifying shot, but Condor kept going, enraged, furious, unstoppable.

  But he’d now been shot twice, had already lost too much blood, and the surge of adrenaline wasn’t enough to overpower James for more than moment.

  Then she saw it. The gun she’d kicked away from Condor.

  She grabbed it—

  James knocked Condor back, raised his gun—

  Bridget aimed at James—

  James squeezed the trigger—

  Bridget’s shot went off first, a clean bullet into James’s dark heart. He gasped and turned to look at her. Then he fell and shook for a moment, and within seconds, he stopped moving at all.

  Frost’s men swarmed the area, but by then, Perez’s plane was long gone. Bridget cursed to herself. After all of this, he’d gotten away. But at least Condor was still alive.

  The medical team worked on Condor, patching up the bleeding gunshot wounds, one in his chest, the other in his arm. She started toward him, but Frost walked up to her and took her aside.

  “Agent Jamison, a word.”

  “Not now. I’ve got to check on Condor…”

  Frost gave him a dismissive glance. “He’ll be fine. We’ll make sure of it.”

  She glared at her boss. “I just need to get to him.”

  “He needs medical, not you, no matter how well-meaning you are. You need to listen to me. Just for a moment. Then you can do whatever the hell you want.”

  She sighed but reluctantly agreed.

  “That’s better,” Frost said. “We’ve got a lead on Perez. There’s only so much airspace. We lost him once he made it over the Gulf of Mexico, but there are only a few places he could make it on that size of a plane.”

  “Fine, and you want to let me know how badly I screwed up letting him get away. You trusted me, took a chance letting me come on this mission in the first place. And I fucked it up.”

  Every word she’d said was true. She hadn’t realized it until she’d said it. Now she just needed Frost to confirm how badly she’d failed.

  “I could say that,” Frost said. “But first, I wanted to tell you we weren’t sure about James. We never were.”

  “If you had been, you’d have told me?”

  Frost didn’t answer, which was all the answer she needed.

  “That’s what I thought. Now if you’re through, I want to talk to Condor.”

  “He’s being medevacked as we speak,” Frost said, looking over her shoulder toward the airstrip.

  She heard the helicopter propellers and spun to look just as it lifted off. Of all the dirty tricks—

  “You bastard,” she told Frost.

  He’d never wanted to give her a heart to heart. He’d just been distracting her.

  She saw Condor through the open door of the rising helicopter. Their eyes met and held for a moment, and it felt to her like he was studying her, memorizing her, before he flew away. Her heart broke. What had he and Frost been talking about? What was wrong?

  “Where is he going?”

  “That’s classified.”

  “Don’t give me that shit line—”

  “If you really care about him, you’ll let him do this. He’ll contact you if and when the time it right. In the meantime, I have a task for you to perform.”

  Was he just giving her busywork? “You don’t have to placate me, I’m not going to go crazy and chase after him.”

  “It’s not a request. It’s an order. You’re going to form a new inter-departmental task force. And your first operation is to find Perez.”

  It was everything she’d wanted at the start of this mission. Now it meant absolutely nothing to her. Not when Condor was flying away. Not when he wasn’t with her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Three weeks later, Bridget barged into Frost’s office fe
eling as if it was a bad case of deja vu. Only one heartbreaking problem this time. No Condor. He hadn’t returned.

  She glanced at the chair he’d once sat in, and her heart panged. Okay, time for pining away was over. The only thing that had kept her going these last three lonely weeks was setting up the new task force, coordinating information, chasing leads, figuring out where Perez had ended up.

  Now that things were flowing smoothly, Frost owed her, damn it, and he was going to give her some answers or else. His excuses of cleanup work and debriefing wouldn’t work this time.

  Why hadn’t Condor gone around him to contact her? Had their time together meant nothing to him? Had it been just another mission to him? No, she didn’t believe that. Wouldn’t believe that until she heard it from his lips.

  He’d flown away from her right when she’d thought they’d reached an understanding. When she’d thought they could finally be together.

  Frost looked up from his paperwork and scowled, his body going stiff. “Make an appointment with my secretary.”

  “No.” She dropped down into the chair. “Tell me where he is right now.”

  “How the hell should I know?” he said with a shrug. “He doesn’t work here anymore.”

  Her jaw dropped. She couldn’t help it, and she gazed back at Frost in shock. Frost really had fired him. Why hadn’t he told her? Why had Frost fobbed her off with the excuses of debriefing and cleanup work? “It’s not fair. You can’t fire him just because I messed up. Let me go instead.”

  Frost looked at her. “Who said I fired him?”

  She gulped. “So you’re telling me that he quit and just walked away…from work…from…?”

  “You,” Frost added in a conciliatory tone.

  “Why?” she said softly.

  “Why do you think?”

  Frost looked at her, and she suddenly put the pieces together. “When exactly did he tell you to give me the case?”

  “That night on the tarmac. Right before he flew off.”

  So that’s what they’d been talking about in low tones. He’d seen how compromised he was by having a woman he cared about as his partner. He was a ghost after all. Her heart collapsed. After everything they’d been through, she’d thought he would make an exception for her.

  “And you didn’t try to talk him out of it.”

  “I didn’t know if you were ready, if you were the one he needed to find the light again. I’m still not convinced. You could take the easy way out, go back to your cushy life.”

  “Like hell. Where is he?”

  Frost shrugged. “A top agent like you should be able to put together those clues.” He glanced down at the frosty bottle of water sitting on a colorful beer coaster advertising a seedy Key West hotel. The Sea Breeze.

  She raised an eyebrow. “What…?”

  “He’s done his part,” Frost said. “Now he’s waiting for you to do yours. And Agent Jamison? If you do this—don’t let me hear about it.”

  She smiled. “I get your message, sir. We’ll be invisible. Like ghosts.”

  Condor stood in the kitchenette of the Sea Breeze’s manager’s suite and looked at the open-ended airline tickets for DC. He’d bought them three weeks ago, and it was killing him to wait. But he’d wanted to give Bridget a chance to make her dreams come true, to help start the inter-department squad she’d wanted. How much longer could he hold out, give her the space she needed?

  There was a knock on the door. He should have hung up that no vacancy sign, because he wasn’t in the mood to talk to guests tonight. Such was the plight of an innkeeper who was antisocial.

  “We’re full up,” he said, opening the door. He stopped frozen when he saw Bridget standing there. He saw the determination in her eyes, the Dangerous Liaison’s bag in her hand, and he wondered if that meant he was saved from his own stubborn sense of honor. He’d had to allow her this space. To let her make the decision.

  “Really? The parking lot looks empty.”

  “It’s the off season,” he said with a shrug.

  “So are you going to invite me inside or not?” She stepped closer but didn’t come inside.

  He breathed in her cherry bark and almond scent and damned near lost it on the spot. The airline ticket crumpled in his hand. She looked down at the sound, and he swallowed. He stepped back so she could enter and almost groaned when she brushed past him. He set the airline tickets down on the desktop.

  She set the bag down, and his fascinated gaze went to it before returning to his face. “Frost wasn’t supposed to tell you where I was.” As a romantic line, it was a flop, but he couldn’t stop from blurting it out.

  “I’m a spy. I figured it out.”

  “Did you bring me a gift?”

  “Never mind the bag. I need to hear it from your lips.”

  “What do you need to hear, sugar?”

  She looked at him. “What do you think?”

  He knew damn well what she wanted. “Okay. I was a fool to let you go. I love you, Bridget,” he said, pulling her into his arms brushing his lips across hers.

  Bridget fell into his arms, knowing there was nowhere else she’d rather be. “I love you, too. So much I think I’ll burst.” She looked at the crumpled airline voucher on the counter. “You were coming to me.”

  “Yeah, I told myself I’d give you your space, but…”

  She grinned and opened the Dangerous Liaisons shopping bag. “In that case, you get your present.”

  “Hmm, this is a new twist.”

  She smiled and pulled the matching slave bracelet out of the Dangerous Liaison’s bag and clasped the slave bracelet on his wrist in one fast motion. The startled look on his face delighted her.

  “It’s got a hidden mechanism,” she said. “Makes it damned near impossible to take off.” She looked ruefully at the band she still wore. “Which you already know.”

  “I take it you tried to remove yours,” he said.

  “I considered it about a week ago. But somehow, I couldn’t do it,” she said. “So let me spell it out for you. You’re wearing my slave bracelet, Condor. It’ll be your duty to make love to me every single day.”

  He chuckled. “But it’s only simulated sex.”

  She smiled up at him. “That’s what you think.” She sighed with pleasure as she all but melted against him. His hard-on pressed against the sensitive juncture of her thighs and heated her all over, but it was the warmth in his eyes that burned her to her soul.

  He looked into her eyes. “It sure as hell feels real to me.”

  “Oh, yeah, very real,” she said, trembling against him as he bent to kiss her.

  Hours later, when they’d had their wicked way with each other more than once, she leaned over to him in bed. “You know Perez is still out there.”

  “I know.”

  “And you know that I’m in charge of the new task force going after him.” She paused. “Occasionally, we hire outside help.”

  He sat up. “Is that right?”

  “Freelance agents. People we know we can trust.” She looked at him. “People like you.”

  His smile told her what she needed to know.

  Perez had escaped. But Bridget and Condor were a team now in every way that mattered. And together, they’d find Perez. Together, they’d finish this.

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  Acknowledgments

  So many people have helped me along the way. I would like to thank my friends, family, and my patient husband. Thank you for putting up with me especially when I’m in “create mode” and running lines in my head while you’re trying to talk to me. I know that I owe you each a huge debt of gratitude for your encouragement and support. />
  Next, I want to acknowledge my wonderful editor, Stephen Morgan, for laughing with me along the way, getting my jokes, and teaching me about plot beats. You have been a joy to work with, Stephen. I look forward to the next book in the series with a big smile on my face.

  About the Author

  Hi,

  I’m author Julie Castle. I guess you could say I am a natural born romantic with a modicum of artistic talent that I inherited from my mom and a love for telling tall tales that I got from my dad. I guess that set me up for being a starving artist, the biggest fibber in the world, or a romance author. I am so glad that I chose the latter.

  I’ve always had a love affair with the written word. As a child growing up in a small Wisconsin town I loved visiting the local library, a converted gilded age mansion, and getting lost between the pages of a book. The drafty old mansion could be a spooky place at times but I still loved it. I enjoyed poking into behind the scenes areas I was not supposed to venture into.

  I’m still the same way which is why I love writing romance with an edge, paranormal, suspenseful, super sexy, or just laugh your pants off funny I hope you’ll find it in my books.

  I hope you will visit my website at www.juliecastle.com to see what I’m up to next.

  Thanks,

  Julie Castle

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