by Lucy Score
She cried out, and he sucked deeply on the nipple he’d claimed, grunting softly as he emptied himself with violent thrusts.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Xavier hated to wake her. He wanted this moment between them to last. Waverly was curled on her side, her back cuddled against his front, wrapped in the embrace of his arms. He was still hard as a redwood—as if he hadn’t just been gutted by two violent orgasms.
But that wasn’t why he needed to wake her. He needed answers.
She’d left three goons incapacitated without breaking a sweat and had anticipated the shot that could have ended his life or seriously pissed him off before he had. He’d seen the gun in the split second that she’d knocked into him, sending him off balance and out of harm’s way.
That wasn’t luck. That was training.
He now had a good idea what Micah’s text had meant. He’d gotten it as he was frantically sprinting down the club’s emergency exit staircase trying to dial Waverly.
Big news on Tomasso and Target. You’re not going to like it. Call ASAP.
He’d barely escaped the crowd that had closed in on him in the VIP section after Waverly’s stunt. It was a first-hand experience with how Waverly must feel on a regular basis. So many people, each wanting a piece of you. He was going to have a talk with her about using him as a distraction, about separating herself from him, and trying to handle an armed squad of someone’s enforcers on her own. By the time he’d hustled through the door leading to the alley, his instincts were screaming that she was in trouble.
And it looked like it was bigger trouble than he’d anticipated.
He nuzzled into her hair and stroked his palm over her arm and taut stomach. “Angel, wake up.”
“Again? I’m not going to be able to walk tomorrow,” she murmured into her pillow.
He liked that picture enough that his dick twitched against her, but they needed to talk first.
“Baby, wake up. We have to talk.”
“We’re not getting married, X,” she yawned.
“Yes, we are. But that’s not what we have to talk about.”
“I know,” she grumbled and rolled over in his arms. Looking at her swollen lips and those full breasts that pressed against his chest, he started to change his priorities. And when she threw one leg over his hips to cuddle closer to his erection, he almost lost his resolve.
Reluctantly, Xavier pushed her across the mattress until she was an arm’s length away. “Hang on. We have to get out of this bed and get some clothes on or we’re both going to die of orgasm-induced dehydration.”
He dragged himself out of bed and padded over to the closet door. Invictus made it a policy to stock certain basics in each safehouse, and he was relieved to find sweatpants and t-shirts that would fit them both.
Waverly had rolled to her side and watched him approach with a feline smile. “God, you’re magnificent,” she sighed.
“Which one of us are you talking to?” he asked, glancing down at his still hard shaft.
“Bravo to both,” she said. When she stretched, the sheet slid down to reveal one perfect, supple breast.
He turned around.
“Angel, please get dressed so we can get this conversation over with.”
“And then what?”
“And then I’m undressing you again and keeping you that way for at least six or seven months.”
He heard her shift on the mattress and the sound of her pulling on clothes.
“Better?”
He turned around to find her pulling her hair up into a knot on the top of her head. Her nipples were visible through the soft white cotton of the t-shirt. He felt his cock move in appreciation.
“There’s got to be a parka or something in here,” he said, hurrying back into the closet. He found a sweatshirt, three sizes too big for her and hurled it in her direction.
She humored him and pulled it over her head. “Better?” she asked.
“Not really. Maybe it’s the bed. Let’s go back to the living room and sit on opposite ends of the couch.”
She padded out of the room in front of him and veered into the kitchen where she riffled through drawers and cabinets until she found sandwich bags. She filled one with ice and wrapped it in a dishtowel.
“Here. For your eye.”
He frowned and probed his left eye. He’d taken a good shot from the ninety-pound ninja but had forgotten about it in the heat of the chase and the... after.
He took inventory of the rest of his body. Besides feeling sated, the knuckles on his left hand were split, and he felt a bruise blooming on his jaw. Everything else seemed to be intact.
Waverly grabbed two bottles of water out of the refrigerator and slid one to him across the black onyx of the counter.
He opened an app on his phone, and after some fiddling, the overhead lights dimmed on.
“Isn’t that handy?” Waverly said.
“All of our properties are wired to our system,” he said, drinking deeply from the bottle.
He let her fidget for a few more moments.
“You’re going to have to eventually tell me,” he said.
She raised her gaze to his. “I know. I just don’t know where to start.”
“Let’s start with where you learned to beat the hell out of men twice your size, and then we’ll wind our way around to what made you sic a hoard of women on me while you chased Petra into an alley.”
When she began to pace in front of the sink, Xavier pulled out a barstool and sat at the island.
“I have two jobs,” she began. “I’ve been acting my entire life, and in college while I was taking classes in psychology and international relations, I saved my summers for filming. Dante and I made another film together for Target Productions. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was a test.”
Xavier stayed still, focused on her words.
“After graduation, Dante approached me with a job offer. Brad Tomasso, the CEO of Target, had identified a unique need that the government’s intelligence gathering organizations all had. There were certain places that agents couldn’t get into, places that celebrities had access to.”
“Like the Lake Tahoe home of a Russian billionaire.”
She nodded. “Exactly. Dante and I do contract work, gathering intelligence from people in situations where we wouldn’t necessarily be seen as a threat.”
He swiped a hand over his face. The love of his life was telling him she was a spy.
“How long have you been doing this?” he asked, keeping his tone even.
“Since I graduated. I have a good grasp of languages, so I do well with European and Russian targets.”
“When you say, ‘do well…’” he trailed off, not really wanting to know the answer.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not James Bonding my way through assets if that’s what you’re asking. It’s just the kids of weapons dealers have looser lips around drunk party girl movie stars. Or a mogul’s lonely daughter needs a new BFF. Occasionally, Dante and I double-teamed targets. We’ve hacked phones, searched private offices, gotten information out of coked up entrepreneurs with shady business dealings.”
He took a slow deep breath and fought the pounding headache that suddenly appeared.
“It was a pretty strategic move on Brad’s part,” she continued. “The income from the contracts padded the studio’s bottom line, and Dante and I both received a cut. The organizations we worked for were happy to farm out some of their case load.”
“When you say ‘organizations,’ who do you mean exactly?”
“NSA, FBI, DIA, occasionally the CIA and the SEC. And I see the line is back between your eyes,” she noted.
Xavier closed his eyes. The idea was actually fascinating, but the fact that his Angel was taking assignments from the intelligence community destroyed any objectivity he had. A thousand scenarios raced through his head—ways things could have gone horribly wrong, had go
ne horribly wrong.
“So what happened in Tahoe?”
“The whole assignment to get close to Petra? It felt off. Usually there’s a clearly stated objective, but this time I was just told to befriend her and stay close. There were no further instructions. And after a few weeks, the studio told me to bring Dante into it.”
“Do you know why?” Xavier asked.
She shook her head. “I felt like the whole thing was off. Petra’s not into anything, and she’s not involved in her father’s business, so I didn’t think it was likely that she’d know anything. I assumed Grigory was the actual target, and Dante thought the same. So when Petra invited us to Tahoe, Dante decided to do a little digging.”
“So you got her out of the house while he went snooping,” Xavier filled in.
Waverly nodded. “Grigory had a locked study on the second floor. So I suggested a walk down to the lake.” She paused and took a sip of water before continuing on.
“The shooting started about five minutes after we left the house. The office door was open and riddled with bullet holes when I got back to the house.”
“So Dante got caught in the study?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think Petra’s security would have shot up the house like that or shot me for that matter. Their boss is an international mogul. He’s not going to want to be answering questions about two murdered houseguests.”
“So it was someone on the outside.”
“I think someone sent an armed team into that house, and I think they were after Petra.”
“But they got Wrede instead?”
Waverly scrubbed her hands over her face. She looked tired, frustrated. “I don’t know. He wouldn’t have gone easily.”
“Have you considered the possibility that Wrede was in on this? That he used his time alone to report to someone that he was in place?” If Wrede had played any role in Waverly being shot, Xavier would make him pay.
Waverly was shaking her head. “Dante wouldn’t do that. And if he was, he would have called them in when Petra was easily contained. In the middle of the night, probably. Not traipsing around in the woods. It wasn’t him,” she said firmly.
“Don’t let your feelings cloud your judgment,” Xavier warned her. It was a lesson every operative had to learn, and one that he still struggled with where Waverly was concerned. Objectivity with her was impossible. “He abandoned you in a firefight. That’s not what partners do.”
“Dante didn’t abandon me,” Waverly snapped. “He trusted me to do my job. I got Petra away from the house. If he didn’t come for me, there was a damn good reason why. A reason I was about to find out tonight when some moron mistook Petra and I for prostitutes.”
“I beg your pardon?”
She relayed what had happened on the sidewalk outside the club prior to his arrival. “Also, I owe you an SUV. Burke’s fine, thank God. That guy does not half-ass his job.”
Xavier stared at her and very slowly lowered his head to the cool countertop.
“Are you okay?” she asked cautiously.
“I think I need some time to process this,” he announced to the granite.
“I understand,” Waverly said.
He heard her pad around the island, felt her arms come around him. When she moved to release him, Xavier sat up and tugged her in to stand between his legs. He brushed a loose tendril back from her face and held her jaw gently. “Thank you for trusting me with the truth.”
She glanced down before meeting his gaze again and nodding.
“I want you to know that you’re not in this alone anymore. You have me, and I’ll commit every resource I have to helping you find out what happened.” And protecting you, he added silently.
Waverly dipped her head. “Thank you, X. I can’t tell you what that means to me.”
He rubbed the pads of his thumbs over the smooth skin of her jaw. “But, Angel, you need to be prepared for the fact that you might not like those answers.”
“Dante didn’t do this. You’ll see,” she said earnestly before kissing him on the cheek and threading her fingers through his hair.
“That’s not my only concern here, Waverly. There’s a good chance he might be dead.”
Her fingers stilled in his hair. “I hope you’re wrong,” she whispered.
The unwavering faith she had in another man ate away at him. Wrede had abandoned her as Xavier had done. Only Xavier had walked out after he knew she was safe. Yet Wrede was the one she trusted, the one she believed in. The one who didn’t need to beg for forgiveness.
Xavier had been inside Waverly not twenty minutes ago, and already he felt the distance between them growing. Xavier pulled her in for a tight embrace. He wanted her thinking of him, needing him, loving him.
“I’m going to make some calls. Why don’t you get some sleep?” he suggested.
“It’s after one in the morning. Who’s going to answer the phone now?”
“Burke and Micah if they know what’s good for them,” he said lightly.
She wrapped her arms around him tighter. “You won’t… I mean…”
“I won’t tell anyone who doesn’t need to know. You’re my priority, Angel. Nothing has changed that.”
He felt her sigh against him. She pulled back and studied him in that disconcerting way she had. “Will you come to bed then?”
The tightness loosened in his chest. She may believe in Dante Wrede, but it was him she wanted in her bed.
--------
Burke answered on the first ring and sounded almost chipper. “Hey, boss.”
“I heard you had an eventful night,” Xavier said dryly.
“On the bright side, the airbags worked great,” Burke quipped.
“I take it the bad guys didn’t get the girl?”
“I caught up with them about a mile from her house. The idiot driving her car has to be the worst driver ever. I took a shortcut around the block and t-boned the chase car. Looks like Stepanov made it through the gates okay and the other guys limped off.”
“You get the plates?”
“Called ‘em in to the office when I was waiting for a tow.”
“What did you tell cops?”
“That some asshole ran the stop sign.”
Xavier sighed. “Good work tonight, but next time Angel gives you orders, maybe double check with me first?”
“Sorry, boss. She sounded very persuasive on the phone.”
Xavier thought of Waverly in the alley, three men crumpled at her feet. There was a possibility that the woman he was protecting didn’t actually need his protection.
He hung up with Burke and dialed Micah and took great pleasure in waking up his friend.
“There better be fire and blood,” Micah groaned into the phone.
“More like four armed assailants in the alley, one car crash, and an escaped asset.”
“I take it this ties in to my text?” Micah yawned.
“I’m guessing it does. You go first.”
He heard Micah murmur something. “Sorry, Suz wanted to know if anyone was dead.”
“Pretty sure the guys crawled out of the alley under their own power,” Xavier told him.
He heard Micah stumble through the dark and then a thud and a string of curses. “Jesus, man. Thank God you’re not back on night raids,” Xavier muttered.
“I’m a fucking ninja when I need to be,” Micah snorted. “Just not when someone leaves Barbie’s Corvette in the middle of the dark hallway.”
Xavier smiled in spite of himself. “Can you hurry up and finish traversing the dangers of family life so you can fill me in on Tomasso?”
“Yeah, yeah,” his friend yawned. “Okay, so I had a chat with our old pal Travers.”
Agent Malachi Travers was the perpetually irritated FBI agent that had worked the Ganim case and more recently turned up squat for Xavier on Waverly’s purported car wreck and the Stepanov home invasion.
�
�I dropped a few names—Brad Tomasso, Target Productions, Dante Wrede, Stepanov,” Micah continued. “Three of them rang bells. Are you sitting down?” Now that he was awake Micah was having fun dangling the carrot.
“Tomasso turned Target into a contractor for the intelligence community.”
“You’re an asshole in the middle of the night, you know that, Saint?” Micah complained.
“Just trying to speed things along. What did Travers have to say about the Stepanovs?”
“Zip. He’s not aware of any investigations into any of them. In fact, he made a few unofficial inquiries to pals in other agencies. No one’s looking at them, or at least no one’s willing to admit they’re looking at him.”
Xavier’s brain started firing on a theory. “What about Wrede?”
“No one’s aware that he’s missing. Travers did know about Wrede’s moonlighting though. Said he’s been helpful to the Bureau in a couple of sticky cases. They like siccing him on ladies with information. If you know what I mean.”
“I don’t need you to draw me a picture,” Xavier told him. “So Wrede went missing on an investigation that no one wants to own, and Target covers his disappearance by leaking an open-ended vacation.”
“Essentially, yes.”
“Well, I’ve got one more piece of intel for you. Waverly works for Target, too.”
Micah’s silence stretched on for five full seconds before he said anything. “You’re shitting me.”
“Nope. She told me tonight after she kicked the shit out of three of the four armed assholes outside of a club.”
“You’re shitting me,” Micah said again.
“Still not shitting you.” Xavier filled him in on Petra and the excitement at the club.
When he was done, Micah blew out a breath. “So what are we doing?”
“We’re going to help her find Wrede,” Xavier said.
“You realize that you’re delivering your dream girl’s boyfriend back to her?”
“It’s what she wants,” Xavier said lamely.
“Who are we bringing in on this?” Micah asked.