by Mara Jacobs
“Why so quiet, Devine? Are you getting all dreamy about Kampfiller?” Ramos’s lips curved into a taunting grin. A smile of one kind or another was rarely off his face. Sometimes she wondered if he used it to keep people at a distance. Nobody asked you what was wrong if you were smiling.
“Kampmueller. And no, I’m not.” She tilted her head. “Have you been messing around in my file?” And had her background check really included the New Year’s Eve Ball? Ugh.
“I’m hurt, Devine. That would be against regulations.” He placed a hand over his heart. “I’m a by-the-book kind of agent.”
“I don’t doubt that. Exactly what book is the question.” Whatever one it was, it definitely wasn’t an open book. For all his friendliness, Ramos remained a mystery to her.
He ignored her jibe and leaned slightly forward on the balls of his feet, balance still perfect. He studied her. “Devine has a boyfriend. Surprise, surprise.”
“What are you, twelve?” She lifted a hand to touch her ponytail, suddenly conscious that her makeup must have sweated off. Her faded, baggy t-shirt, a relic from Academy training, hung past her hips. Gray gym shorts hit her legs mid-thigh and were ugly as hell, but easy to move in. She was not the type of woman most men dreamed of at night, but she lifted her chin, pricked by his teasing. “And your surprise is not very flattering.”
A dimple flashed in his cheek. “I’m surprised that my expert FBI deduction skills failed me. You never talk about a man in your life. Nobody ever meets you at the Grub Pub when we all go out. You never blush when reading a text and, most importantly, office gossip is silent about you.”
“Oh.” Stupid of her to suddenly feel like the most boring person alive. She pushed quickly to her feet, wanting to get some distance from him. “So you found out about Lewis how?”
Ramos rose more slowly. “Baxter and I were going over some reports from the Raleigh office this morning.” Roy Baxter had the desk behind hers. “We overheard you on the phone saying something about Kampfooler and New Year’s Eve and kissing.”
“Kampmueller. You listened to my phone conversation?” That was so not allowed. At least not without reasonable cause, reams of paperwork and the proper court order.
“After the first couple of words, both Baxter and I stuck our fingers in our ears and hummed. Honest.”
The angelic look on his face made her struggle to keep her frown. Exactly what had she said on the phone this morning while talking with her little sister? They’d discussed their older sister Tess and her impending divorce, but mostly Annabelle had been bubbling over with news about the New Year’s Eve Ball, now only three weeks away. And, as usual, she couldn’t resist teasing Grace about the stupid bet that had been started years ago.
The Devine sister who didn’t have someone to kiss at the New Year’s Eve Ball at midnight had to kiss Lewis.
Of course, there were all sorts of potential problems with that. What if more than one sister didn’t have a date? What if Lewis did have a date? Not that any of that mattered because she was the only one whose date always disappeared before the stroke of midnight, and Lewis had never once brought a date to the Ball.
Her newest strategy for dealing with the fact that she lost the bet every single year was to make losing sound really good. Unfortunately, once she started rhapsodizing over the rare wonder of kissing Lewis, Belly had started laughing uncontrollably. Belly had the kind of laugh that filled a room with warmth, and once started made a person want to feed it like a roaring fire to keep it going. So Grace had gone on a riff about how Lewis had a talent for kissing that was so amazing, someone should market his gift. She’d then spewed some nonsense about developing a new sex toy called KampKiss—vibrating lips guaranteed to make rabbit ears obsolete and revitalize the economy. Empty car factories in Detroit would convert to K-Kiss production. Unemployment would plummet. Depression would become a forgotten diagnosis.
Dear God.
“Exactly how loud were you humming?”
Ramos grinned. “So what’s the big deal? Why are you keeping this Kampdrooler a secret?”
“Kamp––” She paused. There was no way she was going to explain the whole Lewis thing to Ramos. “When you start sharing your private life, I’ll start sharing mine.”
His smile faded. “Fair enough.”
Okay. That had sounded harsher than she intended. He’d just been ribbing her, a standard form of guy communication. “Ramos….”
He held up his hands. “Not a problem, Devine. Let’s run through this one more time and then go meet the rest of the squad. I have someone waiting for me at the Pub.”
Of course he did. She’d put money on the fact that Ramos always had a date on New Year’s Eve too.
“One more time.” She nodded at Ramos and took a step back. “You attack me.”
He came at her panther-quick, before she had time to set her feet in the proper position. His hand circled her forearm and she jerked him toward her, pulling him slightly off balance while she turned her backside into his pelvis, bent forward and let his momentum propel him over her hip and onto the floor.
Unfortunately, this perfect move was ruined by the fact that his hand still gripped her arm. Her body followed his and smashed into six feet of muscle and bone.
Sprawled across his chest, breath knocked out of her lungs again, she silently blinked. His eyes were only inches away, liquid darkness. Her pelvis rested against his stomach and she could feel the regular rise and fall of those hard muscles as they slowly lifted her, lowered her. Her legs, slightly parted, aligned perfectly against his.
Little flashes of light started to stab across her vision and she realized she wasn’t breathing. She sucked in air and stopped mid-motion when her breasts pushed more firmly against him.
“Breathe,” he ordered gruffly.
She gingerly released her breath and took a few more shallow gulps of air. “Well. That certainly wasn’t supposed to happen.” She tried to sound brisk and analytical, as if her only thought was to figure out how the Aikido move had gone wrong. She would be in big trouble if his attack had been for real.
Ramos’s body heaved and twisted and she was suddenly no longer on top of him, but trapped beneath, one arm still firmly locked in his hand, the other wedged between their chests.
Okay. She was in big trouble anyway.
“Treat an arm grab like a wrist grab,” he instructed, his face close to hers, his breath a warm brush on her cheek.
“A wrist grab.” She nodded. His eyelashes were the exact shade of his hair. Small smile lines radiated from the corners of his eyes, even though he wasn’t smiling.
“When I grabbed your left arm, one of your possible moves was to step toward me with your right foot, rotate your left arm within my grip to weaken my hold and then strike my attacking arm with your right elbow.”
She could feel his heart beating. Or maybe that was hers. No, the rhythm was too slow and steady. He turned to look at her arm and raised it slightly, as if to bring his grip to her attention. Did he think she’d forgotten he was holding her?
What he actually brought to her attention was his neck, which was very, very close to her lips. The skin was smooth beneath the dark wave of his hair. She lifted her head slightly, as if to look at her arm. Her lips brushed the area beneath his ear, and without her consciously directing it to do so, her tongue lightly flicked against his skin.
His body froze.
Grace carefully lowered her head. She held her breath. She hadn’t just done that, had she?
“Right.” Ramos finally moved. He released her arm with a jerky motion, put both hands against the floor and lifted his chest, his knees still on either side of her hips. She shivered. The room suddenly felt twenty degrees colder. “We should head off to the Pub now.”
“Right,” she echoed. She waited for him to demand why she’d licked his neck. Then again, the movement had been so quick, he might not have noticed. In fact, she was sure he hadn’t noticed. Those moments he’d g
one scary still had only been a perceptual trick, like the way time doesn’t really slow when you’re watching a bullet speed toward you, it just feels like it because your senses are sharpened. Not that a bullet had ever sped toward her––her job was not as dangerous as her mother believed––but she’d watched a lot of movies, and they couldn’t all be wrong.
Okay, her brain had officially derailed. She shut her eyes and tried to focus on saying something reasonable. Her tongue felt strange and she rubbed it against the roof of her mouth, savoring the subtle flavor of him.
“Are you okay?”
Grace’s eyes flew open. Ramos’s gaze had settled on her mouth. He abruptly stood and stepped to one side of her body.
“I’m fine.” She scrambled to her feet and smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Thanks for staying to help me practice.” She made herself meet his eyes. She was acting like an idiot. Ramos was her friend and an agent that she admired. He always went the extra mile with any of the squad. He was well respected and as much a leader as Carter.
He nodded, his face oddly serious as he stood there.
She tugged at the bottom of her shirt. Ramos didn’t usually look at her in such an intently brooding way and she didn’t know how to respond to him. Saying “I just licked your neck and am interested in tasting more of you,” seemed wildly inappropriate.
Unfortunately, it was true.
He was part of her squadron. Work relationships were messy. He was also a wicked charmer who was attracted to gorgeous women like her older sister Tess, not to sweaty jocks like her.
“I’ll head to the locker room and I’ll see you over at the Pub.” She waited a second. When he didn’t respond, she lifted her hand and waved. She turned and walked quickly toward the women’s locker room. Good Lord, had she really waved, like she was Queen Elizabeth or something? She felt a blush heat her cheeks. When she rounded a mat and broke into a jog, she hoped she looked athletic and not as if she was running away.
Chapter 2
The Grub Pub was warm, noisy and smelled of fried food and beer, two of Leo’s favorite things. He stepped inside the restaurant, a homey mix of vinyl-topped tables and roomy booths, and took a deep breath. It didn’t help. He still couldn’t get Devine’s scent out of his head. Her skin had smelled faintly of lemon and a tantalizing hint of some spice. He’d wanted to bury his nose in the spot where her neck met her shoulder and breathe her in.
Which was so fucking wrong.
Devine was…Devine. His friend, his colleague and the woman who had wormed her way under every damn protective shield he’d erected. He’d known he was in trouble her first day at the field office when he’d looked up from a conversation with Carter and had seen her stride into the room with the confidence and graceful rhythm of an athlete. Carter’s voice, the noise of the office, had faded. For a moment, there had been just her––a smiling woman with hair the color of spiced rum and a face filled with intelligence and curiosity. Then Carter had touched his arm and the world came back into focus. Thankfully, weird shit like that had never happened again.
Sometimes, though, he caught himself thinking about her when they were apart, wanting to share a joke, wondering about her opinion on certain situations. Wondering how that hair would feel under his fingers and across his chest. How that body would feel beneath him.
He pulled his brain up short and forced himself to remember another woman he’d worked with, Katherine Dill. Immediately, guilt and pain knotted in his chest. His hand groped into his pocket and he felt the reassuring weight of his phone. Hawk was on speed dial. He’d never called him. But he could. If he needed to, he could.
Leo flexed his shoulders and relaxed his tense muscles. Devine was an excellent agent with a whip-smart brain. He liked and respected her. Nothing more. And she regarded him as one of the guys, no different than any other man on the squad. Which was exactly what he wanted.
Except, she’d licked his neck.
“Leo!”
He turned at the sound of his name and walked toward the large double booth crowded with the squad and a few of their significant others. Mandy Jenkins, a beautiful blonde lawyer in the Justice Department, scooted over to make a spot for him. They’d been seeing each other for a few weeks. This was her first time at the Pub and, while she had only met a few members of the squad, she seemed comfortable with the group. She was sophisticated, yet warm and friendly, exactly the type of woman he liked. She rested her perfectly manicured nails on his arm and he stared at her hand, seeing Grace’s slender, strong fingers and short, naked nails.
What was it about naked nails that made him hard?
“Leo.” Mandy snapped her fingers in his face with a laugh. “Are you all right?”
He shook his head and smiled. “Sorry, my mind was still on work.” He looked down the length of the booth. “Did I get here before Devine?”
Lisa Roberts, the only other woman on the squad, snorted. “Nope. Michael Wolfram snatched her up the minute she walked through the door.” She leaned forward, a gleam in her eyes. “Could our newbie have a secret boyfriend?”
Roberts was the squad’s prime source of office gossip. Leo thought the woman was wasted on them and should have been placed in Intelligence. If the CIA had recruited her years ago, there was no way Bin Laden would have stayed hidden for so long. Roberts heard everything, sometimes before people even said it.
She gave a sigh and raised her beer. “Wolfram looks like the Swedish GQ version of a special agent. We should use him on recruitment brochures for the Bureau.” She nodded to a point over Leo’s shoulder. “The two of them are seated at that booth over there.”
Leo didn’t turn his head. Wolfram had mentored Devine in the Chicago office, her first assignment out of the Academy. He was in Washington for a couple of months to receive additional training at Quantico. Word was also circulating that Wolfram was forming a special task force to go after one of the most hated domestic terrorist groups in the country. A long line of agents would give their eyeteeth to be part of that team. Wolfram could choose from the cream of the crop.
“You could be right, Roberts.” Roy Baxter, one of Leo’s oldest friends in the Bureau, blew a silent whistle. “Our skirt is looking mighty friendly with the Big Bad.” His eyes narrowed. “Shit, that table is full of HBOs. She’s moving in elevated circles.”
Telling himself he was curious about the High Bureau Officials, Leo turned to look. At the far end of the room, he saw the back of Devine’s head. Her ponytail was gone and her hair looked thick and shiny under the Pub’s bright lights. She was seated in a booth on the same side of the table as Wolfram, their shoulders touching on a seat that had plenty of extra room. She tilted her head back as he watched and she laughed––a clear, happy sound that cut through the chatter and noise of the bar. Wolfram bent his blond head and whispered something in her ear. David Carter, their squadron leader, sat on the other side of the table along with Jim McDonald, the ADIC and Teri Murphy, an Assistant Special Agent in Charge. Not that Wolfram and Devine were paying much attention to anyone else.
It was a day of discovery about Devine. She had two men dangling from her string, Kampmueller and Wolfram.
It was also a day of discovery about himself. He didn’t like it.
Mandy’s hand covered the fist resting on his thigh. “Hard day?” she murmured in his ear.
He breathed in her light, floral scent. “I don’t think I’m going to be good company tonight. I’m more tired than I thought.”
She ran a nail along his knuckles. “Want to go home and have an early night?”
The invitation was clear. They hadn’t slept together yet and she meant for tonight to be the night. Leo looked down into her face and felt absolutely nothing except a dull thread of pain that snaked through his head and began to throb at his temples. Great. He could just imagine telling Mandy he didn’t want sex because he had a headache. He looked toward Baxter, sitting across the table from him.
Baxter lifted a surpri
sed eyebrow, but shrugged. “Devine wear you out with all those hip flips, Ramos?” He easily joined the conversation as he poured a beer from the pitcher on the table and shoved it in front of Leo. “That woman is a tiger. What our boy needs is some food,” he said to Mandy, as if he hadn’t picked up the subtext in her invitation. “He’ll feel better in no time.”
“Food.” Leo grabbed the menu he knew by heart. “That’s exactly what I need.” He was hungry. That was the reason for the headache, the burn in his belly.
A hum of awareness at the back of his neck pulled his gaze to Devine as she wove through the tables toward them, her fluid stride mesmerizing. Her brown leather jacket hung open over a pair of tight jeans and a soft-looking yellow sweater. Brown leather boots reached to her knees. Her smile took in the table. “I’m about to head for home.” She ruffled Baxter’s hair in an affectionate gesture. “Some of us put in extra work and trained late.”
“I’ll have you know we’ve been working hard at hoisting these beers while you and Ramos probably spent half the time on your backs in the Pit.” Baxter swiped imaginary sweat off his brow.
“Please.” Devine crossed her arms and shot Leo a mischievous grin. “Ramos spent most of the time on his back. I got my daily deltoid reps just helping him up.”
She was teasing him, treating him just the way she always did. He stared at her silently and her smile faltered.
“Hold on, Devine.” Roberts leaned over past Baxter. While Devine was one of the guys, Roberts was all female. She wore a snug cashmere sweater, her red hair and makeup perfect despite the fact that she, too, had come from the Pit. “You can’t leave without giving us the scoop on the Big Bad. You’ve been holding out on us, girl.”