Fuel for Fire

by Julie Ann Walker

  He may be hotter than the door handles of hell, but when he gets all Me Tarzan, You Jane, I want to dump his limp body in the River Thames and feed him to the fishes. After she’d killed him with mind-blowing sex and multiple orgasms, of course. And she could probably cop to his last two accusations. She was stubborn, and in that instant she had been willing to sacrifice herself. But the first one?

  “S-stupid?” she sputtered. And good news! The lump in her throat had vanished. “Screw you, Dagan! In case you’ve forgotten, I pulled off this op w-with…”

  She stumbled to a stop because he’d ripped off his mask. And there it was. The Beard.

  Looking at him dressed all in black, shoulders as broad as the Lowcountry, she couldn’t help but think he resembled a god. One of the mythical beings she read about in her fantasy novels. Formidable. Powerful. Gorgeous.

  And here I am, a mere mortal.

  The look he pinned on her was one she recognized. She liked to call it his Clint Eastwood gunfighter squint. He tended to whip it out right before he laid into her for something. She braced herself, mentally running through her standard list of comebacks. But he didn’t give her a tongue-lashing. At least not a verbal one. Instead, he took her face in his hands and sealed his lips to hers.

  She was so surprised that her mouth formed a startled O. Dagan took advantage, his tongue surging between her teeth. His lips were firm yet amazingly soft, and his beard abraded the tender flesh of her cheeks.

  Holy mother! Dagan Zoelner was…kissing her!

  Oh. My!

  Chapter 5

  The instant Chelsea’s lips touched his, Dagan realized she was the reason he had a mouth. So that he could kiss her. Taste her. Take her sweet, earthy essence inside himself.

  “Aw, look at you two.” Ace’s voice broke the intimacy of the kiss. “You’re making my ding-dong and my ping-pongs all tingly. But as the inimitable Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom would say, ‘No time for love, Dr. Jones!’ We need to get out of here before these dickheads wake up. So unlock those lips, untie Chelsea, and let’s get on the stick.”

  Untie Chelsea…

  Those two words were hammer strikes at Dagan’s head. Jesus H. What was he doing?

  Taking advantage of a woman who is handcuffed and hog-tied, that’s what.

  Nausea swirled low in his belly. With a snarl of disgust, he broke the kiss.

  “Check their pockets,” he instructed the others, rubbing a hand over his mouth to massage what remained of Chelsea’s sweet kiss into his lips. “Find the drive.”

  “Aye-aye, Captain.” Ace snapped him a sarcastic salute, then bent toward the sprawled-out Morrison…or Spider…or whatever the hell the man was called.

  Turning back to Chelsea, Dagan didn’t dare meet her eyes. Instead, he went to work on the knot in the electrical cord tying her to the chair.

  He was such an ass. Worse than an ass. He was a cad, a fiend, a low-life shit-for-brains who had taken advantage of a woman who couldn’t give him a well-deserved swift kick to the dick.

  “Sonofabitch.” He cursed the knot when it refused to budge. He was working directly beneath her breasts. Given how he’d just mouth-raped her, he was doing his best not to come anywhere near either one of her amazing, soft, oh-so-round boobs.

  Finally, he managed to grab a loop of electrical cord and pull it free. As he worked, Chelsea’s words to Morrison’s goon screamed through his overheated brain. She had been so brave, so selfless. And standing outside that door, listening to her willingly sacrifice herself, had made all his feeling for her, feelings he had been refusing to name for years, rise to the surface where they could no longer be denied. Then, when she had gotten all up in his grill, using his name? Not Z, but Dagan? Well, something had broken apart inside him.

  I think it’s called self-control.

  The only thing he had wanted to do was claim all that was her—the incomparable wonder of her—for himself.

  The knot finally came free, and he helped her stand by palming her shoulders. Soft. Chelsea was so infinitely soft. Her softness made him hard.

  “Z, I…” she began huskily, then stopped and licked her lips.

  For the first time since the Kiss—yes, it deserved to be capitalized—he allowed himself to look into her eyes. Shock and confusion and something more registered on her face.

  Please don’t let it be pity. He could handle anger. He could even handle disgust. But not pity. Never pity.

  “Z,” she said again, and he noted with no small measure of disappointment that she was back to using his nickname. “I—”

  “Save it for later, Chels.” He skirted around to her back, pulling his tanto folding knife from the case attached to his belt. With a flick, the razor-sharp blade sprang free, and he easily sliced through the duct tape binding her wrists.

  She turned to him then. She obviously had more she wanted to say, but she simply frowned, gnawing her plump lower lip.

  That sensually innocent move sent a shock wave of lust down his spine. Chelsea had absolutely no idea what she did to him, what she’d been doing to him for years now.

  “Besides the thumb drive, this is all the wanker had on him,” Christian said, nudging Morrison’s unconscious head of security with the toe of his boot and holding out a black Android and Chelsea’s iPhone.

  Dagan knew the latter was Chelsea’s phone by the purple waterproof case. The woman was enamored with the color. Half her clothes were some shade of it.

  “Am I the only one tempted to hoist this motherfucker over my shoulder, take him with us, and tie him up in some dark, damp place?” Ace asked, looking down at Spider’s unconscious body with a lip curl of distaste.

  “Not our mission.” Dagan shook his head. “Our mission is to find the proof that ties him to his underworld operations and then turn that proof over to the proper authorities. They’ll be the ones to tear apart every sorry thing he’s built and then light a match and burn the rubble to the ground.”

  “So for us, it’s all guts and no glory.”

  “As you Yanks are so fond of saying”—Christian made a face—“what else is new?”

  “Workin’ nine to five!” Dolly Parton’s voice suddenly blared through the room. Christian wasted no time pocketing the thumb drive and crushing the Android beneath his heel. It wasn’t much, but taking out even one of the enemy’s forms of communication was better than nothing. Then Christian tossed the purple cell to Chelsea.

  They all recognized that ringtone. They’d heard it every day, twice a day, for more than a month. Chelsea’s mother was calling. And even if hellfire was raining down on their heads, Chelsea would answer.

  There were a lot of things that Dagan admired about Chelsea. Her commitment to family was a big one. And he got it. After all, it was his commitment to his brother that had forced him to put in for a transfer from Afghanistan back to the States all those years ago.

  “Momma!” she hissed into the phone, her Southern accent coming to the forefront and stirring Dagan’s heart—and other parts of him located decidedly south. “I told you not to call me ’til after six p.m. London time. I’m on the job.”

  “The job you took because of the money.” The eerie quiet of the penthouse meant Dagan had no trouble hearing the other side of Chelsea’s conversation. “But, honey, I’ll say it again. I don’t want you wastin’ your God-given talents just so—”

  “I can’t go through that with you right now,” Chelsea whispered, nodding her head that she was ready to go. Ace and Christian led the way. Dagan motioned for Chelsea to follow, then took his place at the rear of the pack, unholstering the dart gun.

  Just in case.

  As they made their way from the office, Chelsea’s mother said something Dagan couldn’t quite make out. Chelsea’s response, however, was crystal clear. “It’s not what you think, Momma! I’ll explain everythin
g once I’m home.”

  “Home?” He heard Grace Duvall’s squawk.

  “Yup. I’m coming home soon, Momma. Maybe today.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Then Grace demanded, “Chelsea Lynn Duvall, what haven’t you told me?”

  Chelsea had kept the true reason behind her quitting the “Department of Land Management” and moving to London a secret from her mother. Given Grace’s propensity for getting all up in Chelsea’s business—that wording was Chelsea’s, not Dagan’s—and given the lengths to which they had suspected Morrison might go to vet Chelsea, it had been decided that Chelsea’s cover story should remain entirely intact. Only the president of the United States, the Black Knights, and the director of the CIA knew the whole truth about her undercover operation in London.

  “Well, this one time in the twelfth grade when you thought I was at a sleepover at Lori Jackson’s house, I was really on a coed camping trip with fifteen members of the senior class,” Chelsea whispered into the phone as they passed the kitchen. Her eyes widened when she saw the cook lying on the floor, but she breathed a sigh of relief when she spied the dart sticking from the woman’s thigh before Christian removed it and pocketed it. Leave no evidence behind. It was a tenet they lived by.

  “Don’t sass me, child!” Grace’s bellow rang through the phone’s speaker.

  Despite himself, Dagan grinned.

  Chelsea narrowed her eyes at him, shaking her head. “Momma, I have to go. I’ll call you later. Love you. Bye.”

  Grace was still sputtering on the other end of the line when Chelsea thumbed off her phone and slid it into the breast pocket of her blazer. “Not a word,” she warned Dagan before turning back to the duo in front.

  Not a word? Good. Since words became impossible when he had an unencumbered view of her ass in that tight pencil skirt.

  Chapter 6

  There was a heartbeat behind his eyes.

  That was the first thing Steven Surry noticed as consciousness slipped over him as softly and gently as his mother’s long, dark hair had slipped through his fingers when the chemotherapy had begun to take her crowning jewel. She had been in so much pain. And the doctors had been at a loss on how to further attack the tumor eating away at her brain. Their last hope had been an experimental operation. The trouble was that the procedure was so new and so risky that it hadn’t been covered by insurance, and Steven hadn’t had the quarter of a million pounds necessary to pay for it from his own pocket.

  Enter Spider. The man had approached Steven one dreary April afternoon with a deal. A deal, it turned out, that was made with the devil. Now Steven was stuck well and good in Spider’s sticky web.

  Spider…

  The name prowled through his head on prickly feet. It was followed by a cascade of memories, each more disturbing than the last. The breach to the computer system. That stupid, lying twat of a PA. The three masked men who had stormed in to save her like the horsemen of the apocalypse. The dart gun…

  Bloody hell!

  He lifted a tentative hand to pat the small puncture wound in his neck—someone had been smart to remove the dart and any fingerprints it might have sported. A drop of warm blood smeared across the pads of his fingers. He wiped it on his shirt before digging into the front pocket of his trousers, searching for his mobile.

  He wasn’t surprised to find it missing. Trained agents knew to confiscate and/or destroy any hardware they found. And those three? They had definitely been trained. The way they had entered the room in formation? The way they had handled their weapons? The swiftness and accuracy of the one who had pulled his trigger? It all spoke of years of preparation, practice, and discipline.

  And he would know. He’d done the same, after all.

  In my other life.

  His eyes sprang open to a world of mist and a room that spun in a slow circle. Despite this, he pushed to a seated position, blinking rapidly. That helped to clear the fog and right the world, but it did nothing to mitigate the terrible pulse at the backs of his eyes. And, brilliant. The sudden movement had his stomach threatening a revolt.

  Whatever those daft prats had drugged him with was some seriously un-fun stuff.

  Glancing at his watch, he was relieved to see very little time had passed. Which meant he wasn’t completely buggered.

  He groaned, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. When he pushed to a stand, he stumbled and retched. His stomach felt full of poisonous stones. He wished for nothing more than to toddle to that lovely red sofa and sleep for a year. But as the old saying went, If wishes were fishes, we would all swim in riches.

  He wasn’t a fish. He wasn’t rich. And sleeping on the sofa would be the beginning of his doom.

  Spider…

  The nickname skittered through his brain again like the eight-legged horror it was.

  Staggering to the big desk, kicking the shattered remains of his phone, he spared the old man a cursory glance, watching that scrawny chest rise and fall with deep, even breaths. Steven’s hands shook when he picked up the phone, hesitating when he couldn’t remember the number for Benton, the computer whiz kid Spider had hired straight out of Oxford University. His mind was sluggish, struggling to wade ashore through the waves of narcotic still swimming through his bloodstream.

  Come on, man. Think!

  He licked his lips, grimacing at the metallic taste the anesthetic had left on his tongue. Lifting the handset, he realized he’d dialed the wrong number when a woman’s voice cheerily answered, “Halloo?” Slamming the handset back into the cradle, he blew out a breath and willed his hammering heart to slow.

  He spared another glance at the man lying on the tiles, and picked up the phone again. Forcing his mind to go blank, he dialed the number by muscle memory. Benton answered on the first ring. Thank bloody Christ!

  “Mr. Morrison?” Benton sounded harried. “Did you find it? Whatever she used to upload the virus?”

  “It’s Surry,” Steven said, then immediately filled Benton in on recent events. His voice grew thick with fury when he recounted the part about the three men who’d had the audacity to break into the penthouse. “The thumb drive I confiscated off Miss Duvall’s person is gone. They took it. Can you keep out whoever is trying to hack in without it?”

  “Sodding mess,” Benton grumbled. The sound of his fingers flying over the keyboard was a droning hum in the background. “I can delay them for a day or two. Perhaps even three or four. But I can’t keep them out forever.” Steven’s heart sank. “Not without the original virus. It’s very sophisticated. Just when I think I’ve eradicated it, it changes form and attacks a new variable. I need to reverse engineer the nasty bugger if I have any hope of squashing it.”

  “Shite. Fuck. Damn and prick!”

  “That pretty much covers it,” Benton agreed.

  Steven was breathing hard, his vision still a little hinky. But he forced calm on himself. Work the problem. That’s what he had been trained to do. That’s what he would do. “Okay. I understand. You worry about protecting the digital information for as long as you can. I’ll worry about finding Chelsea Duvall and that sodding thumb drive.”

  The line went dead without Benton first signing off. The kid was odd, no question about it. But that didn’t matter because he was the best hacker Steven knew—maybe the best hacker in the world—which meant that, for now, Steven could stop worrying about the data and turn his full attention toward finding Chelsea Duvall.

  The first place he should look was her home. But he had no idea where she lived. His understanding was that she had been somewhat of a gypsy after moving to London, living with friends and acquaintances while she looked for a flat. And since her initial background check came back clean, he hadn’t bothered to follow up on her living arrangements.

  Plus, even if he did know where she lived, there were four of them and only one of him. Gathering
Spider’s vast group of henchmen would take time. Time he didn’t have. So that meant…what?

  And then he knew. It came to him in a blinding flash of inspiration.

  Chelsea Duvall was a thief. She had stolen—or, more precisely, was poised to steal—private information from one of Great Britain’s most influential men. And lucky for Steven, his boss was friends with other influential men, government men. Men who would be only too happy to help Steven find Chelsea and stop her, if for no other reason than to remain on Spider’s good side.

  Pulling the phone from the cradle once again, he dialed a number from memory—the cobwebs in his mind had begun to clear—and when a nasally-voiced assistant answered, he wasted no time. “I must speak with the deputy commissioner.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. The commissioner is—”

  “He’ll want to speak with me now,” Steven interrupted, then delivered the coup de grâce. “Tell him I’m employed by a man who goes by the name of Spider.”

  Chapter 7

  “So what you’re saying is we’re up Shit Street without a GPS.”

  As an Englishman, Christian Watson was a connoisseur of the finer points of the English language. That meant he had to give Ace credit for using it creatively when Emily informed them that while they were making their way back to the flat from Morrison’s penthouse, Morrison had come to and called his contacts in Scotland Yard. Now there was an APW—similar to an American APB—out on Chelsea.

  Apparently, for the last ten minutes—they had been stuck in blasted London traffic for nearly fifteen—Chelsea’s face had been splashed across every telly in the country. She was Public Enemy Number One. The reports accused her of stealing private files from Morrison, files that were highly classified, files that could be “very dangerous to the sovereignty and safety of Great Britain.”

  The strategy was quite brilliant when Christian thought about it. Everyone in England knew just how powerful the media mogul was, and no one would doubt that a man of his stature and connections was in possession of damning or classified information.