by Alison Kent
"Then you'll just have to trust me that there's plenty of padding between the shoe's heel and mine. I'm not feeling a thing."
He shrugged, stuffed his hands in his pants pockets. "If you say so."
"What?" She sidestepped enough to look over. "You don't trust me?"
Trust. The crux of the matter. Trusting Hank that this scheme would work. Trusting her not to spill the beans. Trusting himself not to make another one of the monumental mistakes he'd become so proficient at making.
Still, he said, "I wouldn't be here if I didn't."
She was quiet for several moments, finally moving nearer and hooking her arm through his. "Do you think anyone is watching us now?"
"If I say no, are you going to let go?"
"Do you want me to let go?"
He studied the crowd walking around them, sought out couples holding hands or strolling with arms joined, noticed others occupying adjacent space with zero connection, ignoring one another, zoned out rather than tuned in.
"No. I want you to stay right here," he said, uncertain why having her close seemed to matter, if it was a look he was going for or a feeling he craved.
He went so far, in fact, as to cover her hand with his, there where it rested in the crook of his arm. Her fingers were slender, long and cool, and he imagined the feel of them between his legs, cupping his balls, ringing his cock.
And then he quit imagining all of that because they still had four blocks to go.
Emma managed in the next second to make things worse by cuddling up even closer, pressing the plump side of her breast to his biceps. "This is rather ridiculous to ask at such a late date, and I'm not sure it would change anything anyway or if it matters, but are you seeing anyone?"
He was wishing he was seeing her naked, his cock buried between her tits. His voice rattled when he finally found it, and he swore if his mind didn't rise from the gutter, he was going to kick his own ass. "My career's not exactly conducive to dating."
She considered that for a moment, came back with, "Because of that thing about not being able to be yourself?"
That wasn't it as much as not trusting himself. "That, yeah. And if I didn't make it home, there would be too many questions. And no one around to answer them."
Again she fell silent, weighing what he'd said. She had to be the most thoughtful woman he'd met in awhile, always thinking before speaking, always saying the right thing.
He could see why Hank had hired her. Why Hank hadn't hesitated bringing her onto the team. Why he himself couldn't think beyond the idea of bedding her.
"So," she was saying, "the girlfriends you have had haven't known what it is you do."
"I don't have girlfriends. I have . . ." Shit.
How was he supposed to explain that one without sounding like a pig? To tell her he had sex, not relationships, and that he never gave the women involved his real name?
"Sex, right?" she asked, and he nodded.
Perceptive again, though with the way he'd jolted to a halt, the answer was fairly obvious. At least she hadn't let go of his arm, even if her steps had slowed.
He only hesitated explaining because of how complicated their situation was. And because he didn't want her to think that when they fell into bed—when, not if—it would have anything to do with this mission.
Of that much he was certain. That they would fall into bed, that they would enjoy the hell out of each other, that they would go their separate ways once all was said and done.
She swatted at a buzzing fly. "Does that bother you? That you don't have anyone to share your life with?"
"I share my life with my team." He banked on them, knew they'd tell him when was screwing up and being a shit since he obviously needed someone to.
A car horn blasted, tires screeched. Kelly John gathered up what he needed to say next. "But if you're asking about not having a relationship with a woman, then no. It's a sacrifice that I rarely give a second thought."
"You called it a sacrifice."
"Yeah, so?" He shrugged out of his jacket, hooked it over his shoulder, giving her no choice but to release his arm.
"Well," she said, gesturing with her near hand, the one with which she'd been holding him, "then it's something you wouldn't have given up had you not chosen this career."
He snorted as they stopped for a traffic light. "There wasn't a whole lot of choosing involved in my coming to work for Hank."
She waited until they'd crossed the intersection before responding. And then her tone made it clear that she thought he was disusing the boss.
"I don't see how he could force you to do anything you didn't want to," she said. "Especially when it puts your life in danger. That's just not who Hank is."
Kelly John knew exactly who Hank Smithson was, as did every one of the Smithson Group operatives.
Simplifying it so she would understand, however, might be more than he could manage with his life on the line, his debt to Hank private, his record lately for big time fuck-ups glaring in bloody neon.
"That's not what I meant." If she still thought him an engineer, this would be harder to work his way around.
But with Hank's blessing and trust and being strung up as he was by the balls . . . "The choice I was talking about was one I had to make, not one forced on me by Hank."
"Oh," she said, and then she fell silent. They continued to walk side by side, though she seemed more interested in holding her purse than holding onto him.
And that just wouldn't do.
Not when he needed her all over him for cover, wanted her all over him because he just did. He moved toward her, hooked his arm around her neck and pulled her close.
She didn't argue; she even smiled. He liked both and found himself relaxing in response. "Sounded earlier in the office like you've made a few tough choices of your own."
The sound she made was nothing less than a snort. "Not exactly a time in my life I look back on fondly. It's rather weak in the pleasant memories department."
Yeah. He knew about unpleasant memories. He also figured comparing war stories wouldn't make for good first date fodder. Especially considering the tone of this date.
Nothing like the mental picture of prison bars to kill the sexed-up mood.
Still, he wasn't ready to let it go. She intrigued him, this woman who'd been through what she had, who now knew what she knew about who she was working for, who hadn't run screaming into the night with the discovery of that truth.
She was staring down the same gun barrel he was. A brave one, his alibi Emma Webster, and he drew her body close. "Not pleasant, no. But you stood up for your beliefs."
Another snort, a tilt of her head toward his. "And without even a book to show for it."
"Have you thought about writing about what you went through?"
She shook her head. "I've had publishers come calling."
"And?"
"I thought about it, but writing it would mean reliving it, and I'm not a big fan of self-abuse."
"Might work as therapy."
"Sure, if I were still needing to work through it. I pretty much did that at the time."
A lot healthier way of dealing than he'd managed, but then he'd been facing a death penalty before Hank made all records of his charges disappear.
"Can I admit something?" she asked as they turned at the next block and the theater marquee came into view.
"Sure."
"I'm not thrilled with the idea that I might wind up back there for doing this."
"That's not a worry. Nothing you're doing is illegal." He didn't tell her how much worse it might be. That being behind bars could be a fate much preferable to falling into the hands of Spectra IT.
"If you're sure."
He nodded, brought them to a stop at the end of the queue to go in. "I am. If anything's off kilter, it'll be what Tripp and I do with the tape."
"Ah, so, it's just questionable company I'm keeping?"
She asked it with enoug
h of a tease to her voice that he couldn't help but glance over. Her eyes were sparkling, as were her cheekbones, as if dusted with a glittery powder. She looked like magic, and he liked it a lot.
Liked it enough that he kissed her. He used the hook of his elbow around her neck to pull her close, and he kissed her.
She opened her mouth, cupped the back of his head, and kissed him back right there in front of God and the theater crowd.
Her tongue nimbly teased and stroked and played with his. Her lips sucked lightly; her teeth nipped gently. All he wanted to do was fuck the foreplay and take her to the down-and-dirty ground.
But he didn't. He teased and stroked and played right back until his balls protested and the slit in the tip of his cock opened and wept.
It was then that he eased back, leaving her with one lingering kiss, then stepping away and gulping enough air to float a battleship.
She pressed her lips together, wet them with her tongue as if tasting him. And he swore there wasn't a person in line deaf to his groan. The woman was going to kill him, kill him where he stood.
"That wasn't for any camera, was it?" she asked breathlessly, the color high in her cheeks, the crowd around them applauding as she ran her thumb beneath his mouth to wipe away her lip color.
"Uh-uh." He shrugged back into his jacket, adjusted the front hem accordingly. "That was all for me."
She blew out a sigh that spoke volumes. She was no less affected, no less aroused. No less aware of where they were headed, this mission be damned.
"Okay, then." She opened her tiny purse for a mirror and her lipstick. "Just wanted to be clear on that."
"And are you?"
"Oh, yeah," she said, nodding. Once finished repairing her makeup, she tucked the items back into her purse and looked over. "Considering neither one of us will be acting when the time comes, I'd say our performance should be Oscar caliber."
For a very long tense moment, a very hot moment, a moment during which sweat pooled at the base of his spine and his balls twitched and burned, he waited.
Then he found his voice and said, "At intermission, we'll hang back. There's a hallway the servers and staff use."
"And that's where the camera is."
"The main one we'll be using, yeah."
She pulled in a deep breath, lifted her chin, smoothed a hand back over her hair. "Then I guess there's only one thing left to say."
"What's that?" he asked.
She answered with a siren's smile. "Break a leg."
The satellite phone in Ezra Moore's pocket buzzed against his thigh like the rattle on the long end of a snake. It would be Oliver calling to see that he'd disembarked safely, that he remained on schedule after the private jet's touchdown.
Ezra was both. Safe and on schedule. He wasn't, however, wanting to speak to the other man. Not yet. Oliver wouldn't be pleased to be relegated to Ezra's timetable, but Ezra had long ago decided he would control his own destiny, answering therefore to no man.
Not even to Oliver Shore, who was looking to one day hold the reins of Spectra IT. An event that would never come to pass while Ezra remained alive.
He slung his pack over his shoulder and made his way across the tarmac toward the car assigned to the Spectra hangar. It would be a short ride to the main terminal. Once there, he would switch to a taxi for the trip to the city.
Ah, but he loved the city. The noise and the lights and the people. Most especially the people. How easy it was to blend in, to do his work, to avoid detection, to get away with every deception he needed to.
The deceptions had become remarkably easy, these identities he assumed, the skins he wore like costumes. He stalked and he prowled and he moved in for the kill, leaving behind no more than a carcass, picking his teeth with the bones.
He embraced situations capable of castrating lesser men. It was where he found his power and his pride. And where the distinction was made between hunter and hunted, master and slave.
He'd been a lesser man once, subject to others who thought only of immediacy, of the instant gratification to be had with the deployment of cluster bombs and bunker busters.
Others who had lost their sight and their way, for whom long range was only accomplished with missiles, who acted in the heat of the moment, seeking revenge, retaliation.
Now those same men were subject to him because he understood the value, the necessity, the beauty of seeing the world through the glass of a crystal ball. Through tea leaves spelling out the power inherent to the individual. Through a palm delineating the road a man was called to travel.
All figuratively speaking, of course—though his great-grand-mere, still living on the island of San Torisco, would tell him that nothing was anything unless it was literal. And that he knew damn well that he had inherited her sight.
Perhaps he had. Perhaps this was the reason he was so clear on what it was he had to do. Who he had to save.
Who he had to kill.
Six
They were headed straight into bed.
Well, maybe not straight, because they did have the rest of this show and then dinner to get through, but after that. . . Emma trembled in her seat, as much from the anticipation as the feel of Kelly John's tickling fingers.
They sat in the rear of the theater; she could see the security cameras in both of the front corners far above the stage. She'd attended how many shows here, and never before noticed the pinpoints of red light?
These weren't the cameras that mattered, however. Those were in the hallway and would be the ones to capture their intimate performance—assuming she didn't succumb to a case of the vapors before the curtain was lowered for intermission.
Kelly John sat leaning toward her, his arm on the back of her seat, his hand draped over her shoulder, his fingers toying with the skin exposed by her low-cut neckline. He brushed the area beneath her ear, and she shivered anew.
She'd totally lost track of the play. The Importance Of Being Earnest had, however, taken on a personal interpretation, one steeped in the warmth of Kelly John's breath where it stirred stray strands of her hair.
She glanced over in the dark, looked up at his profile from beneath lowered lashes. His jaw was set, a sexy shadow of beard adding another layer of intensity to his focus. And he was focused, though she knew his attention was not on the show.
It was as if he was biding his time and no more. Waiting for the hands of the ticking clock to sweep their way around. For the crowd to exit, to mingle, to drink and to laugh, to engage in conversation, the tone of which would signal their reaction to the play.
And then the real show would begin. The show for which she and Kelly had really come.
As if reading her thoughts, he tilted his head, his eyes cutting away from the stage to find hers, study hers, look into hers so fiercely that her throat closed up tight.
The whites of his eyes were bright, his pupils dark, the rings of his irises iridescent. Her stomach fluttered; she thought of lying beneath him, his body buried deep within hers, looking up into those very same eyes.
She squeezed her thighs together, slipped her closest hand into his lap, and absorbed his body's heat with her palm. Her skin burned. Her stomach twisted and turned and knotted tautly. She was never going to make it through the night.
His gaze dropped to her mouth. She wanted to lick her lips, to part them, to tempt his kiss, but she did nothing except watch his face and wait.
She wanted to know what he was thinking, if his imagination had traveled in the same direction as hers. If he thought of where he wanted to feel her lips, her tongue, the heat of her mouth.
In the end, she was the one who groaned, and he was the one who raised his gaze slowly and smiled. The look he gave her then said more than a thousand words.
He was thinking every heated thing she was and more.
more that she was certain existed outside of everything she knew. A more that she wanted him to show her.
And when the curtain
rose for the second time tonight, he would.
"Are you sure you won't miss not seeing the rest of the show?" Emma stood in the theater lobby, a glass of white wine in one hand, her beaded bag in the other, that arm hugging her middle tight.
She pressed her back to the wall beside the bar as the crowd began its slow crushing return to the auditorium. Her nerves were strung high to the point of near giddiness, a state that she couldn't see as being conducive to the staged seduction that was tonight's main act.
Kelly John stared as if she'd spoken using the mouth of her second head. "Are you freakin' nuts? I couldn't even tell you what the hell's going on if I wanted to."
She laughed, nearly sputtering her last drink of wine. "Bored or distracted or both?"
He'd been standing with his back to the bar, his weight in the shoulder he'd braced on the wall. But now he moved in closer, angling his body across hers and dipping his head.
His lips hovered above hers when he spoke. "I'm thinking about your skin."
"I like that," she said, because she really, truly did. It was sexy, erotic, and left all the right questions about what he was thinking sizzling in her mind.
He drew in a deep breath, stirring the hair near her temple. Her nipples hardened as if he'd used his tongue. And she swore her body was melting slowly from the inside out.
God, she was never going to last out the night.
Kelly John moved his mouth to hover at the edge of hers, took her wineglass from her hand, and whispered, "It's time."
She swallowed, nodded, swallowed again, and pushed off the wall, reaching for his hand, which closed around hers as naturally as if she was right where she belonged.
Moisture seeped between her legs at the thought. Amazing, unexpected, and wonderfully, disarmingly real, her reaction to this man. Not that she was particularly surprised.
He'd caught her attention so long ago that this moment felt more like a prophecy fulfilled than an encounter happening only because of Kelly John's mistake.
She followed him around the wine bar, past the theater's concession stand, toward the rest rooms. He only glanced back once before pushing open a door she would've walked beyond without seeing. Considering it appeared to be part of the wall, she supposed she was forgiven.