by Amber Malloy
“How about now?” Walker pulled Ashe close. “Who’s in here?” he called out to the room. “Any judges, captains? Come on. You all can’t be spies.” Most of the regulars turned their heads or became overly fascinated with their empty glasses. “Don’t speak all at once. I know most of you are probably harboring a little crush on her. She has that effect on people. But right now I’m trying to sweep her off her feet and you jaded sons of bitches are making it hard.”
In a huff, Dot ran out of the kitchen. “What’s going on? Is someone proposing?” She struggled with her blouse. Barney followed close behind, adjusting his pants.
“Oh, hey, you two made up.” Ashe snorted.
Dot waved her off. “Is this the guy?” She ventured closer. “Did I hear right? You want to get married?”
“The sooner the better,” Walker admitted, tightening his grip on her waist.
“Well, shit, if that’s not the most romantic thing…” Dot snapped her finger. “You, Chow, let’s go.”
“I just came here for a drink,” he muttered.
“And it will be your last fucking one. I promise.”
“Fine.” The old man slid his chair back from the bar. “But I never heard her say yes.”
Dizzy and in shock, but when all eyes fell on her, Ashe nodded. “Let’s do this.”
* * * *
Sugar Falls provided the perfect backdrop for the luxury yacht that sailed twelve miles from the coast. Ashe took a quick shower to knock off the sticky island muck and threw on a sheer bikini cover-up.
Not a drop of rain had hit the island since she’d arrived months ago. It made the humidity increase tenfold. Considering the lightning strikes hadn’t eased up, Ashe figured they were in for one hell of a storm.
She joined Walker on deck and admired him with his shirt off. Chiseled muscle shaped his amazing body. Puffing on a Cuban cigar the regulars had given him, he spoke on his cell in a low tone.
As he hung up the phone, she took a seat on the deck chair. “J8 wants you in Chicago the day after tomorrow.” He turned to face her.
“What about you?”
“I’ve got a quick meeting, but I should be right behind you.”
“Hmmph,” she replied, not surprised he still wanted to keep secrets.
“You think that Chow dude was on the up-and-up?” Walker asked.
Ashe noted the sudden change in topics. “I’m sure you ran a check on him.” Using a towel to dry her curls, she dropped her head forward to get the nape of her neck. The heavy waves in the back always took forever for her to air out.
“And what if he wasn’t?” he asked with a crooked smile.
She peeked at Walker through the thickness of her mane. “Wow, this whole insecure side of you is kind of sexy.”
“Chow is the real deal,” Walker admitted with a chuckle. He took another puff of his cigar before he stubbed it out in his glass of bourbon on the table. “An actual judge…and before that a navy captain. Looks like you’re stuck with me, babe.” His teasing expression slipped a notch.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Do you mean that?” The twinkling amusement in his eyes almost matched his slip of a smile.
Abandoning the towel, she got up from the chair and joined him at the railing. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Heat of the moment, rash decision… Who knows? You may have regrets.”
Ashe gazed at Sugar Falls. The island appeared majestic, but she couldn’t wait to leave it. The ridiculous amount of time they’d spent apart allowed her to know exactly what she wanted. She wanted Walker.
“At any point since you’ve known me, have I seemed indecisive or the least bit flighty?” she asked.
A humid wind blew over the deck. Reaching out, Walker moved a wayward curl from her face. “The thing is, you have my whole heart, Ashe Knight,” he said, before he moved behind her.
Hearing her name tied to his made her feel strangely whole. Anytime she’d done something impulsive, panic had often set in. Having been an orphan for most of her life, she would have had no one if Eden hadn’t saved her. However, Walker allowed her an anchor.
“Then you probably shouldn’t have married someone on the Most Wanted list,” she murmured.
Thunder boomed overhead, and the yacht swayed within the choppy water. “About that…” he chuckled into her ear before nuzzling her neck. “We’re going to fix it. But first, I need to lock you into this marriage real tight.”
He inched her thin cover-up over the bubble of her ass. They didn’t have to worry about the staff, as everyone had disembarked from the ship to party on Sugar Falls. They were officially alone for the night.
“Are you sure? You’ve had a long trip.” She leaned into his touch. “Remember…three months, a sixteen-hour flight and a deal with the J8 devils—”
Walker nipped her right ass cheek on his way down to his knees. “After your pussy gives my cock a firm hug, then and only then will I slip into a sleep coma.”
While separating her pussy lips with his fingers, he kissed her left cheek. The anticipation made her shiver. Once he’d flicked her clit with his tongue, the world no longer spun and everything came to a delicious halt.
Sliding her legs farther apart, she gave him better access with a moan. Walker teased her with slow laps to her pussy, but when he increased his speed, her soul left her body.
The thunder mixed with the heat and strong waves from the ocean, causing her senses to overload. Wanting to prolong the moment, she attempted to inch away from her orgasm. Walker held her thighs in place and sucked on her clit until she screamed.
After he’d left Chicago, Walker hadn’t been able to think of anything other than Ashe. Months before, he’d known he didn’t want to live without her. He’d only hoped she felt the same.
According to his J8 training, a relationship built on high emotions and stressful situations could never succeed. Once the initial adrenaline rush wore off, everything usually went downhill. The agency frowned upon affairs with clients but didn’t have anything written in stone to prohibit it.
Originally, his plan to marry Ashe had had nothing to do with a bar full of strangers. Nevertheless, once he’d laid eyes on her, his desire had turned into a need.
As he knelt on the deck of Tank’s yacht, he feasted on his wife’s pussy. Ashe’s sweet taste mixed with the slick heat drove him crazy. Ignoring his throbbing cock, he continued to manipulate her opening with his tongue.
When her legs began to shake, he refused to allow her to pull away. He wouldn’t stop until she screamed his name. In a frantic rush he stood up, struggling to get his pants off. Harder than ever, he growled at the sight of her delicious ass. Walker pushed into her body with a curse and a hiss.
In what he took as a poetic nod to his marriage, fresh raindrops fell from the sky. He thrust in and out of his wife’s pussy. Hot, wet and incredibly turned on, he took comfort in the way Ashe’s walls grabbed his cock.
Thankful that he’d found her, Walker held back his orgasm until he heard that sexy whimper. Pumping every bit of his stress into her body, he forced out a shuddering moan. After he’d spilled his seed inside Ashe, he fell forward.
Chapter Twenty
Large oaks replaced the scenic splendor of full palm trees. Chilled straight to the bone, Walker hiked across the Canadian private high school campus. Hours ago, he’d left a tropical climate only to be thrust into a freezing tundra that shocked his system.
He maneuvered in a sea of T-shirt-clad kids and wondered if a few days in paradise with Ashe had thinned his blood. Walker attributed his grumpy mood to leaving his wife. However, if he didn’t want a life on the run, he had to check out his lead.
Vann waited for him outside the administration building.
“Thanks for coming,” Walker greeted him.
“Sure, man. I could use a mini vacay. Between the kids, rogue spies, and Good and Green all needing my attention, a little break will do me good.”
“G
lad I could help.” Ignoring the dripping sarcasm in Vann’s voice, Walker picked up his pace. He had only been able to get them a short, mid-morning sit-down.
“So, you and Ashe, huh?”
“News travels fast…”
“If you wanted privacy, you probably shouldn’t have picked an island full of retired spies. My wife is going to kill you, by the way.”
A pissed-off Eden he could do without. “We’re here to see Father Davis,” he told the receptionist.
Never taking her eyes off her phone, the teenager nodded and jerked her thumb to the office behind her. “He’ll be a few minutes. You can go in— Oh my gawd.” Walker squinted his eyes, confused at the girl’s reaction. “You’re just so beautiful. You’re just—”
“Who?” Vann asked. “Me, right?”
“Oh wow.” The girl grabbed her phone and put it to her ear. “Natalie, you won’t believe this. Thor and Wolverine just walked in.”
“Hold on. I totally get the Thor thing, but do you really think he looks like Wolverine? ’Cause I don’t see it for him.” As Vann laughed, Walker nudged him into the open office door.
“Lydia, get off the phone!” A tiny, elderly priest with thick glasses and a bald head followed them. “I hope you didn’t have to wait too long.”
They shook the little man’s hand.
“We’re here about Ashe Marcille.”
“How is she? Is she okay?” he asked with a thick South African accent.
“She’s safe…for now.”
The old priest tottered around his desk with the help of a cane and gestured for them to sit. “What’s happened?” Worried lines crinkled his dark skin.
“Did you hire J8 to get her out of the jungle?”
“Yes, yes.” The priest leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “I thought that would be kept confidential.”
“Sorry, Father. It’s the age of technology. Can you tell me why?” Tank had found the thin thread between the priest and the Marcille family. They had attended a fundraiser for an orphanage. All the suspects had been present that evening. A mere blip of information had taken Tank’s research to the next level. At the time of Ashe’s rescue mission, Eden hadn’t had the clearance to unearth J8’s contact.
“The church was informed months after the village was raided,” the priest said.
“And Ashe?”
“Survivors described the girl down to a tee. Rogue armies liked to use children around her age to keep the younger ones in line. Since the American government wouldn’t help, I had no choice but to commission J8.”
Father Davis took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “The family wanted to test the water irrigation system—and not in a lab. They should have gone with a team of guards to keep them safe. I thought that village would be okay.” Taking a handkerchief out of his pocket, he dabbed at his eyes. “They didn’t deserve what happened to them.”
Walker clenched his hand into a fist in order to keep his rage in check. “No one could change what happened to the Marcille family,” he assured the old priest. “It’s been found that Tariq Afia wasn’t the mastermind behind Karhi Algharb.”
The priest shook his head. “If you’re asking me who founded that abomination…” He shrugged. “Corporations in the nearby areas would often hire militias to get rid of the villagers. Perhaps it was one of them.”
“Why?” Walker asked, alarmed that anything could warrant such strong-armed tactics against innocent people.
“Greed, money… Take your pick.”
* * * *
They landed in Chicago that afternoon.
“I could have boarded a later flight,” Walker said. He followed Vann into a crappy commercial building, eager to get back to Ashe. The owner of J8 had chartered a plane, insisting they stick together.
“Uh, yeah, I’m under strict orders to bring you back unharmed, and now that I have…” Vann disappeared somewhere into the depths of a reconstructed bank.
The outside held very little curb appeal, yet the inside beat anything in the pages of Architecture Digest. On the first floor, the money vault led to a cigar-and-wine den. Three stories worth of contemporary lines, granite and shiny copper changed the guts from a commercial property to an HGTV dream.
“Let me guess. This is an up-and-coming neighborhood and J8 wanted to get a jump on the real estate boom,” he joked in an effort to cut the tension by half.
“Busted-down buildings make the best safehouses. I hear congratulations are in order.” Shadows from the glass floor-to-ceiling window barely concealed Eden.
Walker faced the deadly spy who stood across the floor of a spacious great room. Considering Eden was a powerhouse in any scenario, he refused to react to the jacked-up energy that wafted off her in waves.
“Spur of the moment thing,” he told her.
“And not long after you watched a video of your fiancée being killed… What a quinky dink.” The shadow hiding her slipped away once she stepped into the sunlight.
“Carpe diem and shit, I guess.”
“Or, and this is just a guess—” Eden offered.
“Of course,” he said, not miscalculating Eden’s skill level.
“You wanted to convince your new wife to run away with you and start a new life.”
“It crossed my mind. I mean, come on, Eden… How long have you had to figure out who kidnapped Ashe and killed her family? Freakin’ years?”
She flexed her well-manicured hand, an old tell that he recognized from the past. The mother of two wanted to hit him.
“Considering you didn’t know Raven was an informant for J8 instead of… What was that bullshit?” Eden tapped her chin in that exaggerated mean-girl manner she’d perfected. “Oh yeah”—she snapped her finger at him—“consultant on a case.”
“Then enlighten me,” he growled.
“The Russian government held Raven’s family. They needed her to locate defectors. They suspected the opera symphony conservatory was where they were hidden.”
“Then what?” he asked.
“She met you.” The spy shrugged. Eden served up her old news as piping hot tea to him. Walker’s chest tightened at the thought of how little he knew.
“After you were compromised, they stopped hiring jarheads,” she sneered.
“Jah,” Lola agreed one level above his head. She leaned over the railing with a twisted grin. “You military boys are way too honest.”
“In other words,” Eden continued, “they didn’t think you had the balls to blow her brains out, so they had us look into it.”
“Did you?”
“The Russians wanted a trade.” Lola raised her voice. “For one American spy, she could get her family back.”
“Don’t worry. She was trying to wiggle her way out of that deal.” Eden snorted. “Maybe she loved you after all.”
“Which is why they killed her,” he muttered, pissed he hadn’t figured it out years ago.
“Bingo. Tell him what he won, Wink.” Lola chuckled from her perch on the balcony landing.
For the first time in a long time that hard ball in his chest begin to loosen. Everything finally made sense. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Ashe,” he relented. Tired of fighting the crazy spies, he understood they were his only shot at a normal life.
“Sure, loverboy,” Lola purred. “Now all you got to do is prove it.” She took a large, sloppy bite out of an apple and chewed.
Chapter Twenty-One
Finally freed from her gilded prison, Ashe was allowed by J8 to charter a flight to Chicago. A detailed security accompanied her to the safehouse. They threw a hood over her head and ushered her straight from the SUV into a building that resembled a bank. Once they were safely inside, they removed the dark cloth to reveal Walker Knight’s smiling face.
“Whoa, your hair,” he said.
“Do you like it?” After Walker had left her that morning, she’d had a ridiculous amount of time and energy on her hands. She’d decided to color her ha
ir deep burgundy and had blown it out. The big barrel curling iron had given it bounce.
He reached out, touched one of her springy curls and tugged. “We are officially in wet dream territory,” he told her.
“Déjà vu?” Ashe asked.
He put his hands under her arms to pull her up to his lips. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’ve had this conversation before.”
Ashe wrapped her legs around his waist and kissed him, deep and hard. She never wanted this weightless feeling to stop.
“Mmmhh,” he groaned.
She leaned her forehead against his. “When did you get here?”
“Maybe a few minutes before you.” Walker sucked her lower lip into his mouth. “Barely any time at all,” he muttered.
As he grabbed a good chunk of her ass, a warm fire burned between her legs. Ashe reached up to cup his face, but a hard thud to her left pulled her attention.
“We can see you.” J8’s team stood outside the floor-to-ceiling window on the patio. Lola made a sweeping gesture with her hand. “It’s glass.”
“Shit,” he whispered in her ear with a chuckle. “Don’t move.”
“What?” she asked innocently. “You mean like this?” She tightened her legs around his waist and rubbed her crotch against his.
“Arghhh! Dammit, Ashe, just give me a second.”
They joined everyone outside. It took a minute or two, but Walker managed to get his cock under control fairly quickly.
Enclosed within an aqua-glass atrium, J8 had set up their hub in the most scenic spot in the safehouse. While Walker kept a healthy distance between him and Eden, Ashe took the only available seat next to the head spy.
“Glad you two could join us,” Lola muttered. “Meet the team. We have my nephew, Aims. He’s tech.” The wiry kid with black hair and wide-frame glasses shot them a two-finger salute. “Lemy here is research and geography.” The curly-haired fairy who appeared no older than a teen waved with a smile. “Vann is weapons, and well…then there’s you two.” She flicked her hand in their direction dismissively. “We have a couple of days until the summit. A few more agents will be joining us, so quit slobbering all over each other and settle in.”