Before I could respond, she pivoted on her heel, yanked open the driver’s door, and swung in, tossing her HK on the seat beside her. Cranking the engine, she lowered her window and winked at me. “Well? I thought we had to go? Unless you’ve changed your mind and we suddenly have time for a quickie up against the hood the Suburban.”
I spun on my heel and angrily yanked open the door the lead Suburban, roughly twisted the key in the ignition, and jerked the shifter into drive.
Fucking Cain.
Fucking dumbass mercs. Getting in the way of my love life is a good way to get on my bad side and that, my friends, is seriously unwise. Because I hate being forced to kill people. It makes me cranky. I like to get my thrill on motorcycles and jumping out of airplanes, not dodging NATO rounds.
I heard Cuddy laugh as I pulled away—she was laughing both at me and with me, I knew.
If those cock-blocking motherfuckers got in the way of me getting laid, I may very well just have to set aside some of my ethical convictions. Because the way it felt to be with Dani?
I was hooked.
Addicted to the drug that was her.
And I desperately needed my next fix.
Chapter Ten
WTF—What the Feelings
Annoying as hell, that’s what it was. Needing him, wanting him, craving him…it was fucking inconvenient, and a distraction.
I drove behind him for an hour and a half, matching his speed to stay exactly half a car-length behind him. I watched my mirrors constantly, on the hunt for signs of pursuit, but so far there was nothing. Most of my focus was on the road and the scan for a tail, but the rest was fixated on Lear.
On how he’d felt, on how we’d felt, together.
On the fact that I was pretty damned certain I was falling for him.
Or had fallen for him, and it was just taking my brain awhile to catch up to what my heart already knew, and what my body had known from the moment I had laid eyes on him.
He was unlike anyone I’d ever known. Sweet, but alpha. Nerdy, but deadly. Fit and fierce, but with a sweet tooth and a gentle touch. And he came from a background almost as fucked up as mine, which meant he got me in a way I don’t think anyone ever did. Not to mention the fact that he knew, from personal experience, what it was I did, what it required, and how to cope with it. He wasn’t scared of me—he respected me, but wasn’t afraid of me. The guys on my squad were all flat-out terrified of me, as well as respecting me as the most senior member of RMI’s kill teams.
He had no problem letting me take point out of deference to my abilities, and trusted me to do the job my way. He had my back, but wouldn’t try to strong-arm me into taking a back seat just because I’d let him stick his dick in me.
Ugh—I felt crass, thinking of what we’d shared in those terms.
It had been more than that—far more. I’d kissed him. With tongue.
I’d snuggled with him in bed—and enjoyed it.
I had ugly-cried in his arms, and he’d let me without trying to fix it or make me stop. He knew my body as if it had been made with him in mind, and could make me feel things physically I didn’t know were possible, while inciting emotions in me I’d thought myself incapable of feeling.
I’d fucked him bare—made love to him without a condom. Something I had never, ever done, with any man, ever. And I hadn’t even thought twice about it. Hadn’t wanted to. And it had felt…perfect. So perfect, I was already eagerly anticipating getting him bare inside me again, and again. The mess was well worth the experience, the beautiful, unparalleled sensation. I wanted it again, and again. I wanted to go to sleep with him, and wake up with him. Wake up naked in bed with him, roll over and take him into me, and make slow sleepy love to him. I wanted to get drunk with him and get on my hands and knees and beg him to fuck me doggy style till it hurt. I wanted to surprise him when he least expected it, shove him up against a wall, drop to my knees, and suck him stupid, make him come so hard he’d forget his name, and swallow every last thick, salty drop.
Gah—I had to stop thinking about sex with Lear. It was becoming a problem. I’d almost entirely tuned out of the drive.
I quickly scanned my mirrors—we’d hit some afternoon traffic outside Green Bay, so the good time we’d made was being eaten away; I saw a few potential tails, but they always sped past or exited the freeway.
And then, abruptly, Lear swerved off the freeway, taking an unexpected exit. I followed him first to a Best Buy, where he gestured for me to wait. He emerged a few minutes later with some two-way radios with headsets—he gave me one, we agreed on a channel and to stay radio silent unless absolutely necessary.
I then followed him to a gas station, where we filled up for the next and last leg of the trip.
After we were both topped off, he leaned in my window. “So, we’re about forty-five minutes to an hour from the airfield. Satellite imagery makes it seem like it’s a pretty open area, but that’s no surprise. If the images I found are anything like current, there’s a stand of trees off the county highway about three miles from the airfield, which is essentially just a strip of well-maintained grass and some old U-shaped hangars. It’s in the middle of several different cow pastures and, from what I can tell, the only access to the landing strip itself is a single two-track. Ambush is going to be tricky, but I have some ideas.” He patted the doorframe. “We’ll stop at the stand of trees and make our plans from there.”
I nodded. “Sounds good.”
He grinned, then. “And maybe, if we’re lucky, there’ll even be a few extra minutes for some…fun.”
I sighed. “It’s been hellishly difficult to concentrate, I have to admit.”
He smirked. “Oh?”
I stared up at him from under hooded eyelids, going for seductive and smoldering. “If you knew the scenarios I’ve been running through my head this whole drive, you probably wouldn’t be walking away from this car right now.”
“Worked up, are you?”
I frowned at his casual attitude. “And you’re not?”
“Babe, I’ve had a hard-on the size of Texas pretty much nonstop since you kissed me back in the woods. It’s honestly starting to hurt like a motherfucker.”
I blinked, smirking lasciviously. “I can help you out with that.”
He sucked in a deep breath, gaze narrowing. “You can, huh?”
I looked around, not sure what I was looking for—it was early afternoon, and this was a suburban gas station off a local freeway, not exactly well-populated, but not deserted, either.
I grumbled curses under my breath in frustration. “Fucking suburbia. Nowhere to go.”
He just laughed, palming my cheek with rough affection. “Dani, don’t worry about it. As much as I’d like that, now is not the time and this ain’t the place.”
“Fuck.” A thought occurred to me. “Didn’t you say you had gear to scan for trackers?”
Another silence. “Motherfucker,” he bit out. “I did. I do.” He tapped his chin. “Wait—I may have brought it, actually.”
He popped the trunk of his SUV and walked around to the back. He flipped open the latches of the big black case with the heavy chrome hinges, twisting the numeric code to unlock it. The top swung up, and he peered in, casually picking up and rearranging blocks of what looked like plastic explosives and spools of wire, and various other odds and ends to make things go boom. He sorted through all this casually, almost carelessly, right there in the parking lot of a gas station. Although, to be fair, one person in a thousand at best would be able to recognize plastic explosives and the associated materials at a glance while passing by a stopped car while going seventy or eighty miles per hour.
Finally, after sorting through the two bins he’d tossed in the back of the SUV, he emerged triumphantly with a complicated-looking wand-like device. He fiddled with it for a minute or so, and then did a walk around of his vehicle, waving the wand slowly over door panels, the hood, the tires, crouching to wave it way underneath the bottom of the
vehicle, popping the hood to scan the engine and the engine bay, and then leaning into each door to scan the inside. Then he repeated the process with my vehicle; he made it through the entire scan of my vehicle and I was about to wonder if either Alice was even better at tracking us than he was giving her credit for, or Cain’s resources were far deeper than he thought, or they’d just gotten very lucky…
And then he stopped, frowning, and leaned back into my car, stretching over my body to wave the scanner at the dashboard. It beeped, loud and fast, and then louder and faster as he narrowed his search to the radio faceplate.
“Fuckers!” He breathed. “Got you!”
He set the scanner on my lap and withdrew a KA-BAR from his webbing. He used it to pry the faceplate out of the dashboard, letting it hang by the wiring harness, and peered in. Replacing the knife, he hunted blindly in his pants pocket, producing a small LED penlight and shone it into the opening behind the radio. With another triumphant grunt, he reached in, glancing up and to the side as he felt around the space blindly—he withdrew his hand with a small round thing a little larger than a quarter.
I eyed the thing in his hands. “That’s a tracker?”
He nodded. “Pretty high quality, too. Black market, most likely. Being former NSA, I know how to get even better stuff, should I need to.” He gestured with the device. “I’ll grab the one out of mine, and then we’ll see if we can’t figure out some kind of plan to use these to confuse my dear friend Alice.”
“I thought you’d just smash them.”
He grinned. “That’s the obvious tactic. They’d lose us, that way, for sure. But if we take a little detour, I can plant these in random cars in a gas station parking lot or something, and she’ll have to take time to figure out if the trackers are still following us or not. Buys us time, and confuses her.”
I laughed. “You’re diabolical.”
He laughed, but his eyes raked over me. “Could you stop being so fucking distractingly sexy? I’m trying to focus here.”
I shook my head, feeling a blush creep over me—it was uncomfortable, being complimented that way. I was not used it. I didn’t know how to accept those kinds of compliments, how to feel sexy and desired and feminine at the same time as being Cuddy—deadly and in control and in charge. It was too complicated, too confusing.
“Whatever,” I mumbled. “Let’s go.”
He frowned at me. “Did I say something wrong?”
I shook my head. “No. Just not used to…” I gestured between us. “This. Being…the way you make me feel, sometimes.”
He nodded. “Believe me, I know.”
I snorted. “Not likely. It’s different for men.”
A cock of his head to one side. “How so?”
I waved. “We don’t have time for that conversation right now, Lear. We’ve been here too long as it is. ”
He huffed. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go.” He pointed at me. “We’re finishing this conversation later, though.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Yeah, yeah.”
I watched him get into his truck, remove the tracker, and then I followed him back onto the freeway for another few miles, to the next exit. He pulled into the parking lot of a supermarket about a mile and a half from the freeway ramps, parked his SUV in a back corner, and gestured at me to wait. He moved through the parking lot into the spaces nearest the door, where cars were parked closer together; he moved casually, as if just heading into the store. He crossed between rows as if angling for the entrance, and then in between the rows with the noses of four cars each near to hand, he paused and knelt as if tying his shoe. Seconds later, he rose, headed into the store, was gone for about ten minutes, and then returned with two plastic bags. He gave one bag to me, winked, and got back into his Suburban.
In the bag were a family-size bag of Skittles, a six-pack of off-brand cola, a plastic container of powered mini donuts, a jumbo box of condoms, and…a greeting card.
I opened the Skittles with a childish amount of eagerness, tossed a handful into my mouth, and read the card while I chewed. The cover was a generic romance-themed card—a photograph of a teacup filled with an arrangement of daisies, with the words “Thinking of You” on the front. Inside was a note from Lear, in crabbed, all-caps, heavily slanted handwriting:
* * *
Dani—
I’m not a big romance guy, but here’s a romantic gesture anyway. Hell if I know what this thing is between us, but I like it. You’re exactly my cup of tea. Ha ha, that’s a joke about what’s on the cover of this card. Dumb, sorry. You’re sexy, and you’re a badass, and that makes me feel funny both in my pants and in my heart. I guess I just wanted to say thanks for being you, for being so much better at killing bad guys than I am, and for that amazing blowjob. Feel free to repeat that as frequently as you want. I may or may not be planning how and when I can return the favor. A lot.
Hopefully I’m not overdoing it and scaring you. Now stop reading the card and let’s go! We’ve got an international crime syndicate overlord to murder.
—Lear
* * *
I read the card through several times, my hand over my mouth, a myriad of emotions skirling inside me.
I wanted to laugh, to awwww at how ridiculous and adorable it was, and to jump his cock out of sheer unadulterated horniness.
Not just horniness…
Desire.
Affection.
Something deeper. Something with a name I’m nowhere near ready to even think about.
I tugged the shifter into drive and pulled the vehicle around behind his, meeting his gaze in his side view mirror. I lifted the card into his line of sight with an expression that probably read somewhere between amused and exasperated; he just smirked, and drove away.
I followed him, still trying like hell to focus on the road, on my speed, on watching traffic around us for tails…
But really, I was totally lost in my own head.
Thinking of Lear.
Of his mouth on me.
Of how he’d felt buried inside me, slamming deep and fast and hard, calling my name as we came together.
Of the emotions that had welled up inside me at the ridiculous card.
Strong emotions. Deep, powerful, impossible to ignore emotions.
Emotions growing out of my heart, rather than my sexual organs.
Fuck.
If anyone had told me, even seventy hours ago, that I’d have these kinds of feelings this fast for anyone, I’d have laughed at them, and probably broken their nose just out of spite.
Yet here I was, having feelings for a man who had only a nominal amount of dependence on the fact that the sex was out of this fucking world.
And also…we depended on each other for survival.
I desperately wanted to be alone with him, safe with him, naked with him—to make love to him, to feel connected to him, intimately and emotionally bonded…
What the fuck was going on with me?
I wanted to cuddle.
I choked the life out of the steering wheel as I drove, wanting to fight the way I was feeling but knowing it was not only useless, but that to fight would be even more of a distraction. If I just accepted it as fact and fate, though, would I ever be me again? Would I lose my viciousness? My independence? My killer instinct?
So far, I hadn’t. I was every bit as deadly as ever. Honestly, knowing Lear depended on me made me feel even more vicious, even more cold-blooded. I depended on him every bit as much, and that was a trickier set of feelings to navigate.
It was all too much.
Too many feelings, all of them huge and complex. All of them sudden, and unexpected.
I hadn’t looked for this. Didn’t want this. Even as I knew I was accepting and allowing myself to wallow deeper in my emotional and physical feelings for Lear, I didn’t want to. It was scary. Loss of control was a major factor for me, and it was triggering my need to bolt simply out of self-defense.
I couldn’t.
We were locked in this together—our only chance of surviving Cain was together, working as a team.
I laughed at myself, at the idiotic circles my thoughts were going in, and tried to shake the entire lump of thoughts and emotions off—focus on the now, on the task at hand.
Yet, as the drive continued, so did the looping, concentric, tangled knot of thoughts and emotions and the fantasies of what I wanted to do to Lear, what I wanted him to do to me, and how he could make me feel emotional, and how some primal, female part of me wanted to bind him closer to me, to tie him to me, to become his and make him mine…
By the time Lear pulled off the freeway and onto a county highway heading east, I was a complete mess of emotions.
A distraction I was in no way equipped to handle.
Chapter Eleven
Into the Darkness
I was positively vibrating by the time we reached the stand of trees I recognized from the satellite imagery: I’d had one of those little bottles of energy drink concentrate, two bottles of cola, and the coffee from the gas station. Now, I had a nearly superhuman tolerance for caffeine, but that was pushing it even for me. Yet it didn’t feel like enough. Not because I was tired, but because normally caffeine helped me focus, helped me tune out any and all distractions so I could focus on the task at hand.
Driving, however, wasn’t enough of a task, and my thoughts kept wandering.
To Dani.
To the sex back in the cabin—how intimate it had been. How natural it had felt to fall asleep with her in my arms.
To the taste of her sex on my tongue, the feel of her orgasming against my lips, screaming my name and heaving against me. To the way she’d held me, cradled me, how she’d whispered so frantically as we moved in unison.
I couldn’t think about anything else.
So I slammed more soda, ate more candy, and tried harder to focus on anything else.
Nada.
My brain and my heart and my body were, on this, of one mind—Dani.
Lear: Alpha One Security: Book 5 Page 17