Chapter Fifteen
KILLION DRIFTED IN and out of sleep with a dick as hard as the Washington Monument, although perhaps a little less impressive in terms of being an international tourist attraction.
A little morning wood wasn’t an unusual occurrence. What was unusual was the hand that curled around him and stroked him, while lips kissed his back and more fingers sank into his hair. Maybe this was the reason people had relationships. Morning sex. It wasn’t something he’d enjoyed in too many years to remember.
But most people didn’t live his life. Being an undercover operative wasn’t about pretending to be James Bond. It was about being nobody. Ceasing to exist as a normal person. Even during his more recent assignments he hadn’t changed how he lived his life. He didn’t have a real home, he had an apartment where he occasionally slept and kept his stuff. He’d distanced himself from his family years ago because by the time he’d realized some of his targets might have the capability to strike back, he’d already been in too deep.
This was his world and he’d made peace with walking through this life alone. Except the damn hand on his cock was reminding him of all the things he was missing out on. As was Audrey’s warm heat pressed against his back.
She did seem determined, and she knew this was temporary. What harm could it do?
He cracked an eyelid and listened for any sounds of disturbance outside. Birds sang and the sun was up. The sound of laughter rang out in the distance.
What the hell. He wasn’t going anywhere during the daylight hours, and neither was the surprisingly intrepid Audrey Lockhart. Her fingers squeezed and he groaned as he stretched out in the bed. And there went all his arguments against getting more involved with this woman, in less time than it took to order a cappuccino.
He turned and rolled on top of her, taking her by surprise. He nudged her knees wide until he lay cradled between her thighs, his erection stroking her core.
“What’s a frog’s favorite drink?”
He pressed against her.
“Oh, God! I have no idea.” She laughed and arched up beneath him. He loved her voice, but, even more, he loved making her laugh.
“Croak-a-cola.” He moved his body against her and wondered why they fit so perfectly. “What has more lives than a cat?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “A frog—they croak every day.”
“Those are awful jokes, you know that, right?”
That sexy laugh of hers made him ravenous for her. “I have a thousand more.”
“Kill me now.” Sunlight sifted between the blinds, bathing the room in a golden hue. Her hair was mussed, violet eyes crinkling at the corners.
She was enjoying this. Them. He assumed it helped her forget their reality and until he heard different he was going to keep her too entertained to think about anything except making love with him, bad jokes, and possibly food.
He held her wrists and pressed them to either side of her head. Then he nuzzled the skin beneath her ear and he could feel her toes curl into the mattress as she quivered against him. He nipped her earlobe and worked his way to her lips, tasted her quickly but thoroughly. There were so many places he wanted to explore. And the more he got of her the more he wanted.
He took her nipple between his teeth and rolled its twin between his thumb and forefinger. He’d already figured out she liked a slight bite to sex. Not rough—he wasn’t the rough sort. Hard, yes, maybe with a little edge, yes, but always watching out for her because she was so much smaller than he was. It was easy to forget a man could hurt a woman if he wasn’t careful.
He wasn’t going to think about what they were doing in terms of emotions. She’d tried to turn it into a clinical encounter last night, but he couldn’t do that—not with her. It didn’t mean they’d forgotten their reality. She didn’t need him in her life. She was fine on her own, or at least she would be when they cleared up this mess. He moved against her core and her thighs widened as if to take him.
Oh, boy. Now that was temptation.
A shudder moved through him as he grabbed a condom and slid it on. He’d had all these great intentions of taking his time with her, but one shift of her hips and he was a goner.
He pushed inside her slick heat and wondered how the hell people stopped doing this? Why do anything else? She shifted beneath him, taking him deeper and at an angle that blew his fucking mind. Then she wrapped her legs around him, crying out, and all he could do was drive deeper and deeper until his world went white and the earth shattered and he roared out a sound as a corner of his brain realized that walking away from Audrey Lockhart was going to be the most difficult thing he’d ever done.
His heart hammered and even as he supported his weight on his elbows, his hips sank farther into hers and his hips kept thrusting like he didn’t even control them anymore. She continued to shudder around him, head thrown back, clearly still in the throes, and he just kept moving until her breathing calmed and she opened her eyes.
They both stilled, staring at one another guardedly.
“Morning, Gorgeous.” Keep it light.
She grinned. “Good morning.”
He pulled out carefully, and got rid of the condom. He put on coffee and remembered he’d bought her a present last night.
“Got you something.” He grabbed them out of a bag and came back and perched a pair of tortoiseshell reading spectacles on her nose.
“I can see!” She grinned and then pulled a face at him. “Man, you’re a lot better looking without glasses.”
The sight of her peering at him through those lenses had him hard as a rock even though he’d only just had her. Nerd-porn. It took another twenty minutes before either of them came up for air.
He got up to pour them coffee, put two mugs on the bedside table. He was about to make breakfast when she pulled him back down into bed.
“Stay here for a while?” she asked.
There was no resistance as he climbed in beside her. He lay on his back and she lay half draped over him, her head on his chest.
“What would you have done if you hadn’t been CIA?”
His lips curled. “Not that I’m confirming anything…but I was on track to be a Wall Street guy.”
“Seriously?” She looked like he’d said trophy hunter.
He laughed. “I know, right? But I have an MBA and an uncle who was in finance. He offered me a job, but I needed a little adventure in my life so I turned him down and joined…the government.” He grew quiet for a moment, and then shared something he didn’t usually talk about, not with anyone. “My uncle died during the attacks of 9/11. I was in Manhattan that day. I was supposed to meet him for lunch.” The feeling of guilt and grief and rage had dulled over the years, but never completely went away. The good guys had died that day. The bad guys had won. He and his colleagues had failed the nation. “It was my first leave since I’d joined the Company and I was hung-over in bed with some cocktail waitress I’d picked up the night before. Figured I’d earned a little time off, a little R&R. I never saw the towers collapse, but I saw the smoke pall over the city. I was called straight back to work and basically haven’t stopped since.” That was the last time he’d spent the whole night with a woman before Audrey.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
The tightness in his throat made his eyes burn. Impossible to remember that day without his chest cavity being scraped raw.
“That’s why you joined the CIA.”
He shrugged, neither confirming nor denying, then stalled some more by taking a sip of coffee. “My life was altered that day, same as every other American. It made me dedicate myself to stopping these assholes. Not just put the time in, but to give it everything I had—no half measures and no excuses.”
“You gave up everything.”
He shook his head and avoided her gaze. “Others gave more. Way more. I’ve never regretted the choices I made.” He regretted it now, and didn’t want to think about why that might be. “It made me a better person. Someone I can stand to see in the mirror.”
“You mentioned a grandmother… Do you have more family?” She touched his face.
His heart pounded. He caught her hand. “I don’t talk about them.”
“Do you ever see them?”
“Occasionally.” He pressed his lips together, shook his head. “Not for a while.”
“You don’t have to sell your soul to serve your country.”
“Sometimes you do.” He changed the subject. “Did you always want to save frogs?”
She laughed, but it sounded a little lost. “Couldn’t save my sister so I moved on to something more achievable.” She lifted her coffee cup off the side table, blew on it before taking a drink, and then carefully set it back down. “We’ve lost one-hundred-and-twenty species of amphibians since 1980 and the rate of disappearance is increasing. Frogs are also an indicator species for an ecosystem and things aren’t looking good for the natural world right now.”
“Saving the world’s species from global extinction is more doable than saving your sister?”
“She got into drugs in high school. She never found her way out.”
Now it was his turn to give comfort. “I’m sorry.”
“I know her addiction issues are probably in whatever file you have on me, but what isn’t is the fact I loved her so much. I tried my best to help her, but she wasn’t interested.” She shifted uncomfortably, hiding from him now, the way he’d wanted to hide from her when she’d asked about his family. His parents mourned his loss even though he wasn’t dead. They missed him.
“I was the good kid, the one who was never any trouble,” Audrey continued. “I overcompensated for her screwing up by being the most well behaved teenager ever.” She ran her fingers over the light sprinkling of hair on his chest. “Which made her resent me even more.”
“You can’t win over people like that,” Killion told her. “They screw up and they blame you. You do well and they think you’re fucking the boss.”
She nodded and bit her lip.
“So you threw yourself into your work as a way of escaping your home life.” He guessed.
“It’s important work,” she argued, and then groaned. “Why did you remind me of my family and my job and what I’m trying to achieve with my life?”
He tucked her hair behind her ears. “You fight for frogs, but you gave up on your sister. Why?”
He watched grief move over her features.
“Have you ever known an addict?”
He shook his head. “Known a few alcoholics…”
“It’s pretty much the same thing. They want what they want when they want it.” She pursed her lips. “No one can really help someone until they’re ready to ask for help. I thought Sienna was in that place when she got pregnant and had a baby a couple of years ago, but no. She overdosed again before Christmas—swore it was accidental.”
“That’s why you were in Kentucky, right?”
“Yeah.” She looked at him, those pretty eyes almost purple in this light. He could see her wondering how he knew she was in Kentucky and just how long he’d been following her. He couldn’t tell her. It was classified. And now that he knew Audrey was innocent, it was an important part of the investigation.
She curled her knees into her chest. “Fighting for frogs is a lot easier than trying to get Sienna to stop doing drugs. Or maybe it just hurts less.”
The words were heavy, and he refused to let them settle in and ruin the fun. Audrey deserved a little fun after all the crap she’d been through.
“What about all the climate change naysayers?”
She pinched him. “Doesn’t matter if people agree or disagree about the cause of the loss in biodiversity. We can still join together to try and protect habitats. That’s the key. The estimates are we’re losing over 10,000 species a year. We’re losing species we haven’t even discovered yet.”
He shut her up by moving to third base without a warm up. Not because he wasn’t interested in her work, but because her passion was a turn on. They both fought for the causes they believed in. They had both dedicated years to their personal battles. He intended to use all the skills he’d ever learned to get her back in the game even though it meant he’d never see her again.
* * *
AUDREY’S STOMACH RUMBLED. “I’m starving.” But she was too lethargic after marathon sex to get out of bed and do anything about it.
Killion rolled to his feet and went to the fridge. “I picked us up sandwiches last night. Tonight we can go out and explore a little. Maybe go for a moonlit swim.”
They were both avoiding the subject of what would happen when his compatriots showed up.
She watched him move naked around the kitchenette. “Be careful with that knife,” she joked.
His eyes went to the ugly scab on her side. “Your side still okay?”
His concern made her choke up a little. He was always looking out for her. She hid her reaction and nodded. He went back to making lunch with the supplies he’d picked up last night.
Spending a day in bed with this man had beaten the hell out of staring at a wall feeling sorry for herself. She had a horrible feeling it wouldn’t be long before someone stuffed her in a safe house and she went insane from boredom.
Assuming the bad guys didn’t find them first.
She pushed the thoughts out of her head. Maybe she could catch up with her academic reading. Or find a new hobby. Her hands sank into her hair. She had no idea how she’d cope with being anything other than a biology professor. Since going to college, it was all she’d wanted to do. Make a positive contribution to the education of others and protect the natural world.
Now she just wanted to survive long enough to clear her name.
A soft knock on the door had her freezing in place. Killion reached for the weapon on the bedside table before grabbing her hand and tugging her into the bathroom. He pressed the heavy gun into her palm. “Stay here. Use this if you have to. Aim and squeeze the trigger. Safety’s off.”
He went back into the bedroom and swept another gun off the nightstand along with his cell.
The knock came again. “It’s Parker.”
She peeked around the doorframe, and Killion glared at her. She pulled back but surreptitiously watched him peer outside through the slats of the blind. Then he moved around to the other window and repeated the process.
Apparently satisfied with whatever he saw, he went to the shopping bags he’d brought home with him last night and snatched up one and tossed it to her. “Get dressed.”
Gone was the lover. Here was the operator back on the mission. She’d known they had to end sometime, but hadn’t expected it to be so abrupt. She dug into the bag and pulled out a bikini and a pretty black halter neck dress. An emotion that felt a lot like grief locked down her throat, but she ripped off the tags and pulled on the clothes. Killion stepped into his board shorts, but never let go of his gun.
His eyes ran over her covered form, and his expression went carefully blank. It caused a shot of warm anguish to rush through her.
“Lock the door and stay in there until I tell you to come out. If I don’t tell you, don’t come out.”
She nodded and backed inside, wrapping her fingers around the grip of the gun, praying she didn’t need to use it.
* * *
KILLION HADN’T REALIZED how desperately he’d wanted to stay in this room and pretend the world wasn’t out to get them until he heard that knock on the door.
Even though he’d been expecting it, the intrusion was unwelcome. Time to go back to being an Intelligence Officer rather than messing around with a smart, beautiful woman. Time to make sure Audrey got out of this mess alive.
Keeping hold of his pistol he dragged the heavy chest out of the way of the door. Then he opened up, just an inch, to find a guy of similar height and build as him, lounging against the post that held up the small veranda. The man had a scar cutting through his right eyebrow and close-cropped hair. Alex Parker. Like his photograph suggested, he looked less like a desk jockey and more like a cage fighter in a suit.
Killion’s operator radar, the one that had been so dormant around Audrey, was practically electrified standing this close to Parker.
Alex Parker was former CIA, but he’d never been on the books. Off the books operations usually meant assassinations although the government always denied their involvement in such matters. The fact Parker had ended up in a Moroccan prison suggested at some point he’d been hung out to dry by his own people. Killion was good at putting pieces of a puzzle together, and these pieces of Parker were jagged and potentially dangerous. It was a professional courtesy not to dig too deeply into that quagmire, but it didn’t mean he’d drop his guard.
“Afternoon,” said Parker carefully. His hands were visible. From the way his pants hung he didn’t look like he was carrying. Maybe he didn’t need to. Killion checked around without taking his eyes off the man. The guy exuded a relaxed air, but it was an illusion. The situation was too tense for anyone to relax.
Parker eyed his pistol. “Nice piece. I haven’t fired the SAS GEN-2. Keep meaning to try it.”
“Maybe we can go to the range sometime.” Killion smiled tightly and stood back to let him in. He had to trust Parker and yet it wasn’t just his life at stake. It was Audrey’s too. And whose fault was it she was even in danger? If he hadn’t acted so rashly and warned her off, maybe he could have backtracked and reexamined the evidence. Found the real culprit without involving her and destroying her life. His actions had catalyzed the shit-storm she now found herself in, and he’d forgotten to mention he was the guy who attacked her that first night before he spent the last twelve hours burying himself inside her as often and as deeply as possible.
She was going to kill him.
At some point he had to tell her the truth, but he’d wait until she was somewhere safe, somewhere where walking away didn’t mean he was leaving her unprotected.
Parker sauntered into the room and Killion became aware of the rumpled state of the sheets and the scent of sex in the air. The fact it reflected badly on him wasn’t the issue. He didn’t want Parker getting the wrong idea about Audrey.
He closed the door behind the newcomer. “I didn’t expect you to come yourself.”
“I wasn’t sure who else to trust.”
That was a little ominous.
“I assume Dr. Lockhart is in the bathroom?” Parker asked.
Killion nodded, but didn’t move to tell her to come out.
“You don’t trust me?” Parker asked quietly.
“Someone tracked me to an island in the middle of nowhere and very few people knew about it.” He was the one holding the gun, but something about Parker made the spot between his shoulder blades itch.
Parker’s eyes were watchful. “I don’t blame you for being cautious.” He held his arms aloft and turned slowly in a circle to prove he wasn’t armed. “But I have a woman I love back home, pregnant with my baby, and just out of the hospital. I only left her side because I wanted to help Dr. Lockhart and find this assassin. I promised Mal I’d come home to her safe. I get that you’re uncertain about what’s going on—we all are—but you need to put the gun away.”
Killion held his stare for a few more seconds then relented. He shoved the weapon in the waistband of his shorts, walked over to his duffel to find a T-shirt. He pulled it on, strapped on his holster and covered it with an unbuttoned shirt. He pushed his feet into the cheap sneakers he’d bought yesterday.
Alex Parker paced the room, helping himself to a drink of water. “Jed and I were the only ones in the BAU who knew exactly where you were. I checked out your buddies from across the pond and there is no record of communications that suggest they contacted Gómez, but it’s impossible to know for sure. What I did discover was someone inside the Agency accessed the flight plan of the helicopter the Brits used and checked out the satellite images.”
“Inside the Agency?” Killion gritted his teeth. “Who?”
“I don’t know,” Parker admitted. “Some bright young thing realized I was in the system before I could dig too deep.” A line cut through his cheek when he smiled. “That doesn’t happen to me very often. I was impressed.”
Killion raised a brow. “They know it was you?”
Parker rinsed his water glass and put it on the drainer. “Nah. The feds are going to pay a visit to a man called Hugo Lutz. And while they’re looking at his PC for evidence of hacking into a government agency they’ll find thousands of images of child pornography.”
“Planted?” Killion asked.
“Nope. Hugo has a sickness that involves underage kids. If he stopped at just looking I might not have lured the feds to him.” Parker shrugged. “I covered my tracks and gave the authorities one of the bad guys to chew on. Frazer was in on the decision. There’s a dark webmaster Lutz works with whom I’m hoping he’ll give up for a little less jail time…”
“Not my problem.” Killion eyed him narrowly. “I only care about getting Dr. Lockhart to safety and tracking down whoever is behind this thing.”
“You’re right. The webmaster can wait.” Parker checked his watch. “I’ve got a private jet waiting for us on the tarmac. We can discuss it there.”
The bathroom door opened, and there stood Audrey, her hair nicely brushed and pulled back in some sort of improvised ponytail, looking like little orphan Annie, holding her toothbrush in one hand, deadly weapon in the other.
“Dr. Lockhart, I presume?” said Parker.
She nodded, looking too damn good in the sundress he’d picked out for her.
“I’m Alex Parker.” The guy didn’t move. Probably a good thing as Killion was so tense the air in his lungs felt like it was brushing up against an electric field. The woman had totally messed with his objectivity. Great. Just when she needed him most he was at his weakest.
Audrey’s eyes were wide and scared, but she straightened her spine and gave Parker a nod. “I wish I could say it was nice to meet you, but under the circumstances…” She moved into the room and handed Killion the handgun. Then she turned and reached out to shake Parker’s hand. Killion held his breath. Alex gave him a pointed look as he calmly shook Audrey’s hand.
Killion grunted. His tension was contagious and he was behaving like the greenest rookie. He had to get over his fear for Audrey and do his job before he did something stupid and got them all killed.
“There are some sandals in the bag over there.” Killion pointed to the chair farthest away from Alex Parker.
Parker smiled and went and sat in a wicker chair in the opposite corner of the room, leaning forward and immediately making himself look less of a threat. This guy was good. Killion watched him like a damned hawk.
Parker concentrated on Audrey as she put on her shoes with shaking hands. “I know what it’s like to be scared, Dr. Lockhart. I was in a Moroccan prison for a time and scared was my first name. My last name was witless.”
“How did you get out?” asked Audrey.
“You don’t wanna know.”
“You said someone in the Agency tracked the helicopter flight plan?” Audrey asked.
“We can’t talk about that here—”
“Okay,” she interrupted the guy, “I’m used to people not answering my questions.” She shot Killion a pointed look. “But what’s to stop them doing the same thing with your airplane?”
Parker grinned and Audrey seemed a little blindsided.
“Move it, Aud,” Killion interrupted. A person would have to be dumb as a rock not to see Alex Parker’s charm. Bastard. “We’ll discuss it on the road.”
Parker rose to his feet. Killion grabbed their stuff. “Let’s go. We’ve already been here too long.” He held the door wide for Parker to lead the way. Audrey followed but before she could exit, he stopped her with a gentle touch on her arm, leaned down and whispered close to her ear, “Thanks for the best honeymoon, ever.”