On the plane to Crystal City, VA

0130 CET

Kaylee jumped out of the car as soon as Mick turned the engine off. She slung her messenger bag over her head and started moving toward the tarmac. She heard Mick cursing as he got out of the car.

“Stop now,” he commanded. His voice was devoid of any emotion and was a full-on command.

She stopped in her tracks, glancing over her shoulder. “Do you think there’s a sniper here?”

“I’m not chancing it. I told everyone we were going in blind,” he said. “Did it never occur to you that you could be in trouble? That Diavolos wants you and will stop at nothing to get you?”

There was a heavy note in his voice that scared her. She crossed her arms over her chest. She was tired. She was vulnerable. She was afraid she’d made a big mistake by having sex with him. And now she wanted to retreat and hide.

“I just need some space,” she said.

“I’ll give it to you once we’re on the plane. But let me do my job,” he said.

She nodded, because she was afraid if she kept on talking she’d say something she’d regret. Or more than one thing she’d regret. Lord knew, there was too much on her mind right now.

He had taken the time to get the rucksack out of the car and shrugged it on. He reached up and double-tapped his earpiece.

“One here. We’re at the evac point,” Mick said.

“Two here. My team is onboard and the aircraft is secure. Pilot is ready to go,” Linc said.

“Five?”

“ETA, five minutes. We had to shake a tail,” Cade said.

“Do you need back up?” Mick asked.

“Negative,” Cade said.

He muted his earpiece. “Let’s get you on the plane. There’s a bed and shower area in the back if you want to use it.”

“No, I’m okay,” she said, turning once again toward the aircraft. He came up beside her, cupping his hand under her elbow and leading her to the plane. He pulled her aside as soon as they were on board, before they reached the others.

“Kaylee…”

“I…listen, what happened between us isn’t nothing to me,” he said.

She waited to see if he’d say anything else, and then glanced over her shoulder at him. His features weren’t easy to read in the dim light. But the stance of his body was tough. Like he was ready for a fight, or a body blow.

“It meant something to me too. You mean something to me,” she said. “But you don’t trust me. I’m carrying very dangerous information that very dangerous people want, and right now I don’t think I can handle one more thing.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “I just want you to know I wasn’t using you.”

She let his words reverberate in her mind. He wasn’t using her. Did he think she had used him?

Hell, she sort of had. She’d needed a release and she was attracted to him. Who wouldn’t be? He was a fine physical specimen, but it was more than that. It was that darkness in his eyes that spoke of a life she understood all too well.

“Mick, wait. Before we get in the cabin with everyone else. I like you…but I’m not sure what’s going on with my dad. You said it yourself. He could be trying to use me, and I am so tired of that. But I also—”

“I get it. You secretly want him to be trying to protect you,” he said. “I’d have given anything for my dad to just once be the kind of father that my classmates had. But he never was. I guess that’s what I’m trying to warn you about. Sometimes we believe in them to our own ruin.”

“Paul?” she asked. In her mind that was the only thing that made sense. Something had broken him away from his dad. She had no siblings, which she knew made her life easier at times. She had only ever had to fend for herself, which she’d barely been able to do at times. What if she’d had a younger brother or sister she’d had to look after? She wasn’t sure she could have managed it.

“Yeah. It was easy to keep hoping that one day I wouldn’t do something to trigger his temper. That after Mom was gone maybe he’d keep behaving the way he’d promised he would. But every day…I’d do something or Paul would. And we’d go to sleep with his promises that the next day would be better, but it wasn’t. I just don’t want you to be hurt like that.”

His honesty made her fall a little bit more for him. He didn’t talk until it was important, and when he did, he was worth listening to. She didn’t say anything, just closed the gap between them and went up on her tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you.”

He shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”

But it was. And as he reached out and took her hand she knew that deep down, he knew it too. She didn’t trust her bonds with other people. They were fragile and could be easily broken, but she didn’t want to let go of Mick. Not when they got to the stairway leading up to the plane or, a part of her whispered, forever.

But she wasn’t a forever kind of girl.

* * *

Once everyone had arrived, they quickly took off. Everyone had separated back into their original groups. Ares in the front of the plane, and the geek squad in the back. Kaylee had been quiet as they boarded, and as soon as she was seated, had pulled a big scarf out of her bag and wrapped it around her head and shoulders. Then she’d put in her headphones and gone to sleep.

He was sitting near Cade, who was watching him like he knew something was up. But the other man kept his mouth closed, which was good. Mick wasn’t a talker, and tonight was no exception.

“Damn, it’s been a long day,” Cory said, plopping down across the aisle from him. “Can we talk in private?”

“Sure. It can’t wait?”

“Boss, I wish it could,” Cory said.

Cory got up and moved to the front of the plane where there was a conference-style table set up behind a partition. Mick glanced over at Linc, canting his head toward the back of the plane. “Keep an eye on them.”

“Will do,” Linc said.

Mick rubbed the back of his neck as he sat down across the table from his communications specialist. Cory scrubbed a hand over the top of his head and gave Mick an unreadable look.

“What’s up?”

“I think someone from the geek squad is currently broadcasting our location,” Cory said. “You know I swept them all at the apartment before we left…but I picked up a new signal once we got on the plane. I can jam it, but we need to figure out who is behind it.”

Mick leaned back in his chair. Kaylee had checked her signal before they arrived at the airport, and Mick thought she’d turned it off and tucked her phone out of sight. But he wondered if she was still trying to get in touch with her father.

“Okay. How do we find out who it is?”

Cory leaned forward in his chair. “Well, I set these devices up to detect a signal. My thought is that maybe you could take Kaylee to the back and talk to her about something and I’ll get Cade to nab Jeff for a discussion about the drone and we can leave Ramona in her seat and I’ll go chat her up.”

Mick looked at the devices in Cory’s hand. How many times was he going to start to trust someone, only to have them betray him? He didn’t want it to be Kaylee, but she had motivation to try to reach Diavolos or his men. Her father could be working with the criminal mastermind. He grabbed the offered device.

Leaning around the corner of the partition, he called, “Cade, you got a sec?”

Cade, who had been lying back in his seat as if he were sleeping, immediately opened his eyes and got up, coming to join them. Cory caught him up on the required task.

“How do I use this?” Mick asked.

“It’ll vibrate if it picks up a signal and start recording the path,” Cory said.

They couldn’t just immediately start pulling the geek squad apart, and he’d worked with his team long enough to know that they could be subtle when they needed to be.

“Cade, you get Jeff first. Maybe pull out the drone,” Mick said.

“Easy enough. How are you going to convince Kaylee to go to the back with you?” Cade asked.

“I’ll ask her to check my bandages,” Mick said.

“Will that work?” Cade asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Whoever gets a confirmation, just give a thumbs-up to let the others know. Cory can jam the signal once we have the suspect and we can figure out how to deal with it when we land.” He got up and headed back to his seat.

Kaylee wasn’t sleeping, he could tell by the way she kept shifting in her seat. He wanted her again. Even knowing she could be selling their group out, he still wanted her. A part of him, probably the dumb part that his father had tried to beat out of him, didn’t’ care about the consequences. But another part just felt sad. Not angry. Sad. Because she was a woman, and he didn’t want to focus his anger on her.

Cade started fiddling with the drone and then glanced toward the back of the plane. “Hey, Jeff. Can you show me how to fix this? Cory won’t help, since it’s not his job to fix my toys.”

Cory gave Cade the finger and Jeff just laughed. “I feel that way about fixing my friends’ computers, but the drone is fun to work on.”

Jeff moved to a seat near Cade and the two men bent over the drone, talking about tech stuff. Mick shifted in his seat and then, after making sure no one was looking at him, punched the knife wound he’d received earlier. Pain made him flinch, and he glanced down to see it was bleeding. Since Cade was the team medic and was currently working on his drone, going to Kaylee shouldn’t raise any suspicions.

“Damn,” he said, standing up and walking toward the back of the plane.

Kaylee came alert at the sound of his voice, and removed her scarf and headphones.

“What’d you do?” Cade asked, looking up.

“Bleeding through the bandage. I’ll go change it.”

“You need a hand?” Cade asked, reaching into his bag and tossing him a pressure bandage.

“You’re busy and it’s not a big deal. Kaylee, would you mind helping?” Mick asked.

She shook her head, following him to the bathroom at the back of the plane. It had a nice marble countertop around the sink and a large shower in one corner. The toilet was set in a small closet next to the shower.

He put the fresh bandage on the countertop and then unbuttoned his shirt before removing the t-shirt underneath. The device that Cory had given him was tucked into his back pocket where he could feel it vibrate, but so far it was silent.

He felt a sense of relief that it wasn’t Kaylee. She came closer to him, her hair smelling of summer flowers. She put her hand on his chest and loosened the adhesive holding the bandage in place. It stuck to the hair on his body and he flinched.

“Sorry.”

“No problem. Probably better to just rip it off,” he said.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, looking up at him with those fathomless crystal-gray eyes of hers, and he realized that she couldn’t. Now that he knew she wasn’t betraying the team, he trusted her again.

So he reached down and tore the bandage off himself, cursing under his breath as he did so.

“Well, that’s one way to do it,” she said.

“Yeah, it’s easier than the anticipation. And you didn’t have to do it.”

She cleaned the wound, her fingers moving quickly. He tried to turn his hips away from her as he had his normal reaction to her touch. He felt the brush of her fingers over his crotch.

“I like being touched by you,” he said.

“I can tell.”

* * *

Kaylee feathered her fingers lightly around the bandage as she placed it back over the wound. There were scars all over Mick’s body, so it was hard for her not to notice how battered he was. She saw the evidence of the violence he said he’d been born into. She wanted to erase a little of the pain that he’d endured, but knew she never really could.

Keeping her touch gentle, she leaned over and kissed the edge of the bandage. The wound was just above his waist, and she slid her hand along the waistband of his pants.

He lifted her up in his arms and she wrapped her legs around his hips. The hard ridge of his erection was hitting her center. She closed her eyes as she tipped her head back and rocked against him.

He pushed her shirt up over her head. “I want to see you this time.”

His voice was low and gravelly, brushing over her senses and arousing her. She nodded. What could she say? She wanted to see him too. Seeing his body, the strength and the scars, was awakening something deep inside her.

A smart woman would probably walk away, but she wasn’t prepared to do that. He took the strap of her bra in one hand and pulled it down until the cup of her bra gaped away from her body. Her nipples tightened and her breasts felt too full as he cupped them. The ridge of his erection was bumping against the very center of her. She moaned deep in her throat and shifted against him.

His biceps flexed as he lifted her in his arms, turning so that he leaned back against the countertop. She could see herself in the mirror over the sink, and the woman she saw shocked her. There was a look of sensual abandon on her face. She kept her legs wrapped around his waist and he held her to him with one arm wrapped under her hips. His mouth moved over hers with passion and fire. Their tongues tangling and plunging deep.

He ran his free hand over her body as his mouth moved down the column of her neck, nibbling and biting softly. He lingered at the pulse beating frantically in her neck. Then he sucked on her skin as everything in her clenched. She rocked her hips against him.

She scored his shoulders with her fingernails, and when he moaned her name, she knew he liked it. She skimmed the edge of her nails down his chest. Tracing the outline of the scars on his body, moving down his chest and around to his back, where she felt the ridge of a deeper scar.

He wrapped his arms around her body, pulling her closer as his mouth found hers again. She liked the way she was surrounded by him—felt very feminine as she was cradled in his arms. His skin was hot to the touch and she wrapped her arms around his body, pulling him closer to her.

He pulled back, staring down at her. Then he traced a finger over the full globes of her breasts. She shifted her shoulders, waiting for a deeper caress. He took one of her nipples between his thumb and forefinger, pinching lightly.

She reached between their bodies, unfastening his pants and freeing his erection. His mouth fastened on her left nipple, suckling her strongly. She undulated her hips, lifting toward him. He drew his other hand down her body, shoving his hand into the waistband of her jeans. Caressing her between her legs until she was frantically holding his head to her breasts, trying to find her release as it remained just out of her reach. She skimmed her hands down his body, touching his hip bone and then moving her fingers around to his erection.

He set her on her feet. “Take your pants off.”

Yes, she thought. Needing to be naked now. She shimmied out of her jeans and panties, glancing up at his erection as he pushed his jeans and underwear to the floor, getting tangled in them as he kicked them off his feet.

He opened the medicine cabinet and fumbled for a box of condoms, taking one out and quickly putting it on.

She reached for his erection, but he caught her hand and stretched it over her head, against the bathroom wall behind her. He lifted her slightly so that she felt the tip of him at her center. He shifted his body above her, using one hand to probe at the entrance of her body before she felt the bold, hard length of him.

She opened her eyes, wanting to see him this time. Their gazes locked, and she wanted to say something, but when she opened her mouth, he brought his down hard on hers just as he thrust inside her. Lifting her up, holding her with his big hands on her behind as he repeatedly drove into her. He went deeper than he had the last time they’d made love. She felt almost too full, stretched and surrounded by him.

He bit her neck carefully, and everything tightened inside her until she felt her climax spreading through her body. Her skin was pulsing, her body tightening around his plunging cock. A minute later he came too, groaning into her neck.

She rested her head on his shoulder and held him tightly, looking at herself in the mirror. She knew that Mick was a man she never wanted to let go of. She wanted to keep him in her arms for the rest of her life. That thought should have scared her.

But it didn’t.