The drone had arrived right on time, proving to him that someone on his team was selling information or was outright involved with any one of the number of organizations determined to end his life. Nina stepped in front of him, drawing her shockgun from the thigh holster and aiming it at the drone. She fired, because they’d agreed this had to look as real as possible, but missed on purpose.

When the drone fired at him, Ewan’s instinct was to duck, to run, but Nina had warned him to stand his ground. He had every faith she would keep him safe, but he had to take the hit in a place where the vest would keep the bullet from causing major damage. If he were running, the hit could get him anywhere.

“Stunbullets,” Nina cried. “Stay still!”

After that, everything happened so fast Ewan couldn’t keep track. Three hard pops hit him in the vest, knocking him a few steps backward. It did hurt, just as Nina had promised, but worse was the spreading tingle of what felt like electric shock running through him. It seized his muscles into tight spasms, forcing his fingers to clench into fists as agony tore through his calves and thighs. His toes tried to curl inside his shoes but cramped instead. He heard his own grunts, animalistic and wordless.

Nina pushed him toward the water. The drone fired again, the bullets heading for their target with a high-pitched whine that wasn’t nearly as bad as a decibel bomb but still rang in his ears, making it hard to hear what she was shouting. Ewan stumbled forward as another series of stunbullets hit him in the back.

One caught him in the upper bicep, beyond where the vest covered. Instant, ripping pain seared through him along with another wave of that electric agony. All his muscles tried to lock up, but Ewan gritted his teeth and forced a step forward to keep himself from pitching onto his face.

From behind him, Nina let out a garbled cry as another burst of stunbullets rained from the drone. Her hands on his back pushed him another few steps toward the pond’s concrete lip. Ewan managed a look over his shoulder. The drone had dropped to just above Nina’s head. While the twin turrets spun, preparing for another round, the window set into the drone’s face clicked and whirred. Taking pictures, making sure he was getting hit, Ewan thought and made sure to screw up his face in an expression of agony that this time wasn’t fake.

Nina fired on the drone again, this time clipping it so that it went spinning upward into the sky before settling and righting itself back in their direction. At the next spatter of fire, she shouted as the stunbullets hit her in the arms and torso. None made it to Ewan this time because she’d stepped between him and the drone, but he jerked as though he’d been struck hard.

The water splashed as he went under. He kept his eyes open, searching the murky green for the sight of the tunnel leading to the other pond. Darting glints of gold and orange tried to capture his attention, but he ignored the fish fleeing his sudden infiltration of their world. Motion was easier in the water, even as his body still reacted to the shock from the stunbullets, and he kicked hard. Heading for the tunnel, his lungs already burning, Ewan stroked through the water as fast as he could.

He misjudged the distance and hit the edge of the tunnel with his shoulder and forehead. He had the presence of mind not to shout and take in water, but the impact jarred him. Dizzy, struggling, he kicked forward again. From far away he thought he heard the sound of an explosion. Nina, shooting the drone as they’d planned. So far everything had gone as they’d expected it to, aside from this—the pain in his head and his muscles going too tight. He was too tired to kick hard and fast enough to get him through the tunnel before he ran out of air.

The water surged behind him. Strong hands pushed him. Ewan swam, helped by Nina who was also kicking. Together, they got through the tunnel and into the small maintenance room in the center of all the ponds, where they both broke the surface of the water gasping and sputtering. Ewan’s left side, the one the stunbullet had hit, had tensed so much he could really only tread water with his right leg, but that was enough to keep his head above the water. Together, they swam to the concrete ledge and clung there, both breathing hard.

“I made sure it recorded you falling into the water, then I let it hit me a few times before I shot it.” Nina’s voice had gone harsh, rasping. Indelicately, she spat to the side with a grimace.

“Did you kill it?”

She shook her head. “No. I let it get away with the footage, which I’m sure they were watching remotely. What’s important is they saw you go under and the drone escaped before it could see what happened to me.”

“They’ll start dredging the ponds,” Ewan said, aware that she was watching him closely. “What?”

“You’re slurring.” Nina gripped his arm and pulled him closer. “Did you hit your head?”

Ewan tried to nod but wasn’t sure he managed. All around them, the water gurgled and whirled as the filtration system kicked on. In this central space, all five of his fish ponds joined up via the tunnels. He pointed at the sixth tunnel, the one that led to the filtration pond.

“That’s the one.” He’d already told her how it was set up to screen out debris, dead fish, and anything else that might find its way into one of the ponds. He tucked his thumb into the waistband of his shorts, tugging.

“You need help. Hold on.”

He kept tugging until Nina took him by the shoulders and forced him to look at her.

“You’re bleeding,” she said and stroked a finger down his cheek. She held it up to show him the crimson stain. “Stop. I’ll help you.”

“I’m going to be naked.”

* * *

“That’s the plan,” Nina said. “Send your clothes through the shredder and have them show up in the filtration pond, have them assume it’s possible you drowned and got sucked into the biodegrading unit. Right? That’s what we talked about.”

“Yes.” He gave her a wide, tilting grin.

“You’re loopy,” Nina said and drew him close. “And cold. We need to get you stripped down and into something else, immediately.”

“You could warm me up with your body heat,” Ewan said and laughed, the sound ringing through the round concrete room even over the whir and whoosh of the filters.

She shook her head, a little amused but more concerned. “Ask me again when you’re in your right head.”

She tugged his shirt off over his head and set it on the ledge, then swiftly and without lingering helped him out of his shorts. She dove beneath the water to yank off his shoes and socks, too. That left only his briefs, which she also removed and set on the pile of clothes. She couldn’t see his nudity below chest-level and had been near him naked plenty of times already over the past few weeks, but something about this felt different.

“I’m sorry.” Ewan’s words slurred a little, not so much that she was alarmed, but enough to show that everything that had happened was affecting him. “I shouldn’t be inappropriate with you.”

Nina cupped his chin in her hands to stare into his eyes, searching for any signs that he was seriously injured. “Your pupils are the same size, that’s good.”

“Are you a doc?”

She laughed as he drew her closer, pressing his body to hers. “I am not. But I can do some basic front-line triage. What you need is to get out of this water and into something warm.”

Ewan’s eyes flashed and she waited for the innuendo, but instead he nodded and twisted in the water to find the metal ladder behind him. In seconds he was up it, bare-assed, standing on the ledge near the hatch to the control room. It happened so fast she didn’t have time to engage her selective sight, so there he stood in all his glory, hands on his hips as though daring her to comment.

Nina stared up at him from her place in the water, but said nothing. With a blink, she engaged the pixelation, though nothing would erase the memory of his body from her mind. Not much ever embarrassed her, but now a thrill of desire curled through her, flushing her throat and cheeks so that she turned away before he could see it.

She gathered his discarded clothes and swam with them to the tunnel he’d indicated, then shoved them into it. The sucking force of the water being drawn down toward the filtration screens and biodegrading unit stole the clothes from her fingers. By the time she turned back around to swim across the space toward the ladder, Ewan had pulled on a cloth coverall he’d snagged from inside the control room.

“Better?” he asked with a flip to get his wet hair out of his face. “Ouch. Scratch it. Head hurts.”

“Be careful. You’ve been through a lot. Are you sure you’re feeling all right? Not faint or dizzy?” Nina climbed up the ladder and shook herself off. Her clothes would dry quickly and her gear was waterproof, so there was no need for her to strip and change.

What if she did have to stand naked in front of him, she thought with another reluctant rush of heat? Would he avert his gaze the way he had all the other times, or would he keep his eyes on her? He would stare, she thought as she watched him. He’d let his gaze linger. He might reach out to touch her, and she might let him.

Ewan put his fingertips to his forehead then looked at the blood on them. “I’m a little dizzy, but that’s it. How long do we wait before we get out of here?”

“We should go now,” she said, dripping in front of him. The water was cool but not frigid, and the room itself was warm, but the look in Ewan’s eyes had sent a shiver down Nina’s spine. Her nipples had gone tight and hard, poking through the material of her shirt.

He saw that. She knew he did. His tongue teased his lower lip for a second or so as he stared.

“The plan worked,” he said.

Nina shook her head. “Until we’re in a safe place, only part of it has.”

“Well, then. Let me get you to that safe place.”

* * *

The maintenance room had tunnels of its own leading to the basements of the different outbuildings, each tunnel outfitted with a small electric cart on a track that allowed for a quick ride from one place to the other. By the time they both settled into the cart’s narrow seat, Ewan’s head had started to throb but the rest of him felt better. He typed in the code for the building closest to the perimeter, a small garden shed that traditionally didn’t get much use. It stored his buzzbike, though, and that’s what was going to get them where they needed to go.

Nina was quiet on the swift ride, and Ewan didn’t push for conversation. Her clothes had dried by the time they got to the shed’s cellar, although the end of her braid still dripped. He sent the cart back to where it had come from and waited while Nina studied the ladder up to the shed.

“I’ll go up first,” she said finally. “Nothing has followed us down here, and I want to be sure there’s nothing waiting.”

He didn’t argue, and in a minute she was leaning into the opening in the floor to gesture for him to come up. Ewan hadn’t been in the shed for years, had barely acknowledged that it existed on his property, but that had all been done to make sure that anyone monitoring him didn’t suspect the building’s importance. Of the dozen or so escape plans he’d implemented and drilled his staff on, the exit through the shed was the only one he’d never breathed a word of to anyone.

“This was smart of you,” Nina said now, standing in front of the small buzzbike. She nudged it with a toe and gave him a smile. “All packed up and ready to go.”

Ewan checked the saddlebags, making sure the gear he’d stowed there was still in place. It was all there, including the GPS disruptor that would keep them from being tracked, just in case somehow one of them or the buzzbike itself had been tagged with a location transponder. He shot a look at her over his shoulder, noticing her grimace.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Nina nodded. “Yes. They got me good, though. I’m going to need something to eat and drink soon. How long of a ride is it to this place?”

They’d agreed he wouldn’t tell her where they were going, in the event something went awry and he needed to get there on his own. No matter how someone tried, they wouldn’t be able to get the information from her. He didn’t want to think about how hard someone would try or what they’d do to her.

“A few hours. There are some travel snacks in the saddlebag.”

“Yum.” She peeked into one, then gave him an eye. “Stale protein bars, hooray!”

“They’re not that stale.”

He moved past her to pluck one out, holding it up to her, then paused at how close they stood. A purpling bruise was starting to show on the curve where her neck met her shoulder, exposed by the line of her shirt. Frowning, Ewan lightly touched it. She flinched.

“Sorry,” he said. “That looks bad. Does it hurt?”

She visibly shivered, then gave him one of those wide grins he’d come to look forward to. “Umm, yes, Ewan, I got kicked by a couple dozen stunbullets right in that spot. It hurts.”

Again, he drew his fingertips over the spot, barely touching, and again she shivered. A quip of how he could kiss it and make it better rose to his lips but he wisely shoved it back. He couldn’t stop his palm from cupping her shoulder, though, or letting his hand slide down her arm so his fingers could circle her wrist for a moment, tugging her a step closer.

Nina tipped her face to stare up at him. “You’re a constant surprise, Ewan Donahue, you know that?”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“It’s a surprising thing,” Nina said in a low voice, which was not quite an answer to the question he’d asked but one he understood. Her whiskey-colored eyes had lit up, her mouth a quirking smile, and she hadn’t moved away from him even though their bodies were touching. She glanced between them, then up again into his eyes.

“Sometimes I think you might actually like me,” he said.

She tilted her head as her eyes traced his face in a way he could feel almost as though it were a physical touch. Her gaze lingered on his mouth. Her tongue peeked for a second between her lips before she shook her head.

“This happens, sometimes. People get into a hard sitch, they get all riled up. . . .”

He wanted to tell her that it was more than that, but she wasn’t wrong, either. “Does that happen to you?”

“Yes.” She breathed. “After I fight, I usually really want to fuck.”

Ewan groaned. “Oh.”

He hadn’t been able to keep the memory of their kiss out of his head since it had happened. Looking at her now, Ewan moved without further thought. He pulled Nina into his arms to kiss her again, this time not coming out of a dream, but on purpose. Knowing it was her.

Wanting it to be her.

There was no way he could have taken her by surprise, yet, even so, her lips parted on a startled sigh. Then her tongue slid along his, and he moved a hand up her back to settle on the base of her neck below her still-damp braid. Briefly the kiss softened before he deepened it again, probing her mouth with his tongue until their teeth clashed.

She set him on fire, and he did not want to be extinguished.

Nina’s hands curled just above his hips, her fingertips digging into his skin so that her nails pinched. After a second, her fingers themselves nipped at the sensitive bare flesh and that tingling bit of pain went straight to his cock. The thin material of the cover-up didn’t hide much, nor did the fact he was naked beneath it. Under her gaze, his body reacted. Heat teased him, and he stifled another groan at the thickness between his legs.

When she looked up at him, her pale amber eyes had gone heavy lidded. Her mouth, soft and full and wet from their kisses. She drew in a breath and shook her head, her gaze clearing. Her expression went from sensual to stern.

He expected an arch smile. Raised eyebrows. Ewan figured Nina would tease him, but all she did was look up, straight into his eyes and hold his gaze for what felt like forever.

“This is not the time or the place,” she told him finally. She still hadn’t moved away. “And I’m not convinced it’s what you really want.”

“It should be obvious that I really want it,” he said, but the look on her face made him take a couple steps back. “But if you don’t . . .”

Nina shook her head. “We need to be thinking about the job. Thinking with our heads. Not our other parts.”

The ache in his head flared, a reminder of the situation they were in, and one he shouldn’t have needed. She was right, but it embarrassed him that he’d been acting like a riled-up adolescent who’d been able to put his hands on a girl for the first time. His arousal fled. He put distance between them.

“We should go,” Ewan said.