by Riley Pine
“Stand down or I shoot,” he says in a thick Eastern European accent, and X instantly stills.
The black stocking mask blunts the leader’s face, but not his thick lips, twisted into a menacing grin.
“I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything important,” he says with a husky, insinuating laugh. His leer bores into my exposed skin.
“Nothing we haven’t done before,” X replies in a casual tone, as if commenting on the weather. “Now, what can we do for you gentlemen?”
“You’re coming with us.”
“Ah,” X says. “That’s a problem. See, we have plans for this evening. We are going to be, ahem, quite tied up.”
“Yes.” The leader’s eyes gleam. “You are indeed.”
Five minutes later we are dressed and bound together in a van, back to back. “Happy?” I snarl over one shoulder, struggling as I test the knots. They are double tied and strong as anything I can do. “You and your big mouth.”
“You love my big mouth, Princess,” he whispers and even now, I have to admit the truth to his words.
I do love his big mouth. I love even more what it does to my body.
And if we survive the next few hours, I’m going to see that it is put to its full wicked use.
The van begins to rumble and X tilts his head to rest against mine. “How long will it take you to get us out?”
“Two minutes,” I tell him.
“Bullshit.”
“For that, I’m saying a minute fifteen.”
He chuckles. “In your dreams.”
“If I win, I want a favor.”
“What’s that?” he asks.
“You have to submit to me. Sexually. The next time we’re naked and alone, I’m the master.”
“Sure thing, Princess. Because there’s no way in hell you are getting us out of this situation in seventy-five seconds.”
“Count.”
By the time he gets to twenty I’ve already worked the hairpin loose, and when it drops I catch it between my fingers. It has a fine blade on the underside, and I use it to saw through my wrist bindings. By forty-five seconds my hands are free and I’m attacking the knots at my ankles. By sixty-seven seconds I’ve spun around and done the same for X.
“Sixty-nine seconds,” he says when he’s completely free. “Done!”
X
Before I knew who she was, I’d read of Z’s many escapes from captivity in the logs of the Order. From being suspended on a rainforest zip line in Costa Rica to being locked in a crypt in Sicily, she always made it out alive. I’d heard of the infamous blade she wore in her hair but never saw it in action until tonight. If it can saw through the heavy cords that bound us, what can it do—or has it done—to human flesh?
Without wasting another second, I kick open the back door of the van.
“Shit,” I hiss. We’re on what seems to be a deserted road, which means we won’t get bulldozed by other vehicles. But we’re traveling faster than I anticipated.
“We need to jump,” she says urgently.
“I know,” I snap. “Maybe give me a second or two to figure out how to do it without both of us ending up bloody pulps on the side of the road.”
“What?” she whisper-shouts. “You drove a car onto a train with Prince Benedict of Edenvale and his future wife, Evangeline Vernazza. And then you all jumped before the tunnel entrance took out the Rolls-Royce, and you’re hesitating now?”
She has a point. But my hesitation isn’t for fear of what will happen to me.
She pushes me aside and stands in the open doorway in her ball gown’s bodice, micro-miniskirt and those damned sexy boots. She’ll die if she jumps.
That’s when it hits me, my reason for hesitation. I’m putting her life before mine.
“Complete the mission,” she says. “That’s what we’re here to do.”
And then she leaps into the dark.
“Lora!” I yell, my voice strangled, and it’s a sound I’ve never heard before.
And then, without another thought, I jump.
My shoulder hits the pavement hard, and I hear a pop as it dislocates, but I keep my head tucked, my knees to my chest as Newton’s first law of motion plays out. An object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
Lucky for me, that force is gravelly asphalt.
When I finally roll to a stop, I do a quick check with my left hand, ignoring for the time being the searing pain shooting from my right shoulder all the way to my palm.
Nothing appears broken, but my knuckles are bloodied, and I feel a slow, warm trickle down the side of my face.
I grin. In the grand scheme of things, I’m pretty impressed with the outcome of this escape.
But where the hell is Lora?
I pull myself to my feet, tucking my right arm against my torso.
“Lora!” I call, following the dark road the way we came. “Lora!” My voice grows louder and hoarser with each cry of her name.
There is no way in hell this is how the mission ends.
I’m running now, shouting her name, trying to prepare myself for the worst even as I refuse to believe that she could be gone.
It feels like hours even though I know it’s only minutes, maybe even seconds, before my eyes adjust and I see a figure standing in the middle of the road, hands on hips, stiletto-booted foot tapping on the ground.
I’m out of breath when I slow to a stop. And there she is. Alive, with minor cuts and scrapes but other than that, no worse for the wear.
She wears a self-satisfied grin until she sees me up close.
“Max, oh my God. I thought you could—I mean all the stories—I assumed this was a piece of cake.” She reaches a hand toward my head. “This needs sutures.”
I wave her away. “That can wait. But you’re going to have to fix my shoulder.”
Her mouth falls open when she realizes the extent of my injuries.
“I—I don’t know how,” she says. “If I had a needle and thread I could stitch you up almost as quickly as I got us out of those cords. But I’ve never set a broken bone or dealt with dislocation.” She winces. “How bad does it hurt?”
I lie down in the middle of the road.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asks.
“It hurts like fucking hell,” I tell her. “But it’s not the first time this has happened. So I’m going to talk you through putting it in place so we can get our asses out of here and figure out what’s next.”
She nods. “Okay. Tell me what to do.”
“You can start by taking off those boots. You’re going to need balance and leverage.”
She doesn’t question me, just unzips one boot and kicks it off. Then the other.
Jesus. My cock grows hard, not caring about the state I’m in. Because her smooth, lithe legs are all but bare to me now.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says.
I raise a brow. “What?” I ask with as much feigned innocence as I can muster.
“That look. You’re lying there bleeding and broken, but your eyes say you want to fuck me until I’ve forgotten my name.”
I grin. “I could do it, too.” And it’s a funny thing. In all my years in the service of the Order, which spans more than half my life, I’ve perfected the art of being wholly unreadable. But when it comes to this woman, I am a goddamn open book. And that’s fucking dangerous.
She shakes her head. “I’d think you’d need both your hands to do that,” she teases. “And that beautiful cock of yours.”
“What about my tongue?”
She licks her lips and swallows. “Yes.” Her voice cracks, and it’s how I know that if I wanted to, I could fuck this woman into temporary amnesia. “Definitely your tongue.”
I clear my throat, getting down to business. “Ok
ay. Brace yourself against me by placing your toes on my torso.”
She slides closer to me, pressing the ball of her foot against my side and keeping her heel on the ground.
“Good,” I tell her. “Now grab my wrist and lift my arm slowly until it’s about forty-five degrees from my body.”
She doesn’t hesitate but is slow and careful in her movement.
I hiss in a breath through my teeth. “That’s it,” I tell her, my voice rough. And for the first time since our kidnapping, I see some semblance of fear in her dark eyes. “It’s okay, Lora. You can do this. All you have to do now is pull. Slow and steady. And no matter what I say, do not stop. You’ll feel it when it pops into place. But until you do, promise you will keep pulling.”
She nods and starts to pull.
I grit my teeth, growling softly. The pain intensifies, and the growl crescendoes to a roar. But she keeps pulling until finally there is that all too familiar pop and sweet fucking relief.
She lowers my hand to the ground and kneels beside me, running her fingers through my hair.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“I am now, Princess.”
She rolls her eyes.
“Hey,” I add. “Tell me how the hell you jumped in those damned boots and survived.”
She grins. “I guess you didn’t do all your homework on me, did you?”
I raise a brow.
“When the Order found me, I was performing in a traveling troupe of aerial acrobats and trapeze artists.”
I rise onto my left elbow. “You were in the circus?”
She groans. “It was much more professional than that, thank you very much. But what you should be asking is what tricks I can do with my body that you haven’t seen yet.”
My throat goes dry. “We need to call in the incident and possibly make an appearance at the local base for a debriefing. After that, you are my master and commander on one condition.” I slide my restored right arm up her thigh and under her tiny skirt where I know now—after seeing her stand above me—that she did not waste time putting on the G-string when we were kidnapped.
She gasps as my thumb brushes over her clit.
“And what condition is that?” she asks, her voice husky and breathless.
“You show me everything that body has been trained to do.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Z
AS MUCH AS it kills me, I step away from X’s clever fingers. We follow the road to civilization until we finally recognize our surroundings. The wind blows cool from the Thames, bringing with it the briny scent of brackish water and a hint of refuse. I close my eyes and pay attention to the smells of the city, centering myself, finding my bearings. There is a faint hint of piss from the wall outside the Dancing Pony pub on the corner. The greasy aroma of a kabob shop. My own perfume and the faint hint of sweat from our exertion. The sheer scent of X.
Oh God, I could drop to my knees and bury my face between his legs like a nineteenth-century harlot plying my wares on the London streets.
“First things, first,” I say before biting my lip so hard that I can’t believe it doesn’t draw blood. “We need some new clothes.” It’s chilly. Really chilly. Gooseflesh peppers my skin and my nipples are taut, for once not from this man’s attentions. I can’t stay outside dressed in, well, nothing.
“Clothes?” A muscle twitches in X’s jaw. “I was rather hoping we could be dispensing with those.”
I roll my eyes. Men.
“Do you mind thinking with the head above your neck for a minute, Max? I know you’re injured, but surely you haven’t forgotten why we’re in our current situation. Or has it just escaped your notice that we were kidnapped from a sex club while on a secret mission to bust Dante Price? Which means our cover has been blown, and Dante was dispatching us.” My shoulders stoop. “We failed, X. We failed the mission. Somehow we messed up.” I kick at an empty soda can for extra effect and send it skittering across the road.
I glance at the man in front of me. I want to unburden myself, but I can’t even trust X. Or Max. We have so many names. So many faces. It’s a wonder that I don’t drown in all the lies I tell.
But he is remarkably calm at the moment. I search his features for anything human, a sense that what just happened to him, to me, to us, left an impression.
But nothing.
Could he suspect anything? He’s so incredibly calm. Impossibly composed.
Granted, I feel the same way.
I take a breath. Not too deep. I don’t want him to see that my nerves are shaken.
“Sorry for that outburst,” I mumble.
“Not a problem,” he says, glancing up the street. A car turns. Headlights almost upon us.
We both jump back on instinct, taking shelter in the deep shadow of an alley dumpster. It’s just a cab. Not more henchmen.
“You want clothes?” X asks, glancing over at me, a hint of humor entering his frosty gaze. “Follow me. Let’s go.”
I balk, crossing my arms. “Why do you get to choose the place?”
Think. Think. What’s your next step here, Lora?
Ah, yes. My shoulders drop an inch in relief. There is a safe house across the Thames. After we give our statement at the local base, I can head there and regroup.
The only question is how can I get there alone?
Any trick up my sleeve, he likely has, too.
I’m going to have to up my game.
He assesses me coolly. “I’m not able to speak to what’s going on in that pretty head of yours, but if you want to avoid attracting attention, I suggest you stick with me. At least for now. Unless—” his smile fades “—you had something to do with that stunt in the club. Tell me again how you’re an acrobat who can jump from a van going forty klicks and land on her four-inch stilettos.”
I glance at my boots, teeth clenched.
“You think I played a part in what just happened?” I say, my tone dripping with indignation. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course not.”
I’m good at risky escapes, less good at convincing lies.
He gives me a skeptical once-over, and I feel the heat of his penetrating gaze all the way to my toes, which involuntarily curl.
Stupid, traitorous body. Wanting him even now.
I remind myself of the state he was in when he found me—his right arm held tight to his body, the wound on his head that only now has stopped bleeding, his voice hoarse as he called my name.
He was worried about me, wasn’t he? I squeeze my eyes shut, scrolling through the mental Rolodex of briefs I read about Agent X—the stunts he himself pulled, the escapes he made. He fooled powerful men into wanting to be him and powerful women into loving him just to obtain information necessary to save the world. He was legendary before he was even thirty. And now?
Now I cannot sort fact from fiction. I know how well he’s trained in the fine art of deception, because I’ve had the same training.
I could hook him up to a lie detector. Torture him. Inject him with truth serum and he wouldn’t crack.
And I am freezing my ass off. In another minute, my teeth will be chattering.
“Fine,” I snap. “But you are buying.”
His chuckle is deep and rich, like dark chocolate, and leaves my mouth watering.
“Harrods.” I cross my arms over my chest. “They’re open for one more hour, and I am ready for some real clothes.”
He arches a brow. “Harrods? You don’t come cheap.”
I blow him a kiss in return. “Darling, you have no idea. I want to hit the food hall, too. All this excitement has made me crave crepes with vanilla ice cream.”
“Sounds delicious,” he says, taking a step forward. Indeed, it looks as if he could eat me instead.
A cab rolls down the street toward us. I put two fingers in my mouth and blo
w hard, hailing it. “To Knightsbridge,” I tell the driver as we slide into the back. “And step on it.”
X
When we finally enter Harrods, it’s thirty minutes until closing. Thankfully my phone and the small stash of cash and the one card I carry still sit safely in my pocket, having somehow survived the jump. This is Harrods after all, and despite who I may know on the inside, nothing here comes for free.
Z pouts, and the sheer honesty of the expression socks me in the gut...but I keep from visibly reacting. “I guess crepes are off the table,” she says. “Clothes are more important, I suppose.”
I wink at her. “Let me just make a quick call.”
I step away while she wanders into the women’s accessories and tries on a red cloche hat that, against her dark hair and creamy skin, looks absolutely gorgeous—until my eyes travel south to that ridiculous ball-gown bodice atop the shortest of short skirts, her legs still clad in those sexy boots. I laugh softly as the phone on the other end rings, reminding myself that the Italian suit I’m wearing is torn in several places from my landing, and the side of my face is likely covered in blood.
All in a day’s work.
Someone picks up.
“X. Is that you?”
“Ewan, my boy,” I say. “Still working the finest crêperie this side of the Thames?”
He chuckles. “You need me to stay open after hours, don’t you?”
“We’ll be there in thirty minutes,” I say. “Just have one chocolate-banana crepe waiting, and we’ll take it to go.”
Ewan sighs. But I can tell my old friend is smiling. “Extra whipped cream for you?”
“Always,” I tell him. “A million thanks. See you soon.”
I walk toward a makeup counter as the woman behind stares at me in horror. When I get to a mirror, I see that my suspicions were right. The gash at my temple isn’t bleeding now, but I do look a hell of a lot worse than I feel. Sutures will have to wait, but I do need some cleaning up.
