Ruled

by Angel Payne

  She searched his face again with those miss-nothing eyes. For a second, seemed confused. “What? Get me back to Washington in the middle of this shit storm?”

  “Get you off the damn grid in the middle of this shit storm.”

  She went weirdly still. Finally rocked her head, pushing back against his fingers. “Excuse the hell out of me?”

  John dipped his head. Settled his gaze more directly with hers. “They think you’re dead—and you’re going to stay that way. Completely dark. And I’m in charge of getting you there.”

  “Where?”

  She still didn’t understand. Not completely. And that was okay. He was trained for this playbook, but that didn’t mean the thing was written yet. “I’m not sure yet,” he muttered. Too many things had to fall into place—starting with getting Sam back on the horn and lining up air transportation in an “invisible” plane or two.

  Yeah. He’d seriously gone there. Conjured that image, fueled by the jacked adrenaline in his blood and the survival-of-the-fittest-let’s-procreate thing going on in his dick, of the female next to him clothed in Wonder Woman garb. Went right ahead and parked her hot ass in a Plexiglass plane too…in which he was the willing copilot…

  Feel like focusing on the situation that matters here, dickwad?

  “I don’t understand.” Tracy’s interjection, husky with urgency, was an odd aid for the concentration cause. If he had to hone on something besides fantasies of her body in red, white, and blue spandex, her near-bedroom voice was a damn good alternative. “I—I really don’t understand.” Clearly, she said it to convince herself as much as him. “I mean, if Craig is—”

  “Dead.” Franz supplied it as gently but firmly as he could. “He’s dead, Tracy. Start saying it, because you have to start accepting it.” Hypocrite. He could barely wrap his own mind around the horror—manifested by the adolescent visions of Tracy Rhodes as a daughter of Zeus.

  “Then they’re going to need me.” Her head rose. She set her lips into a purposeful line.

  He braced her jaw in the V between his thumb and forefinger. “They’re doing all right so far.”

  “Because they have to.” Her eyes sizzled with silver fire. “Because they think I’m dead too!”

  “Which is our biggest advantage right now.”

  “Our…advantage?” She pushed his hand away. “The country needs guidance—”

  “Which they’re getting from Speaker of the House LeGrange.”

  “That’s your idea of an advantage?”

  There was the official buzzkill for the spandex dream. The woman’s code name was Tigress, for a number of reasons—including what had to be a killer political pounce. She wasn’t the youngest vice president in the history of the country because she’d written nice things in everyone’s yearbook and brought the best brownies to the prom decoration party. Clearly, she was chomping to get back to the Hill, especially at a time like now. Political legacies—hell, a permanent place in world history books—were established at moments like this.

  The conclusion hit his gut like a rotted fish.

  He pushed back, to the other end of the seat. “The advantage here is called staying alive,” he gritted. “Excuse me if that messes with your plans for grandeur, Mrs. Rhodes.”

  She had the grace to frown, apparently confused, before a veneer took over her face, hardening everything but her eyes. In those gray worlds, lagoons of hurt still lived. Or so she wanted him to believe. The hard gulp she tossed in was sure a convincing touch.

  “Because whoever just tried to blow me up…might attempt it again.”

  Shep covered the honors of getting a response into the air. “Smart lady.”

  She grimaced, though John had trouble interpreting the look. Was she pissed, chagrined, frustrated? “You think they’d really try? Even now?”

  John grunted. “Especially now.”

  She flashed a new scowl. Correction. A full glower. But the pained glint in her eyes flashed doubly as brilliant. “Your paranoia is duly noted, Captain.”

  The stab emulated its razor of tone. Quick, clean, and slicing deep—at least enough to keep him from retorting something just as glib. Damn it. He’d always been the king of the one-line comebacks. Not now. Not when the only way he could think of conquering this woman was by conquering her—

  By bending her over his knee.

  Yanking up her prim skirt.

  Getting his hand on her full, plump bottom. Soundly. Repetitively.

  “Paranoia.” Thank fuck Shep’s sarcasm was still in working order. “Ohhhh man. Where you going to start with that, Franzen?”

  Took him all of three seconds to go with the set-up. Another three, weighted and determined, to slant a steady scrutiny across the car. “No place to start. We’re already at the end.”

  The woman in his sights arched both chestnut brows. “The end?” she drawled. “What; as in ‘happily ever after’?”

  He hitched a shoulder. “If that’s what you prefer.”

  She shrugged too—though the sentiment was only casual on the outside. Her gaze was now dark as thunder clouds. “You saying I still get a choice?”

  He rocked his head. The statement, and its underlying anger, were legit. In the space of half an hour, her world had been blown apart on every fathomable level. It was a fair question, deserving an honest answer.

  “No. You pretty much don’t.”

  Even if that honesty was fucking shitty.

  “And you don’t have a choice either, I take it?” she finally snapped. “Because you’re just following orders, right? You’re just here to save my precious little life?”

  Once more, frustration to which she was rightfully entitled—though delivered with such an edge of brat, he wondered yet again about the cat turd. Or if her adrenaline was starting to crash.

  Or if she just craved the same thing he did.

  Her. Over his knee. Counting out the swats until her ass was pink and her mind was mush…

  But at this rate, he was going to beat her to the mush department.

  Not. Acceptable.

  So he took command back in the only way that made sense. Swiftly. Forcefully. Pushed back across the gap until he had her by the nape again. Locked her face just inches beneath his. The soft snort from the front seat was all the approval he needed from Shep on the action. The woman in his hold clearly didn’t agree. Her mouth popped open. Resistance stiffened her body. Franz didn’t relent his grip. He didn’t care if she was pissed anymore. She’d pulled the brat card. She was going to get brat treatment.

  “I’m not here to save your little life, kitten.” Departing from the fantasies that’d birthed the nickname, he deliberately ground it out. “I’m here to keep the new president of my country alive. And oh yeah…her son too.”

  In a rush, the fight drained from her body.

  In a flood, guilt crashed through Franzen.

  Yeah, he’d gone there too. Played the Luke card. Aside from tying her down and making her listen—not an option right now, despite how certain parts of his anatomy screamed for it—this was his best and last resort. Something had to get through her gorgeous but thick skull. To get her past the shock of everything that had just happened and cycling through the processing stages as fast as possible. Mentally healthy? Fuck no. Completely necessary? That would be a hell fucking yes—for which he’d logged the years of real-life experience as justification.

  He just always forgot how much he hated this part.

  Especially when the danger was so goddamn real.

  That the bad, bad fuckers who rigged that explosion at the villa were still out there somewhere. No. Out here somewhere—ready to slap that huge target on her back before blinking again. Their reasons? Not important to him. Not yet.

  Their intention, deadly and powerful and still in play, did.

  So he hit the Tigress where it hurt the worst.

  Didn’t mean he had to like it. Didn’t mean, with her sharp huffs hitting his lips, he didn’t d
ream about her actually begging him for pain. Didn’t mean he breathed in her soft scent and didn’t imagine its difference with the arousal from her pussy blended in. Didn’t mean he locked gazes with her and avoided thinking how magical those gray depths would be, wrapped in a subspace fog.

  It only meant one thing. That he made her get to one end result.

  Her resigned rush of surrender. Before she finally muttered, “Fine, damn it. You win. Take me away to Neverland, Captain Hook.”

  For a long second, disguising it beneath the mode of double-checking her sincerity, he kept watching her. In truth, he just enjoyed watching her fume. Probably too damn much. But as she’d just said, he was the captain now.

  Finally, the captain countered in a drawl, “Neverland?”

  Shep cut in with a snort. “I liked the Captain Hook part better.”

  Franz shrugged without turning his head. “Fine. That just makes you Smee.”

  “Wait. Huh?”

  The woman beneath him burst with a small laugh. Franz watched her, captivated. For one moment, as if fate really had dumped pixie dust on them, Tracy Rhodes became simply the same woman with whom he’d first clasped hands, locked gazes, and shared enough electricity to light all Sin City just an hour ago. The same perfect connection clicked. Once more she lifted that adorable little grin, as if to call complete bullshit on his he-man swagger.

  Feisty little Wendy. Perfect little challenge. Beautiful little brat.

  “You have a problem with Neverland, Captain?”

  John slanted his head forward. Then a little more, until his forehead almost pressed against hers. He could almost hear her heart pounding. Or was that his? Or did it matter? Not with the comeback he yearned to give her.

  “Not sure you can handle my idea of Neverland, popoki.”

  The challenge he went ahead and whispered.

  The dare she went ahead and took him up on, working a hand around the blades of his tie and then pulling…until he came close enough their skin did touch…

  “Second star to the right, Captain. Then straight on till morning.”

  He swallowed. Hard.

  Pushed back once again. This time, by inches.

  Excruciating ones.

  Somewhere in the gray matter he was hopefully still calling a brain, his comm line crackled again.

  “Braw Boy to Dragon,” demanded a thick Scottish accent. “What’s going on? Who the hell’s calling the ball on this circus now?”

  With a tight groan, making the brat-kitten next to him softly giggle, he straightened in the seat and then spoke into his wrist. Yeah, the one still pounding with his pulse rate. “You’re talking to him,” he barked. “But I’m going to need your help, man. In some big ways.”

  “Go big or go home, Franz. Ask away.”

  Be careful what you offer. But John knew better to add it aloud. Sam Mackenna was the kind of friend who’d sprawl across railroad tracks for a friend. This plan wouldn’t come to that—hopefully.

  Which meant it was time to set the gears in motion.

  To do what his government had trained him best for.

  And in doing so, to protect the most valuable asset of his life.

  “The circus is hitting the friendly skies,” he said to Mackenna. “And we’re taking the Tigress completely dark.”

  “Well.” Sam inserted a rough chuckle. “Guess you did come to the right source.”

  “I’ve been known to do that from time to time.”

  He took heart in that truth—and in the instinct he was going to have to trust again, despite everything his own government had done to discredit it—and most of all, despite the alligator of self-doubt still snapping at his gut, an alarm clock gleaming in its gullet with every greedy new bite.

  Tick…

  Tock…

  Chapter Five

  Tick.

  Tock.

  Tracy had always had a love-hate relationship with time.

  As a teenager, it had been her worst enemy, pushing back against the plans she’d carefully laid for her grown-up life. But after early high school graduation and an accelerated pace through college, it became her biggest ally—especially after meeting Ryker. She’d begged time to stop, for as many days and nights in the man’s arms she could get. For a few years, time had really listened…

  Until the phone call from Iraq that had proved the extent of the bastard’s true evil.

  Throughout it all, she’d never not been conscious of time. Nor, especially for the last few years, not cared about it.

  Until now.

  She dragged a hand through her mussed hair, lifting from a bed piled with pillows and blankets. It was centered in a cozy bedroom with polished wood paneling extending halfway down the walls, where alabaster wainscoting took over. The theme of European-style elegance continued in a cherrywood armoire with mother-of-pearl insets, leading her gaze toward a sunken sitting area with a Victorian-influenced fireplace. Natural logs burned on the grate, their warm light flickering over matched furniture with modern lines, two chairs and one love seat, upholstered in burgundy velvet.

  Though the man sprawled on the love seat made the thing look more like a piece from a doll play set.

  Or a dragon sleeping on his turret.

  Just waiting for a young virginal princess to seduce…

  How she wished she could fill even one of those categories now.

  Young cooperated with her sometimes, especially after longer sessions on Capitol Hill. She was the first to admit she didn’t know everything, but after a day trying to soak it all up from people twice her age, young was definitely how she felt.

  Virginal? No tricking anyone about that one anymore. Duh.

  Princess was the trickiest. She could pull it off if the inspiration was bad-ass, like Elsa, Leia, or Eowyn. She had to have Eowyn on the short list. Luke would have her head on a platter otherwise.

  Luke.

  Panic knifed through her belly and didn’t stop there. Her legs shot out, kicking the covers free, helping her out of the bed despite a wave of crazy dizziness. She blinked, temporarily stunned at the pink tank and sleep shorts she wore, until remembering a sweet-faced brunette offering her the ensemble after they’d gotten here last night. Nothing would’ve changed even if she was buck naked, though. Nothing else mattered when it came to her son. Especially after yesterday.

  There were three exits to the room. One obviously led to an en suite bathroom, and another, covered by vertical blinds, was obviously the portal to an outdoor space.

  Meaning she sprinted for door number three.

  She’d gotten halfway to the door, off a landing near the fireplace, when a rumbling voice halted her.

  That voice.

  “He’s safe.”

  Lava turned into words. A dark, growly crust crackling over dangerous liquid fire. Turning her body to magma. Turning her senses even hotter.

  Making her very aware of what she was wearing—well, wasn’t wearing—as she pivoted, attempting to look as graceful as a Bond girl about it.

  Who the hell was she kidding?

  Bond? She felt more like the newest clown spilling out of the funny car, especially standing higher than him. Okay, two steps’ worth, but that was enough. She wasn’t naked but might as well be, despite how the man gazed at her with nothing but patience, silence, and only slightly widened eyes. Her sights quickly adjusted to the dimness, letting her observe his own change of clothes. The dark suit was gone, replaced by black track pants and a gray, nearly painted-on T-shirt.

  Hel-lo, Mr. Bond.

  She could sure as hell dream of saying it now—though Keoni John Franzen was, without a doubt, hotter than Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Daniel Craig combined.

  “Luke,” he finally murmured, seeming to sense she needed another yank from the mental fog. “He’s safe. Sleeping in the guest room, down the hall. Sam’s with him.”

  Tracy nodded. “Of course. That’s right. Sorry.”

  As she stammered, the memories o
f their whirlwind arrival returned. Yep. Whirlwind. No exaggeration. Sam Mackenna, surely put into place by the hand of the Divine, handled their Vegas exit plan with one phone call and a lot of aviator ju-ju—resulting in their arrival at the “Whirly World Vegas” tarmac, disguised under purchases from the seedy tourist trap around the corner. With bling-covered caps, sunglasses, and neckerchiefs in place, they’d scrambled into a couple of helicopters to take them on a “sightseeing flight” to see the Grand Canyon at sunset.

  Instead, less than an hour after she, Gem, Ronnie, Luke, and their security details had “died” in the blast at Bellagio, they were all flown northwest, Shep at the stick of one helo, Sam at the other. They hadn’t stopped until the lights of the Seattle skyline twinkled below. After swooping past the distinctive spire of the Space Needle, they’d touched down atop one of the city’s tallest skyscrapers.

  “Why are you sorry?” Franzen’s query sliced into her reminiscence. But the tone wasn’t angry. It seemed more like…chastisement. The protective masculine kind. Or maybe that was her senses reacting…from a place of everything inside that was purely woman and feminine…hell, perhaps even a real princess. One who could think of wearing satin and silk instead of body plates and chain mail all the time.

  On that ridiculous note—back to the situation at hand.

  “To start with,” she retorted, jerking up her chin, “how about the fact that I forgot where my own son was?”

  “For two seconds,” he countered. “Gasp. Someone revoke the woman’s mom card.”

  There went another chunk of her body armor. Through the chink, she let a little laugh spurt. “Sorry. Think I left the mom card in my other purse.”

  He notched his head to the side, nicking his tongue to the back of his teeth for a sexy little tsk. “Damn. I hate it when I leave shit in my other purses.”

  Another laugh. She couldn’t help it. “Do that a lot, hmm?”

  “It’s a problem.” He pushed to his feet, though once more his movements were so fluid, she looked for the hidden cables helping him out. The man had to be using one of those cable systems they used for sci-fi movie stunts. “Between them all, I must have a dozen fro-yo punch cards with only one hole.”