Tall, Dark and Deadly Books 1 - 4

by Lisa Renee Jones

  He stalked back to the main room and found Kara sitting up, her knees curled to her chest. “Why after you insisted I come here do I feel like you now want me to leave?” she demanded.

  Blake snatched up his jeans and started to tug them on. “I don’t fucking want you to leave.”

  “You aren’t very convincing,” she snapped back. “And you say ‘fuck’ and ‘fucking’ a lot.”

  Blake’s hands settled on his hips. “You have a problem with the word ‘fuck’?”

  “You use it in every other sentence.”

  “So I’ve been told.” By his brother Royce’s wife, Lauren, who was one of the only women he knew who came off sweet and still fought like a tigress. Until Kara. And he liked it. He liked it a little too much. His cock thickened. Apparently, it did too.

  “But you don’t care enough to stop,” Kara commented.

  “It’s not that I don’t care.” Blake ran a rough hand through his hair, and he forced his shoulders to relax on a breath. “It’s a habit. I picked it up from a client I worked for.” He sauntered to the desk chair and sat down, trying not to think about Kara spread wide on the desk. He failed and adjusted his jeans. “Someone would say ‘Good morning’ and he’d reply with something like ‘Good morning and fuck you. Now where is product I ordered?” Kara’s eyes went wide and Blake grinned. “Or there was this time he took a bite of his food in a restaurant and dropped his fork in distaste and grumbled ‘fuck’, then glared at the people walking in the door and told them to ‘run for their fucking lives’.”

  Kara laughed, a soft, feminine note that did funny things to his insides. “He sounds both horrible and entertaining.”

  “He was a jerk but a damn entertaining and efficient one, too. He did his job.”

  “Which was what?”

  “Security.”

  “Sounds like he might need some protection of his own.”

  Their eyes locked and held and the air thickened instantly. His muscles bunched, tension rippling through him. If anyone needed protection, it was him from this woman. For now, he’d settle for a distraction. He reached for the phone. “You hungry? I’m ordering pizza. You can go over the restaurant staff with me while we eat.”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “I’m hungry.”

  The air crackled and damn if he wasn’t ready to say “fuck the pizza” and go with her instead. He arched a brow. “For pizza?”

  “Pizza. Yes. Cheese.” His lips hinted at a smile that said she knew what he was thinking.

  “Cheese. Somehow I thought you’d be more complicated than that.”

  “Sometimes the answers are simple.”

  Blake snorted. “Rarely.”

  “I didn’t say easy. I said simple. There’s a difference.”

  “Touché,” he murmured, releasing a heavy breath on the word. After all, what he wanted was pretty cut and dry, pretty damn simple. Find the enemy. Kill the enemy. And damn it, to save Kara, which should not be on the list. And save her from what anyway? Mendez? Richter? Herself?

  Blake scrubbed his jaw and turned away from her, reaching for the phone, and hesitating. Kyle was right. She could be undercover with an agency and he could get her killed if he wasn’t careful. Considering the last woman he’d tried to save had ended up dead, maybe he needed to just get the hell away from her. But he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

  Fuckfuckfuck and add about a thousand more “fucks”, because not only was he entangled with this woman, and on dangerous ground, he knew he was going to try to stop saying “fuck” because she wanted him to. He cared what bothered her. He hadn’t let himself give a damn what anyone thought in a long while and he didn’t want to give a damn now. But he did.

  Oh yeah. He was fucked up where this woman was concerned. He might as well order the pizza and stop wasting time trying to convince himself he wasn’t.

  Then he’d “fuck” her again and hope she didn’t do him “Denver style” afterwards.

  Chapter Eight

  When Kara heard Blake order four pizzas, her blood ran cold at what seemed the certainty that guests were coming. She wasn’t waiting around to be dessert for a bunch of Blake’s crew, who surely he’d called to San Francisco. What had she been thinking to come here alone? And why did she keep thinking that sleeping with a monster was anything but sleeping with a monster? He was one of them. She hated them.

  Kara waited until Blake turned his head to try to locate the address for the delivery order and she scrambled across the bed and snatched up his shirt (since he’d destroyed the buttons on hers, damn him) and tugged it over her head. Next, she darted for her skirt halfway across the room. She silently cursed when she heard him hang up the phone and adrenaline raced through her with the urgency to dress. A second before she’d been about to claim her garment, his hand shackled her wrist.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded as they both straightened.

  “I’m not your crew’s chew toy, Blake. I know you think I’m some sort of whore, but I’m not. I’m—”

  “What? What in the hell are you talking about, Kara? Chew toy? My crew?”

  “You heard me. I’m not a toy for you and your crew to pass around. I don’t care what Mendez told you. I’m not. Let me get dressed and either treat me with respect and let me help you do your job or I’m leaving.”

  “Wait.” He shook his head, looking truly baffled. “You think I have people coming here and I plan to let them use you however they please?” He glanced at the phone and back at her. “How did me ordering pizza turn into this?”

  “Don’t play naive. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “Sweetheart, I wasn’t even naive the day my mama popped me out and the doc slapped my ass. But apparently I do need the just-born-yesterday version of where this assumption came from because not only is no one else coming over. I’m not big on sharing.”

  Kara drew back to study him closer, taking in the strong lines of his masculine face, the openness of his normally shielded dark eyes. He really seemed sincere in his claim. “But you ordered four pizzas.”

  “Well, yeah. Of course I did. There are two of us.”

  “I won’t eat two pizzas.”

  “One for you and two for me. Then an extra for breakfast.”

  Her brows dipped. “You can eat that much pizza?”

  “I like pizza.” Amusement danced in his dark eyes. “So…you assumed I was bringing in ‘the crew’ because of the pizza I ordered?”

  She blinked. “Well, I—”

  “Overreacted,” he finished, pulling her close, his strong arms wrapping around her and his long dark hair tickling her cheek, and her senses right along with it.

  “If you’re telling the truth,” Kara bargained, trying to ignore the slow spread of heat through her limbs, “prove it and let me get dressed.”

  “I like you better naked.”

  She ground her teeth and tried to push away from him. He held her easily. “No one is coming but you aren’t getting dress. You drugged me, Kara. I’m not giving you a chance to do it again.”

  “I can’t be naked every time we’re together, Blake.”

  “Every time we’re alone suits me just fine.”

  She ignored the erotically charged reply that only made her more aware of his broad, well-muscled, bare chest. “How are we going to work together if you don’t trust me?”

  “And you trust me?” he challenged.

  “No, I don’t trust you. Why would I?”

  “Exactly. No one trusts each other in this world.” He surprised her, sliding his hand under her hair and pulling her mouth to his. She surprised herself by not even trying to shove away. The feel of his hard body next to hers, his powerful arms holding her, was just too overwhelmingly right, even when it should be wrong.

  His lips brushed hers, tongue teasing hers in a feather-light touch that left her trembling with need. “Taste that?” he murmured, his breath a soft, hot whisper teasing her lips with the promise of another kiss she
desperately wanted. “Taste how much we want each other?”

  “Yes,” she whispered before she could stop herself, but then it wasn’t like he didn’t know she’d just melted into him, that he possessed the power to easily seduce her.

  “And how easily,” he continued, “we escape the distrust between us when we’re touching each other?” The words lingered in the air, the crackle of desire between them nearly combustible. He was right. At this moment, she could forget everything but him. She could get lost and…and just like that, he released her, stepped back from her, denying her his touch.

  “Our hot encounters, Kara, are the closest thing to trust you’ll get in this life, and with someone else, they might get you killed. They make you drop your guard like you did to me in Denver. Get out while you can, Kara. My offer still stands to help you do it. Mendez will never know. I can make you disappear and whatever problem you are trying to deal with by working for him.”

  An offer to be his kept woman shouldn’t make her stomach flip-flop, but it did. In some demented and odd way it called forward her long-dead schoolgirl Prince Charming fantasies. Only in those fantasies, Prince Charming hadn’t been a criminal. It was a sobering thought that snapped her back to reality. “No,” she whispered. “That’s just another way of being on someone’s payroll. I’m not interested.”

  “I’m offering to get you out, not keep you in with me. Cash, living comfortably, and anything else you need, for as long as you need it.”

  Baffled, she stared at him. “Why would you want to help me? You barely even know me. And I didn’t think…”— she stopped herself from saying “men like you”—“…just why?”

  Shadows danced deep in his brown eyes, the same tormented kind she’d seen that night in Denver. “You aren’t lost yet.” His voice was a rasp of sandpaper. “Not like me.”

  Her mind replayed something she’d said to him back in Denver. If I can be saved, then so can you. He’d replied We aren’t even in the same universe. Believe me. I’m lost. You can still be found. Emotion welled in her chest with the certainty of some deep pain haunting this man. She was right. There was more to Blake than met the eye.

  But could she be saved? It depended on how this mission ended. It depended on what it forced her to do. And she’d do anything, absolutely anything to get what she’d come for. “You don’t know me well enough to know that.”

  “I know. I know because I still see hope in your eyes.”

  It was all she could do to not press her fist to the ache in her belly his words created. She did have hope. It was small but it was real, and she was desperate to discover it was for good reason. But that hope had everything to do with why she couldn’t walk away.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” she said, fighting the tightness in her throat. “I’ll let you save me the day you let me save you.”

  “I told you, Kara, I can’t be saved. I’ve made my choices. I have my reasons for staying my course. I’m headed to hell and I’ve accepted that.”

  And to make this “hope” reality she knew that she was headed the same place. “Then I guess I’ll see you there.”

  His eyes narrowed, sharpened. “I find it hard to believe that a woman who’s working in a dangerous environment to take care of a sick mother would welcome a trip to hell.”

  “How do you know about my mother?”

  “I had someone inside the company files before I ever walked into the building.” And, thanks to the contract he and his brothers had with a large number of airports, he’d been able to charter Kyle to San Fran the minute he’d known his destination. “I know what your HR file, DMV, and any other public record in existence says about you. I know Richter and Mendez believe you’re doing this to pay for your mother’s medical.” He closed the distance between them, towering over her again, the heat of his body radiating into hers. “I believe that’s what you set them up to believe; otherwise you’d jump at my offer to get out.”

  “How does being in debt to someone else inside this life get me out, Blake? At the pay Mendez gives me, I only have to work here a year to leave on my own, on my terms.”

  “No one leaves Mendez on their terms. Why do you think I contract only for my clients? So they don’t own me, Kara.”

  “Mendez doesn’t own me.”

  “He does. You just don’t know it yet. Or else you know something I don’t know, and I’m leaning in that direction.” A knock sounded on the door and Kara almost jumped. “That would be our pizza,” Blake said. “Not my ‘crew’.” He reached up and gently slid her hair behind her ear, then leaned in close, his lips brushing her earlobe. “I’m not buying your life story and, one way or the other, be it you telling me, or me finding out on my own, I’m going to discover the truth.” He stepped away from her and walked toward the door.

  Kara stared after him, barely able to breathe, frozen in place. Time stood still and her mind raced. She was in so much trouble with Blake, it would take a shovel and ten men she didn’t have to dig her out.

  “Kara, can you grab the drinks?” Blake called from the door.

  Grab the drinks? That snapped her back to reality. She was in a t-shirt and nothing else. Kara scurried to peek around the corner to find the door angled so that Blake’s body blocked her from view.

  “I’m here,” she said, and he handed her two liters of soda. Kara rushed away from the view of the door as he called out, “Order some ice, will you?”

  Ice. Right. Kara set the drinks on the nightstand and headed to the desk. By the time she called downstairs, Blake was placing the pizza boxes on the bed, inspecting the contents of each. It was an odd moment to Kara, as if they were some normal couple sharing a hotel snack. And she was going along with it, as if she didn’t know he was going to discover who she was, and then she’d be dead.

  ***

  He’d slept with the enemy and now he was eating pizza with the enemy. On a bed. With her leaned against the headboard, her long, sexy legs stretched out beside his, hers crossed at the ankle. And she was wearing only his shirt. Which he liked her in a little too much.

  This wasn’t the first time Blake had slept with an enemy, or shared a meal with one for that matter. It wasn’t the first time he couldn’t keep his eyes off the enemy either. Only this time it wasn’t out of concern he might be stabbed in the back if he looked away. It was because Kara, with her long dark hair and creamy white skin, seemed to seduce him simply by being there. There was only one other woman who’d ever compelled him as she did. That he didn’t know if she was the true enemy was a problem he had to fix yesterday.

  “Cat got your tongue?” he asked, reaching for his third slice.

  “You have a lot of pizza to eat. I figured I better let you get to it but…”

  He finished off a bite and arched a brow at her hesitation. “But?”

  “I have ideas on who’s stealing from Mendez.” She placed a slice of pizza on a napkin. “I brought the data to show you. I really want to show you but it’s in my briefcase.”

  “What ideas?” He filled his glass with soda and offered her more with a lift of the bottle. “And have you told Mendez?”

  Kara held out her glass. “This person cheating him is a family member of Mendez’s. I’m not sure how he’ll take it.”

  “So you’d rather I deliver the bad news?” he asked, setting the bottle back on the nightstand.

  “Seems a smart choice to me.”

  He inclined his head in agreement. “As smart as packing a weapon which I assume you know how to use?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’d you learn to shoot?”

  “My father,” she said without hesitation but her voice soft, barely there.

  “The fisherman.”

  She rotated to her knees to face him. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what, Kara?”

  “Don’t try to figure me out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s wasted energy when I can give you what you want.”

 
Her. He wanted her. His fingers curled on into his fist. No, damn it. He wanted Alvarez and he wanted him dead. “Which is what, Kara? What do you think I want?”

  “To impress Mendez.”

  She wasn’t wrong. Mendez was his ticket to Alvarez. “Go on.”

  “It’s his nephew. He runs the shipping operation.”

  “Did you tell the former head of security?”

  “He was in on this entire theft ring.”

  “You seem certain.”

  “If you let me have my briefcase, I’ll show you why you should be, too.”

  Blake considered her a moment and pushed off the mattress, grabbing the pizza boxes and setting them on the desk before returning to the side of the bed. With his hands on his hips, he studied her. “You want your briefcase; tell me how you drugged me.”

  She hesitated, her lips thinning, but she agreed. “Fine. Yes. I’ll tell you. It wasn’t hard. The drug I used makes you pass out within ten minutes of contact with the skin.”

  Holy hell. Blake didn’t even want to think about how dangerous that could be in the wrong hands. His simple mission to kill Alvarez had just gotten as complicated as reading a map after a bottle of bourbon. “What drug?” he demanded tightly. “I need a name.”

  “I don’t know the name.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Right. We have trust issues. You’ve told me.”

  His jaw tightened. “Start with how and when you used it on me.”

  “It comes in thin white strips. You can rub them on any surface of an object or directly on the skin. Once a person touches it, the drug absorbs into the blood stream. So…you see. I was telling the truth before. I didn’t have to stay with you that night in Denver. I could have placed the drug on the folder and left right after I got to your room.”

  Their eyes locked and held, the air crackling with electricity. Blake let this fears over this new drug slide away, his need to know where she was going with this suddenly all that mattered. “And yet you didn’t leave.”