by Lara Adrian
“We can’t have that,” she murmured seductively and lay back on the bed.
Scott moved over her, settled in the vee of her legs and braced himself on his elbows and knees. With a look into her eyes, he drove into her, seating himself to the hilt. “Fuck!”
Despite the condom that normally robbed his cock of some of its sensitivity, the feeling of being inside Phoebe was intense. And he wasn’t even moving yet. He was simply lodged deep inside her, taking steadying breaths in the hope of warding off his imminent orgasm.
“You feel good,” Phoebe said, sliding her hands onto his ass and crossing her ankles behind his thighs.
“Yeah?” He dropped his head to her face and pulled her lower lip into his mouth, swiping his tongue over it. “Are you ready for more?”
“Mmm.”
“I take that as a yes.”
He pulled his hips back and withdrew almost completely from her silken sheath before slicing back into her. Like a tight glove, she enveloped him, and he began to thrust steadily. Though he wanted to keep his tempo slow, he couldn’t. His body was dictating his actions now, and he had no control any longer. Driven by the need to find release, his body took on a mind of its own. His hips worked frantically, his pelvis slamming against hers in rapid succession, his cock sliding in and out of her without pause. His movements grew wilder and faster with each passing minute.
His torso was covered in sweat, and every time their bodies came together the sound echoed from the walls, underscoring their combined moans and sighs. Heavy breathing mingled with it. With every thrust, Phoebe arched into him.
“Yes, come with me,” he encouraged her, wanting to feel her body spasm when he climaxed, knowing it would only add to his own pleasure.
“Harder! More!” she demanded.
Scott welcomed her demand. Instinctively he’d held back, not wanting to hurt her, but now that she spurred him on to take her more ferociously, he let himself go. He braced himself on his knees, gripped her hips with both hands and tilted her pelvis upward, immobilizing her. Then he plunged into her, harder this time. Faster too. Phoebe gasped, her chest heaving, but she didn’t stop him, didn’t voice a protest. Instead, her eyes locked with his, approval and desire shining back at him.
“Yes! Scott! Yes!”
He felt his balls burn and knew there was no going back now. Gritting his teeth and clenching his jaw, he drove into her, while he used his hands to pull her pelvis to him in the same movement, doubling the impact.
Phoebe moaned, then a shudder ran through her body. Before it reached him, Scott felt his semen shoot through his cock and explode from the tip. “Fuck!”
His cock kept thrusting back and forth, his hands still holding Phoebe’s hips immobile so she couldn’t escape. Though it didn’t look like she had any intention of escaping. On the contrary, she reached for his face, pulled it to her and kissed him. His movements slowed, and after what felt like an eternity, he stilled.
“That was…wow.”
Scott pressed his forehead against hers. “Yes, wow is the right word.” He rolled off her and rid himself of the condom then pulled her back into his arms. He took a few breaths and leisurely stroked her back before sliding his hand down to her behind and resting it there.
“I hadn’t expected this,” he admitted.
Phoebe lifted her head from his chest. She looked thoroughly loved, and he had to admit, he liked the look on her.
“Expected what?”
“That you’d accept my challenge.”
“Was that what it was? A challenge?” She chuckled softly. “I had the impression you wanted to shock me with your proposition.”
“And? Did I succeed?”
“I wouldn’t be here if you had.”
Scott raised an eyebrow. “Fearless, huh?”
“You don’t strike me as somebody I should fear.”
“You have no idea.” If only she knew what he’d been, who he’d worked for, the things he’d done, and the things he was capable of. But she would never find out. Because despite the incredible sex they’d had, he wasn’t going to tell her anything about himself. She was still a reporter.
“What’s with that frown on your face?”
He shook his head. “No questions, remember?”
Phoebe rolled her eyes and started to rise.
“Where are you going?”
“Where do you think I’m going? I’m leaving.”
“Why?”
“Because you can’t even tell me why you’re frowning just after we had sex.” She swung her legs out of bed. “As if you regret it already.”
Scott sighed and reached for her. “That frown had nothing to do with you.”
Phoebe rose. Scott jumped up and wrapped his arms around her from behind, pulling her against his body. He knew he should let her leave now, but he couldn’t. He didn’t want her to think badly of him.
“I don’t regret what just happened between us. I loved every second of it. You’re an amazing woman, Phoebe. It’s just, well, it’s complicated. And I can’t talk about it.”
“Complicated? What man hasn’t said that after having sex with a woman? Let me make this easy on you. I’ll leave, and you won’t have to come up with any excuses later why you want me gone.”
She was right about so many things. He would make up an excuse eventually so she would leave. And he should take the out she was presenting him with just now. But for whatever inexplicable reason, he couldn’t.
“Phoebe, please spend the night with me. Stay here.”
She turned her head, looking at him in disbelief. “You want me to stay here? What happened to it’s complicated?”
Scott brushed his knuckles over her cheek. “Forget about that. It doesn’t matter tonight. Sleep here, with me, in my bed. I love having you in my arms.”
She tilted her head back in a clear invitation, her lips parted, her lids lowered halfway.
“Thank you,” he murmured. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“How?”
“Give me a few minutes to recover, and I’ll show you.”
And a few minutes was all it would take before he was ready to make love to her again.
10
Scott raced toward the building, but his feet didn’t want to comply. The faster he ran, the farther away he seemed to find himself. As if he were running in reverse. He reached out his arms, wanting to grasp what was in front of him, but his fingers touched nothing. His lungs burned from exhaustion but he couldn’t stop, knew he had to continue, because the fate of so many people depended on him.
But he wouldn’t make it. He knew it instinctively. When he saw the six Marines carry the coffin from the cargo hold of the plane, he knew he would be too late. The American flag draped over the coffin fluttered in the breeze as the six walked stoically toward their doom.
Scott tried to scream, to warn them to take cover, to find shelter, though he knew even if they did, they couldn’t save themselves.
The explosion knocked him off his feet. The shockwave that followed slammed him against a wall. Then there were only flames and fire so hot it was coming from hell itself.
Scott felt his skin melt. The pain rendered him immobile. He couldn’t even scream, because the fire was burning away his face, until only one thought remained: the Phoenix had failed in their ultimate mission.
Phoenix down.
At the command, Scott shot up to sit. He was in his bedroom. The fiery inferno was gone and he was alive. He rubbed his hand over his face, instinctively checking that he was all right.
It was the same nightmare he’d had many times before, though he knew it wasn’t a true nightmare. It was a premonition, even though this particular one seemed to only hit him when he was asleep, while most of his other visions came over him when he was awake.
But just like the other nights he’d had this premonition, he hadn’t glimpsed enough information to allow him to figure out where and when this disaster would take place. There was no indi
cation as to the location, though the six Marines in his vision seemed to suggest the inferno would take place on U.S. soil.
Scott had no idea what was causing the explosion or how large it was, but from the shockwave he always felt hitting his body, he had to assume it was of massive proportions. Not just one building blowing up, or even one city block, but something on an even larger scale.
There was however one thing that he knew wasn’t part of the premonition: the command, which always signaled the end of the vision. Phoenix down.
He’d received it three years ago. It had come from his father and mentor, Henry Sheppard. And Scott had known immediately what it meant: the program had been compromised. The protocol for such an event had been drilled into him ever since Sheppard had started the Phoenix program.
“You hear that command, you leave everything behind, son, you hear me?” Sheppard had urged him. “Assume you’re on your own. They’ll hunt you down for what you are, for what you’re capable of. But you have to live. Do you understand that?”
Scott had nodded reluctantly. “And you? Won’t they hunt you too? You have the same skills as I do.”
Sheppard had squeezed his hand. “When you get that command, my life will already be forfeit. Don’t look for me. Assume I’m dead, because most likely I will be.”
Scott shook off the painful memories when he heard a sound next to him. He wasn’t alone, and only now he remembered that Phoebe was still in his bed. Sleeping soundly.
Quietly, not wanting to wake her, he pulled back the thin blanket and swung his legs out of bed. He reached for his shorts and put them on, then walked into the living room, easing the door to the bedroom shut soundlessly behind him.
Still shaken from the premonition, he walked to the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of water. He gulped it down and felt the refreshing liquid cool his body from the inside.
He knew he couldn’t sleep any longer. His mind was racing again, reliving every moment of his vision in the hope that he remembered something that would help him decipher the secret hiding in his premonition. So he could prevent the disaster. Because that had been the reason his father had started the top secret program within the CIA. To foresee and prevent disastrous events. Until somebody had decided that having agents who could see the future was a liability and a danger in itself. Until that somebody had killed Sheppard and thus made the members of the Phoenix program go underground.
Scott had no idea how many had made it out, how many were alive. The program had operated in such secrecy that not even Scott knew which of the agents he’d met during his training at The Farm had been selected for the Phoenix program, or which were going to enter regular CIA field work. However, he’d always sensed there were others like him and his father, others with the same skill.
“It’s better if you don’t know who the others are. It’s safer for all of you,” Sheppard had said when Scott had pressed him for more information. However, Scott had been given a list of their codenames—Fox, Ranger, Zephyr, and the like—to help with identifying his fellow Phoenix in a time of crisis, though he couldn’t put any names or faces to the codenames. After memorizing the list, Scott had destroyed it and heeded his father’s warning. “Never reveal your codename unless you find yourself in a life or death situation.”
In the living room, Scott reached for the remote and switched on the TV, setting the volume to low in order not to wake Phoebe. It was barely past five o’clock, and neither of them had gotten much sleep. Scott had found Phoebe more than just a little tempting and made love to her a third time, waking her shortly past two o’clock after she’d fallen asleep for a while. Luckily she hadn’t been upset at all about Scott robbing her of her sleep, and had been more than welcoming when he’d thrust into her as he’d spooned her. In fact, she seemed to enjoy herself even more that third time, confessing that she loved to be woken like that.
Scott smiled to himself. He’d have to remember that fact for the future. He suddenly stopped himself, shaking his head. Such thoughts were futile. He couldn’t carry on with Phoebe. A relationship was out of the question. He was still on the run, still hiding from his enemies, and there was no place in his life for a woman. It wouldn’t be fair to her. Besides, for all he knew, her motive for being with him was to get her story. He had no reason to believe she even liked him, though he had to admit that sexually they were a hundred percent compatible.
Scott glanced at the TV, the announcer’s last words having drawn his attention. The photo of a middle-aged white man was displayed in the top left corner of the screen, while the announcer spoke.
“Following a tip from a relative, Martin Lee Warren, the bus driver who abandoned a school bus on a railroad crossing in Brookfield, Cook County, yesterday afternoon, was apprehended by Chicago police in the early hours of the morning. He did not resist arrest, but police sources told us he was spouting anti-American propaganda. Sources close to the investigation confirm that Mr. Warren has a history of mental illness.”
Scott scoffed. “Sicko!” These days mental illness seemed to be a blanket excuse for committing any crime in the book.
He was about to switch the channel when the picture of the bus driver was exchanged for another picture, this one not a posed photo like the one of the driver, but one taken on the fly.
He suppressed a curse. Though the picture was only showing about three quarters of Scott’s face, he was definitely recognizable.
“One man has emerged as the hero of this tragedy, which could have resulted in as many as twenty-seven deaths, twenty-six of which were schoolchildren aged eleven,” the announcer continued. “One of the rescued children shot this photo of the rescuer who seemed to come out of nowhere. According to Debbie Finch from WYAT News, the first news team on the scene, this man left the scene of the accident before the police could question him. While he is not suspected of any involvement in the crime, he’s a person of interest who may be able to shed light on the events of yesterday. Anybody with information about this man—”
Scott switched off the TV. He’d heard enough. Though he’d been right that the news team hadn’t caught him on their camera, one of the kids had and had promptly sent the picture to the press.
This changed everything. Once his enemies—the people who’d killed his father and destroyed the Phoenix program—saw this picture, they would find him. Hell, Phoebe had found him, and she had far fewer resources at her disposal than the people who were after him. It would take them only a few hours to track him down. And kill him.
He had to leave now if he wanted to live.
~ ~ ~
He pressed the pause button, freezing the picture on the TV screen. The man whose face was currently staring at him from the screen was the hero who’d saved the twenty-six kids and the teacher.
There was something he didn’t like about the scenario. How often did it happen that a hero emerged at the eleventh hour to save the day? He grunted to himself and wiped his face with a towel, then tossed it back over the handrail of the treadmill and stopped the machine.
He could sense that the man whose face was frozen on the TV had had prior knowledge about the impending disaster. From the reports he’d seen earlier, the interview with the children this man had saved, he’d had the impression that the man who’d arrived on a motorcycle had acted very deliberately, knowing exactly what to do.
And now that he saw the picture, he knew with certainty that his hunch was correct. The man looked familiar, and he realized now where he’d seen him before.
He stepped off the treadmill and marched up the stairs to his home office. His computer was already on. He logged in, navigated to the file he kept on his desktop for easy access and opened it. He didn’t have to scroll long until he found what he was looking for.
The man in the picture was a little younger, but it was clearly the same one as on the TV. Beneath it, his information was displayed.
Name: Scott Thompson
Codename: Ace
Not
es: First to enter the Phoenix program. Adoptive son of Henry Sheppard, director and founder of the Phoenix program.
Special skills: Premonitions/ESP
Status: Program terminated
Current location: Unknown
Not anymore. He grinned and saw his own face reflected in the monitor.
“Gotcha.”
11
Music drifted to her ears. Phoebe stirred, her entire body aching pleasantly from the activities of the previous night. Scott had been more than she’d expected. She felt a little pang of guilt emerge, because she’d planned on using her female wiles to get him to tell her his story. But the moment he’d kissed her she’d forgotten all about the story and why she’d looked for him. Suddenly nothing had mattered other than the pleasure they could give each other. In the end she hadn’t slept with him to get his story, but because she felt drawn to him like a moth to the light.
She’d never met a man with such magnetic sex appeal, and despite the fact that she knew nothing about him other than that he was possibly hiding from something or someone, she had thrown caution to the wind and let herself go in his arms. The reward had been well worth it—many times well worth it.
She sighed contentedly and rolled over, her hand already reaching for him. With a start she sat up. Scott wasn’t in bed anymore.
She listened for any sounds in the apartment, but heard nothing except the radio on the bedside table. Curious, she got out of bed and snatched a T-shirt that lay on a chair. It was long enough to cover her to mid-thigh, and it smelled of Scott.
Barefoot, she walked into the living room. “Scott?”
But there was no response. Only silence. He wasn’t in the living room, nor in the attached open plan kitchen. The door to the bathroom was open, and it was empty too.
Had he gone to buy breakfast and bring it back? She walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. There was milk and a container of ground coffee. Other than that it was empty. The cupboards didn’t yield much more either: some crackers and jam. Nothing fresh to speak of. She’d seen more food in a vacation rental than in Scott’s kitchen. Almost as if he didn’t really live here.
