The kid’s lip and brow curved into a whatever sneer. “Yeah, right.”
Günter pulled back his jacket and wiped the disrespect right off Chad’s face with a glimpse of his sidearm.
“Um. Yeah. All right.” The kid backpedaled. “What d’ya want? Want me to leave her alone?”
“That depends on whether you want me to leave you alone,” Günter answered, letting the jacket fall so he could take a sip of his whiskey.
He’d never seen anyone make it through a Friday night crowd so fast. Günter was still chuckling to himself when he turned around to find Jenny. Standing on tiptoe, she scanned the bar for her conquest until she realized she’d been ditched and the hopeful smile turned tremulous.
He saw the moment her internal monologue started—probably something daft about being unattractive—and the change in her expression just about killed him. For the second time that evening he approached her before he thought about his actions.
“You’re too good for him,” Günter said in her ear and she whipped around to face him.
At least the color returned to her cheeks.
“Did you chase him away?” she asked. “I thought I saw you talking to him.”
Answering that question was liable to get him into more trouble than even he could handle.
“I think he’d had one too many.”
Willing to believe the lie, Jenny nodded, but muttered to herself, “I’m going to die a virgin.”
Günter read her lips and braced himself against a possessive surge of lust that unfurled his cock so fast he saw faint black spots. “What’s wrong with that?”
Mortified, Jenny groaned, but she was tipsy enough to talk. “I’m the only girl in my dorm who doesn’t have regular sex. Or any sex.”
“Sounds to me like you live in a brothel,” Günter replied and expected a slap that never came.
Instead Jenny blinked up at him and started to giggle. The titter turned into a full-blown belly laugh. When she caught her breath she replied, gasping, “Yeah. I do. A total brothel.”
Günter smiled, and her expression darkened though the light never left her eyes.
“You’re really sexy,” she breathed. “I’d rather sleep with you than Chad any day.”
His stomach somersaulted in response to the sucker punch she drove to his dwindling reserves. Then he remembered she was drunk. Even if she wasn’t Jenny Ainsley, it was out of the question for him to take advantage of a woman who swayed on her feet the way she did right now. He needed to get her into a cab and back to her dorm. Eyeing the bar, he saw he’d never get her across the room without alerting her to his intentions.
“Would you like to dance?” he asked as a popular, yet slower tune came over the sound system.
She nodded and he pulled her around the pole to the dance floor. She stumbled and he caught her.
She frowned and he could see her assessing her inebriated state for the first time. “I think I had too much.”
He folded her in his arms, telling himself his actions had nothing to do with how she made him feel and everything to do with holding her upright. “You’ll be all right,” he said in her ear and she shivered against him.
The deejay drew out the song, remixing it with a thumping backbeat that mimicked Günter’s cock as it pulsed against his jeans. Just watching her walk to class made him hard. This—holding her, feeling her breasts pressed against him, the sway of her bottom just below his palms at the small of her back—would kill him.
As they danced he remained aware of his plan to move them closer and closer to the door. The words to the sultry tune whispered through his brain. Tonight, in his dreams, he didn’t have to imagine her looking up at him, pouting her candy-pink lips in invitation at the song’s suggestion—kiss me—because this time, in this dream, that’s exactly what she did.
His subconscious mind crossed the line his conscious self had drawn in the sand that long-ago night. Arms tightening, he drew her up along his front and moaned into her mouth. Her answering mewl had him imagining an accompanying gush of wetness between her thighs and his legs trembled with the effort to hold them both upright.
To hell with propriety. To hell with his job. This woman was his and he was going to take her right here. Right now. The dance floor melted away. The crowd disappeared. All that remained was the support pole in the middle of the floor.
Slipping his hands under her minidress, he palmed her backside and lifted her until she rested against the steel beam. The feel of her heated cheeks, bare around her thong, had him gasping out her name as she bucked against him.
“Careful, love,” he said, afraid he’d drop her as he fumbled with his fly.
Then the heat of her pussy lips cradled his cock. As slick as he’d hoped, as warm as he’d dreamed, she slid against him in a rhythmic motion that had him forgetting all about careful. Poised on the tip of his cock she paused to look in his eyes.
“We’ve received clearance to land at Kidlington,” she said in Simon’s voice.
“Shh,” Günter said, seriously disturbed at his second’s voice coming out of Jenny’s mouth.
“Wake up,” she said, again in Simon’s American drone.
Günter groaned, not wanting the moment to end, but it was too late. Jenny melted away. He was awake. He rolled over and opened one eye. God, he hoped he hadn’t been moaning in his sleep. His briefs felt sticky and he nearly blushed. He hadn’t had a wet dream like that since his early twenties.
He cleared his throat. “Are they ready for us?”
“Appears so.” Simon eyed him over the rim of his glasses. “You okay?”
Rolling to a sitting position, Günter felt as if the plane mimicked his motion. “I’m getting too old for this,” he said.
Time was he could survive on two hours of sleep in seventy-two. Now after four in forty-eight he felt as if he’d been kicked in the head. “Get me a water?” he asked.
“Sure.” Simon grabbed a bottle from the mini-fridge and tossed it to Günter who caught it neatly.
At least his reflexes weren’t going yet. He stretched and grimaced at a twinge from a blooming bruise along his ribs. Speaking of reflexes… “Is she up yet?”
“Sleeping like the dead. You could probably get her into that body bag now if you want.”
“Save the comedy routine for amateur hour and go wake her up.”
Simon shook his head emphatically. “Oh no. No way. I saw that kick she landed on you. I’m not going to be the first thing she sees when she remembers we practically kidnapped her.”
“Sissy,” Günter said on a jaw-popping yawn.
When he entered the sleeping cabin he stopped short. Jenny, sprawled over the bed, had kicked off the covers. He cursed his impulse to strip her down to her bra and panties earlier for her comfort. Now white satin with pink lace trim flirted with her exposed backside in blatant temptation, reminding him that no good deed ever went unpunished.
The peach-soft skin of her buttocks beckoned and he found his hand hovering over the curve of one cheek. He closed his eyes, remembering the dream. Heat radiated from her, crossing the infinitesimal distance to warm his palm. His cock, already half hard, hungrily stole blood from his still-fuzzy brain.
As if in response, Jenny shifted, lifting her ass into his waiting palm and sighed. Günter snatched his hand away to adjust the room in his jeans. It was the second time in less than twenty-four hours he’d had to wake his charge from a semi-clothed sleep, and he found he had lost both patience and restraint. Cracking open the water bottle he still held, he poured it in a swift line down her back.
She yelped and bolted from the bed. Before she could assume a fighting stance he threw her clothes in her face and retreated to the doorway to watch her sputter and curse from a safe distance.
“What the hell, Günter?” she shrieked. “Asshole much?”
For some unfathomable reason her wild hair and wilder temper made him smirk.
“Get dressed,” he said. “MI-5 is wa
iting for us at the airport, and while your half-naked state won’t hurt our position, I don’t care to threaten to shoot anyone to keep your virginity intact this time.”
He blanched at his slip, but she didn’t seem to notice as she paled at the mention of the agents, and then colored just as quickly at his mention of her purity. He shut the door just as her shoe hit it with a thunk.
“I am not a virgin,” she shouted loud enough for the world to hear.
Günter whipped around, fists balled, and glared at the closed door.
When the hell had that happened?
“Easy there,” Simon tossed out. “There’s not enough fuel to fly back to New York to commit another homicide.”
Brushing aside crazy making thoughts he could do nothing about, he focused instead on the coming confrontation. If Ian didn’t manage to get the support they needed… Well, he had a backup plan, sort of, but nothing he’d like to have to rely on.
The dots on the landscape resolved into houses, and he could see individual automobiles winding through the bleak, winter landscape. His mind ping-ponged back to Jenny rather than contemplate myriad ways the scenario at the airport could go awry.
He wasn’t stupid. He knew very well he could fall in love with her if he let himself. Intelligent, independent, beautiful and feisty—loyal too unless he missed his guess— she exhibited all the qualities he’d come to require and appreciate in a woman, save one. Honesty. She’d lied to him. For that reason alone a relationship with her should be out of the question.
The door to the sleeping cabin opened and he watched the object of his musings walk toward him. She’d wound her hair at the back of her head and wore her jeans paired with a white long-sleeved tee. The boat-like swoop of the neckline emphasized her graceful posture, but the lack of color emphasized the pallor of her complexion. Even her normally rose-pink lips appeared bloodless. His heart gave an unaccustomed lurch at seeing Jenny so drawn.
Before he thought about what he was doing he patted the leather cushion of the seat next to him. “Sit. We’re landing,” he said.
Jenny folded herself into the seat like a child, legs tucked under her, and leaned against him. Without the barrier formed by the armrest on commercial airplanes, the warmth and softness of her entire torso pressed into his chest. Günter froze until his heart kick-started and he wound his arms around her, telling himself it was only for her protection.
“It’ll be all right,” he whispered into her hair. “We’ll begin in Oxford. Not London.”
She nodded and her body relaxed.
He’d done the right thing. Said the right thing. For a moment, or two, he allowed himself to pretend everything would work out. In England. For him. For them.
Chapter Six
“Mr. Faust.” The pilot’s voice came over the sound system. “MI-5 has ordered me to lower the door or they’ll take us by force.”
A beat of silence.
“I’m lowering the door.”
Simon cursed softly.
Günter said nothing. Remained motionless in the seat beside Jenny.
Her heart crashed repeatedly against her ribs. The hydraulic whir of the door and stairs unfolding made her dig her nails into Günter’s arm. If he noticed, he didn’t let on. She eyed the airsick bag tucked into the seat pocket in front of her, wondered if she could open it in time if she needed it.
A count of two. The clatter of booted feet on metal stairs. The solid thunk and hiss of a gas canister as it rolled into view. Surely if MI-5 didn’t kill her, a heart attack would. Fog rapidly filled the plane, and Jenny clutched a cloth Günter had given her earlier over her nose and mouth.
“Disembark with your hands in sight.” A disembodied voice issued the demand over the plane’s speakers and Jenny wondered how they’d patched into the sound system.
She hadn’t been able to see outside after Günter closed the window shades, but her imagination supplied black government SUVs, agents with guns drawn, and a body armor-sporting SWAT team.
Günter stood and helped her to her feet. She stumbled and he gave her shoulder a squeeze to stop her exit from the plane.
“Simon’ll go first. Then me,” he said, from behind his own cloth. “When it comes your turn, do as they say.”
“Shouldn’t you leave that here?” Jenny asked, her eyes drawn to his weapon. Even in the dim light, its brushed black metal shone, sinister.
“They’ll want to make a show of taking it,” he answered.
She accepted the explanation without thought as the fog began to leak under the cloth, stinging her nostrils and making her choke with its chemical stench.
Simon exited first. Jenny couldn’t see around Günter’s broad back to the stairs, but it seemed to her that it took forever before she heard shoes scuffling against the pavement as agents approached and disarmed him. The snap of metal cuffs echoed loud in the hangar.
“Christ guys, take it easy, will you?” Simon said on a grunt. “We haven’t been on opposite sides of a war in over a hundred years.”
A car door slammed and Jenny saw Günter’s back expand as he took a deep breath and coughed.
“Why couldn’t you just let me pay off Gray?” Jenny dug for answers—a way out of their predicament—even if only in retrospect.
He looked back at her, the tilt of his head emphasizing the gold streaks in his shoulder-length hair, and she curled her fingers against the impulse to brush an errant strand from the plane of his worried brow.
“Just do as they say,” he reminded her.
Her answering nod felt jerky—as if her neck could barely support the weight of her head.
Schooling his expression, Günter descended, his steps deliberate as he kept his hands high and visible. The moment he stepped onto English soil, three agents took him down like the biggest threat to national security since Napoleon. One threw him to the pavement face first while another disarmed him and a third snapped cuffs on his wrists so tightly Jenny could swear she saw bruises bloom from where she stood.
“Fuckers,” Simon swore in response to their rough handling of his boss.
Jenny’s stomach heaved at the violence. Memories, long buried, surfaced. Smaller wrists in heavy cuffs. The shuffle of tripping feet. Police ferrying her mother to a waiting car. Oxygen burned her lungs. She struggled for breath. Fought the stark images as they restored their jagged hold on the fabric of her mind.
Agents heaved Günter by the cuffs, the force seeming to wrench his arms at the sockets. One put him in a chokehold to keep him still. Another frisked him in motions designed to pummel.
Günter grunted and bowed his head. Shirt torn and a red scrape marring his nose, he looked like a hired gun brought to heel. Something in Jenny snapped to see him felled, so thoroughly humiliated.
“Stop!” Without knowing how, she reached the bottom step where one of the suited agents grabbed her. “Stop hurting him!”
She twisted, doing her best to fight the agent’s hold, but he snapped her arms up high behind her back. Cold cuffs slapped around her wrists, bringing them together with a vicious tug that buckled her knees.
A battle cry tore from Günter’s throat and he broke away. As he reached her side, a club to his ribs brought him stumbling to the ground in front of Jenny.
“Günter?” Fear bathed her tongue, choking her throat with its foul taste.
“Hush, sunshine.” Though he couldn’t touch her, she felt the implicit caress of his fingers down her cheek. “It’s all right.”
“Get up.” Someone yanked her roughly and Günter renewed his struggles.
A man with hair like night and eyes black as sin stepped from the shadows. “Leave them be,” he said.
“Thank God,” Günter breathed, the snarl falling from his face.
Jenny felt his relief. Saw it in the relaxing of his shoulders, the slowing of his breath.
“About time you showed up, Ian,” he said.
“You’re lucky I came at all.” Ian’s severe expression carved harsh l
ines in a face already impossibly stark.
Jenny’s cry of distress drowned out Günter’s reply as an agent wrenched her arm, yanking her to her feet.
“O’Rourke?” Ian’s terse bark made her captor pause. “Gently.”
O’Rourke nodded once—a terse jerk of his balding head—and propelled her toward a waiting vehicle.
Jenny slid in first. Günter and Simon entered on either side. Though her hands and arms ached, she sat back, wanting to feel the brush of the men’s shoulders. Their bulk offered both comfort and warmth. At the moment her shaking frame needed an ample helping of each.
Ian started the engine and O’Rourke took the passenger seat.
“Was all that rough-up really necessary?” Günter asked.
The agent glanced at his detainees, the width of the rearview mirror emphasizing the up-tilt of his eyes above the wide expanse of impossibly high cheekbones.
“I know, right? I still can’t feel my left testicle,” Simon said then looked at Günter. “And what’d you do? Piss on a corgi?”
“I owed him for betting against United last year,” Ian replied, the devious sparkle in his eyes saying he’d had a private joke with Günter.
“United?” Simon’s brow crinkled. “Wasn’t that an airline?”
“Manchester United,” Günter clarified as they pulled out of the hangar.
Incredulous, Jenny listened to the odd banter. Where grim silence should have reigned, a lighter if slightly tense air had overtaken the vehicle. Humor hardly seemed appropriate at such a time, but no one other than she seemed to find it strange.
“That’s what you meant by Liverpool?” Simon asked Günter.
Günter nodded.
“Soccer freaks,” Simon said with a snort.
“Hey there, it’s football, ya yank,” O’Rourke chided, his apple cheeks mottling with color as he delivered the insult.
“No, football is that line drive tackle your partner flattened my boss with, not some sissy game that pretends to have balls, and I don’t mean the inflatable kind.”
Undercover Lover Page 7
