by Angel Payne
There weren’t any ropes here—of any kind.
It was best to keep it that way.
But damn it, the man once more shocked the hell out of her. Instead of the tension she anticipated from him, Burnett presented a picture of gorgeous confidence, beaming a subtle smirk while leaning back, and crossed his arms. “Report card? Is that so? Well, then…where do I hit on the bell curve, Miss Chestain?” His tongue swept his lower lip, slow and alluring. “I hope I brought enough apples for extra credit.”
Despite everything that screamed uncomfortable about this moment, Zoe giggled. “You blew the curve up before the apples made it to the desk, Burnett, and you know it. Now kiss me and go to…wherever you need to be going.” She pretended preoccupation with her cell as she finished that but gasped as he pulled the device from her hold. “What the hell? Shane? What’re you—?”
She froze when she heard her name being yelled from the device—by Ryder.
“You did not,” she gasped. “Shane! Give me the—”
He easily held her back with one arm. “Good evening. Is this Ryder? Excellent. Name’s Shane Burnett. How are you, man?” He glanced to her, sliding half a smile that threatened to melt her so totally, his physical blockade wouldn’t be necessary. “No, no. She’s fine. She’s right here. I’ll hand you over in a second. But she’s mentioned you two having a little chitchat and that doing so might keep her up until dawn. As you know, the woman has a high-profile performance tomorrow, and my concern is for her health.” He paused, listened, and then nodded. “Glad you agree. I know you’ll do the right thing and let her get some rest so I don’t have to do anything like use the number I’ve stored for her in my phone for a three a.m. emergency break-in on the call…or even track down your number or anything. Thanks. Know I can count on you, man.”
Zoe’s jaw dropped. She managed to close it again as he handed the phone back over, though her lips parted as he bent once more to settle a perfect, soft kiss on them. When he pulled up, she shook her head, not even trying to hide her bewilderment.
“I don’t know whether to say thank you or fuck you.”
Shane gave her a little frown. Didn’t seem as if he had the answer, either. He only kept his gaze on her, permeating and unwavering, fading the room—and then the rest of the world—behind its golden intensity. “If you did either, I’d probably be a lost man again,” he whispered. “Or perhaps I’d be found… A scarier idea.”
Zoe swallowed. And longed to say so much. And couldn’t think of a damn thing to utter. What the hell had he meant? Lost and found? Being afraid? Worst of all, why did he snare the very center of her gut with every syllable, tying her more tightly to him, when…
When he knew what he was going to do in the very next minute.
Without another word, he straightened, grabbed his jacket, and left on steady, silent steps.
In the ensuing silence, the air vent kicked on. Someone slammed a door up the hall. A fire truck siren blared in the street below.
Zoe barely registered any of it.
Only the incessant thrum of her heartbeat made any sense.
The pounding grew louder in her brain and harder in her blood. It pulled her to her feet like some primitive tribal guidance system, drawing her toward the door he’d just closed with such quiet finality. She reached for the knob, a smile of hope brimming. He was there, just on the other side. She could feel him…could almost hear his soft grunt of deliberation as he wondered whether to knock again.
She’d handle the choice for him.
As a precaution, she looked through the peephole, just to be sure she didn’t catch him leaning on the door and accidentally topple his balance.
The hall was empty.
Her heart sank to her stomach. She pushed a hand against the emptiness where it once lay. Curled it into a shaking fist.
“Zo? Zo? You still there?”
She blinked. Ryder. How had he gotten here? She glanced down. Mierda, he was in the phone. The one still in her hand.
She lifted the receiver to her ear as Ry muttered something about refusing to listen as she and Shane got their kink on again. “I’m here,” she snapped. “Don’t have a kitten. I’m here.”
And Shane’s not.
There was a definitive silence from Ry’s end. At last, her friend gasped. “Oh. My. God.”
“What?”
“He rocked your world, didn’t he?” One-person applause filled the line before a loud clunk. “Damn. Sorry. Got so excited, I dropped the phone. Maybe I’ll drop it again just to prove the point. Hell, Zo. Tell me everything. Don’t stop until you get to the part where he ordered me to make sure you sleep tonight. But do it fast before he emergency jams our asses.”
Zoe sighed. Words collided, clamoring to get out, along with a part of her that never had the chance to be a fifteen-year-old, giggling over the phone to a friend about an awesome date. She reached deep for that girl now, beseeching her to come out and tell Ry about the most incredible night of her life…
With a man who didn’t want to play lost or found with her.
She fought to hold back tears, which only turned them into sobs. Are you really going to do this, Zo? Because it’s weak and absurd and really pathetic.
Ryder’s comforting tone worsened the ordeal. He only used it when he knew, through the special sorcery of best friends, that she really needed it.
Shut up, Ry. Please, just shut up.
“I have to go,” she finally blubbered. “I can’t do this.”
“Okay.” Damn him for not even hinting at a demand for explanation. “We’ll do ’tinis when you get back.” When she only filled the line with a slew of snot-filled snorts, he pressed, “Hey, Zo?”
“What?” she finally snapped.
“It’s going to be okay, hot stuff.”
But after she managed a goodbye, she bowed her head and shook it, knowing otherwise. “Okay” wasn’t the word someone used when fate had handed them fireworks so good the explosions could likely be seen in space, only to let the show fizzle away without a fight. “Okay” wasn’t what she’d be for a long while to come.
* * *
The conclusion clung to her like a damn fungus even as she boarded the plane for home the next morning. Thank God her oversized sunglasses and fedora lent her privacy as Brynn settled next to her.
Or not.
“Damn.” The woman giggled, even in the midst of her hangover. “When did they change VIP to stand for Very Incredible Pecs?”
Zoe turned her head a little but didn’t take off the glasses. Her puffy eyes were really scary. “What are you talking about?”
Brynn frowned. “Are those shades hiding your new blindness, missy? Please tell me you didn’t miss the hunk buffet in the front seats.”
“I was busy making sure you didn’t trip down the aisle.”
“Not a valid excuse, Chestain. Their biceps needed seats of their own—and there were at least four of them. One even looked like your type.”
The comment was an unintentional stab. She gazed out the window at the last wisps of last night’s fog, relating completely to their sad fight against the sun. “I didn’t know I had a type.”
“Oh yeah, you do. I can’t believe you didn’t see him. Hulking. Brooding. Dark baseball cap. Darker scowl. Couldn’t make out the rest of his face. I wonder if he’s on the run or something. Wouldn’t that be sexy?”
A laugh escaped, despite the lead weights taking the place of her lungs. “You’re incorrigible.”
“I think he did look up a little when we passed, but only at you. Hmmm, Zo. You could be the Bonnie to his Clyde.”
So much for the humor. “No, I couldn’t.”
“I’ll bet on-the-run sex is way hot.”
She pulled out her new romance paperback. Time for distraction by the only Doms who made sense to care about. Fictional ones. “Not interested, Brynn.”
Her friend broke out in song. Of course. “I’m a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride—because I’m
wannnted, dead or aliiive…”
“Not interested, Brynn.”
Especially because, no matter how hard she tried, Shane was unshakable from her senses. She practically felt his eyes still riveted to her, smelled his rich forest scent on the air, and trembled from the potency of his presence.
Which was ridiculous. And more pitiful than her sob-fest from last night.
She had to get a grip. Return to reality. Now. Last night was a fantasy come true, but like a sexy stage illusion, it was over. The colored lights were off, the makeup stripped free. She had to be grateful for even receiving a goodbye from Burnett. The man clearly didn’t want threads from last night, let alone strings.
In short, her life was no different this morning than it had been twenty-four hours ago.
The logic didn’t fortify her battle against weeping all over again.
Which meant this was going to be the flight from hell.
Chapter Seven
How the hell had he booked himself a first-class seat to Satan’s front door?
Best not to dwell on the answer to that for long.
As the plane backed away from the gate, Shay allowed himself just one sliver of relief. Zoe hadn’t glanced his way once at the gate or during boarding. Too preoccupied with keeping Brynn upright, the woman had gotten no inkling he was on board. He planned on keeping it that way.
Cameron would give them the go-ahead nearly the moment the aircraft made acceptable altitude. The second they received his green light, they’d all pull on their black ski masks—could Cameron get any more cliché about this shit?—and they’d blow open the cockpit door with one of Ross’s nifty cold fusion mini-bombs. Once that happened, Ross, Nori, and Kaziro would move in, putting magic ninja squeezes on the pilots so Nori could change the jet’s course as soon as possible. Meanwhile, he and Bash would join Cameron in controlling the crowd.
Including Zoe and her troupe.
His get-out-of-stress-free card expired. He clenched his jaw so hard, his ears burned. He kneaded both armrests with white knuckles.
Bash, seated next to him, didn’t miss any of it. “Flying get you nervous, man?” he drawled. “So how’d that work out for you on all those airborne missions?”
“Fuck you.”
Damn. He wished he had the freedom to be nicer. In other circumstances, he and Bash would likely be great friends. The guy was smart. Really smart. Vigilant. Funny. A keen observer of every person he met. That was the problem. If Shay started even a casual friendship with the guy, Bash’s suspicion would instantly click in. There was no bromance in terrorism and piracy.
Bash’s chuckle, coming from the middle of a chest that likely accompanied the word “barrel” in Webster’s, wasn’t a surprise. The guy’s freak quotient needled way to the left of normal. “Relax, cupcake. We’ll be on the ground before you know it, arrived at target. Then the only thing we have to worry about are a couple of hundred hostages—though I think we may have gotten lucky in that department. Heard there are a dozen Vegas showgirls on board. You know what that means, don’t you?”
It took all of Shay’s talent at subterfuge to fake a glance that looked lascivious. “Lots of comp buffet tickets?”
The guy humored him with a snort before growling, “Flexibility, man. Bitches who can bend their body any way we command. If we find some rope at Stock’s little desert resort, we’ll have our own personal Barbies to play with. Sweet, yeah?”
Shay forced down deep breaths. It wouldn’t do him—or Zoe—any good if he lost composure now. Times like these, the art of fantasy was a damn good thing. Just thinking of landing his fist in Bash’s face went a long way toward coaxing out another smile—and abolishing his visions of ever hanging out with the guy as buddies. “What makes you think Cam’s going to allow that?”
“Sometimes you don’t ask permission, dude. Besides, it’s not like we’ll be moving the new passengers on board this thing right away. They’re experimental science freaks. Some of them are hooked up to machines and shit.”
Shay pretended to ogle the flight attendant in order to emphasize the “casual” intent of his next question. Cameron had made no secret about his passion to get a plane landed at the desert complex, which happened to be “conveniently” located somewhere near Area 51, one of the government’s most intensely guarded pieces of land. The airspace in and around the base, which hadn’t even been publicly acknowledged until last year, was still heavily restricted—as in fly-over-here-and-you’re-dead restricted. Cam was just as cagey about his reasons behind needing to get inside with an airliner in tow. His agitation about the mission was even worse today—ever since changing the mission from stealing an empty plane to a craft filled with two hundred hostages.
Because he had other people to exchange for them?
People Bash referred to as “science freaks.”
Was Mom one of those freaks now?
“Won’t Cameron need help with all that?”
Bash grunted. “Right. Like he’s going to let us touch any part of his gold pile. Those mutants are his ticket to world domination, dude.”
“And you never asked for a cut of that pie?” He pulled the safety information card from the pocket in front of him and pretended to peruse it. “You’ve been working for Stock for a long time. You don’t think you deserve it?”
Bash answered with a vehement shake of his head. “Even if I did, just don’t want it. For a long time, neither did Cam.”
“What do you mean?”
“Back in the day, he was a much more fun guy. We pulled off smaller fraud scams and made a shit ton of money, which he turned around and spent in the Hollywood scene. He had a big-ass mansion, nice pool, stocked bar…the whole nine. Was a decent director too. Actresses liked working with him, so that meant the tail was sweet and plentiful. But then he hooked up with Ephraim Lor, and the fuckery got really weird. That Lor… He was a piece of work. He was about the crazy shit, you know? He’d go on and on about how we’d become the face of history and have a legacy that would go on…” He rolled his eyes. “Christ. What a wing nut.”
Shay restrained himself from nodding in sympathy. He was intimately familiar with the chaos Lor had caused. That “wing nut” had almost destroyed every state between Mexico and Canada, as well as his brother’s sanity. Thank fuck Tait had survived Luna’s death and was moving on—though the definition of that now included his relentless search for Shay under the umbrella of the SHRC black-ops team.
“But Lor’s not around anymore, right? Didn’t he die in that whole episode at the studio?”
“Sure, but it didn’t make any difference,” Bash muttered. “I call that the beginning of the end for Cameron.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Uh-huh. When we all reconnected in Barbados after that mess, Cam was…different.”
“In what way?”
“He snapped, dude.” The guy’s lips twisted. “If I believed in whacked crap like soul-jumping and reincarnation, I’d say part of Lor leaked out and crawled its way into Cam.”
Shay was glad for a reaction he didn’t have to feign. “You’re right. That’s whacked crap.”
“I know. I know.”
“Cam is all about the money. Always was, always will be.”
“No argument there.” Bash reclined his seat, ignoring the huff from the guy in the three-piece suit behind him. “It’s just how he looks at the money now. He used to be about cars, wine, and women. Now it’s all about guns, alignments, and entertaining fat foreigners who are into some scary shit. He’s started taking insane risks. That whole episode over in Kaua'i…starting a bidding war between Iraq and North Korea for the chance to take over that estate as a forward-operating base…” He blew out harsh breath between his teeth. “These are world powers, Burnett. North Korea has nukes. Between you and me, I was glad we got made on that one.”
Shay nodded tightly. He didn’t have to pour on the acting job much for it. “Bit too heavy on the Johnny Danger ang
le for me too.”
“Right?” His consensus spurred Bash on. “What if both those assholes were playing Cam and planned on eventually uniting for their cause? We wouldn’t be sitting here, that’s for damn sure. It’d already be World War Three.”
“So what’s your take on this one?”
“I don’t have to think anything. This is my last gig, dude. I’m done with this bozo. As soon as we get paid up, I’m gonna steal a transport of some sort and then get my ass to Vegas. Got a guy there who’s going to help me change my identity and fade behind the neon signs.” He backhanded Shay’s chest. “You’re welcome to join me, Burnett. This time next week, we could be balls-deep in a lot of fun, man.”
Shay returned a convincing enough chuckle. “Doesn’t sound like a half-bad idea.”
The shitty thing was, it really didn’t. For a while, he’d at least be in the same city as Zoe. He could look after her from afar, make sure no asswipes messed with her…
“But why wait, right?” Bash drawled. “You catch my drift now?”
He frowned. “Uhhh, not exactly.”
“The dancers, Burnett. You saw them come on board, yeah?”
If he was referring to every step Zoe had taken down the aisle, then yes. “Sort of. I was running down the plan in my head, and—”
“Shit.” The guy extended the vowel, turning the word into two syllables. “You’re a real moron sometimes. Those bitches are soooo sweet.”
Shay held up both hands. “I believe you. I believe you.”
“Didn’t you say you knew a bit about rope-suspension bondage?”
He tried to hide his wince, betraying the regret he felt for shooting off his mouth during that conversation he’d used to “bond” with Bash. “I don’t remember. Honestly, my Dom days were a long time ago.” He didn’t need to pretend that one, either. It had been almost a year since he’d last had the privilege of tying a willing subbie up.
“You did, man,” Bash interjected. “So help a guy out. It’s my last mission before going off grid, right? Let’s string up a couple of these beauties. My dick is dirty, and soap on a rope sounds really damn awesome right now.”
