by Cindy Dees
“Stand by.” Abruptly the operations man was all business.
She waited in an agony of impatience. Trent had to be okay. He just had to.
“I’m tracking his cell phone and it is on the move. That doesn’t mean he’s with the device, however. He’s not answering at the moment. Protocol is to give him thirty minutes to respond before we call the police.”
“Oh, God.” Something had happened to him. She knew she shouldn’t have left him!
“Don’t worry, Miss Jordan. Trent’s one of our most experienced operatives. He can take care of himself. I’m sure he’s fine. I’ll call you back as soon as I know something.”
And in the meantime, the clock was ticking down on something being very, very wrong.
* * *
Trent leaned back, badly rattled, in the cab as it lurched in fits and starts across San Francisco’s crowded, construction-filled streets. Now why would that guy kill himself rather than let Trent question him? He’d only shouted out one question—the obvious one—to the tail as the guy ran out of room in the warehouse and crouched defensively in the corner. Who are you?
The guy had shaken his head, muttered back at him in Spanish and then reached inside his jacket.
Trent had tensed and coiled his body to jump at full speed to avoid being shot, but instead the poor bastard had jammed the barrel of the gun in his mouth and blown his own brains out. Shock had, for once, literally frozen Trent into immobility. And the mess had been incredible. His guts twisted into an awful knot. Had he not chased the guy, he’d still be alive. But the dude had definitely been following him and Chloe. He seriously hadn’t been planning to hurt the guy. He’d just wanted to know whom the tail worked for.
Trent had snapped pictures of the body from across the warehouse and hoped the resolution was high enough that the wizards at Winston Ops could do something with the images. Maybe they could identify the poor kid.
If he was lucky, he’d left no forensic evidence behind for the police to find. It wasn’t that he minded talking to the authorities, but right now he really had to get back to Chloe to check on her. If he knew her, she was losing her mind.
What kind of organization put its employees under orders to kill themselves before allowing themselves to be questioned?
He hopped out of the cab a few blocks from Chloe’s place and hoofed it the rest of the way back. No sense leaving an easy trail for anyone to follow. He paused for a moment in front of her apartment door to mentally gird himself for the next looming crisis. He’d glimpsed her cab following him earlier as he ran at full speed. He hoped the angle had been such that Chloe didn’t get a good look at just how fast he was moving, but he feared that hadn’t been the case.
He never showed civilians his true abilities. It raised too many questions with highly classified and controversial answers. The dead man’s incredulous last words echoed in his mind... “What are you? Some kind of monster?”
That was him. A twenty-first century Frankenstein monster. And on that grim note, he knocked on Chloe’s door.
“Who’s there?” a quavering voice asked through the panel.
“It’s me. Trent.”
The door flew open and a blonde, fast-moving object launched itself at him. He grunted as Chloe’s weight slammed into him, and he used her momentum to spin them through the door. He kicked it shut with his foot while Chloe wrapped her arms around his neck and all but choked him. Damn, but he was glad to see her, too. He’d hated being away from her, even for that short time.
“Miss me?” he asked wryly.
“I was so scared. And you disappeared and we couldn’t find you and I called Winston Ops and they couldn’t get a hold of you and—”
He cut her off gently. “I was worried about you, too.” He showed her how much by kissing her. And hoo baby, did she kiss him back. Recognition exploded across his brain. Here she was. The passionate, unrestrained, expressive woman had finally broken through.
Her hands moved across his chest frantically as if she were checking to make sure each and every rib was intact. Her fingers passed across his neck, his jaw, his cheekbones and through his hair.
“Really. I’m fine,” he murmured against her mouth. Warmth unfolded inside him at the depth of her concern.
“Don’t leave me again,” she begged.
“Well, okay then.” He laughed against her lips. Her hands went under his sweatshirt and she groaned in what sounded suspiciously like unbridled lust. She shoved the soft garment over his head as he guided her toward the sofa. He let her push him down onto it, amused at her urgency. She tugged at his waist, and his belt slithered free of its loops. Then her hands were on his zipper.
As much as he wanted this, he was an honorable man. He didn’t take advantage of scared, vulnerable women. He caught her wrists and asked, “Are you sure about this?”
Her answer was to yank down his jeans and throw a leg across his hips. He’d take that as a yes.
It took every bit of his nimble hand speed to divest her of her clothes while she literally crawled all over him, kissing him and nipping at his flesh until he was nearly as frantic as she. What was it about this woman that drove him completely out of his mind? Was it the contrast between the conservative, uptight accountant persona she showed the world and this private, passionate part of herself she only shared with him? Whatever it was, she lit a fire in him like no other woman had.
She impaled herself on him eagerly, and rational thought fled in a groan as pleasure ripped from his throat. He surged up into her tight heat, gripping her hips and pulling her down to meet him. She leaned back as if she were a wild creature riding an untamed bronco. And he bucked beneath her just like one as she drove him completely out of his mind.
They rolled off the couch and crashed to the floor laughing, never breaking the furious rhythm of their lovemaking, pushing each other into oblivion and beyond. Her lust unleashed was a sight to behold as her entire body flushed, straining toward him. She keened her pleasure, throbbing around him so sweetly that she flung him over the edge, as well. He rolled over, pinning her beneath him, and continued to drive into her as his body recovered without pause and demanded yet more of her.
Chloe’s eyes glazed over as she lost herself in him, shuddering again and again against him and around him until, with a shout, he joined her in spasms that rocked his entire body again.
They collapsed together in a boneless heap and let the floor’s cold slate gradually quench the fire between them. Finally, with a groan, he rolled over onto his back and drew her on top of him. With his metabolism, he was rarely cold, but she’d begun to shiver. “Better?” he asked.
“Mmm. Much.”
“Convinced I’m unharmed?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
She sounded like a contented kitten on the verge of passing out. He smiled into her hair. She did have a knack for making a man feel like the king of the world.
A faint buzzing sound from nearby interrupted their lazy relaxation, and he reached for his wadded trousers. He dug out his cell phone. “Yes?”
“There you are,” Novak said in relief. “I was about to send the cavalry after you. Chloe’s frantic.”
“I’m with her now. It’s all good. But the guy I was chasing blew his brains out rather than tell me who he worked for.”
Chloe tensed against him abruptly. He sat up dismayed as she climbed to her feet, snatched up her discarded clothes and fled for her bedroom.
“I’ve got a picture of the guy,” he told Novak. “Not sure how good it is, but I’ll send it to you. Maybe you can I.D. him and figure out who he worked for.” They ended the call and he duly sent the image from his phone to Winston Ops.
And now for damage control. He sighed, climbed to his feet and headed for Chloe’s room. He had no doubt she would retreat into her cold, cautious persona the same way she did after the first time they’d made love. How could he convince her she had nothing to be ashamed of? That her wild passion was something to be proud of?
As he stepped into her bedroom, she yanked an oversize pillow sham off her bed and held it in front of herself. He skipped mentioning that he had a great view of her entire naked backside in the mirror behind her.
“For God’s sake, put on some clothes!” she screeched.
“Why? It’s not like you haven’t seen me in all my glory a few times, now.”
“It’s embarrassing!”
He grinned. “After the things we’ve done together? We just had hot monkey sex on your living room floor.”
“You don’t have to remind me,” she snapped. She did, in fact, look completely mortified.
Yup. The prude was back. He perched a hip on her dresser and crossed his arms as she scurried around grabbing clothes and yanking them on. “Tell me something, Chloe. Why do you pull this hot-and-cold routine?”
She whirled to glare at him. “I’m never hot. At least whenever you’re not around.”
She spat the last bit at him as if it were a dire accusation. He grinned unrepentantly. “Good thing I’m going to be around for a while then, eh?”
“No! This sucks!”
He intercepted her as she rushed past him in an apparent search for shoes, snagging her around her slender waist and pulling her close.
“Let me go. And for God’s sake, put some clothes on.”
“Relax, Chloe. I’m not going to tie you up and ravish you...at least not unless you ask for it again.”
Her face reddened. “You’re really a jerk, you know that?”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “I have heard that before. But the past half hour tells me you don’t really believe it.”
“Oooh!” she ground out.
“When are you going to get over this irrational fear of your own sensuality? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You should be proud of your capacity for giving and receiving pleasure. Embrace it. Enjoy it.”
“Never,” she ground out.
“Why not?” He stared down at her, genuinely interested in her answer.
“I already told you. I don’t come from the same background you do.”
“Honey, women from every walk of life are equally capable of enjoying sex. Why are you so tense about it?”
“I just want a normal, boring, everyday life. Not a life like yours.”
What the hell was so weird about his life? Okay, so he could run like the wind. And he never slept. And there was the money, of course... Dammit, his life was weird. He stated matter-of-factly, “Fine. If you won’t tell me about yourself, I’ll have Novak run a deep background check.”
“No!”
He looked her in the eyes and saw genuine panic. “I want to know, Chloe. If you won’t tell me, I’ll find out some other way. But I’m done with you giving me emotional whiplash. Since it’s clear Denver was not, in fact, a one-time thing, I’m going to have to insist that you share at least a few of your secrets with me.”
“Why?” she all but wailed.
“Because I want to know you. All of you. Not just your body. I want to know what you like. Don’t like. What you think about. What makes you tick.”
“But why?” she repeated.
“Because it’s part of having a relationship. I happen to like you, Einstein.”
She just stared. He couldn’t tell if it was shock or sheer, frozen terror immobilizing her like that. Eventually she thawed enough to grumble, “Fine. Then tell me how it is you can run that fast. How is it you do everything so freakishly fast?”
She had seen him running. He turned her loose and shoved a hand through his hair. Now what the hell was he supposed to do? He had a serious security breach on his hands. Maybe if he played it cool she wouldn’t realize just how incredible what she’d witnessed was. Panic squeezed him as he stared down at her, silently pleading for her to not to comprehend what she’d seen.
“That’s what I thought. You want to know all my secrets, but you aren’t about to give up any of yours,” she stated.
He swore under his breath as he marched into the living room to retrieve his clothes and pull them on. They weren’t his secrets to tell. But he couldn’t even explain that much to Chloe. In spite of the earlier chase and the more recent vigorous sex, he really felt a need to work out. Adrenaline was surging through his veins demanding release. And that meant he needed to move. Faster than he could move in her living room. It was a calculated risk to leave her alone. But it would take a brazen killer to break into her place with the lights on and the target wide awake and able to fight back. And he’d be no good to her at all if he didn’t burn off a little of this steam.
She was so damned frustrating. She claimed to want a normal relationship but balked at sharing even the most basic information about herself. It was as if she was so terrified of losing control that she had to hold all the cards between them to herself. What kind of normal was that?
Of course, the one thing he absolutely, positively couldn’t ever give her was normal. Not with his health complications. He was probably stuck taking the stem cell therapies for the rest of his life. Unless, of course, he wanted to die a slow and horrible wasting death from spinal muscular atrophy. Not.
Hell, depending on how their genes matched up, they might or might not be able to have children. The good news was the recessive gene for SMA was reasonably rare.
And then there was his work. It had seemed like a waste to have these incredible physical abilities and not put them to good use helping mankind. He’d never guessed he would take such satisfaction in the work. He and his Code X colleagues were quietly making the world a better place.
However, the constant travel and no-notice crisis responses made a normal home life pretty much an impossibility. It would take a special woman to live with his whacky health issues and whackier lifestyle. Someone who embraced weird. Not a woman who craved “normal” worse than life itself.
He’d finally met a girl he could see himself settling down with for a long time, and he was all wrong for her. If this was God’s idea of a joke, the big guy had a lousy sense of humor.
He announced from the living room, “I’m going out for a little while.”
Chloe appeared in her bedroom door immediately, looking worried. “I thought you weren’t going to leave me alone again.”
What the hell? One second she was screeching at him to get away from her, and the next she was giving him this kicked-puppy look and begging him to stay? She officially made him crazy.
Reaching behind his waist, he pulled a .38 revolver out of its concealed holster and laid it on the coffee table. “Do you know how to use one of these?”
“Don Fratello said every woman should know how to handle a gun, and he made me take a weapons safety class,” she answered.
“Who’s Don Fratello?”
“The guy from the FBI who hired me. He’s an agent in the financial crimes unit.”
Trent didn’t like the affectionate look that came into her eyes when she spoke of the guy, but at least she knew how to use a gun. He growled, “My friends Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson will keep you company while I’m gone.” He was so jumpy he could hardly control himself as he headed for the door. “I’ll be back in an hour or two.”
“You did it again,” she accused. “How do you move that fast?”
“I just do.” And with that lame excuse, he let himself out and pulled the door shut behind him. He waited until he heard the dead bolts thrown home and then raced for the stairwell. He needed a major run in the worst way right now.
Rather than risk drawing attention to himself by sprinting up and down San Francisco’s crowded thoroughfares, he took a cab to an exclusive health club that had private workout rooms for rent by the hour.
He cranked the room’s treadmill up to full speed, which wasn’t anywhere near as fast as he could run, but it was better than nothing. He jogged along at fifteen miles per hour until the jittery feeling left his limbs. Lord, that woman messed him up.
He showered and dressed, then took a cab to the hotel
room he’d been using to watch Chloe’s apartment across the street. Quickly, he packed the gear and clothes he would need for the next few days, and fatigue abruptly began to drag at his body. That was how it was with him. He went ninety miles an hour until he hit the wall. And then he crashed like a big dog.
Forcing himself to keep moving, he stopped by a small grocery store and stocked up on food. And then he carried the entire armload of luggage and grocery bags down the street to Chloe’s building.
She let him in as soon as he identified himself, although this homecoming completely lacked the same...enthusiasm...as last time.
“What’s all that?” she asked cautiously.
“Clothes and surveillance gear. And food for the next day or two. Until we know who that guy was that followed us today, I don’t want you to go outside.”
“But my work—”
“You just caught the flu. And you can use the time to study Barry’s files, right?”
She scowled but didn’t argue. As he put away the food, she retreated into her bedroom and sat down in front of her laptop. It was clear she planned to immerse herself in the files and have nothing to do with him for a good long time. Which was just as well. He could hardly focus his eyes.
He moved over to her door and leaned against the frame. “Chloe, I need to sleep for a while.”
“Fine. Take a nap.”
“Uhh, that’s not quite how it works with me. I’m going to take a sleeping pill and crash for the next several hours.”
“Okay,” she replied, distracted, already turning her attention to the columns of numbers in front of her.
She still didn’t get it. “I’m going to sleep like the dead. Nothing you do will rouse me and don’t bother trying. Keep that pistol close by and be prepared to defend yourself if someone breaks in.”
That got her undivided attention. “You wouldn’t wake up even if someone tried to kill me?” she asked in disbelief.
“Nope. When I go down, I go completely down.”
“Several hours, you say?”
He shrugged. “I might sleep for as much as six hours. I haven’t slept for a couple of days.”
