by Julie Leto
“My mother had some schoolgirl fantasy that someday, he’d come claim me. Never happened, of course. He died before I turned eighteen.”
“So you have a sibling.”
Sean forced his body off the chaise lounge. With a kaleidoscope of color flashing behind his eyes, he experienced pain from every injury he’d ever sustained—some during his captivity but some from a long time before.
He walked closer to the edge overlooking the beach and spat into the wind. “A half-brother, but he’s dead, too. Got his brains blown out in a home invasion.”
“Do you know when? Or by whom?”
Sean shrugged, not wanting to think about the sordid mess. He’d never even been in the same room with the only other human being who’d shared his blood, but he remembered the day he’d learned about his half brother’s death with weird clarity. He’d been working a case in Dallas, following a tech analyst for an energy firm that was suspected of corporate espionage.
Just like with Jayda, it had been Dante who’d broken the news. Hell of a coincidence. At the time, Sean hadn’t asked how his former boss had known about the brother Sean had never met or why he’d known about the guy’s murder. He’d assumed the first piece of information had come from an agency background check and the second, maybe, because his brother was wealthy, influential and, by all accounts, as dirty as a French Quarter back alley. If the CIA had put him on a watch list, then Dante, as Sean’s superior, would have been notified when he’d bitten the dust.
None of it had mattered to Sean. He was too surrounded by danger and death of real American heroes to give a shit about some prick who probably wiped his ass with hundred dollar bills.
But Brynn cared. Judging from the way she was biting her bottom lip, she cared quite a bit.
“Did you kill him?”
She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “No.”
Sean narrowed his gaze and strode back across the patio.
“But you know who did,” he guessed.
“Yes.”
“And you’re not going to tell me who it was.”
She started shaking her head before he’d finished speaking. Protective walls flew up around her like a science-fiction force field.
“I can’t,” she said. “Not without betraying a trust. But that’s why I owe you, even though I had no idea who you were until after we retrieved you.”
“Would you have still rescued me if you’d known?”
She hardly hesitated, which made Sean smile. “Yes. I might have even done it quicker. Not because your brother was a good man. He wasn’t.”
He supposed, in some alternate reality, he should hold her part in his brother’s death against her, but he was too focused on the present and the future to worry much about the past. What was done was done—and if her actions bound her to him, then he could use that to his advantage.
And unlike her, he wouldn’t feel guilty about it.
“He’s coming for us now, you know,” he said.
“Who?”
He smirked. “Not my brother, cher. My people might be descendents of voodoo priestesses, but even I don’t believe in ghosts. Not like that, anyway,” he clarified, thinking about Jayda and how she continued to haunt his life even after she’d left without a word. “I’m talking about Dante.”
She waved his concerns away. “He hasn’t even answered my multiple requests for updates. We’re clearly not a priority. But for all we know, you’re still in danger from those goons who kidnapped you. The last thing he told me was to keep you here and make sure you recovered. That’s what I intend to do.”
“I’m recovered,” he said, dropping onto the chaise as the last of his strength deserted him. He needed sleep. Even the risk of sunburn wasn’t moving him off this spot anytime soon.
She slid onto the cushions next to him again. “You’re in the fast lane of recovery road, Sean, but you’re not healed yet. And you know it. We’re both better off waiting for Dante’s instructions.”
He shielded the sun out of his eyes with his hand. “Are you normally so…submissive?”
“Are you normally so forgetful?” She leaned in close and grazed a kiss over his temple. “I don’t recall showing any signs of submission in the water.”
“No, you didn’t,” he agreed. “But you’re still doing Dante’s bidding without knowing anything about what you’ve gotten yourself into. Don’t you worry about what you’re in the middle of?”
Again, she ran her teeth over her lip. It was a tell—one she must have realized she’d revealed since she tried to cover it with a seductive smile.
“Why don’t you fill me in? We have plenty of time on our hands, and though you should be too tired to move, you seem to have no problem with talking.”
As she spoke, she ran her hands across his chest, tweaking his nipple and then following the path of his chest hair down his pecs, over his abs and past his navel.
“This isn’t fair play,” he groaned as her fingers wrapped around his cock. Though lax only moments before, his sex awoke at the sensation of her exploratory touch. Whatever blood had returned to his brain rushed back to where it was needed most, leaving him dizzy and glad he was lying down.
“Who agreed to play fair? I didn’t,” she said, tightening her grip. “But relax. You’re exhausted and I’m simply intrigued by the wonderful instrument of torture you have here. Look how long it’s getting. How thick. The skin is so tight. Silky, even. I wonder if it tastes half as delicious as it looks.”
He mustered enough energy to grab her upper arm. Their eyes locked and he strangled out a desperate, “Don’t.”
She grinned. “This isn’t a power play, Sean. This isn’t a bid for information or even me avoiding answering your questions. This is just a woman who wants to suck a man off as he drifts to well-deserved sleep. It’s a gift,” she promised. “Nothing less.”
Without the strength or will to fight her, he relinquished the last of his control. She spared no time in kissing a blazing path down the same route her hand had taken. When she lifted his dick into her mouth and started to softly suckle him, skimming his head with her tongue then shifting to the side so that she could take him entirely into her mouth, he couldn’t remember if they’d been talking before, much less what they’d been talking about.
Sean had never known surrender. Not when he was an agent working counter-intelligence. Not when he’d been tied to a chair, having the crap beaten out of him.
But now, he knew what it felt like to let go.
And under Brynn’s lips, teeth and tongue—it felt like heaven.
This pleasure she gave because she wanted to, because it pleased her to please him. That’s what she’d said, and he had no reason to doubt her. Not now. Maybe not ever. She hummed as she sucked. She groaned with appreciation as she took him deeper, harder, cradling his balls in one hand while the other worked in tandem with her mouth, jerking him closer and closer to ecstasy.
He mustered just enough strength to tangle his hand into her hair and breathe out a sweet oath as he came. The rush was hot like a lazy summer day, the release something like soaring above the clouds on a glider. And she didn’t stop. She kissed him, caressed him, soothed and petted until he gave in to his exhaustion and followed the fantasy of his orgasm into the realm of sleep.
And in his dreams, she started all over again.
Nine
Falling into a routine with Sean proved seamless and comfortable. When he woke up, she brought food. Once they’d filled their empty bellies, they worked off the calories in bed, against the wall, across the couch or, once, splayed over the kitchen table.
When his injuries got the best of him, she climbed on top. When she was sore, he soothed her with cool compresses and his wicked tongue. After he’d surprised her in the shower while she was washing her hair, she’d blown his mind by suggesting he get her off with the detachable showerhead before she reciprocated by sucking him dry until the water heater cried uncle and the icy shards sen
t them scrambling for the warmth of the blankets on her bed.
Then they slept. When he woke, they started over again, though by the time forty-eight hours had gone by, sex had turned into cuddling, then back to touching, exploring, manual pleasuring and infinite sessions where they did nothing but kiss and kiss and kiss.
Brynn had no idea if keeping Sean in a state of constant arousal was helping or hindering his recovery, but by the morning of their third day as lovers, they finally started doing the one thing she’d been trying to avoid—talking about her standing orders to keep Sean where he was.
“I think I’ve finally cottoned on to your evil plan,” Brynn confessed, her breath ragged and her body still quivering from his amazing experiment with ice cubes and olive oil. The results had been so dizzying, Brynn was shocked she had the mental acuity to figure out anything.
Sean emerged from beneath the sheets and settled in beside her, his half-mast erection pressed softly across her thigh. “What’s that?”
“You’re going to wear me out so I can’t walk. Then you’re going to take off so that I can’t follow you.”
“Mmm,” he said, wiping the shiny gloss off his lips before he kissed her neck. “That would be downright dastardly of me.”
“Are you saying you could never be so shameless?”
He chuckled. “Of course I could, but that’s not what I’m planning. In fact, it’s the opposite.”
“You’re not going to try and escape?”
“No, I’m cutting out tonight. I’ve just decided that I need to take you with me.”
He gave her no chance to respond but instead kissed her with the kind of single-minded intensity she’d come to crave from him—the kind that belied the fact that although they’d pleasured each other in nearly every way possible, they were virtual strangers. Yes, she’d told him about her childhood in boarding schools, and he’d recalled several hilarious tales of his misspent youth in the New Orleans French Quarter. Yes, they’d exchanged stories that covered topics ranging from the worst sex they’d ever had, the best meal they’d ever indulged in and their preferred method of ending relationships that had run their course, but they’d kept away from topics that linked them as a pair.
Intimacies aside, the nature of their relationship had not changed. She was still the woman who’d saved him. He was still the man she had to keep safe and away from the trouble that had nearly gotten him killed.
She grasped his cheeks, holding him close before she reluctantly broke the kiss.
“I can’t betray Dante,” she confessed.
His sky blue eyes darkened as if invaded by storm clouds. “But you can betray me?”
She pressed her mouth to his again, her mind swirling, her senses enthralled by the man in her bed.
Now she understood what he’d intended when he’d given in to her seduction plan so easily—he was making her care about him, forging a loyalty that would supersede whatever debt she owed to Dante Burke.
And damn it, his strategy was working.
“I only want to keep you safe,” she said, grateful that he didn’t pull away but instead relaxed into the mattress and curled his arms around her.
“This isn’t keeping me safe, Brynn. This is keeping me out of the way. And while I was on death’s door, it was a solid arrangement. But I’m stronger now, as I’ve been proving for the past forty-eight hours. I need to find out who took me—and why.”
Brynn snuggled up his chest so that her chin rested on his sternum. “What did they ask you?”
Up until now, Sean had remained reticent whenever she questioned him about his kidnapping. But if he was counting on her cooperation, then he had to come clean.
“They wanted to know where Jayda was,” he replied.
“Jayda?”
“Jayda Hei, or at least, that’s the name she went by when I knew her. She was a North Korean assassin when I met her, but by the time we parted ways, she’d moved to the allies, in a way, as an agent for T-45.”
Brynn sat up. Another layer of complications descended over her, causing her to drag the still-damp blanket around her body while her stomach quaked then dropped.
“She was T-45?”
“It’s a secret organi—”
“I know what it is,” she interrupted. “My father was a founding member.”
She’d never told anyone that. She’d never had the need. Before her holiday of healing with her twin, even she and Ian rarely broached the topic.
But Brynn wasn’t a fool. The web connecting her to Sean’s kidnapping just got tighter and intricately more treacherous than she’d thought.
“Your father couldn’t have been old enough,” he replied.
“He was sixteen in the last year of World War II,” she explained. “But he was highly intelligent and perpetually in trouble, according to his stories. Apparently, he always looked younger than he really was. During the war, he made an effective little spy. Who would suspect a gangly, wide-eyed schoolboy of passing information for the Crown?”
Sean plumped the pillows behind him, signaling that his interest in her family’s history wasn’t just for show. When he snagged the corner of her blanket and reeled her in close, she couldn’t resist surrendering to his warmth and relishing in his arms wrapped so possessively around her.
“So your family has a long history in espionage,” he concluded.
She chuckled, though the sound lacked the proud humor that her brother might have felt. Ian relished the storied saga that connected the Blake name to the most devious minds in European history, but Brynn’s pride in her father’s accomplishments was always balanced against the knowledge that his undercover connections had gotten her mother killed.
“You could say that,” she admitted. “T-45 started after the Allies won the war and there were a lot of European spies with no way to feed their adrenaline addictions. They were too impatient to wait for their governments to rebuild and used to working on the fly, so they formed their own organization and offered their services to whichever president, king or prime minister could come with up cold, hard cash.”
“How long was your father an operative?”
“Until MI-5 and SIS came calling when he was nearly thirty, I think. He had a strong sense of loyalty, so he signed up and worked for Great Britain until he met my mother.” This time, her laugh was genuine. “After she died, I found her diary. God, I must have read it a thousand times as a teenager. She was a proper Boston young lady attending a soirée with her family-approved banker fiancé, and my father was a painfully handsome ‘diplomat’ with a British accent, irresistibly twinkling blue eyes and a gun tucked beneath his tuxedo.”
Sean grinned. “He was packing?”
Brynn couldn’t help but conjure an image of her father from the pages of a photo album, back when he’d been young and cocky and the embodiment of a young James Bond rather than the haunted, jaded, crueler version of a brokenhearted man he’d become before his death.
“Even when I was only fourteen, I couldn’t help but wonder how she’d spotted his weapon when he undoubtedly possessed the skills to keep it hidden.”
“Unless he wanted her to see it,” Sean suggested, his eyes sparkling with the same mischievous glint she suspected her father had used to snare her mother.
Buggers, but it was powerful stuff.
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” she confessed, turning her attention to the smattering of chest hair tickling her cheek. “He was an international man of mystery, and she was, after all, just a young woman fresh out of finishing school with a degree in art history and no particular plan to use it for anything except to sit on the board of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.”
As she spoke, Sean stroked her hair, combing his fingers through the damp strands with a lazy rhythm that made her believe, for a split second, that they had all the time in the world to enjoy each other.
But no one had all the time in the world. No one knew when the end would come, even a retired spy who’d made t
he mistake of trying to leave his past behind him.
“So he was older than she was?” Sean asked.
“And that was definitely part of the appeal. She was twenty-three, naïve, romantic and desperate for adventure, which he offered with his concealed Walther pistol and devilish grin. She fell instantly in love. Nothing was going to keep her from winning him for herself.”
Brynn had never imagined feeling that kind of love. She’d never even thought she wanted it. Nestled against Sean’s chest, however, she considered the possibility. Her every breath came with an infusion of his scent. He was intoxicating, and for the first time in her life, she understood how her mother had fallen so quickly under her debonair father’s spell.
Clearly, it was a genetic weakness.
“And just like you would have,” Sean mused, “she got exactly what she wanted.”
Brynn hummed her agreement. “For a little while, at least.”
Sean crooked his thumb beneath her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. “Sometimes, a little while is the best two people can hope for.”
“Are you talking about us now?”
“Yes.”
Brynn pushed up, kissed him softly and then sat against the cushions beside him. The conversation had somehow gone entirely off the rails, though she suspected Sean had artfully turned the tracks while she was thinking about her parents and the past.
But she’d told him enough. He now knew more about her than any lover who’d come before him—and probably, more than any who would come once he was gone.
“So this Jayda Hei,” she said with a snap, making it clear that her turn of personal share-time was over. “She was your lover?”
Sean cleared his throat, but to his credit, he answered. “Not at first. She was young when we met. I wasn’t much older. I’d been recruited out of Special Forces into the CIA and had been quickly assigned to the Arm. Anyway, her family in China had sold her to a recruiter from North Korea when she was two. Maybe three. By the time she turned sixteen, she was one of their most effective assassins, taking down targets and disappearing before anyone thought to look at the sweet young girl in the Hello Kitty t-shirt. A few years later, she got traded to T-45. Then, seven years ago, she snuck into the States and went off the grid. She was considered a threat to national security, so the Arm was ordered to retrieve her.”
