Dark mission 04 - Sacrifice the Wicked

by Karina Cooper

  He couldn’t. “Christ,” he whispered, and to seal the impression—to get a taste of the woman he couldn’t shake—he closed the gap. Covered her mouth with his, claimed her soft, warm, trembling lips in a kiss that had nothing to do with anything but the need he’d tortured himself with for two long, eternal months.

  Mission Director Parker Adams froze.

  This man worked for her. Sort of. He worked for Sector Three, which was so classified even she didn’t know what they really did. He wasn’t her friend.

  He sure as hell wasn’t her lover.

  He was a witch, and she was better than this.

  But there was nothing cold about the ragged edge of lust exploding under her skin. Slow, saturating heat gathered between her legs, swirled low in her belly as his lips covered hers.

  Somehow, Agent Simon Wells, spy for Sector Three and irritating thorn in her heel, was kissing her.

  No, not kissing her. Devouring her.

  Two months of forced civility, eight bloody weeks of tension, finally snapped between them.

  His mouth was firm, aggressive. Undeniable. She gasped as his fingers slid away from her throat, up over her jaw. He dug his thumb against the corner of her mouth to coax it open, and nerves tingled to life. Her skin, her senses, her lips.

  That part of her brain that had nothing to do with common sense and everything with wild, primal abandon.

  His tongue slid between her lips, tasted her, and sensory fireworks flared behind her eyes. She shuddered. Her hands fisted by her sides; she closed her eyes because she couldn’t stand to look at the handsome angles of his face while he played her body like a fine-tuned instrument.

  And she couldn’t pull away. Didn’t want to.

  A whole other problem she wasn’t equipped to handle. Not now.

  Not when her world had turned into a cage of politics and lies around her.

  His teeth nipped at her bottom lip. Hard enough to force a shattered moan from her throat. Every torturous nerve turned to liquid flame, and just with a kiss. With the feel of his broad, leanly muscled chest against hers. His leg slid between her own, and God help her, her silk pants were so thin that she might as well have not been wearing anything at all.

  He’d trapped her. Not just between hard doorjamb and harder man, but by the sensations sweeping through her body.

  Lust. She recognized that one easily. It’d been a long time, but she knew the chemical taste of it as the secret parts of her body went soft and liquid with need.

  Fear. Fear of his touch? Fear of her own response?

  Fear of him.

  That one spiked as his fingers tightened on her chin. Holding her still, forcing her still.

  No.

  His tongue twined with hers, demanding, wet. His hips tightened against her own, locked her down, pinned her until all she could think about was the hard length of him trapped behind his jeans. So very, very close.

  No!

  Parker grabbed his sides. Felt the faintest uneven ridge under her thumb where a bullet wound had healed into a ridged, puckered scar. She’d been the first one to tend him—clean entry, messy exit, on the front and back of his left side. Courtesy of a mission she didn’t authorize. It had bled too much, but she’d done it.

  Blood. The very thought pitched bile into her chest. Gave her enough to work with, to separate herself from the unyielding assault on her senses.

  It was enough. Wrenching her mouth away, Parker jammed a thumb into the tender scar.

  Simon swore, jerked back so fast it left her off-balance, staggering into the opposite side of the doorjamb. She grabbed onto it, jerked her hair out of her face to glare at the missionary as he covered the front of his side with one hand.

  Pain etched dark edges into his features. His eyes glittered. By day, she knew they were a mixed green and brown. Hazel eyes; sometimes one, sometimes the other. Sometimes gold.

  “Damn,” Simon said, sucking in air with a painful hiss. But his white teeth flashed in a thin smile. “I’ll remember that next time.”

  Nerves, anger, pitched in her belly.

  Parker forced her knees to lock, her shoulders to straighten. Unflappable Mission Director. That’s what she had to be.

  That’s what she was.

  “There won’t ever be a next time,” she said, proud when her voice remained even. As self-possessed as he was. “Get out, Mr. Wells. We’ll discuss this in the morning.”

  When his smile slanted into an arrogant, self-satisfactory curve, she bit out, “At the office.”

  The fact she even had to clarify galled.

  He turned, presented her with his broad back, and picked up the folder again. The triptych sigil on its cover gleamed. Operation Wayward Rose.

  She wasn’t going to stop him this time. The damage was done. Nothing he did could keep her silent. Unless he killed her.

  He could try.

  “Oh, and Director Adams?” He paused in the office door frame. The night painted his features in shadow, turning the hollows under his cheekbones and the beautifully angled line of his jaw into something sinister. “Believe it or not, I’m on your side.”

  She raised her chin, forcing her gaze to remain on the back of his head. Not on the powerful line of his back, leaner than some of her more built missionaries, but no less muscled for it. She’d seen him in various stages of undress—hard to avoid it in the training facilities and in such close quarters. She’d seen most of her missionaries.

  But his body put her tongue in knots.

  “I don’t believe you,” she told him, cool as the air she pulled into her lungs. “You’re a spy for the witches, for Lauderdale.”

  “But I’m on your side,” he repeated.

  Was he insane as well as a heretic? She muffled a laugh before it slipped from her lips, knowing it would only come out razor sharp. “Come talk to me when you’re ready to share what you know. Until then, Mr. Wells, count yourself lucky I’m content to let you stay.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Trust me,” she cut in, drawing herself up to her not insubstantial height. Her chin rose, but her gaze pinned him where he watched her from the door. His eyes narrowed, a dark slant of . . . surprise? “This is my Mission. There is nothing I won’t do to keep my people safe from you.”

  Simon raked long fingers through his short, coffee brown hair, turning away. “You have no idea what you’re promising.” But then his head turned, throwing his angled jaw into sharp relief. “And I can’t be there all the time. Stay out of this, Director. At least for your own good.” It wasn’t a reply. He didn’t give replies.

  It was an order. As arrogant as it always was with him, dismissive of her intent. Of her authority.

  Locking her teeth together, Parker said nothing as he left her office. Held onto the door frame with cramping fingers until she heard the final click of her front door. It beat her first choice, which was to find the nearest portable object and pitch it at his smug head.

  Her temper sizzled, a fraction of a degree cooler than the physical lust still riding her. As tempting as it would have been to give in to either, Parker didn’t dare.

  She didn’t sleep with missionaries, and she sure as hell didn’t flirt with witches. Simon was both.

  Only by the narrowest margin.

  That traitor. He hadn’t come in through her front door.

  She’d have to figure out how he’d breached her security. Shore it up if she expected to play a game she wasn’t sure she’d built herself up enough to handle.

  Politics were bad enough, but this . . . chemical warfare of need and confusion only added to the months-long political shitstorm Nadia Parrish had forced on her with Operation Wayward Rose.

  Parker was tired.

  Her lips throbbed. They felt damp, swollen. Her skin prickled, but it wasn’t fear. Or all fear.

  She couldn’t deny it. A part of her, the simple woman, wanted Simon Wells.

  No, not precisely. She wanted his strength. His fearlessness. Hi
s control.

  And the Mission director she’d become couldn’t afford any of that.

  A warm bundle of fur leaned in against her ankles, as if in apology. Parker bent to gather Mr. Sanderson into her arms. His heavy weight settled into her chest, collar jingling, and the happy rumble of his purr rattled through her ribs. Stranger gone, problems over.

  Not for her.

  She wanted answers.

  The Church had them. Somewhere. As the director of the witch-hunting Mission, she should have been in on everything the research and development branch of the Church was planning. Had planned. Whatever Sector Three was doing, it affected her Mission.

  Aside from a classification hierarchy, the two directors were equal. The blasted Church law demanded it. Order of hierarchy put the bishop of the Holy Order of St. Dominic above all things, the directors of Sector Three and Sector Five—the Mission—next, and the civic body of government last. Period.

  But two months ago, Nadia Parrish had knocked down Parker’s typically apolitical door with demands Parker didn’t have the clout to deny. Simon, supposedly a missionary but trained under Sector Three’s meddling eye, had been a problem ever since.

  Along with Sector Three’s interference, names like GeneCorp and the Salem Project had cropped up.

  Words like human testing.

  Having Operation Wayward Rose end in bloodshed and disaster, end with more questions than when it began, grated Parker’s sense of responsibility.

  And her pride.

  But she hadn’t been able to learn much before the order had come down from the Church brass—destroy the data, classify everything. Hide whatever dirty fingerprints the operation had exposed.

  Parker surveyed her dark office. The drawer she’d put the folder in was still slightly ajar, but other than that, Simon made for a neat thief.

  One goal, in and out. And a kiss.

  Why? Why had he kissed her?

  She bent, let the cat jump lightly to the floor, and tried not to think about the reminder her body wouldn’t let go. She was a grown woman. She knew what the damp ache between her legs meant.

  Lust wasn’t nearly a good enough reason to ignore Simon’s loyalties.

  Her Mission. Her people. She’d had to sign death certificates for enough of her missionaries to feel responsible for every last one.

  But she wasn’t sure what to do about it. Yet.

  Nothing in his thirty years of life had prepared him for Parker Adams.

  Simon’s heart pounded in his chest, a rhythmic thump, thump of anxiety, of surprise and adrenaline, and a ragged, visceral need. It had taken everything he’d had to leave that apartment—to leave her, tousled and off-balance and—“Fuck,” he rasped as he leaned against the elevator wall.

  He shouldn’t have kissed her.

  He couldn’t not. What the hell was it about the woman?

  Forcing himself to slow his breathing, his fist clenched on the railing as another surge of adrenaline lanced through his chest. Found an echo in his head.

  He’d gone in expecting a fight. Expecting to go toe to toe with her in the only way he’d stand a chance—as the kind of man even the ice bitch of the Mission couldn’t bend to her will.

  More fool him. What was it about her that left his palms sweating, his heart pounding?

  The doors hissed open.

  The lobby lights slanted through his skull like a straight razor to the eyeballs. “Fuck,” he repeated, gritting the word out as his senses cracked without warning. Shapes, living bodies, individuals. They piled up in his head—thirty floors of people, stacked up like the pieces in a jumbled puzzle.

  Not now.

  As pain fractured through the back of his skull, Simon staggered out through the lobby doors, grabbed a fistful of brick. The ground shifted out from under him. The folder slipped from his fingers. Pale in the stark fluorescent lights surrounding the complex, it fluttered as if in slow motion. He squinted at it.

  It blurred.

  Degeneration. That’s what the scientists called it. What Kayleigh called it. A sign of the end.

  In about eight seconds, his sight would go. With it, the sensory radar that constantly pinged the back of his head, where his witchy ability lived.

  Where the worst of the headache screamed.

  Shit. Not the time. Not the place, either.

  The street beyond the carefully manicured strip of fake grass dipped and swayed, rolling inward on itself as he struggled to think through the screws drilling through his skull.

  Time was running out. In a very terminal sense.

  “Hey, man.”

  The voice sheared through his overwhelmed brain. Slammed into his senses like a thunderclap.

  Masculine. Grating. Simon jerked, surprised when his back straightened and he fell against the side of the building. He didn’t realize he’d bent over.

  Squinting, he couldn’t see more than the vaguest impressions of a shoulder, a muted face. Black on black.

  He clenched his teeth. “Operation number,” he managed.

  “Oh, man.” A hand grabbed his shoulder, steadied him. “You look like hell. Just lean right there, okay?”

  The brick wall dug into his back. Simon braced his hands against it, felt the gritty surface but couldn’t see it. “Who are you?” he demanded. His voice locked down on a taut edge of pain.

  Of anger.

  This sucked.

  “Don’t strain yourself.” The man patted him on the shoulder and let him go. Simon jerked his head around, searching vainly through black streaks for the owner of the cheerful voice.

  Paper scraped along cement.

  When it spoke again, it seemed farther. Or his ears were tunneling from vertigo. “Thanks for this. You saved me a lot of work.”

  As if Simon weren’t buckling in pain.

  “Fuck you,” he growled.

  “Aw, and here I thought we were friends. Oh, well. Take care of yourself.” The sound didn’t come at Simon from in front, or beside him. It slammed into him like a wall. All-encompassing. Overpowering.

  Sensory overload.

  “Get back—” He choked. Coughed as blood filled the back of his throat. His tongue prickled, like he’d licked an exposed wire, harsh and metallic.

  As his knees buckled, as his back grated against rough brick, Simon coughed into his cupped hands and realized they cooled, tingling and wet, in the dark.

  He didn’t know if the thief was gone. Couldn’t see, couldn’t open his senses.

  Couldn’t do anything but hemorrhage from the nose and wait for the worst to pass.

  CHAPTER TWO

  She was late.

  At half past nine, Parker strode out of the mirrored elevator and into the interior offices of the Mission. The din of over two dozen voices conferring lowered as every eye shifted to her.

  Damn it, she was never late.

  She resisted the urge to pat down hair that didn’t need patting. The reflective elevator walls told her that she looked exactly like she always did—confident, polished, and untouchable. She’d bound her copper hair in its customary smooth coil, her makeup was perfectly applied. Not too heavy, a few subtle passes to highlight her features.

  Under her tan trench coat, her navy blue pantsuit covered her neatly from neck to ankle, tailored to her body, accompanied by a cream-colored blouse too high-necked to be inviting. Although overall damp from the summer shower pattering the walkways outside, she didn’t look anything like the disheveled woman Simon had accosted.

  Exactly the point. She wasn’t that woman, and she’d be damned if anyone else saw her that way.

  Parker strode past the first three rows of desks, aware that the missionaries watched her go out of the corners of eyes not completely focused on computer screens and field notes. Even the dialogue around her quieted.

  She didn’t like speculation. Speculation led to questions, at a time and place no one could afford them. If she’d learned anything in her years in the Mission, she’d learned first
that trust wasn’t just essential—it could save a missionary’s life. These missionaries needed to obey her every word. To have no reason to doubt her.

  Nothing Parker did—or wanted to do—would be allowed to jeopardize that. Already in the hole due to her predecessor’s betrayal last year, she had to tread extremely carefully. Over a year of dedicated service had made dents in the agents’ collective armor, but she wondered if she’d ever stop struggling against the tide.

  Probably not. And she couldn’t blame them. Peterson had served over a decade as director. To have him exposed as a witch had been a terrible blow for the men and women who’d followed him. And to have had her appointed by the bishop didn’t help. At twenty-eight, she was young for a director. That counted for a lot of the doubt.

  Head held high, she crossed the fake wood floor. Her heels clicked with every step, authoritative enough to announce her approach and loud enough to give her agents warning.

  It was a small favor but one she didn’t mind giving them. Parker remembered what it was like to be a cubicle jockey. Her missionaries worked hard. She didn’t mind straddling the hard-ass line now and again.

  The cubicle area served as the information hub of the Mission. Most of the missionaries here were information analysts, technical specialists, and a few street-level operatives catching up on paperwork. Topside didn’t see as many active witches as the streets below the security line, though it wasn’t entirely unheard of.

  The décor, at Parker’s insistence, was tasteful. Expensive because it had to be, and as harmonizing as the decorator could safely make it without losing its working edge. The floors were kept clean by routine maintenance, and even the faux wooden cubicle panels gleamed.

  Agents came here to work, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be comfortable. Missionaries led hard lives. Harder for the active operatives. Among the offices, jail cells, and training facilities in the Mission side of the Holy Order’s quadplex, there were suites of recovery rooms, isolation rooms, and a whole floor of suites specifically for those agents on the brink of mental breaks. Parker did her best to make sure her agents found some solace between operations.

  “Agent Trapp.” Her voice snapped across the open floor.