Elite Ops Complete Series

by Lora Leigh

  “What about our other party of interest?” She breathed against his ear as her hands rasped down his chest to his taut abdomen.

  “Either way, full disclosure will be demanded,” he assured her.

  She nipped at his ear. “Tell me who he is.”

  He almost grinned. “Abbas? A true bastard.”

  “Uh-huh.” Her lips moved to his neck as the mission began to take second place now that she had the information she needed in case Falks or Greer approached her.

  “Fifteen percent fee.” He finally remembered as her tongue stroked beneath his ear.

  “Hmm,” she murmured as her fingers moved to his belt and slowly loosened it.

  Hell, they would end up melting the snow from the shelter faster than the warmth of the fire would.

  Moving back slowly, he sat down on the bench, staring up at her as he gripped her thighs and pulled her to him. He needed a taste of her, just a little bit. He couldn’t get enough of her, no matter how much he tried.

  Jerking the hem of her sweater over her silken stomach he laid his lips against her flesh and listened to her breath catch, felt her hips arch.

  He touched her and she caught flame along with him. It was like spontaneous combustion, and it was destructive.

  “Straddle me.” He pulled her closer as his head lifted.

  A flush mounted her face as she moved to straddle his hips. Leaning back, he arched his hips as she came over him, driving his denim-covered cock between her thighs.

  “Damn, you’re hot, even dressed,” he growled as he gripped her hips, ground against her and moved her over him.

  “Dangerous game here,” she panted. “I could end up tearing your clothes from that sexy body of yours and having my way with you.”

  “You’d have to beat me to it,” he promised her. “Because I’m less than a second from doing the same to you.”

  He gripped her hair and pulled her to him, demanding a kiss that he knew would sear his senses. And it did. It burned into his brain, sent flames shooting over his nerve endings and exploding in his balls.

  He could lay her back and strip her, have her, taste every inch of her body, and pray to God no one caught them. The chances of being caught were slim to none, he assured himself. Only a few people would know where they were. The guests at the party wouldn’t be slipping out here until after dark. They were a bit more circumspect in their liaisons.

  John felt her hands thread through his hair, her fingers clenching as she tried to pull him closer. Her lips moved beneath his, her tongue accepted his, rubbed against it, tasted him as he tasted her. They both groaned, the sounds of pleasure washing around them as they strained closer.

  His head tilted as he moved to taste more of her. His hands were beneath her sweater, cupping and caressing her unbound breasts, stroking her nipples and dying for a taste of them.

  There was a mission here that he was supposed to be concentrating on. A job to do. Hell, Jordan would kill him if he found out how distracted he was becoming and just how important Bailey was becoming to him.

  The unit was all that mattered to Jordan Malone. Bailey was all that mattered to John. This wasn’t going to work out for the other man where missions were concerned. And nothing else was going to work out for John if he lost Bailey.

  Holding her to him, his lips sipping at hers, his hands stroking her breasts, her nipples, he knew he couldn’t live without the taste of her, the touch of her. He needed this simply to survive.

  “Well, it looks like we’re definitely interrupting something here.” The low, irritated foreign drawl had John’s head jerking back as he pulled Bailey from his lap to the relative protection of his side.

  “You’re so bad, Jerric.” Catalina’s cool, feminine tones were filled with amusement. “You could have given them a few minutes before interrupting.”

  Bailey stared back at the couple, her senses alive like never before, and felt a flush work over her face as she faced Jerric Abbas.

  He was glowering at her as though in disappointment or disapproval before his expression cleared and his black eyes were once again cool and all too familiar.

  This wasn’t the Jerric Abbas she had known, but that look was definitely the cousin she had known as David Abijah, and the agent she had met in Atlanta, Micah Sloane.

  The pieces were falling in place for her. Trent had become an international penny-ante broker, John Vincent, and built his reputation into that of one of the most trusted, reputable black-market brokers in the world.

  Micah Sloane was fairly unknown, but Jerric Abbas wasn’t. This Jerric was making a name for himself, though. Travis Caine. She knew the man she had recently met as Travis Caine wasn’t the same one she’d met in England several years before.

  They were all dead men reborn.

  “Should I leave?” She rose slowly to her feet and jerked her jacket from the edge of the bench where she had laid it. Pulling it on, she suddenly felt less like a schoolgirl caught making out and more like a woman with a mind of her own.

  Of course, David had always had way of making her feel like a child whenever he caught her in something she shouldn’t have been a part of. He had been a steadying influence in her life. He and his father Garren, before their deaths, had represented stability in a world that often hadn’t made sense to her.

  “Miss Serborne.” He nodded his head to her before turning to John. “I hear we’re still in a bit of friendly competition.”

  John rose slowly to his feet as Jerric and Catalina both remained still, too careful, too wary.

  They had been followed or somehow suspected they were being spied upon. She could feel it. Had someone been watching them before Jerric and his rumored lover had come upon them?

  “I trust we’ll both handle it like the professionals we are,” John drawled as Bailey watched Catalina closely.

  “Always,” Micah stated, his expression hooded as he gave John another long, intent look. “Sorry to have interrupted you, but I do so enjoy getting my little pokes in where I can.”

  Catalina’s laughter was silky and smooth. It was natural, though the look on her face was warning.

  They were definitely being watched.

  “Then Bailey and I will retire to our room, where your little pokes don’t matter,” John said mockingly as his hand settled at the back of her waist and he led her toward the doorway. “If you’ll excuse us.”

  “Of course,” Jerric murmured, then his voice became a breath of sound as they moved past. “Be careful, my friends, you’ve picked up some attention.”

  John and Bailey moved past them as though they hadn’t heard the brief warning. John’s arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her to him as though they had every intention of finishing what they had started as soon as they returned to their room.

  Bailey would have loved to finish it. The need for it was burning through her system like a flame she couldn’t extinguish.

  He had always done that to her. If he touched her, her response tormented her for days on end. When she had lost him, she had never forgotten that touch, never forgotten the man who had claimed her heart.

  Glancing around, Bailey caught sight of movement in the edge of the shrubbery that led into another path of the maze. There, sheltered by the shadows, Ralph Stanford shifted back, almost hidden completely by the evergreens he was hiding within.

  Bailey could feel the malevolence reaching out to her, the rage that filled the other man.

  Bailey felt John’s hand at her back, a subtle warning to ignore the man as he watched them. She could ignore him for now, but she knew the time would come that ignoring him wouldn’t be an option. Ralph hated to lose and he hated Bailey. It was a combination Bailey knew would soon strike out at her, and perhaps John as well.

  CHAPTER 15

  ON THE SURFACE, JOHN was the perfect businessman. He conversed with the elders of the society Bailey had been born into with a charisma and intelligence that over the next few days they would learn to respect.
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  Ford Grace, Samuel Waterstone, Stephen Menton-Squire, and Ronald Claymore were all on the board of directors of Serborne Enterprises, a vast umbrella of businesses and major shares in businesses that made up the Serborne fortune. It was these men who would lose a large source of income if Bailey died without an heir or changed her will to leave her fortune to a nonrelative rather than charity, as had been set up.

  They were also the four men who had made the short list of suspects in the investigation she had been conducting herself for years, as well as the investigation John’s unit was involved in.

  The four of them were her godfathers as well. Her father hadn’t picked one man, just as her mother hadn’t picked one woman. No, she had four sets of godparents, thank you very much.

  They were also the men whom John had convinced that he was smart enough, savvy enough, and deceitful enough to help Bailey control her shares once she took them over. Not that any of them was happy that he would no longer be voting those shares. But at least they weren’t opposed to the man it seemed she was choosing to vote them.

  “You’re making quite an impression,” she murmured to John as he returned to her several nights later in the ballroom after meeting the four men for drinks.

  “There’s no way those four men work together,” he growled. “Do you realize that in the past six years they have argued over the simplest vote, and almost come to blows over each idea that has been broached to making your companies more efficient and employee-friendly?” He looked outraged. “Do you know one of those bastards nearly hit me?”

  “Really?” She hadn’t known that. She had been too busy trying to pin the name Warbucks to one of them.

  “Bailey, those four are psychopaths posing as businessmen.” He was in her face, his expression bordering furiously amazed. “They need to be locked away for the safety of everyone they know.”

  Bailey stared back at him in surprise. “I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

  She turned back to the shrimp bowl on the buffet table and debated a few more when he caught her arm and pulled her around to face him once again.

  “Bailey, it is that bad,” he growled, horror obviously reflecting in his gaze. “If you ever, and I mean ever, decide to actually take responsibility for the inheritance your parents left you, then you have a fucking mess on your hands.”

  “That boy likes to overexaggerate!” Bailey turned around, reeling from the obvious criticism that she neglected her inheritance, to meet Ronald Claymore’s furious, brows-lowered, forehead-drawn expression. He looked just as pissed as John. “If you end up marrying this brazen little upstart, then we’re going to have words.”

  “Ronald, you never could tolerate anyone who could out-yell you,” Samuel Waterstone expressed in precise, cold tones from behind him. “Don’t punish her because he’s louder than you are.” He then glowered at John. “He’s louder than all of us.”

  When exactly had the Twilight Zone decided to visit Aspen, Colorado?

  “Ignore them, Bailey.” Ford was the only one who showed a reasonable amount of goodwill. A smile quirked at his lips and his gray eyes reflected something she hadn’t seen since she was a child. A sense of fun. “They’ve gotten too old to enjoy a good fight.”

  Stephen Menton-Squire was glaring at all of them. “The boy is a damned bastard,” he muttered, drawing disapproving glances from the other three men.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen.” John gripped Bailey’s arm at the elbow, his expression filled with irritation. “I don’t think you need to be a part of this conversation.”

  “Wait, this conversation involves us.” Stephen turned on John with a fierce frown as he jerked his evening jacket into place and straightened his thick shoulders. “We should obviously be present.”

  “In a padded room,” John bit out with a frown just as dangerously dark as the other man’s. “And only if you show some respect when a lady is present.”

  He drew her quickly away. Looking over her shoulder, she caught Ford’s obvious chuckle as the other three men began to argue among themselves, again.

  It was normal. For the first time since returning home, Bailey remembered something good about the times she and her parents had spent with the four men and their families. When Ben Serborne engaged in a war of words with these men, it made an all-out brawl look gentle.

  “They’re like children,” she murmured with a sense of nostalgia.

  “I’d rather deal with terrorists armed with nuclear capabilities,” John muttered as he drew her to the dance floor and took her in his arms before glaring back at them. “You need to do something about them where your companies are concerned.”

  She looked back at him in surprise. “Not my area. The business was Father’s love affair, not mine.”

  “It’s your children’s inheritance,” he informed her, anger still vibrating in his voice as his hand pressed her closer to him and she felt the warmth of his larger body surrounding her.

  “I don’t have children,” she pointed out. “And I don’t intend to have any.”

  He almost stopped in the middle of the floor, surprise drawing his expression tight once again. “You will eventually,” he finally stated carefully.

  Bailey met his gaze with one of determination. “No, John, I won’t. The father of my children died. Remember?” She kept her voice carefully low, kept her lips hidden so they couldn’t be read. But she didn’t hide the truth from him.

  She’d rather be alone than to be with a man simply because she wanted a family or children. It wouldn’t be fair to the man, but it especially wouldn’t be fair to the children.

  He didn’t say anything. Hell, what could he say? It was the truth. He was going to disappear from her life just as he had the first time, except this time she would know he was out there, without her.

  “The business is your legacy,” he finally stated as he tucked her closer to him. “It will go to someone, Bailey. Leaving it to charity is unconscionable.”

  “And taking care of it myself is outside my range of abilities,” she told him. “I’m not a businesswoman, John. I don’t want to be one.”

  Once this was over, she would take enough of her inheritance to retire. A nice little house someplace quiet, a peaceful little neighborhood where she could retreat from the battles she had faced over the years.

  She deserved it, she told herself. She was looking at losing the man she loved twice in one lifetime. There would be no children, no family, and the white picket fence would be for looks only.

  How was he supposed to answer that one? John wondered then. She had been an agent from the age of eighteen until she had been fired the year before. She had lived to destroy the person or persons responsible for killing those she had loved. The only time that love had overwhelmed that desire, it had been taken from her.

  Jordan was going to be pissed, he thought as he felt determination well inside him. He wasn’t letting her go a second time. And she wouldn’t sit back and let him fight those battles on his own, she would be at his side. She would be a part of the unit, one way or the other, or John would have to break a promise that could very well put both their lives in danger.

  “And if you could have the man you loved?” he asked her then. “Would you want children?”

  He felt her smile against his shoulder and had a feeling it wasn’t a gentle smile. He could almost sense what lay behind it.

  “That option isn’t open to me,” she said softly. “Until it is, that’s not a question I can answer.”

  He tucked his head against hers and reined in the sigh that would have slipped from him. This mission was getting to him, the entire situation was fucking getting to him. He needed to give her reassurance, he needed to promise her that he was never going to leave her life again, but until he made the necessary arrangements, he couldn’t promise her anything. He didn’t have the promises to give her.

  “Excuse me. I’d like to claim this dance.” They drew to a stop as John stared back at Wagner Grace.
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  Bailey turned and stared at the other man. John could feel the tension building in her body, working through her system.

  “Just for a moment,” he requested as he stared at Bailey. “I promise I won’t keep you long.”

  The man looked haunted, but he also looked spoiled and put out, John thought. He admitted, though, that the off-spring of the four icons who were here this weekend hadn’t impressed him much. They were spoiled little children parading as adults. They were smart as hell, but their intelligence was invariably put to use in less-than-intelligent areas. Wagner for instance, according to the unit’s report, had spent most of his life trying to get out of work rather than showing any interest in the various business interests his father had accumulated.

  “Of course.” Polite society would have frowned on him for refusing, he guessed. Besides, this was one for Bailey to handle.

  Moving from the dance floor, he bit back a grimace and joined the four men he was certain should be committed for the safety of the public at large. Not to mention their own safety.

  “That boy has some growing up to do,” Samuel commented as John turned and directed his attention back to the ballroom.

  “They all do.” Stephen sighed. “We didn’t raise our kids right, Sam. That’s our problem.”

  “Ben raised his right,” Ford interjected. John turned to stare back at the other man. Ford’s eyes met John’s and in them, John glimpsed a bit of calculation mixed with the respect. “Ben raised his girl right,” he stated again. “He was smarter than the rest of us.”

  With that he turned and moved from the gathering. Watching, John saw him join Raymond, speak for a moment, then leave the ballroom.

  John turned around again to watch Bailey, his gaze narrowed on her cool expression and the stiffness of her body. Wagner looked sincere, intent, convincing as he talked quickly.

  BAILEY PLACED ONE HAND in Wagner’s, her other hand on his shoulder, and stared up at him curiously as he led her around the ballroom floor.

  She could feel the tension radiating from Wagner. A watchful cold tightness to his body that she had never associated with him before. She hadn’t seen him much during the house party. He and several of his friends, such as Grant Waterstone, had found other pursuits to entertain them.