Sweet Seduction Secrets (Sweet Seduction, Book 8): A Love At First Sight Romantic Suspense Series

by Claire, Nicola

  Fuck! She had a point though. Her last assignment, one that sounded like it went FUBAR, ended up in Guangzhou. And we just happen to be investigating the new drug kingpin replacement and the Chinese manufactured drugs he’s suddenly pushing on our streets.

  Nick wouldn’t agree that this was the best move to make. Hell, Nick would have my balls for breakfast if he was listening right now, just like Jase had said.

  And if that didn’t put a damper on my erection, nothing else would.

  I lifted my eyes from the ground where I’d been contemplating this next step and met smoky grey.

  She knew. She knew what she was asking. She knew what my answer would mean.

  I’ll catch you. This is me catching you, firecracker.

  “Wayne Pascoe,” I said, waiting for the door to smash open and Nick to miraculously appear with a sharp blade aimed at my nut sack.

  Nothing. But Charlie had taken a step closer.

  “Auckland’s new drug king,” she supplied. I nodded.

  “Pushing drugs we know aren’t made here, at a fraction of the cost of those that are.”

  “And Nick suspects they’re from China.”

  This was it. This was me turning my back on my family and reaching out to catch a spy.

  “Yeah. They’re Chinese and my guess is, you’re right.”

  Chapter 24

  Veritas Lux Mea

  Charlie

  For a moment I couldn’t speak. Such naked honesty. Such raw admission. Such unfamiliar truth.

  Adam had just shown me his colours.

  I licked my lips, realised my t-shirt was still in my hands, and quickly donned it. One of us needed to be covered.

  It was harder than it should have been, lifting my eyes to look back at Adam.

  He knew what he’d done. It was written there, all over his face. Shock. Disbelief. Fear. Conviction. Desperation. He knew. And he knew that I knew too.

  “So,” I said, still unable to find the words to adequately defuse the moment. I’d never been good with feeling my own emotions. Other’s; it hadn’t really mattered. If you get them feeling, then you get them weakened. But the thought of Adam being weak left me feeling slightly breathless.

  I sat down on the bench seat and started pulling on my boots.

  “Wayne Pascoe and Chinese drugs on Auckland’s streets,” I said, zipping up the side of my knee high biker’s boots. “And Nick just happens to be investigating it.” I lifted my gaze and watched his reaction carefully. “Is this sanctioned by the Police or just an ASI special?”

  Adam scowled, then ran a hand though his still damp hair. Only then did he realise he was still naked, wearing a pathetic strip of towelling and nothing else. He started to dress, as much for needed camouflage as it was to distract.

  I was losing him.

  I stood from the bench and walked toward him, making him halt in his movements, appropriately wary. Sometimes merely being in a person’s personal space has its advantages; upsetting equilibrium, making them more likely to make a mistake. Narrowing their line of vision.

  At least, I told myself that was why I was getting closer.

  “If we’re to do this,” I murmured, stopping right before his immobile form. “We need to be honest with each other.”

  “But not trust?” he queried, eyes holding my gaze and not flinching.

  I smiled; it was undoubtedly defiant.

  “This is me being honest with you,” I said, reaching up and running a finger along the edge of his jaw. “There’s never going to be any trust.”

  He swallowed thickly as my nail traced a line down over his throat. But it wasn’t fear I saw in his eyes. Adam knew I could incapacitate him from this proximity in two seconds flat. But it was not fear that I saw.

  He was turned on.

  The notion momentarily surprised me. Was I losing my edge? I was sure I’d been going for lethal. I adjusted my tactics to accommodate his reaction immediately.

  I stepped closer; leathers against towel.

  “Are the Police involved, Adam?” I asked, leaning in and nuzzling his neck. His head tipped back involuntarily, giving me better access.

  “No,” he rasped, his hands finding my hips and holding me steady against him. “This is for Amber.”

  I took an abrupt step backwards and shook my head.

  “Amber?”

  Adam snatched up his boxers and pulled them on under his towel. Then with determined movements, he discarded the towel and reached for his leathers.

  “Jaxon Harding did a number on her,” he said, zipping up his pants with a harsh tug that could have proved disastrous. Adam didn’t hide his emotions well. I revised my opinion of his abilities as regards to being a spy. “The mess he left is still out there,” he went on, picking up his sweat soaked t-shirt and balling it up in his fists.

  Bare chested, he turned to look at me; eyes blazing with anger and not just a small measure of frustration.

  “She can’t walk anywhere without thinking one of Harding’s minions is about to take her out. A lot of people are unhappy with what happened. This new kingpin has been heard to say he’ll pay all of Harding’s debts.”

  “All of his debts?”

  “Amber was influential in bringing Harding down. Bringing the entire organisation down, affecting the flow of drugs throughout New Zealand. Public opinion is that she has to pay.”

  “And Wayne Pascoe has said he’ll make her,” I finished for him.

  Adam shrugged. It made the muscles in his chest ripple. For a second I saw nothing else.

  Then he stepped closer, into my personal space, and lifted a finger to my chin, tipping my head up.

  “We’re a family,” he whispered, looking hard into my eyes. “We look out for each other. Take care of each other. Have each other’s back. Any one of us would risk our lives to keep Amber safe.”

  He moved closer still. Leathers against leathers.

  “When you become part of our family,” he murmured, lowering his head, hot breath fanning against my lips, “you belong to all of us.”

  I let a slow breath of air out, my eyes locked on Adam’s, trying futilely to ignore his lips. So close, I knew he was going to kiss me. So near, I could almost feel the caress.

  He held the position for a long drawn out moment. So long, I found myself leaning closer. Tipping over. Falling.

  He stepped back, and then turned away, lifting his shirt above his head and throwing it, basketball meets hoop style, into the laundry hamper in the corner.

  “Nothing but net!” he called, and then sent me a beaming grin.

  I stared at him for a second. Feeling too many emotions in that moment to form coherent words. Coherent thoughts.

  A rush of air left me. The bastard. He knew. He drew me in, made me fall, and stepped back.

  Brilliant.

  A smile came unbidden to my lips and then the next breath of air out was more of a chuckle.

  Bravo, Mr Savill. Bravo.

  Talk of family and his kisses knocked me on my arse.

  The smile fell. He knew me. He saw inside. He looked past the spy and glimpsed the lonely woman.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this,” he whispered. “You don’t have to do this all on your own.”

  “Should I become part of your family then, Stalker? Is that it?”

  “You already are,” he replied, and turned toward the door, leaving the room.

  I rushed to follow him, unsure why, but unable to stop myself.

  “I think Nick would argue with that,” I pointed out, catching up to him in the hallway. He didn’t turn around, but kept walking towards the sleeping quarters at the rear of the building.

  “Nick might not like it, but he’ll accept it,” Adam finally replied, just as he pushed into a room, causing me to follow.

  I had a momentary thought that Eric in control would have witnessed my mad dash to keep up with Adam’s longer legs. I wondered if it had amused him. It sure as hell didn’t amuse me.

>   “So, you just declare I’m part of the family, and that’s that,” I said, watching as he pulled a clean shirt from a drawer, and pulled it over his head.

  I started to frown and then let my eyes wander the room instead. Bed. Side table. Lamp. Bookshelf with books and games. Set of drawers full of clothes. Bathroom full of toiletries. ASI knew how to do a lockdown.

  “Have you ever had a family, Charlie?” he asked, sitting down on the side of the bed.

  “The Department is my family,” I automatically replied. Which shocked more than the words did. The Department, as we’d already ascertained, was a piss poor family. But the fact I’d blurted the defence out without forethought was the real shocker.

  Adam had not just lowered my guard, he’d obliterated it.

  “What about when you were a kid?” he pressed, watching me behind shuttered eyes. His emotions well in check.

  I feared mine weren’t, so I turned away to pace.

  What the fuck was wrong with me?

  “I lost my parents when I was five.”

  Silence, which forced me to turn.

  “Truth?” he said, when my eyes finally found his.

  I nodded my head, feeling more exposed than ever.

  “What happened?” he asked baldly. Had he softened his tone, I may well have not replied.

  “Car accident. My father swerved to avoid a truck on the wrong side of the road, and took the car over the side of a cliff.”

  “Shit,” Adam said with feeling. “You weren’t with them?”

  “First day of school.”

  “Lucky.”

  Was it? I’d often wondered.

  “Where did you go after that?”

  “Wellington,” I admitted, moving to the other side of the bed and sitting down. My legs felt weak, all of a sudden. My breaths laboured. “Sisters of Mercy orphanage for the next few years, then foster homes across the city. I was never more than a year in each one.”

  “Harsh,” he offered. “You grow attached to any?”

  I shook my head, my hand somehow finding its way to my stomach. I felt like I might vomit.

  “What were they like?” he asked, not moving closer. In fact, he wasn’t moving at all.

  I would have turned my head to face him, to see what secrets were revealed on his face. But I was having a hard time not being sick, and all my concentration was required just for that.

  “I can’t…” I said through panted breaths. My head shook from side to side. “I can’t…”

  “Easy,” Adam said softly. But somehow now the softness of tone was acceptable. His warmth met me first, and then his arm wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me up against his side.

  Then in the next laboured breath we were lying on the bed, his back to it, my flank pressed against a dark duvet. My body curved into his side as though it belonged.

  “Breathe,” he encouraged. “I’ve got you. It’s OK.”

  But it wasn’t. The more I tried to remember my childhood, the more difficult it was to suck in air. My mouth filled with saliva, my stomach churned as though I’d swallowed arsenic. My mind whirred.

  This was new. I’d never not been able to remember before. My childhood hadn’t been particularly eventful, save for the fact that I had no relatives and grew up in foster care. Thousands of kids did. I was no different. And I made it out OK. I went to university. I was encouraged to do well in school. To strive to be the best that I could. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember the details.

  The names. The faces. The homes. They were there somewhere, but also not. As if someone had thrown a sheer bit of fabric over my memories and I could only see hazy outlines and hear mumbled words. As if someone had rewritten my past.

  “Oh, fuck,” I said, pushing up from Adam’s embrace and rushing to the bathroom. I stared at the toilet long and hard, but willed the bile back down. Turning to the sink, I knocked the faucet on, and then splashed water on my face.

  After several seconds I stood up, sucking in air through droplets of water, and looked at myself in the mirror. I was pale. Shadows bloomed beneath my eyes. Something haunted and unmentionable flashed in my gaze. I concentrated on breathing. Then cracked my neck from side to side. Rolled my shoulders. Loosened my limbs. My training coming back bit by bit.

  Adam’s face appeared in the mirror, over my shoulder, concern and not just a little shock there.

  I wasn’t surprised. I half expected him to joke, to say something like, Jeez, when you decide to feel emotions, you really go full hog. But he didn’t. He just looked me in the eye and waited.

  I had nothing. No explanation. No carefully prepared story to cover my breakdown. I had nothing.

  “Wayne Pascoe,” I managed to say, and watched Adam rock back on his heels. “Your mark selling drugs manufactured in China.”

  Adam slowly nodded his head. “What have you got?” he asked eventually, and I could have kissed him. No personal questions. All business. As though he knew I needed that.

  “What if…” I started. Shook my head. Fuck it hurt. The headache had come from nowhere, but I knew what had caused it.

  Sheer fabric and mumbled words.

  I reached for a towel and dried off my face and then let out a slow breath of air. My pulse rate slowed. My breathing regulated. My skin even flushed a more healthy shade. I stared at my pupils in the mirror. Small, pinpoint even, but I credited the halogen light above my head for that fact.

  But when I took a step toward the bedroom, I could have sworn my body felt like it had been drugged.

  I forced that ridiculous thought from my head and focused on what was important.

  The connection. The puzzle pieces. Somehow it all fit.

  “What if,” I stared again, turning to look at Adam, “the cartel I brought down in Guangzhou still exists.”

  Adam stared long and hard at me, the cogs inside his head whirring. I could almost see them shifting behind the deep blue of his eyes.

  “If that’s the case,” he said slowly, “then you’ve been kept in the dark.”

  “Exactly,” I said, feeling lost and alone and fucking mad. “And the person who’s kept me there is the one man who’s been like a father to me over the years.”

  “The Director,” Adam finished for me.

  The Director. The one who praised my skills and competency, while denying me access to Jacques Thibault’s interview after China.

  “The connection,” Adam continued, filling in the blanks, but I’d already silently done it. “We’re interfering with the drugs here on New Zealand soil. Upsetting their distribution in the South Pacific. Targeting their representative here.” He lifted his head and looked at me, worry etched in fine lines across stubbled cheeks. “And you tried to stop them in Guangzhou. Stop them where they were made. You know them. You know how they work and you know who else is involved.”

  I sank down onto the edge of the bed, the weight of discovery too heavy to uphold.

  “You’re a target, babe,” he said softly, moving close enough so when he crouched down, his hands could reach out either side of my legs and rest against the bedspread. “But not because of what you’ve done. Because of what you know. And you wouldn’t have even realised that at the time, you may not have figured that out at all - that’s why he left you active. Until a chance arose for you to connect the dots.

  “What we’ve been doing for the past few years, all the drug busts, and cleaning up the streets. It put a target on our head. But it put a bullseye on the back of his. Because sooner or later you’d hear about your home city. Your home nation. You’d read it online or see it on a news programme, and you’d connect the fucking dots.”

  His hands moved from where they’d been resting against the bed, either side of my legs, and came down on my thighs. He squeezed them slightly, his head ducking down to meet my eyes.

  “It’s what you know, even if you didn’t realise you knew it. It’s what we’ve been doing, even though we had no idea how far reaching our acts wer
e. But most of all, it’s him, this Director, this man in charge of New Zealand’s spy agency.

  “Wayne Pascoe’s not the new drug kingpin. The Director of the Department is.”

  Holy fucking shit.

  “No,” I rasped. His fingers tightened, he opened his mouth to press home the issue. But I beat him to it. “Not just our new kingpin. He’s bigger than that.” Pascoe was just a front.

  Adam frowned.

  “The person at the top of the cartel was always a shadow,” I admitted slowly, as the facts started to make sense. “We caught the lieutenants. We got the dealers on the streets. But we never found the shadow. They called him Yǐngzi. But no one knew for certain who he actually was. Interpol thought it one of the lieutenants. The DGSE in France thought it someone they held at Le Santé. The Department put it out there that it was another target we’d looked at earlier, but Interpol couldn’t find him when they searched again. But they all agreed on one thing. The cartel was over, with or without Yǐngzi.”

  I started laughing. It sounded unhinged even to my ears. Ten years I’d followed orders blindly. Ten years I’d done what was required of me without a second thought. Ten years I’d been his soldier. His spy. His agent. Ten fucking years and this?

  He was coming for me. Tell her I'm coming. Tell her it’s time to face the truth. Veritas Lux Mea. There's nowhere to hide.

  Veritas Lux Mea. The truth enlightens me.

  God, I felt sick.

  Chapter 25

  One Way Or Another, This Ended Tonight

  Charlie

  The sickness didn’t abate that evening, nor the next day. A constant sense of nausea, a thrumming of anxiety, a tumult of emotions I had no way of countering. Adam kept a wary eye on me, but I no longer felt as though I was under his guard, suspected of escaping at any given moment. Not trusted. It was concern that kept the edges of his lips down. Worry that darkened the blue of his eyes. Frustration that had his hair standing at odd angles, his fingers constantly running though them, as though aerating his scalp would somehow aid in cooling him down.