Hard to Protect (Black Ops Heroes)

by Black, Incy

  Her breathing broke, replaced by tiny snatched gasps.

  His cock wept a tear of appreciation. “Hardly noticed them,” he whispered hoarsely. “Too busy going blind feasting my eyes on the whole package. Besides I have a few of my own, a hell of a lot more obvious than yours.”

  “Some are self-inflicted. Those teenage years can be hell,” Angel said, her tone quiet and self-deprecating. As if she were issuing a caution, giving him a chance to retreat.

  Jesus. “I’m sorry you went through that,” he responded softly, giving her a light squeeze. He would not join the ranks of those who had, no doubt, judged and hurried away from this woman.

  “Don’t be,” she mumbled. “At the time, making those little snicks on my skin provided a much-needed release. A way of letting out anger, angst, and confusion.”

  It was his turn to suck in a breath. She drew her forefinger across the puckered indent marring his chest, then drew a tantalizing trail to the one just left of his naval.

  Biting his lip, he closed his eyes,

  Her finger circled his navel slowly, with an unspoken promise to drop lower and then lower. His own fingers got busy. He’d prefer she focused on all that was sublime about her, like her pebble-hard nipples atop lush breasts.

  Then, because she’d reduced him to half-idiot, he murmured: “My scars are all healed. Want to share why yours appear all but invisible on the outside, but remain as raw as ever on the inside?”

  “No.” Snapped like a wire cord under too much stress. Palms flat against his chest, she pushed. Hard. “You’ve got my body, Berwick. You can’t have my soul.”

  No, because she’d already given that to her bastard brother. He caught her elbow as she shoved passed him. “Fair enough. I’ll take what I can get.”

  “And maybe I’ll give it. But not here in the shower.” She tugged free and padded over to the recessed shelves, her wet hair clinging to her back, the ends curling slick against her skin, like naughty question marks. Reaching for a towel, she wrapped it in a seductive drape from breast swell to high thigh. “You going to give me directions to your bedroom?” she asked, her voice low and husky, the words drawn slow. “Or do I have to find it myself?”

  “Upside-down arrangement,” he blathered nonsensically, no blood left for his brain. “Sitting room and kitchen upstairs, bedrooms on this level. Back along the corridor, second door on the right… And you are both the most confusing and complex women I have ever met.”

  “No, Berwick, not confusing, not complex, just not that easy. Figure out the difference.”

  She disappeared into the corridor, hips swaying, her feet leaving a slick track of prints gleaming against the slate. Christ, even her footprints raked his body with lightning bolts of need.

  Cursing long and hard, he swept his hair back with both hands and ducked his head under the hot stream of water. How the hell was it that she always seemed to wrest control of the situation from him?

  He’d never encountered a woman so uninhibited about her own raw nakedness, though her need to draw brutal attention to those scars troubled him. What angst had driven her to self-harm in the first place? Just how unhealed was she, beneath the pale silvery cuts marking her skin? Why was she so afraid to let anyone get close?

  Not his problem. Angel Treherne was a survivor. And the way she knocked him off center, he was the one at sodding risk.

  Extinguishing the shower, he reached for a towel and dried himself with sufficient vigor to qualify as extreme exfoliation.

  Christ. How many times had he joked with his team about the need to gird their loins before going into battle, never once feeling it necessary to take his own advice? Well, tonight was different. She was different. And his loins would be chipper enough when he himself got some.

  Back down the corridor, butt-naked and displaying his pride, he pushed into his bedroom… And scowled.

  Bed empty, sheets tossed awry. A towel, carelessly discarded on the floor. Three drawers to his dresser irregularly stepped, his T-shirts spilling out of one in a waterfall, blue and black pairs of jeans hanging from another like tongues.

  The witch. She’d helped herself to some of his clothes before fleeing. Not that he gave one shit about that.

  This looping, hairpin bend roller-coaster ride he was chasing her on ended now. No more wooing. No more trying to be nice. No more trying to protect Angel Treherne, and no more trying to wrest control from the biggest tease in history just to land Rhys Treherne.

  He’d planned to call Zac McAllister and cancel the order to arrest her.

  The hell he would now.

  Chapter Seven

  She’d told him not to reach for her soul. One backward glance before quitting that wet room, and she’d seen he hadn’t listened. Beneath all that hot need, a fierce determination had etched Berwick’s face. That he would not let go of her until he’d routed out every last one of the secrets she kept buried deep.

  So she’d up and left. Fast.

  Not running scared. Not running shy. Not even running regretful that she’d allowed something as silly as pricked pride to fuel her rash need to prove her seduction skills did not “suck.”

  No. She’d up and left fast because, lust aside, if Berwick didn’t much like her with her ice shield up—and yes, that hurt—he most certainly wouldn’t like the woman she kept barricaded behind it.

  The sudden rap on her open office door was loud, abrupt, and not unexpected.

  She braced. She’d known he would come at her. Berwick wasn’t the kind of man to allow a woman to skip out on him without explanation.

  What she hadn’t anticipated was that he would come at her with company—Fray Dervish and Zac McAllister—who, on his nod, took up sentry position on either side of her as she sat, her spine stiff to the point of snapping, at her desk.

  She pointedly kept her attention on Will’s black boots, still firmly planted on the threshold to her office as if further entry into her territory might contaminate.

  The heavy silence lengthened. No action, reaction, or even sign of life from any of the players. The moment trapped like a film clip stuck on freeze-frame.

  She couldn’t stand it. The need to prove she was in no way intimidated by these bully-boy tactics—a lie, given the way her heart couldn’t seem to decide whether to stop or pound—she pushed out of her chair, extended her arms straight, and fit her wrists together in a caricature of being cuffed. “Bit extreme, in my opinion, Berwick, to arrest a woman for changing her mind,” she taunted. “But then who knows what goes on in that head of yours, as my psych assessment on you warned.”

  He moved fast, so fast her eyes couldn’t track him. His palms hit the surface of her desk, the slap of skin against wood, ricocheting off the walls. “You are not in control here.”

  No. But she could pretend. She could have won Oscars for her past performances. For an instant, she feared the universe would explode. Then, his face emptying of all expression, Berwick straightened and stepped back.

  “I was ordered to fuck you, Angel. So you’d give up Rhys’s whereabouts. That’s not going to happen, so I’ve come up with a different plan.”

  It was one thing to hold a suspicion, quite another to have it so crudely confirmed. She would not double up against the cramp ripping her stomach walls. “Why would you tell me that?”

  His eyes hardened, light green becoming dull jade. “So you don’t delude yourself into believing my interest in you was anything more than an unsavory part of my job. And because you’re going to need a white knight to save you, and I am not that man… Get her out of my sight. Containment Suite Four.”

  What? Seriously? He was going to have her locked up? “You can’t hold me. Not without valid cause.”

  Throwing his arms wide, Berwick strangled out a laugh. “Reality check, sweetheart. The Cube is home to the ‘plausibly deniable’ Black Ops units of British Intelligence. Who’s going to know? Who’s going to care? We. Don’t. Exist.”

  He nodded at her two escort
s. “Take her down.”

  When she didn’t move, Zac braved touching her. A quick squeeze to her shoulder before his hand slid down to fix around her upper arm to lift her.

  She and her two sentries had barely skirted her desk when she pulled up short in front of the man whose head she wanted to rip from his shoulders. “You’ll never get away with this.”

  “Get away with this?” His contemptuous glare raked her top to toe and back up again. “After obstructing the search for Rhys the way you have, such would be the public’s disgust at what he’s done, I could tar, feather, and parade you stark naked in chains down Bond Street and the crowds would cheer.”

  The heat in her office had climbed exponentially, yet perversely, Artic-bitter temperatures licked her skin, raising goose bumps. How much did Berwick know? How the hell had he found out about the conspiracy involving the MoD?

  “Innocent front-line troops, Angel. Fighting for their country, dying for their country—”

  Don’t say it. Don’t say it…

  “—Used as human guinea pigs in medical trials without their knowledge or consent.”

  She felt the sharp recoil of the agents standing on either side of her. They hadn’t known. Berwick should not have shared. Didn’t he realize that anyone in the know about BT11 mysteriously wound up dead? “Who told you?”

  “Butters. After you disappeared last night, I paid him a visit. It’s amazing what a man will declassify when pinned to his own bed with my forearm crushing his thorax. Not to mention, he’s rather keen to keep private, from his adoring and currently-residing-with-the-kids-in-Scotland wife, his visits to a certain hotel in St. John’s Wood. One of my mother’s establishments. Apparently, he favors chastisement, and not the verbal kind.”

  Her eyes flew open. Berwick locked her in a skin-flaying stare.

  Then, “Christ, Angel,” he half whispered. “Fourteen separate psychotic episodes caused by BT11, a hundred and twenty innocents dead. A Red Cross outpost in Mozambique wiped out. A refugee relief center in the Sudan, also wiped. A garrison checkpoint in Afghanistan leveled with all lives lost. A clinic—”

  “Enough. Please God, no more,” she pleaded hoarsely.

  She hadn’t known Rhys was testing his flu vaccine on soldiers. When he’d told her and confessed some had suffered unanticipated side effects, she’d raged. And when he’d then shared that the MoD had ordered the full erasure of anyone connected with BT11, including Rhys, she’d thrown up, tasting a fear she hadn’t experienced since Cymion Gray’s murderous visit.

  The only reason she’d escaped death—so far? Because, following Rhys’s disappearance with the stolen thumb drive, the MoD saw her as an asset in tracking down her brother.

  “How? How could you protect Rhys after that?” Berwick demanded.

  “He w-warned them his f-formula wasn’t r-ready,” she stammered.

  “He may have warned the brass. He said fuck all to those soldiers he shot up with his junk.”

  “It was a f-flu vaccine,” she protested weakly.

  “So that’s how Rhys got this past you. He sold you some bullshit story about his chemicals saving mankind from a future epidemic. No, Angel. BT11 is a form of synthetic adrenaline, bio-engineered by your brother to enhance performance.”

  No. Rhys would never lie. Not to her. But Butters would happily twist the truth without conscience. “Did Butters happen to share, while you were crushing his windpipe, the fact that every thread linking BT11 to the MoD has been, or is in the process of being, severed? As in killed off. Soldiers, medics, two officers above the rank of Brigadier, Rhys’s partner, his technicians. All dead.”

  A long, heavy silence pushed against her office walls.

  “No. He didn’t,” Berwick eventually ground out.

  A glimmer of hope flickered. “Now, do you understand why Rhys had to go to ground?”

  More silence, except for the buzz of a fly spinning in spasm on her window shelf.

  Fingertips to her temples, she pressed on. “Butters is a key financial adviser to the MoD. Four years ago, he put forward the motion of charging pharmaceutical companies exorbitant amounts of money to test developmental drugs on front-line troops.”

  Her voice was scratchy, her mouth too dry. Berwick folded his arms across his chest. Suggesting he’d listen but not necessarily believe.

  Her temper simmered; she tamped it down and plowed on. “The motion was unanimously rejected by the military brass. Except a covert nucleus of deputy ministers and military officers—I don’t know who…I think the names are on the thumb drive Rhys stole—disagreed with that decision. They thought Butters’s proposal offered a genius solution to filling the financial gap left by the austerity measures being foisted on the military to save money.”

  She cleared her throat, wiped her lips, her sweating palm leaving a trace residue of bitter salt. “Rhys’s private laboratory was approached when the bigger pharmaceutical companies backed away. My brother was overconfident in his work. The MoD got to register four highly lucrative patents in the early years of the relationship, but then things went bad. BT11, Rhys’s new experimental drug, failed. Its side effect—catastrophic and violent psychosis. Those who authorized the experiment panicked, Butters took control at the Cube, and he’s been using Black Op resources to sanitize what happened.”

  Berwick wasn’t an easy man to read. Did he believe her? Or was that rigidly blank expression of his hiding that he thought her revelations preposterous? The ravings of a crazed conspiracy theorist.

  “Unexplained deaths in the armed forces aren’t easily hidden, Angel,” he said.

  No. But she’d done her homework. “Accidental friendly fire, traffic accidents while out on operations, suicides, drownings—twenty-five murders sprinkled across all three Services comprising over a hundred thousand men and women are a cinch to hide. Last year, there were forty-nine non-combat related deaths reported among British forces in Afghanistan alone.”

  Still nothing from Berwick.

  Frustration ignited her temper. “Fine, believe what you like, but when a kill-order is issued on Fray and Zac because they now know too much, Butters will expect you, his current lap-dog, to carry out the executions. Are you up for that, Berwick? Is that your price for leap-frogging forward in your precious career?”

  “Get. Her. The fuck. Out of here.”

  Zac and Fray must have feared for her life. Moving super-fast, they half dragged, half carried her into the corridor.

  Resisting damn near dislocated her shoulders. “You stick your head any further up Butters’s backside, Berwick, and no one will be able to hear you singing Rule Britannia,” she yelled back loudly enough for half the Cube to hear.

  …

  A full week had passed.

  Will ceased his furious pacing of the empty changing room, crossed to his locker, spun the combination lock, three times left, once right, and when the door released, reached inside and removed a bottle.

  He’d cocked up. Fucking big time.

  Breaking the seal on the thirty-year-old single malt Jack Ballentyne—his old commanding officer, mentor, and friend—had sent him as a welcome back present, he sank a couple of generous slugs, figured what the hell, and downed a third. Re-tightening the cap, he retuned the bottle to its dark recess.

  Then he exploded. Driving the heel of his hand against the glossy surface of his locker over and over again, the slam of bone and muscle against the protesting metal, hideous. For good measure he added a couple of fist dents, the skin across his knuckles splitting.

  Chest heaving, he turned his back on the damage, shook out his fist, and waited for his hunger to wreak violence to abate.

  He’d thought having Angel locked up where he could keep an eye on her, would afford her protection. Massive fail on his part. Huge.

  Not fifteen minutes ago, Butters had ordered him to cease all further contact with Angel. That he, personally, would be assuming full responsibility for her ongoing incarceration.

  Thi
s, coming on the back of the report he’d received just this morning from Zac—who he’d assigned to investigate on the hush-hush Angel’s wild accusation that the MoD had been silencing all those in the know about BT11—confirming that her fears were far from misplaced.

  Fuck. He should have gotten her clear of the Cube and Butters when he had the chance. Her violent reaction alone to the threat of incarceration—so at odds with her Ice Queen persona—should have been warning enough. Angel might be adept at sidestepping the truth, but she couldn’t lie outright for shit. He’d witnessed that for himself.

  Christ, instead of protecting her as he’d intended, he’d handed her to Butters on a plate and put her in mortal danger. How the fuck was he supposed to put that right now that Butters had barred him from visiting the custody suite?

  In need of an idea fast, he drummed the back of his head slowly against the damaged door of his locker in the hope it would shake loose some inspiration.

  A possibility slammed him fast. It was also extreme. But what the hell. He’d protect her—by breaking her the fuck out. In a way that didn’t implicate him much beyond being an idiot. He could live with that. Everyone made mistakes. It shouldn’t set his career back more than a couple of years.

  He’d do so under cover of the fake funeral he’d orchestrated to lure Rhys out from wherever the hell it was he was hiding. And scheduled to take place at three o’clock today.

  His actions would be in direct contravention of his orders, but he’d argue later that Angel’s presence had seemed rational at the time. That, at the last minute, he’d changed a small detail in his initial plan to improve the chance of Rhys coming in without a fight, because he would have seen for himself that Angel was alive and safe.

  He heaved a deep exhale. His plan wasn’t perfect. Rhys might not survive his re-capture, but Angel—a woman his conscience seemed to have adopted—would. He’d take that. And as for Butters? Once Angel was safe, he’d welcome an attack. It would give him a good excuse to kill the fucker.

  Activating his cell phone, Will placed a call through to Fray Dervish and instructed her to go shopping. Then, lowering to one of the wooden benches dissecting the middle of the changing room, he waited.