Mayhem's Desire: Operation Mayhem

by Lindsay Cross

  “And she treasures you too.”

  She shrugged, but in a confident way—as if he’d told her nothing she didn’t already know. So the two sisters were close despite their differences. Interesting.

  “That’s how family works, right?” There was the tiniest bit of bitterness in her voice—something he wanted to explore further, but the last thing he needed right now was to get her thinking about things she didn’t like.

  “So, what were you like growing up?”

  Her entire demeanor changed. It was like a tsunami was rolling toward him from the distant horizon, growing larger and stronger. He felt the power of her presence as she unwound her arms and laid a hand on her hip. She dropped her chin and looked up at him with thick, impossibly black lashes. Her effect was just as devastating as the rogue wave. “What do you think?” She tilted her head just a little bit and stepped toward him. As she touched his chest with her finger, he sucked in a breath.

  And then she looked up at him, and he lost his ability to reason. “I—I don’t know. Tell me.”

  Her lips curled at the same time as her arms slid up and around his neck, her fingers toying with the hair at the nape. “I’ll give you three guesses.”

  No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep his hands at his sides. Instinctively they went to her hips. Hips that seemed to have been carved out just for him. “I’m not good at guessing.”

  His mouth was close to hers, wanting to taste her again. With her body plastered against his, he was barely able to hold himself back. She was the most gorgeous creature he had ever laid eyes on. He could feel every inch of her through their clothes. Heaven help him, he knew what she looked like underneath that silk nightgown.

  “Well, aren’t you full of surprises?” Her nails dug into his arm with a bite of pain, instantly arousing him. His hips bucked reflexively as he turned her toward the wall and held her against it, savoring the fact that he could feel his erection digging into her belly.

  They were so close now, their lips hovering inches apart. He was going to kiss her again. Going to fill himself up with her sweet taste and touch. He was so close. He could feel her breath fanning across his face.

  “You were a master at guessing earlier.” Her eyes narrowed, and she shoved him away.

  He let go, surprised, and watched as she stomped off, her hips swaying provocatively in the darkness.

  “Whitney?”

  She went inside and shut the door, and the soft click of the lock seemed louder than an explosion. She’d just played him for a fool, and he’d walked right into her trap completely blind.

  Son-of-a-bitch. He’d completely mistaken her arousal for what it truly was—anger.

  She was still pissed off from earlier, and she’d just made sure he’d spend the entire night without one wink of sleep. Dr. Averton better have set her alarm bright and early, as he didn’t know how much longer he could wait for an answer to his problem. The next time he saw Whitney Averton, he’d be ready. She’d never dictate his responses again.

  11

  Whitney woke up seething and grabbed her phone, punching in Cory’s number before the sleep cleared from her eyes. The phone rang without answer, and she tossed it back onto the nightstand, not actually thinking about Cory, but Hicks. How dare he come to her door in the middle of the night pretending to want to talk to her sister? It was beyond obvious he’d hoped for a booty call. Why else would he have come to the door fresh from a shower, wearing a sleeveless shirt that revealed his powerful arms? It had taken a massive surge of willpower not to jump him right there. But no matter how attractive Hicks might be, she wasn’t about to let him use her as a doormat. And Hicks hadn’t just walked on her tonight—he’d wiped his muddy feet.

  Well, at least she could derive some satisfaction from knowing she’d sent him away all hot and bothered—and alone. There were only three women on the premises, and they were all off limits to him.

  Whitney slept soundly, gloating over the knowledge that she’d won that battle, but she woke up alone. Her sister, a notorious early riser, was long gone by the time Whitney crawled out of bed. After ransacking her bag, she settled on a pair of jeans and a V-neck white T-shirt. Classic and casual. Shoved in the bottom of one of the drawers.

  Now she padded barefoot down the staircase toward the kitchen, her stomach reminding her it was past time for breakfast. Half afraid to find Hicks prowling about, she was relieved when she found the room empty. She went to the large double refrigerator that took up part of the far wall and pulled both doors open. There were bacon and sausage, cold cuts, eggs—everything she’d need to make whatever she wanted. Her stomach grumbled. It might be a little early for her to start pulling out pots and pans, no matter how much her fingers itched to try out that professional-grade stove.

  Whitney closed the doors with a sigh of regret and looked around for the pantry. She found it just off the kitchen—a large, walk-in closet with fully stocked shelves. And an entire assortment of cereal was right at eye level. She could definitely handle this. She selected the Lucky Charms marshmallow cereal, found a bowl for the milk, and proceeded to devour an entire serving. Nothing like a good coating of sugar first thing in the morning to get her going. If she were still here tomorrow, she’d make herself a hot breakfast.

  No one had come in and bothered her during breakfast, and she hadn’t heard anyone walking around the mansion, so after picking up her mess, she went off in search of her sister. There were three levels to the mansion, and from what Melissa had told her last night, all the living quarters were on the second. Did that mean the lab was on the third floor?

  She went up to check, but after a thorough search of the third floor got hopelessly lost. Finally, she managed to find her way back to the stairs. There was no way Melissa would’ve just left her alone, and she seriously doubted the entire team disappeared in the middle of the night. So, rather than barge into someone’s bedroom, she started prowling around the extra rooms on the first floor. There was a study two stories high filled with dark leather couches and a fireplace and enough books for an entire city to read. But no Melissa.

  And no Hicks…

  She kept prowling around, determined to forget about that man…At least for now. She made it through a ballroom, a couple of storage rooms, even a fully stocked fitness room complete with treadmills and bikes and small free weights. But she encountered no other humans. She was about ready to give up, and maybe sit and pout on the staircase when she bumped into Diggs. The man’s grin was as wide as it had been last night, and he had a carefree recklessness about him that made her think he probably smiled like that all the time.

  “Morning, beautiful.” He leaned against the banister of the staircase and flung a towel over his shoulder. He wasn’t wearing a shirt today, just a loose-fitting pair of gym shorts. She was woman enough to notice that he was a fine specimen of male, but there was no comparison to her heart-stopping reaction to Hicks.

  “Morning,” she said. “Have you seen my sister?”

  “Yep, she’s in the lab. Want me to take you to her?”

  “Hmmm.” Was her sister with Hicks? Did she really want to pit the two men against each other again? Last night it had certainly been entertaining, but today… “Maybe you could just point me in her direction?”

  “I don’t have anything else to do. Come on, follow me.”

  He turned and walked off in the other direction, giving her no choice but to follow him like an idiot.

  Whitney hurried to catch up with him. “I’ve searched this whole place and haven’t found anyone. Where is everybody?”

  “In the lab. We’ve been there since zero four hundred.” He slowed his pace so that she could catch up and they walked side by side through what had to be the most intricate maze of hallways she’d ever witnessed.

  Her irritation with him for not allowing her to find the lab on her own vanished. If he’d tried to give her directions, she would’ve gotten lost in a minute.

  As if
reading her mind Diggs said, “it’s one of the reasons we picked out this place as our base. Even if someone managed to break into headquarters, they’d never find the lab.”

  “For sure,” she muttered. “Why do you call this your base instead of your home?”

  She noticed Hicks had referred to it the same way last night. They turned down yet another hallway, the decorations growing more austere by the minute. “Because it’s not our home. It’s our headquarters. Our base of operations.”

  “Operations? But Melissa said you guys weren’t military anymore.”

  For the first time since she’d met the man, a shadow crossed features. “No, not anymore.”

  She found herself studying him as they walked. He moved a lot like Hicks had last night in her apartment, with an unconscious power that ordinary people just didn’t possess.

  “Here we are.” He stopped in front of a blank section of wall. No wood paneling or anything resembled a door, just plain, dark green-painted sheet rock.

  “Where are we exactly?”

  He gave her a wink and pressed his hand against a space on the wall. A bright green light rolled from the top of his fingers down his palm, and then an entire section of the wall slid back silently, revealing a staircase leading down—and none other than Hicks making his way up in their direction. Just like Diggs, he was shirtless and in gym shorts. Her traitorous heart fluttered at the sight of his raw, masculine beauty.

  “If it isn’t the devil himself,” Diggs said. “Hey man, I was just about to hit the showers, and she’s looking for her sister. She’s your case, so you should take her.”

  Hicks’s thunderous dark eyes met hers, and she could practically feel the frustration rolling off him in waves. The events of last night played out in her mind, and she shifted uncomfortably. From the look of him, he hadn’t gotten much sleep, which was exactly as she’d intended, so why did she feel guilty about it now?

  She braced herself, waiting on him to tell Diggs to screw off and take her himself. She wouldn’t allow them to see that his rejection still bothered her.

  “Thanks, I got her.”

  Diggs left her standing there speechless. Evidently, he planned some retribution. She would if the situation were reversed.

  “Well, are you coming?” His tone was too cordial—he definitely had something planned. But if she wanted to get to Melissa, she’d have to let Hicks take her. If the lab below was as much of a maze as the hallways above, she had no intention of traversing the place without a map or guide.

  “How are you this morning?” She descended a few steps until she was standing just above him. The position allowed her to stare straight into his eyes, no looking up.

  There was a tightness about his mouth that hadn’t been here last night, and she didn’t like the thought that she was the one who’d put it there.

  “I think we both know the answer to that question,” he said gruffly.

  What did that mean? Was he mad? Resigned? Lord help her, she couldn’t tell. Either way, she wasn’t apologizing to the man, not until he apologized to her. He was the one who’d been in the wrong from the get go, not her. He was the one who’d judged her without all the information. So why did she want to run her fingers across that strong masculine jaw?

  Suddenly, the door behind her slid shut, and they were left in a dark staircase, lit only by a soft glow of light. It was the kind of place for an illicit meeting, and she found herself leaning toward him.

  But he didn’t meet her halfway this time. He simply reached out to steady her and then let go as if his touch hadn’t just branded her skin.

  “Come on, I’ll show you around the place.”

  Hicks gave her his back and descended the stairs, fighting to keep his reactions hidden. He’d had a long talk with Dr. Averton this morning, and the results had not been what he’d expected. Although the enhancements could have affected his natural male reaction to females, it was unlikely. That meant Hicks’s response to Whitney was one hundred percent natural. The fact that he could smell and feel her arousal was in effect an enhancement, but Dr. Averton had been quick to point out that while Reaper had reacted to Caroline on a primal level, none of the other men on the team had been affected by her that way.

  And Diggs had told him last night that he didn’t share Hicks’s…strange attraction to Whitney.

  So, what was he supposed to do with all that information? He sure as hell didn’t know, and although he’d spent the better part of the morning trying to figure it out, he hadn’t come up with an answer. He couldn’t avoid her, not until he found who’d broken into her apartment, but maybe he could temper his reaction to her by sheer willpower.

  He reached the bottom of the stairs and held the door open for her, and when she passed by him, he couldn’t help but inhale her scent. No matter how much she was trying to pretend otherwise, she was just as hot and bothered as him. Maybe he could turn the tables on her like she had done to him last night—make it so that she couldn’t think or sleep or even freaking walk without aching. Just as quickly as the thought came to him, he dismissed it. He wouldn’t have the willpower to stop halfway. If he started, he’d finish it.

  “This place is insane,” she said.

  Hicks dragged his eyes off of her and forced himself to look around. State of the art equipment filled the large glassed-in labs lining the hallway on either side. Instead of the deep, vibrant colors of the mansion upstairs, the research facility was all white and austere. With glass covering the top half of the walls and concrete floors, it was the exact opposite of the opulent luxury above. “Want me to show you around before I take you to your sister?”

  Whitney bit her lip and Hicks had to hold back a groan. He wanted to bite her lip. He wanted to take her mouth in a fierce act of possession and then claim her as his own.

  “I’d like that if you don’t mind,” she said without guile.

  “Out here are the peripheral labs that your sister uses for data processing. We don’t use these facilities very often, but they’re there if we ever need to expand.” He led the way down the hallway.

  “Expand how?”

  Shit, he shouldn’t have said that. “The principal research facilities are deeper. Past them is our main training room and our actual HQ is in the back.”

  “So, there is an entire below ground level as large as the mansion above?”

  “That’s correct,” Hicks threaded his fingers together behind his back as they walked, needing to do something with his hands to keep himself from touching her. “We’ve laid it out in order of importance. The less critical areas are closer to the stairway, and the most important ones are on the very outskirts.”

  “In case someone breaks in.”

  “Exactly.” Their war room was the most heavily fortified section of the entire compound. Even if someone managed to breach the interior of the mansion, find the hidden entrance to the lab, bypass the scanner and get through the research facilities, they would still not be able to breach the final location. Not without activating two tons of C4 explosive, anyway.

  “Why do you always talk like you’re preparing for an attack?”

  “Because we are.” General Rainier wouldn’t give up his search for the team or Dr. Averton and the serum. They were, as far as Hicks was aware, his only link to his little pet project.

  A project he’d lured Hicks’s team into under pretenses. They’d gone in thinking they were doing their duty to their country. They’d had no idea they’d end up like this. Cut off from normal life and the work they’d lived for, uncertain of their ability to control themselves…

  At least Hicks hadn’t been forced to cut ties with his family when they’d gone into hiding—both of his parents had died when he was just a kid. He’d had a great foster home, way better than most, and joined up for the United States military at the age of eighteen. Some of the others had been forced to leave more behind.

  “Can I see it?”

  “What?”

  “Your
headquarters. Sounds kind of cool,” Whitney said casually.

  “No.”

  Her eyes narrowed at his harsh tone. He wouldn’t mind showing her their war room—it might impress her—but just because he wanted her like he wanted air didn’t mean he trusted her.

  “So, this guy who’s trying to get you, what does he want?” Whitney had crossed her arms again, and even though she was wearing a simple white T-shirt—which looked utterly devastating on her—his mouth watered. He’d thought her hot in that skintight dress, but she looked more approachable like this. More like his usual type of woman.

  “Who said anything about a guy?” Melissa must have filled her in on some of the details last night, but he had no idea how much she’d told her. Surely Dr. Averton hadn’t revealed all their secrets. Had she?

  The thought of being able to share his real self with someone sent a surprising jolt of elation straight up his spine. He’d lived in the shadows for so long he honestly didn’t even know who his real self was any more. Maybe he didn’t have one. Maybe he was just an ex-operative who’d been sucked up and then spat out by the military, with no hope of having any other identity for the rest of his life.

  He’d never given it much thought before. If anything, he’d always felt bad for the guys who’d had something real in their lives and given it up because of Project Mayhem. But now…Well, it seemed like it might be nice to have someone in his life. A sense of purpose beyond mere survival.

  Queasiness rolled around in his stomach. There was no doubt they would have explosive sex, the kind he might not ever experience again, but did he really want more? With her?

  If he was ever going to commit to a woman, and that was a big if, she’d be honorable and she’d be good. She wouldn’t be on the wrong side of the law.

  But was she really as bad as he’d assumed? What if he was wrong about her?

  “No one. I just assumed from the way everyone talks around here that someone bad is after you. I mean, why else would you be hiding out in a bunker dressed up like Donald Trump’s mansion?”

  Damn, the woman was too inquisitive by half. He should’ve expected that since her sister was a genius. But he wasn’t ready to give away all of their secrets just yet. “Well, you know what they say about assumptions.”