Hotshot

by Mann, Catherine

  He yanked the door open. “Damn it, Jayne.” His hair wet, he jerked his bathrobe tie tight. “I already told you I’m sorry for—” He looked up. His eyes went wide. “Shit.”

  Jayne?

  Jayne!

  “Jayne?” Paulina pushed inside, her steps and voice far more controlled than her churning stomach. “Your ex-wife was here.”

  He held up his hands. “Hey, calm down. She was waiting on my doorstep when I got home. She saw about the explosion on the news and wanted to know why I hadn’t told her what was going on with Shay.”

  Perfectly reasonable. But she hadn’t gotten this far in the FBI by accepting half the story as the whole truth.

  She knew guilty when she saw guilty. “And you’re sorry for not telling her, which is why you barked, ‘Damn it, Jayne,’ when you thought she’d come back.”

  “That’s pretty much how conversations between us roll.” His eyes skipped away and back. Liar.

  Paulina circled him, her job-honed instincts blaring.

  Even with the scent of his fresh-washed body and spicy soap, she smelled . . . another woman. “So you got your shower.”

  “Uh-huh,”

  He dodged her eyes.

  “Did you sleep with your ex-wife?”

  He met her eyes, wary. Weary.

  She slammed her basket on his black lacquer dinner table. “Answer. Me. Now. Did you sleep with Jayne?”

  “Hell, no. Even if I’d wanted to—which I didn’t—you may recall you wore me out last night. I’m not exactly in my twenties anymore, and I don’t resort to those little purple pills.”

  Dating a CIA agent totally stank. His evasive maneuvers were pretty darn convincing. “Something happened.”

  “Don’t you think we should head back to work? I need to get dressed.”

  “I couldn’t locate you on your phone. You were probably too busy sucking face with your ex to hear.”

  “I was asleep,” he snapped. “If anything, you should be chewing my ass for not hearing the phone when I’m on call.”

  She stepped closer, crowding him, even if he didn’t retreat. “Right. Whatever. So I came by to feed you and let you know you can snag a couple more hours’ sleep. There’s been a glitch with the technology, and it’s going to be a while before they’re up and running again to track the data. Now I deserve to know what happened here with you and Jayne.”

  He hesitated.

  “Don’t hand me any bull about how we’re not in a relationship.” She held her temper in check, because if she lost control of her emotions, she might just cry, and she would not humiliate herself that way. “We’ve been sleeping together for four months. That entitles me to a straight answer.”

  He scrubbed a hand over his face, then along his steel gray hair. “We had a fight about Shay. Things got heated and”—he hesitated, swallowed, threw back his shoulders—“we kissed.”

  THIRTEEN

  She blinked once. “You kissed your ex-wife. You kissed her?”

  Don could see the hurt in the furrow between her brows—coming from a woman who never showed softer emotions.

  That cut him off at knees far more than buckets of Jayne’s tears. “I accept responsibility.”

  A tic started at the corner of her eye. “How can you be so calm about this? I know we don’t have some great romance going here, but when I sleep with a man, I expect exclusivity. And I’m absolutely certain this isn’t okay with Jayne’s accountant fiancé.”

  He felt compelled to offer her some reassurance. “I did not sleep with Jayne.”

  “A mighty big technicality. My mama always said close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. In case you were wondering, this qualifies as a grenade.”

  Best to divert this conversation ASAP until she cooled down. “Your mother? That’s the first time you’ve even referenced a family.”

  “I didn’t crawl out from under a rock.” The tic twitched faster.

  “So, if you didn’t crawl out from under a rock,” he pressed ahead, “where are you from?”

  “I grew up in Kentucky.” She eyed him warily, fingers toying with the handles on the picnic basket. “Mama and Daddy worked in the local car factory. They divorced when I was five.”

  “Did your father cheat on your mother?” He risked a step closer. “Is that why you’re so fired up over one kiss?”

  “Hell, I don’t know if my father cheated or not.” She slammed the wooden basket handles down and faced him full on. “I was five freaking years old. I’m ready to explode because we’re sleeping together, and you plastered your mouth all over another woman.”

  “I’m sorry.” He still didn’t understand what had happened with Jayne, but he knew full well it was going nowhere. “It meant nothing. I was comforting her because she’d heard about the bombing and drive-by. She was terrified for Shay and . . . Again, it meant nothing.”

  “Absolutely do not pull out that cliché shit with me.” She tucked her hands on her hips, started to talk, shook her head, and turned away, then spun back. “Do you love her?”

  “No! Fuck no,” he answered without hesitation.

  “Do you hate her? Did marriage make you some kind of commitment phobe?”

  His neck started to itch. “I’m not that complicated.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong about that. Don, there is a limit to how many cans of cream of mushroom soup I’m willing to waste on a man.”

  He held his tongue, gauging what to say next that wouldn’t send her spiraling into a full-tilt rage.

  Her face went red anyway. “Don’t you dare ask if I’m PMSing, or I’m going to unleash some serious tae kwon do on your ass.”

  “You think you can take me?” he couldn’t resist taunting.

  Her eyes narrowed with sexy lethality. “In more ways than you can even imagine.”

  He shoved his hands in his robe pockets, suddenly feeling damned vulnerable, given he was naked underneath. “I should have kept my mouth shut. Excuse me for having a shitty week due to gangbangers with terrorist connections gunning for my daughter. The kiss was a fluke, and no way in hell will it ever happen again.”

  “Don’t insult me with more of those cliché answers.” She stepped closer.

  “Pardon me?”

  “No, I’m not going to pardon you this time.” She began circling him.

  “You have to know I was only speaking in a figurative sense.” Where were his pants?

  “Oh, I know full well that you won’t commit to so much as an authentic apology.” She stopped in front of him, legs spread and planted, killer heels dangerously close to his bare feet. “That makes it a little tough to believe you’re not still carrying around feelings for the woman you were married to for nineteen years.”

  “The woman I divorced fifteen years ago.”

  “Excuse me for thinking you might have feelings for her. I assumed that must be the reason you’ve never been seriously involved with anyone else for as long as anybody can remember.”

  Fine. He got it. He was inadequate when it came to anything a female would call meaningful. “You’re the one changing the rules, not me.”

  She snorted her disgust. “You’re a freaking train wreck, Don.”

  Frustration detonated inside him. He’d taken it when Jayne pulled that PTSD crap on him; hearing it again, from this woman . . . “Fuck off, Paulina.”

  Her face went into deep-freeze mode.

  Ah, shit, shit, shit.

  Had he said that out loud? But he couldn’t take it back, and she’d made it clear his apologies didn’t mean jack. So he stood his ground and waited for the retribution he knew was com—

  She slapped him.

  Yeah, there it was; however, even expecting it hadn’t prepared him for the pain hammering his jaw. The woman was strong.

  He anchored her wrist. “I’ll give you that one. But do not try it again.”

  She flipped him on his back.

  Holy hell. He saw stars dancing around his ceiling fan. Th
is was not his day.

  But he wasn’t going down easy. He still held her arm, lucky him. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  He hauled her down.

  She slammed on top of him, tucking and rolling, tumbling again. His back crashed into the dining room table. Her basket slid across and hurtled to the carpet.

  China shattered. Food splattered. She launched to her feet panting, only a second ahead of him.

  He’d never seen this side of her before. So out of control.

  So damn hot.

  Her hair twist slipping loose, she crouched, ready. Watching. “No dessert for you.”

  Don stalked closer, careful to keep his body loose, his moves nonthreatening. Easy enough to appear vulnerable when his robe tie had long ago given up, leaving his John-son waving in the wind. “You’re hurting yourself by denying us that treat, princess.”

  Slowly, he touched her stomach, her muscles gripping beneath his touch. When she didn’t move, he stroked upward, slowly, until she straightened, her feet still immobile. Pinning her with his eyes, he slipped his hand down, lower still, until he stopped between her legs in a none-too-subtle reminder of where he’d laved away lemon meringue from their last meal together.

  Paulina pressed his hand more firmly to her, molding her skirt between her legs. His body throbbed in response, hardened, his erection clear to see. Yeah, baby, this is what they were about. This was how things were supposed to be between them. She guided his hand back and forth against her, farther, sliding it just free of her body.

  She flipped his hand around.

  And bent back his pinky.

  Pain screamed through his body even as he locked his jaw up tight. She pushed harder, just about drove him to his knees.

  She leaned closer, her mouth a kiss away from his. “Who’s on top now, baby?”

  He blocked the agony and swept his foot behind hers, knocking them off balance. He twisted just in time to catch the brunt of their fall. She got to be on top, but he wasn’t letting those lethal hands of hers loose. He locked a leg over hers for good measure.

  Panting, she loomed over him, her face flushed, her hair a frazzled, fiery mess. Her hips offered the perfect cradle for his raging erection.

  He smiled up at her. “What now, princess?”

  “Shut up.” Her mouth slammed against his, nothing gentle or giving about it.

  Paulina nudged aside his bathrobe with her teeth. She nipped and kissed her way down, stung and soothed with her teeth and tongue. He hiked up her skirt to her waist, slipped his fingers under the string of her underwear, twisting, tighter, until snap, the scrap of satin fell free. She teased her damp core against him, lubricating him with her essence, almost sending him over the edge like a trigger-happy teen.

  He arched back and slammed home deep inside her. A groan slipped between his gritted teeth. He paused. Restraint. Restraint. Restraint.

  She struggled to free her hands, wriggling against him with needy insistence. The woman worked out, and it showed. “I need you hard and fast and out of control right now.”

  Thank God they were on the same page.

  “Glad to comply.” He released her wrists and gripped her hips, hauling her down as he thrust upward, letting her take this as far as she wanted. The carpet chafed his ass, no doubt leaving rug burns, not that he cared as long as she kept . . .

  Sliding . . .

  Up . . .

  Down . . .

  Faster and faster.

  The slap of skin against skin echoed in the room along with their gasps and elemental grunts. She scored his chest, and he growled his appreciation. He arched up to take one pert nipple in his mouth, drawing, teasing, working it until her rhythm grew more frantic.

  Her face went tight with pleasure. He watched her release slam through her, tearing a scream from her throat along with a litany of louder “Yes, yes, yes,” as her eyes fluttered shut.

  The tight pulsing squeeze of her pleasure massaged him, wrenching the last of his control away. She locked her knees tighter against his hips, milking his orgasm again and again until it nearly hurt, but he wasn’t ready for it to end.

  He was so screwed in more ways than one.

  She sagged over him, a sweaty, sated blanket of soft female. His head still tumbled from the intensity of how they’d come together, unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. All antacids aside, he wasn’t ready to give up her soufflés yet, and that blindsided him on a night when he needed all of his wits to get through what the coming hours held at CIA headquarters.

  This woman had a way of throwing him off kilter until he forgot practical concerns.

  He went still, searching his mind, because something was off. He’d missed the boat somehow . . . He sat bolt upright, rolling Paulina off him and onto the carpet.

  Both of them bare. Totally bare.

  Because damn it all to hell, he hadn’t worn a condom, and she wasn’t on the pill.

  Finally, they had a break in the case.

  Airport lights cut through the dark night heavy with heat and tension. Vince pounded pavement, biker boots thudding on his way toward the Pilatus painted in civilian colors with a civilian registration number. Going to battle in jeans rather than his flight suit chafed sometimes, but the undercover persona came with the boundaries he got to push in the air.

  He stroked his jaw. Skipping shaves rocked, too. Which made him think of Shay’s questions about category one grooming standards and what her nervous conversation had led to.

  He couldn’t let himself think about the way he’d left things with her, hauling ass out only seconds after brain-stunning sex against the door. He’d barely had time to zip his pants after the emergency call from Berg, much less coax Shay out of the shell he could see her retreating into at mach speed.

  The air force had never cared much about convenient timing.

  Jimmy jogged up alongside him, eyes sleepy lidded, but a gleam of excitement shone through the fog. “Hey, Vapor, you ready to roll?”

  “Seems I’m more awake than you are, my brother.”

  Years of working together settled them into step silently along the ramp to the yellow and blue Pilatus tied down between two White Cessna Citations. Monitoring equipment had been moved into a corner of the hangar for a makeshift command center the day before. Vince and Jimmy would transmit data down from the plane to Smooth and Berg.

  Smooth had been monitoring the cloned phone channel from the teen mixer. The phone had gone active again. Now Smooth and Berg were logging every number stored in the phone’s history, working their asses off to follow the path of the calls and put together a network that would lead them to whoever was orchestrating this nightmare in the making.

  If one of those phone lines was in action while they had the plane in the air, they would be able to get an up-close peek at the speaker. Photos often spoke a lot louder than words when people were careful not to use their real names.

  But he couldn’t ditch protocol, or he risked the whole mission. Preflighting the plane was his responsibility, one he intended to accomplish as fast as possible.

  Vince looked over to Jimmy, the breeze blowing in off the lake doing little to cool the stress steaming through him. “I’ll get the walk-around, and you take the interior.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Vince grabbed a checklist from his publication bag and began the mandatory preflight ritual. He started at the entry door and moved in a clockwise direction around the aircraft, checking for any sign that something was amiss. Even a bird’s nest clogging an intake duct could cause a crash. He didn’t want to end up in a safety report where the cause of the accident was a yellow-breasted anything. He spotted no leaks and nothing with boobs, yellow or otherwise, around the airplane.

  He entered the cabin just as Jimmy sat in the copilot seat.

  Jimmy shot him a thumbs-up. “The snooper system in back is in the green. Let’s get this baby off the ground.”

  Vince wedged himself into the left se
at and strapped his waist belt. “Read it, and I’ll run it.”

  Parking brake, yoke unlocked, the steps continued to get the plane prepped before engine start.

  Tension ratcheted, clouding his vision. As much as he wanted to be airborne pronto, he knew these steps were about more than safety. He needed this ritual, here in the craft, even if for sixty seconds, to get his head in the game and relegate everything else—especially Shay—to the back of his mind.

  With each call from Jimmy, Vince fell into the rhythm, sliding into the zone.

  Jimmy moved on to, “Engine start checklist.”

  He checked the radio frequency and keyed the mic. “Burke Ground Pilatus niner-six-eight-foxtrot-uniform, Charlie Row, Spot Four starting engines.”

  The radio crackled, “Copy foxtrot-uniform, call when ready to taxi.”

  “Prop.”

  Vince peered over the nose. “Prop clear.” Some things didn’t change, even after a hundred years of flying. He moved his head over to the open window and yelled, “Clear.”

  He pushed the starter switch, and the big turboprop on the nose spun to life. They cleaned up a few minutes more of call and response and readied to taxi.

  Jimmy read back the instructions to the controller and scanned the right side of the airplane. “Clear right.”

  “Cleared left,” Vince answered then advanced the throttles and started the aircraft moving.

  He tapped the brakes for a check then eased off with a minuscule lurch forward. Routine. Ritual. Block out all else.

  Jimmy dialed up their second radio to the automated terminal information service frequency for the latest weather. He jotted some info down on his kneeboard and checked the takeoff data. “Takeoff data looks good. About a three-thousand-foot roll.”

  Vince braked to a stop just short of the runway. “Burke Tower, Pilatus niner-six-eight-foxtrot-uniform number one with information bravo, ready for takeoff.”

  “Foxtrot-uniform on takeoff hold runway heading until three thousand feet,” the tower responded, continuing with the takeoff instructions, which Jimmy repeated back.

  Ready to ride.

  His body hummed louder than the plane in anticipation. He applied power and turned onto the runway. He nudged the rudder pedals and nosed the aircraft onto the centerline. He moved the throttle forward, and the aircraft rapidly accelerated. Jimmy watched the instruments, while Vince handled the airplane.