by Becky McGraw
Slade had a hero’s heart, just like her father.
She loved him, but she wasn’t going to push it on him. It would be devastating if she found out he didn’t, or couldn’t ever, feel the same way about her, but if that was the case she’d deal with it. Taylor couldn’t stop the tears that clouded her vision as she sent up thanks that he hadn’t been blown up, so she had a chance to find out.
“You okay?” Cee Cee asked as she stopped at the intersection where they’d probably be sitting for a while, because it was blocked by a police cruiser as a uniformed officer waved more vehicles with flashing lights through.
“As soon as Slade gets back to the compound, I will be.”
“What’s going on with you two?” Cee Cee asked, and Taylor glanced at her.
“I don’t know, but I want the chance to find out.” Taylor huffed a breath, as she picked up the company cell phone that Dexter had given her before they left the compound. She pressed the first number she needed to call—Homeland Security, and held the phone to her ear.
“Next to my daddy, he’s just about the best damned man I’ve ever met in my life. But he’s also the most—uh, yes ma’am. I need to speak to the person with the most authority there, please. It’s an emergency—I need to report terrorist activity.”
By the time they reached the outskirts of Dallas, Taylor had finished with the call and was exhausted from the mountain of questions she had to answer for the agent they connected her with. The same agent that Mac had turned over the prisoners to an hour prior.
Taylor laid her head against the seat and closed her eyes. A wet tongue stroked across her cheek, and she reached back to scratch Lola’s muzzle, which earned her another lick.
“He’s okay, LoLo,” she assured. Lola’s hot breath tickled her ear as she sniffed there. “Because of your daddy, we’re all okay.” Taylor giggled as she leaned away from another swipe from her tongue and pushed her into the backseat. A minute later the drone of the tires dragged her into her subconscious.
“What in the hell is Cade doing here again?” Cee Cee grumbled, waking Taylor up as she stopped the Humvee in the same spot Slade normally parked it. “I pray to God that Slade didn’t hire him.”
“What’s with you and him?” Taylor asked, being as nosy as Cee Cee had been with her about Slade. It was obvious from her violent reactions to him, which Taylor couldn’t miss, that they had a history of some sort. “How do you know him?”
“He almost lived at my house when I was a teenager, because his father was an asshole. We dated until I decided to join the Army after college, and he decided that I wasn’t joining. The showdown was not pretty, with him, or my brother.”
“Typical men,” Taylor said, as she opened her door. She slid out then opened the back door to let Lola out.
“If Cade Winters is a typical man, I don’t need one,” Cee Cee scoffed as she walked around the front of the Humvee. “None of the men I’ve dated since him have been like that, so I think he’s more atypical. The last one was a Navy SEAL, and he was definitely a real man.” Cee Cee waggled her eyebrows and Taylor giggled. “I just couldn’t handle not seeing him any more than I did.”
They turned toward the porch, and stopped, because Cade Winters blocked the steps, his heavily muscled arms folded over his equally beefy chest as he pinned Cee Cee with a cold stare. Taylor watched the staredown between them go on for a full minute as his jaw worked, but he didn’t say anything. Finally, he unfolded his arms, walked down the steps and passed them without a word to go to his huge pickup truck.
Taylor caught Cee Cee following him with her eyes, and realized this woman wasn’t as over that man as she pretended, her reactions to him said so.
They walked to the steps, but the front door opened and Dexter leaned out, and his eyes skimmed over them to look around the yard.
“I got it, Cade!” he shouted, before ducking back inside and Taylor groaned. She hoped like hell his excitement didn’t mean there was more drama was going on at Deep Six. She honest-to-God didn’t know how much more she could take.
Cade Winters shoved Cee Cee to the side on the steps and elbowed Taylor in his haste to get back inside the office. Whatever it was, that man’s pants were on fire to find out what Dexter had broken. Actually, even as tired as she was, Taylor’s curiosity was piqued as well.
“I’d take a nap, but I don’t want to pull out the sofa while he’s here or strip down to my skivvies. That man will never see my skivvies again,” Cee Cee said grumpily, as she walked inside behind Taylor and shut the door. She knew Cee Cee had to be as tired as she was, probably more. Taylor had planned to go take a nap herself in Slade’s apartment, but now she would feel guilty.
“I’d say go to the barracks, but I saw the other Humvee there so the guys are back too. They might be sleeping, but I doubt it.”
Dave Logan was going to have to figure out something on the sleeping arrangements at this compound. Especially since he now had women working here.
“Yes! You are fucking brilliant, man! You saved me so much damned time!” someone shouted in a gravelly, but booming baritone and Taylor and Cee Cee looked at each other.
“It’s about damned time someone around here realized that,” Dexter replied, his voice echoing down the hallway.
Now, Taylor definitely had to go find out what those two were up to. “Just lay down on the sofa in your clothes. I’m going to find out what the heck they’re doing in there,” she said, as she walked down the hallway.
She walked inside Dexter’s office and saw a folding table had been set up, and three disassembled cell phones lay on top. “What are you doing? Sounded like you were watching a football game or something.”
“None of your business,” Cade replied gruffly, stepping in front of the table.
“She’s going to know anyway, because Slade will tell her,” Dexter said, with a sigh, and Cade glared at him over his shoulder.
“I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him. He has a big mouth, and not a scrap of sense when it comes to OPSEC,” Cade grated.
“This is not a secure facility, man. We don’t usually handle classified ops,” Dexter said, and grunted a couple of times as he worked on whatever he was doing behind Cade. “We trust each other and the place is small so there are no secrets here.”
“Sounds too damned loosey goosey to me,” Cade grumbled.
“We get the job done, even though Logan is a hardass sometimes.” Dexter laughed.
“I knew there was a reason we’re friends.” Cade replied, the two men continuing to talk like they didn’t even realize she was in the room.
Well, what they also didn’t realize was she was not leaving until she found out what he and Dexter were working on. It may not concern her at the moment, but it could later. Taylor did not like to be blindsided.
“That may change,” Dex said and Cade moved slightly right so she could see that Dexter held up something that looked like a small computer chip. “You haven’t met his new wife yet.”
Cade’s eyes slid to her and he frowned, tried to look fierce, but she smiled. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Who is she? What’s she like?” he asked his eyes boring into Taylor.
“A lot like that one, only meaner.” He laughed, then grunted again. “Former FBI SAIC—and just about the smartest woman I’ve ever met,” Dexter said, with respect in his tone.
“Not smart enough to stay out of a man’s world, evidently. Just like those women who are trying to get into spec ops these days,” Cade replied, with a snort.
A man’s world? Anger forced up her throat to burn inside her skull as she unfolded her arms and walked up to him. She poked him in the sternum, and he scowled down at her, way down, but he didn’t scare her.
“Listen here, Mister Man. It’s no damned wonder Cee Cee has no use for you. We don’t need to stay out of your world. You need to learn to live in this new and improved woman’s world. If you’ve got enou
gh gray matter to survive, which I highly doubt, because you’re not evolved enough.” A tool clattered on the table as Dexter choked out a laugh.
“See?” he said, in a strangled voice, as he stood. “I think I have it man. I just need to put them in the reader and run the algorithm.”
“Don’t forget the GPS locations, and if you can speed things up I’d appreciate it. My contact is on standby with his team,” he said, his eyes boring into hers in a stare down similar to the one he had with Cee Cee in the yard.
“I’m still not leaving,” she said, folding her arms across her chest again.
Dexter fiddled with some kind of contraption beside his laptop. The thing looked like it wasn’t even functional, with wires hanging out and parts visible on top. She saw three little pieces shoved into the front of it, and he typed something into his computer then turned around.
“Should be an hour or so,” Dex said, and Cade Winters nodded.
Taylor unfolded her arms, walked around the table and stood in front of the laptop. The first thing she saw was the header. A. Khalil Terrorist Cell.
She didn’t need to see more. Spinning around to Dexter, she demanded. “You got his three cell phones didn’t you? How’d you get them?”
“He didn’t get them,” Winters replied, gruffly, and his eyes glittered like hard blue crystals in the fluorescent lighting. “I got them after Ahmed was assassinated.”
From his tone of voice and attitude, Taylor wouldn’t doubt that Cade Winters had been the assassin. He had just that kind of air about him. Cold and lethal.
“You killed him? she asked, fear putting a little squeak in her voice. This man’s eyes said he was a killer, and she had just challenged him like she was ten-foot tall and bulletproof.
“Who’s missing gray matter now?” Winters asked cockily with a raised brow. “Your boyfriend obviously doesn’t tell you everything. Let’s just say the prince trusted the wrong guards.” His nonchalant shrug told her he didn’t much care that Khalil had been killed.
“He’s not my boyfriend, I work here,” Taylor corrected. This man didn’t need to know her business. And Slade wasn’t her boyfriend technically. Dexter’s laugh contradicted her though.
“Funny you knew just who I was talking about, isn’t it?” Cade said smugly.
Grrrr—this man had to be the most arrogant and frustrating bastard she’d ever come across. He must have noticed her frustration, because the corner of his hard mouth ticked up.
She lifted her chin and turned toward the door. “I have the answer I needed, so I’m leaving now.”
Dexter’s laughter bounced off the walls as she walked down the hallway. She saw that Cee Cee had indeed laid down and gone to sleep on the sofa, so even though it was the middle of the day, she was going to Slade’s apartment and do the same.
Let the bastard think what he wanted.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Slade was bone tired as he and Levi pulled up in front of the barracks and stopped at nearly zero three hundred, but his insides felt like he had grabbed hold of an electric wire and was still hanging on. His brain felt like alphabet soup as he opened the door and slid to the ground. It should, he had been grilled and flambéed by the head honcho in charge of terrorism at every alphabet agency in the United States government.
And then the locals got what was left of him, so they could file their reports.
But at the end of a very long day, he felt like this goat fuck might actually be finished. Zami was taken by Child Protective Services until they could figure out who to release him to. It would most likely be his mother, and the other widows of Ahmed Khalil, who would take him back to Saudi when they figured out how to get home.
Tariq had been arrested and questioned, but it was a futile effort. The man basically admitted guilt to his interrogators with a smile. But when he got tired of being grilled, he stood and walked out and not a one of them could stop him. He was going back to Saudi in the morning, leaving the men who got caught doing his dirty work to face the music alone.
Just as Slade suspected it would end.
The only thing hanging was the suspected terrorist cell in Dallas, and whether Ahmed had activated them before he was killed. That’s what Cade Winters had been calling him about. He needed Dexter’s help to extract the information from the SIM cards in the phones he’d found on Ahmed’s body after he took out the guards who assassinated Ahmed. Ahmed paid the ultimate price for not thoroughly checking references before he hired those men, because they were the assassins hired by Tariq.
With a huffed breath, Slade entered his apartment and shut the door wondering if Taylor was in bed waiting for him like she had last night. He knew he was getting entirely too comfortable having her there, but he couldn’t help hoping she would be. Tomorrow he’d start figuring out how to gently remove her from his bed, and his life. Especially since they were going to work together. The need to protect her at every turn, to defend her, told him he was also getting entirely too attached to her. Because he’d broken his own hard and fast rule since he bid Jeannie goodbye. He’d let a woman sleep in his bed overnight. But tonight he needed her there.
The adrenaline that had puckered his ass while Levi dismantled that bomb, and the subsequent boost from being interrogated was still pumping through his veins. He was so high on it, he was hallucinating, because he actually thought he saw Taylor laying on his bed bathed in candlelight when he passed the bedroom door.
The buzz inside his body was so loud, Slade knew when he crashed it would be a very bad one, unless he could burn some of it off somehow. If Taylor was up, that would be sex. If she was asleep, he’d take a shower and deal with it himself.
“You did good today, baby girl,” he praised, as he bent down to hug Lola’s neck. She barked and he patted her head as he stood. Buddy whined at him from inside his kennel beside her pillow.
“Did I do good too?” Taylor asked, and he spun to find her standing in the doorway of his bedroom naked. His cock went rock solid and his eyes slid down to her proud breasts, tipped by the most amazing nipples he’d ever seen.
“You did fantastic, little bit,” he said walking toward her. She fell into his arms and lifted her face for a kiss. It was brief, but fire sizzled down his body to his cock, before he pulled back.
“I need you,” he growled, and she smiled as her hand slid down his arm to take his and he shivered. Taylor led him into the bedroom, and he saw that he hadn’t been hallucinating. She had two candles on either side of the bed burning. She led him to the bed and crawled into it.
“Lay down and let me give you a massage to relax you a little,” she said, and Slade quickly shucked his clothes, laid his pistol on the nightstand and got into bed. Feeling her small hands work his muscles again would probably help tremendously. He laid face down on the pillow, and she straddled him then reached for the oil he saw on the nightstand. She was ready, had set this whole scene up and he couldn’t say he didn’t like the result. He heard her squeeze the oil in her hands, then sighed when her fingers dug into his flesh.
“I know you’re exhausted, but don’t you go to sleep on me this time. I want to get to option two,” she said with a giggle, kneading his shoulders, building the tension inside of him instead of reliving it. “We have all day to sleep tomorrow, all day Sunday too.”
Slade was going to make sure she was out of his bedroom, and had a bunk or something by Sunday. Monday they’d start over on different terms. Resisting her when his body craved her would be tough. But Slade knew a clean break was best for both of them. He had a bad feeling she was getting too attached to him too.
Taylor slid her body down his, massaging out the knots in his muscles until she reached his feet. She squirted more oil in her palm, and worked his ankles. When she hit that secret spot she’d found with her mouth the other night, Slade’s cock went rock solid and he groaned loudly.
“I know your secrets,” she whispered, her voice heavy with desire. He was just as heavy with desire, and
he needed her right now. Twisting, he rolled over, and sat up to grab her hips. She squealed when he reversed their position, and pinned her to the bed.
Before she could react, he covered her mouth with his, taking advantage of her surprised gasp by invading her mouth with his tongue. Taylor wiggled under him, mumbled protests in his mouth, then her throaty moan vibrated through his tongue as the squirming slowed to needy thrusts against his upper thigh and her tongue finally embraced his.
Her body wilted and her calf wrapped around him, as she shoved her fingers into the hair at his nape, pulling him closer, opening wider for his assault. For endless minutes, he kissed her, soaked up the sweetness of her mouth, absorbed her excited moans and mewls until breathing hard, his heart pounding in his ears, Slade pulled back to kiss her jaw, lick his way down her long neck to her collarbone where he circled his tongue in the indentation. A shiver racked her and she whimpered. He lifted his head to meet her eyes.
“I fucking love those sounds you make,” he growled, his dick harder than it had ever been in his life. He wanted to bury himself in her right then, feel the tight fist of her passage close around his aching cock, but there was so much more of her body to explore first. This was not going to be a quickie, because he wanted her to store up good memories to replace the traumatic ones she had from her ex-boyfriend. But she seemed to like a little domination in the bedroom. He was going to give it to her, but in the way it should’ve been given in the first place. Before he was done with her, she would be begging him to fuck her.
Pushing up to his knees, Slade bowed his head to the task at hand and kissed and licked his way down to her breasts, savoring the heady salty-sweet flavor of her skin which worked every taste bud he had into a frenzy. At her breasts, he stopped to admire them and her nipples puckered tightly in invitation, her back arched and her eyes begged as she looked down at him.
