A Kiss to Kill

by Nina Bruhns

  He pushed his cock deeper, as far into her as he could go. And then he held himself perfectly still for a handful of pounding heartbeats. Enjoying the pure throbbing pleasure of her acquiescence. She reached up and kissed him, an openmouthed kiss of breathtaking adoration.

  “What are your instincts telling you now?” she whispered against his tongue.

  That he loved her.

  The thought was so quick and devastating that his breath sucked in in an implosion of denial.

  No! He didn’t love her. He couldn’t. He didn’t know how to love. Wasn’t even sure what it was.

  He shoved aside the impossible thought and whispered, “That I’m very glad you’re mine.”

  The darkness wrapped them in a blanket of comfort, isolating them from the harsh reality of the outside world. He wished he could stay here with her forever, just like this.

  “I am yours,” she whispered. “I love you.”

  The words hit him like a shotgun blast in the chest, crashing him from his warm fantasy. She’d said it before. On that first day. Except then it had been in the past tense, and shouted at him like a curse. I loved you! she had cried, Why did you betray me? But he’d thought she was lying, using emotions to try and get to him.

  “Don’t,” he quietly begged her now. “I can’t be what you want me to be, Gina. I’ve already told you that.”

  “I know,” she said. “I don’t expect you to love me back. I just needed to say it once. To let you know how I feel. I do love you, Gregg. So much.”

  A thread of panic wound around his heart. God, could she really mean it?

  “You’re killing me, baby. I really wish—”

  “Shhh, it’s okay,” she gently said. Her body moved under his. Tempting. Seducing. Hot and willing. “Do you trust your instincts, Gregg?”

  The panic hummed through him. Did he love her? How could he know?

  “I mean really trust them?” she pressed. “About me?”

  He felt her body under his, joined with his, so warm and accepting, so full of life, and love, and trust. Even handcuffed and completely under his control, and after all she’d been through, she was still so fucking strong and true it filled him with awe. Love? Who knew? But one thing he did know.

  “I do trust them,” he whispered. “And you.”

  He felt her lips smile against his skin. “That’s all I want. It’s enough for me.”

  But it wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to do more. He needed to prove his trust to her. As she had, time and again, for him.

  As frightening as it was, he knew how he could do it. How he must do it. To show her in actions what he couldn’t put into words.

  Reaching under the pillow for the key, he unlocked the handcuffs that bound her to the headboard. He lowered her arms, and pressed the cuffs into her hands. Then he rolled off her, out of her, going onto his back.

  “Me,” he said. The panic wound around his heart like a greedy monster, nearly robbing him of his willpower.

  He sensed her profound hesitation. But he needed to do this. To prove to himself that he could.

  “Quickly,” he ordered. “Do it!” He beat back the inner demons that threatened to make him rip the cuffs from her hands and throw them across the room.

  “Are you sure?” she whispered. “It’s okay, really, you don’t—”

  “But I do,” he said. He didn’t know why, but doing this was suddenly more important than anything he’d ever done before in his life. For her. But mostly for himself. “I trust you.”

  He heard her swallow. “All right.”

  With trembling fingers, she found one of his wrists and snapped the cuff around it. He gritted his teeth. The fact that she was so reluctant helped. The urge to spin her on her back and resume the dominant position was urgent and powerful. It would be so damn easy. But he resisted with everything in him. He had to know if he could do this.

  She slid the open cuff around a spindle and reached for his other wrist. He fisted his hand reflexively. She sucked in a breath.

  He took a deep breath. Forced himself to relax his hand. “Go on. Don’t be afraid,” he told her. And she snapped the other cuff home.

  His heartbeat took off. He yanked at the metal bracelets. He was well and truly caught. Jesus! What was he doing? She could—

  She canted over him. And whispered, “Now I can do anything I want to you.”

  His pulse doubled. But as her hands touched his body, a strange thing happened. Instead of panic, his body felt an electric jolt of pleasure. Then she kissed him. And all at once he didn’t know whether to be terrified or excited beyond belief.

  “Gina . . .” he choked out.

  But she didn’t listen. She climbed onto his body, pressed her beautiful breasts against him, and put her clever mouth to his skin, and proceeded to tear his world order to pieces. He groaned as she touched him in places he never allowed anyone to touch, shivered as she licked his flesh into a frenzy of desire, and shook with infinite pleasure as she took his rampant cock in her mouth, and tortured him with her tongue.

  “Gina, please,” he begged, and once again he felt her smile.

  “I think I like you helpless,” she murmured.

  God help him!

  “Don’t get used to it,” he returned through a clenched jaw. He was so over his panic. Now he was just ravenous. Explosive. He wanted her now. He tugged at the handcuffs. They just got tighter. “Let me loose!”

  “No.”

  “I want to be inside you when I come,” he ground out, teetering on the very edge of losing control.

  Something in his tone must have clued her to his sincerity. She hesitated. He heard a soft moan of agreement. She reached under the pillow for the key.

  Fuck that.

  “Hurry,” he said. “Slide up on top of me.”

  She did so, and before he could draw a shaky breath, he was deep inside her. Wet and hot, she felt so fucking good. But handcuffs or no, he wanted her under him. Two decades of hand-to-hand combat took over and, handcuffs and all, in the blink of an eye he’d spun their bodies and pinned her under him.

  “That’s better,” he murmured, gripping the spindles of the headboard. Taking over.

  “Not fair,” she protested breathlessly as he drove into her. But she wrapped her legs around his waist. He’d proven his trust. Now she just wanted him.

  He kissed her deep and long, and started to move. More and more urgently. Filling her and worshiping her flesh with his. Showing her with his body and soul what his rational mind still refused to acknowledge.

  That he wanted her to love him. Desperately. Longingly. Deep inside, he yearned for her to fill the dark, empty place that had been his heart for as long as he could remember. A heart he’d deliberately allowed no one to enter.

  Until now.

  She gasped as he pounded into her. Clung to him as he rode her toward oblivion. Both of them cried out in a single explosion of pleasure and emotion, the unexpected power of their combined climax blowing them away completely.

  “Oh, Gregg,” she sighed breathlessly when their pulses returned from the stratosphere and they floated back to earth.

  “I’m here,” he told her, holding her close after she finally brought out the key and released him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  And for the first time ever, he really wished he didn’t have to leave.

  BUT he did.

  As soon as Gina fell asleep, Gregg slipped from the bed and padded quietly to the bathroom. He quickly dressed, then went into the sitting room and closed the bedroom door silently behind him.

  He lifted the phone and asked for Rebel Haywood’s room.

  “Hello?” came the groggy answer before the first ring ended.

  “Sorry for waking you, Special Agent Haywood. This is Gregg van Halen.”

  “Oh?” There was a micro-pause. “Oh. Hang on. Gina’s right—” There was a muffled cry. “Oh, no! She’s not—”

  “Gina’s with me,” he cut in. “Sleeping. Sh
e’s fine.

  “Oh. Thank God,” the FBI agent breathed. “Give me a heart attack.”

  “I have a favor to ask. Can you come over and stay with her? I have something I need to do, and don’t want to leave her alone.”

  There was a rustling of bedcovers. “Uh, sure. Just give me five minutes.”

  When she arrived, dressed and armed, Agent Haywood didn’t ask where he was going or for how long. But when he opened the door to leave the suite, she did say, “You’re coming back, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he assured her. “Just keep her safe until I do.”

  She smiled. “I will.”

  He closed the door behind him, and wondered what Alex Zane’s problem was. The woman was smart, beautiful, and loyal, and obviously had it bad for the dimwit. Was the guy fucking blind?

  Whatever. Not his business.

  He retrieved the Mercedes and pointed it toward McLean, Virginia, the pricy suburb where Lester Altos maintained his D.C. residence. After setting up her computers, STORM’s comp spec Darcy Zimmerman had been able to ferret out the address, along with a few other interesting tidbits about the congressman from Louisiana. Principal among which was that Altos sat on the Military Defense Subcommittee of the mega-influential House Appropriations Committee. The same subcommittee for which Zane had found a meeting agenda on the terrorists’ sunken yacht.

  Hello? Was there any doubt they’d found their guy?

  Quinn was right to call STORM to assign another team to follow through on the nuclear trigger theory with the Coast Guard, just in case this new angle was wrong. But Gregg was sure this was the right direction. Everything was falling into place.

  He had argued for going in fast and hard and apologizing later if they were wrong. Marc Lafayette had agreed, outraged that his beloved home state might be represented by a slimy traitor.

  Quinn, however, would not be rushed. He wanted hard evidence, so any charges against Altos would be iron-clad. He wanted the bastard behind bars for the rest of his life, or better yet, at the end of a hangman’s noose. He had a point.

  But Gregg had his doubts Altos would ever see a trial, judging by the look on Kick Jackson’s face. The man was on a serious crusade for revenge. Something about a massacre in Afghanistan, or was it the Sudan . . . Of course, Kick would have to get in line behind Gregg. The image of Gina being carried off the plane after her rescue, battered, bruised, and bloody, drugged because she was so traumatized she could barely function, was forever burned in Gregg’s brain. Someone would pay for that. If it was the last thing he did.

  In any case, the team had argued back and forth until Darcy had finally shooed everyone to their own rooms to get some shut-eye. They would come up with a plan in the morning.

  Gregg had other ideas.

  Gina showing up at his door had caused a delay, but not changed his mind. If anything, it had strengthened his resolve. She loved him. He would not let her down.

  ALTOS’S three-story colonial mansion was tucked into a wide, azalea-filled lot on a tree-lined lane. Gregg drove past, wanting to get a feel for the neighborhood and decide where he would set up his surveillance. Easy. A tall, slotted topiary hedge ran between two houses directly across the street. On his second pass, he saw movement. For an instant, the very edge of a man-shaped shadow scudded along the perimeter, paused, then retreated back into it. Just enough of a glimpse for a trained eye to spot.

  Jackson. Gregg had to smile. The guy must want company.

  What the hell. He was part of a team now.

  He parked the Mercedes a mile or so away, strapped on his fanny pack entry kit, zipped up his black hoodie, and slipped back through the darkness. Approaching the hedge, he gave a low bird call. A dove coo answered. He slid through one of the manicured breaks.

  “What up,” Jackson greeted him in a low voice, leaning with his back against a brick wall behind the hedge. He was holding a pair of night vision goggles in one hand, a sniper rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “Great minds,” Gregg returned with a bump of his fist and a jerk of his chin across at the Altos place. “So. Anything going on?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Yet?”

  “Had a look-see earlier. One car missing from the garage. No one seems to be home.”

  “Just one? Wife in town?”

  “Yup.”

  Frowning, Gregg consulted his watch. Well past three a.m. “Hot date?” Altos’s trophy wife was considerably younger.

  Kick looked skeptical. “How long have they been married?”

  “Ten years.” Long enough for the honeymoon to be over. “Shit.”

  “Could he be running? Spooked by the flag your Pentagon files search triggered?”

  “Possibly.” Gregg debated. Decided if the team was compromised, no way was Jackson the mole. “Or maybe he was warned.”

  The other man’s gaze sharpened. When he answered, his voice was quiet but forceful. “If someone warned him, it wasn’t by anyone in STORM. I know these people. I would trust my life to every one of them.”

  Gregg was pretty good at reading people. Jackson meant every word.

  “It remains to be seen,” the other man went on, “whether or not we can trust you.”

  Gregg didn’t bother to be offended. Kick had been one of the first to vote in his favor this afternoon. But suspicion kept a man alive. “Fair enough,” Gregg said. “So, what’s the plan?”

  “My plan was to watch and wait. But I could be persuaded.”

  Gregg smiled. “Fancy a little B&E?”

  “That’s taking a bit of a risk, isn’t it?”

  “No business for the faint of heart. How ’bout if I enter and you watch my back?”

  Kick’s brows rose. “You trust me?”

  “Like I have a choice?”

  “Yeah, you do.”

  He shrugged. “Whatever. I’m going in. Alarms?”

  “Ancient.”

  Gregg rattled off his cell phone number and set it to vibrate. “Text me if company arrives.”

  “Will do.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment and tested the mood of the street. All felt tranquil. So, with a nod to Jackson, he melted into the shadows.

  GREGG made quick work of getting inside the house. The security system was child’s play, which told him either a) Altos had nothing to hide, or b) the congressman felt totally safe with his secrets.

  Innocent? Or overconfident?

  Just in case, Gregg checked carefully for more sophisticated security measures. Hidden cameras. Pressure triggers. Silent alarms. There was nothing.

  He checked the bedroom. No signs of hurried packing. Two suitcases stood unused in the walk-in closet. No empty hangers. Two electric toothbrushes sat charging on the bathroom counter. So, Altos hadn’t taken off.

  Next he located the home office. Lester Altos had been a politician for more than half his life, of which over a dozen years had been as a Louisiana congressman. One wall contained a shoulder-height bank of cabinets that held more files and documents than Gregg could search through in a month. He took one look, and went to the desk to turn on the computer instead. His hacker skills were novice at best, but one thing he had learned long ago was to interrupt the boot-up bios before the OS started, and have the computer make a call to mama. Mama, in this case, being Darcy Zimmerman’s STORM mainframe computer station, the ISP for which he’d obtained from her earlier. Once the two computers had talked to each other, Darcy could find her way back in.

  As he waited for the scroll of code across the screen that signaled docking was complete, he skimmed his gaze around the rest of Altos’s highly polished desk. Other than a picture of his young wife and a goldfish bowl containing one bright red Siamese fighting fish and a handful of bright white gravel, the surface was clear.

  The drawers were filled with a completely normal and boring assortment of office supplies. He found nothing whatsoever of interest.

  After shutting down the computer again, he went to the file cabi
net and started riffling through the drawers. Going specifically after bank info, he retrieved several folders filled with statements, photographed them with his PDA for account numbers, and forwarded the pix to Darcy, along with a few other bits and pieces. Then he sent it all to Tommy, too, because you just never knew.

  Finally, he hit the folders with all the logical names: Gina Cappozi, both Mahmoods, all the dead suspects from New York and Allah’s Paradise, Alex, Kick, and himself. Came up empty.

  Ah, well. That had been a long shot. They’d already established the traitor was not a moron. Keeping hard-copy links to bad guys would have been extremely stupid.

  No, any real evidence would be hidden in the computer. Hopefully Darcy would have better luck.

  His phone buzzed and he checked the screen.

  Hds up. Cmpny.

  Time to go? Gregg listened, watching the fish swim round and round its bowl on the desk, its scales flashing red and silver against the glittering gravel. After a full minute there was still no distinctive rumble of the garage door opening.

  He made his way to the front of the house and peeked out through a curtained window. A dark blue luxury sedan had pulled to the curb at the head of the home’s brick walkway. A man and a woman sat in front talking, the man in the driver’s seat.

  Gregg lifted a pair of binoculars from his kit and zoomed in on the woman. Her earrings glinted back at him in the moonlight like the fish’s scales. The trophy wife. He moved his focus to the man. But from this angle, he could only see up to the guy’s shoulders. Damn.

  After making a quick stop back in the office, he took the stairs down. Shifting the goldfish bowl he’d just grabbed under his arm, he paused to peer out through the curtains again. This time he had a better view. The two people in the car didn’t seem to be in any hurry. They started to argue. A few minutes later, the man gestured angrily, slashing a hand through his hair. The wife’s door jerked open. She made one parting shot, then jumped out of the sedan. The man bent over to the passenger side, calling after her.

  Gregg should be oscar mike. He was about to turn away. But what he saw made him stop in his tracks. The man’s face as he leaned over was clearly illuminated by a pool of moonlight. For a second Gregg just stared. What the fucking hell.