Kiss the Enemy (Slye Temp)

by Dianna Love

  “—might or might not be alive,” he finished.

  She’d let him think that. “What can you tell me about the Russian?”

  Gage growled something under his breath. “I’m already telling you more than I should.”

  “And not as much as I deserve,” she countered, sure that he’d get her meaning about the blown op.

  “Do we have to do that tonight, Sabrina?”

  “No.”

  The silence became a living thing, stretching and morphing into a challenge to see who would fold first. Gage finally said, “You can’t go running your own op on this one.”

  “How do you know one of the agencies hasn’t contacted me to run one?”

  “I know.”

  She ignored that. “Are you involved in this stateside?”

  “No. Even if I could do it without ruffling feathers, I’m tied up on the other side of the pond. I just don’t want you going in dark and no one knowing it’s you. Anything connected to the Banker ends bloody. We’ve never been able to find anyone alive who has contracted for him and I’m starting to wonder if he does repeat business with any merc.”

  “I’ll govern myself accordingly.”

  “Not going to let this go, are you?”

  She smiled at the capitulation in his voice. “No.”

  “I better be gaining major points for this.”

  “You are. I just can’t guarantee how you’ll get to cash them in,” she joked, enjoying this little moment.

  “The Russian surfaces from time to time then disappears. We thought he was dead then he surfaced again eleven months ago and started taking heavy contracts with different factions. He was putting a resume out for the Banker. If you get between him and his goal, Dragan Stoli will mow you down.”

  “If he gets between me and one of my people, I’ll mow him down.”

  “Just be careful. Okay?”

  She gave the empty room a give-me-a-break look. “I have a better team now than I did back when you called me your ace-in-the-hole.”

  “You were more than that and you know it.”

  She’d thought so at one time. How did he expect her to hang up and sleep alone tonight when he said things like that? He didn’t. He wanted her to miss him as much as he missed her.

  She had for so long she didn’t want to think about it. And neither did she want to argue any more tonight so she didn’t remind him yet again that he could fix this. “Thanks for the intel. I’m sure my team can handle anything I take on.”

  “There’s never been a question of that, but whoever burned you in the UK is still around. If I knew who it was, I swear I’d bring you his head. Until that happens, stay safe for me.”

  Those last four words clutched her heart and squeezed.

  The click ending his call echoed in her head with finality.

  Was she making a mistake by keeping them apart? Punishing both of them when she no longer believed he had any part in burning her team?

  She didn’t know, but once this mess with Margaux was cleaned up, Sabrina had to make a decision to either put their differences aside and be with Gage or end all personal contact until she had answers on the UK.

  CHAPTER 33

  This might not have been her best plan.

  That happened when you only had one play.

  Margaux could just make out Logan’s face by the wisp of light coming off a tiny candle across the room, but that was plenty. Enough to see that he was not going to be easy to convert into a Margaux fan. “Let me up and I’ll explain.”

  “Really? You think you’re just going to stroll back into camp after popping Moose with a Taser, dismantling my truck and stealing an ATV, give me some bullshit and that’s all it takes?”

  “I am sorry about Moose, but you left me the hardest one to take down.” Marguax lost her thought when Logan’s hardon nudged her between her legs. Not to be left out, her breasts perked in response, wanting to rub against the heat coming off his chest.

  What had she been saying? Moose. “I tried not to hurt him.”

  “Where’d you go?” Nothing soft in that tone. His body might be happy to see her, but having her beneath him didn’t seem to bother him at all.

  “Margaux.”

  “What was the question?” She knew, but his superior attitude was getting on her nerves. She hadn’t had the best day.

  “Where. Did. You. Go?”

  “For. A. Joy. Ride. Played Goldilocks. Found a house, got a real shower. Ate a meal I nuked and put on some clothes that fit me better.”

  “Who’d you talk to?”

  “No one. It was a vacation home. I had to break a window to get in.” She stopped short of telling him she intended to pay for that when she got out of this mess.

  Hardass mercs did not leave apology notes.

  How could Logan act unaffected by his reaction to her? She could feel his dick getting thicker.

  Heat pooled between her legs. She had to be crazy to want a man who looked ready to string her up by her thumbs. But Logan wouldn’t hurt her. She knew that all the way to her bones. And the minute she’d driven away today she’d felt a hollow place open up in her chest at leaving him.

  She’d missed him.

  No matter how many times she tried to tell her body that he was the wrong man to trigger her hormones, it changed nothing about the way she felt when he was close.

  Too close.

  Logan wasn’t moving. He had her sandwiched between the hard wood floor and over two hundred pounds of cut muscle. Not a give anywhere she looked, definitely not in his face. This whole intimidation routine was wasted on her.

  “Come on, Logan. If I wanted to hurt you, I could have.”

  “No, you couldn’t have.”

  Her ego had taken enough hits lately. “Think not? I disarmed Hulk Jr, took your truck out of action, found my way out, then made my way back and hiked around until I could sneak in here without anyone knowing. Not bad for Jane.”

  “My men knew you were here.”

  “Prove it.”

  Logan lifted up and spoke in a normal voice. “Angel?”

  The door flew open and an automatic weapon was pointed at Margaux’s head. The flirty Angel was nowhere to be seen. If Logan said the word, he’d unload his magazine.

  Logan really had been expecting her and opened his security so that she’d just walk right in.

  That realization destroyed the false confidence that had convinced her this would work.

  “I’ve got this,” Logan told Angel who backed out and closed the door. His gaze returned to her and she read trouble. He explained in a very matter-of-fact voice, “The minute you entered our outer perimeter, you were located and observed to determine if you were carrying a weapon before you were allowed to proceed.”“I could have had one in my boot.” Had she really said that? The point was to downplay herself as a threat, not rise to his baiting.

  “You wouldn’t have entered this room without something in hand if you had a weapon on you. You came unarmed to convince me you’re no threat.”

  Point to Logan. He’d read that one right.

  In one lithe move, Logan was up standing over her, the knife still in his hand. “Get up.”

  She pushed up on her elbows, gritting at the sharp pain in her arm, but she’d be damned if she was going to complain. When she got to her feet, she kept her hands in view. “I only wanted to make a point.”

  He crossed his arms, knife still clutched in his fingers, expression flagged “no sale.”

  This had sounded like a such a clever idea in her head, but right now she was questioning her sanity for even trying. She smiled, trying for unconcerned. “I don’t like being held against my will so I wanted to show you that I could come and go as I pleased. That’s all.”

  “Why’d you come back?”

  “I told you I want to meet the Banker, too. I don’t have your resources, but I’m a merc and you know I’ve got skills. Some skills even you don’t have. Now that you know a few more of
them, and how effective I am, I’m back to talk about working together, but as peers. Not your prisoner.”

  Logan’s face didn’t so much as twitch with a reaction. He kept studying her, letting the silence build. She wouldn’t break and be the first to talk. She’d laid out a logical reason for coming back and with the universe on her side this time he’d accept it. Plus, she’d helped him escape the jungle prison.

  Didn’t that count for something?

  He flipped the knife over in his hand then threw it at a crate where the tip stuck deep into the wood. “I don’t take on people I can’t trust.”

  Yes, she had an ulterior motive for coming back, but he was one to talk about trust. “You can’t trust me after I refused to leave you to die in that jungle hell, leave your man safe here, leave your truck pretty much intact and walk back into your camp unarmed?” Getting pissed wasn’t the right tactic with Logan, but he was the one she had to watch out for in this partnership. “I’m clearly willing to trust you in spite of getting shafted in Paris.”

  “I didn’t shaft you.”

  “No? You mean to say you weren’t screwing me for my apartment?” She hadn’t realized just how much that hurt until the words were out.

  “That’s not the way it was.”

  “Like hell. I finally put it all together after I woke up here as your prisoner.” She let the word prisoner hang there between them. “You got a call that last morning and left immediately. The diplomat and his assisant died two blocks away. For years, I convinced myself that you had only been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that’s not true. You were in the perfect position to reach the kill zone within minutes.”

  “I already told you, I didn’t kill them.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “I was there to save the diplomat.”

  “So you were in the saving business?” she smarted back.

  “He was my aunt’s only son. With some time, I can prove that.”

  His admission drowned her anger. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Logan turned away. “I couldn’t.”

  Because she hadn’t been more than a means to an end. “All those days together, all the sweet words, you telling me about the places you wanted to take me one day and the whole time I thought you meant it. That you—” ... cared about me. She caught herself before the words slid past her tongue and gave him a weapon to turn on her.

  Her fingers were clenched, dead giveaway that she’d let him get to her.

  His granite face softened when he turned to her. “I did mean everything I said. At the time.”

  “Stop lying to me.” She rolled all that anger and pain into a tight wad and shoved it deep, no plan to revisit it. “I came back to talk business. Make up your mind if we’re going to be able to work together or not.”

  “You tell me the truth, Margaux. Your prints don’t show up in the law enforcement database in this country. You don’t exist. And you were in Paris when my cousin died.”

  She deflated at that. “You ran my prints?”

  “Why shouldn’t I if you have nothing to hide? Why were you in Paris? What are you hiding?”

  Her world was imploding and every step she took risked another land mine. “I went there to hide from someone who wanted to kill me because I’d called in his plans for a bombing here. Things went bad and his son died. A friend helped me get to Paris. I knew enough French to get a job bartending. I was safe. Until you came along.”

  Emotions shifted in his eyes. “You didn’t know about the diplomat?”

  “Not until I read about it. I came back here and a friend taught me how to defend myself.” Sabrina had given Margaux far more than self-defense training. She’d given Margaux skills and a sense of value when she’d most needed it.

  “How’d you end up looking for the Banker in the Trophy Room?”

  Who did Logan work for? CIA? MI6? Some other covert group? “Which side are you on, Logan?”

  “Mine right now.”

  “Just give me a straight answer for once. Are you trying to hook up with the Banker to execute an attack or to stop one?”

  “It’s complicated.” He looked away. “You shouldn’t have come back.”

  That hurt.

  Oh, shit. He still had the power to hurt her, even after all this time. She still loved him. She might lie to everyone else, but not to herself. Her heart was doing a jam-up impression of a stress ball being squeezed by a gorilla, but that didn’t mean Logan had ever felt the same way about her.

  He thought she was a criminal, and that was how she was playing it, so it shouldn’t hurt.

  Why couldn’t she get her head straight when it came to him? She let anger wash over her to drown out the sound of her heart breaking. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have walked into the Trophy Room. I shouldn’t have dragged your ass out of that hut and I shouldn’t have believed that it mattered to you if I lived or died. Does anything matter to you, Logan?”

  Logan grabbed his hair, gripping it and growling. He let go of his wild locks. “Nothing is fucking easy with you.”

  Like his aggravation was all her fault? “Then let’s make it easy. I’m done with you.”

  She swept past him, headed for the door with no plan beyond that.

  She opened it half way and the door slammed shut.

  Logan yanked her around.

  She punched him in the chest.

  He stood there and took it then dropped his forehead against hers. “I can’t fucking live this way. I need to know the truth.”

  “You know the truth. I’ve never harmed innocent people, Logan. How could you think that of me?”

  He took a deep breath and exhaled a sigh filled with anguish. “This life fucks with your head until you can’t see up from down some days. I don’t kill innocent people either. I’m done doubting you. I believe you. Now I need you to believe me.”

  The pain in his voice reached her when nothing else would have. There was no hope for her because this man was her emotional kryptonite.

  She kissed him, hoping she was right to go with her heart on this one. He kissed like he made love, completely, leaving nothing on the table. He lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around him. She clutched his head and his neck, pulling him in harder.

  He shoved up against her and she could feel her own damp heat. Somehow they ended up against a wall, freeing his hands. One went under her flannel shirt and cupped her breast. The relief at being touched switched to an ache to be touched everywhere.

  His fingers played with her nipples, sending heat spiraling down to her core.

  She tightened her legs, riding hard against his thick ridge.

  He started making that deep growling sound she used to love, the one he made when he was beyond stopping. She’d gloried in pushing him to that no-return point every time he tried to slow things down.

  There was no slowing down this freight train.

  He licked her neck, just under her jaw and she clenched against him. His mouth kissed and nipped, then dove in again for more of her.

  He yanked down the waist of her jeans until he could push a finger inside her. She shuddered, close to the edge. She tightened around him then pushed up and down.

  His words ground out, harsh with hunger. “You’re so wet and tight. God, I missed you. Missed us.”

  She went all in. “You ruined me for anyone else. I want to feel you deep inside me. Now.”

  “You’re killing me.” His hands clutched her hips, lifted up and slid her down on his cock. She gripped his shoulders, clinging to him, her body taut and hurting. She needed just another touch. He pushed up hard and pulled back slowly, shaking. She tightened. His hand came down between them and he teased her then stroked up hard again.

  Her release sent stars showering in her vision. He wouldn’t let her stop coming. His fingers were relentless and he was pumping harder until he tensed and shuddered with a deep groan.

  They went down to the floor with him clutching her
to his chest, breathing deep gulps of air. She was a noodle.

  A very satisfied noodle.

  No wonder she’d avoided men. The two times that she’d had sex in the past six years had paled compared to being with Logan.

  He held her against him and she fell asleep with a thought hovering in the distance, waiting to be addressed.

  Had they come to any agreement?

  CHAPTER 34

  Logan filled a plate with eggs, smoked ham, grits and drop biscuits. He’d never acquired a taste for grits, but Nitro had told him that Margaux liked them. Nitro knowing something Logan didn’t about Margaux rankled, but Logan wasn’t about to let on.

  Moose was exceptionally quiet this morning before he struck out to walk the perimeter.

  Party Man was finishing off his breakfast. He’d fixed the truck, but with a little help. When he dug around in the cab, he found a note from Margaux explaining how to repair the wiring.

  Angel was honing one of his knives, lifting it to eye the edge.

  Logan turned to walk away from the camp fire.

  Nitro said, “Just remember that we do deliver to the love shack. You know, if you get tied up.”

  Logan turned and sent him a scathing look that shut down all jokes then kept walking toward said love shack.

  What kind of idiot had sex with no condom?

  One that loses his mind around Margaux.

  He opened the door and stepped in to find her buttoning up her shirt. She stood up and smiled. “I was heading out to eat with the guys.”

  Logan placed the plate on the bed. “We need to talk.”

  Her face lost all signs of happiness and he wanted to kick himself. Why was he constantly making her unhappy?

  She moved over to sit down and put the plate on her knees. “Is this the ‘we made a mistake’ talk?”

  “We did. Or, I did.”

  “Well, I didn’t. I enjoyed it.” Her chin shot up to put an exclamation point on that last part.

  “I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it.”

  “Then what was wrong with it.”

  “It was fine.”

  “What are you so pissed off about then?” She kept eating, but stared at him the way someone would when they were hearing a new language for the first time.