by S. M. Butler
“Past tense?”
She shook her head. “I still do. But I’m not one of your Reapers. I won’t blindly follow orders. I need to know what I’m getting into and what you’re getting my brother into. You can’t just demand…things from me and expect me to roll over on my back.”
Nathan sighed. She wasn’t wrong. He hadn’t really thought about what she’d meant to him until she had tried to leave him.
“Nathan, do you understand?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“You’re being awfully quiet.”
“That’s because there isn’t anything for me to say. I don’t disagree with you, Bridget.” He grinned at her. “Although, there are more ways to have sex than for you to roll over on your back.”
“Nathan!” She ground out his name between her teeth. “We are not having sex.”
“We’ll see,” he replied.
“Ugh. You’re not listening to anything I’m saying.”
“On the contrary. I’ve heard every word.”
“But you’re not getting it.”
“Propositioning you the way I did was wrong,” he said. “It was callous and unfeeling and disrespectful to you. Am I getting that right?”
Her brow pinched tightly together but she nodded.
“See? I am listening. So, the next time I ask you to have sex with me, it will be in a more respectful fashion.”
“The next time?”
“My delivery was horrid. I understand that. But it doesn’t change my attraction to you, or the fact that I want to have sex with you.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “I swear, more shit comes out of your mouth that surprises me than anyone else ever.”
“I’m not a monk, Bridget.” He sighed.
“Why now?”
“I’ve spent the last ten years focused on my family’s deaths. I need their killer more than I need to breathe.” He met Bridget’s hazel eyes. “I’m finally getting somewhere, and I find myself…well, there’s no one I can…” He trailed off and broke the contact with her. This was stupid. He was being stupid. He was saying everything wrong and she was not understanding what he needed to say.
But when her warm, slender fingers wrapped around his much larger hand, he focused on her touch. It was not like pity. It was not like she was simply going through the motions.
Maybe she did understand.
“You’re lonely,” she said, quietly.
Was he? He didn’t even know himself whether he was or not.
“Listen, we don’t need to have sex in order for you to not feel lonely. I won’t be your Band-Aid.”
He didn’t answer. He was fascinated by the way their hands fit together. Her hand was half the size his was, and whiter than snow when compared to his hand. In reality, her skin was more like cream, but it lost its color against his much darker complexion.
Maybe that was exactly what he did to everyone he encountered. They all lost their allure, their color when placed against him. This was why he kept everyone at arm’s length. Why he didn’t let anyone close. But somehow Bridget had gotten behind his defenses when he hadn’t been looking. So, he started talking.
“It took me three years to track the money paid to the assassins that killed my wife and daughter to an import company that dealt with shipments from the Middle East. It took me another three years to unravel the dummy corporations and the shell companies that owned it and changed hands. But I cracked it in the end. I found the man that may have ordered my family’s deaths or probably knows who did.”
“What happened?”
“I couldn’t prove it. No witnesses. The money trail wasn’t substantial enough to hold up in a court of law. I’d spent six years creating the Company. I was going to order the hit. I was going to avenge my family.”
“Did you kill him? The man that killed your family?”
Nathan shook his head. “No. You see… that day I found out, I went to the bank. The bank was robbed while I was there. The situation escalated and there was a shoot-out between the police and the robbers. I watched a woman dive to save a child from the crossfire. She was shot four times in various places. She should have died that day.”
“That was me?” Bridget ran a hand over her chest.
He nodded. “You see, I’d been building six years of emotion. I’d pushed it away, tucked it deep inside. But when you dove for that child, all I could think of was my wife and I wondered if she’d dove for my daughter like that when they were attacked. And if they were afraid at the end. And if they were angry with me for not being there.”
“Nathan, you would have died too if you’d been there. I saw the files, the photos. No one could have survived that.”
“I know. For all my logic, I know that. I’d spent a fortune developing the Reaper procedure. I’d built the Company for the sole purpose of destroying my wife’s killer. I couldn’t save Vicky, but when you were hit, I knew I could save you.”
~*~*~
Bridget stared at Nathan. Maybe this was another manipulation. Maybe those weren’t real tears making his eyes shimmer. Or maybe for the first time in his life, Nathan was being honest with someone.
As he took a breath to start again, his phone went off, ringing loudly in the silence of his penthouse. He hung his head as Bridget asked, “Do you need to get that?”
He nodded. “I asked Sierra to ring me if she had new information on Martinez.”
She gestured to the phone sitting on the table. As Nathan picked it up, she closed her eyes. Nathan was one of those people that it took the jaws of life to get them talking. She’d gotten that, but would this phone call clam him up?
She didn’t remember much from the day she got shot. She didn’t remember the child or getting shot at all. The doctors had said that was normal for trauma patients, but she’d always wondered why she’d been caught in the crossfire but no one else had been.
He sighed as he hung the phone up. “I need to go to Jubilee.”
“More bad news?” She asked.
“I hope not,” he said. “Martinez was attacked again last night.”
“I see,” Bridget said. She looked away from her boss, trying not to show her disappointment.
“Martinez is the key to unlocking everything, Bridget.”
“You haven’t explained that.”
“I will, soon,” he said. “I don’t think he even knows, honestly.”
“You do what you need to do, Nathan.”
He stood up and headed for the door. Bridget closed her eyes and took a breath, trying to keep the burn of disappointment from overtaking her. He stopped close to the door and turned back to face her. “Bridget?”
She looked up. “Yes?”
“Come here,” he rumbled, his deep voice echoing in the quiet room. “Please.”
Slowly, she got to her feet and stepped lightly across the room. As soon as she was close enough, his hand slid to her cheek, his thumb brushing her cheekbone lightly. She stared at his dark eyes, trying not to tremble.
“We will finish this conversation, Bridget.”
“Which one? The one where you explain the truth or the one where you propose sex?”
One corner of his lips turned up. He leaned in, so he was inches from her face. His warmth surrounded her, and her body responded by sending hot currents of electricity through her blood. His eyes were half-lidded as he replied, “Both.”
She blinked once, and he was gone, the door shutting softly behind him. She let out a shaky breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
The solid promise he’d made her had her toes curling and her blood burning. But if Nathan had his way, he’d always be running from her, always be hiding things.
She needed more than his explanations. She needed to be in the thick of things. She pulled out her phone and hit the talk button without dialing. “Sierra?”
“Yes, Miss Muldoon. How may I be of assistance?”
“Where’s Mr. Hawk headed right now?”
&n
bsp; “Jubilee.”
Bridget sighed. She was already getting left behind. She wasn’t going to get the whole truth, the messy truth, from Nathan until he saw her as an equal. The thing was… she didn’t have anything to offer. Her life had revolved around him for so long.
Or did she? He wanted her. But could she use his physical attraction to get what she wanted from him? And would that make her just as bad as him? Or the same?
14
Bea woke up deliciously sore. Shit, she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d slept so well. But she woke up with a start, registering that she was naked, not alone, and when she shoved her hand beneath her pillow, there was a whole lot of empty instead of her gun.
In the midst of the panic, she glanced to her side and saw Axel. Saw his bare chest rising and falling lightly, his face twisted into whatever thoughts he was dreaming while he slept. A shadow of stubble had appeared on his jaw overnight, adding to the stressed look on his face while he slept.
She’d screwed Axel Martinez six ways from Sunday, her body was sore as fuck, and she had loved every second of it. She slipped out of bed to go to the bathroom and found her gun still inside the dress she’d worn the day before. She’d never once slept that far from her gun. It was more of a security blanket than anything. She’d never been able to do it.
But she had last night, and she didn’t want to think about why. She went back in her bedroom, grabbed her robe and wrapped the purple terry cloth around her body. It wasn’t sexy, but it sure was comfy. She glanced inside her bedroom, her hand on the door knob. Axel’s body tensed even while he slept, she realized. Like he slept expecting to be attacked. His record said he was in the Marines for eight years. And he’d been out of the service for another nine. Apparently, that was enough time to learn how to sleep without sleeping.
She gently shut the door behind her and stood there for a moment. She lifted her hand and ran her fingers across the smooth wood of the door. She couldn’t bring herself to regret sleeping with him, but this had complicated things so much more than she’d hoped.
Axel was a decent guy, a good guy who was in a tough situation that he really didn’t even know about. Nathan didn’t want them to reveal the Company to him, and she respected that decision, but it also meant she couldn’t tell Axel exactly what kind of danger he was in. And he’d never know exactly who he had slept with the night before.
How much of her was wrapped up in the Reapers? The team was her entire life now, and when she’d decided to accept the offer, she’d had no regrets. She had no family to mourn, no friends she would miss. Beatrice Li dying was nothing anyone would care about. Genevieve had probably thrown a party when she’d found out Bea was dead.
She made her way to the kitchen and stopped cold when she saw who was standing in it. Nathan wore his trademark t-shirt and hole-riddled jeans, his shoulders covered by a flannel shirt. To hear him talk, you’d have expected that posh British accent to come out of a guy wearing a three-piece suit, but not Nathan. He never wanted to be exactly what people expected him to be.
His chocolate eyes watched her as she went to the coffee maker and turned her back on him. It went against everything she felt inside to do it, but she wanted him to realize she wasn’t threatened by him. Not in the slightest.
“I see you took your mission to heart.” His tone sounded as if he were amused by the whole thing.
“If I turn around and you’re smirking at me, I’m going to slap that smirk clear off your damn face.” She didn’t stop her movements, pulling out the container with the coffee from the fridge and spooning enough into the top of the coffee maker.
“Slapping isn’t exactly your style, is it, Miss Li?”
She closed the top of the coffee maker and pressed the brew button. She turned around and faced Nathan. He was not smirking, which was a testament to his survival instinct. “I’ll make it my style for you.”
“I’ll remember that,” he replied, easily. He didn’t look worried, and she wasn’t surprised by that either.
“What are you doing in my house?” She asked.
“I understand there was a visitor last night.”
“Yes.”
“We’ve identified him as a Russian enforcer by the name of Vlad Andropov. Interesting, isn’t it, that suddenly Russians are everywhere?” He smiled tightly.
“You know something,” she said. “Why would Russians be after Axel?”
“Why, indeed? I was hoping Mr. Martinez might have that answer.”
“He’s still asleep,” she replied. Gurgles from the coffee maker drifted up into the silence. She sighed and glanced at Nathan. “Why him? Why did you bring him here?”
“I needed a mechanic that could handle himself, if say, he was attacked because of our operation here. Mr. Martinez was getting out of the service and needed a new life.”
“So, you bought him,” she growled. “Does anyone ever tell you no, Nathan?”
“Not often.” Nathan’s grin was feral. “I’m very persuasive.”
“Yes, persuasive. That’s it,” she said, flatly.
“I convinced you,” he said.
“I didn’t have a choice.” She’d literally been hanging from a building when Nathan had made his offer to her. It was he saved her, or she plummeted to her death.
“Miss Li, there is always a choice,” he replied. He straightened and headed for the door. “I will be close by if you need me. I have some other business to attend to while I’m here.”
Other business. He always had other business. And really, she wanted no part of it. Nathan could keep his secrets. That was fine with her.
The real problem was the man sleeping in her bed. What would Axel be expecting from her now? She’d known fooling around with him was a mistake the night before, but when he’d touched her, when she’d seen the brilliance of his eyes when he’d come, she’d been unable to regret it.
Bea poured herself a cup of coffee, sweetened it with her French Vanilla creamer, and sat down at the dining room table. It was sunny outside again. Another Texas summer day. Barely seven o’clock now. By her estimation, she probably only had a couple hours of sleep, but her body felt relaxed and rested like she’d slept for days. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d woken up like this.
Regret crept in, at taking advantage of Axel in that way, in a time when he was stressed and not thinking clearly, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel bad for sleeping with him.
Three times. The man was an insatiable fucking machine.
“Hey, beautiful,” Axel’s voice was gravelly and raw as he came into the dining room. His face was deliciously bright, though his jaw was coated in a fresh coat of stubble. He wore only his boxers, his muscles flexing as he walked. His shoulder looked better than it had the night before, the cut closed up and not nearly as red as it had been. His face was a different story. A large bruise that looked suspiciously like the shape of the two-by-four had turned an ugly purple color. The cut on his forehead had closed, but it was raised up over his skin, puffy like it was fighting away at infection.
That was just like him, wasn’t it? The man was a fighter. She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised at that. He was military at one point. They were taught to survive.
His arms wrapped around her body as she sat in that chair, staring out the window. She let herself lean back, against his belly and didn’t say a word as they stayed that way for a few minutes, her sitting, him standing behind her. Later, looking back, that would be her favorite moment, the moment where she really fell in love with Axel Martinez.
Axel moved first, bending down so his nose nuzzled against her neck, and a soft purr fell from his lips, vibrating against her skin.
“I thought I heard voices in here,” he said.
She hoped he hadn’t heard the conversation because she wasn’t sure she was ready to admit any of her life to him. “Nathan was here, but he’s gone,” she replied.
“Good,” he said, his hands sliding into
her robe, cupping her bare breasts from his position behind her. She drew a sharp inhale that almost sounded like a hiss. “I’d hate to give my boss an eyeful when I bend you over this table.”
She chuckled and stood, but he didn’t relinquish his hold on her. She spun in his arms, so she faced him as he pressed against her, forcing her ass against the table. His thick length pulsed against her belly, hardening with the want and desire she saw in his dark eyes.
His head tilted and he leaned down to her. Gently, he pressed his lips against hers, unhurried, as if their night’s activities had taken the edge off. His hands fisted at her hips, as if he couldn’t decide if he wanted to pull her closer or not.
She slid her ass on the table and wrapped her legs around his hips, hooking them behind him. He groaned as her heels pressed his cock harder against her naked body, restrained by the boxers he wore. “Baby, you’re not making this easy on me.”
“What?”
“I need to get to work.”
She leaned back but didn’t unhook her heels from him. “We need to talk about that.” He sighed, and pulled back from her, the cool air hitting the two of them. “Look, someone tried to kill you. Straight up, murder. And they’ve tried it twice now.”
His eyes darkened with anger, but he didn’t say anything.
“That is what happened to your window, right?”
He pushed her back, stepping out of the embrace of her legs. “Maybe.” He glanced at her. “And you? Were you going to tell me that you could shoot like that? Are you going to tell me where the fuck you learned that?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping…”
“What?” He snapped.
“I was hoping that it wouldn’t come up,” she admitted.
That was when the mask came down. She saw the change, from warm to cold in a heartbeat.
“I have to get to work,” he said, stepping away from her. She followed him into her bedroom as he grabbed his clothes, now dried with the blood of the man she’d shot. He growled and bunched up the shirt, throwing it to the side. He grabbed his shorts and yanked them on.
“You need to stay out of sight,” she told him. “This is the safest place for you. Someone is trying to kill you.”
