Live Wire

by Cristin Harber

  Her smile reached her ears. “New recruits have the interviews.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The background checks.”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “They’re… under surveillance.”

  Surveillance. Sugar might have had field training, but Lexi had not. She was a loner, a hacker, and had survived more than her fair share of harrowing situations. Parker preferred that she stay far from anyone who could possibly be worthy of surveillance. “Nope.”

  Determination flashed on her face. “It’s not like we’re going to go watch people who are actually bad guys. They’re the good guys, just wandering around without a job—”

  “They have jobs. Deadly jobs.”

  “Well, not at home they don’t.”

  “Lex.” Christ.

  “We’ll just stay in the car or whatever. Give us some of that Titan gear you guys hang on to, and we can see through the wall.” She winked. “Come on. Sugar’s going nuts. She’s not the type to nest.”

  “Nest?”

  His wife smiled but rolled her lips as though she wanted to hide it. “It’s almost time for Sugar to give birth. Some women in her position nest. They clean the house top to bottom. They have uncontrollable urges to prepare their home for the new arrival.”

  He smirked, now knowing why Lexi hid her smile. A ridiculous image of Sugar scrubbing the rafters in leather maternity pants came to mind. “I’m sure the Westins have a top-secret-cleared cleaning staff proficient in the art of nesting.”

  Lexi’s not-so-hidden smile came out in full force. “You’re missing my point. It’s her last hurrah. And it’s safe. We’ll behave. Sugar wants a road trip, and what she said is true. She has an instinct that Titan relies on. The girl could pick a bad apple out of an orchard. Bad bullet out of a barrel. Whatever. Let her help vet the new recruits.”

  Parker shook his head.

  Lexi pursed her lips. “It’ll be a piece of cake.”

  No way would Jared allow Sugar, eight months pregnant, to search out the potential new team members and go undercover to watch their every move. “There’s not a chance that will fly.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Well, we’re going to do it.”

  “You, maybe. He’ll give the okay to let you hack some data. But Sugar in the field? Nope.”

  “We’re going to do it.” Lexi’s statement sounded like a practiced mantra.

  “Lex—”

  “Sugar and I are going on a pre-baby, nondangerous, surveillance-only road trip!” She smacked him with a kiss. “And it’s going to be awesome.”

  “This wasn’t really a discussion, was it?”

  She kissed him again. “No, babe. It wasn’t.”

  At least he’d tried. Then again… he wondered how Jared was taking the news from Sugar.

  CHAPTER TWO

  If there was a telltale sign that trouble was about to show up at Jared’s office doorstep, it was the cadence of Sugar’s step and the corresponding groan of his dog, Thelma. Sugar marched in, her posture and expression telling him she was sure that she’d get her way and that he had major reason to be concerned. Thelma placed a short, stubby paw over her wrinkly bulldog face and rolled over at his boots.

  He leaned back in his chair. “This oughta be good.”

  “Always is.” She leaned against the doorframe, looking hotter than the Fourth of July. Her smile said, Just try me, and her eyes dared him to disagree. The challenge she had yet to issue had him aroused, and attitude alone had him horny as all hell and wanting to push out of his chair and press her against the wall. This was their game, and damn, he loved it.

  She tilted her head, letting her dark hair fall over her shoulder. “You’re looking particularly studly over there. Doing big, important things today, Boss Man?”

  “Breaking out the Boss Man, huh?” He grumbled and laughed, rocking back in his chair, and watched her sway her hips forward as she walked like sex and stealth swirled into one.

  His wife was a smokin’ sex goddess even pregnant. Too bad she knew it and would use those fuck-me eyes and screw him senseless until she got whatever answer she wanted.

  Sugar sat her leather-clad hip on the edge of his desk, and they locked their gazes. “Thelma, honey. Go in the next room. There’s a treat.”

  “Ruthless.” His pulse jumped. Kicking the dog out meant Sugar wanted her way, and it almost always meant her sweet pussy was his for the taking. No one would dare walk into his office without permission, and if his wife wanted to play the seductress, Jared would have zero complaints or accidental voyeurs.

  “What?” She scooted closer to him on the desk. “Don’t you want to play with me?”

  “If you think”—he pulled her leg so that she sat in front of him, straddling his chair—“that this will change whatever I have to say, Baby Cakes, you’re mistaken.”

  “Pity.” She smirked but leaned close enough that he could smell her shampoo. “Kiss me anyway, and let’s see how it goes.”

  She didn’t wait for an answer, and her mouth tasted bubble-gum sweet. His hands rested on her thighs, his tongue tangled in her mouth as her fingernails scratched the back of his scalp.

  “The places I want your tongue. Care to guess?” she purred into his kiss.

  Damn. She’d likely get whatever she wanted. He inched forward, licking the delicious slope of her neck. He stifled his own groan and kissed the soft skin. “Here.”

  “I won’t complain.”

  “Woman…”

  She murmured in a way that was a stroke to his shaft.

  His tongue ran behind her ear. “You like this.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Sugar shifted on the desk, a quiet gasp giving her away.

  “You love it.” He upped his game and scraped his teeth against her, nibbling as she tried to hold the upper hand.

  “I love a lot of things you do to me.”

  He pulled back, not giving in to her games so easily. “You’re up to no good.”

  God. Sexy sat in front of him. Flushed cheeks, heavy eyelids. Her lips were parted, and her hair was a mess. He hadn’t even started with that yet. “Yes,” she said.

  “You’re going stir crazy. I’ve been watching you.”

  She nodded, gaze set on his. “Yes, sir.”

  He rewarded her with the slightest of smiles for breaking out the big guns with the sir. “You want a job?”

  “Not exactly.” Sugar’s dark-blue eyes intensified.

  “Then what?”

  She put her palms flat on his chest then raked her fingers down. “Sex first, business later?”

  Jared ran both hands down her thigh, answering her without a word, and unzipped the knee-high boot, tugging it free. He stripped the sock and held her bare foot in his hand, running his thumb along the arch. “Whatever it is, you’ll be careful.”

  Her head dropped back. “Mm-hmm.”

  “Good girl.” He worked his way down the sole of her foot, watching her squirm as he changed the pressure. His thumbs worked her heel and pressed deep circles, sliding to her ankles, then flexing her foot back until he massaged her brightly painted toes.

  “God, that’s insane,” she whispered.

  He took the other boot off, repeating the process, watching her melt. “You came into my office, planning to take over, and look what happened, Sugar.”

  She bit her lip and let her hair tumble forward. “This was my plan. For you to take over, J-dawg. And you know it.”

  Either way, at that point, he didn’t care. “Stand up.”

  With a lazy, sexed-up smile, she stood, and he pulled her pants right off. After months of trying to figure out what was easiest—and Sugar insisted on maintaining her look in maternity wear—Jared had determined that to get his wife out of leather maternity pants in a reasonable amount of time, he needed to be part of the process.

  She laughed. “Greedy.”

  “Hungry.” He unfastened his belt. “For you.”

  “Good.” There was nothing sexier than her
flushed cheeks when Sugar was set on making him feel good.

  He moved closer to the edge of his chair. “Turn around.”

  “You just want to see my ass.”

  Hell yeah, he did. But he wanted to wrap his arms around his woman, wanted to feel his cock deep inside her, and Sugar sitting backwards on his lap would do that for him. Jared playfully smacked her butt as she turned around. “It’s a great ass.”

  She stuck it out, and he squeezed her cheeks then let his hands drift down her thighs, spreading his fingers over the silken flesh of her legs. One hand went up, running over her heavy, pregnant-with-his-child belly, and the other stopped between her thighs, finding her folds wet. One touch, and she shifted, sucking a deep breath.

  “Too much?” He slowed.

  “Not at all.” Sugar moved for him again, leaning her weight against his touch.

  Jared stroked the delicate, sensitive area and watched how her back arched. His forefinger opened her, and she moaned. “Good, baby?”

  She nodded, letting the cascade of dark hair falling down her back mesmerize him. How could his woman, so brash and biting, so sexy and sultry, simply shake her hair without looking his way and have him damn near do anything to make her happy?

  Jared massaged her clit with one hand, breaching her pussy with the fingers of his other.

  Her hips flexed, grinding on his palm, riding for more friction. “Please, Jared.”

  That was all he needed. “Damn.” She inched and angled her body, and he slid his pants down to his boots. His erection was free and in hand. Sugar turned her head, peering at him over her shoulder.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  She nodded. “If you don’t hurry up—”

  His woman. He would’ve spent more time trying to aggravate her, except he was dying to be inside her body. Positioning the head of his shaft and—goddamn. Jared’s molars ground down. Sugar’s tight pussy would kill him. “Shit, Baby Cakes.”

  Together, their breathing caught. Sugar’s hands splayed on his desk as she inched back onto his cock, and he couldn’t handle another moment. He thrust. Her nails scratched, unable to find traction on the finished wood. “Fuck, yes. Jared. Yes.”

  He couldn’t breathe. She leaned back, her hips moving up, down, accommodating him, and he groaned, flexing, wrangling his arms around her to hold her in place. Sugar held on to him. Her arms were a vise grip, holding on as though he were a life raft.

  “Again.” Her whisper boomed to the base of his cock.

  He flexed up.

  “God,” she gasped.

  “Good?” He grunted.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He did it again. Short. Rapid. Bursts. He possessed his wife—holding her, letting her feel every single fucking inch of his cock inside her body.

  “More,” she begged.

  Sugar consumed his shaft. He controlled her, owned her, moved her up and down, the silken feeling of her slickness working tighter and hungrier as he drove. The sound of their gasps commingled. Fiery electricity flowed down his spine, drawing his balls tight.

  Her head went down. Her teeth—he felt them bite into him somewhere. God, she had his flesh between her teeth, but all he knew was that her pussy muscles rippled.

  Sugar bore down on him, using his hold as a fulcrum, and her orgasm hit them both—a complete supernova, its intensity blinding. Her body milked his pulsing cock, and his hot release was an act of heaven.

  Sugar went limp in his hug, kissing his arm—where apparently she had bitten him—and her chest heaved. “You sure know how to show who’s boss.”

  He chortled, shaking his head languidly. “Damn, you are fun.”

  “To love, to fuck, to hold,” she whispered. “To work with.”

  She stood carefully and turned, and he couldn’t help but admire the pink in her cheeks that didn’t come from makeup. Her lips were pinker than her lipstick and her eyes more blue than when she’d first walked into his office. He did that to her. That left a mark of pride in his chest.

  “Prove you love me, and help slide those pants back on me.” She winked. “I can’t convince you of my great plan when I’m half-naked.”

  He snagged the leather pants and underwear off the floor. “You might not convince me anyway.” But that was a lie. She didn’t need to convince him, and he wouldn’t stop her.

  “Like I need your permission.” She snagged the black panties and hopped as best she could from one foot to the next while he pulled up his pants and tucked himself in. “But I want it.”

  That was why they worked in sync. There hadn’t been a job in a very long time that Jared hadn’t run by Sugar. She had the mind of an operator and the discerning ability to figure out how to blow shit up in a way that flat-out impressed him. And turned him on. Great combination in a wife.

  “Elevator pitch. Let’s hear it.” He smoothed his shirt and adjusted his pants so that only they would know he’d just been well fucked.

  “You have three wannabe new guys. Lexi and I want to be the team that does the on-the-ground observation.”

  He blinked, surprised. “You want to do the surveillance?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s boring as shit.” So where was the catch?

  She raised an eyebrow.

  Well, nothing was boring as shit when Sugar was involved. “If you do it, you have to stay out of the fray. Away from the newbies. Watch and report. That’s it.”

  Kiss-swollen lips smiled as if she had her yes already. “We can do that.”

  “From afar, Sugar.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Meaning, you can’t interact with them, babe. Read me?”

  She smirked. “No shit, J-dawg.”

  “You can’t bump into them.” He ticked off one finger.

  “I’m not stupid.”

  He ticked off another finger. “You can’t do whatever it is you’re thinking about.”

  She narrowed her gaze. “Yes, I can.”

  “God, woman.” He closed his fist, not bothering to count off the dozens of other things she shouldn’t do. “You give me heartburn.”

  “No. Those are orgasms I give you, baby.”

  Jared dropped his head back and roared. “Damn straight, pretty mama. You do what you need to.” But he sobered and rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the strain of laughter in his cheeks. “But no shit, Sugar. You, Asal, and this baby? My world. You’ve never asked me to change; I’ll never ask you to either. If you need to get out there, go. If something makes you feel uncomfortable, don’t for a moment hesitate to flag for help because you’re worried I’ll be pissed you’re in the field. You read me?”

  “I do.”

  “Unconditional trust.”

  Her eyes went watery. “Fucking hormones.”

  “So you read me?” he said again, quieter this time.

  “Loud and clear, Boss Man.” She leaned forward and placed a sweetly gentle kiss on his lips. “And I love you too.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The house was quiet as Parker and Lexi sat around their dining-room table, three recruit folders spread in front of them.

  Bishop O’Kane. Jax Riddle. Locke Oliver.

  “They’re all insanely…” Lexi gestured, staring at the screen of her laptop. “Deadly?”

  Parker didn’t look up from his screen. “That’s a good thing, babe.”

  “Right. And they’re clean enough.”

  He nodded. The records showed skirmishes here and there—nothing that couldn’t be expected from men who operated at the caliber of Titan’s people.

  “Your ice cream’s melting,” she said. “And I need another beer if we’re going to stare at the same data all night.”

  “No.” He pushed his chair from the table and stretched as he stood. “Come on. We’re done.”

  “Jax and Locke are too far away.”

  “Right,” he agreed. Locke worked private ops in London, and Jax was on the West Coast. Titan could drop someone in to do the
recon on them in person. No need for the Sugar-Lexi road trip to go trans-Atlantic or cross-country.

  “So Bishop’s our guy.”

  Parker wrapped his arms around her chest, pressing her back to him, leading her to the couch. “Bishop’s your guy. Be easy on him.” He kissed her cheek. “And by be easy, I mean don’t do anything.”

  “I know. But still, this is exciting.”

  He plopped them both down, and Lexi curled into his arms while he surfed the channels for something sports related. With a football-classics channel on in the background, he tied her hair around his finger and watched her smoky eyes flutter open and closed. “So exciting, you’re falling asleep.”

  “Stop it.” She turned in the crook of his arm. “You get to play cops and robbers all the time. Sugar does. Everyone does. I think it’s neat even if I just get to sit in a car and listen to my girl babble about her spot-on gut feeling. It’s something different.”

  Parker pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Just be careful.”

  “How much trouble can we get into watching a guy grocery shop or whatever?”

  His rumbling laugh met hers. With Sugar, they both knew the answer.

  “Alright. Of course we’ll be careful.”

  “Good.” He let go of a piece of her platinum-blond hair. “Go to sleep, and I’ll carry you to bed.”

  Lexi turned over on her chest. “Why am I going to sleep?”

  “Uh… sports? Because your eyes are shut?”

  “I’m a full-fledged spy girl now.”

  “Alright, spy girl. You don’t need to sleep.”

  “Maybe I do. Either way, I know this isn’t technically how you guys scout your new team members. But really, Sugar was going stir-crazy. She needed to feel as though she was still important to your team.”

  “Of course she is.”

  “I just kind of know that there’s something unexplainable about being pregnant and having folks handle you with kid gloves. It has to be a first for her.”

  He cackled. “No one’s treating her any different.”

  “Bull. Even Sugar’s treating herself different.”

  Parker squeezed Lexi tight. “We take care of our own.”

  As she snuggled into his chest, her previous life seemed a thousand miles away, yet she knew he was dead serious. “I love you, and I love being part of your world.”