by Nikki Duncan
Lawson pulled a card from his jacket pocket and offered it. “Please call if you change your mind.”
“Sure.” H showed the men to the outer door, as he had earlier with Ms. Sebastian.
“By the way.” Lawson turned just before stepping outside. “Mr. Harris didn’t happen to give you some laser-powered contact lenses, did he?”
His vision flickered with a surprise hit to his shields. Did they know about the prototype? Or were they trying to trick him?
Channing had mentioned a government contract relating to the technology they’d worked on, but only he and Channing had known about the prototype. They’d been careful to create them and keep the notes away from Sirrahmax—especially after spotting Jefferson.
His gut knotted.
His heart hammered his ribs like a beater pounding a Chinese gong.
“I worked with Channing on the concept. The laser required to see his vision to fruition proved to be too costly.” Too glitchy and unpredictable, but not as unpredictable as the customized acrylic used for the lenses. “The diagnostic tool Channing hoped to offer will never be available. Is that what this is about?”
For a man who hated lies, he was treading awfully close to his own. But if Channing had been killed over the lenses, no way in hell was he admitting to having them. FBI or not, they had knowledge of things they shouldn’t. Even if he had sensed their honor and integrity, they wouldn’t be the first men power had corrupted.
He’d been misled by the government before. The results had been deadly.
“If you think of anything, please call.”
H nodded, unable to voice the lie of agreement. Janus was back. Channing had been murdered. He was being questioned about the lenses.
These were not coincidences, and he couldn’t share what he knew. Eston White was too securely connected to every government branch.
As he had with Ms. Sebastian, H watched Lawson and Burgess head to their car.
Unlike Ms. Sebastian, Lawson pulled a cell from his pocket to make a call. After a few minutes of head shaking and shielded looks back at the office, they got in and drove away.
Dr. H grabbed a pad from Dana’s desk and jotted down the license number and car model. He wasn’t likely to forget it, but he didn’t take chances.
As for the contacts, he was growing used to managing the risks. Still, he would learn from Channing’s murder and tighten security.
The FBI knew something. So did he.
Honor and integrity were not bulletproof.
Chapter Three
Snap.
Crack.
Ava’s jaw popped with the force of her it’s-too-damn-early-to-consider-being-up yawn as she fumbled with the adult-proof wrapper keeping her out of her energy shot. Tingles of lingering exhaustion vibrated along her skull and forehead. At least she hoped it was exhaustion. She hadn’t been able to dodge the headache since leaving Dr. H the day before.
An inescapable nightmare she couldn’t wake from, seven a.m. had loomed and grown more daunting with each passing hour as she’d sat in her car outside Dr. H’s second-floor condo. She had called in for a relief team, but she should’ve called them in earlier so she could get some sleep. She’d instead stayed until long after he’d gone to sleep, because studying his habits at night would help her know how to relate to him when they were together during the day. And, after identifying potential study applicants as Whitestone operatives, she’d wanted to keep an eye out for other operatives closely monitoring him.
Her team had hoped that alerting Dr. H to the threat caught on a recording from a recent fundraiser would encourage him to reveal what he knew about the lenses. They had failed in the direct approach though. Success relied on her, and for her that meant she needed to learn everything she could about him.
During his casually intimate dinner with Dana and the night of watching his house, Ava had seen no one. Had the threat to Dr. H vanished with Breck’s arrest of Madame V and her cohorts a few weeks earlier, Whitestone wouldn’t have sent in an operative to apply for his study. And the study had been infiltrated by at least one mole.
As capable as her new team had proven themselves to be in the past few weeks, Ava knew how Whitestone agents operated. She knew what to look for. Calling in someone less familiar with their methods sat like lead in her gut, but she’d promised Breck.
Promised to work on trusting people on the job.
Promised to utilize the group she’d joined.
Promised to make an effort to work with them rather than settle into her instinctive habit to work alone.
She’d pulled the phone out to call Aidan when Dr. H stepped in front of the giant window at the front of his place wearing only a pair of running shorts which showcased his leanly muscled body and powerful legs. She’d swallowed and dropped the phone into the seat beside her.
She’d touched his body. Felt the strength chiseled from his workouts. Wondered what he’d be like in bed.
He crossed his feet at the ankles and lowered himself into a meditation pose. The move had pulsed with peaceful power.
She’d watched him sit with erect posture as his balanced breaths danced in his muscles with rhythmic ripples. The ripples had echoed through her with desire. The seriousness that had cloaked him earlier slid away as a shimmer of blue light settled around him. Probably a reflection of the nearby lamp light, but weird.
His mini smile that had changed his face before had once again graced his mouth. A serenely sedate man sat in his place. His erotic power grabbed her from across the distance and had her fumbling for the phone.
Now, almost four hours later according to the dashboard clock, she waited in her car in the parking lot of his lab where she’d come to escape the dreams attempting to overwhelm her mind like a plague. Neither the cold shower nor the drive-thru coffee had succeeded in clearing the gritty haze scrubbing her eyes with each blink or the fog in her brain.
“Ugh.” Ava gave up on the losing battle of expelling thoughts of Dr. H from her mind. She abandoned the fight against wakefulness and dropped her head against the car’s headrest to rest her eyes for a few minutes.
Despite the morning sun brightening the sky she slipped into dreamless darkness.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Ugh.” She grumbled and turned away from the rapping intrusion.
Tap. Tap. Tap. “Ms. Sebastian.”
Not him again. Like when she’d attempted to sleep at home, remembered images of him mostly undressed and his smooth voice invaded her mind’s deepest recesses. His power slid over her in streams of awareness and arousal. Teasing. Taunting. Threatening.
Click. Screech. Groan.
More vivid than in her dreams, old-timey musk swirled with morning mugginess through her car. Drawn in, with pulses of arousal sparking beneath her skin, she turned her head closer to the clean scent of him.
“Ms. Sebastian.”
His formality, his unyielding habit of calling her Ms. Sebastian rather than Ava, felt…intimate. Like he knew her. Knew her darkest secrets and saw her scars. She sighed and settled closer to the impression of him. She drew his scent into her lungs. “Mmmm.”
Warm breath fluttered along her neck and the edge of her ear. She shivered. He cleared his throat.
“Ms. Sebastian, when you are ready to wake up, we will begin.”
“Huh?” She slitted open one eye and jerked back. Dr. H’s face, haloed by the morning light behind him, filled her vision. She’d not only fallen asleep, but she’d been snuck up on. Mistakes like that cost lives.
“You’re late.” The stoic man from the lab was back.
“I’ve been here since around six. I’m not late.”
“You’re not ready to go either.” His face and tone remained blank of emotion, but intuition told her he was humored and a little aroused. Would he be if he knew who was after him?
“You’re inhuman. Who willingly kicks off their day before nine?” She ignored the whine in her voice and instead turned away to find t
he energy in a bottle she’d apparently dropped when sleeping.
He shouldn’t be so…awake. So ready to tackle the day. Especially given that his lights had still been on at four when Liam had shown up to relieve her from duty.
“Looking for this?” He waved the small bottle between them. She reached for it. He pulled it away.
“Hand. Over. The. Shot.”
“You won’t need it.” He stuck it in the pocket of his swimming shorts and stepped back.
With deliberate slowness, she turned in the seat and placed her feet on the ground. He took another step back. She concentrated on her core muscles and raised herself out of her convertible Mini.
“Hand. Over. The. Shot.” She knew how to kill a man with her bare hands. If he thought he would get between her and her shot, the man was delusional.
His only answer was a leisurely survey up and down the length of her. After a pause at her winged, messenger-hat shaped lapel pin, his gaze scanned up to hers again. He shook his head. “I said wear a suit.”
She glanced from his ratty tank top, shorts and flip flops to her pant suit and heels, and back to his shorts. “This is a suit.”
“Not for swimming.”
“For… No.” She shook her head. “I’m not going swimming. We are not going swimming.”
Where would she hide the gun currently nestled at the small of her back? How was she supposed to protect the man, keep him alive, if he insisted on keeping her unarmed? Okay, so he didn’t know what he demanded. But that didn’t matter.
She was on a case. She had a mission. She could not indulge in a morning swim. Hunk in board shorts looking ready to surf for hours or not, she couldn’t do it. Especially when she only had an hour of sleep to fuel her.
“Have a nice day.” He stepped back and she noticed the open-topped Jeep he’d driven the day before. Beach boy looks, a vehicle that said he enjoyed fun, an adeptness at meditation, a tense work mood, and a habit of speaking in short sentences. The man was a contradiction. “What? You said we were working…” The energy flowing through the air around him was waking her up, but not enough.
“We would be if you could follow instructions.” Even in his sun-loving clothes he was somber. Seemingly one-track minded.
“You said wear a suit. I wore a suit.”
“A swimsuit.”
She rolled her shoulders back. “That’s not what you said. And swimming has nothing to do with auditing.”
“Well, it’s what I meant. And tantrums don’t suit you.”
“I do not throw tantrums. And you’re no more psychic than I am.” Yeah, she was waking up, but her focus wasn’t what it could be if she had that shot. He was looking for any excuse to eject her from the study. She needed to stay alert if she wanted to keep up with him. Failure could too easily mean death. “And you can’t blame me for not reading minds.”
He opened his mouth, but shut it again. Shaking his head, he closed the distance between them, coming close enough for the morning breeze to whisk his scent to her. Too close.
Her pulse quickened.
He pulled the bottle he’d confiscated from his pocket and with a quick twist removed the cap.
Yes! Her brain screamed in anticipation. He was going to take mercy on her. He was going to…
He upended the bottle, dumping the blessed, berry-flavored, focus-giving liquid on the ground between them. The gun holstered at her back pressed into her spine. The barrel would fit nicely into the groove at the bottom of his jaw. Not that she wanted to hurt him so much as make it perfectly clear standing in her way of an energy shot could be detrimental.
Too late to change that circumstance though.
“You don’t need this, Ms. Sebastian. We’ll check inside. I’m sure Dana has a suit you can borrow. A swimsuit.”
Capitulation hadn’t struck her as one of his qualities. He confirmed it by arrogantly dumping her drink. Well, she wasn’t known for surrender either, but she would allow him his victory.
Grinding her teeth, she locked up her car and followed Dr. H toward his building. His sister was a couple sizes smaller than Ava. Borrowing a suit from her… This wasn’t going to go well.
Stupid damn need to keep him safe. Alive.
“Dana’s your assistant?”
“Yes.”
“Just how close are you that you know she has a suit here I can use?” It hadn’t been difficult for her to learn Dana’s real identity. Despite gentle nudges, he seemed intent to keep it hidden.
“Close enough.” He keyed a code into the panel beside the door and let her inside.
Vague. Again. Ava studied his body as they headed down the corridors. He walked with a strut, the God-like strut so many doctors had. As if they could control everything and everyone around them.
Knowing he swam explained the lean build to his body. Regardless, she needed a more accurate read off him. She couldn’t see through his granite façade.
He headed into a dressing room with two sets of lockers sitting at a right angle to each other in one corner. A futon-type sofa sat against a free-standing wall in the middle of the room, and a large mirror dominated the other wall. A shower was likely on the other side of the divider.
He pulled a red suit from a locker and offered it to her. “This should work. And if we’re going to work together you should call me H.”
He’d given her the first sign of approval, but it faded in the glare of the barely there two-piece suit hanging from his finger. “That’s not a suit. That’s a bandage.”
“You’re going to pretend shyness?” He straightened his arm, moving the bikini closer to her. “And it covers more than you think.”
“Maybe on Dana’s two-sizes-smaller-than-mine body.” She met his hard stare. It wasn’t so much the idea of the small scraps that bothered her. It was more a matter of who would see her in the scraps. Him. “You’re out of your mind. And why are you assuming I’m some sort of tramp with no reservations? I’m here to audit records.”
“Are you kidding? After yesterday?”
“I did nothing yesterday to—”
“Lead me to believe you’re free enough to willingly wear something like this?” He wiggled the fabric scraps and rolled his eyes at her. “You easily forget your line of questioning about orgasms.”
“I forget nothing about orgasms.”
He smiled his small smile that only hinted at humor, but damn her, he became more powerful each time he flashed a hint of the grin. Each time it made her ache to draw him deeper into the lighter side. She wanted to know what he would be like if he allowed himself to enjoy the world around him.
Her head buzzed.
Shit. She had no right wondering such things. Or assuming he didn’t enjoy his life.
She clamped her mouth shut, closed her eyes and lamented the loss of the energy shot and its kick of focusing power. Power to focus on something other than H and orgasms.
Her body hummed with awakening arousal.
“I’ll let that lay.”
Her eyes drifted to the futon. Lay where? She didn’t need to go there. She didn’t need to see how clearly amused he was. She didn’t need him to see her reaction to him.
She needed to shut her mouth.
“Take the suit, Ms. Sebastian.”
She snatched the suit from his hand without meeting his gaze.
“You can put your things in the far right locker.” He left without another glance her way.
When she was alone, she went over and turned the lock on the door. She wasn’t a prude. She’d proven that on her last assignment. But no way in hell would she give him the chance to walk back in while she was changing.
The man made no more sense than her reactions to him. He pulled at her and aroused her and aggravated her.
She turned and caught her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes widened. She expected to look enraged. Instead, she looked…soft. Doe-eyed and slack-mouthed. The look had nothing to do with lack of sleep, but if he mentioned it she’d sure as sh
it claim otherwise.
She didn’t do soft where men were concerned. Not anymore. Not since— No. She wouldn’t think about him.
She would remind herself of her mission, limit her thoughts of H to those of a professional nature and curb the desire to bait him about anything sexual. This morning had robbed her of enough credibility for three jobs.
Shaking off his impact, Ava turned away from the mirror. She unbuttoned her suit jacket, but stopped before slipping it off. Pressure built in her head, as if there were too many thoughts slamming into each other. The hairs covering her arms danced an attentive tango across her tingling skin. She twisted around. The room was empty save her and her reflection.
Still, she felt his gaze on her. Watching. Studying. Waiting.
Narrowing her eyes, she walked to the mirror and touched her fingertip to the cool surface. A space reflected back between her finger and its reflection. Not a double-sided mirror.
She scanned the room for cameras, or likely places to hide cameras. The pressure in her head eased.
“Stop it, Ava.” He’d given her no reason to suspect him of being a member of the Asshole Clan. His background, what she knew of it, didn’t support the theory.
Regardless, she’d needed to get closer. She’d asked for this assignment. She may as well make the best of it. She loved the water. She could find pleasure in it, even with him. And then they’d get to work.
Hurrying through the task of changing, she stowed her clothes and gun in a locker. In the shower area she found a large towel to tie around her waist. At least she could hide some of herself from his view. Every little bit helped.
On the way to the door, she stopped before the mirror and checked the suit.
It was small, but not quite as small as she’d thought it would be.
The bottom worked if she remembered to not fidget with it. She checked herself to make sure the essentials were covered and sighed in relief that she’d shaved that morning. This could have been profoundly more embarrassing. She adjusted the two triangles barely covering her breasts and nipples. Feeling silly, she executed a quick roundhouse kick to see how the suit behaved. Nothing vital came uncovered, but if she’d been one cup size bigger she’d be in a universe of hurt.
