A Harmless Little Ruse (Harmless #2)

by Meli Raine

  “Do you mind?” She jostles her hands. “Can I wipe my nose that you just injured? Daddy is going to shit a brick when he finds out you’ve abused his daughter.”

  “And when he finds out you stole my gun to go after three well-established, highly successful men to fulfill some sick, mentally unbalanced scheme you have for revenge against guys who did nothing more than meet your request for some gang bang sex, I don’t think your version of events is the one he’s going to believe.”

  She moves to kick me in the balls.

  I’m a nanosecond faster and swoop my foot across her ankles.

  Lindsay drops. I let go of her wrist.

  “You bastard,” she says from the ground, looking up at me, blood smeared and eyes wide and feral now.

  “You think this is me being a bastard, Lindsay? Really? Because on a scale of bastard, this is downright courtly.”

  “You bruise me and headbutt me and give me a bloody nose and you call that courtly?”

  “You pretend to want me, give me a little intimacy -- ” My voice cracks on that word, damn it. “And then steal my gun and try to escape. You really aren’t in a position to demand anything from me behavior-wise.”

  Her lips purse, nostrils flaring, and she grabs the hem of her shirt, pulling it up to wipe her nose.

  A flash of dusky nipples greets my gaze.

  I bite back a groan.

  We’re both panting, angry, frustrated, feeling betrayed, and turned on as fuck.

  Or maybe that’s just me.

  “Lindsay. Give me my gun. I’m not going to stop asking.”

  She plants the soles of her feet on the ground. She’s wearing black leather sneakers, black sweatpants, a black hoodie with a black t-shirt underneath.

  Who does she think she is? An Emo ninja?

  Her head dips between her knees and she just breathes.

  Footsteps. Leaves rustling. And then --

  “Sir?”

  It’s Gentian.

  “Call them off. Found her.”

  He eyes me uncertainly. “And your -- ”

  “And nothing. Target found. Do the rest.”

  “Yes, sir.” Gentian runs off.

  “You are just like Daddy,” Lindsay says, contempt so thick in her voice I could wear it as sunscreen in Afghanistan and stay pasty white. “You think you can order everyone around and they’ll do your bidding like good little robots. I spent four years of my life on that island because Daddy made his mission more important than me.”

  “My mission would be easier if you were just a robot.” My damn erection taunts me. Wish I were a robot right now.

  “This mission wouldn’t exist if I were dead.”

  I explode. “That’s the point, Lindsay! My job is to keep you undead!”

  “Your job is to turn me into a zombie?” She gives me a withering look.

  I ignore that. “Where’s my gun?”

  “What gun?”

  I grab her arm, hard. My fingertips dig into her wiry muscles. I know I’m hurting her. A sick little corner of me enjoys hurting her. I can’t admit it, but she fucking gutted me back in her bedroom, letting me wake up like that. Alone. Used.

  A mark for her sick little game. Is that all this is?

  She squirms, but juts her chin up at me, defiant, glaring.

  I dare you, those honey-brown eyes say, turning dark as this standoff continues.

  Oh, yeah?

  I don’t back down.

  Ever.

  Pain enters those eyes, then fear. Good. A healthy dose of fear means we’re getting somewhere. She should be afraid. Not of me. Of them.

  Any fear, though, is progress.

  “Let go.”

  “My gun.”

  She nudges her chin toward the bush behind me. I push her toward it.

  “Get it.”

  “How can I get it when you’re squeezing me like a nut in a wrench?”

  “You got the ‘nut’ part right.”

  She scowls, then rolls her eyes.

  I’d laugh if I were in a different mood, but now I’m pissed. Not so much about the gun, which was bad.

  Pissed that she left me like that.

  And by pissed, I mean hurt.

  “You are such an asshole. How can I bend over when you’re holding me like this?”

  I reach up for her hair with my free hand and snake my fingers through it, threading it like a Chinese finger torture puzzle through my knuckles.

  “What are you doing?”

  I let go of her upper arm.

  She bolts.

  Then yanks back with such force I have to lean down slightly or I’ll rip all her hair out at the roots because of the sheer force of her movement.

  Her scream dies in her throat.

  “You bastard,” she gasps, pooled at my feet into a panting little ball of hard, tight anger. Her chest rises and falls and God help me, my blood goes where it shouldn’t. I need all the oxygen to go to my brain. Last thing my pants need is a tent.

  “I may be a bastard, but I’m not a sucker, Lindsay. Bend down and find my gun.”

  “You just want me to bend down so you can see my ass.”

  I stay silent, because one of the rules of handling a hostile person is to give them something to be right about.

  I can give her a victory on that topic.

  Because she is mostly correct.

  It’s not the only reason, but it’s a nice fringe benefit.

  Five seconds later, my gun’s in my waistband, and she’s two feet away from me. I let her go.

  We’re at an impasse.

  “Just let me leave, Drew. I’ll disappear. Run away. Hide. I know how.” Her voice is so contrite. Her pleading is damn close to begging. These mood swings are killing me.

  Why the change in her? What’s made her so desperate to leave?

  “You think letting a presidential candidate’s daughter escape to go live an underground life is on my list of Shit I Want to Do Tonight?” I start laughing. It’s not a pleasant sound. “You’re as crazy as your parents think you are, Lindsay!”

  She winces. I hurt her. Hit a nerve. Her eyes simmer in the moonlight, unspilled tears pooling on her lower lids. As pissed as I am, I regret that comment. My heart starts doing the two-step in my chest, and my hands curl into fists so I don’t reach out and pull her into my arms and whisper I’m sorry.

  If I do that, it’s like handing her a scalpel and telling her to cut out my beating heart and use it as a metronome.

  “Plus,” I add, “whatever you think you know about disappearing is nothing compared to how much more the people who want to get their hands on you know about it. You’d be tracked, found, kidnapped and dead – or worse – before you know it.”

  She shudders at the word worse.

  Footsteps.

  “Help!” Lindsay starts screaming.

  “What are you doing?” I plant my hands on my hips and just watch, unamused.

  “I’m going to tell Silas what you did to me.”

  I snort. “You mean the part where I saved you from yourself?”

  “You controlling, overbearing, arrogant son of a bitch! You think you own the world! You think you can tell me what to do and -- ”

  “I see Drew hasn’t changed a bit,” says a familiar voice. Mark Paulson’s here, to our right, his face in profile, blond hair a lot longer than the last time I saw him. I catch his eye and see his eyebrows are arched, filled with questions.

  “You got here fast,” I snap at him.

  He shrugs. “No traffic this time of night.”

  Lindsay’s yelling continues unabated. “ -- think you can kiss me and, and, take me to bed and that will change anything-- ”

  “This is not quite the Drew I know,” Paulson says, turning away and coughing into his hand.

  SLAP!

  Distracted by Mark, I’ve given Lindsay her chance. She took it. My face absorbs the impact, which wasn’t much. She has strong arms but bad aim. I can tell this is the first
time she’s ever slapped anyone.

  I would laugh if I weren’t rubbing my mouth, tasting a little blood.

  And dealing with a shit-eating grin from Paulson, who gives me a look that says, Better you than me, man.

  Chapter 3

  “Would you excuse us for a moment?” I ask, as if Mark had interrupted us at afternoon tea, and not in a moment of rage and humiliation and gun theft.

  He turns away and heads toward a dark figure a hundred feet away. Must be Gentian.

  I reach for Lindsay but she steps back, knees unlocked, thighs tight in a stance I recognize. It’s from mixed martial arts and her fists are curled. She thinks she’s going to fight me?

  Cute.

  Cute and hot.

  “Lindsay, I’m Special Ops trained. You couldn’t take me if you cloned yourself five times.”

  “I don’t need to fight you and win, Drew. I just need to cause a little damage.”

  Oh, you already did, baby.

  My chest squeezes, just enough to make me ache.

  Can’t say that out loud, though.

  “I am trying to help you,” I say slowly. Moonlight highlights the still-fresh scratches on her face, the awful bruising from the car accident, and her cheeks are flushed, rosy and fresh. She looks so gorgeous and raw, injured and feisty right now. It’s inappropriate and completely dangerous to think this way.

  I don’t care.

  I need to get through to her.

  My hands aren’t enough. Brute strength isn’t cutting it.

  I guess I have to resort to feelings.

  “Beating me is your idea of helping? Why am I not surprised?” she says, her bitter tone making me wince. On the inside only, of course. On the outside, my face is polished granite.

  “You can’t do this. Not alone.”

  “Do what?”

  “Hunt down those guys and kill them.”

  Her mouth makes a silent O.

  “I wasn’t – I wouldn’t -- ”

  “Don’t lie. I was. I would.”

  Her eyelids peel back in shock.

  “But not like this, Lindsay. You’re not being logical. This is no plan. You need tactics and strategy to win a war when you’ve lost so many battles already.”

  Her jaw is hard as steel, tight like a drum, and she’s glaring at me like she doesn’t want to hear a damn word I say.

  But she’s listening.

  That has to be enough.

  “I am here,” I say slowly, “for my own reasons.”

  She huffs softly. “Last night showed me a few of your reasons.” Her eyes flit to my crotch.

  “Not that.”

  “You didn’t like that?”

  “Lindsay,” I groan, running my hand through my hair and trying not to fuck her right up against the wall of her house, under her open window. “I didn’t fall asleep with you in my arms in your bed because I have some ulterior motive!”

  Her cheeks go pink.

  And I go cold.

  “No,” I hiss. “Tell me you didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Fake it.”

  “Fake what?”

  “Fake everything last night just so you could convince me you really care about me and maybe there’s hope. Fake it so you could trick me and get your hands on my gun and escape.”

  Snake eyes. Lindsay’s looking at me with narrowed slits, reluctant to tell any truths. I can’t blame her, but I do. She’s ruining everything. Whatever half-baked scheme she thinks is going to work may very well destroy my carefully crafted machine that is designed to perform the same function:

  Revenge.

  “Here.” She tosses a phone at my face, crossing her arms over her chest, her mouth tight. “Read that.”

  Come play with us, the text says.

  And then another one.

  AGAIN

  Then three texted pictures. Harry shaking hands with Blaine Maisri at a political event.

  The second pic turns me into a tingling body of stone and ice. I skip it. I force myself to look at the third texted picture of Blaine kissy-facing the camera.

  “Fuck,” I curse. My eyes dart to meet hers. I hold up the phone, the glowing screen pointed at her. “This is why you ran? This?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “No, Lindsay, that’s the entire damned point. No, I wouldn’t, not if I had a highly trained, highly motivated nine-member security detail assigned to me. No, I fucking wouldn’t run, because I would trust the men whose entire purpose in life is to protect me.”

  “BUT YOU DIDN’T!” She explodes like a hand grenade tossed right into the middle of all four chambers of my heart.

  “I TOLD YOU WHAT HAPPENED!”

  “And they still raped me, Drew,” she says, her voice low and intense. “Nothing you tell me about that night changes the fact that they just turned me into a bucket of flesh holes for their pleasure.”

  Flesh holes makes my throat spasm. “Nothing they did to you was about pleasure. It was about control. Power. Evil.”

  “That’s exactly why I need to run away.”

  Something in her eyes changes the air between us. What happened? What isn’t she telling me?

  “That’s why you need to stay next to me at all times,” I counter.

  Her slow blink is the only answer she gives.

  I’ll take it. It’s better than no.

  “Drew, what is that picture of you about?” she asks. The question feels like the weight of four years crammed into a handful of words.

  “I’ve never seen that picture before.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “What do you think it’s about, Lindsay?” If they shared that picture with her, what else did they show her?

  My skin turns to cold plastic. My mouth goes dry. The world turns into nothing but dark shadows and cold winds.

  “You’re naked in that pic. And you have blood all over you.” She’s staring at the ground, then her eyes click up to meet mine. “And my scarf is in the picture. What...what did you really do that night? Whose blood is that?”

  Someone bangs an enormous gong in my head.

  She’s really asking if that’s her blood.

  The truth is, I don’t know.

  “I can tell you what I know,” I choke out. “I know I didn’t hurt you that night. I know they drugged me. I know I would never, ever willingly participate in what they did to you.”

  Mark Paulson clears his throat. I can’t see him. He’s behind a bush. The other guys must be getting antsy. You don’t order a high alert and leave them hanging. Relieved by the interruption, I leave Lindsay hanging.

  I can only handle so much. I’m made of steel when it comes to protecting other people, but even I have weaknesses.

  Not many.

  But this topic is one of them.

  “And I know damn well, Lindsay,” I add, grabbing her arms, pulling her to me with a fierce possession. “I know damn well I’ll never, ever let them hurt you again.”

  “How am I supposed to know that, Drew?” Her words are a mixture of fury and a whimper that says she wants to believe me. “I see a picture like that and of course I wonder.”

  Those assholes. I open my mouth to explain. Or to try.

  “Drew?” Mark calls out.

  Saved by the bell.

  “Tell Gentian it’s covered,” I call out to him. “We got it. No need to tell Bosworth.”

  Lindsay’s shoulders sag with relief. Her eyes cut over to both of us, and when she meets mine, she’s fuming. Aching with confusion and pissed as hell, but she’s panting.

  Exertion? Arousal?

  I can’t tell the difference in her anymore.

  I reel back.

  I call out to Mark. “But we have a new situation. You, me, and Gentian inside in Lindsay’s bedroom in ten minutes. Tell the team to go back to normal stations. Crisis over.”

  Paulson leaves, and just as he’s around the corner, Lindsay tries to run for it. Again.

&
nbsp; I pounce, flattening her in seconds, belly to belly, and this time, she’s not getting away.

  Before she can say a word, my mouth’s on hers, my body blanketing her, hips grinding into her, my cock hard and ready. None of this makes sense.

  Not one movement, not one kiss, nothing.

  She pushes up against me, her energy and anger directed through her mouth, her hands, the way she grabs my ass. Her hands pin me to her body. This is her volition. Her will. Her need is clear.

  But confusing as fuck.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing right now, Lindsay,” I tell her, my mouth against her ear, shoulder digging into the mulch beneath us, our heads up against the wall of the house. We’re filthy and sweaty, my fingers smelling like her, the memory of her coming against my hand so fresh.

  “I know what I’m doing,” she pants, nipping my lip, her hands like snakes, all over me, angry and feral, filled with a desperate hate that only passion can inspire.

  “I would take you right here, up against the wall of your parents’ house in the middle of the goddamn night like a rutting animal if you weren’t...if I weren’t -- ” Words fail me. That happens more and more with her. I punch the wall with my free hand, my bones jarring with the impact, but at least it takes attention away from my pounding cock.

  “If you weren’t a coward?” Her chin juts up in that crazy way she has and that’s it.

  I go fucking primal.

  Her fingernails dig into my shoulders, one hand threaded in my hair, her mouth is hot and heavy on mine, taking as much as I am, our lips bruising, tongues tangling in a ball of fury and lust. My hips push her into the ground as if I could pin her in place and make her stay there forever, to keep her from fleeing, my hard cock seeking her warmth, her breasts pushed against my chest with a soft, yielding feeling that is paradoxical compared to the wildcat trying to maul me alive with tongue and fingers.

  “I hate you,” she gasps against my mouth, but she kisses me again, sucking on my tongue, her hand wiggling between us to stroke me from the outside of my pants, my vision turning into storm clouds that billow and mushroom. My pulse sprints through my body like an Olympic runner going for gold and I can feel her getting close as I bend down and free myself, ready to lift her leg and slip inside her, give her what her dirty, naughty, rebellious little body needs.

  The same body that left me in bed and stole my gun.