Lana lowered her head and breathed in the scent of fresh earth and decay. Her heart thundered in her chest. Feet thudded down the path and the beam of a flashlight swept over their hiding spot. Lana held her breath until she thought she might burst. Finally the steps faded away and she let go a sob.
“Shhhhh.” James stroked his hand down her back. “We’ll have to stay here for a bit. They’ll be waiting on the road, hoping to flush us out, and it’s too dark to navigate the rest of the trail without a light.”
“Well, it certainly hasn’t been a boring date,” Lana mumbled. “Sex in the office. A stakeout. A little nookie in the car. Illicit activities in a parking lot. And pursuit by armed bikers and drug or arms dealers. You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”
“It’s not over.” James flipped her onto her back and eased himself on top of her, holding his weight on his elbows, his weapon still in his hand. Lana wiggled and felt his erection, hard as steel, settle firmly between her legs.
“James Hunter. I can’t believe you. We are not having sex in the forest while we’re being hunted by men with guns. Who gets turned on in life-threatening situations?”
“You.” He slid his hand between them and under her dress. Shoving aside her panties he pressed a finger into her center and then trailed her wetness along her inner thigh.
“That was from before,” she spat out, her cheeks flaming. “It doesn’t just evaporate.”
James slid his finger between his lips and smiled. “It’s from now.”
“Like you can tell.”
His hand cupped her sex again and his finger dipped inside her, just enough to tease, and then out. “Maybe you’re right. I need another taste.”
Heat flared through her body and she softened beneath him. “What if they come back?”
“I have my weapon ready.”
Lana wiggled her hips against his hardened length. “I noticed. Good thing I’m wearing my easy-access dress.”
James tilted his head down until his eyes met hers. The warm glow in their blue depths stirred the heat in her veins.
“I’m sorry I pulled you out from under the Hummer.” He leaned forward and brushed his lips against hers. “They wouldn’t have seen you under there. I should have trusted your judgment.”
A strange contentment flowed over her skin and squeezed a drop of graciousness from her heart. “You were just trying to protect me.”
When he kissed her again, something changed in the air between them. Her body still thrummed with need, and his hand still slid down her body, seeking her moist, warm heat. But something else flowed in the current, breaking down walls, joining them with an invisible bond.
Whatever it was—danger, desire, desperation—it clouded her mind and opened her heart, and for the first time she wanted to share with him some of the past that haunted her.
“You’re not bad at this protection thing,” Lana said. “I might hire you as a bodyguard when you’re done with your assignment.”
James chuckled. “You’re my girl. You get my services for free.”
Lana lifted her head. Darkness surrounded them like a thick black cloak, pierced only by the tiniest sliver of moonlight. “I was Levi’s girl,” she whispered. “And he never protected me.”
“Who’s Levi?” His hand stilled.
“He was the biker I told you about. I was with him for four years, from when I was sixteen. I was kind of a bad teenager, looking for trouble, and he was a badass biker who was all the trouble I could handle. I thought it was meant to be. He didn’t hit me much the first year, but then we moved to the US and he joined the Wolverines.”
James sucked in a sharp breath and for a second Lana wondered if she should tell him the rest. Maybe not. Maybe just one piece at a time until she knew she could trust him with the biggest secret of all.
“I know about the Wolverines.” A worried crease formed between his eyebrows.
“They didn’t care that I was his old lady. They…made me do things around the clubhouse and when I didn’t do them right they…were violent. Levi didn’t intervene. He said I deserved what I got.” Lana’s voice thickened with remembered pain. “Sometimes he would just…watch them hurt me. Only thing he stopped them doing was…”
A stick cracked not more than ten feet away, and a gasp broke free from her lips as she glimpsed the beam of a flashlight.
James bolted to his feet and helped Lana off the forest floor. “Looks like we’ll have to continue our date in a new location.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Carpe Noctem?”
Lana stared at the golden plaque affixed to the wall in the now-familiar Gastown alley. “This is where you’re taking me to escape from the drug dealers? The cab we caught outside the University Endowment Lands would have taken us anywhere. You must really get off on the whole danger thing.”
James chuckled. “You certainly do.”
Lana’s cheeks flamed at his overly accurate statement. If they hadn’t been interrupted in the forest, no doubt their date would have involved even more sex in unusual places.
James slid his access pass through the reader. “I need to speak to Tony,” he said. “I overheard something at the beach that could be a concern. He knows I’m undercover and he has a knack for sorting through thorny issues.”
Lana shuffled her feet. “How about I just wait for you out here? My last two experiences haven’t been the most positive. The first time I visited the club you interrogated me and then threw me out. The second time you riled me up so I would get thrown out. This time I’ll just save you the trouble and stay out here.”
“You have no problem endangering your life to get a picture for your case, but you’re afraid to go into a sex club?”
She saw the challenge for what it was, but she couldn’t stop her hands from finding her hips. “I’m not afraid.”
“Good.” He clasped her hand and led her down the stairwell and into the black-and-white-tiled reception area. Trixie hustled out to greet them wearing a barely there, blood-red corset dress lined with gold trim, red mesh stockings and red stilettos.
Lana swallowed and looked down at the little black dress she had thrown on after they had had sex on her desk three different ways. Jackie had convinced her to keep a selection of outfits at the office for various emergencies, but she hadn’t been prepared for an impromptu visit to a sex club.
“I’m…er…overdressed.”
Trixie gave her a wink. “Not at all. Your dress is tight, short and low cut. You just make the grade. And there’s someone here tonight I know you’ll want to see, so you get a free pass.”
After James headed to Tony’s office, Trixie walked her to the bar. Lana kept an eye out for leather jackets with Hades patches but the only leather in the club was the kinky kind.
“Katy!” Trixie called out. “Look who’s here.”
Lana smiled as a woman with long brown hair turned around. Katy Sinclair. Her first surveillance suspect. Her first case. The reason she’d met James.
“Lana.” Katy gave her a warm smile and turned to her companion, a glamorous woman in head-to-toe leather. “This is the private investigator who saved my life after Steven had his breakdown.”
They exchanged greetings and Katy and Lana chatted about Katy’s new law practice, her children and their new house in West Vancouver.
“Hey, it’s my favorite PI.” Katy’s husband, Mark, joined them from behind the bar. Also a lawyer, and James’s best friend, he and Katy had met on the same case and been instrumental in putting some serious criminals behind bars. Tall, with broad shoulders, sable hair and dark eyes, Mark had been the object of Lana’s fantasies until she realized he was totally smitten with Katy.
“I’ve been curious about the woman who managed to tame James,” Mark said. “He’s been quiet about you two for so long that I thought you weren’t together anymore.”
Lana swallowed and her cheeks flamed. “We aren’t. Weren’t. Aren’t. I don’t know.”
/> How humiliating. Either they were going out or they weren’t. How could she not know where they stood?
Mark chuckled. “Totally understand. I lived with him for almost ten years and he still confuses the hell out of me.”
Lana stiffened. She had forgotten how close Mark and James were. He probably knew James better than anyone. And there was a question dancing on the tip of her tongue.
Swallowing hard, she asked, “Did you know…Christine?”
Mark’s eyes shuttered and he cast a quick glance around the club. “Yes, I knew her. What do you want to know?”
She wanted to know a million things. What was she like? Did she make James laugh? Did they have fun together? How long were they together? But in the end it was all the same question.
“Did he love her?”
Mark studied her for a long moment and then his eyes softened. “Why do you ask?”
Lana looked down and twisted her hands in her lap. “He said he asked her to marry him, and it wasn’t a decision he made lightly because to him it was a lifetime commitment. I just thought…it was a strange statement. He didn’t say he loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. He talked about getting married like he was entering into a contract.”
“Sounds like you have your answer,” he said softly. He put his arm around Katy and gave her a squeeze. “When we got married it was for love, and nothing else.”
“I know. I watched you for weeks.” Lana smiled at their obvious affection. “I was there from the beginning. I saw you fall in love.” At the time she’d thought she had the best job in the world. If she could live vicariously through other people’s relationships, she wouldn’t long for her own. But in the end, Katy and Mark walked away with each other, and Lana was still alone.
Katy’s eyes teared and she squeezed Mark’s hand. “It wasn’t an easy road.”
“But you knew,” Lana persisted. “You knew from the beginning it was something special. Something worth the hardship of the bumpy road.”
“I knew the minute I laid eyes on her.” Mark leaned over and kissed Katy on the forehead. “I would have walked through hell to make her mine. Almost did.”
Katy shuddered and Lana gave her a sympathetic glance. They had both almost lost their careers and their lives in the pursuit of justice.
“Is James here tonight?” Katy took a quick glance around the club. “I didn’t see him come in.”
Mark snorted. “He’s here, but in disguise. We’ll have to pretend we don’t know him.”
Disguise? Not once since they’d met again had she thought of James as being in disguise. He wore the biker persona as easily as he wore his low-slung jeans. But Mark was right. When his assignment was over, he would hang up his leathers, return the motorcycle and become James Hunter, crusty cop, once more.
A bruise of sadness formed in her chest. She would miss biker James. The new James was spontaneous and unrestrained. Possessive and protective. He laughed more, lived more.
Did he love more too?
“I thought you said she hated you.”
James leaned back in his chair and looked around Tony’s office—anywhere except at his all-too-intuitive friend seated behind an enormous glass-and-oak desk. Sleek, modern and sophisticated, Tony’s office was a reflection of the man, lacking only the enigmatic quality that made most people wary of the club’s owner.
“Maybe not as much as I thought.”
“So what’s going on with you two?”
James drummed his fingers on his thigh. “I didn’t come here for a psychological analysis. I came here because my life is in danger and the DEU is doing dick-all about it. I need some advice. My relationship will be neither here nor there if I’m dead.”
“You have a relationship?” Tony stroked his nonexistent beard.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You did. You said you had a relationship. Not that I needed to hear it from you. I could see it the minute you two walked into the club. Body language. Powerful tool in a psychologist’s arsenal.” A grin split his face. “I can say with 100 percent certainty, she doesn’t hate you. At all.”
James shrugged. “She doesn’t want to have a relationship. She doesn’t trust me because I messed her around so bad. She wants to keep it casual.”
“What do you want?”
James stood and paced around the room. He’d asked himself the same question one hundred times since he’d reconnected with Lana. Finally he shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess that works for me. No one gets hurt. I don’t wind up in the same situation I was in with Christine.”
The words didn’t ring true, even to him, and suddenly he didn’t want to be having this conversation. He spun around to face Tony, knowing as he did it was the wrong thing to do. “Are we done now? Can we talk about the more serious issue?”
“We are talking about the more serious issue.”
Unnerved by Tony’s steady gaze, James stuffed his hands in his pockets. “You should have stayed in psychology, indulged your need to analyze people and spared your friends.” He knew he was being defensive. Hell, his back had been up since Tony mentioned Lana, but he didn’t need help with her. He just needed time to sort things out in his head, and he couldn’t do that when he was concerned about his cover.
Tony raised an eyebrow. “Practicing law gives me plenty of opportunities for psychological analysis, and the club even more so. My friends get my help, even when they don’t think they need it. And as for me, it was time for a change. New scenery. New people. New career.”
“Most people only make one life-altering change at a time,” James said bitterly.
Tony’s eyes shuttered and his hand clenched on the desk. “I’m not most people.”
Now there was an understatement. Cloaked in an aura of danger and mystery, with a commanding, physical presence, Tony could control a room with only a glance. Even James knew better than to challenge him, although right now, with anxiety pumping through his veins, he couldn’t help but try again.
“How about you help me figure out how to convince the DEU to return the weapons cache? Leave me to handle my own damn nonexistent relationship.”
“You’re about to lose the one thing in the world that means something to you and you don’t even realize it,” Tony replied coolly.
“My life.”
“Roxie.”
Tony’s mild, unthreatening tone belied the danger inherent in the fact he knew Lana’s real name, a name she had said she’d never used since moving to Vancouver. James’s teeth gritted together and his skin prickled. Maybe Tony wasn’t the friend James had thought he was.
“That’s not her name.”
“It’s the name she was given at birth.”
Heart pounding, James leaned over Tony’s desk, dropping his palms to the cool surface. “I don’t see how that was information you needed to collect for the club.”
Although James had breached Tony’s personal space, Tony didn’t move.
“I collect information on everyone who comes into the club, and especially on anyone who manages to sneak in not once but twice. She’s intelligent and resourceful, as well as beautiful. And I’m guessing her kink—and yes, I know she has a kink—is a result of some past trauma, a way of finding control in a situation where once she had none.”
James’s vision sheeted red. If Tony had been any other man, he would have grabbed him by the shirt, hauled him over the desk and tossed him into the wall before wiping that damn knowing smile off his lips. But something held him back. Whether it was Tony’s utterly calm demeanor in the face of James’s anger, or the sense Tony was more than he appeared, he didn’t know.
Still, his overwhelming urge to protect Lana in the face of a threat needed an outlet. With a low growl, he swiped everything off Tony’s desk, taking what satisfaction he could in the sound of pens and books hitting the floor.
Tony snorted a laugh and leaned back in his chair, folding his hands behind his head. “And there, my frie
nd, is the answer to your relationship problem. It’s not casual at all. Not in the least. You’re in so deep you’re drowning.”
In response to James’s quizzical look, he continued. “I highly doubt you would have reacted like that if the object of my inquiries had been Katy, or Trixie…” he tilted his head to the side and said quietly, “…or even Christine.”
Hands trembling, blood still pounding through his veins, James could only stand and stare. Tony was right. He’d never felt this way about Christine. Affection, yes. Respect, definitely. They’d shared similar values and interests. They’d agreed on most things and rarely fought. Being with Christine had been easy, comfortable. He had thought it was enough to sustain a marriage. But in the end, it wasn’t enough for her. And if he was honest with himself, it hadn’t been enough for him. He needed more. Fire. Challenge. Sass.
“You played me,” he said as he collapsed into the chair across from Tony’s desk.
Tony smiled. “I helped you. No thanks necessary. Now that we’ve sorted out that problem, you mentioned an issue with the DEU refusing to release a cache of weapons?”
James scrubbed his hands over his face. Although Tony had been cleared to know about James’s assignment, he couldn’t give him too many details, certainly nothing regarding Bones’s suspicions about his identity or the possible DEU mole. But after overhearing Rex at the beach, he was damned sure Rex had purchased some new weapons and was looking to offload the existing cache on his buyer. Which meant he would be asking James for his weapons in the next few days and the DEU wouldn’t give them up. No way could he involve Ryder again.
He gave Tony the basic info and twisted his lips as Tony steepled his fingers.
“I can see both sides.” Tony sighed and shook his head. “Despite my formidable powers of persuasion, I don’t think even I could get past the bureaucracy. Still, something doesn’t sit right with me. With your distinguished career, one would think they would bend over backwards to keep you safe. Why hang you out to dry? And why now?”
Barely Undercover: Legal Heat, Book 2 Page 18
