by Tara Janzen
He reached for the rope at her back with his free hand, taking hold of it just below her waist, and he pulled, stretching her tighter—and he teased her with his tongue, teased her until her groans became a sob, a soft sound of distress and longing.
Ah, Gillian . . . so sweet.
So sweet and starting to come undone for him.
He felt her first contraction, and gave the rope a short tug, freeing the hand he’d tied at her back. She immediately brought it around to the back of his head, tunneling her fingers through his hair and holding him closer, pressing herself closer, begging him to do what he was doing, only faster, only harder, and to please, please, please . . . suck on me.
He heard her in every cell, heard her in the back of his mind and on the tip of his tongue, and when he did it, it was all over for the bad girl. Her body went tight, her head went back, and release flooded through her, making her skin hot. He let her ride her wave of pleasure to the end, let it break over him and drive him goddamn crazy.
Fuck. He wasn’t in control of this.
He wasn’t in control of any goddamn thing with her, and that kept him hooked, heart and soul.
He pulled the rope and felt it loosen, felt it slip and slide and pool onto the floor, felt her do the same, her body suddenly going limp. He didn’t let her fall. He never let her fall.
Never fucking ever.
He held her, keeping her close. When she was in his arms, he pulled the gag down, and with the taste of her still warm in his mouth, he kissed her, long and deep and slow, letting her taste herself, letting her know she was his . . . only and always his.
CHAPTER
8
SOONER OR LATER, something had to give, and C. Smith Rydell hoped to hell it was the bad guys’ attention span before it was the cupcake’s knees. He didn’t know how in the hell somebody could shake that badly for as long as she’d kept it up and still be standing, especially on those little white platform heels.
He let his gaze run over her again where she was plastered into the corner. Cupcake was right, double frosted with sprinkles. That had to be a tough way to live, so freaking helpless, with one damn .45 cartridge to your name and not even being able to hold on to that. If she’d been his—and she wasn’t—he’d teach her how to protect herself. The task would be at the top of his damn “Things to Do Today” list—teach Cupcake how to use a handgun. It was the only hope someone like her had in the big bad world.
Geezus. He stepped back over to the door. Something had to give, all right—and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be him, not an inch.
Pressing his ear to the wood panel, he listened. Royce’s men were still out there on the veranda, deciding what to do next, then silence, quickly followed by a hurried scuffling of feet.
Party time.
He moved back away from the door and the sudden, heavy pounding on the other side.
“Abra la puerta! Hazlo ya!” someone challenged—Open the door. Now.
“Mierda!” Bullshit, he yelled, giving his best impression of a surly Latin drunk, which, under the circumstances, wasn’t too damn hard. “No me moleste!” Don’t bother me.
“Buscamos a la rubia . . . la gringa! Abra!” We’re looking for the blonde . . . the American. Open up.
Open up a solid two inches of jungle hardwood set in a wrought-iron frame lag-bolted into the Palacio’s eight-inch-thick masonry walls and secured with two steel dead bolts?
Smith didn’t think so.
He took two steps back along the wall and leveled his Sig at the unhinged side of the door frame.
“Oígame, pendejo!” he said, coarsening his voice and slurring his words. Listen, asshole. “Si estuviese una rubia aqui, yo le cogería, no hablaría contigo! Ve te!” If I had a blonde in here, I’d be screwing her, not talking to you. Go away.
Well, that shut them up, the sheer unvarnished common sense of it. But not for long.
He put his ear to the door when he heard their conversation start back up, and he had to admit that they had a pretty good plan—posting a man in the courtyard where he could observe the whole veranda, and sending two guys to the other side of the building, where they could access the balconies.
Like the balcony to his room.
Smith looked behind him at the open set of ceiling-to-floor-length windows he’d been sitting behind all day with his spotting scope. Yeah, it wouldn’t take much to get through those babies, but anybody who tried was going to wish they hadn’t. He could guarantee it.
“Get into the bathroom,” he ordered the woman. “Into the bathtub.” If all hell broke loose, the cast-iron tub was the best place for her, right after every other goddamn place in the world.
What in the hell, he wondered, was she doing in fucking El Salvador?
For that matter, what in the hell was he doing in fucking El Salvador, except preparing to get his ass kicked?
Gunfights, especially gunfights with four-to-one odds, were damned tricky things.
But not as tricky as explosives.
A deafening blast from the street suddenly rocked the room and lit up the night with a bright flash, shattering glass and shaking the plaster off the walls, and all-around ringing his chimes.
Geezus. Fuck.
He instinctively turned in on himself, bringing his hands up to protect his head, too late, of course, if the bomb had been close enough to blow him to smithereens.
It hadn’t been, and in the seconds it took him to realize that he was still in one piece, that the hotel hadn’t collapsed, and even that there had been a bomb, the woman disappeared.
Oh, hell, yeah. Right off the map. Poof. The cupcake—gone.
He’d never heard of anyone being atomized by the concussion of an explosive device, but there wasn’t anything left of her, anywhere in the room, and the jungle hardwood door hadn’t budged.
And yes, he was really starting to like that door.
But the woman, hell—he raked the room with his gaze, and that’s when he spotted a swirl of tawny blond hair not quite held together anymore by a red polka-dot bow peeking above the rim of the tub in the bathroom.
Okay. That was skill, pure, mad skill, to be able to move and think when glass was breaking, and the walls were shaking, and your ears had to be ringing.
Mad skill.
On the other hand, anyone who looked like her had probably realized from a pretty young age that they were going to need to be fast on their feet.
Still, he was damned impressed.
“Vamos al cuartel! Rápido!” The orders came from out on the veranda. Back to the compound. Quickly.
Yeah, assholes, back to the compound, he thought, and he needed to get the woman back to her hotel.
“The woman.” Right. The woman probably had a name, and he definitely needed to ask her what it was. First, though, he crossed over to the broken windows, his boots crunching across shards of glass, and checked the street.
There were no body pieces anywhere, and he was damned glad of it, but the old Ford pickup that had been parked near Royce’s front gate had been reduced to a burning hunk of raw scrap metal. Pieces of it were everywhere. The tires were smoldering, the upholstery was on fire, and the gate had been demolished. The two halves of wrought iron were still there, but were twisted on their hinges.
Shit. Dozens of men were racing around inside Royce’s compound, more than he’d thought were in residence, and they were definitely riled up and probably going to stay that way for the rest of the friggin’ night.
Dammit. He’d come to San Luis looking for Red Dog, been tagged by his old buddies in the DEA to do some recon on Royce, ended up in the middle of some half-assed Central American turf war, and had a blonde in his bathtub—a tawny-haired blonde in a low-cut dress that fit like a coat of paint.
He didn’t know if it was dumb luck, or if he was just living right, or if he was fucked.
“What’s your name?” he asked, a little too loudly, because he could hardly hear himself think.
A
pair of large designer sunglasses peeked up over the edge of the tub.
“Honoria,” she said breathlessly, and he could just imagine how fast her heart was beating. His sure as hell hadn’t slowed down yet. “Honoria York, but most people call me Honey.”
Yeah, he just bet they did, and for a couple hundred bucks an hour, he could probably call her Honey, too.
“Take off your glasses,” he ordered. He didn’t know where in the hell that had come from particularly, but when bombs were exploding, and cars were burning, and guns were being drawn, giving orders was what he did best.
Besides, he wanted to see what she looked like from the neck up, and the glasses covered half her face. Her hair was a mess. All those little bows had given up, and so had her bobby pins. They were sticking out of her French twist here and there, and every place where a pin had fallen out, there was a curl. She had definitely lost the sleek Riviera look and was heading toward the wild side.
She reached up to take off the glasses, but whether it was because he’d told her to, or because it had gotten dark outside and was definitely dim in the room, was actually a moot point.
It didn’t matter.
Not at all.
Because once the glasses came off, and he saw her face, he had the answer to his question. It wasn’t dumb luck or clean living that had put her in his bathtub. It was one of those cosmic laws of the universe that had kicked in and said, “Let’s screw with Rydell’s head tonight, just for the hell of it.”
Because she had a face guaranteed to bust him, a real heartbreaker, one of those little, goddamn pixie faces that had been his downfall more times than he cared to remember.
Honey—yeah, he just bet.
“Stay put.” Another order, perfect, but it was for her own good—and his. Half a room away with a slab of cast iron between them was about as close as he wanted to get to her.
It was about as close as he dared, and that pissed him off in a way that having to face four gunmen had not. Because, dammit, his odds had been better against the damn gunmen. He was a helluva shot, and nothing but a sucker for a green-eyed blonde.
CHAPTER
9
GILLIAN HAD PUT the boy to bed, drugged with sex and all but knocked out. Jet lag from Thailand hadn’t hurt the cause, and was probably what had actually pushed Travis over the edge into such a deep sleep. Either way, she was afraid he wasn’t going to get to rest for long. His phone was going to ring in about twenty minutes, and after he took the call she’d programmed to his number, he was going to be busy the rest of the night—busy someplace else.
And she would be on her own, which was the way things had to be.
She crossed the loft again, heading toward her gun safe and letting her gaze slide over him where he lay naked on top of the sheets. He was so beautiful, his face almost sweet in sleep, like the angel he was, but there was nothing sweet about his body. Six feet of raw power and testosterone roped with muscle and sinew, he was a force to be reckoned with, a force of destruction when he so chose—and a force of near unbearable pleasure when she chose.
She let her gaze run back over the length of him and hardened herself against the easy way, against her own weakness. She had a job to do, and he couldn’t be any part of it, not if she was to live with herself afterward.
And she would live with herself. She always did, no matter what she’d done—and she’d done things in the last two years that other people, so-called normal people, couldn’t even imagine, let alone carry out.
They didn’t need to, because guys like Travis, and Creed, and Hawkins were there, doing it for them. Guys like Kid and Quinn were there, watching their backs. Guys like Rydell were there, working in Central America against odds he knew he would never beat.
She was there.
And Dylan Hart was there.
She slowly came to a stop, only partway to her destination.
Dylan Hart—now, there was a name to give a girl pause, to make her think.
Hart. Yeah, definitely a name to get a girl’s attention, and maybe make her break out in a sweat, a cold sweat, because that’s what Hart was: cold.
Hart knew about the white room. He’d been in an identical place on the island of Sumba, Indonesia, on the receiving end of one of Dr. Souk’s psychopharmaceutical concoctions, a drug known as NG4, but the NG4 hadn’t changed him the way XT7 had changed her. Hart had been a ruthless son of a bitch before he’d been messed with, and he was still ruthless, still cold, still hard. He only had one soft spot in his life, and it wasn’t her. Not by a long shot.
The only reason Grant let her operate through SDF was because Dylan Hart had taken personal responsibility for her, and Hart had made it very clear where the lines on his responsibility lay, and he’d made it absofuckinglutely crystal clear where her responsibilities lay.
She glanced down at the ring of keys in her hand.
She was getting ready to cross one of Hart’s lines, and there were going to be repercussions. Big ones. Maybe deadly.
Her gaze went back to Travis. She loved him too much to drag him down with her into this, to have him hunted by Hart, and Hawkins, and Creed, to have General Grant sic Kid Chaos on him, to ever put him in danger of being in Kid’s sights.
It could happen.
Depending on how successful she was in her quest, it would happen. She knew it. Hart hadn’t candy-coated the facts of her employment or of her termination, and SDF would not tolerate a rogue operator. The chop-shop boys broke a lot of rules, most of the rules, but the few they kept, they held dear. Their survival depended on it, and vigilantism had no place in their operating procedures or in their hearts. They were the good guys, and not a one of them doubted it, because not a one of them had ever killed outside the law. They’d all rattled the chain of command, but none of them had ever broken it. They acted under orders, and only under orders.
She knew all this. She’d watched SDF in action. She’d read all the files. She knew the inviolate rules.
And yet . . . and yet . . . she closed her hand around the keys, so tightly she could feel the sharp edges pressing into her skin, but not so tightly that they cut. She needed her hands tonight, to hold her guns, to hold her knives, the tools of her trade. The line had already been crossed. She’d crossed it when she’d tagged Royce’s walls with Red Dog 303, and there was no turning back.
None. Not when everything inside her pushed her on. Not when she’d been forced to her knees more times than she could bear by the monster in her mind.
If Hart wanted her after the deed was done, he was going to have to find her, and she wasn’t going to let that happen. Once she started running, no one would ever find her—no one, not even the angel, and he would look.
Oh, God, he would look, except in the one place he wouldn’t want to find her.
Shifting her attention back to the keys, she slipped them around on the ring. There was no other way. When she found the set she needed, she started forward again. The door on her safe was made of heavy steel, and after releasing the locks, she swung it open to reveal enough weapons and ordnance to pull off a small island coup.
Her gaze instinctively went to her sniper rifle first. The Knight SR-25 semiauto was the most powerful and longest-ranged weapon she owned, but it wasn’t appropriate for the battle she saw shaping in her mind, the same battle she always saw, the one she’d war-gamed half a dozen times on the surrounding rooftops and in the alleys and the creek bed where she and Johnny Ramos, one of SDF’s mechanics, paintballed.
The ACOG-scoped M4 carbine wasn’t going anywhere tonight either. She’d be facing a superior force in both numbers and firepower, and she couldn’t afford to get in a protracted firefight, where she could get “fixed” in position by opposing fire, flanked, and overrun. It was going to be “shoot and scoot” all night long, until she took a prisoner.
Then things were going to get serious.
Royce wouldn’t come himself. He’d send his men to capture her if they could, and kill her if th
ey had to, and one of those men was going to tell her where Royce was waiting. The ex-CIA agent truly was a sick bastard, with a misogynistic rap sheet a mile long, and she knew his first choice would be to have a little fun with the woman who’d screwed five of his deals.
Fine with her. He could want whatever his heart desired. All she needed was his location . . . all she needed was to be right tonight.
She hated to doubt herself, tried to shake it off, but prescience was a tricky thing. She’d geared up twice before, thinking Royce had found her, that the bastard had finally figured out who and what Red Dog was and was coming for her.
She’d been wrong both times.
But not tonight, she thought. Tonight felt different. Tonight she was afraid.
Reaching up, she pulled a tan, innocuous-looking briefcase off the top shelf. In a world of functional but ugly combat weapons, the pistol in the case stood apart. Perfectly balanced, finely finished, and as exquisitely crafted as a century-old Japanese katana blade, the TC Contender was a work of art.
She set the case on her workbench, turned the cipher lock to its combination, and popped open the top. Two scoped barrel assemblies occupied half the case, a .44 Remington Magnum threaded for a sound suppressor, and a fourteen-inch .223 Remington, both set into custom-formed green felt recesses. The frame and forestock of the pistol occupied the lower right corner of the case, with the remaining recesses filled with cleaning supplies and a hand-tooled leather cartridge cuff she wore cinched around her right forearm for fast reloads.
She gently ran her fingers over the polished ebony grip and traced the silver-inlaid dragon scrollwork etched into the frame. The Contender was pure Buck Rogers, black and beautiful, blued steel with a long sensual curve on the trigger guard, its grip custom-raked to fit her hand. And its purpose—its only real purpose—was to kill things; more specifically, in her line of work, to kill people.
