Surrendering To Her Sergeant (42 page)

She went still. He didn’t blame her
for the shock, or the fresh fear that glittered in her eyes. “I—I
don’t think so,” she replied.

“Good. We’ll hope that stays the case,
because I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

Her response might as well have been a
wallop with a two-by-four. Nevertheless, he wouldn’t have traded
the gentle touch she lifted to his face for anything. “And I’m not
letting you out of mine.”

He luxuriated in one more moment of
elation before letting desperation crash in again. As he turned and
watched the “medical bus” leave the hotel with red lights whirling
and siren blaring, he whacked a hand on the steering wheel. “We
need a fucking plan,” he snarled. “Trouble is, I don’t have
one.”

For the second time in as many
minutes, Luna’s calm fingers, now on his hunched shoulder, pulled
him back to sanity. “I do, Weasley.”

* * * * *

If his stress level wasn’t pegging its
needle in the red right now, he would have a serious boner of
appreciation for what this woman called a plan.

The luxury condo, located on the top
floor of a tower in Wilshire Boulevard’s swankiest section, was
pulled from a damn movie. The sprawling granite kitchen had a fully
stocked pantry of nonperishables and a wet bar that rotated with a
button push. Two bedrooms contained plush California-king beds
piled high with pillows in gray, red, and black. In the bathroom,
there were at least three ways to get clean, including a glass
stall shower, whirlpool tub, and a eucalyptus “wet room,” whatever
the hell that was.

But the real shit that was worth the
hard-on was the audio and video systems in the living room. Tait
ran a hand along the sixteen-channel mixer, the sleek spheres of
the Cabasse speakers, along the ledge beneath the massive image
monitor, and struggled to muster at least one “holy shit” of
reverence.

Wasn’t happening. All he could think
about were his teammates, being locked and loaded into a phony
medical transport, bound for God knew where.

The acid and thumbtack cocktail
coursed through his whole body now. He paced, trying to escape it
and chase it at once. Frustration pounded at his brain.
Restlessness clawed his limbs.

“I found some soup,” Luna called from
the kitchen. “There might be crackers in here, too. I know it’s
only seven in the morning but you have to eat
something.”

He stopped only to dash off
a burning glare. “I
need
to find my teammates. I
need
a goddamn phone.”

She huffed. “I guarantee you that
Stock’s boys had your phone thirty minutes ago and are scouring the
SIM card as we speak. Making you toss it into the riverbed was one
of the best decisions I’ve made all day.”

He increased his pacing route to
include a loop around the couch. That made it easier to slam a
frustrated palm against the long marble bar that separated them.
“Right up there with making me ditch the van for a Fiat then
telling me to circle the block six times before pulling in
here?”

The woman braced hands to her black
denim-covered hips. “The backup car was Dan’s choice, not mine, and
you sure as hell weren’t minding its speed on the curves so I’d
seal the hole on that one, soldier. As for the
ring-around-the-rosy, my first instinct was to go for ten rounds
but I was feeling generous. You got off easy. Now thank
me.”

He wanted to maintain his glare but it
was damn hard when she stood there looking so bossy and sexy.
“You’re lucky I like you.” Grudgingly, he added, “Thanks, Mamma
Mercy.”

“Anytime, Daddy Grump.”

He halted as he cleared the couch for
the third time and stared over the cityscape that stretched for
miles. Everything was brilliant in the midmorning sunshine, another
golden LA day. “What is this place, anyway? This is too nice to be
a safe house.”

“But in a way, it is.” She stepped out
of the kitchen and hitched a hip on the edge of the couch. “As you
probably already know, Dan’s sister is Secret Service. But the
ultra-down-low is that she moonlights on ‘unique’ assignments from
time to time, likely CIA Special Activities Division
stuff.”

“Hmm.” It was a speculative grunt.
“Wonder if I’ve met her.”

“Maybe.” She shrugged out of the
bolero-style leather jacket she’d had on, which covered a pale pink
tank top. The color, lighter than the deep reds and purples she
usually wore, lent her skin a glow he’d never noticed before.
“Anyhow, Dan is convinced she’s going to be in a situation someday
requiring her to ‘disappear’ for a while, so he used a chunk of his
stock dividends to buy this crib and make it nearly invisible, at
least electronically, to the outside world.”

He turned fully toward her, drawn by
curiosity. “Stock dividends?”

She tilted her head and flashed a
little smile. “Colton Steel? Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

“Fuck,” he muttered. “Uhhh,
yeah. If he’s one of
those
Coltons, why is he running around in bad suits, a
worse haircut, and collecting a spook’s pizzly
paycheck?”

“Same reason they found Prince Harry
on the front lines in Afghanistan. Believe it or not, a few of the
privileged remember why they have such good fortune and want to
give back.”

There was a hassock near the couch. He
straddled it as he asked, “Is that the same story for his sister,
too?”

“Oh, no.” Her lips took on an amused
slant. “Devyn just fancies herself as a keen little mix of Nancy
Drew, Sydney Bristow, and Lara Croft, and wants to eat bad guys for
breakfast every morning, no matter what it does to her big
brother’s blood pressure.”

He rolled his shoulders,
battling the distinct green pang that joined the tumult of his
senses. It didn’t mean anything that she knew all that about
Colton’s sister. It also didn’t mean anything that every time she
said the guy’s name, the silk in her voice wrapped possessively
around the syllable.
Dan.
Shit. He wasn’t imagining it.
Come here and cuddle with me, Dan. Will you zip up my dress,
Dan?

“So how do you know about this place?”
He tried to be civil about it. He probably didn’t succeed. If Luna
noticed, she bypassed it.

“As soon as Dan’s team linked up with
mine last week, he told me he was worried about the shit getting
thick with Lor. He was also concerned that as the ‘unconventional’
agent, I had a place to go that was completely safe. Off the books,
you know? He brought me up here and made me memorize the security
codes, ‘just in case.’”

“Didn’t that work out hunky
dory?”

He hated himself the moment it flew
out. Jealousy was an item on his useless indulgences list,
something he sure as fuck didn’t have time for, especially now. But
even thinking of Colton in here alone with Luna just a week ago
flicked that needle of tension deep back into his mental red
zone.

Goddamnit, she was
his
.

He’d planned on standing and moving
out to the terrace for some air. Fuck if that was happening now,
with that thought locking his brain in its crosshairs. As if he had
a choice to escape it. As if he could run from that chamber in his
soul that the woman had occupied from the moment he’d held her in
his lap all those months ago at Bastille and again in that palm
grove a few miles away. The woman she’d showed only to him. The
tender girl who hurt and ached, who cried for Mexican informants
she’d never met and had a touch that turned his cocky-ass attitude
into a smitten puppy at her feet.

He was certain if the woman had a
newspaper with which to smack him right now, she would. With hands
back on her hips and a new glower on her face, she charged, “What
the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” He looked away.
“Nothing, okay?”
Everything.
Tension rushed his veins again, forcing him to his
feet. The room swam and he didn’t care. It wasn’t like he had
anything to be solid for. “God
damn
it.” He raised both fists and
pounded the slider to the patio. Even the fucking glass wouldn’t
cooperate, only shuddering beneath the blow instead of joining his
spirit in the whole shattering-to-pieces thing. “They’re all out
there, being held somewhere, and I’m sitting here in a palace
instead of helping them!”

Luna’s reply was filled
with maddening calm. “You can’t do anything to help them with those
assholes stomping through the city searching for us.” The
crunch
of her leather
boots came closer. “You told me that Lor and Stock plan on using
the guys as leverage for passage out of the country. They can’t do
that with dead people, okay? Based on what Ethan told me this
morning, everything indicates that their plan is somehow connected
to the show’s live broadcast tomorrow night. That gives us tonight
to try and figure all this out.” She curled her hands, long and
gentle and tapered, around the fists he still had clenched at his
sides. “And we
will
figure it out, Weasley.”

He shook with the effort of
resisting her. Clinging to his rage was the last thing he had any
control over in this giant goat fuck of a situation. “I can’t stand
this,” he grated. “I need to be doing something. I’m a spotter for
one of the best goddamn snipers in the world and right now he’s
been turned into a half-dead Sleeping Beauty who needs me to
find
him, wake his ass up
and—”

“I know.” She stepped in
front of him. “I
know
.” She ran her hands up his arms and over his shoulders until
flattening them to the sides of his face. “Look at me,
Tait.”

He stiffened his jaw and shut his
eyes.

No
.

“Look. At. Me.”

No
!

He hated her for this.
Hated that this was the one damn moment he’d been craving for the
last week, except for now. He hated her for the velvet compassion
in her words, the soft strength in her fingers. He
really
hated her for
stepping in with such surety, daring him to fill his arms with her.
She was so close. Her scent, that heady clash of smoke and roses,
wrapped around him. Her hands, steady and determined, moved up to
burrow in his hair.

Her lips, perfect and pleading, grazed
his.

“Then just take me,” she
whispered.

It was so simple, like the tiny thread
that yanked the whole sweater apart. And damn, did he unravel for
her. He plunged his mouth on hers in a fever of need, lust,
longing. When she opened for him, whimpering in passion, he pushed
his tongue deep inside, demanding every flicker of the desire he’d
seen in full bloom when monitoring the scene between her and Z
those many months ago. He wanted all of it and more. Not just her
submission, but her desire. Not just her body, but her mind. Not
just her spark, but her whole damn fire. It was nothing less than
what she’d get from him in return.

The resolve surged through
him, powering into his arms as he hauled her off her feet. Her
gaze, dark and magnetic, was waiting when he opened his eyes. She
smiled and cupped a hand to his face again, like some medieval
princess thanking her knight for sweeping her from a dark tower.
Didn’t she get it?
She’d
rescued
him
…

And now freely offered up all that
power back to him. She knew he needed something to control right
now, and offered herself as that something.

He twisted his head to kiss her
fingers. Like no other woman in his life, she moved him. Humbled
him. And turned him on so much, he wondered if he’d get them to the
bedroom without coming in his jeans.

Thankfully, he managed the feat. After
stomping into the nearest chamber, he turned and let her fall to
the mattress, following her down a second later. He didn’t give her
a choice about what came next. Holding her jaw in one of his hands,
he leveraged her for the deepest dive of his lips and tongue,
possessing her mouth with the force of his. He didn’t let her go
until she all but churned beneath him, bunching her hands in his
shirt, mewling and sighing.

He yanked the cotton free
from his torso and grunted in pleasure as she trailed her fingers
over his burning skin. That didn’t stop him from making her bend
both knees so he could rip down the zippers on her boots and jerk
both things off. As soon as he had her feet bared, he bit into the
edge of one, then the other, making Luna laugh and sigh in the same
breath. He let her legs fall as he kneaded his way from her knees
to her waist then made short work of unfastening her jeans but not
removing them. It had been his intent, but he wasn’t opposed to
switching a mission plan for good cause. And right now, the sight
of her lace-trimmed, powder-pink panties, contrasted by her black
jeans, was too incredible to pass up. He jerked her pants wider to
get a more complete view. God
damn
. Through the semi-sheer fabric,
he could see the shadow of her close-trimmed pubic patch…a dark
treasure veiled behind a color of innocence. He was going to claim
that fortune soon, so soon…