Better with You: Outback Skies, Book 4 (2 page)

Lowering his beer, pulse pounding as he leant back in his chair and pressed his foot to the single leg of the table, Charlie grinned at Dani. “It’s a complicated relationship,” he answered. “Dani works overseas a lot.”

Opposite him, Dani laughed. As always, every part of him that was governed by purely male instinct responded to the sound. Her laugh had always gotten him hard. Didn’t matter how much he’d tried to train his body not to respond, when Dani laughed like she did now, a real laugh, full of real humour, hot blood pumped into his dick and his balls throbbed.

“It’s a
simple
relationship,” she counted and took another sip of her beer. The slight accent she’d had the last time they were together—a sinfully exotic mix of Asian, European and Australian—was nowhere to be heard. “I do what I have to do and
Charlie
here waits for me to come find him when it’s time.”

Charlie didn’t miss the emphasis on his name. She’d never known him as Charlie. Charlie hadn’t existed when they’d been together. What else did she know about his new life?

Did she know
she
was the reason he’d walked away from his old one?

And if so, would that have an impact on what she was here to do?

Which is what, exactly?

Too many questions. Not enough answers. He was going to have to do something about that soon.

Very soon.

“Time for what?” Ryan asked.

Charlie couldn’t help but notice all three men were enrapt by the situation. Mirth played on all their faces. Even Evan, who was normally as stoic as a stone, was hanging on every word.

They swung their collective stares back and forth between Charlie and Dani. Ryan was close to wriggling on the seat. As it was, the bloke had pushed that damn cowboy hat he rarely took off his head so far back it was a wonder it didn’t fall off completely.

Dani lifted a single eyebrow, her gaze battling Charlie’s. “For fucking.”

Charlie jolted to his feet. “And on that note,” he said, flicking his mates a quick grin, “my wife and I are outta here. Things to do.”

Evan snorted. Matt and Ryan burst out laughing. “Those kind of details we don’t need to know,” Matt said, holding up a hand.

“Speak for yourself, Doc,” Ryan chuckled. “It’s been a while since I’ve had any action. Jeremy’s been stuck in Canberra for a month.”

Adjusting his belt—and surreptitiously loosening the locking strap on his Glock’s holster—Charlie gave Ryan a mocking look. “As if I’m going to tell you about my sex life. You think I want you picturing my naked arse?”

Ryan smirked. “You don’t think I already have?”

“I like your friends, Charlie,” Dani murmured from the other side of the table. She was still seated. Damn it. He needed to get her away from them ASAP. “They’re entertaining. It’s enlightening to see you with them.”

Charlie ground his teeth, meeting her unreadable gaze.

Hurt them, Dani
, he tried to tell her with his own stare,
and I
will
kill you
.

“I’ve got other forms of
entertainment
in mind now, sweet cheeks,” he said aloud, deliberately raking a slow, lustful inspection over her. “We’ve got some catching up to do.”

Ryan hooted with laughter again. “Oh, man, this is too good.” He turned to Dani. “Can I convince you to put off the
catching up
for a bit? I mean, I know the senior constable here is a sexy bastard, but this is just too—”

“Let the happy couple be, Taylor,” Evan cut him off. “Otherwise, when the deputy prime minister is next in town, we’ll keep interrupting the pair of
you
while you’re catching up.”

Charlie forced out a relaxed chuckle at Evan’s promise, watching Dani where she studied him from the other side of the table.

Body thrumming with an energy he didn’t want to analyse, he raised an eyebrow at her. “My cuffs are waiting, wife.”

Dani’s lips parted. Her chest rose with a sharp intake of breath.

Charlie wondered if she was remembering the last time he’d put cuffs on her. What they’d been doing…

Without a word, she slowly rose to her feet.

He ground his teeth again. Christ, she looked good.

The skin-tight faded-blue jeans she wore did nothing to hide the toned perfection of her long legs. The loose white shirt that draped from her shoulders highlighted the natural brownness of her skin. Its floaty fabric hinted at small breasts that required no bra and were perfect to cup in his hands, and it hid anything else that may be under there
with
those perfect breasts. Like a gun. Or two. Or a knife. Or three.

He swallowed, not from trepidation, but anticipation.

What he
was
anticipating, he didn’t want to consider. Not until he had Dani out of the pub, away from his mates and in the privacy of his home.

If they made it that far.

A heavy throb filled his groin. The thrumming in his body intensified.

He remembered this sensation all too well. The pre-rush that came with action.

Once upon a time, he’d only ever experienced it in the moments before the irreversible conclusion of a job. In the brief minutes between when he’d fixed on his target’s heart and his target’s heart stopped beating. Then Dani had entered his life, and that rush had preceded something else.

Something that had once been just a part of their cover but had become so much more.

So what was the reason for the rush now?

The kill? Or the—

Dani stepped around the table, destroyed the small distance between them in two fluid steps, and slid her arms around his waist.

He felt her hand skim his gun. Bit back a groan at the slight contact.

What had she done to it?

And then she was pressing her body to his, her groin, her hips aligned with his, her nipples brushing his chest.

“I’ve missed you, baby cakes,” she murmured, rolling her hips as she squeezed his arse cheeks. “You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to be with you since we said our goodbyes.”

He stared into her eyes. Registered the rapid beat of her heart pounding against his chest. “I think I’ve got an idea,” he answered, snaking his own palms over her waist, up her back, down to her butt.

Not a weapon to be found.

What the hell was going on?

A dark emotion shimmered in her eyes, one he’d never seen there before, and she let out a soft sigh. “No,” she whispered. “You don’t.”

And before he could respond, she brushed her lips over his in the softest kiss he’d ever experienced.

A kiss unlike any Dani had ever given him.

A hesitant, shy kiss.

God help him, he was truly fucked.

Chapter Two

There was no way he was going to believe her. Or trust her. She didn’t trust herself. Too many years of being duplicitous for a living meant she had no idea how to be anyone else. The messed-up part of all that, the irony of it, was
who
she was had never been concrete.

Not since ASIO recruited her that was. At barely sixteen, the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation had plucked her off the streets of Indonesia where she’d been living since before she could remember.

They’d been watching her for some time, had noted the skill with which she went about luring in and then dispatching vile foreign tourists who thought it was perfectly acceptable to come to her country of birth to fuck girls scarcely old enough to be pre-pubescent.

They’d recruited her, trained her, honed that skill until she’d become one of their best agents.

And in doing so, she’d become fluid in her identity.

When the job required her to be a clueless backpacker, she was. When it required her to be a plain, nervous mouse of a secretary, she was. When it required her to be a vixen seductress, she was.

When it required her to be a timid housewife married to a sales rep sent around the world for his work…she was.

The thing was, when it came to Charlie Baynard—or as she’d known him in those days, John Tennant—timid had never been an option.

She’d spent the entire length of the housewife/sales-rep job fighting the urge to fuck him senseless.

When the job was done—successfully, thereby ending a planned infiltration of Australia’s Sudanese embassy by a factious arm of the military—they’d been reassigned a new job.

Still working together.

For that job, she’d been the charity-obsessed, sex-kitten wife to Charlie’s mining magnate, a woman who bumbled her way through life, finding herself in the wrong rooms at official functions often.

Every job, every assignment, they’d grown deeper and deeper into their roles as a loving husband and wife.

Deeper into the ruse.

A ruse that had sometimes inadvertently laid their souls bare. Conversations and interactions with normal people had allowed Dani to see the man her partner really was beyond the cold-blooded spy. A man with a moral high ground and a sense of mercy no assassin should ever possess.

So deep into the ruse, Dani—who had been named Aanjay by a mother she never knew and become Dani De Vries the day she’d signed the ASIO contract—often found herself wondering what a normal life with her
husband
would be like. So deep she actually
longed
for that life. Ached for it.

They’d spent hours talking about what a life away from ASIO would be like as they cased out targets and locations. Too many hours talking, perhaps? Too many hours fantasizing about a life beyond her. In those conversations, she’d found herself not only sexually attracted to her partner, but emotionally as well, a situation she’d never expected to experience but couldn’t deny.

It had weakened her. Instead of concentrating on the task at hand, she’d found herself concentrating on the way the corners of his eyes crinkled when he laughed, on the way he’d slow to avoid birds on the road.

No matter how hard she’d tried not to, she’d fallen in love with him a little during those talks. Not just because she’d learned more about him, but because he’d made her feel something beyond the calculated rush of a job.

Without even knowing it, he’d shown her she was
more
than a hollow killing machine. Even if she could never act on that knowledge.

One night during their last job, as they were preparing for their appearance as husband and wife in the company of their target, John—Charlie—had wondered what a life
together
away from ASIO would be like. Had joked about living the simple life with her, one of normal, every-day activities—grocery shopping, pet ownership, trips to the vet, renovating a home together, children…

Dani had wanted to drop everything and start living that life with him straight away.

Had almost said let’s do it.

And then they’d gotten the call it was time to move and the topic had ended and their last job had begun in earnest.

That fucking last job.

Russia.

Damn it.

They’d been so deep in their cover of husband and wife that during that last job, the public kisses, the handholding, the public displays of affection that had been a part of their ruse had come close to spilling over into the privacy of the apartment base they called home.

She’d almost surrendered to the desire she’d seen in John’s eyes every time he looked at her. Almost surrendered to the craving want for him that consumed her.

Four weeks out of job completion and they’d come so close. So close. Close enough they’d tempted fate and gone to bed naked one night.

In case their target was suspicious about them, they’d told each other. In case someone was monitoring their apartment, their married-couple cover would hold up.

It was a bullshit excuse. Their apartment had been clean. Dani had swept it herself.

But they’d climbed into bed naked all the same.

The second, the very second their naked bodies had brushed between the sheets, the ruse had been shot.

They hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other.

Had spent long languid hours exploring each other’s mouths with their own. Longer hours exploring each other’s bodies the same way.

And in amongst the exploration and kissing, they’d murmured of leaving the life they led behind together. Of escaping it all…

If it hadn’t been for a call from the director with new intel, those long hours would have—she knew without a doubt—ended with John inside her.

For the next four weeks, they’d skirted each other. Avoided touching even in public, even as their eyes spoke of pleasure beyond comprehension. Pleasure and dreams and a fantasy two trained killers without hearts were never meant to long for.

And then John had received a call from the director.

And she’d gotten
her
call from the director.

They’d ended their ruse of a happily married couple
and
their working relationship with Dani sinking her blade into John’s side, between the second and third ribs, while she’d straddled his naked hips.

Marriage over.

She’d failed to kill him.

He’d failed to retaliate in kind as he’d fought back.

But he’d left her half dead with a promise he’d finish her off if she came at him again.

To this day, she questioned why he’d let her live.

He could have killed her.

But he hadn’t.

Shattered, beyond numb, she’d finished their assignment in Russia without him.

By the time she checked in with the director, John Tennant was no more.

He’d left Russia. Left ASIO.

Disappeared.

For reasons that petrified her, his disappearance had torn at what was left of her soul more than all the lives she’d ended.

The fact he hadn’t put a bullet between her eyes the second he saw her here, in the town he’d made his home for four years, worried her.

But that worry hadn’t been powerful enough to stop her doing what she wanted to do to him the moment she watched him stride into the pub.

Kiss him. Feel his breath fan over her teeth, her tongue. Feel his hard, agile body against hers.

Feel his heart beating next to hers.

Oh God, if this was the very last thing she ever experienced in her life, if he pulled his Glock and shot her dead now, right now, she would still die knowing she was exactly where she wanted to be.

With her husband.

A man once Australia’s most dangerous spy.

Closing her eyes, she relaxed into John—no,
Charlie’s
body. Smoothed her hands up his back, tangled her fingers in his hair and deepened the kiss.

Sought out his tongue.

Held her breath when he kept it from her, his body stiff, his hands gripping her hips with punishing force.

Oh, no. No, he was going to—

He slid his tongue against hers.

She moaned before she could stop herself.

At the sound, Charlie groaned and took completely possession of her mouth.

He hauled her harder to his hips, his groin. His tongue battled hers, the hunger behind the assault making her head swim.

It was never good to be this vulnerable, this open. It could only end in grief and pain. But she had no defense against the effect John Tennant—Charlie Baynard—had on her.

Never had.

From the second she’d laid eyes on him in the director’s office in Canberra all those years ago.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about!”

At the laughing encouragement, uttered by the gay heli-musterer Ryan Taylor—a man currently dating the recently outed
and
newly appointed deputy prime minister—Charlie pulled away from the kiss.

For a split second, Dani wanted to turn to the heli-musterer and break his jaw.

Instead, she sought out Charlie’s eyes. Searched their hazel depths.

He returned her scrutiny, his expression revealing nothing.

If it wasn’t for the fierce way he gripped her hips and the rigid length of his erection grinding against the curve of her sex, she would have no clue what he was feeling.

To be honest, she still didn’t. Not on an emotional level.

On a physical one, however…

Did he need to fuck her as much as she needed to fuck him?

Or were there other physical activities on his mind?

Her heart tripped faster at the question and its missing answer.

“John,” she whispered, staring at him.

Without a word, he released her. Let her go and stepped back. An abrupt distancing.

Ryan protested. “Boo.”

The doctor, Matt Corvin—once targeted in Somalia by militants while working as a Doctor Without Borders doc, and whose ex-fighter pilot wife was eight weeks away from giving birth—smacked the heli-musterer up the back of the head, knocking Ryan’s cowboy hat off in the process. “Shut up, Taylor.”

Dani registered all this without taking her gaze from Charlie.

Charlie, for his part, only looked at her as well.

“Charlie.” She emphasized his new name. Her intel told her he’d had it for four years. “Take me home.”

His nostrils flared. A fraction. Enough to tell her he was fighting with himself. A minute tell she used to tease him about during their mission in Russia.

The mission that had started it all.

Man, how different would her life be,
his
life be, if the Australian PM hadn’t insulted the Russian president during a G8 Summit?

“Please?”

He frowned at the word.
Please
wasn’t a word she’d used often in their interaction. Not unless it was part of their ruse.

That she did so now could end their reunion.

Reunion. Huh. Not exactly the correct word for what
this
is.

Hitching the strap of her bag—in which was her favourite knife, her favourite sub-compact Berretta, her second favourite pair of sunglasses and her favourite lip gloss—farther up her shoulder, she shifted on her feet. The tiny scalpel nestled in its harness in the waistband of her jeans, just below the base of her spine, pressed into her flesh. Reminding her why she was here.

It wasn’t to kiss her one-time partner.

“Take her home, Baynard,” Evan Alexander—a man once slotted to receive the Order of Australia before a helicopter crash almost killed him—ordered. The fact he spoke at all impressed Dani. Every bit of intel she had on him stated he was introverted, reclusive and quiet.

Take me home, John,
she repeated in her head, watching her ex-partner.

She didn’t want his friends, the men he’d allowed to get to know him—even if it was only a small part of what was essentially a lie—to be exposed to their interaction any longer than was necessary.

Coming here, surprising him at the pub… Well, she’d always used her flair for the dramatic as a way to unsettle her target.

And now she’d found him, now she had him again…

“C’mon, baby cakes,” she murmured, letting her lips curl. “Aren’t you just dying to know what’s going to happen when we get there?”

His nostrils flared again. The tiniest of reaction to her goad.

And then he snared her right hand—the closest one she had to a dominant hand—and flung a grin at his friends. “Consider me out of action for the rest of the weekend. Don’t come knocking. In fact, forget I even exist.”

Ryan threw back his head and laughed. Matt echoed him. Evan rolled his eyes and smiled.

“Ready.” Charlie tugged her hard and fast to his body, overtly smutty delight on his face, ice in his eyes. “
Wife
?”

Dani couldn’t stop herself swallowing. Nor could she stop the wholly primitive constricting of her sex.

Damn it. John Tennant, Charlie Baynard, whatever the hell he called himself now, still pushed all her buttons.

Coming here, letting him know she was here, actually interacting with him, may be far more dangerous than she’d thought.

Slicking her tongue along her bottom lip, she oozed as much sinfully evocative presence as she could. “Ready.”

“Lacky,” he shouted over his shoulder without tearing his stare from hers, “make sure those pastries get to the cop shop, okay?”

“Sure thing, Senior Constable,” the man behind the bar called back.

With a slow grin, Charlie touched his trigger finger to her bottom lip, winked and then pivoted on his heel and strode through the pub, pulling her along behind him.

She drew level with him by the time they made it to the door, flicked her wrist out of his grip with practiced ease and slid her hand down his back. Slipped her fingers between his body and the waistband of his trousers.

Inched them lower.

Hot, smooth flesh. Nothing but hot, smooth flesh.

No boxers. No briefs.

No blade either. Or 9mm semi-auto.

Nothing but Charlie’s skin under her fingers.

Wow.

Had he really changed that much in the last four years?