Better with You: Outback Skies, Book 4 (5 page)

“Depends,” he murmured, expression revealing nothing. “On what you say next.”

Dani swallowed. “Don’t?”

He chuckled at her wry attempt at humour but didn’t remove the gun from her side.

“You’re going to have to give me something more than that, Aanjay.”

Cold fingers of unease trailed up her spine. He knew her real name. Her birth name.

She thought only the director knew that. It wasn’t on file anywhere, and the person she’d been before joining the agency, the teenager who burned for vengeance, had died the day she’d become Dani De Vries.

There was no evidence of her anywhere.

Once again, he has you at a disadvantage. What are you going to do about it?

Catching her bottom lip, she studied the man before her. “Can I get dressed first? Or are we going to do this here in the shower, both naked?”

A devious glint danced in his eyes. “Is my erection distracting you?”

Before she could stop herself, she dropped her stare to his groin again.

Her body reacted to the impressive sight, the muscles of her sex constricting. She’d spent a lot of hours in the surreal lulls of her work—periods waiting for her targets to be where she needed them to be, to say what they needed to say—imagining what it would be like to be fucked by Charlie.

The cold pressure at her side vanished.

“It seems it is,” Charlie muttered as she jerked her focus up to his face. He stepped backward, out of the shower, his gun aimed at her throat.

She knew why—a direct bullet to the throat was a definite kill, a slow painful one. The person shot would bleed out with no way of stopping it. They would spend the time between the bullet entering their neck and the time their heart drained choking on their own blood.

It was a horrible way to die. It conveyed a message. Both to the person shot and anyone the person was connected to. There was no mercy behind the pulling of the trigger.

Charlie wasn’t aiming his gun at her forehead for an instant kill.

If he pulled the trigger, she was going to suffer.

If.

She had to talk.

Fast.

Licking at her dry lips, she waited for him to indicate her next move.

“Towel,” he said, without shifting his aim.

With a quick nod, Dani covered the short distance to the rack and the dry towels hanging on it.

She kept her focus on his face. Made her movements exaggerated as she reached for a towel, sliding it slowly from the rail.

She could kill a person five different ways with a towel.

Her ex-partner knew that.

Still holding his stare, she wrapped the towel around her hips, tucked the end between the fluffy cotton and her skin and then knotted the front of her wet shirt between her breasts.

Charlie ran a quick inspection over her new look.

If it had been anyone else doing so while pointing a gun at her, she would have taken advantage of the moment and disarmed them. Maybe broken their nose, their jaw and possibly their eye socket.

Dani didn’t move.

She
had
to get him to trust her.

If any of this was going to work, if she was going to be successful—and holy fuck, she needed to be successful—she
needed
him to trust her.

When his stare found hers again, she held her arms out to the side, palms forward, and offered him a smile. “Better.”

His nostrils flared. Not a little. A lot. “Now you see,” he said, the corners of his lips curling. “I found the whole naked thing far more appealing.”

A warm sense of joy flowed through Dani at his words. Settled in her belly. Made her own lips spread into a smile.

She wished to fucking hell it hadn’t.

She needed him to trust her.

What she
didn’t
need was for her to fucking fall for him all over again.

That truly
would
be dangerous.

Chapter Five

“What about you?”

Charlie raised an eyebrow at Dani’s question.

She flicked a glance down to his groin. His erection hadn’t abated at all. Of course, the fact he couldn’t stop thinking about how incredible she tasted, how incredible his name sounded bursting from her as she came all over his tongue, his lips, his fingers, didn’t help the situation.

“You going to cover up?” She arched her own eyebrow. “Or do you plan to strut about like that for the duration of the interrogation?”

He laughed. Risked a quick glance at his jutting cock. “I don’t know. Is it going to get the truth out of you if I do?”

Dani smiled.

Fuck, he wished she hadn’t. He had no control over his body when she did. His cock twitched, fresh blood pumping into its already engorged length.

And why the hell was his chest so tight? His throat the same?

Yes, Dani smiling was an issue.

Crossing the room without taking his eyes off her, he whipped the remaining towel from the rail and flung it over his shoulder.

Dani watched him, smile fading.

“You deactivated the motion sensors?”

She nodded once at his blunt question.

His stomach tightened. So did his groin. Was it wrong he was turned on by the fact she’d done so? “Out,” he ordered.

“Of the bathroom?”

He nodded.

“Okay.”

She walked from the room. Charlie had to stop himself from grabbing her wrist and hauling her to his body as she passed him at the door.

Hell, he was in trouble here.

He hadn’t wanked her out of his system. And now that he’d tasted her, he wanted more.

However, more was off the table.

At least until he learned why she was here.

“To the living room,” he commanded, keeping his Glock trained on her.

“You going to tie me to a chair?” she asked over her shoulder as she began walking.

Charlie’s cock throbbed at the thought of tying her up. Not to a chair, but to his bed. Spread eagle. Blindfolded. Completely under his control without any risk of her breaking his neck as he made love to her.

Made love? That’s a dangerous concept right there. Back away from that, mate.

Clenching his teeth, he ran a quick glance over her back.

His gaze stumbled on the way her hips swayed and he bit back a growl.

He’d watched her use those hips to beguile and disarm many times. Was she doing that now? Or was this just her natural way of walking? When it came to Dani, was anything natural?

Her orgasm was. You tasted it. You felt it on your tongue. As good as she is at subterfuge, what are the odds of her being able orgasm on demand?

A heavy knot twisted in Charlie’s gut.

When it came to Dani, he’d learned never to dismiss the odds.

“Change of plans,” he said, jerking his stare from her backside. “Go to the gym.”

She stiffened. Shot him a quick look over her shoulder again.

He grinned. “I don’t have to tell you which room that is, do I?”

The smirk she gave him was both smug and playful.

Fuck, he was in trouble.

They entered the room he’d set up as a gym without another word.

Glock still trained on Dani’s windpipe, he crossed to the far wall, slid open the top drawer of the wooden chest under the window there and withdrew four cable ties.

Dani’s soft gasp filled the silent room.

“What…” She stopped when he lifted an eyebrow.

“To the cable crossover,” he instructed, flicking a glance at the machine in the centre of the room.

“You’re going to cable tie my wrists and ankles to that?”

He grinned. “Sure am, sweet cheeks. And then I’m going to get the reason you’re here out of you. The real reason. Not the bullshit you’re planning to tell me.”

Dani’s eyes narrowed. “How? You going to fuck it out of me?”

“The thought’s crossed my mind. But as you know, I have other ways.”

“So Charlie Baynard, cop, is just as big a façade as John Ten—”

He moved. Fast.

Fast enough to catch Dani off-guard, a feat barely imaginable. She yelped as he snared her throat in his hand, her nails scrambling for his wrist as he lifted her feet from the floor. Fear flooded her eyes as he drove her back to the closest wall. As he slammed her to it.

“Ch-Charlie.” She gasped, fighting against his grip on her throat. “I didn’t…”

If she registered he had the tip of his Glock rammed to her temple, she didn’t show it. Her stare locked on his, her toes flailing against his shins.

“John Tennant doesn’t exist anymore, Dani,” he growled. Hot rage pulsed through him. Rage and guilt and hate and disgust.

John Tennant. A man who had killed more—

Dani slammed her knee into his groin.

Pain erupted in his body. Hot and icy cold at once.

He staggered back, his grip on her throat releasing as his brain tried to compartmentalise the agony radiating from his cock and balls. Compartmentalise it. Contain it. Turn it off.

Dani smashed her fist into his jaw.

He spun with the blow, forcing his body into a faster spin to strike her cheek with his heel.

She reeled sideways, caught herself and flipped into a perfect arc, landing on her feet farther away from him.

Her towel, he couldn’t help but notice, was a pool of cotton on the floor at his feet. Her breasts heaved. Blood trickled from a minute cut below her eye.

He snapped the gun on her face. The fact he was still naked made her attack all the more ironic. For a pathetic moment there, he’d really thought what was between his legs may have been her weakness.

Instead, it was his.

“Bad move, Dani,” he snarled.

“Charlie.” She held up her hands, palms out to him, her bare legs in a semi crouch. “You need to let me talk.”

“Talk.”

“Please,” she flicked a look at the towel on the floor, at his groin, “can we cover ourselves up first?”

Holding her stare, he hooked his big toe beneath the edge of the crumpled towel and kicked the damp rectangle of material to her in a floating arc.

She caught it midair. Wrapped it around her hips again.

“Your turn,” she said. “I swear, I won’t move an inch as you cover up.”

Heart pounding, he studied her.

She wriggled the fingers of one hand at him. “Give me a cable tie. Just one. I’ll bind myself to the cable crossover.”

Gun trained on her forehead, Charlie bent, plucked one of the dropped cable ties from the floor and straightened.

Dani watched him, expression unreadable.

No, that wasn’t right.

In her eyes, in the skin around them, he saw fear. She was genuinely scared. But of him? Why? Why come here if she was scared of him? Why make herself known to him? Unless it wasn’t him she was scared of?

Charlie’s pulse thumped fast in his ears.

What else could scare Dani De Vries? Who else?

“Give me the cable tie, Charlie,” she repeated, wriggling her fingers again as she positioned herself between the two vertical steel poles of the weight machine. “Just promise to cut me free if you decide to kill me. Give me a fighting chance.”

He stopped his frown before it could crease his forehead. What the hell was going on here?

Without a word, he crossed to where she stood and tossed her the thin strip of plastic.

Reflexes as preternaturally fast as always, she caught it midair.

Pressing her right wrist to the metal, she wrapped the cable tie around the pole, threaded the lead through the tiny locking slit and pulled.

Charlie sucked in a sharp breath as she effectively bound herself to the machine.

There was no way of escaping that bind. Not without cutting the plastic band, or cutting off her hand.

Cable ties weren’t the preferred form of binding in the spy business just because they were cheap.

“Now.” She turned to look at him, expression exasperated. “Your turn. Wrap that towel around yourself so I can tell you why I’m here.”

Why I’m here.

Fuck, he wanted to know why she was here.

Almost as much as he wanted—

“Charlie,” she said, watching him. “Please?”

He snagged the edge of the towel draped over his shoulder and tugged it. Slowly slid it from his body. Dropped it at his feet.

Dani’s breath caught. Her eyes widened. She stiffened.

“What…” she began and then stopped, a soft groan falling from her as he walked towards her.

Her gaze skimmed his chest, his stomach. Lingered on the stab wound she’d given him a lifetime ago. It explored his erection, a thorough caress he wasn’t immune to.

“Pl-please, Charlie…” she rasped as he stopped directly in front of her. “You need to know—”

“You’re right,” he cut her off, slipping his finger between the edges of the towel wrapping her waist until he found the smooth skin of her hip. “I do. But there’s something I need,
we
need more.”

She groaned as he stepped closer to her, close enough for his engorged dick to nudge the curve of her sex through her towel. He skimmed his palm farther over her hip until he had a handful of her arse. He squeezed it once, hard, and then tugged her lower body to his.

“You can tell me,” he said, lowering his head until his lips feathered the shell of her ear, “what I need to know, as I do this to you.”

He nipped her earlobe, sucked the tiny fleshy pad as he parted the front of her damp shirt with the point of his Glock.

“Charlie.” His name left her on a choppy breath.

She didn’t touch him with her free hand. There was no doubt she could. Even bound like she was to an immovable exercise machine, she could do some serious damage to him one handed.

As he nuzzled on her earlobe, the side of her neck, she could pincer his windpipe with the fingers of her free hand and tear it from his throat. She could wrap her legs around his waist and crack his back.

She could make those and any number of other lethal moves.

But she didn’t.

And in Charlie’s gut, he knew she wouldn’t.

For the moment at least, she was a prisoner to her lust, just as he was to his own.

A prisoner to the sexual tension, the undeniable chemistry, the tangible desire that had sparked between them from the very first moment they’d met.

She was his.

Really
his.

For this moment.

Moving his lips to the curve where her neck became her shoulder, he nipped her warm, smooth skin. Right on the spot he’d sucked when they were in the shower. Branding her with a hicky then. Framing the mark with his teeth now.

She hissed in a breath. “Oh yeah.”

There was no denying she got off on a little pain. He did too. It came with their personalities, he suspected. A person didn’t become a spy, an assassin for their country, paid to do dark deeds, if their psyches were passive and submissive.

He nipped her skin again, and then sucked the flesh.

She arched, the side of her breast brushing at the knuckles of his hand. His brain registered he was still holding his gun, its cold metal barrel positioned close to her armpit.

Did he put it down?

Raising his head, he gazed down into her eyes. Their pleasure-clouded depths sent a lick of hot need deep into his groin.

Pulse wild, groin throbbing, he traced the tip of his Glock down the column of her throat to the shallow dip at its base. Circled it there. Drew in a ragged breath as Dani’s pupils dilated and her lips parted.

Tugging her hips closer to his, he trailed his gun lower over her chest, past her collarbone, down over the uplifted swell of her right breast until it reached her distended nipple.

She stared up at him, her breasts rising and falling. “Charlie…” she whispered.

He circled her nipple with the point of his Glock. “Dani…”

Her eyelids fluttered half closed. Her breath quickened. She touched his chest with her free hand, dancing her fingers over his own nipple in an almost hesitant, almost shy caress.

Another lick of hot desire speared into him at the touch.

He tightened his grip on his gun. Ground his teeth. Squeezed her butt. Kneaded the toned muscle.

Head roaring, close to no longer being in control of his own actions, he bent at the waist and took her other nipple in his mouth.

“Fuck, yes!” she cried, tangling her fingers in his hair.

She pulled his head harder to her breast, rolling her hips as she did so.

He suckled harder on her nipple, laving it with his tongue as he did so.

She moaned, her hand in his hair a painful fist.

Fresh blood flowed into his already rigid cock and, without thinking, he dragged the tip of his gun lower down her body, over her belly to the edge of her towel. Slipped it between her hip and the material and shoved.

The towel fell to her feet.

For a surreal moment, he imagined pressing the barrel of his Glock to the curve of her sex. Saw the metal aligning with her clit where it was nestled in its fleshy hood.

Imagined making her come that way.

Dark desire surged through him. Dangerous and enticing and compelling.

He could do it. He knew that. Make her come with his gun. Bring her to orgasm by just sucking on her breast and rubbing her clit with his Glock.

But that kind of sexual interaction belonged to the man he’d once been. John Tennant would have made Dani come with his gun. Would have reveled in it.

He wasn’t John any more.

Pulling his mouth from her nipple with a pop, he took a step back.

She groaned in protest, her breasts heaving, her belly doing the same. “N-no…don’t stop…” she pleaded.

Gripping the handle of his gun tighter, he fought for control of the dark lust threatening to overwhelm him.

He wasn’t John Tennant any more.

He wasn’t.

“Charlie…” Dani moaned.

He took another step back, holding her gaze as he placed his Glock on the seat of his bench-press machine.

She watched him, her breath shallow.

“Tell me why you’re here, Dani,” he ordered, stepping back closer to her.

“I need your help,” she answered, the words a husky whisper.

Sliding his fingers into the heavy curtain of her hair, he balled his hand into a fist.