Code Name: Baby (23 page)

“I noticed.” Kit slid her arms slowly around his neck.

Wolfe took a deep breath. He was trying to be practical, to be honest with her, but her body was robbing him of all thought. “There's no reason for you to worry, because it won't be a problem.”

She studied him uncertainly. “What does that mean?”

“It means no babies. No chance of it on my end.”

Her finger traced his cheek. “Are you going to tell me why not?”

“It's a long and not very interesting story, believe me. Bottom line—I can't.”

“I'm sorry,” she whispered. “What a terrible shame to waste such good genes.”

She was painfully serious, he realized. She didn't have a clue about the black humor in what she'd just said. “The world will survive.”

“Maybe there's something that can be done. Have you seen a doctor?”

“It's final, Kit.” He shoved open the bedroom door with his foot. “I just wanted to tell you so that you wouldn't worry.”

He put her down in the middle of soft white sheets, but when he tried to stand up, her hands tightened, pulling him closer. There was more than need in her eyes, more than desire.

There was something that felt like belonging.

He closed his eyes, rocked by the image of Kit pregnant, round and radiant with a child they'd made together in love.

Never going to happen, you fool. You're Foxfire property, stamped and processed. Children are neither in the technology nor the job description.

He dropped the jeans he'd carried upstairs. Her hand slid down his stomach, making him curse. Foxfire protocol proscribed ongoing personal relationships. Sex was fine as long as it was arranged through well-screened government sources. But it was never the same woman twice and the contact was never cluttered by emotions or discussion afterward.

Ryker's rules, and they were never broken.

Wolfe frowned. He'd just broken that rule in spades.

He'd have to end his contact with Kit soon. God knows, he shouldn't have started this. But his resolve wavered as her smile warmed him in the moonlight, and her eyes darkened with welcome and acceptance.

He had never known either. The combination was a sucker punch.

He could withstand torture and gunfire, but not Kit's smile.

So he forgot Ryker's rules, knowing it was stupid and maybe even dangerous, but unable to turn away from all she offered. For once he needed to feel exactly what it meant to
belong.

One last time,
he vowed, pulling her atop him.

“You're scowling at me.”

He ran his hands across her stomach. Smiling, he cupped the silken weight of her breasts. “Because I'm trying to go easy with you.” He bent closer, kissing the dark, aroused nipples that left his body hard again. “You're not helping too damned much either.”

“When I want easy, I'll tell you. Right now I'm thinking along the lines of hot and fast and bone-jarring. Got a problem with that?”

Hot and fast was right up his alley.

Something buzzed noisily on the floor by the bed, and he cursed. “My beeper. I have to get it.”

Kit sighed. She started to roll onto her side, but he caught her hips and held her against him. “Wrap your legs around me,” he ordered. With one hand at her waist, he slid to the edge of the bed and leaned over, searching the pocket of the jeans he'd dropped. He found his pager, checked the ID and frowned.

“Look, I'll go,” she said quietly. “I mean, if this is important…”

He dug his cell phone out of another pocket. “Don't even think about moving. I'm not close to being done with you, honey.”

Her face filled with color. She laughed shakily. “You're going to talk on the phone while we—while I'm—” She stared at him, her legs riding against his growing erection.

“Multitasking is the motto of the new Navy.”

“No way.” She bit her top lip. “Not even
you
can do…well, that.”

Good thing she didn't know about some of Ryker's kinkier training exercises, Wolfe thought darkly.

His eyes narrowed. “I can't?” He nudged her legs apart and slid inside her, grimacing at the wet silk feel of her. His long, probing strokes made her gasp, her nails raking his back.

He realized that watching her come all over again was going to be high on the list of his best life memories. “Don't let me stop you from letting go.”

He held his slow, powerful rhythm, watching her rise to meet each stroke. With the slightest wince, he flipped open his cell phone. “Yeah.”

Kit's eyes flashed open, her face filled with color. She tensed as he drove harder, deep inside her. She whispered his name, staring at him blindly.

And then to his fierce delight, her back arched and she came again.

When she would have cried out, he muffled her mouth with his palm. Her eyes were dazed, her body flushed, and he had never seen anything more beautiful than her passion.

“Houston, it's Teague. Everything quiet in there?”

Wolfe felt his pulse kick as she moved beneath him. “As quiet as it needs to be,” he said hoarsely.

“Nothing moving out here.” Silence. “I saw the living room light go out.”

“Nothing to worry about.”

“How's Kit?”

Wolfe's eyes narrowed. The subject of the question was currently panting hard, ready to crest in another wave of pleasure. “Asleep.” His jaw clenched as her velvet muscles squeezed him.

His control was unraveling fast. All he could think about was her body, stroking him in hot, shivering tremors, scrambling his focus.

“Grab some shut-eye. Even you Foxfire hard bodies need quality time in theta.”

“I'm trying.” His voice hardened as Kit went boneless against him. “If there's nothing important…”

“Not out here. The coast is clear.”

“Later.”

Wolfe cut the connection and dropped the phone. Something glinting and wicked filled Kit's eyes, and she gripped him hard, drawing him deeper inside her. “Hurry up,” she whispered, biting his hand.

Squeezing him intimately, she pulled him deeper until he felt his control snap.

He pinned her beneath him. “You live dangerously, honey.”

“Because a certain man leaves me no choice.” Her voice was husky. “I want you wrapped around me. I want the imprint of your body so I'll never forget tonight. Fill me up. Turn me inside out. Let me feel you lose control.”

It was the easiest thing he'd ever done to let her smoky voice pull him deep until he did what she wanted, locking their fingers and rising to his elbows, driving her across the bed with hard straining stokes until she came beneath him again.

As he drank in her broken cries with his lips, Wolfe let his control shatter and found his way home inside her, dimly aware of her mouth sliding into a smile before pleasure swallowed them both completely.

“Y
OU TOOK FOREVER
. Get back under the covers
now.
”

Wolfe frowned into the darkness. He'd talked to Izzy and then checked the downstairs perimeter. Nothing seemed irregular or felt out of place when he did an energy scan.

But he was restless, just the way Kit's dogs were restless. “I took seven minutes, honey.”

“Forever,” she said sleepily, curling up against him.

He couldn't stay here. Touching her was becoming an addiction.

He took slow breaths, focusing on the dark house. The branches of a big cottonwood tree scraped the nearby window, and he shifted his concentration, running it through the house as he checked for noises that were out of place or subtle energy trails that felt wrong.

But nothing hinted at Cruz's presence. And that awareness only left Wolfe more edgy.

He heard Kit's steady breathing beside him. She was asleep again, her leg across his thigh, her fingers curled around his shoulder. Desire was a pleasant torture as she twisted in her sleep, her warm body open to his.

Wolfe knew he shouldn't be cluttering his mission with emotions.

But something bothered him more than that. Ryker could have ordered that Kit and the dogs be taken to a safe house unrecorded in any government database, guarded 24/7 until Cruz was back in custody.

But he hadn't put her into isolation, and Wolfe knew why. She and her dogs were the best bait Ryker had, and he meant to use them any way possible. He would do whatever it took to avoid having Cruz's face splashed across the six o'clock news while reporters shouted messy, unpleasant questions about a military program that didn't officially exist.

Ryker knew that Cruz would come after them, and Wolfe would be her only real defense when the bullets started flying.

Until then, he had to stay close—and stay ready.

Curled up beside him, she murmured softly, her hand opening on his chest. She said something about chew toys in her sleep and sat up quickly. “Why did you let me fall asleep?”

“No reason not to.”

“You're still awake and you don't even look tired.” She shoved the hair out of her face and glared at him. “How come you aren't exhausted?”

“Training,” he said smoothly. “I'll catch a nap later.” He changed the subject, staring at her neck. “You're going to have a mark there in the morning. Maybe more than one.”

Kit stretched beneath the quilt, smiling smugly. “
Excellent.
I've always wanted to be debauched and seductive, like Ingrid Bergman in
Notorious.
”

“That's an old movie, right?”

“One of the best. Don't tell me you've never seen it.”

Wolfe shrugged. The only kind of movies he saw regularly involved demolition techniques and round trajectories.

“Where have you been living, the eighteenth century?”

“Not quite that far away.” He toyed with the hair at the back of her neck, letting it spill over his fingers.

He didn't want to ask personal questions, but he had to. “If any of the men in your life have hurt you, I'll find them.”
Actually, he'd kill them.

“That sounds very plural.” Kit traced his stomach. “You must think I've been busy.”

He pulled her up and kissed her with grim possessiveness. “I think you're unforgettable. How could you not have men lined up wanting you?”

She stared out the window for a long time. “There was only one. At the time he seemed important.” She sighed. “You don't really want to hear this.”

“Try me.”

“He was an archaeologist working up on the mesa for a summer. That tent of his looked so damned hot that I felt sorry for him. He used to come down for showers and air conditioning on the weekend. One thing led to another….”

Wolfe's muscles tightened. He hated the man already. “Things usually do.”

“We agreed on everything at first.” She laughed bitterly. “Except on marriage. I wanted to and he didn't. And about kids. I wanted six and he wanted zero. He also wanted me to give up my canine work, leave the ranch and follow him to North Dakota.” She closed her eyes and Wolfe watched moonlight play over her face. “How could I leave? How could I ever give up my dogs?”

“He was a fool to ask,” Wolfe said harshly. “Worse than a fool.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he was used to getting exactly what he wanted.” She rolled over, drawing her fingers down his chest. “It doesn't matter.”

Branches scraped against the window. “Did you love him?”

“I loved thinking that I did. As for the rest—no, I didn't.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Kit smiled crookedly. “Because I know how the real thing feels. I've probably always known.” Leaning down, she kissed him with slow abandon.

Wolfe's chest tightened. Honor made him slant her face up to his. “I can't stay, Kit. It's—what I am and what I do. I won't lie to you or make promises I can't keep.”

Something shimmered in her eyes and then vanished. “I've always been a sucker for a man who tells the truth. Even when it's not what I want to hear.”

He didn't try to answer her.

“Stop looking so angry. I don't want promises from you.” She slid her leg across him, bringing their warm bodies together in a slow, erotic friction.

“Kit, you can't—”

She traced his cheek, then bit his ear.

He closed his eyes at her touch. “When I'm gone—”

“Shut up.” She pressed against his erection. “Where's that multitasking you're so proud of?”

The moon struggled through dark branches outside the window. Looking outside, he realized the wind had picked up. Soon would come the worst part of night and the last chill hours before dawn.

But he turned his back on the night, watching her face as he moved inside her with desperate care. He knew she would be hurt, no matter what he did, because she held back nothing and asked nothing in return.

She broke his heart with her honesty. How in the hell was he going to walk away from her when the order came down?

She slid her hand between their bodies, and his world tilted. Wolfe pulled her astride him, thigh to thigh, buried in her heat.

Desire burned white, consuming all thoughts of tomorrow.