Heat Seeker (31 page)

“It’s about time you showed up,” she murmured with a smile as he moved to her and took her in his arms. “I didn’t think you’d ever make it.”

Her body snuggled against his, accepting a part of him that he never wanted to lose. It was almost impossible to pull his head out of his cock enough to concentrate on the mission.

“Are we clear?” he asked, his voice barely a breath of sound as he kissed the shell of her ear.

She caught his wrist and moved his hand to her rear, to the back pocket where she had tucked the slim electronic detector she had been given to sweep their room.

Lowering his hand, he clenched it over the rounded globe and pulled her closer to him, letting her feel the erection that throbbed beneath his jeans.

“I could eat you up right here,” he whispered. “Lay you out on that bench and show you just how inventive I can get with my tongue.”

Her breath caught. He heard the sound, felt the little jerk of her body as her hands moved beneath his jacket to tighten on his shoulders.

“You’re distracting me,” she breathed out roughly.

“I’m distracting me.” His hand petted and stroked over her rear as the image of her spread out on the padded bench nearly had him spilling himself in his jeans.

God, the things she did to him.

“Our friends are definitely a part of the problem.” He kept his voice so low that she had to press her ear to his lips to hear him.

“You met?” The feel of her lips rubbing against his ear in turn had his balls drawing tight.

“With both of them,” he affirmed. “The job is on the table between myself and our other party of interest. Your attempts to investigate as you covered for them over the years were successful. They believe they can trust you, as well as me. We should know within a few days.”

Her hand stroked over his shoulders, her nails scraping against his sweater as her hips moved against his, teasing him, torturing him in the most pleasurable way.

“You’ll be chosen,” she stated. “One of them will come to me soon enough. Myron has yet to meet with me, but I’m expecting him to do so very soon. When he does I’ll let him know I’ve chosen you for the job.” He could hear the distaste in her voice.

Have you received any information on Roth? He couldn’t stop himself from caressing her ear as the hand that rested at her waist dipped beneath the hem of her sweater. The memory of that knife at her throat still had the power to terrify him.

“No.” She shook her head. “He hasn’t been seen since leaving Aspen last night, but I don’t expect to hear anything for several days.”

“He’ll be careful for a while until he’s certain he’s not being tracked,” John agreed. “Do you think Warbucks will pull back and allow him to live?”

“It’s according to how bad he wants to please me,” she said. They were hoping Warbucks’s intent to draw her in went deep enough for a favor. It could give them an edge they could use later.

John nodded. “We should know something soon then.”

The waiting game was the hardest. They had everything in place, their intent had been made clear. Now they just had to wait to see what Warbucks did with it.

“I’ve demanded full disclosure, either way,” he told her. “The price, the item and the buyers involved will demand it simply because of the risk factor. I need to know who to come after if I get screwed.”

And John Vincent was known to come after his enemies.

“How do we know we’ll meet the true Warbucks?” Her
hands were as busy as his. They stroked beneath his sweater, her fingers combing through the fine mat of hair on his chest before rasping against a hard male nipple.

He damned near shuddered at the pleasure. Fuck him, she was like a fire herself, burning him from the inside out.

“We’ll know.” They’d worked too long, too hard and this sale was too important to Warbucks’s reputation.

She finally nodded as her tongue slipped between her teeth to lick over the lobe of his ear. His palm cupped her breast, his thumb stroking over her nipple.

The hard tip was warm silk, tempting his mouth even as he fought to hold back.

“What about our other party of interest?” She breathed against his ear as her hands rasped down his chest to his taut abdomen.

“Either way, full disclosure will be demanded,” he assured her.

She nipped at his ear. “Tell me who he is.”

He almost grinned. “Abbas? A true bastard.”

“Uh-huh.” Her lips moved to his neck as the mission began to take second place now that she had the information she needed in case Falks or Greer approached her.

“Fifteen percent fee.” He finally remembered as her tongue stroked beneath his ear.

“Hmm,” she murmured as her fingers moved to his belt and slowly loosened it.

Hell, they would end up melting the snow from the shelter faster than the warmth of the fire would.

Moving back slowly, he sat down on the bench, staring up at her as he gripped her thighs and pulled her to him. He needed a taste of her, just a little bit. He couldn’t get enough of her, no matter how much he tried.

Jerking the hem of her sweater over her silken stomach he laid his lips against her flesh and listened to her breath catch, felt her hips arch.

He touched her and she caught flame along with him. It was like spontaneous combustion, and it was destructive.

“Straddle me.” He pulled her closer as his head lifted.

A flush mounted her face as she moved to straddle his hips. Leaning back, he arched his hips as she came over him, driving his denim-covered cock between her thighs.

“Damn, you’re hot, even dressed,” he growled as he gripped her hips, ground against her and moved her over him.

“Dangerous game here,” she panted. “I could end up tearing your clothes from that sexy body of yours and having my way with you.”

“You’d have to beat me to it,” he promised her. “Because I’m less than a second from doing the same to you.”

He gripped her hair and pulled her to him, demanding a kiss that he knew would sear his senses. And it did. It burned into his brain, sent flames shooting over his nerve endings and exploding in his balls.

He could lay her back and strip her, have her, taste every inch of her body, and pray to God no one caught them. The chances of being caught were slim to none, he assured himself. Only a few people would know where they were. The guests at the party wouldn’t be slipping out here until after dark. They were a bit more circumspect in their liaisons.

John felt her hands thread through his hair, her fingers clenching as she tried to pull him closer. Her lips moved beneath his, her tongue accepted his, rubbed against it, tasted him as he tasted her. They both groaned, the sounds of pleasure washing around them as they strained closer.

His head tilted as he moved to taste more of her. His hands were beneath her sweater, cupping and caressing her unbound breasts, stroking her nipples and dying for a taste of them.

There was a mission here that he was supposed to be concentrating on. A job to do. Hell, Jordan would kill him if he found out how distracted he was becoming and just how important Bailey was becoming to him.

The unit was all that mattered to Jordan Malone. Bailey was all that mattered to John. This wasn’t going to work out for the other man where missions were concerned. And nothing else was going to work out for John if he lost Bailey.

Holding her to him, his lips sipping at hers, his hands stroking her breasts, her nipples, he knew he couldn’t live without the taste of her, the touch of her. He needed this simply to survive.

“Well, it looks like we’re definitely interrupting something here.” The low, irritated foreign drawl had John’s head jerking back as he pulled Bailey from his lap to the relative protection of his side.

“You’re so bad, Jerric.” Catalina’s cool, feminine tones were filled with amusement. “You could have given them a few minutes before interrupting.”

Bailey stared back at the couple, her senses alive like never before, and felt a flush work over her face as she faced Jerric Abbas.

He was glowering at her as though in disappointment or disapproval before his expression cleared and his black eyes were once again cool and all too familiar.

This wasn’t the Jerric Abbas she had known, but that look was definitely the cousin she had known as David Abijah, and the agent she had met in Atlanta, Micah Sloane.

The pieces were falling in place for her. Trent had become an international penny-ante broker, John Vincent, and built his reputation into that of one of the most trusted, reputable black-market brokers in the world.

Micah Sloane was fairly unknown, but Jerric Abbas wasn’t. This Jerric was making a name for himself, though. Travis Caine. She knew the man she had recently met as Travis Caine wasn’t the same one she’d met in England several years before.

They were all dead men reborn.

“Should I leave?” She rose slowly to her feet and jerked her jacket from the edge of the bench where she had laid it. Pulling it on, she suddenly felt less like a schoolgirl caught making out and more like a woman with a mind of her own.

Of course, David had always had way of making her feel like a child whenever he caught her in something she shouldn’t have been a part of. He had been a steadying influence in her
life. He and his father Garren, before their deaths, had represented stability in a world that often hadn’t made sense to her.

“Miss Serborne.” He nodded his head to her before turning to John. “I hear we’re still in a bit of friendly competition.”

John rose slowly to his feet as Jerric and Catalina both remained still, too careful, too wary.

They had been followed or somehow suspected they were being spied upon. She could feel it. Had someone been watching them before Jerric and his rumored lover had come upon them?

“I trust we’ll both handle it like the professionals we are,” John drawled as Bailey watched Catalina closely.

“Always,” Micah stated, his expression hooded as he gave John another long, intent look. “Sorry to have interrupted you, but I do so enjoy getting my little pokes in where I can.”

Catalina’s laughter was silky and smooth. It was natural, though the look on her face was warning.

They were definitely being watched.

“Then Bailey and I will retire to our room, where your little pokes don’t matter,” John said mockingly as his hand settled at the back of her waist and he led her toward the doorway. “If you’ll excuse us.”

“Of course,” Jerric murmured, then his voice became a breath of sound as they moved past. “Be careful, my friends, you’ve picked up some attention.”

John and Bailey moved past them as though they hadn’t heard the brief warning. John’s arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her to him as though they had every intention of finishing what they had started as soon as they returned to their room.

Bailey would have loved to finish it. The need for it was burning through her system like a flame she couldn’t extinguish.

He had always done that to her. If he touched her, her response tormented her for days on end. When she had lost him, she had never forgotten that touch, never forgotten the man who had claimed her heart.

Glancing around, Bailey caught sight of movement in the edge of the shrubbery that led into another path of the maze. There, sheltered by the shadows, Ralph Stanford shifted back, almost hidden completely by the evergreens he was hiding within.

Bailey could feel the malevolence reaching out to her, the rage that filled the other man.

Bailey felt John’s hand at her back, a subtle warning to ignore the man as he watched them. She could ignore him for now, but she knew the time would come that ignoring him wouldn’t be an option. Ralph hated to lose and he hated Bailey. It was a combination Bailey knew would soon strike out at her, and perhaps John as well.

ON THE SURFACE, JOHN
was the perfect businessman. He conversed with the elders of the society Bailey had been born into with a charisma and intelligence that over the next few days they would learn to respect.

Ford Grace, Samuel Waterstone, Stephen Menton-Squire, and Ronald Claymore were all on the board of directors of Serborne Enterprises, a vast umbrella of businesses and major shares in businesses that made up the Serborne fortune. It was these men who would lose a large source of income if Bailey died without an heir or changed her will to leave her fortune to a nonrelative rather than charity, as had been set up.

They were also the four men who had made the short list of suspects in the investigation she had been conducting herself for years, as well as the investigation John’s unit was involved in.

The four of them were her godfathers as well. Her father hadn’t picked one man, just as her mother hadn’t picked one woman. No, she had four sets of godparents, thank you very much.

They were also the men whom John had convinced that he was smart enough, savvy enough, and deceitful enough to help Bailey control her shares once she took them over. Not that any of them was happy that he would no longer be voting those shares. But at least they weren’t opposed to the man it seemed she was choosing to vote them.