Retrieval (11 page)

“Okay, you’re right. I have nothing to apologize for.”

“You don’t?” he asked perplexed.

“You just said I didn’t. I’m simply trying to be agreeable and give my future husband what he wants,” she returned affecting a put out expression.
And cue the bantering.

“Okay, and I hate to keep harping on this, but I haven’t technically asked you to marry me yet. And if you were giving me what I wanted I’d be buried balls deep inside of you right now, riding us both to the other side of a tremendous orgasm,” Sebastian responded in a sinfully dark voice.

“Why can’t I ride us both to orgasm? Are you a male chauvinist? I’m glad I’m learning these things about you now. It will help me make my decision when you finally do ask. And please, Bastian, let’s not get it confused: You
will
ask. It’s only a matter of time.” She was smug, her mouth curled into a knowing smile.

King jumped up on the bed. She’d been so immersed in Bastian that she’d forgotten all about the dog. And the pain in her side.

“Close your eyes next time, you voyeur,” she admonished King.

“What?” Sebastian asked her clearly confused.

“I wasn’t talking to you. Are you okay?” she asked him as she moved to the en-suite bathroom.

“Why’d you ask that? Yeah, I’m okay. Anyway, we need to talk. That’s what I came in here to do and somehow this,” he waved toward the bed, “happened. You just do something to me, damn it.” Frustration wound its way through his tone, and he ran a hand through his hair.

The action showed the clear outline of his massive biceps, and she wanted to lick the indentation on his arm caused by the flex of the muscle.
Don’t even get me started on the tat.

He must’ve noticed her preoccupation because he cleared his throat, and when she turned startled eyes to his, he had a smirk on his face.

“Oh no, you don’t! Get out of here right now. I’m going to shower, you’re going to get me something to eat, and then we’ll talk. And it’s happening in that order,
capisce
?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you little harpy. I left some clothes in that bag over there for you. Please put them on. I will probably go ape shit if the guys see you the way I just did.”

After that oddly possessive statement, he made to leave but stopped when she called his name, or rather, her shortened version of his name. Which he wasn’t protesting too much anymore.

“Yeah?” He turned back and raised an eyebrow.

She lowered herself to one knee at the doorway of the bathroom.

“I’m just giving you some pointers real quick. First you have to kneel, like this. Then, you hold out your hand and grab mine. Are you paying attention?” she asked him when he looked like his eyes were going to bug out of his head.

He nodded slowly, confusion drifting over his features, and she continued.

“Next, you stare deep into my eyes. This is important. You must have a look of intense feeling on your face as you do this part. Then you profess your undying love. Next you ask me if I will do you the very great, the greatest in fact,” she added with wide-eyed emphasis, “honor of becoming your wife.”

She ended her lesson with a deep sigh as if that was the most profound part. She got up gingerly because she was still a little sore. Not sore enough for hanky panky apparently, but still tender. The look on his face was priceless, and before he could smart back off to her she said one more thing.

“Don’t screw it up, you only get one chance.”

Then she slammed the door shut to the bathroom as she tried in vain to hold back her laughter.

*

Imp
. He shook his head and felt his face pull into a smile. He needed to hightail it out of her room before he either tore down the bathroom door and fucked her senseless, or laughed his own ass off. He didn’t know if he would survive either of the two.

* * * *

An hour later Sebastian walked into the living room, his mind heavy with plans and eager to solve the problem at hand. He pulled up short, just at the threshold and stared in amazement as Skylar sat on the love seat. She juggled three bright balls of light with one hand while petting that mammoth animal she called a dog with the other. She had a smile on her face as she talked animatedly to Rover, Bleak, and Morrissey. Rover stared like a lovesick pup whose entire world began and ended with her.

Sky didn’t seem to mind his man’s infatuation. No, in fact, she seemed oblivious and was laughing at something Morrissey had said. Sebastian cleared his throat.

She immediately focused on him, and the impact of that smooth whiskey gaze rooted him to the spot. Something hot and wicked moved behind her eyes. Her mouth tilted for a moment before she checked it. He was beginning to think it was her ultimate goal to unman him because he lost his train of thought when she stared at him like that.

He cleared his throat again and sliced a shut-the-fuck-up look at the other men in the room.

“Having fun?”

“Yes, sir,” Rover laughingly called out.

“You bet.” Bleak didn’t hesitate.

“Abso-friggin-lutely,” Morrissey chimed in, his face revealing the same glee that Bleak’s did.

“I’ll just bet your lazy assess are. Rover did you find out anything else about Smythe-Ward’s location change?” Sebastian asked.

He moved to sit on edge of the love seat. This left him close enough to smell her but far enough away to hopefully resist the temptation her skin posed.

“The tracking device we placed on his limo shows that he’s moving southwest. I don’t know where he’s going, but he was getting there quick until he stopped about two hours ago,” Rover replied as he pulled up the computer notebook in his lap.

“Southwest?” Skylar asked, and concern reverberated in her tone.

“Yeah, he left about the same time we got back last night. He stopped in Oklahoma though and hasn’t picked back up yet this morning.”

Sebastian watched her face carefully. “So, what’s in the southwest that Dolan Smythe-Ward wants?”

“Who’s Dolan Smythe-Ward?”

The juggling balls of light in her hand moved faster now.

“You know exactly who Smythe-Ward is Sky, and so do we.”

Sebastian dropped the knowledge in her lap waiting to see what she would do with it.

“You think you have so much information. Tell me: How much did he pay you to come after me?” She never looked at him, her gaze intent on her light toys.

“Does it matter?”

“Not really, no.”

She sighed, and before he could blink, she’d extinguished the spheres of light as she laid her head against the back cushion of the love seat.

In that moment she looked like a child, so still and small against the plush cushions of the love seat. Her hair was damp from her shower, but she had a healthy glow back, and her skin was flawlessly smooth. He’d noticed how smooth when he’d undressed her last night. She’d been passed out, and he’d first been stunned by the perfection revealed and then alternately angry that somebody else might see her. He’d put one of his T-shirts on her quickly. Her hair had been a red flame tipped in black against the stark white of the bed sheets, but today it was pulled back into a sloppy ponytail. Tendrils had escaped, framing her face.

Most redheads he’d seen had ivory-colored skin. Not Skylar. Even with her red, gold, brown, black tresses, her skin complexion brought to mind thoughts of lazy days on sun-stroked beaches. It actually worked with her flaming locks. She was a beautiful woman with high cheekbones, a straight, pert nose that tipped up slightly on the end, full, rose-colored lips, and a dainty, little chin. She had perfectly arched dark eyebrows over stunning whiskey-colored eyes. As he stared at her, his heart rate kicked back up again at the thought of just how close she’d come to being a prisoner of her father.

Emotions flashed across her face. They beat a swift path, and he was grateful she didn’t have a poker face. Sebastian knew he’d be hard-pressed to get information from her directly, but if he asked the right questions, her face would give her away.

She sat up and looked out the window of the condo before she gazed back at him.

“All right, this is the deal. You give me a little, and I’ll give you a little. Until I’m absolutely sure you won’t do something that goes against us, I won’t give you any more than I feel I can.”

Her voice was steady, but her hands worried the fabric of her pants. Yeah, she was strung tight, and Sebastian wondered if any of them made a wrong move whether she’d put them down and leave without a trace.

“Do you want to shake on that or what?” Sebastian asked in a laconic tone when he noticed her reluctance to make good on her words.

“Nah, you get the benefit of the doubt, because I know that if Daddy Dearest finds out you have me and didn’t turn me over, your ass will be grass or at least fertilizer for it,” she told him in an equally dry voice.

“Well, gee, thanks,” Sebastian murmured. He moved to stand beside the window directly opposite Sky’s position.

“So, what do you want to know?” Sky asked in a tired voice.

“Are you sure you feel up to this now?” Concern he couldn’t manage to hide was rife in the tone.

“I’m okay. I’m just tired, and it’ll take me a couple of days to build my reserves back up. Uh, I guess I can leave, go back to my house if you want. I definitely don’t want to intrude or become a burden. I didn’t even think of that, I apologize.”

He glanced out the window as he replied. “You aren’t intruding. So let’s start there.”

The other men were silent. They’d noticed the byplay between him and Skylar and wisely kept quiet. Sebastian had never been one for intense relationships and certainly not after only knowing a woman for mere hours. His men knew this. His reaction to her was outside of his normal behavior, and it had them worried.

They’d come to him last night with their worries, and he’d shrugged them off. They’d told him that when a man got a woman stuck on his brain, or in his craw as Rover had so delicately put it, it could be a hairy situation. Especially a woman like this. He’d told them he could surely handle one woman. While Rover and Bleak were inclined to agree, Morrissey had expressed his doubts. Sebastian told him that the mission for retrieval had changed for the time being. Now they were going to protect Skylar and her sisters while trying to figure out just what the hell was going on. It didn’t hurt the overall program that they were all dominant men who felt that protecting women was their primary duty.

Now here they all were, silently waiting for Skylar to unveil the great mystery that was her. None of them were comfortable with this situation, but they were all in.

“Where?” Skylar’s question filled the silence.

He took a deep breath. “The beginning,” he answered then pinned her with a gaze that made sure she sat up straighter and pulled her big-girl panties on for what was coming.

*

The man pushed her damn buttons so easily. He was either pushing her sex button or her pissed-off button, and she was never on sure footing with him because she never knew where he was going next.

But she was about to go somewhere none of these men had ever anticipated, and she felt a need to warn them even while she was pissed off by the clear command in Sebastian’s voice.

“Gentlemen, I introduced myself to your oh so venerable leader over there earlier. My name is Skylar Milania Veragova McKannon. I’m twenty-six years old, originally from Ohio. I have four sisters, three of whom you probably know something of; some of you,” she elaborated as she slanted Morrissey a bland gaze, “knowing more than I thought. I have one sister I haven’t found yet. Four of us shared a womb. The other one was taken from us in utero and implanted in another woman. But that’s a different story for a different day. I’m guessing that what you all really want to know is
what
I am, or at the very least, an explanation for what you’ve seen from me.” She finished on a huge sigh that she hoped conveyed her pique with the entire situation.

She wasn’t comfortable with this. She’d just told herself and them, not even five minutes ago, that she wasn’t going to give these men any more than was absolutely necessary. She needed time to recover and keeping them off her back with limited information should do the trick. Then she was going to give them the slip and meet up with her sisters. Smythe-Ward was on them hard, and Sky needed the information she could glean from her time with Sebastian in order to figure out how close he was to finding them all.

Now, as the whole sordid mess started coming from her lips, she couldn’t stop the compulsion to spill the words of their story. She couldn’t contain the need for someone other than the McKannon sisters to know the truth.

Oh sure, Smythe-Ward probably had people who knew something, but they were more than likely as twisted in the head as he was. He would’ve been deemed a monster long ago if anyone he trusted had half a conscience or gave even an inch above nil for human life.

“Do you need permission
petite souer
?” Rover asked compassionately from his perch on the ottoman at Skylar’s left.

She stood, giving another one of her patented sighs as she looked at each of the men in turn, saving Sebastian for last.

“Nah, I’ve decided you’re going to get my story, but I promise you’ll all wish you hadn’t. So, since I’ve decided to ante up here, do I get some food, or were you going to starve the truth out of me?”

“Well, why not,” Sebastian drawled halfheartedly. “Since we’ve waited this long what’s another hour or so while we fix dinner and then eat?”

“All right, good plan. I knew you’d appreciate my hearty appetite.” Skylar said the last innocently.

She heard a strangled laugh, and a couple of coughs, and smiled to herself. She put an extra swing in her hips as she exited and wondered if he noticed.

*

I am so not hungry for food right now.
He eyed Skylar’s body in the yoga pants and tank top he’d filched from her house yesterday. The way her ass moved underneath the material had him brick hard. Nope, the only hunger he was feeling was for a tight, little fire-haired wench who could probably kill him with one touch.