Sacrifice the Wicked (17 page)

She was everything he’d fantasized. More.

As her body clenched around his fingers, twitched in aftershocks of her orgasm, Parker panted for air. Her eyes squeezed shut, a trick he was learning she employed to keep from engaging him.

It was cute.

The lovely bloom flushing her chest and cheeks fascinated him. She climaxed unapologetically, as completely as he could have hoped.

But it wasn’t the way her muscles remained clamped on his fingers that knocked any last good intentions he had out of the running.

Her hands remained wrapped around the metal rungs, tight on the headboard. Exactly as he’d commanded.

Slipping his fingers out of her sent her body into a shuddering gasp.

“Jesus, you’re beautiful,” he said huskily. He couldn’t help it. Parker Adams knew how to dress herself for maximum impact, but naked, makeup worn away, stripped of every piece of armor she carefully cultivated, her beauty outshined anything else he’d seen in his life.

Her hair spread out around her, vivid against the dark burgundy comforter. He liked redheads as a rule, but she was something else entirely.

Something he didn’t dare explore.

You’re mine.

What the fuck had possessed him to demand that?

Parker’s feet flexed, toes pointing in a stretch he watched shape every soft line of her body. His blood hammered, erection pulsing painfully behind his restraining zipper.

“Simon?”

“I’m here,” he said. Although God knew why. She was dangerous.

This
was dangerous.

Her mouth curved as her red-tipped lashes lifted. Her eyes, still hazy, met his. Challenge. “You are missing a minor yet crucial step,” she pointed out, her voice smoky. And so similar to his own taunting drawl that he couldn’t help his grin.

“Minor, huh?”

“I did add crucial,” she replied serenely. One foot slid over her other shin, an absent caress that shouldn’t have been as sexy as it was. But she didn’t let go of the headboard.

And that was enough.

She might not realize what it was about him that elicited her gasps and moans and panting for more, but he knew.

For now, he could pretend it was enough.

“Are you ordering me to fuck you, Parker?” His crudeness widened her eyes, but not in shock. She’d spent too much time around missionaries to worry about language.

Instead, embarrassment filled her features. She glanced away. Then back. “Is it an order if I say please?”

“Begging has its charms.” Simon unsnapped his jeans, his gut twisting with it as he watched her gaze fall to his hands. To the vee of skin he exposed as he pulled his zipper down. He didn’t deal with boxers or briefs; his cock sprung free of the confining denim, thick and so sensitive that he gritted his teeth.

The unadulterated wanting in her face, in the way she licked at her lips as if he were a five-star meal, thrilled him.

“Just keep looking at me that way,” he said roughly. He shed his jeans. “Like you’re going to eat me alive.”

“Any chance I get,” she whispered. Her legs opened, one knee upraised. It bared her to him, let him admire the tuft of reddish-brown hair between her legs. The slick pink flesh beneath.

His blood pounded through his dick.

That was his.
She
was his.

At least for tonight.

“Please,” she repeated breathlessly. “Simon—”

“Easy, sweetheart.” He climbed over her, his erection heavy between his legs. His need elevated into desperation. Her legs opened on either side of his, her hips tilting up in obvious demand.

“No,” she said, her lips curving into a smile miles beyond wicked. Her elbows bent, but she didn’t let go. “Not easy. Anything but easy.”

As his cock nudged her soft flesh, Simon’s breath caught on something between a groan and a chuckle. “Insatiable.”

“Not done screaming,” she managed, her hips lifting, arching, doing everything in her limited power to force him inside her body. As she coated him in her own body’s juices, Simon felt the last, lingering confines of restraint slip away.

He didn’t have a condom. He didn’t need one. He wasn’t so much of a slut that he didn’t take care, and he knew without having to ask that she did the same. Pregnancy wasn’t an option; all the normal missionaries were given birth control shots at every physical. He didn’t have the same physicals, but she did.

Grasping her hips in both hands, Simon stilled her body. Met her gaze, held it. “Look at me,” he commanded harshly.

She bit her lip. A whimper escaped as his fingers tightened.

But she didn’t look away.

And as he slid into her wet, welcoming flesh, as she took him in, inch by gleaming inch, Simon lost himself. In her body, so fucking tight and wet and welcoming. In her eyes, deeply blue, wicked and fogged by desire. In her hitched breath, her broken pants as he slid out of her, and back in. Slowly. Forcefully. Nothing easy about it.

She cried out, body twisting.

Simon caught her leg as it curled over his hip, heel digging into his back. He stroked inside her, every push, every thrust ratcheting his climax higher, faster, harder.

She moaned, timed with every pump of his hips. So beautiful. Color swept her face, her body clenched around him, massaged his cock and shoved every last thought from his head.

There was just her. Just him, inside her. Her voice surrounding him, her body, her cries of ecstasy drawing him in. Erotic as hell.

“More,” she sobbed. Her back arched, and Simon let go of her hips to brace his hands on either side of her shoulders. “Simon, there, oh, God—”

His name and God’s in one breath. He chuckled, the sound hoarse as he buried his lips against her shoulder. Her skin tasted faintly salty, smooth as silk under his mouth as he licked a trail along her collarbone. As his hips pumped against hers, as she raised her own to grind with every thrust, his teeth sank into the muscle between her shoulder and neck.

She didn’t want easy.

He didn’t want to disappoint a lady.
This
lady.

As sweat gathered across his shoulders, as heat coiled tighter and tighter in his gut, his balls, Parker writhed and panted and moaned his name. Until her internal muscles clamped down around him, dragged at his sensitive cock and wrested all control from him.

His lips found hers; fused as she cried out, a scream every bit as intense as the one he’d already coaxed out of her. As his body began to shudder, as spasms of his climax rippled out from his tightened balls and Parker’s fingernails sank into his back, Simon groaned in echoed release.

The fucking world flipped over.

Parker Adams, the woman who’d haunted his every waking fantasy, shuddered underneath him, her eyes blissfully closed, her lashes spiky against her sweat-damp cheeks. As his cock twitched and leaped and shattered every preconceived notion of objectivity he’d built around him—around
them
—Simon’s arms gave out.

His body covered hers, pinned her, and he dropped his face to the bedclothes by her shoulder. He had to breathe. He had to remember how.

He had to disengage—his body from hers, his mind from the dangerous path it traveled—and he had to do it
now
.

But he didn’t.

This was a problem.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

J
onas Stone wasn’t completely honest with the world.

No missionary was—that way spelled a messy end—but he didn’t like that the world wasn’t always honest with him, either. It was a complaint he’d long since learned to handle, his way. In the flickering light of the tech van he’d made his own, he watched the city through half a dozen feeds mounted against one wall.

“The police department has gone on record stating such figures are overblown, but that the public should continue to be vigilant. However, there is no statement from either the New Seattle Riot Force or the Mission—”

The shelves built into the van were custom designed by him, allowing just enough room for his chair to slide on tracks between them. Computers, screens, a veritable cornucopia of technology traveled with him wherever he went.

This was home. More than the apartment he claimed on his paperwork, more than the offices where Alan Eckhart kept track of the lower level street teams, this van had everything he needed and more.

Including a small fridge and a crate of energy boosters for the overnighters.

He’d had a lot of overnighters lately. Not all courtesy of the Mission, either.

Damn, he was skating along a thin line.

“—say they never would have suspected Walters to be a witch. Missionaries were on the scene shortly after his attack on the family—”

Jonas rubbed one thigh absently, thumb dragging across aching muscle. His chair, also custom, cradled his weight evenly, but no amount of padding could take the pain from his body forever. His right leg hurt more tonight, probably from the physical therapy he’d insisted on pushing.

At least he could walk, albeit with crutches. It was a far cry from his prior confinement to his chair.

“Witnesses say two men burst into the Avenue Café moments before the attack on an employee.”

Jonas’s attention dialed in to that one. Reaching over, he tapped two keys on the interface he’d built himself. Compiled of three keyboards and an array of wires, it controlled every last aspect of his tech van.

On command, the other feeds muted. Figures passed through the glass in silence.

A pretty brunette looked solemnly out through the monitor. Behind her, people milled outside the very same café Simon Wells’s message had directed him to. “Although no one was seriously hurt, all three men have vanished into the chaos that followed. The police encourage everyone to keep calm and be aware for any suspicious activity.”

Of course. Not that it’d help. New Seattle was rife with suspicious activity, not the least of which came from the Church itself.

He adjusted his glasses, reaching for the comm he’d slotted into its dock. The message had been wiped, but he’d already traced the source. Winston Wilkes, one of many employees at the New Seattle bank. Topsider. Clean record, workaholic, divorced once, no kids.

Nothing suspicious there. Except for the fact it came with Simon’s name attached. And a set of instructions he’d already investigated.

Jonas knew what the pretty reporter didn’t.

Hacking into the sec-comps didn’t take any effort anymore. Jonas had so many back doors into the city’s network that he could spy just about anywhere outside of the Holy Order quad. Most of the time, it came in handy for Mission operations.

Sometimes, he did it on his own.

Sad to think that despite all of that, the hacker he’d spent too many hours chasing down still managed to give him a run for his money and then some.

The data he’d accrued tonight puzzled him immensely. Why had Simon Wells been at that café? Why had the director been with him when she was supposed to have been meeting with the team leads topside? He’d watched them exit in the chaos, tracked them in their stolen car to the condos overlooking Testament Park.

He’d had to dance a finger-jig on his keyboards to do it, but he’d managed. And he’d remotely turned off the silent alarm the director’s clumsy vehicle-sec hacking had triggered.

But he couldn’t even say why.

Jonas had a bad feeling about all of this. And only half of it came from the bone-deep pain he lived with on a daily basis.

Fifteen years was a long time to rebuild himself. The fact he’d managed to do it after a coven nearly blew him up with his tech van was pretty much a miracle—even he thought so. He’d seen a lot of missions, a lot of screwups, and a lot of bad choices in his time.

But he liked to think that he’d been given a second chance. He recognized the good people he worked with. The director, for all her aloofness, was that type. Scads better than David Peterson ever was.

Something about her reminded him of one of the few people he counted as a friend. Although Naomi would hate to be compared to the woman she called
little Miss Parker
in that way of hers.

He tilted the comm screen, studying its carefully clean surface. The message from Simon was puzzling by itself. He knew for a fact the man was involved with the GeneCorp issue. He’d traced a few leads at the director’s request—and shared what he’d learned with a couple of friends on the wrong end of Church law. Silas Smith and his team had been working on the same problem, different angle.

He figured better two interests than one.

He hadn’t counted on Simon cropping up as a third. By his calculations, the man fell on the wrong side of Mission loyalties. Simon’s request to meet him and the director at that café had come with alternatives. The protocols given in the same message told him to send everything he knew about the director’s interests to a particular frequency.

Tracing the frequency led to a miles-long list of dummy buoys. Ones he didn’t have time to investigate. Another player?

This news feed suggested there had been an altercation at the same place Jonas had been instructed to visit. Surveillance footage put the director there.

And yet, the all-call from the director’s frequency had requested all the leads at her headquarters. Eckhart had gone up already.

What was he supposed to do now?

Because from where he was sitting—and he didn’t think it immodest to claim he sat at the center of the wave, he could virtually tap into anything—it looked like he had cards nobody else knew existed.

Jonas blew out a breath, shoving his glasses up on his head and leaning back in his seat.

Was this it? Was this his moment?

Nerves ate at his stomach, gripped his chest with viselike intensity. He’d grown up in this Mission. Had sworn the oaths, done his duty. Through hellfire and worse, he’d overcome it. He was the best analyst out there; he knew it. The king of the wave.

Was it all for nothing?

Or was this just his chance to walk—
ha!
—where good men had walked before? To take that step, the same line missionaries before him had taken. Silas Smith, Naomi West. Missionaries he’d looked up to.

Still did.

Was he talking crazy?

“I’m talking crazy,” he affirmed to the bank of monitors. And even as he said it, his long, thin fingers darted over the keyboard. He tapped in a string of code, hesitated.

Last chance. He could stop now. He could pull up stakes in his moral code, pull his big boy pants up and do his job. He could work his technological magic on the dockets the Mission gave him and keep his nose clean.

He could forget about Silas and Naomi. About the Salem Project, and the hole in his gut. The same void that had been steadily eating at him for over a year.

Slowly, pulling his glasses back to his nose, he studied the command he’d never thought he’d find himself inputting.

The cleanest resignation he’d ever tendered.

The only resignation he’d ever tendered.

What would Silas do?

Leaving the command line in place, he flipped open his comm. Plugged the mic into his ear and dialed.

The line synched within seconds. “Tell me you have good news.”

His lips twitched at the order. “I never lie to a lady. Especially one that can kick my ass.”

Naomi West snorted, one of her many less-than-ladylike traits. “What’s up then?”

“A mystery.” He slid his glasses off again, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. Quickly, he filled her in—leaving out the bits about the extra frequency.

There were some things he’d long since figured out how to filter. If Naomi suspected another threat, she’d stop at nothing to end it.

That’s what made her a damn good missionary. But she had other problems now.

Jonas could handle this mystery player.

She was silent for a moment after he stopped speaking. And then, baldly, “What the fuck, Jonas?”

“Yeah, that’s kind of what I thought, too,” he admitted. “Nai, what did Phin give the director?”

A beat. Just enough for him to sense the lie before it came. “I don’t know.”

Jonas frowned. But he didn’t pursue it. “Well, all right,” he said lightly and slid his glasses back into place. The command line blinked at him. “That’s all I got. Sounds like someone pulled a coup.”

“Damn. I’ll tell the team.” Her tone hardened. “Don’t do anything stupid, Jonas. I’m going to send—”

“Don’t. I’m fine down here.” He glanced at the silent feeds. His eyes narrowed, back straightening as the figure of a man detached himself from the alley next to the mid-low Mission offices.

Company?

“What about little Miss Parker? Any word?”

“Nothing since the last comm wave,” he said quickly. “Nai, I gotta go.”

“Wait, let me—”

Jonas winced. “Trust me, babe. When have I ever let you down?”

Maybe the worst lie he’d told. His guts gnawed themselves apart. A bad feeling, right?

A terminal one.

As he cut the line, jammed his thumb against the security pad and let the device scrape itself clean, Jonas watched the man raise a fist outside the van.

Wham, wham, wham!
Even though he’d been expecting it, the impact jerked him half out of his chair. Pain shot up his twisted legs, and Jonas grabbed the edge of the desk as he swallowed back a clenched groan. The van doors opened behind him.

“Jonas? You in here?”

Neely. “Christ,” Jonas gasped, falling back to the chair. He swiveled, rubbing his right thigh with both hands as he glowered at the missionary. Neely’s familiar face was a hell of a relief. Not the shadowy killer he’d half expected looming out of the dark. “Don’t scare me, man!”

The man leaned in, hands braced on the van floor, wincing. “Sorry. I figured you’d have seen me coming.”

He had. He just hadn’t realized it was one of his own. “Been working overtime on these new dockets,” he admitted. Mostly true. “Is it just me, or are we seeing a serious climb in activity?”

“Don’t even get me started,” Neely replied, his mouth twisting in chagrin. He jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. “You able to take a ride?”

“Huh?” Jonas rubbed at his face. Fatigue always managed to catch up in those times between projects.

“Ride,” Neely repeated with amusement. “You. Me. Now.”

“Why?”

“The director wants you topside.”

Jonas stilled. Slowly, lowering his hand, he squinted at the man he’d known for almost a year.

A lie. Neely lied. Why?

“Jonas? You okay?”

Jonas shook his head, grimacing. “Approaching the point of no return, you know?” He turned around. “Let me power down. You want to unhook my crutches?”

“Got it.” Metal clanked behind him as Jonas stared at the screen. The blinking cursor.

What would Silas do?

The right thing.

He tapped the enter key. Data streamed. One by one, the monitors in the van turned black. As the overhead lights winked out, Jonas took a deep, calming breath.

This was it. No going back.

He reached behind him, grabbed the first shelf, and pulled himself along the track bolted into the floor. The oiled bearings moved soundlessly. As he swung by the final tier, he grabbed the coat he’d set there, pulled it on over his T-shirt, and grinned as he met Neely’s friendly gaze. “Sounds like a real storm up there, huh?”

“It’s shaping up to be that way,” the man agreed lightly. He offered a hand, and though every part of Jonas’s pride rebelled, he took the man’s help. Getting out of the van was getting easier with time, but he wasn’t made of steel. The van creaked as Jonas stepped off the bumper.

As his weight settled to the wet pavement, he glanced around. The gravel lot outside the lower street Mission offices was only dimly lit, and the lights affixed to the outside structure flickered as they always did. The electrical grid this far down didn’t promise anything but a headache. The Mission had generators to handle the indoor power.

Pain rippled down his twisted legs. Climbed up through his spine. He must have made a face, because as Neely set his crutches down, angled perfectly for Jonas to slip his hands through the arm braces, his dark eyes flicked to his legs. “How are you feeling?”

Some of the agents just never stopped asking. “Every day’s a win,” Jonas said cheerfully. “So what’s the director need me for?”

“Same old song and dance.” Neely steadied him as Jonas tightened the straps. “We’re good, but we’re not you up there. Hey, maybe you’ll finally accept that promotion to topside offices, huh?”

Jonas’s grin hurt. “I like my van.”

“You and that bucket.” Neely slammed the doors closed, and Jonas tapped in a series of numbers on his comm.

The other missionary watched the van. Raised his eyebrows when nothing happened. “And?”

“I’m good,” Jonas chuckled, “not flashy. She’s safe.”

“All right, then.” Neely gestured toward the dark lane between the Mission building and the training facility beside it. “This way.”

“Where’s your car?”

“I parked on the other side of that alley,” he replied, and Jonas’s chest twisted.

A lie. Another lie. They compounded into a drum of fear. As Jonas’s awkward footsteps clanked into the dark crevasse, as the padded ends of his crutches splashed through gathered puddles, he heard a subtle click behind him.

His heart pounded. Fear gnawed at his guts, but he firmed his grip on the crutch supports and set his jaw. No going back now.