Tempting the Fire (35 page)

“It’s like the CIA. Except it’s staffed by the X-Men.” When he nodded, she frowned. “You don’t seem very surprised.”

“After what I’ve seen—a man who turned into a chupacabra, another who can make earthquakes, Itor people who can throw fireballs—I’m willing to believe you.” He cut her a hard look. “About this, at least.”

“I couldn’t tell you about ACRO, Logan. We thought you were in Itor’s pocket. I came to find out what kind of weapon you were making for them.”

“So the cryptozoologist thing really was bullshit.” His voice was too level, too calm, and Sela began to sweat despite the air-conditioning, which otherwise made the inside of the helo feel like a giant refrigerator.

“No. That’s what I do for ACRO. I’m an expert in the field of unknown species. And,” she added, wincing, “that really fucking hurts.”

“Sorry.” He gentled his touch as he used tweezers to dig bits of her shirt out of the wound. “So what is Itor? Really.”

“What did you think they were?”

He shrugged. “A private paramilitary agency that sold their services to the highest bidder.”

That’s right, GWC would have vetted Itor for legitimacy—probably. And yeah, Itor was known to the world as nothing more than a private security agency.

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The reality was far more sinister, but GWC would have had no way of knowing that.

“They’re an agency much like ACRO, except they play for Team Evil.

They work differently than we do, they’re set up differently than we are and they have absolutely no ethics. They’re all about the profit and power.” Though in recent years, they’d stepped up their game, and speculation within ACRO was that Itor was building to something big. Something very big.

A warm trickle of blood ran down her arm. Logan pressed a pad to her wound and applied pressure. “You doing okay?”

“Yeah.”

“A little sting …” He rinsed her cut with saline solution, and yep, it stung.

“Was the man who was, ah, killed … one of yours?”

Though many had died during the battle, only one had died so horrifyingly, and she knew exactly to whom Logan was referring. “Yes,” she rasped, her throat as raw with emotion as it was from breathing the smoke that had come off Akbar’s burning body.

“I’m sorry.” He sighed. “So how much of what you told me about your background is true?”

“All of it.”

“What about Marlena?”

“What about her?”

The helicopter banked hard to the right, and Logan braced her by throwing a strong arm across her shoulders. When the bird straightened out, he pulled back, his movement brisk and impersonal, as though he’d been keeping a sack of flour from falling off a shelf. “Is she really your assistant?”

“No,” she admitted. “Can you bandage my shoulder now? We should be approaching the airstrip.”

“So what does she do at ACRO?” he asked, not falling for her distraction.

Though he did dig a bandage out of the kit.

“Logan, we need to get ready to land—”

“What does she do?” His voice was sharp now, cracking even over the loud thump of the rotors.

Sela grabbed the bandage from him and shoved to her feet. “I’ll finish this myself.”

Trembling with nerves, annoyance and about a million other emotions she couldn’t name, she yanked open the bathroom door and slipped inside.

But when she went to slam it shut, Logan’s arm blocked it. Then, with icy deliberation, he filled the tiny space with his body, his presence … and the force of his anger.

“There is nowhere to go, Sela.” Logan’s expression was dark, his voice low and dangerous, but as he crowded her in the small space, his body hardened with more than anger.

Instantly, her traitorous body ignited with a slow simmer of heat at her core.

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Angry sex was not a good idea right now. Hell, sex in any form was not a good idea—not with Logan. He already had a lot of control over her heart, and sex would only bind her to him even more tightly.

And then, when he learned the complete truth about her, he’d cut those tethers and leave her broken.

“Get away from me,” she rasped.

Instead of complying, he closed and locked the door, then took back the bandage. His face might be a storm cloud, but his hands were gentle—if brisk—as he opened the sterile package and smoothed the bandage onto her shoulder. His touch sparked more heat, and she actually quivered with desire. Not good.

She shoved at his chest, desperate to get out of the bathroom before she did something stupid, but he struck like a snake, somehow gripping her wrists in one hand and lifting her onto the sink with the other as he stepped between her spread thighs.

“I said, there’s nowhere to go.” His breath was hot and desperate in her ear, the scrape of his teeth on her lobe bordering on erotic.

“All I need to do,” she whispered, “is scream.”

His hips pushed against her, his arousal in hard contact with her sex. “You going to let your friends kill me, Sela? For what? Bandaging your wound?” He ground his hips, and she gasped as her core became molten. “Making you hot?”

The last time they’d been like this, had screwed while angry, he’d said he loved her. She didn’t know if that was true anymore, but she did know it wouldn’t be once he found out what she really used to do for ACRO.

This would be her final chance to be with him, so no, she wasn’t going to scream. At least, she wasn’t going to scream for help.

Jerking her hands out of his grip, she reached between them and tore open the fly of his pants. He growled in approval, and then somehow, in the cramped space, he managed to peel her BDUs and panties down to her ankles and then step between her legs while her pants were tangled around her boots.

His expression was wild, feral, as he thrust his finger into her wet pussy, and she had to bite her lower lip to keep from crying out.

“I love the way you respond to me,” he gritted, his jaw so tight she suspected the exact opposite, that he hated it, that he was as much a slave to her physical response as she was.

She arched her back, needing him deeper, and he complied, adding another finger and pushing them in up to his knuckles. His fingers thrust and swirled, rasping over nerves that screamed with pleasure.

They didn’t have time to play, but Logan knew that as well as she did, and in the space of a breath, he replaced his fingers with his cock. The broad head of him stretched her, slowly, almost painfully, and then the tenderness was over.

He slammed into her with a grunt. His hot gaze collided with hers as he angled his head to kiss her. The helicopter jolted, but Logan kept his balance easily, holding her steady with both hands on her hips. Needing more of him, she 201

gripped his hair in her fists, forcing his head down to keep his mouth on hers.

There was no talking. No trying to get information from her. This was about releasing the horror of the day’s events, about confirming that they were alive, because even if they were furious with each other, they were alive.

Logan began to move faster, the veined ridges of his cock stroking her sensitive flesh with each thrust. Heat curled upward from her sex, spreading like wildfire through her muscles and over her skin.

Powerful surges sent lightning strikes of pleasure into her clit, and she moaned into his mouth. He pumped harder, his thrusts becoming frantic as he neared the peak, taking her with him.

Just as the first ripples of climax struck, he pulled away, his eyes focusing on her like searing lasers. “Yes,” he ground out, “or no?”

For a second, she just blinked, too dazed to get what he was asking. Then it struck her—dear God, he was … he was asking permission to come. He didn’t want to hurt her with his thoughts. The knowledge destroyed her. Made her eyes sting and her heart sing.

“Yes,” she gasped. “Please!”

He closed his eyes and threw back his head. His jaw was clenched, the tendons in his neck straining, and then molten jets splashed inside her, turning the ripples of pleasure into a tsunami of ecstasy. She would’ve screamed, except his hand shot across her mouth, so she was biting down on his palm as the release took her.

Images swamped her, but they were beautiful—Logan’s fantasies of them together, on a beach, in a forest, in front of a fire with snow falling outside.

She came again, and when it was over, she had to clamp her teeth together to keep them from chattering at the amount of intense emotion washing over her.

Logan said nothing as he buttoned up and stepped out of the cage of her legs and pants. But he surprised her by helping her tug up her pants, and when they were dressed, he opened the door and ushered her out.

“I still need to tape up your bandage.”

“It’s okay. Really. I’m going to get a seat up front. You can sit back here if you want.”

He gripped her waist and guided her back into the seat she’d been in before she fled to the bathroom, and this time, she knew she wasn’t getting away from his questions. They’d had a brief moment of escape, but his expression was hard again, his body tense.

And her? Yeah, she was a mess. She didn’t bother glancing into the main cabin, because everyone in there probably knew what had gone on in that bathroom.

“How many times do I have to tell you that there’s nowhere to go? So you might as well answer my question.” His voice was a deadly rumble that reminded her of Stryker’s earthquake. “What. Does. Marlena. Do.”

Sela’s stomach clenched. He really wasn’t going to let this go. She could 202

put him off if she truly wanted to cause a scene, but he’d find out eventually anyway. He might as well hear it from her.

“She came with me to seduce you.”

Logan’s head snapped back in surprise. “She what?”

“She’s what’s called a Seducer,” Sela said. “Her job is to—”

“Fuck information out of someone,” he finished. “So you came for the chupacabra, but ended up fucking me, and she came for me, but ended up fucking the chupacabra.” He laughed bitterly. “Ironic fucking world, huh?” He reached for some surgical tape, then froze … and turned back to her. “Wait. You can read people during sex. Can she do that?”

“No.” Her stomach turned over, because she knew where this was headed.

“But you can. Which seems like a damned handy skill for someone who works for a secret agency that employs Seducers.”

“I guess.”

His expression went flat and cold enough to make her shiver. “I think it’s time to cut the bullshit. You’re a fucking Seducer, aren’t you?” She shook her head, and his fingers tightened around her wrist. “I am so sick of your lies, Sela. I want the truth, and I want it now.”

Anger flared, a welcome heat to replace the icy dread that had centered in her chest. “You are not in charge here. You’re on my turf now, so I’d be careful about demanding answers I don’t want to give you.”

“So that’s a yes,” he said, eyes flashing with fury. “You denied it over and over, but you really are a goddamned corporate prostitute, so dedicated to your job that you fucked me on a company flight.” He laughed. “I apologized for calling you a whore, but now I realize I was right all along.”

Stung, she leaped to her feet and slapped him as hard as she could. “You don’t have a lot of room to talk, you bastard. At least I have never sold my services to the highest bidder. I don’t think you can say the same thing about your company.”

She spun around, and nearly collided with Stryker, who must have been keeping a close eye on what was going on in the back of the helo and had come to help her. His eyes were chips of ice as he glared at Logan, but spoke to her. “You okay?”

Not at all. When she’d actually worked as a Seducer, falling in love hadn’t been a concern. She’d been intimate with so many people and had never even come close to love, so it just figured that she’d succumb while on a mission that wasn’t even intended to be about seducing.

And now her past had come back to haunt her in a way she could never have predicted.

“I’m fine. I’m just going to take a seat with Marlena.” They’d be on the plane and in the air within half an hour, and thank God Dev kept the thing stocked with expensive alcohol, because she planned to drink the past few days away.

With any luck, she’d wake up and find that the whole mission was nothing but a 203

bad dream.

204

After a fifteen-hour flight, thanks to bad-weather diversions, they landed at the ACRO compound at seven in the morning. Logan helped his sister off the jet with the medics, who wanted to keep Caroline in the infirmary overnight for observation.

Neither Caroline nor he was happy about it, but Logan knew his sister needed to be checked and treated more extensively. “I’m going with her.”

No one argued, and so Logan and his father followed the medics and Caroline into a waiting Hummer. He felt Sela’s eyes on him, but he refused to turn around. The anger at what she’d done, what she’d kept hidden, would reach another boiling point if he looked at her.

Within five minutes, they were in front of a brick building where there were four more men waiting. Two of them ushered his father away for a debriefing; Logan didn’t bat an eye. Let the old man explain what he’d done. Logan needed to stay with Caroline.

The remaining men escorted Logan and his sister inside an extensive medical facility and to an exam room.

“Sir, we’ve got to change her into a gown,” one of the nurses said. “Which means you need to leave.”

Reluctantly, he did, but stayed right outside the door in case she called for him. The guilt, which had built from the second he’d learned she’d been kidnapped, now threatened to overwhelm him. He slid down the wall and sat on the floor, buried his face in his hands as he did so.

It was only then he realized he’d need to call GWC for more of his daily injections. He’d managed to grab a week’s supply from the tent after Stryker’s great earthquake matinee, but he had no idea how long they’d be here.

“Sir, I’m going to be the doctor in charge of Caroline.”

He looked up at the soft-voiced, slightly older woman in a white coat and small, round glasses standing in front of him.

“I’m going to examine her thoroughly, decide if I need to order tests—and, of course, I’ll have to find out exactly what happened to her,” she continued. “It might take a while, and you look like you need some food and rest. I can have one of the agents escort you to a sleep room.”