Two Passionate Proposals (3 page)

“Fuck off!” He threw the nearest thing to
hand—which happened to be one of her shoes—at the door.

Guffaws echoed, along with raucous
comments, fading as the guys headed down the corridor. Imogen looked back at
him, and they both laughed ruefully.

“Sorry about that.” He rolled her over
again so she was underneath him. With light fingers, he stroked her thigh, caressed
her backside, and then slipped them beneath her underwear to slide into her. “You
want to stop?” His eyes turned silver once more as he obviously found her
already wet and swollen.

“Would it matter if I did?” She gasped at
the gentle but firm pressure of his fingers, trying to remember to breathe out
as well as in.

“No.” He covered her mouth with his,
continuing to stroke her until she pushed him away and fumbled at his belt.

He thrust her hands back, then pulled down
her skirt and panties. He dropped them on the pile of discarded clothes,
unzipped his trousers and kicked them off with his underwear. Kneeling above
her, he tore off his T-shirt and leaned over her to the bedside table,
retrieving a condom from the drawer beside his bed.

“You keep them in there just in case?” She
tried to sound disgruntled, but the words came out in a breathless rush as she
looked at his brown, muscled body, his erection pleasingly hard.

He gave her a shrewd look. “I bought them
today, as it happens.” He winked. “Just in case.”

She watched him put the condom on,
shivering with desire, then sighed as he lay on top of her, nudging into her
until she nodded, then sliding fully into her, making her gasp.

As she had known it would be, their
lovemaking was fiery, intense and fun. How could it be anything else? Passion
coursed through them like a virus, infecting them with a fever that made them
burn. She’d never felt anything like it before. Was it ordinary desire, or was
there something magical about it? She got her answer as the electricity flow
surged and dipped with the fluctuations in their power. The room echoed with
their low laughter as the lights dimmed and brightened until eventually the
bulb burst, scattering the floor with fragments of glass, casting them into
semi-darkness.

Their humor dissipated as their passion
intensified, and the heat built in her abdomen until she thought she was going
to spontaneously combust. When she finally came, she lit up like one of the
beacons in the report he was never going to read, burning with a flame that
made him gasp, consuming him as he shuddered and poured his own passion into
her.

He kissed her as her heartbeat gradually
slowed, and nuzzled her neck, smelling her hair, then laughing as he discovered
a bit of mud she’d missed.

“You really do need a bath,” he said.

“I had a shower,” she protested as he
withdrew carefully, disposed of the condom, then rolled over and stood up.
Sighing, she pushed herself upright. She wasn’t disappointed at the sex, but
she was disappointed it was over. She climbed from the bed and bent to retrieve
her clothes from the floor. Straightening, she gasped. He stood there beside
her, holding two glasses of wine, staring at her with one brow raised.

“Going somewhere?” He put the glasses down
and climbed back onto the bed.

“I thought. . . .” She smiled, flushing,
her shirt in her hand. “I assumed we’d completed our transaction.”

“I’ve been waiting for this since I first
saw you two months ago. Don’t think I’m going to let you go that easily. Get
back here.” He pointed to the bed.

She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t think you can
boss me around in bed just because you outrank me.”

“Insubordination, eh?” He reached out, grabbed
her wrist and pulled her on top of him, then rolled and pinned her beneath him
again. “You’re stunning,” he said, kissing her neck and nibbling her shoulder. “I
fell for you the first moment I laid eyes on you, when you returned after that
mission in Holy Island. You looked absolutely exhausted, and yet you were still
the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.”

“I thought today was the first time you’d
seen me.” She looked up at him, her heart loud in her ears, unable to think
anything except: wow, you’re gorgeous! She remembered he’d called her captain
on the field, although she hadn’t been wearing any symbol of her rank. He’d
known who she was and had come to find her. Her cheeks grew hot with pleasure.

“Actually I don’t make a habit of ordering
women to my room,” he pointed out. “I have been watching you for a while.”

“So how come I’ve never seen you following
me around?”

“It was a covert mission.” He winked. “Very
hush hush. Camouflage and everything.”

She smiled, but inside her stomach was
flipping and she was thinking:
no, no, no, this won’t do at all. I can’t be
in love already.
But she was, of course, she knew it immediately; she’d
been lost the moment he’d given her that appraising look and asked her:
Do
you need someone to scrub your back?
“And I didn’t disappoint after your
clandestine operation?”

He nibbled her ear. “Absolutely not. I’m
going to nickname you Dynamite. I’m going to call you that on the parade ground
and everyone will be asking why.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. He smiled,
tracing her face with his fingers, suddenly tender. “Sweetheart…I’m sorry about
tonight. Not about the sex, but…I should have bought you roses, taken you out
to dinner a few times before I leapt on you. You deserve better.”

“Somehow, I don’t think it would have been
very romantic sitting in the mess together, even with candles.”

He laughed, albeit ruefully.

She caught his hand in her own. “Look, we
don’t lead normal lives. Not only are we in the army, we’re constantly fighting
the threat of Chaos. Death is something we live with every day. We don’t have
the time for an old-fashioned courtship. And anyway, I’m not complaining. I
knew what I was coming here for.”

When they felt sufficiently recovered, they
made love again, and then later he did as he’d promised and scrubbed her back
while she sat in the bath, singing. Then she’d fallen asleep in his arms, happier
than anyone had a right to be. And that was just the first night.

In the morning, she’d crept out before sun
up to sneak back to her bed, but from that moment on, she’d spent every night
in his room. The relationship formed out of nowhere. Within weeks, she was
besotted. They took great pains to keep it quiet, even going on missions
together, although the army forbade such activities. She’d tried her hardest
not to let their relationship affect her work, but the life-and-death
assignments and their breathtaking powers only seemed to add to their passion.

Practically everyone in his company knew,
and at least a few in her platoon. They thought it a great source of amusement
that the inimitable Captain Williamson had finally been proven as human as the
rest of them. She wasn’t sure who told her superiors, but find out they did,
and she knew that was why she’d eventually been approached.

*

Imogen had never thought he would stare at
her with such hate in his eyes. The cold, metallic glint made her shiver, and she
pulled away from him and drew up her knees, wincing as pain sliced through her
shoulder.

“So,” he said, looking up at where his
hands were tied to the bed and grimacing, “you were saying?”

“Walker called me in to see her.”

“When?”

“The morning after Pullman’s party.” Her
popular sergeant had turned twenty-four and her platoon had thrown him a
birthday party in the mess. Hawke spent the whole evening glowering at her from
the bar while she danced the night away with her colleagues, most of them men,
and afterward he’d dragged her back to his room, where he spent several hours
proving to her he was the most important thing in her life, and she’d better
not forget it. It was the last night they’d been together.

His face told her he was recalling the
evening quite clearly. “Go on.”

“She told me she had a mission for
me—strictly black ops, under the radar. She had some information on Liam
Brooks.”

“Brooks?” His eyebrows rose sarcastically. “You
mean the MP you murdered?”

“I did go to see him, but he was alive when
I left.” She got up to pace the room. “Walker told me she’d discovered he was
working for Chaos.”

He stared at her.

“I know. I found it difficult to believe
too. But she had evidence: photographs, a transcription of telephone calls, you
name it. . . .” Imogen took a deep breath. “She told me she wanted him
assassinated.”

“If that’s true, why didn’t she come to me?”

“I don’t know; I’ve asked myself the same
question a hundred times. I think maybe because she wanted someone she could
manipulate, and she thought I’d be easier than you.” She peeled off the pad
pressed against her shoulder, saw it was soaked with blood and dropped it on
the floor. She needed to get the damn bullet out, but until she could find
herself a doctor, that was impossible. For now, she had to make do with binding
the wound. After rummaging around in the cupboard, she found a clean sheet and
tore it into several strips. She folded one and placed it over the wound as a
pad, then bound it with another strip and tied it off in a knot.

Hawke watched her as she worked, but she
remained quiet, letting him think about what she’d said for a while. He’d
ceased to struggle, and she knew he was asking himself whether she was telling
the truth.

When she’d bound the wound, she sat on the
edge of the bed next to him. “Where was I?”

“You were trying to convince me you weren’t
evil,” he said wryly.

“Oh yes, that’s right. So, Walker wanted me
to take out Brooks.”

“And you accepted the mission.”

She rolled her eyes. “Like I had a choice.
I had to leave immediately.”

“Bullshit! You could have gotten a message
to me. You’re a captain, for Christ’s sake; you would have had time to send a
runner.”

“Cameron,” she said softly, “Walker told me
she knew about our relationship and had turned a blind eye to it up until then.
She made it clear that if I tried to tell you where I was going, she would send
us to opposite ends of the Earth and make sure we’d never see each other again.
And anyway, I thought I was coming back.”

He studied her. His eyes were very dark, and
she couldn’t read what he was thinking. “So what happened?” he said.

“I found Brooks, infiltrated his house, got
right up to him—but he was waiting for me. He had two warlocks posing as
security men, and they captured me and took me to him. But he didn’t kill me.
He told me he’d discovered that somebody high up in the military was working
for Chaos and he was about to reveal who it was to the newspapers.”

“Who was he about to out?”

“Walker.”

He stared at her. “Surina Walker? The
major-general of the Supernatural Unit of the British Army is working for
Chaos?”

“Now do you see why she wanted him dead?”

“Imogen . . . .”

She stood and began to pace again, her arm
throbbing. “I knew he was right, Cam, I just knew it. I don’t know how, maybe
because of the way Walker had blackmailed me into going on the mission. But I
believed him. I told him I would help him expose her. We worked out a
plan—which included bringing you in on the secret, by the way—and I left
London, intending to make my way back to HQ.”

She poured herself a glass of water and
drank it in one go. She felt dizzy and knew she was losing too much blood. But
she had to hang on. She had to tell him what had happened. “I was driving down
the M4 in the middle of the night, and I was hit full on by a black military
van. My car rolled, but luckily, I was unhurt, and I managed to crawl out of
the window. At first, I thought it was an accident, but then I saw them looking
for me—six of Walker’s personal guard. I made it over the bank and into a copse
of trees on the other side, and I was able to obscure in the trees.” She had
shown him on one of the missions they’d carried out together how she could
camouflage herself in natural surroundings.

A frown had appeared above his eyes. How
could she make him believe her?

“What happened then?” he said.

“I tried to contact Brooks and found out he’d
been murdered.”

“By you.”

“So the papers said.”

He glared at her. “So you took off? You
didn’t try and contact me?”

She stepped forward into the light. She was
so angry she could have punched him. “Of course I tried! I came to HQ, but they’d
set up a perimeter watch. Tim Mitchell was one of the guards, and I went up to
talk to him, not realising he was there to keep me out! He chased me through
half of goddamn Devon before I managed to bring him down.”

“You put him in hospital.”

“The bastard was trying to kill me!” She
sat back on the bed, rubbing her wounded shoulder. “I’d lost my mobile phone,
and when I tried to ring you from a new one, I could hear they were listening
in and I couldn’t risk talking to you. After the incident with Tim, I realised
they’d turned everyone against me. I couldn’t stay in England. They’d hunt me
down eventually. I went to France, hoping to find help, but Walker had gotten
to them too. In every country I’ve passed through, I’ve been hunted, shot at,
attacked, and chased out.”