Undercover Lover (9 page)

He looked over his shoulder and Simon paused to meet his eyes.

“Revenge,” Günter replied, the single word tasting like acid on his tongue. “We’re dealing with revenge.”

* * * * *

Even in his dreams he couldn’t get away from Jenny or that night he’d held her close…

Günter wrinkled his nose at the stink of cigarette smoke and stale alcohol. Wearing a baseball cap and a golf shirt half tucked into his jeans under his windbreaker, he almost blended in with the other jocks and jerks vying for position in the college dive bar.

He pried his foot free from a sticky spot on the worn parquet floor and pressed his way through the crowd in an attempt to get closer to his charge. She’d escaped his sight line when she moved to the other side of a support pole five minutes ago. When she didn’t emerge onto the dance floor he assumed she leaned against the pole, perhaps stopped to chat up some admirer.

The idea of her flirting over the rim of her red plastic beer cup at any of these blokes had him shouldering the assembled throng out of the way. When he reached her side, she looked up at him, doe eyes just this side of tipsy, and smiled.

His heart stopped. Whether because she looked at him directly for the first time in the three years he’d been tailing her for Tallis, or because he realized his mistake too late—never let the principal remember your face—he couldn’t say.

“Hi,” she said when he stared down at her like an idiot.

He cleared his throat. “Hi.”

“Want a drink?” She raised her voice over the din and waggled her mostly empty cup at him.

Frantic to make a quick getaway before his features imprinted on her inebriated brain, he shot back a brusque, “No, thanks.”

Her face fell and she looked away. “’Kay.”

“Sorry. I just…” Just what? He wasn’t prepared to talk to her for God’s sake. What was he supposed to say?

“Hey, you’re in my accounting class.” A sandy-haired kid in a letterman’s jacket sidled up to her. Forearm braced possessively above her head he leaned in and whispered something in her ear.

Günter stepped back farther. He’d kick some scrawny kid off a barstool and watch her from the crowd. Make sure she didn’t get into any trouble. Gather some innocuous tidbits about her life for Tallis. That’s all the job required. Nothing more. Nothing less. Unless of course she got into trouble.

It didn’t happen too often, but every once in a while Jenny behaved in ways that confounded him. Perhaps it was just being a college student, but the girl wasn’t entirely predictable. For instance, in the three years she’d been in college he’d never seen her drink as much as she had tonight.

He saw the coed eye her empty cup and Günter read his lips as he asked her if she wanted another.

She tossed back her hair and smiled up at him. “What’s your name?” she mouthed.

“Chad,” he answered.

“Jenny.” Her eyes sparkled with sexual energy and there was no mistaking her expression. The girl wanted to get laid.

Chad took the opportunity to drop his arm neatly behind Jenny’s back and used it to palm her backside and press her close. Jenny giggled up at him and Günter saw red. Before he could rearrange the guy’s face, Chad stepped back and said, “I’ll get you that drink.”

As luck would have it, he approached the bar near Günter. The bartender, busy with the crowd, would take a while to serve him.

“I see you’ve met Jenny,” Günter said.

“Huh?” The kid looked at him, a half-annoyed half-bemused expression adorning his vapid but conventionally handsome features.

“Are you two dating?” Günter asked.

“What are you, some kind of pervert?”

“No, but I know her brother.” It was the truth, but even if Chad told Jenny in class on Monday, she’d think the kid was lying.

“So?” Chad held up two fingers to the bartender, who didn’t notice.

“He has me follow her sometimes. I make sure she doesn’t besmirch the family name. Cover up any problems she creates.” Now he lied. Sort of.

The kid’s lip and brow curved into a
whatever
sneer. “Yeah, right.”

Günter pulled back his jacket and wiped the disrespect right off Chad’s face with a glimpse of his sidearm.

“Um. Yeah. All right.” The kid backpedaled. “What d’ya want? Want me to leave her alone?”

“That depends on whether you want me to leave you alone,” Günter answered, letting the jacket fall so he could take a sip of his whiskey.

He’d never seen anyone make it through a Friday night crowd so fast. Günter was still chuckling to himself when he turned around to find Jenny. Standing on tiptoe, she scanned the bar for her conquest until she realized she’d been ditched and the hopeful smile turned tremulous.

He saw the moment her internal monologue started—probably something daft about being unattractive—and the change in her expression just about killed him. For the second time that evening he approached her before he thought about his actions.

“You’re too good for him,” Günter said in her ear and she whipped around to face him.

At least the color returned to her cheeks.

“Did you chase him away?” she asked. “I thought I saw you talking to him.”

Answering that question was liable to get him into more trouble than even he could handle.

“I think he’d had one too many.”

Willing to believe the lie, Jenny nodded, but muttered to herself, “I’m going to die a virgin.”

Günter read her lips and braced himself against a possessive surge of lust that unfurled his cock so fast he saw faint black spots. “What’s wrong with that?”

Mortified, Jenny groaned, but she was tipsy enough to talk. “I’m the only girl in my dorm who doesn’t have regular sex. Or any sex.”

“Sounds to me like you live in a brothel,” Günter replied and expected a slap that never came.

Instead Jenny blinked up at him and started to giggle. The titter turned into a full-blown belly laugh. When she caught her breath she replied, gasping, “Yeah. I do. A total brothel.”

Günter smiled, and her expression darkened though the light never left her eyes.

“You’re really sexy,” she breathed. “I’d rather sleep with you than Chad any day.”

His stomach somersaulted in response to the sucker punch she drove to his dwindling reserves. Then he remembered she was drunk. Even if she wasn’t Jenny Ainsley, it was out of the question for him to take advantage of a woman who swayed on her feet the way she did right now. He needed to get her into a cab and back to her dorm. Eyeing the bar, he saw he’d never get her across the room without alerting her to his intentions.

“Would you like to dance?” he asked as a popular, yet slower tune came over the sound system.

She nodded and he pulled her around the pole to the dance floor. She stumbled and he caught her.

She frowned and he could see her assessing her inebriated state for the first time. “I think I had too much.”

He folded her in his arms, telling himself his actions had nothing to do with how she made him feel and everything to do with holding her upright. “You’ll be all right,” he said in her ear and she shivered against him.

The deejay drew out the song, remixing it with a thumping backbeat that mimicked Günter’s cock as it pulsed against his jeans. Just watching her walk to class made him hard. This—holding her, feeling her breasts pressed against him, the sway of her bottom just below his palms at the small of her back—would kill him.

As they danced he remained aware of his plan to move them closer and closer to the door. The words to the sultry tune whispered through his brain. Tonight, in his dreams, he didn’t have to imagine her looking up at him, pouting her candy-pink lips in invitation at the song’s suggestion—kiss me—because this time, in this dream, that’s exactly what she did.

His subconscious mind crossed the line his conscious self had drawn in the sand that long-ago night. Arms tightening, he drew her up along his front and moaned into her mouth. Her answering mewl had him imagining an accompanying gush of wetness between her thighs and his legs trembled with the effort to hold them both upright.

To hell with propriety. To hell with his job. This woman was his and he was going to take her right here. Right now. The dance floor melted away. The crowd disappeared. All that remained was the support pole in the middle of the floor.

Slipping his hands under her minidress, he palmed her backside and lifted her until she rested against the steel beam. The feel of her heated cheeks, bare around her thong, had him gasping out her name as she bucked against him.

“Careful, love,” he said, afraid he’d drop her as he fumbled with his fly.

Then the heat of her pussy lips cradled his cock. As slick as he’d hoped, as warm as he’d dreamed, she slid against him in a rhythmic motion that had him forgetting all about
careful
. Poised on the tip of his cock she paused to look in his eyes.

“We’ve received clearance to land at Kidlington,” she said in Simon’s voice.

“Shh,” Günter said, seriously disturbed at his second’s voice coming out of Jenny’s mouth.

“Wake up,” she said, again in Simon’s American drone.

Günter groaned, not wanting the moment to end, but it was too late. Jenny melted away. He was awake. He rolled over and opened one eye. God, he hoped he hadn’t been moaning in his sleep. His briefs felt sticky and he nearly blushed. He hadn’t had a wet dream like that since his early twenties.

He cleared his throat. “Are they ready for us?”

“Appears so.” Simon eyed him over the rim of his glasses. “You okay?”

Rolling to a sitting position, Günter felt as if the plane mimicked his motion. “I’m getting too old for this,” he said.

Time was he could survive on two hours of sleep in seventy-two. Now after four in forty-eight he felt as if he’d been kicked in the head. “Get me a water?” he asked.

“Sure.” Simon grabbed a bottle from the mini-fridge and tossed it to Günter who caught it neatly.

At least his reflexes weren’t going yet. He stretched and grimaced at a twinge from a blooming bruise along his ribs. Speaking of reflexes… “Is she up yet?”

“Sleeping like the dead. You could probably get her into that body bag now if you want.”

“Save the comedy routine for amateur hour and go wake her up.”

Simon shook his head emphatically. “Oh no. No way. I saw that kick she landed on you. I’m not going to be the first thing she sees when she remembers we practically kidnapped her.”

“Sissy,” Günter said on a jaw-popping yawn.

When he entered the sleeping cabin he stopped short. Jenny, sprawled over the bed, had kicked off the covers. He cursed his impulse to strip her down to her bra and panties earlier for her comfort. Now white satin with pink lace trim flirted with her exposed backside in blatant temptation, reminding him that no good deed ever went unpunished.

The peach-soft skin of her buttocks beckoned and he found his hand hovering over the curve of one cheek. He closed his eyes, remembering the dream. Heat radiated from her, crossing the infinitesimal distance to warm his palm. His cock, already half hard, hungrily stole blood from his still-fuzzy brain.

As if in response, Jenny shifted, lifting her ass into his waiting palm and sighed. Günter snatched his hand away to adjust the room in his jeans. It was the second time in less than twenty-four hours he’d had to wake his charge from a semi-clothed sleep, and he found he had lost both patience and restraint. Cracking open the water bottle he still held, he poured it in a swift line down her back.

She yelped and bolted from the bed. Before she could assume a fighting stance he threw her clothes in her face and retreated to the doorway to watch her sputter and curse from a safe distance.

“What the hell, Günter?” she shrieked. “Asshole much?”

For some unfathomable reason her wild hair and wilder temper made him smirk.

“Get dressed,” he said. “MI-5 is waiting for us at the airport, and while your half-naked state won’t hurt our position, I don’t care to threaten to shoot anyone to keep your virginity intact this time.”

He blanched at his slip, but she didn’t seem to notice as she paled at the mention of the agents, and then colored just as quickly at his mention of her purity. He shut the door just as her shoe hit it with a
thunk
.

“I am not a virgin,” she shouted loud enough for the world to hear.