Virtually Hers (33 page)

Blood ties run deepest—and deadliest.

Proof of Life

© 2009 Misty Evans

Super Agent Series, Book 3

No matter how many times he patches the holes in the wall, CIA Deputy Director Michael Stone can’t forget the night a terrorist took him hostage in his own home. Or the mistakes that transformed him into an overwhelming force to keep his country safe. And now that his niece, the daughter of the Republican candidate for President, has been kidnapped just days from the election, Michael vows to do whatever it takes to get her back.

Dr. Brigit Kent, a consultant for the Department of Homeland Security, knows this particular kidnapper well. Exposing him, however, will reveal her sister’s secret ties to a terrorist group. The only way to keep her sister safe is to blackmail the sexy, rock-solid deputy director. A move that puts her directly in his line of fire.

Brigit is undeniably beautiful, brilliant, cunning. But is she friend or foe? The answer to that question could break Michael’s personal code of honor—and his heart.

Warning: Bullets and blackmail, good luck and laughter. Surprises and secrets and love ever after…

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Proof of Life:

Brigit’s pulse hopscotched under her skin. Not because Michael had mentioned her father or offered to take out most of her problems in one grand slam. It was the way he was holding her and looking down at her, like a kid with a secret so big, he was ready to burst.

In the hospital, he’d made the emotional walls between them fall like they were constructed of thin sticks. She’d confessed too much and now wondered if he felt the same way.

Yet, if there was any awkwardness, she couldn’t tell from the way he was hugging her against his body. His beautiful, powerful, hard body ignited a hunger inside her. All her anger, frustration and common sense dissolved like the Irish fog when it met sunlight.

As his eyes, devilish with amusement, invited her to ask about his plan, she tried to unscramble her brain. A nanosecond later, she gave up. Forget the plan. “I think I want to kiss you.”

Michael’s intensity ratcheted up a notch and Brigit had to remind herself to breathe. They stared at each other for a long moment, his gaze as intimate as the hand stroking her spine. “Now that’s the kind of thanks I was hoping for.”

She moved on him, going up on her toes and sliding her hands up his broad shoulders and solid neck to pull his face down to hers. Without resistance, he matched her boldness, taking her mouth with the same self-confidence he did everything else.

A knock made her jump back out of his arms. Conrad Flynn’s voice was muffled through the door. “We’re going to get food. You coming?”

The predatory look in Michael’s eyes made Brigit swallow hard and take another step backwards. The set of his jaw, the way he stalked toward her as he answered, continued to cause havoc with her pulse. “Bring us something back.”

Seconds passed as the men left. Michael was nearly on top of her, and the instant the door latch clicked, he wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and brought her to him again.

Talk about crossing lines, sucking face with the Deputy Director of the CIA could only bring her more grief, but as his demanding lips parted hers, she didn’t care.

For this moment, grief was far away. Guilt and responsibility too. He made her feel sexy and alive like she’d never experienced, and damn if she didn’t want even more.

Enjoying his sensual lips on hers, she used her tongue to taste him. Coffee and a hint of spearmint. Power and control.

He returned the favor, meeting her tongue with his as he shifted her body around to press her against the wall. She sucked in a breath, amazed at his gracefulness, but he mistook it for pain and broke the kiss. “Is it your ribs? Did I hurt you?”

Brain muddled from an overdose of his lips, she shook her head in confusion. “My ribs?”

Michael’s fingers grazed her rib cage, sending an electrical charge through her chest. “Your bruised ribs, remember?”

She giggled, the sound almost a whisper. Had she really just been sticking her tongue in his mouth? “Oh, that, no. You didn’t hurt me.” Touching him in the same spot, she watched his eyes darken with desire. “I’m in tiptop shape.”

“You were almost blown to pieces two days ago.”

Two days ago was another lifetime she didn’t want to talk about. She didn’t want to talk at all. She wanted his tongue back in her mouth and his body pressed up against hers, trapping her to the wall. “I’m not done thanking you for today.”

With slow smugness, he smiled and slid his face so his cheek was next to hers and his mouth was by her ear. “What were you doing hunting Peter by yourself? I told you we would come to Belfast together.”

His low tone, the sound of pure sex in his voice, made her shiver. How did he do that? Talking about a terrorist and undressing her with his voice at the same time?

She struggled to form coherent words. “Killing Peter would ruin your career.”

He kissed a spot under her earlobe. “What about your career?”

“Gone already.” Leaning her cheek against his, she breathed in his clean-smelling aftershave and hoped it would rub off on her. “No career. No family. No life.”

“I told you”—he nibbled her lobe—“I’m going to get your dad back.”

Sinking her fingers in his short hair, she sighed. “How?”

“Peter’s the key.”

“Peter will be dead soon, or at least very, very sick.”

Michael’s lips stopped nibbling. “How do you know?”

Shut up
, she told herself.
You’re ruining everything
. But she couldn’t ignore his question, nor could she lie. “I poisoned him.”

“What?” Michael put his face in front of hers so they were nose to nose. “How?”

She let her hands fall to his chest. His sculpted-like-a-Roman-god chest. Now she’d blown everything. “The umbrella.”

Michael stepped back and held up his hands, looking at them as if they were diseased. “You put poison on the umbrella?”

“No.” She shook her head in earnest. “
In
the umbrella. It’s a Cold War technique. You use it like a gun to inject a poison pellet into your target.”

His brows drew down and then he strode out of the room, clearly irritated, taking all his magnificence with him.

Brigit slumped against the wall, deflated. Her luck hadn’t really changed after all. She didn’t belong with Michael any more than she belonged with her father or her sister or anyone else. She was alone. Totally alone.

“Show me.”

Her head snapped up at Michael’s command. The umbrella was in his hands and he was holding it out to her.

Taking it apart, she laid each piece on the bureau and answered his questions about how it worked. Keeping her focus on the umbrella, she tried to let his annoyance roll off her back, but his obvious disappointment in her couldn’t be ignored.

When his silence stretched into the painful zone, she peeked at him from the corner of her eye. He was staring at her with an unreadable expression, arms crossed over his chest. “You built this?”

Returning her attention to the umbrella, she swallowed the lump in her throat. “Yes, and I followed Peter to the bar and injected him with rat poison. Got him right in the calf.”

Silence again. Unable to stand it any longer, she turned to face him. “Say something.”

A light had entered his eyes. He rubbed his chin with his fingers and thumb. “I think I’m turned on.”

Relief slammed through her as he grinned wide, perfect teeth showing. In an instant, she was in his arms again. She wrapped one leg around his muscled thigh as their mouths found each other, and the next second he lifted her and swung her around to sit on the top of the bureau—umbrella parts scattering—all without breaking their kiss.

Her legs instinctively parted to allow him access, and he slid her to the edge of the bureau where their hips snapped together. The bulge in his pants teased her as mercilessly as his lips.

“I didn’t think you had it in you,” he murmured against her mouth.

“I don’t normally,” she said, feeding him short, hot kisses. “But every time I think of Ella and Tory and what Peter’s taken from me, I hate him. I hate him so much I want to kill him a hundred times over.” She pulled back and checked his response. “Sounds terrible, doesn’t it? That I hate my brother enough to kill him? Holy Virgin, I’m fucked up.”

“You have every right to feel mad, Brigit. Blood doesn’t mean shit in this case.”

God, she loved him for saying that. Leaning into him again, she teased his lips. “Thank you.”

He responded, speaking through her kisses. “Dangerous to go after him alone, though.”

“I laugh in the face of danger.”

One of his hands went under her sweater, raked her stomach. “Jesus, you’re my kind of woman.”

When past and present meet, secrets lie beneath the surface.

Beneath the Surface

© 2009 M.J. Fredrick

In retrospect, perhaps archaeologist Mallory Reeves shouldn’t have delivered the divorce papers to her estranged husband mere weeks before her marriage to another man. She knew seeing Adrian again would stir up memories, but she didn’t expect so many of them to be good, not after the mess they both made three years ago.

She also didn’t expect to want to stay at the dig site on the Yucatan Peninsula. But the lure of the ancient ship and, yes, her sexy ex provide more of a draw than the white picket fence she thought she wanted.

Marine archaeologist Adrian Reeves has good reason to trust no one. His former partner—and
former
best friend—made off with his last archaeological find. And his wife left him, frustrated by his obsession for professional revenge.

Now both Mallory and his nemesis have returned, and it can’t be an accident that they’ve turned up in the middle of the most important excavation of his career. Seeing her again unearths old pain—and rekindles never-forgotten desire. Now he has to decide if he can trust Mallory again. More importantly, if he can trust himself with her.

Warning: Smokin’ hot archaeologists, painful memories, breathtaking underwater scenes and a passion that won’t die.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Beneath the Surface:

Something was off, something was wrong. Adrian realized it the minute the ship came into view the following day. It wasn’t covered, for one thing. Had the currents shifted in the past twenty-four hours, had they pushed the rubber sheet off the ship? He scanned the site and saw the tarp flipped back, not rolled as if it had been pushed by water.

As a result of being uncovered, much of the ancient wood had dissolved into the water. His stomach clenched. The more wood he lost, the more the integrity of the site was compromised. He couldn’t afford that.

He finned over to a curved shape rising out of the ocean floor. That hadn’t been there yesterday, had it? Or in their excitement over finding the figurehead, had they missed it? His heart rate picked up when he realized it was an amphora, and he reached for it.

A slender shape shot out of the mouth of the amphora. Shock blended with the sharp pain in his arm and he dropped the amphora as he jolted backwards.

Shit. Shit. Fucking moray eel had made its home in the ceramic vase. Adrian had been too distracted to notice. Hell and damn.

Before he could turn to inspect the damage, Mallory was beside him, squeezing the wound closed. His blood drifted into the water in a dark cloud. Mallory’s brow furrowed in concern as she realized they were in danger.

Sharks.

With his free arm, he motioned to Toney and Jacob, then to Mallory, and pointed up. They needed to get out of the water in case a nosy shark came to investigate. Mallory looked at him a moment before she took his other hand and clamped it over the wound on his triceps. He didn’t dare look to see how bad the damage was; he couldn’t risk letting more blood into the water.

Mallory swam to the others, signaled what had happened and motioned them to go up. The two men exchanged a glance, then nodded before ascending to the first decompression stop.

And Mallory swam to him. What the hell was she doing? He gave her his worst scowl, but she merely pushed his hand away and covered the wound with her own. So she squeezed a little harder than she should have—her way of getting revenge?

She gave him a questioning look and mimed swimming. He nodded. With her hand firmly on his arm, they swam up to where Toney and Jacob dangled near the decompression line. Mallory scanned the water, before looking at him again. He made a half-assed okay sign and her frown deepened.

He hated to admit he was getting weaker. His arms felt like lead and he could barely keep his eyes open. But whether it was from loss of blood or the poison moray eels were said to have, he didn’t know. He did know that Mallory’s grip kept him focused.

She tugged and they swam up the line to the next stop. He shook his head, as if that would erase the effects of the bite. Mallory hung on, scanning the water. The good thing about the Caribbean at this depth—clear as a bell. They could see sharks coming from a long way off.

He lost his grip on the line. She caught him with her legs, wrapping them around his, holding him to her. He tried to give her a leering grin as his hips nestled intimately against hers, but couldn’t manage an effective one with his regulator in his mouth and the muscles in his face refusing to obey his command.

Finally they reached the barge. The three of them worked together to haul Adrian up on the platform. Mallory shed her gear with amazing efficiency before she tugged at his torn sleeve to see the damage.

Her face paled above her bloodied nose, and he turned to look. The skin over his triceps was shredded. Blood oozed down his arm, coating his skin.

“He took quite the chunk out of me, yeah?” he asked and blacked out.

He came to with a start when Mallory spilled some liquid fire on the wound, and he sat up with a scream.

“I’m sorry.”