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I wonder if I’d have been happier in a simple life. And I think I know the answer.
Yes.
Somewhere behind me a woman begins to come in loud whimpers and suddenly I’m exhausted. This night is all so sudden and confronting and confusing.
My worlds have collided, and I feel thrust into a strange new universe.
X leads me from the club without another look or comment, and by the time we get into the waiting limo all I want to do is speed to my hotel, slip into my pajama pants and binge on online baking competitions until I fall asleep.
Instead, X doesn’t release my leash.
“Why did you start crying in there?” His voice is tight, almost husky with some repressed emotion.
I look away, glaring out the window at the rainy London streets. The truth is that I don’t know where my tears came from.
I thought I’d cried myself dry over Max. What we had. What we lost all those years ago. But apparently, when it comes to my first love, I have a reservoir of feelings.
I cry for a future denied me. One where I work a nine-to-five job. Live in the country with Max and have children.
Now, at my age, the promise of children is almost denied to me...unless I can find a way to get out.
But to buy a new future would sell out my past. Nothing comes without a cost. If I walk away from the Order, I walk away from my entire life.
“Lora, look at me when I talk to you,” he growls.
“You don’t get to command me outside the Lion’s Den,” I mutter as we pull up in front of our hotel. “Remember what’s real and what’s not. In the real world, you don’t own me.”
His eyes burn a deep midnight blue. “Is that a fact?”
“Ugh.” I roll my eyes. “Whatever.”
“That’s the best you can do? I seem to remember a more extensive vocabulary.”
“I’ve learned the value of brevity. Go fuck yourself has such a ring to it.” I rap on the window to our driver. “Can I get my key, please?”
The young driver turns around. “Your key? There’s only one, miss.”
“You’re kidding,” I growl.
X chuckles. “What did you expect? If anyone follows us, we have to look like a believable couple. And in this case, it means sharing the penthouse suite in the Shangri-La Hotel. The Order moved our belongings in while we were at the club.”
Ugh. Of course.
My daggers are all upstairs in my suitcase, so I have to settle for a death glare. “If we are living in forced proximity, I can’t be responsible for my actions. I might smother you with a pillow in your sleep.”
“I’m a light sleeper,” he says. “But I’m sure we can find something to pass the time.”
X
We ride up in the elevator in icy silence, glaring at the rich velvet wallpaper. Every time I open my mouth to say something, I think better of it and close it again.
She may have deceived me for a few years, but I kept her in the dark for decades. How do I begin to apologize for that?
There aren’t words.
So I give her her space—as much as I can in the small box we’re in.
She stalks ahead of me when we get to our floor, straight to our room and through the door, not bothering to hold it for me.
“Shit, Z,” I mumble as I stick my foot in between the door and the frame before it slams in my face.
I slip inside and already hear the shower running in the bathroom. It takes everything in my power not to barge in there, to throw the curtain open and demand her attention as in the Lion’s Den.
“Space,” I mutter, reminding myself that what we just experienced was likely beyond her realm of comprehension or preparation. She needs time to let it settle.
So I stay in the suite’s small living area, raiding the minibar and spreading out a feast of tiny bottles and delicacies across the glass coffee table. Before I can dig in, though, I’m hit in the face with a pillow, then a folded blanket.
Z stands in front of me in a plush white robe, the exposed skin on her chest and neck pink—likely from the scalding shower I’m sure she took. Her wet dark hair spreads long over both her shoulders.
In the twenty-plus years I’ve imagined her, I never anticipated seeing her like this would knock the wind clear out of my chest. She looks exactly the same.
It seems cruel to have her look so unchanged when everything else is different.
“You’ll be taking the couch,” she says coolly, her jaw tight, even as her whiskey-brown eyes hit me like a shot.
No woman has ever kicked me out of her bed after sex, but then, we weren’t exactly in anyone’s bed tonight.
“Understood,” I say. “Appreciate the amenities,” I add, holding up my pile of linens.
She spins on her heel, heading toward the bedroom.
“Lora, wait,” I call after her.
She stops but doesn’t face me. “No one has called me that for years,” she says softly. “Yet when you say it, it’s like everything melts away and we’re seventeen again. It makes me think you’re Max when I know full well you’re not.”
I blow out a long breath. “You know if I could have told you, I would have. Don’t you?”
She turns now, and tears streak her cheeks. “One night I fall asleep in your arms in my dorm room, and the next morning you’re gone. No word. Not then, not ever again. Can you imagine how it felt? Did you hear my heart break? I swear I almost died from the pain.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “I was just a kid, Lora. And a moron. All those IQ tests they made us take? They were entrance exams. Apparently, my scores were such that the Order feared if anyone got their hands on me before they could put me through the program, I’d end up a weapon rather than a protector.”
She scoffs. “It’s all semantics. You’re a weapon. I’m a weapon. It’s just a matter of who got to us first.”
She’s right. Yet something in what she said sets off a warning bell.
“Who got to you first, Lora?”
She doesn’t flinch, her gaze remaining steady.
I stand and stalk toward her. Once in front of her, I cradle her face in my palm and ask the question again.
“Who got to you first?”
Her dark eyes burn with twenty-five years of fury, and in a blink she has me slammed against the wall, a blade at my throat, the cold metal taunting my skin.
“The. Order,” she growls through gritted teeth. “Who the hell got to you?”
I disarm her in the fraction of a second, spinning her so now she’s flush against the wall.
I press my cheek to hers, feeling her chest rise and fall with her quickening breaths, her perfect tits rubbing up against me.
“If we’re on the same team, love, why the hell are you armed?”
She lets out a bitter laugh. “The same reason you wore that hidden holster to the Lion’s Den. Don’t make me break your nose, Max. I wouldn’t want to mar that beautiful face of yours, but I’ll do what I have to.”
I retreat a step and hold up my hands in mock surrender.
“I’m not the enemy, Lora.”
She turns around, her shoulders sagging a little. “Neither am I.”
The problem is, in our line of work, you never can tell.
Several seconds pass before I finally let my shoulders relax.
“Nice work tonight, Agent Z,” I say stiffly. And I mean it.
“Go to hell, Max.”
There’s the feisty Lora I remember. I can’t help it. I grin from ear to ear.
She rolls her eyes and then stalks to the bedroom, the door slamming behind her so hard that it rattles the Impressionist paintings dotting the wall.
I take off the ridiculous spiked leather jacket and toss it on the marble floor. Since our bags are all in the bedroom, I decide to sleep in the jeans—and the ankle sheath that lies beneath...
Forget all personal connections. They will either betray you or be used against you. That goes for family, friends and even lovers. Consider anyone other than the agents you work with either an enemy or a liability.
That was the first thing they’d told me when the Order removed me from Frasier Academy. From the second I agreed to be an agent, I was forced to cut all ties outside the organization.
For twenty-five years I’ve been an orphan and a ghost, a man with no name, no past and no future. Only the next mission.
I prepare my makeshift bed and crawl in as exhaustion hits me like a runaway train. The couch is lumpy, but I’ve dealt with worse. Yet as I drift off, I swear I hear muffled cries coming from Z’s room. I lift my head, and this time the cry is unmistakable.
Ice enters my veins.
If someone is hurting her, they are dead. But their dying will take time and I’ll make sure every second is filled with inescapable pain.
I unsheathe a blade and creep soundlessly to her door. I slip inside, my senses on high alert, dagger raised to strike.
That’s when I see her, alone in the bed wearing nothing but a Frasier Academy T-shirt, panties—and her own sheathed dagger at her ankle. I suck in a breath, for a second seeing the young girl I fell in love with. Has she kept the shirt as a memento of us—or is she playing with me, getting me to let my guard down because of a bloody memory? I hesitate, but only for a second as she thrashes right and left, a hectic flush on her cheeks as she sends the covers askew. This is no act.
I put my weapon away as my chest tightens. What horrors has she seen other than this night? If I had to venture a guess based on my own experience, I’d say it was more than any one person should be expected to handle.
I slip my dagger in its hiding spot and crawl cautiously into the bed. Dreaming or no, it is a dangerous thing I do with a woman I don’t fully trust and who has no reason to trust me.
“It’s okay, Lora,” I whisper. “It’s just me.”
Her eyes open wide, and she pulls a handgun from beneath her pillow, aiming it unerringly right between my brows.
“It’s me,” I say again. “Max. I just thought you might need—”
She drops the gun next to the phone on her night table, then burrows into my arms.
“Only for tonight,” she whispers, scooting closer. “Because I don’t want to be alone, even if the alternative is you.”
I huff out a laugh, pulling her to me. “Understood.”
Her lips press to my ear, as gentle as a petal plucked from a rose. “And if you try anything like we did in that club, I’ll castrate you before you can pull a weapon.” Sharp teeth nip my lobe to punctuate her warning.
No matter how soft and supple she is, her body is a deadly weapon. She knows a hundred ways to kill a man with her bare hands. And yet I’m not afraid. Shit. I can’t get close enough.
“Of course,” I say, grinning. “Whatever you need.”
And because I haven’t slept in days, I surrender to it now, Lora nestled in my arms. She hooks an ankle around mine, and we sleep, bodies tangled, chest to chest, and dagger to dagger. The lights of London seep between the curtains. Bad guys are out there. Plotting. Planning. But that’s not my concern right now.
Enemy or liability means nothing, if only for the next few hours.
I breathe in the jasmine scent to her soft hair and for a moment revel in this most unfamiliar of feelings...
Peace.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u80f63736-7de3-52f2-b998-5f3b7978a93b)
Z
I SLIDE OUT of bed before dawn. X might be a light sleeper, but I’m an expert at moving through life undetected. I’d have died a thousand times otherwise. In the bathroom I grimace at my reflection, the dark rings under my eyes hinting at a restless night. I’ve always looked younger than my years, but today it’s as if the past has descended. My gaze looks ancient. I look like I’ve lived a thousand lives and I’m on edge from dreams that I can’t fully recall. Only that they’ve left my stomach tied in a series of sickening slipknots.
Usually when I’m unsettled, sex helps calm me, but no way am I going to be mixing business and pleasure on this assignment.
This time your business is pleasure, an invisible devil on my shoulder whispers.
I bend over and splash icy cold water on my face, washing away the traitorous impulse of my body to crawl into bed with X and wake him up by taking his cock in my mouth.
“No,” I mutter, giving my reflection a stern wag of the finger.
I’ll have to resort to plan B. When I can’t indulge in a sexual release, running takes the edge off. It’s in no way a pleasure, but it pummels my mind into order, allows me to sweat out stress.
I creep out of the bathroom, grateful we are in a suite, and change into yoga pants and a pale blue running top in the predawn dark.
