Authors: Bianca D' Arc
Dead Alert (21 page)
She stood at his side for a moment, just looking at him. He really was the most handsome, fit man she’d ever seen in the flesh, so to speak. His body was as perfect as Michelangelo’s David. He didn’t have any scars, which she thought odd, now that she realized what he did for a living.
His eyes opened. She was caught staring.
“Like what you see?” One corner of his mouth tilted sexily upward.
“Oh, yeah.” She moved closer, stepping into the tub. He took her hand, guiding her to face him, coaxing one foot over his hips so she straddled him.
Suddenly her mouth went dry as she met his smoldering gaze. Her position made her vulnerable and was all too blatant. Her thighs were open, her pussy bared to his gaze as he sat up—on the perfect level for . . .
“Oh my Lord . . .” she exclaimed as he kissed her there, his tongue snaking out to wind around the little nub that made her knees go weak.
His big hands landed on her ass, supporting her as she began to tremble. Just that easily, he had her all hot and bothered again. Sam Archer was probably the naughtiest lover she’d ever been with and she had a sneaking suspicion she hadn’t seen even a fraction of his tricks yet. The thought should have scandalized her but it only made her hotter. There was something about being with a bad boy who knew how to touch a woman and push her to her limits.
Sam licked her, showing his skill and she burst into flames. A short climax followed by intense afterglow made her limbs weak.
“You’d better let me sit down before I fall down,” she only half joked.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered against her tummy. His hands supported her on the way down, never letting her go. At least not far.
She ended up facing him, perched over his thighs, straddling him. Her knees splayed to the sides in the wide tub, her heels somewhere around his knees. He was rock solid beneath her. Warm, slippery from the soapy water, and the look in his eyes made her heart stutter.
“Thank you.”
“Any time.” He almost purred with satisfaction. “I really like watching you come.”
She felt the heat rise to her cheeks but her belly jumped in reaction. He said the naughtiest things sometimes that really turned her on.
“Maybe I can return the favor.” She reached between them and grasped his semi-erect cock in her hand. It was his turn to jump.
But he covered her hand with his, stopping her when she would have continued.
“Time for that later. Right now, we’re going to relax and enjoy this tub. I’ve never seen anything like it. Have you?”
He eased back against the headrest and cuddled her close so she rested on top of him, her head in the crook of his neck, her breasts flattened against his chest. Their bodies slid sinuously together in the soapy water.
“Only in magazines. I didn’t think people actually did garden tubs for real. Only for photo shoots.”
She felt languorous after the lovely climax he’d given her. The hot water was the perfect temperature and the company wasn’t bad either. Sam felt good under her. His arms stroked over her back, soothing away any remaining tension and making her feel cherished.
“If I ever buy a house, I’d like to have something like this in it.”
“Me too,” she agreed lazily.
That was the last thing she remembered until he roused her with a kiss sometime later. The water had grown tepid and her skin was wrinkling up in places. It was time to get out.
“Sorry I fell asleep,” she murmured, embarrassed.
“Don’t be. I take it as a compliment that you feel safe enough around me to let your guard down. I like it.” His smile warmed her.
Slipping only a bit, she climbed off him and out of the tub, all too aware of her pruny fingers and toes. She reached for the giant bath towel and wrapped it around herself, suddenly self-conscious. Sam grabbed her from behind, towel and all and pulled her backward into a big bear hug.
He seemed to be in a playful mood, which suited her fine. She liked seeing the carefree side of him, knowing she was seeing the real Sam, not the super duper secret agent.
“I believe I promised you room service.”
Her stomach rumbled as she remembered how hungry she was.
“I hope they have a good restaurant. I could really go for a cheeseburger right about now.”
“A cheeseburger?” He let her go as he snagged a smaller towel and dried off before casually wrapping it around his hips. “I didn’t picture you for the cheeseburger type.” He flipped the drain so the water would flow out of the tub.
“What type am I?” she challenged playfully.
“I had you pegged more as a health food girl. Salads and sprouts. That sort of thing.”
“
Au contraire.
I eat salads when I’m being good but for comfort food, give me a good all American cheeseburger any day.”
Au contraire.
I eat salads when I’m being good but for comfort food, give me a good all American cheeseburger any day.”
“A girl after my own heart,” he joked as they headed together toward the bedroom.
Dinner consisted of cheeseburgers with imported gourmet cheddar cheese and the fanciest French fries Sam had ever seen. It was delicious. More so because of the company than because of any special treatment the chef had given the burgers.
They were too caught up in each other to really pay much attention to the food. After finishing the food, they went back to bed for what remained of the night. Neither of them got much sleep, but when they did sleep, it was in each other’s arms. Sam discovered he liked the feel of her against him, though he’d never been much for cuddling with anyone else.
Emily was teaching him new things about himself all the time. He’d never really met anyone like her before. Oh, he’d enjoyed friendships with many professional women. He’d even dated a few. He liked and respected the women who’d been drafted onto the team but Emily was something else altogether.
He realized suddenly the most likely reason. He was in love with her. Had to be. The feelings she inspired in him couldn’t be anything else. Sam wasn’t one of those guys who fell in and out of love every day. He thought he’d probably loved his high school girlfriend, but that was only a pale glimmer compared to what he felt now for Emily.
There was nothing he could do about it now, he realized. Love had caught up with him at last—at the worst possible time. Sam didn’t know how it was all going to shake out for him and Emily. He’d do his best to protect her. From the zombies and their makers. From the snakes in her own company. And from himself, if it came to that.
For now, all that mattered was that she was in his arms. In his bed. He fell asleep feeling smugly satisfied with that particular thought and didn’t rouse ’til morning.
Chapter Twelve
W
hen they got to the airport the next morning, Sam was hyper aware of their surroundings and the possibility for trouble. If someone had seen them or suspected them of being involved in the raid the day before, there could be trouble. With that in mind, he did an extra thorough examination of the jet with Emily’s help. They’d discussed it over breakfast and agreed to get to the airport early in order to check things over as best they could.
hen they got to the airport the next morning, Sam was hyper aware of their surroundings and the possibility for trouble. If someone had seen them or suspected them of being involved in the raid the day before, there could be trouble. With that in mind, he did an extra thorough examination of the jet with Emily’s help. They’d discussed it over breakfast and agreed to get to the airport early in order to check things over as best they could.
Emily helped. She knew this model of jet better than he did and was invaluable in checking for small things that could turn their flight into a crash real fast. Sam kept watch while she checked the engines and steering mechanisms. She did the same for him as he checked other parts of the plane. Then she climbed in and he watched the outside of the jet as she activated various switches, making bits move about.
Everything looked okay and they were done in plenty of time to pick up their charter and head off into the sky. Before long, they were headed back to their home base in Wichita. They’d shared a lovely morning, talking about all kinds of things and sharing a new closeness that hadn’t been as easy between them before their shared adventure—and the aftermath marathon session of lovemaking last night.
“So, how do you want to play this when we get back to work?”
“What do you mean?”
They were cruising safely and Sam figured it was a good time to strategize for tomorrow and the continuation of his mission.
“I mean this. Us. Do we go back as a couple or do you want to try to keep this under wraps? Buddy knows and others may have seen your car parked in the lot all night, but do you want it out in the open or do we keep them guessing?”
She seemed to think about it for a moment.
“What’s better for your mission?”
“We’ll make a soldier out of you yet.” He couldn’t help but compliment her reasoning. She’d impressed him, putting the good of the mission ahead of her personal comfort. Then again, he shouldn’t have been too surprised. Emily was an altogether different sort of woman from those he’d been involved with before. “It would be better to have our relationship out in the open,” he answered honestly. “It would give us a reason for always being together and it might act as a distraction in case anybody wonders what we’re up to.”
“Okay then. Out in the open it is. But no necking in the hangar. I do have certain standards to maintain.”
He liked her sense of humor. Reaching over, he ruffled her hair, then smoothed it and pulled her in for a quick kiss.
“If we didn’t have a passenger back there, I might seriously consider initiating you into the mile high club right about now,” he whispered when he pulled back. They had one passenger hitching a ride back to Wichita, but he was safely ensconced in the rear cabin with the soundproof door closed between them so they could talk freely.
“Mile high club?” She pretended innocence, though he could tell she damn well knew what he meant. Every pilot had heard the stories about the informal fraternity of people who’d had sex in flight.
“Oh, yeah.” He nipped her earlobe, then sat back in his own seat. “You tempt me beyond all reason, Em. But one of us needs to fly the plane.”
She gave a heavy, dramatic sigh. “If you say so.”
“Emily . . .” he growled. “Don’t tempt me.”
She laughed outright then, the sound charming an answering smile out of him. He never would have believed the stickler of a boss he’d met only a few days ago would turn out to be such a tease. Emily definitely had hidden depths he was only beginning to plumb. He looked forward to learning more with eager anticipation. But that would have to wait until they were safely on the ground.
“I was thinking, since we have a free afternoon, it would be pretty normal for me to spend the ground time doing paperwork,” Emily volunteered, changing the subject. “If you want to get a close up look at the manifests and flight plans, I have a private office at the hangar. I don’t use it much, but it is there. No windows and the door locks.”
“I like the way you think.” He sent her a lascivious grin that made her laugh. He liked to hear her sound so carefree and happy. And he liked being the one to make her feel that way.
“We can get to the hanky panky later,” she said in a mock stern voice. “But I don’t mind if people think that’s what we’re doing. It’s all in a good cause. Meanwhile, you’ll be able to get a much closer look at what I’ve been able to pull together of the suspicious manifests and corresponding flight plans. I made electronic copies of everything and hid the USB drive in my office.”
Sam was impressed at her forethought. “That’ll save me a lot of time.”
She grinned at him. “Yeah, I thought so. All I’ve been able to make of the information so far is that there’s a predominance of flights to destinations in or near the Pacific Northwest. I only started gathering the records a few weeks ago and haven’t had time to really look into it yet, but that much was pretty obvious. I had to be cautious in the way I dug up the documents. I didn’t want Scott or anyone who might work for him to know I was making inquiries.”
“Smart move. Do you think anyone knows you’ve collected all those documents in electronic form?”
“It’s doubtful. I got them all off different computers and didn’t put them into a single file. I saved them to the USB drive one at a time. I also have some of the hard copy from flights I actually made. I keep copies of all my flight information going back a year or two. I didn’t pull the individual flight data hard copies, but it’s all in there, waiting. I marked the folders with a little tear on either the tab or the edge so I’d be able to find them again when needed.”
“Good thinking. We can pull those files and take the USB drive back to your place. I have a laptop in my duffel bag that nobody at Praxis Air can trace. It’s on an independent network and we can use it to send the data back to the analysts at my home base and see what they’ve already made of what I sent them on my own—which wasn’t much.”
“Well, we can change that now that we’re working together.” She sent him a bright smile. “We’re on approach. Let’s land this puppy and get to work.”
A short while later, they were on the ground. Their passenger had disembarked and they had gotten only a few odd looks as Emily led Sam into her private office and closed the door.
“They’re definitely grouped right in this area,” Sam said to Emily a couple of hours later. They’d poured over her hard copy records together and a pattern emerged as he put the odd flights she’d earmarked together into some kind of order.
He drew circles on a topographical pilot’s map Emily had pulled out of one of her other filing cabinets. It was a map of the Pacific Northwest. In particular, he was looking at a large section in the less populated areas of Eastern Oregon, Washington state, and upper and mid-Idaho. It was a big area, but at least they’d gotten that far with the information at hand.
“That’s a lot of ground to cover,” Emily commented as she stood beside him. They had cleared her desk and were standing around it. The office was a mess with papers everywhere, but they were definitely onto something.
“Hopefully the team on base will be able to narrow it down with the information on the drive.”
One of the first actions Emily had taken after locking her office door was to go to a secret compartment in her antique desk and retrieve the USB drive. She’d given it to Sam for safekeeping before showing him the way she’d marked the file folders for the flights she’d actually made herself.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to get hungry. We skipped lunch and it’s close to dinnertime.” She rubbed her midsection as she spoke and Sam became aware of his hunger—both for food and for her. Since they’d first made love, he just couldn’t get his fill of Emily’s sweet body.
He began to put the files back in order. “Yeah, let’s put this place to rights and get out of here. I think we’ve given our coworkers enough to talk about for one day, don’t you?”
Emily walked over to him and put her hands on his waist, tugging slightly at his neatly tucked shirt, deliberately disarranging it. Then she ran her fingers through his short hair, dislodging a few of the longer stands on top a bit, making it messy. He got the idea when she reached up on tiptoe and kissed him hard, grinding her lips against his.
Two could play this game.
Sam took great pleasure in messing up her pretty hair and tugging at her clothing so she’d look adorably rumpled and sexy as hell. Any red blooded male seeing her like that was going to think all kinds of lascivious thoughts, but he figured it was okay. She was going home with him. Not anybody else. He was the lucky bastard who’d have her in his bed tonight. The gods were smiling on him in a big way.
Before he could forget himself and drag her clothes off right then and there, he pulled back, taking stock of her pink lips, the sexily tousled hair, and wanton disarray of her clothes. Yes, there was no doubt about it. She looked hot.
“Damn, baby.” Sam couldn’t keep from expressing his appreciation.
“Back at’cha.”
He liked the breathless quality of her response.
“Let’s hurry and get these files back where they belong so we can finish what we started.”
“And get dinner,” she reminded him. She worked with him to refile all the folders and put everything back to rights quickly.
“Dinner’s on the list. As is reporting back to base. But then you’re all mine, Em, so be warned.”
“I can get behind that,” she agreed with a sexy grin that made him want to push her up on the desk and have his way with her right there. But it would have to wait. At least until they got back to his place.
They finished refiling the folders at record speed and Sam ran a critical eye over the office to see if he could discern any obvious differences from when they’d first entered. Everything had been put back from where they’d gotten it and the place looked good.
“We’re good to go,” he nodded at the condition of the room. They worked well together as a team no matter what they were doing, it seemed.
“All right.” She patted her messy hair and looked like she was trying to compose herself before opening her office door. Just as she would probably do if they really had been in there making love all this time. “Let’s do it.”
She nodded to him and opened the door. There wasn’t exactly an audience waiting outside watching the door with bags of popcorn in their laps, but there definitely were more people in the outside office area than there had been before. Most of them looked over when they stepped out of her office.
Sam quickly slid his arm around her shoulders and put his body between the onlookers and Emily, shielding her. It was something he’d normally do in this situation, so it wasn’t out of character. And it established them as a couple without any room for doubt. The way she snuggled into his side spoke loud and clear of shared intimacy.
They walked the gauntlet of the back office together and out into the hangar and then the parking lot without speaking to anyone. It was pretty clear that everyone present saw them and the possessive arm Sam had around Emily’s shoulders.
“A little blatant, don’t you think?” Emily challenged when they’d gotten out into the parking lot.
She might be complaining, but she wasn’t moving away. In fact, she seemed more than comfortable with his display, snuggling closer and putting her arm around his waist. It might be for the benefit of the gawkers clustered in the open hangar door. Or it might be because it felt so darn good. At least it felt darn good to him to have her close.
He bent and placed a quick kiss on her temple.
“Just staking my claim. You don’t mind, do you?”
She craned her neck to meet his gaze as they walked toward their cars.
“I don’t mind. I kind of like giving them something to gossip about. It might keep some of them from wondering what I’ve been up to snooping around lately.”
“The old bait and switch,” he agreed. “It’ll fool the casual observers, but if there’s anyone really serious—anyone who was sent to deliberately watch you—it might only arouse further speculation. Still, either way, we can use it to our advantage. And I get a little primitive thrill out of staking my claim.” He shook his head, amused by his own reaction. “Can’t say that I’ve ever felt that particular caveman instinct before.”
“It’s okay, Tarzan. I don’t mind playing Jane for a little while.” They’d arrived at their cars and she turned to face him. Her smile teased him and gave him an oddly light sensation in the vicinity of his heart. “So long as it’s understood that we’re partners, not master and servant in private, I can play the little woman in public. For now. Though you understand, it goes against my independent nature.”
He laughed outright at her over the top delivery, as she’d probably intended. She laughed with him and they had a moment of shared amusement before she stepped away from him. She fished out her keys from her purse and turned toward her car, which was parked right next to his.
They’d decided to take both cars back to her place where she would pack a fresh overnight bag and water her plants. Then they’d head to his place, which was safer. He’d chosen it for its reasonably secure location and he’d made some improvements since moving in that included some early warning sensors in case anyone tried anything.
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