Express Male (22 page)

Dammit, he knew they should have gone to a hotel. By being in Marnie’s house this way, she was assigning more to the experience than was actually there. What the two of them had had tonight was sex. Period. Just like what it had been between him and Lila.

As soon as the thought uncoiled in his head, though, Noah knew it wasn’t true. What he and Marnie had done tonight was nothing like what had been between him and Lila. He felt different now from the way he had felt after having had sex with Lila. With her, there had been nothing immediately afterward except very pleasant physical exhaustion. With Marnie, there was…

He halted the thought right there. One problem at a time, he told himself. First things first.

“Long story short,” he said again, more emphatically this time. “What happened between me and Lila only happened once. And it only happened because of an extreme situation that was never repeated. That’s all that matters, Marnie. And it’s all you need to know.”

She studied him in silence for a long time, the hand that had been open over his heart slowly curling into a loose fist. Finally, softly, she asked, “What if the extreme situation
was
repeated?”

He looked at her blankly. “I don’t understand. It wouldn’t be repeated. Lila and I don’t work together anymore.”

His answer seemed to bother more than placate her, because her eyebrows arrowed downward even more and she removed her hand from his chest completely. “What if you and Lila
were
to work together again, and find yourselves in another extreme situation?”

“That won’t ever happen, Marnie.”

“But what if it did? Would the two of you react the same way?”

“What difference does it make?”

She uttered a soft sound in response to his question, one he couldn’t for the life of him describe. He knew he wasn’t giving her the answer she wanted, but she’d told him to be honest. And honestly? He couldn’t predict the future. Besides, there was no future to predict. Not only was there little chance he and Lila would ever be working on an assignment together, never mind standing in the same room, but there was little chance he and Marnie would ever see each other again once this assignment was concluded.

And why, dammit, did the realization of that make him feel even edgier than her probing questions did?

“Look, Marnie, I—”

“No, it’s all right, Noah. I understand.”

Somehow, he doubted it. How could she understand what he was saying when he didn’t understand much of it himself. “Do you?”

She nodded, but her expression indicated she felt something entirely different. She gripped the sheet in one hand and pulled it up over herself, hiding from view the delectable flesh Noah had been touching and tasting only moments ago. And that, he supposed, was the most telling response of all.

“It’s late,” she said softly. “And we both have to work in the morning. You should probably go.”

He probably should. But he wanted to stay. Because somehow he knew that if he left now, there was little chance he would ever be back.

He told himself that was the way it should be. Reminded himself that was the way it always was. He and his partner had sex and then went to their corners. If it was good sex, they met for round two on a date that was mutually agreeable to them both, then went to their corners again. It was an arrangement that had always suited Noah in the past, even if he’d never had a partner who lasted more than four or five rounds. Sex, like boxing, wasn’t a sport for the faint of heart.

His heart had always been able to take it. But Marnie’s, he was beginning to realize, wasn’t the pugilist that his own was.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he finally replied. “It is late. And we do have to be at work in a little while. Thanks for the reminder.”

She uttered that soft little sound again, then, “Anytime.”

Anytime,
Noah repeated to himself as he pushed the covers away and swung his feet to the floor. Yeah, right. Such a short word, to be filled with so much.

“O
KAY
, E
LLIE
,
TELL ME
again why I have to sit out here twiddling my thumbs while you’re inside having all the fun?”

Ellie bit back a growl as she turned from her place in the back of the van to look at Daniel, sitting in the driver’s seat. Like her, he was dressed completely in black, but unlike her, he wasn’t armed. At least, she didn’t think he was armed. She was pretty sure she’d talked him into returning the automatic he’d purchased the day after he’d discovered who and what she really was. She never should have told him the truth about her job.

She bit back an exasperated growl. It was too late to start second-guessing herself now. What was done was done, and she’d just have to make the best of it. If Daniel wanted to tag along, she couldn’t stop him. To a point. Yeah, he could drive the getaway car, she’d promised him, but that was it. Only
she
would be going into ChemiTech after hours, and only
she
would be in the physical line of fire, should anything go wrong. Bad enough she’d let him talk her into that party fiasco. Never mind that he may have been instrumental in furthering the investigation. Enough was enough. Starting now, the investigation was hers again. And hers alone.

And it would go perfectly, she assured herself further. As long as Daniel stayed out here where he belonged.

“You’re not going to be twiddling your thumbs,” she told him. “You’re going to be listening to everything I do and say, and you’re going to make sure it gets recorded back here.” She jutted a thumb over her shoulder at the wall of sophisticated surveillance equipment behind her. “That’s a very important part of the job. It’s what half of OPUS agents do for a living.” In addition to a million other things, she thought, but she wasn’t about to tell Daniel any more about the workings of the organization than she already had.

“Yeah, right,” he said. “I’m sure a lot of people who work for your agency get paid a ton of money to push a record button and peruse the latest issue of
Sports Illustrated
for the rest of the night.”

Ellie gritted her teeth. “There’s a little more to it than that. As it is, you’re not actually trained to even push an OPUS record button, so consider yourself in perilous waters. You never know what’s going to happen when you push a button in OPUS.”

“Yeah,” he agreed derisively. “A Diet Coke might come out instead of the Cherry Pepsi that you really wanted.”

“Look, Daniel,” Ellie said, her patience gone. “You’re not even supposed to know what’s going on. You’re sure as hell not supposed to be a part of this. If the muckety-mucks at OPUS find out how far I’ve let this go, they’ll not only jerk me from the program and blacklist me from ever going through agent training again, but they’ll fire me from the job I
do
have. I could even face charges of treason.”

His mouth dropped open. “What the hell was treasonous about you telling me what’s going on?”

“It’s a secret government assignment,” she said, somehow managing to bite back the
dumbass
with which she wanted to punctuate the sentence. “And Uncle Sam doesn’t like it when people tell his secrets, especially to those who have no stake in them.”

“Well, I think that’s nuts,” he said. “I can be a huge help to you.”

She closed her eyes. “Daniel…”

“Fine,” he said tersely. “I’ll stay out here and push the record button.” He reached into the passenger seat for something as he added, “Luckily, I brought along the latest issue of
Sports Illustrated
to peruse while you’re inside having all the fun.”

“It’s
not
fun,” Ellie said, her teeth gritting again. “It’s my job. And it’s very dangerous work. The only thing that would make it
more
dangerous would be if you were in there with me.”

“Just go do your very dangerous work, all right?” he said. “Wake me when you’re ready to go home.”

“Oh, for—” There was no reason to sit here like a couple of three-year-olds doing the am-not-are-too thing. She had very dangerous work to do. Daniel knew the drill. She’d briefed him before they left her apartment. The van belonged to OPUS but had been assigned to Ellie for the night. She’d shown Daniel how everything worked and, smart guy that he was, he’d caught on with no problem. Yeah, okay, so it pretty much amounted to pushing the record button. That was beside the point. The point was that Ellie should have kicked his dumbass when she had the chance.

Men.

She tucked the few items she’d need into the pockets of her black trousers and slipped her weapon into its ankle holster. Then she mentally ticked off her breaking-and-entering to-do list. She hadn’t wanted to risk working late again at her phony-baloney auditing job, since she’d already done that several times. She didn’t want anyone taking too close a look at the daily check-in log and wondering why a lowly accountant was spending so much time going over the books. Best-case scenario, they’d think she was too incompetent to get her work done during regular hours and ask for someone else. Worst-case scenario, they’d think she was up to no good. Better just to leave at her regular time on occasion and, if necessary, slip back into the building after working hours, under cover of darkness.

Speaking of which.

With a final glance at Daniel, who had already begun perusing the magazine under what pale streetlight spilled through the windshield, Ellie silently opened the back door to the van and exited. They’d parked half a mile away from one of the back entrances of ChemiTech, so she covered the distance in a quick sprint, arriving barely winded. Daniel had filled her in on Sebastian Baird’s habits and schedule—oh, all
right,
so he’d been sort of useful to have on board—so was a breath mint—so she knew Baird would be gone by now.

She checked her watch. Half-past ten. Daniel said Baird and several other of the ranking scientists consulted until nine tonight, which meant there had been plenty of time for all of them to vacate the premises. Hopefully, there would be few, if any, stragglers. Though Ellie had learned in her short time at ChemiTech that research scientists were prone to long hours, since some of them never wanted to do anything
but
research, she figured ten-thirty was pushing it for even the most dedicated. The building should be deserted save a dozen security guards, easily eluded, and a skeleton cleaning crew, easily deceived.

Ordinarily, the big brick building would be difficult to breach, so the security guards tended to be less-than-diligent in their nightly rounds. Talk about perusing your
Sports Illustrated.
But the gadgetry OPUS had at its fingertips—literally, Ellie thought as she withdrew a small metal device from her pocket—was anything but ordinary. With little effort, and even less time, she had the steel door open and the alarm disengaged.

In thirty minutes—probably less—everything would be back exactly the way it was supposed to be. And Ellie would have in her possession copies of some very confidential notes that were locked tight in Sebastian Baird’s lower right-hand desk drawer.

Oh, all
right,
so Daniel had given her that information, too. And, yes, okay, he’d given her a key to Baird’s office. Ellie would have found the notes
and
gotten into Baird’s office just
fine,
thank you very much, even without Daniel’s help. It just would have taken her a couple minutes longer, that was all.

She arrived at her destination with no trouble, let herself in and crossed to the desk on the other side of the room. Even in the dark, she could see that, like so many offices in ChemiTech, the place was a pigsty. Baird’s office was bigger than most, thanks to his seniority and value to the company, but it was every bit as cluttered as the others. Security lights outside scattered some meager illumination through fat venetian blinds, striping the leather sofa beneath it that was burdened by boxes of files, textbooks, notebooks and computer discs. The desk held more of the same, along with haphazardly arranged items like a microscope, a telephone, a coffee mug and an iPod.

Ellie was careful to touch nothing more than she had to, then was meticulous about putting everything she did touch back in its proper place. She picked the lock on the drawer, collected the notes, used Baird’s copier to copy them and returned the originals to their rightful place. Then she folded the copies and tucked them beneath the waistband of her pants at the small of her back.

She was making a quick survey of the room to double-check everything before leaving when the door suddenly opened and Daniel slipped through. He’d thrown on a white mad scientist coat over his black clothes, and he’d tucked a clipboard under one arm, presumably to look like he belonged in the building after hours. But his panicked expression was totally out of place. Likewise out of place was the flash of fear that singed Ellie’s belly. Field agents did not know fear, singed or otherwise. She tamped it down and focused on Daniel instead.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she whispered.

“I forgot to tell you something,” he whispered back.

“What?”

“Sebastian Baird is headed your way.”

More than fear did more than flash in her belly at that. Ellie had to tamp down pure, clawing-at-the-back-of-her-throat terror.
“What?”

“His car went right past the van, headed toward ChemiTech, so I hoofed it over here to tell you. I knew he and Howie—that’s the security guard who does night duty at the front desk—would talk Cubs baseball for a good fifteen minutes, because they always do. But that was fifteen minutes ago,” Daniel added ominously. “If Sebastian’s coming to his office, and I’m sure he is, he’ll be here any—”

The elevator chimed in the hallway outside.

“—minute.”

“Oh, fu—”

Ellie never quite got the expletive out of her mouth, because Daniel suddenly lurched across the room and filled her mouth with his tongue instead. Then he swept an arm across the desk, knocking half of its contents to the floor. Keys were jingling on the other side of the office door, but Daniel pulled away from her to jerk her shirt from her pants, yank it over her head and the notes from her waistband and toss both to the floor. Then he went to work on unfastening his belt and the fly of his trousers.

Ellie’s hands flew up over the bra that was as black as everything else she had on that night, and she started to object, “What the fu—”

But Daniel molded his mouth to hers again and pushed her back onto the desk, covering her body with his. She was about to roar an objection and then pop him in the eye, but something stopped her. Mostly the fireball of heat that exploded between her legs when she felt the full, ripening length of him pressed against her there. And also the torrent of pure, potent pleasure that flooded her when he covered her breast with his hand and squeezed hard.

Everything melted in that moment. Her body. Her thoughts. Her fears. Herself. There was a buzzing in her brain and a craving in her core that obscured anything else that might be happening. All she knew was that she was touching and being touched by Daniel the way she had always dreamed of touching and being touched by him. And all she felt was a passion and a hunger and a need for more.

As he filled her mouth with his tongue again, she dropped her hands to his waist and bunched up the fabric of his lab coat, until she could reach his shirt beneath. As she wrenched it free of his pants, she realized the latter garment was unfastened, so she tucked her hands inside, burrowing her fingers under the cotton of his briefs. As she cupped his bare ass in her palms, Daniel thrust his hips forward, his erection surging now against her belly. Ellie bucked her hips upward in demand, even knowing the gesture was futile when she was still dressed. She wanted Daniel inside her,
deep
inside her. Forget about foreplay or anything else. She wanted to be joined with him in the most primal, primitive way a man and a woman could be joined. And she wanted it
now.

In response, he thrust his tongue deep into her mouth again and rubbed his body against hers, the hand on her breast squeezing hard again. There was nothing gentle or tentative about the way he touched her, as if his hunger for her was as inflamed as her own for him. Ellie groaned out loud as she hooked her legs over his, and met him thrust for thrust as he rocked his pelvis against hers. She moved a hand between their bodies, cupping her palm over the hard, heavy length of him, pressing the back of her hand against her own aching center. She stroked both Daniel and herself, once, twice, three times, four, driving them both deeper into their delirium. But she was jerked back to reality when a bright white light suddenly exploded overhead, and she realized it had nothing to do with an orgasm.

And also when a booming voice thundered, “Oh, for God’s sake, Beck, not
again.
”

Ellie tore her mouth from Daniel’s and turned to look in the direction from which the voice had erupted, and found herself gazing at the very man she was supposed to be investigating. Dr. Sebastian Baird stood framed by his doorway, wrapped in one of those old geezer overcoats and carrying a dilapidated briefcase. Ellie knew he was nearing eighty, but he could have easily passed for a man in his early sixties. He was tall, over six feet, had a full head of steel-gray hair, a pale complexion and startling blue eyes.