More Than a Mission (16 page)

“You won the race, remember?” he said, and, with that, he lay down on the floor and pillowed his head in his hands.

The race? Puzzlement turned to amusement. Ah, yes, the race. The win that guaranteed her position…at least for this time.

She eased off the couch and knelt beside him as he lay exposed to her. That long sculpted body within reach and absolutely impossible to ignore. Almost as impossible to ignore as the long, equally impressive state of his erection.

A pool of damp drenched her as she imagined what would happen soon.

But first, she had to touch.

L
ucia cursed as the signals from the cameras continued to be nothing more than static. She hadn't been able to end the jamming. But she had been able to pinpoint the general source of the transmission—a spot right behind the cottage where she had seen Aidan enter with the Sparrow.

She could head there, but by doing so, she risked compromising Aidan's assignment. Given what she had seen of what was going on…

Aidan was physically safe. His heart, however, was another matter. And the assignment…possibly already compromised if what she suspected was happening was actually happening.

Lucia had heard what he said about it being just about the job. But behind those tones, her women's intuition had picked up on his attraction to the Sparrow.

Glancing at her watch, she realized Aidan had been incommunicado for just over twenty minutes. That's all it took, she joked with herself, but realized she couldn't rush in just yet. She would get in gear, get prepared and give it just a little while longer before she went in search of the jamming device.

Alone. She knew that broke with procedure, but calling in Walker now was sure to cause problems and, as the lead, Aidan would not take it well.

They'd had enough problems without creating another.

 

Aidan lay watching Lizzy as, in turn, she looked at him. Her sherry-colored eyes had darkened to that cognac color he'd seen the other day. Her gaze was so rich with the heady promise of what was to come, that he nearly grew dizzy from it.

“Lizzy?” he questioned at her delay.

“Just…admiring,” she answered and laid her hand in the middle of his chest. Shifted it over to caress his pec. Run it along the hard edge of his nipple.

He wanted to do the same, and he reached up, cupped her breast. Took her nipple between his fingers and gently twisted it.

Her eyes half closed for a moment and her breath hitched slightly. She liked that. A lot. But so did he.

He needed her closer, so he placed his hands on her hips, exerted gentle pressure so that she would straddle him, the center of her just above his erection, her soft hairs teasing the sensitive skin at the edge, just below the condom's reach. Then he reached up once more, cradled both her breasts and pleasured her as she slowly explored him.

She placed her hands on his chest and loitered for a moment before inching them down his body, investigating every hollow and plane. Her palms were smooth against his skin, warm and slightly damp.

When she met his gaze, her pupils were open wide. Her lips must have been dry because she licked them nervously.

And suddenly he wanted to lick them too.

He surged up, captured the back of her head in his hand and kissed her. Slipped his tongue into her mouth and sucked on it. When he pulled back a bit and their gazes collided, they both knew it was time.

He didn't lie back down. He needed to see her eyes. Be close to her as she took him in.

She shifted the final inch, raised her hips and hesitated for just a second, poised above him. Would she take him hard and fast or…

Slowly, Elizabeth thought.

The tip of him just breached her entrance. She lowered her hips, lingering over every inch of him as she moved downward. Her breath was held prisoner in her chest and his face filled her vision as he stretched her.

When she finally had taken all of him in, she paused as the sensation nearly overwhelmed her. “Aidan?” she said and licked her lips.

He picked up one hand and cupped the side of her face. The other was supporting him, allowing him to be close to her as she rode him. “Sweet Lizzy. This is…amazing.”

She couldn't argue. His length tucked inside her was creating a jumble of sensations. Heat. Wet. A clenching of her insides that demanded she do more to satisfy the knot of need somewhere inside her. Was it down there and just sexual? Or was it in her heart? she wondered, but then she flexed her hips and moved upward, languidly.

The friction of it made her moan and close her eyes.

Aidan didn't press her then and she was glad for it. She wanted to focus on the pleasure of him next to her. In her. On the delicious sensations that came from moving on him, slowly at first, but then faster and faster as she sought her satisfaction.

He urged her on with soft encouraging words. With the lick of his tongue at the sensitive spot on her neck that he had sucked before. At her breasts as he caressed them with his hand.

At some point, he finally lay back down and brought his hands to her hips to help guide her.

With her hands leaning on his chest and her hips pumping against him, she was near the edge. Her breath was rough in her chest. Her body was trembling. It would only take a little more, she thought, aware that she was near release.

He must have sensed it, as well; for he exhorted her onward, and when she was poised at the edge, he leaned up just enough to suck at the tip of one breast, then bit it gently.

It pushed her over the edge.

She drove down on him hard, called out his name as her body shuddered and trembled with her climax. But he was still hard within her and even as he soothed her with his hands, she could feel her hunger coming back to life.

Aidan sensed her renewed need even as he marveled at it. She had pleasured herself with him, but the pleasure hadn't been all hers. The feel of her around him, of her breasts and legs and skin…of all of her, was so enticing that he didn't want it ever to end.

But already her renewed desire was dragging him toward his own climax. He was barely keeping control despite his wish to be with her.

Somehow he managed to get her on her back without breaking away from her. He would have rather died than lose that contact with her, he thought.

She looked up at him, wide-eyed and vulnerable. Almost disbelieving the passion sizzling between them. Afraid. “I'm feeling it too, Lizzy.”

“It's…scary,” she confessed, creating a spot in his heart for her he didn't want to have.

Leaning down, he brushed a kiss on her lips and said, “Don't be scared. I would never hurt you.”

Although he knew he would, because there was no good way for this to end between them. If she wasn't the Sparrow, he'd still have to leave at the end of the day. He'd already warned her he wasn't a stay-at-home kind of guy.

And if she
was
the Sparrow…

He was doomed for sure, he thought, as he moved in her and brought them both to the edge again before they slipped over together.

Afterward, when they were finally breathing and their legs could hold them, they slowly walked upstairs to her bedroom and climbed into bed.

He held her cradled to his side, knowing they would make love again. It had been too amazing for them not to. But before then…

He had a mission. That was why he was here. Liar, the little voice in his head yelled, but he ignored it and pressed forward with his assignment.

“What was it like growing up here? Always being in one place?” he began, in part because he needed to discuss her family, but also because a part of him actually did wonder what such a life was like, having never had such stability during his younger years.

She ran her hand across his chest, the gesture soothing, one of connection rather than desire.

“Nice at times. Annoying at others. In a town as tiny as Leonia, everyone knows everyone. Everyone knows everything about you.”

“Hmm,” he said and rubbed his hand up and down her arm, but didn't say anything else. He didn't want to press too hard and arouse suspicions.

“And you? What was it like always moving around?”

Aidan's answer came quickly, too much so, he feared. “When I was younger, it was hard. I would just get used to the place and make friends and we would get our next assignment.”

“And later? When you were older?” she asked and snuggled closer to him, her body plastered along his side, one thigh tossed over his legs beneath the sheets.

His arm was tucked under her and he eased his hand over the curve of her waist to hold her close. “When I was older? I stopped trying to make friends. It made it easier,” he confessed.

She was quiet for a long time before she said, “I had my friends and family. And all the aunts and uncles and cousins, not to mention the neighbors and the milkman…” She stopped with a chuckle and he joined in her amusement.

“It must have been nice. I just had my family.”

“And Mitch,” she added.

Involuntarily, he stiffened at the mention of his friend's name. Especially coming from her. But she was right. He'd had Mitch. “Mitch was…like a brother.”

“Did they ever find out—”

“Why he was killed. No,” he answered tightly, since at the reference to his friend, the headache he'd had that morning had begun to return.

“I'm sorry. I didn't want to bring up anything painful.” She sat up then and the sheet fell away, revealing all of her to him.

“Headache's back?” she added quickly. He must have been making a face of some sort for her to notice.

When he affirmed it, she straddled his legs so that she might have a better position and began a slow and careful massage along his temples. “Close your eyes,” she said.

He did, not only because she asked, but because the sight and feel of her was arousing him again and he had other things that needed to get settled first.

“Was it hard for you? After your mom and dad—”

“I'd rather not talk about that time. It was…difficult.”

He slowly opened his eyes, inspected her face. The hurt was there for the world to see. “Didn't your other family help out?”

Lizzy stopped her massage and dropped her hands to her sides. Of course there had been family to help out, she thought, but that hadn't made it any easier. Especially when the person closest to you, the one you knew you could always count on, had as good as lost it.

Dani had been inconsolable for days and then the grief had turned to anger. Anger at the police who couldn't find the killers and later, at all the bureaucrats who had seemed so intent on covering up anything to do with her parents' deaths. Maybe even anger at herself for not being there to stop it, Lizzy thought.

“Lizzy?” Aidan asked and placed his fist beneath her chin, applying gentle pressure so that he could read her face.

“Sometimes you're alone even when you're surrounded by people.”

He cursed beneath his breath, slipped his hand to the nape of her neck to draw her close for a kiss. “I'm sorry,” he whispered afterward. “For everything,” he said and Lizzy got the weird sense he wasn't just talking about her parents.

H
e didn't know how many times they made love that night. He had run out of condoms and Lizzy had supplied some more.

Enough times that he was sore. Dead tired. Exhausted.

Thoroughly satisfied. Totally confused.

Rolling onto his side, he propped his head up with one hand and glanced at her as she lay sprawled on her back beside him. A rumbly and all too regular noise came from her.

She was a snorer.

How long had it been since he'd spent enough time with a woman to know something like that?

Too long.

That had to be the explanation for his abandon. For the feelings he was having toward her. Walker could surely explain how it was transference or some other such psychological issue.

It certainly couldn't be love.

Her eyelids drifted open slowly and as she saw him there, a broad welcoming smile erupted on her face. “G'mornin',” she said, her voice husky.

He shifted over, dropped a quick kiss on her lips. “G'mornin'. Do you have any plans for today?”

A tired sigh escaped her. “Some errands to run in town before work. And you?”

“I'm supposed to meet a friend,” he lied since he couldn't risk her going with him. Not when he had to report in and possibly go back to investigating her. Back to proving she was a killer.

She glanced at her wristwatch and grimaced. “I guess we should get going.”

“I guess we should,” he replied, but made no motion other than to shift closer, until he could lay his hand beneath the sheets on the indentation between her hip and waist.

“That's not going to get me moving.”

“No? Then how about this?” He slipped his hand downward, parted her thighs and found the tender bud tucked between them.

“Oh. O-o-h. That might work,” she answered and gripped his shoulders with her hands, urging him over her.

“I thought so.”

 

Inside the hotel suite, Walker and Lucia were waiting for him.

He shot a quick look at his watch. Barely eight o'clock. “What's up?” he asked as he strolled in and then plopped himself on the couch next to Lucia.

“Besides you? All night?” Lucia teased and Aidan blushed as it occurred to him what Lucia might have seen during her surveillance.

Walker silenced her banter with a harsh glare and a sharp slash of his hand.

“Is this mission compromised, Spaulding?” Walker asked, clearly all about business this morning.

Aidan was not about to let the other man dictate to him as he seemed so fond of doing. He had always found Walker to be a fairly easygoing kind of guy, but he'd been anything but during this assignment. Not to mention that Walker chastising him for his arguably less than professional interest in Lizzy was kind of hypocritical to the max.

“Jealous? Not getting any from the doc?” Aidan shot back, referring to Walker's ongoing affair with the royal physician.

Walker was on his feet in a second, fists clenched at his sides. When he took a step toward him, Aidan rose, picked up his chin and stepped right up to him, spoiling for a fight.

They were of a like height and similar build. He knew he could hold his own, but this little show was accomplishing nothing. “I did what I had to for information,” he said from behind gritted teeth, trying to defuse the situation.

“Was that the only reason?” Walker wondered aloud and arched a sandy-colored eyebrow to emphasize his point.

Lucia seemed to think it best to intervene, since she stepped between them and laid a hand on each of their chests. “Down boys. I'm overdosing on all the testosterone.”

After a final exchange of glares, they all sat down again, an uneasy silence filling the room.

“Report, Spaulding. What did you learn during your midnight escapade that we can tell the duke? He is expecting us to find the
prince's
killer.” Walker pressed and stared at him intently.

He had to give the other man credit. He had perfected the whole bushy-eyebrow, give-you-guilt look. And it worked. He was unable to meet his gaze as he said, “Nothing.”

At least nothing that he would share. Like that Lizzy was an aggressively passionate lover. One who pleased as much as she liked being pleased. And that she snored…

He smiled at that last recollection. The seemingly perfect woman had at least one flaw.

Besides being an assassin? the voice in his head questioned snidely.

“The
Quiz
plans on going to press tomorrow with a story on the prince. It seems they've got more information than we do.” After he spoke, Walker clasped his hands together and laid them across his midsection. It was a pose that seemed comfortable at first glance, but was anything but if you looked closely at the tight set of his jaw.

“We've got this,” Lucia said and tossed something small, black and plastic on the coffee table before him.

Aidan picked up the object and examined it. He recognized it immediately. He had designed his share of jamming devices. This one was compact and well-made. Besides the on/off switch, there was a dial, he suspected for modulating the strength of the signal. It called to memory a similar device he had seen. “Where did you get this? It looks like MI6 issue.”

“In the reeds behind Ms. Moore's cottage. It was on for the earlier part of the night until I was able to home in on its signal and retrieve it.”

His relief that his time with Lizzy hadn't been monitored was short-lived. He inspected the device again and racked his brains for any moment he wasn't with Lizzy, trying to figure out when she could have planted the device. Nothing came to mind. “When did—”

“I don't know when she put it there. As far as I could tell, she was with you the whole time,” Lucia admitted, but then pressed onward. “What I can tell you is that there were no prints, but there was DNA. She must have had it on a belt clip or something else that rode against her skin.”

“And?” Walker asked, leaning forward intently now as he awaited her answer.

Lucia weakly motioned with her hands. “Xander is running the PCR tests as we speak. We'll have the results later today.”

“We need more.”

Aidan glanced at Walker after those words. “And how do you propose we get more?”

“As far as I'm concerned, you've jeopardized your position, Aidan. There's no sense in not coming clean with Ms. Moore.”

He pictured telling her. If she was the Sparrow, he would be prepared to deal with the reaction. If she wasn't…

“I'm not sure—”

“Be sure,” Walker jumped in. “The
Quiz
hits the streets tomorrow with whatever information they have. Real or imagined, we'd better have something to tell the duke so that he knows his money is being well-spent.”

Risking a glance at Lucia, he realized she was as uncomfortable as he was. “What do you think, Lucia?”

“I don't like being rushed. If Ms. Moore is the Sparrow, I don't think she's going to give herself up just because you admit you're an agent for the Lazlo Group. She has no reason to fear us.”

Walker confirmed his agreement with a quick nod. “You're right. But if she isn't the Sparrow—”

“She'll be afraid? I don't think you know Lizzy. She doesn't strike me as the type to be afraid.”

“Lizzy, huh?” Walker said in low tones before shifting to the edge of his seat and leaning forward to emphasize his point.

“Be ready to deal with her if she's the Sparrow. Lucia and I will have your back.”

He met Walker's gaze and surprisingly saw commiseration there. After all, the other man had fallen for the royal doctor during his assignment. He knew what it was like to mix pleasure and business. The difference was, Aidan could see no happy ending in his mission.

“Let me get cleaned up. Liz…Ms. Moore said she would be running some errands in town. If I can't find her there, I'll head for the restaurant.”

Lucia rose and said, “We'll be there when you need us.”

Aidan had no doubt they would be. Only, if Lizzy wasn't the Sparrow, the kind of support they could offer would do little to help the situation.

 

Less than half an hour later, he was back in the main part of the hotel suite, watching Lizzy in the monitors. Like him, she had showered. He wondered if, like him, she had thought of him as she'd run her hands over parts kissed during the night.

The reaction of his body was unwelcome right now given what he would shortly have to do. He muttered an expletive beneath his breath, drawing Lucia's attention at a nearby monitor.

“You ready?” she tossed over her shoulder as her hands flew over the keys on her laptop.

He wondered what she was working on so intently and approached. “What's up?”

“You got me thinking yesterday when you mentioned how our histories were altered. I've been trying to track down more info on Ms. Moore. Old info. Pre-alteration, if something like that occurred.”

He leaned his hand on her shoulder and peered at the screen. It was a listing of past students from the Leonia High School Alumni Association. “Looks normal,” he replied.

“It does, but I want to dig deeper. See if I can't hack into the server and check out their other files,” she advised and chanced another glance at him. “You ready to go?”

He motioned with his head in Walker's direction. “What about him?”

She shrugged while typing. “Some kind of urgent call from Corbett. Said for you to go ahead and he would be ready whenever you needed.”

Which was fine by him. He didn't need Walker to watch his tail. He was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Besides, first he had to meet up with Lizzy.

Returning to the far monitor, he realized she was no longer in her room. Flipping from one camera shot to the other, it became obvious that she was nowhere on the premises of either the restaurant or the cottage. Accessing the earlier images stored on the hard drive, he realized Lizzy had left the cottage. Picking up his binoculars, he scoped out the beach front and then tried to see if he could pick her out along the streets of Leonia.

Damn. Nothing. Time for him to hit the bricks.

“I'm out of here. The code word if I need assistance is…” He stopped dead, wondering what they might be discussing in those moments after he made his revelation. Lucia turned to face him as he considered it. But it suddenly occurred to him there was one last thing he wanted the Sparrow to hear if that's how it played out. “The code word is
Mitch.
”

She uneasily acknowledged it with a nod and he was out the door, hurrying down the stairs and onto the main street. Where might Lizzy be headed this morning? The docks and markets for food? One of her friends' places or the WAC?

He was closest to the latter and so he drifted by there, seemingly to check out what the WAC would be offering. The doors were closed as was the ticket office. Still, he lingered by the posted schedule, checking it out as any normal patron might. Anything to lessen attention.

After a few minutes, he ambled back in the direction of town, hands tucked into his jacket pockets. The reassuring weight of his HK Mark 23 dragged at one shoulder. At his ankle, the Glock 36 rubbed his pant leg.

He was ready for battle.

Once on the main street, he opted for Samantha's shop, which was closest. Inside the store, calm reigned, unlike the other day during the sale. Unfortunately, Samantha had taken the morning off, her sales clerk advised.

As he stepped out of the store, he wondered if Samantha had taken the time to be with Lizzy. If so, would Kate also be in on the outing?

Hurrying up the block to the next shop, he noticed a familiar figure up ahead on the opposite side of the street. Lizzy. Dressed in black jeans with a black leather jacket covering a figure-hugging white T-shirt. She looked stunning. Not at all tired. He called out to her, but she seemed not to hear.

Raising a hand and giving a wave, he once again yelled her name.

She finally noticed and looked his way, but acted as if she didn't even recognize him. Puzzled for a moment, his delay allowed her to turn down the side street before he could react.

Fixated on following her, he jumped into the street, but stopped short at the strident blare of a horn. He glared at the driver who had nearly hit him and who shook a fist at him angrily.

Aidan ignored the driver and continued across the street, past the traffic in the opposite lane and onward to the corner of the block onto which Lizzy had turned.

No Lizzy anywhere on the street. There were a number of shops, however, and so he walked down the block, pausing at the shop windows to peer within searching for her, but she was nowhere to be found. At the end of the street, which had turned out to be a dead end, he paused, wondering where she could have gone when Lucia came on over the wire.