On the Job (3 page)

They were both so lost in their greed, united in their goal for more friction, more pressure, more bliss, that they were hardly aware of anything else. They heard Tony's and Hal Margrave's casual banter in the distance and the sounds of feet hitting the dock, but they were knotted exclusively to each other in those frantic seconds.

He pumped into her to the hilt, and her breath exploded out of her. He paused. A drop of sweat trickled from the side of his forehead down to a whiskered jaw. He held her against the wall, her body skewered on his cock, and rotated his hips slightly. Her legs were parted wide. He ground his pelvis against her exposed clit.

“If I'd ever been here before, I wouldn't have been able to leave. I'm not going to be able to sleep or eat if I'm thinking about this pussy.”

He watched her while she came, his face rigid, his body drawn as tight as a bowstring the moment before the arrow rips through the air. She shook in pleasure, all the while aware of his lancing gaze and feeling vulnerable for it.

Feeling beautiful.

He nursed her through her orgasm by moving his hips in tiny, subtle circles, giving her pressure on her clit. His cock throbbed high and hard inside her. She bit her lip to stop from keening. It felt decadent, so hot and forbidden.

“I'll just pop in and shower and meet you two up at the lodge,” a woman's voice called from outside the entrance to the changing room.

Panic clutched at Madeline's throat. She gave Walker a wild glance. It was Kitty Margrave, Hal's friendly, middle-aged wife.

“Move.
Do something
,” she whispered.

Her eyes went wide in shock. He did something, all right. He started to fuck her with long, thorough strokes, holding her stare the whole time.

“Walker,” she mouthed helplessly. The thrusts of his cock in her pussy had sent her to shivering again with the aftershocks of her orgasm. She rested the back of her head against the wall and surrendered.

Anything else was impossible.

“Didn't you leave your clothes up at the lodge?” Hal's voice resounded in the distance. Madeline's heart seemed to want to explode out of her chest, but she just stared into Walker's blazing eyes as he fucked her, faster now, hunting down his own bliss.

“Oh, you're right, I did,” Kitty said sheepishly.

“Maddie must have run up to the lodge for a book or something. I told her to bring one, but she said she wouldn't get bored,” Tony said, the sound of his voice growing more distant as the three of them made their way through the sprawling lawn.

Walker saw the finish line, Madeline could tell. Not just from the feeling of his cock swelling huge inside her, but from the fact that he no longer tried to mute the sound of their flesh slapping together as he fucked her. She whimpered when he slammed into her one last time, his face contorted in an agony of pleasure.

He'd grown so erect, so swollen with need that it hurt a little to harbor him so deep while he exploded. She broke the skin on her lower lip with her own teeth when she heard his guttural, wild groan as he emptied himself inside her. She grasped his back with her handcuffed hands, absorbing his shudders, greedy to experience his surrender.

But it hadn't been him who had surrendered in those tension-filled moments, Madeline admitted as he panted, his head lowered next to hers, his forehead against the wall. It had been she who had sacrificed her pride by allowing a man she hadn't seen in eleven years—a man who had once rejected her—inside her mind . . . inside her flesh.

He lifted his head slowly. His short, wavy hair shone like dark, burnished gold in the shadowed room. He stared at her mouth. His face lowered over her.

“No,” she whispered harshly. He'd been about to kiss her. Madeline couldn't take that.

“Your mouth is bleeding,” he said quietly, his lips just an inch away from her own.

She slicked her tongue along her lip. “I bit it.”

“I know,” he murmured.

“Let me down, Walker.” She hated that her voice shook.

He didn't move. Madeline felt his gaze on her, but she kept her eyes lowered.

“I came back for you, Madeline.”

She did look him full in the face then.

“You fucking
liar
,” she said incredulously. It was bad enough that he'd hauled her into this changing room, handcuffed her to a shower and screwed her until she didn't know her own name. Now he was telling her ridiculous lies. Those six words he'd uttered felt like the equivalent of a slap. Tears sprung to her eyes.

“Let me
down.
I need to shower. You came inside me!” Panic swelled in her breast. She cried out when he did precisely what she'd said, lifting her off his cock. He set her on her feet. Her teeth clenched in rising anger when she realized she was still attached to him with her arms looped around his neck.

“Hold on,” he said sternly when she struggled against him like a wild animal that had just realized it was trapped. She held the spasm of emotion that wanted to leap out of her chest down with effort as he helped her unhook her arms from his head. He bent and pulled some keys out of his jeans. As soon as he'd unlocked the cuffs and her wrists were free, she staggered away from him. He caught her with a hand on her elbow.

“Leave me alone,” she bit out, made even more angry at the realization that she was about to cry. Why had she just allowed that to happen? Now he held even more power over her, and he knew it. “Just get out of here.
Now
.”

She didn't turn around as she hurried into the room that contained a steam sauna and shelves filled with towels. He'd gone by the time she returned.

He'd done what she'd asked, for once.

Unfortunately, given what Tony had hired him for, Walker Gray wouldn't have gone far.

W
alker glanced up from his computer screen when he heard the beep of a card being swept through the security entrance into Tony Hallas's large den.

“Has she come downstairs?” he asked, his fingers pausing on the keyboard.

Barry nodded and plunked down into a chair. Barry had obviously used his time off this morning to take advantage of the undercover assignment location and bask in the Tahoe sunshine. He wore hiking boots and canvas shorts, and his nose was sunburned to a shiny glow. “She's on the patio with Tony. She's an eyeful, I'll give her that, but about as friendly as a piranha on a diet. She sure doesn't try to hide the fact that she doesn't want our protection, does she?”

Commenting on Madeline's hostility seemed about as obvious as saying the Lake Tahoe view was spectacular, so Walker continued with his task of checking for attempts at breaching Tony's security system. There were only a handful of individuals on the planet as well trained at securing a compound from either a physical or technological threat as the Secret Service. Tony Hallas wasn't the president of the United States, but he'd hired Walker and his crew because he believed Walker could offer him similar protection in his Lake Tahoe vacation lodge. Even Tony, who owned the largest computer systems security company in the nation, had to admit he didn't know some of the stuff the Secret Service did.

“Do you know what Madeline just told me?” Barry asked.

Walker frowned as his fingers continued to fly over the keyboard. “I can just imagine,” he murmured.

“She told me that I was infringing on her right to privacy by guarding her.”

“Did you tell her that since she decided to have a relationship with Tony Hallas, she lost a few of her rights?” he asked evenly, his eyes fixed on the computer screen. “Anyone close to Tony is a potential security breach. Kidnap Madeline Sayer or threaten to kill her, and Tony is suddenly at risk for giving away software to China or Pakistan or who-the-fuck-ever who wants the opportunity to attack U.S. financial institutions.”

“You mean beyond the stuff we think Tony hasn't already given to the Russian mob?” Walker gave Barry a wry glance before he continued his search. Barry had just mentioned the crux of the reason he, Barry and two other members of his team, Arthur Lange and Jim Stephano, were in Lake Tahoe undercover—because the Secret Service criminal investigations division believed that Tony Hallas had been selling software to the Russian mob, information that had been used for a recent hack into U.S. ATM accounts. Over 10 million dollars had been stolen before the breach could be sealed.

Tony hadn't questioned Walker's cover about moving back to Lake Tahoe in order to start his own corporate security operation. Tony had bought his cover because, in fact, that'd been precisely what Walker planned to do. He'd already handed in his resignation with the Secret Service and was counting the days until he returned to Lake Tahoe when they'd received some alarming intelligence in regard to Tony Hallas.

One of the Secret Services's missions was to investigate computer-based attacks on the nation's financial and banking infrastructure. Tony Hallas was suspected of breaching that security, and Walker was tailor-made to go undercover. Walker's boss had begged him to stay on the Secret Service payroll for a short period of time and lead the Hallas investigation.

Tony trusted Walker. They'd been friends since they were both seven years old. Walker's father used to be Tony's father's gardener, and the two boys had spent more than a dozen summers practically attached at the hip.

Until they'd met Madeline Sayer, anyway. Until they'd both vied for her attention. Walker had been the clear winner in their younger days. He'd left Tahoe, though, and the spoils went to Tony.

Barry rubbed his sunburned nose and continued. “I did explain things to Ms. Sayer about why she was a weak point in security, and do you know what she asked? How come we didn't have a person guarding all of Tony's friends?”

Walker stopped typing and glanced up. “He's not planning on marrying all of his friends,” he said grimly.

“I told her that. How do you suppose she manages to pull off looking down her nose at you when she probably barely tops five foot four?” Barry mused.

Walker grinned. “Forces of nature can come in small packages.”

He didn't waste time telling Barry that Madeline was actually one of the warmest people he'd ever met in his life. The fact that they were discussing her like she was a royal bitch was as good an indication as any of how off balance she was with him being there. It was something, he supposed, knowing he was having an effect on her. He couldn't be too choosy about her manner of reacting to him when the woman he wanted like his next breath was engaged to another man.

He'd hardly expected her to run into his arms. Not Madeline Sayer.

Walker stared out three floor-to-ceiling arched windows onto the shimmering blue lake cradled in the cup of the High Sierra Mountains. Tony's enormous, secluded lodge was made of river rock, pine and glass, but the glass dominated, giving a person the impression that the outdoors and indoors blended seamlessly. Even though Walker had grown up in a comfortable, modest apartment in Kings Beach with his father, mother and brother, he wasn't unused to being inside the realms of grand Tahoe estates. He'd often accompanied his father for jobs and had been a regular visitor at Tony's father's lush Tahoe City villa.

Walker wasn't really seeing the stunning Tahoe scenery on the other side of the windows, though. An equally riveting—and even more powerful—image crowded into his mind's eye: a naked Madeline staring up at him as defiance, fury and hurt warred behind her huge, dark eyes.

You fucking liar,
she'd said.

Walker may be in Tony Hallas's house under false pretense, but he hadn't been lying when he told Madeline he had come back to Lake Tahoe for her. He could have started his security firm almost anywhere, but he'd chosen Tahoe at least in part because of his memories of her. The sharp pain of regret of having left her had grown into a dull ache over the years. When he'd seen the glossy surveillance photos of a Madeline all grown up, it'd been like a slug to the gut.

Tony had seemed so eager to change the subject when Walker asked him about a wedding date that Walker had wondered if one or both of them were dragging their feet about final commitment. If it was Madeline hesitating, she'd probably elope with Tony tonight just to spite Walker. Handcuffing her and having sex with her out in the changing rooms earlier hadn't exactly been the smoothest of moves on his part. When he'd volunteered to head up this assignment, he'd forgotten the full effect of Madeline.

The past eleven years had only made her more difficult to ignore.

Barry came over to the desk where he worked. “I'll take over here. You might as well watch out for Ms. Friendly. Tony told me to ask you to have dinner with them. They're waiting for you on the terrace.”

Tony stood and shook his hand a few minutes later when Walker stepped outside to join the others. The particular terrace where they'd gathered was another example of architecture mimicking nature. The floor and surround consisted of the type of huge, smooth granite boulders found all over the Tahoe area. They'd been artfully arranged not to distract from the main attraction, the cerulean blue alpine lake. Natural pine outdoor furniture echoed the surrounding forest.

“What do you think, Walk? Can you make this place into a Camp David?” Tony asked.

“That might take a little more than twelve hours, but we'll get you in good shape quick enough. The perimeter of the lake is going to take some doing to seal, but I have the equipment I'll need arriving tonight. I was just running some diagnostics on your system.”

Tony gave a mock frown. “I'm sorry I asked. Enough about work. I don't come to Tahoe to talk shop.” Walker's gaze flickered to the right and landed on Madeline reclining in a lounge chair, looking like a vision in a white halter dress that set off her tan.