Unchained (12 page)

Finn paused. A hint of a warning was in her voice. Or maybe it was regret. He wasn’t sure, so he pressed further.

“Why not? It’s dollar beer night and the whole Justice crew will be there.”

Reacting as if he’d just informed her all the other reindeer didn’t want to play, she got super snippy with her way-too-fast reply.

“I do not socialize, Mr. O’Brien.” She started to add something then thought better of it and snapped her mouth shut.

Well, fuck. Guess she told him. Shame for her, he knew what bullshit smelled like.

“Shit, lady, relax. I wasn’t asking you on a date. It was just a polite question. Everyone else is going. Even that limp fuck stick,” he said with a derogatory hand gesture out the door to where Jonny remained engaged in a vehicle repair. “Whatsamatter with showing some Justice solidarity and spending a pleasant evening with your co-workers?”

He managed to ask the reasonable question with a minimum of snark, so he didn’t expect her frigid reaction.

“Get out, Beantown. Go find someone else to bother.”

And with that, she sat down heavily in a big executive chair and started furiously rearranging the papers on her desk.

Knowing a dismissal when it came at him, Finn shrugged off her unreasonable behavior and got the fuck out of there before she lit him on fire.

An hour later, Remy’s head was thumping like a bass drum. Try as she might, getting that fucking idiot Finn O’Brien out of her thoughts was harder than it should be. Something about the guy rubbed her raw and drew her in at the same time. And if there was one thing she didn’t do, it was get drawn in.

She hadn’t been facetious about not socializing. Ever. Her personal hard limit was anything that happened away from work.

Though still the new guy on the block, she got along well with all of the Justice principals and had no problem establishing a respectful rapport with the people answering to her.

Justice.
Hmph.
These guys were the real deal. Coming here and taking this dream of a job was a stroke of luck she always assumed was out of her reach. Other people got lucky. But not her.

Headhunted and hired by the legendary Cameron Justice, Remy had been so overwhelmed by who he was that she’d been a mindless twit during their initial meeting.

Oh, she knew all about the Waldo magnet. High-powered people in interesting places whispered about the guy’s unnatural abilities. Even after he left the military, tales of his exploits still spread by word of mouth.

She knew this because Remy had flown Apache helicopters for the Army. Sometimes in war zones where the guys told bigger-than-life stories. That was when she first heard about the Justice brothers.

But just like the brothers, her service days were behind her. Only in Remy’s case, what she hoped would be a career in the military ended with bitterness, betrayal, and anger.

But whatever. Life goes on. Scenery changes. People come and go. She was a free agent in every way that mattered, and as thirty approached, she had finally come to a personal resting place where the past was the past, and she stopped questioning every little thing or what her place was in the world.

Picking up a business card from the holder on her desk, she ran her fingers over the raised lettering.

Remington Bisset

Director

Logistics and Transportation

Next to her name and title was the Justice Agency logo. She felt drawn to the simple graphic the first time she saw it. Three flames—obviously the brothers—atop two semi-circles. It had a phoenix quality to it—at least that was her interpretation.

Remy identified with the phoenix metaphor on a cellular level. She understood how it felt for fire to destroy only to rise from the flames and fly again. There was a time when she feared fire and its destructive nature. Now? Now, she was the inferno.

Pushing away from the desk, her chair rolled backward a few feet, and she spun around to peer out the window. Tossing the card onto a pile of papers, she reined in her thoughts and stopped them dead. Some things weren’t worth thinking about. Not if she wanted to stay one step ahead of the ghosts and skeletons from her closet of personal horrors.

She didn’t have time for extraneous shit. Not when this job was still hers to lose. Because the main guy, the one who’d been a Major. Him. He was away. Honeymoon.

Major Alexander Valleja-Marquez. Another legend. Someone she knew held her ultimate fate in his hands. The guy whose absence seemed to make everyone around here a basket case. Until he came back and personally vetted her, she didn’t exactly feel secure.

Taking over from a longtime associate of the Justice Agency who was forced from the job by family issues, Remy was very aware that her every move was being scrutinized.

In charge of anything that moved—for the occupants of the impressive Villa de Valleja-Marquez and the newly constructed agency compound—she had her hands full. And not just with a fleet of vehicles so diverse it boggled the mind. Nope. She was also charged with keeping a stable running and liaising with Alex’s personal pilot.

Jesus. Keeping it straight in her mind was no easy task. Multiple cars, trucks, a limousine, a dozen electric carts, a couple of Segways, and two dozen ATVs. Nine horses, a bunch of pogo sticks, a locker full of in-line skates, three elaborate buggies, and a constantly evolving configuration of dirt bikes, Harleys, and three-wheel motorcycles. And then there was an ever-changing array of bicycles, scooters, and even a few skateboards with the Justice logo.

Best part? She handled all of it. Hell. She even had a shot at Draegyn St. John’s Lamborghini. Now, that had been a shit-ton of fun. He’d asked her to tinker with something—Remy knew damn well the request was a test of some sort. But she went through the motions; even test-drove it before declaring the vehicle in tiptop shape. That was when she’d taken the red sports car on a rip-snorting tear outside the compound. The road was sparsely traveled, so she had a long stretch of highway to let loose on.

Yeah. That’d been all kinds of fun.

But the fake car issue was a reminder of the vetting. An even better reason than her personal ones for not socializing. Dancing on the bar with her boobs hanging out wasn’t what she wanted to be known for.

As if that’d ever happen
, she thought with a quiet snort.

Nope. Her party girl days were well behind her—if she’d ever really had some to begin with. Not even being a shit-kicking Army pilot with mad warrior skills had been enough to keep her safe. Evil found a way through the staunchest of defenses.

Finn O’Brien and his cocky swagger and that ‘
I’m too sexy for words’
smirk was barking up the wrong tree if he thought she was going to engage with his bullshit.

He wasn’t getting a thing out of her without unimpeachable permission.

Not a car.

Not a truck.

Not a scooter.

Not even a pair of roller skates.

And no way was she hanging out at Whiskey Pete’s, no matter what the occasion. She’d learned the hardest way a woman could that no one, she didn’t give a fuck who it was, could be trusted.

“C
OFFEE’S READY!”
A
NGIE
sing-songed as she wove in, out, and around the furniture and boxes crammed into the great room of Parker’s Sedona house. They were weeks from moving into their new home and far as she was concerned, it couldn’t happen fast enough. The packing and planning were fun. Sort of. But she’d had enough and just wanted to get the actual move over with and start their new life.

The life where they were a couple. Parker and Angelina, often referred to as the sexy lawyer and his Desert Angel. She’d waited a long time for this. Practically her whole life since that was how long she’d loved her older brother’s best friend.

A pair of strong arms snaked around her waist and scooped her backward until she collided with a large, muscular chest. Momentarily stunned as all the oxygen whooshed from her lungs, Angie squealed when she felt Parker dive in and maul her neck.

Laughing, she tried to squirm in his hold and turn around, but he held her firm. “Better put your glasses on, old man. The breakfast table is over there!”

He simply grunted, she supposed it was a laughing grunt, and continued to make a meal of her neck and shoulder.

Coming up for air, he chomped down on her earlobe and muttered, “Sexy smartass. My favorite flavor.”

The old man and the smartass. Angie sighed. Her life was next to perfect.

“Oh, cut it out, Counselor,” she simpered. A naughty wiggle of her butt against the front of his jeans was supposed to be for effect. Until he grabbed hold of her hips and forcefully ground against her
. Uh, hmmm
. Someone wasn’t fucking around this morning. Maybe she should have taken care of the good counselor’s morning wood before they left the bedroom.

Day late and a dollar and a half short.
Shit.

“Honey, I’m being serious. Stephanie could walk in at any second.”

Parker groaned, and his hold slackened. The realization they weren’t alone was slowly sinking in. They’d been screwing like oversexed bunnies for months—all in the privacy of his off-the-compound house. In fact, it wasn’t even a little bit unusual for Angie to greet Parker at the end of the day with drinks and her tits on full display. Her favorite greeting-him-at-the-door outfit was an indecent little skirt, one of those schoolgirl uniform get-ups that barely covered her ass, and nothing underneath.

Having Stephanie as a stayover guest certainly put a crimp in their debauched style.

Ugh
, he groaned. “You’re right, of course.” She felt the reluctance rolling off her virile lover in waves as he let her go and took a step back. “Don’t want her fiftieth to start off with an eyeful of you getting your freak on.”

“Me?” she squealed with outrage. Smacking him on the shoulder, he smirked at her and shrugged.

“Desert Angels like their sex wild. Off the hook. Unchained.”

God. Could his drawl be any hotter? Angie giggled. “Yeah, well be that as it may, I wasn’t the one roaring like a bull last night. The bathroom is tile, y’know. That sort of noise carries through the whole house.”

Parker grinned. One of those big, happy, shit-eating grins he did so well.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have seduced me in the shower.”

Making a deliberate pouty-scowl, she pushed some hair behind her ears and sniffed like an affronted nun. “If that was a seduction, sir, then we really need to talk.”

She knew her eyes sparkled with amusement when she saw the same mirrored in his.

“I believe being told to get my naked ass into the bathroom and ready to be thoroughly used for someone else’s pleasure in no way qualifies as seduction.”

“Depends on how you look at it.” He chuckled.

Angie laughed in his face. “Take the Dom cap off, Mr. Sullivan. I know you like to think you have a willing sex slave waiting on your dick and call”—she smirked—“but a girl has to do what a girl has to do when her man gets up there in years.”

His eyes flashed dangerously.

“Angelina Marquez. Dick and call? Where do you come up with this stuff? Are you angling for a spanking? ‘Cause let me tell you, baby girl, keep up those old man jokes and we’re gonna explore some real punishment. I’m beginning to suspect you’re not showing your master the proper respect.”