A WILDer Kind of Love (30 page)

“You think Newport knows the difference?”

“Or cares?” Devyn added.

That flipped open another page of Franz’s book. “We’re already covered in Hawaii,” he rushed on. “Luckily, Shay and Zoe are still there on honeymoon. They’ve been transported to the cottages on the Barking Sands Missile Base. Nobody’s getting on that base without stripping to their skivvies and handing over five official forms of ID.”

Dan nodded, approving the move. “Is there a chance Newport may still want Shay more alive than dead, though? And would he try to use Tait as bait for that?”

One more page peeled back across Franz’s face. “That’s why Tait, Kellan, and Lani are staying in the next cottage over. Lani’s little brother, Leo, is with them.”

He punctuated it by fully locking his gaze with Dan’s—baring the full extent of his dread. The move reeled Dan through his third shock of the night. Fate had gotten in the first smack with Devyn appearing on his front doorstep, followed by her fist in his wall. Now, the exposure to this side of John Franzen he’d never seen. During the entire history of their friendship, the tough soldier had never allowed his composure to unravel so much.

“These men are my
ohana
, Colton,” Franz told him. “My family. If even one of them or their loved ones are taken down by Newport’s fucked-up rampage, the man will not live to see another sunrise—and I’ll gladly tell the world in a court of law, including President Craig Nichols, that I was the one who ridded it of that sonofabitch.”

Another thick pause weighted the room. This time, Menken didn’t attempt to calm the Samoan. The only person with those kinds of guts was, not surprisingly, Devyn. “Okay, big guy.” She stroked his shoulder, her hand looking tiny on his bicep. “We’re on a good roll here. Stay focused. One more safe house to secure, then you can go out and track some bad guy motherfuckers.” She shook her head and pouted. “
Dammit
.” Added a pitiful whine. “I wanna go too,
mauna
man.”

“
No
.”

Dan commanded it in unison with Franzen. He was about to embellish it with a rant about how playing roulette with safety got half of one’s face burned off, but that was when all his thoughts of fire were totally doused—

By the glacier of horror that had taken the place of his chest.

Shit.
Shit.

The last safe house would be Vegas. Because Devyn would be going in it.

Sure enough, Menken looked up from a smart pad he’d opened, declaring, “We’ve got a furnished place ready to go not too far from here, tucked into a gated community. Nice view of the lake and everything.”

“Sounds charming,” Devyn groused. “I can toodle around the water in my cute little paddleboat, getting blitzed on margaritas—or you can just send me to hell. Same diff.”

Dan jolted to his feet. Paced all the way to the kitchen and back again. Then again. He had no idea what else to do with the terror now gripping
his
soul—the crazy what-ifs that bombarded him from all angles, shattering the glacier into freezing shards that tumbled through every inch of his body, every drop of his blood.

You want to talk about hell, baby sister?

Hell was the certainty that Newport likely knew, with crystal clarity, what Tess had come to mean to him in the last year—and that if he’d been followed by any of the bastard’s minions over the last week, especially to Catacomb, it wouldn’t be an outrageous leap to assume they’d taken their relationship to new levels.

Hell was the certainty that if Newport even suspected Tess was Dan’s sexual submissive, he’d take her to his own dungeon—where safe, sane, and consensual would be merely fancy words from a dictionary.

“Hey! King shit!”

Devyn’s shout jerked him around.

“What?” he snapped.

“I think that’s my line,” she rebutted. “Well,
our
line.” She spread her hands. “What the hell? What’re you doing?”

He took a second to breathe. To evaluate the accuracy of the shit storm that had just plummeted over his logic—and still led to the only course of action, disgusting as it was, that he could take because of it.

Fuck.

He scraped a hand through his hair. When he lifted his head back up, he arrowed his stare straight at Tess.

“You have to go with her,” he directed.

Tess’s gaze widened. “What? Who?
Me
? Where?”

“To the safe house.” He didn’t falter any syllable. “With Devyn. You have to go with her, Tess. It’s not negotiable.”

She gawked like he’d just grown webbed feet and had quaked it at her. “You’re smoking crack, Colton. If you send me, you’ll have to send half the office, too. We’re all just your work friends. Trained CIA work friends who work in a damn secure building, at that.”

“Dammit.”

“Dammit what?” Her head slid back as if on a rail, spearing him with a full
what-the-hell
, as he started crossing the room toward her.

“You’re going to make me do this the hard way, aren’t you?”

“The hard way…
what
?” But when he didn’t deter his gaze from her beautiful face for a second, her demeanor started to crack. She blinked hard, and he knew—
knew
—that for a moment, she didn’t just see him. She felt him. She felt
them
. All the connection and perfection and power of what they’d shared in the middle of the desert, in the darkness of that dungeon, was just as real and brilliant here, as he knew it would be—as she shook her head against it, refusing to believe. Dan didn’t blame her. Looking at the sun was hard enough, but being forced to hop in a space shuttle then land on it?

Death was death, no matter how good the fire felt getting there.

When he was finally close enough, he lifted his hands to her shoulders but didn’t grab them. Instead, with hands turned over, he trailed his knuckles along both those sweet curves, hoping she felt his longing, even now, to kiss them, shield them, hold them—

To protect her with his own damn life, if that was what this all came to.

“You’re going to the safe house with my sister.”

“No, I’m not.”

“
Yes
…you are. I’m not going to let that asshole
or
his dipshits near you, ruby.”

A tremble ran the length of her body. An answering energy vibrated through him. Just like that, it all returned…the threads, so spectral yet so strong, that bound their very chemistries. Undeniable. Unbreakable.

Tess jolted her stare up at him, stabbing daggers of jade confusion through dark ginger lashes, sharpening as he shifted even closer.
Help
, he pleaded to heaven.
Help me to help
her
understand.
If at least her senses acknowledged the truth of who he was, she’d comply. She’d be safe, and so would his secret.

Not happening.

The next second, she made her chin follow her gaze. It jutted up as she huffed again at him. “Dammit, Dan. They’re not going to come anywhere near me. Honestly, I don’t think there’s any need to—”

Desperate times. Desperate measures.

He flipped his hands over. Dug his fingers into the flesh of her arms and his stare into the deepest corners of hers. “We don’t have time,” he growled. “And you will
not
argue with me about this anymore. You’re going to that house, little rose, and that’s a goddamn order.”

‡

“T
ess.”

She ignored him, tugging the blanket tighter around her shoulders. She’d found it in the window seat of the bedroom she’d claimed at the Summerlin safe house then instantly wrapped herself in it, craving the symbolic refuge as much as the real.

Even so, she wished the thing would become a full invisibility cloak. That would mean she couldn’t enjoy the view of the lake—Caspar had been right; it was awesome—not that she saw it, anyway. She was numb. Sealed off. Barriers up. Nothing in, nothing out. She couldn’t drool over her luxurious surroundings or even laugh at the family of ducks on the patio below, shaking their backsides after a midnight dip in the water. She certainly couldn’t risk a speck of fear for everyone, even herself, who had targets on their backs courtesy of that bastard, Kirk Newport.

Letting any of it in meant letting
all
of it in. That meant remembering the blast from two hours ago that had dropped her to her knees in the middle of Dan’s living room.
Warp core breached, Captain.
She’d proved that by shivering through the most agonizing minute of her life, before letting Devyn yank her up and help her out the door.

Between there and here, everything had turned into a blur. It was for the best. Even slivers of memory made her ball up, knees to chest, checking the shields in her soul for full coverage.

Thing was, she wasn’t sure they all still worked. The gears of her emotional defenses were rusty,
too
rusty, not having to be activated since the day after her eighteenth birthday, when she’d hauled the last of her moving boxes from home.

No. Not home. Just Mother and Father’s house. That place had never been home.

A home was a place for feeling wanted. Accepted. Safe.

She’d found home after that—at least parts of it, here and there. At college, where classmates and professors helped her grow and flourish, then at the Agency, where the days were challenging and the fulfillment was high, finally giving her the feeling that she’d gotten something right in her life.

Then there’d been Dan.

Meeting Dan. Knowing Dan. Trusting Dan.

Home.
He’d been home. Or at least the closest she’d ever come to knowing it in her life.

Had all of that been a lie, too?

Who the hell was he? Who was the man she’d entrusted with so many deep secrets? With whom she’d shared so many laughs—and tears? Who’d put up with her dorky princess cartoons, brought her cheesy balloons on her birthday, always let her have the chunkiest pieces of the guacamole, even the last spoonful on ice cream cheat night?

Who’d told her he could never dominate her—then went ahead and did it as another person. Then did it
again
—and put the cherry on that shit-fun sundae by telling her they could never meet like that again.

Why?

What the hell was wrong with
her
that he had to become a different person to be intimate with her? What was wrong with Tess but right about Odette? Was it the whole coworker thing—though technically, right now, they weren’t even that? And what had she gotten so wrong about submitting to him that he’d called it all off after their second amazing night?

Amazing for
you,
maybe
…

Maybe it really was just her. Maybe all of this had just been written in the stars since the day she was born, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to change it. She’d always be the middle one. The disposable one. Getting it all right still wasn’t good enough, even for the lover who’d made her feel, at least for a week, that “good” was just the beginning of what she could accomplish.

Maybe it was pointless to even continue trying.

“
Tess
.”

“Go away, Daniel.”

“No.”

Despite the order, he maintained his position in the doorway. Tess didn’t move. With her head turned, she was able to focus on every detail of his voice, all the things even the voice disk couldn’t cloak. Why hadn’t she picked up on it before? The core of baritone command. The subtle Atlanta accent. The husky word endings that wrapped their way around every nerve ending in her body, even now.

“I can’t do this, Dan.”

“I can’t leave until you do.”

“I’m reeling.”

“I know.”

The sky flashed over the lake. A thunderstorm was approaching, even as the moon snuck from between the clouds to drench the landscape in silver. She winced, almost shutting it all out, feeling as if she peered into a mirror instead of a window—if mirrors could reflect the depths of souls, too. Hers was an equal palette of darkness, fighting the bursts of memory that kept trying to take over, painfully hot and blinding. When they weren’t, the electricity lingered on every particle of the air, razing her composure, singeing her nerves—all because he still stood there.

Dammit.

Even now, he could do this to her. Make her feel just like the lake outside: churning, waiting—needing the strike of his lightning to feel completely alive.

But what was lightning when it was a lie?

Just a cloud. Filled with ice. With nowhere to go.

“Tess.”

“
No
. Daniel, please—just go away!”

Of course, he took two stomps into the room. Looked like he wanted to swear but didn’t. Slammed out a breath through his nose. “Look…I—” An inhale now, sharp and angry. “I had no idea you’d be at Catacomb that night.”

She huffed. “No shit.”

“I—”

“Was just there with your handy mask and voice disguise, figuring you’d check out what was up in submissive tail for the night? Good on you, Dark Knight.”

She grabbed her chance to lob an over-the-shoulder glare, but instantly regretted it. Damn. He was painfully beautiful to take in. His gaze pierced her like sunlight through blue glass. His body, clad now in mission gear consisting of a black skintight T-shirt and cargo pants, was perfect as a life-size GI Joe. Even with anguish possessing every inch of him, he was flawless.