Blamed (17 page)

“And...and why do I deserve it?” she asked breathlessly, the muscles of her legs and belly flexing in the periphery of his vision.

He glanced up to see her biting her lip again, cheeks flushed, dark hair tangled around her shoulders with a few strands clinging damply to her temples, thanks to the steam from the filling bath. Her breasts—perfect handfuls topped with cinnamon-drop nipples—rose and fell with each agitated breath. “Because I promised I’d reward you for your patience, and I will never break a promise to you, Beth. Never.” Unable to wait any longer, he hooked his arms under her trembling thighs, yanked her to the very edge of the counter, and buried his face in paradise.

She didn’t bother with a delicate whimper or feminine moan. No, Beth gave a keening cry, right out of the gate, the fingers of one hand clenching in his hair while the other hand slapped against the mirror. “Oh, God. Oh, God, why didn’t you get around to doing this
sooner?
” Her lower body writhed sinuously as she fought to give him greater access.

Part of him wanted to chuckle at her bluntness, but he was too busy getting his first taste of her, and she was so. Damn.
Real.
Slippery and sweet and hot and pink, coating his tongue as he licked her from bottom to top, swirling around her hard little clitoris before sliding down again to penetrate her.

He’d had his fingers in her before, and his cock, but this moment was one he had hungered for. Offering his woman a never-before-experienced pleasure, proving how well he could take care of her needs every goddamn day, if only she would let him. She might not require his muscle or his gun, but he could make her need this. His mouth. Him.

Moving swiftly, he replaced his tongue with his fingers, thrusting two deep into her clenching core as he shifted to suck her clit between his lips. She bucked against him, both hands in his hair now, and groaned, low and husky. “Jesus, Vick. Oh, fuck, you should see what you look like on your knees, with your mouth on me.”

He rocked back slightly on his heels to look up at her, lids heavy as he licked his lips, not letting a drop of her arousal go to waste. “What do I look like, baby?” Leaning over, he nipped her inner thigh before soothing the sting with his tongue.

A tremor rolled through her as her fingers loosened their grip to stroke over his scalp, making his cock actually
hurt
, he was so hard for her. Eyes gleaming like starlight, she shot him a smug smile. “You look like a fucking god.”

Vick certainly felt like one. With a grin to match hers, he curled the fingers inside her to rub against the magic ridge of sensitive flesh that would send her hurtling into orgasm.

A shudder racked her as she whimpered, but as he watched her expressive face, her eyes flicked over to the tub. Just then, he registered the sloshing noises indicating an imminent overflow—”Shit.” His hands left her body without finesse, lunging for the knobs to shut off the flow in the nick of time. Cursing again, he opened the drain to lower the water level, stopping it after several torturous seconds where he listened to Beth’s ragged breathing from across the room, her pumping lungs a match to his own.

With a grunt, he stood, slowly turning to face her, blood thundering in his ears. His brows lowered when he saw she cupped her mound in one hand, slender fingers petting her own wetness as she watched him, gaze dipping to his erection. The heat of her stare set his nerve endings on fire. “You’re touching yourself.”

Her fingers stilled momentarily before resuming their sensuous stroking. “Yes.”

As much as he wanted to kneel in front of her and lick at the slick fingers intimately shielding her, his control had begun to crack. He was too greedy over her, too relieved at having her for a second time to delay getting inside her any longer. Stalking toward her, he fisted the base of his throbbing cock. “Move to your clit and keep touching.” When she rushed to obey, he stepped between her thighs and rubbed the head of his erection through her folds before notching it at her entrance.

He cupped her chin in his free hand, urging her to look up at him. Her eyes glowed, warm and excited and uninhibited as they met his. Bending to drag his lips over hers in a brief brand of a kiss, he murmured, “It’s so good, baby. You and me. It’s so damn good.” A smooth thrust of his hips, and he was inside her.

His forehead dropped to rest on hers as they moaned. Grabbing her hips in both hands, he rocked forward until they were fully joined. His head buzzed, his heartbeat falling to center in his groin, and he watched the space between them as her fingers began to move once again over her sex. “That’s right,” he whispered, his voice ragged and harsh, nearly unrecognizable. “Make yourself come while I’m in you. I’ll wait.”

While her hand rubbed faster, and harder, her other arm lifted to loop around his neck. “Aren’t you...going to...kiss me?” Her core clamped around him as her orgasm flitted closer.

Christ, she was going to kill him. Shaking his head, he continued to watch her get herself off, his hold on her hips unyielding as he pumped his length in and out, one needy inch at a time. “You want a kiss?” She nodded against him, gasping. He growled, his thrusts intensifying as his control slipped further. “Then frig your hot little clit until you come for me, and think of how I’m going to fill you up thirty seconds after you do.”

“You’re such...such a bully.” But she worked her hips over him as best she could from her perch on the counter, and he lifted his head to watch a bead of sweat trickle down between her quivering breasts. Her fingertips flew, making him pant at the sight of her confident movements.

Unable to stay still, he licked up the drop of sweat, savoring the salt of her heated skin. “You love it.”

Her head fell back against the mirror with a heartfelt groan. “God, I do. I love it. I love...”

You.
I
love you.
He heard it, and, fuck, he wished she’d said it, but the silent knowledge broke through the last walls of his control, and he couldn’t wait for her to finish. Knocking her hand aside, he took over the task of stroking her clitoris as he drove his cock into her. Hard. “Give me your mouth,” he demanded, the tingling at the base of his spine telling him exactly how much time he didn’t have before he died in her.

Clutching at his shoulders with both hands, she kissed him as she came, a rhythmic clench around his length that milked his release from him with shocking ease. He swallowed her cries, fed her his own, and wrapped his arms tightly around her slender torso while he tried to piece his world back together.

I
love you
, he thought fiercely.
I
love you to the point of madness
,
and beyond.

Instead of telling her, he buried his face in her neck and bit the inside of his lip until he bled.

Chapter Fourteen

Five kilometers southwest of Pančevo, Serbia
Seven years earlier

There she is.

He’d expected her, of course. Wherever the bad guys lurked, young Elisabeth Faraday had a tendency to shine her light—though, usually, her light was the little red dot attached to the scope of her sniper rifle. A trifling detail, if you asked him.

He tugged the knit skullcap lower over his brow before blowing into his cupped hands in a vain attempt to warm his chilled fingers. Poor-man’s gloves, chopped at the knuckles to bare his fingertips to the harsh winter wind, were a necessary part of his cover disguise, but the cold played hell on his joints.

Thirty years old, and Vick was already starting to feel ancient. Six years in the military, two of which had been spent moonlighting as a wet-behind-the-ears SIS recruit, followed by six more up to his armpits in blood and secrets. His fluencies in Farsi and Arabic, along with a handful of other languages, had put him on a fast-track trajectory within MI6, straight into Section T-16.

Had he known the sort of work he would be undertaking when he first joined the service, would he have been so eager?

Again, she snared his gaze in a narrow alley across the road, leaning against the brick wall of the village grocery. A black cap covered her ears, dark brown hair haphazardly spilling over her shoulder. Strands caught in the wind, lifting away from the vulnerable curve of her throat, and he watched as Beth shivered before zipping the shapeless utility coat all the way to her chin, the lamb’s-wool lining no doubt quickly warming her skin.

Yes.
Yes, he’d have been eager to sign his name on the dotted line, consigning his soul to the devil for queen and country...but only if it meant Beth Faraday was always just across the road from him.

He shouldn’t approach her. Management had embedded him here nearly three weeks ago, to monitor the traffic of the main thoroughfare into Pančevo and intercede with a tactical team when the time came. The oil refinery there—barely recovered from the NATO bombings—was believed to be a target of militant Croatian forces.

The goal of these terrorists didn’t matter; the goals of terrorists never mattered, because they were always the same. There was a reason why Vick never need worry about getting laid off.

The growing unrest in the province of Vojvodina had caught the attention of too many first-world powers, it seemed, or Beth wouldn’t be here. Which was why, unfortunately, he
had
to approach her.

His heart thumped in his chest.

He would never forget the first time he’d seen her, before he had known who, and what, she was. A skinny teen with kewpie-doll lips and a witch’s eyes, they had, by complete and utter chance, stood in line together at l’Atelier des Cinq Sens in Brussels. She’d been anxious, shifting nervously in place, and her shoulder had bumped his. Her mumbled apology in strongly accented French—he would soon learn she didn’t possess his affinity for foreign languages—had given him the opening he’d needed to introduce himself as Canadian journalist James Horner.

It had been his first undercover mission for T-16. He should never have offered her the glimpse at his wallet and passport, never confirmed his cover identity. He certainly should have never bought her an espresso, or the mint-crème truffle she’d been drooling over. Above all, he should never have sat with her at a low-slung table for two and facilitated her attempts at flirting.

She had been too adorable to resist. And too young to do anything other than discuss their shared love of hockey—her appreciation for the sport genuine, his manufactured for the sake of his cover. Everything about her had been enthusiastically innocent, yet Vick had stared into those mutable hazel eyes of gold and gray and seen knowledge that seemed...out of place. It wasn’t sexual, wasn’t violent. Just shadows where there should only have been sunshine. By the time they had parted ways on the sidewalk an hour later, something had loosened inside his chest, a tightness he’d barely been aware of but had carried with him since MI6 first approached him.

Later that evening, Vick had used James Horner’s press pass to gain access to a private conference room adjoining the executive suite at the hotel of a certain diplomat linked to mass genocide in his home country. After silently breaking into the executive suite, he’d moved toward the balcony where the mark was enjoying a cigarette—just in time to watch the back of the diplomat’s skull disappear in a mess of blood and bone.

Retreating as quickly as he’d arrived, Vick had hidden in the conference room as all hell broke loose. But not before lifting his monocular to catch a glimpse of hockey-loving Beth hurriedly packing away an M96 sniper rifle on the rooftop across the way, her lively face a blank mask.

That moment had been the start of his fascination. What man could resist the mystery of a teenage assassin? Though she’d only given him her first name—smart girl—Vick had the intelligence resources of an entire nation at his disposal, and, after making his report to Management about who, exactly, had offed the diplomat, a full-scale investigation was launched against Beth.

It had taken almost a year to locate her by satellite imagery, deep in the heart of the Faraday Industries compound outside Boston, Massachusetts. Tracking her movements was merely the tip of the iceberg when it came to Vick’s obsession, his file on her growing month by month as various MI6 agents made peripheral contact with her in the field. A pattern emerged: Where evil hid—the kind of evil that threatened communities, countries, entire races—Beth and company would seek, at the behest of the United States government. It was the same work T-16, the section charged with global terror prevention, aimed to accomplish, but without the days and weeks and months of planning.

One shot from Beth’s rifle, and the threat was gone. It was up to the people left behind and the leaders of the free world to deal with the aftermath.

Now, four years after their first meeting, Vick didn’t have to question why Beth Faraday was in Serbia. She’d been sent for the same reason he had; their methods of operation simply differed.

Seeing her filled him with a strange glee, as if her presence solidified his reason for working as he did. Building the investigation into her had given him purpose when he’d still struggled with his transition into T-16 and life as a spy, realizing he would be required to lie to every single person he knew, including his fellow agents. Every time he saw her, either from a distance or up close and personal, he felt...solidified, the tumblers clicking into place inside him and locking tight.

By that same token, Beth’s presence relaxed the constant tension he carried. They’d only met twice—as in, introductions had been exchanged. First in Belgium, then not quite eighteen months ago in Indonesia, when he’d told her his name was Felix Yates. He had seen her bright gaze dip to the gap between his front teeth, and instead of self-consciousness over the flaw—his usual internal response—he’d experienced satisfaction. Here was a facet of him that would always tell the truth, even when his words were lies. He’d known the moment she recognized him though his hair was a lighter shade of brown than before and his eyes a duller blue behind the thick lenses of his fake spectacles.

His suspicions had been confirmed during that meeting: The girl from l’Atelier des Cinq Sens had been as real as the markswoman on the roof opposite the diplomat’s hotel. Neither was an act, and therefore both were who he wanted to know. Needed to know, if he were being honest—she was an itch beneath his skin, a tic in his eye, a prodding at the back of his mind. Beth Faraday was his white whale.

He wondered if she’d laugh at the comparison. Probably not—he couldn’t imagine any female of his acquaintance enjoying being likened to a two-ton sea mammal. And knowing this particular young woman’s love of guns, any commentary from him would likely result in bloodshed. His, specifically.

A dense fog hanging low over the packed-earth road muted the early morning light. No pavement for this village, which had witnessed the mass execution of over a thousand Jewish souls during the Second World War. Unlike much of the province, this secluded corner of Vojvodina had refused to join the technological revolution of the late twentieth century into the dawn of the twenty-first and remained a throwback to a time so horrific the world had nearly stood still. The shops along the main road were quaintly proportioned and constructed of rugged brick, and in any other part of Europe would possess enough charm to drive tourists to it in droves.

Not in Serbia, however. Not for this village, housing as it did a Croatian inciter who’d honed his craft in Herzegovina during the Bosnian War in the nineties. A ringleader who had in recent months decided he wanted sole control of the oil in this region—all of it—Eduard Cesarec would prefer to take what he wanted by force, because he got off on violence, appearing to have a distinct liking for blowing things up. Cars, buildings, people, it didn’t matter to this particular villain.

So yes, Vick knew
exactly
who Beth’s target was. Which meant he had a choice to either stand in her way or step aside.

Flexing his chilled fingers, he popped the collar on his ragged wool coat, the coarse nap rough against his scruff-covered jaw. The forecast predicted snow starting around noon, and he suspected Beth had plans to be on a jet bound for home long before then, with Cesarec yet another name on her list of completed jobs.

It didn’t sit right with him—not because he judged how she made her living. Who was Vick to judge, when they performed the same work, only for different employers? No, it was because now, in every glimpse he caught of her, whether by image capture or in person, there were new shadows in her eyes. She smiled, she laughed, she teased and flirted, but there was a weight pulling at her liveliness—whether she recognized it or not—and Vick wanted to ease the weight. It was an undeniable protectiveness for the teenage girl, morphing into a possessiveness born of his obsession with solving the mystery of Beth.

No more time to waste. He neared, close enough to glimpse a flash of pink from between her lips, hear a snapping pop. Bubble gum. Jesus, she was the most tempting, confusing mix of soft innocence and sharp intelligence, and he finally forced himself to admit what he’d subconsciously recognized from their very first encounter.

He wanted her. He wanted her so badly he fucking ached with it. His hands, his chest, his groin, all of it a pins-and-needles tightness calling to painfully unmet need. Part of him couldn’t help but see this desire as tawdry. She was a decade younger than him, already too knowledgeable about the sad state of the modern world. Fuck, she killed people for a living—he’d seen it with his own eyes, and there existed numerous satellite images of her hard at work, all across the globe. The absolute last thing she needed was an older man sniffing after her, especially in a situation where she was, technically, vulnerable.

If he made a pass at her, she might read it as blackmail. Sleep with him or he’d out her. But it was too late for that, because she was already a known entity in their business and readily on file in international databases. Vick had unintentionally seen to that.

Elisabeth Laïla Faraday
,
wet-work assassin
,
weapon of choice the sniper rifle;
skilled with any make and model
,
but with a distinct preference for the Faraday bolt-action
.50 caliber with the company’s patented telescopic-sight technology.

First noted hit in Brussels—as reported by agent Raleigh Vick to his superiors in the Secret Intelligence Service—with five other confirmed assassinations of ranking foreign nationals in the past four years.

Evidence suggesting her involvement in over two dozen tactical missions performed by Faraday Industries personnel
,
contracted by U.S.
government;
most believed to be rescues or extractions.

Enrolled in university courses;
undergraduate degree track in Art
&
Art History.

No citations pertaining to criminal or violent behavior outside of various assignments.

No known aliases.

No reported interpersonal relationships.

Another flash of pink, another pop of her gum, and Vick was suddenly in front of her in the alley, staring directly into the muzzle of her handgun. He’d assumed—wrongly—she had been unaware of his approach, given her unconcerned posture and seeming inattention to her surroundings.

Vick should know better than to assume anything about Beth by now. He flashed her a quick grin, revealing the gap between his front teeth, but kept his gloved hands in his pockets. “No harm,” he told her, adopting the thick regional accent he’d been using since arriving in the village three weeks ago. “No harm.”

Her gaze once again dipped to his mouth, and she immediately relaxed, pocketing her weapon. “You don’t sound like a Felix or a James this time,” she said with a beatific smile.

Oh, Lord, she was happy to see him. Genuinely, unabashedly happy. The truth of her emotions, written large across a face he’d stared at for hours on his computer screen, seized his heart in a crushing grip and yanked. His chest might hurt to look at her, but his body warmed from throat to belly, the same as when he took a first sip of hot tea on a cold morning. “Dmitri.”

She bit her bottom lip, capturing the pink plumpness he wanted to nibble on himself between perfect white teeth. “Yes, I suppose that’s exactly who you sound like. Dmitri...what?”

Idiot girl, looking at him as she did, as though she were delighted by him and his false names. He shouldn’t indulge her.
And yet...
“Dmitri Kovak.” Then, daring everything and acting on instinct, he reached out to trace a bare finger down her cold cheek and spoke roughly in Serbian. “
Lepa devojka.
” Beautiful girl.

It didn’t matter that she likely wouldn’t understand him; she read his tone just fine. Stepping away from the wall and toward him, she lifted her chin. “You shouldn’t talk to me like that.” Her smile slipped away. “Every time I see you, my insides turn melty.”