“My targets are the same people who’re after what we want.”
She ground her fingers into suddenly throbbing temples, wishing she hadn’t opened her mouth. “I know that.”
“Will it be a problem?”
“I don’t know.”
Needing distance from Rory’s sharp agitation, Damon stood up and closed the window. This was how he’d expected her to react when he’d confirmed her suspicions about al-Hazzezi’s death, although even now what he was picking up from her wasn’t so much fear as . . . confusion.
“It complicates things,” she repeated, her conflicted emotions battering his mental antennae.
Indeed.
He turned back to his master thief and found her fighting to suppress a shiver. A slight draft reminded him that she’d been out in the cold and was almost certainly chilled.
Reluctantly, he returned to the bed they had to share and gathered Rory into his arms. He couldn’t allow this development to adversely affect the mission.
But how to fix it, he had no idea.
Her perspective wasn’t something he could change with argument. He was an incubus, and his missions were nonnegotiable. Logically, she understood his objective, but apparently found the means abhorrent.
Would assassination by physical means have been more acceptable?
Damon dismissed the stray thought with a shake of his head. He was still shocked to awaken to her turmoil, especially just after killing ibn Turki.
Immediate and unquestioning acceptance had probably been too much to ask for, even of someone who stole for a living, but after several days together he’d dropped his guard. Rory’s reaction now hurt worse than he’d expected it to—and not just because of her emotions.
Damning himself for a fool, he rubbed her back, unable to resist touching her in the guise of helping her warm up. Despite the agitation she radiated, he couldn’t stay away, needed to do something to help her.
Now shivering in earnest, Rory held herself stiffly, not accepting his attentions, but not rejecting them, either. Her stance gave Damon hope that with time she’d resolve her dilemma in his favor.
Decision made, he addressed the one problem he could solve. “Let’s get you out of those.” Her jumpsuit couldn’t be that warm. He worked the stiff zipper down, peeling the tough material off her shoulders and rubbing down the skin he bared with an extra blanket.
Once he had her dry, he bundled her into bed and lay down beside her, struggling to ignore the faint scent of healthy, feminine sweat. Despite the growing pain behind his eyes, his cock responded to her proximity, thickening against his hip with every breath she took.
Rory pressed tentative fingers on his shoulder. “You’re not . . . ?”
Resigning himself to a long night, Damon put his arm around her shoulders and drew her to his side, away from the edge. After all, the bed wasn’t that big. She’d fall off if she wasn’t tucked against him.
He held his breath when she gingerly hitched her leg over his, but luckily she didn’t raise it high enough to brush his burgeoning hard-on. “If I took you now, it’d be a grudge fuck. You don’t want that.”
His master thief didn’t say anything after that, though the fist clenched at his waist spasmed.
Damon took her silence for agreement and counted the seconds and minutes until she fell asleep, while his body burned from her softness.
Rory stared at the image on her cell phone’s screen, frustrated by the lack of detail for the south section. Until she had that information, she couldn’t plan her approach to the fortress Karadzic had made of his base of operations. And she couldn’t risk going in blind. That would be suicide, something her family wouldn’t appreciate.
The low-powered relays she’d planted carried the signal from Karadzic’s system far enough that she could tap it from the relative safety of their room in the hostel. Thanks to Lucas, she had the video feed from the security cameras on her cell phone.
Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth. She’d cracked the security system, and could watch what was going on inside, could slide in anything she wanted, but the building’s physical and human defenses were something else altogether. She glared at the telltale gaps in her list. It would take a major diversion to get the data she needed.
Without willing, her gaze flicked to the closed door of silvery oak behind which came intermittent sounds of splashing. What if . . . ?
Shaking her head, Rory dismissed the notion and the image of her Adonis standing nude under the paltry flow of water afforded by the shower that automatically flashed before her mind’s eye.
Out of the question.
For the past days, their dealings had been strained, ever since she’d voiced her compunction toward his hits. He’d tried hard to act as though nothing had changed between them, but it had. If nothing had changed, her body wouldn’t be aching with emptiness, the way it had been since she’d stupidly opened her mouth and inserted foot.
Sure, if she insisted, he’d probably perform, rise to the occasion as the case may be. But that wasn’t what she wanted, not unwilling performance. A grudge fuck, as he’d called it, would taint everything that had gone before.
Her gut churned. It wasn’t even as if she cared about the terrorists Damon killed. Her problem was just . . .
Words continued to fail her. She couldn’t take back what she’d said because she didn’t know what she wanted to take back, if anything. She didn’t know what was wrong, didn’t know what she wanted to happen.
Didn’t know how to get into Karadzic’s stronghold safely without the info she lacked. Rory scrubbed her hands over her face in disgust. Too much thinking and not enough doing.
If she were making progress in her preparations, she wouldn’t be twisted up in French knots about this situation with Damon, might even have figured out how to get back to the way they were before. Preferably without apologizing.
Since she’d hit a dead end, planning-wise, Rory switched screens and opened her e-mail to check the messages in her in-box for anything from Lucas, deliberately ignoring the one from Felix, who was probably demanding she confess her mischief. Easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission. While Big Brother wouldn’t have betrayed her confidence, her father’s paternal intuition could be unnervingly accurate at times. Besides, though he was her father and front man, she was an adult and a free agent. She hadn’t had to answer to him for years.
The light scent of clean male drifted by her nose.
She looked up to find Damon by her shoulder, a threadbare towel wrapped around his hips, in a good position to read the display. The only man she had to answer to at the moment. She’d been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t heard the door open.
Sneaky bastard.
Of course, she’d have done the same in his shoes. He didn’t comment on whatever he’d seen, though, so she let it lie; it was hard for her to get up a good head of steam when she secretly approved of the intent. Besides, she didn’t want to stir things up again, just when it seemed they were settling down.
Seeing the look of innocence he kept pasted on his face as he dried his hair with another towel, the notion she had earlier once again niggled at the back of her mind.
The sudden rattle of metal on wood jerked Rory’s attention to the table by the bathroom door, where Damon had left his phone before showering. The matte black device vibrated again, jiggering on the hard wood like an epileptic giant beetle.
He picked it up and read something off the screen, his jaw firming with determination as he pressed some keys. His nostrils flared in a predatory expression she’d seen before, whenever he lay down to kill.
Without looking up from his phone, Damon gave her the news. “Karadzic’s arriving day after tomorrow with it.”
Rory’s stomach dropped queasily. In little more than a week, the nuke would be put up for auction. She didn’t have time to quibble or find another—more palatable—work-around for her problem.
Taking a deep breath to steel her nerve, she took the bull by the horns. “I have a problem.”
That got his immediate attention. “Go.”
“There’s one side I can’t get to, where security detains any idlers.” Welcoming an excuse not to meet his narrowed eyes, Rory dropped her gaze to her phone to switch to the screen she was studying earlier. “See?” She tilted the display toward Damon to show him her list as he sat beside her on the bed, his closeness surrounding her in warmth and clean male scent.
“How can I help?”
Rory explained what she needed him to do and the logic behind it, all the while wondering if she was grasping at straws. Or maybe desperate to achieve a détente between them?
Propping his arms behind him, Damon leaned back, deep in thought. His posture made the towel around his hips gape distractingly, the sight prompting a spasm of hunger from her empty womb. Finally, he nodded. “Sure, sounds workable.”
“That’s . . . great.” She fell silent, suddenly filled with misgivings. It was one thing to rely on her Adonis for reassurance; it was something else altogether to work hand in hand when she’d always been a solo act before. It was a deliberate extension of trust to ask for his help in this venture. She hoped it wasn’t a mistake.
And that she hadn’t suggested it for the wrong reasons.
Steeling himself to run the gauntlet of whores in the street, Damon exited a textile shop deep in the heart of Karadzic’s territory. He’d seen as much as he could from that covert without rousing suspicions; it was time to make his move. Rory’s instructions had been to meet her at the corner near the abandoned warehouse across from the Turkish bakery.
Nothing had changed since he’d first passed the area to enter the shop. Throngs of whores continued to troll for business, which seemed steady; several cars had driven by and picked up a girl or three from the ones that crowded their doors. A common sight in this part of town.
Just as he cleared the doorway, a Peugeot in camouflage tricolor with KFOR stenciled in white across its door and hood pulled up, one of the many he’d seen driving around town, supposedly maintaining peace. Then, bold as you please, the soldiers aboard made their selections from the whores clamoring for their business as though ordering takeout. It drove away, heavier by three.
Raw emotion beating at his mental antennae, Damon ignored the byplay.
Old and avid eyes turned to him as he approached the rendezvous. Eyes that assessed him quickly and labeled him a potential client. Some in girls young enough to be his daughter—and he’d jumped into the game later than most.
Desperation and greed, fear and despair, all that washed over his mind as scantily clad women flocked to him, clutching at him and rubbing their breasts against him wherever they could. They called out invitations in a medley of sultry voices, offering sexual services in exchange for euros.
Cool determination cut through it all as a pale brunette with dark eyes and big hair sashayed up to him, ruthlessly elbowing her competition out of the way. “You not want them,” the brunette declared in broken Slavic-accented English.
She had to be Rory. But a Rory unlike any other he’d seen. She balanced on stilettos as though born in them. And her shapely legs went on forever, an impression heightened by the extreme brevity of her dress.
Damon had to swallow before he could get his throat to work. “I don’t have time,” he told her, maintaining the Oxford tones of Jamil Abdou with difficulty.
“I get you off fast. Blow, two minutes, sixty euros,” she countered, her hands wandering over his body calculated to arouse. Knowing that didn’t make her caresses any less effective, as his sudden painful hard-on could attest, especially when it had been days since he’d had any release.
“Sixty for two minutes?” he parroted blankly.
“I very good.” Still pretending to negotiate with him, she led him down one side of the warehouse and into a side alley that looked out on the squat three-story building that formed one side of Karadzic’s headquarters. Three guards loitered at the end.
Not wasting time, Rory unzipped his pants and knelt at his feet, pulling his eager cock free with a murmur of approval.
Damon shivered at her touch, his balls already clenching and swelling in anticipation of more. Damned if she didn’t have him trained.
Barks of cynical laughter rose from further down the alley. Security might be tight, but evidently Rory’s assessment of the guards was correct: they saw themselves as worldly men and understood that certain urges had to be satisfied.
Alone, he or Rory would have been detained for interrogation, at the very least. Together, with their intentions obvious, they were safe; provided they didn’t take too long, there’d be no problem.
Now, all he had to do was keep his mind on business.
The very next moment, Rory almost wiped his mind clean of everything but sex when she licked his length, her firm grip leaving no doubt that what was coming next wouldn’t be a mere semblance of a blow job.
A run of teasing nibbles up his cock lit a bonfire in his balls. She expected him to conduct a surveillance through
this
?! He’d assumed she intended to put on a show, not the actual thing!
Damon’s eyes nearly rolled back as she popped his cock head into her mouth and sucked like there was no tomorrow. Damn, but she had a gift for shaking his control. And he couldn’t tell her to slow down—it would have been out of character for the roles they were playing.
“Hurry,” Rory muttered around his cock, her aura sparkling with anticipation. Her breath flowing over the damp flesh only made him ache more. The brazen minx. She was enjoying his predicament, too!
Damon let his head fall back, clinging desperately to his control as he shuttered his eyes against the pleasure streaking through him. As he studied the buildings around them, he promised himself he’d get Rory to do it slowly, when they were back in their room and had some privacy. As it was, he was supremely conscious of their exposure, knew there were watchers in the shadows.