On The Rocks (17 page)

Her gaze followed the angle of their aim
—across a wide swath of tranquil water dotted with fishing trawlers
and kayaks and a forty-footer or two similar to the one she now
stood on— and found the target roughly a mile out to sea: a sports
yacht.

Sleek and stealthy, the jet-black cruiser
looked like an oil slick on all that blue. The windows were thin
slits and tinted so deep there was no way to see inside, even if
the range of her binocs hadn’t reached the limit. A figure was on
the topmost deck, but with the distance it was just an
indistinguishable blob.

Who did that boat belong to?

And why was Abrahan wary of them?

She returned her gaze to the house. To the
men, unmoving, target in their sights.

A convertible went barreling down the coast.
She tracked it a moment, seeing one dark head and one that looked…
blue?

“Long way up.”

Lowering the binoculars, Kizzie swiveled her
head over her shoulder. Lennox lounged at the front of the boat.
Bare feet crossed at the ankles and propped up on top of the
cooler. Shirt off and aviators on, hiding those wicked green eyes.
He looked like a tourist on holiday, and might have committed to
the role a little too fully.

“You planning on scaling the cliffs to get
in there?” he asked around the cigar between his lips.

“If that’s what it takes.”

He twisted his head toward the craggy
cliffside. “Hope you’re not afraid of heights then… Guess you can’t
be. That’s only, what, four stories up? Heaven was a much longer
fall for an angel like you.”

“Ugggh.” Fighting a grin, Kizzie tipped her
head all the way back on her neck. “Your game is so
tired
.”

Lennox sipped at his cigar and shrugged.
“I’m a little out of practice.”

A little? She snorted. “Do you ever pick up
women with that line?”

“Usually,” the smoke floated out of his
mouth and vanished into the air, “they just fall into bed with
me.”

“Or airplane bathrooms,” Kizzie
muttered.

On their red-eye to Naples, Lennox had tried
exactly once to discuss Belém: “Remember the night before—”

“Recon. Strategize. Execute. That's all we
are, you and me,” she'd cut in, shutting him down entirely. That's
all they needed to be. Anything about the past was irrelevant to
their present, and she and Lennox had no future.

He’d left her alone after that, and when
Kizzie wasn't reviewing Intel from Agent Hayford, she spent the
time being overly critical of the first class accommodations. The
seats were cushy enough, but after snuggling up with Xander on the
buttery leather couch of his jet, flying first just couldn’t
compare.

During her kvetch session over the cheaper
upholstery and the absence of her Dom, Lennox went ghost for
roughly ten minutes. So did the flight attendant. And unless they
were both out there checking the wings at thirty thousand feet,
chances were high they were crammed into the rear bathroom getting
their freak on.

Could have been a coincidence. Absence alone
wasn’t enough to convict them. But when the woman returned with her
lipstick smudged, clothes mussed, and her nametag tilted so hard
the ‘r’ in Jennifer held on for dear life, Kizzie was pretty
certain about what had gone down.

Maybe even a little jealous.

‘Cause, dammit, this was day six of
No-Touchy-Gate and things were getting drastic. Hell, she hadn’t
been “touchied” since Tokyo, when Xander had her draped over his
thighs, his thick cock hard against her hip as his broad palm stung
her ass over and over. Then, bastion of evil that he is, he'd
shoved his fingers into her sopping heat and brought her right to
the edge of orgasm before he spanked her again.

Her pussy clutched and she clenched her
thighs. Dragged a deep, salty breath into her lungs. If she focused
on that memory a microsecond longer, the ache in her belly would
have to get dealt with.

Kizzie turned back to Lennox. Half naked.
Black hair loose. Skin bronzing in the midday sun…

Great.

“Did you even get her name?” She forced her
thoughts away from sex and… oh, wait, nope, that question was still
about sex, wasn’t it? She forced her thoughts away from sex that
involved
her
.

“Whose name?” he asked, stubbing out his
cigar.

“The flight attendant.”

Lennox stared at her a long moment, like he
had no idea what she was talking about.

“I didn’t bang the flight attendant.” He
cocked his head far to one side and smirked. “But maybe I should
have. Life’s short,
chuchu
. We should take pleasure wherever
and whenever we get the chance.”

Stretching his arms over his head until his
bones cracked, he swiped his tongue over his lower lip. “When you
were younger, it wasn’t hard to convince you of that.”

A low wave rocked the boat and Kizzie
readjusted her stance. “You didn’t convince me. I fucked you
because I wanted to see what it was like to…”

Letting the words hang, she adjusted the cap
on her head, twisting the brim to the back. Checked the fishing rod
secured to the boat’s shiny brass railing. Not a chance in hell
they’d catch a fish with the thing. For starters, there wasn’t any
line on the reel. And for finishers, the reel wasn’t a reel to
begin with, it was a long-range optical bug.

The clever little high-tech toy shot a beam
of light into the office wall, picked up the vibrations from the
glass, and translated it into speech. It had been going since this
morning, sending data into the tackle box— or, rather, the recorder
inside the tackle box. Once they got back to the cottage they'd
rented, everything Abrahan had said today would be spat out for
their greedy ears to hear.

Fake rod, fake tackle box, but the cooler
was legit. Kizzie headed toward it. Tapped the lid. “I need a
water.”

Lennox’s mirrored shades pinned her where
she stood. Slowly, he dropped his feet and retrieved a frosty
bottle from inside the cold box. Pushing to vertical, he towered
over her, holding the drink out.

She grabbed it.

He didn’t let go.

Lifted his thumb to stroke over her first
finger. “You wanted to see what it was like to what, Kizzie?”

She looked up at him. Tugged the bottle but
it still didn’t pull free. “To fuck you.”

“And what was it like to fuck me,
chuchu
?” he drawled.

At the time? Exactly what she needed. A tiny
slice of normal consumed under abnormal circumstances.

In hindsight, one of her bigger mistakes in
life. Or “learning lessons,” as the new age spin went.

Kizzie ignored the question altogether.
Ignored the sight of his jeans riding low on his slim hips, that
little trail of dark hair on his taut belly, the breadth of his
pecs, and that menacing black panther inked over his heart.

How many times had her lips passed over that
tattoo en route to far more dangerous territory?

His thumb still going over her knuckles, she
swallowed hard, voice way too husky when she said, “I've never been
your sweetheart, Lennox.”

“Never said you were.” His brows drew down,
hiding behind his glasses. “'Cause that’s not what that means.”

She blinked. Nodded. “
Chuchu
… it’s
Portuguese for ‘sweetheart’.”

“Is it?” He barked a laugh. “Happy accident
then.”

The bottle, and her finger, slipped free of
his grip. She wrenched the cap off the neck just as Lennox snatched
the ball cap off her head. Her hands flew up too late and ice cold
water splashed down onto her tank. Her body flushed with heat so
fast the freezing liquid turned to steam in a heartbeat.

Lennox twisted the cap to and fro. Looked
inside the fabric dome, no doubt seeing where she’d ripped the
stitching to remove the tracer Phil had embedded in it.

On the surface, Kizzie mirrored the sea
around them— all calm. But just beneath was full-on Mortal Kombat.
In her head she’d already backflipped over the rail, executed a
sweet Air Akimbo and a Throat Slice while Shao Kahn’s disembodied
voice commanded, “
FINISH HIM!”

Because that wasn’t just a cap he held. It
wasn’t even just
Xander’s
cap.

It was Sir’s cap.

That and the phone in the back pocket of her
jean shorts were her only connections to Xander. The thread binding
them was thin to begin with, but with each passing day it seemed to
grow more and more delicate. Horny levels aside, six days was
nothing. But since she didn't know when she'd see him again, the
only difference between six days and eternity was the spelling.

When his cap was pulled low over her
cornrows, Xander stayed on her mind in more ways than one. That all
male scent that was uniquely his still lingered in the fabric and
clung to the brim. And, yeah, it was mashed-peas mushy, but having
this teeny little part of him with her kept her impatient side at
bay.

God, how could she be so attached to a man
she barely knew?

That “something” she needed to confront
niggled in the space under her breastbone. But Kizzie ignored it as
Lennox seated the cap on his head and locked the brim in place.

Not okay.

Instead of smelling like Xander, it would
smell of chocolate cigars and she'd been trying to excise memories
of Lennox since he'd left her ass in Belém.

“Off. Now,” she snapped.

“Mean something to you?”

“Not a thing.” Lennox didn’t need ammo. He
needed to return her cap before she drowned his ass in all this
conveniently located water. “But it’s mine, so I want it back.”

She loped a leg over the squat railing
separating them and got on his level.

“You coming to get it?” That uneven smile of
his widened.

Fists balled, Kizzie crossed her arms over
her chest and rocked back on her heels, waiting patiently. That
lasted all of a blink before her hand shot out to snatch it off his
thick skull.

Laughing, he dodged her swipe and held an
arm out to keep her away. “Want this bad, huh?” He dislodged the
cap and twirled it around his finger. Held it by the brim and
extended it to her.

She reached. He yanked it back.

“Lennox…” she warned.

He chuckled. He was always doing some
variation of a laugh. Like this was all just some big game.

“Remember São Luís?” he asked.

Kizzie cocked a brow. Of course she did. Two
weeks running on the beach and morning swims in the ocean for
strength and endurance. One of those early mornings, they'd gone
for their dip in the Atlantic dressed only in thigh holsters and
nasty blades. They'd ended up fucking on the sand.

“No.”

“Hm. Well, you hid my clothes and I had to
hoof it back to the motel with my balls out.” He twirled the cap
around his finger again. “I never got that shirt back. That was my
favorite shirt.”

“It was a white tee, Lennox. You had
eighteen thousand of them.”

“This is just a black cap, Kizzie. I’m sure
the guy who gave it to you has another one.” His brows peeked up
from behind his mirrored shades. “How long you been seein’
him?”

“I'm not seeing anybody.”

Lennox sighed. “Come on, Kizzie. All we're
doing out here is waiting. Can we talk about something?
Anything
?”

“We can talk about you giving me my hat
back.” She curled her lip. “And then you can thank me for not
pistol whipping you a second time.”

“I'm gonna get a laugh out of you, Kizzie
Baldwin. You can't hate me forever.”

“I don't know about that. I've done pretty
good for almost ten years and I'm willing to keep at it. My hat.”
When he didn't hand it over, she rolled a shoulder to her ear.
“Fine. Whatever, I don't care. I'll get it later.”

“You don't care?”

“No.”

Eyes on hers, he Frisbee-tossed the thing
like a pro.

Overboard.

It sailed through the air on a short arc,
and then dome-dived into the water some twenty feet away.

Kizzie’s mouth popped open. Did he really
just…?

“You gotta be shittin’ me.” She stabbed a
finger at him, and only because she didn’t have her knife. “Go get
my cap, Lennox.”

“I thought you didn’t care?”

“How
old
are you? Go!” Her palms
slammed into his chest and he snagged her wrists.

“Okay. But you’re comin’ with me.”

Before she could pull back, the water was
coming up fast. She broke the plane awkwardly, Lennox's hard body
doing a horrible job of cushioning her fall.

Kizzie kicked like mad to orient herself and
popped up from under, sucking down a mouthful of air and errant
seawater. No idea where Lennox was. Hopefully a shark was chewing
on him.

She searched the surface for her cap. It
bobbed several yards away, the thick weave of the fibers keeping it
afloat. That wouldn't last forever.

Getting a move on, she covered the distance
to it quickly, snagged the brim, and then it was a short swim back
to the boat. By the time she reached the low lip of the stern and
dragged herself onboard, the cap was sopping wet and no longer her
concern.

The phone in her back pocket was.

“Shit.”

Dripping and disoriented, she reached behind
her, patting the pocket where the phone was... not.

Her stomach dropped to her toes.

Oh, god, no.

She looked over the railing, staring hard
like she had Go-Go-Gadget Deep Sea Vision and could pick out a
pixel of black in a universe of navy.

Lennox hoisted himself up over the rear edge
in a fluid move and twisted so his butt was onboard but his feet
dangled. Glasses in his grip, his green eyes glittered in the
sunlight.

“I couldn't help it. You were—” His smile
fell. “What's the matter?” His head twisted away and then zipped
back toward her. “You got the cap, right?”

Kizzie dug her teeth into her lower lip,
summoning calm by cursing in her head. “Yep,” she said tightly.
“Problem's my phone.”