She smelled warm and sweet, like a woman just out of bed. Traces of her perfume clung to his senses; the very same perfume he’d ordered her once to wear again.
Of course he noticed that she did. Probably in some misguided attempt to assure herself he had no control over her, but she wore it all the same.
Sexy.
He dropped the detached slide to the carpet.
“How dare—”
Her words caught on a hard gasp as he locked the fingers of one hand around the smooth, slender column of her throat. Her eyes snapped wide, chin jerked high, as if that would allow her to keep breathing.
He didn’t squeeze. Knew how easy it would be, but that wasn’t his goal.
Not here. Not now.
Not, if he got his way, ever.
But he needed her to back off, or else he wouldn’t get the choice.
“Stop,” he said, nearly a growl. She shuddered in the crook of his arm.
Beneath his thumb, her pulse hammered, hard and fast.
“Forget about Juliet Carpenter.” Every syllable fell in low, even tones. Unbreakable. “Forget about GeneCorp, me, Sector Three, everything you read in that file.”
Her eyes widened, fathomless and shadowed. “I can’t.”
“You need to. This has been going on long before you, and it’ll keep going after you’re dead,” he told her. Maybe it would help. God, he hoped it did.
Because if the conspiracy unfolding under her feet didn’t get her, he would. He couldn’t avoid it, avoid her, any more than he could avoid breathing.The hard ridge of his cock nestled firmly against her abdomen.
As the awareness of it slid into her gaze, he felt it in the way her back arched. The faintest tilt. A curve. Subtle as hell.
He turned her on.
Jesus, he could have gone the rest of his short life without knowing that.
His voice softened. “Do you understand me, Parker?”
She swallowed hard, her throat moving under his palm. But she didn’t answer.
He leaned in, until there was no space for her to breathe. Until he could feel her blood quickening through her veins, echoed in the slam of her pulse beneath his grasp. Her nipples hardened beneath her thin silk shirt, impossible not to feel through the insufficient barrier of the tank top under his synth-leather jacket. Erotic as hell.
From ice to inferno in nothing flat.
The useless gun hit the floor at his feet. A bell jangled, padded footsteps springing away into the dark.
“Get off me,” she whispered.
But her eyes went soft and smoky. Dazed.
Simon should have stepped back.
He couldn’t. “Christ,” he whispered, and to seal the impression—to get a taste of the woman he couldn’t shake—he closed the gap. Covered her mouth with his, claimed her soft, warm, trembling lips in a kiss that had nothing to do with anything but the need he’d tortured himself with for two long, eternal months.
M
ission Director Parker Adams froze.
This man worked for her. Sort of. He worked for Sector Three, which was so classified even she didn’t know what they really did. He wasn’t her friend.
He sure as hell wasn’t her lover.
He was a
witch,
and she was better than this.
But there was nothing cold about the ragged edge of lust exploding under her skin. Slow, saturating heat gathered between her legs, swirled low in her belly as his lips covered hers.
Somehow, Agent Simon Wells, spy for Sector Three and irritating thorn in her heel, was kissing her.
No, not kissing her.
Devouring
her.
Two months of forced civility, eight bloody weeks of tension, finally snapped between them.
His mouth was firm, aggressive. Undeniable. She gasped as his fingers slid away from her throat, up over her jaw. He dug his thumb against the corner of her mouth to coax it open, and nerves tingled to life. Her skin, her senses, her lips.
That part of her brain that had nothing to do with common sense and everything with wild, primal abandon.
His tongue slid between her lips, tasted her, and sensory fireworks flared behind her eyes. She shuddered. Her hands fisted by her sides; she closed her eyes because she couldn’t stand to look at the handsome angles of his face while he played her body like a fine-tuned instrument.
And she couldn’t pull away. Didn’t want to.
A whole other problem she wasn’t equipped to handle. Not now.
Not when her world had turned into a cage of politics and lies around her.
His teeth nipped at her bottom lip. Hard enough to force a shattered moan from her throat. Every torturous nerve turned to liquid flame, and just with a kiss. With the feel of his broad, leanly muscled chest against hers. His leg slid between her own, and God help her, her silk pants were so thin that she might as well have not been wearing anything at all.
He’d trapped her. Not just between hard doorjamb and harder man, but by the sensations sweeping through her body.
Lust. She recognized that one easily. It’d been a long time, but she knew the chemical taste of it as the secret parts of her body went soft and liquid with need.
Fear. Fear of his touch? Fear of her own response?
Fear of him.
That one spiked as his fingers tightened on her chin. Holding her still, forcing her still.
No.
His tongue twined with hers, demanding, wet. His hips tightened against her own, locked her down, pinned her until all she could think about was the hard length of him trapped behind his jeans. So very, very close.
No!
Parker grabbed his sides. Felt the faintest uneven ridge under her thumb where a bullet wound had healed into a ridged, puckered scar. She’d been the first one to tend him—clean entry, messy exit, on the front and back of his left side. Courtesy of a mission she didn’t authorize. It had bled too much, but she’d done it.
Blood. The very thought pitched bile into her chest. Gave her enough to work with, to separate herself from the unyielding assault on her senses.
It was enough. Wrenching her mouth away, Parker jammed a thumb into the tender scar.
Simon swore, jerked back so fast it left her off-balance, staggering into the opposite side of the doorjamb. She grabbed onto it, jerked her hair out of her face to glare at the missionary as he covered the front of his side with one hand.
Pain etched dark edges into his features. His eyes glittered. By day, she knew they were a mixed green and brown. Hazel eyes; sometimes one, sometimes the other. Sometimes gold.
“Damn,” Simon said, sucking in air with a painful hiss. But his white teeth flashed in a thin smile. “I’ll remember that next time.”
Nerves, anger, pitched in her belly.
Parker forced her knees to lock, her shoulders to straighten. Unflappable Mission Director. That’s what she had to be.
That’s what she
was
.
“There won’t ever be a
next time,
” she said, proud when her voice remained even. As self-possessed as he was. “Get out, Mr. Wells. We’ll discuss this in the morning.”
When his smile slanted into an arrogant, self-satisfactory curve, she bit out, “At the
office
.”
The fact she even had to clarify galled.
He turned, presented her with his broad back, and picked up the folder again. The triptych sigil on its cover gleamed. Operation Wayward Rose.
She wasn’t going to stop him this time. The damage was done. Nothing he did could keep her silent. Unless he killed her.
He could try.
“Oh, and
Director
Adams?” He paused in the office door frame. The night painted his features in shadow, turning the hollows under his cheekbones and the beautifully angled line of his jaw into something sinister. “Believe it or not, I’m on your side.”
She raised her chin, forcing her gaze to remain on the back of his head. Not on the powerful line of his back, leaner than some of her more built missionaries, but no less muscled for it. She’d seen him in various stages of undress—hard to avoid it in the training facilities and in such close quarters. She’d seen most of her missionaries.
But
his
body put her tongue in knots.
“I don’t believe you,” she told him, cool as the air she pulled into her lungs. “You’re a spy for the witches, for Lauderdale.”
“But I’m on your side,” he repeated.
Was he insane as well as a heretic? She muffled a laugh before it slipped from her lips, knowing it would only come out razor sharp. “Come talk to me when you’re ready to share what you know. Until then, Mr. Wells, count yourself lucky I’m content to let you stay.”
“You can’t—”
“Trust me,” she cut in, drawing herself up to her not insubstantial height. Her chin rose, but her gaze pinned him where he watched her from the door. His eyes narrowed, a dark slant of . . . surprise? “This is my Mission. There is
nothing
I won’t do to keep my people safe from you.”
Simon raked long fingers through his short, coffee brown hair, turning away. “You have no idea what you’re promising.” But then his head turned, throwing his angled jaw into sharp relief. “And I can’t be there all the time. Stay out of this, Director. At least for your own good.” It wasn’t a reply. He didn’t give replies.
It was an order. As arrogant as it always was with him, dismissive of her intent. Of her authority.
Locking her teeth together, Parker said nothing as he left her office. Held onto the door frame with cramping fingers until she heard the final click of her front door. It beat her first choice, which was to find the nearest portable object and pitch it at his smug head.
Her temper sizzled, a fraction of a degree cooler than the physical lust still riding her. As tempting as it would have been to give in to either, Parker didn’t dare.
She didn’t sleep with missionaries, and she sure as hell didn’t flirt with witches. Simon was both.
Only by the narrowest margin.
That traitor. He hadn’t come
in
through her front door.
She’d have to figure out how he’d breached her security. Shore it up if she expected to play a game she wasn’t sure she’d built herself up enough to handle.
Politics were bad enough, but this . . . chemical warfare of need and confusion only added to the months-long political shitstorm Nadia Parrish had forced on her with Operation Wayward Rose.
Parker was tired.
Her lips throbbed. They felt damp, swollen. Her skin prickled, but it wasn’t fear. Or
all
fear.
She couldn’t deny it. A part of her, the simple woman, wanted Simon Wells.
No, not precisely. She wanted his strength. His fearlessness. His control.
And the Mission director she’d become couldn’t afford any of that.
A warm bundle of fur leaned in against her ankles, as if in apology. Parker bent to gather Mr. Sanderson into her arms. His heavy weight settled into her chest, collar jingling, and the happy rumble of his purr rattled through her ribs. Stranger gone, problems over.
Not for her.
She wanted answers.
The Church had them. Somewhere. As the director of the witch-hunting Mission, she should have been in on everything the research and development branch of the Church was planning. Had planned. Whatever Sector Three was doing, it affected her Mission.
Aside from a classification hierarchy, the two directors were equal. The blasted Church law demanded it. Order of hierarchy put the bishop of the Holy Order of St. Dominic above all things, the directors of Sector Three and Sector Five—the Mission—next, and the civic body of government last.
Period
.
But two months ago, Nadia Parrish had knocked down Parker’s typically apolitical door with demands Parker didn’t have the clout to deny. Simon, supposedly a missionary but trained under Sector Three’s meddling eye, had been a problem ever since.
Along with Sector Three’s interference, names like GeneCorp and the Salem Project had cropped up.
Words like
human testing
.
Having Operation Wayward Rose end in bloodshed and disaster, end with more questions than when it began, grated Parker’s sense of responsibility.
And her pride.
But she hadn’t been able to learn much before the order had come down from the Church brass—destroy the data, classify everything. Hide whatever dirty fingerprints the operation had exposed.
Parker surveyed her dark office. The drawer she’d put the folder in was still slightly ajar, but other than that, Simon made for a neat thief.
One goal, in and out. And a kiss.
Why? Why had he kissed her?
She bent, let the cat jump lightly to the floor, and tried not to think about the reminder her body wouldn’t let go. She was a grown woman. She knew what the damp ache between her legs meant.
Lust wasn’t nearly a good enough reason to ignore Simon’s loyalties.
Her
Mission.
Her
people. She’d had to sign death certificates for enough of her missionaries to feel responsible for every last one.
But she wasn’t sure what to do about it. Yet.
N
othing in his thirty years of life had prepared him for Parker Adams.
Simon’s heart pounded in his chest, a rhythmic
thump, thump
of anxiety, of surprise and adrenaline, and a ragged, visceral need. It had taken everything he’d had to leave that apartment—to leave her, tousled and off-balance and—“Fuck,” he rasped as he leaned against the elevator wall.
He shouldn’t have kissed her.
He couldn’t
not
. What the hell was it about the woman?
Forcing himself to slow his breathing, his fist clenched on the railing as another surge of adrenaline lanced through his chest. Found an echo in his head.
He’d gone in expecting a fight. Expecting to go toe to toe with her in the only way he’d stand a chance—as the kind of man even the ice bitch of the Mission couldn’t bend to her will.
More fool him. What was it about her that left his palms sweating, his heart pounding?
The doors hissed open.
The lobby lights slanted through his skull like a straight razor to the eyeballs. “
Fuck,
” he repeated, gritting the word out as his senses cracked without warning. Shapes, living bodies, individuals. They piled up in his head—thirty floors of people, stacked up like the pieces in a jumbled puzzle.