9. Chapter 9
Raz’s gaze strayed to the poster board behind Kate. The picture of the man the Dragon SEALs had been hunting stared back at him. Eiji Matsuda.
“I know you had a friend look into my friend Bonnie,” Kate said.
“How the hell—“
She lifted a hand. “It’s all been a ploy, Raz. I needed to find out if you were a Dragon SEAL.”
His jaw locked, sending protesting stings through his head. So she really was baiting me this whole time. He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe hidden in the wall behind him. “And you know about the Dragon SEALs, how?”
“I have friends in the CIA, and I heard about the team, particularly from Matsuda’s circle.
” She walked from one side of his desk to the other, running her fingertips over the wood.
“The secretive group who throws grenades in everyone’s plans with the Mirage, the guy who can get in and out of places undetected.
Of course, I didn’t know the dragon part was literal or that there are four members until now.
” She stopped and swung toward him, her brown eyes twinkling with something close to hope.
“And how did you learn I might be a part of this team?”
She hopped up to sit on the edge of the desk. “It took some digging. The Mirage is the only one on the CIA’s radar, and even then, he’s impossible to find. But I tracked your particular service records in relation.”
He wished those records didn’t exist. But Lewis had wanted to make them legit and forced them to join the Navy SEALs a decade ago. The freezing water and chafing sand had been the worst part of the advanced specialized training.
“You assumed because the Mirage and I served together that I’m part of this Dragon SEALs team?” Raz asked. “And then created this ploy to do what?”
“Ask for your help.” Her tone had dropped to a serious octave.
He came to attention as something dark crossed her features. His instincts had told him she desperately needed something.
“You went through all that to ask for my help?” he asked, disbelief waging war in his mind. “Why didn’t you just come to me in person?”
She sighed, causing the sides of her onesie to slide open. His eyes lowered to follow the path over her pert breasts in a satin black bra. Warmth traveled down to his groin. Following his gaze, she cursed before pulling the zipper up. Her cheeks held a radiating glow.
She answered, “Putting the whole you’re a dragon and I’m a Fallen aside.
Because we both didn’t know that aspect until recently.
If I came to you as a human, asking for your help with Matsuda, you would have what?
Gotten what information you needed from me and tossed me aside, thinking I couldn’t possibly know about your secretive vigilante team. ”
She wasn’t wrong. His team was far too cautious when it came to leads. They would have kept her on the radar but wouldn’t have taken her seriously.
“This is too personal for me,” she said. “I needed to get under your skin, learn who you were as a person, and show you what I’m capable of.”
Stealing. Just like Midnight. “You wanted us to think you were Midnight, didn’t you?”
“Did I succeed?” Her voice wavered.
His mouth dried. “Are you?”
“I’m who you need to bring Matsuda down.”
Her evasion of the question streaked fire across his back. “If that’s the case, you’re going to have to be more forthcoming than that.”
Her jaw ticked and her hands dug into the desk. “If I were Midnight, do you seriously believe I wouldn’t have a great fucking reason for doing what I’m doing?”
The woman he was learning about definitely would, but something in him knew she wasn’t defending herself.
In the car when she’d been defensive about him calling her a criminal, she’d gone quiet.
She wasn’t shutting down now. She was explosive because she was protecting someone else.
He had a feeling she wasn’t Midnight, but she knew who was.
Also, to defend someone like Midnight took a certain kind of person.
Someone who cared deeply. And that meant she was worth listening to.
“What do you need help with?” he asked.
“Matsuda has something of mine, and I want it back.”
“Care to share details?”
“It—“ She stumbled over words, and from her sudden change to her normal nonverbal communication, whatever she would have said would have been a lie. She sighed, as if thinking better of lying. “Listen, we both want to get something back from him. He needs to be stopped.”
Something twisted inside him. She evaded the question as if she didn’t trust him.
He’d brought her here because his dragon instincts were never wrong, but his leniency had led her to find out the truth about him and his team.
As much as he didn’t care to risk himself, he wouldn’t risk his team. “We don’t work with criminals.”
Ice slid down his spine from the glare she sent him.
With a sharp tone, she ordered, “Follow me.”
She maneuvered around his desk until she plopped down in his office chair and scooted forward. Intrigued, he joined her.
“Put in your password,” Kate said.
Too curious to listen to reason, he grabbed the cordless keyboard, smelling her expensive sweet scent as he whisked by her.
After typing in his password, he handed it back.
She opened a browser and continued through the FBI secure login with credentials—the identification number she had probably stolen.
He would have stopped her, but the computer she was working on was so encrypted that the feds couldn’t trace it back to him.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She operated the site as if she had been on there more than once, pulling up a list of the tracking devices specific to his field office. Tracker names lined the left side while their availability and location followed in a row.
“Why are those active?” he asked. No one had active missions that he was aware of.
“If you had ever checked your logs, you would have noticed them missing. Each of which I’ve attached to the items I stole, like the Hope Diamond necklace.
If you were to track them”—she clicked on a hyperlink to pull up the active GPS feed for a tracker—“you’ll notice that all the items are currently sitting with their owners. ”
The tracker she had pulled up was in Philadelphia at a location Raz recognized, since he had the map posted on the poster board in his kitchen. The Super Bowl ring was at the ball player’s residence, from whom she had stolen from.
“I return every single item I steal, and my clients do with it what they want at their own discretion,” she said.
“I’m not responsible if they commit insurance fraud, but I try to turn them in without leading them on.
These people hire me to do a job. At first, I was doing it under the radar, but it wasn’t long before the news caught up with me.
I performed my part and told them to funnel my payment into orphanages because I’m not the one who needs the money. ”
Given her past, that didn’t surprise him, and this woman who had a big heart chipped at his armor.
“That paper trail is collateral I keep against the people who hire me, not that they think of it that way. Do you know how much publicity they get because the Bubblegum Bandit comes to their establishment? I even tipped off the field office about the trackers, but no one paid attention. Why is it that someone who is trying to help others in this way is called a criminal? I’m not without blame as I’ve used unfriendly tactics and used them as a ploy to get to you, but you’re a vigilante—don’t try to deny that—so you should understand what I’m trying to do here.
I want to help people who can’t help themselves. ”
Raz’s ears pounded, drowning out her words.
His dragon was a thundercloud in his head, raining down lightning and fire throughout his body.
Her words spoke to him on so many levels.
Did his team go to dangerous locations and kill brothers and sisters or husbands and wives to keep cities safe?
Yes. Did he understand what it was like to want to help others? Yes.
Fuck.
“So sorry to tell you”—she lifted her legs onto the corner of his desk, leaning the chair back into him—“you can’t call me a criminal any more than you can call yourself one, hotrod.”
Her suggestive tone and that damn fucking confidence were enough to set him ablaze, an explosion waiting to happen.
There had been one inevitable outcome between them that he was finding harder and harder to deny, especially now that he couldn’t think of her as the enemy—if she wanted him, he’d fuck her.
But what was coursing through him now wasn’t just sexual desire, though most of it probably was—he couldn’t deny the tension between them had been thick enough to swim in—but this was attraction on another level.
The kind that could destroy a man if he allowed himself to get too deep.
But he found himself caring less and less about the consequences.
Kate didn’t just make him feel like he didn’t have the world on his shoulders; she made him feel like that weight could be lifted, the burden shared.
Because if there were someone like her who had been raised in the darkness, lived in it, yet still found a way to shine.
To fight. Then maybe there was hope for him to avenge his clan and destroy the thing that haunted him, and she was hope wrapped up in a fun little package.
And he wanted to help her. He wanted to—
His hands, feeling more like claws, grabbed the back of the leather seat.
Kate fell quiet and turned toward him. “What are you thinking about?”
“Every reason not to fucking kiss you.”
She took a slow breath. “I think about that a lot too. But…”
“But?” he pushed.
“I’m running out of reasons.”
He couldn’t agree more and captured that damn mesmerizing mouth in a kiss.
The plush cushion of her lips surrendered, and her fingers curled into his shirt to tug him forward.
Her feet plopped to the floor as she turned into him, seeking more contact.
Kate opened her mouth without hesitation; her wicked tongue playing with his in maddening wet strokes.
Savage need scorched blood straight to his cock, pulsing, filling.
Kate jumped, the chair crashing to the floor.
Wrapping her arms around his neck, she kissed him forcefully—just as desperate as he felt.
He pushed her against the desk. Bending her backward, he pressed his dick against her midsection, sending tingles through his constricted shaft.
Her hands tore at his shirt. And hell—he wanted more.
Grabbing her onesie’s zipper, he ripped it down her body and shoved the clothing away from her soft skin, allowing him to drown in her scent. Only her.
His fingers flew to the back of her bra.
By the time he unclasped the material, she had unbuttoned two buttons on his shirt.
Running his hands over her shoulders and down her chest, he let the bra slide into her lap.
Her breasts filled his hands; her tightened peaks pressing into his palms. She moaned into their sloppy but fucking hot kiss.
His shirt came free as she ripped it open, destroying each button.
Her urgency spurred his dick into an angry throb.
Gasping, Raz tore away from the kiss to rock his cock against her core, trying to soothe the rutting ache tearing through him.
She moaned, and her confident hands ran up his shoulders and under his shirt to push it down behind him, locking his arms behind his back.
Turning the tables on me, you foxy—
She slammed him back into the wall, and his arms were effectively trapped.
The stare she gave him, like he was the only man she wanted to fuck, melted him.
And despite the vulnerability, he stayed put, wanting everything her gaze promised.
Her lips crashed into his in a passionate heat, warming to a raging boil.
As she trailed kisses down his naked chest, the hair on his neck stood on end. His focus billowed up into a haze of need. The snap of his pants’ button and zipper released his penis from the constriction. Sparks fluttered in his stomach.
She shoved his pants and briefs to the ground. His cock bobbed free, causing pleasure-pain to arc from his bollocks to his groin.
“Fuck,” he groaned, banging his head back against the wall. What is she doing to me? He licked his lips and gazed down at her.
Her pursed lips were so painfully close to his throbbing member.
A shock of blown warmth spread over his sensitive skin.
Is she blowing hot air at my… She gazed up at him with that playful look in her eyes.
What have I gotten myself into? She’s too hot…
she’s too… Her lips covered his tip, and she sucked.
His body tingled, balls tightening to loosen the seed that her mouth beckoned as she swallowed him inch by slow inch.
“You’re fucking perfect,” he growled. But damn, there was no way he was letting her be the only one to play that game.