Chapter 2
TWO
Kade
The black sedan moves.
After sitting in that corner of the lot for at least forty minutes—engine running, lights off—it shifts into gear the moment we step onto the sidewalk. Not following. Just repositioning, like a predator deciding if the prey is worth the energy.
I catalog the details automatically: older model Crown Vic, aftermarket tint job, dual exhaust, suggesting engine modifications. My first instinct tags it as surveillance—but surveillance for whom?
I run the math fast.
Someone from my last op in Bogotá, still carrying a grudge. DEA, following a thread from two months back when I inserted into their network without authorization. Local law running a loose tail on the bar, watching for distribution activity.
All three scenarios fit.
All three make more sense than the fourth option my brain tries to generate and immediately discards—that whoever sits behind that tinted glass has any interest in the woman currently walking beside me.
That's paranoia. Not threat assessment.
The angle of their position doesn't fit an exit tail anyway. They face the entrance, not the sidewalk. Whoever it is, they're waiting for someone still inside. I file it and move on.
My holster sits heavy against my hip, the standard Glock loaded and ready. A suppressed secondary digs into my waistband—a paranoid habit I've carried all week and haven't yet decided to break.
My hand settles on Wren's lower back.
She trembles slightly under my palm—adrenaline crash, the aftermath of the bar, whatever else hums violently between us every time I get within arm's reach of her.
The thin silk of her dress barely covers her thighs, and every step makes the hem ride up.
She tugs it down repeatedly, as if just now registering how little fabric actually exists.
I'm very aware of how little fabric exists. I've been aware since the moment she walked in.
I should have let her walk away alone. Should have gone back inside, finished my beer, minded my own business.
But the moment that prick put his hands on her, something primitive in me kicked completely offline.
Not rationality. Not assessment. Pure, territorial instinct driving straight through my chest like a spike—mine—before I'd even decided to move.
I don't examine that too closely.
"That guy from inside was a real tool." She glances back toward the bar.
"Guys like that are cowards." I scan our six, tracking reflections in windows, mapping exit routes. "They only push when they think no one's watching."
"And you were watching."
"Yeah." No point denying it. "You stood out."
A nervous laugh escapes her. "Right. The only woman dancing alone in a mountain bar. Real mysterious."
"Not that." We turn down a quiet side street. I position myself between her and the road, an automatic habit she probably doesn't notice. "The way you moved. Like you were trying to forget something. Or remember something. Maybe both."
A beat of silence. "You get all that from watching me dance?"
I don't mention what else I got from watching her.
I don't tell her how my iron control snapped the moment I finally cut in—how she immediately stepped into my personal space, grinding her soft curves deliberately against my thigh in the middle of that crowded floor like she'd decided something and intended to make it my problem.
The friction was maddening.
I pulled her flush against me, one arm low on her back, intentionally letting her feel exactly what she'd provoked.
She gasped—this quiet, sharp little sound that hit me straight behind the sternum and stayed there.
Her eyes had gone dark, pupils blown wide, and the heat between us turned into something with actual weight.
Something I could press my hands against.
Still throbbing. Still hers, whether she knows it or not.
"I'm good at reading people," I say instead. "Occupational necessity."
"What occupation involves hanging out in bars and rescuing strange women?"
"The kind that pays well and asks few questions."
She halts. Turns to face me. The chemistry between us ignites on contact with open air—hot, immediate, no longer pretending to be anything other than what it is.
In the streetlight, her eyes are impossibly blue. Wide. That expression isn't innocent curiosity. It's a dare.
"I don't usually get rescued by mysterious knights in dark jeans." Her chin lifts slightly. "What's your angle? Looking for a grateful damsel to warm your bed?"
The blunt suggestion detonates low in my gut. She knows exactly what she's doing—standing there with the streetlight backlighting her dress, rendering the silk nearly transparent. The outline of her lace underwear. The hard peaks of her nipples pressing through the thin fabric.
The rational part of my brain, the part that handles threat assessment and exit strategies, goes very, very quiet.
I need her right now.
Not later. Not at her apartment, not in a bed, not with the proper setup and adequate time. Right now, in the dark, with the mountain air on our skin and no audience but the stars.
I need to taste her, need my hands on her, need to hear what sound she makes when she stops trying to keep quiet.
It's the same instinct that made me cross a bar floor to put myself between her and a stranger's hands—primal and absolute and entirely beyond my usual control.
I grab her hand and pull her sharply out of the light, dragging her into the pitch-black shadows of a narrow alley between two closed storefronts.
"My angle?" I back her against the rough brick wall, bracketing her body with my arms, pressing the rigid length of my erection firmly into the soft curve of her belly. Her breath punches out of her lungs. "I want to find out if you taste as good as you look. And I'm not in any mood to wait."
Her pupils swallow the blue of her eyes entirely. She grinds her hips deliberately into mine, and a raw sound escapes the back of my throat.
"That's a terrible line, but it’s working.”
I drop my forehead to hers. "Tell me what you want, little bird."
"You." No hesitation. "I want you."
"Be specific."
"I want—" She drags in an unsteady breath.
"I want whatever you want. All of it. I just—yes.
Whatever you want." Her fingers curl into the front of my shirt, twisting the fabric like she needs something to hold onto.
“Use me, Kade.” The words come out raw, stripped of every pretense.
"Hard. Rough. However you want me—I don't care. Just fuck me and don't hold back."
Heat detonates through my chest and drops straight to my cock.
"Say that again." My voice has gone somewhere dark and quiet. "So I know you mean it."
Her chin lifts. Blue eyes, blown black. "Take what you need. However rough you need it to be."
Christ.
"You're handing me a lot of trust for a dark alley." I drop one hand to her thigh, sliding up under that excuse for a dress, slow enough to watch every flicker cross her face. No fear there. No hesitation. Just naked, blazing want. "You sure that's what you're asking for?"
"I've never been more sure of anything." She arches into my touch. A rapid pulse thrums under my fingertips as they climb higher. "You saved me tonight. You're holding back right now." Her eyes meet mine—clear, certain, burning. “Don't hold back."
"You should be scared." I find the edge of her lace—barely there. "You don't know me. Don't know what I'm capable of."
"I know exactly what you're capable of." Her hips push forward, chasing my hand. "That's why I'm not scared."
I search her eyes one more time. No doubt. No hesitation. Just that blazing, absolute certainty that mirrors the heat tearing through my chest.
"Your funeral, little bird."
I spin us, putting my broad back to the street, shielding her with my body, and slide my hand directly into her panties. Already soaking. Already swollen and desperate, like she's been waiting for this since the moment I pulled her onto that dance floor.
"So incredibly responsive." I lower my head, murmuring against her ear, working her with fingers that have learned her rhythm in thirty seconds flat.
"How long have you been this wound up, sweetheart?
Since you were grinding on my leg on that dance floor?
Or just since I told that asshole to back off? "
"Since—" A sharp, ragged gasp breaks her voice as I find the right spot. "Since you called me sweetheart."
I circle her clit with my thumb while I slide two thick fingers deep inside her. She clenches around me immediately—slick and impossibly tight. A filthy satisfaction rolls through my chest.
"So fucking wet for a stranger in a dark alley.” I increase the pace, ruthless, precise. “Anyone could walk by right now."
"I don't care." The words tear out of her on a ragged breath, her hips rocking hard against my hand. "I don't care—just don't stop. Please, don't stop."
The please wrecks me.
"Not a chance, little bird." I curl my fingers and watch her face go completely slack. "Give me every sound. I want to hear all of it."
She stops trying to muffle herself and the result—God, the result. Her nails dig into my shoulders through my shirt, her head falls back against the brick, and the filthy, desperate sounds that pour out of her with every thrust of my hand are the best thing I've heard in years.
Each one winds me tighter, drives me closer to the edge of something I can't pull back from.
I work her harder. Faster. Track her approach to the edge with the focused attention I give to field operations—reading every micro-response, adjusting, giving her exactly what she needs until she can't think, can't breathe, can't do anything but shatter.
She peaks with her whole body, clenching violently around my fingers while I swallow every sound she makes. I work her through the aftershocks until she trembles helplessly against the brick, her forehead dropping to my chest.