Chapter Seven
Jed could feel her bristling as she walked beside him. She was well and truly furious now. Good. Keep that focus on him and let the subconscious do its work.
He tongued the inside of his bruised cheek, which was throbbing like a toothache.
Fighting mad. He deserved everything she was going to dole out.
The key now was not to push her so far that she’d hate him afterwards.
He needed her willing cooperation. To a point.
He suppressed the urge to smile. That would probably start her swinging at him again and he’d prefer to do that in private.
He hadn’t wanted to keep her hanging just now, but she’d challenged him with the five minutes comment.
It had been a long time since he’d let a woman get under his skin enough that he’d considered all out sex in an elevator.
He wanted her badly enough that he questioned himself about it, something unusual in itself.
Usually, he could step back and detach. With Elena, he found himself wanting more.
He blamed it on yesterday’s events. He always needed an outlet after finishing a mission.
In his job, facing an opponent and taking care of business usually meant ending a life.
He’d learned to be unemotional about it, to put his reaction on hold, and then, when the time was right, to channel all that energy into something more positive.
He’d wanted to come to Elena in a better mood, but instead, she’d come to him when he was at his most detached. Had to be, because he was getting ready to dissect the situation for debriefing and discuss the operation with his teammates. Not the time to get emotional about anything.
Elena showing up and challenging him was an easy excuse to make her the outlet for that tightly controlled coil of tension inside him that was patiently waiting for release.
He could have put her off until he was in a less edgy mood, but her prickliness had pushed him When she’d confronted him, he could sense her discomfort and knew without being told her “problem” was still bothering her.
The thing was, thinking about her “problem” made him hard for her, especially now that he knew just how wild she was in bed.
He clamped down on his straying thoughts of coming inside her and turned back to the next meeting on his schedule. So much at stake and he couldn’t get sex out of his mind. Sex with one woman, that was.
But what was she thinking now?
He’d known what she was up to yesterday, with that request for a session in the CAVE. He’d easily guessed her plans in her quarters. Sabotaging them was too much of a temptation to resist.
Karma was a bitch, though. He wanted to get to his own climax with this woman and he couldn’t. Not possible. It would be selfish to find release when she wasn’t cognizant of what their time together meant.
He wanted to be as honest as he could. He gave himself a mental shake of the head. That was something new—being honest and trying to sexually imprint another operative. When did he ever have the dilemma of his conscience tugging at him?
Jed glanced to his right. She was too quiet, a murderous look in her eyes, as she kept in step. A sudden urge to soothe her arose from nowhere, but he knew Elena well enough that words wouldn’t mean much at this point. He was used to pulling back and reacting later; she wasn’t.
“After the next two meetings,” he told her, “I’m all yours.”
Her hazel eyes flashed back at him. Still a little green in them, he noted.
“You mean you’ll answer all my questions?”
“Perhaps.” Never make a full promise to any dangerous woman.
“Will you at least let me hurt you the way you deserve?”
He ran his tongue against the inside of his cheek again, regarding her for a moment. The woman did have quite a punch. Her raised eyebrow amused him.
“That depends on how long you propose to have me sit there passively while you’re at it.” A deliciously devious image of her taking charge in his bedroom filled his mind.
Her brow rose higher. “Oh, I don’t care if you fight back,” she retorted. “I’m still going to hurt you.”
“Done,” he said, privately amused. A little aggression in bed could be exciting foreplay.
She was looking at him, her eyes narrowing as she studied the bruised side of his face.
Her face was flushed and he knew she was thinking of other things besides injuring him.
For an instant, he wondered whether she’d somehow caught the erotic image in his head.
But they weren’t sleeping or hooked together by the BE machine. She looked away.
“Just answer this and I’ll wait till later,” she said. “Are you responsible for what I’m going through right now? Was the strange sensation in the stairway in Frankfurt your doing?”
He realized it was important to her that he wasn’t the cause of her inability to fight what her body craved. Fortunately, he didn’t have to lie.
“I have nothing to do with that,” he assured her.
“I don’t know what happened there. That’s why I brought it up at the meeting.
We have to find out whether it’s just you or something more.
Dr. Kirkland’s theory makes sense. I do understand that withdrawing from the serum caused this chemical imbalance in your body but it’s accelerated, so you’re feeling two years’ worth of need, if you want to call it that, instead of a normal dose of healthy sexuality. ”
“Ouch.” She grimaced. “Do you always sound so matter-of-fact?”
He inclined his head. “It makes the discussion less emotional for you,” he pointed out. His voice went a notch lower. “In the privacy of bedrooms and fantasies, however, we can talk as dirty as you want without you being conscious about how it’s making you feel.”
“It makes me feel nothing,” she declared.
“Liar.” He supposed he could be a gentleman and not bring it back up. He chose ruthlessness to push his point. It would keep her aware of him while he couldn’t fully focus on her. “You know you’re going to think about my hand in your pants every time I look at you there.”
Her face flushed but she still refused to meet his gaze. “I never had a chance, did I?” she asked, her voice low.
Jed paused to look at her. He would have gone after her even if she hadn’t been assigned to him. That was how much he’d wanted her. But covert life meant unexpected twists, even in one’s personal life. He’d just have to do everything backwards. Fuck her crazy first. Woo her later.
“No.”
SHE SHOULD BE ANGRY. She wasn’t.
She should be plotting murder. Instead she was a mass of confusion, following this man around just because...
just because. He was like a new found flavor, something she couldn’t decide whether she liked or not.
And that aura of danger around him reminded her of those lost childhood days when she ran alone in the streets, not knowing whether there’s menace lurking around the corner.
Those pauses he made would drive a woman crazy. Did he deliberate about every single thing he was going to say?
No, he said. Arrogant devil. The look he gave her was frank and sexual, making her stomach churn, and then it was replaced by that cool, assessing gaze again, all business.
It was fascinating how the man could shut off just like that.
The lighting in the elevator had accentuated the angles and planes of his face, making those strange eyes of his glitter even more against his tan.
There was nothing subtle about him, not in the way he’d touched her, not in the way he’d looked at her.
In those few minutes, he’d shown desire so palpitatingly raw, it’d kept her frozen in place, every part of her connected to that need in him.
And with a bite, he’d turned her on even more.
She felt her insides clench at the memory.
Ordinarily, she would sit down, think everything through, and come up with a game plan.
But she’d better toss that strategy out of the window when it came to Jed McNeil.
He’d successfully foiled and thwarted every one of her plans.
Hard as it was to admit it, he’d kept her off-balance since...
had it been only yesterday since her “freelance” remote viewing? God, it felt like days.
It paid to remember that this was Number Nine with whom she was dealing, the one who finished each mission. He ultimately dealt with death. That accounted for the dangerous air she sensed cloaking him all the time.
Her eyes narrowed. Dealing with him wasn’t going to be like the way she’d beaten the other males against whom she’d trained these past two years.
Jed McNeil, she suspected, was an entirely different species altogether.
He’d yet to acknowledge her blow to his face.
That dried trickle of blood on his chin was still there.
It was all deliberate, of course, because now it was like a mockery, daring her to do her worst.
Her shoulders straightened. Dammit, she wasn’t going to slink away to lick her wounds.
Deep down, she was still that orphan running wild in the slums in Russia, a stray who wouldn’t join any of the gangs, and she had survived those times, so this was nothing.
Like everything else since, this was nothing compared to those dark days.
No stomping off right now. She had to understand what was happening to her before working out her next steps.
And this feeling...she had to get it under control somehow.
Because right now, without being connected to him with machines or virtual reality, she was actually seeing the two of them in bed, with her on top and doing naughty things an angry woman shouldn’t be doing.
And the thoughts weren’t helping her overdriven libido at all.
She was overwhelmingly conscious of his eyes settling on her briefly again. “I’m not the one invading dreams, Elena,” he said, in that low tone of voice that forced one to pay attention. “For what it’s worth to you, it’s unsettling to me too.”