TWO

She watched as he shook his head, obviously fighting for control as she fought

to help him lose it. She tightened her muscles around his cock. Her hips shifted and

rolled as her lashes fluttered with the pleasure.

“Fuck me,” she whispered.

His eyes widened as a sexy grin curled over his lips.

“Say it again,” he ordered.

“Fuck me, Trent. Fuck me until I’m screaming for you.”

It wouldn’t take him long to make her scream. She was already on the verge of it.

Already needing it. Her nails dug into his wrists as he began to thrust, to move.

Bailey’s legs lifted, curled around his thrusting hips. She tried to lift closer, to

catch that last sensation, that last moment of intense, incredible pleasure that

would send her over the edge.

Each thrust tore another cry from her, sent her flying higher. Heat tightened in

her pussy, in her clit. It whipped through her, raced over her flesh, and finally

detonated in her womb in an explosion so intense, so soul shattering that she could

only cry his name.

Her orgasm filled every cell in her body and sent ecstasy tearing through her

nervous system. It stole her breath, stole her mind, and left her a creature of

sensation alone as she felt him thrust hard and deep before his body tightened and

his release tore through him as well.

A moment out of time. That was what it felt like. Like a moment that would

never return, and she was desperate to hold on to it. To hold on to him.

She was still fighting to catch her breath when he rolled beside her and pulled

her into his arms. For a moment she froze, so unused to being held by another that

for the slightest second it was completely alien to her.

She lay against his chest, listened to his harsh breathing, the thunder of his

heart, and gave a desperate little prayer that she could hold on to it just a little

longer.

“I knew you’d blow my mind,” he finally said with a sigh.

“You would have to have a mind first,” she quipped, suddenly uncertain of

herself.

What did a woman do with a man like this? Did she try to hold him? Let him

go? What? God, she had no idea how to play the most important game in her life,

even though she had excelled at the other games she’d attempted in her career.

“I have a mind.” He rolled her to her back, rising over her as he gave her one of

those rakish devil-may-care grins. “And I used to have a heart. I think you stole

that, too.” He was suddenly somber.

Bailey stared up at him, her lips parting in surprised wonder.

“Your heart?” she whispered.

“It’s very probable.” He winked down at her before bounding from the bed and

striding across the room. “Showering with me?” He glanced back at her as she

watched his cute, tight ass.

“Later.” She shook her head. She needed to get her bearings, needed to figure

out where she was supposed to go from here.

“Later then.” He nodded. “I’ll step out and get us dinner after I shower. I have to

check on a few things with a contact then I’ll be back.”

She nodded then watched wistfully as he disappeared into the bathroom. The

sound of the shower seconds later had her blowing out a hard breath before she

flipped the sheet over her body. A quick nap might get her equilibrium back.

Besides, she was worn out, more tired than she could remember being in years.

A grin pulled at her lips at that thought. He had worn her out. Sated her. Made

her feel treasured. She definitely wanted to keep him.

Long minutes later she felt the kiss on her cheek and his quiet “Be back soon,

love.” The door closed behind him.

She was sliding back into sleep when hell broke loose outside. The explosion

blew out the windows, shattering glass over the bed and lighting up the stormy

night as Bailey screamed in horror.

Jumping from the bed, she jerked the sheet around her and raced to the front

door. Flames were licking up the side of the bungalow where he’d parked his Jeep.

The vehicle was a mess of twisted metal. Flames greedily consumed it and

destroyed the fragile dreams she had been building.

Neighbors from surrounding bungalows were running for the driveway.

Someone was yelling for help. Someone else noted in hysteria that there was a

body in the vehicle. And all Bailey could do was stand there, her fists clenched in

the sheet, her soul shattered.

This was what she got for wishing, for hoping. This was what Bailey Serborne

got for dreaming.

JOHN VINCENT STEPPED out of the bungalow, whistling quietly, a part of his soul

lighter than it had been in years. The Australian night wrapped around his senses, a

cool breeze riffling through his hair as a smile tilted his lips for a second.

As he moved off from the door, the smile eased away. A shadow stepped from

the tree line and rushed across the short expanse of grass toward him.

The contact he was supposed to meet in town reached Trent’s Land Rover in the

driveway, agitated and obviously frightened.

“Thank God you finally came out!” Timmons Lowen was shaking from head to

toe. His limp brown hair was saturated and plastered to his skull, his normally dull

hazel eyes wide and glittering with fear. “Mate, Warbucks is on to us. They’re

looking for us.”

Trent grimaced as he jerked the man beneath the awning of the house and gave

him a quick little shake.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Warbucks was a shadowy individual—or several individuals—acquiring and

selling classified American information and hardware to terrorists. Part of that

information was a list of Australian Secret Intelligence agents working with the

CIA abroad. Agents who were turning up dead.

Trent’s investigation into the Australian connection to Warbucks was turning

up some surprising results, and information that Trent knew was more than

dangerous.

“Somehow Warbucks found out what I’ve been doing,” Timmons wheezed.

“They sent a guy after me. He almost caught me in town. Listen to me, Trent, we’re

screwed.”

“What the hell did they find out?” Trent felt like shaking the little man.

Timmons was obviously losing his last grip on the fear consuming him. Hell, he

should have known better than to use this man at the hotel where Warbucks was

suspected to be meeting this month with a broker who would sell the new

information Warbucks had. But Timmons was already in place, and the best pair of

eyes he had.

“They found out about it,” Timmons cried. “That I was watching for you. Who

you are. All of it, Trent. Warbucks knows everything.”

Trent paused. “How did they find out?”

Timmons shook his head desperately. “I don’t know, mate. All I know is that it

was from the agency. While he was in the bar looking for me I trashed his car and

found an agency ID and pictures and info on us. We’re tagged.”

He had to get Bailey out of there. Glancing around, he watched the sky light up

with lightning, felt the power of the storm, and knew he had to get Bailey as far

from this mess as possible.

“Take the Rover.” Trent dug his keys out of his pocket. “I’ll met you at the safe

house in Paddington in three days. Stay there, Timmons. Don’t poke your nose out

the door. Hide the Rover in the garage and play dead.” He shoved the keys in his

hands and pushed him to the Land Rover.

“The safe house. God, Trent, I knew I could depend on you.”

Trent jerked the driver’s door opened and pushed Timmons in the seat.

“Don’t call me, don’t call anyone,” he ordered him. “Just lay low and don’t open

the door for anyone but me.”

There was only one person who knew the details of the information Trent had

been working on, as well as Timmons’s part in it. His partner, Guy Warner. Even

Bailey hadn’t known who Trent’s contact was or that he was tracking the

connections in Australia to Warbucks.

Timmons jammed the key into the ignition as Trent backed away. The ignition

started as Trent turned away to run back to the bungalow. Then the night exploded

around him. Trent felt himself being catapulted through the air, his body landing

hard enough to drive the air from his lungs as he bounced into the mud and muck

of the swampy canal that ran past the bungalow.

The night was ablaze as another explosion rocked the night, sending more

fragments of the vehicle hurtling through the air.

He fought to breathe through the pain, to make sense of the blinding light and

pyrotechnic colors that danced in front of his eyes.

He could hear screams. A woman’s screams, Bailey’s. The sound of her cries tore

through the night as he dragged his eyes open and fought to roll to his side.

He struggled to turn, blinking against the mud that covered his eyes and rain

that poured over his face. As his vision finally cleared, he focused on the hell that

had been the driveway, and saw his partner, Guy Warner.

He was racing from his car to the Land Rover. The agent had a curiously smug

expression on his face. And there was Bailey, wrapped in a sheet, screaming for

Trent.

It was too late, Guy had already found him. He fought past the constriction in

his chest, tried to think, to find the closest route to Bailey when he saw Guy move

to her. She threw herself in his arms.

Trent blinked as his vision began to blur. He fought to refocus, then watched as

another agency vehicle pulled up and one of the American SEALs who had worked

this last op with himself and Bailey moved into view.

Jordan Malone.

His gaze blurred again even as he fought it.

The night began to close around him, to smother him in darkness.

“Easy there, Trent.” He was caught before he hit the ground and struggled to get

free.

“Hold up,” a dark male voice hissed. “We’ve got this one covered, buddy.”

Trent tried to shake his head, to make sense of what was going on. He

recognized the voice, he just couldn’t place it.

“Bailey,” he groaned.

“Bailey’s covered. Let’s move out.”

He couldn’t see. His vision swam with colors that didn’t make sense. His skin

burned like fire, like acid. He felt singed from the inside out.

“Bailey.” He groaned her name again as he fought the hands that forced him to

move.

Bailey. He’d left her there. He’d promised to return. The first woman he’d ever

promised to return to.

“Bailey’s safe.” Reno. That was his name. Reno Chavez. Navy SEAL. Part of the

SEAL team working within the joint American–Australian operation they had

conducted.

Dizziness washed over him again. Darkness covered him like a layer of ice. He

couldn’t fight it this time. He couldn’t halt the tide of nothingness that washed

over him and dragged him under.

He could feel death moving over him despite his battle against it. The breath

stilled in his chest, fury rocking through him. Warbucks. The bastard had managed

to defeat him before the battle had ever begun.

Atlanta, Georgia

Five Years Later

Bailey Serborne fought until she was gasping for breath, until breathing actually

seemed exhausting, uncertain. She jerked against her bonds, screaming through the

gag and she refused to cry.

She’d been captured tracking the international terrorist known as Orion, but she

hadn’t been captured by Orion. Oh no, even Orion wasn’t this damned efficient.

She had been captured by the team of unknown men guarding Orion’s target, Risa

Clay. The young woman had been marked to die by the bastard who had raped her

eight years before. She was remembering who her rapist was: He had aided her

father, Jansen Clay, in his white slavery operation and the kidnapping of a

senator’s daughter.

Bailey had tracked Orion to Atlanta, tracked him to a small group of the

wealthiest men in America and had been working tirelessly to connect the dots

among Orion, his employer and the deaths of her own family members.

She had gotten so close, so very close, only to be captured by the unknown

suspected agents currently protecting Risa. Agents who refused to share

information or to allow her in on an operation that she could benefit.

The men were known in underground circles simply as ghosts. The research

she’d managed to do, the answers she had come up with concerning them didn’t

make sense. Among those men there was a former Navy SEAL, a former drug lord,

an arms dealer, and a suspected terrorist. Of the five men she’d managed to identify,

none was known as a good guy, but they were all surrounding Risa Clay. Which

made her wonder at their covers.

Instead of getting answers, though, she was tied, gagged, and blindfolded as she

was transported from the apartment building she had been in to an unknown

location where she would be “interrogated.”

Her own agency, her boss, a man who had been a friend to her parents, had

betrayed her. He had given them the secret to breaking her, to stealing the

information she was refusing to give them.

As though she wouldn’t know that the men she was investigating were the same

ones holding her. She’d been close enough to hear each of their voices. She was

good at voices, good at identifying agents despite covers or alterations.

Bailey worked her hands against the ropes holding them, feeling the damp

warmth of her own blood as her skin abraded. The thought of being drugged, of

being forced, terrorized her. She was almost shaking with that fear. Being drugged

by men she couldn’t trust was even worse. Men whose names were synonymous

with blood and death.

She could hear them talking. It was a hollow sound, a sound that indicated a

cavernous area, perhaps a warehouse. She was lying on a cot. The drug would be

given through an IV. She remembered that. It had been part of her training when

she had worked with the Mossad years ago. It was the drug known to break her the

fastest.

Bastards! She bit back the tears, the fury. If she let it take her over now, then she

was going to break before they ever inserted the IV.

“The drug will be here within the hour,” one of the men spoke up.

“I don’t like this,” said another, the one she’d heard called John. His tone was

irate, and had been growing more so since they had arrived at the location.

“Chill,” another voice advised him softly. “There’s no pain involved. It’s

humane and efficient.”

Why would killers worry about humane and efficient?

“Fuck your humanity and efficiency,” John growled, his voice still low. “Let her

the fuck go.”

“Her people are on their way,” he was told. “We’ll wait for them outside, lead

them in, then begin the interrogation. You keep an eye on her.”

Her would-be knight had also been the same interrogator who had called her

“cheap meat” hours before. Threatening to sell her to the local dog food company.

But she’d heard the amusement in his tone, heard the playfulness.

Nostalgia had almost washed over her at the sound. If he’d had an Australian

accent. If he had light gray eyes rather than dark, if his hair was a lighter blond. If

he were another man and another time, then she would have known she was safe. If

he were the lover she had lost, Trent Daylen, rather than John Vincent, a suspected

arms dealer and killer, then she wouldn’t fear the outcome here.

But Trent was dead. She had to force herself to remember that, to let that pain

wash through her again. Trent had been killed in Australia.

Trent was gone.

She heard the men leave, but she was aware there was one still watching her.

John. The arms dealer.

He was an agent, she knew he was. They all were. It was the only thing that made

any sense. If they drugged her, she’d forget all this. She would forget their names,

their identities, and the operation being conducted here. It would all be gone.

She felt movement around her, a brush of air against her cheek a second before

the gag was dragged down over her chin.

She stayed silent. At the moment, she decided silence was the better part of

valor. It could be her smartest move.

“Picked yourself a hell of a fight here, didn’t you?” His voice was low, filled

with anger.

“What do you care?” She kept her own voice equally low.

He breathed out roughly. She felt a low sizzle of electricity as he gripped the

back of her neck.

How odd. That reaction was rare. It was a reaction she had only known with

Trent. She closed her eyes again and forced herself to breathe through the

knowledge that she was truly alone. She had no partner, she had no agency

backing. Hell, her own agency was turning against her for these men.

What the hell was going on here?

“I shouldn’t care,” he assured her. “You’ve asked for this. You could have given

us what we needed and gone your way.”

“Bullshit.” She gave a hard mocking laugh. “Going my way wouldn’t have

taken me very far. Orion is mine,” she hissed. “His death belongs to me.”

“That isn’t going to happen, baby,” he assured her. “The bastard nearly killed

you in Russia. Let it go now.”

She couldn’t let it go.

“You’re lucky.” Orion’s voice washed through her memories. “The right people

want you alive, for the moment. Don’t make the same mistakes your family has

made, little girl. Go home. I cross you again, and I’ll drink your blood for

breakfast.”

The right people wanted her alive. People she hadn’t cared to associate with

since she was eighteen years old. The right people, those with too much money and

too much power. People who hired this man’s services and gave him his orders.

“I can’t let it go.”

She should have lied about it. She could have promised him the moon; what the

hell difference would it make in the long run? She should give him what they

wanted and bargain for her release and just fucking run.

She’d been running for more years than she could count. A few more surely

wouldn’t make a difference.

“What does the drug do to you?” he asked as she felt his fingertips running

down her arm.

She wanted to smile. Trent used to do that when he wanted information from her,

that or her attention, or just to touch her. The backs of his fingers over her arm.

These weren’t Trent’s fingers, even though the sensation was the same. There

was a fine webbing against his flesh, as though his fingers were scarred or had

suffered some trauma. He touched her as Trent once had, though, causing her chest

to tighten with pain.

Her handsome, courageous Trent.

The blindfold eased slowly from her eyes and she found herself staring into the

storm-ridden grays of John Vincent’s. They were eyes that swirled with turbulence,

with anger and desire, with lust.

He was rugged, rough. His face was sun-bronzed with creases at his eyes as

though he had once laughed a lot but rarely did so now. His upper lip was a bit

thin, his lower lip a bit full. They were kissable lips. Lips that would know their

way around a woman’s body. Lips that knew how to kiss, how to caress.

“Are you going to let me go?” Bailey could feel her heart racing in her chest as

he hunched in front of her, staring into her eyes as though he were trying to figure

her out.

“I shouldn’t,” he whispered. “I should never have walked into this little trap.”

She could sense the but in that sentence and would’ve loved to have known what

he was thinking.

“What trap?” she asked, wondering at the swirl of emotions in his eyes.

“The Bailey Serborne trap.” He sighed. “Big ocean-green eyes and the face of an

angel. A face that traps a man’s soul and never lets it free.”

He sounded serious. Bailey wanted to sneer, but she couldn’t work up the

mockery, the sarcasm needed. It wouldn’t slip past the pain that pulled at her heart

and left it aching.

“I know who you are,” she whispered. “You’re no more an arms broker than I

am.”

He laid his fingers against her lips. “You never want to say that again. Don’t

even think it. Don’t become a risk, Bailey, or I’ll never be able to protect you.”

She tilted her head to the side. “Since when did I become your responsibility?”

Familiarity flickered in his gaze, confusing her. He watched her as though he

knew her, as though he had touched her, and for a moment she could actually feel

that touch.

His lips thinned, holding back whatever he wanted to say as he rose to his feet

and dug his hand into the snug pocket of his jeans. He pulled free a small penknife,

opened it, then moved around her.

A second later he was curling her fingers around it.

“I can give you five minutes,” he told her. “There’s a car parked at the back

door, the keys are in the ignition. Drive out slow and easy and keep driving, baby.

If you’re taken again, I won’t be able to save you. I won’t be able to keep this from

happening to you.”

She stared back at him as he moved around her, her fingers gripping the knife as

she made a decision she couldn’t have imagined making.

“The information you wanted,” she whispered.

His eyes narrowed.

She gave him the brief details he needed, most importantly the location of

Orion’s handler, information it had taken her years to track down. She would have

known his voice in a heartbeat, but she wouldn’t hear it again. She described the

handler’s voice as well as Orion’s quickly while she worked the knife through the

ropes. She ran through the list of details she had, reciting the last one as the ropes

fell away from her wrists.

She dropped the knife and moved. Jackknifing from the cot, she swiped his legs

out from under him and sent him rolling before sprinting to the back door.

She was almost there. Her hands were reaching for the latch when she was

suddenly grabbed from behind and jerked around. She bounced against the cement

wall. The only thing that protected her head was the hard male hand that covered it.

The only thing that dimmed the shock of the impact was his lips suddenly covering

hers.

The fingers of his free hand gripped her jaw, keeping her from biting the tongue

that swept across hers. Not that she would have bitten. Not that she could have

bitten. She was shocked, held amazed, lost in a riot of sensations that she had felt

only once in her life, and only with one other man. A dead man.

“Try that again.” He jerked back from her, releasing her. “You can play dirty all

you want to, baby, but remember, I’ve got your number, and I know damned well

how to use it.”

She flashed him a daring smile. “I expect to hear from you soon then.”

Sliding the door handle down, she slipped out the crack she made in the double

doors and escaped into the night. The car was waiting, the keys in the ignition.

Within seconds she was pulling sedately down the alley and checking her rearview

mirror.

He was watching her. Standing there beneath the moonlight, illuminated in an

eerie glow cast by the nightly orb and the lights that struggled to ease the dimness

in the alley.

And for a second, just the briefest second, it wasn’t the arms broker/unknown

agent John Vincent she saw. For just a breath of time, it was Trent. For a single

heartbeat she saw him, felt him.

“Trent.” She whispered his name as he turned and stepped back into the

warehouse, dispelling the fantasy forever.

Trent was gone. He was dead. She couldn’t ever let herself forget that.

Or was he?

Her eyes narrowed as she pulled the vehicle into Atlanta’s traffic. She had her

suspicions where her cousin David Abijah was concerned, because God’s truth,

Micah Sloane could be no one but the Israeli cousin that she had believed was

gone forever. She knew his voice, his movements, and the man who had

interrogated her earlier could be no one else.

Micah Sloane was no more a former Navy SEAL than she was. He was a man

without a true past. A man who moved like her cousin, a man who carried himself

like the only family she could have called her own.

Bailey knew voices, she knew faces, she knew characteristics and movements. It

was her strength as an agent. And she knew her cousin David, just as she had

known her lover Trent. And now two men, one supposedly a dangerous criminal,

both with the same characteristics, the same “feel,” and they were working

together?

She didn’t believe in coincidence and she sure as hell didn’t believe in an

overactive imagination. She wasn’t overly imaginative. She was fact-based. She

knew herself. She knew the people she loved.

She was betrayed. It was a betrayal that struck into her soul and left her shaking

in anger. A betrayal she wondered if she could ever forgive. John Vincent couldn’t

be Trent Daylen, but she knew for a fact that Micah Sloane and David Abijah were

the same.

It was a betrayal she drove away from, just as her cousin had walked away from

her. Just as Trent had been taken away from her.

As the night wore on and the car ate up the miles to DC, Bailey knew where she

was going from here. She had spent too many years fighting other people’s battles.

It was time she fought her own.