A Harmless Little Ruse (Harmless #2) (2 page)

He shrugs. “No traffic this time of night.”

Lindsay’s yelling continues unabated. “ -- think you can kiss me and, and, take me to bed and that will change anything-- ”

“This is
not
quite the Drew I know,” Paulson says, turning away and coughing into his hand.

SLAP!

Distracted by Mark, I’ve given Lindsay her chance. She took it. My face absorbs the impact, which wasn’t much. She has strong arms but bad aim. I can tell this is the first time she’s ever slapped anyone.

I would laugh if I weren’t rubbing my mouth, tasting a little blood.

And dealing with a shit-eating grin from Paulson, who gives me a look that says,
Better you than me, man
.

“
W
ould
you excuse us for a moment?” I ask, as if Mark had interrupted us at afternoon tea, and not in a moment of rage and humiliation and gun theft.

He turns away and heads toward a dark figure a hundred feet away. Must be Gentian.

I reach for Lindsay but she steps back, knees unlocked, thighs tight in a stance I recognize. It’s from mixed martial arts and her fists are curled. She thinks she’s going to fight me?

Cute.

Cute and
hot
.

“Lindsay, I’m Special Ops trained. You couldn’t take me if you cloned yourself five times.”

“I don’t need to fight you and win, Drew. I just need to cause a little damage.”

Oh, you already did, baby
.

My chest squeezes, just enough to make me ache.

Can’t say that out loud, though.

“I am trying to help you,” I say slowly. Moonlight highlights the still-fresh scratches on her face, the awful bruising from the car accident, and her cheeks are flushed, rosy and fresh. She looks so gorgeous and raw, injured and feisty right now. It’s inappropriate and completely dangerous to think this way.

I don’t care.

I need to get through to her.

My hands aren’t enough. Brute strength isn’t cutting it.

I guess I have to resort to
feelings
.

“Beating me is your idea of helping? Why am I not surprised?” she says, her bitter tone making me wince. On the inside only, of course. On the outside, my face is polished granite.

“You can’t do this. Not alone.”

“Do what?”

“Hunt down those guys and kill them.”

Her mouth makes a silent
O
.

“I wasn’t – I wouldn’t -- ”

“Don’t lie. I was.
I
would.”

Her eyelids peel back in shock.

“But not like this, Lindsay. You’re not being logical. This is no plan. You need tactics and strategy to win a war when you’ve lost so many battles already.”

Her jaw is hard as steel, tight like a drum, and she’s glaring at me like she doesn’t want to hear a damn word I say.

But she’s listening.

That has to be enough.

“I am here,” I say slowly, “for my own reasons.”

She huffs softly. “Last night showed me a few of your reasons.” Her eyes flit to my crotch.

“Not
that
.”

“You didn’t like that?”

“Lindsay,” I groan, running my hand through my hair and trying not to fuck her right up against the wall of her house, under her open window. “I didn’t fall asleep with you in my arms in your bed because I have some ulterior motive!”

Her cheeks go pink.

And I go cold.

“No,” I hiss. “Tell me you didn’t.”

“Didn’t
what
?”

“Fake it.”

“Fake
what
?”

“Fake everything last night just so you could convince me you really care about me and maybe there’s hope. Fake it so you could trick me and get your hands on my gun and escape.”

Snake eyes. Lindsay’s looking at me with narrowed slits, reluctant to tell any truths. I can’t blame her, but I do. She’s ruining everything. Whatever half-baked scheme she thinks is going to work may very well destroy my carefully crafted machine that is designed to perform the same function:

Revenge.

“Here.” She tosses a phone at my face, crossing her arms over her chest, her mouth tight. “Read that.”

Come play with us
, the text says.

And then another one.

AGAIN

Then three texted pictures. Harry shaking hands with Blaine Maisri at a political event.

The second pic turns me into a tingling body of stone and ice. I skip it. I force myself to look at the third texted picture of Blaine kissy-facing the camera.

“Fuck,” I curse. My eyes dart to meet hers. I hold up the phone, the glowing screen pointed at her. “This is why you ran?
This?
”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“No, Lindsay, that’s the entire damned point. No, I wouldn’t, not if I had a highly trained, highly motivated nine-member security detail assigned to me. No, I fucking wouldn’t run, because I would trust the men whose entire purpose in life is to protect me.”

“BUT YOU DIDN’T!” She explodes like a hand grenade tossed right into the middle of all four chambers of my heart.

“I TOLD YOU WHAT HAPPENED!”

“And they still raped me, Drew,” she says, her voice low and intense. “Nothing you tell me about that night changes the fact that they just turned me into a bucket of flesh holes for their pleasure.”

Flesh holes
makes my throat spasm. “Nothing they did to you was about pleasure. It was about control. Power. Evil.”

“That’s exactly why I need to run away.”

Something in her eyes changes the air between us. What happened? What isn’t she telling me?

“That’s why you need to stay next to me at all times,” I counter.

Her slow blink is the only answer she gives.

I’ll take it. It’s better than no.

“Drew, what is that picture of you about?” she asks. The question feels like the weight of four years crammed into a handful of words.

“I’ve never seen that picture before.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“What do you think it’s about, Lindsay?” If they shared that picture with her, what else did they show her?

My skin turns to cold plastic. My mouth goes dry. The world turns into nothing but dark shadows and cold winds.

“You’re naked in that pic. And you have blood all over you.” She’s staring at the ground, then her eyes click up to meet mine. “And my scarf is in the picture. What...what did you really do that night? Whose blood is that?”

Someone bangs an enormous gong in my head.

She’s really asking if that’s
her
blood.

The truth is, I don’t know.

“I can tell you what I know,” I choke out. “I know I didn’t hurt you that night. I know they drugged me. I know I would never, ever willingly participate in what they did to you.”

Mark Paulson clears his throat. I can’t see him. He’s behind a bush. The other guys must be getting antsy. You don’t order a high alert and leave them hanging. Relieved by the interruption, I leave Lindsay hanging.

I can only handle so much. I’m made of steel when it comes to protecting other people, but even I have weaknesses.

Not many.

But this topic is one of them.

“And I know damn well, Lindsay,” I add, grabbing her arms, pulling her to me with a fierce possession. “I know damn well I’ll never, ever let them hurt you again.”

“How am I supposed to know that, Drew?” Her words are a mixture of fury and a whimper that says she wants to believe me. “I see a picture like that and
of course
I wonder.”

Those assholes. I open my mouth to explain. Or to try.

“Drew?” Mark calls out.

Saved by the bell.

“Tell Gentian it’s covered,” I call out to him. “We got it. No need to tell Bosworth.”

Lindsay’s shoulders sag with relief. Her eyes cut over to both of us, and when she meets mine, she’s fuming. Aching with confusion and pissed as hell, but she’s panting.

Exertion? Arousal?

I can’t tell the difference in her anymore.

I reel back.

I call out to Mark. “But we have a new situation. You, me, and Gentian inside in Lindsay’s bedroom in ten minutes. Tell the team to go back to normal stations. Crisis over.”

Paulson leaves, and just as he’s around the corner, Lindsay tries to run for it. Again.

I pounce, flattening her in seconds, belly to belly, and this time, she’s not getting away.

Before she can say a word, my mouth’s on hers, my body blanketing her, hips grinding into her, my cock hard and ready. None of this makes sense.

Not one movement, not one kiss,
nothing
.

She pushes up against me, her energy and anger directed through her mouth, her hands, the way she grabs my ass. Her hands pin me to her body. This is her volition.
Her
will. Her need is clear.

But confusing as fuck.

“You don’t know what you’re doing right now, Lindsay,” I tell her, my mouth against her ear, shoulder digging into the mulch beneath us, our heads up against the wall of the house. We’re filthy and sweaty, my fingers smelling like her, the memory of her coming against my hand so fresh.

“I know what I’m doing,” she pants, nipping my lip, her hands like snakes, all over me, angry and feral, filled with a desperate hate that only passion can inspire.

“I would take you right here, up against the wall of your parents’ house in the middle of the goddamn night like a rutting animal if you weren’t...if I weren’t -- ” Words fail me. That happens more and more with her. I punch the wall with my free hand, my bones jarring with the impact, but at least it takes attention away from my pounding cock.

“If you weren’t a coward?” Her chin juts up in that crazy way she has and that’s it.

I go fucking
primal
.

Her fingernails dig into my shoulders, one hand threaded in my hair, her mouth is hot and heavy on mine, taking as much as I am, our lips bruising, tongues tangling in a ball of fury and lust. My hips push her into the ground as if I could pin her in place and make her stay there forever, to keep her from fleeing, my hard cock seeking her warmth, her breasts pushed against my chest with a soft, yielding feeling that is paradoxical compared to the wildcat trying to maul me alive with tongue and fingers.

“I hate you,” she gasps against my mouth, but she kisses me again, sucking on my tongue, her hand wiggling between us to stroke me from the outside of my pants, my vision turning into storm clouds that billow and mushroom. My pulse sprints through my body like an Olympic runner going for gold and I can feel her getting close as I bend down and free myself, ready to lift her leg and slip inside her, give her what her dirty, naughty, rebellious little body needs.

The same body that left me in bed and stole my gun.

“Do it,” she hisses. “Take me. C’mon, Drew. What are you afraid of? I want it. I want you. Let’s just get it over with,” she says, egging me on. Lindsay is an emotional pendulum. The arc is too wide.

Too extreme.

I chill immediately.

What the fuck is this game?

“No,” I say, my voice ragged and torn, like she’s shredded my vocal cords. “No way. I’m not going to screw you against the side of a building because you want to get it over with, Lindsay. I can’t be some weird version of a revenge fuck.”

My cock is screaming ten thousand different versions of
Yes, you can!
while the rest of me wants to duct tape her mouth shut and stick her on a helicopter back to that mental hospital because maybe Lindsay isn’t done cooking yet.

She might need some more time there.

And I may be the biggest goddamned sucker on the planet.

“It’s just sex, Drew,” she says viciously, her hair a disaster, eyes practically glowing. I tuck myself back in, using every stress-control technique I can think of to regain impulse control.

I get in her face, our lips a half inch from each other, and my eyes cross until I can’t see her anymore. All I see is red. “I am not going to let you turn me into a monster like those guys four years ago, Lindsay. I don’t play that game. You can stand there and tell me you hate me after spending tender time in bed with me and letting me inside you just enough to know all of this is a big sack of shit.”

Her lips curls up in a snarl, but I can see she’s fighting on the inside. Lindsay’s a great liar, but not when it comes to how she feels about me.

“Tell me the truth about that night,” she insists.

“I already did.” Except she’s right – I didn’t. I continue. “I won’t help you in your quest to convince yourself that I am bad. I refuse. The first time we make love, it won’t be in anger, and it sure as hell won’t be up against the side of your house within earshot of a security detail you just emasculated.”

She laughs. It’s the sound of broken glass dropped on a tin roof. “
Who
did I emasculate, Drew?”

“You’re not like this,” I snap back, but the crazy fire in me is calming down. It has parameters now. Borders. I can manage this. I can get myself back to baseline.

“Like what?”

“Self-destructive.”

“You think this is self-destructive? Hah! It’s self-preservation!”

“The fact that you can’t tell the difference makes you dangerous, Lindsay.”

“Fuck you!”

“No. We’ve established that already. Quit begging.”

“You
wish
I begged!”

Tension radiates like live wires between us. She’s looking at me with such a mix of hatred, lust, and determination that I want to let her run away.

With me right on her heels.

But I can’t.

Because I have a job to do.

I look up at the open window. “I assume you can’t scale walls?” I ask her.

She huffs.

“Then we need to go back in the house the normal way. Through an actual door.” I reach for her arm to guide her. She wrenches it away. My fingertips burn with the feel of her.

That’s all I’m getting for now.

I guess it’s better than nothing.

At least she’s still here, weaving her way through the bushes alongside the house’s foundation, finding grass and a stone path that winds around to the back door.

My gun is in my waistband. Lindsay’s in sight.

Just another night at work, right?