Honey Moon (6 page)

His brow furrowed. “Never contact me again.” He bent, kissed her cheek and murmured, “Stay out of bars and far away from me.” Hand trembling, he opened the stall and gestured her ahead.

Without looking at him, her phone or the amount he’d given her, she forced herself forward.

Holy hell, I don’t even know her name.

Sam did know the name of the woman sitting at the bar and staring daggers at the sweetest thing he’d ever had, in the briefest sexual encounter of his life, as she hurried for the exit.

Crap. Busted.
And doomed to losing his cover as a newlywed. Goddamn, his luck sucked. For the first time since he’d chatted Laree up on that dating site, the woman had to be early, instead of her usual twenty minutes to an hour late.

“You fucker,” Laree howled at him when he’d slunk close enough. She glanced at her wrist phone, and her gaze spit fire. “You emptied your account. One hundred thousand, six hundred and ninety-seven dollars and forty-eight cents for a two-dollar whore? In a filthy bar?”

Christ—really?
More pissed over money than another woman. At least she hadn’t figured out his real name, seen his actual worth. He still had plenty left for his parents to pay for his funeral or legal expenses, and, hopefully, the brave soul whose scent was on his fingers would use the economic boost to get safely clear of any ties to him—a terrorist—once things went south. Without a bride, chances of this nightmare going any other direction were nil.

Then why did the happy grin, the smug expression of a guy with a purring dick, fight to break out on his face?

A direct look at the woman he’d callously used worked to wilt him—not surprising, but still it rankled there wasn't a single tear, no hurt and confusion, nothing but anger on her face. At least there’d be no broken hearts for either, and perhaps, just maybe, not walking up that ramp on his arm meant she’d live to reel in someone else.

Laree’s forehead pinched, lips pressed thin, before she opened her mouth. “I’m guessing you just paid an escort who was contracted and already compensated by some asshole friend of yours? Using a lawyer-free transaction that’s irreversible without the agreement of the receiver. Are you insane? You’re really broke? No hidden accounts?”

“Penniless. I also quit my job,” he lied. She’d believed him to be a respectable stockbroker.

Expression stunned, she drew back as if he’d punched her.

Figuratively, I, the biggest of bastards, did
. Popped her bubble to getting her dreams of that free castle in the sky.

“You think I’ll finance our wedding and support some loser?” she snapped.

No. I expect you to tell me to fuck off.
He grasped her shoulders. “I’m sorry. Very sorry. I’m a sick perv you’ll never see again.”
Except on the news.
He leaned and pecked a kiss on her cheek and released her. “Deny knowing anything.”

She yanked off the ring, and slammed it down on the bar. “I don’t understand. You said you loved me.”

Barely tolerate, let alone love, but at least she’d live to dance on his grave. He’d leave her the ring to hock—her fingers already easing closer to reclaim it—and the stocks and bonds she’d find in his briefcase. Least he could do. Her other hand rose as high as her voice had been and she slapped his face. He absorbed the blow he deserved, pivoted on his heel and it was his turn to run.

Outside, no sexy and mysterious woman in sight, he headed for his secret lair. Unfortunately, without a bride on his arm, he’d have to move forward with plan B.

Purchasing an illegal handgun wasn’t easy. Not since billions of all makes and models had been melted down, destroyed after the global ban went into effect. Only government agents, police and those who sat in mass transport driver seats—including cockpits—were licensed to carry anything other than stun guns, mace or compound bows during specific times of the year and with a hunting license to support it.

It’d be much easier to steal a legitimate gun. He’d have to put a serious dent into his flush bank account in order to get the address of the pilot on the shuttle roster for this city. Then he’d have to cross so many lines, commit acts he’d never imagined doing. Sweat broke out of every pore just thinking about it.

He walked blindly, his head spinning as the mental list of felonies grew. Lurk in the shadows, attack and kidnap, steal an identity and stash the guy somewhere, doctor that identity, and—
bloody balls
—ready to be a shy bloke who’d never faced any screen other than computer monitors in solitude and without video feed to anyone but his family, to play an Oscar-winning role.

Fun times.
He squared his shoulders and strode faster.

Chapter Four

Jenna picked up her pace. The automated trains that left every quarter-hour were deadly to attempt boarding if you didn’t heed the large digital display—blood-red numbers showing the countdown to one tenth of a second until departure.

In a heavily populated city of drones who measured their lives in fraction of a second intervals instead of coffee spoons, no one cared how easy it’d be to have weight sensors hold the door until a person cleared the entrance or exit. At least once a month, some unfortunate lost inches off their backside, or worse, a foot, when they didn’t clear the pane of unstoppable glass and steel doors zapping along its track to close, despite more than air and insects in the way.

She caught the northbound train with eleven-and-a-half seconds to spare. Once inside, Jenna stumbled against the console and lowered her wrist phone to scan payment. Heavy footsteps behind her told her some fool boarded on her heels. The click of glass locking in place, and a lack of screaming meant they’d made it intact.

Her side ached, breath hitching, as she headed down the aisle on the crowded train to collapse in the first open seat. Her leg against a large grocery bag, she submissively didn’t try to claim a section of the armrest with the elderly woman taking up more than her share of space. For once, she didn’t mind the close proximity to teeming numbers of humans. A protective bubble of happiness enclosed her as the reality of what’d happened sank in.

I, no dream, had Sam Dexter’s dick inside me.

Since she was a child, she’d gobbled up political and social musings to try to decipher what was truth or fiction concerning the world she lived in. A decade ago, she’d been of age to join the working class after school. Then she had to limit her obsession with news to stolen moments when the cams weren’t centered on her cubicle. She stopped randomly reading to concentrate on sites that most caught her attention, one of which was a guy not much older than her who steadily became more and more famous.

Weekly, she devoured Dexter’s blog—
In the Loop
—as soon as possible after her wrist phone chimed to tell her he’d posted. His profile pic hadn’t been updated in years, not since he’d written a controversial post about female versus male stalkers. Since then, he’d successfully dodged photographers attempting to show more than his written word on the Net. But she felt like the moment she’d seen him sitting at the bar, the name Sam should have rung bells and she should have known.

Throughout the years, a particular way he’d phrased something looped, as the blog name promised, over and over in her thoughts. Occasionally she’d find her hands wandering as she pretended he lay beside her in the darkness of her bedroom. Oh God, imagine if they had been on a comfortable bed surrounded by jasmine and candlelight, instead of florescent lights and shiny porcelain.

She shifted her hips in the hard seat, the pleasant sensation between her legs complaining that fast and furious had been wonderful, but over way too soon. Yet no matter the speed, she wished she could repeat the event every day and night and afternoon and times in between for the rest of her life.

Yeah. Like that’d ever happen.
Thousands of women—and men—would kill to be with a renowned intellect that hid from the public eye in person, but bared his soul online with cryptic honesty.
In the Loop
had a fan base of millions.

For the past three years, Dexter had been included in
Timeless Mag
’s annual shortlist of most desirable bachelors, despite the lack of picture beside his attributes. Shortly after he first made the cut and successfully petitioned the magazine to skip even old photos, he’d blogged about attraction for reasons other than outer beauty. Said he wasn’t a mysterious
Phantom of the Opera
guy, but he didn’t need the acclaim. Preferred to remain anonymous to better maintain the integrity of his blog instead of the other option, becoming a recluse while his face flashed across screens and hiring bodyguards to protect from overly affectionate followers and paparazzi who learned his identity.

Jenna couldn’t help wondering how many affectionate followers he didn’t hide from. She raised her hand to her nose. The tangy male scent faded, and she clenched her fingers into a fist.
I held his dick.
But she hadn’t traced her fingers over his face—features that promised to be plastered over the Net two days from now, regardless of what condition he was in.

Her throat clogged as her thoughts turned dark. Perhaps it’d be more than his face the world would see—a full show of that long lean body, a bullet-riddled corpse en route to cremation. More likely, he’d disappear never to be heard from, let alone seen, again.

She swallowed hard. After giving her the climax of a lifetime, Sam would have dealt with the model-perfect woman who’d stared death rays at Jenna leaving the bar. He’d have then followed in her tracks, but instead of hopping a train to obscurity, he would jump aboard the Stubborn Bastard Express, determined to expose a possible conspiracy without risking anyone but himself.

Over her dead body—and—
shudder
—that could literally come to be.

Did all his lovers have movie star looks like the one she presumed was his fiancée? Was the stunning blonde perched on the barstool more than a prop, someone he sincerely wanted to share vows with? The pair was gorgeous enough to get every perk a shallow world had to offer. No petition of theirs to be fruitful and multiply would be turned down.

Her spine stiffened. The next thought racing through her mind—
we didn’t use protection
—grabbed her by the throat and shook her so hard her heart smacked into her ribs.

Billions of sperm—zillions, based on how powerfully he’d pumped—swam within her, each carrying the code of the man that he was—a man she’d admired for years, since she’d become his twenty-first follower on his third blog post.

Finding herself knocked up by a guy she had an intellectual thing for—and now a physical one—would be brilliant if she wasn’t a fool and a liar. She’d told him she was sterile. Her teeth clenched, jaw aching as she gave herself a mental slap upside the head.

She gleaned by reading stories concerning working guys and gals, that a big draw for escorts over unpaid buddies was the male could go bareback. Anyone who practiced the world’s oldest profession who wasn’t sterile and documented on a regular basis as disease-free faced incarceration for twenty-to-life, or worse—being tossed in a trunk and driven to a shallow grave.

The woman beside her flashed a worried look and Jenna forcibly relaxed.
Crap
and
oh God
and
how-stupid-can-a-girl-get
turned into
why care
. Sam Dexter had told her to never contact him again. His welfare versus that of a possible child was a no-brainer. Any spark of self-preservation—doubt if she should do as he said and not risk herself—disappeared.

She’d sacrifice everything for her lover of five minutes, meaning a potential embryo of about eight cells after two or three days of life wouldn’t grow any further, not with a mother refusing to let a man whom the world needed stop her from taking the crime of terrorist onto her own shoulders.

Unlike some sort of martyr-type plan Sam must have, odds were strong she’d survive whatever scheme she’d manage in the next forty-eight hours. She also knew she could at least put a crack in the powerful façade of the Love Center, encourage the smarter honeymooners to get the potential of a deadly hoax and thus save a few lives while sacrificing any possibility of offspring of her own. She’d be arrested, interrogated, beaten, cleaned up and sterilized, then locked away for life.

Her head hummed as the city flew by and she sat and pondered—for the umpteenth time—why she valued life so little. There’d been no motive for her to play with fire and invite strangers to bars, other than a sense of civic duty. A fool with an overdeveloped conscience. An inability to ignore—or better yet smush—the Jiminy Cricket lecturing in her ear, insisting Miss Pinocchio should do anything and everything in an uncaring world to step up and protect her fellow humans.

She’d planned to recruit a honeymoon winner, get him to check out her unsubstantiated suspicions, be alert to anything amiss when he boarded the shuttle with his bride. Not in her wildest dreams had she expected not only would that honeymoon winner be an idol of hers, but the fact Sam was suspicious of the LC as well added a huge wallop of credibility to her fears.

Seeing as it was quite possible she’d been the anonymous commentator to spur him into this particular line of investigative journalism, certain to have come to the same conclusions as her—the main one being that for some reason the LC had a problem with sterilized and gay couples—rushes of guilt scrambled up and down her spine.