Seek and Destroy (6 page)

    "That is a bullshit excuse and you know it."

    "It is a very real-"

    "Bullshit!" David roared, and immediately regretted it. He winced against the pain, paused until it subsided. McKoy placed her hand back on his arm and it helped more than he cared to admit. "We risk our lives every goddamn day. Having some sort of chemical toxin in me does not make me any more of a risk than you with a blown out knee."

    Weber grunted and pinched the skin between his eyes. "Will you at least accept a temporary transfer? Keep you off your feet until you are fully recovered? I can make sure your missions are nowhere near any biological shit like Ricin."

    David swung his gaze up to McKoy, whose eyes held steady, waiting for his answer. She gave him a slight smile that made his insides wiggle like Jell-O during an earthquake.

    Pulling his gaze back, he shook his head. "No transfer. I am not ICE material."

    "Take some time," Weber offered. "Think about it."

    He riveted his eyes to his boss. "No transfer."

    

    

    
One year later.

    

    It was too easy. Why didn't they ever present more of a challenge to him? He brushed off a spec of dust from his laptop monitor and sighed in irritation. He'd have to dust again after this. He couldn't allow anything to distract from the perfect picture.

    Christ he was bored. At least when he played cat and mouse with the agency, they made it a little more interesting.

    Time to come out of hiding. Five years had been long enough. They all thought he died, having blown himself up in that explosion back in his cabin.

    What a bunch of morons.

    With his finger he touched the faded photo of her, its corners frayed and peeling. Her blue eyes shined, her smile warming his heart. He loved her more than anything and would stop at nothing to show her how much. Everything he'd done in the past and was about to do would be a declaration of his love. As soon as she understood that, she'd come to him. She'd be his. Finally. His dick stirred, waking up to the thought of being about to touch her, to love her, as he'd only been able to do in his mind.

    Blowing up those treacherous traitors five years ago made him feel alive again. It filled the void left when the agency cruelly ripped them apart, when ICE threw him out before he had the chance to tell her how he felt.

    Screw them. He'd show them all. They were stupid to think he'd simply go away. For two years he tried to hack back into ICE's system, to plant viruses that would wipe them out. But damn if they hadn't beefed up their security, made their system so tight air couldn't get in.

    Since he tried over and over to break into ICE without success, he'd taken out their punishment on the next closest thing.

    Impulse Technologies, Inc.

    Chrysalis Architectural, LLC.

    Emergent Technologies, Inc.

    He tried to find a technology company that started with the letter 'C' on the West Coast. He couldn't simply remove the 'I' and 'E' without the 'C'. No, IE didn't make sense. Together they had to spell ICE. So he'd settled on the architectural firm. It didn't do much damage, but at least it took him a step closer to his goal.

    ICE needed to pay for what they'd done to him. For what they'd taken from him. After five years, he knew she didn't pick up on his message or she would have come to him by now. Since she didn't make the connection of the bombings, he figured this time he'd better make it a little more obvious. A little more personal.

    He pushed the space bar and watched his monitor as an explosion rocked the lower left half of the new Cascade Technological Advances building, the gray concrete crumbling and belching up smoke. His cock grew semi-hard with excitement from the scene as it unfolded.

    Sirens immediately filled the dusty air as people, at least the ones who still moved under their own power, ran away screaming. The surveillance camera blinked against the percussion. He made a few adjustments and the camera went back into focus.

    His pulse started to quicken. God how he loved it when things went according to plan. His gaze flicked to her picture. "You see, my love? See what I've done for you? Look at the way they scatter. As if I'd do this for them." He waited for several minutes until most of the people had evacuated the building. He didn't want to hurt too many. But he couldn't help if some were too stupid to get the hell out of the way.

    He hit the space bar a second time and another explosion rocked the building, this one deeper inside. His body responded at the sight. His hard-on grew, straining against his zipper. Breathing fast, he smiled. Hot damn. It always excited him when he blew shit up.

    Glancing at the monitor, he watched the chaos, felt that familiar stirring deep in his groin. Always careful to place the bombs nowhere near a load bearing beam, he didn't want the building destroyed, merely the server room. The first explosion took out the wall, opening the scene up for him to watch the rest of his beautiful plan at work. The second explosion did what it intended to do-annihilated their computer system, completely rendering them technology-less. Satisfied with his plan, he pulled the picture off his monitor and closed the laptop.

    Soon, ICE. Very soon it will be your turn. He'd have his revenge. And when he removed the barrier between them, they'd finally be together again. Bringing the picture to his chest, he sighed. His cock pulsed against his jeans and he unbuttoned his pants to allow it free. Covering the head with his hand, he began to stroke. It didn't take much for him to shatter, in his mind replacing his hand with hers. And her lips. And her pussy.

    "For you," he moaned and squeezed his eyes closed to conjure up her pretty face, her amazing body. "I love you so much."

    He wanted to hear those words from her. Of course she loved him. How could she not when they'd spent five years together? No, he told himself, irritated at how the line between fantasy and reality seemed to be getting harder and harder to decipher. They'd been
apart
for five years. Physically, at least. He knew they shared a connection that went far beyond the physical plain.

    He couldn't think of her any other way but loving him. The thought of her
not
loving him simply didn't compute. He wouldn't be able to survive without her love. Her love filled his lungs. His very essence.

    And, he thought with a cold shudder, if she
didn't
live to love him, he couldn't stand the thought of her living at all.

    

    

    Charis hid behind the large palm tree and leaned just enough to catch a peek at her target. Tall, dark, and carved, his slightly shaggy yet oh-so-sexy hair lightened from the Hawaii sun, his skin bronzed from head to toe. She pulled her sunglasses down to get a better view as the ex-field ops agent turned beach bum came jogging out of the surf like one of the lifeguards from an episode of
Baywatch
. David Hasselhoff nothing. David Snyder held her attention, sending surges of sexual current straight to the folds of her pussy.

    His year off certainly did him good. His legs, long cords of hard muscle beneath tight, tan flesh, flexed and released as he moved out of the water. Her heart pounded in rhythm to the pounding of each of his feet against the sand.

    Warmth slowly spread throughout her body, centering deep in her belly. Despite the heat of the Hawaiian sun, her nipples puckered. Painfully. The thin material of her suit wouldn't have a fighting chance at covering her obvious arousal. Pulling the oversized shirt closed in front of her, she brought her eyes back up to gaze at the man she'd been sent to bring home.

    She felt her thighs quiver, the ache between them growing with every passing second she watched the sexy ex-agent.
Oh God, no. This is work. Do not let him excite you. Do not enjoy the way your labia is swelling and softening from the sight of him.
Closing her knees, she squeezed her muscles to force her body back in check. It didn't work. No, in fact it resulted in the exact opposite affect. The friction of her suit against her throbbing clit had her damp, her juices increasing the more she thought about it.

    Why did he have to be better looking than she remembered? He lifted his arm, showing off a perfectly sculpted bicep leading up to an even more perfectly sculpted shoulder. He brushed his hand through his mocha-colored hair, forcing the water out. She watched breathlessly as the tantalizing ex-agent stretched out his well-defined muscles.

    Oh wow. The sparks heating her inner core grew into electric jolts spiraling around her ever slickening channel. She dared not squeeze her legs together again, knowing it may just melt her into a puddle right here next to the tree.

    The gorgeous, hard muscles of his chest glistened with little licks of water. Sucking in her lower lip to bite down, she watched as he twisted to stretch his back, flexing his flat stomach and rippling pectorals. Yummy.

    The afternoon sun shined bright overhead in the cloudless blue sky, its rays catching in the water droplets still clinging to his skin. Oh double wow. She'd never felt such a rapid and crushing, overpowering attraction to anyone. Letting out a shaky breath, she licked her lips.

    Love at first sight? Maybe. In all her twenty-eight years she'd never been in love, so she really had no basis of comparison. Whatever that feeling growing deep inside her, sending her heart racing and her flesh humming, she liked it. It gave her a sense of bravado, like fate had suddenly given her a nod of approval.

    
No wonder they say love is a drug.
What a high. She felt delirious and dizzy. Aroused and breathless. Only one other time had she even come close to this feeling. In the hospital, the first time she'd met David Snyder.

    She closed her eyes and still saw him in that hospital bed, fighting for his life. She'd stayed through the nights with him, holding his hand, comforting him as his body fought off the Ricin poison threatening to take his life. It didn't seem all that long ago when she'd been the one in the hospital bed, those wires and tubes connecting her to beeping machines and blinking monitors.

    Charis shook off the feeling and glanced back to David Snyder now. The scar on his shoulder had healed to a puckered pale white. The sight of it sent a slight shiver through her. A single gunshot and he'd almost died. She knew how close he'd come to death. The human body damaged so easily. It made her feel so helpless, so vulnerable. Scared she'd lose him. Lose him before she ever had the chance to know him.

    She couldn't explain it. She'd just met the man, and yet something about him fascinated her, excited her. As he lay there in that hospital bed, she must have spent twenty hours a day by his side. She hated hospitals ever since living in one for almost two months while she went through surgery after surgery. But for him, she ignored the bitter memories of waking up scared and alone in a dark room.

    The endless nights of watching him sleep, all the while fighting off her own need for slumber, were all for his sake. No one deserved to wake up alone in a strange room.

    Her visible scars had long since faded. The scars buried deep in her psyche still made it hard to sleep. She'd hate for him to have those same scars. For some crazy reason, she just knew if he opened his eyes and saw her there, she'd save him from the nightmares.

    She'd talked to him, told him about her hopes and dreams, desperately wanting to hear his. She told him anything and everything, knowing her secrets were safe. It made her feel close to him, intimate. Like lovers.

    Charis focused in on his scar. She knew the pattern by heart, like a lion's mane. For some odd reason, her fingers tingled at the thought of tracing it, feeling its silky-roughness beneath her touch. She felt connected to him, as if her scars somehow meant they'd shared some grave experience. In a way they had.

    They'd both stared death in the proverbial face and lived to tell the tale.

    She brought her attention back to David. From the way he moved now, he didn't appear to have lost any mobility as they originally thought he would. He stretched his exquisite arms high over his head and bent over, touching his toes. It gave her a great view of his derriere. Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm. Mobility seemed fine to her.

    Pushing her sunglasses back up, she tried to relax and stepped out into the open, the small beach bag containing her tanning oil, wallet, and cell phone swinging in her hand. The men's oversized white dress shirt hung loosely against her skin, opened in the front to reveal a poor excuse of a floral swimsuit. At least she didn't have on the poor excuse of a swimsuit NASSD had chosen for her. A bikini? Obviously someone in NASSD's wardrobe department had a sense of humor.

    Her twin brother Chris had been accepted into the folds of the highly coveted counter-terrorist agency six months ago. She wouldn't put it past him to have a hand in this. He'd been lecturing her to get out from behind her computer screen.

    She glanced down at her appearance and gave an involuntary shiver. The last time she'd been this naked in public she'd just taken her first breath, twenty-eight years ago.

    She'd argued with wardrobe for over an hour before refusing the assignment if she had to sport a string bikini. Ah but wardrobe, along with the rest of the action-crazed NASSD agents, were all tucked safely back on the mainland. Or Pakistan. Or Indonesia. Among other countries. They'd never know she now wore her own suit instead of the meager attempt at coverage.

    Pulling her shirt closed in front of her, she drew in a deep breath. At least the suit covered most of the scarring on her stomach. The doctors used skin graph after skin graph from her torso to repair the damage after the explosion had peeled most of the skin off her right leg. She'd been lucky. If she had actually stepped on the landmine instead of tripping the wire, it would have taken her leg clean off. Probably would have killed her. She shuddered at the memory.