Seconds turn to a full minute, the plane lifts off, and the minute we’re airborne, the jet shimmies and shakes, but soon the climb is stable and steady. Unwilling to waste even a moment of the two-plus hours we’ll be in the air to London, if that’s our final destination, I stand up. Amanda does the same, and I have the idea that she’s reminding me that she is my equal in all things. But this isn’t about equal. It’s about pleasure, and I’m simply not a man who gives up control. Not to her or anyone, and I make that point when I pull her to me, tangling fingers in her hair, just the way they had at the mansion.
“Kiss me like you did back there at that party,” I demand.
“But I’m poison, remember?”
“My kind of poison,” I say, my cock now rock-hard, my mouth closing down on hers, tongue licking against hers, demanding, stroking. She resists for a flash of a moment, but then she is kissing me back, her soft curves melting into me, my free hand moving from her waist where it settles to caress and then cup that sweet ass of hers.
But she tears her mouth from mine, her hand flattening over my heart that is racing right along with my adrenaline. “If I’m poison,” she challenges, “what if I poison you?”
“Sweetheart, I don’t scare that easily,” I say. “In fact, I like the high of danger and you’re making me pretty damn hot and hard right now.” I turn her around and unzip her dress, leaning in, my lips at her ear. “And if you poison me now, too soon, we’ll both miss out on a hell of a lot of pleasure. So, wait.”
“Talk is talk,” she taunts, but what is interesting is I have this sense that she both wants to scare me away and pull me closer. I think she scares a lot of people away. But I’m not a lot of people.
I scrape my teeth over her earlobe, nipping hard enough for her to stiffen and suck in air, but she refuses to give me more. I lick the wound I know I’ve created, and whisper, “I’ve never been big on talk,” my hands finding her dress and caressing it off of her shoulders. It slinks down her body, and pools on the floor, my gaze raking over the barely there black thong and her round, sexy bottom.
I unhook her bra, my fingers pushing the straps forward and off of her arms, and once she’s let it fall to the seat in front of us, my teeth find her shoulder, before I release her and shrug out of my jacket.
By the time it’s falling to the floor, she’s kicked aside her dress and rotated to face me, her high, full breasts now boldly on display. And yet, there is something reserved and proper about my little poison princess. Layers she hides beneath her challenges and dares. Complexity beneath all her many perfect curves that interests me in a way little does these days. She interests me and my eyes rake over her pink pebbled nipples, my hands settling at her waist, when we both want them on her breasts.
But anticipation makes everything sweeter, and I kiss her again, hard and fast, before lowering to one knee, my mouth finding her flat, sexy belly before I twine my fingers in the strings at her hips, and drag her panties down her legs. My lips end up a breath from her sex, and I glance up at her as I lick her clit, reveling in the way she sucks in air, and arches her back. But when she reaches for me, I stand up, cupping her face, dragging my mouth over hers. “My kind of poison,” I declare.
“You sure about that?” she challenges again.
My answer is a kiss, and the instant our tongues collide, something wild, hot, and fierce happens between us. Something out of control, when I never allow myself to be out of control. But nevertheless, it happens, and perhaps that is the only proof I need that she is poison. And yet, she’s an addictive poison that I drink in with another lick of my tongue, followed by yet another. We are touching, licking, kissing, undressing to include the removal of a few well-placed weapons on each of us. Until finally, Amanda is in nothing but her thigh highs and heels, and I am in nothing but my pants, that aren’t my pants at all, and without the condom I realize now that I don’t have.
I shackle her waist, and pull her to me. “I don’t have—”
“—a condom,” she supplies, once again finishing my sentence, when few dare any more than they manage to interest me. “Aside from the fact,” she adds, “that we’re both all but lab rats for the agency, I can’t get pregnant.” Her hands settling on my chest. “The agency likes that about me. It’s okay if you do, too. But if you’re afraid—”
I tangle rough fingers in her hair and pull her mouth to mine. “I told you,” I say. “I don’t scare easily.”
“Good. Because right now, I just want to—”
“—fuck?” I supply.
“Yes,” she agrees. “Fuck.” And that word “fuck” is spoken as primly as one might expect from a scholarly scientist that I am suddenly harder and hotter for than I have ever been in my life.
I kiss her, my tongue sliding deeply, stroking against hers, and she moans into my mouth, the taste of her sweet, delicious poison explodes in my senses. And I can’t get enough. I rotate us, and sit on the bench, taking her with me and without any hesitation. We could die tomorrow. We could have died tonight. And I need to fuck this woman.
My hands mold her breasts, and she presses her hands to my face, panting as I tweak her nipples, with yet another demand of, “Why are your pants still on?”
“Pleasure isn’t about fast,” I say, tugging roughly at her nipples, watching her lashes lower, her forehead finding mine, her fingers curling on my jaw. “It’s about that reaction you just gave me.”
She slides her cheek to mine, her lips near my ear. “I want the reaction you’ll give me, when you’re buried inside me.”
My cock throbs with those words and I pull back, dragging her mouth to mine in what becomes a deep, drugging kiss that ignites fire between us all over again. We’re kissing. We’re touching, and yes, we are getting rid of my pants. And holy hell, she is sliding down my cock, all wet and hot, taking me inside her, and it’s one of those rare moments I allow nothing else to exist. There is just what I feel, which is really fucking good, and what I want her to feel, which is even fucking better. But instead of moving, instead of getting on with the pleasure and the fucking, somehow, we sit there, me buried deep inside her. We are still, our mouths close, breathing heavy, warm, in unison.
And I don’t have to look into her eyes to feel the pulse between us. It’s that intense. A burn that radiates, scorches, that is more than raw need and nameless sex. More than a simple hard and fast fuck that could be satisfied with another woman. This is about her, about the crackle between us from the moment we met, and the very fact that I crave only her, even needing this, when I normally need nothing, both arouses me and pisses me off. Really fucking pisses me off, and I want it sated and now. I pull her mouth to mine and kiss her—at the same moment, I press her hips against mine, and thrust into her. She moans, a sweet, sexy sound bordering on a raspy growl, and drives me wild.
I mold her closer, my hand wide between her shoulder blades, the other on her breast while my mouth suckles and licks at her nipple. She kisses my neck, my cheek, my shoulder. And each place her mouth touches, each time her sex grinds against my cock, adrenaline surges through me. I want her. I need her. And yet, something again, we are still, we are looking at each other and the silence is brutally filled with truth. We might die tomorrow. We might die today. Maybe I’ll kill her. Maybe she’ll try to kill me.
There is something sharp and dark in her eyes, a moment before she leans in and presses her lips to mine again, and we are suddenly kissing again, and she is rocking against me as I thrust into her. I let myself get lost in the moment, in her. I touch her and she melts into me. I touch her and she shivers. I touch her and she moans, and I feel every one of those reactions with a full throttle adrenaline rush. It’s in every touch. In every kiss. And I swear it’s too fucking soon when she stiffens on top of me, her fingers digging into my shoulders moments before her sex clenches around my cock, her release becoming my release.
She’s just collapsed on top of me, all her soft curves melting into every hard line of my body,
when the phone on the wall a few feet away buzzes. “And we’re at thirty-thousand feet,” I say, rotating Amanda and lying her down on the bench. “That will be our update from the captain.” And with regret, I pull out of her, hand her a box of tissues from a built-in table just above her head and attached to the bench. I then stand up, leaving her naked and exposed, adjusting my pants, when I’d rather be with her, naked and in control.
Walking to the wall, I grab the phone, answering with, “I’m listening,” as I turn to bring Amanda’s heart-shaped ass into view, my cock already showing signs of life again.
“Detailed instructions are in the envelope in the overhead bin,” the pilot states, and the line goes dead.
I return the receiver to the wall unit, and Amanda grabs her dress, stepping into it. “Well?”
“We have a message,” I say, opening the bin to find a piece of paper I read out loud. “Mr. and Mrs. Jones will arrive in NYC where they live and work, in approximately eight hours, and they will remain there for the duration of their next assignment. A car will be waiting when you arrive to take you to your rental house, where you will receive further instructions.”
Amanda settles her dress into place and steps in front of me to remove the letter from my hand, reading it herself, before she glances up from it to me. “Where we live and work,” she repeats. “And for the duration of our assignment. That sounds complex.”
“Agreed,” I say, turning her and pressing her against the wall by the phone. “And I don’t do long term or complex anything. What do you know that I don’t know?”
“That I have a very unique set of skills,” she says. “I don’t do long term or complex, either. They get me in and get me out. So, what do you know that I don’t know?”
I narrow my eyes on her, searching for the right and wrong in her, the reason the agency wants me with her. Her chin lifts, defiance in her eyes, but there is something else, a vulnerability that could be guilt. Guilt is dangerous. To her. To me. “You’re mine now, Mrs. Jones,” I say. “I’ll protect you. I’ll give my life for you, but if you cross me . . .” I slide my hand under her hair and settle it at her neck. “I’ll kill you. To be clear, I could have already, and I can, snap your neck in the blink of an eye.”
She laughs, unfazed in the slightest. “That’s the most romantic thing anyone has said to me in forever.” She reaches up and strokes my jaw. “I will protect you, too. I’ll die for you, Mr. Jones, but let’s be clear about the playing field.” She holds up her hand and taps her pinky, then strokes a thin film-like material over the stubble on my jaw before running it over her bottom lip. “That’s deadly when I want it to be. And it’s only one of my many techniques. You might be bigger and stronger, but I am the Poison Princess. I could have already, and I can, kill you at any time.”
Fuck. I’m hard again. What is it about this woman? I drag her mouth to mine. “Then I guess that means we’re even.” I kiss her, a quick slide of tongue before I add, “For now.” I tug her skirt up her hips, and turn her to face the wall, stepping into her, and pressing my cheek to hers. “Let’s talk about who’s in charge. Which would be me.”
She gives a low, sexy laugh that says everything and nothing. And even then, some part of me knew that Amanda would be the most delicious, dangerous challenge I’d ever known.
Chapter Five
Present day . . .
The past might be playing in my mind, but Amanda and I still sit in the rental car, her green eyes locked with mine in what I know as familiar defiance. Defiance I first experienced that night on the plane. The night that she began earning my trust. The night I fell in love with her and handed her the ability to fuck me over. Even knowing all the things that I now know about her: her betrayal of the agency, her actions that lead to Danny’s death, her secrets and lies, there is no denying that I still love this woman, and that really fucking pisses me off.
I reach for her, my hand sliding under her hair just as it had that night, and I drag her toward the armrest and to me. “I wouldn’t have killed you three years ago,” I say. “But I will now and I can still snap your neck in the blink of an eye.”
“And I can still poison you before you have any hint it’s happening.”
“You’d be dead before I ever hit the ground,” I promise. “You betrayed me, Amanda. I will never give you the chance to do it again.” I release her, but even as I do, I know her, at least on some level, and I’m anticipating her next move. I reach for my gun, turn it on her, and as expected, already she’s holding one on me.
“I betrayed you?” she hisses. “Stop the games, Assassin. I told you. I know the truth. I know who, and what, you are.”
“I’m the same person that you not only fucked but fucked over and over and over,” I say, rejecting the idea that she left over a nickname that means nothing. “And you liked fucking me,” I add. “Too much, it seems. But you won’t fuck me again.”
“That one statement says it all. You are that same person. I just chose not to see it. Assassin. ”
“If a code name that I was given by someone other than myself makes you see me differently, you had something to hide.”
“If that code name means nothing, you would have told the woman you supposedly loved about it in three months.”
“You’re right. I would have but something told me you couldn’t handle it.”
“Couldn’t handle it? Which part? Your code name or your real intentions?”
“I guess I never really trusted you.”
“I trusted you,” she surprises me by confessing. “Completely. Totally. Foolishly. But it doesn’t matter now. You want to kill me. I want to kill you. We both have to put duty first.”
“Duty you ran from.”
“I never ran from my duty. I ran from the hit put on my head and on my parents.” She changes the subject. “Bottom line, Assassin: whatever the future holds, I’m here with you now, and I fully intend to catch Franklin and make him suffocate on his own breath. The way I watched those people in the subway in China suffocate on their own breath through his monstrous actions. He will do what he promises to do.”
I believe her. About Franklin. About her desire to make him pay for the past, and prevent a future attack. That’s the problem, though. She makes me fucking believe her when I now know that she isn’t what she seems. “You can’t do that by fighting me, and I’m one hundred percent certain we’re being watched. For all I know, they’re with you and you’re setting me up.”
“They’re not with me. No one is with me.” Her jaw tightens, stubbornness radiating off of her, but she lowers the gun. “Kill me or stop threatening me.”
“I don’t make threats. You know that.” I harness my gun. “It’s just not time yet.” I eye the mirrors for signs of trouble, and then glance at her again. “If I find out—”
“Yadda, yadda, you’ll kill me. Got it.” She changes the subject. “I need my traveling lab. We have to get to my condo.”
“You want your potions,” I say, remembering her suitcase of vials a little too well. “Negative. We’ll restock what you need in Texas.”
“We need that lab,” she insists. “It’s filled with the work I’ve done. Compounds already formulated. Time we might not be able to spare when we get to Texas. You’ve seen what that means. You know what I can do when armed with my own weapons.”
She’s right. I have. And that means her condo could be one big, deadly trap. But so is the attack Franklin intends for our water system, and he’s ten steps ahead of us. I place the car in reverse, but don’t back up. “We’ll go, but we go now. I’m not giving anyone time to miss you here at the school.” I back up the rental, and drive toward the exit. “When were you first aware that you were being watched?”
“Last night when I left the school. At no time before then.”
“That you know of.”
“No one followed me until last night,” she insists. “You know me.” She sucks in air at that statement, then lets it out, as if she reg
rets those words when even this might be a ploy to get me to let my guard down. That won’t happen.
“I was miserable and I let it affect my decisions,” she adds. “I made a stupid mistake by taking this job last week, but until then I was off the radar for three years for a reason. I’m good at what I do.”
I pull us onto a wider campus road. “The agency found you before I did.”
“Electronically, because I took this job,” she argues. “And I hope like hell it was the agency keeping an eye on me until you got here, because if you found me, if they found me, Franklin could have, too. Or someone else.”
“Someone else, meaning who?” I ask, flicking her a look, only to find her staring out of the side window at the mirror, which shifts my gaze back to my mirror immediately to ensure we aren’t being followed.
“Whoever else the agency might send for me,” she says, offering nothing more.
“That was a non-answer,” I say, “which we’ll define later. My bottom line, this time. Whoever is following us, the agency included, we’re getting rid of them. We’re going to make my visit seem like a date. We’ll appear to go to lunch at the pier where we can get lost in the crowd, pick up a new vehicle, and make our way to your place. We’ll be in and out before anyone knows.”
“In a perfect world,” she says. “I don’t remember ever living in a perfect world for even one day of my life. There are just façades of perfection.”
That statement references our history, and it indeed takes me back three years, to the moment she’s recalling for us both. She’d been naked at the time. I’d been naked. Lying side by side, legs entwined. Talking for hours, when a confession I’d never made to anyone, never felt for anyone, came to me.
I stroke the hair from her eyes. “I loved my parents,” I confess. “As much as a child can love a parent. I was five when my father was killed, a SEAL on a mission. Ten when my mother died in a car accident. But beyond that, Amanda, I have never loved. I honestly didn’t think I was capable of love. But you. I love you.”