Undercover Engagement by Samanthe Beck

Chapter Twenty-One

“Do you think the meet is going to happen?” Eden turned away from the dark scenery zipping by to look at Swain’s profile.

He shrugged. “Don’t know, but”—he tossed her a smile before steering the Bronco into the turn for their driveway—“most ops involve a lot of work, a lot of skill, and some luck.” He pulled to a stop by their porch and turned to her. “You got us as far as we can go on work and skill.”

His smile disappeared. Blue eyes, deep as midnight in the faint light put out by stars and headlamps, scanned her face. He smoothed her hair behind her shoulder. “I’d say we’ll know if luck smiled on us by this time tomorrow.”

A flock of possibilities took flight in her stomach. Despite the intimacy of the moment, she had to move. She swiveled away and hopped out of the car. Swain met her around the hood and followed her up the porch steps. At the door, with him focused on sliding his key into the lock, she asked the deceptively simple question that had been circling her mind for days. “What happens if their source declines the meet?”

He pushed the door open and gestured her through. “At that point, we have very little to lose. I can ask the guys to give me his name so I can talk to him direct. More likely, you could ask,” he conceded as he pulled the door shut.

She walked into the living room, clicked the side-table lamp on, and snuggled into a corner of the sectional. The sectional where she’d first had sex with him, because even though she’d been telling herself she detested him and couldn’t trust him, a part of her had wanted him nonetheless. Now all of her wanted him—all of him. “You think they’d tell us?”

He sat, too, and pulled her over until her head rested on his thigh. “I don’t know. That gets tricky.” Long fingers combed slowly through her hair. “I think Dobie would tell you just about anything, but he wouldn’t want to put you in the crosshairs of a guy who’s already told him he doesn’t want to meet. He wouldn’t feel as protective of me. He might even think I should go on and argue my case face-to-face, instead of pressuring him and Kenny to be intermediaries.”

She nodded, enjoying the feel of his thigh under her cheek. “I wheedle a name out of Dobie, with assurances that I’m sending you to have the conversation. Geez, we’re playing that guy like a fiddle. Why in God’s name does he let me?”

The hand in her hair stopped. “Because you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his entire tiny-town life.”

“Pfft.” She rolled onto her back and stared up at him. “What makes you say that?”

He stared down at her, his handsome face serious as stone. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve seen a lot of things.”

Her heart scrambled for a foothold in her chest. “Don’t say stuff like that to me. I might get used to hearing it.”

“Would that be so bad?” He smoothed his hand over her forehead, then rested the other across her chest, palm over her heart. “Getting used to it? Getting used to me?”

Her pulse stuttered, then raced off at triple time. There was no way he couldn’t feel it. “What are you asking, Swain?” The question came out of her tight throat as barely more than a whisper. “One way or another, this assignment’s going to end in a few days.”

He shifted her head to the cushion and stretched himself out on the sectional, propping his upper body on his forearms so his head hovered above hers. “I’m asking if this”—he slipped a hand beneath the neckline of her gauzy sundress and covered her breast—“has to end when the assignment ends.”

Her nipple instantly rose to greet his palm through her bra. He felt it. She knew by his satisfied smile and the way he moved his hand over her, gently abrading the sensitive crest. Without a thought, she arched into his touch. Her breath escaped in a shaky exhale because her pounding heart took up all the room in her chest. “What would this not ending look like?”

He brought his face nearer to hers, eyes darkening as his pupils expanded. His hand continued to knead her breast, obliterating her ability to think. “Anything you want it to look like. Anything,” he repeated and lowered his mouth to hers. So soft, so mobile. The kiss, upside down, inverted, sent her head spinning. She lifted a hand and pressed it to his jaw. To anchor him. To anchor her. Their tongues tangled. His lips consumed. And then, sweet Jesus, his teeth. When he eased back a fraction to let her breathe, he sank his teeth into her upper lip, just firmly enough to make her nerve endings flare. Heat zinged through her—a straight shot from her lip to her core, with a quick, lethal twist low in her stomach.

She groaned, and he very purposefully devoured the vulnerable flesh until it ached. At a point just short of her begging for mercy, he moved on to her lower lip. She endured the sweet torture as long as possible, but her body grew hot and restless. She ran the soles of her feet over the cushions, seeking leverage, and buried her fingers in his hair, seeking control.

He wouldn’t be controlled, apparently, because he continued on his merry way and scored his incisors along her chin.

“Anything, choux,” he said against her throat. “What can I do to convince you?”

“Nothing,” she gasped and arched her spine, a little desperate to have his mouth on the nipple he’d provoked to a painful crest.

He drew away so suddenly she almost cried out. The hand on her breast stilled. An undefinable expression shuttered the face looming over hers. “Is that a challenge, choux? Because I’m not gonna give up. I’ll convince you.”

Confused and needy, she replayed their conversation in her mind and realized he’d misunderstood her response. He’d taken her “nothing” to mean there was nothing he could do to convince her. But before she could formulate an explanation, he went on. “I’ve got you partway convinced already.” He shifted, came up onto all fours above her, and braced his hands by her hips, resting his forehead against her upraised thighs. “I’ve got your pussy convinced this doesn’t have to end. You know I do.”

His breath fanned down between her legs, and her absolutely convinced pussy quivered in anticipation of his mouth. “Swain…”

“Shush. I’m not going to argue.” With that, he flipped her skirt up, lowered his head, and tongued her through her panties. Her legs went boneless, and her thighs splayed open.

“Swain!”

“I’m not talking to you, Eden. Not listening to a word that comes out of your lying mouth. I know where I can get an honest response.” Her panties dug into her skin for a second, then gave way with a brisk tear. He put his mouth to work on her, and any response became impossible. His urgent lips and demanding tongue reduced her to a writhing, whimpering, wholly inarticulate recipient of frustrated male persuasion. The man put his entire body into tongue-lashing her pussy. Above her, his hips rocked, twisted, and danced the cock-strained fly of his jeans tantalizingly close to her face as he delved, retreated, changed angles, and delved again, doling out more of his highly addictive arguments. Her empty mouth filled with saliva. Her gently abused lips tingled for harsher treatment and unrestrained friction.

She wanted it. “Swain!” This time she didn’t wait for an answer, simply hooked her fingers into the waist of his jeans and began wrestling his buttons open. “Swain,” she panted, “you really are a cooyon if you think I need any convincing.”

He stilled. “You said ‘nothing.’”

She used his stillness to part his fly. His cock, unhampered by underwear, bobbed out to slap her cheek. Now it was his turn to groan. “I meant there was nothing you needed to do to convince me, though I sincerely appreciate all this effort.” Ready to return some, she ran the tip of her tongue from the base of his cock to the flare along the underside of the head.

“Fuck me,” he breathed, then quickly shimmied his hips and dragged his jeans down so his balls weren’t trapped inside a denim prison. “I…uh…I owe you a pair of panties, choux.”

“I owe you this.” Taking hold of his jutting shaft, she manhandled it away from his abdomen—

“Go easy…”

And slid it between her lips.

“Damn it, Eden. Damn it.” His hips jerked forward, like a startled animal running the wrong way, then back, and then stabilized directly above her. “That hurts. So. Good.”

He punctuated each word with a short, measured thrust. She couldn’t respond, except to reach around and get a two-handed hold on his ass—a hold somewhat hampered by the wrist splint, but a hold nonetheless, since he wasn’t trying to shake her off. Not even when she menaced him with a roving finger. Her sense of triumph lasted a moment, until he warned, “Two can play that game, choux,” and took a similar hold on her, meting out a similar threat. “Your call.”

But his cock pulsed in her mouth, and the hint of his orgasm already laced her saliva. Mutually assured destruction? They’d see about that. She pressed his hips down and lifted her chin at the same time. His choked curse told her everything she needed to know. He might have her pinned under him, but she had the advantage. Had it and wasn’t above using it. And using it. She kept right on using it until he jerked his head up, leaving her drenched and unattended, only to sink his teeth into her inner thigh and come with a long shudder and a low groan of surrender.

She took it all, eagerly, holding him fast with hands and mouth as her throat worked, groaning herself when he slowly withdrew from between her lips.

“Well, okay then,” he said in a thick voice. “I’m glad we got that settled.”

She patted his ass. “Me, too.” Her inner muscles twitched from deprivation, but her lips curved into a smile. Satisfaction took many forms. “I could use a shower.”

He laughed. “Hell no, choux. You made your bed.” He lowered his head as he spoke, and his breath became a billion feathers teasing her most overstimulated parts. “You’re just going to have to lie in it a little while longer.”

He proceeded to prove paybacks were, indeed, hell. The hottest, deepest, sweetest hell she’d ever known.

…

Swain jolted awake with a suffocating sound stuck in his throat, darkness all around, and the phantom ache of broken bones throbbing in his ribs and arm.

“Shhh.” A cool hand stroked his back. A husky voice whispered, “You’re okay.”

Just that voice, that one lingering touch, and the nightmare retreated. Unfortunately, the present rushed in to remind him that the last time he’d landed in the grip of his past, he’d fought his way out physically and done damage to the woman who’d had the bad luck to wake him. The same woman he lay next to right now. The one with a sprained wrist. “I’m okay,” he echoed to reassure them both, then carefully settled back against the pillows before easing her head down to rest on his shoulder.

“Same dream again?” She put her arm across his chest, her splinted wrist over his heart.

“Yeah. Not as bad.” He kissed her hair. “Go back to sleep.”

“Hmm. You, too.”

Not likely, but he closed his eyes and listened to her breathing grow slow and steady. The nightmare really hadn’t been as bad this time, and the aftermath not nearly as destabilizing. He recognized the trigger easily enough. That dream tended to sneak up on him when his real-life situation felt out of control. Right now, that meant the op. Eden had done the job, gotten the commitment from Dobie to speak to his dealer, and now it was out of their hands. The guy would either agree to a meet or not, but he had no way to impact that decision. It was out of his control.

He matched his breathing to hers, because his nervous system wanted to rev. Not just over the uncertainty of the meet, he acknowledged, but over the lack of definition around “this not ending” between Eden and him. He knew what he wanted it to look like, but was she there, too? He didn’t know. It wasn’t exactly out of his control, because he could be a convincing son of a bitch when needed, but it wasn’t completely within his control, either. He could also be patient when needed, though it wasn’t necessarily his strong suit when it came to her.

A ding pierced the silence of the bedroom and made him realize he had started to drift.

Shit.

Eden shifted and murmured, “Wha?”

“Nothin’, choux.” Reaching over, he grabbed his phone from the nightstand and flicked the mute switch to silence notifications before the text alert sounded a second time and woke her completely.

He squinted at the screen. Four fucking thirty in the morning was too damn early, even for him. But not, apparently, for Malone, who’d just sent him the time and place for the evidence pickup—five thirty at the Hideaway motel, right there in town beside the Gas N Go. Knock on the door of room seven, meet the contact, take the files, and be on his way. Easy. And while he might bitch about the early hour, he had it easy there, too. The woman turning over the evidence implicating the county treasurer had worked from midnight until basically now gathering everything from her boss’s office. Malone warned him to be on time because she was stressed and anxious and might lose her nerve if the pickup didn’t go like clockwork.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. How could it not? Piece of cake.

Eden stirred beside him, shifting in her sleep so her bare leg brushed his, and got him wondering if he had ten minutes to spare. Too risky, he decided. Not when ten minutes with Eden had a habit of becoming twenty or thirty minutes, or as many minutes as he could coax from her. They had a nervous witness holed up in a hotel room, and he had one job—show up on time. Well, two jobs, actually, since Malone had stressed the need for discretion with respect to this errand. If he woke Eden, she’d wonder why he was leaving early. He didn’t want to lie to her. Not even a harmless fib to keep his commitment to Malone intact. So…

Moving carefully, he eased out of the bed. On his way to the door, clothes in hand, he turned to enjoy one last look at her, now facedown across their bed, beautifully naked and deeply oblivious. Had he not received the text, he might have phoned in sick to the day job and spent the morning hours waking her up slowly. And then fast.

Another morning. Because, at the very least, “this not ending” meant they’d have other mornings. If it looked the way he wanted it to look, they’d have lots of other mornings. Turning away, he strode down the hall to the bathroom. Under the pink-tinged fluorescent bulbs, he faced himself in the mirror. Yeah, that cooyon right there definitely had his preferred version of “not ending,” but just because they were currently cohabitating and engaged didn’t mean she’d be ready to flip a switch and make that their reality. She might want to back up a bit and try—what the hell—dating for a minute. Normal people dated, he conceded as he stepped into the tub, lifted the diverter, and started the shower straight off to avoid the noisy pipes. Flowers. Candlelight. Dinner out. Dinner in. She was entitled to all the steps of a proper romance. So was he, when it came down to it, but he’d flown right past the getting-to-know-you phase the minute he’d met her the first day at KDOCJ. He’d known her just by looking. Her direct gaze, her cool voice, her unshakable resolve, and the occasional flashes of temper she indulged in when someone did his level best to shake that resolve.

She’d known him, too, he admitted as he dried off and dressed. She’d known something about him didn’t fit, and she hadn’t liked it. Hadn’t liked him. Not because his skills didn’t measure up—he’d made sure they did—but because she sensed the slick, slippery side of his nature. A side of his nature he couldn’t deny and wouldn’t waste his breath trying. Instead, he owned it. His ability to size up a situation and turn it toward his purposes made him a good operative but maybe a not-so-good person, so he’d done her a favor and warned her off.

Thankfully, she hadn’t heeded his warning. Exiting the bathroom, he went to the kitchen and completed his morning routine—coffee, shoes, keys—on autopilot while he wrapped his head around that. She’d stuck. Against all the odds, he’d somehow started to win her trust.

Did he have more to win? Undoubtedly. He fired up the Bronco and backed out of the driveway through a soupy predawn fog. He had the time to do it. His mission with her came down to one simple directive.

Don’t fuck up.