Wildfire (Fire 3)

She tried to ignore the sudden longing inside her. She wanted to get back to New Orleans—she wanted to play with new inventions, live a sensible life, eat what she wanted, sleep when she wanted, fuck whom she wanted. Though at that point she didn’t want to fuck anything, she reminded herself. Danger, Will Robinson.

“I’ll hold you to it,” she said, keeping her eyes trained on the path in front of them. It might have been her imagination, but it almost felt as if he tightened his arms around her for just a moment. If he had, the gesture would have been oddly comforting. But of course he hadn’t. She had to stop looking for things that weren’t there.

She should have known where they were going. The old boathouse loomed into sight, far enough away from the surveillance equipment that no one would hear her if she screamed. The ancient building perched out over the water, on the opposite side of the island from the brand-new building Archer had constructed to house his small armada. This place had once sheltered small boats during the hurricane season or when the previous owner returned to the mainland for long months at a time back in the middle of the previous century. It was amazing it had stood up to so many storms—part of the roof had fallen in, though the walls were at least vertical, and the windows were long gone.

There was a heavy padlock keeping the wide doors closed, but she didn’t expect Mal would have any trouble picking it. She just didn’t expect him to do so while he was still carrying her, but he managed quite handily, nudging open the door with his foot and then kicking it closed behind them.

And then they were alone in the huge, cavernous interior, the sun blazing through the holes in the roof. It felt safe, quiet, when nothing had felt that way in longer than she could remember, and she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that this dangerous, dangerous man had the uncanny ability to make her feel protected. She cleared her throat. “What makes you think this place isn’t bugged as well?”

“I went over everything a couple of days ago.”

She controlled her instinctive doubt. “He could have had them done since you were here.”

He shook his head. “I’m wearing something that alerts me to bugs.”

She looked at him in surprise. “Really?”

“On my hip. If we run across something, trust me, you’ll know.”

She refused to think about his hips. “Great,” she grumbled. “Are you just going to stand there holding me while we talk?”

“Nope.” He released her suddenly, dropping her feet to the ground, and she was so startled she almost stumbled. He caught her upper arms to steady her, and they were too close, looking at each other, wary, suspicious, aroused.

“Oh, hell,” he muttered, and before she realized what he was doing, he’d pulled her into his arms, placing his mouth on hers.

Chapter Thirteen

It had been a long time since kissing had been anything but a macabre form of punishment, and for a moment Sophie let herself dissolve into it, the heat and hunger of his mouth on hers, the raw desire that shot through her, unwanted, and she was sliding her arms around his neck, pulling him closer, when sanity reared its ugly head.

She shut off her brain and moved, and a moment later he was on the ground, the rotting floor cracking beneath his weight where he’d landed. She had only a moment to congratulate herself before he surged back to his feet, and she was poised, alert, ready for his attack.

Instead, he looked at her across the shadow-dappled boathouse with nothing more than amusement. “Not bad for someone who’s been on her back for two years,” he drawled. “You want to see if you can do it when I’m paying attention?”

She took a step back, even though he was making no move to approach her. “If I were you, I wouldn’t drop my guard,” she said, her heart hammering, though whether with adrenaline or in reaction to his kiss she wasn’t quite sure. “I don’t like you, and I’m going to take you down any chance I get.” Why did that feel like a lie? It was exactly the way she should feel.

“So I gather,” he said, unperturbed. “So why did you start to kiss me back if we’re such dire enemies?”

“Why did you kiss me?”

“Because I wanted to see what you’d do,” he said, moving toward the far wall and sliding down so that he was sitting on the dusty floor. “You’ve been cut off for years now—Archer assures me that he’s no longer interested in his conjugal rights, and I wanted to see how desperate you are.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Calm down,” he said mildly. “You passed with flying colors.”

“It was a test?” Her voice rose a little, and she

bit her lips, ignoring the conflict inside her.

He shrugged. “If we’re going to work together, I needed to test your reactions.”

“We aren’t going to work together,” she said furiously. “When the Committee abandoned me here, they lost any claim to my loyalty . . .”

“Oh, come on! You surely didn’t expect the Committee to bother with you after your betrayal? You know as well as I do that if I were abandoned here in the same situation, no one would come after me either. We had an operative spend three years as a prisoner in the South American jungles and no one bothered to rescue him. Once you start your mission, you’re pretty much on your own. They’ll help if they can, but in your circumstances no one was going to stick his or her neck out. You’re an idiot if you ever thought someone would.”

Why hadn’t she brought the gun with her? She’d done a thorough breakdown and cleaning, making sure everything was intact, checked it and loaded it, but of course there’d been no chance to try it out. She could think of a perfect target to practice on at that moment, but the handgun was up in her room, hidden in the mattress with her stash of pills.

“I never thought anyone would,” she said. “So it’s a good thing I gave up on the Committee as well.”