Cut and Run
Table of Contents
Title Page
CUT
Book Description
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RUN
Book Description
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Lara Adrian’s Books
Tina Folsom’s Books
About the Authors
CUT AND RUN
PHOENIX CODE SERIES
Books 1 & 2
NEW YORK TIMES
BESTSELLING AUTHORS
LARA ADRIAN
TINA FOLSOM
CUT
LARA ADRIAN
Copyright 2014 Lara Adrian LLC
Book Description
Community college professor Ethan Jones is living a lie. A precognitive agent known as Zephyr, Ethan is accustomed to subterfuge and deception, but when the Phoenix program is betrayed, he’s forced to cut all ties to the life he’s made and everyone in it—including smart, beautiful Tori Connors, the one woman who tempted the cold agent to let down his impenetrable facade.
A chance encounter years later and thousands of miles away thrusts the lovers together again, and this time Tori refuses to let Ethan deceive her. Although he is a dangerous enigma, Tori still desires him, and soon their inconvenient reunion becomes a temptation too strong to resist. With assassins closing in, Ethan and Tori embark on a desperate race for their lives—one that will put their tentative trust to the ultimate test.
1
Portland, Maine
Three years ago
When he got out of bed that late-February morning, Ethan Jones had no idea his life was about to end.
Standing barefoot in just a pair of jeans at the kitchen window of his girlfriend’s small bungalow, he palmed a mug of fresh-brewed black coffee as he watched the sun rise. He’d been up for about an hour, leaving Tori to sleep in a while before she had to get ready for her nursing shift downtown at the medical center ER.
It was snowing again. Fine white crystals ticked against the windowpane as a gust blew through the tree-lined, working class neighborhood.
When he’d first moved to the Northeast from New Mexico, he’d hated the winters. Hard to imagine two years into his teaching stint at the local community college, he was actually growing accustomed to the snow and cold.
He was growing accustomed to a lot of things lately.
Getting too comfortable.
He recognized that fact for the risk it was, but it didn’t keep him from registering genuine warmth as Tori Connors shuffled sleepily into the kitchen.
She was wearing his white button-down from last night and nothing else, her pale blond hair a messy tangle around her shoulders. The hem of the shirt fell halfway down her slender thighs, a single button fastened between her pert breasts.
“Mmm, it smells good in here,” she murmured, drawing closer. “Fresh coffee and a hot man. Two of my favorite things.”
As he took down a mug for her and filled it, she walked over and wrapped her arms around him from behind. Her cheek rested warmly against the center of his bare back. “Why didn’t you wake me when you got up?”
“Because if you’d been awake, we’d still be in bed, doing everything but sleeping.”
Her little moan vibrated through him. “That sounds like a great idea to me. Let’s call in sick,” she murmured, dropping kisses along the groove of his spine. Desire ignited through him with each soft press of her mouth on his skin. “Or we can say we’re snowed in, trapped by a freak blizzard that only hit the East End. We can play hooky and spend the whole day in bed together.”
He groaned, closing his eyes as his pulse hammered into a heavy throb. Spending the day in bed with Tori was never a bad idea. God knew, he’d been doing enough of it lately. And despite the fact that his cock responded with enthusiastic agreement, Ethan broke out of her loose hold and pivoted to put the mug of coffee in her hands.
“It’s a test day for my eight o’clock class. Before that I’ve got an advisory meeting with a student who wants to drop Comparative Lit.” He bent his head to give her a brief kiss, tasting the faint mint of toothpaste on her tongue. “I can’t blow off the day, no matter how tempting you make it.”
She gave him an arch look. “Apparently not tempting enough to make you jeopardize your perfect attendance, Professor Jones.” She smiled, but her smart, denim-blue eyes were studying him over the rim of the steaming mug. “You’re a strange one, you know that? I swear, sometimes I just can’t figure you out.”
“What’s to figure out? I don’t think I’m that complicated.” His tone was calm, even amused, despite the prickling of his instincts.
As for complicated? She had no idea.
And he meant to keep it that way.
He might have gotten too comfortable with Tori in the months they’d been together, but he was never careless.
He was too well trained to let any part of his cover slip, even with her.
Ethan casually strode to the refrigerator and took out a carton of eggs and a bowl of fruit he’d chopped up earlier. “You want french toast or pancakes for breakfast?”
“Surprise me. You know I love whatever you put on the menu. Besides, after last night, I’m ravenous.”
Pivoting to lean her back against the counter, she grabbed a strawberry from the bowl and bit into it, watching him gather a few more things from the fridge and cabinets. “Why do I get the feeling you want to change the subject? The way you always seem to do whenever that subject is you.”
He shrugged. “I guess I don’t find myself all that interesting.”
She blew out a soft laugh. “Trust me, Ethan, you’re interesting. You’re also charming, athletic, and ridiculously gorgeous. On top of all that, your mind is like some kind of encyclopedia. I don’t think there’s a book in existence you haven’t read, and you can talk about any subject as if you’ve studied it all your life. Not to mention, you cook like a dream and…do a lot of other things like a dream too. You’re actually freakishly perfect.”
He set a quart of milk on the granite countertop and met her gaze. “Careful or you’re gonna give me a big head.”
“And then you’ll definitely be late for your class,” she said teasingly, her pretty mouth curved in a grin. A mouth that he wanted to taste all over again this morning.
He couldn’t resist pulling her into his arms. She went willingly, her soft curves pressing against him as he reached under the cotton shirt to caress her naked breast.
“Do you ever think you should be doing something else with your life, Ethan?”
He smirked. “I hadn’t before, but now that you point it out, gigolo chef doesn’t sound half bad.”
Tori laughed as he kissed her, but when he drew back and met her eyes there was a seriousness in their blue depths. “You never think that maybe you made a mistake coming here to Portland, instead of somewhere else? You don’t think you’ll get bored here eventually?”
“What makes you say that?”
She gave a vague shake of her head. “I don’t know. It’s just…something I wonder about sometimes. I know you’re devoted to what you do. But you’re too smart to settle for Associate Professor. Maybe you should aim for something higher than that.”
She thought he lacked ambition or drive? The thought made his brows rise. He wasn’t defensive; more privately amused. “I like my job.” He grinned. “I’m not trying to save the world or anything.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know that. But you’re too exacting and meticulous to be teaching liberal studies for the undeclared, don’t you think? I mean, I know you’re dedicated to your students. If you ask me, you’re the best thing that ever happened to that school. But I’ve known you for almost a year now. I’ve watched you, Ethan. You’re Ivy League brilliant and then some. Yet here you are, hiding out at a small-town community college.”
Her choice of words nearly made him choke.
Fuck.
Was it even remotely possible that she suspected something?
He wanted to reassure himself it was only coincidence, merely conversation, but his conditioning was too ingrained for him to tread with anything less than caution.
Tori Connors was a small town girl. She’d been born and raised in rural Maine. She didn’t have the same mileage on her that he did, nor the years of training in concealment and subterfuge, but she was a sharp, observant woman with a keen intelligence. It was part of what attracted him to her, aside from her girl-next-door beauty and earthy authenticity.
So far, Tori knew only what he’d allowed her to know about him—most of it sticking close to his carefully constructed cover.
She knew nothing about who he truly was, or his work as a precognitive agent in one of the CIA’s most covert programs. If he cared about her—and he did, more than he ever should have dared—then he had to make sure Tori never got close to that other part of his life.
Ethan drew her further into his embrace and kissed her with an affection, and a desire, that belonged entirely to her, not to his training or his need to ascertain a potential breach in his cover.
He felt more for Tori in a handful of months than he had for anyone else in all of his thirty-one years of life.
That fact alone should probably have told him it was time to break things off and move on, but damned if he’d been able to find the will to do it.
“Hey,” he said gently, smoothing a sleep-tousled blond strand from her face. “Tell me what this is about. What’s on your mind, babe?”
“I’ve just been thinking about things.” She pressed her lips together as she looked up at him, hesitation in her dark blue eyes. “It’s going to be March soon. Which means Saint Patrick’s Day is coming up…”