Femme Fatale (24 page)

“It’s comfortable, I guess. But it’s kind of lonely. And, like, boring, you know?”

She peeped at Primo through her lashes to see how he was taking this.

Pretty well, apparently. His face had the sleek, satisfied look of an overfed cat. His hand slid down to cup her bottom. Creep. She resisted the urge to stamp her heel into the arch of his foot.

“A beautiful woman should not be lonely,” he said solemnly.

Oh, please. Who wrote his dialogue? Jerks-R-Us?

“Perhaps you would permit me to send one of my men to fetch your bags from the hotel,” he continued. “Here you will be safe and entertained.”

Entertained? Oh, yeah, absolutely. She always found it entertaining to break into the private office of a Colombian drug cartel financier so that she could use his personal computer to evade his system’s security.

Safe? She wasn’t so sure.

“You are so nice to me, Primo. But—” Tory raised her head from his shoulder. “You will understand if I’m not, uh, real good company for a day or two?”

Primo’s handsome face clouded. “I do not understand.”

She put her lips close to his ear. The German was still watching them, his smile indulgent, his eyes cold.

“My ‘girl thing,’” she whispered. “Remember?”

Primo’s arm dropped from around her waist. But Tory was betting now that he had invited her to stay, in front of another man, he would let it stand. Heck, he had enough bedrooms.

“You must still be my guest,” he said politely. “We will find some other entertainment until you are…well.”

She felt a flash of triumph. She was in.

She hadn’t changed.

Spread-eagled against the red tile roof like a captive staked to an ant hill, Bishop watched as Angel—Victoria, she called herself now—flirted and fanned herself in the courtyard below. The sun beat down. The tiles scorched his skin. He burned from a combination of sun and need, of anger and admiration and lust.

She hadn’t changed at all.

Oh, her hair was different, auburn and wavy instead of black and straight, and her name was different, and she’d done something mysterious to her face in the way that women did to change the emphasis of her eyes and lips.

But those eyes were the same, bright and sharp as a copper knife. The mouth was the same, lush and tasty. The take-me body, the screw-you attitude…oh, yeah, she was the same woman, all right.

She could still make him want her with a look. Hell,
she didn’t even have to look. All she had to do was breathe. All she had to do was stand there, breathing, to make him want her so bad he ached.

He wasn’t the only one, either. Valcazar had his hands all over her.

Bishop’s gut knotted. He told himself it didn’t matter. Tory didn’t want his protection, and Valcazar was a dead man anyway.

But whatever his mind told him, his gut wanted her away from here. And his heart—his stubborn, stupid heart—just wanted her. She was a lying, amoral, opportunistic survivor who had saved his life and betrayed his trust, and he wanted her.

Bishop laid his face against the red clay tiles and burned.

A
pparently the slut suite came with its own bathroom. Thank God.

Tory kicked her sandals off by the door and padded barefoot over the thick white carpet. She passed her matched and monogrammed luggage, parked neatly at the foot of the all-white bed. Long white draperies stirred over open white shutters at the tall French windows. Even the furniture was painted white and gold. Yuck. All the white in the world couldn’t disguise that the place was built with drug money. Blood money.

Her skin crawled. She wanted a shower. She tugged the bathroom door shut behind her and turned on the light. Her reflection sprang at her from the mirror over the sink.

She jumped. Jeez. She wasn’t usually this edgy on a job. The encounter with Bishop had rattled her more than she wanted to admit.

Sliding two fingers beneath the edge of her bronze bikini top, she drew out her personalized cocaine pipe.

She’d told an amused and indulgent Primo that she didn’t like to share. But the tiny pipe was more than a party girl’s expensive affectation. Because, in addition to the pretty gold plate and the diamonds that winked on the side, her pipe had other special features: a hidden button that sucked in the fine white powder and an internal compartment that held the drug so it never entered her system.

She depressed another diamond on the side of the pipe, opening the secret compartment, and shook a single line of coke—with a twenty-five-dollar street value, courtesy of her friendly host—into the toilet.

“I’ve seen drugs dumped like that before,” a deep voice observed behind her. “But in my line of work, they’re usually wrapped in plastic.”

Her heart jumped. Her hand tightened on the slender gold pipette. Slowly she straightened and met the dark, sardonic gaze of Bishop Tyler reflected in the mirror above the sink.

He was safe. Relief sang through her veins. That was good.

He was here. That was bad.

And he’d just watched her lose a thirty-minute high down the toilet, which was going to be very hard to explain.

“I thought you were gone,” she said.

He pushed aside the white shower curtain and stepped out of the deep claw-foot tub. Too tall. Too close. “Obviously.”

She backed into the sink. He followed. Her toes curled into the cool tile. She wished, now, she hadn’t kicked off her heels at the door. She’d always needed every inch, every advantage, she could take against Bishop.

She straightened her spine. “What are you doing in my room?”

“Hiding.”

“Bad idea. I called the guards on you once already, cowboy.”

“But you didn’t tell them who I am.”

He loomed over her, tall and unfathomable, staring down at her with those hot, dark eyes.

“So?” she asked. Not a particularly clever reply but certainly smarter than
Take me,
which was the only other response that popped into her brain.

“So.” His warm breath skated across her face. “I figured maybe you’d decided to feel sorry for me.”

She’d never met a man who needed a woman’s pity less. “Wrong. I thought you’d be out of here by now.”

“I’m remarkably hard to get rid of.”

“I remember,” she said.

“Do you? What else do you remember, angel?”

Too much. Too well. Her breathing hitched. “I remember you think I’m a cokehead slut with homicidal tendencies.”

“Maybe I was wrong.”

She tossed her head. “If you were, you wouldn’t admit it.”

“A cop who ignores the evidence is a bad cop. Why did you ditch the coke down the toilet, angel?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She almost groaned. That was so lame. His nearness must be short-circuiting her brain cells.

“Your pipe.” He plucked it from her fingers and turned it over in his hands. “It’s clever. Where did you get it?”

The pipe had been developed for her in the Stony Man labs, but she couldn’t tell him that. The problem with working for a supersecret government agency was that it was supposed to
stay
secret, even from other agencies of the same government.

She shrugged. “I picked it up a while ago. Does it matter where?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” He handed the pipe back to her. “Why didn’t you tell Primo I’m DEA?”

She widened her eyes in fake surprise. “You mean he doesn’t know?”

One corner of Bishop’s mouth quirked. “If you keep answering all my questions with questions, this is going to be a real short conversation.”

“Okay by me. You’re the one who wants to talk.”

“You don’t want to talk?” His voice was husky. Low.

Her body hummed. Maybe their closeness got to him the way it got to her. Maybe he was remembering the way it had been between them.

Or maybe he was just making sure they weren’t overheard by one of the brute squad in the hall.

Tory stuck out her chin. “Not unless you’re going to tell me what you’re doing here.”

“Good,” Bishop said. “Because I don’t want to talk either.”

She was staring him straight in the eye. So she couldn’t pretend later, even to herself, that she didn’t see the kiss coming.

She saw. His eyes darkened. His gaze dropped to her mouth.

He moved in on her slowly, leaning his weight on the sink behind her, trapping her between his lean, hard arms and his hot, hard body.

She had the time and the training to evade him. She wasn’t an expert at hand-to-hand combat like her fellow operative Bethany Riggs or a stuntwoman like Kylee Swain, but she could shoot and gouge, kick and claw. After she’d been recruited by Stony Man, Barbara Price
had seen to it that Tory had the skills she needed to survive in the field. She could protect herself.

Against any man but Bishop Tyler.

Bishop was prepared for her to resist. Whatever he knew of her past—
You think I’m a cokehead slut with homicidal tendencies
—he didn’t really believe that after two years she’d let him break into her room, barge into her life and stick his tongue down her throat without some kind of protest.

She surprised him. She’d always been able to surprise him. It was one of the things that drew him to her, and one of the reasons he distrusted her.

He kissed her with his eyes open. He wanted to see her face. He wanted to gauge her reaction. Was she the woman he remembered? But up close, the details blurred. She smelled different, a combination of tanning oil and some musky scent Angel Perez could never in a million years afford.

But the feel of her was the same—sleek and lush. Her mouth was the same—full and soft. The taste of her was gloriously familiar, shockingly hot.

When he took her mouth the second time, she opened to him like she was welcoming him home.

Her strong, smooth arms slid around his shoulders. Her generous breasts pressed his chest. He skimmed his hands up her nearly naked back, her skin warming his palms like heated silk. Her fingers stroked his nape.

And then she reached into his hair and tugged, hard.

Frustration speared him. But it was loss that hollowed his chest; regret that roughened his voice.

He raised his head. He was breathing hard. “What?”

“I don’t want this.”

Yes, she did. She was breathing hard, too. He noticed and was glad.

“A cop who ignores the evidence is a bad cop,” he reminded her. “Your face is flushed.”

She glared at him. “Too much sun.”

“Your pupils are dilated.”

“Too much coke.”

“I saw you dump your drugs down the toilet. You want this, angel. You want me.”

“I don’t have time for you,” she said.

His temper lit. “In a hurry to get back to Valcazar?”

She didn’t hit him, as he expected and perhaps deserved. She went rigid in his arms. “Actually, I am. He’s expecting me to come down for dinner.”

“Are you going to do everything he expects you to do?”

Her eyes glittered. With tears? Or fury. “I do what I have to. I do my job.”

Realization seeped into him like water soaking into sand.

“What is your job, angel?” he asked quietly.

Her mouth tightened as she realized her slip. Too late. She pushed at his shoulders.

He let her go but repeated his question. “What is your job? You’re not DEA. If you were local law enforcement, you wouldn’t be outside the country. What are you? FBI? CIA?”

She thrust her tumbled hair behind her ears in a quick, defensive gesture. “Oh, please. Do I look like a spook in a suit to you?”

“No, you don’t.” She looked exotic. Angry. Apprehensive. “Interpol?”

“You’re crazy. Or smoking something from your last bust.” She pulled a thick white towel from its metal bar and wrapped it around her body. “I have to shower.”

He crossed his arms and propped against the door. “Go ahead.”

“Without an audience,” she said through her teeth.

“How about someone to scrub your back?”

“I do fine on my own,” she told him, and he was pretty sure she wasn’t just talking about her shower. “Beat it, cowboy.”

If he left her alone, he could search her luggage. He shrugged.

“Suit yourself,” he said, and strolled out.

Tory sagged.

This was going amazingly badly. She had hours—at the most, days—to find Primo’s office, install a port on his computer that would allow her access to his accounts, and establish a connection between the drug lord’s fortune and Egorov’s terrorist network.

Most cracking—breaking into a computer system—was not the result of programming genius or computer wizardry. Usually it was a simple matter of persistence and the plodding repetition of a number of tricks that exploited common system weaknesses. It took time and concentration. And Bishop Tyler was diverting her time and destroying her concentration.

Tory rattled the shower curtain closed and cranked the faucet. She needed to get in touch with Barbara Price. Maybe Stony Man’s mission controller could pull some strings to get Bishop recalled to the States. At the very least, she could tell Tory what the DEA agent was doing in the Cayman Islands.

Tory dropped her towel and her clothes and stepped under the water. Unfortunately, the transmitter-receiver earplugs Barbara used to communicate with her operatives in the field were currently masquerading as a pair of big
gold earrings at the bottom of Tory’s suitcase. She hadn’t dared risk wearing transceivers to a pool party. Besides, if Primo ever got close enough to stick his tongue in her ear, he would have noticed them. So until Tory dressed for dinner, she was flying blind and solo.

She wrapped herself again in the towel and squeezed her hair over the sink. Straightening, she scowled at her reflection, at her straggling hair and scrubbed face and the faint scarlet lines under her jaw. Despite several successful surgeries, the scars would never completely disappear. A makeup therapist at the burn center had taught her to mask them. But her makeup bag was in her suitcase, along with her hair dryer and clean underwear.

She didn’t want Bishop to see her like this. She didn’t want to display her scars any more than she wanted to reveal her identity.

Tory stuck out her tongue at the mirror and felt absurdly cheered.

“You’re over it,” she told her reflection. “You’re over him.”

Her reflection stared back at her with troubled eyes and didn’t say a word.

Tory pulled her hair forward to hide her scars, secured her towel more tightly over her breasts and sauntered out to battle.

He wasn’t there.

Tory scanned the empty white room. What a relief. What a…disappointment.

And then Bishop slid from behind the open wardrobe door and glided to the center of the thick carpet. Against the backdrop of the white, feminine room, he looked big and dark and dangerous. Her heart stuttered.

“You can knock off the silent Indian scout routine,” she said crossly. “I’m not impressed.”

Black laughter leaped in his eyes. “Tell me what would impress you.”

She would have cut out her own tongue first. Because the truth was, he had always impressed her. In the shifting shadow lands of covert ops, Bishop stood like a mountain, strong and uncompromising. His integrity was one of the things that made him so attractive.

And so dangerous. Because what she was about to do violated numerous national laws and several international agreements.

She arched her brows. “You want to impress me? How about you turn your back while I put on some clothes?”

“I’ve seen you naked,” he reminded her softly.

Yes.
The memory shivered through her. She tucked her hands into her armpits so he wouldn’t see them tremble.

“Two years ago,” she said. “And it was dark.”

His gaze remained fixed on her face, probing, burning. “Both times?”

“Yes!” she snapped, and then flushed, realizing what she had revealed. She remembered. Every detail.
Both times.

He held her gaze until the blood drummed in her ears. Without a word, he turned his back and stared at the long windows on the opposite wall.

Tory drew a shaky breath. Clothes, she ordered herself. Now. Move.

Hurriedly she hauled a suitcase onto the white bedspread, unlocked and unzipped it. For a second she frowned at the contents, tissue-thin fabrics in violent colors. She’d chosen her underwear this time around to provide herself with cover, not coverage. But it couldn’t be helped now. She grabbed a handful of flame-colored silk.

Half-crouched behind her open suitcase with one eye on the back of Bishop’s black head—she wasn’t leaving
him to search through her scanties while she went into the bathroom to dress—she stepped into her panties, shed the towel and fastened her bra in front. It was like getting dressed in gym class. She’d always hated gym class.

She pulled her bra straps onto her shoulders and adjusted herself into the cups. At least in gym class she hadn’t had to worry about exposing herself to a hard-headed, soft-spoken cowboy who’d once threatened to arrest her for murder.

She dropped her red dress over her head, wiggled it past her hips, patted and tugged it over her breasts.

With a sigh of relief, she unlocked the second suitcase to retrieve her makeup and jewelry bags. Turning back to the mirror, she applied cosmetics with a quick, practiced hand: first the green-tinted base that masked her scars and then a light foundation and then her party face. She pursed bright red lips at the mirror. Almost done. All she needed was…