Hot Contract (11 page)

Jen held on to him as he began to shake. He
was shaking and shaking, and she was shaking, but she didn’t know
why and when he leaned his forehead against hers and looked into
her eyes, she still didn’t know what was wrong, only that it was
bad.

“I don’t have a condom,” he said. “God, this
is so wrong.”

He turned away; fists planted down on the
breakfast bar and closed his eyes, shoulders up tight around his
ears.

“I thought,” she said finally, after a long
buzzing silence. “You know....God, you are
such
a bastard. I
can’t believe we’re having this conversation naked.”

She trailed off, horribly aware of her lack
of clothes. Jen stood and dragged the sheet up over her shoulders,
knotting it in front of her, this time with a double knot. It was
obvious he didn’t want anything more to do with her.

Keegan turned and spun Jen to face him,
pushing his face right down in hers, looking in her eyes, pinning
her against the table with his hard on. She was sweet poison and a
one way ticket to Hell, but nothing about their attraction was
logical. He wanted to lift her up, get rid of the sheet and slam
himself home.

“Can’t you see what you do to me?” he asked,
the longing tucked down so deep he could feel it clawing at the
base of his spine.

Her eyes were dark, her mouth tight, and he
willed her to understand with everything in him, willed her to
look—really look—into his eyes and see what he couldn’t put into
words.

“I don’t carry condoms with me. And I don’t
think you do either.” But maybe he was wrong? “Do you?” Lots of
women did. He could be wrong. He wasn’t sure how he’d feel if he
was wrong.

“No,” she said.

And Keegan knew he was screwed, because they
couldn’t get it on and he was freaking happy? What was wrong with
this picture?

“I don’t carry condoms,” she said, hands
opening to touch him.

“I’m, uh...glad.” He managed to look away,
every cell in his body screaming to life at her first, tentative
caress.

“Can we get one later?” she asked, still
touching him.

“Yeah,” he growled. He held his arms down at
his sides, wanting to touch her in return, but knowing if he did he
wouldn’t stop there.

“Can we—”

“No,” he said, very firmly, because the note
in her voice was just a little too husky. She leaned against him,
between his thighs, against him, against that part of him that
wanted her so damned much it wasn’t ever going to go down, even
though he was slamming more will at it than a tri-athlete at the
wall.

She gave him a little laugh, cheek turned
against his chest, hair spilling down to his hips. “My legs are
shaking,” she whispered.

Welcome to the club. “I have
marshmallows.”

“Uh, that’s nice?” she asked, looking at him
uncertainly.

“Very nice. I’ll start a fire and we can
roast marshmallows…and talk, ok?”

Jen rotated her stick, one hand tucked into
her scratchy polyester blanket. The marshmallow was stale and hard.
She hadn’t really thought Keegan’s team flew around with
marshmallows in their luggage. He said he’d found a bag in the
supplies. After a few minutes, they softened up nicely.

“I don’t know why yours turn out so well,” he
said.

Keegan sat next to her on the small picnic
bench, the press of his thigh against hers almost as much of a
distraction as the way he kept dropping marshmallows into the fire
and having to scoop them out again before they turned into
explosions of charred fluff.

“I’m a volcanologist,” she said. “I can
handle the heat.”

She worked the hard golden crust off over the
still liquid core and eyed it critically.

Keegan swore. “These things never stay put.
They get soft and drop.”

“It’s because you’re holding your stick
angled the wrong way, you need to hold it straight out, here.” She
showed him. “Just move your hand.”

The marshmallow oozed around Keegan’s stick
and fell into the fire. Keegan pushed it over to the side and
flipped it out into the night where it sputtered and
disappeared.

Jen frowned. “It didn’t even sizzle.”

“I’m getting faster,” he said. He fished in
the bag for another.

Jen held hers out. “You can have mine. All
that ash isn’t good for you.”

He caught her hand and looked into her eyes.
“Thank you,” he said, biting off exactly half.

Her heart skipped a beat. “You’re
welcome.”

He licked his lips, and she followed, leaning
in without realizing she’d moved until their lips touched.

His hand cupped the back of her neck. “I like
marshmallows.”

“Sweet,” she managed.

His smile lit his eyes. “Yeah, very
sweet.”

Except for the distant whisper of the Project
and a ripple of guitar music from farther down the road, the
campsite was quiet. Wind sighed through the eucalyptus trees and
carried the promise of rain. His arm circled her, tucking her in
close to his side.

“You suspect anyone in particular?” he asked,
bringing her attention back to the real reason he was here.

Jen stared into the fire. “Not Makena,” she
said slowly. “I know you don’t get along, but he’d never hurt
me.”

“He’s the one who took you from
StallingCo.”

She nodded.

“Are you in love with him?”

There was nothing in his voice to give away
what he’d just said as important, but she stared at him anyway,
letting the words, not his tone of voice trickle into her
conscious.

“I just tongued your tonsils. And you think
I’m sleeping with my cousin?” She shoved him off the bench and
stood, the blanket gathered in her knotted fists. “I don’t know
whether to be insulted or pissed off, but I’m leaning toward
pissed—Makena isn't just my cousin, he's my friend!”

Keegan pushed to his feet. “Don’t you think I
know that?”

She caught his arm. “Then why did you
ask?”

His nod came slow and hard, and his voice
sounded wrong, so rough and hoarse it was like he was ripping the
words out of a place way down deep inside him. “I am so fucking
jealous.” He met her eyes. “I care, all right? I fucking care about
you. I care whether you live and I’ll blow ‘em away if you
die.”

“I had a boyfriend, once” she said, stunned.
Panic ground away the flow of words. She felt like she was sliding
back into a past where he couldn’t reach her.

The anger in his eyes turned to knowledge.
“Was he the guy who hurt you?”

“It wasn't rape,” she said all too quickly.
“It was consensual. I wanted it.” The wind whispered over her ears
and down her nape where her hair had fallen forward hiding her
face. She couldn't breathe. Her hands covered her eyes, blocking
out the sight of Keegan looming over her. She wished she could
block out the memories. “Oh,
God
—why am I talking about
this?”

“He raped you,” Keegan said flatly. “I'll
fucking kill him.”

Jen took a deep breath and couldn't stop,
hyperventilating and dizzy. Keegan pulled her into his arms and
held her tight, one hand cupped at her nape. The rapid rise and
fall of his chest made her want to cry.

“Don't feel s-sorry for me, damn it!” Her
eyes were hot and strange—scratchy like there was something in
them. “I did it to myself. I wanted someone so bad—I built up a
fantasy. I didn't love him, I didn't even like him. I just,” she
tucked her face into the soft fabric over Keegan's chest, “…wanted
someone to care.” Her voice went very small. “Mac offered to kill
him.”

“Your cousin knew?”

“Mac…was doing his residency at the hospital,
but he was also the head of Security ops. He knew everything that
went on at StallingCo…the entire complex is wired. My grandfather
Stalling was p-paranoid. Mac...Mac destroyed the video...all of it.
All the copies. It was my first time. He told me…” she began, all
her pain and horror tamped down into a little ball. The same little
ball she’d kept it in for the last eight years. “That he wanted a
way into StallingCo but I was f-fat. And frigid. Not a real woman,”
she continued, high and tight, holding on to her composure with
both hands. She strangled her voice down and took a deep breath.
“And I had to lose weight and drop out of school because he didn’t
want a fat wife and geeky kids, no matter how much money my dad
paid him.”

“Jen, I’m going to tell you something and I
want you to listen, all right? Your dad is an asshole—still
listening? Asshole. Want me to repeat that?”

She tried laughing, but it came out more like
a sob. “It was a long time ago. You’re nothing like him.”

“I’m from your dad. I can see where you’d be
allergic.”

“I’m trying to build my resistance. You can,
you know, kiss me again and help me out.”

Keegan smiled crookedly. “So I’m like a shot
now? Nasty medicine?”

“Medicine is good for you,” she breathed,
lifting her face to his.

He pulled her tight, just holding her. “God,”
he whispered, “this is fucking unreal.”

That startled a laugh out of her.

“You’re smart, Jen. And beautiful, and hot—”
He hesitated. “Really hot. I can’t...think, with you in my
arms.”

Her hands were trapped between them, and
yeah—maybe he wasn’t healed up. How she felt him flinch, he didn’t
know.

“I hurt you,” she said quietly.

“You caught me the wrong way. It’s just a
scratch.”

Jen gave him a frustrated look. “I’ve seen
your shoulder. It’s not just a scratch.”

He gently lifted her arms up around his neck.
“Trust me,” he said. “Try it like this.”

“Tell me why you’re here?” she asked a little
later, as they watched the fire pop in the grate. “Watching over
me.”

Keegan pulled the blanket up over her
shoulders. “Want another marshmallow?”

“I want you to talk to me,” she hesitated,
“please?”

Despite his best efforts to contain it, the
crap in his head was about to break loose. “Angry,” he said. “Not
at you.”

He thought he’d worked through it, but the
guilt was still there, all bright and shiny. Self-loathing filled
him up and choked the words in his throat. If he’d only moved
faster, formulated some kind of backup plan, Connor wouldn’t be a
hostage, and Keegan wouldn’t be here...with Jen. He looked down
into her eyes and felt her concern like a sucker punch.

“My brother,” he said abruptly. He rolled a
marshmallow in his hand and flipped it into the fire where it broke
open, throwing out flows of charred fluff. “DalCon specializes in
ransom drops, damage control. It’s understood, see? That kind of
money, there’s got to be go-betweens. We make sure everyone plays
fair. The Samoy backed out at the last minute. Kai—he's got cash,
and they wanted more. We took the kid, but the chopper was a piece
of shit. Connor and the kid fell out. We got the kid back, but the
Samoy got Connor.” Keegan rubbed at his eyes. “Two million? DalCon
is people and equipment. I don’t have that kind of money. They’ll
kill him if we insert. They’re waiting for me to try. They know us,
see? And I—I don’t know what to do. Corlis wants us to go for
it.”

“My mother was kidnapped,” Jen said, looking
down into the fire.

Out of the corner of his eyes, the curve of
her cheek trembled in the flickering darkness. She opened her mouth
and took a deep breath before saying, “Maybe your sister is
right.”

“I promised to keep Connor safe and I’m not
willing to risk it. For right now, he's safe enough. A full frontal
is the last thing I want.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Tell me about the rest of your family. We
need to troubleshoot who wants you dead.” Keegan looked into Jen’s
eyes for the first time since he’d started talking. “I need to get
into the Project, Jen. I need to know why Terri was so important to
the Aina.”

“It’s locked down and you don’t have ID.”

“I have you,” he said tightly. “It’s
enough.”

****

Sunlight struggled through the crappy
curtains, as gray and sour as the climate. Cheap paneling, cheaper
carpet. The bad was so damned old, Fallon could feel springs poking
his ass through the flattened out mattress.

He sat with his back to the wall, watching
Corlis sleep. It was her expression and the way she carried herself
that made her such a hard-ass. She had the eyes of a killer in the
face of Malibu Barbie.

With them closed, the resemblance was tight.
She’d hate waking up to find him. Hate it worse if he eased on over
and held on to her like a damned squeeze toy. He could hear Keegan
out in the kitchen and Jen’s lighter voice say something in return.
Fallon stood, a blanket drawn up over his shoulders. It was thin
and didn’t help much. He flipped it over Corlis anyway.

Banging his best friend ranked way up there
on the stupid-scale. He should have carried his ass.

“Thanks,” she mumbled. Not to him, sort of at
the wall. Like she knew he was there and didn’t want to thank him
personally.

She did want his blanket though, hugging it
up around her until the only thing he could see was a thin slice of
hair and face. Her eyes opened and focused on him. And for a gutted
second his breath caught.

She didn't reach for him, but she didn't push
him away and for a second, he held on to her—face buried in her
hair, and pretended everything would be all right.

****

The early morning sunlight slanting in off
the hood made Jen’s wilted pink dress look like a wino’s bag,
holding a bottle. Keegan looked over at her from the driver’s seat
and thought it wasn’t supposed to be this way, this feeling he had
for her. It was supposed to be grand, all bells and whistles and
bows and long, romantic walks and stuff, like a Hallmark
commercial. Not this glow.

He felt warm and...happy?

His brother was in danger; Jen’s family was
out to kill her. And he felt happy? Her shoulder brushed his. Happy
was a good word. Insane was probably better.