Marked (Hostage Rescue Team Series) (13 page)

She wanted to attack that mouth just inches above her own. Vent the anger and longing and desire she’d held back for so long.

Part of her still couldn’t believe that Jake was actually holding her the way she’d always wanted, his expression full of a hunger that made all of her hot spots ache.

She gripped his broad shoulders, breathless at the feel of the muscles bunching beneath her fingers. All that power coiled there under her hands, held in check, used to seduce and protect rather than take. Her knees went a little weak. She’d waited for him after he’d broken up with Linda, keeping in e-mail contact in the hopes that he’d come to her. When he hadn’t she’d forced herself to cut ties and move forward because she couldn’t stand to be
just
his friend. She couldn’t. It had slowly been killing her.

“I wanted to wait,” he began, sounding almost regretful as he stared into her eyes, “but I feel like I’ve waited forever for you already, so fuck if I’m gonna wait a second longer.” His hand tightened in her hair, gripping it in his fist as he tipped her head back.

Her sharply indrawn breath seemed to echo between them. His eyes turned even darker as he bent his head and slammed his mouth down on hers. Rachel met the kiss with every ounce of pent-up need and frustration inside her, pressing up on tiptoe to take what he offered.

Jake made a dark, hungry sound at the back of his throat, slanting his lips across hers, the kiss so raw and intense that she moaned. They fed from each other, unleashing the raging hunger between them. She trembled at the sheer power of it. Tingles raced throughout her body, the pleasure already so sharp it was a sweet torture.

Jake suddenly slowed the ravenous pace. He licked at her lower lip instead, a seductive caress, ignoring the way she opened in invitation, seeming to savor teasing her. Rachel mewled in frustration, needing so much more from him, her fingers biting into the muscle bunching beneath her hands.

His hold tightened, his right arm a band of steel across her lower back as he pushed his tongue between her lips to taste her. He absorbed her gasp, the hand at her back sliding up to splay between her shoulder blades as he licked and caressed.

God, the man could kiss. She was already breathless, floating, desperate to get naked and feel his skin on hers, feel him plunge into her.

Rachel whimpered as he dragged her closer still and his tongue stroked every sensitive spot inside her mouth. His beard prickled her slightly, in sharp contrast to the silky smoothness of his lips and tongue. He feathered teasing little touches against the tender roof of her mouth, slid it against hers in a seductive caress that made her ache to have him inside her.

She flattened her body against his to relieve the ache in her breasts and in her sex, meeting each stroke of his tongue, lost in the feel and taste of him. His fist released her hair to cup the back of her head and hold her steady, the other sweeping down her back to grip the curve of her ass. He made a low sound of pleasure as her belly came into solid contact with the hard ridge of his erection straining the front of his jeans.

She felt drunk on him, drowning in sensation and desire and didn’t care if she never came up for air again.

All she could do was moan to convey the agonizing need inside her, but then Jake stiffened and jerked his head back. She leaned back, grateful for the strong arm around her back to keep her from falling as he let out a frustrated breath and reached up to tap his earpiece. “Evers.”

His eyes stayed on hers while whoever it was spoke to him. The burning hunger she saw reflected there was quickly banked by whatever was said. A muscle in his jaw flexed and a new tension filled his powerful frame. “Roger that,” he said. “Be there in fifteen.”

Tapping the earpiece again so that no one could overhear them, he sighed and eased his hold. “Babe, I gotta go back in.”

She searched his eyes. “Everything okay?”

He nodded. “It’s fine. They’re just working some new intel and want me there at the briefing.”

She knew he was being purposely evasive, but she also knew he’d tell her if it was something important. He wasn’t officially part of the taskforce on Brandon’s case, he’d only volunteered to help out at the drop tonight and she suspected they’d let him because he was an HRT member.

Running her hands over his shoulders once gently, already anticipating when she’d be able to do the same over his naked skin while he was buried deep inside her, she lowered her arms and stepped back. Instantly she felt colder, more alone. “Will I see you again tomorrow?”

His lips curved in a slow smile. Lips she couldn’t wait to taste again. “Of course you will. I train all day but I’ll come by as soon as I’m done.”

She had no idea what she was supposed to do with herself in the meantime, but that wasn’t his problem and he’d already gone above and beyond to help her. But God, she wished he would stay the night and just hold her in the darkness so she didn’t feel so alone with her thoughts. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

His stare was hot enough to burn. “You can count on it. I’ll check my phone when I can, but if you need anything call Morales or Tuck.” He stroked his hand over the side of her face. “Try to get some sleep, and hang in there.”

“I’ll try my best.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled. “I know you will, and that’ll be more than enough.” He leaned down to give her a quick, hard kiss then grabbed his jacket and walked out of the room.

****

Xang wiped the back of his hand across his upper lip as he pulled the ringing phone out of his pocket. It felt like it was a hundred degrees in this old warehouse when it was probably closer to sixty.

He couldn’t stop sweating, couldn’t control the staccato beat of his heart. The op had almost been a disaster. “Did you get them?”

“They’re incomplete,” his contact spat back in Mandarin.

Xang blanched, suddenly feeling like he’d been dropped into a tub full of ice water. “What do you mean? That’s impossible, I saw the plans myself.” Had something gone wrong during the transfer? Had there been some kind of virus attached to the files he’d failed to notice?

“That’s because you’re completely ignorant about architecture,” the man snapped. “There are layout features missing, measurements and dimensions missing.”

“Does it affect the op?” Xang asked, trying to tamp down his growing fear.

“Of course it affects the op! You know how tight the timeline is. We have no choice but to go forward with what we have and the people already in place. The FBI will act quickly—we have to carry out the attack in the next forty-eight hours, otherwise we’ll have no choice but to abort the entire thing.”

Xang wiped at his damp face. They’d blame him for this. They couldn’t track him here—not yet—so he still had some time if he ditched the burner phone, but damn. “I’ll see if I can get the original plans on my own.”

“Don’t bother. You’ve done enough,” the man said in a scathing tone. “Just know that if this attack fails, it’ll be on your head.”

Meaning if this glitch forced them to abort the attack, he was a dead man.

The line went dead before Xang could say anything else. With a shaking hand he threw the burner phone onto the ground and crushed it beneath the sole of his boot. There. That would buy him at least a few hours’ head start to find a new hideout. He wasn’t their lapdog, trained to blindly obey and come to heel when called. He had the resources, men who respected him and were loyal to him.

Xang knew he had to finish this on his own. He paced around the room, his footsteps echoing hollowly off the concrete walls.

He hadn’t gone to the drop area in person because that would have been stupid, but he’d watched everything unfold with the help of CCTVs he’d hacked into in the area. He’d seen Rachel appear and leave the USB. He’d seen his hired men approach. Then the men chasing them through Chinatown. He knew damn well they’d been undercover Feds.

That bitch
, he thought, raking his hands through his hair. Not only had she brought law enforcement with her when he’d specifically warned her what would happen if she did, she’d altered the files, made him look like an idiot
and
jeopardized the entire operation. And since he hadn’t heard from any of the three guys he’d enlisted for the job, other than the initial e-mail transmitting the files, he knew they must still be in custody.

Xang’s muscles knotted as he battled the rage swamping him. He’d fucking
warned
her of the consequences. Did she not believe he’d actually kill her brother? That he didn’t have the balls to go through with it? He’d killed before and he’d do it again.

The rage roared through him in a red tide, hazing his vision and making his heart pound. She deserved to lose her brother for that. And she deserved to die as well. Images of her dying at his hand flooded his mind, fueling the need for vengeance.

Once he got his hands on her he would kill her and whoever was guarding her. He might not be able to get to her right now, but he would teach her a lesson in the meantime, show her he was not to be fucked with.

He sucked in an unsteady breath, making a half-hearted attempt to stem the fury thrumming through him. Spinning on his heel, he stalked to the far end of the building where a closed door lay between him and his prisoner.

Throwing the steel door wide, it clanged against the wall to reveal the figure bound on his side to the wooden pallet. Brandon blinked as the light from the main part of the warehouse hit him, his face pinched with fear behind the gag as he held Xang’s gaze.

“Your sister fucked everything up,” he snarled, taking a menacing step toward him.

Brandon tried to shrink away but there was nowhere for him to go with the nylon ropes holding him in place. Xang took great pleasure in slowly reaching down to withdraw the knife from the sheath on his calf and holding it up so the light glinted off the wicked blade.

Brandon made a choked sound and shook his head frantically.

Xang felt the surge of power and excitement whip through his veins, erasing the fear and anger. He thought of the pictures he’d seen of his father and brother, their bodies mutilated and burned nearly beyond recognition as a warning to others who defied the Chinese government. Their fingernails and toenails had been pulled out first. The photos had shown the scabs forming over the raw wounds, so he knew it had been done first, before the digits had been cut off, one by one. Next, their sadistic captors had cut out their tongues and gouged their eyes from their sockets.

According to other prisoners who’d seen the torture and returned to the village after, his father and brother had still been alive when they’d been disemboweled and burned all over with branding irons. The Communist party hammer and sickle symbol had been seared into what little flesh remained.

Xang focused on his knife, the blade so clear and bright he could see his own reflection in the steel. His father’s eyes stared back at him, demanding vengeance. Retribution. Starting with this.

“I’m going to let her know exactly what I think of that,” he said to his prisoner before bending down and reaching for Brandon’s bound hands.

Celida sat up straight in her chair to stretch the muscles in her neck and shoulders. “Whaddya think?” she asked Rachel, bent over the file between them. They were in her office at the Baltimore field office.

“I think that’s everything.”

Celida grunted in agreement and shoved the handwritten notes they’d compiled into the file. It was already dinner time and they’d been working for the past five hours solid without a break.

Of all the buildings Rachel had worked on since joining her architectural firm, a handful had been flagged for further analysis. Some located in or near Chinatown itself, others financed or owned by Chinese businesses. Analysts were running intel on them all now, looking at resident and guest lists, upcoming events that might be of interest to the radical group Xang had been recruited into.

“I’m done,” she said, pushing back from her desk. “You hungry?” They hadn’t stopped for lunch, so the last thing she’d eaten was a fruit tray and some yogurt in her hotel room this morning around five.

“I could eat.” Rachel’s expression said otherwise, but the fact was, the woman needed to eat something. She was thin enough as it was. She needed to take care of herself or the stress was gonna take a serious toll on her body. They’d been poring over the blueprints and floor plans of all the flagged buildings, looking for possible concerns. Stress points, vulnerable areas, that kind of thing.

“Come on, let’s get outta here and—” Celida stopped, practically froze in the act of rising from her chair as the door to her office opened to reveal Tuck standing between the jambs. His reaction was a bit subtler, but Celida saw the way he tensed a little when he saw her. “What are you doing here?” she blurted, frowning at him.

Those warm brown eyes held hers, calm and unreadable. “Came to hang with Rachel for a bit until farmboy can make it here.”

Oh, that deep, honeyed drawl. Still so damn sexy. Annoyed, she pushed to her feet, unable to curb her knee-jerk defensiveness that his sudden appearance triggered. “She’s hanging with me.” She didn’t need him to take over.

He stared back at her, his lips twitching a little as he tried to hide a smile. It was so unfair, what his smiles did to her. Way worse that he knew it. But at least she knew from the raw male interest in his eyes that she affected him just as much.

Which was why she raised an eyebrow in defiance and refused to look away, aware that Rachel was looking back and forth between them as they confronted each other for a few heartbeats of silence.

A very electric, charged silence, crackling with the possibility of what could have been. Could still be, if he wasn’t so stubborn.

Rachel cleared her throat. “Um, I don’t really need to eat—”

“Yes you do,” Celida told her, finally peeling her eyes off Tuck long enough to shoot her an annoyed look. Damn the man, for showing up unannounced and throwing her off her calm, cool and collected game. She prided herself on it. “I know you’re tired and you need to eat something.”