Beneath the Fire (A Guardians Novella) (2 page)

Her dismissal of him was like throwing water on the fire of his jealousy. Nathan thought all of two seconds before jogging after her. Damn, what was wrong with him?

“Lucy, wait!” He fell into step beside her. She continued walking, her jaw jutting out stubbornly. “I’m sorry, babe. Please.” When she still ignored him, he stepped in front of her and gripped her shoulders, physically stopping her.

“Get your hands off me!” Lucy said furiously.

“No.”

“I’ll scream.”

“Go ahead. I’ll kiss you.”

“You’re impossible!” Lucy yelled.

“I agree.” Nathan grinned down at her. He knew she had a temper. All that Latina blood coursing through her veins. “Come on, Lucy, give me another chance.”

“A chance for what? You know, I don’t even know what we are,” Lucy said uncertainly.

He didn’t either and it was scaring the shit out of him.
 

“Let’s grab something to eat. And then we’ll talk,” Nathan murmured.
 

CHAPTER TWO

Thursday night at Antonio’s pizza in Georgetown was usually packed with students, but they managed to snag a booth after just a twenty minute wait.

Lucy had just turned twenty-one last February, so when Nathan suggested pizza and beer she was all over it. And Antonio’s pizza was the best. Their server still had to check their IDs though. She knew Nathan was a year older than she was, although sometimes when his afternoon stubble started to show, he looked a bit older. His eyes also seemed more hardened and mature than most of the other guys she had ever interacted with at the university.
 

“Did you have any classes today?” Lucy asked. Nathan was on his fourth year as an economics major.
 

“Yes, two actually. One of them should be right up your alley,” Nathan said, his eyes crinkling with his charming smile. “Political economics.”

“Oh, if you need any help,” Lucy offered smugly. “Did you have lacrosse practice today?”

“Nope, but we’ll have an early one on Saturday,” Nathan said.
 

Their pitcher of beer arrived. Lucy noticed how the waitress eyed Nathan like he was one big juicy steak. Oh, well, the man was gorgeous, what could she do? That still didn’t prevent her from wanting to scratch the woman’s eye out. Wait a minute. When did she start feeling all possessive toward him?
 

“What are you thinking of, Lucy?” Nathan asked curiously as he took a sip of his beer. “Your face shifted from annoyed to confused in seconds.”

Lucy tried to act nonchalant. She could never play poker. “Oh, I was just um, thinking about all the work I need to get done before spring break.”

“Oh, going somewhere?”

Danger. Danger. Alarm bells sounded in her ear.

“Um, visiting my mom in California. How about you?” Lucy asked quickly. Nathan’s eyes narrowed.
 

“I was hoping to ask you to go away somewhere,” he said slowly. “Apparently, I was too late.”

Lucy sighed. “What exactly are we doing, Nathan?”

“Not here —my place after dinner.”

The minute they got into Nathan’s apartment, they were on top of each other. The sexual tension had simmered over dinner and sharing that pitcher of beer kind of loosened her inhibitions. They were kissing each other desperately. Lucy kicked her shoes off and Nathan quickly divested her of her jeans. He yanked his shirt off and hauled her legs around him and had her against the wall.
 

“Fuck, babe... you’re so sexy,” Nathan growled, his erection a hard ridge rubbing against her panties, the roughness of his jeans a welcome friction. Pushing aside the crotch of her underwear, he slipped his fingers in. “You’re so wet for me already. Fuck—”

“I need you—”

“Shh... I’ll take care of you—” Nathan murmured.

Lucy felt hot, her core was throbbing almost painfully, waiting for release. Nathan devoured her lips in a searing kiss as his fingers plunged inside her moist channel, his thumb rubbing her pleasure point. He swallowed her cries of ecstasy as she shuddered against him. She vaguely registered his hand moving between them to unfasten his jeans to release his arousal.

“Shit, condom,” Nathan muttered. He lowered her legs and reached behind him, opening his wallet and getting out a condom. He put the condom between his lips, flung his wallet across the room and picked her back up to settle her legs around him.

Lucy took the condom from him and opened the foil packet, while Nathan fisted her underwear on one side and ripped them off. He kissed her hungrily as she carefully unfurled the condom on him.

She gasped when he thrust himself inside her. The first time they’d had sex, she wasn’t sure she could take him. But he filled her in every way she could imagine and it was beautiful.

“Look at me, Lucy,” Nathan ordered as he continued to thrust inside her.

She raised her head from the crook of his neck to look at him. Their eyes met. His eyes smoldered with a feral passion she had never seen before. Each time he pounded her against the wall, it felt like he was trying to get inside her so deep, that he would be melded into her forever.

“You’re mine, Lucy,” Nathan whispered. At that moment, as they both reached their climax, Lucy agreed.

***

They ended up on the couch. Lucy was partially on top of him, her head tucked under his chin, her right leg shoved between his.
 

“I don’t want to share you,” Nathan said finally. Those were the first words that were said between them after he had taken her against the wall.

“Are you saying, you want us to be exclusive?” Lucy verified.

“Yeah, babe that’s what I mean.”

Lucy played with the light sprinkling of hair on his chest, not sure how to phrase her next statement. “I’m not ready to have a boyfriend, Nathan.”

“Why the fuck not?” Nathan growled and Lucy felt the rumble against her cheeks.
 

She sighed. “I want to concentrate on my studies. It’s not a good time for me right now. Uh... there are things about me that I’m not ready to share.”

She felt him stiffen. He took a deep breath before exhaling deeply. “Whatever it is, we can face it together, Lucy.”

Now why did he have to say the perfect thing?
It’s not that simple. I have to go to Mexico and stop my dad from selling innocent women into the sex trade,
Lucy wanted to yell.

“It’s a bit complicated, Nathan.”

“So tell me.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“I just can’t,” Lucy muttered. Suddenly feeling the walls closing in on her, she pushed up against Nathan to leave, but he wouldn’t let her go, and instead, hugged her tighter.

“Stay. OK. Don’t tell me,” Nathan whispered soothingly. “We can take it slow. I won’t ask you anything until you’re ready to tell me. But please, Lucy, can you... just be mine, OK?”

Lucy looked up and gazed into Nathan’s sapphire blue eyes. They were hazed with so much tenderness and she felt her heart squeeze. She was falling in love with him. How did this happen so fast?
 

“If that means you scaring off every guy I talk to, then no,” Lucy said sternly. She had to set boundaries after all. Come to think of it now, Nathan did look like he had glared Tom off earlier.

Nathan scowled at her. “I can’t help the way I am. But I’ll try to rein it in.”

“That’s not good enough Nathan,” Lucy said quietly.

“I’ll work on it,” Nathan said, grinning down at her.

“Smiling at me isn’t going to work either,” Lucy said, trying to pinch him. It was close to impossible, the man defined washboard abs to a tee. “I’m serious, Nathan. Do not scare off my male friends.”

“As long as they maintain a one square foot clearance from you, I won’t tear them apart,” he promised.

Lucy rolled her eyes, but decided to let it go because there was a hint of teasing in his voice. She shifted on top of him and traced the intricate dragon tattoo that snaked across his clavicle and down the top of his left shoulder.

“You never told me when you got this,” Lucy murmured.

Nathan gave her a crooked grin. “Five years ago when I was seventeen—I was involved in some crazy shit back then.”

“Do you regret having it done?”

“Heck no,” Nathan replied. “My mom was pissed off as hell. But it was a phase of my life that I had to go through.”

“Will you tell me about it?”

“Babe, I will,” Nathan said seriously. “Once you start opening up to me. That’s the deal.”

Lucy sighed. That probably meant she would never know.
 

***

Nathan parked his bike in the underground parking of Artemis Guardian Services (AGS), a company that dealt with small team surgical incursions and other undercover work outsourced mostly by government agencies like the CIA and FBI. The missions were usually done under the radar because of political sensitivity. He had been with AGS for almost a year. Contrary to what Lucy believed, Nathan was not twenty-two years old. He was twenty-four. He had a degree in criminal law but had decided against becoming a cop or joining the FBI. He had joined the AGS to become a Guardian because seven years ago, when he was a bare-knuckle fighter in underground tournaments, an intriguing man by the name of Viktor Baran had approached him and left him his card.
 

There was something about Viktor, the head of the AGS, that Nathan found hard to resist. The man exuded some kind of lethal energy and danger. Nathan wanted to be him. Nathan had gone into the bare-knuckle fighting circuit as a form of rebellion. He did not need the money. He came from money. His father was Nicholas Stark, an extremely successful venture capitalist. But that was all his father was good for: his business and a string of illicit affairs. His mother had refused to divorce him and instead became an alcoholic. But Viktor had left him a simple statement that changed his life: “Once you have your shit sorted out, kid, come see me.”

And here he was, seven years later. His first mission had been a rescue assignment—in Russia no less. A couple of Guardians were being held prisoner and his current mentor, Maia Pierce, was one of the hostages. Gorgeous chick, he had a big crush on her when he first met her— she had a jealous fiancé though.
 
Jack McCord would glare off any man that made the mistake of looking at his fiancée in a less than appropriate way.
 

Shaking his head, he flashed his badge at reception and made his way to the second floor—the first subterranean level. Lucy Cortez was his first undercover assignment and he had already broken the first rule: get close to your subject, but do not get too personal. Fuck. Nathan was pretty sure he had already fallen in love her.

Maia was already waiting when he entered the briefing room.
 

“Hey, Pierce.”

“Stark,” Maia replied. “How’s the subject?”
 

Man, Pierce got straight to the point, Nathan thought. He did not respond immediately but took his laptop out and booted it up.

“I still haven’t detected anything suspicious in her email,” Nathan said finally. “Except she exchanges very cryptic messages with a certain fatheranton337.”
 

“What do you mean cryptic?”

“His recent email said, ‘two weeks to cancun,’” Nathan said. “I know she’s going to California to visit her mother during the spring break. So I don’t know why a friend would say something like that and not elaborate.”

“What else?” Maia prodded with interest.

“The email before that just said: ‘say eight marys,’” Nathan said. “This I find strange and it reeks of being a coded message. Lucy’s Catholic which may explain the religious subtext.”

“Interesting,” Maia said, a frown marring her features. “How about her phone?”

“Nothing. Calls are mostly from her mom.”

“Nothing indicating that she is in contact with Francisco Cortez?”

“Nope.”

“So in three weeks, we’re pretty sure she would not lead us to him?”

“So far, it’s a dead end, but I sense we’re not aware of another angle. I’m baffled by those odd emails, but there’s something else,” Nathan said. “I see a trace for a chatroom, but I could not gain access to it. That website is fucking Fort Knox. Might be worth having Tim take a look at it as well as trace the owner of the email. I’ve already sent it to his queue.”

Tim Burns was their lead data analyst.

“Excellent. I’ll escalate it,” Maia said thoughtfully. “Senator Bauer is getting impatient. He wants results and is coming down hard on the FBI and AGS to make some progress.”

The Braga Cartel had made the crucial mistake of kidnapping Senator Bauer’s illegitimate daughter. Despite not acknowledging his daughter publicly, the Senator obviously cared for the girl and relentlessly pressured the FBI to find her. They did, but not after the damage was done. The girl was catatonic when they rescued her and was looking at years of therapy down the road. Senator Bauer had approached AGS to shut the Braga Cartel down. Viktor had informed him completely shutting a cartel down took years and heavy resources, but they could conceivably get to Francisco Cortez, who was personally running the white slavery portion of the business.

“Bates is going to be disappointed.” Maia grinned at him.

Nathan felt his muscles tense. Bates was his coach on the lacrosse team and was a friend of Maia’s which was how he was able to get on the team. “What do you mean?”

“We’ve got enough, we can track her remotely if we have to. I’d hate for Miss Cortez to get attached to you,” Maia explained with a shrug.

Either Nathan took too long to respond or the expression on his face gave him away. Maia’s eyes narrowed. “Are you withholding information, Stark?”

Shit. He had to come clean. “I slept with her,” Nathan said quietly.

Maia’s face turned red with fury. Her eyes turned icy, blasting him with an arctic stare that could have frozen him in place.

“What the FUCK, STARK!” Maia yelled. “How could you be so stupid? God!”

Maia shot out of her chair and started pacing the room. “That was not part of the plan. You were only supposed to hang out with her. She’s twenty for heaven’s sake. You do not sleep with her to get information.”