Trained for Seduction (10 page)

“Oh no, that’s like asking a family station wagon to run the Daytona 500 and be competitive. I had a spotter, special equipment. I didn’t do it all alone. And being a sniper isn’t very glamorous. You have to sit around a lot. Wait. Sit. Measure distance, wind velocity, elevation. Wait more, then get the shot off and run like hell.

“But most of the time I was in a secure location waiting to pick off the bastards. I used a rifle like the ones back there, for that.”

“Is that how you fell off a roof? When you broke your leg? Getting away after a shot?” She bit her lip because he wasn’t the type to share anything. Maybe this was too much.

“I was getting into a secure location, yes. They wanted me on the roof and my knee was killing me. I didn’t want to get sent home for surgery so I just kept loading up on cortisone shots when I could get them. So I went to step over something and my knee locked.”

“And you fell.”

“Yep. Funny how when you avoid things, they come around to bite you in the ass eventually.” He touched the holes he’d made in the target. “And that’s how I came home. They didn’t want me back with a plate in my leg, but the powers-that-be wanted me busy, so they made me a spy, in training to be Lord of the Spies, as you so aptly put it earlier.”

The wistfulness in his voice led her to believe the military hadn’t done him any favors. “You didn’t want to leave, did you?”

“No, and coming back was hard. I made a lot of bad decisions when I came back, like marrying my ex. Definitely shouldn’t have done that.” He sighed and turned away from the target.

Kate wanted to ask about the bad decisions, the ex, but the mask he had abandoned for the afternoon reappeared, and she figured he was about done sharing. He’d done well, considering he barely knew her.

But she did want to know him better. His ego seemed to like to play more than honest Chase, so she asked, “What else are you that good at?”

“Making you come.”

Kate laughed, for the first time glad the egotistical bastard had returned. “I don’t think I’ll ever shoot as good as you.”

“Probably not. Jake can’t, either, if it makes you feel better.” He put his arm around her and they walked back. “Speaking of my other talents…do I need to take care of you? We don’t have to make love. I can make you come in many fun ways.”

Kate shook her head. She could come for him, easily, but she wanted to wait until later, when he was hard again, and she could have his cock deep within her hopefully not-so-sore pussy. That’s what she liked best. “Consider it payback. I owed you.”

“Then you need more practice. I’ll stand over there so I don’t distract you.”

“Thanks.” She put her ear and eye protection back on, loaded the gun, and aimed.

Chase watched her take aim over and over and found himself impressed with her skills when she was finally able to concentrate. She was more accurate than some of the agents he knew, and they had a lot more training. She never ceased to amaze him, which was a sobering thought. Talking about his past had only served to remind him how lucky he was now.

And in a few weeks, they’d take her away from him, and his luck would be shit again.

He refocused on Kate, watching how she concentrated, her mind weighing the shot with those damned statistics of hers. He couldn’t believe how he had almost lost control while she was reciting gun facts. He never lost control with a woman, not like that.

She had looked so damned pretty, leaning against his shooting bench, handing him statistics he didn’t know, and he knew guns. The lust had been instantaneous, consuming, and if she hadn’t stopped him, he would have pounded her on that bench until she screamed his name loud enough for the farthest neighbors to hear.

Kate finished that round and looked up at him expectantly. He was used to giving advice, orders, but the way she looked at him, as if her world would shatter if he wasn’t pleased, it triggered a deeper feeling. Another need.

“Much better,” he said, and her face lit up like Christmas morning. “Let me show you something else, though.”

And then he taught her how to double-tap the trigger before moving to the next target, to ensure a better chance of a kill. It felt weird, teaching the woman he loved secrets to maximize the kill ratio. But he wanted her to return, alive, so he dug deep and taught her other skills, ones that would hopefully save her ass and bring her back to him.

She picked up these new skills easily, and he was impressed with how well she took direction from him, though it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. She’d taken direction from him all last night, in his bed.

“Why don’t we try this in motion?” he asked.

She did as she was told, and he was mesmerized by her fluid grace, how she was able to bob, duck, roll, and make the shot look incredibly sexy while still being sufficiently accurate.

“Go back to stationary,” he commanded as she reloaded.

She did, and this time when he crept up and kissed her neck, she was able to keep the shots on the target paper. But when he grabbed her hips and ground his cock against her ass, the shot went wild again, pinging another tree.

“Bad, huh?” She frowned up at him, looking very serious, very much Kate.

“No, much better. I’m proud of you.” He kissed her neck one last time. “Why don’t we go find something to eat?”

She beamed up at him, then put away the gun.

Chase shoved his hands in his pockets and beat away the growing feeling of unease. They had asked him to see if she was ready for this, not just sexually, but if her other skills were there, despite the bare minimum of training she had received.

Unfortunately, she could shoot well enough. Even more unfortunate was that for what they wanted her to do, she probably wouldn’t even pick up a handgun. Tomorrow he’d put her through her paces and see how fit she was. He hated the thought. If he wore her out, there’d be nothing left for him later. But he would do his job.

He rubbed his jaw with his hand. He had Monday to pound out more details, to come up with a better plan for her assignment. He couldn’t lose her. Tuesday, the big meetings were to take place, the ones that would put the whole mission into play. If he could find a solution to getting her in and out of the mission, instead of just in, he could find some peace with what he had to do.

Maybe then his luck would change.

The more Kate got to know Chase the more she understood why he was Jake’s best friend. Besides being damned good at everything—cooking, oral sex, shooting, fucking her senseless, making her come, did she mention cooking? And sex? Chase was also blessed with excellent organizational skills, which she admired as he whipped through cleaning up lunch. He also had a warped sense of humor that she enjoyed all day.

One needed a sense of humor to deal with Jake, especially since he’d pestered her with texts all day, wanting to know where she was, when could he give her birthday spankings, why wouldn’t she come to the club and get a special present from him? Jerk. She adored him, though.

But no way could Jake top the special presents she’d received from Chase. Orgasmic shower sex and shooting lessons. It didn’t get much better than that. He let her take a nap in the afternoon and woke her with a glass of iced tea and a smile that promised there’d be more sex later. Perfect, perfect man.

That evening Chase made them steak and potatoes for their birthday dinner, with a nice salad. He was just as proficient with a gas grill as in the kitchen, and Kate knew her full stomach would hate leaving him come Monday morning. All right, all of her would hate it. He even made them a birthday cake, chocolate, with homemade icing and two candles that they blew out together. Very sexy, romantic.

“Is this birthday better than your last?” she asked him over coffee, her cake finished.

“Let’s see,” he pondered as he tapped the fork against his lower lip. “I spent my birthday chasing this sweet girl up the eastern seaboard and then explaining to my bosses how I had single-handedly screwed up six months of work. So yeah, this is a hell of a lot better.”

Poor guy. “How long did you expect it to take to catch me?”

“Forty-eight hours.”

It was hard not to feel more than a little sorry for him, now that she knew him better. “Ouch. How bad did your ego hurt after a week?”

“Not as bad as it did after a month when I found out your father had you.” He put the fork down and leaned his arms on the breakfast bar. “How did you hide that long?”

“I’m not telling you. What if I need to hide again?”

“I’m hoping you won’t feel the need.”

She smiled slowly. “Not if you keep treating me like this. I feel badly, you waiting on me hand and foot.”

He rose, took their plates to the kitchen and then returned with more coffee. “You can repay me by inviting me to your home and playing hostess for a weekend. And if I want sex, maybe you’ll think about being a good hostess and put out.”

“The putting out part is easy. I don’t cook very well, but I make a mean mac and cheese from the box.” He grimaced and she laughed. “We had a chef. There was no need for me to learn. And you forget, I don’t have a home.”

“Then we’ll find you one. I made accommodations for you at the hotel down the street from the lab, starting Monday, so you’re not homeless.” He glanced at her, his expression guarded. “But if you want, you can stay here until you find something.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” Staying here, with him…Emma was already a little in love with him. How long would it take her to convince Kate to follow?

“You seem like a pretty private person. I wouldn’t expect you to be comfortable with me staying here.” Which was different than living with him, she reminded herself sternly.

He shrugged. “Once Monday comes, my life will be owned again by the government, and if I surface for air long enough to breathe, never mind make love to you, we’ll both be lucky.”

“Don’t you take time off?”

“Never. I usually work weekends, too.”

God, his life sucked. “So this weekend…”

“Is my first vacation in years. Granted, they ordered it, but I’ll take it. I didn’t realize how stressed I was. I haven’t felt this relaxed in I can’t remember how long.”

If he was this busy and stressed as hell, were his employees overworked? She had no clue, but Jake was always going somewhere, doing something. He didn’t have time for a relationship of any sort, either.

Chase had a failed marriage. Did that mean she was doomed to a lonely, solitary life, getting laid on a Friday when she was home for a day? Now that she’d had a taste of sex, there was no way she was going back to masturbating. “Is that how my life will be?”

The look that he gave her was cryptic. “No.”

“What do you do?”

“Classified information.” That mask of his came down in full force, denying her any information.

“I don’t want you to leak spy secrets.” Honestly, he was so uptight sometimes. She understood the whole classified thing. Her work in the lab had classified all over it. “Just tell me what you can tell me. I have no clue.”

Chase relaxed a little and then shrugged. “I plan things. I make a lot of phone calls, I order people to do things, and then I make more phone calls to find out why the hell they didn’t do what I ordered. I read maps, read other reports; I listen to my agents, and then meet with military and civilian personnel and fill them in on all that I have learned.”

It couldn’t be all that bad, could it? It sounded…boring. “But Jake said you do some ops stuff. You were assigned to go to my father’s.”

“Very special occasions, they’ll send me. Like to your father’s.” He cupped his coffee mug in his hands. “Sometimes we go out into the field, and I do enjoy that, but it’s not the same as when I was just an agent. This is harder, tougher, and the stakes are higher because if you—my agents—don’t come home, it’s my ass.

“And when my day is done, I cart home more paperwork, more files, and if I can breathe when it’s all done, I run my prerequisite five miles on the treadmill and try to do some weights, because they expect me to be in shape, in case they need me.”

His life sucked, and Kate wondered how he stood it all. What kept him there? “I won’t complain when I have to go on a training dive next month, with Jake, in the Caribbean, then.”

“Please don’t.” He sent her a pained look over his coffee mug. “Because I loved diving. And jumping from planes and blowing things up.”

Her inner pyromaniac loved detonating things, too, which was how she became her father’s eager pupil. Maybe she and Chase could blow something up together. He probably had clearance to view her work in the lab. “Do you wish your life was different?”

“Yes. And no.” He sighed. “Like you said, it’s a lonely job. Sometimes the adrenaline rush is a constant high and that’s the part I love. I love that I’m helping my country. I love the control, the excitement. But the hours are hard. And this house is very empty when I come home.”

Kate knew lonely, and he looked a little lost, enough for her to say, “Would it make you happier if I stayed until I found a house of my own?”

He hesitated, and the flicker of emotion on his face made her catch her breath. For a moment, he almost looked…happy. “Yes. I’d like that.”

****

Sunday morning when Kate woke, Chase was still in bed with her, sound asleep, his arm heavy across her chest, one of his legs thrown over hers. It was intimate and yet cozy, something she never expected of him.

For as emotionless as he seemed at times he seemed to crave touching her, even in his sleep, and she fought to quell the gentle squeeze that tightened around her heart. So dark and dangerous on the outside, but she was beginning to see that inside he was just as achingly lonely as she was. Vulnerable in some ways. She glanced at the clock—eight and he was still in bed.

Time for the Lord of the Spies to rise and shine in the way he was most proficient—making her come. She kissed him slowly, brushing his lips with hers, gently licking the seam of his mouth to tempt him awake. He responded on a moan and then woke fully, much quicker than she expected.

He smiled, bright-eyed, looking ready to leap from the bed. “Ready to run?”