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At the sounds of gunshots competing with the sirens for attention, I halted in the doorway and turned to the side. Bonnie was still okay, so it hadn’t come from there, but she was being nudged from the room into the hall.
The second the other shooter left the lab, I fixed my attention back to the masked man with us as he traded his rifle for a sidearm. Now was my chance.
I lunged at my target and brought the heel of my hand up beneath his nose while kneeing him in the balls, just as Dad had taught me.
He groaned, then yelled in an unfamiliar language, and I took the chance to strike him again, knocking his Glock to the floor. The rifle was still on a sling around his body, but we were too close for him to get ahold of it and use it, and I had to keep it that way.
From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of William taking off for the hall while I slid beneath the enemy’s extended arm as he went to punch me. He had brute strength, but I was smaller and more flexible.
He pulled a knife that’d been strapped at the side of his leg, and I fell back on my ass, preparing to use everything I had in me to kick, but before I had a chance, the sirens stopped and a voice came over the intercom.
“Stop fighting, or your colleagues will die,” someone announced in a computer-generated voice. At the threat, I went still, trying to calculate the odds and what to do next.
The masked guy used the distraction to his advantage and secured a strong hand around my ankle, flipping me over. The last thing I remembered was him climbing on top of me before everything went black.
18
CARTER
OFF-THE-GRID, PENNSYLVANIA
Standing only in my jeans, the belt buckle undone but still on, I took a sip of my scotch while opening the door to my second office. The space served two purposes: my own office separate from Falcon’s headquarters, and it was where I fucked when I was in town. Tonight’s reason for being there was the latter.
The law professor I hadn’t seen in six months was outside, and I sure as hell hoped Jasmine could fix me.
“I was shocked to get your message. Been forever.” Jasmine stepped around me to get inside and had her coat off by the time I’d closed the door and faced her. Aside from pink lipstick, and black heels, that coat had been all she’d come over in.
I set aside the scotch as she confidently strutted naked across the room. She kneeled by the couch, flicked her black braid around so it rested over one taut nipple, then lifted her wrists, waiting for me to bind them.
I thumbed the tail end of the belt hanging from my pants and approached her, hating the wrenching pain in my gut, and the heavy weight filling my chest. I shook my head and dropped my hand to my side.
Was it still too soon? I’d been distracted by a case last month. One that’d had me teaming up with an unlikely partner—Rebecca’s college boyfriend, Constantine Costa. I wanted to blame working with that man and his family for why I still couldn’t get hard, even with Jasmine on her knees for me. But in truth, I knew that wasn’t why.
Tonight was a waste of time. Because as depraved and screwed up as I’d become over the years, one thing hadn’t changed. I was unapologetically loyal. To a motherfucking fault, so it would seem.
I’d never once strayed when married to Rebecca. And now there I was, loyal once again, but it wasn’t to Rebecca’s ghost. I wished so damn much I could convince myself it was, in fact, Rebecca giving me pause. That it was her memory preventing me from being with another woman.
It sounded better to say I was being loyal to Rebecca’s memory all over again, like I had been those two years before I’d met Alyona Jovanovich—a woman I never wound up taking down.
As good as it sounded, it wasn’t the truth. No amount of saying it out loud would make it so, because it wasn’t loyalty to Rebecca keeping my dick down around other women. I’d become loyal to a fantasy, to Diana. To a woman I couldn’t have and hadn’t even seen in person but a handful of times.
As of five days ago, I’d stopped checking the cameras I’d planted at the research center in Amsterdam, hoping that’d help this fuckery going on in my head. Help me return to the status quo, which was having meaningless, rough sex.
“You need to go,” I ground out, frustrated. “I hoped this would work, but it won’t.”
“What would work?”
As she stood and came my way, I lowered my focus to the smooth V between her legs where her hand rested. I didn’t feel a damn thing. Not even a subtle dick twitch.
“I’m sorry,” was all I said before lifting her coat from the floor to nudge it at her.
“Well, if you change your mind . . .” She pursed her lips in disappointment while putting on the heavy garment.
“I won’t.” Once she was covered, I opened the door. “Unfortunately.” The second she was gone, I shut and locked it, then bowed my forehead against it, my heart hammering out of control.
Far too tense to get behind the wheel of a car, I decided it’d be best to jerk off in the shower here before heading home.
I started for the bathroom, unzipping my jeans, then paused at the sight of my laptop on my desk. Like an addict, I toyed with the idea of pulling up surveillance footage in Amsterdam. Get my dopamine hit from seeing Diana.
