Page 28 of Ready For His Rule

“Where?”

She still didn’t understand. Not completely. And that was okay. He was trained for this playbook but that didn’t mean the thing was written yet. “I’m not sure yet,” he muttered. Too many things had to fall into place—starting with getting Sam back on the horn and lining up air transportation in an “invisible” plane or two.

Yeah. He’d seriously gone there. Conjured that image, fueled by the jacked adrenalin in his blood and the survival-of-the-fittest-let’s-procreate thing going on in his dick, of the female next to him clothed in Wonder Woman garb. Went right ahead and parked her hot ass in a Plexiglass plane too…in which he was the willing copilot…

Feel like focusing on the situation thatmatters here, dickwad?

“I don’t understand.” Tracy’s interjection, husky with urgency, was an odd aid for the concentration cause. If he had to hone on something besides fantasies of her body in red, white, and blue spandex, her near-bedroom voice was a damn good alternative. “I—I really don’t understand.” Clearly, she said it to convince herself as much as him. “I mean, if Craig is—”

“Dead.” Franz supplied it as gently but firmly as he could. “He’s dead, Tracy. Start saying it, because you have to start accepting it.” Hypocrite. He could barely wrap his own mind around the horror—manifested by the adolescent visions of Tracy Rhodes as a daughter of Zeus.

“Then they’re going to need me.” Her head rose. She set her lips into a purposeful line.

He braced her jaw in the V between his thumb and forefinger. “They’re doing all right so far.”

“Because they have to.” Her eyes sizzled with silver fire. “Because they think I’m dead too!”

“Which is our biggest advantage right now.”

“Our…advantage?” She pushed his hand away. “The country needs guidance—”

“Which they’re getting from Speaker of the House LeGrange.”

“That’s your idea of an advantage?”

There was the official buzzkill for the spandex dream. The woman’s code name was Tigress, for a number of reasons—including what had to be a killer political pounce. She wasn’t the youngest vice president in the history of the country because she’d written nice things in everyone’s yearbook and brought the best brownies to the prom decoration party. Clearly, she was chomping to get back to the Hill, especially at a time like now. Political legacies—hell, a permanent place in world history books—were established at moments like this.

The conclusion hit his gut like a rotted fish.

He pushed back, to the other end of the seat. “The advantage here is called staying alive,” he gritted. “Excuse me if that messes with your plans for grandeur, Mrs. Rhodes.”

She had the grace to frown, apparently confused, before a veneer took over her face, hardening everything but her eyes. In those gray worlds, lagoons of hurt still lived. Or so she wanted him to believe. The hard gulp she tossed in was sure a convincing touch.

“Because whoever just tried to blow me up…might attempt it again.”

Shep covered the honors of getting a response into the air. “Smart lady.”

She grimaced, though John had trouble interpreting the look. Was she pissed, chagrined, frustrated? “You think they’d really try? Even now?”

John grunted. “Especially now.”

She flashed a new scowl. Correction. A full glower. But the pained glint in her eyes flashed doubly as brilliant. “Your paranoia is duly noted, Captain.”

The stab emulated its razor of tone. Quick, clean, and slicing deep—at least enough to keep him from retorting something just as glib. Dammit. He’d always been the king of the one-line comebacks. Not now. Not when the only way he could think of conquering this woman was by conquering her—

By bending her over his knee.

Yanking up her prim skirt.

Getting his hand on her full, plump bottom. Soundly. Repetitively.

“Paranoia.” Thank fuck Shep’s sarcasm was still in working order. “Ohhhh man. Where you going to start with that, Franzen?”

Took him all of three seconds to go with the set-up. Another three, weighted and determined, to slant a steady scrutiny across the car. “No place to start. We’re already at the end.”

The woman in his sights arched both chestnut brows. “The end?” she drawled. “What; as in ‘happily ever after’?”

He hitched a shoulder. “If that’s what you prefer.”

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