AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Captain Franzen? Is something wrong?”
And way to let it tromp across his features too. Shoving both into the mental shredder, he turned and forced himself to confront those wide doll eyes staring at him from the other side of the Escalade’s back seat—in which, through a bizarre string of circumstances, he’d landed with her.
Alone with her.
Hell.
“No.” He clamped his teeth harder, jogging the edges of his lips higher. “Everything’s fine, Madame Vice President. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried.” Her auburn brows crunched, as if weathering an internal chastisement. “All right. That’s a lie. I’m a little worried. This isn’t protocol. Is Luke going to be okay?”
“He’s in the car right behind us. I’m sure he’s doing great. His usual detail is being backed up by Sam Mackenna. He’s a good man.”
“The red-haired Goliath? Looks like he should be hacking and slashing his way across a moor in a kilt and nothing else?”
Soft chuckle. “He actually owns a few of those. Nellis has him on loan from the RAF for a while. Has a day job training the jet jocks out there.”
She smiled. “Luke’ll be in heaven about that.”
“But you’re still worried.”
Her pensive gaze out the window confirmed what he’d heard in her voice. “This isn’t the way we normally do things.”
“Vegas isn’t a normal city.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
“Which is why you can’t stop stressing.”
“I’m a mother, Captain. Stress is my middle name.”
“I could just order you to stop.”
Had he really gone there? Referencing her and “orders” in the same sentence—then letting his libido fill in the rest of that erotic scenario? She went to work in the White House. He spent his days in the gym—and before that, made his living in swamps, forests, and third-world ghettoes.
But dammit, something about her called to every Dominant bone in his body—which was just about every bone in his body. No. She just…pulled at him, period. Brought instincts to the surface of his blood, primal and feral and needing, especially with her new reference. I’m a mother. Like that was the most important burden on her shoulders, not being second-in-command of the free world. She didn’t mean it, of course. She couldn’t. But for the few moments he let himself believe it, he was entranced. Captivated. Ensnared by the Tigress…
Her gaze flared—as if she’d been able to read his mind. Or maybe she was just as enticed? And if so, how deeply? Did her imagination burst to life with the same dream as his? The same whispered words between them?
Get on your knees, kitten.
Yes, Sir.
Now worship me with your mouth.
Oh yes, Sir.
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
“Well.” She angled more fully toward him, setting down her phone and folding her hands in her lap. “You clearly know what you’re doing. And if Sol also felt the protocol break was necessary—”
“For him to head up the decoy motorcade as a masquerade? Yeah. It was necessary.”
Reallynecessary, but she didn’t have to know the extent of that. Remarkably, it was easier to maintain the façade about that, instead of his growing attraction to her. Sol received the intel while Rhodes met with a group of local elementary kids who’d won a writing contest, The Adventures of Barry the Bald Eagle. While she’d listened to the first-place winner read his piece aloud, Wrightman took a call from the Vegas PD, with Franz listening too. The cops played back an untraceable message in a computer-generated voice, about how the vice president would soon be “sinking into the pit of hell, along with the other oppressors pretending to better the world with their corrupt leadership.”
