LITMIR.BIZ

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in our surveillance even when we did have him in our sights. Not that he can be sure he hasn’t been under constant surveillance, so there’s still some small chance he’s gone into hiding and stayed there, but—”

      “Oh, he’s been sure he wasn’t under surveillance,” Lila told him with what sounded like absolute certainty. “He’s known about every gap and failure. You can count on it.”

      “Well, I don’t know if I’d count on it,” Joel said, “but somehow the guy always does seem to know what OPUS is doing. Sometimes it even seems like he knows it before we do.”

      “There’s no somehow to it,” Lila said. “And no seems, either.”

      Joel looked up from the diagram where his gaze had fallen to find Lila staring at him with a very troubling expression. As if she knew something he didn’t. Which, if Sorcerer was involved, wasn’t good. “What do you mean?” he asked.

      “I mean the reason he manages to stay one step ahead of OPUS is because he does know what we’re doing. Every step of the way. And he knows it, sometimes, before the field agent even gets handed the assignment.”

      Joel narrowed his eyes at her. “That’s impossible. The only way he could know that would be if—”

      He halted before finishing, not wanting to put voice to the thought that flashed into his head.

      So Lila finished his statement for him. “Someone inside the organization has been helping him all along.”

       CHAPTER THREE

      “HOW CAN YOU KNOW THAT?” Faraday asked. “And why wasn’t it in your report?”

      Lila tugged meaningfully on the handcuff that still connected her to his headboard. In a fantasy, she might have found the idea of being handcuffed to the bed of a sexy stranger profoundly arousing. In reality, it was damned annoying. Probably because Joel wasn’t a stranger to her anymore. She was getting to know him pretty well. What was weird—and unwelcome—was that she still found him sexy. Where getting to know him should have made her dislike him, she instead found herself feeling curious about him. Even worse, the stuff she was curious about had nothing to do with the job they both had facing them.

      “Uncuff me,” she told him, “and I’ll reveal everything.”

      He arched a dark eyebrow at that.

      “Everything I know,” she clarified with an exasperated sound.

      The eyebrow dropped back down again, and for a minute he almost looked disappointed. Interestingly, though, his expression registered no fear at the prospect of releasing her, and that, Lila had to admit, was pretty admirable. Stupid, but admirable. Most guys wouldn’t have had the gall to cuff her in the first place. Men who’d tried to restrain her in the past had generally ended up horizontal, usually unconscious and always bloody. And even if one of them had managed to capture her—yeah, right—no way would he have been brave enough to release her while he was still anywhere in the same ZIP code.

      Of course, Joel Faraday wasn’t exactly hurrying to carry out her instructions, was he? So maybe he hid his fear well. Which, to Lila, was even more admirable.

      “Promise me you won’t kick my ass to Abu Dhabi and back again,” he finally said.

      Okay. She’d just kick his ass to Aberdeen and back again. “I promise I won’t kick your ass to Abu Dhabi,” she vowed.

      “Or back again.”

      “Whatever.”

      But he still didn’t move. “Promise me you won’t even kick it as far as Arlington.”

      She sighed heavily. Fine. She’d just kick his ass to Foggy Bottom. “I promise I won’t kick your ass as far as Arlington,” she repeated dutifully.

      “Promise me you’ll leave my ass the hell alone.”

      Well, now, she didn’t want to be hasty. She’d already noticed that, even in baggy pajama bottoms, his ass was kind of nice. She might have plans for it later. After she’d kicked it around for a little while. “Look, I promise I won’t kick your ass tonight, all right?”

      “Ever,” he insisted.

      She bit back a growl. “All right. I won’t kick your ass ever. Or any of your other body parts, either,” she added when he opened his mouth to say more.

      “Promise?”

      This time she growled quite distinctly. “You want me to sign something in blood?”

      He actually seemed to consider it for a moment.

      “All right.” She finally ground out the words. “I promise.”

      He must have believed her, because he made his way cautiously to the nightstand where he’d placed the key. And watching him move, all fluid and stealth and leisure, Lila realized she had no desire to kick his ass anyway. It really was a nice ass. And it was attached to a very nice torso. Which had extremely nice shoulders. Fastened to lusciously nice arms. In fact, she decided as she watched him palm the small key and turn toward her, it would be a shame if anything happened to any of Joel Faraday’s body parts. Unless, of course, his body parts happened to be naked at the time, and Lila happened to be the one doing anything—and everything—to them.

      Yeah, it was definitely going to be an interesting assignment.

      He hesitated a moment at the side of the bed, still just beyond her reach. Then, even more cautious than he’d been before, he extended his empty hand outward, palm up, presumably in a silent request for her to give him her hand that was uncuffed. Not sure why he would want it, Lila nevertheless started to do so without hesitation. Then, for some reason, her hand stopped when her fingertips were just shy of his. She glanced up to find him gazing at her face, a silent question in his eyes. But he didn’t move his hand forward to take hers, only waited without speaking for her to touch him first.

      Still not sure why he didn’t just unlock her, and never once removing her gaze from his, she gingerly pushed her hand the remaining distance necessary to meet his. But the moment their fingers finally connected, she instinctively wanted to pull back.

      It was the strangest thing. Lila never retreated from anyone without a damned good reason. As in, without a life-threatening reason. Joel Faraday was in no way a threat to her life. He wasn’t even a threat to her wrist at this point. But there was something about the way her bare palm skimmed over his—a perfectly innocent touch—that made her want to jerk back again.

      She fought the sensation by dropping her gaze and focusing it on the fingers that folded gently over her hand. But for some reason, that only compounded her confusion. Because not only did Joel’s fingers nearly swallow her hand whole, he touched her in a way that made goose bumps pebble her flesh. His hand was warm, the skin duskier than hers, dusted with black hair that made it appear darker still. His fingers were long and blunt compared to her small, slender ones, unadorned save the heavy Georgetown University ring he wore on his ring finger. His was a no-nonsense hand. A working hand. A manly hand. But it held hers so gently.

      Maybe that was what put her off-kilter. She’d never thought of a man’s hands in terms of gentleness before. On the contrary, men’s hands were not to be trusted.

      Joel continued to hold her free hand as he bent forward to reach for her cuffed one. He had to lean over her body to get to it, and when he did, the V-neck of his T-shirt fell away from his body at eye level. That gave Lila a view of a long, muscular torso and trim waist, all of it naked, and all of it dusted by dark hair. She sucked in an involuntary breath at the sight of such masculine beauty, filling her nose with the scent of him, a scintillating mix of Dial soap, expensive cognac and raw, unmitigated male. Her heartbeat quickened in response, and in an effort to slow it, she turned her gaze to her left hand, which had pulled taut the short chain imprisoning it to the bed. But seeing Joel insert the key into the lock and give it an uneasy twitch only made

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