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I would’ve believed him if his grip on the steering hadn’t tightened.
“Is it something you both can overcome?”
He pulled the car off the road and parked, then turned to face me. “I will do anything to be with you, Eliza. Even set aside my differences with Saint, err, Niven.”
“I know he’s called Saint. Will you tell me what happened?”
“I will not. So I suppose you can say I’ll do anything but that. And a handful of other things, like dancing naked in the street. Although it wouldn’t be the first time.”
He leaned over and put his hand on the back of my neck.
“I need to kiss you, Eliza.”
When I leaned forward, he crushed his mouth to mine and pushed my lips apart with his tongue, then did battle with mine. His kiss was hard and so deep. His grip on my face was powerful and tender at the same time. The growl that came from his throat made me flood with desire and squeeze my legs together.
He broke the kiss first, trailing his lips down my neck. “We need to go,” he whispered. “But I must have one taste first.” He unfastened two buttons on my blouse, pulled the cup of my bra out of his way, and crushed his mouth to my nipple the same way he had with our kiss. The vibration of another growl sent pleasure coursing through my body.
All too soon, he tucked my breast into its cup, refastened my buttons, and brushed my lips with his, leaving me breathless. He put the car in gear and returned to the route while I tried to lower my heart rate by breathing deeply.
“It was more than a walk home.”
I looked over at him with scrunched eyes. “Sorry?”
“Earlier, you said it was a walk home, not a bloody marriage proposal. You’re wrong. I did propose.”
I laughed. He didn’t.
12
TYPHON
Once we arrived at the hospital, I told Eliza to go inside and I’d wait. When she argued, I reminded her she didn’t have transportation back to London, and at the very least, she should attempt to find out everything she could about Harper’s surgery and condition, then decide what to do.
I didn’t tell her, but worst-case scenario, I’d make the hour drive to Shere and find somewhere to bunk. There were phone calls and messages requiring my response, and if he was available, I wanted to talk to Z. It was also time I checked in on Oleander, Verity, and Delfino.
After making Hornet a permanent member of Unit 23 as of the first of the year, I planned to wait until the second quarter to extend the same offer to Verity. For now, though, her expertise wasn’t as essential to my unit as it was to the human trafficking investigation taking place at the command center. Thus, I’d agreed she could remain on temporary loan to the coalition until such time as she was needed for one of our missions.
Not that anyone outside my team would know what our missions entailed. Our very existence was often questioned—with the exception of the highest-ranking MI6 agents, most of whom were currently serving on one of the UN’s task forces.
Shortly after I joined Unit 23, reports of a secretive branch of the UK SAS known as Squadron W hit the mainstream press. According to the exposé, soldiers—meaning active-duty military personnel—carried out sanctioned high-value targeting and other “incredibly dangerous and elusive tasks.”
Firstly, no active-duty military had ever or would ever be part of the unit. Although there were many former armed service personnel in our ranks, myself included. But it wasn’t a requirement.
While the bulk of what was contained in the “information leak,” as it was referred to, was either vague or incorrect, particularly the nomenclature, other points were somewhat accurate.
As far as the name of the “squadron,” the logical correlation was that W was the twenty-third letter of the alphabet, which in itself was a stretch. Why report on us at all, then codify our name?
More, when I read the words “incredibly dangerous and elusive tasks,” I wondered whether the article had been written by someone still in secondary school. We did carry out such work, but the phrases used hardly scratched the surface of the danger my unit faced on a daily basis.
More indistinct mentions like threat monitoring, agent running, and intelligence gathering were sprinkled in. Again, none posed a threat to revealing either the unit or the actual work we did.
However, there were two specific missions written in such detail that Jekyll believed there was a traitor in our midst.
The first was the “squadron’s” role in the overthrow of a Middle Eastern country’s dictator. The article stated it had been facilitated via highly secretive monitoring of the man’s inner circle. All true.
Second was the suggestion we were active in the early years of the Afghan war. Again, true. And that we also undertook reconnaissance missions targeting war criminals. Not only targeted; they were eliminated.
The amount of accurate information versus inaccurate left Jekyll perplexed. His response? We closed ranks, and only his most trusted team members were privy to his intended methods for exposing a mole in our midst. I was on the inside. Saint was not.