Page 21 of Covert Temptation (SEAL Team Blackout Charlie #4)

D ante evenly distributed his weight between his palms and his toes, the rest of his body rigid as the second minute of his plank crawled by.

Faint sunlight streamed through the living room windows, then vanished again as the sun slipped behind a cloud.

The snow fled, leaving the world much brighter.

Today, he and Kennedy could take a walk through the open fields, though he was pretty sure those designer boots wouldn’t hold up to the mud.

Instead, they could sit by the fire again.

The memory of her weight in his lap, the feel of her in his arms, the scent of her sweet perfume that probably cost a fortune but was just right for her, flooded into his head with another beam of sun crossing the hardwood floor.

He felt at ease in a way he hadn’t in a long time. Telling Kennedy about the team and his family stripped a weight off him.

But not everything felt right. Kennedy didn’t climb into his bed last night.

He didn’t know if he was frustrated as hell or relieved. Either way, he woke alone—and hard as steel after dreaming about her all night long. The strain that simmered in his body had to go somewhere, so here he was, sweating it out on the floor just past 0500.

When he heard a soft footstep, his heart gave a leap.

Kennedy.

He turned his head to see her enter the kitchen wearing an oversized sweatshirt that didn’t come anywhere near hiding those long, toned legs. Hell—she was barefoot too. Seeing her small foot was a reminder of how she’d thrown her calf over his shoulder as he licked her pussy…

And how she bucked into his lips and tongue when he made her come.

Her back was to him, and she moved with a grace that made him want to stare too long. The little couture queen intrigued him far too much.

He cursed under his breath and aimed his attention to the floor.

Focus.

She rattled around in the kitchen, making a smoothie drink from some ingredients she found in the safe house stash. And now she was humming.

No. Not humming—counting.

Damn, he hated that she felt like she had to be ready to run at any moment.

She scooped powder into a big plastic cup and added something from a carton she’d found in the stores. Then she added water to the mix, topped it with a lid and began to shake it.

He switched to one-arm holds. Maybe the torture would outweigh the throb of his stiff cock at watching her entire body rocking with the shaking motion.

He had to burn this out—this edge. This need.

As she started toward the living room, he dropped his gaze to the floor again. She walked over to the sofa and plopped down.

Last night, he’d cleared away the broken remnants of the coffee table and placed them out back. The open space was perfect for his morning workout…but it was too damn close to Kennedy.

He could crawl two feet and nestle his face between those firm thighs.

“Still showing off?” She settled back on the cushions, then propped her feet on his spine. Like he was a piece of furniture.

He turned his head, sweat breaking out on him for other reasons than exertion. “Seriously?”

She sipped the concoction in her cup. “You broke the coffee table. I need a place to put my feet.”

He grunted. “Fair.” He was about to respond with something snarkier, when his phone buzzed on the floor a few feet away from him.

Saved by his commanding officer.

He rolled out of the plank in one smooth glide and grabbed the phone.

“Now you’re really showing off.”

He could almost hear her sexualizing him—and damn if he didn’t want to be sexualized by her. Her smile reflected the sentiment, but her eyes revealed a glint of worry in the deep brown depths.

He unlocked his phone and opened the text.

Con: Great work finding the son. Need you to dig into his past employment. File sent.

Dante: Where’s the file from?

Con: CIA dug it out of their archives.

Dante: The CIA’s archived files?

Con: Yes.

Dante: He was an agent?

Con: No. He was you. Intel. Support.

Dante rocked on his heels a little. Unsure how to feel about that, shaken by their similarities.

The son had once worked for the CIA. That made so much sense…including how he knew how to avoid detection.

Dante’s stomach churned.

He wanted to be out there, boots on the ground with his team, wanted dirt and blood and answers. Instead, he was stuck here half waiting, half hunting.

But maybe this was where he was needed most.

Movement caught his eye. Across the room, Kennedy had stretched out on the old sofa, arms behind her head, legs long and bare, crossed at the ankles like a goddamn challenge to part them.

Why hadn’t she come to him last night?

Why hadn’t he gone to her?

He looked away, jaw clenched, and forced his attention back to the phone. After shooting a final text to Con, he moved to the desk and located the file sent to him.

He opened the CIA personnel archive and started his deep dive, fingers flying across the keys as he ran searches through back channels and cross-referenced digital footprints with current public records.

Daniel had wiped almost everything. But not well enough.

Ten minutes in, a smoothie appeared at Dante’s elbow.

He looked up—and Kennedy was there, handing him a shaker bottle like it was no big deal. But as he reached for it, his forearm brushed against hers, and she paused for a second too long.

Something passed between them.

Something warm. Real.

He didn’t speak—just gave her a grateful nod.

She turned away, a private smile curving her lips as she padded back to the couch.

God, he wanted to follow her.

But the file. The job. The mission.

Dante forced himself back to his work.

The deeper he went, the more the picture came into focus. The son—Daniel Sheen— had worked for the CIA. Not as field op or desk analyst, but as a computer tech in a secure facility in Northern Virginia. He climbed the ranks on his knowledge fast. His clearances were high enough to know too much.

To know about Blackout…and Echo team.

He quit the CIA after just six months. After that, he lived with his mother in the Virginia home where he grew up.

The son knew everything —how to scrub records, how to slip through digital nets without raising flags. He was trained to vanish.

To fake his own death.

And now he was out in the wild, executing a plan that was likely years in the making. This was an act of revenge against those who failed to stop his mother from dying in that bombing.

Dante sat back, heart pounding.

They were one step closer. They had a trace to follow.

All they needed now was to find him.

And if this guy turned out to be Cipher —the man pulling all the strings, the voice behind the puzzles, the chaos, the terror—it would all end right here.

Or blow up in their faces.

Dante picked up the smoothie, took a slow drink and looked across the room at Kennedy. Her eyes were closed, her chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm, like she wasn’t carrying the weight of nations behind those long lashes.

He knew better.

She was carrying just as much as he was—maybe more. Hell, she already had a target on her back.

And every step they took toward the truth painted that target bolder. With every thread they pulled, they risked dragging the danger closer—not just to her, but to both of them.

From here on out, they had to tread carefully. One wrong move, one leak, and they’d be silenced before the truth ever saw daylight.

Failure wouldn’t just mean sinking the op. It would mean losing everything.

Including whatever fragile, unfinished thing had taken root between him and Kennedy.

* * * * *

Kennedy sipped the last of her smoothie and set the cup in the sink. Chalky vanilla protein powder wasn’t exactly a cafe latte, but she would have to make do, just like she did with everything these days.

She leaned against the sink, staring out the window that overlooked the front yard. The sun had melted off the snow, leaving slushy patches on the driveway and yard, and the sky had cleared to a pale blue.

The faint tapping noise of Dante’s fingers on the laptop told her that he would be a while. Now that they knew Daniel Sheen had faked his death, they were officially in the trenches.

Kennedy was here for Dante. After all, she always backed Alyssa on every project. She was prepared to assist in any way possible. Whatever it took, she’d be right there beside him.

She went into her bedroom. A quick glance around the space made her nose wrinkle. Kennedy was no slob, but she hadn’t been her usual fastidious self since coming to the safe house. A cluttered space cluttered her mind, so she set about tidying up.

First, she spritzed the bedding with a small bottle of linen spray from her suitcase. While that dried, she grabbed the few garments she’d left draped over the chair in the corner.

She could hang her things up in the closet…but she didn’t know what to plan for. They might be making a run for it any minute, and there wouldn’t be time for packing.

In the end, she smoothed the garments before folding them neatly and tucking them into her luggage again. With that task completed, she fluffed the pillows and made the bed.

The small act made her feel a little more human, and that meant she wanted to dress like one. She selected jeans, soft and worn in all the right places, and a red sweater with buttons down the front that she’d picked up in Paris.

When she looked in the bathroom mirror, she realized that for the first time in weeks, her complexion didn’t look ghastly. Maybe it was the red hue of the sweater…

Maybe it was being here with Dante.

Her makeup pouch sat on the counter. Since she’d been in hiding, she hadn’t felt like doing more than applying a little lip gloss.

But next thing she knew, she had a mascara wand in hand and was pulling it gently over the very tips of her lashes to accentuate the length.

Then she added the lip gloss to her pout.

There—her lashes were darker. Her mouth kissable.

If anyone was looking.

If Dante was looking.

She smiled softly at her wishful thinking.