Page 25 of Too Guarded to Love (Project VIPER #3)

O livia adjusted her duffel over her good shoulder as the elevator doors opened.

Nic pushed off the wall and stepped toward her, his posture as tense as Kane’s, and reached for her bag.

“I got it.” She nudged his hand away. “I don’t want to be a problem.”

“It’s not a problem, Olivia. Give me the bag.”

She ignored his command and turned to her brother as irritation simmered in her blood. “So, where’s this mysterious Level Black? Sounds like an eighties hair band if you ask me. Or maybe some sort of underground club you need a password to get into.”

“More like the second. I’m taking Beth to get some things from my locker before we head down. As per Admiral Edgar”—Kane shot Nic a side glare—“you are with Nic until further notice. Stay with him and listen. If he tells you to stay put, you obey. Understand?”

She thrusted her chin in the air. “I understand, and you don’t need to lecture me.”

“Good. See you underground. Love you.”

“Love you too.” She really did love her brother to pieces, but sometimes… She turned to Nic. “Le ad the way.”

He chuckled. “You’re letting me lead now?”

She sighed. “If I don’t, will you snitch to my brother?”

“If it will make you obey, then?—”

Nic paused as if listening to something. She strained her ears but didn’t hear a damn thing. A second later, he nodded, the movement so subtle she might have missed it if she hadn’t been so enthralled with that damn pretty face.

She reached out a finger and touched his chin. “What’s up with that?”

“What?”

“You nodded.” The movement of his jaw scraped his five o’clock shadow against her skin. She shivered as the sensation zipped up her arm. “I saw you. I’ve seen you do that before. Sometimes your lips move like you’re talking to yourself, but?—”

He wrapped his hand around her wrist and pulled her fingertips from his chin. “We need to take the stairs. Elevators are shut down for security reasons.”

She looked at the elevators that had been working just fine before the explosion. “How do you know?”

“Superpowers, baby.” He took her hand and tugged. “Come on.”

She fell into step beside him. Arguing in the middle of a classified government facility that had just been attacked and arguing didn’t seem wise. “Now you’re calling me baby after calling me a problem?”

“You’re a huge problem, but not because I’ve been ordered to keep you safe.” He opened the door to the stairwell and checked the area.

She glared at him as he reached for her hand again.

What the hell did that mean? She opened her mouth to ask, but the quiet eeriness of the dire situation hadn’t carried into the stairwell.

Men and women, some in lab coats, some in casual clothes, and some in camouflage, bustled down to the underground level, however far down that may be.

A few floors later, Nic led her through a set of wide double doors into a tunnel that looked like a subway without cars or a track.

Silver tiles and stark white concrete gleamed under fluorescent lights.

To the left, about a half dozen golf carts waited in a row.

Others sped in both directions, carrying personnel and supplies.

Tugging on her arm, Nic led her toward a young man at the front of the row with a tablet. The soldier in camouflage with the buzz cut and baby face snapped to attention.

He saluted as Nic stepped in front of him. “Sir.”

“How’s it going down here, private?”

“Level Black is good, sir.”

The tense yet excited glint in the soldier’s eye countered Olivia’s trepidation.

Sure, a garage had just blown up, but she was surrounded by the best of the best in a top-secret underground facility.

It wouldn’t take long for Ryan and Scarlett to figure out who was responsible for tonight’s atrocities.

Gran would wake up soon and tell her to run from Nic’s dangerous yet alluring as hell charms. Or knowing Gran, she might tell her to enjoy said charms and then run.

Olivia would be fine as a Level Black guest for the next day or so.

And then she’d go above ground with the proof she’d been sabotaged and get her job back so she could do Harlee’s surgery.

The guard gave Nic his room assignment as he motioned them into the closest cart. As they climbed in, he saluted Nic again. “Keep us safe, Captain.”

Nic reached up and clasped his shoulder. “You too. Keep up the good work.”

Something she hadn’t felt in a long time tingled in her chest. Tears threatened as the feeling expanded into a bittersweet mixture of pride and heartache.

She hadn’t felt patriotism like this since the last time she’d seen her father in uniform at her hometown’s Memorial Day Parade.

A boy around the age of ten had tugged on her father’s sleeve and said, “Thank you for your service, sir.”

Olivia’s heart had melted along with the ice cream in her hand.

There were many times she hated her father’s career.

Moments like that reminded her of why her family’s sacrifices mattered and why her mother, and now Scarlett and Beth, stood by their men knowing what they might have to forfeit in the name of love.

“Hold on.” Nic sped off down the tunnel.

She glanced at the console between them. “Does this thing come with sunglasses?” She squinted against the glare from the walls. “Isn’t it supposed to be dark and dank underground?”

Nic nodded to a woman in a white coat zipping past them from the other direction. “When the network of tunnels was built over a hundred years ago, they probably were.”

She held on to the dashboard. “I shouldn’t be surprised. Sleek and shiny seems to be VIPER’s vibe.”

“We’re a whole lot of high-tech awesomeness, but it’s women like Scarlett, Beth, and Patience, and now you who light the place up.”

“Ah, there’s the charmer I’ve heard about.” And hot damn if it didn’t light up parts of her like a Christmas tree. “How do you convert that pickup line when you’re in a bar?”

He shot her a look hot enough to melt the tiles off the wall. “I don’t need pickup lines. I didn’t need one with you if I recall correctly.” His gaze flicked to her mouth as he adjusted his big frame in the small seat. “Nope. It’s all coming back to me. Why did you deceive me, sirena ?”

She stared at the carts speeding along in front of them as his hungry, gravelly voice burst the Christmas lights he’d ignited into a supernova.

She’d already explained her reasons, but his tone suggested he hadn’t been satisfied with her answer.

“I thought it could be our little secret. I know your reputation. You aren’t the commitment type.

My life is too busy to start a relationship.

Nobody needs to know what happened at the beach but us. ”

He didn’t take his eyes off the long stream of concrete. “And?”

Dammit. How did he know there was more? She blew out a harsh breath to sever the connection that hadn’t died with the explosion. “I grew up in a hometown a lot like this place.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “I’ve seen photos of your family’s farm. There is nothing sleek or high-tech about it.”

No, there wasn’t, and she missed it. Earlier, she’d pictured Nic on a dragon. What would he look like on top of a stallion?

She shoved that fantasy aside. “We don’t have a network monitoring everyone’s movements, but we have a community grapevine.

For my entire life, my well-meaning, and sometimes not-so-well-meaning neighbors, reported back to my family about every move I made.

If I stood next to a friend who was smoking, it would get back to my parents that I was hanging out with the wrong crowd.

If I so much as kissed a guy’s cheek in public, someone told my parents to start planning my wedding because I was surely pregnant. ”

Nic smirked. “So you’re well prepared for life at VIPER headquarters, where everyone knows everyone else’s business.”

“Prepared, yes. Happy about it, no.” She craved a connection with a man, but not with him and the freaking Department of Defense.

“After my parents died one right after the other, Kane went back to West Point, but I didn’t go back to college.

I stayed at home with Gran. When Kane lost his leg and Gran moved to DC to help him, I moved where nobody cared about who I talked to or how much moonshine I had with dinner. ”

“You drink moonshine with dinner?”

“When I’m not on call.”

“Sounds like the perfect meal.” He darted out his tongue to lick his lips.

“And I get what it’s like living under a microscope, and not just at headquarters.

I was in and out of foster care since I was two.

My father was an alcoholic who died in jail when I was a baby, and my mother chose drugs over parenting.

I became a full-fledged orphan when she overdosed when I was ten.

Every move I’ve made my entire life has been documented in state records. ”

She laid her hand on his arm as her heart broke for the little boy inside the tough soldier. “I’m sorry you had to grow up like that.”

“Thanks. It sucked, but I made it out alive.”

“I’m glad you did.” Squeezing his steel, she added survivor to the list of traits she admired about him. “The more bionic soldiers on my side, the better.”

He raised his fingers to his temple in a salute. “At your service, ma’am.”

She ignored the parts of her body weeping for his brand of service.

“So, let’s assume I’m right about being watched back in Atlanta, and let’s assume whatever shady asshole has been watching followed me to the beach.

What if getting shot wasn’t part of the attack on Gran and the others?

What if whoever is watching me is behind running me off the road and the shooting?

That means I didn’t escape the scrutiny and the lack of privacy I left in my town. ”

“And it means people are still watching you.”

“Yeah. The reason I said, ‘screw it’ at the beach and did what I did when …” She glanced between his legs. Was that a bulge under his pants ?

“When you what, Olivia? Did what I’d been fantasizing about since the moment I spotted you all wet and beautiful by the ocean?”

“Wet and beautiful?” Heat rose to her cheeks despite the chilly air. “I thought you were too good for pickup lines?”

“That’s not a line, baby. That’s the honest truth.”

The intensity in his words trapped her breath in her throat.

“Almost there.” He touched her arm. “Finish your thought before I ask you again in front of the cameras up ahead. What were you thinking when you dropped to your knees in front of me like a diosa del mar ?”

“Goddess by the sea?” She squeezed her thighs together, but the pulsing desire incited by his compliment, which should have sounded cheesy, didn’t subside.

Maybe it was his smooth-as-silk accent. Maybe it was his too-beautiful-for-words face.

Or maybe he possessed his own sort of gift that made a girl forget every reason she shouldn’t drop to her knees and worship him like a god.

No, not a god.

A hero.

Gods weren’t real, and Captain Nic Romero was one-hundred-percent hot-blooded male.

She brushed off his touch. “Please stop doing that.”

“What? Complimenting you?”

“Yes. It’s distracting and I’m still annoyed you think I’m a problem.”

“You’re a hard problem.” He smirked as he glanced down. “In one sensitive area.”

“Oh.” She tried to keep her gaze straight ahead but failed.

“Eyes up here, baby, or I’ll pull over and show you how hard just sitting next to you makes me.”

She whipped her head up. “Cool it with the inappropriate compliments.”

“Not going to happen. Now answer me.”

“Fine. I thought what we did—what we would have done if I hadn’t been shot—could have been more than a secret. And the next time I saw you at Kane and Beth’s wedding, we could share a smile and only the two of us would know what it meant.”

She stared at his profile. The muscle that ticced in his jaw was the only indicator her words affected him. “I’d hoped that my choice to explore the dark stranger who let me lead would be a memory nobody could ruin by calling it impulsive or reckless.”

Nic stared down the tunnel. “Was it either of those?”

“Impulsive? No. Reckless?” She smirked as he glanced at her. “Well, I did wind up getting shot so…”

He whipped the steering wheel to the right. Cursing, she lurched to the side. He yanked her back with his steel as he stopped the cart. As she caught her breath, he gripped her chin with one hand and her waist with the other.

“I’m deeply sorry for that and promise you will not get hurt again, hear me?”

She blinked, mesmerized by the intensity of his apology and desperate plea in his vow.

His nostrils flared as his grip on her chin tightened. “And until Edgar says otherwise, you are under my protection. And you will listen to everything I tell you to do without question. Got it?”

She didn’t speak. Trapped by his touch, she could only shiver at every guttural word that sounded like a warrior’s vow to torch a village to keep her safe.

Slipping his steel fingers from her chin, he cupped her cheek. “Now that we understand each other, it’s time we followed through on your deal.”

Her body shuddered as she shook her head. “I took that deal off the table. ”

“It’s back on the table, but with a stipulation. Whatever you were going to propose had better include finishing what you started at the beach.” He leaned so close the recirculated air barely had enough space to blow between them. “Consider that an order.”