The Omega Team: Hot Rod (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read online

  Something prickled at his nape. Acid tickled the back of his throat. “Hired you?”

  “Yes.” One frigid, emotionless word.

  He didn’t know why it hit him so hard, but the thought, the vision of her with another man, lots of men, made his stomach churn.

  When he didn’t respond, she glared at him. “Yeah. I’m a hooker. You got a problem with that?”

  He forced a smile. “Some of my best friends are hookers.”

  He felt her fury. It smacked him in the face like a slimy trout. But her ferocity made him smile. A little. He had no idea why. He didn’t like to think of her with other men, hundreds of them, thousands, perhaps. But that was stupid, because he had no claim on her.

  No man, except those with the funds to hire her for a night, had that claim.

  But somehow, irritating her was like a balm on his own annoyance.

  At himself. At the world. At the way things had turned out.

  He thrust all thoughts of Samantha from his mind. She was dead and gone. And that boy who’d once promised her the world? He was dead and gone too. In his place was a hard, bleak shell of a man. A man who had sought out and destroyed every scrap of humanity clinging to his petrified soul.

  And he liked it that way. He liked it just fine.

  Vixen riffled around in her purse until she found some gum. She unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth and then proceeded to blow and pop incessant bubbles.

  Not that gum popping was like nails on a chalkboard to him, but it was.

  He shot her a frown after a particularly percussive rendition. “Do you need to do that?”

  She fluttered her lashes. “Do what?”

  “Pop your gum?”

  “Sorry, Dad.”

  Ohh. There was bitterness in that word. It said more about her and her past than she probably imagined. But then girls with a happy home life generally did not grow up to be whores.

  A flash of pity for her ripped through him along with various scenarios she might have suffered…until she riffled some more and emerged with more gum, which she added to the wad in her mouth, because, apparently, one stick of gum wasn’t provoking enough.

  God. Months of this? Fighting his attraction to her and listening to that incessant cracking? What was he in for?

  If he was smart, he would just tune her out. Focus on the drive. And, when they got to the cabin, ignore her there as well.

  But she wasn’t so easy to ignore.

  Especially when she continued popping her gum.

  He turned on the radio to drown her out. But apparently she didn’t like country music, because she issued a rumbling groan of distain. “Don’t you have something else?” she snapped.

  He shrugged. “This is Texas.” Country music on every other station was practically the law. Still, she punched button after button, skating from channel to channel with an annoying persistence. She found one that might have been classical—tough to tell through the static—and for some reason left it there. Probably just to piss him off. She didn’t seem like a Rachmaninoff kind of girl to him.

  He attempted to ignore the scratchy, inconsistent tune until he could stand it no more and then, with a violent jab, turned the radio off all together.

  He should have known she would turn it back on. And then she began again, jumping from one station to another. She finally settled on a station featuring música norteña, a particularly strident form of Mexican polka music that made his eyes cross.

  But it was better than conversation. And it was easy to block out.

  For a blissful few miles, until the station faded away, he was free of the expectation of banter. When she spoke again, it was with a particularly hostile tone.

  “So tell me, Hot Rod. How did you end up with the Omega Team?”

  “Why do you say it like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “You. You said it as though it was inconceivable that such a thing should occur.”

  She shrugged. “I thought the Omega Team was made up of the best of the best.”

  He set his teeth. “I am the best of the best.”

  Her response was a snort.

  “Why would you doubt it? You’ve never even met me.”

  “Oh, I’ve met you.”

  His heart skittered. She had? When? Surely he would have remembered. “Have you?”

  “You better believe it, Bub. I’ve met you many times. Different bodies, but the same guy.”

  “Um, are you taking about reincarnation?” Had he been saddled with a hippie hooker?

  The disgust was prevalent in her tone. “I’m talking about your species.”

  His…species? And here, all his life, he’d thought he was human. Go figure.

  “You military grunts, you’re all alike.”

  Ah. So that was her bugaboo. “Are we?”

  “Oh yeah. So arrogant. So holier than thou. You all pretend like you serve the good of the nation. You pose as the protectors of the realm. But when it comes down to it, it’s all a lie. Nothing means more to you than your moral imperative—but that’s a lie too, isn’t it? You only serve your own selfish desires.”

  Matt shook his head. The river of acrimony in her soul flowed even deeper than he’d suspected. “Why are you so bitter?”

  She stared at him. “Bitter? Why am I bitter?” She ticked the reasons off on her fingers. “My life was ruined. I have to go into hiding with three Neanderthals—”

  “We actually prefer the term Homo neanderthalensis.”

  “Jarheads—”

  “Not fair. None of us were marines.”

  “Arrogant, insufferable bastards—”

  “Technically, my parents were married.”

  “Who don’t give a shit about me or anything except their mission.”

  He barked a laugh, though none of this was funny. “Well, that is a tad paradoxical because you are our mission.”

  “You know damn well what I mean.”

  “Maybe. But you don’t know me. You know nothing about me.”

  “Untrue. My father was like you. Just like you.” A snarl. One he didn’t expect. At least, not directed at him.

  “And you know what kind of man I am? After a couple hours in a car together?” And, not to mention, hardly any conversation that didn’t involve his dislike of chewing gum and mariachis.

  “Oh, do I.” She crossed her arms over her chest and he wished she hadn’t, because it drew his attention to her plunging hooker cleavage and he was supposed to be driving.

  “Why don’t you tell me? What kind of man am I?”

  “A poser.”

  He had no idea why her accusation hit him so hard. He wasn’t a poser. He wasn’t.

  “You give the impression of being the big bad alpha hero. You exude promises—protection, valor, honor—but we both know, deep in your core, you won’t keep them. You can’t. Because you’re really just a selfish animal, concerned with nothing but your own needs.”

  Each word was a blade sliding in slow, skewering him. Because it was as though she saw clear through him. Knew his fears…and poked at them with a sharp stick.

  For years, since he’d learned about Samantha’s death, he’d been tormented by those very accusations, whispered in the night by a voice in his head that sounded a lot like her. He’d worked hard to silence that voice, to claim his place in the world, to prove he was the exact opposite of the man this vixen described.

  He decided then and there that as beautiful and alluring and tantalizing as she was, he didn’t like Vixen LaFleur. Her presence was like a scouring pad on tender flesh. She was brash and classless and coldhearted.

  And a hooker.

  Not that he could ever forget that fact.

  Had she been a housewife or a nurse or a Sunday school teacher, he could have ignored her allure. Women like that had no place in his life. They were too good for him and he knew it.

  But this one?

  This one was irritating and angry and rude and she chewed h
er gum loudly.

  And she was a hooker.

  This woman was exactly his type. Exactly the kind of woman he deserved.

  That was going to make the next month very uncomfortable indeed.

  What were the odds?

  Sam glared out the window and attempted to ignore her exasperating companion. But it was more than exasperation, wasn’t it? It hurt.

  Of all the men in the world to be assigned to protect her, why did it have to be him?

  The one man she had trusted.

  The man she’d loved.

  The man who had turned his back on her in her darkest hour.

  The man who had deserted her and ruined her life.

  And to make things even worse, he didn’t even remember her.

  Of course, she’d changed a lot since those days so long ago. She’d developed a hard, cold shell to survive the acrid wasteland her life had become when her father had died. She was still furious at Dad for leaving. He’d done his time. He’d served his country enough. He should have retired when he had the chance. He should have come home to them.

  But he hadn’t. He’d chosen his duty to country, his moral imperative, over his family. Then he’d died and her life had become a living hell.

  A hell that had brought her here.

  And granted, she certainly didn’t look as she had the last time she’d seen Matt—that tearful good-bye when his father had been transferred and he’d moved away. They’d both been so young, babies in the grand scheme of things, though they’d thought themselves mature enough to make forever pledges—pledges he hadn’t kept.

  She knew better now than to trust a man’s pledge, but she’d changed in other ways too. She’d long since lost the plump mien of a child and now had the much sharper features of a wary woman. Due to the nature of her job, her makeup and clothes further camouflaged who she was at her core. But that hardly let him off the hook.

  To be honest, as infuriated as she was at him for betraying her trust those many years ago, she was even angrier that there wasn’t so much as a glimmer of recognition in his eyes.

  She’d fantasized, once upon a time, that there’d been a good reason he’d never responded to her letters. That there was some great, tragic, romantic explanation why he’d sloughed her away like an annoying flea.

  She was hardly so naïve now.

  Matt Devereaux was just a jackass. And he always had been.

  He was nothing but a hot rod. A souped-up version of a real man. They looked good and made a lot of noise, but in the end, they were all just for show. Probably didn’t even realize what an utter imposter he was.

  She probably shouldn’t have snapped at him, but she hadn’t been able to restrain herself.

  Why are you so bitter?

  Ohh. If he only knew.

  But then he wouldn’t care. Not really. His silence all those years ago had proved as much.

  Sometimes she hated him so fiercely she could barely stand it, and now—now that he was by her side, so close—it was hard to resist the opportunity to jab at him.

  But they’d be cloistered in a small cabin for a month.

  Her best option would be to just ignore him.

  Trouble was, he was a hard man to ignore.

  Even as a boy, he’d been irresistible. That crooked smile, those dark, simmering eyes, the silk of his hair. He’d reached the glory his teenaged body had promised. He was enormous, heavily muscled and tall. And though his features were still as beautiful, they had a savage cut to them. The scar slicing through his left cheek, nearly a dimple, only made him seem more mysterious and fascinating.

  No.

  She yanked her thoughts to a screeching halt.

  No. He was not attractive. Not beneath the surface, at least.

  It would serve her well to remember what kind of man he really was.

  And, even though there were three Omega Team warriors to protect her, she knew the only person in this debacle she could really trust was herself.

  No one else really gave a damn about her.

  Especially not Matt Fucking Devereaux.

  Chapter Three

  The safe house was as dismal as Matt remembered. Two bedrooms, a small bathroom with a leaky toilet and a kitchen-cum-living area, all furnished with mismatched furniture that had seen better days. It was nestled in a clearing in the woods outside the small town of Salvation, Texas that, on the map, was found just to the south of the middle of nowhere. They’d passed through town coming in, and that hadn’t changed much either, with the possible exception of a new bakery. Oh, and the stoplight. That was new too.

  Obviously, not a lot going on in town.

  Not that it mattered. They would only be leaving the cabin for supplies.

  He and Vixen pulled in first, which was annoying because Ace and Coop were supposed to have arrived before them to clear the area, and also because he was damn tired of being alone with her—gum popping and all. So, after he cleared the interior of the cabin and before he carried her luggage and the groceries into the place, he told her to sit tight while he did a perimeter check.

  To his annoyance, when he glanced back at the cabin, she was watching him through the window. Clearly visible. Hell, her shiny blonde curls were like a beacon in the gloom.

  She might as well be wearing a target and singing an aria.

  He stormed back onto the porch, threw open the door and bellowed, “Are you crazy?”

  For some reason, his totally logical question seemed to surprise her. Those doe-like eyes widened and her lips parted. It took some effort, but he ignored all that and focused on her response. “What?”

  “Jesus Christ, woman.” He stomped over to the window and yanked the curtains closed. “You know someone wants to kill you. You know the area hasn’t been checked. Why on earth would you stand there in full view?”

  His fury lit the fuse on hers. Her eyes narrowed and her fingers curled into fists. “How dare you yell at me for that?”

  “I’m not yelling.” More like howling.

  She marched over to him and confronted him, toe to toe, nose to nose. Or nose to chest. She was short, after all. “It’s your fucking job to keep me safe. If you need me to do or not do something, you have to tell me. I’m not a fucking psychic.”

  “Okay, missy. How’s this for clear direction? Keep the fuck out of sight. At least until we are sure the area is safe. And hell, even then. In fact, just go to your room and stay there.”

  “Fuck you, jarhead.”

  “I already fucking told you, I was not a fucking marine.” He didn’t know why he was letting her get the better of him. He never lost his temper, and he never spewed profanities like this…but her attitude was fucking pissing him off.

  He wanted to turn her over his knee and wallop her bottom—

  Oh. Fuck.

  It scalded him, the blaze of lust that ripped through him.

  And suddenly, he lost the reins.

  Though he knew better, though he knew he shouldn’t, though he knew it was insane, he grabbed her shoulders, yanked her against him and kissed her.

  It was savage and harsh. A punishment, really, and while one part of him was mortified at this effort to dominate her in a physical way, to show her, once and for all, who was boss, another part of him liked it. Loved it. Squirmed in delight.

  She tasted sweet. Her mouth was soft, velvety. Her lips were lush pillows. Her body, sealed to his, was like an armful of heaven. It was a scalding moment of exquisite pleasure, especially when she softened and kissed him back.

  But then, he should have known. He should have suspected she was hardly the kind of woman who allowed such liberties without her pound of flesh.

  Her knee—and a particularly bony one, as it happened—came up quick and hard, connecting with his tender bits.

  The air whooshed from his lungs and painful shards of light blinded him as agony raked him. He tightened his hold on her, but only to keep himself from falling to the floor in a writhing lump of misery. He
held her and shook as he recovered himself. And then he released her. Stepped back and gave her some space. Gave himself some as well.

  Hell, he deserved that.

  He forced himself to meet her eyes. “I apologize,” he said. Nearly a croak.

  To his annoyance, she smirked. “No need to apologize,” she said. “Just be aware that if you ever touch me again, next time, when I unman you, it’ll be with a knife.”

  Funny thing, he totally believed her.

  And he vowed to himself never to touch her again.

  Oh, not because of her utterly unveiled threat. But because he’d enjoyed that kiss—that fraction of a second when she’d kissed him back—way more than he should have.

  No doubt about it. She was a dangerous woman.

  If he wanted to emerge from this mission unscathed, he needed to keep his hands, and his lips, to himself.

  Sam did go to her room, but not because Matt had commanded it. She needed to get away from him, and fast.

  She was mortified that she’d kissed him back. Only for an instant, only because his scent and his touch and his taste had somehow reached down deep into the desolate well of her soul and stroked a long-languishing memory—but she had.

  It infuriated her how quickly she’d abandoned her vow. All her hate, her bitterness, her anger at him had just evaporated and she’d gone back in time. Become again that girl who had never been truly hurt. A girl who trusted. A girl who loved. A girl who gloried in the kiss of the boy she worshiped without any suspicion of her impending doom.

  Stupid girl.

  Oh, how on earth could she stand being so close to him? Spending so much time with him?

  How could she stay here and not kill him?

  Because once he’d let go of her and set her away, all that hate, bitterness and anger—that had so quickly deserted her—had returned. It had coalesced into a spitting acid and settled heavily in her belly.

  It would probably be wise to stay in this room and avoid him completely. She glanced desultorily around at the austere furnishings. It was hideous, but she’d seen worse.