Page 57 of Breaking the Rules
“And then what?”
“And then I’m undressing you again and keeping you that way for at least six or seven months.”
He heard her shift on the mattress and the sound of her pulling on clothes.
“Better?”
He turned around to find her pulling her hair up into a knot on the top of her head. Her nipples were visible through the soft white cotton of the t-shirt. He felt his cock move in appreciation.
“There’s got to be a parka or something in here,” he said, hurrying back into the closet. He found a sweatshirt, three sizes too big for her and hurled it in her direction.
She humored him and pulled it over her head. “Better?” she asked.
“Not really. Maybe it’s the bed. Let’s go back to the living room and sit on opposite ends of the couch.”
She padded out of the room in front of him and veered into the kitchen where she riffled through drawers and cabinets until she found sandwich bags. She filled one with ice and wrapped it in a dishtowel.
“Here. For your eye.”
He frowned and probed his left eye. He’d taken a good shot from the ninety-pound ninja but had forgotten about it in the heat of the chase and the... after.
He took inventory of the rest of his body. Besides feeling sated, the knuckles on his left hand were split, and he felt a bruise blooming on his jaw. Everything else seemed to be intact.
Waverly grabbed two bottles of water out of the refrigerator and slid one to him across the black onyx of the counter.
He opened an app on his phone, and after some fiddling, the overhead lights dimmed on.
“Isn’t that handy?” Waverly said.
“All of our properties are wired to our system,” he said, drinking deeply from the bottle.
He let her fidget for a few more moments.
“You’re going to have to eventually tell me,” he said.
She raised her gaze to his. “I know. I just don’t know where to start.”
“Let’s start with where you learned to beat the hell out of men twice your size, and then we’ll wind our way around to what made you sic a hoard of women on me while you chased Petra into an alley.”
When she began to pace in front of the sink, Xavier pulled out a barstool and sat at the island.
“I have two jobs,” she began. “I’ve been acting my entire life, and in college while I was taking classes in psychology and international relations, I saved my summers for filming. Dante and I made another film together for Target Productions. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was a test.”
Xavier stayed still, focused on her words.
“After graduation, Dante approached me with a job offer. Brad Tomasso, the CEO of Target, had identified a unique need that the government’s intelligence gathering organizations all had. There were certain places that agents couldn’t get into, places that celebrities had access to.”
“Like the Lake Tahoe home of a Russian billionaire.”
She nodded. “Exactly. Dante and I do contract work, gathering intelligence from people in situations where we wouldn’t necessarily be seen as a threat.”
He swiped a hand over his face. The love of his life was telling him she was a spy.
“How long have you been doing this?” he asked, keeping his tone even.
“Since I graduated. I have a good grasp of languages, so I do well with European and Russian targets.”
“When you say, ‘do well…’” he trailed off, not really wanting to know the answer.
