Audition - Skye Warren, Amelia Wilde Page 0,8
might only have been a small-time criminal, had Mother Nature not decimated his home. Is he dealing with Russia? North Korea? Either way he’s in way over his head. Only a matter of time before he winds up shot in the back. I can join him or I can snitch on him. Not exactly great choices.
I’m doing a little reconnaissance on his properties.
I open the door, expecting to see a couple of rough-hewn bastards fighting or training. They might even take a swing at me. We’re all a bunch of army bastards, more comfortable using our fists than our words.
Instead I’m struck by the sight of a body in motion, but not in violence.
She’s dancing. Grace. Strength. And completely inappropriate to this place—desire. It’s nothing so base as tits and ass, though I’m sure hers are lovely. No, it’s the sweep of her calf and the indent at her waist. The lift of her chin.
I could not be more shocked if I had been punched. Or shot.
It feels a little bit like being dunked in lava, watching her dance. I’m immobile in the doorframe of the warehouse. My sanity is one step behind me, utterly gone. I’m seeing visions. She can’t be real. I don’t even want her to be real. This kind of beauty doesn’t belong in the goddamn gutter. A pale pink leotard against the dinge-dark hollow. Satin ballet shoes pushing into the dirt. Slowly, very slowly, my sluggish mind searches the perimeter. Alone. We’re alone. If anyone had wanted to shoot me, they’d have had plenty of time. An eternity while I’d been staring.
Her spin slows, like a top that’s run out of momentum. Dark eyes meet mine. Surprise. A flash of something else—anger. She drops to flat feet. No longer a goddess, a blur. She becomes a woman. “No,” she says. Then again, “No,” with such force I glance behind me in case someone’s charging at her wielding a knife. The shipyard is empty. It’s only my company she’s objecting to.
Well, you can’t fault her for taste.
“Normally I have to say something for women to hate me,” I say, strolling into the warehouse, pretending my heart doesn’t thud at the sight of her lithe body. Pretending my cock isn’t a breath away from rock-hard. “I have to say something about their tits or their ass.”
Her eyes narrow, but she doesn’t seem particularly shocked by my crude language. No, she wouldn’t be. Not in this place. She would have heard much worse. “I told him no more guards.”
“You told who?”
“Who else?” she says. “Your boss.”
My boss? I work for the US government. My job is to drive around godforsaken deserts and pray I don’t get blown up by a bomb buried underground. If I play my cards right, I might move into special operations. That’s what was implied before I went on leave. Go along with what Caleb Lewis offers. Collect information. Report back.
It’s a chance to be somewhere other than the bottom rung. Maybe the only chance I’ll ever get. Which means I have no business being interested in this girl. She probably isn’t even eighteen. “My boss,” I repeat, my voice flat.
“Isn’t that why you’re here? To guard me?”
“Why don’t we do this—you dance again. I’ll stand here, but if anyone attacks you, I’ll just let them have at it. No bodyguards for you.”
She’s not amused. “The guards aren’t there to protect me. You’re here to keep me in the warehouse or keep me at home. Make sure I don’t wander away. Make sure I don’t talk to anyone.”
“You’re talking to me.”
“You tell Caleb we had a deal. And it doesn’t include some—” Her narrowed gaze sweeps down my body, as if she’s only now noticed that I have a body. “Some overmuscled asshole on steroids.”
I put my hand over my chest. “Direct hit. I’m wounded you think I’d resort to steroids. These muscles were earned the old-fashioned way, thank you very much.”
She snorts, which somehow sounds feminine and delicate. “I’m sure you do much worse things than steroids. And there is no way, absolutely no way, that you’re going to be my new guard, so tell Caleb he can forget it.”
“Would it put your mind at ease to know he didn’t send me?” Though I’m curious how he’s connected to her. We enlisted at the same time. Went through basic at the same time. We’ve never been close, really. When we both had leave, I was surprised he offered for me to hang out