My Royal Surrender

She scoffs. “It’s all semantics. You’re a weapon. I’m a weapon. It’s just a matter of who got to us first.”

She’s right. Yet something in what she said sets off a warning bell.

“Who got to you first, Lora?”

She doesn’t flinch, her gaze remaining steady.

I stand and stalk toward her. Once in front of her, I cradle her face in my palm and ask the question again.

“Who got to you first?”

Her dark eyes burn with twenty-five years of fury, and in a blink she has me slammed against the wall, a blade at my throat, the cold metal taunting my skin.

“The. Order,” she growls through gritted teeth. “Who the hell got to you?”

I disarm her in the fraction of a second, spinning her so now she’s flush against the wall.

I press my cheek to hers, feeling her chest rise and fall with her quickening breaths, her perfect tits rubbing up against me.

“If we’re on the same team, love, why the hell are you armed?”

She lets out a bitter laugh. “The same reason you wore that hidden holster to the Lion’s Den. Don’t make me break your nose, Max. I wouldn’t want to mar that beautiful face of yours, but I’ll do what I have to.”

I retreat a step and hold up my hands in mock surrender.

“I’m not the enemy, Lora.”

She turns around, her shoulders sagging a little. “Neither am I.”

The problem is, in our line of work, you never can tell.

Several seconds pass before I finally let my shoulders relax.

“Nice work tonight, Agent Z,” I say stiffly. And I mean it.

“Go to hell, Max.”

There’s the feisty Lora I remember. I can’t help it. I grin from ear to ear.

She rolls her eyes and then stalks to the bedroom, the door slamming behind her so hard that it rattles the Impressionist paintings dotting the wall.

I take off the ridiculous spiked leather jacket and toss it on the marble floor. Since our bags are all in the bedroom, I decide to sleep in the jeans—and the ankle sheath that lies beneath...

Forget all personal connections. They will either betray you or be used against you. That goes for family, friends and even lovers. Consider anyone other than the agents you work with either an enemy or a liability.

That was the first thing they’d told me when the Order removed me from Frasier Academy. From the second I agreed to be an agent, I was forced to cut all ties outside the organization.

For twenty-five years I’ve been an orphan and a ghost, a man with no name, no past and no future. Only the next mission.

I prepare my makeshift bed and crawl in as exhaustion hits me like a runaway train. The couch is lumpy, but I’ve dealt with worse. Yet as I drift off, I swear I hear muffled cries coming from Z’s room. I lift my head, and this time the cry is unmistakable.

Ice enters my veins.

If someone is hurting her, they are dead. But their dying will take time and I’ll make sure every second is filled with inescapable pain.

I unsheathe a blade and creep soundlessly to her door. I slip inside, my senses on high alert, dagger raised to strike.

That’s when I see her, alone in the bed wearing nothing but a Frasier Academy T-shirt, panties—and her own sheathed dagger at her ankle. I suck in a breath, for a second seeing the young girl I fell in love with. Has she kept the shirt as a memento of us—or is she playing with me, getting me to let my guard down because of a bloody memory? I hesitate, but only for a second as she thrashes right and left, a hectic flush on her cheeks as she sends the covers askew. This is no act.

I put my weapon away as my chest tightens. What horrors has she seen other than this night? If I had to venture a guess based on my own experience, I’d say it was more than any one person should be expected to handle.

I slip my dagger in its hiding spot and crawl cautiously into the bed. Dreaming or no, it is a dangerous thing I do with a woman I don’t fully trust and who has no reason to trust me.

“It’s okay, Lora,” I whisper. “It’s just me.”

Her eyes open wide, and she pulls a handgun from beneath her pillow, aiming it unerringly right between my brows.

“It’s me,” I say again. “Max. I just thought you might need—”

She drops the gun next to the phone on her night table, then burrows into my arms.

“Only for tonight,” she whispers, scooting closer. “Because I don’t want to be alone, even if the alternative is you.”

I huff out a laugh, pulling her to me. “Understood.”

Her lips press to my ear, as gentle as a petal plucked from a rose. “And if you try anything like we did in that club, I’ll castrate you before you can pull a weapon.” Sharp teeth nip my lobe to punctuate her warning.

No matter how soft and supple she is, her body is a deadly weapon. She knows a hundred ways to kill a man with her bare hands. And yet I’m not afraid. Shit. I can’t get close enough.

“Of course,” I say, grinning. “Whatever you need.”

And because I haven’t slept in days, I surrender to it now, Lora nestled in my arms. She hooks an ankle around mine, and we sleep, bodies tangled, chest to chest, and dagger to dagger. The lights of London seep between the curtains. Bad guys are out there. Plotting. Planning. But that’s not my concern right now.

Enemy or liability means nothing, if only for the next few hours.

I breathe in the jasmine scent to her soft hair and for a moment revel in this most unfamiliar of feelings...

Peace.

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