Page 10 of Deceive Me
“I’ll give you five days. That’s all,” he warned. “Five days to earn Deacon Walsh’s trust. Five days to tell him on your own, or I’ll do it for you. In the meantime, anything you see or have insight on that involves Mansa, you come to me immediately, got it?”
She hesitated. Nodded.
“I won’t tolerate you holding out on me, Elliot. I care about you. We all care about you. But that won’t keep us from doing the right thing.”
“What happens if I trust these people and they don’t keep my secret? What happens if the information leaks?” She’d have to leave then. Maybe she was merely delaying the inevitable.
“It’s not gonna happen. I promise you, Elliot—and I keep my promises.”
“I know.” He did. If she knew one thing about him, it was that. And she knew she trusted him as far as she could trust anyone, so his promise would have to do. “I know you’re trying to do the right thing, Dain.” She was too, but he’d never see it that way. She wanted to protect the people she cared about. Why put everyone at risk when they could put only her at risk? But she knew from Dain’s face that this was as far as he’d concede.
His body relaxed even more as he ran a rough hand through the Mohawk lining his head. “You drive me absolutely insane. You know that, right?”
The words shouldn’t hurt; half the time that was her primary objective. But she didn’t think either one of them was joking right now.
With a negligent shrug, she grabbed her duffel bag and headed for the locker room door.
“Elliot.”
She didn’t really look back, more like at the floor just over her shoulder. Dain was having none of that; he walked right up until she couldn’t help but see him—from the chest down, at least.
“Look at me, little Otter.”
That fucking tenderness again. Funny how she could name it now; when they’d first met, her a fighter on the underground circuit, him a respectable “soldier” who shouldn’t want anything to do with her, tenderness had been as foreign as normal. And yet he’d still managed to convince her to join him, to work for him. To become something far closer to normal than she’d been her entire life. And bastard that he was, he wasn’t above using it to his advantage.
And damn it, hurt or not, she didn’t want to leave her team. They needed her.
She turned to meet Dain’s dark stare without flinching.
“Don’t wait,” he said earnestly. “Don’t put me in that position. I don’t want to betray your confidence, but even more”—he reached out to trace the line of her jaw, the look he gave her softer than she’d ever seen on his hard face—“I want you to come to terms with your past and realize it no longer has power over you, Elliot, except the power you give it.”
“My past doesn’t have any power, Dain.”
“Yes, it does. That’s why you can’t say aloud that Martin Diako is your bastard of a father, that he killed your mother because she escaped, that he tried to kill you, that he ruined your life. You’ve built a whole new you out of the ashes of the torture he inflicted; don’t let him steal that from you as well. You’re strong. You can face this.”
“Can I?”
“You have to. Because if you don’t, it will eventually destroy you.”
4
Deacon knew he should be in the library with the team leader, Dain, going through logistics, discussing their plans, explaining the setup here at the house. King and Saint had arrived around lunchtime with a shit load of equipment they’d laid out in the library at the back of the house. Dain and Elliot had been delayed at the office but arrived a few minutes ago, and yet Elliot still lingered out by the team’s van in the driveway.
And where was he? Lingering in his own foyer, for God’s sake. Waiting for a certain spitfire to come inside. He should probably feel guilty for watching her through the front windows, for spying, but he didn’t; he was curious, a trait that usually served him well. He wasn’t sure where that curiosity would lead him with Elliot, but he refused to back down from it.
The door finally opened, and Deacon released the breath he’d been holding as Elliot walked into his home. What kind of name was that, anyway? Elliot Smith. The men called her Otter sometimes, but if anyone asked him, she bore zero resemblance to the playful creature they’d nicknamed her after.
The second the words popped into his head, he understood.
They’d named her after her opposite, of course. Just to piss her off, more than likely—something his team would do to one of their own too. He grinned imagining all the havoc that must have wreaked with the prickly woman.
Elliot didn’t seem prickly now as she walked through the front door and stopped to eye the open area before her. Those intense blue eyes assessed the new domain, but her expression remained blank. Buttoned-down. He had the sudden perverse need to provoke her, to push her past whatever was holding her back and free the attitude that had so fascinated him in the office. Pushing away from the wall, he walked toward her.
That sounded easier than it was, because the closer he came, the more the sexual attraction that had flared in Jack’s office gripped his balls in a vise of need. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt hunger this strong, and with no effort whatsoever by the object of his interest. Elliot didn’t startle at his appearance, didn’t do anything but stand there looking around, and yet the sunlight streaming through the glass surrounding his double front doors set her white-blonde hair gleaming, brought a rich glow to the light tan of her bared neck and the slope of slender muscles in her arms. Her shirtsleeves were rolled up, the buttons open at the collar, creating a beguiling vee that drew his gaze down to places that had distraction written all over their tempting curves.
Her body was small but perfect. Just the thought of how small she’d be if he managed to get inside her had sweat breaking out on his upper lip. He forced himself to look back to her face, to stop at the base of the stairs and lean an elbow on the banister instead of moving right up into her space and seeing if she’d have the same kind of reaction to his body that he had to hers. Would those blue eyes widen? Would her pale skin flush, her breath quicken?
A pinch in his groin warned him to avoid that path, so he opened his mouth instead. “I wondered when you’d get here. You aren’t afraid of working with a four-year-old girl, are you?”
