Free Dirty Dare: The Rescue (Sexy Suspense) (Part 1, spin-off to the Dirty and Dare Me series) by Julie Leto

never be so shameless?”
    He chuckled. “Of course I could, but that’s not what I’m planning. In fact, it’s the opposite.”
    “You’re not going to try and escape?”
    “No, I’m cutting out tonight. I’ve just decided that I need to take you with me.”
    He gave her no chance to respond but instead kissed her with the kind of single-minded intensity she’d come to crave from him—the kind that belied the fact that although they’d pleasured each other in nearly every way possible, they were virtual strangers. Yes, she’d told him about her childhood in boarding schools, and he’d recalled several hilarious tales of his misspent youth in the New Orleans French Quarter. Yes, they’d exchanged stories that covered topics ranging from the worst sex they’d ever had, the best meal they’d ever indulged in and their preferred method of ending relationships that had run their course, but they’d kept away from topics that linked them as a pair.
    Intimacies aside, the nature of their relationship had not changed. She was still the woman who’d saved him. He was still the man she had to keep safe and away from the trouble that had nearly gotten him killed.
    She grasped his cheeks, holding him close before she reluctantly broke the kiss.
    “I can’t betray Dante,” she confessed.
    His sky blue eyes darkened as if invaded by storm clouds. “But you can betray me?”
    She pressed her mouth to his again, her mind swirling, her senses enthralled by the man in her bed.
    Now she understood what he’d intended when he’d given in to her seduction plan so easily—he was making her care about him, forging a loyalty that would supersede whatever debt she owed to Dante Burke.
    And damn it, his strategy was working.
    “I only want to keep you safe,” she said, grateful that he didn’t pull away but instead relaxed into the mattress and curled his arms around her.
    “This isn’t keeping me safe, Brynn. This is keeping me out of the way. And while I was on death’s door, it was a solid arrangement. But I’m stronger now, as I’ve been proving for the past forty-eight hours. I need to find out who took me—and why.”
    Brynn snuggled up his chest so that her chin rested on his sternum. “What did they ask you?”
    Up until now, Sean had remained reticent whenever she questioned him about his kidnapping. But if he was counting on her cooperation, then he had to come clean.
    “They wanted to know where Jayda was,” he replied.
    “Jayda?”
    “Jayda Hei, or at least, that’s the name she went by when I knew her. She was a North Korean assassin when I met her, but by the time we parted ways, she’d moved to the allies, in a way, as an agent for T-45.”
    Brynn sat up. Another layer of complications descended over her, causing her to drag the still-damp blanket around her body while her stomach quaked then dropped.
    “She was T-45?”
    “It’s a secret organi—”
    “I know what it is,” she interrupted. “My father was a founding member.”
    She’d never told anyone that. She’d never had the need. Before her holiday of healing with her twin, even she and Ian rarely broached the topic.
    But Brynn wasn’t a fool. The web connecting her to Sean’s kidnapping just got tighter and intricately more treacherous than she’d thought.
    “Your father couldn’t have been old enough,” he replied.
    “He was sixteen in the last year of World War II,” she explained. “But he was highly intelligent and perpetually in trouble, according to his stories. Apparently, he always looked younger than he really was. During the war, he made an effective little spy. Who would suspect a gangly, wide-eyed schoolboy of passing information for the Crown?”
    Sean plumped the pillows behind him, signaling that his interest in her family’s history wasn’t just for show. When he snagged the corner of her blanket and reeled her in close, she couldn’t resist surrendering to his warmth and relishing in his arms wrapped