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

so possessively around her.
    “So your family has a long history in espionage,” he concluded.
    She chuckled, though the sound lacked the proud humor that her brother might have felt. Ian relished the storied saga that connected the Blake name to the most devious minds in European history, but Brynn’s pride in her father’s accomplishments was always balanced against the knowledge that his undercover connections had gotten her mother killed.
    “You could say that,” she admitted. “T-45 started after the Allies won the war and there were a lot of European spies with no way to feed their adrenaline addictions. They were too impatient to wait for their governments to rebuild and used to working on the fly, so they formed their own organization and offered their services to whichever president, king or prime minister could come with up cold, hard cash.”
    “How long was your father an operative?”
    “Until MI-5 and SIS came calling when he was nearly thirty, I think. He had a strong sense of loyalty, so he signed up and worked for Great Britain until he met my mother.” This time, her laugh was genuine. “After she died, I found her diary. God, I must have read it a thousand times as a teenager. She was a proper Boston young lady attending a soirée with her family-approved banker fiancé, and my father was a painfully handsome ‘diplomat’ with a British accent, irresistibly twinkling blue eyes and a gun tucked beneath his tuxedo.”
    Sean grinned. “He was packing?”
    Brynn couldn’t help but conjure an image of her father from the pages of a photo album, back when he’d been young and cocky and the embodiment of a young James Bond rather than the haunted, jaded, crueler version of a brokenhearted man he’d become before his death.
    “Even when I was only fourteen, I couldn’t help but wonder how she’d spotted his weapon when he undoubtedly possessed the skills to keep it hidden.”
    “Unless he wanted her to see it,” Sean suggested, his eyes sparkling with the same mischievous glint she suspected her father had used to snare her mother.
    Buggers, but it was powerful stuff.
    “I wouldn’t put it past him,” she confessed, turning her attention to the smattering of chest hair tickling her cheek. “He was an international man of mystery, and she was, after all, just a young woman fresh out of finishing school with a degree in art history and no particular plan to use it for anything except to sit on the board of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.”
    As she spoke, Sean stroked her hair, combing his fingers through the damp strands with a lazy rhythm that made her believe, for a split second, that they had all the time in the world to enjoy each other.
    But no one had all the time in the world. No one knew when the end would come, even a retired spy who’d made the mistake of trying to leave his past behind him.
    “So he was older than she was?” Sean asked.
    “And that was definitely part of the appeal. She was twenty-three, naïve, romantic and desperate for adventure, which he offered with his concealed Walther pistol and devilish grin. She fell instantly in love. Nothing was going to keep her from winning him for herself.”
    Brynn had never imagined feeling that kind of love. She’d never even thought she wanted it. Nestled against Sean’s chest, however, she considered the possibility. Her every breath came with an infusion of his scent. He was intoxicating, and for the first time in her life, she understood how her mother had fallen so quickly under her debonair father’s spell.
    Clearly, it was a genetic weakness.
    “And just like you would have,” Sean mused, “she got exactly what she wanted.”
    Brynn hummed her agreement. “For a little while, at least.”
    Sean crooked his thumb beneath her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. “Sometimes, a little while is the best two people can hope for.”
    “Are you talking about us now?”
    “Yes.”
    Brynn pushed up, kissed him softly