Tempting the Fire Page 33

  “I thought you were one of the bad guys—you can understand that. I work for the greater good, even if it goes against my own happiness.”

  “That’s a hell of a sacrifice.”

  “It can be. But Devlin says that things happen for a reason. I used a skill I haven’t used in years—and as it turns out, I can’t read your immediate thoughts. You have no idea what a relief that is, how free I feel when I’m with you because of that. I can be normal with you. I can be in a relationship—and I really want to be. Because I love you.”

  He paused, feeling like the breath had been kicked out of him. And then, “Say it again.”

  She smiled shyly. “I love you, Logan. I want to be with you. I want you to stay here at ACRO and continue your work. I want you to go out on Crypto assignments with me. I like that you’re possessive of me. That you want to protect me. I want our pasts not to stand in the way of our future, and I’m willing to fight to make sure that happens.”

  He lowered his head and kissed her, a soft kiss that turned bolder and hotter as she pressed against him, held him tight, as if she’d never let him go. He was more than happy to ensure that happened.

  PHOEBE STORMED INTO ITOR’S OFFICE HEADQUARTERS, WHICH didn’t look like a headquarters at all. Itor ran its operations from several locations all over the world, chiefly in populated areas, where activity was hard to monitor. But its main hub was in the middle of nowhere, disguised as a sheep ranch in the Australian outback. Most of the work took place underground, safely shielded from radiation, satellites and psychics.

  The huge ranch house topside was staffed by Itor agents who actually ran the sheep operation—and ran it well, at a profit. About a dozen agents lived permanently in the house, and another dozen lived in the guest quarters behind it. All other Australian-based agents lived in the small town about twenty miles to the south, including Phoebe, though she also kept two smaller flats, near their Madrid and Kiev strongholds.

  Her footsteps echoed with a metallic clang as she walked down the brightly lit, tubelike corridor. At the end of it, she submitted to a retina scan, and the titanium door whooshed open. On the other side, Dawn, Alek’s hyperannoying assistant, sat at her desk, her fingers flying over a keyboard.

  “He’s waiting for you,” she said, without even looking up. “You’re late.”

  The head of Itor had absolutely no patience for tardiness, and even though Phoebe knew she got a little more slack than others, her stomach still knotted. She was in enough trouble as it was.

  She entered his plush office, but the room was empty. He was either in the bathroom or the bedroom. Grateful for the extra time, she poured herself a brandy from the wet bar and settled into one of the overstuffed leather sofas.

  She’d just taken her third sip when she felt Alek. Drawn to the dark power that emanated from him, she swung her head around to where he stood in the hallway, filling it more with his presence than with his size. He was tall, but lean, his muscular runner’s body rippling with banked energy. Usually he wore slacks and a fitted shirt, but today he must have been handling ranching duties, and he looked as at home in jeans as he did in more formal attire.

  But then, a man like Alek could wear anything he wanted and own it.

  “So,” he said tonelessly, “ACRO fucked things up again.”

  “There was no way we could have predicted—”

  “Shut up.”

  She bristled, but shut her mouth. He was the only person on the planet who could do that to her. She wondered, though, if Devlin had the same commanding presence. She’d only seen pictures of Alek’s son—he looked like a younger version of Alek, with the same piercing, knowing eyes, the same shade of brown hair. But she doubted Devlin’s ruthlessness could compete with Alek’s. Maybe his mother had contributed some weaker DNA. Pussy genes, as Alek liked to say.

  “Did Melanie make an appearance?”

  “Yes.” Phoebe had no idea why he did shit like this: ask questions he already knew the answers to. The man could read her mind. Could read pretty much anyone’s, even through shields. Except Melanie’s, which pissed him off to no end. It also made no sense, given that Melanie and Phoebe weren’t split personalities. They were identical twins mashed into the same body. Then again, they possessed different abilities, thanks to the experimentation that had taken place while they were just embryos in a petri dish.

  “When we’re done here, I want to see her. You’ll let her out.”

  Phoebe smiled. Melanie was in for a world of hurt. Alek didn’t ask to see her very often, but when he did … well, Phoebe never knew exactly what he did to her, but when Phoebe got their body back, she was always bruised and sore. He never bothered to beat Phoebe; he’d learned a long time ago that she enjoyed pain too much to make the expending of energy worth it.

  Which wasn’t to say that he didn’t punish her in other ways, and she sat nervously as he moved to the wet bar and poured himself a vodka on ice.

  “You failed to procure the chupacabra, and you have probably lost us GWC as our primary weapons supplier.” He didn’t wait for an answer, because he wasn’t expecting one. “On the other hand, you did arrange for the delivery of the Izapa crystal.”

  That had been a six-month-long endeavor. The crystal, covertly excavated from a Mayan temple, was part of the 2012 doomsday prophecy, which Itor fully intended to exploit. With the crystal, Alek planned to create a device that would harness the cosmic radiation scientists believed would be funneled toward earth on the day the winter solstice sun intersected with the Milky Way’s dark rift. With that energy, Itor would be in possession of the greatest, most powerful weapon known to man.

  And with that weapon, Alek intended for Itor to rule the world.

  Phoebe planned to rule at his side, and she’d do anything to get there. But first, there was the small matter of getting ACRO out of the way. The bunch of meddling do-gooders.

  “I didn’t just arrange for the delivery,” she said, with a trace of bitterness she hoped he didn’t pick up on. “I supervised the excavation and made sure no one got in our way.” Which meant that she’d killed a few government officials. “And I did it without alerting ACRO to our presence.” She’d finished there just before she’d gone on the chupacabra operation that she’d botched.

  He nodded. “No small feat,” he admitted. And wasn’t that the truth.

  “Those bastards have been ruining more and more of our missions.” Truly, it had been a miracle that Itor had been able to pull off something as huge as the crystal robbery without ACRO’s interference. “It’s time to go on the offensive with them. We need to take them out. Let me do it. Let me have Devlin.”

  “Why, Phoebe,” Alek murmured into his glass, “you’re talking about killing your own brother.” He grinned. “Your ruthlessness makes me proud.”

  She stood, knowing she’d just gotten herself out of some horrendous punishment. Melanie wouldn’t be so lucky. Smiling, she clinked glasses with him. “I learned from the best,” she said, already savoring the taste of bloodlust on her tongue. “Like father, like daughter.”

  About the Author

  SYDNEY CROFT is a pseudonym for two authors, who each also write under their own names. This is their fifth novel together. Visit their website at www.sydneycroft.com.

  Don’t miss any of Sydney Croft’s sizzling series

  featuring the bad boys and girls of the Agency for

  Covert Rare Operatives

  Riding the Storm

  ACRO Series Book 1

  A storm’s rage. A woman’s desire.

  A man with the power to set them both free.

  He can summon lightning at will. Emerge unscathed from the center of a tornado. Strip a woman down to her barest defenses through the sheer force of his sexuality. He’s gorgeous, dangerous, and the target of parameteorologist Haley Holmes’s latest mission. Haley has been dispatched to the Louisiana bayou to investigate the phenomenon known as Remy Begnaud—a man with a gift he never wanted: the ability
to control a storm’s fury. But even a woman trained in bizarre weather phenomena has no defense against the electrifying power of the ex–Navy SEAL … a power his enemies would kill to control.

  With her agency monitoring their every move, Haley’s job is to seduce Remy, gain his trust—and help him harness his extraordinary gift. But who will protect her from this voracious lover who’s introducing her to a new world of erotic thrills—a man who grows increasingly insatiable with each new weather event? Haley knows a big storm is approaching—and with it will come unexpected delights. But so, too, will the storm unleash her greatest fears: an enemy bent on destroying Remy. And her worst fear of all—falling in love with this magnificent man, then having to betray him …

  “Riding the Storm will ride your every fantasy … a power punch of erotic heat, emotion and adventure. Remy takes you on an adventure you won’t soon forget.”

  —LORA LEIGH, USA Today bestselling author

  Unleashing the Storm

  ACRO Series Book 2

  Feel the heat. Hear the roar.

  The fever has begun.

  There’s a storm rising. Electricity crackles in the air. For Kira Donovan, it’s that time of year again: when the need floods her flesh, when almost any man—the bigger and the stronger the better—will do. For Kira, an animal psychic, the heat is a matter of life and death, and this year it has come at just the right time. Tom Knight, a natural-born predator, has arrived at her isolated Idaho farm—for reasons all his own.

  At first Kira isn’t interested in Knight’s motives. She just needs him—his body, his hands, his scent. But soon, through a daze of desire and distrust, Kira discovers Knight’s world—the world of a covert operative, one man among dozens of secret agents waging an astonishing global war. Knight’s mission is to bring Kira—kicking and screaming if necessary—into the Agency for Covert Rare Operatives and harness her extraordinary gift. He never expected the powerful emotions she would ignite in him, or the fierce desire to keep her safe from harm. For as darkness gathers around them, Kira is feeling the heat once again, leading them both on a wild ride of delicious thrills … and terror beyond imagining.

  “Red-hot romance and paranormal thrills from the first page to the last! Sydney Croft writes the kinds of books I love to read!”

  —LARA ADRIAN, New York Times bestselling author

  Seduced by the Storm

  ACRO Series Book 3

  Danger is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

  They met in a steamy Florida bar—then spent a night of mind-bending passion. Two secret agents who each possess unique telekinetic gifts—and whose combined sexual powers leave neither of them unscathed. For ex–Navy SEAL Wyatt Kennedy, assigned by the Agency for Covert Rare Operatives to the most treacherous mission of his career, the woman in black leather and lace has just become more than a one-night stand. Because Faith Black is the sole barrier to the success of his mission—and not even Wyatt’s legendary seduction skills can penetrate her deep cover.

  Faith’s psychic gifts make her one of the world’s most dangerous women—but she hides a secret pain she shares with no one. Until Wyatt. And Faith has an agenda of her own: using her unique powers to save someone close to her—a move that pits her against a man she thought she’d never see again. For as a deadly hurricane is unleashed across the eastern seaboard, desire reignites between Faith and Wyatt, exposing secrets that thrust them both into harm’s way. With the hurricane sweeping closer—and their erotic hunger for each other growing—these two wary hearts must come together to heal, to trust … and to harness the power of a storm that could consume everything in its path.

  “If you like intrigue, espionage, danger and sexy secret agents with psychic abilities, you will love this book—especially when one agent has to disperse a hurricane with sexual energy! Croft’s realistic characters have real, flawed motives that keep the action suspenseful and the sex extra hot.” —Romantic Times

  Taming the Fire

  ACRO Series Book 4

  Pleasure. Power. Danger. It doesn’t get any hotter than this.

  He came to the underground London club for a night of extreme sex play with the enigmatic “Mistress Rik.” But the special agent known as Trance is really on a search-and-rescue mission to keep her alive. Part predator, Ulrika “Rik” Jaegar possesses feral powers that make her a danger to others—and to herself. That’s why the Agency for Covert Rare Operatives wants to recruit her to their side. To do so, Trance will have to pull off the impossible: capture and control Rik, both woman and beast.

  On the run from the deadly agency that changed her into a pleasure-seeking shape shifter, Rik uses sex to rein in her own raging desires. Operating on pure instinct, she trusts no one … especially not the magnificent alpha male with the power to seduce her into submission. An undercover agent with unique hypnotic gifts, Trance is surprised by his instinct to hold Rik and keep her safe—but he has a job to do. And as he hunts her down, as Rik and Trance are thrust into the ultimate game of domination and submission, they’ll enter a place where surrender is their sole hope of survival—and the only thing that can tame the wild beast in both of them.

  “Totally outstanding. This is [a] sizzling hot series that has never failed to keep my undivided attention. The collaboration of Sydney Croft is nothing short of brilliant.” —Fresh Fiction

  And stay tuned

  for the newest ACRO novel,

  coming from Bantam Books in 2011….

  Tempting the Fire is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Bantam Books Trade Paperback Original

  Copyright © 2010 by Larissa Ione and Stephanie Tyler

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Croft, Sydney.

  Tempting the fire / Sydney Croft.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-553-90759-9

  1. United States. Navy. SEALs—Fiction. 2. Animal communicators—Fiction.

  3. Rain forests—Fiction. 4. Brazil—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3603.R6356T46 2010

  813’.6—dc22

  2010006267

  www.bantamdell.com

  v3.0