He should have been ashamed of himself. Hell, he was using a set of military hardware that even soldiers in the field didn’t have yet, to spy on a woman. He watched as Kira leaned her head back against Jason McClane’s chest and lifted her hands to clasp the ones at her shoulders. The pose was entirely too intimate, too close. He felt anger twitch the muscle in his cheek as McClane kissed the top of her head and rubbed his cheek against her hair. He knew he wasn’t the least impartial when it came to Kira, and possessive instincts he didn’t know lived within him were now tightening at his gut.
He wanted to kill McClane for touching her, and that was a bad thing. As the two moved back from the balcony doors, Ian pulled the goggles free of his face and tucked them once again into the wall safe.
The villa the Eventeses had leased for the season had every amenity, right down to personal safes in each bedroom.
Pushing his fingers through his hair, he paced his darkened bedroom, feeling lust edging into desperation as he thought of her, possibly allowing another man to touch her.
He shook his head. He’d watched Kira and her uncle together before, and though there was a surfeit of affection, there seemed to be no sexual tension. But that assurance wasn’t easing the tightening in his gut, or in his cock. He knew it wasn’t even possible that she would do something like sleep with the bastard. He knew that in his head, but logic could never apply to how he reacted over Kira, especially when another man was around, no matter who that man might be. He wanted to be the only one who touched her.
He didn’t even bother to jack off again. Masturbation wasn’t helping. He knew this mood, or at least a weak facsimile of it. The tension invading him wouldn’t ease until he fucked her. Until he fucked her until neither of them could breathe for the pleasure tearing through them.
So why was he waiting? She was over there, accessible to him, and it was more than apparent that she wasn’t going anywhere.
But she was a woman.
Ian snorted at that thought. Oh yeah, she was a woman. She was all woman. And Ian couldn’t push back the thought that it was his responsibility to protect her, to shelter her. He didn’t want her involved in this mess, and yet she seemed determined to immerse herself in it.
So determined that no more than a few months after her own brush with death during that Atlanta assignment, she had been in Nathan’s hospital bathroom, lying in wait, eavesdropping on their conversation.
A mocking grin shaped his lips. She had known his visit to Nathan had been arranged. She had said as much. She had guessed all along that this was an operation. But how much of that operation had she guessed?
And now, here she was, poking her nose into the most dangerous assignment he had ever undertaken, for whatever reason.
He needed to know that reason, he realized. He needed to know why she was here and what she wanted. And he needed one more taste of her. Just to see if she was as hot, as sweet, as mind-numbing as he remembered.
He needed his head examined was what he needed.
Ian grimaced as he threw himself into the cushioned chair in the sitting area of his room and stared broodingly at the window that looked out over her villa.
Propping his hand on the arm of the chair, he rubbed at his lips with his finger and glared at the window. That damned woman was nothing but trouble. She was going to make him crazy.
Going to? Hell, she already had made him crazy. He should be in his study going over the supply routes the cartel soldiers used to transport the drugs from the warehouses to the transport ships and cargo planes flying them out.
He had a million different details to see to. If Diego Fuentes had been decent enough to apply his genius to a legitimate business then he could have enjoyed a far healthier lifestyle. And perhaps Ian could have respected the man whose blood he shared.
And though he hated admitting it, Ian knew they were possibly too much alike. They were just on wrong sides of a war and the fine line between decency and immorality.
He had to deal with Fuentes and Sorrell, Ian told himself, he couldn’t afford to worry about Kira in the mix. Pushing himself out of the chair, he stalked to the door of his bedroom suite and jerked it open, intent on doing the job he had set for himself that night.
The supply lines had to be changed and the product insured. Until he caught Sorrell, he had to show the bastard that the Fuentes cartel had the best supply lines, the best underground network, and most efficient men in the business. That was the reason Sorrell had pinpointed Fuentes to begin with. Because the cartel moved its drugs with the least amount of difficulty or interference.
Ian had caught on quickly after entering the business to how Diego and his father before him had set up the cartel’s vast network. They didn’t just have drugs going into every nation of the world, but they transported weapons, information, and a vast array of other illegal products. Pirated software and music, clothing and accessories. Even, at odd times, criminal figures looking for escape.
The cartel had it all, except terrorism. Diego Fuentes had never allowed himself to be infected with the fanatical beliefs that drove such men. He’d supply them with arms; after all, according to Diego, that was business. But he would not allow the network he had worked a lifetime to build to be threatened by the infiltration of terrorism.
At least he had a line in the sand, Ian thought mockingly. He could infect babies with drugs, murder his own people, make whores out of runaways, and kidnap helpless young women, but he wasn’t a terrorist.
Breathing out roughly at the thought, he flicked his fingers at his bodyguards—Deke, Mendez, Cristo, and Trevor—and headed to the study.
The four men had been working on suggestions for the new supply routes as well as security for the warehouses and transportation.
He stood in the middle of the study as the others entered. Cristo, shorter than the others but no less dangerous, closed the heavy door as Trevor Mandrake moved to the safe in the wall, coded in the combination, and pulled free a hand-sized electronic box and flipped it on.
Trevor moved around the room, watching the digital and analog displays before giving Ian a short nod that everything was okay.
The first three months he had been with Diego, he’d had to sweep his study as well as his bedroom each time he entered it. The son of a bitch had been determined to spy on him. They would fight over it, agree that Diego wouldn’t spy on him, then Ian would find more bugs. Diego had finally begun realizing the futility of it in the last few months.
“We haven’t found a bug in a while,” Deke said. “The old man giving up?”