“Maybe you need your backside warmed to get you back on the straight and narrow.”
Molten eroticism shot straight from Jaz’s sex to her head, the threat turning her on a great deal more than she wished it had. She wasn’t the kind of person who enjoyed…that. She wasn’t. No matter how hot it was. And it was hot at hell. Taking the offensive before Liam could catch the scent of her thoughts, Jaz picked up a strawberry with her teeth and straddled his lap. She leaned down to share the wild fruit.
Liam went hard beneath her even before his teeth nipped into the berry, his palms cupping her backside.
Jaz ran her hand along Liam’s cheekbone, stroking along his chiseled clean-shaven jaw. There was so much strength that lived behind Liam’s hazel eyes. So much responsibility. And, deep down, so much passion and life that it called to something inside Jaz’s soul. “What am I going to do with you?” she whispered, not meaning to say the words aloud, but doing it anyway.
Liam cocked an eyebrow at her, his gaze to intimate that she felt her core grow damp all over again.
“The question, Jaz, is what I’m going to do with you.”
With that, he moved smoothly from the couch and carried her into the bedroom, making short work of her clothes until she was naked and spread-eagle over the sheets, each limb secured to a bedpost with whatever piece of cloth found itself closest to Liam’s hand. Towering over Jaz, Liam rubbed his thumbs over her pebbling nipples before running his callused hands along the full expanse of her skin. “Let’s see if I can make you fly all over again,” he murmured into Jaz’s ear.
And then he did just that.
In the morning, Jaz found herself draped over Liam’s naked body, his chest rising and falling in an even rhythm beneath her. Realizing it was the first time she’d ever beaten him to consciousness, Jaz carefully slid herself down toward his cock, her mind reeling with the various choices of vengeful torment that had suddenly opened themselves up to her. Just as she got to his hips, however, her mouth watering with the thoughts of mischief, the buzzing vibration of Liam’s cell phone clattered along the polished bedside table.
Liam’s muscular thighs tightened as he shifted, coming awake in an instant. A second later, he had the phone in one hand and Jaz’s hair in the other. “Whatever it is, now is a bad time for it, Aiden.”
Jaz grinned and licked the head of her target.
On the other end of the phone line, a male voice spoke rapidly, probably trying to get a word in edgewise before the line went dead.
Liam shifted again, but now, instead of throwing his phone down as she’d expected, he released his hold on Jaz instead. “Understood,” he said, swinging his legs off the side of the bed. “Have everyone meet in the delta conference room. We’re on our way.”
31
Liam
Conference room Delta was already full by the time Liam and Jaz arrived at the office—which didn’t bode well for the news. It meant Aiden had already vetted the information, and, from the stony expression on his face, it wasn’t good.
Liam pulled a chair out for Jaz, then took his own seat, the large leather chair at the head of the table rocking gently beneath him. Looking around the table, Liam took silent attendance. Aiden was there, of course; that was expected. Lucy from the PR department. Nell Hewitt, a twenty-something computer genius with an insatiable love of hacking who they’d snagged for IT. Eli. Kyan. Cullen and Sky. Liam’s gaze lingered on Sky the longest. With her strawberry-blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail and a laptop open on the table, she looked ready for battle. And Liam knew better than to do battle with Sky.
“All right,” he said by way of opening. “What do we have?”
Sky looked to Aiden, who flipped a switch, bringing a large-screen television monitor on the side of the room to life. The screen flickered once, then focused on a news anchor wearing a suit and a serious expression while the Trident Rescue and Security logo digitally decorated the backdrop behind him.
“Trident Rescue and Security, a company run by Liam Rowen out of Denton Valley, Colorado, is under fire today due to reports of failing in their duty to insulate pro world-champion mountain climber Jazmine Keasley from a terrorist attack. Ms. Keasley was nearly killed in an explosion a little over a week ago despite being under the protection of the security firm. Sources close to the events reveal that Vector Ascent, the company that originally hired Mr. Rowen’s operation, has now recalled the contract, citing inadequate services. Channel Seven has reached out to Trident Security for comment, but the company didn’t respond. We will update this story as more of it becomes available.”
Aiden shut off the footage.
“This is bullshit,” Jaz said. “Since when are terrorists involved? And Vector didn’t recall the contract—they’d have told me.”
“Any deliberate explosion can be called an extremism attack,” said Aiden. “More to the point, truth rarely stands in the way of sensationalism. Regardless, I started getting calls after this aired to discuss the matter. And before you ask, Channel Seven isn’t the only one reporting. It’s going all the way up to national news.”
Liam lifted a brow. It wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t exactly earth-shattering news either. He looked at Sky. “I imagine you’re going to tell me why this is worse than I think it is, misinformation about the contract notwithstanding.”
“That depends on what you think this is,” Sky answered with brutal frankness. “On the surface, this looks like a bit of bad press about a security company’s misstep. Unfortunate and unfair, but par for the course for a company of Trident’s size. What caught my attention was the syntax. The way some of the wording came off and how the information was being pieced together.” She brought up another file, this one a montage of various talking news heads all saying the same thing in almost the same way.
“I’m still not following the pucker factor,” said Liam.
“When different reporters cover the same incident, they naturally report the details in slightly different manners. Different words, different highlights, different depth of analysis. On the other hand, when companies issue press releases with convenient quotes, summaries, and descriptions, we often see a slew of very similar articles. This is especially true when reporters don’t have a lot of independent information, so they rely on written documents provided by somebody else. This whole thing looks like one giant press release. Down to the whole terrorist leap and fact-checking error about the contract.”
“But no one issued a press release on this,” said Jaz. “Not the police or Vector Ascent. Certainly not Trident Security or me.”
“Exactly.” Sky nodded. “We had the same issue with the original news about Trident’s contract being made public. It wasn’t any of us and it wasn’t Vector. So I went back to look at all the reporting that touches you. The coverage of Trident taking Jaz’s contract, news of the explosion that repeated wording from the threat letter, and now this bit of drivel about Trident’s ineffectiveness—they all have the same feel to them. As if the same person wrote all the stories. So I did some digging with my journalistic contacts and confirmed that all the stories were seeded in major papers, which generally calls for serious favors.”