Page 88 of When He Plays

Maybe that was why she said, “First mission. I’d been through all the training. I knew all the risks, but there is something different about actually being in the field. I’d made a good contact.” Correction, she’d thought that she made a good contact. “He checked out on paper. Checked out with the CIA’s techs. I went to meet him around midnight, at a warehouse so that he could give me more intel on a weapons’ dealer that we were after.” It had been so cold that night. Almost frigid. Sometimes, she could still feel the cold. And the blade of the knife sliding into her. “As soon as I got inside, he came at me with his knife. Sliced me deep even as he confessed that he’d been offered fifty thousand US dollars to kill the spy.”

“Where was Jamar? Where was your damn backup?”

“He wasn’t my partner then. I met Jamar later. The guy who was my partner back then—he was outside the warehouse. Watching for threats. He didn’t know that the biggest threat was inside, with me.”

Logan’s fingers had stilled over the scar.

“He pulled the knife out of me, and I knew he was going to stab me again. I headbutted him. Drove my knee into his dick. Tripped him even as I was bleeding all over of the place, and we both fell to the floor.” Those savage, silent minutes of fighting replayed through her mind so often. “I got the knife. I put it in his throat.”

“Good.”

No judgment. Just…

Good.

Then he was sliding down in the bed. “There’s a place I didn’t get to kiss before.”

“Really? Where?” She’d thought that Logan had kissed her everywhere but⁠—

Her scar. His dark head had bent. Logan pressed a soft kiss to her scar.

“Logan.” Again, she had to blink quickly, but he’d already looked up. Had he caught the tears in her eyes before she’d been able to banish them? “You have scars, too.”

“What? This thing?” His fingers slid over his cheek as he shifted back to a position beside her. His head pressed onto the pillow beside hers as he stared into her eyes.

“Yes, that one.” His newest scar. “And the ones on your back. Your side. Your chest.” Logan had seen so much pain over the years.

“Life isn’t always pretty.” He sounded utterly unconcerned. Simply stating a fact. “And sometimes life leaves marks on us all.”

“I want to kiss your marks,” she whispered. He’d kissed hers. Wasn’t it only fair for her to do the same?

“Have the hell at me, sweetheart, you just go right ahead⁠—”

A loud peal of sound cut through his words. She tensed a moment before realizing that peal was the suite’s doorbell. It rang once more. Then…

Hard pounding. Frantic pounding.

“Fuck,” Logan breathed. He leapt from the bed. Yanked on a pair of boxers. “Stay here.”

Um, no. She leapt from the bed, too. She’d never been the hide-from-danger type. Also, she was the spy.

The desperate pounding seemed to get louder.

She yanked on Logan’s discarded shirt. It fell to her knees. She yanked open his nightstand and hauled out a gun. She’d spotted the gun in there when he’d pulled out the condom earlier.

He’d said all of her clothes and toiletries had been brought to the suite. Charlotte assumed that meant he’d brought her weapons, too, but she hadn’t searched through her bags yet. She didn’t waste time on a search right then, either. Logan had already rushed out of the bedroom, and she followed quickly on his heels. Though she made sure to keep the gun hidden behind her.

“That’s not staying in the bedroom, Charlotte!” Logan had looked back and caught sight of her in the narrow corridor that led to the suite’s den area.

“You’re right. Super astute.”

Frowning, he turned back around and kept stalking forward. She kept following him. In moments, he’d reached the suite’s main door.

The bell pealed again. Someone’s fist also pounded into the door. Way too hard. Logan put his eye near the peephole. “What in the hell…?” He backed up, unlocked the door, and hauled it open.

Three men stood on the threshold. Jake. A very grim-faced Jake. Evans—she recognized the VP of the hotel’s security. And…

Sebastian Shay.