Barely Undercover by Sarah Castille Read Free Book Online

backed down,” she whispered, unbelieving. The James she knew never backed down. Never gave up without a fight.
    “Had to. Don’t want him to think I’m a threat or he’ll slit my throat while I sleep, and two years of undercover work will go down the drain.”
    The loud rumble of Rex’s engine cracked the stillness and she watched it disappear across the field. James turned to face her, his eyes glittering with an intense light, wild and untamed. She could feel his anger, taste his power, and it took all her self-control not to throw herself on him in a frenzy of animal lust.
    Her breath hitched. Unnerved, she slid off the vehicle and tried to sidle past a thoughtful James, but he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her close.
    “I’m not done with you yet.”
    Maybe not, but she was done with him. She had to be—for her own sanity. Never had she felt such an internal disconnect. The James she’d known was still there—protective, possessive, sweetly caring and utterly confident. So at odds with the man who’d walked away. How could she still want him after he’d hurt her so much?
    Her rational mind cut through the fuzz of lust and the question she’d asked herself a thousand times fell from her lips. “Why?” she gritted out. “Why did you leave me?”
    He drew in a ragged breath. “At the time I thought it was the right thing to do. I got a call about an undercover assignment—this assignment. Too dangerous to have any ties. I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
    “And you couldn’t have told me that? I would have understood if you couldn’t share the details.”
    James shrugged and she studied him closely, marking the shift in his eyes from blue to gray, solid to insubstantial.
    “That wasn’t all of it,” she said on a hunch, “was it?”
    “No.”
    She bit her lip to stop any possibility of tears. He didn’t deserve her tears. He didn’t deserve to know how she really felt. “Are you going to tell me the rest?”
    He hesitated, twisted his lips as if considering, and then finally shook his head.
    Her heart shriveled, her breath leaving her in a rush. “I deserve more than that.”
    “You do,” he said softly. “But I can’t give it to you.”
    She seethed inside, angry at him, angry at her own weakness, angry she wanted him so desperately she ached inside. Turning her back on him, she scooped up her clothes and yanked open the door to her car. “Guess I’ll see you on Saturday.”
    “Not happening.”
    Oh yes it is.
    She slid into the safety of her vehicle and turned the key in the ignition. The Jetta wheezed and died. She tried again. Her betraying car refused to allow her the dignity of a clean escape.
    “I told you to get rid of that piece of junk two years ago,” he growled. “It’s not roadworthy and in your line of work you need a reliable vehicle. What if it had been Rex and not me who caught you out here?”
    She bristled at the harsh words he threw at her beloved Jetta. “He would never have recognized me and I could have talked my way out of it. You know that. I went along with your little show because I had nothing better to do with my time. But in the end, I didn’t need you. Just like I didn’t need you two years ago. Just like I don’t need you now.”
    Shocked by her own harsh words, she slammed her lips together. She had never in her life been purposely mean. Not even to her father who had all but ignored her in favor of her two older brothers after her mother died. But then she had never been as badly hurt. The pain Levi had inflicted had been skin deep—superficial wounds that had disappeared within days, sometimes weeks. But James had bruised her heart, and seeing him again only opened up a wound she had long thought healed.
    James tightened his jaw. “We need to—”
    The Jetta finally sputtered to life, cutting him off. She hit the gas, speeding across the grass like there was no tomorrow.
    But there was a Saturday. And Hades was in it.
     
     
    James