Her Covert Protector (Rogue Protectors Book 4) Read online

  Her Covert Protector

  Victoria Paige

  Copyright © 2021 by Victoria Paige

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places, events, organization either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, places or locale is entirely coincidental. The publisher is not responsible for any opinion regarding this work on any third-party website that is not affiliated with the publisher or author.

  Edited by: edit LLC

  Content Editor: Edit Sober

  Proofreader: A Book Nerd Edits

  Photography by: Wander Aguiar

  Model: Jose Luis Barreiro

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Connect with the Author

  Also by Victoria Paige

  Prologue

  John Garrison was a beast between the sheets.

  Though, technically they were not between the sheets.

  Currently, he was wrecking Nadia against the couch. He had her back against the armrest, thighs spread, her right foot on the floor while he used his body to keep her left leg pinned against the back of the couch.

  He thrust.

  He grunted.

  He rode her hard.

  “Don’t lock me out,” he ordered.

  “But it’s so good like this,” Nadia moaned, her legs squirming at the pleasure pulsing below her pelvis, her body arching to meet his hammering hips. His cock slid in and out of her pussy, its girth stretching her inner walls to pleasurable extremes. The throb was so exquisite, it made her a slave to the relentless pounding of the man between her legs.

  “I’m not ready to end this,” he groaned. His words triggered a distant alarm in her head, but the heat that flared between them since they crossed that line minutes ago had incinerated all sense of logical thought. John wasn’t a man to let your guard down around. But when he opened the door, and when she saw he was alive, nothing else mattered. Not even her pride. He scoffed at her tears of relief, then turned his back on her, leaving her standing in the foyer. She probably shouldn’t have followed him. It should have been enough to see him alive. But she needed more assurance that he was okay, never thinking it would have gone this far.

  That she would surrender herself to his animalistic way of fucking and loving it.

  “Gonna come, babe,” he grunted above her, his cock growing impossibly hard as he drove her harder into the couch. “Fuck.”

  Babe.

  That was the first time he called her that. She was usually Powell to him. Like just moments ago, when he made her see red so soon after feeling relief that he made it out of Mexico in one piece.

  “Part of the job, Powell. Don’t get sentimental.”

  John climaxed and collapsed on top of her, his weight heavy on her chest, much like the remorse that started pushing itself forward from the back of her mind. He must have felt her stiffen because he raised his head, still breathing hard, a sheen of sweat on his brow.

  “You’re still an asshole,” she whispered.

  An arrogant brow arched. “An asshole who’s given you an orgasm.”

  She pushed against his chest and he exhaled a heavy sigh, pulled out of her and rolled away. He stood and disappeared to the bathroom, presumably to get rid of the condom.

  Nadia sat up, glanced around for her panties and spotted them under the coffee table. She picked up the evidence of her momentary lapse in judgment and tucked them into her backpack. She straightened her tight skirt, thankful that John didn’t rip it apart when he shoved it to her waist. Her cheeks burned at how shamelessly she’d submitted to him. It was the guilt, she told herself. The guilt that it was her failure that stranded him and his team in Mexico, running for their lives.

  When John returned to the living room, he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, board shorts, and flip flops. He was fastening a giant watch on his wrist, a duffel slung on his shoulder.

  She rose to her feet on unsteady legs. “Going on vacation?”

  The levity of his outfit belied the expression on his face. A stoic mask. “I need to leave. Take all the time you need. Just lock up behind you.”

  “You trust me to lock up?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t keep anything of importance here. This is just a place to crash.”

  Somehow Nadia doubted that, and yet somehow she knew he was also right. If there was something the CIA officer kept here, it would be useless to someone who planned to steal it, because it would be protected by several layers of security.

  “So, that’s it?”

  His jaw hardened. “This can’t happen again.”

  A bitter taste saturated her tongue, before she managed a humorless laugh. “You need to be clearer about that, John. This as in dragging me into your clandestine ops any time you please or this”— she motioned to the couch—“which was a normal reaction to us blowing off steam because of Mexico.”

  He regarded her steadily. “So you’re clear, then, that this is just us blowing off steam? A one and done?”

  A corkscrew twisted at the center of her chest, making breathing difficult. Obviously, this was just another casual encounter for him. Hell, sex might be his way of coping whenever he’d escaped life-or-death situations. He was still charged with testosterone, and Nadia appeared conveniently for him to unload. She winced at the term. No need to make things awkward, but now knowing how John felt inside her, she wasn’t sure if she could look at him any other way without remembering.

  “Yes.” Her chin jutted out.

  His gaze narrowed. “Powell, what happened in Mexico could have happened to any comms officer. You need to get over it.”

  She gritted her teeth. “See, John, I can’t just get over it because it wasn’t my job. You put me in a situation I wasn’t ready for. You blackmailed me into agreeing.”

  He strode past her. “Don’t have time for this. Suck it up.”

  “I don’t want to suck it up!” she yelled. “Can you even imagine how I would feel if all of you got captured, or even worse, killed?”

  He stopped right at the door. His back to her. He didn’t even turn around, just cocked his head to his side. “Lock up.”

  With those two words he left her behind. Nadia didn’t know how long she stared at the door that shut behind him. But when she came back into herself, she made a decision. She slipped out
the agency-vetted phone that Garrison had given her. Extracting the chip and without thinking twice, she dropped it to the floor and crushed it with the heel of her boot.

  Then she gathered all that was left of her dignity and left the house.

  1

  The sun was just hitting the horizon when Nadia pulled into the resident’s entrance of the SkyeLark apartments. Before entering her code into the security panel, she glanced at her side mirror, watching a black Explorer roll to a stop at the curb behind her. She was used to Levi James shadowing her at work and looking in on her and her dad. She waved him off, letting him know she was secure.

  Nadia knew he would wait until she was safely behind the apartment gates.

  North Spaulding Street was quiet at this ungodly hour of the morning. She wished her favorite grocery store was open so she could save a trip, but such was the life of an LAPD crime analyst.

  Crime didn’t have a schedule, and neither did she or the people she worked with. She pulled her Subaru SUV through the entrance and rounded the complex, coasting into her parking spot. Cutting the engine, she dragged her weary form from the vehicle and made her way up to the third floor where the promise of sleep awaited. When her boots hit the second level, she remembered to tiptoe past the door of the apartment in front of the staircase. But when she ascended a few more steps, the sound of a knob being turned reached her ear.

  She suppressed a groan. So much for making it past her nosy neighbor.

  “Good morning to you, Missy,” Clyde’s cigarette-roughened voice greeted her.

  Nadia ducked back so she could see her neighbor. Clyde was pushing eighty and the oldest resident in this cozy apartment complex. But the man had an alert mind and kept up his daily walks and poker nights with his buddies who also lived in the building.

  “Hey, Clyde.”

  “Overnight call out?” he asked.

  “What else is new?”

  “Which mobster is it this time?”

  Nadia bit back a smile. “Not every DB is a mobster.” DB meant dead body, but Clyde in his inherent nosiness, must have memorized a cop lingo book at one point in his life and understood every LEO term she threw at him.

  He stared at her dubiously. “That’s not what I’m reading on the internet.”

  “Not if you keep reading the Hollywood Tattler.”

  “Touché,” Clyde gave a disgusted snort. “You’re right. The End of Days cult in the Valley has been warning of a Los Angeles Armageddon if people don’t repent for their sins. They said the Ebola scare two months ago was just a warning.”

  Nadia yawned. It was a real yawn and not an effort to get rid of Clyde. “Well, you can sleep better at night. All perpetrators involved in the plot have been arrested.”

  “Looks like you’re ready to crash,” Clyde observed. “Catch some z’s and catch you later.” Without waiting for her reply, he shut the door.

  Clyde could be chatty. At times he could be abrupt like he was just now, but she was used to his quirks.

  Nadia continued to trudge up the stairs. There were four apartments on the highest floor. She rented one and her dad had leased another. The remaining two units were occupied by Clyde’s buddies.

  Grumpy old men surrounded her—no, not really. They usually made her laugh and were only sometimes grumpy. A smile touched her lips.

  The sun cleared the horizon, and its rays reflected on her apartment’s windows. She glanced at her watch before she fished out the keys to open her door.

  Six.

  She didn’t have to be back in her lab until noon that day. Entering her digs, she booted the door close and headed straight for the kitchen. She lowered her patch-laden backpack on the counter before opening the fridge. An unfamiliar foil-covered plate sat in the middle shelves. Unfamiliar because Nadia hadn’t put it there, yet familiar in a way she knew who put it there.

  A beep on the phone alerted her to a text message.

  Even without looking, she knew it was from her dad.

  “Goulash in the fridge.”

  Going on a hunch, she headed to the pantry and opened it. A smile formed on her lips. Her father also stocked up her cupboard. They kept separate apartments and agreed to do their own groceries to maintain a semblance of independence as well as sanity. And yet, a dad would always be a dad. Always worrying if Nadia was taking care of herself given her long hours with the LAPD.

  She exited the backdoor of her kitchen to go see her father.

  The apartments on the third floor shared a rooftop garden. The majority of the plants were vegetable crops, and the rest were flowers. She made her way to Stephen’s unit and let herself in. He was sipping coffee and browsing the news on his mini tablet.

  “Morning.” She walked over to him and kissed him on the brow before heading to his fridge to grab the carton of milk, which she knew he kept for her as well. Maybe this semblance of independence from each other was a myth in her mind. “Thanks for the groceries. You didn’t have to do that.”

  He merely smiled.

  “Didn’t expect you to be up already,” she continued. “You’ve been bingeing on Hodgetown until the early hours of the morning.” Stephen had a habit of sending her random texts of his activities for the day, which was how she found out he was cheating on her by streaming their favorite series and watching it without her. Nadia didn’t always respond, especially when she was on the job, but it had always been that way with her dad. It had been the two of them for the longest time until Clyde and his buddies butted into their lives.

  “Have you started season four?” he asked.

  “One episode.” Nadia poured herself a glass of milk and settled in front of him.

  “Well, you have to catch up,” her dad said. “There’s—”

  “Don’t tell me,” she cut him off with a warning glare. He also had a habit of spoiling a show. Like he couldn’t wait to tell someone about his theories. Nadia longed for their lazy weekends of all-day television. With the explosion of streaming, it was a wonder they did anything else when they spent time together. They loved the same science-fiction and horror shows. Hodgetown was the perfect combination of the two genres, and they had bonded over the series.

  “I wasn’t,” he defended. “But please tell Gabby to tell Theo his acting chops are getting better and better with each season.” Gabby Woodward was a detective on the LAPD task force that Nadia was attached to and, technically, her boss. Theo Cole was her son and the star of the hit series.

  “Okay.”

  “Maybe drop a hint that she should guest star on her son’s show.” Gabby also used to be a popular teen actress of a zombie apocalypse series that still had a cult following to this day.

  Nadia laughed and sipped her milk. “You know, we give her a hard time about it at work, especially since everyone who’s above thirty remembers Gabby in Dead Futures.”

  “Not only that.” Stephen lowered his tablet and rested his elbows on the table. He took off his spectacles, letting them hang from his fingers, and leaned forward as though he was about to tell her a great idea. “The studio would be crazy not to capitalize on the sensational headline from a year ago.”

  “Daaaad,” Nadia gaped. “I can’t believe you’re all for exploiting that.”

  He shrugged. “There’s a three-part mini-series on that baby swap scandal, right?” That story, so mind-boggling, it could only come out of Hollywood.

  “That’s not a done deal yet. Gabby and Declan are not too keen on the invasion to their private life, but Theo is all over it.”

  A yawn escaped her.

  Her dad frowned. “That’s the second day this week you hit the late shift.”

  “They needed someone to break into the deceased’s laptop.”

  “Foul play?”

  “It appears to be suicide, but Gabby isn’t calling it yet. The guy was on the news recently…” Nadia rubbed her eyes. Thomas Brandt was an executive with SillianNet, a software company that had been embroiled in a hacking scandal the year bef
ore.

  “Go to bed, sonyashnyk, before you get called again. You can tell me what a whiz you are this weekend. We’re still on this Saturday, right?”

  She loved his pet name for her. The Ukrainian word for sunflower. Looking at her father, no one could tell he was a former CIA asset who’d been a Ukrainian scientist forced to work in a Soviet-era bioweapons lab. Because of his defection, Russian death squads targeted them, and the assassins had been successful in killing Nadia’s mother. Stephen and Nadia escaped execution when the agency had given them new lives and identities in the United States. She’d been six-years-old at that time, and her memories were blurry. She didn’t find out about their circumstances until years later.

  Recently, a faction of the Ukrainian Brotherhood targeted her father, intent to exploit his work. Technically, the threat was over, but just as a precaution, Levi had been assigned as her security escort. The LAPD also assigned regular patrols around the apartment complex.

  “Yep,” she said. “You’re going to regret watching Hodgetown all by yourself.”

  “I’ll watch it again with you.”

  “If you promise to hold your silence for the duration of each episode—”

  “The Locke Demon appears to have—”

  Nadia shot him a quelling look. The Locke Demon was her favorite character—as well as that of half of the Hodgetown fandom—from last season. A creature who used to be a man and cursed to be the guardian of the Ethervale, the thin curtain that separated Hodgetown from the dimension of monsters. In the finale of last season, the demon hesitated in killing Billy Mayhem, Theo’s character, when he was trapped in the Ethervale.