Sky's Lark Read Online Free Page A

than twenty-one years full of violence, need, and desperation.
    A cell phone ring cut through the impromptu silence. Rodriguez answered on the second chime, speaking in rapid-fire Spanish. Less than a minute later, he shut the phone. "Pickup time."
    With that declaration, Rodriguez spun and strode off, the other men hard on his heels.
    Bryce brought up the rear, keeping each one where he could see them, stalking silently across the pavement. He remained alive by practicing near-paranoid caution. Slipping behind enemy lines, snaking through compounds and enclosures during his military years had taught him well. Caution was a requirement as he reinvented himself in order to go deep undercover, to learn the ways and means of a new group, necessary to feed information to his superiors and take down high-stakes operations from the inside. His honed skills, multilingual abilities, and raw determination had landed him his current position and would hopefully pull him out—skin intact—sooner rather than later.

Chapter 5
     
    Lark grabbed her duffel bag before marching out her apartment door and into the early morning light. She glanced around the immediate area, finding no sign of the man she had encountered the night before. A mixture of relief and disappointment settled over her as she headed down the stairs and to her waiting Mustang.
    For some reason, he stuck in her mind like bees to a beehive. Each time she confidently shoved the memory aside, it crept back, tantalizing her with intrigue and curiosity, not to mention the sizzling hot kiss.
    Boy howdy, he could kiss.
    Men came and went in her life, some faster than others. She liked it that way. No strings, no attachments, no man sitting his butt on the couch hollering for her to bring him a beer as he watched hour after hour of football on the TV. She controlled her life, did as she liked, and answered to no one. A girl's dream, in her opinion.
    But this guy caught her interest. Not just the handsome face attached to a drool-worthy frame, but the innate delicacy in his handling of her. Any other guy would have used force and brute strength to dominate the situation. Instead, he chose the opposite tactic, completely surprising her into stillness and guaranteeing she would stand steady for the moments needed to complete his goal. She would give him credit where credit was due. However, that didn't alleviate the problem at hand; his thug status trumped the rest of his persuasive sex appeal.
    For a brief moment she considered trying to locate him so she could persuade him to fall on the right side of the law, reform himself into a model citizen. Just as quickly, she discarded the idea. People had to change themselves, and for bad or worse, he chose this profession. It took rare strength and courage to rise above humble beginnings, to dig out of generations of poverty, to swim against the current until you caught a tenuous foothold on a faraway beach, full of marvelous opportunities to those motivated enough with hard work and dedication to claim the prize. Unless an individual set his goal along those lines, with boundaries of steel, they tended to stray back to what they knew: crime.
    With a forlorn shake of her head, she climbed into the car, throwing the bag into the passenger seat.
    She needed an intense workout to clear her mind and dispel the remaining tension from the mission. As much as she might have enjoyed a hard, fast round of sex, the act involved a partner, something she lacked this morning. Thus, the gym would have to do.
     
    * * * *
     
    Bryce watched the petite blonde float down the stairs and to her car, his gaze never straying until the light blue Mustang vanished from sight. Damn.
    He couldn't stay away, craving another glimpse of the beauty. She piqued his interest and revved up his libido more than any woman he recalled. Her compact form, full of feminine power, caught his attention, gave him nice scenery for a moment in time and erotic dream material for