Deadly Pursuit (SCVC Taskforce) Read Online Free

Londano.”
    Said out loud, those words seemed to vibrate in the air. The moon smiled down at her and she drew her first fearless breath in months. She felt a sudden hot rush in her veins, a tingling sensation shooting through every cell of her body.
    Letting her head fall back on her shoulders, she let it come, this rush of accomplishment instead of fear. It roared through her.
    Laughing up at the sky, she sang out, “I did it! I arrested the Lord of the Cartel World!” She took a few steps back, staring at the sky, and held out her arms. Twirling, she let her herself enjoy the sweet tingle of relief and success racing through her body.
     
     
    God, she was beautiful.
    And young, Cooper reminded himself for the hundredth, possibly thousandth, time since she’d joined his team. Too young. For him anyway.
    But as he watched the beautiful agent twirl herself around in unabashed joy on the sand, with the spotlight on and an audience of horny males watching her, Cooper would have sold his vintage Fender guitar collection to be even five years younger.
    And not her boss.
    Celina was so alive and so beautiful and so completely crushing on him, it made him want to turn in his badge and chuck his very last moral into the garbage can just so he could touch her. Just once. He would touch that smooth, soft, creamy skin, take her full bottom lip between his and…
    Die.
    Die and go to heaven .
    Hypnotized by her blissful twirling and the idea of a heaven filled with her, Cooper let himself feel what she was feeling. Pure rush. Total adrenaline. Joy. He’d felt it with his first major bust too. A long time ago, when he was still fresh and eager and hungry. The rush of taking out a bad guy was a drug, making the hunger intensify. That hunger had added a lot of notches to his DEA belt and catapulted him to his current position, but he’d had an epiphany on this last assignment. He was worn out.
    At thirty-eight, he still loved his job. Loved protecting his country and meting out justice to assholes like Emilio Londano. His taskforce was the best in the country, a machine, just like him, apprehending cartel leaders that trafficked drugs, weapons, and people. In the past year, they’d extended their reach. He and Thomas had gone to Colombia back in the fall, trying to figure out Londano’s operation in the Southern Hemisphere in order to help them deal with this one in the Northern.
    Thomas and a couple of the other guys on the taskforce had been with him since the early years, taking out several large drug rings while always trying to get the Londano operation that stayed consistently out of their reach. But when the latest addition to his team, this twirling rookie Fed, was handed a personal invitation into the Londano den of lions, Cooper almost pulled the plug on the whole operation.
    She’d turned him. A couple of months with his group and she’d made him feel less like the cartel-eating machine he’d made himself into and more like a human. A man.
    A man who wanted her.
    A man who realized that if she walked into the den of lions, he couldn’t keep her safe.
    Celina stopped and walked toward him, off balance and laughing. An unbidden smile crept to his lips—after all she was safe now and Londano was headed to federal prison—but then she was standing right in front of him and looking like she was about to throw her arms around him, and whoa —
    She threw her arms around him and kissed him. Right on the lips.
    Her lips were so soft and she smelled like the ocean and, holy mother . Cooper jerked his head back, pulled her arms from around his neck, and stepped back.
    Quarters, the fucker, cleared his throat, looking displeased and jealous at the same time. Celina dropped her arms, the happiness fading from her face and replaced with fear as it dawned on her that they were spotlighted on the beach with a significant audience, some of whom were now clapping and whistling.
    Quarters, eat your heart out.
    “Sorry,” she