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  Honor Bound: Book Six

  Angel Payne

  This book is an original publication of Angel Payne.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  * * *

  Copyright © 2018 Waterhouse Press, LLC

  Cover Design by Waterhouse Press, LLC

  Cover Photographs: Shutterstock

  * * *

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic format without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  As always, for my generous and giving man…for joining me on this journey so bravely and steadfastly. I am forever in love with you.

  * * *

  And…to all of you who encouraged me to write “the weird book,”

  And help me rejoice in my weirdness each and every day.

  You are the paint in the sky…and the dreams none of us have imagined yet.

  Stay weird!

  * * *

  Special thanks to my hand-holders on this book! It wouldn’t be here without you!

  Carly Phillips

  Carrie Ann Ryan

  Jenna Jacob

  Kennedy Layne

  Melisande Scott

  Riane Holt

  Tracy Roelle

  Victoria Blue

  Contents

  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

  Continue the Honor Bound Series with Book Seven

  Excerpt from Masked: Honor Bound Book Seven

  Also by Angel Payne

  About Angel Payne

  Chapter One

  “Hi, gorgeous. You wanna play lions? ’Cause I’m ready to chase your meat.”

  Shay Bommer stared as the little redhead in skintight jeans wobbled on her five-inch heels and finished the line with a playful roar. He expected her friends, a group of ten women at a table in the corner of the LA International Airport bar, to applaud her drunken effort. Clearly, they’d concocted a crazy version of double-dare-you to pass the time, and she’d drawn the wrong straw.

  The moment provided more proof for a theory Shay had observed in nauseating detail lately.

  People did strange fucking things in airport bars.

  A hand snaked around his waist from behind, elegant fingers topped by slick blue-black nails. “I have a better game,” murmured a voice just as sultry as the redhead’s. “I wanna play war. You lay on the ground, and I’ll blow you up, baby.”

  Hell.

  Six months undercover with one of the world’s most notorious criminals, and the worst bullets he dodged these days were lines like that.

  Remember why you’re doing this. Remember who you’re doing this for.

  He swung a polite smile at the redhead and then swiveled to peer at her friend, an equally petite woman with a deeper tint to her mahogany pixie cut, showing off ears with four piercings apiece. “Ladies, I’m flattered but—”

  “Ohhh, noooo,” flirt number one protested. “We don’t like the sound of that ‘but.’”

  “Not to be confused with the butt we do like.” Her friend slid the goth fingernails under his ass, squeezing him through the fabric of his tailored dress trousers. For the fifteenth time tonight, he missed his regular camouflage “work attire” worse than Scout, the Siberian Husky who’d been like another brother to Tait and him through boyhood.

  “You’re so gorgeous.” The first woman pushed his knees apart and stepped in for a feel from the other side, sliding a hand over the fabric covering his cock. “Oooo, and hard. You don’t just look like Superman, do you? You feel like him—”

  “Everywhere.” Her friend kept exploring, finally wrapping eager fingers around his balls. “Mmmmm. He’s not Superman, Brynn. He’s Ironman.”

  Shay tensed. He threw a subtle but thorough glance around the room, wondering if he’d missed anything on the first five sweeps. Ironman. How the hell had the woman blurted his radio call sign? Had Cameron Stock, the evil prick he’d been hanging out with for half a year, directed the woman to act shitfaced in order to drop the name and see how he’d react?

  Or are you freaking out like a little girl now, Bommer? For fuck’s sake, her fingers are all over the junkyard between your thighs—and the size of your “pipe” isn’t a state secret. You may have earned the nickname by setting timed run records in PT, but your cock isn’t a bad ally for the cause.

  He rolled his eyes at the smartass in his head as the woman nuzzled his neck. When her margarita-heavy breath hit him, he had the answer to his dilemma. Her hit on the name had really just been stupid coincidence, though he rarely believed in that kind of cosmic shit. He couldn’t afford to.

  Brynn sidled closer, fitting the apex of her thighs against the same part of his anatomy. “Come on, stud. What about it? Ellie likes to share, and so do I. Two redheads, grounded by fog in the same airport as you, with a room waiting for us over at the Hilton…”

  “And at least one of us isn’t wearing panties.” More margarita breath fanned his face.

  Brynn giggled. “Make that neither of us. Horny, panty-free dancers from a hot Vegas show. Find a blue moon somewhere in that muck outside, and you’ve been handed a once-in-a-million memory, honey.”

  Part of him screamed to simply agree with her. That same part filled his imagination with a fantasy painted in shades of ohhh, fuck, and yeah. Both women kneeling before him, servicing his cock in all the ways any heterosexual male dreamed. He’d find a way to clamp their nipples as reciprocation for their naughty behavior before they licked every inch of his erection, preparing him to fuck them both…

  Thoughts he didn’t dare indulge for another second. Not now.

  He pushed off the barstool, rubbed the back of his neck, and faked an awkward laugh. “I’m certain you’re right, ladies, but I can’t. I’m here on business. My colleague should be here any minute.”

  The reply was a string of lies. Where the fuck was Wyst? The guy was thirty minutes late. Not a development Shay wanted to take with the normal calm that had earned him a fast place in Cameron Stock’s inner sanctum. But tonight, everything was different. Within the hour, they’d solidify the plans that would make this burglary happen, finally bringing him to the last stretch of this disgusting mission.

  Shay had been working closely with the spooks to make this shit go down as seamlessly as possible. His personal investment in taking out Stock was intense. Last year, Stock helped engineer a scheme that nearly drenched the US West Coast beneath a nuclear fallout cloud, a plan thwarted in an operation by his brother Tait’s Special Forces team—though the price had been devastating. Tait’s ladylove, Luna Lawrence, had eventually died as a result of the standoff’s violence. The trauma had turned Tait’s heart into a husk and his liver into a distillery. And watching that shit happen? Shay grimaced from the me
mories. The term “emotional waterboarding” fit the bill nicely.

  But exacting revenge on behalf of Tait was only the first half of the picture. Shay never lost sight of the second goal for this escapade, equally driving every step he took and move he made. He was going through this hell to find another victim of Stock’s rise to criminal glory—a piece of prey who’d then been forced to become a cog in the monster’s machine.

  A cog he’d once known as Mom.

  His gut turned. It certainly wasn’t a new experience, especially if he counted all the years that had been wasted since she “deserted” them, as their father had always alleged. He’d been only nine. Tait was ten, though he was counting the days until his eleventh birthday, when he’d enjoy the six-month period when he could say he was two years older than Shay. Life’s concerns were so simple. They were still a halfway-functioning family. Dad’s drinking was still just uncomfortable instead of unbearable. He only went after Mom once a week rather than every other day—until the four-day bender that had ended with her leaving in the middle of the night. And never coming back.

  Hearkening the start of the shit years.

  Tait did his best to make sure they were safe when Dad got bad. There was the “hideout” in the basement next door courtesy of Mrs. Verona, stocked with canned food for emergencies, thanks to Uncle Jonah. Mrs. V always baked fresh cookies, too. Damn, he wanted those cookies again. He wanted the long conversations he and Tait had while savoring them.

  Most of all, he wanted all the time he’d missed with his mother.

  Whom he and Tait had joined Dad in vilifying for the last eighteen years—when she’d never intended to leave forever.

  Who had signed on with Cameron for six months but had been forced by the man to stay for the rest of her life, used for her brilliant scientific mind—and probably a lot of other hideous things.

  Who’d been forced to erase Melody Bommer and instead live as Melanie Smythe, never once permitted to contact Tait and him. Not just a stranger to her children. A ghost.

  Now, Shay was achingly close to raising that ghost. To finally finding and freeing her.

  All he had to do was help Cameron’s team steal a commercial airliner.

  After an hour, when they’d landed the bird, he’d be standing at the front door of her lab.

  It was going to be a night for tricky feats—beginning with peeling off the women who’d redraped themselves against him.

  Where the hell was Wyst?

  His cell vibrated on the bar, dancing across the sticky granite to notify him of an incoming text. Not a second too soon, dickwad.

  “Sorry, ladies. I really need to get this.”

  While the message saved him from the paws of his new fan club, it also slammed him with disappointment. Only three people knew the number to this phone, all smarmy sons of bitches. The device belonging to Shay Bommer, not “Shane Burnett,” was secured in a locker in Langley, Virginia, its voice mail stating he was on deployment and didn’t know when he’d be back.

  He yearned for that other phone now. For even five minutes on the line with Tait. The last time he’d seen his brother had been such a bizarre fluke. Shay had just gotten started on this assignment and was working his way into Cameron’s good graces, finishing one of the man’s “special projects.” They’d been on the island of Kaua'i, where Cameron had attempted to sell a beachfront estate to the North Koreans for use as their forward base in an assault on the western United States.

  To Shay’s shock, Tait and his sniper teammate, Kellan Rush, led the op to crush Cameron’s scheme and save the estate’s owner, an islander named Lani Kail. The whole episode actually helped seal Stock’s buy-in on Shay’s cover but had nearly made Lani another casualty of the man’s evil. Not a great twist, considering Tait had damn near proposed to the woman after she was safe. Tait’s fresh love for Lani made him deaf to any explanation Shay had for his involvement with Stock, officially turning Shay into a traitor in his brother’s eyes.

  The four months since then had been complete hell. And this text likely represented an extension of the ordeal.

  Yo, Shane. You still at the airport?

  Called that one right.

  Shay clenched his jaw again. In addition to violating the team’s rule about refraining from personal names on all mobile communication, Wyst also confirmed he wasn’t at the airport, meaning the great airplane heist was again a no-go. Damn it.

  Am I supposed to be anywhere else?

  The sarcasm wouldn’t translate, but Wyst wouldn’t get it even if he stood here for the verbal version. The guy’s DNA strand had taken a leak during the distribution of higher brain function, making him Cameron’s ideal lap dog.

  Guess you’ve been waiting for me. Sorry. Was eating dinner.

  Shay refrained from gibing about whether the guy would indulge a manicure or a Friends rerun after eating. Mainly, he worried about Wyst actually answering.

  So Cameron’s called off the op again?

  Once more, there was a hell of a lot more he burned to type. No, to demand. Like why the hell they weren’t moving on the plan when the Pacific Ocean itself was cooperating tonight, dumping fog porridge over half of LA. He watched the departure-gate crews get itchier by the minute, waiting for word from the control tower that every flight would be grounded until morning. Their wait wasn’t long.

  After a few minutes, the PA system crackled. “We regret to inform passengers”—blah blah blah—“due to abnormal fog and dangerously low visibility”—blah blah blah—“Los Angeles International Airport will reopen at six o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  It was such a rarity for LAX, the crews clapped like kids on Christmas. In a way, it was. All the tarmacs had just been turned into Cameron’s airliner goody bag, complete with a cloak of subterfuge to better enjoy the “fun.”

  So why the hell was Stock stalling this time?

  New tactic. No joy on taking golden egg tonight.

  Not enough yolk to hatch the plan. Extra roosters called to watch the henhouse.

  “Fuck.”

  Now the guy switched to code speak? “Not enough yolk” likely meant none of the jets outside had enough fuel in them, even for a short hop to the desert outside Vegas. But that defense was thin. Why couldn’t Stock get a couple of fuel crew IDs falsified, since he’d passed off Shay and Wyst as “airport contractors” for the last month? And “roosters” in the henhouse clearly referred to extra security for the terminals, determined to keep the largest airport in the state a drama-free zone tonight.

  That defense didn’t wash either. Stock had a shit ton of resources for this kind of thing. He’d called up a small mercenary army to face Tait’s Special Forces battalion in Hollywood last year, not to mention the team of pretty-boy cutthroats gathered by his bitch, Gunter Benson, for the Kaua'i adventure.

  So what wasn’t adding up here?

  Shay hoped to God it wasn’t his cover story.

  His next text exchange with Wyst would supply the answer to that.

  When is hatch time rescheduled?

  If Wyst’s answer was evasive, he’d know the jig was up. It’d be clear Stock had learned about Shay’s true purpose and was plotting to cut him out of the mission—and into a bunch of little pieces too.

  Shit.

  It would be time to risk contacting his CIA point man, Dan Colton. He’d need an exfil fast, if he lived that long. Finding a place to disappear for the night would be a priority. Trusting the LAX security team wasn’t an option. He had no way of knowing who Cameron owned around here.

  Escaping to the Hilton with his two new dancer friends suddenly seemed the best plan for the night—if they really weren’t working for Stock themselves. Which, despite his earlier assumption, was an option on the table again.

  How the hell was he going to figure them out? Getting them naked wasn’t a fail-proof answer. Wasn’t like he’d find wires or trackers. Cocksuckers like Stock had sneakier ways of keeping tabs on a guy these days, especially if the
y’d researched their prey and learned he belonged to several high-end BDSM clubs in Pensacola and Panama City. Wasn’t a secret that he was tapped to teach rope-bondage classes when he wasn’t tromping a desert or jungle with his Seventh Special Forces Group operational detachment, as well. All those women had to do was entice him into a little rope play, knowing he’d throw his entire attention into the scene, before distracting him just enough for Stock to put a bullet through his skull or a knife across his throat.

  It’d be a viable theory if he still had conscious women on his hands.

  He turned back toward the bar in time to hear the clink of Ellie’s piercings as her head dropped to the marble. A contented smile was plastered on her lips.

  “El?” Brynn leaned over and poked Ellie’s shoulder. “El? Heeyyy, wake up. We were just starting to have some fun. Ellliieeee…woooo hoooo…anyone home?” She knocked on El’s head like it was a neighbor’s front door. When she added doorbell sounds, Shay wrote off his suspicions of the girls as Cameron Stock conspirators. Or sadly, as potential playmates for the night.

  As he allowed his big head to deliver the depressing news to his small head, another text came in from Wyst.

  New hatch time. 8 AM tomorrow. Sunset Airlines #403 to Sin City.