Cyber Seduction: Across A Crowded Room 3

CYBER SEDUCTION

ACROSS A CROWDED ROOM - 3

by

ELIZA MARCH

Copyright © 2016 Second Edition

IATO - Across a Crowded Room

Cyber Seduction, Book 3 – Emily and Jason barely escape Monte Carlo with their identities intact after retrieving the nanotech chip, and then once again Jason distances himself from Emily. The continued plan includes enticing Mosel to follow Emily back to Washington, DC where they expect him to meet with the terrorists and their contact. The danger to her escalates but it’s imperative they uncover the mole in their agency.

The tables turn on Jason and Emily when he risks everything to get the answers he’s been looking for and is captured. Emily takes a risk and enlists Mosel’s help to save him. As the story unravels, convoluted secrets from the past surface, expose old guilt and childish misconceptions, and finally shed light on old nightmares.

Innocence Lost, Book 1 - While working with the secret International Anti-Terrorist Organization, privately referred to as IATO, agent Jason DesJardin survives the deadly explosion that seriously injures his partner, Harrison James and kills his mentor, Senior Agent Avery Holmes. After discovering evidence of a mole in the organization, Jason goes deep undercover to find the man behind the kill order. Guilt, a dark secret from his past, and the need to protect Avery’s daughter, prevents Jason from returning to Emily and exposing her to the dangerous elements of his job. Instead of being with her, he watches and guards her from a distance, refusing to accept that rejecting her hurts both of them.

Emily is ready to prove she’s stronger than Jason realizes. Accepting the man she loves is alive and avoiding her is not an option. She’s determined to finish her training with her father’s black ops organization, IATO, find the answers haunting her past, and once and for all, prove she can take care of herself. When she discovers ties between the old car bombing that killed her father and the terrorists she’s investigating, she finagles an assignment on to Jason’s team and their next IATO mission. She will get the stolen nanotech chip back from the arms dealer looking to broker the secret technology to the terrorists and investigate the contact to her father’s death.

The Monte Carlo Affair, Book 2 - The balance of world power drops into Emily’s inexperienced hands, and she is forced to play a dangerous game of seduction with Mosel Reinhardt, the notorious international arms dealer, while her team and Jason look on. Is Reinhardt peddling the nanotech chip technology, or are Emily’s instincts about him correct?

The mission heats up when Jason finds he can no longer resist her—his old friend’s daughter, the agency computer genius has gone femme fatale and she’s too hot for him to handle, and neither can Mosel. The man who’s never cared about anyone or anything actually seems to care about Emily. After years of waiting to have her again, the tables turn on Jason. He’s unwilling to share her with anyone, let alone his oldest rival, even for the mission. But will he be able to watch her seduce Mosel in order to find her father’s killer and stop the madness? Would she stop if he asked her?

Genre: Contemporary, Romantic Suspense

COPYRIGHT

CYBER SEDUCTION: IATO

ACROSS A CROWDED ROOM Book 3

Copyright © 2011 by Eliza March

First Edition Publication: March 2011

Second Edition Publication: May 2016

Cover design by Eliza March

All cover art and logo copyright © 2016

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

Published in the USA by Smashwords

DEDICATION

To anyone whose gaze once locked and connected with another’s across a crowded room, especially if the memory still brings a smile to your lips and an extra beat to your heart. This story’s for you...

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I’d like to acknowledge all my family, friends, and colleagues who supported my dream of seeing this book reach print. Across A Crowded Room was the first full-length manuscript I ever completed. It’s the one most authors stick under the bed, never to see the light of day. And believe me, it’s been there on and off over the years. But Jason’s and Emily’s story held a special place in my heart, and I wanted it told. I rewrote, reviled, cursed, and edited the book within an inch of my life, and twelve or more revisions later, I believe it has finally become a book any author would be proud to share with her readers. I hope when you come to the words, The End, you’ll agree it was well worth the read. And now the stories from International Ant-Terrorist Organization will continue.

Chapter One

Once inside her own place, Emily took a deep breath, leaned against the closed door, and sighed. The weariness from the tension began to set in almost immediately. She couldn’t move. Her knees were like jelly. Watching Jason check out the apartment, his gun in his hand, she wasn’t sure the weakness she experienced was a result of the evening’s events, or his effect on her. Just watching him, so unruffled, made her ache for him all over again.

Braced against the door, not sure she could accommodate the offer she was about to make, Emily asked, So, do you want anything?

You better rephrase that offer if you don’t want to end up on your back, right here, right now.

Something to drink? Or eat?

Oh. Jason had just finished checking the bedroom and small bathroom when he heard Emily’s offer. She was killing him.

Cautiously, before he turned to glance at Emily over his shoulder, he took a deep breath. Being alone with her set off all sorts of alarms in his head. This time, what would he use as an excuse? He turned and exhaled. When he saw her exhausted expression, his attitude switched from sex to concern. Emily was moments from collapse.

Down, boy, he thought to himself. Now wasn’t the time to jump her bones. She was dead on her feet and her dress was split to her navel. He’d done that, but he didn’t want to think about it right now. Everything except Emily could wait.

He walked over to her, slowly taking her around the waist. His first instinct was to support her, but when the sensation of her nearness and scent surrounded him, he brought his arms around her and held her for his own satisfaction. At first she shivered in his arms, and then she relaxed against him. Up to this point, she must have been operating on pure adrenaline. Running his hands over her shoulders, his face buried in her hair, Jason kept reminding himself she wasn’t used to this intrigue. Computers were her specialty, nice, safe computers.

He lifted his lips from her forehead and stared down at her, saying, Thanks, I could use a chilled glass of wine. How about you? Just point me in the right direction. I’m capable of finding my way around your kitchen while you get cleaned up.

There’re several bottles in the wine cooler. Pick whatever you like. She told him where the glasses were as he led her into the bedroom.

A nice warm bath will do you a world of good. Go ahead, get the kinks out, and I’ll go scrounge up the food and that wine while you relax. I’ll help you get your stuff together later.

Jason turned on the tub water and lit the rose-scented candles sitting on the ledge before he went into the kitchen to pour the wine. He returned, handed her a glass, and then left her to herself. He didn’t trust himself to let her relax. If he stayed a second longer, they’d both be in that tub, and he was sure there would be no relaxing going on.

That bath never looked so enticing. A nice soak is all I need. Emily dragged her hand through the bubbles and looked at the steaming tub like it was a life line.

Enjoy the ambiance while I see to dinner. Jason chuckled, turned without looking back, and closed the door behind him.

Emily ached all over, but mostly with desire. The very fiber of her being still reached out for him as she took the scrap of what was left of her dress from her shoulders, dropped it to the floor, and stepped into the fragrant water.

She couldn’t stop craving him, the feel of his hands, his scent, his heat. Her body screamed for more. Even though the discomfort from the evening’s adventures ran from tip to toe, she still wanted more. The hot bubbling water felt wonderful all over her sensitive skin.

She slipped farther down in the tub, realizing she had developed an insatiable sexual appetite for this man as well as rekindled her old emotional need for him. During certain moments tonight, he seemed to demonstrate similar feelings toward her. Was it possible he felt the same way?

Emily lathered the washcloth with the fragrant soap—something sandalwoodsy and rosemaryish. She giggled. Were those even words? Maybe not, but they were two conflicting scents, both invigorating and relaxing at the same time. As she scrubbed her body with the strange herbal mixture, she thought of the similarity between the fragrant soap and the vibes Jason gave off. The inner turmoil she felt began to subside a little, even though his conflicting behavior confused her.

For many years, he’d tried to play the older brother role, and he could be just as annoying as one, too. Between Jason and her father, the few times in high school when she’d tried to date, the poor guys were too intimidated to ask her out a second time. Coming to the house once was usually enough.

She put her head in her hands thinking about tonight. Brotherly? Definitely not tonight. That brother thing ended long ago. It had never worked for her, anyway. She spent night after night and year after year mooning over him like a star-struck teenager. Hell, she was a teenager then, what was her excuse now? She thought back to when he came home the weekend before his graduation from Annapolis, dressed up in his white Naval uniform. Even thinking back now, she felt a tingle of warmth flowing through her. She was so thrilled when he admitted he’d missed her and he spun her around in his arms. Jason wasn’t usually that demonstrative. In fact, he even seemed surprised at himself that day. He was out of the country a lot after that.

Lazing back in the tub, Emily couldn’t keep a smile off her lips. Ah, the coup de gras. Her best friends in high school, Liz and Amy, lived off the encounter of Jason kissing her smack on the mouth for a week. And she lived off it for years.

She considered the reason for her inability to gauge him. Too many times, he’d acted like a complete jerk, as if being in her presence was unbearable. So typically male, he remained aloof, almost cold to her in the presence