Scorching Desire Read Online Free PDF Page B

shoes off and then tugged on the leggings.
    “Normally I would.”
    “Then why aren’t you now?”
    “Because…” His voice trailed off.
    “Because I’m the one who’s cleaning up your mess, or because I’m a member of Trinity Masters and you have to treat me with at least as much respect as a bottle of wine?”
    “You don’t think much of Damon or me, do you?”
    Tasha winced at his half-hurt, half-disgruntled tone but didn’t say anything.
    “I think it would be worse if I started relationships with people I have no future with because someday I’ll be called to the altar.” Marco’s words were quiet and more sincere than she expected. “I always make it clear to my lovers that I’m looking for a night or two of pleasure, nothing more. Plenty of women have turned me down because that wasn’t what they wanted.”
    I’ll be called to the altar.
    Tasha stuffed her jeans into her suitcase. Marco was right, it would be cruel of him to start relationships that would never go anywhere. He and Damon and all the other members of the Trinity Masters would eventually be married. Tasha would not. She’d accepted that fact several years ago, around the time the Grand Master had stopped apologizing every time he sent her out on an op.
    She took off the silver shirt, slid her bra strap back in place and then put on a tunic-like top made of sheer black material. Her upper body was clearly visible, but the cut of the shirt was ostensibly modest. She closed up her suitcase and started digging through Marco’s, selecting items and passing them up to him without a word.
    She started running through the scenarios for the op. She’d done hundreds of different ops before her CIA handler had helped to get her off Uncle Sam’s radar and into the Trinity Masters. At the age of twenty three she’d already been an agent for the US government for ten years. She’d been so tired and burned out that she’d gotten sloppy—it would have been only a matter of time before she was killed if she hadn’t gotten out.
    Those first few years had been quiet and peaceful—until the day she’d been summoned by the Grand Master.
    She’d gotten her hair done and had a bikini wax, sure she was being called to the altar. Having never had a normal relationship, she was desperately looking forward to her marriage. To outsiders, a trinity union would seem impossibly strange, but to Tasha it had seemed like the answer to a prayer—if there were two other people in the relationship there would be less pressure on her.
    But the Grand Master hadn’t matched her. He’d needed her to get the CFO of a manufacturing conglomerate to retire. The Trinity Masters had someone in place to take the job, and they needed their person in a position of power before another member formally announced a new plastics recycling process they’d developed.
    On the Grand Master’s orders, Tasha had seduced the CFO. Not slept with him, but seduced him nonetheless—showing him what life after retirement would be like. Implying that if he did retire he would have the time and the money for an affair with someone like her.
    It had taken less than two weeks for her to get him to hand in his letter of resignation. She’d continued the relationship until he formally stepped down.
    A few more assignments like that and she’d finally realized she was never going to be called to the altar. The members of the Trinity Masters were some of the smartest and most powerful people in the country. They wanted and deserved elegant partners who elevated them—not a woman who could, and would, seduce a sixty-five-year-old man or break in to a bank.
    Tasha thought she’d escaped her former life, but all she’d done was trade one master for another. That had been hard for her to accept, but she finally had, knowing that she would never be deserving of a trinity of her own. At least she was unlikely to be killed or imprisoned doing these jobs.
    With some difficulty Marco shed his