by Meli Raine
Taken.
He groans, mouth finding my ear, the rasps of his breath driving my pulse to a breakneck run. I unbutton his pants and lower the zipper like I'm breaking and entering, a thief stealing passion, hoarding it, treasuring it.
Ah, the heat.
His cock is so hot.
My palm sinks in, gentle but firm, fingers teasing him over his boxer briefs until he makes a sound of pleasure that goes straight to the core of me.
I've pleased him.
A ragged breath comes out of him, twinned with an expression in his eyes that gives me every feeling I can imagine experiencing. He kisses me, soft and full, his hands sliding under my shirt, unclasping my bra at the back, moving around to cup my breasts. Our hips rub up and down, his shaft against my clit, and soon I'm making noises, too, until he stops.
Cold air crashes over my skin as he peels my shirt and bra off, his mouth on my nipple before I can say a word, tongue teasing, all that I am turning into that singular focal point where the tip of his tongue finds me.
A low hum starts at the base of my brain, my fingers against his bare chest pressing into wax, the heat of his skin turning into a mental infrared map that detects temperature levels. Robotic and cold, my mind shifts into measurements, calculations, calibrations, and analysis.
I've elevated.
And I didn't even try.
One look at Callum and I can see the change, the way his eyes shift from side to side, the pieces of him trying to reconcile what our minds are doing to us.
“Damn,” he murmurs once he sees it in me, too.
“We can't,” I say mournfully. “Oh, how I want to, but we can't.”
“I won't. I won't have anything less than everything with you, Kina. So no–we can't. We won't. Not until we're both really here for it.”
Long sighs unroll out of both of us, the sound comforting and infuriating at the same time.
“We should take the jammers off, anyway,” he says bleakly. “It’s been at least ten minutes.”
“How can we do this?” I ask him, wanting to be held, hating the pull inside me trying to manipulate him. It would be so easy. A blow job, his fingers in my hair, my mouth making quick work of his lurch and spill into my mouth, would give me the upper hand. How?
Because as long as I am less emotionally attached to sex, I'm in control.
But with Callum, there's no need for control. That's the point. Being authentic with him means giving up control. And I can't do that when I elevate.
Yet we're trained to elevate when we have sex, so the endless iterative loop is where we're both stuck.
For how long?
Bzzzzz.
“No,” he groans.
“You knew it was inevitable.” I stand, searching for my shirt. He pulls me back, arms around my waist, lazy and firm.
“Now I really don't want to leave you.”
“You have to. It's for the best.”
“I never want you to feel abandoned by me again.”
“We're doing this together, Callum. I don't. And you said the word feel. We're breaking all the rules of training, aren't we?”
“Pretty sure we started breaking them a long time ago, Kina. Breaking so many rules Stateless taught us.”
“What's our mission, then? If we're disobeying so many orders? Violating rules?”
“It's still the same.” But he's uncertain. In another man, the uncertainty could seem weak. In Callum, though, it's a sign of strength. A leader never has more authority than when they are reviewing choices and realize that new information means they have to re-evaluate their beliefs.
I'm not sure where that thought came from, but it hits me hard in the gut, like a stone tossed from a distance, meant to shake me out of shock and into action.
Can I draw on his strength? Does he have enough to lend me? Questioning what we've been taught is dangerous enough.
Questioning the entire premise of how we view the world is deadly.
But not questioning it is no longer an option.
12
Seven months later
Callum
For seven months, I've been separated from Kina, told to stay away from the compound until Svetnu gives me the signal. For seven months straight–and nine in total–I've watched McDuff's every move. A baby could have been gestated in the time I've watched him.
All this time, he's been Lily Thornton's lapdog, their entwined life about as dull as can be. They are engaged now and they’re living together, so even the surveillance is less interesting. At least before, there was movement from his place to her parents’ house and back. Now I have to run twice as far every morning to make up for the extra hours spent sitting in my car.
But today is different.
I'm trailing McDuff, and I don't like where he's leading me.
For nine months, I've trailed him every day. Svetnu told me not to kill him yet, and I suspect this is the reason why. The guy finally did something other than cater to Lily Thornton. He knows something about the compound, clearly.
But what?
A flash drive in my pocket may hold the answer.
A flash drive with the memory card that Kina's downloaded, encrypted files are on.
I'm one of the best in the world for hacking, and even I can't open these files. I have a darknet supercomputer working on it, though.
Sure can't ask anyone else for help.
Piecing together McDuff's actions into a pattern that makes sense means I have to have access to everything. Every scrap of information. Every whispered conversation on a cell phone. Every CCTV tape. Smith handles all the electronic communications, sending me a report with significant clips twice a day.
I'm the guy on foot. But as boring as it is, it’s crucial, because the in-person monitoring of an important operative involves nuance. You can't pick up nuance from a report alone.
I've now followed him through a plane ride from California to DC. A car rental. A northern drive, and suddenly we're on roads so familiar, I feel my pulse start to stomp in anger.
He's taking me to the compound.
I grab my phone and get Hokes, ready to put him on high alert.
But then McDuff takes a sharp left, turning onto an old access road along the compound's fenced perimeter. The road is owned by the town and leads to some land containing a small water treatment plant adjacent to the reservoir–a real facility that supports our cover story. High-voltage fencing and brick buildings not unlike ours at the compound are all that's there. What is he doing?
I can't drive down the same narrow access road, so I park in the woods and hightail it on foot. I stop, though, to call Smith, who answers on the first ring.
“Yeah?”
“I need all the audio surveillance on McDuff for the last twelve hours.”
“What?”
“He's making a move and I need to figure out why.”
“The audio… all of it?”
“Raw. I need it now. ”
“We're, uh...” Smith's hesitation makes my temper boil over.
“Patch it through! I don't care how. I need to hear what he's been saying. He's–”
The phone dies.
I try again.
No connection.
I look at the bars on my phone. Nothing. Of all the times to lose reception.
“Damn it,” I whisper, hating myself for the emotional display.
Following a car's tracks is easy, but I only have two legs. He has four wheels. Forty-five minutes of light jogging and I finally catch up to him.
To find him wearing a town uniform t-shirt, riding a standing lawn mower.
Like any other member of a landscaping crew, he has noise-canceling headphones on, a green visor cap with the town's name on it, and mirrored sunglasses. The long, rolling hills of thick grass show signs of being mowed maybe a month ago. To the untrained eye, he's just a dude doing his grounds-crew job.
To me, though, his behavior sets off every damn alarm.
What
the hell is he doing?
For the next four hours, he mows and weed whacks the grassy areas that abut the compound. That's it. There's a shed the size of a small RV, with mowing equipment and apparently, running water. He drinks from a small bottle he refills from a garden hose.
He knows his way around this space.
How long has he been coming here? How long has someone from his private group been surveilling us like this? We're not stupid. Not naïve. We realize there are actors out there who know about Stateless. How did no one pick up on this?
Movement to my right makes me turn to see Janice, on a large riding mower bigger than the one McDuff is using, working her way slowly through a thick, slightly marshy spot inside the compound. She's concentrating, her face slack.
I'm instantly reminded of her humiliation before our class our final year. A memory of Judi, who died in the ambush during The Test, blindsides me.
Nostalgia is such a sneaky emotional opportunist.
With a comical sense of timing, Janice realizes McDuff is on the other side of the fence and brakes the mower, which pitches to the left. Righting herself, she overcompensates, ab muscles making her wobble on the seat but steadying with a firmness that is almost eloquent.
McDuff spots her, smiles, and waves, arm moving in a big arc designed to gain attention.
Janice frowns, turning off her machine, ripping the headphones off her ears, her curly hair tufting comically.
“Hi!” he shouts.
She scowls. She shoves the earphones back on, flattening the tufts.
All he gets is the sound of her engine as she peels through the rest of the mowing so fast, she leaves ragged pieces of grass jutting up, like a bad shave, a poor haircut, a neglected garden.
13
Two days later
Kina
“What the hell is he doing?”
Janice's question is hard to hear over the sound of the tractor as she points to the guy mowing the lawn on the other side. He's wearing noise-canceling headphones, the parts covering the ears a bright blue with black outlines, and his green cap says something that looks like the town's name. His t-shirt is sweat soaked at the armpits and neck, making it wet and clinging.
The man has pecs, that's for sure.
I remember Callum's bare chest.
I evict the thought.
Too bad other parts of my body can't.
It's been seven months since I've seen him. Seven months of wondering. Seven months of longing.
Seven months of silence.
When I told him to go and do what Dr. Svetnu told him to do, to find McDuff, and also to find his brother, I never imagined that he'd be gone for so long.
Or that he'd cut off all contact. He said he would never abandon me.
Even Romeo came back to the compound between operations when he was in Callum's role.
“Kina?” Janice interrupts my thoughts.
“What?”
“What is he doing?”
“He's mowing.”
Playfully, she whacks my upper arm. “You know what I mean!” Janice is always so reserved, quiet, and, well... broken. The playfulness is a welcome change.
“I don't know.”
“I think he's a spy.”
The guy scratches a spot right above his crotch.
“I think he's just a grounds-crew guy.”
“Just.” Said with flat affect, Janice's one-word reply makes me wince.
“I didn’t mean it that way. I meant he's not an operative–he is what he appears to be. He works crew, it’s his job.”
“Uh huh. So why are you here?”
“Running.” It's 8:30 a.m. With the newborns who have come in, I've found my best time now is after they’re all fed and changed. They’re content for a while, and five miles is enough to center me without being exhausted.
“If you want exercise, ask to be reassigned to my division. You haul enough bags of mulch and pea stone, after hours of weeding, and you get all the workout you could ever want.”
“You try lifting toddlers all day.” I slip my sleeve up my shoulder. “Bet my guns match yours.”
The guy stops his mower. It's clear he sees us.
He smiles and waves.
“He's so creepy,” she says out of the corner of her mouth. “Why is he doing that?”
“Doing what, exactly?”
“Smiling. Waving. Why?”
“Maybe he's being friendly?”
“Why? Why would someone need to do that? We don't smile and wave on the compound.”
“People smile out there. It's how they greet people. It's a pleasantry.”
“It's exhausting.”
“It is?”
“Yes! How am I supposed to react? Do I smile and wave back? And if I do that, will he want to talk to me? I don't want to talk to him.”
“You can do whatever you want.”
“What I want is for him to stop!”
“Hi!” he shouts, waving but not coming closer.
“I don't think he's stopping, Janice. That's just how people are out there. Consider it an anthropological fact.”
“You know what else I don't like?” she mutters. “His technique.”
“Sloppy?”
“No,” she says, shoving her headphones back on. “He's neater than I am. He’s cutting the grass in that crisscross pattern.” With that, she revs the engine and takes off. Nothing makes us more upset than being bested at our job by someone else. We're primed to compete. Survival requires it. Janice can't turn off that trait inside herself.
Just like Callum and I can't stop elevating when we try to be intimate.
Every hair on the back of my neck suddenly goes crazy. Friendly Mower Guy is busy adding oil to his machine, so I know the source of my weirdness isn't him.
Someone is watching me.
I pivot and start running away from the fence, hoping my mind will clear itself on the last half of my run. It's nice to chat with Janice sometimes. I don't normally come out to the periphery like this. The fence has always seemed so imposing.
Now it's alluring. I know what's beyond those borders.
A shiver takes over, making me run faster, as if a predator were eyeing me, considering, sizing up and deciding.
I'll remove myself from its possible options.
As I reach the nursery building twenty minutes later, Philippa is at the door, panting as if she's the one who ran five miles and not me.
“What's wrong?” I ask her.
“Nothing's wrong. But there's another newborn.”
“More? Another one?”
I get a quick nod. I look down at my sweaty self.
“Let me shower.”
And increase the formula order, I think to myself.
14
Callum
That asshole is surveilling Kina.
Two nights in a row, McDuff has gone back to a rented trailer in an RV park, popped a beer, made some dinner on a small grill, and sat beside a fire pit to eat. He goes to bed at eleven after spending an hour on his laptop, and he's up at 4 a.m. for a morning run.
If I didn't already hate him, that alone would do it. When you're surveilling someone, their hours become yours.
And 4 a.m. is a bit extreme.
I get the sense that McDuff can be more than a bit extreme, though.
After his run, he showers, then drives to the access road, parking his car and walking to the equipment shed. He spends intermittent hours in it, in between mowing and weed whacking different sections of the water treatment plant property.
He's so damn boring.
Until he isn't.
The second I see him watching Kina, I want to cut his balls off with his broken femur's sharp edge and feed them to his nostrils. Why is he watching her?
And did he just wave at her?
Janice and Kina talk, hands gesturing, their words animated though I can't hear them. An extremely skeptical look at McDuff from Janice makes me stand, hand on my firearm.
Then she takes off on her mower, leaving Kina alone.
Until she breaks into a run for the compound's main area.
Watching her makes me hungry to touch her. It's a sunny day, with gauzy clouds in the sky stretched above us as if they have all the time in the world to hang out. To relax. To be. Nature lives according to a clock I envy, time elongated and without measure. No stress, no deadlines, no missions.
And as I watch Kina, I crave that kind of time. What would life be like if I could spend every waking second–and sleeping ones, too–with her?
The yearning turns physical, a pull in my chest and abs.
Long, lean legs with compact, defined muscles propel her forward, shoulders moving side to side, arms pumping. The contours of the bones of her face, her arms, her ribs, her hips, make her a pleasure to watch. I’ve been trained my whole life not to feel–that she makes me feel so much all at once is highly improbable.
But very true.
She's beauty in motion and for a split second, I'm distracted.
Until I realize she's running a little too fast.
Scared?
Why?
My attention jumps back to McDuff once she's out of view. For the next hour, he mows, but it's clear he's watching for Janice or Kina.
The guy is casing the fence. Waving to them.
Smiling.
He's gathering intel. Observing. Watching patterns.
Just like me.
But unlike me, he has no idea I'm watching him.
When Svetnu gives me the go-ahead to kill, I'll do it with relish.
Because this guy deserves to die.
15
Kina
My feet take me back to the same stretch of fence the next morning. For reasons I can’t explain, I feel closer to Callum when I run here. It's silly, I know. But seven months of nothing has me clinging to the margins of my own imagination.
I'm desperate for a feeling.
A feeling I only find when I think about Callum.
The dirt underneath my soles is like an old friend, always there, never judging. When I was out here yesterday with Janice, I felt freer than usual. Maybe it was the run. Maybe it was the conversation–a weird one, for sure, but one that somehow felt pretty mundane. Janice is broken and strange, but in a world where I have to constantly monitor my every word and protect myself from being manipulated, strange and weird can actually be a relief.