Necessary Pursuit (A Trinity Masters Novel)

by Lila Dubois

  Selene wanted to point out that love wasn’t truly love if it required change. Growing together and adapting, yes, but not one-sided change. She remained quiet, afraid he’d stop talking if she interrupted.

  “We fell apart and came back together five times over the course of twelve years.”

  Her eyebrows raised. “That is a long time.”

  He nodded. “When you’ve been together that long, I guess it’s easier to return to something comfortable, familiar.”

  “Is that why you continued dating her?”

  Oscar shook his head. “No. That’s why I think she kept dating me. I loved her. Loved her so much, I tattooed her damn name on my back.”

  She’d assumed the large tattoo, Faith, that was written across his back had been a declaration of spirituality.

  “She broke things off for good the night I’d planned to propose.”

  “Oh, Oscar. I’m sorry.” Selene was curious about a woman who would date a man twelve years if she was truly that unhappy with him. It seemed the height of cruelty to expect a man to change rather than to love him for who he was, and Selene found herself angry with a woman she’d never met.

  Oscar studied her face and sighed. “You have more questions. I can see it.”

  “I don’t wish to make you unhappy.”

  Oscar snorted. “If you ask my family, they’d say that was my normal state.”

  Selene considered that. Oscar was unlike any of the other men she had taken to her bed. She preferred adventurous, passionate lovers who saw sex as an outlet and an expression of self. In short, she preferred people with relatively few sexual hang-ups who were GGG—“good, giving, and game”—and didn’t take it too seriously. Oscar was gruff, and yes, she had noticed he was quick to anger, though not in a way that frightened her.

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  Oscar frowned and she could tell she’d surprised him with her observation. However, he recovered quickly. “Stick around a few more minutes and you’ll change your mind.”

  She gave him a smile. “I don’t believe I will.”

  His brows relaxed, giving his eyes a softer, less intense look. “So ask what you want to know.”

  “Her name was Faith?”

  He gave her a curious look, which she answered. “I’ve seen your tattoos, including the one on your back. I’d assumed you’d meant faith as a noun, but I can see now it is a name.”

  Oscar shrugged. “At least it’s on my back and my stupidity isn’t thrown in my face day after day.” He sighed, and Selene sensed he was working hard to center himself to calm down. “Have to admit I’m sort of partial to the name Selene. Goddess of the moon, right?”

  She smiled. “The original Titan goddess. Not one of the lame Greek hangers on. Though when I was in college—physics major with a minor in applied chemistry—I jokingly told people I was named after Selenium, the element. That I had to go into chemistry because of my name.”

  “And what is Selenium?”

  “A metalloid. Dangerous, but beautiful—it can be used as a pigment.”

  “Dangerous and beautiful? Suits you.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere,” she said, perfectly aware that she was flirting with him, while he was still attempting to change the subject.

  Oscar was a thorough, considerate lover, and while part of her longed for another night in his bed, there was a more realistic, practical side that issued a warning. In the past, she’d never been in a position to confuse physical attraction with affection, but there was something about Oscar that tugged at her heartstrings.

  “Everywhere, you say?” he asked suggestively.

  He had a slight Southern twang that Selene found extremely appealing, sexy. But she wasn’t going to let him distract her with that honey voice and sexy body.

  “Why would Faith accuse you of being angry all the time?”

  Oscar seemed somewhat surprised by that question. “Surely you’ve noticed I have a temper.”

  Selene blinked as she thought back over the past few days. His reactions had seemed perfectly reasonable in the face of what had been going on around them. “Not a particularly scary one.”

  If her question had surprised him, her response had shocked him outright.

  “Two years is a long time to harbor a broken heart, Oscar. Why haven’t you moved on?”

  He toyed with the label on the beer bottle and glanced over his shoulder. She suspected he was debating whether or not to have another.

  “Because I don’t blame her for leaving. Her reasons weren’t wrong. And they won’t be wrong with the next woman. It’s just…I’m not…” Oscar rubbed his hands over his beard. Selene had observed him doing the same thing several times, typically whenever he was thinking, tired or, like now, frustrated. “I’m not like my brothers and Sylvie. I don’t wear my heart on my damn sleeve, and I suck at saying sweet shit.”

  Selene fought not to grin, aware that Oscar might take her humor badly. She attempted but failed to force a more serious expression. “And Faith wanted you to compose her poems, write songs about her?”

  Oscar realized she was joking and barked out a loud laugh. “Not exactly. I think she would have been okay if I’d just…fuck…I don’t know…talked to her. She said I was emotionally distant. That the only emotion I was capable of expressing was anger.”

  “Anger is far from a dispassionate emotion.”

  Oscar nodded slowly. “Yeah. Well, I lost my shit the night she told me it was over for good. I told her she should know how I felt about her. I mean, Jesus, she was fucking everything to me.”

  “I’m guessing the,” she repeated his words, “‘lost my shit’ response didn’t help your case.”

  “All it did was prove her right.” He blew out a long, harsh breath. “We got into the biggest fight we’d ever had. Ended with her storming out. She left me alone with a hole in my heart and a useless diamond in my pocket.”

  Selene reached across the island, placing her hand on top of his. He turned his over, grasping hers to hold, giving it a squeeze before he released it.

  “And there’s been no one since?”

  He shook his head and she could see him shutting down, pulling away from the conversation. And her.

  “And Faith is the reason you didn’t want to join the Trinity Masters?”

  “I rejected joining the cult because I don’t like taking orders, and I’m not planning on getting married. I’m no good at relationships and not looking for love.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  Oscar didn’t appear to hear her rejection of his reasoning. Instead, he said, “I prefer my life the way it is. Falling in love means giving someone control over you, and I’m not doing that again.”

  “Is it about control, or love?”

  “They’re the same thing,” he shot back.

  Selene raised an eyebrow, but he wasn’t looking at her.

  He was quiet for a moment, then said, “The way Langston and Sylvia and even you talk about these arranged marriages, I can tell that even if falling in love isn’t necessarily an expectation, it’s a hope most members seem to have.”

  “I suppose it is.”

  “And now that I’ve been shanghaied into this cult, I have to hope,” he stressed the word, “that whoever is placed in an arranged marriage with me doesn’t expect me to fall in love with them.” He straightened, still not looking at her. “Because I had the love of my life, and losing her hurt too fucking much.”

  Chapter Three

  “Sir, ma’am, we need you to move to a more secure room.”

  Oscar sat bolt upright, jerked from sleep by the calm but brisk tone of the guard. He glanced over at Selene, who was rolling over, her hair a mess around her face. Oscar yanked the sheet up to make sure she stayed covered.

  The two of them had ventured to the larger of the two bedrooms after their conversation in the kitchen, moving their luggage into the master bedroom by tacit agreement. He’d left home just over a
week ago, expecting to spend a few nights in Boston bailing Langston’s ass out of trouble. He’d stayed afterward to spend time with Selene, and when it had been just them in the hotel, the fact that he hadn’t packed much hadn’t mattered.

  Then the camera had turned on. And his and Selene’s vague comments about both needing to get home were forgotten.

  Their current situation meant more time in each other’s company, and Oscar wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. His attraction to the beautiful physicist continued to grow the more he got to know her. What had started out as merely sexual chemistry was quickly turning into something akin to friends…with benefits.

  “I need you up,” said the guard, who he could now see was Wayne. “Right now.”

  “We need clothes.” Selene was propped up on an elbow, holding the sheet over her chest with the other hand.

  “No, ma’am. You need to move to a more secure room.”

  Oscar swung his legs off the bed, not giving a fuck about his own nudity. His shirt and boxers were on the floor, and he grabbed them, though he didn’t have time to pull them on. Selene rolled across the bed to get out on his side, reaching for her glasses on the nightstand. She tried to bring the sheet with her, but when it wouldn’t come untucked, she dropped it. Modesty was far less important than safety.

  Both naked, they followed the guard through the dark house. As they tiptoed down the stairs, Oscar caught sight of the second guard, Bill, standing beside a window in the front room, carefully positioned in shadow. Outside, the sky was a deep gray; it had to be close to dawn, but there was a blanket of heavy-looking clouds that meant it was still fairly dark.

  A laptop was open on the floor near Bill’s feet, the screen tilted so that he could see it.

  “What’s going on?” Oscar whispered.

  Wayne didn’t reply right away, instead leading them down the hallway. He opened the basement door, the well-oiled hinges silent.

  “There’s a vehicle with a lone occupant on approach. It passed by several times before finally turning onto the driveway.”

  “Who is it?” Selene asked. “Can you see?”

  “Not yet.” Wayne nudged Oscar down the steps into the basement. When Wayne reached for Selene, Oscar grabbed her, pulling her in with him before the other man could touch her.

  “When the vehicle is in range of the main camera net, we may be able to. The distance cameras are infrared, so all we know is it’s a single occupant.”

  “What are you going to do?” Oscar demanded.

  “Our job…protect you.” Wayne closed the basement door.

  With the door closed, the basement was pitch black.

  “Fuck,” Oscar snarled as he started feeling around on the walls for a light switch. When he hit it, the cavernous room was lit by a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling of the space below where they stood, at the top of the stairs.

  “Do you think it’s safe to have a light on?” Selene asked. Her lovely body was haloed by the dim glow.

  Oscar passed her his shirt. “It’s an interior, underground room. Also, if he didn’t want the light on, he should have given us a fucking flashlight.”

  Selene slipped on the shirt, then started down the stairs. The basement was unfinished, more cellar than useable room.

  Oscar followed her down, slipping on his boxers when he reached the bottom. No more than three minutes had passed since Wayne had woken them up, but the peaceful night’s sleep he’d been having with Selene by his side seemed hours ago.

  After revealing more than he’d intended about his relationship with Faith, the two of them had moved upstairs to the bedroom. He wasn’t sure who had made the first move. Maybe they’d both shifted closer at the same time. All he knew was, one second, they were unpacking the few clothes they had in their possession, and the next, they were naked on the bed, kissing and touching as if their lives depended on it.

  Oscar was no stranger to one-night, even two-night stands, and while he knew they were in serious danger and this was far from a vacation, he was unnaturally happy to have this time with Selene. He wasn’t anxious for it to come to an end. Which was ridiculous, considering the very deadly threat to their lives.

  “Do you think it’s Luca?” she asked.

  “I think we should assume so and be pleasantly surprised when it’s not,” he snapped.

  Selene merely raised an eyebrow, the corner of her mouth twitching. “Is something wrong, Oscar? You’re normally so easygoing and sunny…”

  “Ha. Ha.” Actually, her teasing did help him relax. He’d warned her about his temper, yet his gruff tone didn’t seem to bother—or even faze—Selene.

  They were silent for a moment, both straining to hear anything. In the silence, he started to work through the possibilities and iterations of what could be happening.

  And the more he thought about it, the more he second-guessed the current plan of hiding in the basement.

  “If it is Luca…” He glanced at Selene.

  Her brow was furrowed. “He said their job was to protect us. But shouldn’t the priority be to take Luca into custody?”

  “Exactly what I was fucking thinking.” Oscar scrubbed his hands over his face. “If he gets out of the car with a gun—”

  “More likely a bomb.”

  “—will they kill him to keep us safe?”

  “And if they do, our chance at answers about that bomb dies with him.”

  They glanced at each other and then both bolted for the stairs.

  The guard by the window, Bill, glanced over when they emerged from the basement, his gaze hard. He gestured emphatically for them to go back down the stairs.

  Oscar ignored him and ran at a crouch through the living room, scooping up the laptop from the floor before Bill could stop him. Cradling it with one arm, he ran back to Selene. Together, they looked at the camera feeds displayed on the computer.

  A nondescript car sat about fifty yards from the house. The farmhouse, owned by Bennett Security, was regularly used as a safe house, so it had cameras set up around the perimeter. One of those cameras was capturing this feed. Because the car was still a fair distance from the camera, the picture was grainy.

  Despite that, they could see the driver, who had both hands on the wheel, and as they watched, he bowed his head.

  “Tired? Praying?” Selene whispered.

  Wayne, who Bill must have signaled to come back downstairs to deal with them, clamped a hand on Oscar’s shoulder. “Sir, you need to get back in the basement, where you’re—”

  “What are you going to do with him?” Selene demanded. “We need information from him.”

  “Information?” Wayne frowned.

  “Fuck, they’re not members of the cult, so they weren’t told shit.”

  “What cult?” Wayne demanded.

  “The fucking cult I just joined like a moron.”

  Selene put her hand against his back, rubbing it in a circle, while addressing Wayne. “The man you’re protecting us from may have answers we need.”

  “About a cult?” Wayne asked.

  “Ignore the cult comment. He wakes up grumpy.”

  Oscar snickered at her comment. It was rare for someone to not only find his gruffness inoffensive, but funny. Selene not only didn’t care when he snapped, she found a way to make him laugh.

  “We need you to capture him,” Selene told Wayne. “But be careful because he may be wearing a bomb.”

  In the silvery blue light that filtered in through the windows, Oscar thought he saw Wayne’s face go pale.

  “You want us to capture a suicide bomber?”

  “What?” Bill hissed, turning away from the window. “There was no mention of a suicide bomber.”

  “This…this is what secrecy gets us.” Oscar kept his attention on the laptop. The man-who-might-be-Luca still sat in the driver’s seat, bent over the wheel.

  Selene hastily explained. “We don’t know that he’s a suicide bomber. All we know is he kidnapped a woman
and put a bomb vest on her.”

  “If you think the assailant is in possession of an explosive, we need to fall back and—”

  “Your only orders are to protect us?” Selene demanded.

  “Yes, ma’am, which is why—”

  Selene dashed down the hall. Unlike Oscar, she didn’t bother to crouch when running across the parlor. Bill lunged for her but missed.

  “Fuck,” Oscar and Wayne snarled almost in unison as they leapt up to follow her.

  Selene was already at the front door. Hand on the knob, she glanced back. “Please make sure I don’t die.”

  Then she opened the door and stepped out onto the porch.

  Selene stood in the doorway, silhouetted by moonlight, her feet bare and her lovely, long, naked legs making her seem fragile. Vulnerable. His heart thumped its way to his throat, making it difficult for him to breathe, to swallow. Fear kicked in as he played out all the ways this could go very, very wrong. He envisioned the way her body would jerk with the force of the shot and then drop, crumpling into a heap, her blood pooling under her, long black hair forming a halo around her beautiful, angelic face.

  Jesus, now was not the time to have a morbid poetry moment. That kind of stuff was Sylvia’s territory. He was the one who kept everyone safe and in check.

  Selene was neither at the moment, yet he was out of his element here.

  He preferred digital battles. The closest he’d ever come to combat was when he’d seen Franco get shot. The image of watching the man go down, the blood, Juliette’s cries, it had all come back to him too many times since. Bullets struck fast, and if they hit their target, there was fuck-all anyone could do to stop the destruction.

  Oscar was hampered by the fact that he still held the computer with one arm, so it was Wayne who grabbed the back of the T-shirt Oscar had loaned her and yanked Selene back inside.

  “Wait, he was getting out of the car!”

  “Call it in,” Wayne snapped at Bill while hauling Selene toward the basement door. “The situation is FUBAR.”