GRIT

by Elle Cross

  As if in response, his aura flickered white, mingled peppermint and mountain frost. It breathed over me, tickled me, made my skin dance and the muscles in my stomach and legs tighten and clench.

  I was fire and ice.

  Did he know the effect he had on me?

  He smiled, slow and sensuous as if in answer. Like he knew that his every breath licked a cool trail up my legs, and lingered like a petal soft kiss between them. A thrilling contrast to the liquid heat that gathered there.

  "So, dinner tonight, Ms. Tallinn?"

  I nodded my head, and gasped out, "Yes," when I felt a particularly insistent jolt course through me.

  I got to my feet immediately. Luckily, my hair hadn't been wound tightly around his finger, not that I would have felt a lock of it being pulled out by the roots at this point.

  If he thought my behavior odd, he didn't mention it.

  He stood up as well, the play of snow and frost around him darkened to its usual cloak of storm clouds and lightning.

  I'd forgotten how tall and imposing he was.

  "I should probably go." I straightened my dress, and started backing up toward his office door. "Thank you for letting me barge in here and ramble at you about stuff."

  What the hell was with me and that word lately?

  "My pleasure." The deep thrum of his voice vibrated throughout my entire body, liquefying my core. My clit throbbed with every beat of my heart.

  I needed to get out of there fast.

  I turned on my heel and marched out of his office. By the gray tendrils that I saw out of my periphery, I knew he was right behind me.

  I prayed that he wouldn't insist on escorting me down like he had yesterday. I'd likely melt the entire building. I jabbed at the elevator button, and thankfully it didn't take forever to arrive this time.

  "Balin," Deimos called out.

  Lords Above, if I could only unhear that voice. Every word out of his mouth hummed perfectly against my body.

  "I have an unfortunately timed meeting. Please make sure Ms. Tallinn is secure in one of my cars." Then, he studied my face.

  I hoped I was shielding a lot better than what I felt right now. Because if he so much as touched me, I'd have an orgasm right here in front of everyone, and I'd be too blissed out to be embarrassed by it.

  "Don't work too hard, Ms. Tallinn. I'll follow up on a few things on my end, reach out to your Detective Troy. Then I will see you tonight, yes?"

  "Yes," I breathed out.

  His half smile held a promise. I wondered if I had the strength to endure it. I stepped woodenly back into the elevator car, unable to tear my gaze away from his eyes, which were tinged red and gold in this light. Luckily the doors closed before I could make a fool of myself and fling myself at him. Make him work that mouth on my body.

  In no time, the doors opened to the black marble foyer. Balin led me by my elbow, just a light touch. I was happy that I was able to contain myself, that I didn't spontaneously combust or become a writhing succubus at just anyone else's touch or presence.

  He settled me in the back seat, showed me the controls, and how the passenger cabin had complete and total privacy if I needed to have confidential conversations for business. Then, he told the driver the address and directions to my office.

  The driver maneuvered the sleek car into traffic. Over the speaker, he mentioned that if I needed anything, I just had to press the intercom button. He expected that it would take a good thirty minutes, since traffic was a bear today.

  When was it not a bear through skyscraper alley?

  My guilt pricked at me, and I wondered if I should just ask him to pull over and I'd catch a subway. The express would probably get me there faster.

  Then I remembered who he worked for. Asking the driver to deviate from a specific order wouldn't be doing him a favor.

  I fiddled with my tablet and sent a message to Megan to let her know that I was on my way to the office.

  After a few minutes, though, the ride became hypnotic. I was cocooned and sheltered, like I was in an odd bubble out of time. Like this moment would stretch into forever while I was in this car.

  The hushed privacy of this passenger cabin, hidden behind black tinted glass and sound-deadened partition, I ran my left hand up my thigh. I lingered for a moment, before I moved between my legs. My panties were soaked, and it was nothing to slip my fingers underneath them, part my folds, and work the slick heat over my clit.

  Deimos.

  His look.

  His words.

  The feel of them against my skin.

  How they electrified the air.

  Vibrated against me.

  I orgasmed easily, finding release even as I bit my lip against shouting out his name.

  I was still restless. I let myself linger and play over another wave of pleasure, circling my fingers light and quick around my clit before pushing down harder, adding pressure, skimming over and over again until I gasped out another orgasm, my hips rocking against the intensity.

  Lords Above, what would that mouth feel like against my body?

  I rolled my nipple between my fingers with my other hand, my left hand still wrenching mini orgasms out of me, building into one final release that arched my back, had me panting and seeing stars.

  Delicious shockwaves of pleasure still jolted through me throughout the rest of the car ride, until we arrived in front of my office.

  I checked the time as the driver came around to my door to open it for me.

  9:50 A.M.

  It was going to be a long day.

  I strode into my office and the first thing I saw was Megan's too-blinky eyes and her stretched out smile. "Hey boss, it's a beautiful day outside, isn't it a beautiful day?"

  Megan was a study in contrasts. Raunchy, sexting nympho one moment, someone who could lead story time the next. She became all kindergarten teacher when she tiptoed around bad news.

  I mentally braced myself for the kid glove treatment. It was easier than avoiding it.

  "Yes it's beautiful. Any pressing concerns today?"

  She shook her head, her dark bob swishing around her face. Her eyes were large and liquid. Her delicate pixie face belied a vulnerability behind her facial piercings and sleeves of tattoos. Her petite, waspish figure fit her personality, all sharp and buzzing.

  She couldn't stop fidgeting over her paperwork.

  I sighed, put my bag down on the chair across from her desk and held my arms out. She shimmied into them immediately and clasped her skinny arms around me. I was immediately engulfed in her signature fragrance of violet and sandalwood. For someone who did more flirting than working out at the gym, her grip was surprisingly strong.

  "I hope Jack’s okay. I can't believe that something like that could happen to someone I know."

  "It'll be fine. Corbin's on it, and has the best people on it. Before we know it, Jack'll be back. Until then, why don't we keep ourselves busy and maybe give him some stories about our wild adventures when he comes back, yes?"

  She gave me a watery smile and nodded. "You're right, absolutely right, boss." She sniffled, nose twitching like a bunny's, the diamond in her nose piercing glinting with the movements. "Oh! I meant to tell you earlier. You got a bunch of phone calls, mostly client referrals and all that jazz," she said flipping her wrist out to a pile of little notes and scraps of papers that had accumulated on my desk while I was gone for a day. Then, she scurried to her spiral notebook on her desk, the one she wrote in for important messages and clients she didn't want to forget.

  I'd long since given up trying to tell her how to manage the office.

  Her eyes had a hint of her trademark sass, and it was nice to see it there. Sorrow didn't work on her pixie face.

  She tore out a piece of the notebook paper and waved it around like a prized flag. "You have a very important message from a very important person. Like, big time impor-tant-e!"

  I giggled in spite of myself, and was happy I hadn’t called off sick on her
after all. "Very Important Person, huh? Do tell." I grabbed it from her fingers. I didn't have to read the entire page to see keywords pop up in her calligraphic script.

  Janus.

  Deimos.

  Dinner appointment.

  Call.

  Megan was at my side, squealing, her perpetually cold fingers clamped to my forearm. "Did you see it, did you see?"

  I didn't want to spoil the surprise that I already knew about my appointment with Deimos. Just thinking about it made my stomach all fluttery. I wondered if this was what school girl crushes felt like.

  "Okay, okay, I gotta tell you! Some time yesterday, this really nice lady called and started talking at me, trying to get a hold of you, yaddayadda, and I was all, 'Well, I'm not at liberty to disclose Ms. Tallinn's phone number, but if you give me a message, I will ensure she receives it.' And then she said, 'Understandable, if you could please let me know when Ms. Tallinn would be available, I would like to make an appointment for Mr. Deimos.' I about died on the phone. Died, I tell you! Isn't that awesome, tell me that's not awesome?"

  I bit my lip, smiling at her enthusiasm. "Well, I don't know what I'm surprised with more, that he’d tracked me down, or that you could sound so professional."

  "Ha, ha. Anyway," she said, unfazed by quip. "I told her that you would be back in the office today, but you wouldn't be available until after two o'clock." She punctuated the last part. "So, she said she would confer with Mr. Deimos and call back with a solid timeframe." She bounced up and down at this last part, she was so excited.

  Megan's energy was contagious. I didn’t want to burst her bubble to let her know that I’d stopped by the Black Tower earlier and now had a dinner appointment with Deimos. "I'm happy you're pleased with yourself. One question, though. If I wasn’t free until after two, who are my morning appointments?"

  I scoured my tablet now just to double-check the office calendars. My schedule seemed wide open.

  "Well," Megan started. "I didn't want them to think that you had all this free time just lounging around, because you don't! I had to rearrange all kinds of appointments, many of which were on the books for like a year."

  I liked how she could make office scheduling turn into an epic Norse saga.

  "I actually just got off the phone finalizing your eleven o'clock."

  I stopped sorting through some papers and files to look at her. "You didn't...auction off...that time slot, did you?" Megan hadn't been exaggerating about the scheduling. It usually took some Cirque du Soleil acrobatics to change things around during an unexpected schedule change. Sometimes, though, clients got very persuasive with Megan, and she'd learned to ride the line between profiting from the clients and perhaps allowing herself to be sweet-talked.

  She just gave me a look. "Of course not. Have a little more faith in me and in my selling skills. I merely suggested that perhaps the eleven o'clock would be best suited for so and so, and the other person would be so much happier waiting to speak with you next week." She shrugged and flitted off.

  I wasn't going to pry any further than that. What Megan did to keep the agency operations running was pure magic to me, so I'd told myself not to pry unless I saw like bloody heads in her purse or something. I moved to the back of the office, which was a converted bedroom, and sighed at the oasis of my desk, the antique wood polished and gleaming. It was a comfort to see.

  Without being asked, Megan came in with my favorite thermos full of my coffee. She thrust a box full of sweets at me, too.

  "I gotcha some paczkis, boss, crème filled! Max took 'em right off the sheet just before you got here. Thought you could use some sugar." She yammered off more odds and ends that she thought were important from yesterday before flitting off to make a fresh pot of coffee for the clients and skipped downstairs to get some more pastries from Max.

  I must have seemed in a bad way if even Megan wanted to take care of my sugar needs.

  I looked at the time. It was just after ten, and I might as well fuel up before my eleven o'clock.

  The public face of my office was this cute second level walk-up, above Max's pastries. It was in a delightful neighborhood on the West Side, where people abhorred huge, corporate Big-Box types, and went out of their way to support local, entrepreneurial businesses.

  It was also a lovely way to operate a business without having a security guard or cameras. I'd learned a few things since my days operating out of my SoHo loft. But, my clients still needed a measure of anonymity.

  With Max below, I felt more secure than ever. Especially since his mother had an arsenal of black market weapons that she dealt out of the back of their deep freeze.

  Also, she loved Megan and me, made us call her Babcia, found us woefully underweight, and had made it her personal mission to stuff us full of pastries and coffee at all times. "Men don't want bones, kochanie...they want something to hold on to."

  I'd also bought and converted a townhouse to use as my own personal office space. It was nestled in the midst of townhouses, in the block catty corner from this one. My neighbors thought I worked way too much, and traveled for business, which was why I was rarely seen in that neighborhood.

  I never took clients there. Megan knew that was one of my sacred rules. No clients in my private office, period. Even if they were well-trusted or repeat business. The private space was just for me. Well, she and Corbin were of course included, but no one else.

  Not even Jack knew about that space. He only knew this public front.

  Jack.

  My chest tightened.

  I needed to move. To keep busy. Since Corbin had my phone, I fired off an email to her and let her know where I was and to call the office if she found anything. I wanted to start my own background search for Owen, but didn't know where to start.

  I highly suspected that there had to be a connection there with their adoptions. Both Corbin and Owen's history were so remarkably similar. And given some of Owen’s last memories, and how he was somehow forced into some kinky activities that did not look consensual, and knowing what I knew about what Corbin’s adoptive parents had planned for her…I couldn't help feeling that there was a connection.

  Megan came back from Max's, and called out from the kitchenette. "I'll need to finish some things, but I should be ready by the time the eleven o'clock comes in." I could hear her skipping back to her desk, managing files, and hunting down any mention of me on the Internet and killing it.

  Yeah, I also didn't know how someone so creative and colorful could be into all that computer stuff, all of which was a complete mystery to me.

  I stared at the search prompt, the cursor blinking at me, taunting me almost.

  "Hey, Megan?" I called out.

  "Yeah, boss?"

  "Can you come here for a minute...if you're not too busy?"

  She was in my office and sitting before I had even finished asking.

  "What's up, boss?" She was perched on the edge of her seat, her legs bouncing as the top half of her leaned forward hugging her notebook to her chest.

  I indicated to close the door, like we weren't alone in that office or anything.

  "Ooh, top secret time, what's going on?" Her eyes were lit up with keen interest. She bounced from her seat to the door and back again faster than I could blink. She curled her legs under her, as still as I’ve ever seen her.

  Not for the first time, I wondered what Megan would look like if she were outfitted with wings. Thinking about her with buzzing wings and flying around the office doing her job seemed right.

  I took a deep breath, curling my fingers around my coffee tumbler. "Okay. You've got to promise, and I mean promise that whatever I tell you here, you won't tell anyone else."

  Her eyes grew even larger, taking up half her face. "Of course, boss, never ever do I tell anyone about anything that goes on here anyway."

  Then I looked her dead in the eyes. "Not even Corbin."

  The silence was palpable. I swore I heard her blink.

  "Not even
Corbin?" she breathed. Then she looked behind her, as if Corbin were some boogeyman about to bust down the door.

  "Not even Corbin," I confirmed. "It's not technically illegal...or maybe it is, I'm not really up to date with privacy laws—"

  "Psh, boss," Megan flicked her wrist at me. "Like I care about that stuff. I know that Corbin can be kinda uptight about stuff like that, so I don't ever tell her about my information sources anyway."

  It was my turn to be surprised. I blinked at her revelation. "Wait, what?"

  "Oh, Corbin asks me without asking me to find information all the time. But, you know, legal mumbo jumbo and stuff, she can't like know how I obtained these anonymous sources and all that. See, you didn't know I did that till now, didja?" She put her little hands on her hips, and puffed out her chest like she was a little superhero.

  And she was.

  I shook my head and giggled. "Well, okay, I see this is actually going to be easier than I thought." I pushed a file toward her on my desk. It was full of pictures, scrap pieces of paper, notes, anything physical that I could get my hands on about Corbin's ‘adoptive parents.’ "I need information about Owen Sanderson's past.”

  She lit up, her fragrance changing to a sparkling strawberries in champagne. "Oh, Corbin's case!”

  “I have this old case, though, that I feel would have a link to it. I figured maybe this would add new information into the search strings." I lifted up the file as an offering.

  Curious, she grabbed the folder, and started leafing through it. It had old headlines about an orphanage in Eastern Europe in there as well. "Aw, poor little kidlets, that's absolutely—" then she gasped big and loud. "That's Corbin! And, wait. Is that you?"

  She looked back at me and her wide, shocked eyes consuming most of her face now.

  I nodded, since that was an easier way for me to answer than not. "I have this really odd feeling that somehow what happened to Owen was the same fate that was planned for some of the girls at that orphanage."

  Those final images that Owen shared with me fluttered open in my mind. I had to focus harder than usual to get those final images buried under ice and snow.