My Super Sexy Spy

by Doyle, S.

  “Holy shit! Hold on, baby. I’m coming.”

  But first, I was going to need a weapon.

  * * *

  Liam

  “Are you done yet?” I asked through swollen and split lips. Dmitri had been whaling on me for hours. Hitting me until I blacked out. Giving me smelling salts to wake me up only to start hitting me again with his brass-knuckle-covered fists.

  I had two broken fingers. A couple cracked ribs. A nose that would probably never look right again. My eyes were swollen, but I could see the open warehouse space where he’d brought me had gotten darker as the hours passed. Add to that, my hands felt numb where the zip ties he’d used to secure my wrists cut into the skin.

  But none of that mattered.

  I’d told Beth I was going out to get coffee and I never came back. Not a word. Not a signal. There would be absolutely no reason for her to think I’d run into Dmitri the Douchebag in the States. Everyone had already told her the situation with her father was over. That she was safe.

  At least his anger was directed toward me and not her. He wanted to inflict some pain. He wanted to feel like a big man again because Marta had said she liked my dick better than his.

  And I’d never even fucked the woman.

  “Done?” Dmitri asked, sitting on a backwards facing chair in front of me. “My friend, I’m just getting started.”

  “Look, you and I both know you’re not going to kill me. It would cause too many bureaucratic headaches. My agency would discover you’re in the country and all those opportunities you have—I’m sure with the Russian mob—would dry up like dust.”

  It hurt to talk because every time I did the skin of my swollen bottom lip ripped a little more.

  “This is probably true, but I have many more ways I can cause you pain.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, but look, could you just hurry it along? Beth probably thinks I bailed on her again and every hour that passes where she doesn’t realize I was kidnapped and tortured is another hour I’m going to need to grovel to make it up to her.”

  “Ah yes, your woman. She will think you ghosted her. That is the term, yes? Excellent. This also causes you pain, so I am glad.”

  “Sure, but if you’re not going to kill me, eventually she’s going to realize this wasn’t my fault. I’m just trying to speed that up.”

  He lifted his hands in the air, exasperated. “You can’t rush an artist.”

  “How about this? I’ll tell you the name of the place where I got my dick pierced. You said Marta was all into it. The woman who did it was gentle, too. Didn’t hurt even a little.”

  He looked at me skeptically. “This is true?”

  Of course it wasn’t true. It hurt like a sonofabitch and I couldn’t fuck for months.

  “Absolutely.”

  He eyed me critically. “You do look like shit.”

  “And I hurt, man,” I said, inflating his ego. “You really worked me over hard. I’m not going to feel right for weeks.”

  He seemed to consider that. Then he looked at his swollen knuckles. “I have to take a piss. Then I will come back and decide if you’ve had enough.”

  Awesome. He got up from his chair and walked to the other side of the space. There was an office in a corner, and, behind that, there must have been a toilet. With him temporarily gone I considered any options I had for escape, but the zip ties weren’t budging, and the reality was, I didn’t have the energy.

  Suddenly there was a break in the darkness, and I heard the squeak of a door opening. Then, like a mirage, I watched as Beth looked around the open warehouse until her gaze finally landed on me.

  “Liam!” she cried softly, then came running toward me. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Look at your face.”

  “Beth, get out now! Dmitri has a gun and a Taser. He’s just gone to take a piss. He’ll be back in a second!”

  She turned and looked in the direction of the office where the only light was coming from.

  “Don’t worry. I got this.” She dropped a kiss on my forehead. Then she took off on her sneakered shoes and I watched her virtually blend into the darkness. And I’d never been more scared, not on any mission ever, than I was in that moment.

  * * *

  Beth

  You can do this. You can do this. As quietly as I could, I snuck into the office and listened as Dmitri…was talking to his penis?

  “Yes, it might hurt you, but this piercing will be very attractive to the women. I will look like a sex god and Marta will take me back. I am certain. And you, my friend, will heal in time.”

  Taking advantage of his somewhat vulnerable situation, I jumped at the chance to catch him, literally, with his pants down. I quietly came up behind him and pushed my weapon into his back.

  “Hands up, Dmitri. Slowly.”

  “Beth!” he said, craning his neck to see who had snuck up on him even as he lifted his hands in the air. “How are you? Good to see you. Very tricky you were with credit card just being a normal credit card.”

  “Yeah, well, you guys sort of ran with that,” I said as I pulled the gun out of the back of his jeans and used that instead of the weapon I’d brought with me. “Did you do that to Liam’s face?”

  “He embarrassed me. I needed to prove my point. But I was basically done with him. He was all worried about you thinking he ditched you. Wanted me to beat him up faster to get it over with. I think it might be love, Beth.”

  “Just start walking. And put your dick away. Slowly and with one hand,” I said, shoving the gun against his back.

  “Could you look at it and tell me if you think a piercing would improve it?”

  “I’m not looking at your penis! I have a boyfriend.”

  Fairly docile, Dmitri stuffed it back into his briefs and walked into the warehouse space without any more prodding from me.

  Liam was hopping his chair forward incrementally, hissing in pain every time he did.

  “Liam, stop,” I said. “You’re hurting yourself. Dmitri, release him.”

  “You are so lucky, my friend. Your girlfriend is a true hero to come rescue you,” Dmitri said as he pulled out a pair of scissors, which I probably should have taken from him, and started cutting through the plastic ties.

  Liam looked at me as I struggled to remember that I should probably keep the gun pointed at Dmitri.

  “What the fuck is that in your hand?”

  “His gun,” I said.

  “Your other hand!”

  I lifted my left hand up and showed him my curling iron. “What? It’s the only thing I had that I thought might pass for a gun. And it worked.”

  “Not really,” Dmitri said. “I knew you were not armed, but I had decided that Liam had suffered enough.”

  Dmitri cut through the ties and Liam sprang toward me, taking the gun from my hand and swirling it on Dmitri like it was an extension of his hand.

  “It is okay,” Dmitri said, as if he were somehow offended by what Liam did. “We are now even, no?”

  “You mangled my face and I never even fucked Marta,” Liam told him.

  But I, for one, was done for the night. Having spent an emotional day thinking Liam just left me, all I wanted to do was go home and snuggle under the covers. After cleaning up Liam’s face, of course.

  “Liam, let’s just go.”

  He looked at me then. “You know I wouldn’t just leave you like that, right? That’s why you came looking for me.”

  He said it with such conviction, I almost wished it was true. “Well, there might have been a moment or two of doubt.”

  His bloody face fell a little bit, but then he seemed resigned to the idea. “It just means I’ve still got work to do to convince you I’m sticking around.”

  “Good luck, you two,” Dmitri said with a careless wave as he walked to the same door where I’d come in. “Send me an invitation to the wedding.”

  The door closed behind him and Liam let his arm holding the gun drop. As if any strength he’d had was now suddenly gone. />
  “Do you need to go to the hospital?”

  He looked at his fingers, which were crooked in a way I knew meant broken. “Let’s see if we can hit an urgent care. They’ll set my fingers and my nose and not ask as many questions.”

  “Is this what it was like to be a spy?” I asked him, even as I winced in empathy pain as he held his ribs while he walked toward the door.

  “Ex-spy,” he hissed. “Oh, and on the way to that urgent care…we’re stopping at Starbucks and getting you a fucking macchiato.”

  I smiled. Because when my man said he was going to get me coffee…

  He got me coffee.

  Epilogue

  Somewhere in the South Pacific

  Beth

  “Falling in love is a lot like traveling to someplace wonderful. It hits all your senses. At first, you’re amazed how beautiful everything is, but then as you explore and learn, what you’re seeing becomes something you actually feel. Inside you. And because of the beauty in your mind and in your heart, the world, in general, feels better. Food is tastier. Water quenches more than thirst…”

  “That’s hot, kitten,” Liam said, dropping a kiss on my bare shoulder after reading what I’d just typed. “It’s going to make a great book.”

  Yeah, after Liam’s face and ribs had recovered, after he’d called an old colleague of his and decided to take up contract security work, after he’d moved in with me, he’d urged me to contact one of the legit editors in New York who’d reached out to me previously, and give the book thing a try.

  I did. Now we were on an island in the South Pacific. I was wearing a bikini, my nose ring and a rock on my left hand. Taking selfies with my fiancé and crystal blue water in the background like I’d just invented the concept of selfies.

  Our plan. To work, write, travel the world together…and have eternal hot monkey sex.

  “It’s not supposed to be hot,” I told him, slapping his six-pack abs. Had I ever thought of him as skinny? “It’s supposed to be decent writing. But it needs work.”

  “Kitten, your work is hot. It’s why I messaged you in the first place. Yes, I was reading your blogs to research you, but the whole Leigh thing was really just an impulse.”

  I pouted. “I still miss her.”

  “I’m right here. Let it go!”

  Leaning over, I gave him a peck on the lips to let him know I forgave him. Basically, I forgave him every day because loving him was way more fun than hating on him.

  “Anyway,” he continued. “My point is that I only made a comment because…well, I don’t know. I read it and thought, yeah. That’s what that place feels like to me, too.”

  I shut my laptop and tossed it on the beach blanket protecting us from the sand. “You mean that? I really reached you, even before you knew me?”

  “I was half in love already when I met you.”

  “You called me flat chested when you first met me!” I reminded him.

  “Because I wanted your attention on me, not Dmitri the Douchebag.”

  “Such a Douchebag. Why does he keep sending us postcards from all over the United States?”

  “I think he thinks we’re his friends,” Liam explained. “I think, in a weird sort of way, we are.”

  I huffed. “Friends with a guy who kidnapped me. Fiancé to a spy who lied to me.”

  “And loved you,” Liam reminded me.

  I smiled. “And loved me.”

  Once upon a time, all I wanted was to be normal. Turns out, my life was way more adventurous than something as simple as normal.

  And I couldn’t be happier about that.

  * * *

  Hey reader! Hope you enjoyed My Super Sexy Spy. I had a blast writing it. Another story I loved writing…Mostly My Boss. Turn the page to read an excerpt…

  Mostly My Boss

  Now

  Therapy

  Julia

  The office smelled like lavender. A diffuser no doubt. Something that might put the occupants at ease without them even realizing that was happening. I was not fooled. He wasn’t here yet. Typical. So I took a seat as the older woman—late fifties, early sixties maybe, perfectly dressed complete with hair and makeup—sat in a comfortable chair across from mine. I knew her name was Carol.

  I appreciated the clean esthetic of the office. A desk and a computer behind her. Three comfortable but sturdy leather chairs situated in the center of the room. A bookshelf filled with books but no knickknacks to make the room feel cluttered.

  “Can I get you coffee? Tea? Water?” the woman asked as she directed her gaze to a small area designated for that purpose: a mini fridge, a counter with a coffeepot and kettle.

  I was about to decline when she started rattling off her tea menu.

  “The vanilla orchid sounds delicious,” I said with a tight smile.

  Prepping the tea would give her something to do while we waited. A way to cover for the fact that Ethan was late. Which wasn’t my responsibility anymore. No more making sure he was on time for things. So no reason for me to feel antsy, which is what I’d always felt when Ethan was late, and it was my responsibility to get him someplace.

  Not my responsibility anymore.

  A few minutes later she came back with a large white mug filled with steaming tea. She sat again and I took a second to admire her outfit. A blouse that I knew had cost more than a hundred dollars. Pants that were tailored to her exact height, which was tall for a woman. A pair of unassuming nude pumps that I recognized as Jimmy Choo’s work.

  She wore no ring on her left hand. Was that a purposeful choice to put her clients at ease? After all, no one in this predicament wanted to be faced with the icon of a perfect relationship sitting directly across them. It would only ratchet up the tension and highlight the deficiencies of the dubious couple in question.

  “I should tell you,” I began, “before he gets here, that we probably have different agendas for this meeting.”

  Carol’s eyebrow rose. “You understand this isn’t a business meeting.”

  “Yes,” I said, trying not to think too hard about what I was doing here. I mean, I knew what I was doing here. These were Ethan’s terms and I agreed to them. This was the price of getting free. “I’m trying to tell you that I’m only doing this because he’s insisting.”

  The door opened in a rush and I turned to take him in. He was still sporting the scruff around his jaw. His clothes were wrinkled and disheveled, as if he’d hastily tucked his button-down into the jeans but hadn’t quite managed to tuck it in all the way around.

  I shook my head in dismay, wondering if he’d slept in those same clothes last night. On the heels of that thought, I wondered who he might have been with.

  Not that it was any of my business.

  One hour. I could do this for exactly one hour.

  “Sorry,” he announced to both of us.

  Thinking on it, that’s how he started almost all his conversations with me. With an apology. I might have been tempted to feel sorry for him if:

  a) I wasn’t SO so over him,

  b) he wasn’t usually right to be apologizing.

  He took a seat next to me and Carol smiled at him.

  “Can I get you something?” she asked him. “Coffee—”

  “No, thank you,” he said, clapping his hands together. “I really want to get started.”

  “If that was the case, then you wouldn’t have been late,” I pointed out.

  I winced. Wow, that sounded bitchy. Passive–aggressive. Mean. Cold. And bitchy. When had I become that person? One more thing to blame on Ethan. Forcing me to become the worst version of myself.

  “You’re right. Sorry. There was a reason…I’ll explain later. Anyway, I’m here now.”

  There was always a reason with Ethan. This time I managed to hold my tongue.

  “Well then, let’s begin, shall we?” Carol said. “Obviously you both know who I am as I come to you recommended by a mutual friend, Daniel. But for the purposes of introductions, I’m
Dr. Carol Longmire. I can list all my credentials for you, but that would be boring. Enough to say I’ve spent the past ten years focused exclusively on couples therapy. Obviously I’ve heard and read quite a lot about you both, but I hadn’t realized you were married.”

  “Oh, we’re not married.” I snorted. “Did Daniel tell you that we were?”

  “No, I suppose I just assumed that beyond the corporate relationship there was a personal relationship.”

  “There is,” Ethan said. “We’ve been together…in some way…for over twelve years. Since our freshman year in college. That’s personal. That’s a relationship. That’s why I said we needed counseling.”

  Carol turned her attention to me while I focused on my tea. “And you, Julia? Would you call what you have with Ethan a personal relationship?”

  “I’d call it something,” I quipped as I sipped my tea.

  “That’s her defense mechanism,” Ethan pointed out. “She uses sarcasm like a sword to keep the hordes at bay. You just have to see through it.”

  I sniffed. Okay, maybe I did a little. But hordes? Really? That was being overly dramatic.

  “Ethan, Julia said she thinks you both have separate agendas today. It’s probably important for me to know what both of those are.”

  “I want to fix what I broke,” Ethan said.

  I shook my head. He couldn’t. There was no going back. Didn’t he see that?

  “I just want out,” I said. Out of my job, away from Ethan. To be someplace where I wouldn’t hurt so damn bad.

  “Jules,” Ethan muttered, and I could hear the desperation in his voice, but I couldn’t let it touch me. If I did, it would be too easy to crumble, too easy to cave.

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened, then?” Carol said. “What broke you?”

  I looked at Ethan and his expression was desolate.

  “It’s simple,” I said. “I quit.”