Rook Security Complete Series

by Camilla Blake

  It was a nicer room than either of them had anticipated from the appearance of the outside of the hotel. The decor was dated eighties with mauve and teal bedspreads and enameled furniture, but who cared about that? It smelled clean and the air pumping from the window unit was righteously cool.

  Cedric stretched hard, and the bottom of his shirt came untucked from his pants. Because he was undercover as a boyfriend on this trip, he’d foregone the formal slacks and button down. He wore jeans and a t-shirt, which now showcased the bottom of his abdominals in a perfect V that made Elena’s mouth water.

  She thought of geese flying south for the winter. A V that pointed toward paradise.

  Cedric rose and unzipped his duffel. He immediately started pulling out gadgets and little pieces of tech that he flipped on with remote controls and the small tool he’d pulled from his pocket. Without pausing, he started mounting them around the room.

  “What’s that stuff?”

  “Surveillance equipment, alarms, panic buttons. The whole nine.”

  Cedric patiently walked Elena through exactly what each thing was and how she was supposed to use it if Cedric were incapacitated and she needed help. She had a pit in her stomach the whole time. That familiar panic was coming back to her. Her worry that he was putting himself in danger for her.

  But just as she was about to go into a full-on freakout, the technology tour was over and Cedric was typing something into his smart watch. He turned to her with a huge grin. Very different than the professional, focused smiles that he’d been giving her all day. This was much more like her Ced. Cuddle-Cedric.

  “We’re here. We’re safe. I’m going to take a shower and get some sleep, okay?”

  She nodded, sitting down on the bed, her eyes on him.

  She watched as he stripped off his clothes and folded them up neatly. She smiled at the fact that he’d brought a dirty laundry bag that he put his worn clothes into. She should have known that he’d want to keep everything neatly separated.

  Down to just his boxers, he grabbed a towel and turned toward the bathroom. Elena followed him with her eyes, knowing she was being a perv and not really caring. He was so unbelievably beautiful. He wasn’t particularly defined, but his muscles were huge. His torso was like a barrel sitting atop his narrow hips. His ass popped out hard in the back. He had a booty like a professional soccer player. No wonder he was such a fast runner. The man had serious horsepower.

  The shower went on and Elena stood in front of the air conditioner for a while, attempting to cool down.

  When Cedric came back out though, water racing down over his chest and back, a tiny hotel towel clinging to his glutes and thighs, Elena’s internal temperature went through the roof again.

  “What do you bench?” The words popped out of her mouth.

  “Hmm?” he turned and stepped into underwear under his towel, hanging it on a hook on the wall. Next came a pair of basketball shorts.

  “Sorry. That’s probably as rude as asking what you weigh, isn’t it.”

  He laughed. “Elena, are you a little flustered right now?”

  She nodded, her mouth dry. She didn’t care if she looked totally sex-starved. This was Cedric. He’d never judge her. Besides. She was totally sex-starved. “How could I not be? Look at your body. I’ve never seen someone who looks like you.”

  Cedric looked down at himself, his face looking a little bemused. “Come on. I’m built, sure. But it’s not like I’m an Olympic athlete or something. You’ve seen plenty of bodies better than mine.”

  Elena took a few steps toward him. “I’ve seen Hollywood bodies, sure. With all their million muscles and tan skin and waxed chests. But you’re just like, a real man. You’re built like a tank, Ced.” Her voice dropped low. “Like an animal.”

  Cedric cleared his throat and shifted on his feet. He studiously tried to ignore the hot tightening between his legs. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought Elena was attempting to seduce him. But she knew the rules. She knew that nothing could happen between them right now.

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah. I mean, movies make you think that strength comes from having an eight-pack and, like, a neck the size of a tree trunk. But that’s not actually true. Look, the military makes you strong, right? You get jacked in the Marines. But it’s not cosmetic. It’s real strength. Which is why I don’t have, like, all the little definition.” He looked down again at his solid barrel of a chest. “I don’t really have all the vanity muscles.”

  “You have real strength.”

  She was still staring at him like she wanted to swallow him whole. Cedric cleared his throat again. “You know how you used to be scared of school? Well, I used to be a little shrimp. When I was in elementary school.”

  She scoffed in playful disbelief.

  “No, really!” he insisted. “I was always tall, but there was no meat on my bones at all. And kids would push me around. It wasn’t until I moved in with my grandfather that I started putting on muscle. He said that life is hard, so it doesn’t hurt to be strong.” Cedric smiled at the memory. “He’s right. I’m grateful for that wisdom. Being strong is part of who I am now. It’s part of my approach toward life.” He and Elena were just two feet apart now. “It’s part of the reason that I get to be here, protecting you.”

  It was all wrapped up and cloudy between them, who the two of them were. What they were there for. It had never been murkier. Cedric was there in a professional capacity, but also because he undeniably loved her. He wanted to use his body to protect her, but he’d never been more sure that his body was built to pleasure her as well. He wanted to make her come with every single body part he had. He wanted to lie over top of her and protect her from a tidal wave. He wanted to press inside her until she was trembling with pleasure. He’d take a bullet for her. It was all one and the same. For Cedric, protecting her and loving her could never be separated.

  They stared at one another hard and Cedric allowed himself five more seconds before he was going to tear himself away from her, deposit her in one bed and collapse into the other. They were safe in this hotel room, he was sure of it, but that didn’t mean that he could allow himself to be completely and entirely distracted by her. Which was exactly what was happening.

  “Do you drink protein shakes?” she asked out of the blue.

  Cedric paused, a small smile on his face. Of all the things that could have come out of her mouth, he hadn’t been expecting that. “Um. Sometimes? Why?”

  “Because before I met the security team I remember thinking that I wished that I had some baseball-cap-wearing, protein-shake-drinking boyfriend to protect me. And then I wouldn’t need a bodyguard.”

  Cedric laughed. “Suddenly you have both.”

  “Lucky me,” she smiled up at him and then ducked around him to shower.

  ***

  Elena haggled like a pro. It didn’t surprise Cedric at all, because he was of the mind that Elena was good at everything she tried. He watched her halve the price of the head-wrap she wanted. Then she paid mere pennies for the fruit she bought them for breakfast, and lastly, she basically got their jeep rental for free.

  Cedric was deeply grateful she was there because he would have gotten completely fleeced. Haggling required on-your-feet thinking, quick math skills, and acting chops. None of which did Cedric have. He was more than happy to leave all that to Elena.

  They were going to be returning to the hotel later that night, so Elena merely wore a day pack on her back. Cedric had a small pack himself, a baseball cap, and the gun at his hip.

  Cedric drove the jeep out of the buzzing, bustling city and onto dusty back roads that really seemed more like the vague suggestion of a road. As he drove, Elena braided her hair back and carefully arranged the white wrap over her hair. She put on sunglasses as well. With her flowy white pants and colorfully embroidered shirt, she truly looked nothing like the jeans-and-t-shirt-wearing conservationist she was known to be.

  She looked elegant and m
ysterious and totally one hundred percent out of Cedric’s league. He’d been relieved that he didn’t have to wear his slacks and button downs in the desert heat, since he was posing as her boyfriend. But he suddenly wished he was wearing something a little less American than his Levi’s and Brooklyn Cyclones t-shirt. He sighed as they raced along the edge of the desert.

  A few hours later, after they’d stopped to guzzle bottled water and eat some of the bread and hummus and olives that Elena had bought for them, they finally hooked up with one of the tourist groups that were going out to observe the elephants.

  If things had been different, Elena wouldn’t have had to take this journey with a group of British, American, and Australian tourists, Cedric knew. She would have been with her friends, natives to the country of Mali. She would have been with people who truly understood the cultural and environmental impact of their beloved migrating elephants. Instead, they were surrounded by chubby tourists with sunburns and cheap binoculars.

  Elena didn’t seem to let it get her down though. She was flushed and excited to be back in the Sahel. Cedric could tell. The group rode in a pack in their many jeeps off into the desert.

  That whole first day passed, however, and not a single elephant in sight.

  “Ah, well,” Elena shrugged to him as they made their way back to the Olympus that night. “That’s life. You never know where the elephants are going to be. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

  And they did. And the next day. Three days in a row of dusty strikeouts and near-blinding heat and Cedric was starting to worry that they might return to the states having seen zero elephants. But Elena remained optimistic.

  “You can’t plan or coordinate nature, Cedric. You just have to take it as it comes.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The good news stateside was that all the reconnaissance to which the team was devoting their undivided attention was coming back positive. Their intel told them that most of the men who had been involved in the smuggling operation didn’t even know who Elena was. They were flunkies just trying to make a buck. There were three men who were the brains behind the operation and who had most likely been the ones who would have seen taking Elena out as advantageous. Two of them were currently awaiting trial in King’s county and one of them was laying low in Far Rockaway. Rook Securities had eyes on all the suspected dangers to Elena’s life. And Elena was halfway around the world from those dangers.

  Cedric wasn’t exactly sleeping easy, but it was definitely a huge weight off his chest.

  The fourth day that they were supposed to drive into the desert, apparently there was a dust storm in the Sahel that would have made it unsafe for them. In fact, the air in Bamako was hazy. The dust distilled the bright sunlight but instead of dimming it, it seemed to make it come from every direction at once.

  Elena and Cedric had decided to walk around the city that afternoon, but an hour into it, they cried uncle and slid into a little cafe on a corner.

  The cafe’s doors were closed to the dust, and Cedric was relieved to feel that it was at least fifteen degrees cooler inside than it was outside. His shirt was sticking to his chest and his sweat tracked through the dust clinging to his arms.

  Elena was in another head wrap, this time one she’d maneuvered to cover her mouth as well, so only her eyes and the bridge of her nose had been exposed.

  Cedric took her hand and led her to the back of the cafe, where he’d be able to keep his back to the wall. Cracked, colorful tiles lined the floor and rusty, dated signs advertising Coca Cola and Cafe Au Lait hung over the dinged wooden bar. A soccer match played on an ancient television, the picture occasionally rolling and the clientele howling in anger whenever it went fuzzy.

  The cafe was filled with a mixture of people, some local and some international. Cedric had noticed that all of Bamako was like this. It was a city filled with people who’d come to huddle at the edge of the desert. Whether it was a way station or a home, it tended to catch all kinds of people.

  There were a few American women on the other end of the bar. Cedric could tell from their sunburned noses, hiking boots, and the guidebook that they passed back and forth between them, arguing loudly.

  Cedric sat Elena down in the safest corner of the bar, farthest from the entrance, and, knowing they were going to have to buy something in order to stay, turned to the counter-slash-bar.

  They’d stopped in enough of these places for him to know what Elena liked. And to know what they most likely served without his having to decipher the menu.

  “Two cokes, vegetable couscous.”

  He quickly paid and took the cokes with him, knowing the food would come out in a second. When he turned back to Elena, he almost laughed. He’d tucked her back in the far corner of the cafe, hoping that she’d blend in for a second while he was gone.

  But there she sat, a burning jewel in a dark corner. She’d pulled her wrap off her face, though it still covered her dark hair. The red dust in the air left an interesting stripe across her eyes and the bridge of her nose.

  She wore a flowy shirt of deep emerald and tan, gauzy pants that were so roomy they looked like a dress when she stood. Since her return to Mali, a kind of calm had stolen over Elena. Cedric had expected her anxiety to rise. He’d expected her grief for David to return in full force. He knew she was mourning him still. But being here with her, he was also meeting a new side of her. He was meeting the woman she’d been before the attack. She was relaxed and in charge. She’d observed all of their clucking groups of tourists with a kind remove. The pace of Bamako charged her, excited her. The rolling, expansive, endless desert thrilled her.

  Cedric imagined her as a general returning to the battleground of a particularly gloriously won battle. She was not foolishly ecstatic about it; she knew what this victory had cost her. But she still couldn’t help being proud of it all the same.

  God, he hoped they saw some elephants.

  Cedric slid into the seat next to her, separating her from the room and the rest of the people there. He cracked the cap off one of the glass bottle cokes and handed it to her. He did the same for his own. She absently toasted him, her eyes on the dusty air outside.

  “I hope it settles overnight,” she told him. “I’d like to have time to at least try once more.”

  They were leaving Bamako the day after tomorrow, which put tomorrow as their last day to try and catch a glimpse of the elephants.

  He wanted to tell her that they were definitely going to see the elephants and that everything would be all right. Perfectly wrapped up in a bow. But, Cedric was Cedric, and he didn’t play at guessing things like that. “We’ll check the weather when we get back to the hotel.”

  “Elena?”

  Cedric stiffened, his hand going immediately to the weapon strapped underneath his shirt. He put his back to Elena as his eyes found the mid-sized man with black hair. The man spoke with an accent and wore a fashionable sweater with a high collar that Cedric could tell had been blocking the dust better than his own baseball cap had done.

  “Mon dieu!” the man exclaimed, his eyes practically devouring Elena as he came abreast of their table. “I do not know you are back. I cannot believe what I am seeing.”

  “Bastien,” Elena’s voice came out from behind Cedric.

  So, she knew this guy. This Bastien guy. That was good and bad. Good because it meant that she trusted him enough to un-stiffen from behind Cedric’s shoulder and bad because Cedric didn’t know him. And any unknowns were a strict threat. He needed this man’s full name and he needed it fast.

  The man sat without being invited, his eyes still fastened to Elena as if he were seeing a mirage.

  “Bastien Agard, meet Cedric Swift,” Elena introduced them. “Bastien works with the IWCF’s French counterpart.”

  Cedric took the Frenchman’s hand and firmly shook it. He returned the slow perusal in kind.

  “Ah. I see,” Bastien said, leaning back in his chair and looking between Elena and Cedric. “You ar
e lovers.”

  Elena laughed, but it wasn’t the light, easy laugh that she used with Cedric. “And why do you say that?”

  “Because,” Bastien responded, though his eyes were still on Cedric, “you are basically sitting in this man’s lap. And you do not sit on any man’s lap, mon amour.”

  There was some spark in the man’s eye, something hovering between fascination and injured pride. It was then that Cedric abruptly realized that Elena and this Bastien bastard must have been lovers at some point. And this Bastien bastard was obviously not completely over it.

  Elena turned her head toward Cedric and though Cedric did not want to look away from this stranger, he couldn’t help but return her gaze. “Did you hear that, baby? Bastien wants to know if we’re lovers.”

  The dry expression in her eye, accompanied by that one sarcastic eyebrow had the corners of Cedric’s mouth pulling up. She was teasing him about their arrangement. They were obviously so freaking into one another they could barely breathe. And yet, they’d never made love.

  “Why don’t you explain it to him,” Cedric responded, just as dryly, tipping back a long sip of his coke.

  Elena laughed and turned back to Bastien, one of her hands finding its way into one of Cedric’s. They sat there, palm to palm, the Frenchman looking back and forth between them.

  “I did not expect you to come back here, after what has happened to your David.”

  Elena stiffened for a moment, but just then, the man behind the cafe counter yelled over to them and Elena rose to get the large plate of saucy vegetables and couscous. Cedric saw that she returned with three smaller plates and a fork apiece. He internally sighed. Apparently, Bastien was staying for lunch.

  Elena served the plates, spilling some couscous on the table and barely noticing. It was all Cedric could do not to immediately clean it up.

  “Technically,” Elena eventually answered Bastien’s statement from before. “I’m not here.”

  “What does this mean?” Bastien asked, looking back and forth between Elena and Cedric.