Secret Obsession

by D. M. Mortier

  She wondered then if perhaps he didn’t want her anymore.

  That conclusion was soon proven wrong when Colt stood with her in his arms, sat on the bed after aligning several pillows at his back, pulled her to sit on his lap, and turned the television on.

  He was hard as steel on her naked bottom.

  She started to wiggle and squirm against him, but he stilled her hips.

  “Not tonight, baby,” he whispered in her ear.

  She was too weak to protest and rested against him tiredly. Although the ache in her lower region for him was acute and demanding attention, she agreed with him. Sex between them right now would only cloud their issues. And being pissed for eight straight hours, pacing and cursing her foes, had been exhausting. With CNN announcing today’s news on the large screen, Imani dispassionately watched the segment for ten minutes before her eyelids became heavy with sleep.

  “Care to tell me what set you off today?” Colt asked softly.

  Too exhausted to think of a smart comeback, or a vague answer, she was honest. “You and Sarah hurt me. You both lied to me.”

  “I’ve never lied to you while you…” He tightened his arms around her. “When do I get to meet Jane? When do I get to ask her about the gifts?”

  “Jane is an idiot,” she said tiredly. Her words were almost slurred. She turned in his lap to lie on her side. With her head resting on his chest, she snuggled against him and closed her eyes. “A blind idiot.”

  “I happen to like her, idiot or not,” Colt teased.

  “Figures,” Imani muttered peevishly.

  Colt kissed her one last time on her forehead before straightening and exiting Imani’s room.

  “How is she?” Sarah rolled to her feet from her seat on the floor of the hallway outside of Imani’s bedroom.

  Colt ran his fingers through his hair in agitation. He wasn’t surprised to see Sarah outside the door. He’d left her there when he’d first entered Imani’s room. He briefly wondered why Sarah wasn’t more upset by his and Imani’s conversation or the length of time he’d spent in Imani’s room. What the hell did she think Imani was upset about? What did she think a man like him would feel around a woman as beautiful as Imani? “At least she ate,” he told her quietly.

  “Imani’s very independent, Colt. She’s not used to having a parent tell her what to do. You’re going to have to back off her a bit until she gets used to your overprotective attitude.”

  Colt sighed in relief. He was fairly certain that, while Imani might be pissed at his highhandedness, that wasn’t the only thing she was pissed at. He was just so damn glad his ward hadn’t figured out that he was fucking her best friend. “I don’t know, honey. I can’t stand by and let men like Lippman try to hurt her.”

  “I know that’s not in your nature, but you’re going to have to let her do her thing.” Sarah wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him. “She’s very good at what she does and very capable. Give her some space.” Sarah laughed. “Lippman won’t know what hit him.”

  “I’ll think about it.” He looked down at Sarah and held her gaze. “What about you? What did you do that hurt her so much?”

  Sarah shrugged. After a few moments of quiet reflection, she murmured, “I need to give her some space too.”

  “I don’t like seeing you girls at odds. Whatever it is, sort it out tomorrow.”

  Sarah sighed. “Hopefully, she’ll talk to me tomorrow. I can’t promise she’ll forgive me though. When I think about it, what I did was pretty shitty.”

  “You dare to show your face here without the girl?” Eric Spartan slapped Lippman like the bitch that he was. His signet ring caught across Lippman’s lip.

  “She’s being protected by that bastard Ragnarson,” Lippman whined as he tried to stem the blood flow from the open wound on his lower lip.

  “I don’t give a damn about your excuses! I gave you the resources you need to remove any obstacle. Why didn’t you use them?” Eric paced with growing agitation across the carpeted floor of an inner room off his office. This room was small with only an office desk and chair, and one guest chair. No one entered that room with a thought for comfort. It was to afford him extra privacy and soundproofing to conduct his nefarious business.

  It was well after midnight when Lippman had phoned to say he was coming by Eric’s penthouse. He was secure in the knowledge that no one would know about this visit, except for the secret service agents assigned to him, as his conservative, politically appropriate wife had gone to bed hours before.

  “Colonel Ragnarson has a Congressional Medal of Honor. Not even you could get away with killing him without serious consequences.”

  “I’m the fucking Vice President of the United States!” Eric roared. “A heartbeat away from the presidency! Don’t tell me what the fuck I can or can’t do.” Eric didn’t worry about the agents who stood silently outside his outer office door. That was what he loved most about this job. He’d been vice president for two years now, and he’d done any number of crimes with them close by, and it had made it all the more exciting getting away with it. They’d remained stoically guarding him but let him do what the fuck he wanted, completely oblivious to his less than law abiding nature. The power of his office coursed through his veins. He felt invincible. “Get that girl and kill anyone who steps in the way. Destroy the colonel’s reputation if you must. Manipulate his records, make him out to be a traitor to his country, do whatever the hell you have to and get him out of the picture. Just don’t get fuckin’ caught, because then I don’t know your ass.”

  “Sir…”

  The vice president pulled a gun out and placed the muzzle in the middle of Lippman’s forehead. Eric laughed out loud as Lippman paled and the scent of his fear permeated the room. He reveled in the intoxicating power of holding the other man’s life in the palm of his hand. It was incredibly tempting to pull the trigger, but Lippman could still be useful. Eric contented himself by pulling out his knife in his left hand instead. The blade was always kept in razor-sharp condition and could cut through bone as though it were butter.

  Lippman’s eyes widened even further, and he started sweating profusely.

  Eric laughed with pure enjoyment as he slashed the blade across Lippman’s hand, severing four of his fingers.

  Lippman screams shook the walls.

  Eric wasn’t concerned over Lippman being heard through the soundproofed walls. His staff knew better than to interrupt him when he was in this inner office. He’d trained them long ago to ignore whatever happened in this room. What he did in that room stayed between him and his victim. No one was coming to save the general. And Lippman wouldn’t say a damn thing because this wasn’t the first crime that Lippman had contemplated. He’d misappropriated government funds, sold intel to the Russian government about Ukraine, and had ordered the killing of an agent when he was about to be exposed. Eric had all the evidence to prove it. No, Lippman was completely under his control.

  “Shut up! And stop bleeding on my fuckin’ floor!”

  Lippman whimpered. His tears now soaked his face, and he was trembling from the effort of trying to not cry out.

  “No more fuckups!” Eric cocked his gun. “The next time I see you and you don’t have what I want…” Eric’s hands shook. He was thirsty with the need to vent his frustration and appease the violence coursing through his veins for a more fatal impact. “Get the fuck out of here and don’t come back until you’ve got the girl.”

  Lippman was trembling so hard he stumbled clumsily from the room, holding a hand soaked with blood and only a thumb remaining.

  Imani smiled for the first time the next day as the design she’d been feverously working on for the past two years passed its second operating test. She looked up at the monitors mounted on the wall in front of her, and her grin widened with satisfaction. Yes! It was beyond any product she’d ever created before. She wrapped her fingers around the locket at her neck, knowing that her father
would have been proud of what she’d created to protect those she loved when he hadn’t been able to save his.

  The night that her family had been brutally murdered still dictated how she responded to the danger around her now. The memory of that night would never leave her.

  Imani had never forgotten the horror of that night.

  She pulled up her design again and nodded with satisfaction.

  “What’s that?”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Mudderfucker!” she shrieked and almost jumped a foot in the air in fright. She spun around after blanking every screen in the room with the press of one button of her laptop. “Don’t ever sneak up on me like that,” she snarled at Colt.

  “Stop cursing, and you haven’t answered the question,” he told her calmly.

  “And I’m not going to,” she grumbled. “What do you want anyway?”

  “I want you to answer my questions.”

  “I’ve already told you—”

  “You need to tell me why that asshole Lippman is almost frothing at the mouth to get his hands on Jane,” Colt growled in frustration. “You don’t seem to understand how much danger you’re in.”

  “I guarantee that they have no idea what I’m doing, and it has nothing to do with why they want me.”

  “Imani, I’m not fucking around. What’re you building that’s got the fuckin’ CIA wetting themselves to get their hands on you?”

  “No one knows what I’ve built. No one! If they’re asking about me, it’s not because they know what I’ve built. It’s because they know what I can build.”

  “What fuckin’ difference does it make?”

  Imani smiled sadly at him. “If they knew what I’d built, they would have killed you to get to me by now.”

  “What?”

  Imani grinned to take the sting out of her very serious revelation. “I never tell the company what I’m building before it’s done. Usually, I work with a team. I give everyone different pieces to work on, without any of the other team members aware of what the other is working on. Only I would know what the final product was, and even then, it would only be revealed when I’m ready to. I’m guessing someone is finally noticing my varied product line and may have uncovered who I am.”

  “I don’t understand. What you build for the company is common knowledge eventually, and it wasn’t any kind of weapon, right? So, what difference does it make if people know what you’re working on or not?”

  “The difference is that, despite Marcus being my supervisor, no one actually can determine my work process or what my capabilities are. Now, in addition to all that I’ve built, they now suspect that I made your weapon and shield, and my government records may have been unsealed. At least, my father’s records may have been unsealed. With the knowledge of my capabilities, my pedigree, and the possibility that I may have access to Father’s work, men like Lippman are getting excited. The technology to build your weapon and your vest is a gateway. Any engineer worth his salt would realize that and that, coupled with my father’s work…” Imani laughed with no humor. “Let’s just say these assholes are terrified.”

  “You have both the Chinese and Russians salivating over you as well.” Colt ran his fingers through his hair in agitation and frowned down at her. “Fuck, I’ve had to triple the guards around this place in the last few hours. The underground chatter about you is becoming deafening.”

  “I need to get out of here, and so do you and Sarah.”

  “Where would you go? How will you protect yourself?”

  He grabbed her forearms in an almost brutal grip, but of course, he’d never hurt her. “Promise me you’d never try going it alone.” The fear in his voice was palatable. “Promise me.” He shook her slightly, clearly wanting her cooperation, no questions asked.

  Imani rolled her eyes at him. “I may be angry at you, but I’m not stupid. You’re a colonel, ex-Special Forces, with a Congressional medal of honor. If anyone can protect me, you can.”

  “You say that, and only yesterday you tried to leave here.”

  She chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what happens when you make me so mad I can’t see straight.” She pressed a few buttons and pulled up a screen. “Besides, I can see the chatter as well.”

  “Then I don’t have to tell you how important it is that I need answers about what you’re doing.”

  “I’ve been working on a few things, but there is something I created some time ago and was putting the final touches on after your fight with those agents.”

  “They were just following orders.”

  “Yeah, that’s my worry. The next time the order may be to kill you. Men like Lippman won’t remain patient forever, and their threats won’t be empty.”

  “You made another weapon?”

  “Not precisely, I made more advanced protective shields. It was something I’d started while you were still in combat. But when the Pentagon started asking questions and wanted prototypes of your gun and shield, I thought it best I not finish it. Now, with the increased danger, I thought it best I finish what I’d started and include additional shields for myself and Sarah.”

  “And you wonder why these mudderfuckers want you to work for them?”

  “It doesn’t matter what they want. I’m not going to be forced to make a weapon of mass destruction. Have you seen our world leaders in the past fifty years? With the exception of President Obama, I wouldn’t trust any of them with anything I create.”

  “What about the men and women who would benefit greatly from the shield?”

  Imani couldn’t determine whether Colt truly wanted her to make the shields for the military or whether he was asking a rhetorical question. His expression was neutral, and his voice had no inflection. “I would gladly make weapons and shields for a war that I felt was just. I would gladly provide them for a leader I believed in. I can’t think about the men and women fighting. I have to think about the men in power, who are mostly sociopaths, sending them to fight. What’s to stop the leaders in Russia, China, Venezuela, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, and the list goes on and on? What’s to stop them from getting their hands on it? Since I can’t control where my designs go if I sell out to the Pentagon, I’m not making weapons for anyone. Besides, the US government isn’t immune to sociopaths either.”

  “I can’t argue with that reasoning. However, I can see both sides of the argument. I experienced what being in possession of such weapons in the heat of battle was like. I know you made them specifically for me, but I can’t tell you how many hundreds of lives I was able to pull out of harm’s way or how many of my men I shielded from attack. You have no idea how many lives I was able to save because I had that shield and gun. You have an amazing talent, and I get why they want those weapons so badly.”

  “You’re not telling me anything I haven’t argued with myself. But then I keep going back to the proverb, ‘live by the sword, die by the sword.’”

  “So, you made me another shield? What? Are you hoping to thwart the many swords that will be coming my way?”

  Imani couldn’t tell how he felt about the new shield, even though he hadn’t seen it yet and had no idea what she meant by advanced. He’d always seemed embarrassed by his gun and shield in the past, as if they gave him an unfair advantage. She knew he would freak when he saw what the new shield could do. “Bad men are coming your way because of me. I’m not going to apologize for making more protection for you since I’m expecting you to protect me. I think you’re a much better shot than both of us, so, yes, you’re getting a new shield.” She had been hoping he’d smile at her attempt at a joke. However, he continued looking at her in the same stoic fashion, devoid of emotion, an expression she associated with his colonel demeanor.

  “I don’t need another shield. My need at this moment is a little more basic.”

  “Like the other shield, it’s up to you whether you use it or not. However, if I were you, I wouldn’t knock it until you’ve heard
what it does. It’s probably not what you’re thinking it is.”

  “And I’m sure you’d eventually tell me about it. However, I need to know you’re not planning on trying to leave again, and as I said before, my more immediate need is very basic. Come here and let me show you.”

  She lifted her palm and took a step back as though to block him. However, he hadn’t moved an inch. “Look, we don’t have time for this right now. Clearly, we need more time to rethink this relationship thing, and we need to deal with the threat coming at us.”

  “Nothing to think about. I’m too damn old for you, but I can’t seem to let you go either. I’ve come to the realization that giving over your protection to anyone else is not even thinkable. I want you, and I know you want me. We agree on at least that. Everything else I can deal with later. My plans for you have changed, and whatever threat is coming, I’ll deal with it.”

  “You? You’ll deal?” She looked at him askance.

  She shrieked as he grabbed her hand and pulled her against him.

  “Yeah.” He grinned, knowing that he was infuriating her. “I’ll deal. I protect what’s mine. My woman, mine to protect.”

  She sputtered with indignation.

  “It’s been too long, and I need you, baby,” he whispered softly, buried his nose in her hair, and wrapped his arms around her.

  She tried to remain rigid against him, trying like hell to remember why she should be angry at this seesaw in his behavior toward her, but she was terrified. Already her body was yielding against his. The familiar scent and feel of him were triggers to her senses, an immediate recognition of how much she wanted him. It clouded her judgment, and she despaired that she would never have the willpower necessary to protect herself from him. “What? You haven’t gone back to ignoring my existence?” She tried for sarcasm in order to camouflage her racing heart and fractured breathing. “Isn’t that your modus operandi?”