by Sara Forbes
I reach up and pull him by his loosened tie so he's crawling on top of me, heavy and reassuring. Our hips make contact and we grind together, building heat.
"Let me help you with that." I undo his buttons so the shirt falls open. He sits back on his heels and removes his shirt completely. My gaze travels over his honed muscles, and then I follow the contours with my fingers, down his sternum. I slip my fingers under his waistband, making his muscles harden. I want to rip off everything and let him access every inch of my body.
He reaches for me, pulls me up by my shoulders and kisses me, his tongue taking over my mouth, leaving my lips quivering when he draws away. My clothes get in his way, so he pulls the jacket off me, then grabs the t-shirt by the hem and yanks it over my head.
By now, we're not talking, just panting, grabbing, clamoring for more, deeper contact. He reaches around and unclips my bra. My breasts are already hard for him and he shows his appreciation with his tongue, planting hot kisses, sucking and licking the hardened tips until I'm writhing.
We wrestle, rolling over, him on top, then me. We laugh, we kiss, we fumble madly, exploding warm, trembling skin. He's attentive to every hitch of my breath as his fingers smooth over my neck, shoulders, breasts and stomach. I feel so cherished, so idolized. And it doesn't feel like anyone's leading this thing. We're both in the driving seat and it feels wonderfully freeing.
Then the mood changes, deepening. My breath becomes hard and frantic. The pulsating need between my legs is becoming urgent. I can't deny what my body wants. My hips thrash against his, desperate to let him know.
And he gets the message. He pulls down my zip with a decisive crunch. Slowly, he eases the denim over my hips. I arch up to help him. Gripping both sides of the jeans, he lowers them over my thighs, kissing the heated skin as he pulls the material down and further down to my ankles. Then he tosses the jeans away. He removes his own pants.
In his blue silk boxers, he approaches me again, crawling over me, his dark blue eyes not leaving mine. He cups his hands around my knees and looks down at my body with a hunger, as if deliberating how best to do me. My panties are soaking. I'll let him do anything. And he can read that from me.
"Sure?" he asks.
"Absolutely," I breathe.
He grabs me by the hips and flips me over so my breasts and tummy sink into the soft duvet. I let out a squeal of surprise. The pressure of his palm on my lower back holds me in place while he pulls my soaking panties slowly over my buttocks. The friction of the lacy garment against my over-sensitive flesh makes more wetness gush from me. I squeeze my thighs tighter.
He slides the panties down my legs and when they slip to the floor, he takes my legs at the knees and gently pushes me back into a V. I let out a ragged breath into the sheet. His fingers smooth up the backs of my trembling legs and he traces a maddening line where the panties had been. Then slowly, he moves those magic fingertips to the hot, wet, trembling place where I really want them. He presses all his fingers against my pussy feeling my wetness, making small, unbearably lovely circles. This time my breath comes out as a moan.
He growls approvingly and smooths the cum over my folds, gently tapping. I move my ass up and down in time to the pulses of desire wracking my body.
I gasp as the first wave of pleasure ripples through me. My hips arch, pushing my ass higher in the air. I clutch the bedclothes either side of me, crushing the silk in my fists in an effort to contain the buildup of tension. I'll hump his bed I'm that desperate for release. I writhe and squeeze, pumping my hips against the bed.
"When you bent over to pick up my waste paper basket yesterday, I was thinking of this." His hands palm my buttocks, easing them apart and together. He massages further.
"I...thought you were working," I grunt.
"Multitasking," he says.
"Really?" I ask.
"No, Jess," he laughs. "When a man is thinking of sex, he is never of thinking of anything else."
His finger slides into my vagina where I'm so ready for him. Then two. My inner muscles clench around him. His sharp breath lets me know he's ready too.
He pulls out and within seconds, I hear a crackle of plastic. He's found a condom. I look over my shoulder as he sheaths himself and resumes the same position hovering over me, except now I can see his sheathed cock standing to attention. I'm so ready for him to fill me.
The tip of his cock teases the swollen flesh at my opening. I lift my hips higher to accommodate him. He pushes slowly, firmly in, stretching the lips of my pussy, I give a cry of joyful relief as I stretch around him.
He fills me, slowly, inch by slow inch, nudge by nudge until I'm totally surrendering to the demands of his cock. He's reaching walls inside that I didn't know were there. It's tight, it's glorious. He rocks, pushing in and pulling out. It takes me a moment to adjust to him being totally in control of my pleasure, totally in tune with what I want.
Until, suddenly, it's not enough. "Faster," I moan.
He speeds up. The air is filled with our rasping breaths and the accelerating sounds of skin slapping against skin. I'm so close. I'm heaving, sweating, my hands clutching, my heart bursting, my mind splintering. This is so freaking out of this world.
"Yes, "I hiss. "Keep...going...this. Exactly this. Don't you dare change."
He's as desperate as I am. His hands plant on the bed beside my head as he pumps with maximum intensity.
"Egan, please, oh please," I whimper. I'm scared I won't hit that high, that it'll peter out to nothing and I'll be left with this yawning emptiness. After such a buildup, it'll kill me.
Then his cock hits the deepest part of me and it sends me over that edge, into the abyss. My body lurches around his cock, every muscle straining to wrench more pleasure. Pulse after pulse of ecstasy rolls over me. My body has never known this depth of pleasure. I'm one big glorious, buzzing mess of nerves that he's just played perfectly.
I feel his body tighten. He wraps an arm around my abdomen and crushes me back into his slick, heated torso as he approaches his own release. After two full body jerks, his hoarse roar fills the room, its vibrations rumbling through my bones.
"Oh my God, Jess," he groans. "What have you done to me?"
He pulls out and flips me over to face him. His features have softened, his cheeks and forehead fused with color. "Wow."
I nod. I struggle to get my tongue prepared to form words again. "I never knew it could be like that," I say finally.
He gazes at me in solemn silence. "It can be like that," he says bending to kiss my shoulder. "Anytime and always."
I blink at him. Can this be true? Can life be this good?
We both smile. Crazy, silly smiles.
But then something flits across his expression.
"But we have to get back?" I ask.
He nods. "We have to get back."
We let out a sigh in unison.
"It won't always be like this," he says ruefully. "I mean, the having to go back bit."
"It's okay," I tell him. "We'll take each day as it comes."
We agree then that Egan has a quick shower while I lol around in bed, then while I shower, he starts packing food and cups and plates in a rucksack.
When I come down the stairs with my damp hair to the kitchen, he's all packed and ready to go. I suspected he'd be efficient but not quite this efficient. He's looking critically at a packet of Oreos.
"Do you think she'd eat Oreos?"
"If she doesn't, I will."
"Good." He stuffs them in the rucksack.
We bundle into the car and take off. We've only been gone an hour.
Half way to the office block, Egan gets a call on his phone which he picks up immediately. It's brief and Egan barely says more than hello. But I know it's important because Egan stares straight ahead in complete silence afterward, changing gear like an automaton.
"Bad news?" I venture.
"On the contrary," he says, turning to me. "They've got a place for her. For Natasha."
>
He accelerates.
"So, how does that work?" I ask. "I mean, is it a good place?"
"Should be. Paying them enough."
"How much?"
"Five."
"Thousand?"
He grimaces then shakes his head.
I grab the dashboard. "Five million?" I squeak.
Egan sighs. "Circumventing state security—any state security—doesn't come cheap. This is why we have to do what we do."
"We?" I ask.
"We call ourselves the Bitcoin billionaires."
"Because..." my voice falters. "You're, um, billionaires?"
"Well, we have to convert the Bitcoin into hard dollars to retrieve any value. But yes, unless the Bitcoin value sinks under the thousand-dollar mark, we control sums worth billions."
"How many of you are there in this 'we'?" I ask my voice faint.
"Seven." He sighs heavily. "For now, at any rate."
The rest of our trip back to the office is in silence. Egan, I suspect, is planning ahead like crazy. Me, I'm just in a stupor, trying to get my head around the whole "billions" part. No wonder the guy has enemies. And I have to wonder—what do other dissidents like Natasha do when they don't have a knight in shining armor come in with billions of dollars to rescue them?
22
EGAN
"THE SAFE HOUSE CAN TAKE YOU this evening," I tell Natasha straight away. "I got a call from Mr. Kline on the way here."
She nods, but her face is a carefully maintained blank. And I understand that. She's moving from somewhere she feels relatively safe to the unknown. I never expected her to get up and dance at this news. I feel curiously deflated myself.
"I'll be with you every step of the way."
"And Jess?" she asks.
"Well, you'll be saying goodbye to Jess here before I drive you to the rendezvous. She's not part of the deal. Mr. Kline would get extremely angsty if I brought someone else along."
She nods. "Okay."
I'm at a loss as to what more to say to her. I don't know when I'll see her next. I can't give her guarantees about anything. I'm as scared for her future as she is.
"This is what Sergei would have wanted," I tell her. "You'll have a real life. Do it for him. Thrive for him. And someday in the future, you'll look us up, okay?"
"Us?" She asks.
I realize my slip, "Well, me. Maybe us."
She grins.
"That's better," I say. Now, we have to get moving. Kline has given us a window of only six hours in which to show up, starting now, and it's a four-hour drive. We've got to get out of here in the next two hours. Can you manage that?"
"In the next two hours?" she asks in dismay.
"Yes. Can you do it?"
"Yeah, sure. Is Jess here?"
"She's downstairs. She knows."
"Okay."
I watch her go. Then I get on the video call to give the guys the good news.
23
JESS
WHEN I LOOK UP FROM THE leaking shower pipes that I'm trying to fix, Natasha is standing there before me, looking kind of ghostly.
"Natasha?"
"I'm going to the safe house. Egan just told me."
"Yes, I know."
She collapses into me. I hold her and hug her emaciated little body. "This is a good thing, Natasha," I say bracingly. "You'll have somewhere proper to stay. A proper bed, a proper bathroom. A proper life. You couldn't keep on living like this."
"I know." She sniffs.
"Don't you want to go?" The answer is obvious already and I don't blame her. This building may be a dump, but we're all she has, and all she knows in this country. What a horrible situation for her.
"I...I don't know." She breaks away from me, slams her back dramatically against the wall and slides until she's sitting on the floor tiles, her stick-like legs sprawled out in front of her.
I abandon the shower and sit down beside her. "Look, I know it must be scary as hell to be moving again, this time to unknowns."
"Yeah. At least with Egan, I knew Sergei trusted him. But these people? I don't know them. Egan's my only link to Sergei. When I'm here, it feels l dunno, like a part of Sergei is still here. There's still a connection."
"I understand. Have you told Egan this?”
"No. Please don't mention it to him."
"Why not?"
"Because I've been such a burden to him. I know it."
"He doesn't see it that way, Natasha. It's the safe house's dallying that's been the burden for him, not you. Never you."
"Thanks." She fidgets with her sleeves, pulling them down over her knuckles. "I don't know what's going to happen with me."
I could agree with that statement but my job here is to instill some hope into this poor young woman. If it's the last thing I can do for her. "What kind of future do you see for yourself?" I ask. "Would you like to get a job? Or perhaps study something? British universities are very good."
"Well, maybe engineering. You said I was good at that."
"You would be very good at engineering," I say.
"Did you go to university?" Her eyes are shining.
"Uh, yeah. But I gave up before I got my degree."
"Why?"
"Because of a guy. If you ever go, Natasha, don't make my mistake. Never let a guy talk you into abandoning a course, okay?"
"I would never," she says fiercely.
I laugh. "Good. I believe you on that."
"But what was it like?"
"It was fun while it lasted. Who knows? Maybe I'll go back and finish it one day," I say dreamily. "You know what? I still have brochures of my old university in Exeter lying around here and they have a reputable engineering degree. I was showing somebody them when I worked here before and I left them here. They're probably still in the storeroom. Wait there."
"Now where the hell it is?" I mutter. I gingerly finger my way through a pile of stuff that I emptied out of my locker. I grab the university booklet from the bottom of a stack of women's magazines that Martha and I used to read in here when we took breaks.
"Here." I come out and hand it to her. A dusty, out-of-date university brochure is the least I can offer her, I just wish it could be something more substantial.
Natasha runs her hand over the sun-faded picture of the campus buildings on the cover. "Thank you."
"It's nothing. I should have brought you better stuff to read. You Russians aren't the only ones with good literature, you know."
"No, it's good. I'll just go put it in my bag. I have to finish packing."
"Okay." It's my cue to get up and find Egan.
He's on the second floor, on a call. Judging by the number of faces on his screen, it's his billionaire gang meeting. I make sure to stay out of range of his webcam. I don't know if they know about me yet, and I'm so not in the mood for a round of introductions with a group of high-powered alpha guys which is exactly what they look and sound like.
After an animated conversation, Egan comes to me where I'm sitting over in the kitchen. He drinks a glass of water and runs a hand through his hair. "How's Natasha?"
"She's okay. Holding up well. She's going to miss you."
"Yeah." He turns to me, twisting the glass in his hand. "But it's more important that she start the rest of her life. I'm just a reminder of her past and a shady one at that."
"I'd say you're all she got that's familiar right now."
His eyes tense up. "Safety is the most important thing now. I will not have anything happen to her under my watch."
I rise and slide my hand down his arm. The muscles are hard as rock. "You're doing the right thing."
He nods and relaxes a fraction.
"But don't forget she's a person, too."
"Don't worry," he growls. "I'm hardly likely to forget."
I guess he's made a huge personal sacrifice having her here. More than I'll ever know.
"Natasha and I have to get to the rendezvous," he says. "You're welcome to stay here, but—"
<
br /> "That's okay," I say, smiling. "We can meet tomorrow when it's all over. I'll go up and say goodbye to Natasha now."
"OK. And Jess?
"Mm?"
He presses a warm kiss to my lips. "Thank you."
Heat flares in my body but I disengage quickly and let him go.
Saying goodbye to Natasha is heart breaking. I'm fighting to stop tears falling as we hug goodbye. The worst thing is, I can't promise to stay in contact with her. It's like sending her across the Atlantic in the eighteen-hundreds not knowing if I'll ever hear from her again and it seems ridiculous in this internet age that she won't be able to contact me.
Egan says it may be possible to contact her someday, but there would have to be a period of strict silence while her new identity gets set up. I can't argue with something I don't know anything about.
"Promise me you'll eat enough and stay healthy?" I say to her.
She nods.
"And don't take any shit from anyone."
She hugs me harder.
And then I leave. On the other side of the door, I clutch my stomach. If this day has taught me anything it's that Egan and Natasha are living in a parallel world, a murky underworld that I wasn't even aware existed, one in which you could fear for your life. I'm now part of that world, whether I like it or not.
I want to help them. I just wish I knew how. I don't know the rules.
24
EGAN
AS PER INSTRUCTIONS, I order a registered taxi—not an Uber—to a residential address in Northampton, a two-hour drive. The deal is that Mr. Kline will be waiting in front of the gate of said address. He will then take Natasha alone in a separate car to the safe house. I'm not allowed to know where that is.
It's all very cloak-and-dagger, but then again, I'm the last person to tell Kline's organization that they're being paranoid about security. It's necessary that they're going to such measures. They tell me there are no CCTV cameras in the area and that I should refrain from taking any cellphone with me.