For the first time I had what I’d been waiting for my entire life. A man of grace and power loving all I had to offer. I ran my hand over the flexing muscles, holding his taut hips, tracing the lines of his muscles where sweat trickled as he worked himself into a frenzy. A part of me realised I ought to do something more than gaze at this god-like man but to be honest, I just wanted to watch and experience this gift.
I let my fingers drift down his perfect belly and the tips trail up his shaft. I’d never seen anything so perfect. It leaked and he shivered, crying out each time I swept my thumb pad over the top. When I’d collected enough, I sucked it clean and Jacob growled, leaning forward and licking into my mouth.
The action, the taste of him, flipped a switch. I went from docile to sex addict. “Enough, you want me, you’re going to take me,” I snarled.
I pushed him off me, not confident I could turn us without hurting him, dragged him up onto all fours and thrust into him so hard he braced against the wall of the hotel. With my fingers digging into his flanks I pounded into him hard.
“Fuck, yes,” he shouted. “More, like that.”
So I did it, a blind flurry of movement as he slammed back into me. The tension inside my belly reached critical mass.
“Jacob, I can’t…”
“Do it, fuck I need to feel it.” The first coherent words we’d managed for long seconds.
I didn’t have the experience necessary to grab his cock and make him come with me, but I did have a reward in mind. I allowed the swelling inside me to hit its peak and I held the moment as the internal combustion pushed outward. I cried out, inarticulate with love for my incredible man.
The moment I could draw breath and felt Jacob reach for his cock, I smacked his arse, pulled out, which made him curse, flipped him over and took this cock into my mouth before giving his balls a gentle squeeze.
“Oh, fuck, Mac.” His fingers dug into my scalp, hips flicking off the bed and his cock pulsed, releasing his load into my body. I groaned and swallowed, sucking hard, then more gently before reducing him to a shivering wreck with licks at the sensitive tip. He stroked my head where it rested on his thigh.
“Thank you,” he murmured, already falling asleep.
I brushed my hand over his thigh and smiled as the thick hair tickled my palm. Who the hell knew body hair could be a turn-on? If I lay there much longer, I’d be roaring for round two.
“You need cleaning up,” I told him. I managed to lever my body, now beginning to hurt like I’d been mauled by an alligator, off the bed. In the bathroom I soaked a towel, threw the condom away and returned to a sleepy man looking almost boyish in the soft light of the hotel room.
I wiped the sweat off his back, cleaned up other more sensitive places that made him squirm, and kissed his lean back.
“Wish we’d done that without condoms,” he muttered, face still planted in the pillow.
“Why? Less mess,” I said.
He looked over his shoulder with one brown eye. “Then I’d have you inside me forever.”
I laughed. “Corny much? I’ll always be inside you,” I said, tapping his heart.
He nodded before pulling me up the bed, to curl around his back and hold him close as we both slept the sleep of the just.
26
I rose from the deepest part of slumber with a speed that came from instinct pulling me up from the depths to face danger. It was like rising from the water to gasp at the air. The moment my eyes opened my body moved.
“Don’t you fucking, dare,” hissed a woman’s voice.
Something cold and hard dug into the back of my head. Jacob, my first thought. The second took longer as I tried to orientate myself in the hotel room.
“You try anything, and I’ll blow lover boy all over this bed,” she snapped.
“Okay, you have my compliance,” I said, quivering with the need to move because of the hormones dumped into my bloodstream.
“Mac?” asked a soft voice near my right arm.
“Just do as she says,” I said, voice tight, body tighter.
Jacob flinched, woke and rose in one fluid movement. He stilled as he saw the guns pointing at us.
“Sit up,” the woman commanded, the gun moving away from my skull.
I lifted myself, ribs and back screaming at the effort, off the mattress. It was dark in the room, the lights from outside giving everything a ghastly yellow glow. I sat on the edge of the bed and glanced behind me at Jacob. A second woman with a large revolver kept the barrel tight to his head, just behind his left ear.
“Don’t move, babe,” I told him. “Don’t fight.”
“Cute, real cute,” the woman said moving back away from me. Too far to go for a direct assault. She held the weapon, a Glock, in two hands, feet shoulder width apart and she watched me, not the barrel of her gun. She knew how to use it. Her finger sat over the trigger.
“He so much as twitches and he’s dead,” she said. “He’s dead anyway, but I’ll let you have a few more seconds before I have the deed done.”
She was maybe 1.70 metres tall. About 65 kilos soaking wet. Her body mass index would be close to zero by the looks of the corded muscle in her forearms and neck. White skinned with a heavy but natural tan, brown hair, bleached by the sun on the long ends and big green eyes. Her lips were thin, cheekbones and chin sharp. When she spoke, I detected an Oxbridge accent layering something rural, a very English voice. I’d never seen her before.
“Who are you?” I asked.
Her top right lip lifted in a sneer. “What the fuck do you care? You’re going to die anyway.”
I licked my lips. We were both naked. Jacob had a gun to his head, not a figure of speech this time, and I knew how fast that Glock could take me out. There’d be no walking away with a wound if she shot me at this distance and I’d never save Jacob.
“That seems very final considering I don’t know you. I’m guessing this isn’t a spurned lover thing, obviously we’re gay, so what do you want?” I asked, maintaining eye contact. “The British Government aren’t going to give any ransom money for us, and we don’t know anything worth selling, so please, tell me how to fix this.”
“I want you to watch my friend kill your boyfriend,” she said, and her eyes flicked to her companion.
“Get up,” growled the other woman in a Russian accent.
“Do as she asks,” I told Jacob after his first ‘fuck you’.
He moved and she forced him around to my side of the bed. “Kneel,” the Russian said, a much larger, blonder woman.
Jacob glanced at me and sank to his knees.
“Hands, pidor,” she ordered.
Jacob raised his hands and laced his fingers together. He looked at me the whole time as if waiting for the order to action. I shook my head and saw his confusion. The woman placed the revolver, a Nagant M1895 able to hold seven rounds, against his temple. Jacob didn’t move a muscle.
I looked back at the smaller woman. “Okay, now what? You shoot him but why? What will it gain? We’re just two grunts doing our jobs. We know nothing.”
“You killed him,” she said and for the first time the barrel of the Glock wavered.
That didn’t really help. I’d killed a great many men over the years. “Killed who?” I asked.
“Stephen…” the name came out as half snarl, half sob.
I glanced at Jacob. “Clark,” he clarified.
My eyes widened in surprise. “No we didn’t. He was dead when we found him.”
The movement made me flinch back but that didn’t stop the Glock from pushing into my forehead. “No, you killed him. You, the British fucking Government.” She made a sound of pure grief and I stared at Jacob knowing this was goodbye, she’d pull the trigger. The kind of grief that drove her to seek us out, break into the hotel room and hold two operatives at gunpoint meant she’d pull the trigger.
The barrel pushed hard enough against the thin skin of my forehead to bruise but she pulled back, stepped back and returne
d to the correct firing position. The larger Russian woman kept her mouth shut and the gun on Jacob’s temple.
I eased myself to upright, ribs protesting, hands up. “We didn’t kill, Clark. Why would we? We needed him alive to find Dilras Begum. Losing him cost us dearly. Trust me, we wanted him alive.”
She laughed, a tear escaping the corner of her right eye. “Trust you?”
“Bad choice of words,” I said. “But I have no reason to lie. I just want to get out of this alive. I want my friend here to stay alive and I’d like you both to leave this room alive.”
“Why would you want that?” she asked, eyes like green lichen over granite.
“Because I have no argument with you, and I don’t seek death needlessly. Listen to me, please, whatever issue you think you have with us it can be solved.” I tried to keep my focus on the woman and not let my eyes stray to Jacob.
“You can’t bring him back,” she said.
“No, but I can help you understand what happened. We can figure it out,” I said.
“They said you killed him,” she stated.
I shook my head. “No. Not us, it was General Delta. A man who is dead. An African warlord. We killed him for what he did to our team out there. He took Clark, extracted information –”
The Glock came too close and my heartrate kicked back up as she pressed it against my head again. “No.”
I took a short breath. “Yes.” A pause. “Please, let me explain what we know then you can make your decision about our fate.”
She stepped back. “Talk.”
I glanced at Jacob and watched a bead of sweat move around the barrel of the revolver. He gave me a slight nod.
“Okay, from the beginning. I lived in Kinshasa. Jacob found me. We went back to talk to his commander on this mission, the one to save Ms Begum. When we arrived, a bomb took out the team and the building, sniper fire made us flee the scene. We knew Clark wouldn’t be with the rest of the team. I’ve been tracking his movements for years looking for a way through to the men who gave the orders he wanted me to carry out. Kill orders and other things. We went in search of Clark, knowing he had contact with Delta. We found his body in a warehouse. We went to hunt down Delta –”
“You’re lying,” she stated.
“No, I’m not. Who told you it was us that killed Clark? Who sent you on this mission? Who do you work for?”
I could see the rage building in her, but she lashed it down even as her finger tightened on the trigger. “I’m the one asking the fucking questions.”
“Yeah, okay, I know, but please. Before you kill us just think about it. What would we gain from Clark’s death at that point and in such a horrific way? Why would we torture him like that? Since when do the SAS need to cut people’s fingers off, or their faces for that matter, to extract information? We’re a lot more organised than that, you know this. You know what you’re doing with that gun so you know how we operate.” I spoke with such speed my words tumbled together.
“He suffered so much for them,” she said.
“Who is them?” I asked. “Please, if you want revenge tell us and we’ll fix it. We’ll take them out. We just need names.”
She stared at me, her body relaxing by tiny increments while her mind tried to process what I said. The effort it took her to think past her grief and the lies she’d been told almost seemed to hurt.
“Listen, please, just tie us up so we can’t follow, and you can go,” I said.
The Glock swung away from me. “No, you need to understand the consequences of your actions.” The large black barrel centred on Jacob’s head and the revolver changed angle just a little so it would fire into his chest cavity and rip his body in half. “I missed you on that fucking rooftop but I’m not going to miss this time.”
Jacob shuddered at her words. She’d been there, the day of the explosion that wiped out his team. The day we’d been shot at by a sniper. This woman had been at the beginning of this mess and we were only just finding out about it now. So much had happened since the bombing I’d never spared the sniper a thought, I’d been too interested in Jacob, the mission, the future. She had already tried to kill us twice and I’d not taken any precautions to protect us from a threat made by an organisation that had proved itself deadly to those who tried to stop it or uncover its members and intentions. I had failed.
“No, please, no.” I dropped off the edge of the bed and onto my knees, hands reaching for her with no more thought than to beg for his life. “No, please, anything. I can give you anything. I’ll work for you to find out who did this to Clark. I swear please, don’t, don’t hurt him. Please, don’t kill him. Please…”
Her finger squeezed the trigger even tighter and in my mind’s eye I could see the mechanism click back, the round ready to be struck, igniting with the pressure necessary to rip a life from this world.
I wanted to lunge for her, but I knew the metre between us was too far for me to reach her and prevent the Russian from killing him, then me. Not that there was anything left for me if Jacob died. I couldn’t start again after this; I knew it in my bones. He was my only chance at any happiness. Maybe I didn’t deserve it for all the death I’d dealt in my life by following orders like the perfect little soldier boy, but if I could just have one more minute with him in my arms, I’d sell what was left of my soul.
“Please… I will do anything for him. Give you anything.” The words were the final whisper of a breaking heart. Her finger tightened. I looked into Jacob’s widening eyes.
A click.
Nothing.
A misfire.
“Fuck,” she snarled.
The Russian woman stepped back. “We kill them both now.”
Clark’s girlfriend or wife or whatever the fuck she was, looked at me. “It seems you have angels on your side today.”
I almost pissed myself in relief. My wrists came together in total compliance. “Just tie us up. Let us live and we’ll bring down the men responsible for Clark’s death. The real men. Those who control you. Control the lies you’ve been told.”
“You need to stop talking before I change my mind,” she snapped.
I closed my mouth.
“Hog tie them,” she ordered the Russian.
“I don’t think –” the larger woman began.
“No, you don’t. I paid you to follow orders. Just do it.” The smaller woman waved her gun about now, discipline forgotten, the moment of cold clarity ending on a shivering wail of internal emotional pressure.
I could almost see the rush of control ending. She wanted out. The moment she’d found herself able to kill two men at point blank range had gone and in its wake was confusion. This woman wasn’t a natural killer. She normally followed orders and as a sniper she’d been a crap shot. Now she just wanted revenge for the man she loved.
She lifted her gun and tried to stop it wavering. “Find out who got him killed. Find the people who give the orders. Stop them. The things they want to do to the world –”
“Enough,” barked the Russian. Did she work for them or for Clark’s lover?
The lover might not be able to think any longer, but whatever the pecking order the big Russian was a professional and when she grabbed me, her rough handling made me gasp in pain.
She used plasticuffs after she’d pulled my wrists behind my back. Then she used another set on my ankles, these even tighter and used the simpler zip ties to lace them together. She pushed me over making me cry out in pain. Jacob went through the same procedure. We were lying a metre apart, naked and staring at each other.
The women didn’t say anything more. They just left us on the hotel bedroom floor.
27
“Well, that could have gone worse,” Jacob said. “Not how I imagined the day starting.”
I laughed. “Fuck me, this hurts.”
“I need a fucking piss,” he said, chuckling.
Things became a bit silly at that point. We both started laughing, the shock of the last few m
inutes rolling through us. When we calmed down, we took stock and tested the restraints with more purpose.
“Shit,” Jacob said. “All I’m managing to do is cut myself.” He panted a little at the straining effort.
“Don’t do that,” I said. “I’ve an idea.”
“I hope it doesn’t involve screaming for help. I don’t want Colonel Brant or a cleaning woman to find us like this.”
I grinned, the laughter just bubbling under the surface. “No, idiot. The knife. The NRS. You took it off your belt. If we can get to your clothes…”
“The clothes on the other side of the bed you mean?” he asked, squirming against his restraints again.
“Hey, Jacob, stop. You’re panicking.”
“Fucking hell, I hate this.” He wasn’t listening to me. The laughter of moments ago was slipping away, being chased by the hounds of uncontrolled fear brought to bear by a fear of being tied down. Jacob’s PTSD surfaced, I could see it happening in the twitching of his body, the short breaths, the hardness in his eyes and the waves of anger he used to beat it into submission. He’d fail this time because he couldn’t move well enough to rid his body of the noxious mix of chemicals generated by his unruly brain.
“Hey, listen to me, listen,” I called over his dark muttering and thrashing about. He’d broken out in a sweat.
“What? What possible words of wisdom do you have for this particular problem, Mac?” he asked, voice brutal and sharp.
I didn’t rise to the contaminated bait. “I can’t move, Jacob. I can’t save us. You have to do it and it needs to be quick. I’m not breathing well like this. My weight is on my ribs. Please, help me.”
The panic in his eyes made me think I’d missed the mark, but he wrestled with the demons chasing themselves through his head and took a deep breath, one I envied at the moment.
He nodded. “I can do this.”
I managed a small smile. “You can do this.”
By small wriggling movements to and fro he squirmed past me and the bed. I watched his strong body, the one which had graced me with such desire the night before, now bend to the task in hand. Thinking about the previous night didn’t help much because my cock suddenly found the entire situation interesting and decided to grow.
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