by Michael Todd
“Are you sure that you should drink that much?” she asked, suddenly not sure how to even begin to seduce the man of her dreams.
Sal looked up and smiled. “Believe me when I say that I’ve earned it. The T-Rex was one of the more believable items of the whitepaper they sent me. I swear, the guy in charge of writing this shit up must have been fired from the job.”
She smirked. “I think we’ve all been there. Those people who want fame more than recognition will jump at anything to get their names on some big headlines and hope for a movie or book deal to come along because of it.”
He nodded and took a long sip from the pint glass. After a few seconds, he straightened and shook his head with a laugh. “Come to think of it, maybe you’re right. I might be going at this a bit too quickly.”
“Hey, if you need to unwind, you need to unwind.” She chuckled. “Although, if you’re in the mood to unwind in ways that don’t kill your brain cells and attack your liver, I think I might have a couple ideas.”
Sal leaned forward curiously. “Oh? What did you have in mind?”
“Well, I’ve been told that you like stamina-testing sex marathons,” she said. “A fuck-off,” she added quickly when his eyes widened.
He wasn’t sure how to respond to that and immediately wondered where she’d gotten the idea from. He turned quickly as Madigan slipped out the door without looking back. She couldn’t have…
Then again, putting Courtney up to something like this did seem like the kind of thing that she was capable of, now that he thought about it. It wasn’t something that she would become known for, but it was the kind of stunt she would pull to keep him on his toes with her. Now, he simply had to figure out whether she wanted him to decline the offer or not.
Maybe it was the alcohol, but he wasn’t in any mood to play games. If she wanted him to be monogamous, she would have told him. That was the kind of woman she was.
He turned to Monroe, and a smile teased his lips before he took another long sip from his drink. “Let me finish this and we can get started on our stamina-testing sex marathon.”
She blushed furiously and looked around to make sure nobody had heard him say that. Thankfully, enough people were drunkenly loud to mask what he’d said from anyone even close by.
It didn’t take him long to finish the drink, and they paid their bill before they stepped outside.
“Your place or mine?” Sal asked without even the slightest hint of a slur.
Courtney thought about it for a moment. She wasn’t that prolific, but she knew enough to make an informed decision.
“My place,” she said. “Definitely mine.”
She gasped for breath and could half believe that her eyes actually bulged out of her face as she dropped back down to the bed.
Breathe. Just keep breathing. That was the key.
“Are you ready to give up?” Sal asked as he tilted his head in a challenge and grinned. He was sweating, but he still looked like he could go for a while yet.
She shook her head in answer to his question, not ready to talk yet. To distract him, she grabbed his wrists and pushed his hands against her breasts. He kneaded them gently. The sensation as his rough, callused palms rubbed against her nipples didn’t help with the low, needy ache from where she could still feel him filling her.
“It’s not possible,” Courtney finally managed to gasp. “I’m a scientist, and I say that nine times is not scientifically possible.”
“Well, you know that the Zoo has all kinds of ways to flip off the laws of science,” Sal retorted with a grin. He leaned forward to press a kiss to her lips. “Besides, my current record is twelve times, and I still think that I could have gone for a few more.”
She gaped at him, but her competitive streak flared. Twelve times? It had to have been with Madigan, she realized. She had been the one to set this up.
“That bitch,” she breathed.
“What?” Sal asked. He gripped her nipples between his fore and middle fingers and tugged them gently in a way that made the wet ache in her pussy harder to resist.
“Nothing,” she growled. “Fuck it, I don’t think I have it in me to go to twelve, but I think I can make double digits at least.”
“Your call,” he said with a grin and kissed her neck as his hips pumped in and out of her again.
“Fuck, yes…” she whispered, her teeth gritted as she held him close to her.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Morning had arrived, and she wasn’t insanely hungover and in need of coffee-based medication to keep her from murdering anyone who so much as looked at her wrong.
She was getting old, Madigan realized.
At least she made up for it by being at the bar for breakfast and sipped some coffee infused with Irish whiskey. The coffee there was better than anywhere else in the Staging Area, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t make it interesting. She smirked, took a sip, and picked at the grilled cheese she’d asked them to make for her breakfast. The drinks were great. The food was greasy and strictly comfort-based. It was good for when her head pounded, and she needed something to take the edge off of that and an upset stomach. Right now, though, it wasn’t that appealing.
What did appeal, she decided, was who had strolled in through the door. There were customers there even in the morning, so that wasn’t a surprise. People kept all kinds of hours around there, but right now, this was their slow time.
Which meant that when Courtney stepped into the bar, she easily became the focus of Madigan’s attention. The way that she alternated between a stagger and a shuffle revealed all too clearly that she had gotten lucky the night before—although luck was subjective in this case. She’d obviously taken Madigan’s advice, but challenging Sal to a fuck-off did have its consequences.
Monroe sat across from Madigan and glared at her. She opened her mouth to speak but stopped as a tired-looking waitress came over to their table.
“What can I get ya, honey?” the woman asked in a practiced tone.
Madigan answered for her. “We’ll need coffee. Lots of it. Just…bring a pot and a mug. Plus, as much protein as you can get on a plate for her.”
The waitress nodded, apparently unfazed by what had to be a common order around there, and headed back toward the kitchen.
“You…bitch,” Courtney accused as soon as the waitress was out of earshot.
Kennedy chuckled softly. “I don’t exaggerate, Courtney. Best you get used to that. Now that we have him, how do we make sure other women don’t? I mean, it seems like you took the workout pretty well, so I see that I made a good choice.”
“Are you kidding me?” her companion asked. “He’s a fucking machine.” Madigan smirked at the pun. “I’ll be sore for a week, and that is even though I had to alternate between my mouth and my pussy after round five.”
A pause ensued as the waitress returned with a pot of coffee, a mug, and a plate full of bacon and eggs heaped on a thick steak. It looked greasy and delicious, and Monroe immediately attacked a piece of bacon.
“And twelve times?” she asked, speaking with her mouth half full of bacon. “What do you have, titanium labia?”
Madigan laughed. “Honestly, I was ready to throw the towel in at nine, but he had this cocky smile that I wanted to fuck right off his face. I didn’t succeed, but it was an honest attempt. How many times did you go?”
“Ten,” Courtney admitted. “But that’s only because he said that he’d gone twelve times with you recently, so I had to get it up to double digits at least.”
“Alternating though?” Kennedy stole a strip of bacon from Courtney’s plate. “That’s cheating.”
“Believe me, it was necessary,” the specialist growled. “My jaw still hurts a little too. I mean, I’ve only ever been with two guys before, so my experience is thin, but there’s something that tells me that there’s nothing natural about it. He has to be unique in the fuck-me-blind ability.”
Madigan nodded and sipped her coffee though
tfully before she responded. “I’ve been around enough to have had a decent control group. Even Arnold couldn’t compete.”
Sal stepped out of the shower. There wasn’t an extra towel for him to use, and he didn’t want to try out the razor that he’d found in the stall. He would need to head home to complete his morning ritual.
For now, though, he took advantage of the still slightly damp towel that Courtney had left behind to dry himself before he stepped out. He had made sure that he was alone in the apartment before he took a shower. Well, it wasn’t like he had anything to hide from anyone who might arrive. He’d simply assumed that Courtney didn’t expect any visitors.
He kept her towel wrapped around his waist to be safe as he returned to her bedroom where his clothes had been discarded the night before. He’d taken them off fairly early in the evening. Well, Courtney had, anyway, but the point remained. They were still clean enough to wear, at least to get back home.
There was, however, a matter he needed to consider. He was now in a physical relationship with the other two founding members of Heavy Metal. That wasn’t a simple situation. He wasn’t great with women. Hell, he hadn’t even been in a physical relationship with anyone but himself before he was shipped out there, so he knew less about it than most.
“I’m so fucked,” Sal growled, shaking his head. “Then again, they have been fairly intense relationships, so if I go out with a shot in the back in the Zoo, it’ll be with a smile on my face.”
That was assuming he would have a face left, of course.
He fucking talked to himself again, he thought with a shake of the head. Maybe this was another sign of taking that goop in raw—going crazy. That he’d hooked up with two different women, both of whom had ready access to guns, was another sign that he was borderline fucking nuts.
It had been worth it, though. He grinned and nodded before he pulled his shirt on over his head. Still, his bravado about how Madigan would feel about him with Courtney had faded along with the alcohol. He didn’t look forward to talking to her about it.
He looked down as he pulled his pants on.
“You had better be happy with those two and not get me in trouble with a third, or the next time we go out into that fucking jungle, we may not make it back out,” he growled as he buttoned himself up.
And he had talked to his dick now, huh? Insanity definitely loomed.
Anderson dragged himself out of bed and rubbed at his eyes as he looked out the window. What kind of work base didn’t have a steady supply of coffee, anyway?
Well, they did have a steady supply. The people who worked on the wall there were required to be functional and sharp enough to handle heavy equipment at all hours of the day or night, so that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that the supplies were all shipped in from that cesspool of capitalism that was the Staging Area every week. Since the whole operation was required to be one hundred percent under wraps, the supplies had to match the number of people who were supposed to work there, which excluded the black-ops team that tested new combat armor suits. Add that to the extra personnel who were brought in, and supplies were running out, fast.
And since scientists and engineers needed obscene amounts of coffee to maintain their work habits, it was no surprise that coffee was the first thing to run out.
Thankfully, the sun now rose on day five of this debacle, and that was the last one that they were paid for. If the suits weren’t ready by now, the plug would be pulled, and hopefully, someone else would be called in to handle round two of testing these pieces of high-tech crap.
As he stepped out of the little hut that he’d called home over the past week or so, he saw that the open ground in the construction site had been put to good use.
Finally.
The new pilots weren’t of the same cut as the special forces that Anderson had worked with. They were harder and tougher—hard-core black-ops operatives. They might have had the likes of SAS, French Foreign Legion, SEAL, and Green Beret attached to their credentials, but they had been out of it for almost a decade. Since then, they’d worked with security companies and ran the operations that even the US black-ops teams were afraid to implement.
The message was clear. After the previous bungle, Pegasus didn’t want anyone associated with the military involved in what they did there.
The suits looked bulkier than before, and yet Anderson could see that the movements were smoother and easier and lacked the lag that he’d noted in the previous test runs. The weapons were new too, and not the bottom-of-the-basement stuff that the military liked to use. It was all new, high-tech, and top-of-the-line stuff.
It was a pity that it took the death of a good man to introduce all these improvements.
One of the team—the one out of the suit who oversaw the dry runs—turned when he noticed that Anderson watched their training.
“Colonel.” His profile had called him Iver Corran, former SAS and one of the more highly recommended operatives among the new arrivals. “The engineers finished their work last night, so we’ve taken the opportunity to bring the new and improved suits out for a little fresh air.”
“Corran, right?” he said. “I hope it’s not too big a change from the overthrow of democratically elected governments to work on testing suits of armor.”
“This is our overtime,” the man responded with a smirk. “We keep the coups and political assassinations for the weekdays.” He gave the officer a quick once-over and paused when his gaze reached the burn scars. “What are you, army?”
“Marine Corp, actually.”
“Fantastic.” He chuckled. “Even more sanctimonious.”
Anderson nodded. If the truth be told, he wasn’t that sanctimonious, but people like these guys were the lowest of the low. They were men of skill and talent who elected to do terrible things because it meant they received an unhealthy number of zeros in their bank accounts, all paid for by the Pentagon’s defense contracts.
“Do you think you’ll be ready to move soon?” Anderson asked to change the subject.
“Absolutely,” Corran growled.
“At what time?”
He shrugged. “I can have them suit up properly right now if ya want. We might need time to make sure the supplies are ready. Let’s say maybe an hour?”
Anderson nodded.
“Anxious to get out of here, are ya?” he asked with another smirk.
“I’ve been in this hellhole for a week now,” Anderson rasped. “You cunts get this shit done today, and I can go home.” He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t want to talk about his family with a bunch of high-paid mercenaries.
“That sounds like a plan.” Corran turned away with a shrug. “I’ll let ya know when the time comes.”
The colonel nodded and headed back to his little hut.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“This is Overwatch.” Anderson spoke into his mic as he lowered himself into his seat in the operations center. “Are you ready, Falcon Team?”
“Fucking hell,” one of the men cursed over the comms. “Do we really have to use these ridiculous call signs?”
He rubbed his temples. All work and no coffee made him a very dull boy, apparently.
“This is an official operation,” he retorted and hated that he had to explain this to the men like they were toddlers. “Names and nicknames will be kept off comms at all times. Use your assigned call signs when you attempt to communicate and keep comms as clean as possible as much as possible. Is that understood?”
Silence was the only response from the other side. He knew that was an attempt to goad him, and it wouldn’t work. He’d been in this game far too long to be outplayed by a bunch of mercenaries with over-inflated egos. Anderson shook his head and leaned back in his seat. Let them pretend to be high schoolers. He didn’t give a damn.
“Overwatch asked you maggots a question, Falcon Team,” Anderson heard Corran prod in a rough tone. He sounded like he felt similar irritation at their antics.
“Understood,” came a series of three voices in quick succession. It annoyed him that they respected Corran more than they did him, but not too much. These guys were assholes, and their opinions mattered very little in the bigger scheme of things.
“Now, if you keep a southwestern heading, you’ll encounter a mass of heat that we’ve picked up on the satellite feeds,” Anderson informed them. “Keep your senses alert, though. There are many creatures in that mess of a jungle that don’t show up on heat sensors. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the most dangerous ones are those that don’t show up.”
“What was all that about keeping the comms clear of unnecessary chatter?” one of the voices asked with a laugh.
“Shut it, Patterson!” Corran snapped.
The colonel rubbed his temples. “That’s Falcon Four to you, Falcon Leader.”
“Oh…roger that, Overwatch,” the man said and had the grace to sound chagrined.
Anderson shook his head. It really wasn’t his problem if these dumbasses caught themselves in an international scandal while they ran an unsanctioned operation on foreign soil. They would simply be relocated and made to sit in some office in San Francisco until the heat cooled and they could operate out of the country again. It wasn’t any trouble for him, so why did he stress so badly and insist that this mission went right and by the book?
Well, it was in his bones, he had to admit that. Any mission that he was involved in had to go well, or it would be a lesson for him to obsess over and learn from for the next one. He might not have a next one after this debacle, but again, that wasn’t his problem. If they found some cushy desk job for him too, he would be more than happy with that. It would mean he wouldn’t have to travel all over the world and it meant he’d be home at a reasonable hour and attend soccer practices and piano recitals. Date night with the wife. No watching good men get killed over the profit margins of a company that had more lobbyists in Washington than there were politicians.