by Gini Koch
“It’s a gift and a skill.”
CHAPTER 55
JEFF PULLED MY TOP OFF WITH ONE HAND while his other stroked my breasts. He moved his mouth to my neck, and I moaned. He nibbled, and I moaned louder. The soundproofing in the Embassy truly lived up to its hype—we’d never woken Jamie once, and considering I was sometimes shattering crystal, it was the one good thing about living here.
“Mmmm,” he said against my neck. “Last night was too long ago.” He bit my neck, and I yowled my agreement while my hips started bucking. Jeff stopped the lovely things his hands and mouth were doing. “What was that?”
“Um, me?”
He looked over his shoulder. “Ah, no. We have company. Interested company.”
I sat up. Sure enough, Duchess was at the side of the bed. “Good girl, back to bed.” She gave a doggy sigh and went back to her bed. She settled in, but she was watching. “Stay. Good girl.” I lay back and pulled Jeff onto me. “We’re good.”
We started back up, I yowled happily, Jeff stopped. “We are not alone.”
I looked around. The three cats were all awake, watching. I sat up. Duchess was still in her bed, radiating long-suffering good dogness. The other three dogs, however, were covering the “watching from the side of the bed” portion of the festivities.
“All dogs, back to bed!” I got three more dog sighs, but they did as they were told. “Stay! I mean it.” I lay back down. “Ignore the cats and they’ll get bored.”
“Really? You’re used to this?”
“Yeah. Trust me, I know my parents still do the deed. I think they’re interested because it’s us, and it’s all new, in that sense.”
Jeff looked around. “I’m not really used to an audience.”
“They’re dogs and cats. We do it in front of the Poofs all the time.”
“The Poofs have the decency not to look, or at least not to let me know they’re looking.”
I looked closely at his expression. Sure enough, he was embarrassed and freaked out. And, sadly, no longer even close to being in the moment.
I pondered my options. It wasn’t as though this was the first time I’d ever been in this situation. I rolled out of bed and went to the pantry in the kitchen. “Deluxe dog biscuits, large size, flavored for preference.” I opened the pantry. Sure enough, the Elves had the pantry covered as well as the refrigerator. There was a large box of biscuits sitting on the shelf. “You guys rock. Whoever you are.”
Went back into the bedroom, tossed four biscuits each to the dogs, grabbed the parent side of the baby monitor, and jerked my head at Jeff. “Come with me, quickly.”
Jeff hypersped out of the room, and I shut the door, leaving the dogs munching happily. I put the box back and the monitor on the counter. “Okay, now, let’s relax while they eat. They’ll all settle down with us out of the room.”
“You’re sure they won’t bark and wake the baby?”
“I’m positive.” If the soundproofing here ensured my cat-in-heat yowling didn’t wake the baby, it was unlikely the dogs were going to manage it. “Okay, I’m going to get a Coke, then we’re going to go to the living room, sit on the couch, and relax.” And, hopefully, reenact pleasant times from the Lair.
“Okay.” Jeff didn’t sound convinced. I decided not to focus on that. We’d managed to get past my freaking out about waking Jamie during sex. We just needed to get past his freaking out about dogs and cats being around. We could do that, right? I stretched while I tried not to worry. I opened the fridge and bent over to grab a Coke.
Before my hand closed around the can Jeff was up against me rubbing in a very pleasant, interesting, and insistent manner. “Mmmmm, do that again,” he growled.
“Do what again? Bend over? Stretch? Get a soda?”
He picked me up and flipped me so my legs went around his waist. “All of the above.”
Well, this had been my plan, so I wasn’t going to argue. I stretched and bent back, so I could close the refrigerator door. Why waste the electricity? Besides, we didn’t need the light—windows or no, there were night lights all over the place. I passed on the soda. I planned to have my mouth otherwise occupied.
Earth-friendly actions over, I straightened up to find Jeff definitely purring, with the “jungle cat about to eat me” look on his face. I loved that look. He buried his face in my breasts, and we reenacted the first orgasm he’d ever given me. I was all over this kind of nostalgia.
I’d sort of figured we’d head to the living room and a couch, but Jeff had other ideas. Still ravaging my breasts and squeezing my butt while I ground against him and did my best to get his T-shirt off, he took us into the formal dining room. He flung a chair aside and laid me back onto the table, so my behind was at the edge.
Before I’d met Jeff I’d had a fantasy about being ravaged on a conference table. Since meeting him I’d had that one fulfilled more than once. But it never got old, and a big dining room table resembled a conference table in more ways than one.
Jeff had his shirt and my pajama bottoms off now, though he was still in his. He grabbed my wrists and held them up over my head. “I’ve heard you’re unhappy with your current job. I think you need to apply for a new position.”
“What sort of work experience are you looking for?” I was managing to talk only because he didn’t have me completely insane from desire. I didn’t figure speech was going to remain in my repertoire long.
He gave me a slow smile as he slid the fingers of his free hand over my neck, playing with the spots he knew make me incoherent. “I like to train up. Show you how we do things around here.” His fingers stroked my breasts and gently rubbed my nipples.
I gave up on speech. Moaning was taking all of my vocal capacity. Jeff’s mouth followed his hand. As his tongue curled around my breasts, I gave up and let the yowling begin.
He trailed his tongue down as he let go of my wrists and slid his hands to my thighs. As his mouth went between my legs, he spread them wide. My yowling hit High C. Still keeping my legs wide, he gently flipped me over. I grabbed the sides of the table as he nipped my behind and went back to making me hit all the high notes.
I lost track of time, and orgasms, until Jeff’s tongue trailed up my back. He bit the back of my neck as he entered me and all I could do was gasp and moan as his body’s weight held me captive while he pounded inside me.
“That’s right,” he growled in my ear. “Let’s see if you can handle the pressure this job entails.” He lifted his body off mine, slid his hands under me, cupped my breasts, and lifted, so my body was curved. I let go of the table and pulled my arms in, so I was resting my head on my forearms.
“Good,” Jeff purred. “Now, let’s see if you remember the rest of this important process.”
I managed to make some inarticulate sounds that tried to indicate I not only remembered but thought of it fondly. I wrapped my legs around and under his butt, or, as I thought of it, moved my feet into position to help his amazingly perfect thruster engines put the pedal to the metal.
He spread one hand so it still supported me but allowed his thumb and little finger to play with my breasts, while his other hand slid over my stomach and down, to stroke me in alternate time to his thrusts, while I squeezed my legs in time with him, until I wanted to go insane from the feelings both inside and out.
This was one of the variations of the Alpha Centaurion Love Knot, and, as I’d discovered early and appreciated immensely, it was amazingly efficient at making me want to pass out from pleasure. It took very little time before an incredible orgasm hit. As it did so, Jeff pulled me up so my body was fully against his now.
In between shrieking his name, I grabbed the back of his head, while he bit down on my neck and, hands still doing their amazing job, pressed me down onto him harder, while he exploded inside me.
Jeff might have had an issue yesterday with recovery from swimming in the Potomac, but he was in his standard fine form now. As my legs unhooked, he turned me around, bodies still
shuddering from climax, so I could wrap my legs and arms around him while he held and squeezed my butt and stayed inside me, getting ready for Round Two.
This time, he did head us to the couch. I wasn’t empathic, and I couldn’t read minds, but experience told me that since we’d done a variation, Jeff wanted to ensure I still loved the original.
Sure enough, he laid me on the couch and flipped my legs up to his shoulders, keeping my arms inside his, against my body. I locked my feet around his neck, grabbed those thrusters, and we went to town.
He was deep inside me this way, and I loved it. It was intense, almost frantic, him slamming into me, with me pulling him in even deeper the only movement I could make, every thrust feeling deeper and better than the last.
He’d just climaxed, so it took a while for him to build back up, but this was more than fine with me. I was busy yowling like a cat in heat while he growled because it was so intense that he couldn’t talk, either. My orgasm started and, in this position, it just kept on going and going and going. The Love Knot ensured an Energizer Bunny climax, every time.
Jeff’s body shuddered and then he roared as he erupted into me, and I climaxed so hard I could barely breathe.
My legs went weak, and he let them fall around his hips while he wrapped his arms around me and kissed me deeply. I usually couldn’t talk immediately after this kind of sexual experience, and tonight was no exception. The beauty of being with an empath, however, was that I could instead allow all the feelings of love, lust, and gratification wash over me and know he understood and appreciated them all.
After a few minutes, Jeff nuzzled my ear. “Nice interviewing skills. You’re hired.”
I laughed. “Can’t wait to start. I already love the benefits package.”
CHAPTER 56
JEFF STOOD UP, CRADLED ME in his arms, and headed us for the bedroom, stopping only to grab the baby monitor.
The dogs and cats appeared asleep and uninterested, which hardly mattered, since I was blissfully exhausted. Jeff slid us under the covers.
“We’re naked.”
He chuckled. “Jamie won’t care. We’ll worry about clothes when we get up to feed her.”
“O-kay.” I wrapped around him, snuggled my face into his pecs, and went to sleep.
The sound of The All-American Rejects’ “Gives You Hell” woke us, not Jamie. We got up quickly, found our nightclothes and put them back on, and checked on her. She was awake, playing with her Poof, several other Poofs standing guard.
“She didn’t wake up for a feeding.” I tried not to worry about this.
“She’s fine,” Jeff said as he picked her up and gave her a kiss. “Babies do sleep through the night, you know.”
“Is she off schedule?”
He sighed. “I don’t think we have a schedule to compare her to, baby. We’ll mention it next week, when Tito does our tests again, if she sleeps through the night again.”
I thought about what we were saying. More to the point, I thought about the fact that we were saying it in front of Jamie. “Not that there’s anything wrong with sleeping through the night or waking up to have a feeding.”
Jeff caught on. “Right. Jamie should do what’s best for her health.”
Our potentially unhelpful attempts to ensure our child didn’t think we either did or didn’t want her to sleep through the night over, we did the morning routine, which was nice, then tried to mentally prep for whatever this day was going to hold, which wasn’t.
Potential assassinations aside, Jeff actually had ambassador-type work to do. Sadly, Lockwood was right—Jeff might think of me as the Co-Chief of Mission and Walter might use the title, but when it came down to the paperwork, at least, Jeff was the only one who mattered.
Then again, I didn’t like paperwork. And we now had four dogs that needed walking. Of course, we also had lunatics after us, or possibly after us. I checked and verified that our outfits for tonight weren’t in Pierre’s hands so fittings would be later, confirmed that Caroline was still sleeping, made sure the new parents and babies were doing well, and got a “no thanks anyway” from Amy. Then I rounded up the boys.
They arrived at my door looking ready for action. I could tell they were both packing heat. “Dog walking time,” I announced cheerfully.
Len and Kyle both stared at me for a long moment. “Are we driving?” Kyle asked finally.
“Um, no. While the dogs would be all for a cool ride in a limo and the idea of a dog park has certain charm until you, you know, think about it in regard to our dogs, the term ‘walk the dog’ refers to just that. Taking the dog and letting it walk. And do its business. In this case, letting all four of them do their business.”
I could tell from their expressions that when Len and Kyle had envisioned working for the C.I.A., never had the idea of being on dog walking duty occurred to them. I felt for them. When I’d killed my first superbeing, I hadn’t envisioned doing what I did now, either. Live and learn fast was my motto, of course.
“Come on, guys. I have to push the stroller. You’re both big dudes. You should be able to handle the dogs without issue.”
“It’s their issue we don’t want to handle,” Len mentioned.
“It’s a crap job, I’ll give you that.” Snickering to myself, I got the dogs’ leashes on, handed Dudley and Duke to Kyle and Dottie and Duchess to Len, then got Jamie bundled up for the great outdoors.
Diaper bag hooked on one handle-hook and my purse hooked onto the other, random Poofs along for the ride, we headed for the elevator. The dogs tried to pull the boys the way they did with whichever A-C had them; but though A-Cs might be stronger, football players were apparently better at dog handling, at least my two were. Both boys had the dogs minding by the time we reached the front of the Embassy.
Navigating the steps was an issue, or would have been if White hadn’t joined us. “Need a helping hand, Missus Martini?”
“I never say no. You want to come for a walk with us, Richard?” It was a safe bet—he had his coat on.
“Frankly, I’d love to.” He held the door for all of us, then helped me get Jamie’s stroller down the stairs. Enhanced or not, her stroller had so many bells, whistles, and A-C gadgets on it that I couldn’t lift it safely by myself, especially not with her in it.
We went over to Sheridan Circle Park first because it was close and the dogs really needed the stop. Len and Kyle remained underwhelmed by their dog duties, but they only complained a little bit. Dog necessities completed, I contemplated where to go next. It was a nice day, and we’d been out for only five minutes—seemed sort of a waste to just go back to the Embassy.
“Any suggested destination, Richard?”
He gave me a small smile. “I’m sure you’re not aware of it, but we’re fairly close to the Embassy of Paraguay.”
“What a great destination idea!” It was particularly great because I knew without asking that Jeff, Chuckie, Reader, and everyone else would forbid us to go. Under the circumstances, I let the accurate mention of my lack of awareness slide. “Lead the way, Mister White.”
We started at a slow stroll, Len and the girl dogs in front of us, Kyle and the boy dogs bringing up the rear, White walking next to me. It was rather pleasant.
The one positive I had to give this area was that the buildings were, for the most part, beautiful. They tended toward old and stately, with lots of mature and well-maintained foliage. The streets were loaded with trees, and there was a lot of grass. It was much greener than I was used to, coming from the beiges, browns, and reds of the desert.
One of the things no one had mentioned to me until I’d lived at the Embassy over a month was that it was actually disguised to look as old as everything else around it. It gave the feeling of having been here for a couple of centuries, as opposed to a few decades. Our Embassy wasn’t the most astounding, architecturewise, but it absolutely fit in with its surroundings and achieved the whole “looking smaller outside than inside” thing, though everyone insis
ted it was just good design, not cloaking or any other mysterious visual effect.
“What’s the word, Richard? Did anyone make any progress on any damn thing last night or this morning?”
“Sadly, no. Other than our Concierge Majordomo, who’s planned the Embassy’s social calendar for the next several months, presuming we all survive tonight.”
I wasn’t sure if I should feel happy nothing had progressed without my help or worried. Settled for both. “Pierre’s a god.”
“Truly. He’s also ordered all the equipment needed for the school and day care center.”
I ran that sentence over again in my mind. Wasn’t computing. “Excuse me?”
White chuckled. “Denise Lewis wants to have something to do to pass the time, since she had to give up her job to relocate here. And our children don’t go to regular schools.” This I knew to be true; they were all schooled within the A-C community.
“Denise wants to teach and run a day care center?”
“The Lewises will be living on premises, and Kevin will have the title of Defense Attaché. Because she has a teaching degree and also has children living with us, Denise has graciously requested to be in charge of the day care center and school. For the Embassy personnel and for those in Alpha and Airborne who might prefer to have their children schooled here as well.”
“Can I take my classes from Denise, too?”
“Sadly, no.” White said this with a straight face, but I could tell he wanted to laugh. Hey, it was worth a shot.
It didn’t take us too long to reach our destination. The building the Paraguay Diplomatic Mission was housed in was one of the more boring and nondescript ones—not ugly, just not trying to shout “look at me!” like some of the others. Our Embassy wasn’t wearing glitter and fringe, but it was a lot snazzier looking.
“You sure we should be here?” Len asked. “They tried to kill us all two days ago.”
“No. Assassins tried to kill us. Sure, they’re associated with this diplomatic mission, but that doesn’t mean everyone else here is out to get us, or even knows what’s going on.”