Blind Shot

by Lola Feri

  Garrett stopped kissing me to look down at his hand squeezing my cock, hard, sliding from base to tip. That was fine with me. It let me start to mouth my way along his throat. I started to think about giving him the same kind of mark he had left on me the night before, but when I ran the bare tip of my tongue along his carotid, he shook as if I had slapped him. Intrigued I did it again, and he made a whimpering sound, never slacking off with his hand.

  God, I had no idea he would be so sensitive there, and it wasn't long before he finally reached up and tugged my hair hard.

  "You need to stop that," he said. "I feel like I'm going to go out of my head."

  "I'll stop if you get me off," I said. I was only half-joking, but he growled, snapping his teeth against my lower lip. To my surprise he spat in his hand before returning it to my cock. For some reason, I hadn't thought he had it in him to be so crude. Then I growled between gritted teeth when he dragged his wet hand along my shaft, stopping at the tip to gather up some liquid.

  "Come on," he grunted in my ear. "You always do what I say, don't you, Ryland? You always... do what I say, and I want you to come."

  I pressed my face hard against his neck, making a high whining sound. He laughed at me a little, but even in the state I was in, I knew there was no meanness in it.

  "God, you're so fucking gorgeous like this, you look like you're going to burst, and that's what I want, baby. I want you to come all over yourself. I want you to blow all over, fucking drench yourself..."

  I couldn't believe it. Alec fucking Garrett was whispering completely filthy words in my ear, and it was getting me so hot. I had one arm thrown over his shoulders, my body slightly twisted so my other hand could cling to his shirt. I wanted this man to fucking wreck me.

  I dug my heels into the bed, thrusting into his hand even as he jerked me off. It felt so good that I stopped myself from coming twice, but then right when I was thinking about pulling back one more time, he bit me, right over the bruise he had left last night. That pain, bright and shocking, pushed me right over the edge, and I had to muffle a shout when I spilled all over myself, just like he wanted.

  I squirmed against him, batting his hand off my cock when it grew oversensitive, and for a while, I just wilted in his arms.

  To my surprise, he held me, kissing my hair and nuzzling my ear. It felt good, warm and safe, making it take a little longer for me to pull away. I propped myself up on one elbow.

  "Should have fucking known, you're a cuddler."

  He smiled at me, raising an eyebrow.

  "Is that a problem?"

  Was it? Most of the guys I've been with, even the ones I was friendly with, usually stayed for a quick afterglow hug at best before we went on to doing other things, and other people. However, I couldn't imagine Garrett being any of those guys.

  "No," I said. "But fuck, I'm not letting you go without."

  Garrett shrugged, a brief smile on his face.

  "Don't force yourself. I feel like I'm on a winning streak on this having sex with men thing. Don't want to take it too far just to crash and burn my first time out."

  Someone else might have taken it as a refusal, but I'd been working with Garrett for a week now. I could see that turn of humor at the corner of his mouth, and I leaned up to kiss it.

  "Fuck, you're not forcing me, though if you want, we can play like that. I mean, I like it."

  Before he responded I slithered down his body, chuckling a little at the fact that he hadn't even undone his pants yet. He had gone soft while jerking me off, but even cupping his dick through the fabric of his nice pants was enough to help him regain interest.

  On impulse, I pressed my mouth to the fabric, feeling him get harder and the breath catch in his throat. There was something in the tone of his cry, so needy and slightly broken that made me press against the sheets again, whimpering against him. After a minute, I couldn't resist unzipping his fly and pulling his dick out. I liked the way it filled my hand when I circled my fingers around the base, drawing up roughly. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him grasp the bed desperately.

  "Put your hands on me," I said thickly, and immediately he did. One hand in my hair, the other on my shoulder, there was no doubt in either of our minds what would happen next.

  With my hand still around the base of his cock, I opened my mouth and lapped at the tip of his cock, a little coyly at first. When I heard his sounds going from pleasured to demanding, I took half of his cock in my mouth at once, bringing my fist up to meet my lips at the same time. That made him choke of a shout, and I might have laughed if I didn't want more than that, so much more.

  His hand tightened in my hair, and dark thoughts drifted through my head. I wondered for a moment if I could convince him to really fuck my mouth, to force me to take his cock down my throat. Something in my head told me that he would never have done that with a woman, but with me, he'd do it with me. Something about that thought made me groan over him.

  "Please, Ryland," Garrett groaned. "Feels so good, feels so fucking good."

  There wasn't any meanness in him at all. There was just me taking him apart with my hands and my mouth. I wanted to make him feel all of those nights that I laid in bed and thought of him, all the times I had imagined just this.

  His big body started to shake, starting with the occasional tremor, and then I felt the muscles in his torso, his thighs, as they tensed up. Suddenly both his hands were in my hair, tugging hard, bringing me down on his cock, and God, it was so good.

  "I can't... I can't..." he was muttering but I didn't care what he thought he couldn't do. I knew what I wanted from him, and I sure as fuck was going to get it.

  With a yell that seemed to shake me as well as him, he spilled down my throat. Hot and perfect, and claiming. I didn't let go right away, instead I clung to him, feeling him soften and his body finally start to come down.

  "Fucking hell," he murmured. I sat up, smirking. My mouth felt tender and slightly sore, and there was an ache in my jaw. Yeah, this was exactly what I had needed.

  "Did you see God? If so, he probably has something to say about you swearing so much. Not very holy, that."

  "Come here," he grumbled. "I would say that I have something for that smart mouth of yours, but you already seem to have taken care of that."

  I laughed, letting him drag me up his body to hold me in his arms. I wanted to make some kind of smart crack about knowing that he was a smuggler, but right then, it felt too good just to rest against him, to let him kiss my hair and rub my back.

  "Was that good?" he asked after a moment. "For you, I mean. I didn't hurt you, anything like that?"

  "It was good," I said with a drowsy smile. "You'll get better, I promise."

  "Will I have the chance to do so?"

  "Sure, I'll take you to a few clubs, maybe set you up with a Grindr..."

  Even with my face buried in his chest, I could tell that he was looking at me, and I laughed.

  "If you're wondering whether you're going to be invited back for a repeat performance, then the answer is a very decided yes. Happy now?"

  He laughed. I wasn't sure if I had ever heard him laugh like that before.

  "Yes," he said. "Thank you."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Garrett

  I awoke early the next morning, Ryland still a heavy weight against my side. It had been years since I had woken up next to someone. I stared at the ceiling trying to savor the feeling as long as I could. Part of me kept circling, examining the situation from every terrible angle.

  My mind told me that this had been a mistake. At the very best, it was an error in judgment to become intimate with an asset. Sending someone you cared about into the field was always hard; sending someone with whom you were having sex was another thing altogether. At worst... I had taken advantage of my position of trust and authority with Ryland. I knew that mind games weren't always blatant, and that influence could take on the most insidious forms.
Would Ryland have wanted me if I wasn't his handler?

  Of course my heart didn't make things any easier. There was a kind of peace over me that I hadn't felt before. Something that was fractured had become complete. Something broken was now whole. I didn't even know I had been lacking before this, and now a part of me dreaded going back to what I had coped with before.

  A colleague once told me that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. I knew what he meant now. I had been blind, and now suddenly I could see things I never knew existed.

  I started to get up from the bed, but Ryland stirred, making a puzzled noise.

  "Don't go," he muttered, still mostly asleep. "Just stay."

  I wish I could. I hope I can...

  "I need to get up, and you should to," I muttered softly. "I'll let you know when I'm out of the shower."

  He grunted assent and rolled back over, away from me. Despite being the one who moved first, I was disappointed to lose his warmth, and the weight of his body against mine. It was shocking how much I wanted to stay in bed with him, but of course that wasn't possible.

  Instead, I took the archetypal cold shower, and after rousing him as promised, I started breakfast in the kitchen. There were some supplies in the fridge, and if we needed to stay in Bucharest for a while, we could always go shopping.

  My satellite phone chirped as soon as Ryland came in, dressed only in jeans and drying his dark hair. I wanted nothing more than to run my tongue along the thin seam of dark hair running from his navel into his jeans, but instead I gestured at the food.

  "Get that down you," I said. "If call is what I think it is, we might need to get going pretty quickly."

  He made a face I ignored and as I answered the phone, he took a seat and started vacuuming up the food.

  I listened as the details were given to me, nodding along. It was good to get this mission going. It kept me from dwelling on what had happened, and it forced us to return to normal.

  "All right," I said after hanging up. "Looks like they want us in place in three hours."

  Ryland was already done with breakfast and looking at me expectantly. The only way I could tell that something had happened last night was the dark bruise on his throat. It felt a little strange. On one hand, of course we would both look exactly the same. On the other, I felt like something should have changed us.

  "Cool," he said easily. "I'll get geared up."

  He saw me watching him, and despite the smirk on his face, there was something almost gentle about his expression.

  "Hey, it's not the end of the world," Ryland said quietly. "We don't need to talk about it. Ever, if you don't want."

  "And if I want to?"

  He paused, and I realized all over again that despite knowing everything in his file, Ryland was still in some ways a mystery.

  "Then we can do that later," he said. "After the mission."

  "I'll hold you to that," I said, and then reminded myself that we needed to make sure that there was an after, that he would be alive and we would still be with the agency.

  ***

  Four hours later, almost noon, and I was sipping coffee tensely with the irregular group of handlers that had been brought together for this job. We all had English in common at least, but I had never worked with any of them before.

  Somerfield was meant to be running this op, but something had kept him in Greece. I wasn't surprise when I was named as the mission head. A part of me wanted to refuse, as Ryland deserved my full attention, but ethically, there was no way to do so. I was the one most likely to make sure the mission went smoothly, something that would save lives.

  This time we had a small deserted storefront a block away from the hideout of the traffickers. It was better than the surveillance van where I had had my last breakdown at an observation crew, and that was a comfort at least.

  The layout of the operation was simple. The building where the traffickers were hiding was on a cul-de-sac. They were nearly the only inhabited building on the block, and it was close to the middle of the day. It had been decided that rather than going in after them, we would be best served by flushing them out with a smoke bomb and then picking them up as we could. It wasn't the cleanest way to run an op, but it was fast and brutal. The orders were clear, and everyone was on the same page.

  Ryland, like most sharpshooters, preferred to pick his own perch. When he stabilized and gave the clear sign, I could tell he was in an abandoned building slightly south of the hideout. He had gotten there quickly, and glancing at the other sharpshooter’s video feeds, he had the best clear shot to anyone who came out the front door. Three other sharpshooters were stationed around the building, all of them farther away. My heart beat a little faster at the idea that Ryland would essentially be taking point this operation. I calmed myself down with a few deep breaths. This was the work that Ryland was born to do. That meant I should let him do it.

  There was a part of me that wanted to be on the ground with him. I had been running ops for a while, but that never stopped me from getting into the field for at least some of the action. I knew with painful certainty how important logistics were, but a part me really only felt alive in the field.

  And when I was having sex with Ryland.

  It was beyond a terrible thing to be thinking while we were waiting for the op to commence, and I tried to push it out of my head. When a handler from Austria turned to glance at me curiously, I told myself that there was no way she could tell what was going on in my head, no matter how obvious it all seemed.

  "All right, check in from all quarters."

  I got okays from the entire team on the ground, and it was time.

  "All right. Commence operation."

  Most of the job, both Ryland's end of it and mine, involved a lot of hurry up and wait. We were bored for far more of our work than otherwise. And then there was the flip-side of it.

  From Ryland's vantage point, there was a muffled boom and the house filled with smoke. Men started to stream out of the house. Most were intercepted by the team on the ground, cuffed up while their eyes were still watering. However, there were more running than could be caught, and there was the monotonous sound of gunfire, regular and measured, filled the air. I saw Ryland take two perfect shots, and then as he focused on the next, he hesitated.

  "Cortez, report," I snapped. If there was going to be a repeat of the last time we were working, I wanted to make sure that I headed it off at the pass if possible.

  "That's... I think that's Anton Szlacty."

  I repeated the name, staring at the screen, and a ripple went through the room. Szlacty was Drago's second in command, a power player in this part of the world. No one from Drago's group was meant to be involved in this operation.

  "Take him down," a handler next to me said, not quiet, but not loud either.

  "Let me follow him," Ryland said quickly. "He's got nothing to do with these assholes. That means he's just visiting, right? Maybe family, who knows what. But if you let me trail him back, we might get a bigger fish than we thought."

  "Take him down," someone else said. "He's dangerous and just getting him out of the way will help.

  "Let me follow him," Ryland repeated, his voice quick and almost trembling. He had sights on Szlacty, who was working his way down a narrow alley, almost right under Ryland's feet.

  The agents with me were all European. They had spent a long time losing friends to Drago's soldiers, and I knew that Szlacty was one of the worst. Everyone was concentrating on their screens, murmuring support and directives to the operatives in the field, but I could tell that they were listening closely to me.

  Ryland...

  I trusted Ryland.

  "Trail him," I said. "But if it looks like he's getting away, take him down."

  Ryland's affirmative was crisp in my ear, but on my screen, I was with him as he exploded into movement. To avoid losing sight of Szlacty, he went out the window and down the side o
f the building, rifle slung over his shoulder.

  The air in the surveillance room was thick. I could tell this would be a part of the reports filed tonight, all of which would end up back with Farris.

  I ignored them. In the agency as much as elsewhere, we were judged on the results of our calls, almost before anything else. As I watched Ryland tail the fleeing Szlacty, I forced myself to stay calm. I breathed, I focused on Ryland's focus, and I refused to think of the operation that put me in physical therapy for four months and that killed my team.

  Szlacty took one turn and then another, moving slowly once he was away from the trafficker's hideout. He had nothing to worry about, he thought.

  "We need to get local police on the site, pick him up if he doesn't end up somewhere useful," another agent said quietly. "Your asset can't track him into an open street with his rifle."

  "Not yet," I said, still staring at the screen, and then I realized with a start where Szlacty was. The buildings he passed in the alley looked familiar because they were right next to the building the surveillance room was in.

  "What the hell," someone behind me said, but then Szlacty was entering the abandoned pool hall next door, and I could feel my heart beat faster.

  Through the screen, I saw Ryland draw his service revolver. It was better for close quarter work, and with a chill, I realized he was getting ready to follow Szlacty to ground.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ryland

  There was a smart way to do this. I could radio for help, for the backup that this job needed. The building could be properly surrounded, and we might be able to flush out some criminals who had been haunting this part of the world for almost two decades.

  I'm no glory hog or maverick, I would have been happy to do that.

  Except.

  I had been in this kind of neighborhood before. They were all over Eastern Europe, buildings converted from row houses that were all linked through doors from one to the other. You could get from one end of the block to the other without ever dropping down to street level. If this wasn't Szlacty's final destination, we could lose him permanently, and I wasn't about to let that happen.