Sarah
Nan chain-smoked a pack of cigarettes as we all, the SAS squad included, watched in horror at the harrowing scene before us. Finally, when I could take it no more, I disappeared to the bathroom and broke down. As silently as I could, I wept for those poor children and prayed to God that their death wasn’t on my hands. The possibility that the explosives could have been transported through Tatem Shipping had bile rising in my throat. I had no right to feel sorry for myself. Tom was right. I’d made my decision, and for the greater good I was living with it.
“Take one more foot closer to that bedroom, and I’ll ram my foot right up your arse,” I heard Nan shout.
Knowing that my five minutes of self-pity were over, I blew my nose and washed my face.
“What’s your problem, Mrs Harper? Sarah’s clearly upset. I was just checking to see that she’s all right!” Hunter protested.
“I was welling up a bit too. Didn’t see you using those grabby hands to make me feel better, did I?” she replied.
“What grabby hands? I’m starting to get a bit pissed off with you suggesting shit. It’s your son’s grabby hands you want to be worrying about,” he said.
After a moment of silence, I heard, “I thought for the sake of your own career we’d agreed to leave my son out of this, and I doubt you swearing at me and making unwanted visits to my bedroom will go down well either,” she replied.
“It’s not your bedroom I was heading towards; it was Sarah’s,” he protested.
“It’s Miss Tatem to you, and they’re all my bedrooms,” she answered. “Now why don’t you go back downstairs and put the kettle on? There’s a good lad. A nice cuppa would do wonders for the both of us, wouldn’t it, Sarah?” she shouted the last part to me from the stairs. Coming out of the bathroom, I flattened out my necklace, a nervous habit to compose myself, and pasted on a smile.
“I can do it,” I offered.
“No, it’s okay, Miss Tatem. I’ll get you some tea,” Hunter replied.
“Please, call me Sarah. Everyone else does,” I offered. I realised this would piss Nan off, but I wasn’t going to encourage her. He really hadn’t been anything but kind to me.
“Thanks, Sarah,” he said, giving Nan a smug smile.
“Oh, sod off,” she said to him, making him scowl again.
“You really shouldn’t encourage him,” she admonished me when he was out of earshot.
“And you should try being a bit nicer. Tom has to work with him when all this is over,” I said.
“Tom would be doing more than that if he could see the way he looks at you,” she scoffed.
“He doesn’t look at me any way. And even if he did, it wouldn’t matter. I’m Tom’s. Now let’s go and have that tea before it gets cold.”
“Are you okay now?” she asked. It was the most compassionate thing I’d ever heard her say.
“I’m all right. Just a little tired and overemotional. Nothing a cup of tea and a good night’s sleep won’t fix.”
“Good. Because if I’m left alone with these testosterone-fuelled dick swingers any longer, I might actually maim one of them,” she complained, barrelling back down the stairs.
Despite the comfort of Tom’s soft bed, my sleep was fitful. I finally drifted off around four in the morning, only to be woken again two hours later when a warm, hard body moulded itself around mine.
“How come you’re home? I didn’t think I’d get to see you until tomorrow?” I asked, knowing immediately who it was.
“They called us back early after what happened in London,” he replied, peeling the thin strap of my tank down my shoulder and gently kissing the skin beneath.
“Are the boys with you?” I asked, bending my head to the side to give him more access.
“Yeah. They’re shooting the shit with the B team downstairs. Nan’s up too, giving Hunter crap no doubt.”
“That poor man. She’s been giving him grief all night,” I replied, on a sigh.
“Poor man my arse. We might be on the same side, but the two of us don’t play well together. He’s getting his shit together now. They’ll be gone in half an hour.”
“We should get up then too, baby. They’re all going to know you’re in here with me,” I said, barely containing a moan as his calloused hand slipped beneath the silk to cup my breast, his thumb lazily strumming my painfully hard nipple.
“Say that again,” he growled.
“Baby?” I said. He growled as he kissed his way down my spine. I pressed my legs tightly together, trying to contain the throbbing as my back reactively arched at his touch. His hand disappeared, and I was bereft, until, painfully slowly, he slid my top up my body and over my head, throwing it carelessly on the floor behind him. Strong arms reached for me, anchoring us together, his chest flush with my naked back. Reaching back, I speared my fingers into his hair, clenching frantically as he ground against me. I was out of control. Mindless to the spell he had over my body. I should have been worried about the guys downstairs, but the second he touched me, reason fled. I didn’t care, knowing that he was as blinded by desire as I was.
His lips skimmed the shell of my ear before he sucked the lobe between his teeth and bit gently. One hand continued to tease my nipple, while the other slid slowly past the band of my sleep shorts.
“Tom!” I cried out as his finger slid inside me. I was so wet, so ready for him, so desperate to give us both what we wanted.
“Take off your clothes,” I pleaded.
“With those fuckers downstairs? No way! When I fuck you for the first time, there isn’t going to be a second of it that isn’t all mine and mine alone. I’m fucking selfish like that. I want every moan, every breath, every whimper, and when I’m done, I want you screaming so loud, even the angels will hear you,” he replied, sliding in a second finger.
“Please?” I begged. “We won’t go that far. But I want to touch you too.” I felt his hesitation, but I knew I’d won when he pushed himself up on his knees. Although barefoot and shirtless, he still wore his black combat trousers. I was mesmerised at the sight of him, sliding open his belt as he watched me back, his eyes filled with pure, unadulterated hunger. No longer content to be a bystander, I joined him on my knees and ran my fingers down the path of perfect abdominals. His oblique muscles curved under his waistband, but I didn’t stop there, letting my touched trail gently along the length of his granite-hard cock and making him shiver.
“You’ll be the death of me, woman,” he protested, and with lightning-quick reflexes, he lifted me into his arms. In a heartbeat, my legs were wrapped around his waist. His lips slammed into mine, our tongues duelling as a fierce hunger rushed through me. The pounding, throbbing, almost primitive need to have him inside me was almost painful. When his hard length rocked against that perfect spot, I cried out. His kisses became more urgent, our tongues twisting together as we ignored the need to breathe. Nothing, not even oxygen, could be more vital than this. Lowering me back down, he nestled between my legs and used his free hand to push away the rest of his clothes.
His fingers slipped back inside of me, sliding in and out as my hands memorised every muscle by touch. I climbed ever closer to the impossible abyss when he swirled his tongue around my breast. He blew gently across my nipple before suckling it into his mouth, the pace of his fingers relentless. Deeper and deeper they went, and higher and higher I climbed. His eyes darkened as mine grew wider. My pleasure fuelled him, but I needed more. I needed to know that he was with me as I fell. I reached for his length. Impossibly thick and hard, I couldn’t possible fathom how it would fit inside me, but damn. In that moment, I would have given anything to try. Instead, I slid my fingers gently up and down him. Stroking him as reverently as he had me, until we were both as lost as the other. When I exploded, he swallowed my groan into his mouth. I pumped him wildly as I rode the crest of the wave as he thrust against me. Braced above me, his eyes never left mine as he showed me the naked need behind them. The moment was perfection. A slithe
r of time where we could see and touch a part of one another that would be forever hidden from the world. A secret garden of desire, open only to us. His free hand fell urgently to my hip and his body became stone as he joined me in falling into the abyss. I brushed my thumb gently across his tip, making him tremble before he collapsed against me, his body as spent as mine.
Breathlessly, we held onto each other while our racing heartbeats slowed.
“Forget waterboarding,” I said eventually. “Do that again, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
He chuckled, as I escaped to the bathroom to clean up. When I returned, he caught my hand and dragged me back into bed, pulling me close to his chest, his lips nuzzling the curve of my neck. “I want to know if you missed me as much as I missed you,” he admitted, his hand sliding lazily along the curve between my hip and my breast.
“No. I missed you more,” I replied, feeling his cock behind me growing hard between my legs.
“Not possible,” he whispered, as the nuzzling turned to kisses and he began to rock his hips slowly against me.
“Already?” I asked, unable to believe that he was ready so soon. He’d trained relentlessly in sub-zero temperatures and probably hadn’t slept for over twenty-four hours, but still he found the energy to leave me breathless.
“Baby, this is all that’s kept me going this weekend. All I’ve thought about. Having you here in my bed, being able to smell your perfume with every breath. I better be an old fucking man before I don’t have the energy to appreciate that while I can have it.”
“You know you can have it forever. If you want it?” I whispered, then held my breath. It was the first time we’d talked about any kind of future together. For all I knew, this was it for him. The weekend had been eye opening in so many ways. Choosing a future with me could mean the end of his career. He could be risking everything on the promise of what might be. But I wouldn’t be the one to end this. I would understand if this moment wasn’t enough for him to take that risk, but I wasn’t strong enough to be the one to walk away. Not when every part of me knew, with absolutely certainty, that this was it. That there would never be another man who could ever make me feel like this.
“Promise?” He spoke so quietly, I barely heard him. It wasn’t the warrior with the world at his feet who was asking. It was the little boy who’d once been alone in the dark.
“If you’ll still want me. No inheritance, no legacy. Just me,” I said, needing to know that he was getting me, with all the money and privilege stripped away. Just me.
“If you’ll still want me,” he replied. “No uniform, no career. Just me.”
“I do,” I whispered back.
“Me too,” he replied.
It was funny how two little words could change the course of your life forever. I believed in the sanctity of marriage and the many other ways there were to tie two people together. But none were more important to me than those words spoken aloud, because commitment wasn’t a piece of paper. It was a solemn vow to bind your life to that person’s and forever keep them in your heart.
I closed my eyes as he leaned forward to brush a kiss against my throat. The memory of my last orgasm echoed through my body. I was trembling even before he reached down, tracing patterns across my stomach in gentle teasing strokes, painfully close to where his touch could end this torture. Twisting around in his arms, I turned to face him. His playful grin broke my heart. He was violent, possessive, intimidating. A trained killer. But for me, and only me, he was everything. Tender, loving, a man who would give his last breath to keep me safe and happy.
He was mine.
And the way he looked at me, like I was some impossible dream he never imagined he could have, it made me whole like nothing else ever could.
“You’re in my head, you know that?” he said to me. “All the time, you’re in my
head.”
I frowned back at him. “That’s bad right? When you’re on a mission, aren’t you supposed to forget everything. Be emotionally detached?” I couldn’t be the reason for him to fuck up. The one person to get him killed in the job he was so perfect for.
“It’s never bad. It doesn’t stop me from doing what needs to be done. Just reminds me that I’m not alone when I’m doing it. That I have you to come back to. Always there. Safe and warm. Waiting for me.”
“Always,” I promised. There were no words after that. His tongue flicked out to taste me before he pulled my lip between his teeth to nip at it. I was mindless to the craving as his pelvis ground against mine. I wrapped my leg around his and arched my back, every inch of my body ready to be claimed.
Loud voices filtered into the room from below before a door slammed loudly. To Tom, it was like a starter pistol going off.
“We have to stop,” I warned him, as he kissed and nipped his way down my body.
“Buttercup, we’re not going anywhere until you’ve come at least once more. This one’s for me. So the next time I’m hanging out of a helicopter over the North Sea, freezing my arse off, I remember every second of this. The smell of your skin,” he said, kissing my stomach. “The sound of your breath as it hitches when you orgasm,” he added, moving down a little further to place a kiss on the inside of my thigh. “The way you taste,” he finished, taking me in the most vulnerable way possible. Letting me hide from nothing as he fractured my body into so many pieces, I knew I would never be whole again unless he was with me. Because every single time he took a piece with him.
My eyes fluttered closed, my body completely weightless, like falling asleep in water. He collapsed next to me, his cock still painfully hard against my thigh. I reached out to touch him, and instantly I was airborne, lifted to nestle into his side, my hand captured in his as I rested on his chest.
“I’m going to need that hand back,” I said sleepily, determined to tease and taste and undo him as completely as he had undone me.
“No way. I don’t trust you not to attack me, and I’m saving myself,” he replied, making me laugh aloud. “Fuck, that might just be my favourite sound in the whole world.”
“Saving yourself for what?”
“For when I can make you scream,” he replied, his hand drifting up and down my thigh like he was afraid I’d disappear if he stopped touching me.
“Oh God! I got so carried away! Do you think they heard us?” I asked, suddenly mortified at the idea that the whole team knew what we were doing.
“Don’t worry about it. You’re mine, and I’m not hiding that fact.”
“I’m not hiding it either, but I’d rather advertise it some other way than by letting your men and Nan know what I sound like when I orgasm.”
“Like I’d let that happen,” he replied with a chuckle. We were both exhausted, but restless, kissing and whispering together in the early morning light. Knowing, if not acknowledging that the sand in the hourglass of our time together was running out. He asked me question after question, hungry for any scrap of information I would give him. I was the same way. Hoarding knowledge of him in the secret library of my heart. Eventually I got to asking about something I’d been wondering for a while.
“Why do they call you Reaper?” I asked. Given his profession, the answer seemed fairly obvious, but I asked anyway. Never for one minute expecting that it would turn his body to stone.
Sarah
“What’s wrong?” I asked. I knew what he did for a living. I knew that he had killed people. I couldn’t understand what more there could possibly be to make him hesitate before answering.
“It’s just…,” he said, hesitating again. “I’ve never talked about this out loud before. Not since it happened. I can’t say I’m ashamed of my past, because I’m not. I just don’t want you looking at me differently after you know.”
“I know the man you are, Tom. I can’t imagine that there’s anything you could say that would do that.” I rubbed reassuringly over his heart.
He folded one arm beneath his head and stared up at the ceiling.
I stayed quiet, watching and waiting as he found the right words.
“Remember I said I was in care before I went to live with Nan?” he asked, and I nodded.
“Nan said you were about fifteen when she and her husband adopted you,” I replied. His brow furrowed at the memory.
“I don’t remember the first time I was beaten, and I don’t remember why. The shrinks Nan used to make me see told me that lots of kids block out the traumatic stuff. I just think that it all blends into one after a while. I never met my real parents, but then I was left in a box outside the public library when I was a few days old, so I can’t imagine they were anything worth shouting about.
“The group home wasn’t so bad, but when I was six, a social work came to tell me that I was being adopted by Clive and Martha Bowen. There’s more money in fostering than adopting, but that isn’t why they did it. Clive was firing blanks; you see? It was a source of constant disappointment to his dad that he couldn’t give him any grandkids, so he got me. I imagine the fucker was a disappointment to his dad for a lot of reasons actually. Nothing that waste of fucking space did was ever going to be good enough for his cranky old man, so I guess I became the whipping boy. The more his dad complained, the more beatings I took.” His tone was so cold, so dispassionate, it was almost like he was telling the story about someone else. Like he was completed unaffected by it.
“He started beating you when you were six? But why didn’t the social workers do anything? Why didn’t your adoptive mother?” I asked in horror.
“It started off as the odd clip around the ear. You know, cuffing me with his elbow as he walked by. Things didn’t start getting really bad until after the social worker visits ended. Even then I’m not sure I would have said anything. I’d never had parents before. Who’s to say shit like that wasn’t normal for kids,” he replied.
“And his wife? Martha?”
“She was twelve years younger than him. I imagine he seemed like quite a good catch when they met. He had a nice house and a good job, and she was pretty but poor with little family and no real prospects. She was a trophy wife. But when she didn’t give him any kids, he started taking out his old man’s resentment on her too. She didn’t get it as bad as I did. Clive liked showing her off to his friends, and a pretty wife isn’t so pretty with a black eye and a split lip. The only one who ever really had any spunk about her was Martha’s mother, Sally. I’d never met anyone like her until Nan. She talked to Clive like shit, and he hated her for it. She never wanted Martha to marry him, but there wasn’t really much she could do about it. Eventually Clive banned her from visiting when he was home, so she used to stop by for an hour after I left school. She’d bring cookies or chocolate, and she’d sit with me while I did my homework. I’d take a beating every day for an hour with her.”
City Under Siege Page 17