by Mia Downing
“You guys love Jake, don’t you?”
The mare’s head popped up, maybe because she was looking for her master, most likely because she wanted to drink.
“Would you be jealous if I tried to love him, too?”
Jessa finished her drink and snorted, blowing bits of hay everywhere. Tia laughed and decided her answer could be taken either way. The mare might share and she might not. Spoken like a true female.
It was also a female’s prerogative to change her mind. Tia decided then and there to abandon her fuck-him-or-die attitude. She wouldn’t hide any longer. She’d go to him tonight, as a true bride, and make love to him the way a woman should. With her heart as well as her body.
This was her deepest, darkest fantasy, to love a man, surrender to him fully. To take her bondage-taped heart out of the barbed wire maze she’d constructed around it and to offer it on a silver platter. She wouldn’t offer it in the spirit of love—she wasn’t ready for that, even if she had known him for months and months.
She’d offer it as she’d offered her pocketknife, a symbol that she’d allow this wedding role-play to continue and embrace it. At the end, on Monday, she’d decide if the heart needed to return to the maze. If so, nothing lost. Her heart already hurt. But if she took the chance and Jake realized he could put Tia before Kate…
It would be worth it. For both of them.
Her mind made up, Tia went into the house and twirled around in the kitchen, planning the seduction that would take place this evening. This time they’d dance, but it wouldn’t be that chaste rocking back and forth from yesterday. Today there would be dirty dancing, with grinding hips. She’d kiss him, he’d carry her up the stairs, and this time, when he made love to her, she would come because she sought the pain that stemmed from her heart instead of hiding from it.
Tia went up to the bedroom to see what she needed to prepare for their special evening of wedding sex, take two. It was odd to see the room now, with both of their things mingled. A pair of his boots on the floor next to her sneakers, a spare bra over his sweats on the rocking chair. His bedside table held his gun and a watch. Hers held her smaller gun and a pair of earrings. She smiled at that—such was the life of spies. At least they felt comfortable enough to leave the weapons in the bedroom. She often carried her gun with her at home. She’d bet a quarter he had another gun in the truck.
His second bag was open on the bed, the one she hadn’t searched yet. Tempting. So tempting to know what he had. And, if she got really technical, he had searched her bags earlier and used her nipple clamps on her, the sneak. Yes, it was wrong to peek, but she was a spy, damn it, and training told her if she didn’t go in that bag, she could die. Training also told her if he had something to hide, he would have taken the bag with him. So no, don’t peek in the bag. But Jake’s leaving it there meant it was free game in the spy world.
“Fuck it.” Training won. She sat down on the bed next to his bag and delved in. A sweatshirt was on top, and it smelled so good, fresh, that she wondered what laundry detergent he used. A bit lower, under a clean pair of jeans, was a notebook. She leafed through it.
The first page was filled with notes. Most of it was some sort of code, probably notes from his last mission, which would make sense. Paris was on one line and Kate’s name underlined three times, surrounded by a code of numbers and letters.
Along the edge, he’d doodled crazy shapes, a stick figure with a smoking gun, a dead stick figure bleeding out over the page, and at the very bottom, away from everything, was Kate’s name again. In neat block letters with a little frame around it.
Tia shut the notebook, a bit disturbed. It shouldn’t bother her that he had written her name—she’d been his partner then. But it did. Especially the name at the bottom, alone, in neat block letters. A little frame around it. Kate. Beautiful, perfect Kate, with blonde hair and bombs, roses and ponies.
The pain that had been absent all day surfaced, stabbed, and ached. Unable to stop snooping, she carefully pulled out a few more items of clothing, stacking everything very neatly so she could put it all back the way she had found it. Spies were good at that. His cell phone charger, a second knife, a box of ammo, and then there was nothing left except a scrap of blue cloth in the corner.
She pulled it out, held it up in her hands, and dropped it as if it were on fire. A garter—lacy, light blue with a small pink rose on one side. Kate’s.
She wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he’d used this bag when Kate and Chase had married. Maybe it was forgotten. But maybe, just maybe, he left it there, because it was special to him.
Tia glared. This was what she got for snooping. She put his items back in the bag, careful to layer it all in the original sequence, with every wrinkle in place. She kept the garter, though. For now. Temptation beckoned to her insecurities so she rose and began to inspect the rest of the room, the woman in her a little scorned.
The dresser held more clothes—jeans, T-shirts, underwear. Nothing special. The bottom drawer, though, held paperwork. She pulled it out and found a jackpot of photos—scenery, planes, Jake much younger with another man who resembled him enough to be a twin—Aaron probably. She closed that album, and then at the very bottom, she found her proof.
Inside the last book was basically a photo shrine to Kate. A year’s worth of photos, all in one place. Kate in a bikini, Kate in a deep blue gown, Kate in combat boots and special ops gear, holding an assault rifle. A few of Kate and Chase together. Some of the beautiful redhead she’d seen him with in that Parisian bar. And finally, she found one of Kate in Jake’s arms as they danced, Kate looking at him with adoration, Jake with the same look on his face. Kate looked about to speak, her pink lips amused. Tia slammed the book shut before she could hear what Blondie had to say.
One photo slid to the floor and Tia picked it up. Kate sat on the tire swing out front, where they had said their wedding vows. The elements of autumn sparkled around her, the biggest smile on her beautiful face. Jake had lied about never bringing women home. He had brought her here.
“That, right there, is why this fake wedding was a bad idea,” Tia said aloud, because the part of her that dreamed of weddings and pink needed to hear it, loud and clear. An unguarded heart meant pain—lots of it. And Jake was a very good liar. You had to be if you wanted to survive as a spy.
Unfortunately, the spy was never far from the man. And though he treated his horses well, they probably didn’t care that he loved Kate first. If Kate had carrots, the horses were fine with it. So Tia put the book back and layered the other items on top with spy expertise, all the while wanting to shred those photos. Burn them in the driveway with the garter. Launch grenades at them from the far end of the pasture.
She sighed and, instead, did what any sane, smart woman would do—guarded the heart. She proverbially put it back into the maze, behind the barbed wire and the mines, back inside the shreds of insecurity, bad memories, and doubt that made up the high walls. The bondage tape came out and, with two wraps, it was secure. Jake was nothing but lies. Smoke and mirrors. Deception with a handgun, knives, and a mouth that lied for a living.
Jake had talked the talk during their wedding vows. He’d walked the walk as he had led her to the backyard to say those vows. But when it came down to Monday, Jake would still be in love with another woman, plain and simple.
How could she compete? Kate was a genius bomb maker, beautiful, well-trained, and unfortunately, Jake had sampled her charms in bed—probably better than anything Tia had to offer if he was smitten and he was their third. A man’s heart didn’t heal up and move on after being branded by a woman like that. It just didn’t. Not in a weekend. And frankly, she was tired of the fantasy.
Tia sighed, put Jake’s bag on the floor and curled up on the bed. The tears that threatened finally came, spilling out slowly, the sadness a dull ache that grew and sliced at her heart. It hurt more this time, probably because Jake’s charm had taken the numbness away.
; She suddenly understood Jake’s perverse need for the rules, because a world where your heart was out in the open, unguarded was not a healthy reality. Come tomorrow, the fuck-him-or-die scenario had to be played full force, as if her life depended on it. He was too powerful, too charming, too… Tia closed her eyes. He was too perfect for her.
And Kate was too perfect for Jake.
****
Jake pulled into the driveway long after dark, cursing Chase for this fucking errand that had taken him from Tia’s arms. What should have been an hour of torture had turned into two. An accident shutting down the rain-soaked road turned it into three, then four. He’d called Tia, but there’d been no answer. She must have left her phone as she went out to offer the horses their dinner, so he sent her a text, promising to make this up to her until the wee hours of the morning.
The crib had been beautiful, and he remembered it fondly as he parked in front of the barn. Perfection in handcrafted wood, exactly what the heir to the spydom deserved. He’d called the Lord of the Spies, and together they had mulled over the different options until he finally asked to speak to Kate. Why didn’t she, the spydom’s queen, care about what they picked for her baby?
“Honestly, Jake. I don’t care. Just pick something out.” She had sounded tired. Defeated. Beaten down, and so unlike his Kate that he wanted to shake her.
“You should care. Damn it, grow a set of balls and give the man an opinion.”
“He didn’t ask my opinion when he created this zygote. Why should he ask now?”
He heard Chase in the background, grumbling something, and she told him to fuck off. But her foul language didn’t hold the heat it usually did when she was pissed, and Jake had been alarmed. His Kate lacked fire, and it bothered him to the point that he had ended the call quickly with a promise to put a deposit on the crib. He’d paid for the entire thing because the gift would be perfect, but it still bothered him, Kate’s fireless curse.
Suddenly, it hit him why Kate’s lack of opinion and fire bothered him so much. He realized she had given up, and it hurt him. Kate was a fighter. She didn’t give up, not when she’d fought so hard and long to love Chase. Jake blinked, and thought a minute more.
The tone she had used to curse at her husband sounded suspiciously like Tia when she said, “Whatever you want” to Jake, in and out of the bedroom. Whatever role you want, however I can please you, Husband. It sounded submissive. It had felt submissive, but he realized with growing dread that this was exactly what had bothered him when they first met.
Tia had always felt aloof to him, a little cold. Well, maybe it was hard to be warm when you were leaving the reins to your body hanging over a fence post so anyone could take them. She’d never truly given in and handed them to him.
There’d been no true power exchange. The words and actions said submissive, but you could call a cow whatever you wanted. It was still a cow if you slapped a saddle on it and tried to ride it like a horse. She wasn’t truly submissive.
Tia didn’t give in to his desires. Tia gave up and let him do what he wanted.
However, the Tia that slipped her finger into his ring was a different creature. That Tia held promise of submissiveness, to giving in to his desires. A true power exchange, much in the way they had exchanged vows, exchanged bites of cake. That Tia was his perfection, in and out of bed.
He went into the house with a sense of purpose. He’d get to the bottom of this and then make love to her for the rest of the evening. Or maybe they’d make love first, then he’d figure it out. In any case, he wanted answers, and he wanted to see if she was still the brave, pushy, sexy thing she’d become after he slipped his ring on her finger.
“Hey, Tia?” he called as he entered the house by the backdoor. Silence answered him, so he took off his boots, damp from the rain, and went in.
She’d been busy—her purse kit box was open on the counter, with sticky notes attached to the box with numbers on it. She’d begun to string silver beads onto thin yarn, and the beads glittered as he ran a finger through them in the bowl she’d used to hold them.
Jake stuck his head into the dark living room. She wasn’t on the couch. He took the stairs two by two and found her on the bed, curled up in his favorite T-shirt, asleep. He leaned against the doorframe and drank her in, the curve of her hip under his shirt, the way her thighs pressed together, her hand between them. He saved her face for last and sucked in a breath, because she’d obviously been crying again. Damn it. The flesh under her long lashes was puffy, swollen, and streaks darted down her cheeks.
He drew closer and touched her shoulder, but she didn’t stir. She wasn’t faking it. He’d know the difference, and she usually woke just as quickly as he. So he grabbed the blanket off the rocking chair and gently covered her with it. She rolled and tugged the corner to her in her hand, holding it to her cheek, and she looked sixteen instead of twenty-eight.
He glanced around the room and found her phone on her bedside table. He checked it—no calls except his, no texts except his, so the tears were definitely his fault somehow. He set it back on the nightstand next to her gun and went to his side of the bed. He tripped on something—his bag—and as he moved it, a flash of light blue caught his eye.
He bent down and lifted Kate’s garter off the top of the pile of clothes. He stared at the garter, then back at Tia, his heartstrings tugging. This had been stuffed at the bottom, in a corner. She’d either wanted him to know she’d found it or, in her moment of sadness, fucked up.
Kate had snapped her garter at him in the restaurant after the very tiny, informal wedding, laughing at him as she also chucked him her bouquet. He was doomed to be next to marry, she’d told him, her smile so wicked he’d wanted to strangle her. He’d forgotten all about it until now. But Tia wouldn’t know that.
Jesus, what else did she find? His bedroom was full of ammo against him, and not the bullet type. His gaze flew to the bottom drawer and back to her tear-stained face. He didn’t have to check the drawer to know she’d found his Kate pile, the photos he’d dumped in one album the last time he’d come home, because he’d realized how he felt about her and decided to cleanse her from his life. Without that knowledge, it’d look like he had a stalker problem and needed a restraining order. He didn’t. God help him, he didn’t.
She stirred and whispered something, the blanket over her face. Jake went closer and tugged the blanket from her hands.
“What is it, honey?”
“Hurts.”
“What hurts?” He scanned her form with growing fear—would she hurt herself over something he’d done?
“Heart,” she whispered.
She rolled and something fell from her hand. He picked it up and drew in a breath. It was the engagement photo Kate had sent him, with her big grin and that flashy, carated billboard on her finger, screaming that she belonged to Chase. He frowned and looked closer. It had been taken here.
He whipped out his phone and texted Chase. When did you bring Kate here?
When I proposed. I used the house rules to make her say yes.
Yes, now he remembered. Chase’s plan had been to use the house rules to make sure she said yes. Christ, Chase was manipulative, even before marriage. Of course, Kate had said yes. The last few months were a blur, though. Where was I?
England, the first time around. Everything okay?
No, it wasn’t.
Everything’s fine. TTYL.
Jake closed the bedroom door softly behind him, letting her sleep. He went back to the kitchen and poured himself a generous whiskey and cola, not because he wanted it, but because he needed it. The house rules allowed alcohol if you didn’t get sex, and he wasn’t getting any tonight. Probably not tomorrow, either. The honeymoon was over.
Jake sighed and went to the porch, the crickets loud, the swing creaky as he sat, the moon shrouded in rainclouds. One of the horses snorted, echoing off the walls of the barn. He loved it here. He should be thrilled to be home. But now when he thought of T
ia, instead of flashes of her in Paris, he had to suffer her in his T-shirt, tear-stained, curled around a picture of Kate. He’d done that to her, maybe not directly, but this fucking mess was his fault.
He sipped his drink, rattling the ice around in the glass. Tomorrow… He didn’t want to face her tomorrow. How could he bring up what he knew when he wasn’t supposed to know it?
The pocketknife in his pocket seemed to burn into his thigh, probably because he’d cheated yet again and had spoken to Kate. The look in Tia’s eye had been vindictive when she promised to emasculate him if he contacted Kate. Possessive. He liked that, but he didn’t want to lose his balls over stuff that wasn’t his fault.
He had to find a way to convince her that she was wrong—he didn’t want to be Kate’s seconds anymore. But how? His drink finished, he set it aside and stared out into the darkness, up at the stars just beginning to shine through the clouds.
The truth didn’t work with her, nor did charm. The only thing that seemed to work was when he pulled the dominance card, demanding she see things his way. How could he enjoy playing that, now, when the path it would take him would be a fine line between hate and…caring? Did he dare go deeper than that?
Yeah, he did. He had to go deeper, harder than he’d gone before. He would spend the day charming her, playing the gentleman, the kind husband, because that’s what he really wanted to be. But if things had changed like he thought, he knew a way to get her to surrender.
She wanted pain? He’d give her pain. The good kind. It would be the first step to her giving in and personally handing him the reins to her heart.
Chapter Twelve
Jake prided himself in waking quickly, since it was an asset in the field, but for some reason, he didn’t want to. He was having one hell of an erotic dream, one filled with no images. Only sensations and those were fucking awesome. His skin tingled as if it had a life of its own, his flesh hot, damp, especially around his cock, which had to be hard, because his balls ached. Damn, his dick was throbbing, insistent. Way, way too hard. It also felt…wet.