The nerve of this asshole.
“I was going to talk my way closer to him then I was going to kill him. I’ve been in tighter situations than that. I didn’t need you to come in and save the day.”
“No need means that the rest of the men are dead,” he explained. “I need the phone.”
I was impressed he had taken out four men on his own, not that I would tell him that. And as much as I’d love to know how he did it, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking.
“Here.” I pulled the old-school flip phone out of the pocket of my cargo pants and held it out. “Do you want me to dial a number for you?”
Levi quickly rattled off a number for me to dial and I pushed send and handed the phone to him.
After a moment of silence, he said, “Dragonfly. Pink. Niner Zulu seven two five.”
He told whoever had answered the operation code name, the color of the day, and his personal call in number to verify his identity. “Mission complete. Six tangos down and the package is secure en route to Evac One.” After another pause, he continued. “Affirmative. Patch me through.”
I wished he would’ve put the call on speaker so I could’ve heard the other end of the conversation. I hated that I was left in the dark. I took a minute to look at Levi, really look at the man he had become. It was hard to make out his features in the dark, but I had those memorized. I was more interested in the way he now carried himself, how he’d grown from a teenage football star to a hardened warrior. The old Levi was kind and considerate. He was so full of life that everyone gravitated toward him. I was sure some of it had to do with how good looking he was, but it was more than that. He was charismatic and friendly. This new Levi was closed off and cold. Maybe it was just me he was like this with. Even after all these years, he still thought that I had betrayed him. My heart broke at the thought of him walking around all these years hating me.
“Copy that,” he said and shut the phone.
I waited, and when he didn’t relay any information I broke down and asked, “Everything good?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“You’re gonna play it this way? Not give me any information?”
With a sigh, he said, “Jasper and Lenox made it to Muscat. Al-Harazi had a three-man crew there to rig each embassy. They were disguised as government workers checking the power grid. They had all the right credentials. Grayson and Clark are checking into who forged their documents or if they had backing from the government.”
“They didn’t have help from the Omani government,” I said.
“How do you know that? They have more financial backing than we originally thought.”
Damn. I didn’t know how much to tell him. On one hand, he needed the intel, on the other, it would make me look like I was exactly what he thought I was – a traitor; that I had more to do with Alister Bench than I did.
“They have an American investor. Someone who funnels money to them for his own personal gain,” I explained.
“An American? Who? How do you know?” he asked.
I guess it was time to tell him the truth. It wasn’t like he could hate me more than he did.
“Alister Bench.”
Chapter Nine
Levi
She said my stepfather’s name and I almost veered off the small dirt path we were on.
“I see. So, you’re still in contact with the old man?” My lips curled in disgust. “How does your boss feel about you being in bed with a man that funds terrorists? Or are you keeping that a secret from him too?”
She had a lot of nerve saying that man’s name to me. My thoughts briefly flashed to my mom and sister. I wondered if they knew that Mr. Moneybucks was a criminal. I doubted they even cared as long as he kept the bank account full and they could spend all they wanted. It seemed like all the women I’d once loved were nothing more than money hungry bitches.
“I haven’t seen that man in twelve years.”
“And was that the time I caught the two of you conspiring? Tell me, were you helping him fund terrorists then too?”
“You’re a dick. Do you even listen to yourself when you talk? If I was conspiring with him would I be telling you he was the one channeling money to Al-Harazi?”
She was right. Rationally I knew she wasn’t helping Bench. However, there was no part of me that was rational when it came to Blake Porter.
“Did you listen to any of the voicemails from that day?” she asked. Her voice had softened, and my heart clenched. She sounded so much like the Blake I loved, sweet and gentle.
“Why does that matter?” I didn’t want to talk about that day. I couldn’t take anymore lies. “You know, I should be thanking you. It is because of that day, what you did to me, that I am the man I am. You killed a part of me, the young pussy-whipped idiot. That boy never would’ve made it through selection. You taught me a valuable lesson. A lesson that has kept me alive.”
“It didn’t have to be this way,” she whispered.
“No? What other way did you think this was gonna play out? Did you think Alister was gonna give you all that money and you were gonna keep fucking me? No thanks, honey. You were good, but I don’t fuck Alister’s whores.”
The instant the words came out of my mouth I wished I could draw them back in. As pissed as I was at her, this was not me. I was never cruel just to be hurtful.
I was about to apologize when she changed the subject. “The CIA recruited me when they caught me hacking into Alister’s financials. He had been on their watch list, and they wanted the information I had gathered on him. At the time, I had every intention of finishing school and being a reporter. I wanted to expose Alister, but the agency got to me first. They left me no choice; I either worked for them, or I was facing federal jail time. Obviously, I accepted their offer. I was assigned to a special task force to take down high-powered American players that funded terror organizations overseas.” Blake stopped and took a deep breath before she continued. “What you thought you saw that day wasn’t me betraying you. And after you left and I realized I had lost you forever, I made it my mission to take down Alister Bench. It is only now I have the evidence I need to destroy him. Everything up until this point has been circumstantial at best. Over the years we’ve allowed him to get comfortable. It’s paid off, and now he is complacent and thinks he has outsmarted the government. He no longer goes to great lengths to hide his dealings. He’s lazy, and I have everything I need to bury him.”
There was a lot of information there to sift through, but something was nagging at me. “If my stepfather has ties to terrorism, why have I never been questioned? I have a top-secret clearance. The government crawls up my ass investigating every aspect of my life.”
“Because I cleared you. I knew you knew nothing about Alister’s dealings. And truthfully, the director agreed that keeping you in the dark was best. The fewer people that knew, the less of a chance Alister would get tipped off.”
I didn’t know what to say about that, so I opted to remain quiet. Blake seemed to be lost in her thoughts as well. I wasn’t sure if I should be grateful that she had cleared my name with the director or pissed that I wasn’t trusted enough to be told. What other secrets did she know about my family that she wasn’t telling me? Did my mother know? Was my sister involved? She worked for Alister at one of his newspapers. I wanted to know what had motivated Alister to fund terror organizations and I wondered if that was the reason he was so against me joining the military. My mom wasn’t happy about the idea but only because she thought I could play professional football and I would be able to support her. She didn’t have any real objections until Alister flat out refused to entertain the idea of me joining the Army.
We drove in silence for a long while; I kept replaying what Blake had said over and over. It didn’t have to be this way. What the hell had she meant by that? I popped off at the mouth with something ridiculous to hurt her; however, I couldn’t begin to imagine what other way she thought things could go.
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br /> What you thought you saw that day wasn’t me betraying you. I saw her with my own two eyes negotiating with Alister about the amount of money it would take to have her convince me not to leave for the Army. I heard the girl I loved put a price tag on our relationship and agree to break up with me.
Alister had hated her and her family. He thought they were beneath him because they were good, hardworking middle-class people. I needed to get back to Georgia so I could dig into what my family had been doing since I’d left. Blake could go back to DC or wherever she lived and go about living her life. It was very doubtful we would cross paths again.
“There is a hotel up ahead. We’re gonna stop for a few hours and wait for Clark and Grayson to catch up. Jasper and Lenox will come by and pick us up.”
I had meant to tell her earlier there was a change in the EXFIL plan but I was derailed by talks of Alister.
“Okay,” she agreed, her voice devoid of any emotion.
I knew I should’ve apologized for my earlier outburst, but I wouldn’t. Some things are best left water under the bridge. Our shared history was one of those things.
When we pulled into the hotel, Blake had crawled in the backseat and put the weapons on the floorboards, using her legs to try and conceal most of them. Not that it was unusual in this part of the world to see guns, but we didn’t want to advertise we had them.
I quietly exited the car and went about getting us a room. I contemplated getting two; she had proven she could take care of herself. Despite what I had told her about saving her ass when Amir found her, I was sure she would’ve gotten herself out of the situation. If I was honest with myself, it was kind of hot the way she’d handled Al-Harazi and how calm she remained when she watched me take down Amir.
I opted for one room, tactically it was the smart move, and there was the added benefit of Blake likely being pissed. By the time I had walked back to the car, Blake had already jimmied the backseat down and secured all but two of the AKs I had taken from Al-Harazi’s men. I pulled the car around to the backside of the hotel where our room was located, and we quickly made our way into the room.
“You mind if I wash up first?” she asked.
“No, go ahead.”
That would give me time to think about how I was going to play this. We had at least three hours until Clark and Grayson caught up with us and possibly a few hours after that depending on what Jasper and Lenox had come up with to get us the fuck out of this country. Lenox said the commander was calling in a marker with a friend who owned a resort in Salalah. The man owned a private jet that could fly us out of Oman without the normal documentation.
I doubled checked the door was locked and kept the blinds drawn. The room was decent by in-the-middle-of-nowhere standards. It was a typical low-cost motel in Oman. Cream walls, ceramic tile floor, a bed, a chair, and a bathroom. The bathroom was an open space with a toilet and a spigot on the wall; there was no bathtub or shower stall. I heard the water turn on and had to grab on to the arm of the chair when I thought about Blake in the other room showering.
I could remember every inch of her soft flesh. Once upon a time, it had belonged to me. I’d kissed and licked every part of her. The water continued to run in the bathroom, and with it, my imagination ran wild. I wondered if she still liked to be kissed while she orgasmed. My dick hardened at the memory of her above me, riding me, leaning over me to take my mouth as she started to come. How many times over the years had I tortured myself and jerked off to the memory of her? Too many to count.
The sound of automatic gunfire pulled me from my memory. I grabbed one of the AKs off the bed and gently pulled back the curtain. There were a few buildings around us but mostly wide open barren desert. The gunshots rang out again, and a pickup with two men in the bed of the truck drove by, both with rifles in their hands shooting into the sand.
“We good?” I heard from behind me, the water still running in the bathroom.
I looked over my shoulder, and Blake was standing in the doorway of the bathroom buttoning her cargo pants. Before she had them fully fastened I caught a glimpse of purple panties. My eyes roamed to her flat stomach that showed signs of a six pack, then up further to a purple bra. Her full breasts spilled over the cups, giving my just a hint of nipple. The girl’s body I could clearly remember had changed. The swell of her soft belly was now hardened muscle, her once perky breasts seemed to have gotten bigger. I wish I could’ve asked her to turn around because I would bet her ass was perfection. She had the body of an athlete.
“Levi,” she snapped.
“Five by five.”
She nodded her head and turned back toward the bathroom giving me a view of her scarred back. It looked like she had been whipped or sliced. Five long red scars crisscrossed her back.
“Stop staring, it’s not polite,” she said as she slammed the door.
Holy shit. Where the hell had Blake been over the last eight years?
Chapter Ten
Blake
The last twenty-four hours had caught up with me. I was mentally wrecked. After two failed attempts to pull my damn shirt over my head, I finally had it on and was preparing myself to face Levi. We were almost done. Just a few more hours and the rest of the team would be here, and I could go home. I had days’ worth of reports to write, and I welcomed the distraction. Seeing Levi again had fucked with my head in ways I could never imagine.
How was it possible that my heart still wanted a man that hated me and called me a whore? He had no respect for me as an operator nor as a person, yet I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to fall into his arms. I was stupid and living in some fantasyland where I would prove to him once and for all that I had not deceived him, and we could wipe the last twelve years clean. Even if I could, he wasn’t the same boy I fell in love with, and I wasn’t the young naïve girl. I was the lead agent on a special task force to take down INCONUS players that funded terrorists. He was a special operator with a black ops team that, as far as the intelligence community knew, didn’t exist. We both had new lives, and those lives didn’t include the other person.
There was a knock at the door followed by, “Are you okay?”
Shit, how long had I been hiding in here?
“I’m good,” I answered and opened the door, coming face to face with Levi.
His eyes freely roamed over my now dressed body, and I wanted to shrink under his scrutiny. I had lost my womanly figure years ago. The more hours I trained, the harder and more toned my body became. I had lost all the soft curves men tend to like. Between my boyish frame and all the scars, I was nothing to look at.
Levi’s hand came up to my face; his thumb gently rubbed the apple of my cheek. It had been so long since I had felt his hands on me. I leaned into his touch, and his thumb stilled before he started to pull it away. My hand came up and covered his, not allowing him to retreat. I needed this, needed the connection. It had been a shit two days and years since I’d had any human contact.
“Don’t mistake this for something it’s not,” he warned.
“I won’t,” I answered.
Our eyes locked, his pupils dilated, and his mouth got tight.
“Just because my dick is stupid and wants you doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten.”
His words were harsh, but his touch was not. His large hand gently cradled my face as his thumb moved again, grazing my soft skin.
“I understand.” And I did. I knew what this was. Two people giving in to their attraction, using each other to burn off the adrenaline of a mission. It was nothing more.
“I hope you do.”
Those were the last words he spoke before my back was pushed up against the wall and his lips were on my neck. They were not gentle and sensual; they were needy and demanding.
Levi’s mouth didn’t leave my neck as his hands went to my ass and he hoisted me into his arms, forcing me to wrap my legs around him. I was tossed on the bed, and my clothes were torn from my body in a mad rush, leaving me nude on the cool be
dcover. I watched with rapt attention as he pulled his shirt over his head. Muscle over muscle – that was the only way to describe his chest and tight abs. It was a far cry from the boyish six-pack he once had. His pants and boxers came down at the same time, leaving his erection on full display. My mouth watered at the thought of taking him past my lips and down my throat. Back in the day, I had mastered how to make him squirm. I knew he loved it when I tongued the thick vein on the underside of his dick. It drove him crazy when I scraped my teeth on his engorged head. I could make him beg me to let him finish after I’d spent a good amount of time teasing him and working him up. I used to love to suck him off; loved the feel of him in my mouth and the power I had when he was at my mercy.
His knee came to the bed, forcing me to spread my legs further, and his mood shifted as his large frame loomed over me. “I don’t have protection,” he said, regret evident in his voice.
This had not been very well thought out. We were in the middle of a mission, not a date. Of course, he wouldn’t be carrying a condom in his pocket.
“I have an IUD, and it’s been five years for me. I’m clean,” I told him.
His eyes flared, and there was a quick in draw of breath. “You sure? It hasn’t been that long for me, but I’m always careful.”
“I trust you,” I whispered, and I did, even though I knew he’d never trust me again.
He settled himself into the cradle of my legs, and in one long hard thrust, he pushed inside of me. It was both the best feeling in the world and the worst. He set a bruising pace, fucking me with a force he never had before. This was a first for us; the first time we had had sex without a barrier between us and the first time he had fucked me. There was no mistaking that was what it was, and he fucked me senseless. I matched his powerful thrusts and bucked up to meet him, chasing the orgasm that was just below the surface. He drove into me over and over, never once kissing me, not whispering the sweet words he used to in my ear as he made love to me.
Finally Free (Levi): A Black Ops Romance (The 707 Freedom Series Book 3) Page 6