“And what’s that?”
“A ride home. Come on, I’m exhausted and we’ve got an early start tomorrow.”
Twenty-Eight
They made it into the elevator before he gave in and pressed the smaller man against the wall, arms wrapped around him like a vice, lips pressed to his dark hair. “For the record, I don’t like this.”
“You’re not required to,” his handler replied, clever hands rubbing soothing circles into the small of his back all the same.
Arthur huffed, slipping a hand under his jaw and drawing him into a quick kiss. He drew back as the door dinged for the parking garage, tucking Syler into his side as they stepped out. “Your place or mine?”
“Presumptuous man.” Hazel eyes danced, teasing.
“Yours is closer, but mine has actual food in it,” he continued, unbothered, leading them both over to Lucy.
“See my prior statement,” he snipped, easing into the passenger seat all the same. He looked delicious against the cream upholstery and Arthur briefly entertained a fantasy of taking him somewhere private where he could indulge in both his girl and his handler simultaneously, free from more pressing concerns. As he settled into the driver’s side, Syler smirked a little, trailing a hand teasingly across the shifter as he read his thoughts. “Another night, Arthur.”
“Holding you to that,” he groused, filing the mental image away for later. “Yours, then, and we’ll pick something up on the way. Lord only knows what you think is appropriate to keep in a fridge after seeing your cabinets.”
“Don’t you know,” the engineer sing-songed, “that all androids run on coolant? It’s best kept in the freezer until it’s time for a refuel.” The other man rolled his eyes, refusing to dignify that with a response.
Both lapsed into silence as Arthur exited the garage, Syler relaxing into his seat as he sent in a pick up order to one of their regular spots. The shadows playing over his face as they passed under the street lights made him look older, more suited to going out in the field to meet with a cyber terrorist. Maybe this wouldn’t be an absolute disaster after all.
“You’re sure you’re alright with this?”
Syler sighed, gaze fixed out the passenger window as he rested his face in his hand. “It’s hardly my first choice, but there’s nothing to be done for it. At the very least, it’s a public location and I’ll know most of the other specialists attending. Besides, I’ll have you there and the team behind us. We have a plan. Panicking is only going to serve to keep me up all night.”
Arthur hummed, nodding. He could always trust the other man to be pragmatic, for all that Arthur himself was still decidedly not on board. As he pulled up to the curb by the restaurant, he glanced over at the other man. Despite his bravado, he was clearly uncomfortable with the entire situation. He was right in one respect—panicking really would only keep him up all night, and then where would they be?
A few minutes later, they returned to the vehicle, meal in tow. Syler belted himself in, still pensive. Well, Arthur supposed, he may as well start the job early. “Hey.” The engineer glanced over. The blond pulled him into a kiss, thorough and aimed to distract. The other man was smiling up at him when he drew back. “Enough of that. Let’s enjoy our evening, hm?”
The smaller man huffed out a breath, tucking the carryout bag securely in place on the floor before he settled back into the seat. “And what do you have planned for me?”
“Planned?” he teased.
“You always have a plan, Dufault.”
“Mm, maybe hold onto our dinner,” Syler blinked, but reached a hand down automatically all the same, just in time to brace before he threw the car into drive and peeled out onto the main road. “What do you say we take a drive?”
His handler laughed, noise drowned out by the sound of the engine. “Oh, by all means! You’ve finally stumbled upon a sure fire way to seduce me.” Arthur grinned, eyes on the road, attention entirely on the man beside him.
---
“We never did finish our conversation,” Arthur began, cutting the engine as they pulled into the apartment parking garage an hour later.
“No, I suppose we didn’t.” The agent glanced over at the other man who sat very still, face inscrutable, breathless exhilaration from their impromptu trip vanished in an instant. Neither made a move to exit the vehicle.
Arthur waited, blue gaze steady. “Well, sweetheart? What do you want here?”
“I told you I’m not very good at this,” he hedged, voice trailing off, posture finally breaking as he started nervously toying with the handles of the plastic carry out container. “The talking bit, anyway.” Hazel eyes met his, more than a bit helpless.
It would seem, Arthur thought, that one of them would have to take the lead and it was never going to be Syler, for all that the other man was bossier than sin in every other situation. May as well lay his cards on the table now and hope for the best. He pasted on an easy smile, going for casual as he cupped his hand around the other man’s neck, leaning over to press a kiss to the side of his mouth. “Believe it or not, I’m the patently boring monogamous type, Syler. If you’ll let me, when this is over I want to take you out properly. Somewhere nice. See if we can be as good together as I think.”
Syler blinked owlishly. “I don’t think anyone has ever been that blunt before. Are you sure you’re not the one who’s an android?”
“Syler,” he warned.
“Yes. Yes, please, that sounds wonderful.” Arthur grinned, rubbing a thumb into the knot of tension in the side of his handler’s neck, relishing in the way he melted into him. His expression went a touch rueful. “I’ve never had the opportunity to try your version of patently boring. I might be shit at it.”
“Well, you never know until you try,” he teased, filing away that hint of insecurity for a later discussion. “Come on, let’s eat. And not in here. I like you, but the upholstery is sacred.”
“I see how it is,” he groused, exiting the vehicle all the same. “You’re actually in a monogamous relationship with your car. How can I ever hope to compete with that?”
“She’s my girl, you’re my sweetheart. Totally different,” he responded, tugging Syler to him as they headed for the elevator. “Besides, I don’t have sex with my car.”
“Oh, so there are places you refuse to tread.”
---
They settled on Syler’s couch to eat, mostly because it was that or the bed and Arthur absolutely refused to contemplate eating in bed. God, the man really was particular. Career military through and through, Syler thought, not for the first time. It seemed burned into him right down to the meticulously efficient way he cleared his plate.
“Out of curiosity,” the blond drawled, setting his container aside before fixing a stare at something over Syler’s shoulder. At what, Syler had no idea. In his home, it could be just about anything. “The floor lamp. I mean, I assume it’s just a lamp. It’s definitely producing light, but…”
He gestured towards his metal monstrosity composed of mismatched old steel pipes, three bicycle wheels, a copper pressure gauge, exposed wires, various buttons that might be triggers of some sort, and half a dozen spokes radiating randomly from the top, each ending in between one and three bulbs, among other bits and bobs. Syler reached a hand back to adjust one of the spokes, hinged joints rattling ominously as the bulbs swayed, expression rueful. “Yeah, that’s what happens when narcoleptic engineering meets a manic cleaning spree at three a.m.”
Arthur blinked. “Does it explode?”
“Not so far.”
“Huh.” The older man turned in a slow circle, settling his attention on the workbench nearest to them. It was strewn with the cannibalized remnants of vaguely saucer shaped devices painted in various shades of blue and green. “And those?”
“Rejected iterations of my drone project. Still not totally happy with their ability to hold both payload and surveillance equipment, but their adaptive tracking technology is coming along well
.” Arthur gestured towards the next bench, eyebrows slowly climbing upwards. “I’m toying with robotic spies disguised as common animals that move and look real. Got it off of a late night nature documentary for filming in the wild using decoys.”
“So you’re trying to put me out of a job,” he grinned, slinging a hand around Syler’s shoulders and pulling him in closer, shamelessly indulging in his love of physical affection. Syler huffed, all show as he easily went along with it, curling into his warmth. The man was like a damned furnace.
“Replicating your unique brand of carnage and chaos may be beyond even my abilities, nearly unlimited budget for AI and robotics or not. Hell, the combined forces of the entire scientific community couldn’t isolate the genes responsible for that level of talent if you gave them three human lifetimes.”
Beside him, Arthur laughed. “God, the mouth on you.”
Syler glanced up at him slyly. “You’re very welcome to try to shut me—”
His agent had him pinned to the sofa before he could finish, eyes entirely predatory as he graced him with a hungry look. “My pleasure.”
“Less talking, more doing,” he replied, clever fingers already hard at work undoing the buttons of his shirt. Arthur drew back just enough to shrug it off and Syler immediately tugged him back down, slipping his hands greedily around the other man’s broad shoulders. Arthur’s mouth found his neck with unfailing accuracy, mouthing his way down to his handler’s collarbones and sucking lightly, hands rucking up the bottom hem of Syler’s shirt.
Syler pushed him up, pulling both hoodie and shirt off in a clumsy motion that nearly took his glasses off along with them. Arthur chuckled, reaching up with both hands to resettle the frames before sliding his hands around his head, pulling him in for a kiss. “Eager,” he commented, grinding down into Syler’s lap, pushing him back down. The other man bit back a whine.
“Two years of celibacy,” he panted, working intently on Arthur’s belt buckle, “has not been for me, thank you very much. Besides,” he shoved the other man’s pants open, hand hot and intent where it palmed his agent’s cock, “you and your fucking skin tight shirts have been trying to kill me for months.”
“Ah,” Arthur grinned, lifting Syler by the hips and tugging his pants and briefs off in a smooth motion, “so you have noticed.” He stood just long enough to step out of his trousers before settling back on top of Syler, gloriously naked, left hand cupping the back of his head to pull him into another heated kiss while the right wrapped snugly around both of their cocks and pulled firmly. Syler groaned into his mouth, hands pressing into his hips hard enough to bruise as he rutted into Arthur’s fist.
And then he let go, sitting back neatly on his heels, cock bobbing merrily just out of reach of Syler’s hands, the absolute bastard. Syler fell backwards onto the sofa with a huff. “What the hell, Dufault?”
“Turn over, sweetheart,” he crooned, tugging his legs over the edge of the sofa and encouraging the younger man up onto his forearms, braced across the cushions, ass bared. Arthur knelt behind him, palms running admiringly over his waist and back before settling on either side of him as he laid open mouthed kissed down his spine. Syler quirked a brow at him over his shoulder.
“Not sure we have time or lube for a proper fuck, Arthur,” he cautioned. “Though I do appreciate the spirit.”
Arthur buried his face in the small of Syler’s back, inhaling, before looking up, blue eyes coy. “Actually, I was thinking of how gorgeous you’d sound while I ate you out.”
Syler hummed, expression faux consideration. “Well, I suppose—oh fuck me!”
“Thought we didn’t have time,” he teased, licking another wide trail across the younger man’s hole, wide hands spreading his cheeks open, thumbs massaging gently at his entrance as he went to work with such unparalleled enthusiasm that Syler contemplated sobbing for joy, head dropped between his forearms and cock positively aching, all pretense of articulate conversation firmly eradicated for the foreseeable future. Christ, why hadn’t they done this sooner?
“Because,” Arthur answered, and apparently he’d said that out loud, “you like playing hard to get.” Syler whined, pressing back into the other man’s mouth and working a hand around his own cock. Arthur caught him around the wrist, forcing his hand back up by his side as he returned to worshiping his ass. “Not yet, sweetheart.”
Syler went boneless, resigned to a happy little death with Arthur’s mouth buried firmly in between his cheeks, writhing with abandon as the other man alternated his grip between spreading him open and hauling his hips in closer, occasionally running a hand up to brush tantalizingly close to his cock.
Right about the time Syler lost the ability to think entirely, little more than a slew of half-constructed pleas as he rutted back into his agent’s mouth shamelessly, cock absolutely weeping for how close he was, the blond pulled back. Pressing one last wet kiss to the small of his back, he flipped him back over and pressed him back against the seat. Syler reached for him blindly, pulling the other man into his lap and groaning as his hand finally—finally—wrapped around their cocks and tugged, thumb tracing teasingly over their tips once before setting a brutal pace.
“That’s it, sweetheart. Let me see.” Syler’s eyes slipped shut, balls pulled tight, head falling backwards against the headrest. “Yes, darling, right there. Blow for me.” Syler groaned, cock shooting in hot spurts across his chest and stomach. Arthur followed closely behind, sounding absolutely wrecked.
Panting through the haze of his orgasm, Syler let his head loll back, hazel eyes slitting open to look at the other man, arms braced on either side of his shoulders. He looked absolutely ruined. Syler couldn’t help but kiss him again.
“Fucking hell,” he croaked, hands tangling in short blond hair as he pulled the other man closer. “I’m keeping you.”
Arthur chuckled, nuzzling into his neck with a smile. “Glad to hear it.”
They both laid there catching their breath for a while. Syler was starting to doze off by the time Arthur tugged him to his feet and dragged him into the bedroom. Something about it not being appropriate to sleep on a sofa when there was a perfectly serviceable bed not twenty feet away. He grumbled heartily when the other man showed up with a warmwash cloth to clean them both up, but curled into him contentedly all the same afterwards, dropping off to sleep quickly.
And if Arthur was up half the night worrying, well, Syler didn’t need to know about that.
Twenty-Nine
They left early the next morning despite the trip to the convention center being only a half hour drive. Syler wanted time to set up a secondary command post in their hotel room, well aware that their entire system was still at risk of a total lock out at any time and wanting a back up in the likely event that the hacker took advantage of Syler being away to come after their headquarter systems again.
“Spreads the risk,” he muttered to Arthur, busy reviewing the conference booklet on his tablet from his seat on the passenger side. “They can absolutely attack both of the systems simultaneously, but if I keep the two separate and route through my personal server bank back home, it’ll be harder to knock us totally offline.”
“Oh, so that’s why you don’t have room to store plates,” he teased, tight grip on the steering wheel belaying his unease. They’d taken Sonya at his insistence, though Syler had argued his Tesla would probably fit in better with the crowd. Arthur had won when he pointed out that they’d yet to install the direct line to HQ communications in the BMW, which meant their vehicle, at least, was safe from cyber terrorism.
‘What a fucking mess,’ Syler sighed. He spared a glance over at Arthur, the other man dressed down for once in a sport coat and sweater. It was the best Syler was going to get from him, he supposed, for all that he was still massively overdressed for a convention of raging computer nerds. “Not sure what I’m going to do with you once we hit the convention floor. You stick out like a sore thumb, Arthur.”
“How so?” he q
ueried intently. Nice to know he was taking this seriously, at least.
“Six odd feet of slab muscle in designer jeans following after a bespectacled nerd in a Star Wars shirt, and you ask that?” Syler snorted. He’d been avoiding going to these things since he joined the CIA for a reason. Academia and all its trappings had only ever been a necessary evil, tolerated through grad school and then banished from his life joyously. “It doesn’t help that I know a good half of these presenters personally. The AI and robotics fields aren’t small by any means, but we get around. They’re going to ask.”
“Ah,” Arthur shrugged, relaxing. “Just tell anyone who does that your boyfriend didn’t want to be left home alone so soon after the holidays.” He reached his free hand over to brush against his. “I hear he’s needy.”
Syler chuckled. “That you are, Dufault.” He wrapped his hand around the other man’s all the same, squeezing lightly. He returned his attention to his tablet, pulling up the timeline of events. “There’s a meet and greet social this evening with several booths open for early perusal. Pyrona helpfully made it onto the list, though it isn’t listed as manned, just interactive.”
“That normal?”
“Not unusual, particularly if the point of the booth is to demonstrate something that should be user friendly to anyone with the expertise required to attend.”
“I really am escorting you on a field trip for nerds, aren’t I?”
“You have no idea and, frankly, I wouldn’t mind skipping out altogether.” He set down his tablet, as prepared as he was going to be before they had their system set up. “To be honest, a part of me wants to think that we’re more worried than we need to be. That this is just another egomaniac who wants to pick apart the brain of someone who beat them. That type is rife in engineering—dangerous online but an easy target for someone like you in reality.
“As nice as that would be if it were true, it’s conveniently forgetting that Oliveria turned up dead after the NSA breach.”
Covert Affairs: Partnership : A Covert Affairs Romance (Book One) Page 15