Love & Lies

by Julie Johnson

  “What?” I asked warily for the second time in ten minutes.

  His mouth lifted in a half-grin. “Nothing.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You’re just… full of surprises,” he said, shrugging. “You hate Disney princesses and you love medieval mythology. You’re terrified of heights, but you appreciate the view from the top. You’d choose Rocky Road ice cream over survival supplies. You ramble when you’re nervous. You complain that you don’t like me, but you kissed me on a train car like you never wanted to come up for air.”

  I blushed, of course.

  “You’re a contradiction.” He said, leaning in so our faces hovered millimeters apart. “A gorgeous nerd. A terrified adventurer. A clumsy cultural-expert.” He moved closer and I felt his breath on my lips when he spoke again. “It’s strange and unexpected and beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

  I tried to slow my racing heartbeat. Tried not to hear his words or stare too deeply into his eyes as he said things I’d been waiting my whole life to hear. Because if I looked, if I listened — I knew I’d fall.

  Too fast. Too hard.

  I’d blink and, before I knew what was happening, I’d be in love with this man who was, in many ways, still a total stranger to me. And I couldn’t let that happen. Couldn’t allow my study-abroad-dalliance to become something much more permanent. I wasn’t a dumb princess in some fairy tale and, as he’d already told me, he was certainly not my prince.

  This was a fling. No strings, no labels, no promises. Just a short-term love affair I’d look back on when I was a wrinkled old lady in a rocking chair on the back porch, telling tales to my thousand grandkids.

  Right.

  My traitorous, treacherous heart cackled hysterically at me from within my chest.

  You’re dumber than Aurora and Cinderella put together if you think you’re not already half in love with Wes Adams, it taunted deviously.

  I chewed anxiously on my bottom lip, riddled with worry, until Wes closed the gap between our faces and pressed his mouth to mine in a consuming kiss that made me forget all about my heart and, instead, start thinking with certain other, less judgmental, parts of my anatomy.

  * * *

  I wasn’t sure how we got back to my apartment. The entire trip was a blur.

  All I knew was, once Wes kissed me, once I got a taste, there was no stopping it. No way to sate my appetite for him. A wave of shored-up lust that had been trapped carefully behind a dam of self-control for the past month tore through my body like a tsunami after a year-long drought.

  Buda Castle was left in the dust. The Turul statue was forgotten. Habsburg Gate faded into the distance as we ran, laughing like fools, down the steps of Castle Hill. Our hands tightly entwined, we cast surreptitious glances at each other as we raced through the city toward my apartment. It took forever, but only because we stopped so many times. We couldn’t go more than two minutes before the need to crush our lips together became unbearable.

  It was crazy. Out of control. Indecent. Immodest.

  I didn’t care.

  At the bottom of the steps, Wes pulled me against his chest and kissed me so deeply, so passionately, I forgot to breathe. Deprived of oxygen, I might’ve passed out in his arms, had he not broken away. Tourists were looking at us — snapping pictures, shielding their children’s eyes. It didn’t matter. I was so caught up in him, I would’ve stripped naked on the cobblestones if he’d asked me.

  I’d never even let Conor kiss me in full-view at a high-school football game.

  We reached the middle of the Chain Bridge, and I couldn’t take another step without touching him. I tugged Wes to a stop and pulled his face down to mine, slamming our lips together hungrily. It was far too much for a public display of affection; and yet, it wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy me. Pressing my mouth to his, I let myself float away as our lips devoured and discovered one another. I was so I dazed I couldn’t have told you my first name or my favorite color, but I’d never felt more complete than I did at that moment. Only the threat of toppling over the railing in a lust-fueled stupor was enough to force us onward.

  We made it another block before the wave crashed again.

  A single, heated glance passed between us, and then Wes was yanking my hand, dragging me into a narrow stone-paved alleyway, and pressing me against the wall with the entire length of his body. I could feel his hardness, knew his desire matched mine in every way. Our lips met again, his tongue entered my mouth, and I had to grip his shoulders so I wouldn’t crumple to the ground in a pile of strength-sapped limbs. I arched into him, needing more — more lips, more skin, more everything. My hands traced down his back, under the hem of his henley to skim the bare flesh beneath. He growled and tore his lips from mine, panting hard into the crook my neck.

  “You’re killing me,” he whispered. His teeth scraped my earlobe and I moaned so loud a woman peered out her first-floor apartment window at us with a disapproving look.

  Shit.

  “Let’s go.” I grabbed his hand and pulled him from the alley, sprinting down the street as fast as possible in flimsy sandals. He was right beside me, step for step — just as eager to get behind closed doors, where our last vestiges of restraint could be shed like the unwanted clothes still concealing us from one another.

  When we finally reached my apartment, he kissed me as I fumbled blindly with the key. I struggled for several long moments until Wes, officially out of patience, took over for me. The lock turned and, lips still fused together, we fell through the front door as a messy tangle of arms and legs, hitting the floor before we’d made it two steps beyond the threshold. Wes kicked the door closed with one foot, threw my keys and purse across the room, and rolled on top of me in a single swift move that made my stomach clench with delicious anticipation.

  “Red, Red, Red,” he chanted under his breath, his eyes on my face and his hands in my hair. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”

  His palms moved over my shoulders and down my sides, skimming so softly I could barely feel them through my clothes. I was getting desperate — the need to feel his touch against my skin grew more urgent with each passing moment.

  I lifted my arms to remove his shirt, more than ready to see what lay beneath, but he reached down, grabbed my hands, and pinned my wrists above my head in a firm, inescapable grip. I couldn’t touch him, couldn’t move, as he held both my hands down with one of his own. He was in total control of my body, pulling expertly on those invisible threads that bound us together.

  He touched; I responded. It was elemental, instinctual. The most basic of physical principles, brought to life by his hands.

  For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

  His hand traced down my breastbone; my back arched like a bowstring.

  His fingers skimmed a spiral pattern up my neck and across my cheekbone; my head fell listlessly to the side, giving him better access.

  His knee nudged my legs apart; I let them fall open so he could settle fully on top of me.

  I was a puppet on a string. It should’ve been confining, demeaning.

  It wasn’t.

  It was electrifying. A thousand volts of lust pumped through my bloodstream, lighting me up from the inside out. It was the hottest thing I’d ever experienced.

  “Wes,” I whispered, unable to form other words. Unable to ask for what I wanted.

  His face moved closer, his mouth trailing wet kisses along my jaw, making me squirm with pleasure. His lips landed softly on mine, but he didn’t kiss me. They were the shadow of a kiss, the ghost of what I needed — teasing, taunting. He was driving me crazy.

  “Please,” I begged, my eyes on his.

  “What, Red?” He asked, grinning crookedly down at me. He was enjoying this, the bastard. “Use your words, like a big girl.”

  I glared at him. “I don’t like you.”

  His grin widened before he leaned forward and kissed me. Not another insufficient peck — a full-out, no-hol
ds-barred kiss that invaded every one of my senses and left me gasping for breath when it was finally over. He pulled away, a smug look on his face, and I couldn’t remember what we’d been discussing only seconds before.

  “Oh, I think you like me.” Wes taunted against my lips. “Especially when I do that.”

  Okay, now I remembered.

  “Or this,” he whispered, kissing a path down my neck, until his face was hovering directly over my cleavage. I forced my body to lay unresponsive under him, not to bend or break beneath his touch, as he slowly pulled the neckline of my t-shirt down. Somehow, this had become a contest — a battle of wills I knew I’d never win, but couldn’t stop myself from taking part in.

  When whisper-soft kisses began to land against the lace of my bra, keeping still became nearly impossible. I needed to move, to touch him, to kiss him — and he wasn’t letting me. His hand began to move under my shirt, and I felt my spine go rigid with the effort to remain in control.

  “Wesley Adams, if you don’t make love to me in the next thirty seconds, I will kill you,” I threatened in a murderous voice.

  Wes’ head came up at the sound of his name. Laughter and lust faded from his eyes and something else — something painful — flashed in their depths. He abruptly released me, rolled to the empty space beside my body, and sat up, so we weren’t touching at all. A guarded expression masked his emotions from me.

  I sat up and stared at him, eyes wide. “Wes?”

  He didn’t look at me, and I saw the muscle ticking in his cheek like a time bomb as he clenched and unclenched his jaw.

  “I was just kidding,” I said, reaching out to touch him. When my fingertips landed on his forearm, he flinched and lifted haunted eyes to meet mine. Whatever he saw on my face affected him so strongly, his expression immediately shuttered.

  “I have to go,” he said haltingly, rising to his feet. His tone was cold. Impersonal. Like he was talking to a stranger, rather than the girl he’d been kissing like a madman for the past hour. I couldn’t fathom what had inspired this change in him. He had to be kidding around.

  Right?

  “What do you mean, you have to go?” I asked, a little hysterically. If he was joking, I was ready for the punchline.

  “I’m sorry.” He stared straight ahead as he spoke. “I just remembered I have something to do for work.”

  A beat of silence passed between us. It was eight o’clock at night — we both knew his words were a lie.

  “Wes, what did I do?” I asked in a strangled voice. “I’m sorry if I said something wrong. If I did something…”

  His eyes came back to meet mine. They were burning with fervent emotions I couldn’t name. “It’s not you, Red. You’re perfect. Don’t ever think it’s you.” Leaning down to where I was still sitting on the floor like a discarded rag doll, he pressed his lips fiercely to my forehead. He held the kiss for a long time and, inexplicably, I felt my eyes fill with tears.

  “Are you saying goodbye to me again, Wes?” My voice wavered.

  He didn’t say anything as he pulled his lips from my skin and turned for the exit. When he reached the door, he stilled with his hand on the knob. “I’ll see you soon,” he promised, but his voice was hollow. I wondered if his promise was equally empty as I watched him pull open the door and step over the threshold.

  And then he was gone.

  Chapter 24

  Weston

  SUBZERO

  * * *

  My punches rained down on the bag in a steady rhythm. I hadn’t bothered to tape my knuckles or change from my street clothes. As soon as I’d stepped through the door, I’d shrugged off my jacket, crossed to the bag, and started hitting. The rage, the pain I’d been feeling since I left Faith’s apartment — it needed an outlet. With each strike, I recited the two words bouncing around my head like a crazed incantation.

  Wesley.

  Smack.

  Adams.

  Smack.

  Ten minutes passed.

  Twenty. Forty. An hour.

  I kept hitting.

  My knuckles were raw — bleeding and aching. They hurt like a bitch.

  But that pain was a fucking needle prick, compared to what I’d felt when Faith looked at me with love in her eyes and said another man’s name.

  It gutted me.

  A knife twisting in my stomach, slicing through sinew and muscle. Rending vital organs to hemorrhaged shreds.

  Before I’d met Faith, I didn’t think I had a heart. Now that I knew her, I was sure I didn’t.

  For twenty-five years, a solid block of ice resided behind my ribs, and I was better for it. The perfect operative. Cold, detached, numb. No need for useless emotions. No use for the triviality of love.

  You can’t miss what you’ve never had.

  But in the span of a few weeks, a stubborn, whip-smart, unshakeable girl had melted my subzero shell. With one look, one laugh, one touch, she’d dissolved all the defenses no one else had even gotten close enough to see. And when she’d exposed the shriveled, unused, underdeveloped organ inside my chest — the laughable excuse for a heart that hadn’t pumped since I was small — she ripped it, still beating, from the cavity and claimed it for her own.

  So, I could hit the damn bag until my hands fell off.

  The pain would never come close to the searing agony inside my empty chest.

  * * *

  “Abbott.”

  “I need a status report.” Benson’s voice snapped over the line.

  Breathing deeply, I tried to mask the contempt in my tone before I responded. “I’m surveilling the interior of the Hermes offices as we speak.”

  My eyes remained riveted on the screen of my laptop. The picture was bouncing slightly, the rhythmic movement of Faith’s steps making the camera on her messenger bag sway as she walked the halls. I reached out a hand and pressed a series of buttons to mute the volume feed and dim the picture.

  “And?” Benson prompted.

  Ass.

  “I have audio and visual.” My jaw clenched.

  “Anything actionable?” His voice was patronizing. “Or are you just monitoring the girls’ locker room to get your rocks off?”

  I began to grind my teeth. “I’ve ID’d six operatives from the internal footage. One of them is Szekely’s nephew.” Konrad’s face flashed in my mind and I felt an uncomfortable sensation in my chest. I liked the kid — it was a shame he’d gotten himself snarled in this shit. “I bugged a baseball cap and gave it to him as a souvenir – hopefully, he’ll be wearing it next time he visits his uncle’s compound.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Good. The young ones always break faster in interrogation.” Benson’s voice was smug. As if he’d ever interrogated anyone except the intern who finished the last doughnut from the box in the staff break room.

  “We might be able to use him as leverage, but I doubt he knows much about the true nature of his uncle’s company.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. “Plus, Szekely isn’t the sentimental type. You could cut off his nephew’s hand and ship it to his doorstep via one of his own couriers— I doubt it would faze him. He won’t do anything to jeopardize his empire. Not even for family.”

  “Well, we’ll see about that,” Benson blustered. Even when he knew he was wrong, he couldn’t admit it. “What do you have in terms of layout intel?”

  “I’m reverse-engineering a map of the building from recorded images, sewer plans, and old blueprints. I should have a complete picture in a week. Two weeks, max.”

  “Make it one.”

  I began to pound a fist against the metal desk in sharp, metronomic hits that made the bones in my hand ache. My eyes followed the blinking red dot on the city map monitor, as Faith hopped on her bike and headed out for another run.

  “Do you have access to deliveries in transit?”

  “Limited.” I bit out the word like a curse, remembering how shitty I’d felt when I searched Faith’s
messenger bag, opening each parcel and photographing the documents inside for later study. If she ever found out…

  “Abbott, I’m not fucking around. We need actionable material, and we need it yesterday.”

  “You don’t think I know that?”

  A frosty silence blasted over the line. “Speak to me like that again, and I’ll transfer your ass back here behind a desk so fast you’ll have perpetual whiplash.”

  God, even his threats were pathetic. The worst pain he could even contemplate inflicting on someone was akin to a slight neck twinge. I tried not to laugh.

  “Sorry, sir,” I sneered. “I’ve made contact with a few local sources. There are rumors that Szekely is working on something big. A new prototype.”

  “The CIA doesn’t deal in rumors, Abbott.”

  Given the opportunity, I’d put a bullet between Benson’s eyes without hesitation.

  “Rumor or not, my sources are worried. Theories range from drones to nukes to bio-weapons. No real consensus. The only thing they all agree on is that whatever he’s working on is so advanced, it could alter the course of modern warfare.”

  “All the more reason for you to stop dragging your heels,” Benson barked. “Tap every source you can find — bleed them dry, if you have to. I want to know what the hell he’s building in that compound. And, for god’s sake, get some eyes inside his estate. I don’t care what you have to do — just get it done.”

  “I have a meeting with a new source in a few days. He’s outside the city, living off the grid in a small village, but apparently he was one of Szekely’s inside men for years before defecting. He wants to discuss possible U.S. asylum status in exchange for what he knows. I’ll contact you if he has anything concrete.”

  “Do that.”

  He hung up.

  “Enjoy your doughnuts, lardass,” I muttered.

  I took a deep breath, tightened my grip on the sat phone, and hurled it across the room so hard, it ricocheted off a wall and the screen fractured in a spiderweb.