by Lila Dubois
Eli bent his head, taking her nipple in his mouth. Irina sobbed, her body thrashing between them, her eyes squeezed shut. She was utterly vulnerable, open to them. Theirs.
Eli released her nipple, then laid his head on her breast and closed his eyes. His hand still moved between Irina’s legs. The tight muscles of her thighs were twitching, her teeth clenched. The only sound was the wet slide of Eli’s fingers, but the pace began to taper off, even as Irina’s moans grew louder.
“Eli, are you going back to sleep?” Jasper asked.
The only response was a further slowing of his fingers’ torment of Irina’s pussy.
“No, no, don’t stop,” she begged.
But Eli was once more asleep.
Jasper reached up and unbuckled the belt. Irina looked at him, her eyes pleading.
He shook his head. “Not without him.”
Irina’s eyes flashed. She wiggled out from under Eli’s hand, then slid her own hand down to her pussy. She closed her eyes, clearly prepared to finish the job herself. Jasper turned away, not because he didn’t want to watch, but because watching might destroy the self-control he was clinging to so desperately.
“Damn it.” Irina’s voice was heavy with resignation.
He turned. She lay on her back, arms flat on the bed. She pressed her legs together and drew her knees up.
“Not without him. Together.” She rolled off the bed, standing stiffly. “I’m going to shower.”
Chapter Nine
The room was surprisingly nice, given that they were at an otherwise unremarkable motel just off the freeway. It was one of those motels where the parking spaces were right outside the door of each room, and based on the smattering of cars, it was mostly unoccupied.
Jasper checked on their vehicle through the front window, which looked out onto the parking lot. They hadn’t been able to go far with the windshield-less SUV, so when he’d seen a small used car lot outside Pueblo, he’d pulled over. Irina had stripped the SUV’s plates while he broke into the office and snagged the keys for the five-year-old gold, four-door sedan that now waited outside their room. They’d loaded everything, including the Rodin, into the surprisingly large trunk, then swapped the SUV’s plates for those of a red compact. They’d taken it a step further and traded the gold car’s plates for those of a similar gold vehicle at the back of the lot. Jasper hoped the elaborate switching of plates would buy them some extra time. They’d dropped the SUV off near the front entrance of a less-than-savory-looking body shop. If they were lucky, the shop might “borrow” some pieces and make it disappear.
They’d managed to put a hundred and fifty miles between themselves and Denver before concern over Eli, and the need to sleep, had them pulling over. They’d paid cash for the room and ditched Jasper’s outfit and Irina’s dress in the Dumpster. The bags of clothes Jasper had gotten for them had survived the transfer between vehicles, and they’d brought those in. The laptop he’d taken from the security people had not. It had a massive dent punched into it, so Jasper had broken it open and pulled out the important-looking pieces—he wasn’t great with computers, but he knew just enough to get the hard drive—then tossed what remained. Maybe Irina could do something with it, but it would take time and equipment. Their best lead was no longer looking so promising.
Toothbrushes and their own clothes were steps away, in their suitcases, but it was better to keep the suitcases closed as long as possible, making sure nothing identifiable, or covered in trace evidence, was left behind.
Jasper pulled on the generic sweats he’d gotten for himself only eight hours ago—though it seemed like days had passed since then—and jogged down to the motel front desk. He bought a cheap toothbrush and toothpaste from the night clerk, who was getting ready to leave. The sun was streaking across the sky as he hustled back to their room.
Irina was out of the shower and preparing to pull on the exercise clothes he’d gotten her. Jasper put a hand on her bare lower back, turning her to the light. Her left hip and buttock bore a spectacular bruise blooming to the size of a small plate.
They’d both showered as soon as they’d gotten here, removing any GSR, as well as the sticky sweat they’d built up. He’d first seen the bruise then, but it hadn’t been nearly this big. He released her, saying nothing, and watched as she continued to dress. After this second shower, he was struck again both by how lovely Irina was and how young she looked, face bare of makeup and wet hair loose.
“Toothbrush?” He offered it to her.
“You first. There’s a burner phone in my kit. I want to call in.”
Jasper nodded, then checked the bedside clock. “We’ll find the local morning news, see what they’re saying, if anything, about last night.”
Irina put on socks, then slipped out the door. Just to be safe, Jasper watched from the window as she rummaged in the trunk. When she was safely back in the room, he took his turn in the shower.
Eli was awake and sitting up when Jasper exited the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel. He looked at Jasper, then at Irina, who had her back to the room, phone pressed to her ear. He blinked. Gone was the aggressive sexuality, replaced by the slightly baffled-professor demeanor.
“Welcome back,” Jasper said. He tried to smile, but it faded quickly. He had no idea where they stood with Eli.
A lot had happened in the darkness of the night, and this was their first real conversation since before the attack.
“Did I get kidnapped or did I dream that?” Eli looked disconcerted, as if being kidnapped was puzzling rather than terrifying.
“Yes.”
“And…then we, uh…” Eli looked around the hotel room, as if searching for evidence of the raw sexual encounter.
Jasper couldn’t help it, he laughed, but it wasn’t mocking. “There are some pieces you’re missing. Stuff happened in between the kidnapping and the sexy times.”
Eli looked down and cleared his throat. “I thought I was dreaming part of it. A really vivid dream.”
“They drugged you. You were out cold when we got you back.”
Eli’s head snapped up. “Got me back?”
“This is going to sound dramatic, and frankly it was. We rescued you.”
“Rescued me?”
“How much do you remember? I mean before the sex.”
“Not much. We were in the parking lot.” Eli frowned. “Oh. We had a fight.”
“Actually, you left us. Not without reason, but you made it clear you wanted nothing to do with us.”
“The Rodin—”
“Safe. And the other boxes.”
“But I’m… Oh God. Everyone is going to think I stole the Rodin.”
“Well, technically you did…” Jasper couldn’t help himself.
Eli glared at him, then dropped his head into his hands.
Jasper’s heart broke a little as, for the second time, he watched Eli crumple under the weight of the consequences of last night. He wanted to reach out and touch him. After the interlude they’d shared, after the raw and visceral truth of what they’d done, he wanted to assume things were, if not fixed, at least better between them.
“I was going to turn on the news, see what the reporters are saying, but I won’t if… I don’t want to upset you.”
“Just do it,” Eli mumbled.
Jasper grabbed the remote, turned on the TV. They suffered through the last ten minutes of an infomercial before the early bird local news came on.
There was nothing in the morning breaking news, and nothing in the scrolling announcements.
“It might not break until later in the day,” Jasper said as he turned off the TV.
Eli looked at Irina’s back. She still had the phone pressed to her ear.
“Jasper, is she…is she okay?”
“A bit banged up. The shot to the hip is going to hurt for a while.”
Eli whipped around. “She got shot?!”
“Maybe I’d better give you a play-by-play.”
“I jus
t wanted to know if she was okay after…after what I did to her. You know, uh…”
“You mean mercilessly teasing her and never letting her orgasm?” Jasper raised a brow.
Eli cleared his throat. “Yes. That. Wait. After all that, we didn’t…she didn’t?” He frowned.
“That was not anywhere close to being an actual sentence,” Jasper pointed out. “We didn’t have sex. I mean no one had sex. I touched her…when and how you ordered me to.” Jasper’s voice grew husky and his cock twitched. He looked away, getting his body under control.
“I’m…I’m so sorry,” Eli said. “I’m not normally like th—”
Jasper whipped around, voice hard with anger. “Don’t. Don’t apologize. Don’t make that cheap. Don’t make it less than what it was.”
Eli straightened, meeting Jasper’s anger head on. “And what was it?”
“It was the first time we were a real trinity instead of three strangers. And the whole time I had to remind myself we’d never have anything more than last night, because you were already gone. As soon as your walls went back up, you’d be out of our lives.” Jasper let out a sharp laugh. “The first time our trinity came together it was already broken.”
Eli’s face was inscrutable. They stared at each other, neither willing to back down, yet there was something lying unsaid between them, the connection they’d forged last night, a connection forged as they’d put their hands on their wife.
“Oh fuck.”
Jasper whipped around, looked at Irina. Her words were soft but vehement in a way that made his muscles tense. Her bare face was etched stark with some expression he couldn’t name.
“Irina.” Eli pushed to his feet.
Jasper stood shoulder to shoulder with him. “What is it?”
Irina placed the phone on the table, then carefully picked up the lamp and brought the base down on the phone, smashing it to bits.
“We need to run. Now.”
Irina, this is Price Bennett. You asked for information on an address that belongs to a VIP Bennett Securities’ client. The request triggered an internal flag, which is why I’m calling. I’d like you to call me back, on my personal line, so we can discuss the source of your request. Your supervisor says you’re on personal leave.
Irina, this is Price Bennett again. I’m getting after-action reports from an engagement by our high-risk division in Colorado. Call me back, immediately.
Irina repeated the carefully memorized voicemails for a second time. She’d listened to each message five times, memorizing them before destroying the burner phone. Jasper white-knuckled the wheel and cursed both inventively and at length.
Eli leaned forward from the backseat. “You’re sure this Price Bennett guy is in the Trinity Masters?”
“Yes. I’ve met him a couple of times and saw his ring. It’s this sort of open secret that he lives with both a woman and a man. Clearly they’re his spouses, though officially I guess they’re just his roommates or something. The man, Gunner, is an FBI agent, and Denise is a renowned scientist, doing cutting-edge research in genetics. I’ve met both of them a few times at work events.”
“That’s an interesting trinity,” Jasper remarked.
“Price is rich and powerful. He can do what he wants.” Irina grimaced. “After we saw that address on the sheet inside the box, I called it in, asked the research office to look into it. That’s what the first message is about. Whoever owns the art is a VIP client.” She made air quotes with her fingers as she said “VIP.”
“You think that means a member of the Trinity Masters,” Jasper said.
“Yes.”
“But we already knew that.” Eli shrugged. “We knew the owner of the Rodin was a member.”
“No.” Jasper drew out the vowel. “We suspected. Now we know. Not only are they a member, they’re a well-connected member.”
Irina nodded. “Bennett Securities’ High Risk Division is, as far as I know, exclusively overseas. They handle stuff like security in war zones. If the owner of that,” Irina pointed at the Rodin, “has enough pull to get an HRD team at short notice, at an art fundraiser…”
“Oh.” Eli sat back and pulled the Rodin protectively onto his lap. “You’re saying Irina’s boss—”
“Reporting directly to Price is above my pay scale. More like my boss’ boss.”
“—is in on it? He’s one of the purists?” Eli finished.
“And he’s got to be the owner of the art. Who better to hide something like that than the owner of a massive private security firm?” Jasper’s tone was grim.
“The real question is,” Irina said, “why bother kidnapping Eli?”
“And were they targeting him specifically? Or was he just the easiest to grab?”
“I’m offended by that, I think.” Eli frowned. “Er, should I be?”
Irina winced out a smile. “The thing is, Jasper and I both turned off our phones, because we knew we could be tracked by them.”
It didn’t take Eli long to see where she was going with that. “And my phone was on.”
“And you’d walked away, all by yourself. It was very dramatic. Stupid, but dramatic.”
“Thanks, Jasper,” Eli grumped.
“You’re welcome, husband.”
Eli did that blinking thing and Irina laughed.
Scenery whipped by the windows. The imposing Rocky Mountains were behind them as they headed south and east. Before them lay expanses of forest intersected by bare ridges of barren, rocky soil. They’d hustled into the car and gotten on the freeway, putting miles between the burner phone and themselves before Irina finally relayed the messages that had been waiting for her when she’d called in to her personal phone’s voice mail service.
For safety’s sake, they were completely off the grid. They’d tossed Eli’s phone—which they’d found in his pocket after they’d rescued him—into the back of a pickup going the other direction after turning it back on. Jasper’s and Irina’s phones were in a lead-lined pouch in the bottom of Irina’s suitcase. They were traveling old school, using a map Jasper had picked up at a gas station. With no phone, and by using only cash, they were doing their best to minimize their digital footprint.
No phones meant no GPS, and they had no way to check where they were real time, but Jasper had a destination in mind. The last sign they’d passed said 150 miles to Amarillo, Texas. They’d changed highways since then, and were now on a narrow two-lane road that aspired to be a real freeway.
“Stupid question.” Eli sat forward again. “Doesn’t this mean we did it?”
Irina and Jasper shared a surprised look.
“We were supposed to find one of the pieces in the ERR album.” Eli ticked the points off on his fingers. “We did that—though, to be fair, I haven’t had time to make a definitive identification. We don’t know for sure who owns it, but we know that this Price Bennett guy is at the very least protecting it. Why don’t we just call the Grand Master and tell her?”
Irina looked at Jasper. “He has a point.”
“He does,” Jasper agreed.
Irina smiled. “And if the Grand Master steps in, we’ll be safe. Even if Price Bennett is a member of the purists, I’m sure she can shut him down. All we need to do is stay safe until he’s…dealt with.”
Jasper grinned. “I have an idea about where we can hide out.”
“Veto,” Eli said.
“What?” Irina glared at Eli. “What are you vetoing?”
“Whatever he has planned. I don’t trust that smile on his face.”
Irina examined Jasper’s expression, noticed the way his eyes sparkled with some hidden mirth. “You may have another point, Eli.”
“Oh come on, you’ll love it.”
“Uh, does that sign say we’re entering Oklahoma?” Irina asked. “I thought we were in Texas.”
“We were. We turned north about thirty miles ago.”
“What’s in Oklahoma?” Eli asked.
Jasper laughed.
&
nbsp; “There’s a fetish hotel in the Oklahoma panhandle.” Eli’s voice was flat.
Irina bit her lower lip to hold back the laugh that bubbled in her throat.
Jasper slung an arm around Eli’s shoulders. “No one will look for us here.”
The two-story concrete structure was nondescript from the outside. The front door was dead center in one of the end walls. The parking lot was to the right, and surrounded by an eight-foot-tall fence. From the parking lot you could see the long wall of the building and the evenly spaced square windows, five on each floor. The security bars on the windows looked like a large X, with smaller Xs inside the triangular spaces made by the larger main arms. It was the only decorative touch on a building that otherwise looked like a storage facility.
“Why do you know this is here? How is this here?” Eli’s voice remained comically resigned. “I thought Oklahoma was conservative?”
“It is. This hotel is one of the only businesses in this county, a county which a huge amount of bribery by the owners—a lovely Dutch couple—helped create. They’re their own county and their own town. She’s the mayor, he’s the sheriff. It works. I heard about it at one of the galas.”
“Why can’t we hide out in a big hotel? You know, a normal one.”
“Because this place is entirely off the grid. No security cameras that can be hacked, no digital anything. They’re an all-cash business. That is very hard to find.”
“I’m sure those are the only reasons,” Eli grumped.
Irina lost it, laughing so hard she had to lean against Jasper.
They left their luggage in the car, secure within the parking lot’s protective fence. The automatic car gate had opened to admit them only after Jasper gave the password—”Amsterdam.” Apparently that was the name of the hotel.
They were empty-handed as Jasper pressed the doorbell beside the solid metal front door. There was a mail slot above the doorbell, but there was no business name, street numbers, or any identifying information. It was clearly one of those places where if you had to ask the name, or what it was, you would never be let in.