by Angel Payne
Tait slid his hand around the back of her neck. But instead of compelling her face back up, he tilted his down. He let her see that he valued every drop she cried and understood every word she spoke.
“And you told him you’d been lost once, too.”
She gazed at him. No. Not just at him but into him, slamming his soul with the shimmering force of her sorrow. “Yeah,” she whispered. “I did.”
“And today, you’ve done what you had to—but now you’re afraid to feel calm about it.”
She didn’t answer him in words. He didn’t care. As her tears turned into chokes then sobs, he folded her into his arms and let her plummet into the emotion she needed right now. If the world was perfect, he’d be giving her this pain in the form of cuffs, clamps, and whips, but they were miles from perfection and the best he could offer was a few minutes of safety so she could strip down her heart and give it release.
Incredible, intense woman. Her emotional nakedness was as stunning to him as her bare body, and just as precious a gift. He still didn’t know anything about her beyond the few details Zeke had shared about meeting her on the street when they’d been teens, but in moments like this, Tait didn’t need her baby pictures and a life journal. Now, just like that night when he’d helped her through the subdrop at Bastille, she made him feel like a human skyscraper. A lion king. Her personal hero.
The guy who’d fallen hard for her.
After a few minutes that raced by too fast, she snuffled, swiped the mascara off her cheeks, and stepped back. “Damn it. I’m a mess.”
He couldn’t hold back from cupping the side of her face again. “A beautiful mess.”
She shot him half a smile. “You seriously need your head ex—”
He pulled the rest of the word off her lips by dragging her close and kissing her hard. Reckless move? Yeah. Completely unavoidable? He gave that a giant check mark, too. Ahhh, God…the sweet nectar of her mouth, the lingering salt of her tears, the lush taste of her lips…he’d never tasted such a wonderful ambrosia in his life. And doubted he ever would again.
“My head’s working just fine.” He said it when he finally let her go, still pressing his forehead to hers. “Both of them, as a matter of fact.”
“Shit.” She got it out between a couple of labored breaths. The action made that damn sweater set go tight in all the right places, which didn’t help the protest she tried to stammer. “Weasley—we really can’t—”
He handled that just like the other nonsense she tried to blurt. He simply meshed his mouth and tongue to hers again. When she finally tore away, he grated, “Come to the hotel tonight.” He traced her eyebrows, her cheeks, and her lips with the pads of his thumbs. “Luna…come be with me.”
He watched the yes enter her whole face, bringing a new sheen to her eyes and a slight part to her lips, before the shadow of fear conquered it again. “I have to get the stick to Dan. We have no idea what this is going to unlock on that laptop.”
“And after that? Don’t you have to sleep sometime?”
“Of course.” She guided his hand to the back of her neck again, but made him press into her skin. His fingers hit a little ridge that felt like a staple under her skin. “In the bed where they can find me, via this fun little tracking chip.” She sniffed and attempted a smile. “Karma’s quite a bitch, huh?”
“Fine.” She wanted to play this for the jugular? He could do that, too. “Then I’ll wait.”
Her laugh wasn’t surprising. “You’ll wait,” she repeated. “Right. Sure.”
He squared his shoulders. Tightened his jaw. “I know exactly where you’re going with that, Ms. Lawrence. Be my guest. I’m right behind you.”
She folded her arms and jutted her chin. “For the next year? Because you realize, no matter what goes down with Lor and the Aragons, that’s the crazy assignment you’re volunteering for, right?”
He didn’t alter his position by an inch. “I’m a smart guy, flower. And a patient one.”
Finally, the words seemed to sink into her. Her generous lips curled a little. She gazed up at him, the darkness in her gaze beyond anything she’d ever hit him with before. He almost felt like she was looking at him for the first time ever.
“You mean that, don’t you?” Her tone warmed him like someone had distilled the afternoon’s sunshine and urged him to take a shot.
Tait swallowed hard before brushing his knuckles across her cheek. “Don’t you remember what they say at Hogwarts, honey? The beautiful, crazy witch is always worth the wait.”
She gave him the gift of another laugh. It filled his senses with melody and light, making him grin like an idiot in return.
In another two seconds, the moment was gone. She turned away, still teetering in those heels even though she reached more level ground after leaving the palm grove. As Tait watched the sway of her enticing backside, a jolt of something strange hit his chest. He rubbed his sternum, unable to recognize the shit at first. It had been such a long time since he’d felt it…but the connection finally struck. It was pure, unfiltered joy.
Chapter Seventeen
Ethan was pretty sure he was going to hell.
There had to be some cosmic law against using a Sunday night for dressing up in Dominance leathers and a T-shirt laced with silver sparkle threads, pretending to top a starlet who was as submissive as Xena the Warrior, in front of ten floodlights, a catty photography crew—and the woman on whom he’d much rather be wielding the crop. Yeah, the same woman who’d been watching him for the last two days like a hen eyeing a fox outside her coop, while a filthy fox named Ephraim Lor kept slinking in through her back door.
Yep. Hell. He had no doubt it was already stamped on his mortal train ticket. Didn’t have a problem letting the track take him there either, as long as he got to kill Lor first. Slowly. Painfully. Since tonight’s photo session was taking place in Ricochet, one of LA’s largest and best-equipped BDSM dungeons, he was sure he could find a stretching rack or a high-intensity electro-stim kit that would help him carry out the mission in style.
As Fulsom and his crew worked with the Ricochet maintenance team to pull a St. Andrews cross into an area that better depicted the “undercover kink club” theme for the shoot, Bella clacked away on her latex boots to swap her red leather skirt for a long black lace thing held up by Fulsom’s fashion consultant. Sure, because that was more conducive to depicting a “naughty spy sting” in D/s land, right?
He quashed the thought as soon as it hit. He should be grateful for the costume change. It would force Lor to ease the suction cups on his octopus hold around Ava. She’d be called away to help toss Bella’s hair, straighten an eyelash, adjust the cinch on the corset from which the woman’s plastic cleavage was already tumbling…he didn’t care what the emergency was, as long as he could take a break for even five minutes from the torture of watching the man conduct a hands-on topographical survey of her body, apparently with her full permission.
Goddamnit. The woman thought she’d been making crappy choices in men before? He was of half a mind to march across the room and tell her about the “prize catch” maneuvering to get between her thighs now. An imposter who’d been raised by a pair of zealots, politically radicalized at the age his hormones raged highest and now deceived the world into thinking he was Hollywood royalty while partnering with international criminals.
On second thought, maybe he’d skip the whole “talking to her” part of that plan and get to the section where Ava was in the next room from the bastard. Better yet, the next country. He wondered how he could arrange another planet.
Could this ordeal drag by any slower?
He flung the crop a few times, testing its whir to cut his tension while waiting for Bella to call out for Ava. But when the actress finally spoke up, it was to tell Ava that she and Fulsom’s assistant could handle the wardrobe change themselves.
Damn it.
Now he formed a seething audience of one as Lor took advantage of Ava’s black knit dr
ess in ways clearly inspired by their kinky surroundings. With every inch of skin the man revealed during his groping, a new tendon in Ethan’s body coiled straight past jealousy and into incensed.
By the time the crew turned the lights back on, he grabbed at Bella like an unthinking ape—a comparison that didn’t veer too far from the truth. After tearing off the bottom two feet of the useless skirt, he got to work on ignoring Grant’s session directions, using his own instinct to pose her with animalistic fury. It was just his fucking luck that Fulsom didn’t just approve of the behavior, but was gleeful about it. The man started taking shots with a camera in each hand, shouting at them in wild encouragement. Bella, never missing an easy bandwagon upon which to climb, got into the act, too. Her moans and sighs filled the room as Grant flashed away, finally collapsing and declaring himself “verklempt with photographic delight” before ordering a furniture and lighting switch for the next round.
Dandy. Fucking dandy.
Grant turned his monitor toward Ava and Lor so they could join him as he scrolled through the shots. Ethan wondered why the views that garnered the photographer’s most triumphant crows, the steamiest ones of the shoot, were also the ones that drained the smile out of Ava’s eyes—and sometimes off her lips, too.
The same lips that gave you the grand kiss-off six days ago, Archer. Remember?
He grunted softly. Did he remember? The more apt question was, how did he make himself forget?
Did the tremors in her lips mean she hadn’t forgotten, either? And was maybe reconsidering her words…a little?
He decided to latch onto that hope, even if it was false, to get him through the second half of the shoot.
Thwack.
He grunted in satisfaction after rounding the corner into the next play area and testing the crop at full strength against the red leather pad of a full bondage bed. The big, black-painted piece featured at least twenty rig points, as well as cups in the posts to hold extras like lube or clamps. As it had a dozen times since he’d even glanced at this thing, his mind filled with all the decadent ways he longed to do take Ava in it, on it, next to it. Thank fuck Grant had decided they’d done the “sexy bed” theme to death during their Arabian reenactment at the Huntington, and taken this shoot in a different direction. He wasn’t sure an ice pack jammed down the front of his leathers would sit well with the photographer, but was damn sure it’d be the only thing hiding his erection if he and Ava were in the same vicinity of the bed.
“You’ve got a good arm there.”
He looked up and smiled at the source of the sultry statement. The statuesque strawberry blonde, with curves that were all hers and a smirk that told him she really meant the statement, had already been pretty awesome to them tonight. As the owner of Ricochet, Hudsy Hawn had not only opened the club exclusively for the shoot, but had a full spread of sandwiches and snacks ready for them, too. The woman hadn’t stopped the hospitality there, either. In the gracious style of the switch she was, every one of Grant’s requests or needs got seen to personally—right before she gave the guy a minute-long lecture for spilling soda on the floor and not cleaning up after himself. Ethan had to actually admit agreeing with Grant when the guy called Hudsy “a helluva sexy ball breaker.”
Finding himself at the receiving end of his own one-on-one time with the model, actress, singer, and club owner, he looked to the woman with sincere respect. “I’m rusty, but thanks.” He offered the crop back to her. “You don’t go wanky on your equipment, do you? Is it custom?”
Her smile inched up a little, conveying her own deference in return. “Yeah. I have a guy.”
Ethan chuckled. “Just one?”
She laughed. “Well done.” After she took the crop, she refilled his hands with something else. The black T-shirt displayed a gray version of the club’s logo: a bullet unpeeling from its casing in blatantly phallic symbolism. “While I’d love to stand here and trade one-liners until one of us caves, I’ve come to fetch you back to my office.”
He narrowed his gaze. “Why?”
“Some guy called and asked if I could link you up to him on a video call. His name is Franzen? Says he’s your CO? Built like Thor of Polynesia? Kinda hot? Okay, maybe a little more than kinda—”
“Shit.” He weathered a hit of both relief and unease. Had they finally caught a break with the memory stick that Luna lifted off of Lor on Friday? The USB key had at last unlocked the laptop but the information on the device was gibberish, a combination of numbers, symbols and pictures that seemed a more insane puzzle than the Kryptos sculpture that greeted the spooks out in Langley. It had taken the experts eight years to crack the code embedded into the artwork. They didn’t have eight days for this. Ethan wondered if they even had eight hours.
“Shit,” he repeated after taking two steps. The dungeon’s colored lights picked up the threads in his shirt and reflected them across the wall in a kaleidoscope that screamed use this fashion disaster against me forever. While that ball-wrencher was going to be inevitable once the photos were published anyhow, he wasn’t about to give Franz, and whoever was on the call with them, any extra ammunition for the cause.
“Came to the same conclusion,” Hudsy drawled. “Which is why I brought the new threads.”
After whipping off the disco magic shirt, he pulled the cotton over his torso and emitted a grateful groan. No more threads that felt like a thousand scorpions had turned his torso into their dance club. Unable to help himself, he gave Hudsy a mushy cheek kiss. “I adore you.”
She whacked his shoulder. “Those are only pretty words to me, Sergeant.” Her hand curled in except for one chiding finger. “Save them for the one you really mean them for.”
As they started down a hallway that led past the club’s kitchen and storerooms, he gave a dismissive snort. “Bella gets lots of adoration, each and every day, I guarantee—”
“I wasn’t talking about Bella.”
She tossed another knowing smile in emphasis before stopping at a door with a sign that read Bow to the Queen, Boys. On the other side of it was a small office, though not so tiny that an old-fashioned school desk and a spanking bench couldn’t occupy one wall. The desk to which she directed him was clearly used for the real business side of the club. She pulled out the leather chair located in front of it but Ethan didn’t sit yet. Instead, he squared his stance to the woman and cut to the proverbial chase of things. She was clearly as good a Domme as she was a sub, which meant coy and cute were a waste of time here.
“Ava and I…let’s just say it’s complicated.”
Hudsy angled an elegant hand against her latex-clad hip. “The best ones usually are, honey.”
He locked his teeth. “I’m not her Mr. Right. I’m not even her Mr. Right Now.” He sank into the chair. “Not anymore.”
She hitched her hip onto the desk and cocked her head. “And that creepazoid of a producer is?” When Ethan returned only a sullen silence, she scooted back to her feet with a huff. “Fine. Talk to your boss. I have some things to take care of.”
Before she stomped out of the office, she hit a couple of keys on the computer to bring up the window to which Franz had obviously directed her. He wondered if Hudsy thought it odd that “Thor of Polynesia” had given her a Victorian home-decorating site to bring up as their conference portal but pushed back the concern as he navigated the triple firewall into the screen where Franz waited with Colton at his side. Neither of them jolted when his ping sounded on their end. They were ready.
“Runway!” his leader declared. “Good, you’re on. Are you alone?”
Ethan frowned. Urgency soaked Franzen’s tone. “Yeah,” he replied. “I’m in the club’s office. Can’t guarantee how thick the walls are, though.”
“Understood. We’re going to be as quick and as general about this, anyway.”
“Okay.” He drew it out as half a question. Franz was a smart guy; he’d pick up on the subtext. If this call was classified as “quick and general,” why had they
called the club and brought Hudsy in on the exchange instead of just hitting him on his cell?
The answer punched him in the gut.
They didn’t want anyone to know he was getting a call. At all.
Franz cleared his throat before continuing. “I’ll get to the point. We’ve only scraped the fucking iceberg on breaking through this code. But somewhere between the cartoon conversation bubbles, the algebra questions in Dr. Seuss form, and the paragraphs that look composed by a toddler, your friend Rhett hooked up with a new friend from the FBI encryption team, and they hit what we think is a significant breakthrough.”
He leaned back with a deepening frown. “How significant?” Was it good enough so they could pull the plug on this part of the op? Could he finally cuff Lor and his octopus arms and drag him in for interrogation? Best of all, were they telling him they had enough to authorize a kill order on the bastard?
“What do you make of this?” Franz clicked the mouse on their side, sharing an image from their screen to his. If the guy was thinking to dispel his confusion with it, Ethan had disappointing feedback.
“Looks like you had some play time with those toddlers and told them to make a C with a pack of colored candy.” The rainbow of dots was scattered into a rough representation of the letter, curving only slightly at the top and bottom.
“Good analogy. How about now?”
He clicked up another shot of the same dots. This time, the boundaries of California, Oregon, and Washington were laid on top of the mess. Some dots appeared in parts of Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona, as well.
“What the hell?” Ethan muttered.
“The next view is where we’re hoping to grab your help.” Franz didn’t waste any time clicking to the third version of the map. This time, each candy piece had an Asian symbol superimposed on it.