Taking another step back, he forced his desire to the sidelines. At least for the moment. “So, want to tell me which guestroom I’m sleeping in?”
Chapter Fourteen
Alexis wandered into the kitchen at a little after eight the next morning. As usual, Eric was already there prepping meals for the day. She glanced at the calendar on the wall—yes, she kept an old fashioned paper calendar—and noted that today was one of the days Eric delivered lunch to the shelter staff. The shelter’s funding was below the national average, and because most people who worked there were volunteers, twice a week, Eric prepared big lunches and took them over as a gift of gratitude for the work they were all doing.
“Coffee?” he asked as he diced an onion.
“I’ll get it,” she mumbled as she walked by him. Then she backtracked. “Where’s Red?” she asked. Howdy, George, and Allie were all lined up on the other side of the room, just outside the kitchen—all were eagerly watching Eric, hoping for treats no doubt, but still obeying the “no kitchen” rule.
Eric looked up, smiled, then gestured with his head toward the patio that was visible through the floor to ceiling windows and sliding door. With his back to the house, Isiah sat, gazing out at the view, a coffee cup in one hand and his other hand resting atop Red’s head as she sat beside him.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
Eric let out a soft laugh. “I know. He was already out there when I came in for the day. I let the dogs out after feeding them and brought Isiah some coffee when I let these three back in. Red seemed curious, though, so I left her out. Took her about ten minutes to approach him, but they’ve been sitting that way for at least fifteen minutes.”
Alexis stared at the man in the chair. As she watched, he lifted his hand ever so slightly, then replaced it and rubbed Red’s head. Red gave the smallest of flinches when Isiah’s hand reconnected with her head, but then, as he rubbed, her tail swished across the floor.
“That gives me hope that we might be able to get through to her,” she said.
“Either that or Isiah is going to find himself with a dog,” Eric countered.
“That might not be such a bad idea.” Alexis smiled at the thought as she headed to the coffee maker. It wasn’t hard to imagine Red hanging out with Isiah at The Shack. She might not ever make a good restaurant dog, but hanging out alone in Isiah’s apartment above the bar while he worked wouldn’t be a bad life for her. Alexis wanted to see her be more comfortable socially, but the reality was, Red might not ever be that kind of dog. And if spending time on her own, in a place she felt safe, and with a person she trusted was the right fit for her, then Alexis wanted to make that happen.
After brewing her coffee, Alexis made her way to her office and placed the first set of phone calls that she had on her schedule. Shah had directed her and Jake to take the day off, but there were still things she needed to get done, like invite all her teammates over to dinner. She hoped Isiah would be able to join them. He’d offered to cook, of course. But she wasn’t sure if he’d been serious, and given that he also had a business to run and had already been gone for a few days, she couldn’t blame him if he needed to attend to his own life.
By the time she was done making the calls to each of her teammates, she was laughing to herself. She loved them all, but they were so predictable.
“That sounds like a good way to start the day,” Isiah said from the doorway.
“Come in.” She waved him over with a smile. “It is. I invited everyone over for dinner tonight and their reactions made me laugh.”
“In a good way?” he asked, taking a seat.
She nodded. “Dominic asked if I had a swim-up bar in my pool and if so, whether it was stocked or not. Keep in mind, he doesn’t even know if I actually have a pool or not. Damian simply said ‘Sure’ then asked if he and Charlotte could bring anything. And Beni sounded suspicious as hell.”
“And Jake?”
“I think I woke him up. God knows what he did last night to blow off steam after what happened in Honduras. But he grumbled something along the lines of ‘It’s about fucking time. I’ll be there at six,’ then hung up on me.”
Isiah laughed. “That sounds like Jake. So what are your plans for the day?”
She sat back in her chair and tucked a leg underneath her. “Before we get to that, will you be able to make it tonight? You’ve been away for a few days and Marty’s been running the place, so I don’t want to assume. But if you can, I’d love for you to join us.”
“You going to tell everyone why you haven’t invited them before?” As he spoke, Red wandered by the door and Isiah gestured her in. The dog hesitated, her eyes studying Alexis, then she inched her way in just close enough for Isiah to rest his hand on her head again.
“I think you have a friend,” she said with a soft smile. In reply, Isiah gently stroked Red’s soft fur. “As to your question, yes, I’m going to tell them. But we can discuss it later if you have to work. It’s not a secret.” She paused, then rephrased that because in fact all the records around the events that had happened were sealed. “Actually, it is a secret. But it’s one that I can share with you all.”
“I’ll be here. What time?” he asked without hesitation.
“You sure?”
He nodded. “Wouldn’t have said I’d be here if I wasn’t sure.”
Fair enough. “I told everyone six. Knowing Dominic, he’ll show up in swim shorts with a bottle of tequila at five.”
Isiah laughed. “I’ll come at five and help prep. I can cook.”
She shook her head. “You don’t have to do that. Believe it or not, I can cook, but Eric is here today, too. It is his job, and he’d be crushed if I didn’t ask him to take care of the food for my first, well, I guess you could call it a party. Seriously, I’m not just saying that. He’d be really hurt if I didn’t ask him,” she added when the expression on Isiah’s face told her he wasn’t entirely sure he believed her.
“Fine, then. I’ll come at five and we can sit outside and have a cocktail while Dominic makes a fool of himself in your pool. Do you think he’s going to pretend he’s in an episode of MTV Cribs or something?”
Alexis laughed. “That, or he’ll be scripting out his run on The Bachelor. With Jake egging him on once he gets here.”
“I can definitely see that,” Isiah said, with a shake of his head. “So now that that’s settled, are you actually going to take the day off?”
Alexis glanced away.
“Alexis?”
She met his gaze and made a face. “Sort of?”
“Sort of?” he repeated.
“Serena and I are meeting for lunch at Toto’s and then going for a walk along the beach after.”
Toto’s was a beach bar thirty minutes from her house. It had amazing fish tacos and an even more awe-inspiring beach.
“A CIA operative and an FBI agent having lunch and a walk. Sounds positively casual. Like there will be no work talk going on,” he teased.
Alexis offered him a cheeky grin. “Just girl talk. Assuming girl talk includes chatting about traitors who sell government secrets.”
“If you go get your nails done together, maybe you’d even have time to cover the topic of human trafficking, too?”
Laughing, Alexis threw a pen at him. “Don’t you have work to do or something?”
He caught the pen mid-air and rose from his seat. Red skittered backward but stopped her flight at the door. Rounding the desk, Isiah pulled Alexis up and slipped a hand around her waist, the other held her against his chest.
“You’ll be careful?” he asked.
With her body flush against his, her pulse skittered into an erratic beat. She wasn’t used to a lot of physical contact in general—yes, she’d had her fair share of sexual partners over the years, but this kind of physical contact was different. It wasn’t a means to satisfy a physical urge or a step to finding some kind of release. No, this kind of contact was intimate, it meant something. She raised h
er hands and flattened them against Isiah’s chest, feeling the definition of his muscles under her palms.
“Alexis?” His voice had dropped.
“Hmm?” she managed to say as she absorbed the feel of him against her—their hips pressed together, his fingertips brushing the skin above the waistband of her shorts.
“Are you ever going to kiss me?” he asked.
His fingers continued to brush the skin at the small of her back, and she became aware of every muscle in his body, how it tensed and adjusted with her every move, her slightest touch, as if he were poised and ready. The heat in his eyes stole her breath and Alexis suddenly realized that the man standing before her was keeping his desire—his need—for her on a very tight chain. He wanted her. Fiercely.
Without hesitation, she slipped a hand behind his neck and pulled him down into a kiss. This one wasn’t sweet and gentle as the one before. No, this one was pure fire.
In an instant, his hand was splayed under her shirt across her back while his other cupped her backside and pulled her tight against him. Their tongues danced and battled and tasted and explored as she drew her fingers across his back, against his bare skin.
Then suddenly he was gone. It took her three breaths to realize he now stood two feet away. They were both breathing hard and her attention drifted lower as he adjusted himself in his shorts. As he did, all sorts of images flooded her mind. And as she let those images take root, so too did the knowledge that nothing was going to stop her from what she planned to do next.
“Alexis.” His voice held a soft note of pleading. “We’re in your office. The door is open. Stop looking at me like that.”
Her eyes flitted up to meet his gaze. His words might be conveying one thing, but his eyes were telling her a whole different story.
A smile teased her lips. “Oh, I’ll stop looking at you. At least at parts of you.” And before he could stop her, she dropped to her knees and lowered his shorts.
“Holy shit.” The words whooshed out of him as she took him in her mouth. But he didn’t try to stop her. Instead, he leaned a hip against her desk, bracing himself with one hand while the other threaded through her hair. As she tasted every inch of him, he continued to mutter words to her—coherent words of encouragement mixed in with a fair bit of curses along with sounds she couldn’t make out. Not in any language anyway—but the meaning was most definitely clear.
“Alexis,” he hissed, tugging at her hair, letting her know he was close. Rather than pull back, she took him deeper. And he came hard, calling her name. Then kissing a spot to the side of the trail of hair down his belly, she pulled up his shorts and rose.
His hand had fallen from her hair and his arm now hung by his side. His eyes were closed and his chest was moving rapidly under his shirt.
“How was that for a kiss,” she said with a smile as she brushed one more across his lips, then danced out of the way as his arm came up to encircle her. His eyes flew open and he straightened up from the desk.
“I’m going to head to the shelter today before meeting Serena at Toto’s. I should go get ready. Don’t you need to head back to The Shack? Check in with Huck and Marty?” She was taunting him. And enjoying it.
He stalked toward her. She could have bolted out the open door, but she was more than looking forward to seeing what he’d do when he caught her. And catch her he did, backing her against the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that lined a side wall.
Bracing a hand on either side of her, he leaned in, forcing her to tip her head to meet his gaze.
“That kiss was far more than I had in mind, Alexis,” he nearly growled.
She waggled her eyebrows at him. “I know. I also know you enjoyed it.”
He let out a rueful laugh. “I guarantee that your mouth anywhere on my body is going to be something I enjoy, but yes, that was fan-fucking-tastic.”
“Then why so growly?” She raised a hand as she spoke and trailed a finger along his jaw. The muscle twitched under her touch.
“Because you’re right. I do need to check in on Marty and Huck and The Shack. But now I have to do it all with the image of you on your knees in front of me haunting me all day.”
She laughed. “Surely, there are worse fates than that?”
The smile he gave her was feral. “Oh, there are. And turn-about is fair play.” Then he leaned forward and whispered in her ear every little thing he planned to do to her later that night. When he finally finished and pulled back, her breathing was rapid and she was so turned on she was legitimately surprised she didn’t orgasm on the spot.
He pushed away from the wall and started to walk away. Pausing at the door, he looked back. She was still leaning against the bookshelves, trying to get her breathing under control.
“And Alexis?”
She managed a nod.
“Don’t take care of things yourself. And don’t deny that you were thinking about it,” he said with a knowing smile.
She stared at him. She had been considering it. Seriously, considering it. She had her fair share of adult devices and knew how to use them.
“Don’t,” he repeated.
“And if I do?”
She half expected some cliché to come out of his mouth—something along the lines of he’d punish her if she did. But what came out was even worse. “If you do—and I’ll know—then I won’t lay a finger on you. And everything I just said I’d do, every way I described how I would touch you, pleasure you…”
He seemed to want some sort of acknowledgment, and so she nodded.
“You’ll have to wait. You’ll have to wait until I decide we’re good and ready,” he said with a grin.
She blinked. “That’s evil.”
His grin widened to a smile. “I know. I also know you kind of like it,” he said, throwing her words back at her.
And damn him if he wasn’t right.
A gentle wave washed over Alexis’s feet as she and Serena meandered down the beach after their lunch. A turtle breached the water twenty feet from shore then bobbed back down. “So you and Shah worked out the details of how you’ll contact Rosen?” Alexis asked.
Serena nodded. “Already kicked it off. When I landed in Honduras last week, I sent a message to my handler, Culpepper, with an update. I never heard back—which is no surprise, since he was already dead—but while that wasn’t unusual, in this case, I’m going to act like it was. So, I sent a follow-up message to him this morning. It should take less than twenty-four hours for that email to make it to Angela Rosen. I suspect I’ll hear from her tomorrow. Once we do, I’ll start the dance of making it seem like she’s earning my trust. We’ll have to play it a little by ear, but if she’s greedy and unethical enough to want to sell me out, she won’t be able to resist falling into our plan.”
They walked in silence for a bit longer. Occasionally, the relative quiet was interrupted by the playful shouts of kids or a particularly loud seabird, but overall, the afternoon was deceptively calm.
“Speaking of Honduras, talk to me about the trafficking,” Alexis asked.
For the first time since they’d met, Serena showed some emotion and let out a long sigh. “The group first came onto my radar two years ago. I was keeping an eye on a young man who was making an unusually fast rise in the political leadership of a country I’ll not mention. Anyway, he was invited to a party at a villa along the Mediterranean. Some women were brought in, which wasn’t unusual, but these women were clearly from Central America and not the usual ones we see brought in from Southeast Asia or even the US. It piqued my interest and so I started to look into it. What I found was that it was a new and relatively small ring. But given that it was so highly connected, it raised flags.”
“What kind of flags?” Alexis asked.
Serena lowered her head. “I wondered if maybe arms sales were the primary funding of the group and they were just diversifying and adding trafficking to their business model. Or maybe drugs rather than arms.”
“By the tone of
your voice, I’m thinking you didn’t find evidence of either?”
They drew to a stop and faced toward the sea, letting the waves lap over their bare feet. “I didn’t. That’s why I decided to try and break the ring up. If it’s just trafficking, it’s a lot easier than if the trafficking is part of something bigger.”
“Did that raid break it up, then?” Alexis asked.
Serena shrugged. “I hope so. We took down the leader, but if we didn’t clean up all the trash, it’s possible someone else will step in to take over. And by the way, sorry I had you and Clarke tranq’d. I already had my plan in place and I didn’t want you guys getting in the middle of it.”
Alexis waved off the apology. Once she’d known who Serena was, she’d assumed that had been the case. “Something’s bothering you though, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know, is it?” Serena looked at her.
Alexis all but snorted. “You asked us for help, so yes, you think there is something else going on even if it’s not arms or drugs. A small trafficking ring from Honduras doesn’t get to the level of providing women to parties in North Africa without some connections. But you don’t know what those connections might be. And if you don’t know, then you also don’t know if you’ve truly ended it.”
A hint of a smile touched Serena’s eyes, if not her mouth, when Alexis finished. “Why do you think the party was in North Africa?”
“It could have been in Europe, but Huck said he started looking for you in Africa,” Alexis answered.
“Huck is damn good at his job,” Serena said, acknowledging the accuracy of the analysis without actually acknowledging it. “I’m not sure they’ll let him leave the CIA and it would be a loss if they did. But after his career, I can hardly blame him for wanting to ditch it all and work somewhere where he doesn’t have to question people’s loyalties all the time.”
“You ever get tired of it?” Alexis asked as they started back toward her car.
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