by S A Gardner
“I didn’t say I was afraid of your irr…”
I drowned out his protest. “Third lie—saying you walked away after getting me kicked out of GCA, intending to forget me, when you had me on the other end of a zoom lens and on open mic all those years. And you never even confessed. It was Dad who stumbled on your surveillance equipment when his people were helping me install my latest privacy protocols.”
He opened his mouth, closed it when I raised my voice. “But, after I first blew up, I was coming to sort of accept why you didn’t come clean. Before Russia, we were at odds. After Russia, you were at odds in a different and more complicated way, and I thought you might think it wasn’t the time to add to the mess. See, I excused you.”
He huffed. “Oh, that’s why you haven’t talked to me ever since? That’s excusing me? What would you have done if you condemned me?”
“I’d have hit you with one of my drug cocktails and sent you to a nice vacation in hell.”
“You sent me there anyway. In fact, give me the chemically induced hell anytime. At least that ends.”
Oh, no, he wasn’t strumming my gullible strings. “Fourth lie—when I confronted you, you promised to stop spying on me. You didn’t. That’s inexcusable.”
“I tried. I couldn’t.”
So simple. So stymieing. Tell me again, why didn’t I just hate him and get done with it?
He stood up. Air disappeared. “Calista, I can’t apologize for keeping tabs on you. You lead a hell of a dangerous life—”
“Says Preemptive Action Antiterrorist Team’s commander!”
He cut me off, a ragged edge to his voice. “Suz reported in last night, saying you were having a quiet night in. So I went off to a job outside L.A. Then she called back, frantic, saying you’d exploded out to answer some emergency, and she had lost visual in the rain, then had lost signal when you got out of range of her tracking device. I was coming back when you called me. Do you know how I felt, driving back like a maniac, not knowing if you were in some dirty alley bleeding to death?”
I stared at him.
“It’s bigger than me, Calista. Needing to know you’re safe rules me. I’d rather have you by my side, but since I can’t, I want to at least know where you are, and what you’re doing, so that I can intervene within minutes if you need me.”
This wasn’t the reason he’d given for his past surveillance. He’d made it sound like he’d been making sure I didn’t make too big a mess, or interfere in his jurisdiction. But Ayesha knew.
I was the last to know. Again.
But now that he put it that way, it reminded me of Sir Ashton, of the reasons he’d given for keeping tabs on me, for helping me covertly…
God! How stupid could I be?
The realization burst out of me, a cry under pressure. “You’re in it with Sir Ashton! Or is he in it with you?”
No reaction. Bingo. Right the first time. Was there no limit to their duplicity?
I shook my head, feeling punch drunk all over again. “I can’t believe the two of you! But watching me is not all you do, is it. You interfere in my work, you manipulate me and everyone and everything around me, don’t you. And you both pretend to be at odds!”
“We see eye to eye only where you’re concerned. And we help, wherever we can. You can’t blame us for that. To Sir Ashton, you’re like the daughter he lost. To me, you’re the woman I—”
“Don’t. Say. It.”
He plowed on harder. “I can’t stop saying it or feeling it. I tried, remember? For six damn years. It’s no good. It’s here to stay.”
“Let me tell you what else is here to stay. My team. My work. And you’re jeopardizing it all in your Big Brother need to have control over me. Or should I say Big Lover?”
His lips twitched. “Glad to hear you admit I am your lover.”
“You’re not. Having sex once doesn’t qualify you for that.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe. But wanting me so bad you can’t see or stand straight does.”
That he knew, that he was teasing me with it—I stamped my foot. The room shook. Didn’t take much to shake it, though. I could do that just by turning over in bed. With him and me there, we’d shake the building. We’d shaken existence itself four months ago….
Stop it, moron. You’re playing into his hands.
“Why so indignant? It’s only fair when you do this to me—” He dipped a glance downward. I wouldn’t look. I wouldn’t. “—even spitting mad. And you know what else makes me your lover? Loving you does.”
“I told you before, and I’ll tell you again. Love doesn’t excuse everything. Or anything.”
He came over, held me by the shoulders. It was his tone that riveted me in his grasp. “Then don’t excuse. Just understand. In the past, I felt like the dumbest fool on earth, unable to stop following you around when you seemed to have totally forgotten me. I didn’t know I mattered at all to you, until I almost died. You said you loved me only then.”
An urge swelled, vindictive, cruel. I said it as a therapeutic measure. Because I feared you’d die and I thought it would send you off into the great brouhaha happy.
I shook my head. Nope. No way. I wasn’t lying to get my own back. Not in personal stuff. Not with him. He couldn’t make me adopt his methods.
He pressed closer, wound a persuasive, cherishing arm that could crush men twice my size around my waist. I soaked up the feeling for a moment, then pushed away.
He didn’t press me this time. He shoved his hands in his pockets, exhaled. “You were right about why I didn’t tell you about my surveillance. After being exposed to your hurt anger when the truth came out about Russia, I couldn’t risk disclosing another secret. What we had was too undefined and turbulent as it is. Then your father told you and I wished I’d done it myself. I promised to stop, hoping you’d let me in, let me know what I needed to know without resorting to these methods. Instead, you cut me off.”
“So it’s my fault now? Big bad Calista made you do it?”
“Yes, dammit. Big bad Calista makes me do things I’d give anything not to do. You can’t even guess what it costs, time and resources, keeping an eye on you, protecting your back.”
“You’re making it sound like a great favor now?”
“You stubborn, exasperating woman. I help you, I want you safe, and instead of at least appreciating the effort and the intention, you make me sound like some sick monster!”
“It’s only help if I ask for it, not if you impose it on me.”
“Then why don’t you ask?” he growled, the hands digging in his hair the equivalent of a roar of frustration. “Why don’t you accept my help and protection? Do you think I want to skulk behind your back? If you let me in, if you tell me your moves and plans, if you let me help you, like you do with your father—”
“Okay, stop right there. You’re demanding the same treatment I give my father?”
“No. I demand more. I’m your man.”
I snorted. He tutted. “Prickly. I said I’m ‘your’ man.”
Yeah. I heard. And it sounded so—so—everything. Not good at all, this moronic fluttering.
“Are you? Everything you say now is suspect.” I could swear the air around him shimmered. His heat shooting off the scale. Just like mine, then. “Bound to happen, after all these lies. Your first ones ended in me killing Jake.”
No need to guess what he felt now. No substitutes for roars, either. I bet this was his first good one in four months.
“Oh, no. I’m damned if I’m paying for a sin I didn’t commit. You’re not throwing Jake in my lap. I didn’t make you kill Jake. He did. It’s time you accepted his responsibility for his death. He would have killed you if you hadn’t killed him first. And you confronted him in the first place because you knew if you let him go, you’d be his accomplice in the genocides he was planning. You did what you had to do. Just like I did.”
The jagged memory of ending Jake’s life struck again, stuck in my chest, sh
redding. Damian reached for me, contained me. Just a second, I promised myself, till the wave passed.
“I know it hurts,” he whispered, his lips smoothing my bangs out of my misting vision. “No matter what he’d done. I wish to God every day you hadn’t stopped me from killing him myself.”
“I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t lied to me, making me misread the whole situation.” I shoved him away, severing the soothing trickle of kisses cascading down my face. “But your other lies are far worse. You stripped me of secrecy and autonomy, and you may have doomed me and my operation.”
Something jolted in his eyes before his whole face hardened around it. “You think I’d jeopardize you?”
“Not intentionally. Maybe.” He growled but I went on. “But those who do your dirty work, who have access to my secrets can.”
“No one but my core team, people who care about you, who’ve fought beside you and defended you with their lives, know about you. I’d stake my life on their integrity. I do every day.”
“You’re free to stake yourself. And if it was only me, I wouldn’t mind much. It’s my team I’m worried about.”
“I follow only you. I ran checks on your team only to confirm their fitness to be around you. It’s all about your safety.”
“You have any idea how creepy this is? You’re stalking me!”
He bore down on me, getting bigger in his anger. “You’re not only the woman I love, you’re the warrior I created. It’s my damn responsibility to do everything I can to help you, to keep you functioning at top performance. To keep you alive.”
That silenced me. He has a point here, a claim, a conceding voice insisted, taking his side.
And my answer? The consensus of my wounded heart and enraged mind? To the voice, a deafening shut up. To him, like I said before, “Like hell!”
I spun around, a whimper punching out of me at the pain tearing in my back and knee and right hip. “You and Sir Ashton said PACT and GCA were never involved, that your spying-on-Calista racket was a personal pet project. But is that even realistic? You breached us, probably have us documented down to our genetic maps. What’s to stop someone from tapping you? What if double agents have infiltrated both organizations? Jake told me as much. By spying on me, you may have sentenced us all to death.”
“If so, why are you all still in one piece?”
“Maybe it’s the calm before the storm. And anyway, Matt isn’t, remember? Maybe some leak has already occurred and his condition is some enemy rattling the bag first, making sure the little mice are too confused, too busy hanging on to prepare for a big strike, to fight back or even run.”
It was his turn to be silenced. I got out fresh clothes, almost hearing him replaying my words in his mind, cross-referencing everything surrounding the situation. Seemed he came up with a verdict. He announced it.
“Sounds like a fun theory, but totally unsubstantiated and implausible. A leak is not possible.”
I shook my head and he came around me and caught it in his hands, stilled it, pressed one hard kiss to my compressed mouth. “It isn’t. I recheck every move I make around you a hundred times. Matt’s condition isn’t a leak, not from my side.”
“Still trying to convince me it’s on mine? Maybe. If Ayesha can be made to betray me, anything’s possible.”
He snatched a look heavenward, rasped, “She helped me, put me out of my misery. She loves you, almost as much as I do.”
Yeah, and I loved her. And him. God help me. “I trust you with my life but not to be aboveboard with me, to respect me! I can’t live trying to guess when the next lie is going to come, or what it’s going to be. I can’t keep rationalizing that your actions were concealed out of fear of my neurotic reactions, and taken with the best of intentions. You know where those lead.”
“Calista, I’ll never—”
“Don’t you dare say you’ll never lie to me again! You said it after your surgery, and again last month. Both times I said I didn’t believe you. But it turns out, I did. I believed you. In you. Deep down I always thought of you as—as Captain America or something—someone with black and white values. But it turns out you’re made of a sea of grays. An ocean. And you’re as unfathomable. This disillusion is what hurts so much. It’s what I can’t reconcile with.”
“You’re blowing this out of all proportion, entering a vicious cycle where everything I ever said or did is suspect.”
“And whose fault is that? I’ve seen you act, Damian, and it felt as sincere as what you’re saying now.”
“You talk as if you don’t act, too! You act every day on the job, to gain your ends—good, noble ends!”
“But I don’t con my friends or my allies. I never lied to you, Damian. And you know what? After seeing how far you go to get the job done, I can even wonder what you’ll do if one day your assignment is to liquidate me.”
He reached for me, the arms convulsing around me eloquent with his outrage and horror. “Stop! Stop it! You’ll talk yourself into losing track of everything we ever had. You know me. You know how I feel, what I did, what I’d do for you. Everything I do is for you. Until you, I never knew what needing, what fearing for someone far beyond life and duty was. Whatever mistakes I did stemmed from being unable to contemplate anything happening to you. Don’t make me pay for them by inflicting on me the one thing I fear. I can’t lose you.”
And I can’t lose you. And I can’t love you so much that losing you would end my world. And it seems I’m too late, on all counts.
I staggered away, flung my hands up, venting frustration, conceding vulnerability, limped to the bathroom. I paused on the threshold, my heart crumpling. “Be gone when I’m out.”
His brooding gaze fixed me in place. Then he marched up to me, hauled me up into his arms. “Not without a shower goodbye.”
Ten
I couldn’t believe I was doing this.
How self-sabotaging could I get?
Right now, as the bathroom steamed over and Damian’s hands, lips and teeth caressed my clothes off me, slow, sensuous, hungry and careful, not only couldn’t I give a damn, I couldn’t wait.
There was only so much temptation a woman could withstand.
He got me naked as if by magic. His eyes roamed over me with blazing lust, making me feel all-feminine, all-desirable.
Still fully clothed, he plastered me to him, his breath hotter than the steam as he whispered straight in my ear, thick and deep and sexy, “Calista—you look like hell.”
What?
I opened my mouth to hurl some retaliation. I closed it. The infuriating and unfair thing was, no similar slur was anywhere near the truth. He looked—heart wrenching. Every nerve down to my teeth roots was tingling, itching to sink into him.
But give me a break. Ayesha making that statement and my knowing it was one thing. Him saying it as I stood naked for his inspection was another. This must be how a stained rag feels.
I turned to the mirror, glowered at my reflection, at him. “Thanks for the rave review. I’ll sure use it in my ad campaign. Say, let me order you a stand-in. Any preferences, or is anything okay with you as long as she doesn’t look like a punching bag?”
He leaned one shoulder on the wall, crossed his arms over his expansive chest. Lust swept me unabated. “Five foot five, a thousand-shades, hip-long hair she keeps imprisoned in a braid to mess me up, night sky eyes that drive me to extremes that only make her mad at me, a mind I gladly cut myself to shreds on, a heart overflowing with addictive passion and a body that has me literally by the balls. Can you find me another one like that?”
Oh, come on. Was preemptive seduction part of his PACT training? Was this one of his duties as an undercover agent? Seducing women into selling out their men, countries, children and souls? He could bring down whole world orders that way. He might already have.
It really wasn’t conductive to my current confidence levels, imagining all the women who’d kill for a word of the poetic hyperbole he was lavishing on me. Made
me wonder again what made me so special, what made him say such words, or made him feel them.
Made me wonder if they could possibly be true.
A new suspicion hit—hard. Could there be a reason he was pursuing me apart from his declared ones? Would I one day discover it? Discover that he didn’t love me, never had…?
I was doing what he had predicted. And paranoia sure didn’t become me. Better watch out before I found myself pacing and pondering: To be or not to be!
Take it easy. Go light.
I forced myself to smirk at him. “The only one resembling that extravagant description, if only in the bare outlines, doesn’t only look like hell, she’s hell to be around.”
“Deal. Take me to hell.”
He moved. More like flowed. Incredible. Nature was such a grossly unfair system, endowing one being with so much. Not even massive injury and dying a couple of times had left their marks. Wouldn’t surprise me if he had paranormal healing power.
“This won’t change a thing, Damian.”
He caught my bottom lip, suckled and soothed, breathed his hunger-laden answer into my lungs. “I’ll take my chances.”
I groped for his lips, needing a grinding kiss. He escaped me, rubbed his face over my neck and breasts, capturing each nipple and repeated the ritual. I crushed his head to me, cupped my breasts for a better offering. He just chuckled and moved away. The tormenting bas—uh, better find some other insult where he was concerned. Would swine do? Scoundrel?Nah.
He snapped off his sweatshirt and I turned away. Couldn’t look at his chest. I relived sawing it open and bathing in his blood in 3-D horror clear enough without the visual reminder.
A gentle, inexorable hand brought my face around, the other taking mine to his fervent kiss, before placing it on the ten-inch, almost-faded scar. “I’m fine. I’m better than fine.”
My hand jerked over his barely blemished skin, dug in the formidable muscles I’d sliced open. After the wave of relived anguish and dread passed, my heart melted with thankfulness all over again. That he was here, alive, unimpaired, and mine. At that last thought, my body liquefied. Pathetic. I hoped he’d think the puddle gathering around me was water and not drool—and other things.