Splendid Isolation

by Helena Maeve

  “I’ve read the report.”

  Manuel found himself smiling despite the heavy weight of dismay. “I assumed you would.” I’m sorry perched on the tip of his tongue. He refused to let it slip out. “I admit I didn’t expect you to be stupid enough to come back here, let alone…”

  “Turn you loose?” Cole mirrored his smile. He seemed tired, the crinkling at the corners of his lips filling with the darkness of the room. “Why not? We’re not getting much out of you and the things we’ve had to do to extract even that much are…”

  “Necessary?”

  Finishing each other’s sentences was easy. They’d spent so much time together in their formative years in the business that guesswork came naturally.

  No wonder Manuel had flirted with the notion of retracing his steps. In the end, we look back.

  Which of his victims had told him that one?

  “Far be it from me to convince you not to throw away twenty-four years with Section, but believe me when I say you don’t want to join me in the dog house. Even if the electro-stims don’t get you, you’ll die of boredom,” Manuel assured him. “Go home. Go…take a vacation and spend some time working on your marriage.”

  You have a life worth living.

  Had Manuel meant it, he wouldn’t have brought up the wife.

  Cole shook his head. His silence spoke volumes. He might as well have been struggling to bear the weight of the world on his shoulders. He was too stubborn to share the load—and even if he could, he’d never pick Manuel to help him. They didn’t have that kind of relationship.

  “I never asked,” Manuel mused, after a protracted pause. “Did Silas make it?”

  “We’re bringing him here tomorrow.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “Pleased to have your old friend back?”

  Manuel smirked. “You know me. I always do better with a partner.”

  Like in Havana.

  Why did we ever leave, Cole?

  “I should go.” Cole made no move to follow through. His feet might as well have been rooted to the floor.

  “You should,” Manuel agreed, and peeled back the corner of the covers.

  It was a terrible, foolish mistake, but by no means the first they’d made together. Manuel scooted to one side of the bed and turned his back to the door. He heard the floorboards creak.

  There was a fifty-fifty chance that Cole would have come to his senses in the few steps it took him to get as far as the bedroom door. With odds like that, Manuel should have felt some degree of surprise when the mattress dipped. Instead, he breathed a sigh and reached for Cole’s hand behind him.

  Cole threaded their fingers together, slotting in close. His breath was hot on Manuel’s nape when he spoke. “I know you’re using me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m using you, too.”

  Spy, Manuel thought. Liar, echoed in the depths of his addled mind.

  Neither fit quite right.

  Chapter Eight

  “I don’t remember this one.”

  “Singapore,” Manuel recalled. Goosebumps bloomed in the wake of Cole’s fingertips, his inked skin feverish despite the sheen of perspiration. “I had an afternoon to kill.”

  Cole snorted. “This took just an afternoon?” He traced the curlicue of the tight spiral over his pectoral, lingering over the nipple.

  “I did most of the shading in London, after.”

  “Must’ve hurt.”

  “Get me a needle and a pen, and see for yourself,” Manuel suggested, without heat. He couldn’t resist sliding an arm around Cole’s waist. He told himself there was nothing proprietary in the touch. He just wanted to see how long it took Cole to come to his senses.

  There were unwritten rules here and lines they didn’t cross. Sooner or later, he was bound to hit a tripwire that brought this whole blissful, stolen night to a swift close.

  Cole hummed. “Don’t think I’m a fan.”

  “Oh, thanks.” Manuel pinched his flank. “Didn’t hear you complaining when you were tearing off my clothes.”

  “I’m not a fan of ink on myself,” Cole shot back, squirming. It was a token attempt at slipping free. For the most part, he seemed comfortable right where he was, legs tangled with Manuel’s, his clothes in a state of disarray. “Some people wear it well.”

  “That makes me feel much better.”

  “Maybe this will mend that bruised ego,” Cole said and seized his chin in a lax grip.

  Manuel had all the time in the world to turn away. He didn’t.

  He’d always liked kissing Cole, whether it was desperately, as he was about to tip over the edge into a mind-blowing orgasm, or with the certitude that they were doing it for the last time.

  This one was tender, more prelude than epilogue. Cole nipped lightly at his lips, inching back just as Manuel started to respond.

  “Changed your mind already?” Manuel needled, reverting to levity. His heart beat a nervous tattoo in the cage of his ribs. He worried that Cole could feel it, too.

  He worried that he’d set himself up for disappointment again, as he’d done so many times before.

  The mattress sloped as Cole sat up and knee-walked down the tangled sheets. Manuel’s breaths snagged in his throat, hooked on the heady sight of Cole dragging his pajama bottoms down and baring his soft length.

  You don’t have to. We shouldn’t.

  “Someone could come in,” Manuel choked.

  “Then we’ll give them an eyeful,” Cole retorted recklessly, and bent down over his cock.

  He was all prim and proper when out in the world, lips too thin to ever suggest such base proclivities. But scratch the surface and beneath that veneer of respectability, Cole was a passionate lover. He knew how to coax Manuel to full mast, one hand slip-sliding up the length of his shaft while he mouthed delicately at Manuel’s sac.

  Manuel’s legs fell open of their own accord, the twinge of pain in his thigh easily dismissed as Cole took him into his mouth.

  “Christ…”

  Manuel stuffed a fist into his mouth to stop himself crying out. His hips trembled with the effort of keeping still. It was a sweet ache, that of muscles exercised past the point of endurance. The minute Cole started bobbing his head, he was as good as gone.

  Pleasure raced up and down his spine, tethered to the slow glide of lips and tongue, the teasing flex of fingers around the base of his cock. It pulled at him like a fish hook. “Not gonna last,” Manuel choked out, a warning he hadn’t been able to deliver the last time Cole went down on him.

  Abruptly, he remembered why. A whine all but tore from his lips as Cole tugged off with bruised-red lips and flushed cheeks.

  Cole’s eyes gleamed like steel blades in the half-light. “Who said you had to?”

  Before Manuel found enough breath to reply, he was back to it, taking him so deep that Manuel swore he could feel his throat working around the flushed, tender tip of his erection. He curled his toes in the sheets. Sensation and thought surged into a potent, overwhelming force.

  Heat built and built at the base of his spine before spilling out in gentler waves than any orgasm he’d felt in a long time. Helpless with want, Manuel squirmed, fighting the urge to thrust. He lost his nerve when Cole traced the vein on the underside of his length with little flicks of the tongue.

  “Oh, fuck—”

  Cole choked a little around his cock but didn’t pull off. He stroked and licked until the breakers had all crashed onto the banks of Manuel’s already shaky sanity, leaving him breathless. Climax was a slow-burn, shattering what was left of his self-control.

  When it was over, tremors subsiding under Manuel’s skin, he gently uncoiled his fingers and sat back. A smug smile crested on his bowed lips as he kissed his way up Manuel’s body.

  “What— What about you?” Manuel panted, vaguely aware of Cole’s hard-on pressing into his thigh.

  “Offering to return the favor?”

  “Believe it or not, I’m not terrible
at—”

  The creak of footsteps on the landing outside cut him off.

  Cole extricated himself from his arms with speed that belied his age.

  “Clean yourself up,” he threw over his shoulder, no trace of his earlier tenderness in his voice.

  Manuel grabbed a corner of the sheet to cover up with as Cole swept a hand through his hair and adjusted his clothes. He hesitated for a beat, gaze ticking to the handcuffs abandoned by the windowsill.

  A ball of dread sunk like ballast into Manuel’s gut. No, please. He’d let himself forget that he was Cole’s prisoner. Foolish of him. Now came the rude reminder.

  Manuel braced for the bite of frustration. Yet much to his chagrin, Cole simply swung the door open and stepped through without a word of warning or explanation. Manuel must not have been worth the effort.

  He’d always known Cole had it in him to be cruel, but this exceeded expectation.

  The muffled sound of voices in the hall did nothing to alleviate the seasick churning in Manuel’s gut. He found his sleep pants on the floor and tugged them on hastily, self-conscious. He had slipped up. Again. Now Section knew he could be manipulated with sex.

  Now they knew that Cole could be used to that end.

  Every piece of data he granted them was another chink in his already perforated armor. It wouldn’t be long now before the whole relic fell apart.

  The door clicked open behind him.

  “You left your tie,” Manuel volleyed. He too could strip his voice of affection. He too could pretend this was just business.

  “How would you like to go for a drive?” Cole asked.

  Manuel twisted at the waist. Planning to shoot me in a field? It would certainly make for easier clean-up. “Do I have time for a shower?”

  “I’ll put the kettle on.”

  It was almost domestic. If not for the heavy tread fading beyond the door, Manuel might have believed a drive was all he was signing up for.

  * * * *

  Cole was going to shoot him and leave his body to the crows.

  That scenario seemed as plausible as any other. The farther they drove from the house and the more Manuel believed in its likelihood. He braced himself each time Cole leaned on the brakes.

  The Volkswagen responded smoothly but couldn’t quite mitigate all the potholes they inevitably encountered. It lurched this way and that, shaking Manuel in his seat as they crested one hill and rolled down the slope of another. Grazing fields hemmed them in on either side, a bucolic landscape reaching as far as they eye could see.

  This was farming country, no more familiar to Manuel than the sandstone ledges around the Cottage.

  He had no idea where they were headed.

  Cole fiddled with the radio for a bit before seemingly deciding there was nothing worth listening to anyway. He tapped a rhythm only he could hear against the steering wheel. It might have been nerves.

  “Was that Kazinsky I saw when we left?” Manuel wondered, doing his best to fill the silence in the car.

  “Hmm? Oh. Yes.” Cole narrowed his eyes at the tufts of scrub grass on either side of the road. “I’ll have him transferred when I get back. He’s not fit for this line of work, I’m afraid.”

  “I thought you said he’d been terminated…”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time someone decided to revise my decision,” he admitted thinly.

  Manuel slanted a glance at his profile. Daybreak did them no favors. They were better suited to gloomy evenings and crisp, quiet nights. They didn’t do well in the bold glare of morning.

  “You’re not all-powerful? Say it isn’t so.”

  Cole scoffed. “Bureaucracy is still bureaucracy. You know that.”

  “Sure. And yet…”

  “What?”

  “Here we are.” Speeding away from the safe house, leaving Kazinsky behind in their dust tracks. Even if Section had pulled a complete one-eighty and decided to steal a page out of the Ian Fleming handbook, bending the rules was bound to land Cole in hot water.

  Unless, of course, this was all part of the brief.

  Manuel looked out, past the bug-spattered windshield, at the flowering weeds that bloomed by the roadside. Winter had been mild, but he couldn’t help think they would have endured frost and hail alike. They were sturdy pests, nature’s answer to choosy roses and timid azaleas.

  “Here we are,” Cole echoed as he pulled into an abrupt turn.

  Gravity thrust Manuel up into the door. He grimaced at the sudden pressure on his bruised shoulder.

  Sturdy pests, indeed.

  Cole eased up on the gas with a soft, “Sorry about that.”

  He seemed to make a concerted effort to avoid the bumps and potholes in the tarmac after that, as though to spare Manuel discomfort.

  It was more likely that he cared about the suspension of the company-issued Volkswagen, but Manuel would take what he could get. “I know it’s probably naive of me to ask, but…where are you taking me?”

  “I told you. We’re going for a drive.”

  “According to the Soprano family definition?” Manuel ventured.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  They passed a wooden sign advertising a country fair and, a few feet after that, another welcoming them to someplace called Hornhill.

  As best Manuel could tell, the town was a single street girdled by stooped brick houses. The village square was a modest quadrangle plonked in front of a squat Norman church that had seen its last glory days sometime in the seventeenth century.

  It was still early hours, but the square was already packed with people setting up foldout wooden stalls and stretching out canopies.

  Cole slowed, his expression unreadable.

  “Pretty, isn’t it?” Manuel ran a hand over his mouth. He could still feel the pressure of Cole’s lips against his, kisses hot and full of promises they both knew would never, ever come true. “Makes you wonder how they’d react if they knew they were neighbors with MI6…”

  “You know the answer to that.”

  “They can’t handle the truth?” Manuel’s grin was fugacious. “What are you doing?”

  The Volkswagen slotted neatly between two parked cars. Cole switched off the engine.

  “I thought we could take a look.”

  “At…homemade jams?”

  The query fell on deaf ears. Cole was already unbuckling his seatbelt and squeezing out of the car.

  Manuel gritted his teeth. If this was Cole’s idea of wet work, he needed to go back to basic training. They had no backup. A rookie could slip a net this loose, never mind the likes of Manuel.

  And yet when push came to shove, opportunity well within his reach, he found himself following in Cole’s footsteps rather than away. Their shoulders brushed as Manuel drew up level.

  “I’d ask what you think you’re doing, but I’m not sure I want to know.”

  “I’ve never known you to shy away from hard truths.” Cole slid a hand to the small of his back. “Come along, sweetheart. There’s so much to see.”

  Astonishment would have rooted Manuel’s feet to the asphalt, but dread spurred him into motion. With every step, his socks chafed against the abraded skin on his ankles. His thigh ached when he put his weight on it. But still he walked, keeping pace with Cole and the stuttering rhythm of his pulse.

  Homemade jams were just one quaint offering among many. Manuel counted hand-crafted biscuit tins, artisanal slippers and alpaca throws before they even made it five stalls deep. Jugs of unpasteurized milk were still being hoisted off small, dingy-looking trucks a couple of feet from a local artiste’s framed landscapes and porcelain jewelry.

  A woman offered them grapes from a small woven basket. They were sourced straight from her vineyard. Manuel popped one into his mouth out of politeness more so than interest. His appetite had been routed by the sudden conviction that this was his last hurrah before Cole put a bullet in his skull.

  “What do you think?” Cole asked, leaning against his side.
“A little sour, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t listen to him, lad. My husband’s the same,” the woman added conspiratorially, “I can tell you like ’em. Here, have another.” She was forceful in a way that reminded Manuel of every interrogator that had ever been thrust down his throat.

  He took another grape as Cole scoffed beside him. Somehow, by the time they moved past the stall, he was twenty quid poorer and hefting a bottle of no-name white wine. The expense was Cole’s, as he didn’t have any money.

  “You didn’t need to do that,” Manuel muttered.

  “In sickness, health and reckless expenses…isn’t that how the vows go?”

  Face flaming, Manuel trained his gaze dead ahead. “You heard that part.”

  It shouldn’t have made him feel anything. This wasn’t the first time he’d worn a cover he couldn’t quite inhabit. False identities meant about as much as uniforms and name tags. They were a tool of the trade, not a reflection of the people who pulled them on or off.

  They certainly didn’t have a thing to do with reality, because here in the real world, Cole was the enemy.

  Chapter Nine

  At the church gate, they were forced to turn back toward the car or go inside. Cole showed no interest in the latter, so Manuel took the initiative to veer through another row of stalls and assorted produce.

  They were halfway along when he noticed that Cole was dragging his feet. Not so eager to finish the job, are you? Manuel squeezed the wine bottle in a sweating palm but kept his thoughts to himself. A better man than him would have made it easy on Cole.

  A better man wouldn’t have seduced him into bed in the first place.

  Unfortunately, all the better men were gone, lost to missions that no one would ever write about, buried under assumed names and, by and large, forgotten.

  “Shall we head back?” He did his best to infuse his voice with levity, the better to convince Cole to get on with the task at hand.

  “Yes, fine.”

  The Volkswagen rattled as Cole keyed the engine. To Manuel, it seemed a strangely mournful sound.

  They pulled out of the village square slowly, leaving behind the fair and its myriad treasures. Other cars were already streaming in, bearing clients and gawkers alike. The world kept turning.