Splendid Isolation

by Helena Maeve

“I expected to find you here,” she sneered.

  “Rules and regulations,” Manuel scoffed, waving a hand. He could pretend that the hairs on the back of his neck didn’t stand on end, but he couldn’t make it so. Was this the part where they took him back to Section in handcuffs and subjected him to a whole new battery of enhanced interrogation techniques?

  Cole spared him the trouble of asking.

  “What’s the word from top brass?” Brisk, no-nonsense, Cole sounded like he’d just parked himself at the head of a conference table in the bowels of Section headquarters.

  “Little brother seems to have been working alone,” Chelsea reported with pinched lips. “We looked into every other configuration, but the data doesn’t support any other theory. If he had accomplices, they’re outside the family.” It went without saying that any doubt on the matter would be absolved over the course of long interrogation sessions.

  Manuel felt a dull pang of pity for Arthur. Kid didn’t know what he was in for.

  “As for you two,” Chelsea went on primly, “you’re on leave for the next two weeks. We’re arranging for a London flat for—”

  “He’ll stay at mine,” Cole cut her short.

  Bushy eyebrows climbing halfway up her brow, Chelsea weighed the request. “You’ll have to clear that with the higher ups,” she hedged.

  “They’ll agree.”

  “Possibly.”

  Cole shook his head against the pillow, certitude in the gesture. “They will agree.” He was white as a sheet, his vision unfocused and lips cracked, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t in charge.

  “It’s the gunshot, isn’t it?” Manuel teased, when they were alone again. “You took a bullet for the Crown and now you can get away with murder.”

  Or, alternatively, sleeping with a traitor in full view of his superiors.

  Chelsea hadn’t protested much, which either meant that her input didn’t count or that the contingency had already been factored in.

  Under different circumstances, that might have been cause for worry.

  Manuel slowly pushed himself up from the chair, hospital scrubs rustling when he moved, and pinned his folded arms to the railing of Cole’s bed.

  “So I’m being let off the leash. That’s unexpected.” He had fled the safe house—albeit with Cole’s aid—and he’d been less than cooperative since they first acquired him. Still, he would take it. Better than extradition. “Does this mean you’re my new handler?” he wondered. No need for sugar-coating. He knew this was a trade-off, not a victory. He would’ve had to run, like Cole wanted him to, for the latter to be remotely possible.

  Cole’s expression shuttered. “I’ll close your file on Monday.”

  “Because you think you’ll be working come Monday? You heard the lady…”

  “Who’s going to keep me home? You?” Cole snorted, eyes crinkling with mirth. “I’d like to see you try.”

  That restless, stubborn muscle clenched once again in Manuel’s chest. He did his best to ignore it. “I have my ways,” he taunted.

  Poking Cole in the thigh was easier than admitting he was anxious at the thought of being locked in with a man who wasn’t actively paid to wheedle information out of him. It earned him a burst of laughter and Cole lacing their fingers together as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

  They stayed like that for many minutes, until the casual stroke of Cole’s thumb over his knuckles slowed and finally stopped. When Manuel glanced up, it was to see his eyelids drooping shut, the rise and fall of his ribcage easing into sleep.

  “Cole?” Sense demanded that Manuel leave him be, but he couldn’t not ask.

  “Hmm?”

  Manuel turned his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “What happens to Arthur now?”

  Cole sighed, breath stirring a wrinkle in the pillow case. “Dunno.”

  “Same thing they did to me?”

  “You’re…yesterday’s news,” Cole murmured.

  It wasn’t the answer Manuel had hoped to hear. It wasn’t a no.

  Cole was already fast asleep by the time Manuel pressed a soft, apologetic kiss to the back of his hand and slowly untangled their fingers. He didn’t stir.

  The door didn’t dare creak. With a heavy heart, Manuel let himself out.

  Chapter Twelve

  Until their Section-appointed chauffeur drove off, Manuel wasn’t entirely convinced he wouldn’t find himself dragged into some dank cell to answer for his crimes. Again. Yet the BMW didn’t pull a U-turn at the end of the street. No one threw a black bag over his head.

  On the doorstep, Cole politely cleared his throat. “Change your mind?”

  Manuel gave it a moment’s thought.

  Cole was in no shape to give chase. He might even give Manuel a head start—it had been his idea for Manuel to slip Section’s net in the first place.

  He shook his head. “Let’s get you to bed. Preferably before I have to carry you there.”

  Cole’s third floor flat was one of six units in a new construction on the north bank of the Thames. The building was a cubist wet dream, with overhanging balconies and three different shades of yellow adorning the facade. Modernist sensibilities persisted inside, too, but Cole’s eye for chic didn’t seem to extend to interior design.

  Manuel counted three different wood grains before he made it a foot into the apartment. In the bedroom, he spied a kitschy lamp beside a dusty typewriter, both crammed next to an old inkjet printer.

  He didn’t ask any questions as he spilled Cole onto the bed. The painkillers were almost out of his system, but he remained slow and a little sluggish, strength failing him after a few steps no matter how he huffed and puffed about not needing help.

  “You want something to drink?” Manuel asked between helping Cole out of his scrubs and prying back the covers.

  “Cognac might be nice.”

  Manuel chuckled. “And when you can get up and get it yourself, you’re welcome to it.” Liquor was a long time coming. Cole’s shoulder was taped up, the skin sewn tight with silk thread to hold it in place. He’d spent twenty-four hours on intravenous fluids and hospital food. He had earned the nightcap. “Jokes aside, do you need anything?”

  “You could stay,” Cole suggested.

  He did a fine job of avoiding Manuel’s gaze as he tucked himself into bed, more obedient than he’d been when the doctor insisted on sending him out of the hospital in a wheelchair.

  But if Manuel got into bed with him, there was every chance he wouldn’t be getting sleep.

  “I’ll be in the living room,” Manuel promised. “Rifling through your things.”

  “As long as you don’t mix up my records…”

  “You’ll regret telling me that.” Before he could think better of it, Manuel leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Get some rest,” he ordered.

  Their narrow brush with death must have had some effect on him, too. He wasn’t thinking straight.

  He eased Cole’s bedroom door shut behind him when he left, relieved when the handle didn’t creak. The flat was silent around him, not even a clock ticking to distract from the frantic tattoo of his heartbeat.

  For all his boasting, the thought of delving into Cole’s things left a bitter taste in his mouth. Why? Section had plundered through his entire life, going back as far as they pleased and forcing him to remember minute details about insignificant meetings that took place years and years back—all on Cole’s orders. Returning the favor in some capacity was only fair.

  In the living room, Manuel walked his fingertips along the spines of paperbacks in Cole’s bookcase. He nudged one glossy issue of Time Out London on the coffee table to reveal another. He found a handful of DVDs on a shelf—Hitchcock movies, all, and none of them films Manuel remembered seeing. He thought of helping himself to Suspicion while Cole slept, but couldn’t spot the TV remote anywhere. It was no great loss. Cole’s flat was just another temporary shelter, until Section came to its senses and had Manuel moved
to a more suitable location, someplace they could keep an eye on him.

  They really should.

  He peered between the venetian blinds to the avenue outside. Just because he couldn’t see a conspicuous car with tinted window on the other side of the street didn’t mean his watchers weren’t out there. If Manuel had been in Chelsea’s shoes, he would have assigned a team to Cole alone. Evidently, he was compromised.

  Manuel’s insides churned when he thought of what he’d set in motion—with Cole, but not exclusively. Not anymore. All he could do now was wait and witness the fallout, probably from within a windowless room, where no one would hear him scream.

  As a last resort, he picked The Magus off the coffee table and dropped heavily into a swiveling leather armchair, joints creaking like the misaligned undercarriage of a battered vehicle. Print blurred on the page before his eyes, but Manuel pressed on, stubborn. There was only so much he could do with a handler out of commission and an unfamiliar, ostensibly secure flat for a prison.

  No jack-booted thugs broke down the door by the time he’d made it to the end of the first chapter.

  The bedroom door scraped the carpet a few good hours later. Manuel held up a finger to acknowledge his host but didn’t tear himself away from the paperback until he’d finished the page.

  Cole smiled at him from the doorway. “I see you’re having all sorts of wild fun without me.”

  “I did start out looking for The Anarchist Cookbook…”

  “I keep it by my bedside.”

  “Naturally. You never know when you’ll want to craft a grenade before you get your beauty sleep.”

  There was something about Cole laughing—really laughing, not chuckling, or sneering the way he’d done at the safe house, when Manuel’s barbs struck a little too close to home—that made him seem younger. Ten years were stripped away in the blink of an eye. Moonlight pooled in the hollows of his collarbones.

  An air of guajira echoed in Manuel’s ears.

  “You slept something like eight hours,” he pointed out, not entirely certain if he was excusing or justifying his continued presence. He’d had the time to disappear and come back and disappear again. Lack of opportunity didn’t explain why he was still in Cole’s apartment, stalling.

  For his part, Cole didn’t seem to care. He swept a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, smile soft and easy, as though he woke up to the sight of his arch enemy every day.

  “Well, now I’m famished. Can I trust you with the contents of my pantry?”

  “Depends what you expect to come out of there.”

  Cole hitched his good shoulder. “Why don’t you surprise me?”

  At the Cottage, breakfast was the purview of Arthur and the other handlers. They were fanatical about ensuring their charges enjoyed three meals a day—and if enjoying was too much to ask, then enduring would do. In their absence, Manuel scrounged up a speedy lentil and chorizo soup using only canned ingredients unlikely to have expired, which he left to simmer until Cole dragged himself to the kitchen.

  They ate at the small breakfast nook by the window, Cole’s feet in his lap and the window propped open, throwing caution to the wind.

  “You know you were just shot recently,” Manuel recalled. “By a sniper, no less.”

  Cole swallowed around a mouthful of soup. “We still don’t know that I was the target. Besides…Arthur’s safely in custody, isn’t he? I have nothing to fear.”

  “In your line of work?”

  “All right,” Cole sighed as though making some great concession. “I don’t have anything to fear at the moment. Unless, I suppose, you put rat poison in our supper.”

  “I’d never spoil food like that.”

  “I had no idea you were so finicky about cooking.”

  Manuel chased a bit of sausage around his bowl and scooped it up onto his spoon. “There’s a lot more that you don’t know about me.” A lot you wouldn’t want to know. Then again, Cole was one of the few people who might not judge him for past misdeeds.

  “I have some time now, if you feel like sharing… No?” Cole smacked his lips but didn’t try very hard to conceal his amusement. “Thank you, by the way,” he added, mouth briefly slanting down.

  “It’s just soup.”

  “Thank you for staying.”

  “Oh.” Manuel looked down, at the lentils swimming at the bottom of his bowl, at the shadow of his spoon-wielding fist over the table. “You know me. I can never do what’s expected.” He would have fled—should have fled—the scene of the attack, were it not for Cole.

  Suppose that makes me an even bigger fool than you.

  He hadn’t seized the moment and now here they were, locked into an uneasy truce, negotiating a ceasefire that couldn’t hope to last.

  “Hey.” Cole’s hand was warm on his wrist, fingers long and pale as though Cole made his living as a pianist instead of a glorified scalp hunter.

  The wedding band caught the light from the ceiling fixtures, bright like a beacon.

  “When does the Missus get home?” Manuel wondered.

  “She’s not.”

  “Hey, now. Don’t throw her out on my account.” I’m not staying. He couldn’t. It would be foolish. Reckless. All of the above.

  He couldn’t stay and unravel Cole’s life twice.

  Cole ran a gentle thumb over Manuel’s callused knuckles. “She’s not coming home because we haven’t lived together since I moved here. We call it long-distance, for the higher ups, but…it’s been over for a while.” Convenience and reputation were their own reasons to keep up the pretense. “Do you honestly think I would’ve asked you here otherwise?”

  An arched eyebrow let it be understood that between them, no uppercut, no curveball was unexpected.

  Cole scoffed. “I know you have no reason to trust me—”

  “You saved my life.” Twice.

  “Payback,” Cole replied, shrugging it off.

  Before Arthur, before the Cottage, Manuel might have believed it. He turned his hand so Cole’s fingers slid into his palm. The kitchen window lacked curtains, and chances were high that Cole’s flat was under surveillance.

  That salient point didn’t stop Manuel from easing out of his seat and crouching before Cole’s. It wasn’t just reckless. Seducing Cole when Cole had the power to have him extradited was dangerous. This—slithering into his life, quashing any hope of upward mobility in his job—was making ribbon out of a tripwire.

  A frisson of excitement raced through him as Cole’s spine connected with the wall.

  “Is this what you want?” Manuel ground out, sliding onto the bench. Are you sure? He pinned Cole with his hips, one hand on his uninjured wrist. He didn’t bother with the other. Even doped up, Cole had still grimaced as he moved from bed to wheelchair and wheelchair to car. “Is it worth the sacrifice?”

  Cheeks pinking in the harsh neon light, Cole tipped his head back smugly.

  “What sacrifice? I have you and I have my job—and I won’t give up one to have the other, and I don’t care if that sounds naive.”

  “If?”

  Cole pressed their lips together before Manuel could crawl his way back to some semblance of self-discipline.

  He lost himself to the kiss and the warmth of Cole’s mouth on his. He couldn’t hold out once Cole molded his body to his, the taste of his lips familiar, body hot like a furnace against his.

  They surged together, crashing into the kitchen table to the tune of clattering spoons, then the counter. Manuel knotted a hand in Cole’s hair and wrenched him back with a pained groan. “You’re sure?”

  Cole’s answer was a hard, one-handed shove. “I was sure eighteen years ago,” he growled, and backed Manuel into the fridge.

  His kisses were rough, plundering. Gone was the phlegmatic suit who had first shepherded Manuel into his coastal prison. In his place was the man Manuel had met in Havana, a lifetime before, and abandoned for the sake of saving them both.

  Negotiating the narrow hall
to the bedroom was a short and painful process. Manuel lost his shirt along the way but got his hand between Cole’s legs for a brief instant. Then Cole tore out of his arms and pushed him into the bedroom door.

  There was no finesse to their lovemaking, no technique. ‘I nearly lost you’ became ‘don’t leave me’ in the short gap between Manuel hoisting Cole into his arms and pressing him down into the bed sheets. They had fucked in hotels and safe houses before, bodies entwined in a desperate, ragged hunt for some semblance of companionship, but never like this. Cole scrabbled for the lubricant in the bedside drawer, their fingers locking around paraphernalia as their lips met in increasingly sloppy kisses. They couldn’t shove their clothes out of the way fast enough.

  Cole shunted his pajama bottoms down and arched his back, moaning long as Manuel sunk two fingers into him. It was hotter than bending him over the hood of the Volkswagen, more intimate than waking up beside him at the safe house. Manuel rested his weight on one arm and eased in, savoring the tight clutch of muscle around his cock nearly as much as the curve of Cole’s erection in his fist.

  He wanted to do it slowly, to taste Cole’s release as he crested and finally spilled between them. It would have been sweet to watch him pant and weep up close, like the first time. Euphoria got the better of him. The mind-bending illusion of having Cole, of owning him so completely that he alone could grant him pleasure, overwhelmed his senses.

  Manuel panted as he rode him, a savage thrill of urgency building and building at his core. He was coming before he knew it, too desperate for Cole to resist pounding into him through a pitiless, tumultuous orgasm.

  With his last shred of hand-eye coordination, he tightened his grip around Cole’s length and jerked him off to a merciless climax. Come for me. Let me hear you…

  Tremors rippled from his body into Cole’s and back, an endless feedback loop of frayed nerves and aching muscles. Manuel struggled for breath as they rutted together past the point of pleasure and into that sweet, agonizing delirium of ravenous hunger. It was a relief when Cole let him pull away.

  Manuel collapsed in tangled sheets, his palm somehow still slotted neatly against Cole’s.