Dark Lies (DARC Ops Book 6)

by Jamie Garrett

  Tucker nodded, his hand unconsciously peeling at the beer label.

  “The hotel,” she said. “It’s great. A big improvement.”

  “Compliments of DARC Ops,” Tucker said. “The food, too. You hungry?”

  “Can I look?”

  Tucker stepped aside, watching Macy approach the table he’d set for her. Rudimentary place-settings, paper napkins, and plastic cutlery. “Oooh,” she said, hovering over the closed takeout boxes. “Which one is mine?”

  “Lady’s choice.”

  She opened each with a quiet gasp of delight. “They both look so good. Thank you.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  Macy sat in front of the tray of ribs, placing down her beer with a low thunk. “You know, I can take care of myself as far as fending off assassins. But when it comes to the simplest of necessities, like eating . . .” Macy began working at the ribs without even looking up to Tucker. She was definitely hungry. Tucker felt his own hunger returning.

  Halfway through an otherwise silent dinner, Macy got up to turn the TV on. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “It’s just so quiet.”

  “Sorry,” Tucker said.

  “What?”

  “I think I’m the one being rude. I’m usually better at conversation, but I’m just . . .”

  “It’s okay,” Macy said.

  “A combination of hunger and fatigue, I think.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m worn out, too.”

  “I don’t know how you survived two years like that. Well, I know how, because I’ve seen you in action. But, I mean . . . It’s incredible. I would say I’m impressed, but for some reason it sounds a little stupid.”

  “It’s not stupid,” she said. “I impress myself sometimes.”

  “I bet.”

  Macy wiped her hands on a small white washcloth, and then wiped her mouth, which had been sauce-lined and shiny. Had she noticed him staring at her again? She set the cloth down on the top of the closed lid, and then reached for her beer. “So how’s the big mission going?”

  “I don’t know. They sent me home.”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, home as in here. Er, my room, or whatever.”

  “Why?”

  “They gave me the night off.”

  “Oh,” she said, raising the bottle to her lips.

  “What about you?”

  She drank and then said, “I think I have the night off, too.”

  “Finally.”

  “I’m a little scared to let my guard down, but . . . I feel safe here. Is that crazy?”

  “No,” Tucker said. “This is probably the safest place you’ve been in years.” He stood, collecting the two boxes from their table. He walked toward the recycling bin near the door.

  “You really think so?” she asked. “I feel like when I assume things . . .” Macy trailed off.

  He returned to the table. “When you assuming things, what?”

  “That’s when I get burned.”

  His gaze locked on hers. Her face was suddenly soft and for the first time since he’d found her the day before, she looked vulnerable. But vulnerable to what? An assassin’s bullet, or his own clumsy advance?

  Tucker fought the urge to do or say something stupid, something that would ruin whatever relationship they’d salvaged from a horrible past and a hellish twenty-four hours. He took a long swig of beer to muzzle himself. She drank too. Finally, he spoke. “We’ve got the hotel surrounded by some of the most capable and heavily armed professionals you could ever need. You should at least feel a little safe. And you’ve got me.”

  “I’ve got you?”

  “Yeah,” he said, grinning. “I’m no slouch.”

  “I bet.”

  “If you want, I can get a room next to yours.”

  She looked confused at that one.

  “A decoy room,” Tucker said. “You know, I’ll wait around and take a bullet for you.”

  “Alright,” she said, chuckling on her way from the table to the bed. “Don’t get crazy.” She grabbed the remote and flopped onto the plush queen bed, folding a pillow behind her back. She sighed again, stretching out, her body still looking supple and fresh from the shower. “This is probably the nicest bed I’ve had since . . . home.” She said the last word a little sadly, as if the word crushed her in some way. Macy brought her attention back to the television, clicking through the channels aimlessly.

  “St. Louis?” he said quietly.

  She nodded, the back of her head digging into the plush pillow behind her, the channels on the TV flying by with hardly a second between them. She didn’t even know what she was skipping. She was just roaming, faster and faster. That had been her life, for years.

  He shouldn’t talk about St. Louis, at least for now. That much he knew. There were enough sad stories to worry about already. Instead, he drained the last mouthful of his beer. “We can order a movie.”

  “We can order some porn,” she said with a little laugh. “What are you into?”

  “Missionary.”

  “Oh, that’s exciting.” She laughed again, Tucker watching the bed shake with it. “I was asking about genre, not position.”

  “I know,” Tucker said. “I’m into missionaries. You know, like eighteenth-century nuns spreading the good word through Africa.”

  “What else were they spreading?”

  “Well, you’ll have to refer to the adult menu to find out. Keep it on preview, though. It’ll show up on Jackson’s bill.”

  “No, I think you sold me on it,” she said. “What do I care about what Jackson sees?”

  “You’re right, you’re absolutely right. Life’s too short to deprive ourselves of nun porn in a Johannesburg hotel.” He chuckled under his breath. She was joking, of course. They’d always joked around and teased each other. For one, odd moment though, he wondered what type of genre she’d gravitate to . . .

  Giant cocks?

  That’s what girls like, right?

  He almost punched himself. He had to pull himself together. He could take care of his . . . uhhm, problem later.

  When he looked back to her TV, Macy finally settled on a channel. Some kind of game show with raucous studio applause. When he looked back to her face though, her eyes were closed. “Macy?”

  “I’m here,” she said quietly. “Sorry, I’m just . . .”

  “You’re just slowly entering a food coma?”

  “I’m a terrible host right now.”

  Tucker took a good look at her, stretched out. “Well, I invited myself over. That wasn’t a very nice start as a guest.”

  “You came bearing gifts,” she said, her eyes still closed, the same channel on the television playing some generic game show music. American, Angola, South African—it all sounded the same, the music of background boredom. “You can put something on if you want,” she said, her hand rising off the bed listlessly, a loose-wristed offering of the remote. It had plastic wrapped around it, crinkling in her grip.

  “What’s with the plastic bag?” Tucker said.

  “It was a wrapper for one of the cups.”

  “What’s it doing on the remote?”

  “Germs,” she said.

  Tucker rose from his chair, chuckling at the sudden onset of her germophobia. He took the plastic-wrapped remote from her hand, his index finger grazing hers for the smallest infinitesimal second and made him immediately want more. Her eyes were still closed.

  Tucker took the wrapper off and sat at the edge of the bed. “You didn’t seem too worried about germs back in Luanda. That place you were at.”

  “I had worse things to worry about.”

  “Yes, you did.” He flipped through the channels but found nothing interesting. He also wasn’t trying very hard, his eyes and ears barely attuned to whatever inane show clung to the background of Macy’s dim hotel room. He was more concerned with the immediate: the bed, and who he was suddenly sharing it with.

  Macy had brought her hands to he
r face, fingertips rubbing closed eyelids. “So should we order something?” she said. “Not missionary porn. How about a light comedy? I could fucking use a good light comedy right about now. Or even a rom-com. Could you handle a rom-com with me?”

  “I could handle a rom-com with you.”

  Macy sat up, grinning. She looked instantly refreshed. She even looked younger. “It’ll be fun. We’ll just totally zone out for two hours and not have to worry about everything that’s wrong with the world.”

  Tucker was nodding, but for some reason it produced a puzzled look on Macy’s face. “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “Well, do you mind if I join you?”

  “Huh? What else are you going to do? Go back to your room?”

  “I mean join you on the bed.”

  Macy’s smile returned as she shimmied over and made room for him. “Me and you watching a rom-com in bed. Can you believe it?”

  “Hardly,” he said. Tucker kicked off his shoes and then crawled next to her. It felt right, like something they had just always done together. It felt right to have her next to him.

  It was a large bed, and so they had some space between them. He could almost feel the half-foot like it was a real thing, a physical barrier. For the first twenty minutes one of the stupidest rom-coms he’d ever seen, Tucker couldn’t stop thinking about that half-foot between them, a line. And how easily it could be crossed.

  He inched closer to her and settled in, his eyelids feeling heavy, his breathing slowing to match hers.

  15

  Macy

  She woke up in a darkened room. Someone had turned the lights off so that only the soft blue of the television remained. The movie remained, too, though most likely on its second or third replay cycle. At least it seemed that way to Macy. Her face felt wrinkled enough for several hours of deep, continuous sleep. It was a welcomed escape after a combination of terrible movie and a terrible last few days.

  She felt warm, her back especially. There was also the faintest pressure there, something up against her. Someone. Tucker. When she lay still and quiet, she could feel his breathing. It was long and slow, the sound of sleep, his breath warm at her neck. She didn’t dare move.

  Did Tucker do this? Did he get up to switch off the light, and then return to bed, to a sleeping Macy, to crawl up and spoon with her? Had she stirred awake ever so briefly, and allowed it to happen?

  She had no idea.

  She was sure, at least, that she didn’t want to peel away from him just yet. With the movie still playing, Macy continued the charade of sleep. An act—easily played out—so she could stay next to him. Before he woke up, and before the awkwardness began and the moment ended, Macy wanted to feel him. It was like a test run, a free trial where she could still have plausible deniability.

  She held still, her mind focusing and leaving her body so that her only stimulus was the warm sensation of his body, heavy and muscular, and pressed up against hers. She held her breath against him. Just him, just his breathing, just the movement of his chest. The sound of him. The smell of him, of some type of rustic sandalwood cologne.

  She was stiff as a board, faking it. This moment in a Johannesburg hotel might be her only chance. The future was full of complications, with Tucker or alone. The past certainly contained many of them, a path lined with rose bushes with the most brutally sharp thorns. That was their story: bittersweet.

  Macy held her breath again and then carefully reached to the nightstand, fingers carefully wrapped around the plastic-less remote. She brought it to her face to find the power button, clicked it, and then tossed the remote aside in the now-complete darkness. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then opened them to see the same darkness each time. Silence, except for Tucker’s breathing. And then something else, a low groan as if he’d been talking to himself. Macy felt his body move against hers, his head moving, too, Tucker stirring awake.

  She held still as his arm flopped across her shoulder, a big meaty forearm clunking down onto her. His body moved, too, his hips rocking and trying to roll over. He got stuck against her, moaned something, and then sighed, giving up.

  He relaxed once again. She liked his arm on her. A bonus. She could even maybe fall asleep with his arm there, if it were in the right spot. Just a few inches down off a pressure point. She reached up for it, her hand barely wrapping around his wrist, moving him just right to below her hip bone. Before she pulled her hand away, she let it slide down and slip into his. It was innocent. An accident. His palm was calloused, and cool with sleep. Macy squeezed gently, and when he squeezed back, she pulled way.

  Tucker stirred awake again, pulling away from her and uttering something half-coherent. Macy held still as he sat up, the bed rocking with his movement. In the dark, she could hear his hand gliding through his hair. And then his voice: “Macy? What, um . . . ”

  She stayed still, listening to him breathe, him regaining a calm and even breath. She could almost hear his brain reeling, trying to figure out how it all happened: him, and her, the darkness, the bed. For her, waking up in a strange, dark room was a pretty standard activity. But it was probably a little different for Tucker.

  She felt the bed move again, this time sinking low as he shimmied off to the side, and with one final flick of the bed springs, it went still. Tucker’s weight was gone, off the bed and away from her. She listened to his uncoordinated footsteps in the dark, bare feet thudding softly on the faux wood before coming to a stop and standing still for a moment. A long moment passed with nothing but silence. She would have noticed if he’d left the room entirely, wouldn’t she?

  And then Tucker took a deep breath and began wandering back around the bed to where he’d last laid his shoes.

  Macy rolled over and said, “Tucker?”

  The footsteps stopped.

  “Tucker,” she said again, not a question this time, but a prompt. Despite her attempts to modulate her voice, it was husky with unfulfilled desire. Desire she should switch off. Only Macy didn’t want to. Right in that moment, she wanted him back. And a moment later, through the silence and the darkness, the bed dipped lower again at the edge. Tucker’s weight rocked the mattress as he crawled back on without saying a word. And then she felt his weight on her body, an army crawl from foot to head, of the bed, and of her, until his arms pressed down on either side of her shoulders, the warmth of his face inches from hers. Macy couldn’t see him, but she felt him, every nerve sizzling. A sixth sense, an awareness of his lips moving through darkness and landing first on her chin, a little clumsily. Shaky yet very hungry. Macy tilted her head down and their lips met, flush and wet. He sucked on her lip gently. God, he tasted good. A little tremble echoed through her body like a single ripple across a vast and empty lake. She felt it through her lungs and her neck and then out her mouth as a vibration, a moan. It seemed to spur him on, intensifying his kisses, his tongue thrusting into her mouth and tangling with hers.

  As if suddenly reanimated, her hands came to life and wrapped around him, clutching at his strong back and pulling him tightly against her body while his face pressed deeper into hers, his breathing scorching her.

  It was dark and dreamlike, and as unreal as her fantasies back in St. Louis, where the imagery and the feelings would come to her at night when she’d lie sleepless in her bed. But that was the only similarity. Back in St. Louis, she would be alone and aching, her hand finding its way between her legs. She ached now, too, only here it was someone else’s hand doing the work while her own two hands were busy along his back.

  He’d gone inside her shorts, his thick hand palming her up and down over her panties. And then fingers, curling, tickling. As if it were her own hand, he knew exactly what to do, and he was doing it so well she was forced to bite onto his lip. Partly as a reaction to how good it felt, and partly to punish him ever so slightly. How could he be so bad? Tucker was a different kind of bad in St Louis, when he was a proper gentleman, rejecting her. And now this in Johannesburg, the opposite: still a g
entleman, but stroking her most sensitive spot, making her hot and wet.

  It was even the opposite of who she’d come to know in the last twenty-four hours. At first, in Angola, he’d been so reserved and respectful, letting her mostly take charge. Now Tucker was making her squirm under his touch. There was heat along her neck, too, his mouth slipping down there, licking to her collar bone and sucking there.

  “Tucker . . .” She gasped for air. And then she was swallowed up again by him, his mouth grazing back to her face, to her mouth, silencing her until she could hear only the throbbing blood in her ears. She throbbed, too. For him. For more than his hand. He’d moved his hand to explore more of her body, leaving her a shaky, twitchy mess. Leaving her so hungry. Macy bit him again while her hands moved around his back, and his hips, to the small space between their bodies. It was a space just large enough for the loosening of a belt and button. She unfastened his jeans, hard and sloppy with uncoordinated hands. Tucker didn’t stop her. He even helped, pulling his jeans down from the back so they’d slide off his ass, so that Macy could have even more room. This time it was room to dive in, inside his boxers, her hand feeling through the darkness and the heat, finding her way down the v-shaped bulk of muscles under his abs, and then lower, over the base of his cock, where her fingers instantly wrapped and squeezed. She clung to him, the smooth, hot skin of his cock sliding ever so gently up and down as Tucker released an almost painful-sounding sigh. He was holding something back, something big inside him, pent up. Now she wanted it inside her, pent up, bucking hard into her and filling her.

  He’d been carrying it all along. That she knew from the sneaked glances at his stiff crotch when they entered the jet, or tonight when she exited the bathroom wearing her sexiest. And now she knew just what it was he’d been carrying, the exact shape and firmness of it, how ready he’d been then and now. She firmed her grip, feeling the rest of his body going limp on top of her while one part of him did the exact opposite. Hardening, still, and then finally slipping out of her hands completely. Tucker was moving off her, his mouth off of her neck, his weight off her breasts, still more weight on either side of her, the bed rocking as he moved. She couldn’t see where to, but could feel him inching lower down her body. And then suddenly, from the darkness, came two large hands at both of her hips, and then the feeling of silk clothing being dragged down around her waist, slipping off her ass, and then sliding down her thighs past her knees. Tucker’s hands guided her shorts and panties smoothly off her legs and around her ankle. One ankle out, the other still inside the leg hole. Macy didn’t have to wait for his hands to spread her legs. She was already moving automatically, her knees moving first, and then her thighs, spreading wide around him—for him—as he shifted positions again.