The Asset

by Anna del Mar

“Jesus, Lia.” The stars sparkled in his eyes. “You feel so good. You’re so wet and tight. Do you want to move for me?” His hands nudged my hips. “I’d really like it if you moved for me. I need you to move for me.”

  I rolled my hips and smiled when I spotted the thrill on his face. I rocked on his lap and he grew inside me. I was the earth to his root and he was the root to my tree. He groaned and I moaned, and together we climbed up desire’s steep ladder, three rungs up, one down, trying to prolong the pleasure that raked us, trying to push each other to feel beyond reason, until we were both at the very edge of someplace I’d never been to before. I clung to him as if he was the only rail between me and the abyss.

  His face was control’s strained mask. “I want you to come for me.”

  “I want you to come with me,” I managed to say as he thrust in me.

  “After you—”

  “Together.” I whimpered, nearly out of my mind. “I want you to come in me.”

  “Oh hell, there’s nothing I want to do more than that,” he muttered hoarsely. “Are you sure?”

  He was asking a long, complex, relevant set of questions, but for once I knew what I wanted and I couldn’t stop to explain.

  “Please?”

  The way he bore down on my body had me gasping for breath. There was no holding back now, no illusion of control, no sane way to prevent the blast that launched us into the space we could only share with each other.

  I clung to Ash through the journey. I broke through my mind’s boundaries, shattered my old limits and freed myself from my body’s sorrows. My sex grasped, clenched, gripped, experiencing glory, convulsing with bliss. I vaulted from one orgasm to the next, convinced I’d reached my highest peak, only to launch higher, even if I wasn’t sure I could survive the thrill.

  And then Ash closed his eyes and shuddered. A quiet groan rattled his breath and escaped between his lips. He came deep inside me, his essence dissolving into my being, his goodness erasing the past, his seed extinguishing my body’s dread, washing away terror with joy and anguish with elation. I came again, for him, for me, for the pure joy of it.

  When it was done, I relished every ounce of pleasure he enjoyed, every shudder, groan and caress, every drop he contributed to my being. I couldn’t fathom how I’d survived the pleasure, because every part of me had been touched, kissed and moved, and I wasn’t the same.

  He helped me out of the pool, or perhaps I should say we helped each other, because his legs seemed as unsteady as mine even though his hold on me was stronger than ever. I liked the way I smelled—fiery, like molded metal newly steamed from the forge; metallic, like the hot spring itself; strong, like Ash. I liked the way I felt too, clean, inside and out.

  Ash enveloped me in a towel he pulled out of the bag and, hugging me to his chest, kissed me. “Jesus, Lia. That was...”

  “Good?” I hoped it had been as powerful for him as it had been for me.

  “No, not good,” he said. “Incredible, out of this world, extraordinary.”

  “Extraordinary is good.” I stood on the tip of my toes and kissed him. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” he said, gathering me in his arms.

  “For teaching me joy,” I said. “And for bringing me to Heaven.”

  * * *

  We went back to the cabin and made love several times after that, if only for the pleasure of discovering pleasure itself. Perhaps we were making up for the nights we’d wasted, for they’d been a waste, I was convinced of it now. We slept on and off, distracted from our dreams by the novelty of being together. I’d been loveless and scared of sex most of my life, but now, in between bouts of pleasure, I learned that love and sex entailed different emotions, but when they happened at the same time, as they did when Ash and I were together, they were an extraordinary force.

  Somewhere in the early morning hours, when I lay on my side with Ash curled about me on the bottom bunk, I opened my eyes and heard him sigh.

  “Such a deep sigh,” I murmured in the darkness.

  “If you only knew.”

  “What?”

  He shrugged behind me.

  “No, I mean it, I want to know.”

  “It’s sort of silly.”

  I kissed his callused fingertips. “Tell me.”

  “Okay, but don’t laugh.”

  “No laughs guaranteed.”

  His arms tightened around me. “I dreamed of this.”

  “You dreamed of you and me crammed into a narrow bed in the middle of nowhere?”

  He chuckled. “More or less.”

  “When?”

  “In the jungles of South America, in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. At night, when I lay in my bunk waiting for a mission, or in the field, when we took turns napping. And later in the hospital, when I didn’t think there’d be a day without pain and sorrow in my future.”

  I’d felt the same way so many times in my life, and yet here I was, with him, my body delirious with pleasure, my heart brimming with joy.

  “You mean to tell me that you fierce warriors of the world don’t spend every free second fantasizing about having wild sex with a triple D centerfold?”

  “No, ma’am.” He kissed my ear. “I dreamed of this, exactly this, lying with someone soft and beautiful, craving her body and her craving me. I dreamed of you, even though I didn’t know your name back then.”

  I blinked away the tears. My gut tightened. The fear came back, fear that this exquisite moment was just a passing fad; that Ash wouldn’t be in my bed tomorrow; that he’d die; that I’d die.

  “Ash—” My throat tightened.

  “Stop it, Lia, that part where you tell me off wasn’t in my dream, so don’t say anything. Can’t a guy get to live his dream every once in a while?”

  A dream. I was a dream to him. “Whatever you want, you can have it.”

  “Don’t make me idle promises,” he cautioned. “I’m addicted to you. If you were one of those prescription pills? I’d be completely hooked on your body and I’d have to have you all the time. Think about it. Despite the excess, I wouldn’t mind more of you right this minute.”

  “What excess?” I said.

  He tilted my face and found my mouth. His hands came around to stoke need that didn’t need encouragement. He glided into me and pleasure deleted everything but him from my brain.

  Hours later, my mind registered the distant sound of a rattling cell, but I was too far into my dreams to care. When I next opened my eyes, Ash’s kisses tickled my face and the tricolor horizon on the window announced the sun’s glorious rebirth.

  “Come on, sleepyhead.” Ash propped me up and slid my arms into an enormous flannel shirt. “Got to go.”

  “Go where?” I knuckled my eyes, half-asleep.

  “To the cottage.” He put on my shoes, picked me up and, still bundled in the sheets, carried me out into the morning chill and perched me on the truck’s front seat. I could sense the change in him as he clicked on my seat belt. He’d gone from sweet lover to all business and I was too woolly to figure out why.

  “Your owner is in a hurry today,” I mumbled to Neil, when the dog climbed on the seat behind me. Neil wagged his tail and licked my ear while I smoothed out my tangled hair and tried to make sense of our rush.

  Ash got in the cab, drew a handgun from the glove compartment and tucked it in the back of his pants. I frowned. What on earth was going on? I started to ask, but he flew out of Heaven, driving the jarring road as if it was a six-lane highway. The truck rattled like a can full of dominoes and all I could do was hang on for dear life.

  His phone rang as we shot out of the gate and turned onto the much smoother country road. He answered curtly. “Report?”

  He listened as someone spoke. The lines between his eyes deepened. My stomach sank. I
had a bad feeling about this one. Ash’s contributions to the conversation were succinct and sporadic.

  “Where?” he asked. “How?” He listened some more.

  I cocked my eyebrows and mouthed, “What’s happening?”

  He raised a hand and motioned for patience, even though I had none of that to spare. Then he proceeded to test me further by listening for several long minutes.

  “Affirmative,” he said after a while. “Negative, not yet.”

  By the time he ended the one-sided conversation, he’d been on the phone for a good twenty minutes and we’d arrived at the cottage. There were three vehicles lined on my driveway, including a state-of-the-art RV that I recognized on the spot.

  “What’s the deal?” I said tentatively.

  Ash parked the truck, engaged the break and looked at me for a second too long. “Don’t be mad at me and try to roll with the punches.”

  Something huge was coming down the pipeline. “Uh-oh.”

  He bracketed my face with his hands. “Whatever happens, remember this.”

  He kissed me, and I don’t mean a peck in the lips. He kissed me in a way that said hello and goodbye, good morning, good afternoon and good-night, please understand, I’m sorry and yeah, another big fat do-try-to-roll-with-the-punches.

  For a moment, my brain cut out. I was back at the hot springs and at the brink of bliss. All of that from a kiss? Then he stopped kissing me and I went into immediate withdrawal. Before I had time to react, he handed me his phone. A text message glowed on his screen. It could’ve been copied from a first-grade reader. My stomach plummeted as I read three simple words.

  Rat in trap.

  Chapter Twelve

  Neil barked when we entered the cottage. The small sitting room was crowded. My eyes traveled from one man to the next, trying to make sense of the scene. Manny Rivera sat in his high-tech wheelchair, working on some type of cleverly attached console. Wang Ho paced the foyer’s small perimeter as if guarding the door to the cellar. Will Jackson lounged on my couch, squinting through his thick glasses and playing what looked like a high-tech video game on his laptop.

  “‘Good morning, Vietnam!’” Will shouted, startling everybody, including himself. “Well, hello, beautiful,” he shrieked like a parrot.

  Eyes bright with interest, the three men leveled their stares on me, a trained, systematic, professional assessment with traces of...what? Curiosity. Compassion? I cringed under their scrutiny. I’m sure I looked quite unhinged, standing at the threshold wearing only a giant flannel shirt and black tennis shoes.

  Ash surveyed the room. “Three-sixty?”

  “Perimeter secured.” Manny’s fingers punched the screen before him. “No hostile contact on the radar, no prospects for contact for twenty-nine—no—make that thirty clicks.”

  Ash turned to Will. “Status?”

  “Unchanged,” Will said in a perfectly normal voice. “Target is on the ground, full entourage accounted for, all devices within designated range, visual confirmed.”

  Time slowed down to a trickle as one by one, the realizations hit me. All that brainpower in the room. They hadn’t come to Copperhill just to shovel ashes and clear debris. They hadn’t spent all of their time at the ranch either. They’d scouted, secured and monitored the cottage and who knew what else.

  “Showtime,” Ash said to Wang. “Bring him up.”

  “Bring who up?” I said as Wang disappeared down the stairs.

  “Hang on.” Ash leaned over Will’s screen as both men scrutinized the streaming data. “Keep an eye on the monitoring device signal.”

  Monitoring device signal? “Could somebody please explain what’s going on?”

  Ash gestured with his stubble-darkened chin toward the foyer. Neil growled. Wang came back, leading a man wearing a hood across the sitting room. I stared, speechless. If the hood wasn’t shocking enough, the man’s hands were fastened with zip cuffs.

  Wang guided the man to sit on the chair by the fireplace. My knees were already soft as melted butter, but when Wang removed the hood from the man’s head my heart screeched to a complete stop. I took several wobbly steps backward. I sucked in the air, but not a drop of oxygen made it to my lungs. My back bumped against Ash, who propped me up with a hand to the waist.

  “Breathe.” Ash squeezed my shoulder. “Come on, take a breath.”

  It took all I had to draw in the air. I forced myself to look, to make sure I was seeing right. The man before me would have been invisible in a crowd. He wasn’t short, thin or ugly, but he wasn’t tall, fat or handsome either. His small eyes could have been brown, hazel or olive, depending on the light. His most notable trait was the way in which he wore his hair, short and spiked to cover his thinning crown. He was average in every way and yet I recognized him immediately: Agent Paul Steiner from the United States Federal Witness Protection Program, a man whose word I’d trusted once, until he failed me.

  “We caught Spiky here snooping around,” Manny said. “The son of a bitch tripped the wire like a motherfucking elephant. He pinged it so hard my ears are still ringing. Says he’s a Fed. He’s got the badge and the regulation gun, but he’s missing the suit, not to mention the warrant.”

  Steiner assessed me with a cold glare. “Look who’s back on the map,” he said flatly. “If it isn’t Rose Rojas, in the flesh.”

  Rose Rojas. The name hit me like a fist to the gut. My knees buckled and I might have stumbled to the floor if Ash hadn’t been right there to brace me against the blow.

  “Easy,” he said.

  I pointed at Steiner with a shaky finger. “Don’t call me that,” I muttered. “Don’t you ever, ever call me by that name!”

  “After all this time, I’m overjoyed to see you again.” Steiner leered. “You’ve given me the runaround for so long that I don’t know if should welcome you back into the fold or read you your Miranda rights. How about I give you the choice right now? Tell these idiots who I am. Tell them to release me immediately. Tell them the truth, Rose, that you and I are old friends.”

  Friends? I had to will my mouth to close and my brain to work. Whatever his definition of friendship was, it wasn’t mine.

  “Make it right,” Steiner said. “I don’t know who these thugs are, but it’s to their advantage and yours if they stand down, right now.”

  I blocked out Steiner’s presence in the room, grappling with the implications of everything I had just learned. Neil circled around me, interposing his body between me and the rest of the people in the room. My stomach burned with a surge of acid. The fragile panel that guarded my sanity cracked. The fury inside me flared. Oh, yes, no doubt about it, I was so upset, I couldn’t think straight. Betrayal. Ash hadn’t been straight with me. Devious, conniving, underhanded. Was he as treacherous as Red?

  Ash tried to hold my hand. “Don’t freak out on me.”

  I snatched my hand away from him. “Me? Freak out? Why?” I squeaked like an out-of-tune violin. “Because you went behind my back and treated me like an idiot? Because you ignored all of my warnings and got involved in something that doesn’t concern you? Because you brought this incompetent liar into my cottage?” My stomach squeezed with another realization. “Was this the real reason for last night? You wanted to keep me out of the loop?”

  “That’s not true and you know it.”

  “You didn’t have to stoop so low.”

  “Not another word.” The look in his eyes steeled. “We’ll talk about this later.”

  I more or less snarled, “You deceived me.”

  “You’re being paranoid.”

  “Paranoid? Me?” My nails dug into my palms. “How could it be paranoia when you’ve been keeping secrets and he’s suddenly here?”

  I couldn’t help the shudders racking my unsteady limbs. I hugged myself in an effort to st
op the shakes. My eyes fell on Steiner again. He looked from Ash to me, watching us intently. If only I could vanish him with my glare.

  “Oh, boy,” Will said in Bugs Bunny’s voice. “I think you’re in deep doo-doo.”

  “Do me a favor, kid,” Ash said. “Can you try to zip it?’”

  “On it,” Will said.

  Ash cleared his throat. “I know this is a shock to you.”

  “A shock?” I scoffed bitterly. “No, I’m used to people lying to me all the time. Ask Agent Steiner here. You and he should get along fine, because you’re both into lying and scheming.”

  Ash’s nostrils flared. His lips set in a straight line as he beamed his sanctimonious “you should know better” glare at me. I didn’t care. He’d lied to me. The look on Steiner’s face did nothing to appease my fury.

  “I never lied to you,” Steiner said. “I was only doing my job.”

  “How—” My voice broke. I took a deep breath and tried again. “How did you find me?”

  “It wasn’t easy,” Steiner said. “I’ve been looking for you since you escaped.”

  “Sure you have,” I said. “So you can try to get me killed all over again. What gave me away? Was it the letter I sent you?”

  “Letter?” Three deep, crooked lines etched his wide forehead. “What letter?”

  “The letter I sent to your office,” I said impatiently.

  “It was an envelope containing a packet of something called Red Rush,” Ash put in.

  I stared at Ash in complete disbelief. He’d been watching me closely the entire time and he knew, he somehow knew that I’d mailed out that Red Rush packet.

  “Red Rush?” Steiner said. “What the hell is that?”

  “According to our analysis,” Ash said, “Red Rush is composed of synthetic cathinones that mimic the primary psychoactive active ingredients of delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol, also known as THC.”

  “You mean like K2 or Spice?” Steiner said.

  “Meaner, stronger,” Ash said. “Red Rush appears to have magnified chemical capabilities that impact the brain along the line of LSD. It’s ten times more powerful than previous synthetic drugs and as addictive as crack and heroin. The envelope was mailed to your office a few weeks ago.”