I took on a slow, ambling sort of stroll, like I didn’t have a destination in mind. The sidewalks weren’t crowded, and that helped me keep an eye on my quarry as I paused every so often to keep my cover.
We walked for at least fifteen minutes, passing two more bars that the man ignored. It left me wondering what was so special about The Black Cat that he’d go farther than he had to for a drink. He hadn’t been in there long enough to get more than a couple drinks, even if he’d been going through them fast. Judging by the way the guy was walking, I didn’t think he’d had very much, though he could just be a guy who could hold his liquor really well.
I didn’t realize how bad the neighborhood had gotten until a barking dog startled me, and I looked up to find the snarling creature behind a chain-link fence riddled with signs reading cuidado con el perro. Beware of dog. The dog wasn’t what made me realize I might’ve taken on too much. The inch-thick bars on the windows and door of the house the dog was guarding did that for me.
I looked around, trying not to show how startled I was by my change of surroundings. The shops and bars had given way to houses at some point, but these houses didn’t look like the ones around the hotel. I’d lived in New York long enough that I knew the signs of a neighborhood I didn’t want to be in when the sun went down. This was one of them.
I clutched my purse a little more tightly, but I didn’t turn around. The woman I was portraying wouldn’t have admitted that she’d made a mistake. She’d pretend this was exactly where she intended to be.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to spend much time wondering how long this would hold up. The guy I was following turned to the right, stopping at a gate to punch a code into an electronic pad. Before I could think too much about why a place in this neighborhood would have an expensive security system, movement across the street caught my eye.
The man’s back was to me, but I didn’t need to see his face to know it was Clay.
Shit.
I took a step back, my mind racing to recall a place I could hide, but it was already too late. His head turned, and I knew the moment he’d seen me. His eyes widened, then narrowed. For a moment, I thought he’d ignore me and then yell at me later, and I was fine with that. I glared at him, silently warning him to stay where he was. Instead, he stalked toward me, not even bothering to disguise where he was going or how pissed he was. I supposed it went along with the ‘couple’ lie we’d had at the bar yesterday, but I doubted that was his reasoning.
His words came rushing back to me, the brusque note he’d left hitting me again. By the time he was close enough for that familiar scent to wash over me, I was prepared.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he hissed as he towered over me. “I specifically told you to stay away.”
I raised an eyebrow and put my hands on my hips. “I must have missed the part where you had any authority to tell me to do anything.”
He gritted his teeth. “I’m an FBI agent.”
“In a foreign country on an illegal and unsanctioned op,” I reminded him.
“This isn’t some story where you have the Constitution and police and your family to protect you.” He took another step forward, our bodies nearly touching. “I’m the only one here to protect you, and I can’t do that if you don’t listen to me.”
“I don’t need your protection,” I snapped, resisting the urge to poke him just to make my point. “I’m an adult. And not some fresh from college coed who doesn’t know the way the world really works. I’ve taken care of myself for more than a decade.”
He scoffed, cutting off whatever I’d planned to say next when a rush of anger drove the other words away.
“Don’t pretend you know anything about my life, Clay.”
He crossed his arms. “I know a lot more than you think. I know that your mom and Brianne protected you from a lot.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, they protected me from Darius and some of Mom’s other shit boyfriends. That doesn’t mean I’m naïve, or that you know so much.”
“I know that if they would’ve told you the truth, you never would’ve believed that Brianne and I had sex,” he countered.
“Oh really?” It was my turn to scoff. “What great secret about my family would’ve changed everything?”
His gaze pierced through me, a combination of anger and something else I couldn’t name. Finally, he said, “Brianne’s gay.”
Twenty-One
Tess
No. Fucking. Way.
It wasn’t that I had a hard time believing that my sister was gay, or that I had any sort of problem with it. I just didn’t want to believe that Clay had known this about Bri for more than sixteen years while I hadn’t had a clue.
The pain was worse than when I’d thought they’d slept together. There shouldn’t have been any reason for Brianne not to have told me before she’d ever told Clay. It shouldn’t have been something she’d felt she needed to protect me from. I’d known plenty of kids in DC who’d been out, and when we’d moved to Arizona, I’d had a couple friends who were gay and bisexual.
Sure, after she lied to me about sleeping with Clay, she probably didn’t feel like she could tell me about her sexuality. She would have known that I’d figure out that she’d lied. But why keep the lie up for so long? Why had she let her lie continue to come between us for years rather than admitting the truth?
I should have known.
She should have told me.
Or maybe it was something I should have seen.
Knowing it now, I could see all the little signs that I’d missed, the pieces I hadn’t put together despite how obvious they’d been at the time.
I wanted to scream at her, but she wasn’t here for me to yell at, which meant everything I was feeling had to be focused elsewhere. Fortunately, I had a perfect target right in front of me.
“Just because she didn’t feel comfortable telling me about her sexual orientation doesn’t mean everyone’s been sheltering me my whole life.”
“Come on, Tess,” Clay said, a patronizingly asshole expression on his face. “Your mom and sister protected you from your father’s abandonment, from the financial problems you had. They never told you no. And that was before you moved to Arizona. I bet things were worse there. They felt guilty for taking you away from DC and your friends. Bri felt guilty for lying.”
I poked him in the chest. Hard. “You’re a bastard, Clay. If my family has been lying to me, that’s between me and them. It’s none of your fucking business. Besides, I’ve been doing just fine on my own. We’re not exactly close.” My stomach twisted. “Which I guess you just proved. Bravo.”
I made as if to step past him, a move that would’ve taken me right in front of the gate. When he grabbed my arm, I thought it was because he felt bad about what he’d said, but one look at his face told me he was only concerned with me going off on my own.
“You can’t go walking around here alone.”
“Fuck you, Clay.”
I tried to shake his arm free, but he only tightened his grip.
“I’m serious, Tess. It’s not safe here.”
“Let me go,” I said tightly. “I’m serious.”
“I’m not letting you get yourself killed because you’re too stubborn to take my advice.”
“You don’t give advice, Clay. You give orders. I don’t work for you, and I’m sure as hell not married to you, not that I’d follow orders from a husband. I didn’t come here with you. I came here on my own, and I can do this on my own.”
Our voices had been gradually rising, and only then did I notice that we’d begun attracting attention. A handful of people now stood on their porches or in their yards, not even pretending that they weren’t watching us arguing.
“We’re going back to the hotel, and we’ll finish this conversation there,” Clay said.
I gave a hard yank, and he let go fast enough that I stumbled. My face burned as our viewers laughed. I wondered how many of them thought I was drunk. Tha
t’d be a great story to be a part of: drunk American woman makes scene in San Jose while husband tries to calm her. I could even see how I would’ve written something like that.
“You really aren’t getting the fact that you can’t tell me what to do.” I put as much venom in my voice as possible, which wasn’t hard considering how furious I was in the moment. “Fucking me doesn’t give you the right to boss me around. How about you try asking nicely, and I might consider it.”
“Dammit, Tess,” he growled. “I don’t have time for this.”
I opened my mouth to tell him that he was the one wasting time and that if he’d just stop being an ass and let the two of us work together, things would be moving along a lot faster, but all that came out was a surprised squeak as he picked me up and put me over his shoulder.
Over his fucking shoulder like he was some caveman.
“Put me down!” I just barely kept myself from yelling. We had enough attention right now, but if I started screaming, the people in that secured house were going to come take a look, and I doubted it’d be a good idea for them to know what we looked like.
“Not until we get out of sight,” he said, “and only then if you’re good.”
I seethed as he walked, staying quiet even as I mentally cursed him for treating me like a child. I’d ‘be good’ until we got back to the hotel, and then, all bets were off.
Twenty-Two
Clay
I was surprised when Tess held her tongue as I carried her down the street and flagged a cab. I was shocked when she stayed silent the entire ride back to the hotel. When I closed the door to my room, however, I saw that she’d merely been waiting for some privacy.
“What the fuck?!!”
She shoved me hard, and I took a step backward. When she came toward me again, I put up my hands, palms out as if I could calm her that way. She smacked my hands out of the way and pushed me again, using far more force than I would’ve expected from someone her size.
“Tess let’s talk calmly about this.”
My words had the opposite effect than I’d intended.
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that, Clay Kurth! You have no right to talk to me like that!”
Her eyes were strangely shiny, and it took me a minute to realize that she was struggling to hold back tears.
Shit.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
Her entire face transformed into a mask of pure fury, and she grabbed something off the dresser and threw it at me. I managed to duck, and it crashed into the wall behind me. It fell to the ground in two pieces, and I realized it was the television remote. There was another charge on my bill the FBI wouldn’t comp. Wonderful.
“I’m not crying, you asshole!”
I knew it was a bad idea to point out the tears running down her cheeks as contradicting her statement, so I didn’t. I let her rage, waiting for her to calm down enough to have a rational conversation.
“When did you turn into one of those men?” She practically spit out the last word as if it left a foul taste in her mouth. “You used to tell off any guy who treated Bri or me with anything less than respect.”
I couldn’t hold back from defending myself against that accusation. “I respect you.”
“Bullshit,” she retorted. “You’ve been treating me like a misbehaving child – well, when you’re not fucking me, anyway – and I don’t think either of those things constitutes treating me with respect.”
My jaw dropped, and my mind scrambled to find the words I needed to prove that she was wrong. I couldn’t though, because as much as I hated to admit it, she had valid points. I’d taken her virginity, then left her alone in bed with nothing more than a brief, terse note essentially telling her to stay out of my way while I did the work.
“You’re right,” I said. “I didn’t treat you with the respect I should have.”
She crossed her arms, looking slightly mollified. “Apology accepted.”
I didn’t point out that I hadn’t apologized because it was finally my turn to say my piece.
“I’m trying to protect you.”
As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I knew I should have found a better phrasing.
“Protect me?” She barked a harsh laugh, a foreign sound for her. “You just told me how my mom and sister have been sheltering me my whole life and now you expect me to say it’s okay that you’re behaving like a chauvinistic asshole because you want to protect me?”
“I’m not a chauvinist,” I protested. “I know plenty of women who could have handled themselves in that neighborhood.”
Her arms dropped to her sides, hands tightening into fists. “Like your girlfriend Rona?”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
Tess made a dismissive gesture. “I don’t give a shit if she is or if she isn’t. If you cheated, it’s on you. It’s none of my business. Just like me and what I do aren’t any of your business.”
I couldn’t win. Every word out of my mouth was wrong. I rubbed my hand over my face, exhaustion flooding my body. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“No, you don’t, do you?” she said quietly, her shoulders suddenly sagging. “You used to know though. You used to know me, and you think you can talk to me like I’m still that girl. I’m not fifteen anymore.”
“I know that.” I took a step toward her. “I wouldn’t have slept with you last night if I thought of you like a kid.”
Her laugh was brief and bitter, shiny shards of glass that cut at my heart. “Let’s be honest here, Clay. I think we owe each other that. Last night was about a seventeen-year-old boy and a fifteen-year-old girl who never got a chance to see what the two of them could have been. That’s all.”
“Don’t say that,” I demanded. “Don’t stand here in front of me and act like you didn’t want me as badly as I wanted you.”
“I wanted you,” she said, “because I thought you were the man I’d always imagined that boy would become. You’re not him though. He never would have talked to me like I was some stupid, naïve child who didn’t understand where I was or what I was doing.”
My own temper finally snapped. “You had no idea where you were or what you were doing! Did you see that neighborhood? Couldn’t you tell that wasn’t a place you should have been alone?”
“But it was okay for you to be there alone?”
“Yes!” I paced to the window and back again, not trusting myself to get any closer to her. I never wanted to hurt her, but the urge to shake some sense into her was overwhelming. “I might not have jurisdiction here, but I am an FBI agent. I know how to scout a location. I know what to look for. And I sure as hell know what not to do when tracking a member of a Colombian drug cartel!”
The color drained from her face, confirming my suspicion that she hadn’t known as much as she’d thought.
“I didn’t know.”
“Which is why you should have done what I told you to do and stayed the hell away!”
Her head snapped up, a flush flooding her cheeks as anger sparked in her eyes. “Or you could have let me go with you in the first place so that when you found out that information, I would’ve heard it too.”
That was a good point, but not one I cared to acknowledge. We weren’t talking about my choice to leave her behind, but her choice to get in over her head.
“I was assigned this case,” I said. “Which means I’m in charge and what I say goes.”
She rolled her eyes. “You were unofficially given this ‘case’ and will get in a lot of trouble if anyone finds out you’re here. Me, I’m just a regular US citizen here to find my sister who was working with a Red Care group that’s gone missing. Even if the local authorities have an issue with me snooping around, I won’t start an international incident.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I have the skills needed to find that group and your sister.”
“The same skills that led you to the exact spot I found not too long after you g
ot there? Me. By myself. The non-FBI-agent journalist who you’re so worried about fucking everything up, managed to do the same thing as Mr. Big-Shot-Fed.”
She didn’t get it at all, and she needed to. I stalked over to her, backing her into a corner without a word. She glared up at me, telling me without words that she might have her back literally against a wall, but she wasn’t going to submit.
It was that last bit that pushed me over the edge.
I grabbed her arms as I claimed her mouth with bruising force. Her body went stiff for a second, then she leaned into me, pushing her tongue between my lips with the same raw passion that was coursing through my body.
Our discussion was done. For now.
We tore at each other’s clothes without any of the patience or gentleness we’d had last night. Her nails scratched my back as she yanked my shirt over my head, and I hissed but didn’t protest. I welcomed the pain, let it give me permission to rip her shirt to get at her skin. As my hands slid around her ribcage, then up to push her bra over her breasts, she bent her head and took my skin between her teeth.
I groaned as she bit down, sending a pleasant shock of pain through me. I’d never really been into anything rough, not even with Rona who I’d always sensed would have liked me to be more that way, but now I wondered if it wasn’t a matter of preference in my case, but more about the person. As much as I’d enjoyed sex with other women, including Rona, I’d never felt this all-consuming need for another person.
Need didn’t even feel like a strong enough word to describe what I had clawing in my stomach as I took her mouth again. I pinched her nipples, opening her mouth with my tongue. Her small hands slipped between us, cupping my erection through my jeans.
“Fuck, Tess,” I growled the words against her lips, my blood rushing south. My cock thickened, stiffened, and she continued to rub me, lightly squeezing until I was panting. I curled my fingers around her wrist. “I want to come in you, not in my pants, babe.”
Finding Brianne: New Pleasures Book 4 Page 10