by E. J. Mellow
Her eyes flash once, a hot storm—my favorite—before she straightens and turns away.
This may be more fun than hating each other, I think.
“We have to move fast.” Ploom’s voice brings me back to the room. “There’s a lot to plan and a lot to make sure doesn’t go to shit. The Mexican government is giving us free rein on this as long as we keep it clean, quiet, and they can share the credit of the Oculto’s downfall. Once Axel and I debrief the board, we’ll conference back in for our larger meeting with our full unit. We have to make sure we remember our client’s main ask on this one.” Ploom’s thinning brown hair looks thinner under the fluorescent lighting of his office. “The Oculto have supplied drugs to North and South America for over fifty years, are responsible for countless deaths from territory wars and supplying armament to low-tiered gangs, not to mention the endless list of other sins. So while we’re to retrieve a sampling of his serum, when it comes to Mendoza, it is not a capture. It’s a termination.”
I glance to Nashville, who sits across the table, and look for any sign of what she’s thinking in this moment, but there’s nothing but her blank mask. We knew this was coming but have been dancing around discussing it. Me not wanting to blow apart the rare openness she’s been showing, and her…well, she probably has a list a mile long of excuses, rightfully so. I can’t fathom what it’s like to be in her position, but I’m determined to help her in any way I can.
I just hope she’ll let me.
“This shouldn’t be too difficult,” Axel adds. “Considering we have two of the best agents in the business on this.”
He grins to Nashville, and my lips curl down. Easy, buddy.
“We’ll need proof, however,” he goes on. “And need to decide who will be acting as point.”
I’m about to answer that I’ll be carrying out the K-order, when Nashville’s words cut me off.
“It’ll be me,” she says, her face cold marble. “I’ll kill Mendoza.”
54
Carter
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
PUEBLA CITY, MEXICO: 2130 HOURS
I can hear Nashville’s soft voice talking to someone on the phone as I walk toward her room in the sleeping quarters of COA’s satellite office. It’s been two days since our briefing with our full unit, and we are back in Puebla City, finalizing details before we hit Mendoza’s bunker tomorrow. Nashville got word to Ramie through the bartender at Búho Oculto that she’s ready to meet Mendoza and discuss their future. She didn’t tell him an exact date, only that she’ll show up when she can find a moment to get away. If there were any more specifics, it would come across as too planned, suspicious, and this way we can ensure Mendoza will be there waiting when we go in.
From studying the Echo Mapper, we’ve found only two other ways to enter his underground lair besides the main docking gate, and we’ve planned, and then planned some more. Discussing every possibility, every second of what’s to go down and how I’ll avoid the cameras they have planted around the meadowland while she enters through the main gate. Nashville and I have organized with our team and without, our own checklist of what must happen just as important, if not more. Nothing can go wrong, nothing, and for the first time in a long time, I feel nervous before an assignment.
This of course has nothing to do with the actual mission but everything to do with what I now have riding on it, who I have. Glancing down either side of the sterile hallway, finding it just as empty as when I first stepped onto this floor, I stare back at Nashville’s door. We’re not playing married couple anymore and have been given separate rooms. Little do the agencies know I no longer want a separate room.
“Thank you for gathering that.” I can hear Nashville’s muffled voice through the dark wood door. “Yes, I know. It’s a lot, but this is still really helpful. We can do more when I get home.”
Home.
She must be talking to Ceci.
There’s a beat of silence before, “I have to go though. Someone’s waiting for me.”
Shit. Stupid spidey senses.
I grip the take-out bag in my hand tighter as her door swings open, revealing Nashville in pajamas. Pajamas. I resist a groan as my skin heats, taking in her little shorts and thermal long-sleeve shirt, her red hair loose around her shoulders. The room behind her is lit in a soft orange glow, and I glance in to see there’s a room-service tray on her king-sized bed.
Well, shit again.
“I thought you might want to have dinner with me.” I hold up the bag. “But I can see you already—”
She grabs the takeout, peering inside. “Is this really from Cinco Torres?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“This is a three-Michelin-starred restaurant,” she says, stepping back into her room, allowing me to follow before closing the door with a click.
“It is.” I watch her move to her bed, pushing away the old trays before sitting to tear open the new food.
“They don’t do takeout.”
I shrug. “They did for me.”
“Oh yeah?” She raises a brow in my direction. “And how many waitresses did you have to sleep with for that to happen?”
“Just the seven.” I flash her a crooked grin as I come to sit beside her, watching as she lays out our meal on her sheets. “You’re really still hungry?”
“The food here sucks.” She waves a hand at her empty trays. “Plus, I can’t turn this down.”
“I hope you feel the same way about the other thing I’ll be propositioning you for later.”
Her blue gaze slides over to meet mine as she bites into a forkful of chicken. “Well,” she says after she swallows. “That all depends on how you ask.”
She cleans a bit of sauce from her lip with her tongue, and my jeans are suddenly too tight, my white T-shirt too layered.
“It won’t be nicely,” I say, my voice gruff.
“Good.” Her smile is a whip of trouble. “I’ve never been able to handle nice.”
The air between us grows thick, as it always does, while my skin hums with every molecule that brushes up against it. We’ve kept our distance while in public, kept up our personas of two operatives who hate each other, and my strength to keep my hands to myself has worn thin, especially as I find Nashville looking at me like I’m the new meal, looking at me like that while in pajamas.
Our food never stood a chance.
One second we’re still. The next we’re tumbling from the bed to the carpet as we pounce on each other. I hear a tearing as my shirt is ripped from me, Nashville losing no time to get to my skin underneath. She bites her way down my chest to my stomach, nails raking the whole way, and I groan, her body rubbing against my most important part. Hooking my hands under her arms, I pull her up before twirling her below, palming her full breasts as I claim her lips with my own. The coconut of her skin, in her hair, rocks my equilibrium as I breathe, wanting to devour every inch, feeling her muscular smooth thighs wrap around my waist, demanding me to move against her.
God, she’s glorious. So wild and strong and…everything.
I curse and drop my head into the crook of her neck.
“What?” she pants.
“I didn’t bring a condom.”
“Bedside table,” she mumbles as she licks the edge of my ear.
“Why, Nashville.” I lean up with a grin, taking in her red hair that’s fanned around her delicate face, blue eyes darkened to twilight. “I hope you didn’t buy those for me?”
“If your name’s Rodrigo and mine’s Consuela, then yes.”
I let out a gasp. “You’ve been reading my book?”
“If you get that condom, maybe I’ll reenact my favorite scene.”
She doesn’t have to tell me twice. I’m up before I’m back beside her, but then she’s standing and pushing me into a nearby armchair. I go down willingly, not removing my eyes from her as she slips out of her shirt, baring her perfect breasts, so round and heavy, the nipples little strawberry kisses, and my mouth waters.
“Come here.”
But she doesn’t move, merely gives me a Persephone-slinking-from-Hades grin and slowly pushes her shorts down and then off. She stands there, under the warm glow of the room, naked, confident, her skin a rosy blush under the lights, her apricot hair a shock of delicious color as it spills around her shoulders.
She couldn’t look any more like a goddess if she tried.
This time I don’t ask as I lean forward and pull her to me. Her legs straddle mine, and I run my hands up her thighs to her backside before grabbing both her wrists and bringing them behind her with a tug. Her breasts jut forward, just where I want them, and I lick and taste and lay claim to each one. She moans under my attention, trying to twist free, but I merely grip tighter with one hand while bringing the other to unbuckle my jeans. Each of her excited pants brings her chest closer, and I feel like I’m already ready to explode as I roll on the condom, positioning her over me.
Her stormy blue eyes gaze down, watching, waiting, a lightning strike in the distant sky, and as I push into her we both let out sighs of relief. We’re two addicts getting our fix, and as I let go of Nashville’s hands, she brings them to my shoulders and consumes me, rides me with a passion that’s dizzying to witness. She stopped my pulse the moment I saw her across the room at the gala and completely lays waste to me now.
I should be terrified, running and getting as far away from this woman as I can, for she vibrates with future heartache. No man can claim this creature, but I understand this and would never try. I merely want to hunt beside her, be gifted the chance to lie in her bed and soak in the endless energy that radiates around her. I want her presence as well as her heart, and as I realize this, with her looming above me, my hands tighten around her waist, following her movements up and down, up and down, a shudder running the length of me. My heart has regrown, been recovered from where it was buried six feet under, and despite clutching it tightly to my chest, a protective wrapping, I’ve found a person I want to give a part of it to.
The question is, will she break off a piece of her own in return?
55
Nashville
We sit cross-legged on my bed, draped in our separate bathrobes, finally digging into the food Carter brought. Our previous activity built up a ravenous appetite for me to eat, and I enjoy the quiet of the moment. That is, until he ruins it.
“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Carter asks, handing me a piece of bread.
I take it and dip into the leftover sauce on his plate. “Of course.”
A beat of silence.
“Nashville.”
He doesn’t call me 3 anymore.
“Nashville, look at me.”
“I’m good.” I turn to pick through the dessert bag, but his hand curling around my wrist stops me.
This time I don’t fight my eyes as they meet his green gaze. His dark hair is mussed, and his sharp jaw is shadowed with the beginning of scruff. “I said I’m good,” I repeat, twisting out of his grip. “We’ve gone over everything a hundred times. I’ve taken the explosives we need from the Weapons Depot, we’re packed to the gills with KO and TML spray, and I know when to expect—”
“That’s not what I’m asking about.”
“Of course you aren’t.” I return to perusing through the desserts, selecting a brownie.
We haven’t discussed what I volunteered to do, and this has been intentional on my part. The less I have think about it, the better. I need to remain switched off, detached. He’s not a person, merely a name with a check-box next to it.
“I think we should talk about this.”
Carter ignores my blatant body language that says I don’t.
“He’s your fath—”
“He’s a murderous drug lord.” I fist my hand in my lap. “He is not the man that was my father.”
Was, not is.
Is, is Manuel Mendoza. Was, was the man I lost when my mother ran.
Carter’s angular features search mine. “Yes, but still. If you need me to—”
“I don’t.”
Tense silence suffocates the room.
“Don’t take this the wrong way.” His voice becomes carefully flat. “But I’m having a bit of trouble agreeing that you should be the one to do this. There will be a tomorrow for you after it’s done.”
I understand. A tomorrow that I’ll have to live with, have to always remember.
Consequences for actions.
But isn’t that always the case?
The weight of it shouldn’t change because the person has. I wouldn’t be the best at my job if it did. Because that would mean he’d have taken away another thing from my life, the one thing that I built without him, without them, leaving me with nothing left to control, to have all my own.
“And there will be a tomorrow for you too,” I say, wiping my hands on a napkin.
“Yes.” Carter nods. “But I’m not sacrificing nearly as much.”
“And who says I am? To sacrifice you have to be losing something. My father has been gone for the past twenty years.”
“Gone is different from dead.”
“Not to me.”
If I say it, think it enough, it will be true.
“Okay…” He says after a moment. “But know that I’m here, Nashville. As difficult as that is for you to accept, I’m here, and though I know you never need me to, I can help. I want to,” he adds, tipping his head so I look at him again.
An earlier me would have sneered at that, told him to take his disconcerting words and shove them up his bum, but as I hold Carter’s gaze, seeing nothing but genuine truth, respect, and concern, I find myself swallowing back my cutting remarks.
I know what it’s like to want to protect someone. All too well. And if the roles were reversed, I’d burn down the world before I allowed someone to hurt him.
This realization has me blinking away from Carter’s stare, has my heart pulsing a beat faster. Oh God. This can’t be happening. Not now. Not before what we’re about to do.
With a swallow, I manage to suppress acknowledging the feelings that are suddenly rushing through my veins, a dam set free, and instead force myself to say something a bit simpler but no less powerful. “Thank you.”
Thank you for not doubting my strength while extending your own.
Carter’s responding smile is soft, a gentle press to the corner of his mouth. “Of course.”
There will be a tomorrow for you. Carter’s earlier words spin a new meaning in my head, my chest tightening with these unfamiliar emotions as, perhaps for the first time in my life, I find myself hoping there won’t be one only for me, but for us.
56
3
THE OCULTO COMPOUND
MEXICO: 1105 HOURS
Ramie greets me with the same six guards as my first visit when I walk into the mouth of the Oculto’s underground bunker. Dressed in black military fatigues, he matches the soldiers down to their boots, except where they have MK 16s, he has a standard handgun, Beretta M9, strapped to his thigh. My senses triple in awareness as I glance around, trying to maintain my heart’s steady rhythm.
Why would you need this? Why now?
I’m in my unassuming casual clothes, with no weapons in sight—dark jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved charcoal shirt that feels and looks like cotton, but is more protective than Kevlar.
Like some ancient mechanical animal lying down, the entrance behind me locks back into place, eliciting a metal groan as it cuts off the sun and the soft scent of vanilla that chased me in from the outside. The ground above now resumes its undisturbed visual of a rolling meadowland as nothing but white floodlights, cement walls, and armed cartel stand around me below.
“Check her mouth too,” Ramie says in Spanish as a few move in for a frisk. The smell of his A+ abilities swirl around him like shimmering dust, and with his arms crossed over his large chest, his dark gaze watches me like I’m a thief entering a royal wedding.
“You could always give me a ki
ss and check it yourself.” I slide him a sharpened grin, pleased as the guard who stepped up to do the job hesitates at my words, glancing back to his prince.
“Cute,” Ramie says. “But you wouldn’t remember how to put one foot in front of the other after I did something like that, and then what good would you be? Come on.” He turns once the inspection’s done, not allowing me a response.
Passing the black SUVs parked in the tunnel, we enter the large service elevator in the back, following the same path as before. Down to level five, descending the metal stairs from the wraparound balcony to the main floor. The scientists barely turn my way as they rush to and from their tables, their white lab coats fluttering as they place their materials into metal storage containers, packing up. My nerves buzz as my gaze swings to the cells along the wall. All remain closed except one.
“Where’s Carlos?” I ask Ramie, who’s kept step beside me.
“Not here.”
“Where’d he—”
“It doesn’t concern you.”
I raise my brows. “Since I’m about to join you, I think it does.”
Ramie’s footsteps halt, causing our circle of guards to stop as well. The energy that surrounds him shifts from bored, closed off, to a spark of annoyance.
“Let’s get something straight,” he says, his shoulders seeming to grow wider, his shadow larger, as he pins me with his brown gaze, a gorilla baring his chest. “You might be his daughter by birth, but I am his son by choice.”
A flare of heat erupts in my chest, a lashing of jealousy that rocks me back, confused.
“I’ve been with him and built this by his side.” Ramie’s voice is a dark storm. “I will not have you waltzing in here thinking you’re the new little princess. I don’t trust you. He doesn’t trust you, despite what he might say. And before you get any privileges, you will need to prove yourself to me. You might have a DNA test linking him to you, but I have his loyalty.”