“Hang on,” she said, as she smiled into his eyes, “we can check. Because I think I've got a big fat man in one of my ‘massively huge’ suitcases.”
He laughed again as he kissed her, shifting further so that she was on top of him. “This,” he said as she sat up, straddling him, pushing her hair from her face, her bare breasts full, her soft skin beautiful in the dim glow of the light he'd left burning on his desk, “I like.”
She smiled down at him, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she reached between them to unfasten his pants. “Bet I can make you like it even more.”
He shook his head. “It'd be pretty stupid to bet against that.”
She freed him from his jeans and his shorts, her hands soft and cool against his stomach. “This right here is nice,” she said, touching the muscles in his abdomen, “the way it kind of sweeps down and leads the eye right”—she wrapped her fingers around him—“here.”
Decker reached for her, too, to unzip her jeans, but she shifted back.
“ Uh-uh,” she said as she caressed him. “Nope. I'm in charge.” Somehow she managed to hide her smile as she gazed coolly down at him. “No talking, no touching. I'll tell you what I want you to do, and you'll do it— is that clear? Nod. Once.”
Okay. Moment of truth. There was sex in the office and then there was sex in the office. And yet, Deck found himself trapped by her gaze and nodding. Once.
“No smiling,” Tracy said as she continued to stroke him, harder now, and suddenly, it wasn't all that difficult to not smile.
It was hard, however, not to touch her. He wanted those jeans off, wanted her breasts in his hands, her mouth on his mouth, his dick buried inside of her.
But she had other plans.
“Hands behind your head,” she ordered. “Like this…” She let go of him to show him, putting her arms up, elbows bent, hands clasped.
He wanted to ask her to stay that way so he could get his camera because Jesus. Instead, he silently did the same, and if his injured arm hurt, he didn't feel it. It was inconsequential, a mere inconvenience. He was hyper-aware, though, that he was already breathing hard, his bare chest rising and falling with each breath he took.
She nodded her approval, taking hold of him again, but loosely, with only one hand this time, as she reached out with her other and—lightly— ran her fingers down the smooth underside of his upraised arm, where the nature of his position made his bicep bulge. “Very nice.” She ran her fingers back up the other way. “I like this.”
It took everything he had in him not to move because what she was doing felt unbelievably, erotically good. Try as he might, he couldn't keep his hips from tightening, couldn't stop himself from pushing himself more fully into her hand.
She held his gaze as she tightened her grip on him, but then, again, she let him go.
She leaned forward, whispering, “Don't move,” and then she kissed him, her lips gentle against his mouth.
He had to fight not to respond as she licked him, her tongue warm and sweet—and gone way too soon.
She kissed his chin, his neck, his chest—swiftly licking the nipple above his pounding heart. But then she went back up to his arm and kissed the same expanse that she'd touched so lightly—“Mmm”—humming her approval.
She moved back to his other nipple, then trailed kisses down his stomach. He knew what was coming, he knew it with a certainty that redefined his faith in God, and yet it still damn near killed him when her mouth landed on him, when she kissed him and licked him and sucked him— but he couldn't touch her, couldn't speak, couldn't move.
All he could do was watch. She knew his vantage point was a particularly good one, because she made sure to give him plenty of eye contact. Or maybe she was just policing him. Either way, it worked for him. Completely.
All of his muscles were tight and tense as he held himself still, as she used her hand to add to the pleasure she was giving him with her mouth. He could feel her laughing, the vibration adding to the sensation of her lips, her tongue, and he had to close his eyes, because it was too much, too good, no, it was too fucking great—and he was going to …
“Don't move,” she said again. “Don't. Move.”
Jesus, he had to … He needed … Colors flashed behind his eyelids as he clenched every muscle in his body even more tightly, as he gritted his teeth and tried to silence the moan, the growl that he could feel building in the back of his throat.
“Don't move,” she ordered him again. “Just come. Now.”
And Decker let go.
He let go, and all that there was, was yes.
It roared through him, consumed him, incinerated him. He was everything and nothing, light and darkness. The world ended and kept turning. Time stopped and rushed forward. Life had meaning and he was both here and gone. Exploding, cartwheeling, shattering, obliterating, for the first time in an eternity, Decker truly, completely, totally let himself go.
He didn't know how long it was that he hung, suspended, in that place of sheer pleasure. He didn't know how long it was that he lay there, gasping, still not moving, his hands still up behind his head—he was nothing if not a rule follower. But he slowly became aware of his surroundings, of Tracy's hair fanned out across his chest, the weight of her head on his stomach as she, too, caught her breath.
He wanted to slow it all down, to hold on to it, to make it last, because it was sex to the nth—sex unlike any sex he'd ever had, ever. But it was already over. Already done.
And he recognized, immediately, that part of what had made it so great was that he'd stopped thinking. He hadn't brought anything with him—no baggage, no analysis, no sense of what he should or shouldn't be feeling.
It was just him and Tracy. And pleasure the likes of which he would never have believed possible.
And he already, absolutely, couldn't wait until they did it again.
She lifted her head then, her hair sliding across his stomach as she sat back up, still straddling him, still bare-breasted, still breathtakingly beautiful.
And in love with him.
She'd told him so.
“You have my permission to smile,” she said now, still in that stern voice.
He did just that, laughing a little, as he held her gaze. “What I really want,” he whispered, “is permission to do that to you.”
The look on her face was beautiful, but as she opened her mouth to answer him, someone knocked on his door.
She froze, and Decker quickly sat up, covering her with the blanket, just in case the lock didn't hold.
“Deck?” It was Lindsey out there. She knocked again. “I'm really sorry to wake you, sir, but there's been a clusterfuck of some magnitude, and we need you out here, right away.”
Decker was furious. Tracy could tell because he got very, very quiet. “Why wasn't I told about this?”
His T-shirt was also on inside out. She hoped for his sake that no one else had noticed that, but… No such luck. Jo Heissman was sitting at the conference table, looking from Decker to Tracy and back, with a curiously bland expression on her face.
Lindsey, meanwhile, stood her ground against Deck's wrath, chin out. “Because Tom was handling it. He is still the boss here. And he told me I should let you sleep.”
Complications had developed from the knife wound Dave had gotten in Boston. Apparently, an infection had set in, and he'd passed out at the hotel while Tom Paoletti was bringing his family here to the office, for safety.
It made Tracy want to look beneath Deck's bandage, to check that bullet wound in his arm.
To be honest, she hadn't even known Kelly and Charlie Paoletti were here—they must've arrived while she and Deck were sleeping, et cetera. Apparently, they'd already left, rushing over to the hospital to be with Tom.
Who had been shot at by a sniper on the street outside the hotel—at about the same time SEAL Chief Ken Karmody had taken two bullets to the chest, and one to the leg in the elevator, which had stopped on the eighth floor.
Tom had leaned over to pick up his sat phone from the floor of his car, and a bullet that otherwise would have killed him instantly merely left a two-inch furrow just behind his left ear. It hadn't knocked him unconscious—not quite. But it had bled heavily and created quite a scene as he'd staggered into the hotel, weapon drawn.
The elevator in the lobby had opened to reveal Karmody, critically wounded. Sophia had been in that elevator, too, unwounded but unconscious.
Dave Malkoff was nowhere to be found.
“Where's Sophia now?” Decker asked tersely.
“Lopez and Cosmo are bringing her back from the hospital,” Lindsey reported.
“They're bringing her here,” Decker clarified.
“Yes, sir. They should arrive soon. They drove Kelly and Charlie over there to be with Tom. The FBI has already arranged for guards to be placed on both the chief and Tom. Everyone agreed that it would be best if Cosmo and Lopez got Sophia here immediately.”
Ken was currently in surgery, as doctors raced to repair the damage done by bullets at close range. No one had said as much, but Tracy knew from the extent of his injuries that it would be a miracle if he survived. His wife, Savannah von Hopf, of the van Hopfs, had chartered a jet out of New York and was flying in.
Tracy had always been jealous of Savannah, who worked as a high-powered attorney despite having bushels of inherited money, but she didn't even remotely envy the other woman now.
Tom, meanwhile, was in the hospital, because an X-ray had revealed a hairline skull fracture. Such injuries could result in bleeding in the brain, and he was undergoing the first of what would no doubt be a night of observation and cat scans.
Tracy made a note in the office calendar to send flowers to the nurses who were going to have to live through that. Knowing Tom, he was going to be pissed and insisting he get back to work. Kelly was going to have to get out the whips and chains, and okay. Suddenly that seemingly casual expression held a whole new meaning.
“Alyssa's on her way,” Lindsey reported to Decker. She looked at her watch. “ETA ten minutes.”
Decker nodded. When Alyssa arrived, as company XO, she'd be in charge. Until then, he was in command. “I need Commander Koehl on the line, and I need him now.”
Tracy stood up. “I can do that.”
Deck shook his head. “No,” he said. “This is going to need finessing. Lindsey …”
“I'm on it.” Lindsey vanished down the hall.
He realized how negative his words had sounded. “I didn't mean—”
“I know,” Tracy reassured him. Lindsey's husband Mark was on Koehl's SEAL team. “She'll get through to him before I will. Jo and I'll go to the lobby and wait for Sophia. I'll let you know as soon as she arrives.”
He nodded. And beneath his layers of grim, beneath his anger, Tracy could see an echo of all the intimacies they'd shared over the past few days. And beneath that, she could see his fear for Dave.
“We'll find him,” she told him quietly. “We'll get him back.”
He nodded as he looked into her eyes, but then he glanced at Jo Heiss-man, who was sitting there, pretending not to listen.
He gestured with his head, and Tracy followed him out into the hall.
“You really have that much faith that that Secret thing works?” he asked her.
“No,” she said, touching his hand down where no one could see them. “But I have that much faith in you.”
He didn't say anything, but he held onto her, linking just one of his fingers with one of hers, so she added, “In case you don't have time to, I don't know, say good-bye or… In case you have to leave quickly? I'm just going to say it now. Be as careful as you can, without getting too inside your head about being careful. I'll be here when you get back.”
She felt tears start to form in her eyes, and she blinked, hard, because getting all weepy would only undermine her message.
“Lew Koehl on line one,” Lindsey shouted from her office. “Jackpot! Am I great, or am I the greatest?”
Deck dropped Tracy's hand and was already moving.
She chased him down the hall. “Sir.”
It felt weird calling him that, and indeed, he shot her a look.
“Chief,” she corrected herself. She lowered her voice. “You really need to fix your shirt.”
He looked down. “Ah, shit.”
“No one noticed,” she said, following him to his office door. “Well, except me and Jo. And Lindsey.”
He laughed as he went inside. “Only everyone in the room.” He picked up his phone, nodding a dismissal. “Commander. I'm sorry to bother you, sir, but our situation's escalated. …”
Tracy closed his office door and headed back to the conference room, where Jo had already gathered up her things.
And okay. This was going to be awkward.
Jo knew it, too. It was there in her Mona Lisa therapist smile.
So Tracy went point-blank as she led the way down the hall. “Peter Olivetti. Michael Peterson. Did he call you my princess, too?”
“Queen,” Jo said. “My Queen, or My Liege. My Lady. In retrospect, it's astonishingly unappealing. Like a renaissance fair gone horribly wrong.”
“He smelled good,” Tracy said. “And he listened.”
“He did do that,” Jo agreed. “All that charisma, all of his focus…” She paused. “And then there was the fact that he looked the way he looked.”
Tracy nodded as she turned on one of the standing lamps in the Trouble-shooters lobby. At the time, Michael had seemed unbelievably well put together. Of course, that was before she'd seen Decker naked. “I wonder if anything he said was true. I mean, I know he doesn't really teach first grade. Although what does that say about me, that I found that so attractive?”
Jo sat down on the leather sofa where she'd been camped out earlier. “It says that you like the idea of a man who has a strong calling—a connection to his work. Because, let's face it. People, particularly men, don't become teachers for the money. You're also of an age where you're seeking to fulfill your biological imperative, so a man who likes children would be particularly attractive to you. There's nothing wrong with that.” She paused. “In the same way, it makes sense that you'd be drawn to someone older, someone you perceive to be steady. Someone you might think is ready to settle down. Or maybe even just settle.”
She was talking now about Decker. “No,” Tracy said firmly. “No, thank you. I'm definitely not interested in your opinion about—”
“He's an incredibly complicated man.”
“And one who would be understandably upset to find anyone indulging in office gossip about him,” Tracy countered, even though she'd done it herself in the past.
“I'm merely offering advice,” Jo said. “Things have changed radically in the past hour. You do know it's possible that Dave Malkoff will be recovered, not rescued.”
A living person was rescued, a dead body was recovered. As awful as it seemed, it was certainly a possibility. At this point, they didn't even know if Dave was still alive.
“If Dave is dead,” Jo pointed out, “Lawrence Decker's connection to Sophia Ghaffari—”
“Do you honestly think,” Tracy asked emphatically, “that if Dave is dead, I'll be concerned with more than the awful, dreadful, horrible fact that Dave is dead?”
“Oh, God, no …”
Tracy looked up to see Sophia, her face totally white, and—dear Lord—her clothes stained with the dark red of drying blood, standing by the main entrance. It was obvious that she'd just come in and had heard only the end of Tracy's sentence, and even though Tracy said, “No!” she crumpled to the floor.
Lopez was there, thank goodness, and he caught Sophia and lowered her to the carpeting. He, too, looked devastated. “Dr. Malkoff is dead?” he asked.
“No,” Tracy said again, “Well, we don't know. I was just… Shoot! Decker!” She forsook the intercom system and went with what was the standard here at Troubleshooters Incorporated—the interoffice bellow. �
��Lindsey! Deck! We need you in the lobby, now!”
Jules arrived to find the Troubleshooters office in an uproar.
Decker was channeling his inner caveman as he moved Sophia in a he-man cradle carry from the floor to the lobby sofa.
It was hard to tell with everyone talking at once, but apparently Tracy had told Sophia that Dave was dead, when in fact Dave's status remained only missing.
Tracy looked stricken—it was clear that, whatever she'd told Sophia, her intent had not been even remotely malicious.
But the emotional energy that got consumed was enormous as Sophia finally roused and, finding out the truth, burst into tears of relief. After more noise and apologies all around, Lindsey helped her up and into the locker room, because—just to make everything even more horrible— Sophia was still dressed in the clothes she'd been wearing when Navy SEAL Chief Ken Karmody had been gunned down in that hotel elevator.
Tracy stood, as if to help Lindsey with Sophia, but Decker stopped her. “Don't. You've done enough.”
To Jules's surprise, the receptionist got in his face. “That's not fair. She walked in on a what-if conversation I was having with Dr. Heissman, and she completely misunderstood. She's my friend, Deck. May I please go and help her find something to change into? She's not going to fit into anything Lindsey has in her locker, and I've got two suitcases full of clothes.”
Decker nodded. “Go,” he said. It was only then that he turned to Jules.
“Hey, Deck,” Jules said. “How's it going?”
“Where the fuck is Alyssa?” Decker was apparently eager to relinquish command.
“She and Sam are outside, doing a perimeter check with Cosmo and Silverman,” Jules reported. They were looking, in particular, at the security cameras that surrounded the building, because Lopez believed the system had been compromised. They'd brought in an expert to look at it—Tess—but Jules wasn't going to mention that here, with all the extra ears in the lobby. “Dr. Heissman, nice to see you, ma'am.” He nodded at the woman, then turned back to Deck. “Do we have a description yet, of the men in the elevator?”
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