by Jani Kay
His hands slide down, gripping my arse and holding me steady as I shift my hips to take him inside.
"We don’t have protection in here," he murmurs, and my body lets out a desperate pang of yearning at the loss of his mouth on mine.
"I’m on the pill," I remind him. "I just want to feel you. You and nothing else," I whisper, shifting my hips so his tip sits just at my entrance. "Just you," I whisper again, focusing all of my attention on the man beneath me, and how he makes me feel.
Threading his hands into my damp brunette curls, he pulls my mouth to his again, kissing me hungrily as he drives upward and inside me. I gasp, grinding myself against him as his long, thick length fills me up.
"Holy fuck," he moans, as our hips move together, gliding in and out, up and down, rubbing so deep, my clit pressing into his pelvis with each deep thrust. "You feel so damn good," he moans, grinding himself into me as his hands move down to grip my hips and hold me to him. The pressure is enough to cause my body to release, and I moan into his mouth as my orgasm courses through me, causing my hips to twitch.
He shudders, unable to hold on as his own orgasm spills into me as he groans. Then we move together slowly, working our way back down as our kisses soften and finally stop.
Gavin lies back in the tub, and I rest my head on his chest, listening to the beating of his heart as his hands gently stoke the skin on my back. "Well, that was definitely worth waiting for," he murmurs, pressing a kiss to the top of my head.
Lifting my head to meet his eyes, I can’t help but agree. "It was wonderful. But I’m afraid I’ve just ruined the dinner you made."
Smiling, he runs his fingers down the side of my face, watching their movement before he meets my eyes. "Fuck dinner. We’ll order pizza."
"Well in that case," I tease, grinding my hips against him, smiling as I feel his cock go rock hard inside me. "I’m still feeling a little tense."
DEEP COVER: CASE 001
BY LILLIANA ANDERSON
006
After a second rather pleasant release in the bathtub, Gavin and I order pizza and drink more wine. Although, that just manages to make me so tired I’m falling asleep at the dinner table.
"Whoa, what are you doing?" I call out as Gavin lifts me from my chair with ease and carries me into my bedroom, placing me on the left side of the bed.
"I’m putting you to bed. You’re dead on your feet. Here," he says, opening the tie on the dressing gown I’ve been wearing since the bath. "Let me help you get changed then I’ll go home so you can sleep."
I don’t protest. I just move like an obliging ragdoll as he removes the terry-towelling robe from around my body and slides a cotton nightgown over my head, being careful not to touch me in any sort of sexual way. It’s all very caring. Very Gavin.
"I’ll call you tomorrow," he assures me, pressing a kiss to my forehead and flicking off the light as he leaves the room. My eyes are so heavy that I barely register the numerals on my bedside clock before I drift off to sleep at barely nine o’clock on a Saturday night.
* * *
"God, I’ve missed your smell," Drake whispers as he inhales my scent, his mouth skimming soft kisses over my bare shoulder, up my neck and along my jaw. His strong arms wrap about my middle, pulling my body against his as his hand splays over the soft part of my stomach. I feel his arousal pressing into me while his hand moves lower, stopping just before it reaches my now throbbing core.
"Touch me," I gasp, my hand reaching behind me, threading its way into his hair and pulling his mouth to mine. As our tongues clash, he groans and his hand slides lower slipping between my folds, hitting my swollen nub and causing him to groan more intensely as he feels my wetness.
I roll onto my back and the kiss deepens, my hips moving with his hand as he urges me toward climax. I moan as his fingers slip inside me, curling forward and teasing my g-spot as he stokes me expertly, just like he does every time I have this dream.
Shifting my hands, I slide from his hair to his face where I expect to feel the usual stubbled jaw but instead, I hit a beard.
A beard?
Drake never has a beard in these dreams.
I freeze, my eyes popping open as my mind becomes fully awake and my first instinct is to raise my knee, hitting him directly in his rather large and very erect groin.
"Holy fuck!" he gasps, rolling onto his back and falling onto the floor with a thud. I hit the bedside lamp and look down at him as he writhes on the floor in agony, clutching his cock while his eyes water from the pain.
"What the hell are you doing?" I demand, angrily.
"You told me to touch you," he gasps out, the pain evident in the strain of his voice.
"Well I bloody well thought I was dreaming, didn’t I?" I hiss, hanging over the edge of the bed as I watch him on the floor.
He freezes, a self-assured grin curling up the sides if his mouth. "Wait. You still dream about me?" Rolling my eyes, I reach down, and slap him upside his head. "Ow!" he yelps.
"My dreams aren’t your business anymore," I remind him in a harsh whisper. "You’ve been gone for four fucking years, Drake. You didn’t get a single message to me to let me know you were okay. You don’t get to know things about me anymore!"
Slowly, he sits up, still grimacing a little at the pain in his crotch. "I didn’t want to put you in the position of knowing anything. I didn’t want to risk your safety."
"That’s bullshit. There’s nothing that’s safe about our job and you know it. Besides, you don’t seem to have any issue with escaping under my nose then busting into my house in the middle of the night."
"My house. My wife. I’ll come in whenever I fucking want to."
"Ex house. Ex wife. You don’t even exist anymore."
"And yet, you still dream about me."
"No. I don’t."
He grins, moving toward me as if he’s a predator stalking his prey. I lean back, and he follows me, inches away from my face until I can’t go any further. I’m on my back and he’s holding himself above me, his brown eyes glinting with mischief.
"You do," he murmurs, his eyes lowering toward my lips. I move to lift my leg, ready to knee him in the balls again, but he’s swift, and shifts his weight so his legs pin mine, and his arms stay so close to my body that my hands are pinned against his chest.
He stays above, looking down at me, his eyes studying my face as I struggle with my emotions, pinned and helpless beneath him. I’m not afraid. I know he’d never hurt me. But, having him here, in the room that was once ours, on the bed that was once ours, confuses the hell out of me.
He’s supposed to be dead. I’m supposed to be moving on. And I don’t know whether I’m happy or sad that he’s here. Or perhaps I’m both. There are so many conflicting emotions going on with me right now, confusion, anger, frustration, hurt and disappointment, mixed in with desire, relief, passion, lust, and the one feeling I could never let go of, even at my lowest point, I still feel love toward him.
I turn my head to hide the tear that’s falling out of my eye and try to surreptitiously wipe it away on the bed sheets.
"I’m under surveillance," I tell him, trying my best to keep the emotion out of my voice. "They’ll probably bust in here any second."
"No. They won’t. Your ‘surveillance’ has been taken care of."
Closing my eyes, I feel a wave of hopelessness settle over me as I realise how powerless I really am in this moment. "What did you do to them?"
"Nothing bad," he whispers. "I’ve just given them some bogus orders to drive back into town. They won’t be back for at least two hours when they realise they’ve been duped. And by then, I’ll be long gone."
"Long gone," I repeat. "That’s what you do best isn’t it? You run. You take off."
"I’m sorry," he whispers, his voice so soft and gentle as he lowers his head and presses his forehead against mine. "I’m sorry that I left you, Trix. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I’ve missed you, or how many times I’ve wanted to
visit you in the night and let you know I’m all right. And I can’t tell you how much it hurts to see that you’ve moved on from me when I have never moved on from you."
My tears flow faster now, and I have no way of hiding them. "That’s not fair, Drake. I thought you were–"
"I know," he breathes. "I know. And I’m sorry. It simply wasn’t safe for me to come back here. It wasn’t safe for me to get word to you."
"That’s bullshit and you know it. You could have found a way. There is always a way."
I move my body, trying to get away from him, and he releases me so I can sit up. The first thing I do is wipe at my eyes, keeping my back to him as I compose myself.
He reaches out a hand and runs it down my back gently, sending a shiver of confusion through my body. I stand up and move away from him, leaving my room and heading to the kitchen where I take a glass from the cupboard and fill it with water, gulping it down as I try to reconcile the fact that Drake was just in my bed, touching me.
I think of Gavin. Kind, sweet Gavin, who left me tonight so I could rest, not so I could cheat on him with Drake. Although, the way Drake talks, you’d think I was cheating on him… although, technically, I suppose I am. If he’s not really dead, then that makes our marriage still valid…or does it? I’m so confused.
"Don’t," I whisper, knowing he’s standing not far behind me. I can feel the heat of his body and sense his longing on my skin. "Just tell me why you’re here."
I feel his presence withdraw as he moves over to the other side of the island bench, the small light above, highlighting each beautiful angle of his face. He’s so much tidier now than when I saw him last, his hair clean and pulled back and twisted low on the back of his head. But he has a nice looking black eye and I can tell that his nose is swollen. I long to reach out and touch him, to turn the clock back to a time before that case, when he would often be standing right where he is now. A time when he was still my Drake.
"I have information for you," he says, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a zip drive and a vial of clear liquid, placing them both on the counter between us.
I move closer, picking up the vial and looking at it intently.
"What’s this?"
"That, is the drug Le Doux is selling to the horse racing elite for ten grand a pop. It’s a peace offering that I want you to give Greer to show him I’m still willing to hold up my end of the bargain. And this," he says, pushing the thumb drive toward me, "Is for your eyes only. It’s evidence to prove that I didn’t kill my handler," he informs me.
"Evidence that you didn’t kill your handler? Why are you giving it to me? How long have you had this? You could have given this to Commander Haines, or even sent it to Greer, or Emery, they were in charge of your capture. They would have called it all off if you could prove you didn’t do it."
"I tried that."
"I don’t understand. Why haven’t they done anything then?"
"I don’t know. Either they don’t care that it wasn’t me, or they haven’t been able to see the footage yet."
"Footage? You have video proof it wasn’t you?"
He nods.
"You can’t see their faces. But you can see Agent Blackwood. You see them execute him and push him in the water. There’s also an encrypted payroll file on there that you’re going to have to get into. I haven’t wanted to trust anyone else with it. Somewhere on there, you’ll find their names, along with a bunch of other Feds who are on the take from Le Doux."
"So, you want me to deliver this evidence, and tell Greer that you aren’t guilty of what they want to charge you with?"
He presses his lips together in a slight smile. "I’m guilty of a hell of a lot of things, Trix. But killing my handler isn’t one of them. I’m giving you information to help weed out the people who drove me into this life, who took away my choices and drove me away from you."
"And then what?"
"And then maybe you’ll trust me enough so we can help each other to clean up a whole lot of mess in this world."
I reach out and pick up the zip drive and turn it around in my fingers, studying it as I think about what it might contain, proof that Drake was innocent, a list of agents who are secretly working against us all. "Ok," I say, lifting my head to tell him that I’ll take the evidence in, but when I look up, my mouth open and ready to speak, Drake is already gone.
I’m really going to have to figure out how the hell he does that…
DEEP COVER: CASE 001
BY LILLIANA ANDERSON
007
I’m still standing in my kitchen when Gabby and Emery burst through the front door as if they own the place.
"Where is he?" Emery demands, and he stalks toward me while Gabby moves about the house, checking through each of the rooms and reporting via the radio that Drake isn’t here.
"Gone," I state, opening the kitchen junk drawer where I placed the thumb drive, and the vial, when Drake had gone. I remove the vial, but close it with the drive still in there for me to look at later.
"You just let him go again?" Emery asks, shaking his head in disbelief. "Of course you did."
"I didn’t ‘let’ him do anything. And how the hell am I, a woman of five foot-nine, supposed to subdue a man the size of Drake?"
"You could have figured out something, surely. He used to be your husband," he comments, giving me a look that tells me exactly what he thought I should have done.
"I’m not going to sleep with a man I haven’t seen for four years just to close your case for you, Agent Emery. And don’t ever insinuate something like that to me again or I’ll have you written up. Is that understood?"
"Fine," he states, glancing between me, and Gabby, who is also giving him an unimpressed look.
"I think you’ve said enough, Emery. I’ll take it from here," she says, before turning toward me. "Tell us what happened. Are you okay? Did he hurt you in any way?"
"No, he didn’t hurt me. I’m fine. He just said that he wanted Greer to know that he would still uphold his end of the bargain, and that this vial," I hold it up to show them, "is a peace offering of sorts. It’s the drug Le Doux is fencing. We can get the lab to look at it and work out exactly what’s in it."
Emery snatches it from my fingers and squints into the glass vial as he inspects it in the light. "And possibly work out where it’s coming from," he muses. It’s the first time I’ve heard him speak when his voice wasn’t laced with disdain. He hands the vial to Gabby.
"Well, at least something decent has come out of this mess. I’m sure the commander will want a full report in the morning. But until then, Birdwood and I will get this to the lab. Good work, Samuels," he says, heading straight for the door, surprising me with his sudden praise.
"I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll talk properly," Gabby says, giving my arm a quick squeeze before she follows Emery out and assures me the agents outside my house are under strict orders that they aren’t to be called away for anything.
As soon as I hear them drive away, I go back to the drawer and pull out the drive, plugging it into my laptop and clicking on the video.
Immediately, CCTV footage, time stamped with the date and time, pops up on my screen. In it, I see two figures with Drake’s handler, Eric Blackwood. Their backs are to the camera, but you can see Blackwood on his knees between them, his hands tied behind his back as he shakes his head at something they’re saying. He looks petrified.
There is no sound, and the footage is stilted from the time lapse, but you see one of the figures move and stand beside Blackwood, their arm extended as they press a gun against his head.
Pausing, I zoom in the image, hoping to make out the facial features from their side profile, but it’s far too blurry without some specialist enhancement. I press play, knowing what is about to happen but feeling a sick need to watch anyway. A flash of light. The drop of the body. The rough kick that pushes the body into the water. And then, it ends. Poor Eric.
I stare at the static on my screen
for an unnatural amount of time, wondering exactly who those people are who took out Agent Blackwood. There was no way either of them were Drake, their stature was far too small to be hulk of the man that is Drake Jefferson. And I feel as though I need some help on this to clear up the images and possibly be able to make out at least one of their faces, despite Drake telling me not to trust anyone with this.
Then, closing the video, I click on the other file, prepared to work on cracking the encryption. Now, more than ever, I want those names.
DEEP COVER: CASE 001
BY LILLIANA ANDERSON
008
My phone begins to sing out its morning alarm, signalling that it’s time to wake up and get ready for work. But I haven’t been back to bed. I’m running on only a couple of hours sleep as I try to get through this encryption to see the names on the payroll file. But it’s one of the hardest encryptions I’ve ever had to crack. Someone didn’t want anyone getting into this file.
Standing up, I run my hands over my face then around to the back of my neck, pressing my fingers into the stiff muscles as I roll my head back and hear an audible crack as my vertebrae attempt to return to their original position. I pick up my laptop and hide it in my wardrobe before grabbing some clothes and taking a quick shower to freshen up for work.
I make double strength coffee and drink down two cups, before grabbing a pop tart out of the packet and eating it without toasting it as I fill my travel mug with yet another coffee and head to my car.
When I make it to site seventeen and go through the usual security checks to get on site, I enter the meeting room and find Emery and Gabby surrounded by archive boxes and files. They’re everywhere.
"What the hell happened in here?" I ask, looking around at the mess.
"Commander Greer has a meeting with the commissioner as soon as the results of that vial are in. They’re considering working with Drake if he can provide real information on the Le Doux case. So we’re going over all the information on file to make sure we’re ready to go."