by J. D. Glass
John considered it part of his mission to find them, to help them, and to turn them into a force to be reckoned with, before the Company, before the cabal that truly ruled the world, did.
He had discovered perhaps a few over a hundred of them, and thanks to the Internet and the ideations, the gestalt produced by this generation, had managed to contact thirty of them directly, and another thirty or so indirectly.
But it was Charli who intrigued him most, the one who seemed to fit every last criterion, and so he did what he did best: he gathered intelligence that would be used to form an action plan. He knew about her lovers, kept tabs on her assignations, was aware that they had on occasion included men.
It was not in the least bit unexpected; this group had a higher statistical propensity toward bisexuality, and even homosexuality.
In Charli’s case, while the men almost never repeated, the women sometimes did, and in fact her longer-term relationships had been with women. That by itself proved, to him at least, where Charli’s primary emotional energy and attractions lay.
The one thing he had no intelligence about, the event that made him wonder and search the most, that he was certain held the last bit of important information about her, was that blank spot, the two missing years. He kept searching.
This, he thought with a smile, is the glory of the information age. Anything and everything was available, one just had to know where to look, and he knew he was the best at finding it all. If it had been encoded somewhere, it could be borrowed, stolen, looked at, copied, repeated, and kept available eternally. It was what had brought Charli to his attention, made his plans possible. It was also, and he scowled to himself as he briefly checked his screen for any changes, what had set the CIA and their supposed Treasury agent on his trail. Hell, he considered, she was probably part of a special detail created by picking select Company agents.
He supposed he should be flattered, but instead, he spat eloquently. Fuck the CIA—they violated civil rights, they violated human rights. He thought about the casual legislative disregard of the Constitution, the disemboweled Bill of Rights—the protection of American privacy—what a joke that was!
John had stopped believing in the Company a long time ago, a belief stripped bit by idealistic bit until only the horrifying truth remained. He knew exactly the sort of agent the supposed Anna Pendleton was; he’d been her, once upon a time. So many more, like her, like he used to be. Still idealistic, still deluded, and their intelligence and idealism being used against them—against everyone—to maintain a ravenous system that cared for nothing about the ideals its loyal supporters stood for.
But careful screening, planning, and most especially, timing, meant that some of those agents were now loyal to him—and not half an hour before supplying Ben with the information and the wherewithal to accurately blame-point away from Charli, his CIA informant, an agent undercover within the Treasury, had contacted him. And revealed Anna as another agent under similar assignment.
All John had to do was ensure that Charli and Anna didn’t meet before the sweep went down. That had been a nice piece of subterfuge, he thought, using the gov’s own phones to call the Treas and tip that their undercover operative was not just at the center of the crisis, but its source.
While the agencies stumbled about each other and the agent cooled overnight in a government holding cell until the CIA straightened everything out—if they did, if they actually admitted she was one of them and didn’t instead do what he thought more likely, leave her to rot in jail for what in the end would be considered treason—he’d already have Charli, the money, and his exchange ready to be made.
It was a shame about the agent, but she needed to wake up. She would learn the hard way, the way he had, that the government she served wasn’t out for anything other than the interests of those in power, and making certain they kept it. If the Company didn’t step in to straighten out their mess, she’d more than likely be left to find her own way out, which she would, eventually. And her CIA handler would tell her it was part of her training or testing, if she survived, if she returned to the Company—and if they didn’t again betray her and claim no knowledge of her. Experience would teach her, like it had taught him.
The quick dossier he’d managed to assemble told him that the agent herself, like Ben, like Charli, like the group he’d begun to gather and groom, also had quite a few of the requisite markers, if not in her family background, which he’d ascertain at a later date when he could verify her identity, then at least in her own personal history, such as he’d managed to collect and observe it. Besides, she and Charli were quite obviously drawn to one another, and John was certain that with this particular group, given their propensities, their attraction had much more than the usual, obvious meaning. Like called to like.
He’d find the agent again, and when he did, with that betrayal under her belt, she’d more than likely want to join him, too. Besides, by then his plans would not only be underway, he’d have long had Charli aboard, and if Ben’s reports were even half as true as what he occasionally let slip about Anna and the way she behaved around Charli, coupled with the photographs he had…
They weren’t anything too revealing, just some good long-range shots taken during the last group surfing expedition the dot-commers had gone on. A not-so-casual embrace by the bonfire, the exchange of a more than friendly kiss when they’d been the only two left on the sand, and another, minutes later, by the front door to the beach house. This one had showed something else, something written clearly and plainly to the lens in the way they held each other, exposed on film in the splay of fingers, the grip of hands.
As the memory of the moment and the image played through his head, he idly wondered if either of them knew they seemed like a couple in the very beginnings of the fantasy called love. John himself didn’t believe that particular fairy tale; he was a man of realities, and he’d experienced many of them. Romantic love, such as it was popularly construed and media propagated, hadn’t been one of them, and therefore, in his world view, it didn’t really exist. But he’d stopped taking pictures then. The moment was meant to be private and after all, he wasn’t a voyeur. And perhaps, if X had bred true, if Charli had inherited one of the final markers, any of the traits he’d been searching for, and if the agent had as well, then it was just possible that maybe, for once, there could exist between them something that poets and artists had praised through the ages.
Ben, he was certain, had inherited it to a degree, or he would never have the response to the agent that he did. But even if Ben hadn’t, still, the pictures John had were damning enough to be used as leverage over both Anna and Ben.
It was funny, John mused, what sex and attraction could do to otherwise rational minds. John had pictures—absolute proof—of something they both wanted. That would more than likely prove to be incentive enough.
The program is running. Exit anyway? (y or n)
Deeper Than Skin
* * *
BB84 Secure Session - - Loss 0
* * *
21:12:02 DsrtFx: bit of news for you.
21:12:03 DsrtFx: change of plans
21:12:04
21:12:05 ChknMan: ???
21:12:06
21:12:07 DsrtFx: your pigeon’s a stool
21:12:08
21:12:09 ChknMan: what do you mean?
21:12:10
21:12:11 DsrtFx: Anna—she’s undercover.
21:12:12
21:12:13 ChknMan: are you sure? Now what?
21:12:14
21:12:15 DsrtFx: dead certain. I’ll meet you
21:12:16 DsrtFx: on the usual corner
21:12:17 DsrtFx: You have 20 minutes
21:12:18 DsrtFx: to get ready
21:12:19 DsrtFx: —we’re getting Charli
21:12:20
21:12:21 ChknMan: How?
21:12:22 DsrtFx: Any means necessary
21:12:23 DsrtFx: Do you understand?
21:12:24
21:12:25
21:12:26 ChknMan: Yes. I’m there.
21:12:27
* * *
BB84 Secure Session TERMINATED
* * *
*
“No safe words,” Charli said into her ear, between nips and licks that made the race in her chest become a thud that bordered on painful. Charli had stopped for one moment, just a single moment, to gently cup her face and gaze into her eyes. “Say ‘stop,’ or ‘no’—that’s enough for me, okay?”
“All right.” Anna nodded in agreement and Charli smiled, a sultry twist that transformed her further.
“Are you at all…accessory averse?”
She barely had time to answer by threading her fingers through the hair at the base of Charli’s head, then gripping her about the waist, pulling their bodies closer. “Not at all,” she said to the eyes that shone with a honeyed glow on hers.
“Good,” Charli told her, “because I’ve something new I might like to…share sometime,” and then she was already naked, moving under heated soft skin, until finally they were locked in the full body embrace, Charli in her arms and wrapped around her, a gliding sync of breath and beat and muscle and—
“Baby…” The word was a choked groan whispered against her temple even as fingers clutched at her shoulder, tangled in her hair, pulled her even closer, and the body that pushed against hers ground with greater urgency. “You…you’re gonna…God-I’m-gonna-come.”
“Oh yeah…please. Do,” Anna managed to gasp back. She gripped at Charli’s hip, deepening the connect, the slick of the body on body, the drive within. This she already knew from previous experience was rare, and knowing that it was going to happen, that she was a part of it, amplified everything she felt, kicked the answering throb within her that much higher.
God, she’d lied about who she was, her name, her job, even her reasons for being there in the first place, but what she felt, felt in her body, in her mind, that was something very real, very true, and she so hoped that no matter what came next it came across, that no matter what, Charli clearly and absolutely knew it, because she herself knew—could actually feel—just how much Charli did trust her. Knowing that she was very likely to betray that in the next few days…it didn’t bear thinking about in the here and now. She wanted to simply be in this moment, this very real exchange, focused solely on this private and oh-so-ephemeral world they had created.
She held Charli even tighter, stretched her fingers under the fine dark hairs that skimmed her neck, kissed her, lips and tongue begging for the warm reaches of her mouth. God, she so wanted this, needed this, had known that this was what had hid beyond the surface, below the job, beneath everything.
To get to this level, to earn Charli’s trust, she’d had to first give her own. “I trust you, Char,” she’d told her and meant it, completely. Anna had already decided she’d lay it on the line, convince her somehow to accompany her to one of several designated safe extraction points where they could stay until the issues with Whitestone blew over, and then tell her—everything. She gently stroked the face above hers. “I…before this goes any…I want to tell you—”
Her name, she was about to start with her name, when Charli silenced her confession with another kiss.
“Everyone has their secrets, Anna. Forget them and just feel,” Charli told her as she nibbled a line along the column of her throat, “what I’m doing to you. Be here, now,” Charli told her and laid a teasing line of wet fire just under her ear. “You have a choice, and”—Charli ran her fingers up Anna’s arms until she held her hands—“your decision will lead to more choices. I can restrain you,” she said as one silken thigh brushed against her hip, then another. Charli’s body was the lightest skim against her own, placing the beginning of what would be an exquisite pressure where it was needed most. “Or you can restrain yourself. I’d rather not have to,” she added softly.
Tawny eyes searched through hers even while that beautiful body hovered above, fingers interlaced with hers. “I want to trust you,” Charli said. “You can trust me to hear you—nothing happens you don’t want. Can I trust you? I want to trust you, Anna.”
This was not the first test Charli had made of her, and something in Anna’s expression, or perhaps it was communicated by the way she’d curled her fingers through Charli’s, answered in the right way and passed.
Charli took Anna’s hands and placed them on her shoulders. “If you get uncomfortable, tell me. Otherwise,” and she smiled as she let go, “not another sound—for now.”
And that was exactly where it had started, an adventure in mind, in body, that left Anna alternately breathless and powerful, wondering or flattened by the sheer intensity of the physical, at the woman who stretched her definition of body and disregarded the boundaries of physical gender. It wasn’t that there weren’t differences, merely that to Charli, they didn’t matter, and everything was a test: what Anna enjoyed, what she enjoyed more, how she responded, the way she responded. Every bit of that she could see Charli note, then act and react to, a system of gates and switches, like binary code, ones and zeroes, on and off, if this, then that.
At one point she took Anna’s hand and asked her to touch herself.
“I want you to feel what I’m feeling—how fuckin’ hard, how fuckin’ beautiful you are,” Charli said, then caught Anna’s lower lip between her teeth.
“Feel that, baby? That’s right…just like that,” she encouraged, the soft growl sexy and low in her ear when Anna shifted her hips in response to the combined stroke, and together they pressed down—hard. Oh…that was— “Push it out, push against me…Let me feel you. You…” Charli said, her voice even lower, hoarse with feeling, even as she licked along the delicate pulse point in Anna’s neck, modified just slightly what she did with her hands, “you’re so fuckin’ big. I love the way you feel.”
There was something so very deeply erotic in the way Charli spoke about her body, her arousal, the taboo phrasing that disregarded gender norms. It changed Anna’s view of her body, of what they were doing and how they could do it, set loose something primal she hadn’t known had been chained all this time.
Her fingers dug into the nape of Charli’s neck, needing, frantic, aching to— “Charli…let me touch you,” she groaned out, unable to keep silent any longer, not knowing the right words nor how to describe or ask for what she really wanted.
Charli laughed lightly in response, took the tip of her tongue away from the now so hypersensitive and hardened point she’d bathed on Anna’s breast.
“You really want to touch me, baby?” she drawled, her mouth once more a breath away from Anna’s while her hands— “I think you want to fuck me…put that hard-on where it wants to go.”
God—Anna had no clear idea of exactly what Charli’s hands were doing, only that they moved with and around hers, set a fire that seemed to focus on the— Christ, had she ever truly been that hard or that wet before? “I want to make you come. Don’t you just want to come? You’re so close…”
Charli was going to push her there, had already put her there, maybe moments, maybe hours before. Anna felt the very welcome pressure of a fingertip as it stroked beneath her slick and hardened shaft before it eased inside her, Charli’s own heat just above their joined hands, and even as Anna couldn’t help but respond, she knew this was yet another of Charli’s tests.
Charli pushed the boundaries of code, of what one human being could do to another, of what she would let happen to her. And Anna wanted to touch her, wanted to come this time with Charli hard and wet on her hands, her mouth, the taste of her skin more than just a memory. Anna wanted so much, much more than to merely fuck her, wanted to sink beyond blood and bone, wanted to feel Charli come, too, for her, with her, in so deep they shared breath and beat and body riding the wave until they were the same and—
“I want…I need to touch you, Charli,” she said, the submerged truth finally gasped against the rising tide, the pulsing flood that filled her from
the most sensitive spot of her body to her chest, her arms, her head, and she dared to reach careful fingertips to the face above hers. The skin was warm, smooth, and when Charli didn’t pull away, she dared further, held her cheek, kissed her with all she felt and all she wanted riding the tip of her tongue. “Let me…please.”
“We need to take care of this, first,” Charli answered even as Anna felt the closing in of her body, hot and wet, and…that…was…so…good… A sound of air—of breath, short, sharp, shocked at the infuckingtensity—escaped her as Charli took her hand, licked at her fingertips, ground against her. And then the sensation heightened.
“Now,” Charli breathed against her lips, “now you’re touching me.” She was. She did. As the movement evolved from languid to urgent, became the liquid heat that melded them, Anna’s hands were now free to roam, to visit and explore the places she remembered, the places she still wanted to know, to memorize with her fingers, palms, lips, and tongue the curve of the breasts that were just below her chin, the strain of the muscles that met and marked the channel of her spine, the slight curve and flare of Charli’s hips as Anna finally gripped and held them while Charli rode her body with the same power as when she cut through the ocean, the same fluid wave surrounding them, rising tide and blood filling all the empty spaces, and in the moment she beheld Charli’s face, the full expression of her mouth, the shock and wonder in the glow of her eyes, something so much deeper than awe claimed her as the wave crested and took her with it.
*
It was time, John decided as he cut the session, to find out exactly what sort of man, what sort of soldier, Ben Cooper really was. John’s own chat request to Charli remained unanswered—that didn’t trouble him. What did bother him, though, and had set his hand to motion was the urgent text message he’d received from one of his own inside: the CIA wasn’t about to blow their operation in the Treas, so despite their own inside knowledge, they had not revealed their agent. But the Treas itself was in an uproar. It would take them almost five hours to get themselves together to organize the strike team to gather their supposed rogue, but they already knew where she was—the tracker placed in her laptop told them—and now he knew, too. She was at Charli’s apartment.