by Angel Payne
The line, a tried-and-true favorite from the days when Tracy didn’t have to speak to her security team leader on a burner cell, induced the man to at least a lukewarm chuff over the miles.
“How are you holding up, Madame President?”
“Sol.” She rolled her eyes but the gesture was wasted on the reading chaise and soggy plants in the small atrium attached to the condo’s office. Though everything outside was painted in dreary late afternoon light, she wasn’t picky about the view. It contained a square of honest-to-God sky—the chunk she’d finally persuaded John to let her glimpse, so long as she didn’t actually go into the atrium to do it.
A step in the right direction.
Dear God, she hoped.
For two days, hope had become a steady diet staple around here. For everyone.
She just wondered when hers would morph into insanity.
Not just because she couldn’t see enough sky.
Because she’d been flying to too many stars.
Courtesy of one amazing, rippling, passionate, powerful star captain.
Even now, as Franzen let himself into the room, her gaze went to work on undressing him. Already she envisioned the burgundy Henley stripped away, revealing exotic island tattoos emblazoned across his bulging shoulders and mighty pecs. Took even less effort to remove his track pants, exposing her imagination to his sleek hips and massive thighs, centered by his thick bronze stalk.
That cock…
It had transformed her into a creature of so much lust, she was certain the terrorists knew she was still alive and now tried to finish off the job with some erotic super virus.
If she had to go…
And now, his morbid sarcasm officially rubbed off on her too. She punished herself for giving into it by turning back toward the atrium, denying herself his beauty. Sometimes the humor was fun, but even teasing fate about her death just wasn’t. The country would get along fine without her, but Luke wouldn’t.
“What?” came Sol’s defense in her ear. “‘Madame President’ doesn’t have a nice ring to it?”
“It doesn’t have any ring to it.” She hoisted her chin, more out of defiance to the hulk skirting the desk then sitting in the chair behind it. “Because it’s not the truth.”
“Yet.”
Sol’s volley coincided with John’s raised gaze. His eyes, gone that expensive chocolate shade, dipped over every inch of her form. Her skin turned to electricity and her womb turned to magma, not making it easy to accept Sol’s follow-up.
“You’ll be back here and in the Oval soon. The rightful heir in the rightful throne.”
A laugh spilled before she could stop it. “Thanks for the time travel to the middle ages, my friend—but I don’t want a damn throne.” At the moment, she wasn’t certain she even wanted the chair behind the Resolute desk, in that icon of an office. She’d just gotten used to the layout of the vice-presidential digs. “I just want to work hard, serve the people, and do some good.”
Another eye roll almost took over—directed entirely inward. She sounded like a fantastic campaign slogan, if the occasion were Luke running for his high school class council. Sincere intention or not, “working hard” and “doing good” weren’t viable platforms for running the hugest democracy in the world.
When Sol’s steady silence confirmed as much, she forced her tone into a combination of conversational and professional. It was tricky but not unpracticed. She used it all the time on senators all over the Hill. “So tell me what excitement I’m missing. How’s LeGrange handling everything?”
Blake LeGrange, the Speaker of the House, was sworn in as President before the embers at the Bellagio were doused. The haste of the act chafed Tracy like going braless in burlap, despite accepting that it was necessary for the nation’s morale. LeGrange and she stood apart on issues more than together, but she found it hard to reach middle ground with a dude who had sideburns like silkworms, a Henry the Eighth swagger, and a gaze fonder of her thighs than her face. When she did insist on sticking to her ideals, even with Craig’s support, LeGrange had favorite write-offs like “You’re so cute when you’re feisty, Little T.” But she could’ve had it worse. His wife, Lucille, got the honor of being “Little LuLu”.
Yeah. The nation’s first lady really went by “Little LuLu”.
Tracy didn’t care if the woman called herself the Czarina of Russia, as long as her husband was doing his job. She couldn’t imagine LeGrange not diving right in, especially under the circumstances, but she needed that reassurance from Sol. If the man was still lazing by the figurative pool, she didn’t care if a thousand lunatic terrorists were still on the loose; she’d order Franz to scoot her ass onto the next transport to the capitol. The country needed stability right now, and that shit had to be flowing from the top down.
After a pause extending to worrisome length, Sol finally rendered an answer. “LeGrange is…LeGrange.” He stuck in his first laugh of the call, though the burst hardly brimmed with mirth. “Let’s just say he’s got the bull by the horns.”
Tracy felt her brows bunch. “Which means exactly what?”
“That everything’s running smoothly—as long as the bull lets him lead.”
“Okay.” The way she drew it out clearly captured John’s attention too. As he peered harder at her, she continued to Sol, “That’s a good thing, right? As long as we know where the bull is?”
Sol released another chuckle—this time, actually stirring warmth into the sound. “Damn. You are missed around here, Mrs. Rhodes.”
“Oh yeah?” Her smiled spread into her tone. “Unbelievably, I miss you guys a little too.”
“Hmm.” The reaction shot out with his normal Sol efficiency, but was clipped with more nuance. For a second, it seemed as if her confession really was a surprise. “Just a little?” he added, making Tracy aim a bewildered glance at the phone. Who was this guy, and what had he done with the friend who always helped her make fun of Capitol Hill antics like it was high school with more money? Right now, Sol sounded like the epitome of achy-breaky-needy bestie. It was annoying—another truth she didn’t mind meshing into her tone.
“I’m sure as hell not hiding out across the country for my health, bucko.” Though thanks to the man still so focused on her from across the room, she’d been rocking the best sleep of her life the last few nights. Falling asleep with the big dragon wrapped around her was better than a couple of glasses of wine and fifty pages of committee reports. “So let’s make a deal, my friend. Push on your friends at the FBI and CIA to find out who the hell masterminded the blackest day in world history, and I’ll come back to DC to help you all throw their asses into the deepest, blackest, piss-filled prison cells we can find.”
The phone turned into a ball of static from the rough exhalation from across the miles. The sound ended in Sol’s low, appreciative whistle. “Well, shoot my pretty horsie in the foot,” he added to it.
“Excuse me?” she retorted.
“The sweet widow from Texas really does have a few fireballs in her arsenal.”
She snorted. “Fireballs are just the start of my secret powers, Sol. But like every good Texas dame, I wait for the perfect moment to whip them out.”
He released another chuckle, though once more it walked the weird wilderness between humor and gloom. Still, she could hear the echoes of his typical hurried footsteps, even over the line. Maybe this was Sol’s usual tone, and she’d simply always been too busy to analyze it in full.
Finally he countered, “Well then, get a stack of those flamin’ pups bagged up and ready to go.”
Her face must have reflected the jump of her interest. John straightened, dropping his hands to the ends of the chair’s armrests as she prompted, “Why? What’s up?”
“You mean who’s going down?”
She plunked her hip to the side of the desk. “Are you kidding?”
“Kidding is for the playground.” It was another of their shared one-liners—only for the first time, Sol invoked it without a
single lilt of laughter.
She twisted, glancing at John. “Can I put you on speaker, Sol?”
There was a half-second’s pause. “With who?”
“Franzen.” She let her tone add the Duh, dude to it.
“He’s with you? Even now?”
She let her own telling moment go by. Not for Sol, but for her. For just a few seconds, she let the question stream through her with a different meaning.
He’s with you, Tracy?
Taking care of you?
Giving you everything you need…as a guardian, a person…a lover?
“Yeah.” For just one more moment, she pretended all those questions were still on the line too. She gazed at John as if they were. Sure as hell reached for him like it. Her fingers looked so tiny against the back of his hand. “Yeah,” she repeated softly. “He’s with me.”
She refused to feel guilty for it, either. For once, it felt good to say it like that. To have someone to say it about.
For once, it felt good not to be completely alone.
“Well.” Sol didn’t waste a second getting it out. “He’s taking the detail seriously. That’s…good.” Though he sounded more like the drama geek praising the quarterback for freakishly landing the lead in the school play.
Tracy pushed aside the metaphor, telling her imagination to calm the hell down, while locating the speaker button on the unfamiliar device in her hand. “Okay,” she said, back to business once she did, “you’re on the air, Wrightman.”
John, raising a curious glance to her while leaning forward, greeted, “Long time no talk, man.” Such pure sarcasm, it didn’t even need the dry tone. There’d been a pile of burner phones on the dining room table when they got here; the pile had been depleted to three. The two men had been in constant contact—which further explained John’s open inquisitiveness. “You got something you’re holding out on me?”
Over the line, there was a shuffling sound. “I’ve got something requiring a higher security clearance than yours, Captain.”
Tracy shoved up from the desk. John, trying to hold her back, was too slow on the uptake. “And you’re throwing that out at a time like this?” Her head started to throb. She ticked it John’s way. Sol couldn’t see the action but it sure as hell informed her tone. “What part of his eleven years in SOF are you forgetting? He’s used to receiving more high-level intel in one mission than you get in a year.”
“You mean received.”
“Tracy.” Franz nudged his left foot behind her right calf. “He’s right.” He looked professional but grim. “If this is high-level shit, then trusting me—”
“He’s trusted you with me.” Making sure the whole building felt her stomping retreat, along with the seething tone, might have been overkill—but the show wasn’t just for John. Sol’s brain was a bucking bronc of weirdness right now, and she was tired of wondering where he’d throw her next. “Think that might change your mind about getting your head out of your ass right now, Mr. Wrightman?”
John didn’t move.
Faint static shooshed out of the phone. Sol hadn’t ended the call—though obviously wasn’t happy with it.
“All right,” he finally uttered. “I’ll tell you what I know. But then I really might have to kill you, Franzen.”
The man tied it off with a wry chuckle. Tracy wasn’t sure whether she wanted to thank him or borrow his figurative gun and shoot him. Her goals weren’t so fuzzy when it came to the big warrior sitting before her, leaning in to add his own laugh to the exchange before jibing back, “Promises, promises, asshole.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, she and Franz had barely moved physically—though everything about the world, including the planet’s axis, felt inexorably shifted.
Felt?
No.
The planet literally had to have jumped off its rotation, for what Sol had just shared as conclusive truth. A viable enough theory, at least, that the FBI and CIA were playing nice about pursuing it together—and because of that, scooped up three suspects who apparently hopped back onto the right axis and started talking about the plan that stalled seven world governments in the exact same day.
But now, seventeen minutes after Sol turned the surreal into the real and the impossible into words, Tracy couldn’t do the same. Letting the stillness stretch on felt more…right. Respectful. The memorial she hadn’t been able to speak for Craig. The sadness she’d been sucking back, perhaps hoping it had all been a dream and they’d find her friend miraculously alive in some bunker even she didn’t know about, below the Residence…
Craig would know what to do about this insanity.
But Craig really wasn’t coming back.
Words she couldn’t wrap her heart around—and never would.
Words she somehow had to beat into her mind.
Just…not right now.
Which was why the stillness felt better.
Which was why, the second John rose from the chair, she seized his forearm though said nothing. Her tongue was a slab of glue. Her throat was a desert of despair. But he stared down, seeming to know that too.
“It’s okay, Tigress.” He deliberately used the name, despite how it clearly clenched his own throat, before wrapping his long fingers beneath her elbow. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
The words hardly made him flinch. The only change she noticed was the hue of his gaze, emerging from shadows to a caramel tint, he shifted closer. “It really is going to be okay.”
She gave at least an effort to believe that. Pulled in a deep breath, praying his conviction permeated her, but it was like throwing open the freezer door instead. She gripped him harder as a shiver conquered her, full of fear and dread and rage.
“Keep living that fiction, buddy,” she finally gritted. “You’re not the one who has to deal with a world where a dozen paramilitary organizations, led by a huge cell in the US itself, decided to form their own terror cartel.”
He moved his grip to the back of her head. Tucked her close to his body, her cheek against the ridges of his abs. “And you’re not going to do it alone,” he countermanded. “You have a ‘cartel’ of your own, already working together to fight back. Remember what Sol said? It’s only been two days, and they already have three assholes in custody—colluders talking without coercion or pressure. They’re crumbling from the inside already. They know what an insane plan they signed up for. Order doesn’t come from chaos.”
Tracy wrapped her arms around the tree trunk of his waist. Rubbed her cheek into the firm warmth of him, letting his words soothe her like autumn leaves drifting from mighty branches. He smelled the same way, oaky and savory, and she indulged in another deep breath just to appreciate that rich scent.
“I believe you,” she finally whispered, pushing a new level of trust into each word. “I do.”
“I know, ku’uipo.” His other hand rose, setting a comforting rhythm up and down the length of her spine. “But that’s not the important issue here.”
She stilled. Noticed he did the same. “You mean the one about figuring how we can just stop time right now?” If the technology existed, she would’ve seriously considered it. Here, surrounded by the heat of his body and the calm of his touch, she could float in surrender, be centered in herself.
He laughed quietly, a nearly imperceptible sound to the outside but a calming vibration in her ear. “No.” he lifted the end of the word in gentle reprimand. “The issue of you believing in yourself.”
Tracy huffed. “You’re kidding, right?”
His hands realigned, palming both her shoulders. “Kidding is for the playground.”
“Oh, gawd. And now you’re forbidden from any more unsupervised calls with Sol.”
He gripped her tighter. “And you’re forbidden from skirting the issue, kitten.”
She snapped her head up. Franz was ready, capturing her chin under an equally fast-moving hand. “Kitten?” she echoed in an incredul
ous bite.
The man only smoothly dipped his head and calmly arched a brow. Dammit. “You heard me,” he answered—with a voice growling to lower octaves. The gritty cadence to which he defaulted when they began leaving reality behind…for the world of their Dominant and submissive alter-egos.
There was just one problem with connecting Point A to Point B this time.
“I did hear you, John.” She wasn’t leaving any meaning to chance. “But this isn’t about just getting me to try a new ice cream or making me take swats for biting my nails.” Though for the record, she’d loved the pint of maple hickory, even topped with crumbled bacon, and was all but broken of the nail biting thing. “This is—”
“I know damn well what this is about.”
So much for him fielding her ire like a dragon with a kitten scratch. The dragon had stayed, all right—but the big lizard had been poked now, and wasn’t effing happy about it. Not one damn bit.
Tracy scooted back a little on the desk, taking the blotter with her but not daring to correct the mishap. Not daring to look away from him, period. When she first met Franzen, he was in stealth protector mode. During the flight from Vegas, he became a lethally focused warrior—then here, in their urban hideout, he’d peeled back the layers on the man beneath both…then the Dominant lover beneath that. She’d never lie; every phase made her fear him in strange new ways. But every time, she’d somehow known she only feared the fear, not the man.
Now she knew the truth.
None of that came close to fear.
None of that compared to the frantic pound of her heart as she watched the fire flare through his eyes—and knew she had to get off that desk.
Scrambling backwards on her butt wasn’t going to do it. She swiftly rolled, gaining a little more purchase on her stomach—
Until his hand came down on the small of her back, pinning her like a bear paw.
“John—”
His other hand came down on her ass, making her yelp despite the barrier of her new yoga pants. She was the same size as Rayna Hayes, which had made it possible for the woman to get out and purchase some fresh clothes for her.
“Try again, popoki.”