“I’ve spent the last four years investigating Echo on the sly! Don’t…argh! Dammit, I knew a while back that there was a chance that Gunny hadn’t died when a contact of mine mentioned that damn Shadow organization,” I confess, pulling away to rise and go to the porch railing. “When I realized that…anyway, let’s just say that I haven’t only spent my time pretending to be a school teacher out in butt-fuck nowhere, and that technically I was already running when those goons grabbed me.”
“You saying…?”
“That I had an inkling that Zulu and the whole op was far more than CIA and military. Look, Kinsley…when she deciphered some of that intel was pretty cagey about some of the results if you recall. I never paid it that much mind until after you and I were over. Then I got to thinking about why, when, and all the hows, and it just hit me out of the blue one day. Why would a man, who had willingly let me be captured by the enemy, throw himself at an explosive the way he did? Unless…”
“He needed to die.”
“Yep.”
“Whatever, Jess. I don’t even want to know right now, if you want the truth.There’s enough shit to deal with already. What I do want is for you to accept that you can’t keep hiding away from the shit storm your life has become. King looked into your life. Your sister has some chip on her shoulder with you, her husband is an asshole, and you hardly see your nephew.”
“Thanks, I really enjoy knowing how pathetic you all find my life,” I grumble, pulling away.
“It is fucking pathetic, and I mean that in as offensive a way as I can express to you, Jess. You’re hiding away, alone, and you think that’s any way to live? You’re punishing yourself for trusting Gunny. I think the best thing you can do to spit in that bastard’s eye is come on home and build a good life for yourself.”
Yeah sure, I’ll get right on that, sugar, as soon as I pull a lump of cash out of my ass, I think sourly, narrowing my eyes. The government doesn’t exactly pay the big bucks, and after losing my package and becoming a freaking schoolteacher, it’s not as if I’m rolling in money. I have my run money, a stash I’ve accumulated for a little while, but it’s basic and will never cover rent unless I have a job right now.
“I can’t. I can’t afford to just move here, and besides, you think I can live in the same town as that sack of dog matter?” I mutter, resisting the urge to look at him because I know I’m blushing.
“Didn’t ask you to do anything, Jess, just to consider staying is all. Jericho’s got a place above his garage that is tricked out, and my company has been looking for a trustworthy intelligence expert to make sure we have reliable intel on all our assignments. Don’t decline right away, woman. Listen, I’m…I was pissed at you for a long time, and I can’t say that I want to be best friends or anything, that would just be awkward as fuck for me, but you are family, and dammit, you risked a lot to help us out there. I get that, and what’s more, I get that we all fucked you over in our own way. The guys dropped you like a dirty trick, and I-I should have known when shit went down that you weren’t like that, Jess. I knew you, I know you, and it sticks in my craw that I…”
“Don’t—”
“I didn’t love you the way I love Lenny, that’s the truth. It’s something I have to admit and accept. You hurt me. I won’t lie about that, but the truth is that a part of me is grateful to you for the outcome because if you’d come clean and stayed, we’d still be together and I’d never have met my girl, and I wouldn’t be having Junior.”
Great, now I want to cry and rail at Fate for all this crap because he’s telling the truth. All that does is remind me of what I lost all over again. I could be married right now and have children.Instead, I’m playing pals with my ex—thank you Jesus, he doesn’t hate me anymore—and I have another ex chapping my ass.
And making me squirm, I admit sullenly as parts down below tighten at just the thought of him.
“Aw shucks, Nick, are you saying ‘thank you’ to me for being a lying bitch?” I coo, forcing myself to smile.
That gets me a grin and a noogie from the brute before he pushes me away and shrugs.
“Lenny likes you, and Jericho is not going to accept letting you just pick up sticks. Besides, baby girl, as far as I can tell, you have some revenge to hand out to a certain dickhead and fuck me if I’m not excited to bear witness to your making Mr. Superspy sweat his balls off trying to get to you. By the way, if you’re gonna give him another boner, please do it somewhere private, it’s just nasty seeing him packing wood for your sweet ass. Yo, Jericho! I think she’s gonna stay!” he yells suddenly, grinning when the big, blue-eyed ass comes barreling out of the kitchen, smiling his ass off.
Shit, men. They’re worse than chicks sometimes. Eavesdropping bastards.
“Good. Now then, let’s talk about sex as a tool for that dish best served cold and tasty.”
“Oh brother,” I mutter, rolling my eyes at his hand rubbing before the other idiots come outside, all dressed in similar jeans and some version of lick-my-nuts tight shirts that make me thankful I’m a woman with sight.
“Hell yeah! Where’s the spook?” Blaze asks, picking me up to smooch my neck and blow a raspberry.
“King!”
“Jessie girl. Sure am glad you’re here, darling. You ready to make that man sweat his nuts off trying to get to your snatch?”
What the ever-loving hell?
Chapter Eight
Jess
Sometimes, just sometimes, the best laid plans are not what get you laid. They get you screwed to within an inch of your life—and that’s metaphorically, people. The bad kind. The type of screwing that’s all about losing and not hot sex or oral loving.
For instance, right now I’m standing in front of a computer monitor, tracking a target that I’ve been seeking for three days—employment that doesn’t include children, not that I didn’t like teaching, but come on, I’m a super ex-CIA agent, this is my thing—and Mr. Ass is watching me like a Hawk.
He has been since I walked back inside from the porch two days ago and decided to start mind-boggling him. What? Like I can’t be nice to the man? Let’s not forget he breathed life back into me.
Besides, Blaze was right, he is one of us, even if he deserves a kick in the nuts. And I missed him. Mind-boggling, I know! I actually sat down once the big, badass men left us little women to go do their super-macho stuff and started thinking.
What I came up with still makes my teeth grind so hard I may need to have them capped later, but the truth is that a huge part of me is just so happy to see Gu— Trace, his name is Trace! Whatever. I’m happy. I can’t deny it.
And why should I anyway, I keep reassuring myself as I peek at his creepy self from the corner of my eye. I once loved the man. A lot. I mourned him even if he didn’t deserve it and cried when I lost so much when he “died.”
I can’t just turn that off, can I? And what’s more, why should I? Sure, he’s a lying bag of toad crap, okay, I get that, but it’s not as if I didn’t understand who he was all those years ago.
I, myself—
“Babe, honestly if you’re going to glare at me all day while pretending I don’t exist the other thirty percent of the time, can we at least just get the sexual tension out in the open?” Trace teases, making me grind my jaw harder.
My first urge is to tell him to go suck a long one, but I pull myself in and remember what the guys said. Apparently, there is nothing in this world that a man wants more than someone who seems apathetic. I am so far from apathetic that my early morning masturbation session is laughing at me, but hey, I’m a trained professional, right?
“Tension? Puhleeze, loser. You think I want to sleep with Ethan Hunt only to pull off that mask and find Phillip Seymour Hoffman underneath? Not that Phil wasn’t hot or anything, but no thanks. I don’t do the unknown unless I’m drunk or desperate, and right about now, I’d rather do a hillbilly without teeth that hasn’t bathed in a year than look at your ass.”
Okay, so apathy
isn’t in my repertoire, but at least I’m not still rubbing my legs together to relieve the ache between them. Well, not much anyway.
He chuckles and gives me a lazy stare before sighing.
“I can see you’re going to fight this thing to the very end. Pity, I haven’t had sex since your sweet snatch sucked me dry the last time,” he muses, making my eyes cross with…
No. Is that glee I’m feeling!
No glee. No glee, I yell internally even as parts under the navel start liquefying and singing an aria. Do you people have any idea how attractive it is to—?
Wait a minute!
“Bull crap, Typhoid Larry, I heard Blaze talking about how you infiltrated the Moscow Harem two years ago. Everyone knows those skanks only respond to man candy and dick.”
Side bar. The Moscow Harem is this female-run mercenary group that is more terror than mercy as far as I’m concerned and harder than hell to get anywhere near. The Agency has been trying to get into that assassins’ pit for years but seeing as the heads of that outfit are chicks and seeing as no one really knows anything about the organization past that fact that there are some stealthy hot whores running around the world offing people…
Well, it’s like ISIS with garter belts. You kill one and three more strippers bust out of the clown car. Latest intel was that their suspected head had a hard-on for domination—whatever you call those women who like to dominate men.
So, if this ass brought them down…. I still don’t believe that, and rightly so, since I have a girl crush on whoever is cool enough to strike the fear of God into spooks worldwide, just saying…
Whatever. I don’t want to believe it, but if it’s true then that just means—
“You absolute man whore! You found her?” I wheeze, glaring so hard I feel an eye vein pop.
He shrugs smugly and gives me that cocky lip twitch while ogling my chest like a letch.
“Yep.”
“You lie.”
“Often,” he croons, biting his lip. “But not this time. I found her.”
Devastation. Now I know that rooting for evil is not cool. I get it, but you don’t understand, in female circles in every government agency worldwide there is this awe that goes along with the Harem. I myself put together something sort of stalker-fan-like when we once got intel on a description for one of those women.
Being pals with a sketch artist and all, I sort of had him put together my homage to the chick and I use her as the wallpaper on my phone. Just thinking that this…this turd brought down Harem is so sorrowful I can’t quite compute the thought.
Men have Batman and oo7; I have the Harem. Sue me.
“What? How? Why? Why?” I wail, feeling my heart break a little at the thought of my evil crushes being caught by a man. An ass of a man to boot.
Oh, cruel world! Why hast thou done this to me? Trace is hot and a man slut, and he’s still attractive enough that my vagina has been soaking my ankle socks, and you let him have this?
You let him take down my backup lesbian partners?
“Eh. It was easy. I studied the profile and sketches and…it wasn’t all that hard to do, Jess. The woman is the daughter of a Russian diplomat; she wasn’t exactly hiding. Don’t look so sad, baby, I gave her an out that is working for all concerned. Right about now, a certain African dictator is being held and questioned about the location of a nuke that went missing a few months ago. See, we all win. And her little band of man-hating killers get to do what they love best, grind nuts.”
“While taking orders from men?” I sneer, glaring at him darkly.
“While liaising with some very powerful men,” he corrects me, sighing at my curse. “Look, Jess, the Harem is—for all intents and purposes—mercenary murdering cooch on legs. They’re not the good guys, so stop pretending that I shot Snoopy or something. They are bad women who now have to answer to someone or answer for their crimes.”
The fact that he’s laughing while I feel like Cinderella just bust her glass slipper makes me want to screech, but I reel it in and sniff, curling my lip at him. I’m not jealous that he met my idol, or idols…no, not at all.
I swear. Bastard.
“You boned her right?”
Great, that was just great, Jess. Why don’t you take out an ad in the Times telling the guy that you still have the coochie hots for him. Jealous loser. Heartbroken jealous loser now, since he not only found the un-findable but also ruined the real-life version of the Suicide Squad for me.
“You jealous, baby?” he asks softly, eyes zoned in on my face, taking in every twitch I try to prevent as I feel my blood start boiling.
Oh, what is wrong with me! Why can’t I be like every other female around America, and the globe, and hate lying men? Me? Instead of hating how duplicitous he is, all I can manage is respect for his intelligence and double-crossing ways.
I am not normal.
“Kiss my ass.”
“I thought you’d never ask. I use tongue though. Remember?”
Oh boy, how do I remember…
My blushing cheeks are sucked in as I turn away and fight the giggle bubbling up. One thing he could always do was make me laugh. And yet, what I remember most clearly too is the fact that he made me cry.
But that’s not a bad thing anymore, I assure myself as I turn back and give him a long hard look. No, what I need to think about right now is two—possibly three—things depending on my priorities.
First on the shit list is what I can get from this guy about that desert rat asshole Fazir. I want to catch that scum so bad I can taste it, and yes, some of that also happens to be about redeeming myself to my old “buddies” in the Agency. Sue me. It stinks like roses and mint juleps how badly I want to rub it in their faces that I caught him; and no, they can’t have all this genius back on their team because I no longer play with assholes.
Two, or second on the list at least, is that I really want to sleep with him again. Not to fall in love, mind you but really—he’s hot. I still dig him, and honestly, I’m not exactly into the thought of finding someone else to scratch my itch.
Trace owes me, and I mean to collect.
The third, and this one is a very loose thought, a possibility that may not even come to fruition, is that I want him to give me back what he stole from me years ago.
That one still hurts a lot, so I’m still thinking about it. But hell, it’s a thought at least, and no, I’m not talking about it now.
Nuh-uh. Right now, I’m letting it go, or I may just rip his testes off. Right now, I want to want him, I want him to want me, and dammit, screw King and the guys all to hell, I want to use him up and spit him out like they suggested.
Because yeah, it would make me feel a little better knowing I got mine. Darn. I guess I’m thinking like I have a penis now because as he grins at me, and I grin right back and do something I’ve never done in my life.
Licking my lips slowly, suggestively, I lean closer and bat my lashes.
“You haven’t answered the question yet. You bone the leader of the most kickass assassin organization of the free world?”
His answer, the honest one, if he’s even capable of it, is really important to me because I just…do not want to have to be impressed if he really did have sex with another chick, a chick who is my idol. Or be crushed that he did.
I’m not making sense right now, I know, but come on, I’m sexmonal. And stupid. And possibly still carrying an itty-bitty flame for Trace. So yeah, I’m really stupid.
Trace blinks and leans in closer, those eyes of his going liquid as he stares at my mouth bites at his own lip.
“No. She’s hot, smart, and despite the murderous tendencies, she is really a great package, but I seem to have a thing for little CIA agents who like sexually adventurous positions and eating caramel out of a jar. Besides, it’s really hard to fuck a chick when her flavor is clam and I’m packing python,” he drawls, making me laugh despite myself.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.
Plus, I was terrified she’d be riding me and decide to gut me while I was offloading.”
“Pig.”
“Kidding. Come on, Jess, you think I could fuck a sweet little lady like yourself and then go vanilla?”
“Vanilla? Sounds to me like you were about to take a nifty bite of Rocky Road,” I snort, rolling my eyes and going back to the job at hand before I do something monumentally crazy like face plant in his crotch and stay there till New Years, hoping that my resolution can be—
Stop! Stop thinking about sex. Remember. Apathy. Not humor or grudging respect. Apathy.
It’s hard though, and no I am not talking about Trace’s dick either, I’m talking my inability to focus as he comes up behind me and gets so close I feel his body heat enfold me along with that spicy musk that’s all him.
“Would you believe me if I told you I haven’t had sex since you and I were together, and that no matter how hard I tried to forget you—”
“Nope. Because I have a brain and besides, Trace…” I peter off as the code running on the screen stops and a flashing red bingo lights up. “Holy shit!”
Trace stiffens behind me as we both lean in closer to get a look at what I already know is on the screen and turns to me with a dazzling smile before giving me a hard kiss that stuns me senseless.
“We’re in business.”
***
“I don’t like this.”
We’re all crowded around the huge table in Nick’s study. Trace is languishing back with a grin, as I chew on my nails waiting for the other guys to look at what I found.
“What’s not to like, Storm? Jess’s kickass facial software caught that asshole dead to rights getting in at JFK a week ago, and you can see it for yourself.”
As much as I’m grateful to Trace for backing me here, I am just as stunned and frankly disbelieving as the rest of them are right now. King and Blaze haven’t so much as said a word, and the other two are staring at me with frowns, as Nick shakes his head and curses, falling back with a grunt.
“No offense, Jess, but what are the chances that the program you wrote could be…”
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