by Cole, Aja
I’m only here for her.
I trailed her as she wove through the street markets, tracking her through the many tourists and sellers of goods that lined the narrow streets that snake through the medina.
The Souk el Attarine was heady in itself, heavy with the smells of bright spices and perfumes, but she held my attention.
Now, I watch her in silence as she sits with an older man and his young companion, talking quietly.
When she leaves, I follow her as she clings to the shadows thrown by the buildings at night, turning down a series of short alleys.
I keep a good distance, moving around the corner of her last alleyway.
She’s quicker than I thought, and she’s not the only one who can wear a convincing disguise.
“Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?” Her naturally husky voice is harsh and disturbs the hair at the nape of my neck, while her knife presses against my jugular.
There’s no hesitation or shaking; she’ll press it further into my skin if she doesn’t like my answer.
“Your family’s well, but I’m sure your people have told you that.”
She stills, but doesn’t remove the sharp metal.
“Samir.” Her tone is flat and unimpressed, and she lowers her weapon, but not before I feel a small flash of pain.
I turn to her and wipe my thumb across the front of my neck, eyeing the smear of blood.
“I’ve been looking for you, Naja.”
She lowers her scarf, revealing hair that’s now a chestnut brown instead of her natural black. Her eyes are an eerie shade of brown-gold, and I’m not sure how much is due to the contacts she’s wearing. She purses her lips, annoyance in her gaze.
“You found me, and I won’t ask again. What the hell do you want?”
“I want your help.” They aren’t words that I’ve used often, and they’re a testament to the woman in front of me. She’s a force to be reckoned with, and I’d rather have her on my side than against me.
“I’m not in the business of favors anymore.” She covers her hair and face again, turning on a heel to leave, but I grip her arm gently.
“Please. Just hear me out. That’s all I ask.” We lock eyes silently, then she nods once, and I release her. Without a word, she leads me through small back alleys until we come to a partially hidden door. Using a key, she opens it and slips inside, motioning for me to follow.
When we’re both inside, she secures it behind me and lights a small gas lamp. I look around at the colorful, but simple quarters, an array of patterned cushions on the floor next to a low table. A pile of pillows and blankets that I assume is where she sleeps, and behind the curtain, there’s probably a simple bathroom.
“How long have you been here?”
“Like you don’t know.” She sits on a cushion gracefully, unwrapping her scarf and tossing it aside. Shaking out her hair, she runs elegant fingers through it and I pull my eyes away.
“It looks like you’ve been here longer than a few days.”
“It’s a friend’s place.” She doesn’t elaborate, but waves an arrogant hand. “You have two minutes, and then you can go stalk someone else.”
“I wasn’t stalking you.” I ease myself down across from her, somewhat grateful for the dim lighting because it means that I’m shielded from the full force of her appeal. “I was trying to decide if I wanted to go through with this.”
There’s something delicate, fragile, about her strength, and it draws me in. I’ve been watching her for so long now, waiting for the right moment to approach her, and that’s been dangerous.
Her movements, her mannerisms, are committed in my memory. It’s been a year since I first met her in her parents’ house, after she’d revealed to her sister that she was alive and well after years of keeping her distance.
Before that, she’d been feeding my task force information about the Delano family and other connected crimes.
She’d wanted her sister to come to me for protection when she caught wind of the Delano’s monitoring her family’s movements before she could get to them.
Now, I need her.
“Your time is running out.” Blank, emotionless, she seems a lot different than the fiery woman I met before.
“I took some personal time away from the bureau,” I start.
“You were on leave when I met you. You requested it right around the time you approached my sister, stressing her out. She’s not like me; she’s trusting. She wasn’t ready for all of that at once.” Her voice is accusatory.
“I needed to know what she knew.”
“And yet, here you are, needing me to do your job.”
“It’s not about my job.” I grit my teeth, shaking my head. “This is personal.”
“I don’t do personal.” She stands. “Not for anyone but myself. Your two minutes are up.” She walks to the door, unlocking the multiple locks.
“She was the closest thing I had to family before I was adopted.”
Naja’s hand pauses at the last lock, and when she doesn’t reiterate her refusal to help, I keep talking.
“I met her when I was eight and she was six. We were placed in the same group home, and people always thought we were related because we had similar skin tones. Her father was Persian, and my mother was Arab, but no one cared about specifics and we didn’t either. She was all I had.”
Naja turns around and leans against the door, brown hair falling over her shoulder.
“Her name was Shadi. She was placed before I was, but her foster parents let her visit me and they welcomed me into their home. Then I was placed into and adopted by a military family, and we moved a lot. Shadi and I never lost touch.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you need to know how much she means to me, how much she meant to me. You need to understand why I need you. Why I can’t leave until you agree to help me get justice.” I stand, moving into her space and holding her sharp gaze.
“Justice?” She laughs humorlessly. “There’s no such thing, not when it matters.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Then why are you here with me, and not with your government.” The word is almost a curse.
“It was your government at one point, too.”
“I have no use for a system that betrays its own and then pretends like nothing happened. I have no allegiance to them.”
“What are you talking about? Who betrayed you?”
“What happened to Shadi?” Stubborn, she’s not going to tell me anything else unless she wants to. I dig my hands into my pockets, pushing away the wave of emotion that comes with thinking about her.
“Someone got her addicted to a designer drug, one that was more powerful than anything that was on the streets. By the time I knew, by the time I could help her, it was too late.”
“How do you know that she didn’t want it? That she didn’t choose it?”
“Shadi hated losing control. She lost family members to addiction; she was clean her entire life. She was a good kid.”
“Good kids do bad things all the time. It creeps up on them.”
“It was more than that,” I emphasize, frustrated. It’s the same thing I’ve heard from numerous people, people trying to convince me that her death was an accident. “Shadi liked to visit different countries; she was big on humanitarianism. Through her own work with the UN, and an inheritance from a wealthy relative, she was able to give back, and she crossed paths with a lot of people.”
“You think she crossed paths with the wrong person.”
“Yes.” I nod. “And I think it cost her her life. There’s only so far, only so much, the FBI was willing to do. The order to let the investigation rest came from higher up. Someone heavily linked with a lot of charitable organizations, with UN ties, they didn’t want it to get out that she was a drug addict. But she wasn’t. I know Shadi; she wasn’t. She would’ve never put herself in that situation.”
“I’m fighting my own fight, Elias. I can
’t take on yours too.” Brutally honest, but I respect it.
“So don’t. We’ll take it on together.” I lift a hand to her face, giving her time to move away. “In return, I’ll fight your fight too. You don’t have to keep doing it by yourself.”
“You don’t even know what I’m fighting for, or who.” Her jaw is taut in my hand, as unrelenting as she is.
“But I know you. I might not know the entire story, I might not know the big details, but I know the woman I’ve watched. I know that whatever it is, it matters to you, it weighs on your heart. I know that struggle, and I know what it’s like to bear the burden alone.”
“Okay,” she says, voice low, the first sign of anything other than indifference showing in her golden brown eyes. “On one condition.”
“Name it.”
She reaches behind her and turns each lock, tilting her face up to mine.
“Strip, and don’t say a single word.”
3
Elias
“Ex—,”
She puts a finger to my lips, shaking her head.
“You either want to speak, or you want me.”
My jaw snaps shut.
I know not to look a gift horse in the mouth. A man would be a fool to ruin a chance with a woman like Naja.
The chances are high that this won’t be anything more than tonight, and I know there are things she isn’t saying, and that she might never say.
But I’ll take tonight, and hope that she keeps up her end of the bargain.
“For the record, you’re not trading yourself for my help.” She strips off her long sleeve shirt, revealing a plain black bra and an alluring valley of cleavage. “I’m fucking you because I feel like it, and you’re convenient.”
A man with more ego might take offense to her words, might not like her giving the orders. Most people who meet me would tell you I’m arrogant, they would tell you I don’t tolerate demands from anyone lightly.
They would tell you I’m one of those men with ego.
I’m not one of those men tonight.
I strip off my clothes, tossing away my shirt and pushing down my cargo pants. We lock eyes as she sheds the last of her clothing and I get rid of my boxers. She zeros in on my cock, and the pure lust on her face sends heat zipping through my veins.
I want to tell her how beautiful she is. The way the low light glances off the deep tones of her skin, the way it catches her generous breasts, highlighting her thick nipples, the way it rests on her curves.
What I can’t say with words, I say with my hands. I drop to my knees and run my hands up her legs, caressing over her thighs as she widens her stance.
“A man that knows his place.” There’s challenge in her eyes, but I won’t rise to it in the way she’s expecting. I’ve got more important things on my mind.
I inhale her musky sweet scent, nuzzling my mouth against the folds of her pussy and the erect bundle of nerves topping her soft mound. Opening my mouth over her, I eat at her like it’s my last meal. With my tongue and my lips, I tell her that this is a place I could stay forever. She clutches at my hair, soft sounds escaping her throat. I sip from the wetness clinging to her body, running my mouth over the entirety of her sex, tasting everything in my path.
Using her grip on my hair, she backs up towards the pile of cushions and blankets, and I follow her on my knees. Her eyes are dark with desire and the closed space has us both misted with a light sheen of sweat.
It makes it even more erotic, the air heavy with humidity and silence. Everything is charged, every movement matters.
She sits heavily and I open her legs wider, keeping my position and lifting her leg, trailing my tongue up the underside of her thigh and calf, ending at her heel. I sink my teeth into the soft flesh and watch her luscious lips part on a low moan.
Retracing my steps, I explore her cunt with my tongue, playing just inside her walls and moving to suckle her clit, laving it with my tongue and taking deep pulls. One foot strokes up and down my back while I grip her other leg in my hands, her fingers pulling at my scalp. I don’t mind the bite of pain, it only adds to the fire rolling through me, the vicious throbbing of my cock.
“Get up here.” Throaty and sensual, she knows what she wants, and what kind of man would I be to deny her? I cover her, hips sinking into the space between her thighs, bodies sticking and sliding against each other.
She pulls my face to hers and we kiss for the first time, lips brushing and pulling, teeth clashing as we fight for control.
Neither of us has it.
I lick my way to her ear, pulling it in retribution with my teeth and her fingers dig into my skin. She’s not a delicate woman right now, even if there’s something warring inside of her. She rolls us and I’m on my back, fingers rolling her taut nipples. Moving against my cock with her bare lips, she grinds down, making me grit my teeth and shudder.
I know this is her game, and I’m all too happy to play it. It might kill me, but I’ll go at the pace she sets.
This time.
She lifts up, and I feel the blissful heat of her pussy surround my cockhead as she sinks onto me, walls rippling around each inch of me that enters her heat. The air is alive with desire, with barely contained passion.
She rises above me like an ancient goddess, secure in her sexuality, and I’m under her thrall, completely and totally. Taking my hand, she presses it to her throat, squeezing it lightly before she pulls away.
I tighten my hand the slightest bit, and she moans, clenching around my length.
Fuck.
She fucks me, allowing me this one piece of control, this piece of trust. I pull her closer to my lips, breathing over hers as I hold her throat captive and our hips move with abandon, barely keeping our eyes open at the pleasure that feels almost like a drug.
I don’t let her eyes leave mine, and I refuse to let her ignore the feelings pressing around us. I can see it in her eyes, feel it in the slowing movements of her body, even if I know she won’t acknowledge it.
This connection, it’s enough for me to know that it exists. It has to be enough for now.
I switch our positions, pushing her damn hair back from her face and holding her tighter in my arms, stroking into her with deep thrusts. Panic flares in her eyes right before she shatters around me, but I don’t let her escape the knowledge. I press my mouth to hers and inhale every cry, every sob.
At some point in the middle of the night, she wraps a toned leg around me and captivates me again, head dropping back to the bed and the sweetest sounds filling the space around us.
When sunlight peeks lightly through the small, high windows, I’m not surprised to find myself alone.
If she thinks I’ll give up on her after confirming everything I knew, after tasting her brand of sweet, she’s wrong.
I’ll fight for her, and what’s important to both of us.
I hope she’s prepared for battle, because I’m prepared for war, and I don’t like to lose.
4
Naja
It’s the oldest trick in the book, and yet people still don’t vet or track their waitstaff for events closely enough.
Or maybe we’re just that good.
I skirt through the throngs of well-dressed people, their necks and wrists adorned with diamonds they probably don’t care to know cost people their lives just to make it to them.
Balancing the tray of hors d’oeuvres, I set it down on a table at the edge of the room, discreetly opening the small pod on the underside of my watch and sprinkling the colorless powder over the mushroom caps in the guise of rearranging a centerpiece. With a flourish, I pick up the tray again and hone in on my target.
I pause just nearby, and I let them come to me.
“Are those mushroom caps?” Cultured, moderate, nothing about the woman standing before me would indicate that she’s a traitor.
And yet, she is. A beautiful facade hiding a heartless shell of a woman.
“Imported?” she questions, curious
smile playing at her red lips.
“Yes, ma’am. Only the best for our benefactors. Thank you for your generosity in supporting the children’s hospital. It means a great deal and helps so many.” I draw her in with a compliment, like I appreciate her entirely selfish acts. She doesn’t give her time and money to the hospital for herself; she does it to boost her portfolio for when someone finds out about the other shit she’s involved in.
Like trading secrets and information that get innocent people killed and facilitating black market adoptions.
“Ah yes, I did hear that the servers for tonight are regular volunteers in the wards.”
“It’s amazing being able to see children doing so well.” I watch her nibble delicately on the small cap, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. It’s bite-sized; she could pop it into her mouth easily.
Bali passes me and we switch trays seamlessly. I offer Senator Lightwell a glass of champagne, watching her face closely. The powder is designed specifically to work at optimum speed with her body chemistry and alcohol will only make it more effective.
You can thank Bali’s love of chemistry, for that.
I meant it when I told Elias I don’t do personal. But this is an exception. The four of us who made it out that day haven’t run an op together in a while. We went our separate ways, mostly at my insistence, because the thought of losing them in my quest for revenge was too great.
We all lost love that day, but it felt like my duty. My cross to bear, a way for me to make up for the enormous guilt that I feel.
Guilt that’s only gotten worse since I slept with Elias. That was two months ago, and I can’t close my eyes at night without seeing the tenderness in his face that had no place being there.
I shouldn’t be thinking of him. I should be thinking of avenging my team and getting home to the people I care about.
This is it for me. When I’ve taken down those that need to be knocked off their pedestals and answer for their transgressions, I’m closing the chapter on this life.