by Hazel Parker
It was literally who I was.
Occasionally, in the past, a woman had gotten angry at me and accused me of all sorts of things, but there was nothing hot about an angry woman calling you an asshole. I didn’t have a desire to sleep with those girls, just to get rid of them.
But fucking Kaylie Charleston…
No, focus, Scott.
Mission.
The mission. Yes. Snake was still in pursuit of us. He’d somehow found the first place. The place where…
Where Kaylie and I had had our first of probably many sexual experiences.
Fuck, why was it that I wanted the one thing that I couldn’t have?
Mission, Scott! You fucking idiot!
Right, the mission. The mission where I had let Kaylie seen my face, where I’d eaten out Kaylie, where I had violated so many rules I wasn’t even sure what to do anymore. Did I tell Liam and my other agents?
I was running out of patience with myself. I walked away from Kaylie, who got on the bed and closed her eyes. I knew she wasn’t asleep, but the fact that she wasn’t running her damn mouth at me was enough of a win at the moment; I just needed her to have some distance from me.
It didn’t often happen, because by definition, joining DOM was usually a solo adventure, but we had all told each other that if we needed help, we needed to make it fucking happen. I grabbed a burner phone from a room in the bunker. I dialed Liam’s cell by memory.
And I committed to only talking to him about the mission. Namely, Snake’s role in the mission. I didn’t need to be brutally shamed for not having self-control with my mouth around Kaylie.
“This is DOM,” Liam said.
It didn’t sound like Liam. It didn’t have to. We all had voice modulators installed on our phones. Perhaps someone with a larger social circle or a family would have found it amusing or confusing, but we didn’t have either. Our friends were other agents, and even then, it was more about business than about friendship.
“Liam, it’s Scott,” I said. “I’m in George Town right now, and I got Snake hot on my trail.”
“Shit,” Liam said. “So Snake—”
“He found one of the outposts, Liam.”
Liam cursed a hell of a lot fucking louder this time than he had the previous round.
“All right, what do you need?”
“A plane and defenses out of here,” I said. “This one’s hot, Liam. I can’t afford to be waiting around. I’ll have an army of Snake and his men on me if I don’t hurry the fuck up.”
“All right,” Liam said. “Give me some time. Call me later; I’ll have a plan hashed out.”
“Thanks.”
I hung up right then, looked for a hammer, couldn’t find one, and threw the phone against the wall in frustration. Ostentatiously, I did so to destroy the evidence of our phone call and any trail leading us to this particular building.
In reality, well, unsurprisingly, I had some major frustration issues to deal with.
“You OK?” Kaylie asked.
So much for her pretending to be asleep. So much for you being able to just brush her off and ignore her.
“That obvious, huh?”
I looked back at Kaylie, now sitting up on the edge of the bed, showing no signs of having just napped.
“I don’t know a lot of people who can throw a phone against the wall and say that they’re feeling normal.”
“Not a lot of people can be in my line of work and can say they’re normal,” I said. “In fact, I’d venture to say that none of us are normal.”
Kaylie sat still, processing that information.
“Were you ever normal?”
“Why would you want to know that?”
“Call it curiosity,” she said with a gentle smirk. “Maybe for the guy that will be with me for some time, I want to know a little bit about him.”
I shrugged. I wasn’t going to tell her everything, although her knowing my face was already the most revealing secret she could have uncovered. Everything else was really just secondary, even if, in some respects, it was equally damaging.
“I mean, I went to college. I had a desk job for a bit.”
“And then you became the real-life James Bond,” she said in an overly dramatic tone.
“No.”
I think she expected me to say more, because she leaned forward like she was expecting an explanation. Naturally, I decided when I would give it to her, so I said nothing.
“What all have you been in? FBI? CIA? Some other three-letter acronym that no one has ever heard of?”
“DOM.”
I regretted saying it. I couldn’t remember if I’d already told her that I was a part of DOM or not, but even reaffirming information was bad.
But then again, so was having the hots for a client, so was showing your face to her, so was eating out her pussy.
“DOM?”
“Deo Optimo Maximo.”
Kaylie arched an eyebrow at me.
“I don’t speak Greek—”
“It’s Latin.”
“—but that sounds like the best and biggest something. Maybe the best and biggest dick?”
She narrowed her eyes at me to try and see my reaction.
“No.”
Again, I did not elaborate. And this time, her desire to get me to talk more was starting to piss me off. But unlike last time, when Kaylie seemed to just accept my silence and asked a follow-up question, she seemed almost aroused by my anger.
“I bet you do.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Sure, just like last night isn’t going to happen.”
This little brat…
I walked over, stood over her, put my hands on her shoulders, and glared at her. Only in this spot did I realize how easily she could have sucked me off. She barely had to lean forward if my pants were off.
Thank God they were on.
“Are you trying to get me to do something?” she said with a seductive smile. “Seems to me that you are, Mr. Scott.”
I turned around and took a seat right by her. Too close to her. But I didn’t move.
“You’re reading way too much into everything,” I said. “I had a moment of weakness last night. I said I wouldn’t repeat it. And I won’t.”
And yet, you have feelings for her.
“OK, well then, tell me more about yourself, if you’re not going to say what Deo means.”
“God.”
“I know, I can be annoying,” she said. “What was your desk job?”
“One of the agencies,” I said. I felt like I could speak vaguely enough about this without revealing anything, and it would give my temper and my cock a chance to cool down. “I went to school in D.C. for a career in one of the agencies. But the thing is, people think that there’s some sort of secret program in which you become an agent and you become James Bond. Spying, though, is really quite boring for the most part.”
“Really?” Kaylie said, sounding like she did not believe me. “So far, you’ve killed a bunch of men on the boat, rescued me, taken me to two safehouses, and are in contact with someone to try and get us both off this island. Some guy named Liam.”
“I said ‘for the most part.’”
My temper was not going back down. It wasn’t Kaylie’s fault; I was frustrated with the situation as a whole. Kaylie’s questions weren’t helping, though.
“A lot of spying is just going over emails, reading transcripts and reports. It’s not nearly as glamorous as you’d think.”
“And what firm?”
I shrugged.
“Scott, come on!”
Up to this point, she’d been feisty, at times aggressive, but never quite to the point of anger. But now, with me being as coy as I needed to be, she was getting pouty, angry even.
And you know what?
When she was acting this way, it was a turn on. What would someone this flirtatious and this spunky do when she had anger pushing her as well? Could I even handle something
like that?
“You’re such a fucking tease,” she said. “You’re so evil.”
“Welcome to dealing with someone like me,” I said. “There’s a reason I said what happened last night can only happen once. I—”
Kaylie lunged for me, grabbing me by the shoulders and trying to kiss me. I acted on instinct.
I rolled her off the bed, got her in a headlock, and hovered over her body. I had zero intention of hurting her—that I certainly could not hide and would cost me the ten million dollars—but whenever someone grabbed me like that without warning, my training instincts took over. It didn’t matter that the act was sexual and not malicious. Instinct did not have time to ask about intention.
But now, over her, I had her pinned to the ground. I could have done whatever I wanted with her. The sexual tension was, somehow, even thicker than it had been when I ate her out. She would see everything that happened, and I would get my own release.
I cannot. I…stop it, Scott.
“I am in charge here, not you,” I growled. Why am I saying it into her ear like this? That’s not helping anything. “I told you a thousand times already, this cannot happen. So quit trying to make it happen. Do you understand? Or do I need to sit you down like a child until you get it?”
Kaylie smiled. She wasn’t getting it. If I had to be a dick to push her away, I would. Whatever it took.
“OK, Scotty.”
“I’m serious,” I scowled. “You have pushed boundaries far too fucking hard, and if you keep it up, I’ll just stop communicating with you entirely.”
I had to cut this off hard. Being nice wasn’t working. I had to protect myself as much as I had to adhere to the rules.
“I cannot do this to you, and you cannot do this to me,” I said. “What happens when the mission is over and you’re back home? I will tell you. You will never see me again. Ever. I don’t exist on any social media accounts, and you’ll have a hell of a time trying to find me in the real world. Even if you luck out and stumble across me, it will only happen once, and then you will never see me again thereafter.”
I released my hold around Kaylie’s neck. But her eyes finally seemed to start to understand what I had pushed so hard to get across. Even if we stopped denying that we had lust for each other, we still could not cross that bridge.
“I cannot believe I crossed the line already. But there’s more to it than just my own rules if we cross it again. There’s the fallout, and—”
“Scott, come on.”
“Do not bullshit me, Kaylie. You know you have feelings for me more than you’ll admit right now.”
“I—”
“You forgot your own boyfriend’s name, for fuck’s sake,” I said. “That’s not something someone does unless they’ve found someone else. And we do not need to pretend who that someone else is.”
She knew I was right. She was just too stubborn to say so out loud. I put my hands on the ground for support and stood up.
“Get some rest. If you can’t sleep, there are a bunch of books in a room here somewhere you can read,” I said. “But we cannot be near each other. I need to focus entirely on the mission.”
But that was so much easier said than done. So far, I could at least pretend to fight it because I had not kissed Kaylie. But the instant that I did, there was no pretending, no games, no “we can’t do this.” It would all be off the table.
The only thing that would be on it would be us.
“Scott…”
But for once, Kaylie seemed to be at a loss for words. The impossible had happened. We’d run into a situation that had shut both of us up. We’d encountered a nightmare that made it so neither of us had the fire that we did before.
“Go rest or read, Kaylie,” I said. “I need to figure out what to do next.”
If Kaylie wasn’t going to do that, I was going to force her to. I turned around, went to a board room of sorts, grabbed a burner phone, and locked the door behind me.
But when I locked the door, it felt like I hadn’t just locked temptation out.
It felt like I had shut out the best chance in my life for love.
There was something that I had not told Kaylie, in part because I could barely tell it to myself. Why I had gotten into the field.
I’d done so because I was a loner by trade. In high school, and even in college, I didn’t go to parties. I didn’t go on dates. I just made my point to women, and if they were interested, we fucked. If they weren’t, I didn’t put in any more effort than I had to. The life of a loner was such that it made finding love impossible, because love took time. Love wasn’t something you found in an escort or at a store.
In some respects, looking at it through that lens, it was a small miracle I had not fallen in love with a client before.
But Kaylie truly was different.
And yet, here I was all the same, pushing her away, refusing to fall in love.
Maybe things would change. Most likely, they wouldn’t. But one thing was for damn sure.
If Kaylie got back to New York City safe, and I was not with her, I would never love again. Again?
This was my one chance at love. At a future. At happily ever after.
And my own job would not let me indulge it.
Chapter 14: Kaylie
I couldn’t understand Scott.
Seriously, I fucking couldn’t.
One minute, he had me pinned against the wall, all but threatening to kiss me, his hot breath warming my face…and then the next, he was distant and angry, throwing his cell phone against the wall in frustration…and then the next, he had his hips and groin inches from my face, as if daring me to reach up and grab his cock—which I almost did…and then the next, he had me pinned on the ground…and the next…
I was starting to understand why I didn’t meet guys like this often in regular life; in normal situations, I had enough sanity to stay the hell away from them.
Then again, this was not real life, even if it was real. Scott probably had more pressure on him than anyone in the world. Who could blame him for his confusing, uncertain behavior?
I certainly could not. I did not want to. But all the same, I was left reeling and hurt when I tried to make sense of it all.
When I heard the click on the door to his room, locking me out, I felt like that was it. Like there was no coming back from that. I went into all his rooms until I found the pile of books, but to my chagrin, they weren’t books of interest; most of them were maps describing various locations or had coded messages in them. They weren’t the books that a retired mom would read for entertainment on a Tuesday afternoon; that much was for sure.
I tried to read one about the geography of Ecuador, but even under these circumstances, when the options for “entertainment” were this or staring at a wall, there was only so much dry writing that I could take before I just wilted and gave up. After ten minutes, that was just what I did—I closed the book, sighed, and went back to bed.
I did not need to sleep. I’d already gotten plenty of that.
But I hoped that somehow, someway, maybe if I remained on the bed with my eyes shut for as long as I could, my body would get confused and go back to sleep. I didn’t need it for the rest, but I sure needed it to pass the time and forget all of the nonsense that was going on.
~~~
The door Scott had gone through unlocked.
I jolted out of bed. I had no idea how much time had passed. It could have been an hour, it could have been eight hours; it all just blurred together through an empty nothingness of time. I’d spent however long just staring at the ceiling, daydreaming about what it would be like to go home.
Scott emerged and shut the door behind him. Though looks could deceive, he did not seem as stressed as he had before. He still had a bit of an edge to him, but he also looked emotionally exhausted.
A part of me thought that if ever there was a time to take advantage of him, this was it, but believe it or not, for now, I did want to respect his wishes
.
But the instant I got a chance to poke at him a little…
“I have a way out,” he said.
“What is it?”
“I can’t tell you,” he said. You would think by now, I would have known that would be the answer. “But we leave in an hour when the night is darkest. You can do whatever you want between now and then.”
And there it was. The moment to poke. I could do whatever I wanted? I wasn’t even thinking consciously about what I was going to say or do. I just had to poke.
“Well, I am going to get naked and shower,” I said.
The grin wasn’t as sly as I usually made it. But all the same, I could see his eyes glaze over. He gave genuine thought to the idea of joining me. Maybe he wouldn’t tell me. Maybe he’d just take me from behind without telling me.
And when he didn’t say anything at first, when he didn’t deny the half-offer, that felt as good a sign as any. I stood up, started heading to the bathroom, and took my shirt off along the way. It wasn’t anything that Scott hadn’t already seen, but come on—no man in the world didn’t get turned on by a woman taking her shirt off to reveal her bra and her skin on the way to a shower.
Right outside the door to the shower, I turned around to see if Scott was looking. He had his back turned to me and his arms folded, but he wasn’t engaged in anything. The only reason he’d turned around was to avoid temptation.
But it was a sort of weak resistance. It was the kind of resistance that one put up to feign refusal, a sort of plausible deniability, but it wasn’t anything that would prevent him from taking me.
And yet, it worked enough that he did not turn around. I wasn’t aggressive enough. That was fine—for now.
I got into the bathroom, left the door half-open, stripped naked, and turned on the shower. I stepped inside, so horny and so damn aroused, hoping to feel his hands around my hips, hoping to feel him just take me as he thrust his cock deep inside me.