I wonder if she’s wearing pink—
“Six. Two. Twenty-two. Eighteen. Six. Six. Six.”
“Got that?” she said to the phone, which beeped in reply.
She slapped it shut.
“Uh,” he said again. “So, how’ve you been?”
“Just fine.”
Then she put a small foot directly into his groin, and the world disappeared in a black hole of pain, and the damp cement sidewalk rushed up at him as he collapsed.
“Idiot,” she said as he gasped and rocked back and forth. “You do not leave me to ‘save’ me, got it? I’m not afraid to be a Stone, and I’m not afraid of your family. You think fabulous sex is simple to come by? You think two people bond like that so easily? That what we had happens every day?”
He made a small croaking noise.
“Right. I’m sticking around, chum, and so are you.” She paused. “Sorry about your testicles.”
He finally managed to get a breath. He lay on the wet concrete (at least, he thought with glum humor, it had stopped raining) and looked up at her. “I couldn’t take it if something happened to you.”
“That’s because you’re in love, asshole.”
He smiled. “I am?”
“Yup.” She stuck her hands in her coat pockets and glared down at him. “And for the record, the next time I wake up with a note, you’ll be having it for lunch.”
“I love you, too.”
Her phone beeped and she looked at it. “Bad guy’s in custody.”
“Guess it all worked out, then.”
“Guess so.”
“Why’d you come after me?”
“Why d’you think?”
“It’s a crummy life. I’m not fixing to retire anytime soon.”
“Well,” she said reasonably, “neither am I. I’ve been on the sidelines my whole life. Waiting to be the star in the movie, not the quiet, good-natured pal. Now I’ve got you. Romance, action, science fiction—it’s all here, as long as I’m with you. Do you think I could give you up? Go back to answering phones and hearing about Caitlyn’s adventures and wondering what it would be like to be the main event in my own life?”
“You’re the main event in my life. You gonna help me up?”
She dug a small toe into his ribs. “Is that a euphemism for ‘are we gonna go back to your hotel room now and do it for hours and hours’?”
“Yup,” he said, and she stuck out a hand, which he grabbed like a lifeline, and she pulled him up, up, up into her arms.
Part Three
WITHAL*
Epilogue
Caitlyn marched into The Boss’s office, looking typically disheveled and pissed off. Hair the color of a daffodil. Ripped jeans. Dmitri was right behind her, inscrutable as ever. Brand-new (pressed!) jeans.
She stuck a finger in The Boss’s face and said, “Don’t have Jenny call my cell phone at four-thirty in the morning anymore.”
“Don’t answer it,” The Boss replied, unmoved.
“And it’s only because she asked that we’re here.”
“Right.”
“Because, you’ve heard this before, right? We don’t work for you. I. Run. A. Salon. He’s. A. Count.”
“I have a job, you know,” Dmitri said mildly. “I don’t spend the day being a count.”
“Right, sweetie, your little computer thing.” It rivaled Bill Gates’s empire, but she never stopped calling it that. She ran her fingers through her hair, which had recently been cut brutally short and dyed bright yellow. “My point is, I don’t want you reading anything into this.”
“Never,” The Boss said.
Dmitri pulled a chair out for his scowling bride, who flung herself into it with the grace of a dying moose.
The door opened again, and Kevin Stone, dressed in civvies, walked in.
“Say it ain’t so! They got you, too?” Caitlyn gasped.
“Yeah, well.” He shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep, anyway. With Jenny’s new schedule, seems like somebody’s always awake.”
“Do not get her started on Jenny’s new schedule,” Dmitri said hastily.
“Right. We doing this here, or in a conference room?”
“Here is fine. We’re waiting on one more, and then we’ll start the official debriefing.”
“The bad guys aren’t really going to blow up Hawaii, are they?”
“Not if we have anything to say about it.”
“Didn’t anybody notice they were fiddling around with all the volcanoes? I mean, that’s bold. Hold an island hostage! A hundred billion or blammo.”
“Hawaii is an archipelago,” her husband pointed out gently.
“I knooooooow,” Caitlyn lied.
“So, lots of islands held hostage.”
“Whatever it is, I’m in,” Kevin said at once. He was leaning against The Boss’s desk, ignoring the man’s scowl. “I’ll go right now.”
“Thank you, Kevin, but we’re looking for a team effort on this one.”
“I’ve never been to Hawaii,” Caitlyn admitted, which made her tall husband smile, a rare and wonderful thing. “Uh, totally off the subject, because I don’t want you to misinterpret this as concern for you, because I have zero concern for you—it’s only because you’re married to my best friend that I even ask, but I’m still a little curious. How’s your kid?”
“Incarcerated,” he replied quietly.
Caitlyn had the grace to blush. “Oh. I—okay, that’s a tough one. Normally I’d say ‘that’s too bad’, except she’s hideously dangerous and should not be running around.”
“Thank you,” The Boss said, looking pleased.
“Stacy and I visited her last night for about an hour. Ironically, she had little interest in seeing us. If it wasn’t for the glass separating us,” he added thoughtfully, “she and my wife would have rumbled.”
“Rumbled?” Dmitri and Kevin asked in unison.
“Well.” Caitlyn nibbled her lower lip. “I guess—keep visiting? I mean, she let Kevin and Jenny get away. Came back with them to see you. That’s good, right? She wanted to see you? Gave up the Snakepit to see you.”
“Tried to kill my wife.”
“To be fair, she was your fiancée at the time. Well, okay, that was bad. But look at all the good stuff that happened after!”
The Boss was rubbing his pale eyebrows and squinting over Caitlyn’s shoulder. “Can someone please change the subject?”
He was ignored. “Besides, haven’t you ever seen a toddler acting out? That’s what Charmer’s like: a mean, tall toddler. With split ends. Homicidal tendencies. And, um, really bad nails.”
Dmitri leaned over and murmured in Caitlyn’s ear and, quite out of character, she dropped the subject. “So what are we waiting for? Are we saving Hawaii or are we fingering ourselves?”
“You’ve really got a way with words,” Kevin said. “You should write children’s songs.”
The door opened yet again, and in walked Jenny, laden with file folders, discs, and her laptop.
“Hi, babe,” Kevin called cheerily.
“Nice of you to join us, Mrs. Stone.”
Jenny didn’t change expression, or cringe away; she had The Boss’s number, his weakness, and they all knew it. She went around the room, handing file folders to everyone, opening her laptop, getting settled in her chair.
Kevin leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, which caused roses to bloom in her cheeks, but she never looked up from her paperwork. He slouched into the seat beside her, booted heels resting comfortably on The Boss’s recently polished desk.
“Make this quick,” Caitlyn said. “I want to save Hawaii so I can get some beach time.”
Kevin was playing with a lock of Jenny’s hair; she absently swatted his hand away. Dmitri leaned forward and murmured in Caitlyn’s ear again; she colored and giggled.
The Boss stared at them all, his expression unreadable, and then began the briefing.
My new family, The Boss reflected as he used a laser pointer
on the wall map of Hawaii to highlight the threatened areas.
Not all of them would admit it, but this was a family now. Disappointed, betrayed by blood relatives, here was the real family. The family he had made. Ex-wife (dead), homicidal kid (locked up), new wife (asleep in bed). Co-workers…but somehow more.
Jenny Stone looked up and interrupted his presentation. So much more polite than Caitlyn, he mused, but she still has no trouble expressing herself. “Boss, one moment. I just got the latest intel off the S.A.T. line…we may need to adjust our plans…”
Caitlyn groaned. “This is going to take longer? Why did you just say all that stuff if it’s not relevant?”
Jenny smiled at her old friend. “Not much longer. I promise.”
“Can’t you just say, ‘Dmitri, Caitlyn, here’s your flight info, here’s where the bad guys are—fetch.’ Can’t you?”
“Next time,” Jenny promised. She leaned over and snatched the laser pointer from The Boss. “My turn now.”
“Okay,” Jennifer said as she wrapped up their discussion about an hour later. “Mirage, Wolf, you’ll be on point. Kevin and I will be coming in, too, posing as tourists.”
“Oh, my poor Jenny,” Caitlyn groaned, burying her face in her hands. “What he’s brought you to! I could barf right now.”
“Well, don’t,” O.S.I.’s newest member said. Her badge had her picture, along with the words Jennifer B. Stone, Ops, Intel, Administration. Her badge was green. At O.S.I., badges were white (entry level), pink (administrative assistants), lavender (scientists), navy blue (field ops), green (Ops, Intel, Admin), and black (The Boss).
Caitlyn and Dmitri insisted on retaining their freelance status, and eschewed badges altogether.
“And get going,” she added as Caitlyn climbed to her feet, stretched, and groaned. “Think about all those poor innocent people in Hawaii.”
“It’s not that I don’t care,” Caitlyn protested, “it’s that there’s always poor innocent people being threatened by hideous marching death. And we always save them in the nick of time. At least this time we’re going somewhere where the weather’s nice.”
“Going right now,” Jenny added. “’Bye.”
“Us, too?” Kevin asked.
“Yup. Don’t worry, I packed plenty of sporks.”
“Missed you last night,” her husband said in a low voice, leaning over so far he nearly knocked her laptop to the floor.
Jenny smiled. “I booked us at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. The honeymoon suite. We’ll do what we always do—mix business with pleasure.”
“Damn. A guy could fall in love.”
“Not as fast as this girl,” she said, gathering up her folders and closing the meeting.
Two lovers. And an unforgettable passion
that transcends time in
AGAIN
by Sharon Cullars.
Available now from Brava…
Inner resolve is a true possibility when temptation isn’t within sight. Like the last piece of chocolate cheesecake with chocolate shavings; that last cigarette; that half-filled glass of Chianti…or the well-defined abs of a man who’s had to take his shirt off because he spilled marinara sauce on it. Not deliberately. Accidents happen. At the sight of hard muscles, resolve flies right out of the window and throws a smirk over its wing.
Part of it was her fault. Tyne had offered him a shoulder rub, because during the meal he had seemed tense, and she’d suspected that his mind was still on the occurrences of the day. After dessert, he sat in one of the chairs in the living room while she stood over him. Even though he had put on a clean shirt, she could feel every tendon through the material, the image of his naked torso playing in her mind as her fingers kneaded the taut muscles.
As David started to relax, he leaned back to rest his head on her stomach. The lights were at half-dim. Neither of them was playing fair. Especially when a hand reached up to caress her cheek.
“Stop it,” she whispered.
He seemed to realize he was breaking a promise, because the hand went down, and he said, “I’m sorry.” But his head remained on her stomach, his eyes shut. From her vantage, she could see the shadow of hair on his chest. She remembered how soft it felt, feathery, like down. Instinctively, and against her conscious will, her hand moved to touch the bare flesh below his throat. She heard the intake of breath, felt the pulse at his throat speed up.
She told herself to stop, but there was the throbbing between her legs that was calling attention to itself. It made her realize she had lied. When she told him she wanted to take it slow, she had meant it. Then. But the declaration seemed a million moments ago, before her fingers touched him again, felt the heat of his flesh melding with her own.
He bent to kiss her wrist, and the touch of his lips was the catalyst she needed. The permission to betray herself again.
She pulled her hands away, and he looked up like a child whose treat had been cruelly snatched away. She smiled and circled him. Then slowly she lowered herself to her knees, reached over, unbelted and unbuttoned his pants. Slowly, pulled down the zipper.
“But I thought you wanted…” he started.
“That’s what I thought I wanted.” She released him from his constraints. “But right now, this is what I want.” She took him into her mouth.
She heard an intake of breath, then a moan that seemed to reverberate through the rafters of the room. She felt the muscles of his thighs tighten beneath her hands, relax, tighten again. Her tongue circled the furrowed flesh, running rings around the natural grooves. She tasted him, realized that she liked him. Liked the tang of the moisture leaking from him. And the strangled animal groans her ministrations elicited.
There were pauses in her breathing, followed by strained exhalations. Then a sudden weight of a hand on the back of her head, guiding her. She took his cue, began sucking with a pressure that drew him farther inside her mouth. Yet there was more of him than she could hold.
He was moments from coming. She could feel the trembling in his limbs. But suddenly he pushed her away, disgorging his member from her mouth with the motion.
He shook his head. “No, not yet,” he said breathlessly. “Why don’t you join me?” Before she could answer, he stood up, pulling her up with him, and began unbuttoning her blouse, almost tearing the seed pearls in the process. The silk slid from her skin and fell to the ground in a languid pool of golden-brown. He hooked eager fingers beneath her bra straps, wrenched them down. Within seconds, she was naked from the waist up, and the current in the room, as well as the excitement of the moment teased her nipples into hard pebbles. His fingers gently grazed them, then he grazed each with his tongue. Her knees buckled.
“How far do you want to go?” he breathed. “Because I don’t want you to do this just for me.”
Her answer was to reach for the button of his shirt, then stare into those green, almost hazel eyes. “I’m not doing this for you. I’m being totally selfish. I want you…your body…” She pushed the shirt over his shoulders, yanked it down his arms.
“Hey, what about my mind?” he grinned.
She smiled. “Some other time.”
They undressed each other quickly, and as they stood naked, his eyes roamed the landscape of her body with undeniable appreciation. Then without ceremony, he pulled her to the floor on top of him so abruptly that she let out an “oomph.” His hands gripped the plump cheeks of her ass, began kneading the soft flesh. She felt his hardened penis against her stomach and began moving against it, causing him to inhale sharply. His hands soon stopped their kneading and replaced the touch with soft, whispery caresses that caused her crotch to contract with spasms. One of his fingers played along her crevice as his lips grabbed hers and began licking them. His finger moved to the delicate wall dividing both entryways, moved past the moist canal, up to her clitoris, started teasing her orb just as his tongue began playing along hers. She grounded her pelvis against him, desperately claiming her own pleasure, listening to the symphony of
quickly pumping blood, and intertwined breaths playing in her ears.
He guided her onto his shaft. Holding her hips, he moved her up, down, in an achingly slow and steady pace that was thrilling and killing, for right now she thought she could die with the pleasure of it, the way he filled her, sated her. She felt her eyes go back into her head (she had heard about the phenomenon from other bragging women, and had thought they were doing just that—bragging. But now she knew how it could happen.)
“Ooooh, fuck,” she moaned.
“My thoughts exactly,” he whispered back, and with a deft motion, changed their positions until he was on top of her. Straddled on his elbows, he quickened his thrusting, causing a friction that drove her to a climax she couldn’t stop. Her inner walls throbbed against the invading hardness, and she drew in shallow breaths as her lungs seemed to shatter with the rest of her body.
She put her arms around his waist and wrapped her legs around his firm thighs. His body had the first sheen of perspiration. She stroked along the dampness of his skin, then reciprocated the ass attention with gentle strokes along his cheeks.
“I want…I want…” he exerted but couldn’t seem to finish the sentence. Instead, he placed his mouth over hers until she was able to pull his ragged breaths into her needy lungs. The wave that washed over her once had hardly ebbed away before it began building again. Now his pace was frantic, his hips pounding her body into the carpeting, almost through the floor. Not one for passivity, she pounded back just as hard and eagerly met each thrust. The wave was gathering force, this one threatening a cyclonic power that would rip her apart, render her in pieces. She didn’t care. His desperation was borne of sex, but also she knew, of anger and frustration. He was expelling his demons inside her, and she was his willing exorcist…
Blood was everywhere. On the walls, which were already stained with vile human secretions; on the wooden floor, where the viscous fluid slowly seeped into the fibers of the wood and pooled between the crevices of the boards. Soon, the hue would be an indelible telltale witness of what had happened, long after every other evidence had been disposed of. Long after her voice stopped haunting his dreams. Long after he was laid cold in his grave.