The elevator halts and we both push off the wall at the same time, moving to the center of the car to face each other, so close I can feel the warmth of his body shimmy against mine, but he doesn’t touch me. And I don’t touch him. It’s this crazy game of anticipation we play together. His mouth, that sexy mouth that I know can be gentle one moment and punishing the next, curves ever so slightly. I’ve seen him smile like this, a tiger after his prey that is certain he will win. In this case, I am as well, and I’d like to say this is because I let him win. But the reality here is that he affects me, seduces me, owns me.
And with any other person, in any other situation, that would be a problem in need of an immediate solution. With him, in this situation, it’s arousing. “I want to be inside you. Right now.” he says.
“That’s not a very gentlemanly thing to say in an elevator,” I reply.
He shackles my hips and walks me to him. “We both know my gentlemanly qualities aren’t the ones that make you wet, now are they?”
He’s right. They aren’t, though he possesses them and uses them, the contrast of proper Seth Cage and oh-so-improper Seth Cage only adding to his appeal. And as for him wanting inside me . . . I’ve wanted him there since his fingers made their way under the table and into my panties at the Davenport lunch. I’m pretty sure I want it more than he does. And I’d turn the tables on him, make him wait as he did me, but that would mean making me wait, too, and that’s just not going to happen right now.
The elevator doors open and he rotates us, his arm around my waist, hand at my hip, branding me while the flex of his fingers promises they will soon be in other, more intimate places. Our apartment is a short walk, and Seth opens the door. I enter first, the pale wooden floors that stretch the entire space, upstairs and down, beneath my feet. I never make it any further.
Seth catches my hand, even as the door shuts. The next thing I know, I’m pressed against it, and he’s locking it, multi-tasking like a good agent. His hand slides under my hair, and cupping my neck. Pulling my mouth to his, while mine is on his tie, holding onto him. “Do you know how badly I want you?”
“Not badly enough,” I say, “or you’d already be there.”
His mouth closes down on mine, a deep thrust of tongue that consumes me all the more, because his hand is dragging my skirt up my thigh, sliding underneath to cup my backside. “I’m not going to spank you right now,” he says, tearing his mouth from mine. “Not with tonight ahead of us, but I am going to fuck you.” He slides his face to mine, his lips at my ear, his hand squeezing my backside, as he adds, “Lick you.”
He doesn’t give me time to absorb that delicious promise before he’s pulling my dress over my head and tossing it away, leaving me in my heels, thigh-highs, lacy white bra, and panties. It hits the ground and he turns me to the door, stepping into me and forcing me to catch myself on my hands. His hands cover mine. “Now I’m going to show you what comes after the spanking.”
“Most likely my anger.”
“If you’re angry when I’m done with you, sweetheart, I need to go to fuck school somewhere, and you already know I don’t need lessons.” His teeth scrape my shoulder, but I don’t verbally react. But when his hand comes down on my backside, and he gives it a decent palm, I do. And even as I do, he turns me and he’s on his knee on front of me. “That wasn’t a spanking.” He grabs my panties and yanks them away, his hands at my hips. “But this is what comes after the spanking.”
His tongue laps at my clit, slowly, and then he’s suckling me, and his fingers are stroking me. And he is so damn good at this that I can’t remember why I didn’t want him to spank me. When the first spasm of release hits me, I think I might just ask him to spank me. On my terms.
With this as my reward.
* * *
Only an hour before we’re due at the Davenports’ private club, I stand at the vanity of the master bathroom, dressed in a red silk robe while finishing my makeup. Seth stands next to me, in nothing but a towel after the shower we’d shared together, his muscular upper body flexing with the push and pull of his razor. This man is the Mr. Jones to my Mrs. Jones those around us believe us to be, but he has become so much more. He is my best friend and the man I love when I swore I’d never fall in love, for too many reasons to list.
He glances in the mirror, his eyes meeting mine, and only then do I realize I’m staring at him, when I am always aware of what I’m doing. It’s a matter of life and death that I am, and usually not just mine. But then, that is what Seth does for me. He allows me to let my guard down. His brow furrows at something he sees in my eyes. “What is it?”
What is the matter? Missions don’t make me nervous anymore. I’ve been living this my entire life. So why do I feel off, for lack of a better term, tonight?
He wipes off his face and turns to me. “Talk to me, sweetheart.”
Talk to him.
For once in my life, there is someone who I actually feel comfortable sharing my real thoughts with, and I would right now, but his cellphone rings. He glances down at it where it rests on the vanity between us. “Danny,” he says, and considering our third hand is planning the details of tonight’s mission, he answers the call immediately.
I wait a moment, watching Seth to ensure there isn’t a problem, and then Seth gives me a lifted hand to indicate all is well. For now. I hope that remains the case, and I do not like that the thought just popped into my head. The two of them start talking and it seems to be about tonight’s surveillance, recapping the plan we already have in place. I face the mirror and run my hands over my hair, which is now long and brunette for this mission, my natural shade, before grabbing the hairspray and spraying it down.
Walking to the bedroom, I cross to where my dress lies across the king-sized bed, which I have shared with Seth every night since this mission began. Lust between us, starting on the plane here, and spiraling to something deeper. Already in a black lacy panty and bra set with thigh-highs, I slip out of my robe, then I put on the bra holster resting on the bed and insert the Ruger next to it. Next comes the black cocktail-style dress I’ve chosen for the night. The V of the cleavage hides the holster but is still sexy enough to distract an enemy, while remaining classy. Stepping into my high heels on the floor beside me, I grab my Chanel purse, where my phone and a blade rest, but not much more. Big purses are suspicious looking, and suspicious looking can be deadly.
I exit the bedroom and enter the cozy living room, with high ceilings and windows lining the front wall, creating an intimate, safe feeling that defies the danger of the CIA operation it helps mask. I love this space, but then who wouldn’t love a ten-million-dollar apartment where they fell in love for the first time in their twenty-eight years of living?
Crossing the room, I open the double doors leading to an outdoor space and exit onto the balcony, the night air cool, if you consider the hot afternoon now behind us. Moving forward, I ignore the various chairs and sitting areas of the spacious balcony and head straight to the railing. My fingers grip the thick banister dividing me from the miles of air and gigantic drop just one more step would bring. My gaze sweeps the horizon now speckled with city lights, that glow mostly white, but there are the red and blue and even yellow ones as well. There’s always a random color in everything, and in its randomness is always a story. I learned this from my parents in their laboratory. I’ve found it to be true in every aspect of life.
Seth is my personal random color, or maybe he’s better described as my random bright spot in all of the darkness and death of this job. Yet tonight, as amazing as things are with him, as successful as today has been for us, I feel nothing but dread, a sense of foreboding like a heavy weight on my shoulders. It is a rare but familiar feeling that I do not ever welcome.
There is movement behind me, and I sense Seth even before I turn. But I do turn, finding him standing in the doorway, in another of the gray suits he favors, this one darker, his tie blue like his eyes.
Those blue eyes of
his narrow on me and I know he knows something is wrong. Is there something wrong? He leans a shoulder on the archway, seeming to realize that question needs answering, and by me, silently offering me the space to understand it, and express it. I inhale and grip the railings behind me. “Do you remember me telling you that sometimes I get bad feelings?” I ask.
He narrows his eyes on me. “Yes,” he says. “I remember. And you have one about tonight?”
“I do,” I say, always direct and exact, as my father taught me to be, in all that I do, even if the feeling itself I’m experiencing is not.
He pushes off the doorway and straightens, walking toward me. I straighten as well, meeting him halfway, and then we stand there, looking at each other, existing together, when there was never a “together” for me before him. The mood serious, the air thick with the implication of what I’ve just said. “You’re a scientist,” he reminds me. “Feelings are not facts, but nerves are human.”
“Nerves don’t affect me unless I get one of these feelings. And I’m smart enough to know that facts alone do not keep an agent alive.”
His cellphone buzzes with a message and he removes it from his jacket, glancing at the screen, then at me. “Danny has surveillance online and our car is waiting.” He pauses, narrowing his eyes on me. “What do you want to do?”
“My job and well,” I say, thinking of the man who runs The Circle, who we hope to come face to face with tonight. “We have proof Ming betrayed his best friend, who will assassinate him and everyone he knows if he finds out. He has someone we want, and we can trade. And no good agent lets the chance to get someone like Ming on a leash pass them by.”
And so we make our way downstairs to a black sedan where Danny sits in the driver’s seat. But this time when I enter the car, unlike my first night with Danny as our driver back in Rome, I have no friendly greeting for him. “Crickets,” Danny says, after pulling us onto the road for the short eight-block drive. “What’s up with the crickets?”
“Amanda’s uneasy about tonight,” Seth informs him, his hand settling on my leg.
“Something feels off,” I confirm.
Danny eyes her in the mirror. “A feeling,” he says simply, obviously understanding. None of us like “feelings,” as Seth had pointed out. We’re all human. Except him, perhaps. Nothing affects him, except perhaps me, which only makes our connection all the more powerful.
I blink to find Danny still has eyes on me, waiting on an answer. “Yes,” I say tightly. “Just a feeling.”
“There’s no such thing as ‘just a feeling’ in this life we lead,” he says. “I can assure you the team of five watching the digital feed are the best of the best.”
“You’ve had a digital team watching the Davenports,” I remind him, finding no comfort in the same line of defense I’d reveled in this morning. “Do we have eyes on Ming? Are we sure he’s in the city?”
“He arrived this morning,” Danny confirms. “And he’s staying in the hotel that is in the same building as the club.”
“Do we have him online?” I ask.
“Negative,” Danny says. “He swept his room and removed everything we had in place. Twice.”
“So he knows he’s being watched,” Seth says. “That makes me uneasy.”
And Seth doesn’t do uneasy. “He has no idea you’re involved in the surveillance,” Danny argues. “No one gets close to this man.”
“But we are,” I say, knowing that my gut feeling can’t be a factor here. If Ming is here tonight, it might be our only chance to get close to him. “We have to do this.”
Seth is silent several beats before he says, “Then let’s talk through as many things that could go wrong as we can in the next ten minutes.” And that’s exactly how we spend the short drive.
But I’m still tense when we stop in front of the door. “I’ve got your back,” Danny says just before we exit.
That foreboding feeling rips through me with those words, and I have no idea why. I don’t say this out loud. It can do no good. We all need to focus now on our jobs, not our feelings.
Seth and I exit the car and walk to the door of the private club, the doorman greeting us. “You’re expected, Mr. and Mrs. Jones.” He waves us inside.
We enter the dimly lit room, fancy bowl-like lights hanging from the ceiling, leather high-back booths around the room. I scan the crowd, finding no familiar faces, and actually very few faces. “It’s very . . . empty,” I say.
“Yes,” Seth agrees tightly. “It is. Almost as if it’s a private party for us.” I motion to the end of a bar to our right that will place us in a corner and facing the door.
Once we’re there, we both stand and order drinks. We sip those for a full thirty minutes, with no greeting from anyone we know, when his phone buzzes with a message. At the exact moment, my phone does the same. Both of us reach for our cellphones, and Seth glances at his and then at me. “I have an urgent coded message,” he says as I read my message, that foreboding feeling back again.
“My mother sent me an urgent message to call her. There’s no way the two aren’t connected.”
“Bathroom,” Seth says, motioning to the sign indicating a hallway.
I nod and I wave to the bartender, a stout fifty-something man I’m fairly certain is packing a gun under his jacket, which Seth will have decided as well. “Another round,” Seth orders. “We’re just going to the bathroom.”
“You got it, man,” he replies, reaching for a bottle.
Seth and I turn away, crossing to that hallway and the side-by-side bathrooms. We each stop at our respective doors and glance at each other, our stares lingering a moment, before we both move again. I enter the one-stall bathroom, lock the door, and dial my mother. At the same moment, I receive another message. My mother doesn’t pick up and I try my father. Nothing. I hit the message button and hear:
Amanda, listen carefully. There’s a kill order on our heads. Mine. Your father’s, and yours. Someone in the agency is behind it. We’re going underground and you need to do the same. Ghost protocol. And, sweetheart. Seth Cage, the man you’re on assignment with. They call him “the Assassin” in the agency.
I am not sure how long I stand there staring at the phone. Thirty seconds? An hour? I just know that I’m trembling all over. “No,” I say. “It’s not Seth.” I replay the message. It still says Seth is the Assassin. I inhale and start to pace. “Think Amanda. Think.” I stop walking, hand pressed to my face. “I can’t think here. I could end up dead.”
Decision made, I walk to the door, the gun in my dress the best friend I have as I open it. Finding no one in the hallway, and knowing that Seth could exit the men’s bathroom at any moment, I look right to the exit sign and go for it. I am out of the bar in thirty seconds, and in the hotel in some hallway. I start walking, putting distance between Seth and me, replaying every conversation I’ve ever had with him. I trust him. For God’s sake, I was going to let the man spank me. I love him. Unbidden, my father’s words replay in my head: Love is dangerous. Love is weakness. Love will make you foolish. Love will get you killed. The asshole said those things in front of my mother and I remember too well repeating them all to her, after I walked in on him with another woman.
And still she stayed with him.
Because apparently, love does make you a fool, which means every moment I’m with Seth I’m a fool. I love him too much not to be.
Crossing to the hotel exit, and with a gut-wrenching sensation, I exit to the street. I then walk two blocks to a subway station where I dump my mission-issued cellphone. Glancing over my shoulder, I tell myself it’s for safety reasons, but some part of me just wants Seth to show up and not try to kill me. Forcing myself forward, I hurry down the stairs, and it’s not until I’m on the train that I realize the final decision I’ve made. Or perhaps, accept the final decision that I’ve made. And that decision is about survival. Because I know that Seth has masterfully made himself into the one person who could ever get past my defense po
ison and kill me. Seth is the Assassin. He is my poison.
And I am gone forever.
Chapter Two
Amanda
Present day
I hold my gun on Seth, I will my hand to stop shaking, but the image of my dead mother and a kill order with Seth’s name on it I’d found on his phone moments before just won’t stop tormenting me.
“I did not kill your parents,” Seth says, now trapped by the door of our hotel room, where I’ve confronted him. The hotel room that was supposed to be the place we fell in love again. The place we’ve plotted and planned to take down a madman who wants to poison innocent people. Because I thought we were better together. Instead, it was just him setting me up again. “It’s a misunderstanding,” he adds. “I did not do this, any more than you committed espionage.”
“Obviously you are not getting the point,” I say. “Let’s try this again. The only reason that you aren’t drowning in your own lungs right now, is that I want answers. The only reason.”
“No,” he says, calmly. “It’s not. It’s because you know me and you know I would not hurt you or anyone you cared about. You know this.”
I motion to the door and, damn it, my hand is shaking right along with my knees beneath the fancy cream-colored cocktail dress that I’d loved an hour ago and hate now. I hate everything about this night. And the shaking is not from fear. It’s from the pain of loss and betrayal. My parents are dead and the man I loved, and trusted, killed them. “Flip the locks and make sure we don’t have any unwanted company.”