Authors: Emma Taylor
I rush to the ER to find a patient bleeding. He’s clutching his lower abdomen from pain.
“Patient is male. Caucasian. 6 feet 2 inches,” the nurse continues to brief me as I assess the man lying on the bed.
“How are you, Sir?” I ask.
“We’ll Angie, what a surprise! Are we going to continue to meet like this?” Ty grins at me.
“Ty? What in the world happened to you?” I ask him as I deal with his injury. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to patch him up from a gunshot wound.
“Long story short, I’m home on leave and got into a brawl with some knucklehead trying to steal from a little old lady.”
I gave him a very disappointed look. Home on leave? And he hasn’t tried to get in touch with me!? Without saying I word, I turn around and enter a few entries into the computer. It’s not a serious wound so the nurse can take care of him from here.
“Well, you take care of yourself, Captain Kirk,” I say. I turn around and walk off. I’m mad. He promised to stay in touch and he didn’t even send an email or try to get a hold of me. To make it worse, he’s been home!
“Angie, wait,” he starts. But, I storm off.
For over a year, I’ve been thinking of this guy and he’s just like all the other jerks I’ve dated. I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid and so blinded.
Maybe my father was right about him after all.
I work the reminder of my shift, clearly agitated and disappointed. Agitated at him. Disappointed in myself for waiting for him.
*****
I swing open my apartment door and head straight into the bathroom to shower. I immediately head to the kitchen to open a bottle of wine. I need to get all this anger out somehow.
Just as I settle down on the couch to enjoy some TV and wine, the doorbell rings. I get up and look through the peep hole.
It’s Ty with a bouquet of roses and a bottle of wine. Surely he came to apologize for the jerk move he pulled over the last year. I’m going to pretend like I’m not home. He needs to just go away. I want some alone time.
He rings the doorbell again.
“Angie, I know you’re in there. I can hear the TV,” he yells through the door.
I sigh. “What do you want Ty?” I yell back.
“I want to talk. I brought peace offerings,” he says.
“This isn’t someone kind of war. Just go away,” I tell him.
“It feels like a war right now,” he replies.
I open the door only to shut it in his face. Quiet. A few seconds go by and I open the door again.
I roll my eyes and cross my arms.
“I hate you so much right now,” I snort angrily.
He hands me the roses and wine and walks right past me.
“Ok, just come on inside,” I yell after him.
He surveys the room like he’s back in the battlefield and walks around to see past the corners. His arm hugs his abdominal wound from the gunshot earlier.
“You should still be at the hospital or be taking some pain killers,” I tell him as I close the door and walk towards the kitchen sink. I pull an empty vase from the shelf and start to fill it with water for the roses.
“Don’t need any of that,” he says. “I survived out in the battlefield without it.”
I turn to look at him and roll my eyes again.
“You need to stop being so hardheaded and let someone try to take care of you for once,” I inform him. I turn back around to put the flowers in the vase.
“I’m sorry,” he apologizes. He comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist. He rests his head on my shoulder. Ty takes a deep breath.
“I missed you so much Angie.”
I’m angry again. He thinks he can just walk right back into my life and expect me to forget about everything! This was how it happened the first time. He apologizes, makes me feel sorry for him, tells me how much he misses me, and leaves never to return again!
I’m not falling for this trick he’s playing. I push him off me angrily.
“How dare you!” I scream. “You leave me, promising to keep in touch. But you don’t! You’re home on leave and you haven’t even tried to get a hold of me? No phone call? No email? If you hadn’t showed up at the hospital I may never even have known that you were home.”
I walk past him to grab a napkin to wipe the tears off my face. I’ve been so lonely. I’ve missed him so much. I’ve waited. And waited.
Then he speaks, and I hate myself for hanging onto his every word.
“Angie,” he starts and walks over to hug me. I push him away and grab my glass of wine. I plop on the couch and ignore him.
“I, I’m not home on leave. I’ve been home for a month or so. My contract is done.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I ask.
“No, but it’s the truth,” he pauses. “I want to start over and tell you the truth.” He clears his throat.
“I thought about you. I found out where you lived the first day I got back. But, I didn’t know how to approach you. I wasn’t sure. I was afraid,” he confesses.
Part of me wants to forgive him after this confession, but the other part of me is telling me to stand my ground. He tricked me once before.
“I thought about all the ways I could approach you. I just wasn’t sure.” He walks closer, but refuses to sit. He looks nervous and looks away.
“I wasn’t sure how—what you would think of me.” He runs his fingers through his hair, still cradling his wound with his other hand all the while.
My heart beings to melt. I can’t help it. Ty is strong, always so sure. He says exactly what’s on his mind with no hesitation. But, here he is nervous and unsure of himself.
I sit my glass on the table and motion for him to sit down. He waits for a bit and adheres to my command.
I look into his eyes trying to peer into his soul. I see his eyes move to my lips and stops short of my breasts. I realize that I’m not wearing a bra. My nipples are poking through my tank top. He looks away nervously. I grin. For once he’s nervous and I’m in command.
I get up and straddle him, gently because of his injury.
“Angie,” he says surprisingly. But, before he can finish I lean in and gently bite his bottom lip, teasing him. I roll my tongue in his mouth and kiss him.
He grabs my butt and squeezes. He pulls me harder. From between my legs, I feel him get harder. I grind my hips against him as I hold onto him.
He reaches up, pulls my tank top over my head and eagerly sucks and caresses my breasts. I love the attention he gives them.
I get up, unbuckle his belt, and take off his pants. His member springs into view, standing at attention. Making sure I don’t disturb his injury, I tenderly climb right back on top of him and slip him inside me.
“Ahhh,” he sighs. “You feel so good.”
Ty relaxes and leans back on the couch as I slide up and down on him, slowly. He reaches up to squeeze my breasts. He pulls my chest towards him as he puts his face in between my girls.
Our bodies move in sync as I gently ride him. Ty kisses me again with one hand on my breast and the other on my butt. He feels so good.
Ty puts a finger in my mouth. Still riding slowly on top of him, I suck on his finger as if I had his hard member in my mouth. He reaches around, spreads my butt cheeks and penetrates me from behind with this finger.
“Oh my god Ty,” I moan as my eyes roll into the back on my head. Pleasure after pleasure sweeps through my body.
“Oh, Ty!” I yell and climax. Sensing my orgasm, Ty immediately comes too.
I collapse on top of him, not wanting to get off for fear he’ll disappear again.
“I love you Angie,” Ty finally says. His face is happy, but slightly pained, and I realize I’m leaning on his injury. I gently slide off of him and onto the floor, between his legs.
“What I wanted to say earlier was,” he stops for a second, and turns back to me. “I went to meet with you Dad a few days ago. I told him that I love you and that I want to marry you.”
He pulls out a small black box, gets down on his knee beside me, and says, “He gave me his blessing. So, will you make me the happiest man on Earth and marry me?”
I look at him in disbelief. My mouth wide open.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” I scream. There’s no doubt in my mind that Ty is the one I want to spend the rest of my life with. He slips the ring on my finger.
I get up to hug him and realize that Ty just proposed to me naked. We both collapse on the couch laughing in each other’s arms.
THE END
They had acquired their target, and it was him. Passenger Robert Whitman had thought the Cypriots might put eyes on him after he cleared customs, but they were on him the second he got off the plane at Larnaca Airport. A baggage handler on the jetway followed him up to the non-EU line, where a uniformed agent milled about aimlessly, but always in his vicinity. The agent at the counter scanned and stamped his passport with a gulp and pushed the document back through the gap in the Plexiglas booth with trembling fingers. At the baggage claim, Whitman’s luggage appeared on the conveyor only after every other bag had been snatched by its owner, or made several laps around the baggage area. They’d taken a good look inside the suitcase, no doubt, but there was nothing to see.
No one tailed him from baggage claim, but he picked up on a couple of possibles as he made his way to the car rental desk. He wasn’t actively seeking them, but he’d developed some pretty good intuition over the years. He reminded himself that he wasn’t even supposed to look for surveillance on this operation. Well-trained habits die hard, though.
He saw them as he left the parking garage. There were at least three vehicles following him as he headed north and west along Larnaca Bay on the B3. They were matching his speed and attempting to keep an incidental vehicle or two between them and his rearview mirror. The result was a sort of vehicular body language that gave them away to the trained eye. When he made his turn into the parking lot of the Misty Beach Hotel, one of the suspect vehicles continued past him and the other two turned off into parking lots on either side of the road.
It really was a game this time – a rigged game, and he was on the inside – but the Intelligence Division of the Cyprus Police didn’t know that. They also didn’t know that Robert Whitman wasn’t his real name, or that he didn’t really work for the State Department, or that their surveillance team was itself under surveillance. All they knew was that the CIA wanted them to keep an eye on him,
if they could handle it
, and to report on anything he did while on the island. They were not supposed to apprehend or engage, just observe and report. That made Whitman’s job easy; he was just a rabbit leading the dogs around the track.
***
The inland side of the Misty Beach Hotel could have been mistaken for a municipal administration building but for the hotel logo painted onto the clean white cinderblock and the green awning that covered the last few feet of walkway before the entrance.
Not quite like the brochure
, Whitman thought. The tinted glass doors slid open to admit him onto a marble floor that reflected light streaming in from the bay side of the lobby through three story glass walls framed in antique bronze. Beyond the glass, a swimming pool meandered toward the bay, and beyond that, a beach dotted with umbrellas and sunbathers.
Whitman walked to where the lobby began stepping down to pool level, then turned back toward the plain little reception desk, and the plain blonde woman behind it.
“Hello. Welcome. Checking in?” The blonde’s accent was part British, part Scandinavian. It was interesting, and she was suddenly not so plain. Kind of cute, actually; he put her in her mid-twenties, so probably about 15 years younger than him.
“Are you sure you’re not a tourist pretending to work here?” He handed her his passport. “You don’t look or sound too Mediterranean to me.”
“Well, you sound very American to me, Mr. Whitman.” She smiled and handed back the passport. “But that’s a good thing.”
“Really? I thought everyone just groaned and slapped their heads when we came around. But back to my original question: Are you sure you’re not some lost Norwegian tourist? ” He gestured toward her lapel. “You don’t even have a name tag.”
Robert Whitman was supposed to be quite the womanizer, and the man playing him was beginning to enjoy the flirtation. It had been a while, and the blonde’s smile and the tilt of her head gave him a feeling he couldn’t quite identify.
“Swedish, not Norwegian,” she said, “and my name is Pia. I came here as a tourist a few years ago, and I loved it so much that I decided to make it permanent.”
“Fell in love with the sun and the sand?”
“And with a man.” Now she was practically glowing. How had he ever thought of her as plain?
“I take it he hasn’t broken your heart yet.”
“Oh, I don’t think he ever will.” The best part of her smile was in her blue eyes.
“How about you, Mr. Whitman? How many hearts have you broken?”
“Me? I don’t break hearts. I take broken-hearted women home and hand them a glass of wine and rub their feet.”
And then I go on missions, and can’t call or email, and they’re gone when I get home.
“If you just walk around and say that in your sexy American accent, I think you’ll find plenty of feet to rub.”
“Sexy American accent? Is that really a thing…? I might have to move here, too.”
She slipped two key cards into an envelope marked “319” and handed it to him. “You should probably move into your room first, Mr. Whitman.”
“Please call me ‘Robert,’ Pia; and I have one more question: Where can I get a cheap meal and a beer around here?”
“You might try pub across the street. The fish and chips are excellent, and there will be lots of drunken British girls in uncomfortable shoes.”
Beautiful
and
funny. “Why, thank you. That sounds like a fine evening out for a gentleman.”
He turned toward the elevator and his peripheral vision caught movement in the same direction from the lower lobby. He had to hand it to the Cyprus PD, they were taking their job seriously.
His new shadow arrived at the elevator door in a whiff of coconut sunscreen and an emerald green bikini, the top of which should have been handed down to her little sister long ago, with a sheer white wrap tied around her waist. She seemed a bit young too be working for the local service; at least twenty. Probably older though; he tended to underestimate. Whatever her age, she was clearly there to appeal to the womanizing American who was getting so much attention from the intelligence division.
No surprise that she didn’t need to press the button for another floor.
When the elevator doors opened, he ushered the girl out first and followed as she turned in the direction of his room. As she walked, the hallway lights cast little reflective bands that slid down her black hair as it swayed over her olive skin. She stopped at 317, adjacent to his room and between his room and the exit. As he pulled out his key card, he heard her say, “Looks like we’re neighbors.”
He looked toward her and smiled. “Well, I’ll try to be a good neighbor. Do you like the hotel?”
“Yes, I’ve stayed here a few times. It’s really lovely.” There was no Scandinavian flavoring in her British accent, but her bikini top was interesting in an engineering-the-impossible kind of way. She walked toward him and extended her hand. “I’m Helen.”
“Of course you are.” He took her hand and held it for a moment while he looked in her eyes. “I hope Paris isn’t too noisy when he comes to steal you away.”
“Does every American read Homer before their Cyprus holiday?”
“Just the smart ones…I’m Robert, by the way.”
“Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Robert.” She turned back toward her room and looked over her shoulder. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“Thank you.” The wisp of a wrap around her waist did little to hide the triangle of green fabric below the small of her back which directed his eyes further downward. He wondered how close she was supposed to get to him.
*****
Helen, it turned out, was only responsible for him in the hotel. She kept showing up like a schoolgirl with a secret crush—at the breakfast bar, in the hotel gym, around the pool, and heading back to the room. Robert got the feeling that she might be writing, “Mrs. Robert Whitman” over and over in her notebooks. Joke was on her though, because “Robert Whitman” was just a mash-up of Robert Frost and Walt Whitman that had been approved as an alias for a man whose real passport said he was Kirk Blackwell, and whose military ID said that he was a commander in the United States Navy, and whose dress uniform was pinned with the gold Trident of a Navy SEAL.
The first full day of Kirk’s mission was limited to enjoying the hotel, interacting with as many people as possible, and taking a little walk around Larnaca Harbor. Of course, it was all planned down to the minute, and everything was being recorded by the CIA contractors on his team using cameras hidden in beach bags, purses, and backpacks. Kirk wouldn’t even have noticed them if he hadn’t known exactly where they’d be and when. The Cyprus PD hadn’t been as discreet, but trailing surveillance was a lot tougher than static counter-surveillance. They had definitely grilled the clerk at the cell phone kiosk and now had all of the information to track the phone, but that was part of the plan as well.
The next day was longer, but pleasant. Kirk couldn’t complain about being paid to tour Cyprus, buy souvenirs, and engage as many people as possible in conversation. He did his best to ignore surveillance, but saw and felt it each step of the way. They were in his rearview mirror up to Nicosia, and with him through the pedestrian area and down past the U.S. and Russian Embassies. As he drove out of town and headed toward Limassol, they were in his mirror again, though much farther back—likely because he was also being watched from the air.
Limassol would be the last little test for the Intelligence Division of the Cyprus Police, but it hinged on Kirk being able to bump into an unwitting American tourist staying at the Mediterranean Plaza Hotel. The CIA Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy had told the police that they could talk to anyone they saw their target contact. If that included any suspicious contacts with other Americans, then those persons could be brought to the Embassy for questioning. There was no wrong answer other than failing to report the contact at all, and all indications were that the Cyrus PD would at least talk to anyone Kirk bumped into.
He parked his rental car at a supermarket a block from the hotel and went in for a bottle of water. One of his teammates was shopping the produce aisle, a signal that the team was ready to steer him to the bump; so he checked out with the water and set off on foot for the hotel. He walked east on the inland side of the B1, trying to ignore the cameras he knew were looking toward him from bags at a bus stop, a diner, and a sidewalk café. When he finally crossed toward the hotel, his peripheral vision picked up at least three shadows at various distances. One passed behind him, one paralleled his crossing one block back, and one sat down in an apartment stairwell to make a phone call.
The Plaza had plush landscaping around its semicircular driveway and a more modern edifice than the Misty Beach, but the interior layout was almost exactly the same, though on a slightly larger scale. A tourist at the concierge desk scratched his head, elbow pointing toward the pool/beach exit, so Kirk continued that direction, winding his way around the hourglass pool and toward the beach as he looked for the next signal.
As he passed the through the gateway of palm and hibiscus that separated the pool area and the beach, he spotted a familiar figure fifty meters down the beach. She was walking toward him but paused by an empty beach chair, hand on hip, and then turned toward the water. It was Nikki. Her skimpy two-piece was going to be a topic of conversation around the table back at the safe house. Kirk imagined that she was working hard to keep from breaking into a gigantic grin. The slim Dominican had an easy smile and an even easier manner. She was everyone’s first choice as a travel companion, but the team’s deputy commander pretty much monopolized her. The running joke in the house was that Kirk was madly in lust with her.
The chair where Nikki had paused belonged to the target, and Kirk turned his eyes to where Nikki was looking and spotted the American woman who was his target. He had only seen a grainy passport photo of her, but her body language gave her away. She was trying to be nonchalantly topless like so many of the European tourists on the beach, but her arms kept creeping up to cover her breasts. She also didn’t appear too comfortable with the skimpiness of her swimsuit bottom, but she was putting on a brave face for her fellow sunbathers, so comfortable in their own skins. She knelt to splash water on her arms and shoulders then stood and pushed back a strand of dark hair that had fallen over her nose.
Kirk new that he was going to take some ribbing from the team over this tough assignment to talk to a topless American woman on the beach, especially since the team knew he had at least a slight preference for brunettes. She was walking back toward her beach chair now, her arms still a bit indecisive and her black hair brushing just where the straps to her missing top would be. Kirk decided that he would let her get there before he approached so she would have an opportunity to cover herself, but she immediately reclined and put a t-shirt over her eyes.
Well, this is going to be uncomfortable for both of us…
He walked directly but slowly toward her, trying to figure out an icebreaker that might make him seem like a bit less of a creep.
Hey, I like your tan lines…! Nice bikini wax...! Where’d you get that swimsuit...? Need someone to shade your eyes...? How about your breasts?