Authors: Nicola Claire
Jason swore, but didn’t move a muscle.
Adam stepped between Nick and me, effectively blocking any shot his boss could have fired.
“The fuck?” Nick yelled.
“Stand down,” I ordered, pressing the gun in harder to Jason’s nape.
“Shut up, Charlie,” Adam said so quietly, the ringing in my ears made it difficult to hear him.
“Savill?” Nick queried. “You gonna move your arse so I can get a bead on this woman?”
“No, boss.”
“Ah-ha,” Nick said, the murmur weighted. “And what about Jason?”
“She’s not going to hurt him.”
“Would be nice if I fucking believed that,” Jason growled.
“You attacked first,” I said levelly, not removing the gun.
“You drew a fucking knife.”
“Nick’s entry was purposefully timed.”
Silence.
Then Nick lowered his gun and let out a long sigh.
“I told you to break her, not fucking incite her enough to go postal on us,” he said in a low voice, designed to carry.
I flicked the safety on the gun and pushed Jason away. I couldn’t quite get to my feet, the room was spinning.
“Head hurt?” Jason asked with a smirk as he came to his feet, rubbing the back of his neck absently.
“Pride hurt?” I shot back.
He smiled. Fucking smiled.
“I wish I’d known you before you were fucked in the head,” he murmured, reaching down and taking the gun from my limp hand.
“You OK?” Adam asked, staring down at me, but not moving closer. I got the distinct impression, though, that he wanted to.
Was I all right? Not by a long shot.
“I think I’ll just sit down here for a while,” I admitted.
“You need some ice?”
I shook my head, wincing at the sharp pain behind my eyes, adding to the throb in my temples.
Nick walked over to the table and pulled out a seat, sitting himself down and facing me; legs apart, elbows to knees, leaning forward, complete attention on my face.
“You’re good,” he said. “You could have had us all, if you’d wanted to. And I’d warrant that head injury is nothing more than a mosquito bite to you.”
I didn’t reply. The statement didn’t deserve one. All truth. All somehow deliberate blows that I felt as though real.
Adam finally moved to a chair as well, but not the one he’d been sitting on previously, on the other side of the table. He pulled one out, away from Nick, placing it halfway between his boss and me, as though ready to act as a shield again. I stared at him for a long moment and then pulled my attention away only when Jason took a seat noisily off to the other side.
“Here’s the thing, Charlie,” Nick said, once everyone had sat themselves down. Me, I hadn’t stood up yet, but my body was coiled in case the movement became necessary. “You’re so good, I can’t tell when you’re lying. I can’t tell if this is all part of some elaborate plan; your capitulation; your admission of being assigned to us; your insistence that we’re being hunted and we need you. What I do believe, though, is you were at one time Government trained. SIS. In fact, I’m pretty fucking certain you’re part of a covert branch with no name. A branch that most call ‘the Department.’”
He held my neutral stare with an icy one in return. He’d get nothing from me.
“Or,” he paused for effect, “Operation Evolution.” I gave nothing away. That name had never been official. How the fuck had he found out?
Amber.
“Bit cloak and dagger. Marvel comics even. But there is evidence, hidden, layered in crap and conspiracy theories, that EVO exists.”
“You shouldn’t have looked,” was all I said.
“You knew we would. If you really thought we couldn’t handle it, you would have stopped Amber from doing her job. Not just issued a warning.”
“You mistake my caution for caring. I’m incapable of that.”
He smiled. It was about as chilling as his stare.
“Charlie,” he said. “You care. You may not realise it, but you care.”
I snorted, purposefully.
Nick ignored my rebuke and pulled a cellphone out of his pocket, swiping at the screen and then turning it around to face me.
The words,
"Tell her I'm coming. Tell her it’s time to face the truth. Veritas Lux Mea. There's nowhere to hide,”
were displayed across a laptop screen in the picture.
My
laptop screen. I couldn’t breathe.
“Adam found your hunter,” Nick said, making all the blood rush from my face in a pathetic display of emotions.
Nick lowered the cellphone and ran a hand over his jaw in contemplation. His cold blue eyes never left me.
“Yeah,” he said, standing from the chair, “you fucking care.”
And then he walked right out of the room, without another word.
Leaving me strangely without any air.
I
watched Charlie crack
. I watched on silently as Nick fired shot after shot directly at that shell she keeps around herself, smashing the motherfucking thing from here to Kingdom Come. She fought back at first, didn’t give an inch; the epitome of the spy we’d come to know.
And then he showed her the photo I’d taken of her laptop screen in her quasi-apartment, and the shell disintegrated as though it was nothing more than an egg’s.
“Leave us,” I said, my eyes on Charlie, my words for Jason. “And turn the fucking cameras off,” I added, louder this time, for Eric.
“Savill,” Jason warned.
“Just do it.”
I picked up the movement of his nodded head in my periphery, and when the door slammed shut at his back, only then turned my attention to the camera in the ceiling. There was no way to know if it was filming, no red light to indicate activation, just a mechanical lens aimed at the two of us.
I reached up behind my shoulders, ripped my t-shirt off, and crossed to the dome, pulling my mini-mechanics kit from my pocket. I found some tape I keep in there, and taped the fucking thing over the camera. Sealing it away for good.
The mic might still be on, but it’d be muffled. And without a picture, if we pitched our words low, it’d be hard to decipher what we said in control.
I turned back around and looked down at Charlie. She was watching me. Breathing steadily again. Colour back in her face. Small creases around her eyes as though she wanted to laugh.
Was there something fucking funny about all of this shit that I’d somehow missed?
I shook my head and crossed the room, lowering myself down beside her to the floor. We sat shoulder to shoulder, staring out towards the table and chairs, the fine hair on both our arms rising with the proximity.
“Are you afraid?” she asked.
“Of you? Nah.”
Her lips tipped up in a smile I couldn’t help watching.
“That’d be a first,” she mused.
I raised an eyebrow at her, but unlike the douche I was, she wasn’t fixated on me, instead giving off the appearance of cool and casual ease, staring into the distance.
“There was a guy in your apartment when I got there,” I advised, watching that shell she’d been frantically rebuilding crumble.
A strange emotion stirred within me. Deep. Alien as fuck. Gut wrenching.
“Light brown, full head of hair, stubble across his jaw. Cold cocksucker, big and fit, fists that had been in a fight or two.” I ran a hand though my hair, trying to get a bit of air across my itching scalp. Something about the guy had been chilling, and he’d been in Charlie’s home.
“You saw him?” she queried, eyes finally on my face. “Actually met him?”
“Wouldn’t say it was a meeting, more a message.”
“I read the message,” she said quietly. “I know what it means.”
“Not just the laptop,” I corrected. “But the look in his eyes, the smile he gave me before he jumped out a window and disappeared into thin air. That street’s wide, not many places to hide. But he vanished like smoke on the wind. Fucking creepy.”
“Caleb can do creepy when he needs to. He was trying to scare you away.”
“Why?”
She shook her head, frown lines marring her forehead, lips turned down in a thin line.
“I don’t know. It’s not how he usually operates.”
“You know him well?” I asked as casually as I could muster.
“Well enough.”
“Like read his tells, know his mind?” Every inch of his body?
Whoa. Where the fuck had that come from? Jealous of her colleagues now? Douche.
“More his operational skills. He’s…” She shook her head again, looked out across the room seeing something other than the table and chairs this time. “He’s calculated, extremely professional, highly capable, and utterly cunning. He’s also lethal.”
“As lethal as you?” I’d been trying for a teasing tone, somehow it didn’t come out that way.
She turned stormy grey eyes to my face.
“As lethal as me.”
“Trying to scare me off too?”
“I should do.”
“It’s not working.”
“You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”
“I can see enough to understand.”
Another head shake, the frown lines back across her brow.
“Adam, I’m not capable of what you’re looking for.”
“And how do you know what I’m looking for, firecracker?”
She huffed out a laugh; it could hardly be called amusing.
“That just proves my point. ‘Firecracker.’ You think I’m something, some
one
who can keep you warm. I burn, Adam. I don’t stop burning until there’s nothing but ashes left.”
I stared at her, trying to see behind the shell that had popped back up. How she did it so swiftly, so perfectly, when moments before she’d been a hot mess, I didn’t know. It was stunning to watch. Addictive to see. Mesmerising.
“What if I want to be burnt?” I whispered.
“Until nothing is left?”
“Maybe,” I murmured.
“Trust me, you don’t.”
Silence on those poignant words. Would she ever trust me? Could I ever trust her completely?
My turn to shake my head.
“So, how do we hunt him?” I asked, staring across the room and hating the distance. Between me and the wall, the tables and chairs. Between me and everything I once thought I knew of this fucked up world. Between me and this woman who somehow had made it under my skin.
She couldn’t burn me; she was already too far inside to scorch flesh.
But she could slay me.
“By laying a trap.”
My eyes returned to her face. Just her profile. She wasn’t looking back.
“Wrong place, right time?”
“Exactly. He’s been watching me.
Us.
Following. One step ahead the entire time. He’ll be listening in when I give my report to Mal.”
“How?”
“Because I’ll give it over the phone whilst sitting on my couch.”
“Bugs?”
“He’s not that careless. He’ll be there when I do it.”
“What the fuck? No way! You’re planning on facing him alone, aren’t you?”
Charlie turned to me then, really looked me in the eyes. A soft smile played across her plump lips, lights danced in her smoky eyes.
“It’s the only way,” she whispered, her mouth close enough to feel the heat of her breath. “He won’t come out unless I’m alone. He won’t trust you. He doesn’t trust anyone. But if he’s not here on orders from the Director, then he’ll show himself once I lay us all open for the Department’s next move.”
“And if he is here on orders from the Director?” I pressed, feeling my jaw click with the way I ground my teeth together.
“Then he’ll come out because I’ve walked into
their
trap.”
I bounded to my feet in restless tension. Pacing a few strides away, I turned and practically shouted, “That makes no sense! Either way you’ve set yourself up exactly as they want you to. Laid the foundation for them to do whatever the fuck it is they’ve got planned.”
Charlie rose to her feet in a smooth glide, making it obvious she hadn’t been that incapacitated.
“Why do you care, Adam?” she asked, softly.
Well, hell. She’d got me there.
“Because this is implicating ASI, of course.” Pretty good recovery, if I do say so myself.
She took a measured step towards me, my eyes tracked the movement of her hips; swaying, enticing. An act I wished she’d stop using, because it was getting harder to say no.
Who was I fucking kidding? When had I ever said no?
“Is that the only reason?” she purred, coming to stop right in front of me. Chest to chest, mere inches between our thighs. Any second now my boner would bridge the gap.
Fuck!
“Is this Charlie the spy or Charlie the firecracker?” I asked, my voice lower and rougher than I’d intended.
She took a step back as though it was me who’d burned her this time.
“Don’t get any more involved in this than you have to,” she warned. “It’s going to hurt.”
“You think it doesn’t already?”
Her eyes flicked up to my face; searching.
“This is my family, Charlie. This is all I’ve got. I love them. Every single one of these fucked up dickheads. They’re mine. They’re good people. The salt of the earth. Any one of them would risk their lives for me. Would your Department do that for you?” I demanded.
And maybe I’d gone too far on that last one, but fuck it! The woman was using her body to make me back down and I would not fucking back down on this.
I’m not sure why. I hardly knew her and what I did know was probably all a lie. But I could not let her face off against that chilling smile, that man who had looked into hell and survived. Caleb Fucking Hart was not going to get this woman.
And I didn’t know why that was so important, I just knew it was the most important thing in my life right now.
“We come from two different worlds,” Charlie whispered. “Two alien planets. Your family loves you. Trusts you. Needs you.” The unsaid being, that hers did not love her, trust her. Need her. Anymore.
“Then you’ve got no one to turn to but us. Me,” I pressed. “Throttle back, firecracker. Let someone get close without burning.”
Her chest rose and fell on too quick breaths. If this was an act, she was expert at it. There was a lot I knew Charlie was a specialist at, but this, somehow, I was certain was not one of those things.
I crossed the space between us, reached out and wrapped a hand behind her neck, fingers twisting up in all that hair. My spare hand gripped her jaw, tipping her head back, presenting her lips for plundering.
Then sealed her mouth with mine.
She resisted at first, statue still, lips tightly closed. And then I released her chin, grabbed her butt cheek, and hauled her against the hard length of my cock.
“Feel that?” I growled against her mouth. “You don’t scare me. Not one fucking bit.”
Her lips parted, possibly to snap some snide comment at me, but I didn’t let her. I delved my tongue inside, kissed the ever-loving shit out of the woman, and finally,
fucking finally,
made her moan.
Jesus, that sound! Then her hands were all over my bare chest, fingers finding nipples, nails scratching flesh, heat searing a trail from my pecs to my abdominals, and then without delay, my firecracker wrapped her scorching hot palm around my dick.
I smiled against her lips, while rocking into her too gloriously tight hold, and reached up under her t-shirt, past her bra, moulding my palm to her soft breast.
My turn to groan, and then I was spinning her around, pressing her up against the wall, rocking my cock into her hot little snatch, while she lifted a leg to wrap around my hip. I had her up and hanging off my waist in an instant, tongues still tangling, hands still caressing, teeth nipping while nails left grooves of bliss over feverish skin.
She was wild when she got going. Unstoppable. A bush fire out of control. I burned for her. She exploded for me. Sparks of heat, flashes of blinding light. A roaring flame only the truly crazy would touch.
I was crazy.
This
was crazy. If the mics were still on we weren’t exactly being quiet. And even if they weren’t, what the fuck? We were in an interview room with an unlocked door, any moment someone could barge in here and haul my douchebag arse off the best fucking thing to have happened to me in decades.
I’m not sure if it was the thought of someone walking in on us or the admission that Charlie meant more than just another quick fling, but I was on my knees in the next instant, her leathers undone and being tugged roughly down her legs, until her sweet little pussy, with blonde curls, and a blast as hot as a fucking furnace coming from them, in my face.
My nose buried between her thighs, her legs still held together by her pants around her ankles, but her hips canted at an angle that invited my tongue.
“My turn,” I growled, and she sagged slightly, making more room for me to reach my goal.
And then… heaven. Her scent. Her taste. The way she moved and moaned and demanded in non-verbal pleas for more. She was wet. So fucking wet. And I was about to come all over the floor just from licking her, tasting her,
moving
her.
I slipped a finger inside. We both moaned.
I sucked on her clit. We both shuddered.
I ground my jaw against her roughly. We both sucked in a shocked breath of air.
And then her hands were in my hair, fingers tangled in the strands, and she ground back. Hard.
“Take it!” she demanded, breathlessly. “Take me.” The last said almost shyly.
She was a dichotomy, this woman. A puzzle that just kept getting more interesting. I knew more about her now, and still I knew I’d never discover enough.
I added another finger, pumped into her with a hunger that was only matched by the throbbing of my cock. Then maniacally licked and sucked and devoured her clit, offering a small teeth scrape at just the right moment.
She shuddered above me, her walls spasming around my fingers, her pussy pulsing beneath my lips. Moisture ran down my chin as she panted and moaned, riding the wave unabashedly.
I pulled back and looked up at her; this woman that stole all thought. Firecracker was right; blindingly bright and the most colourful fucking thing I had ever seen. Charlie coming was a vision. Controlled enough not to scream. Wild enough to combust.
I watched on as she rode my fingers, my thumb pressed firmly into her clit, giving her a little more. I watched on and saw beneath the shell, saw a part of her that I’d bet not too many did. If ever. She hadn’t fully relinquished control, but when her eyes opened, that stunning grey staring down at me like a fog cloaked winter’s day, I knew she’d given me more than she’d intended. Lost herself in the moment, floated away on the wave.