Trained for Seduction (35 page)

She sighed as they left the office. Time to find out what Chase was really made of.

Kate went up to shower and they were alone, Jake and Chase, for the first time in a non-work situation. Except to order Jake around and debrief him after a mission, Chase hadn’t said more than two words to Jake in two weeks. And Jake, being the friend he was, respected that boundary by just doing his job.

But now they were only friends, in his kitchen, sitting with coffee as they had a thousand times before. The silence was heavy, uneasy, and Chase cleared his throat to break the ice. “Kate tells me she punched you in the face for what you did in the clearing.”

“She has a mean right hook, your girl.” Jake rubbed his jaw, as if remembering. And then he said, quietly, “I didn’t do more than needed, Chase.”

“Chase, your boss, gets it. Chase, your friend, is a little pissed. But I trust you. I was stupid to be jealous of you, given our history.” Chase thought for a moment, then asked, “Did Diane ever hit on you?”

“You’re asking after all this time? Now?”

“Kate asks stimulating questions.”

Jake nodded, as if he knew too well the power of Kate’s curiosity. “Then yep. She hit on me big time, right in front of you, you stupid ass. The one time you need to notice and you don’t.”

“Were you…interested?”

“Hell, no, and I wouldn’t have gone there, anyway. She was yours. Period.” Jake’s glare faded as he hesitated. “I won’t lie to you. I find Kate to be hot as hell. But I’m not willing to destroy our friendship or my friendship with Kate. I love her, but like a second cousin I would fuck. And if a threesome is going to destroy our triangle of friendship, then I don’t need one.”

Chase nodded. As much bull as Jake dished out, he always cut to the meat of the matter when times got tough. He liked that about his buddy. “She wants this. And I want this, too. I’ve missed this part of our friendship.”

“I get it. Same here.” Jake toyed with a pen. “If it helps you be less pissed, I want to share her laundry list of things that will and will not happen tonight.”

“When did you discuss this?” He should be pissed that they discussed ménage details, but he oddly found he wasn’t. Jake was her friend, and if she couldn’t go to Jake, who would she turn to? It was odd. But it made him a little more at ease with his choice to let Jake join.

“During coffee. She had a lot to say about you, and once I got her calmed down enough to believe you weren’t going to kick her out, she became curious. I don’t think she really understood the ramifications of a ménage. And we all know that a curious Kate is not a good thing.”

Chase thought of her side trip to discover the truth about her past. No, they didn’t need Kate seeking information on her own. “A curious Kate is a dangerous Kate. So what did she have to say?”

Jake drew in a deep, ragged breath, a little uneasy. Very unlike Jake. “First, she didn’t realize the full impact of a threesome, you know, where you would be, where I would be. So I told her—politely—and she flipped out. I mean, ape shit. I was not allowed in front, unless you allowed it, because she belonged to you, and that was off limits.”

Chase sat back, smugly shocked. He loved that she’d stake claim on her body for him.

“Next, she freaked about the safe sex issue, about the number of partners I’ve had, and said I had to wear a condom all the time, even while dressed, and no, I don’t have one on now.”

Horror dawned on Chase. “She didn’t connect your number to mine, did she? My number is high, but yours is way worse.”

“No. You’re good, because you had a brief hiatus from women. That makes you practically a virgin in her eyes.” Jake sighed. “Then, as if she realized there may be long lasting impact, I am now only allowed to masturbate to memories of being in said correct place for me to be—meaning her ass—and if she sees even a glimmer of lust in my eyes at work, she is going to take me out.”

Jake ran a hand through his hair. “I know where I stand with you, man. I cross the line, it’s over. You have my number from over a mile away, and I’m good with that. But the look in her eye told me I wouldn’t get off so easy with her.”

Chase smiled, loving Kate all the more. “We’ve trained her to do evil things to bad men.”

“Yeah, and that’s why I don’t do spies.” Jake toyed with the pen, spinning it with his finger, and then he said, quieter, “I’ve missed you.”

“Same here.”

“If this is going to kill our friendship—”

“No. I’m good with this, Jake. She’s right, about everything. I need this sometimes, and if she can give me what I need, with you, then why not? I know she loves me. I see it now. She doesn’t look at you the same way she looks at me, and before I was too blind to see that. For someone who’s supposed to notice everything, I missed a lot.”

“You need to tell her this.”

“She knows.” Kate stood in the doorway, dressed in the little black dress she’d worn to dinner with his aunt and uncle. Chase knew she also wore the bra and panties he’d picked out for her, underneath, and he hardened immediately.

“You’re beautiful.”

“Thank you.” She gave them both the once over. They had showered and changed earlier. “Chase, you look stunning, as usual. Jake…I must say, you clean up well.”

“You missed me in a suit and tie during the first debriefing. Makes you wish you hadn’t got shot, huh? I rock a suit.”

She laughed. “I’m sure I’ll see it again. Probably at your funeral, after I kill you for doing unspeakable things in a certain clearing.”

“Please don’t.” Jake turned to Chase, seeking an ally.

She laced her arms through Chase’s, pressing her chest to his back, her breasts warm though his jacket. She leaned into him, hugging him tight, as if staking her claim. It had been a long time since someone he cared about staked a claim on him. “Chase says a mile away…I say where’s the C-4.”

“Make her stop. It was job related.”

She kissed Chase’s nape and then unwrapped her arms. She crossed to Jake, stalked behind him, and put her arm around his neck. For once, Chase wasn’t at all jealous when she touched Jake. Especially since the look she had in her eyes didn’t bode well for him.

“Don’t worry, Jake,” she purred in his ear. “You’ll get your threesome before you die. I owe you that much.” Then she tightened her hold on his neck. “But after tonight, all bets are off.”

****

They drove to the club—it was in downtown D.C.—and Chase held her hand as he drove. Jake sat in the back playing a game on his phone. She glanced at Chase, loving how the light from the other vehicles played across the angles of his face. He looked a little concerned as he glanced at her, a smile flitting at her before his eyes darted back to the road.

“You nervous?” she asked. He looked terrified now that she asked.

“Chase or Alex?”

That surprised her. She was the one with the split personality, not him. “I thought Alexander Bishop liked to do wicked things to women.”

He grinned, and that dimple peeked from his cheek. “All of me likes to do wicked things to women. Especially when the woman is a smokin’ hot spy.” Then he glanced over again. “Chase is a bundle of nerves. Alex is good to go.” He smiled. “You?”

“Kate is good to go, but Emma is terrified.”

“Jake’s good, all of him,” Jake said from the back, and then he cheered. “Just beat your high score, Chase.”

“Really?” she asked with disgust, but inside she had to laugh just a little. Jake made the evening so much less tense, so easy. “You don’t listen to music, but you play video games. On your phone. With Jake.”

“You gonna get jealous?” Chase shrugged, sheepish in the dim light of the parking structure. “We have a lot of downtime. Games relieve tension.”

“Can’t have sex all the time,” Jake said. “Chase sucks at word games, though.”

“And you don’t?” Kate asked. Jake actually had a depth of vocabulary that he hid well beneath the façade he’d created for himself. He liked to play the carefree player, the male blond without a brain, but she knew him better than that.

“It’s what the ladies like about me. I am a word shark.” Jake pocketed his phone and looked out the window. “We’re here.”

Kate hesitated. She wanted this, didn’t want this. She was so scared and turned on, her panties already soaked. The two exchanged a look through the rear view mirror, one that made her think for a moment. Paris was the key to the debauchery. That’s where the dark side began. Kate stopped Chase from exiting the car with a hand on his wrist. “I want to know about Paris.”

“What brought that up?” Chase only went this still when something bothered him deeply. He glanced at Jake again in the rearview mirror, and she doubted his heart beat as they exchanged another longer look.

“Tell me,” she insisted. She was dying to know, and since Paris held Chase’s connection to Jake and their sexual adventures, it seemed only right she should know. “I won’t get out until you tell me.”

Chase gripped the steering wheel tighter. He glanced at her, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Jake and I, we were on assignment, and we lived together in Paris. We came home, I got a divorce, and things went a little wild.”

“That’s the abridged version. You know how I feel about that.” She withdrew her hand from his and twisted in the seat so she could see both men easily. “Us being here, together, means that you want to change. You want to share. I love you more than life itself. How much do you care for me?”

“Just tell her, Chase.” Chase looked at Jake again, and Jake shrugged. “I’m about to make love to her. I don’t care if she knows.”

The way Jake said make love made her shiver. From him, that was almost a vow. She slid a hand to Chase’s thigh, and he trembled under her hand. It was slight, and if she didn’t know him so well, she wouldn’t have caught it. But he was hers. She knew. “That was the past. I love you. There’s nothing you can say that will change that.”

“You sure?” He looked so unsure it shook her. Chase was so sure of everything, himself. Ultra confident, ultra boss. But she had always wondered what went on behind the mask of doom. Maybe the man behind the mask wasn’t so confident.

Kate nodded and squeezed his leg. “Time to find out, isn’t it.”

He closed his eyes, and she had never seen him look more vulnerable. “It was, what, two years ago? Three?”

“Three,” Jake said from the back.

“I guess you’re right. And we were deep under cover, living in this little apartment in Paris, doing surveillance, trying to get information on a terrorist cell.” Chase froze again, his left hand gripping the steering wheel, his knuckles white.

Jake sighed from the back seat. “Just tell her, man. Rip the bandage off. Get it over with. It’s worse in your mind than it actually is.”

Kate fumbled for his hand, gripping him tightly. Her mind raced, wondering what in hell could freeze him like this. He didn’t freeze about anything. He was all testosterone, all male… “My God, you were posing as gay lovers.”

“Not at first, but we were sitting ducks, so we improvised, to stay alive.” Chase glanced at her and then closed his eyes, sliding down in the seat as far as his long legs would allow. “I don’t have a problem with same sex relationships. If Jake were gay, I’d still be his friend.

“You have to understand how I was raised, though. My uncle didn’t come from the time of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ This mission—he never looked at me quite the same after that, even though he knew it was a cover and I had no choice. He was harder on me, colder. As if it had changed me.”

“Had it?”

“Yeah.” Chase looked at Jake again in the mirror. “What started out as a cover became way too easy. If we went out, it was hand in hand, and at first I hated every second of it. But after the first week it became tolerable, and by the last week I was able to sit on the couch with my arm around Jake in a crowd and not care. That was big for me. That didn’t happen in Chase’s world, where the general ruled the roost.”

Now she understood why he could come off as judgmental. He had learned it at the hand of a master, probably along with some of the habits he had. She fought to keep the pity from her voice. Chase deserved better than that. “That doesn’t make you any less of a man, though.”

“Easy to say, harder to believe.” Chase shifted in his seat. “We couldn’t see any women if we wanted to live, and it made me stir crazy, as it did Jake. And one day after a beer and bad European porn we discussed our love of kink. And threesomes came up.

“Jake said, ‘When we leave here, come to the dark side, young Sanders.’ And I thought about it, but never had an inkling of acting on it, because my uncle would have kicked my ass if he knew I was doing anything with a man, even if it was loving a woman.”

“Chase, did your uncle…was he mean to you, when you were little?”

He shook his head. “No, Kate. Don’t think poorly of him because of my fear. They were both so good to me, taking me in, loving me. They gave me so much, and he made me the man I am, because let me tell you, it is hard running in that man’s footsteps.”

“Then why?” Why would a man do that to a boy he loved as a son?

Chase sucked in a breath and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “I had a younger uncle who died when I was little. Come to find out, he died of AIDS. He had been gay, had a man he loved and would have married. He looked just like me. Same features. Incredibly attractive. My uncle told me once at sixteen, just joking, that I was too pretty to not be gay.

“And deep inside, I knew he didn’t want that, and I became terrified. What if? So to prove it to myself, I went from girl, to woman, to anything with a vagina it seemed at times, to remind myself.”

“But that was before you came home, from Paris.” Kate prompted when Chase paused for a long moment.

He nodded. “After we returned, my uncle went ballistic on Jake and me. And between him and then later the divorce, it tossed me over the edge. The dark side looked very good to me, and I was with Jake.

Chase swallowed as he admitted, “I do love him. Not sexually, but it seemed natural after all that time together, sleeping together at times, when we had to keep our cover… Loving a woman together wasn’t wrong.”