In A Fix: Torus Intercession Book Two, page 19
“Lucky,” he repeated, bucking against me, grinding down onto me and then lifting back up, only to repeat the motion over and over. “Not gonna lie, I’m feelin’ damn lucky at the moment.”
I didn’t have enough control. “We need to move,” I growled, lifting him up, off me, and manhandling him between our seats and into the back.
Fortunately, there were no seats behind us, only what looked like a bench that was folded up against the side. I came down on top of him and would have driven him to the floor if he wasn’t covered in bunching muscles that held him up, now on hands and knees, as I scrambled off him before taking hold of his hips and burying myself to the hilt.
“Fuck,” he yelled, head dropping between his shoulders, hands clenched on the metal floor as I pulled out only to thrust in again. I grabbed his shoulder then, leaving the other hand on his hip, not letting him move, and drove to his core with pounding, hammering strokes that pulled mewling cries from the back of his throat.
“I told you, I love having you under me.”
“Please,” he gasped, his body jerking, bucking forward with each shove inside him. “I’m gonna come… I’m gonna… Croy!”
His muscles constricted around me so tight, so fast that the orgasm was wrung out of me, and I was coming for the second time that day, my body so lost in the throes of passion that I kept pounding inside of him, unable to stop until I collapsed down over his back.
“I’m gonna fall,” he whispered, and I put my hand down on the floor, bracing us both until I could lean back, bringing him with me, knees bent, my bare ass on the soles of my shoes as I sat there with him impaled on my still twitching cock buried in his tight hole.
“You’re so fuckin’ hot,” he said, head back on my shoulder, panting, taking in big gulps of air. “How?”
“How what?” I asked, one hand around his neck, the other back on his hip.
“How has anyone never kept you?”
“What makes you think it was their choice?” I told him, stroking his flagging shaft, hearing him hiss with the contact. I knew it hurt, and didn’t at the same time. Aftershocks were running through him, and I was still touching him.
“Oh God, what’re you… I had no idea, looking at you in your safe, elegant bespoke suit, that you had a fuckin’ club between your legs.”
I turned his head forcefully, and he parted his lips for me, letting me lick inside his mouth, and then drag my tongue over his until he had taken in enough air to kiss me back.
Held there against me, my right hand on his slowly hardening cock, my left hand keeping his face angled so I could kiss him deeply, when he tore his mouth free, I asked him if I was hurting him.
“No,” he barely got out, voice breaking. “Don’t stop, just have me. Have me, have me have me.”
I pressed my parted lips to the side of his neck, and with each pull of skin, I felt the slow relaxing of the muscles in his ass, until I was sliding in and out freely, moving inside of him, rutting in slow, decadent thrusts.
There was only the continual catch of his breath as he bowed his back, lifting his ass for me until I eased him gently over, onto his hands and knees again, pistoning hard, hand fisted in his hair as he took everything I gave him, the pounding, the slap of my skin on his, and the second orgasm.
When I slid from his body, I watched my cum leak from his still clenching hole, and there was something primitive about that, about claiming what was mine.
“You were so jealous,” he whispered, shivering as he remained on his hands and knees in front of me. “You had to fuck me twice in this car just to make sure I knew.”
“Knew what?” I asked him, my own voice gravelly and thick, moving around until I was in front of him and could lift him to his knees.
“That I belong to you,” he said softly. “You wanted to make sure I knew that Evan isn’t for me.”
“No, I just wanted you,” I lied, scowling at him, glancing away, looking for something to clean us up with.
He threw his arms around my neck and leaned, hanging on for dear life. “You wanted me to know something, and now I do. I know I’m all yours, Croy. And I’m scared to death, because it’s so fast, too fast, but I can’t take my eyes off you, and I’ve never wanted anything to work this bad in my life, so just—say it.”
I lifted his head and kissed him, and he smiled against my lips.
“Now. Just say it.”
“I want us to be together.”
“Oh, baby, me too,” he said, and his sigh was long.
Twelve
Early the next morning, I was having tea in the kitchen when Dallas came around the corner and into the living room, hair in wild disarray, only one eye open, shivering as he started across the floor to me.
“Good morning,” I greeted him.
“I have a feeling I’m never going to get up before you,” he said, reaching the barstool and sliding into it, putting his head down onto his folded arms.
“I’m a morning person,” I confessed to him. “And I suspect you can’t think of anything worse for a person to be.”
“Kiss of death for this relationship,” he grumbled.
I chuckled, poured him some coffee, mixed in the half-and-half I now knew he liked, and put it down close to him.
Slowly, he lifted his head and squinted at me. “You put the milk in for me.”
“Milk is disgusting,” I apprised him, adamant on this subject. “It’s far too thin for coffee, so you have half-and-half, but yes, there you go.”
He took a sip like it was the elixir of the gods.
“I got a call from…Truman?”
“Trousdale,” he corrected. “Took him a hundred and fifty years to tell you whatever it was, right?”
“Yes.”
“He’s been here covering while our boss was in DC, even though we have two assistant AICs here and all he’s been doing is warming the seat.”
“Well, he told me that Suárez’s people arrived at the home of one of their business associates, and at the house in Southern Highlands.”
“Another fancy neighborhood,” he told me grumpily.
“I assumed that would be the case,” I said, watching as he took several more sips of coffee. “Now I’m just waiting on a call from someone in the entourage to get us an address and time for the meet.”
“Okay,” he said, not looking happy in the least.
“I showered, but I need to change. You need to do both.”
“All right,” he agreed, getting up and heading back toward the hall.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” he snapped.
“Stop.”
He did as I asked, and when he turned to me, I read his face, the clench of his jaw and the furrow of his brows.
“Oh, come on,” I said cheerfully. “These are your people; have a little faith.”
“This was never a good idea, and I let you talk me into it and––”
“It’s a great idea, and I didn’t talk you into anything. We had a conversation.”
“No. You told me what was going to happen.”
The man was arguing just to argue, period. “You need to drop it, and you know that.”
He took a shaky breath. “I just this second realized that I hate this so much more than I thought I would, and I might even throw up!”
I moved around the island and jogged over close, stopping in front of him and taking hold of his hand. “You’ll be right there to protect me.”
“Which is a problem, right?” he groused, slipping his hand from mine and stalking a few feet away before pivoting back around. “I mean, if it’s you or the op, I’m gonna save you, no questions asked.”
“Yes, but that would be the same with anyone,” I reminded him. “You’re not blowing the op for me. The FBI are not mercenaries who decide who they are, or are not, going to protect.”
He crossed his arms tight, and for a second, I thought he was going to vent his frustration at me and really let me have it, but he only stood there and fumed.
“I heard that Murray will be there, so hopefully you can extract him cleanly, but if this whole thing gets blown, at least he’ll be back in the US.”
He was scowling at me.
“And after this,” I cajoled, kissing his cheek, “you can put in for vacation and maybe even fly back to Chicago with me.”
He grunted.
“Everything will be all right.”
“How do you know?” He sounded hoarse, hopeful and scared at the same time.
“Because it’s a drug cartel, yes, but only a baby one.”
His glare could have cut glass.
I threw up my hands in defeat.
“I’m gonna go shower. I’ll be right out.”
“Hey,” I said before he could leave the room.
“What?” he snarled.
“The fact that you’re worried about me means a lot.”
His breath came out ragged. “I just…found you.”
I understood, because I felt the same.
“We’re gonna be okay, I swear.”
“Well, anything happens and I get hurt, or you get hurt, our asses are convalescing right here at home.”
Home.
How could it be that Chicago didn’t feel like home for me anymore? Why I could imagine my life fitting seamlessly with his, in this little house, made no sense. But how could my home ever be a place where Dallas Bauer was not?
“You’re gonna play nurse for me if I get hurt?”
“Doctor and nurse both,” he teased me, allowing me to change the subject before either of us got pulled into a conversation we weren’t prepared to have.
He was almost at the hall, ready to make the left toward his bedroom.
“Hey.”
His hand was on the wall as he turned to look at me.
“I didn’t hurt you last night, did I?”
“When?” he asked, and I noted how warm his gaze was. “In the back of my car, or in the middle of the night when I attacked you?”
“Is it really attacking, though, if I get up to pee and you pass me the lube when I get back in bed?”
“Maybe not.”
“I think that would be classified as more of an invitation, but still,” I said, taking a breath, “I wasn’t gentle with you.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“And so?”
“Did I ask you to be gentle or careful or anything else?”
“I just don’t want you to think that wild in bed is the only gear we have.”
He nodded. “I think we’re brand fuckin’ new, and once we both get all the claiming out of our systems and know, for sure, that neither of us is going to up and disappear tomorrow, then we’ll find the tenderness too.”
That made sense. Since I’d never been in a relationship, I couldn’t speak to what that looked like. I would have to defer to him.
“You’ll be my first.”
“Your first what?”
“Grown-up relationship.”
His smile was instant and bright. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
“Of everyone you’ve ever met, you’ve only thought, ‘yeah, I’ll get on a plane twice a month for him,’ about me.”
“Twice a month?”
He snorted. “Yes, asshole. Two Fridays a month, you fly; two Fridays a month, I fly. Those are the rules.”
“When did we decide this?”
“You think it should be less?”
“I didn’t say that. When did I say that?”
He squinted. “You questioned.”
I crossed my arms.
“We’ll see each other every week, two and two. Think of all the frequent flyer miles you’ll rack up.”
I grunted.
“Or you can just go back to Chicago and forget about me.”
The silence felt heavy.
“No,” I countered, not taking the bait, not letting him get rid of me or go fishing for declarations of love, no matter how much I was goaded. He wasn’t getting either—no freedom and no ring. His choice, take it or leave it, was us navigating new waters together. I wanted to make sure he took it. “I’m not about to miss out on spending time with you just because I don’t like to fly.”
He tipped his head. “This is new. Tell me why you don’t like to fly.”
“Are you kidding?”
He laced his fingers on top of his head, a grin curling that beautiful mouth of his. He was waiting to be amused at my expense.
“It’s a giant piece of metal,” I enlightened him, “and the only thing keeping it from falling out of the sky, and me with it, is that the engines don’t fail.”
The look on his face told me he thought I was adorable.
“This is a true statement,” I confirmed.
“For a person who’s supposed to be so logical, you sure do dream up a good disaster scenario.”
“You know what, go take a shower.”
“I was trying to, but you waylaid me with stupid questions, and then concerns about air travel,” he goaded me with a snicker before he left me alone in the room.
I had to pull up some statistics for him on air travel.
“Hey.”
He was back, leaning around the corner, smiling at me.
“It’s gonna be great, seeing each other every week. We’ll always have something to look forward to.”
I nodded.
“Maybe come kiss me for that wonderful observation.”
So I did.
We drove to the house in Summerlin, in the Suburban that had been dropped off for us to use, the blackout windows and black paint job, of course, not standing out at all.
“You know this car screams government issued,” I told him.
“Well, I wasn’t bringing my car,” he assured me.
“You don’t think maybe there’s something in between personal car and the car that the men in black use?”
He gave me a tip of his head, like perhaps.
After I met the team that was on-site with Dallas and me, the two of us walked around to get familiar with the Stantons’ vacation house, though it wasn’t necessary to know every nook and cranny. As Brig’s negotiator, I wasn’t staying for long, so I only needed a general idea of the layout. Which turned out to be lucky, because the house was massive.
The sixteen-thousand-square-foot, three-story, nine-bedroom, twelve-bathroom, twenty-car-garage home had been featured in Architectural Digest because it was a marvel of luxury and innovation. The house was not to be outdone by the landscaping, though. Paver walkways with embedded LED lights led to three separate infinity pools, an outdoor theater, and two bars on a patio from which you could see the Strip. It was stunning, yes, but it was also lost on me. This kind of lavish lifestyle didn’t appeal.
Dallas stood beside me in his Hugo Boss suit, hair slicked back, aviators on, shaved and pressed and looking for all the world like he belonged right where he was.
“This could be your house,” I told him. “You could pull this off.”
“Can you even imagine what the property taxes are? Or the water bill?”
“Electric bill,” I threw out.
“But I guess that’s the point, right? If you can afford to live in a place like this, the upkeep hardly matters.”
“Let’s find the bedrooms.”
It took some navigating, but we pulled up the blueprints and found where we were going.
“Ohmygod, you could fit my whole house in here!”
He was overselling it a bit, but really, not by much.
“This bed is bigger than a California king,” he said, dropping his duffel. “You could fit, like, ten people in that.”
“You want this room?” I asked, still holding on to my duffel.
He turned his head to me. “We’re both gonna stay right here. There’s no way I’ll even hear you from another room. We’ll be good and sleep on opposite sides of the bed.”
“And the team will think what about that?”
He pointed at the two oversized chairs flanking the fireplace that reclined into chaises. “I’ll tell them I’m sleeping there.”
I tipped my head at the built-in entertainment center across the room from the bed. “I wonder if there’s closed-circuit video surveillance of the house and grounds.”
A quick text to the tech crew confirmed that the FBI had wired all but the bathrooms and the master bedroom for audio and video surveillance. Dallas had been adamant that my privacy not be intruded upon, but just in case someone had disregarded that request, he and I did a visual scan of the room, checking behind mirrors and paintings, in the fireplace, under the bed, picking up and looking under anything that wasn’t nailed down. We turned off the lights and looked for any green or red LEDs that would indicate the presence of cameras, and used the small professional-grade RF signal detector, which Owen had shipped overnight, to check for bugs. Once I was sure the room was clear, I took a seat on the bed.
“What’s your thought on this? Two days, tops?” I wanted to get a feel for how he saw this playing out.
“Or less. It depends on what they want for Lane, and how much they need to see us doing to take the bait and make the agreement so we can make the bust.”
“I want this done,” I told him.
“So do I,” he agreed, standing and walking over to me. “In the meantime, we’re in here together. I know I can’t touch you, but I can see you and talk to you, and that’s going to be enough, just like it will be during the week, when we’re apart.”
“Can you stop bringing that up?”
“What’s that? Us being in different cities?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he agreed and was quiet a moment. “I have a question.”
I waited.
“Why do you own such expensive suits?”
“I like the fit.”
He nodded.
“Plus, my Ermenegildo Zegna navy suit is made to travel.”
“You brought three different ones.”
“Mixing and matching,” I teased him. “I didn’t expect to spend so much of my time being naked.”
“You’re complaining?”
“Did it sound like I was?”
He coughed softly. “No.”
“Then?”
He gestured for me, and I smiled at him as I moved into his space, and he slipped his hand around the side of my neck and pulled me close, his lips parting to receive me. Before the insanity began, he needed this last moment of connection and intimacy, and since I craved it as well, we came together in a hard, heated rush that was grounding and exhilarating and everything in between. We parted when Dallas’s phone chirped.
I didn’t have enough control. “We need to move,” I growled, lifting him up, off me, and manhandling him between our seats and into the back.
Fortunately, there were no seats behind us, only what looked like a bench that was folded up against the side. I came down on top of him and would have driven him to the floor if he wasn’t covered in bunching muscles that held him up, now on hands and knees, as I scrambled off him before taking hold of his hips and burying myself to the hilt.
“Fuck,” he yelled, head dropping between his shoulders, hands clenched on the metal floor as I pulled out only to thrust in again. I grabbed his shoulder then, leaving the other hand on his hip, not letting him move, and drove to his core with pounding, hammering strokes that pulled mewling cries from the back of his throat.
“I told you, I love having you under me.”
“Please,” he gasped, his body jerking, bucking forward with each shove inside him. “I’m gonna come… I’m gonna… Croy!”
His muscles constricted around me so tight, so fast that the orgasm was wrung out of me, and I was coming for the second time that day, my body so lost in the throes of passion that I kept pounding inside of him, unable to stop until I collapsed down over his back.
“I’m gonna fall,” he whispered, and I put my hand down on the floor, bracing us both until I could lean back, bringing him with me, knees bent, my bare ass on the soles of my shoes as I sat there with him impaled on my still twitching cock buried in his tight hole.
“You’re so fuckin’ hot,” he said, head back on my shoulder, panting, taking in big gulps of air. “How?”
“How what?” I asked, one hand around his neck, the other back on his hip.
“How has anyone never kept you?”
“What makes you think it was their choice?” I told him, stroking his flagging shaft, hearing him hiss with the contact. I knew it hurt, and didn’t at the same time. Aftershocks were running through him, and I was still touching him.
“Oh God, what’re you… I had no idea, looking at you in your safe, elegant bespoke suit, that you had a fuckin’ club between your legs.”
I turned his head forcefully, and he parted his lips for me, letting me lick inside his mouth, and then drag my tongue over his until he had taken in enough air to kiss me back.
Held there against me, my right hand on his slowly hardening cock, my left hand keeping his face angled so I could kiss him deeply, when he tore his mouth free, I asked him if I was hurting him.
“No,” he barely got out, voice breaking. “Don’t stop, just have me. Have me, have me have me.”
I pressed my parted lips to the side of his neck, and with each pull of skin, I felt the slow relaxing of the muscles in his ass, until I was sliding in and out freely, moving inside of him, rutting in slow, decadent thrusts.
There was only the continual catch of his breath as he bowed his back, lifting his ass for me until I eased him gently over, onto his hands and knees again, pistoning hard, hand fisted in his hair as he took everything I gave him, the pounding, the slap of my skin on his, and the second orgasm.
When I slid from his body, I watched my cum leak from his still clenching hole, and there was something primitive about that, about claiming what was mine.
“You were so jealous,” he whispered, shivering as he remained on his hands and knees in front of me. “You had to fuck me twice in this car just to make sure I knew.”
“Knew what?” I asked him, my own voice gravelly and thick, moving around until I was in front of him and could lift him to his knees.
“That I belong to you,” he said softly. “You wanted to make sure I knew that Evan isn’t for me.”
“No, I just wanted you,” I lied, scowling at him, glancing away, looking for something to clean us up with.
He threw his arms around my neck and leaned, hanging on for dear life. “You wanted me to know something, and now I do. I know I’m all yours, Croy. And I’m scared to death, because it’s so fast, too fast, but I can’t take my eyes off you, and I’ve never wanted anything to work this bad in my life, so just—say it.”
I lifted his head and kissed him, and he smiled against my lips.
“Now. Just say it.”
“I want us to be together.”
“Oh, baby, me too,” he said, and his sigh was long.
Twelve
Early the next morning, I was having tea in the kitchen when Dallas came around the corner and into the living room, hair in wild disarray, only one eye open, shivering as he started across the floor to me.
“Good morning,” I greeted him.
“I have a feeling I’m never going to get up before you,” he said, reaching the barstool and sliding into it, putting his head down onto his folded arms.
“I’m a morning person,” I confessed to him. “And I suspect you can’t think of anything worse for a person to be.”
“Kiss of death for this relationship,” he grumbled.
I chuckled, poured him some coffee, mixed in the half-and-half I now knew he liked, and put it down close to him.
Slowly, he lifted his head and squinted at me. “You put the milk in for me.”
“Milk is disgusting,” I apprised him, adamant on this subject. “It’s far too thin for coffee, so you have half-and-half, but yes, there you go.”
He took a sip like it was the elixir of the gods.
“I got a call from…Truman?”
“Trousdale,” he corrected. “Took him a hundred and fifty years to tell you whatever it was, right?”
“Yes.”
“He’s been here covering while our boss was in DC, even though we have two assistant AICs here and all he’s been doing is warming the seat.”
“Well, he told me that Suárez’s people arrived at the home of one of their business associates, and at the house in Southern Highlands.”
“Another fancy neighborhood,” he told me grumpily.
“I assumed that would be the case,” I said, watching as he took several more sips of coffee. “Now I’m just waiting on a call from someone in the entourage to get us an address and time for the meet.”
“Okay,” he said, not looking happy in the least.
“I showered, but I need to change. You need to do both.”
“All right,” he agreed, getting up and heading back toward the hall.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” he snapped.
“Stop.”
He did as I asked, and when he turned to me, I read his face, the clench of his jaw and the furrow of his brows.
“Oh, come on,” I said cheerfully. “These are your people; have a little faith.”
“This was never a good idea, and I let you talk me into it and––”
“It’s a great idea, and I didn’t talk you into anything. We had a conversation.”
“No. You told me what was going to happen.”
The man was arguing just to argue, period. “You need to drop it, and you know that.”
He took a shaky breath. “I just this second realized that I hate this so much more than I thought I would, and I might even throw up!”
I moved around the island and jogged over close, stopping in front of him and taking hold of his hand. “You’ll be right there to protect me.”
“Which is a problem, right?” he groused, slipping his hand from mine and stalking a few feet away before pivoting back around. “I mean, if it’s you or the op, I’m gonna save you, no questions asked.”
“Yes, but that would be the same with anyone,” I reminded him. “You’re not blowing the op for me. The FBI are not mercenaries who decide who they are, or are not, going to protect.”
He crossed his arms tight, and for a second, I thought he was going to vent his frustration at me and really let me have it, but he only stood there and fumed.
“I heard that Murray will be there, so hopefully you can extract him cleanly, but if this whole thing gets blown, at least he’ll be back in the US.”
He was scowling at me.
“And after this,” I cajoled, kissing his cheek, “you can put in for vacation and maybe even fly back to Chicago with me.”
He grunted.
“Everything will be all right.”
“How do you know?” He sounded hoarse, hopeful and scared at the same time.
“Because it’s a drug cartel, yes, but only a baby one.”
His glare could have cut glass.
I threw up my hands in defeat.
“I’m gonna go shower. I’ll be right out.”
“Hey,” I said before he could leave the room.
“What?” he snarled.
“The fact that you’re worried about me means a lot.”
His breath came out ragged. “I just…found you.”
I understood, because I felt the same.
“We’re gonna be okay, I swear.”
“Well, anything happens and I get hurt, or you get hurt, our asses are convalescing right here at home.”
Home.
How could it be that Chicago didn’t feel like home for me anymore? Why I could imagine my life fitting seamlessly with his, in this little house, made no sense. But how could my home ever be a place where Dallas Bauer was not?
“You’re gonna play nurse for me if I get hurt?”
“Doctor and nurse both,” he teased me, allowing me to change the subject before either of us got pulled into a conversation we weren’t prepared to have.
He was almost at the hall, ready to make the left toward his bedroom.
“Hey.”
His hand was on the wall as he turned to look at me.
“I didn’t hurt you last night, did I?”
“When?” he asked, and I noted how warm his gaze was. “In the back of my car, or in the middle of the night when I attacked you?”
“Is it really attacking, though, if I get up to pee and you pass me the lube when I get back in bed?”
“Maybe not.”
“I think that would be classified as more of an invitation, but still,” I said, taking a breath, “I wasn’t gentle with you.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“And so?”
“Did I ask you to be gentle or careful or anything else?”
“I just don’t want you to think that wild in bed is the only gear we have.”
He nodded. “I think we’re brand fuckin’ new, and once we both get all the claiming out of our systems and know, for sure, that neither of us is going to up and disappear tomorrow, then we’ll find the tenderness too.”
That made sense. Since I’d never been in a relationship, I couldn’t speak to what that looked like. I would have to defer to him.
“You’ll be my first.”
“Your first what?”
“Grown-up relationship.”
His smile was instant and bright. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
“Of everyone you’ve ever met, you’ve only thought, ‘yeah, I’ll get on a plane twice a month for him,’ about me.”
“Twice a month?”
He snorted. “Yes, asshole. Two Fridays a month, you fly; two Fridays a month, I fly. Those are the rules.”
“When did we decide this?”
“You think it should be less?”
“I didn’t say that. When did I say that?”
He squinted. “You questioned.”
I crossed my arms.
“We’ll see each other every week, two and two. Think of all the frequent flyer miles you’ll rack up.”
I grunted.
“Or you can just go back to Chicago and forget about me.”
The silence felt heavy.
“No,” I countered, not taking the bait, not letting him get rid of me or go fishing for declarations of love, no matter how much I was goaded. He wasn’t getting either—no freedom and no ring. His choice, take it or leave it, was us navigating new waters together. I wanted to make sure he took it. “I’m not about to miss out on spending time with you just because I don’t like to fly.”
He tipped his head. “This is new. Tell me why you don’t like to fly.”
“Are you kidding?”
He laced his fingers on top of his head, a grin curling that beautiful mouth of his. He was waiting to be amused at my expense.
“It’s a giant piece of metal,” I enlightened him, “and the only thing keeping it from falling out of the sky, and me with it, is that the engines don’t fail.”
The look on his face told me he thought I was adorable.
“This is a true statement,” I confirmed.
“For a person who’s supposed to be so logical, you sure do dream up a good disaster scenario.”
“You know what, go take a shower.”
“I was trying to, but you waylaid me with stupid questions, and then concerns about air travel,” he goaded me with a snicker before he left me alone in the room.
I had to pull up some statistics for him on air travel.
“Hey.”
He was back, leaning around the corner, smiling at me.
“It’s gonna be great, seeing each other every week. We’ll always have something to look forward to.”
I nodded.
“Maybe come kiss me for that wonderful observation.”
So I did.
We drove to the house in Summerlin, in the Suburban that had been dropped off for us to use, the blackout windows and black paint job, of course, not standing out at all.
“You know this car screams government issued,” I told him.
“Well, I wasn’t bringing my car,” he assured me.
“You don’t think maybe there’s something in between personal car and the car that the men in black use?”
He gave me a tip of his head, like perhaps.
After I met the team that was on-site with Dallas and me, the two of us walked around to get familiar with the Stantons’ vacation house, though it wasn’t necessary to know every nook and cranny. As Brig’s negotiator, I wasn’t staying for long, so I only needed a general idea of the layout. Which turned out to be lucky, because the house was massive.
The sixteen-thousand-square-foot, three-story, nine-bedroom, twelve-bathroom, twenty-car-garage home had been featured in Architectural Digest because it was a marvel of luxury and innovation. The house was not to be outdone by the landscaping, though. Paver walkways with embedded LED lights led to three separate infinity pools, an outdoor theater, and two bars on a patio from which you could see the Strip. It was stunning, yes, but it was also lost on me. This kind of lavish lifestyle didn’t appeal.
Dallas stood beside me in his Hugo Boss suit, hair slicked back, aviators on, shaved and pressed and looking for all the world like he belonged right where he was.
“This could be your house,” I told him. “You could pull this off.”
“Can you even imagine what the property taxes are? Or the water bill?”
“Electric bill,” I threw out.
“But I guess that’s the point, right? If you can afford to live in a place like this, the upkeep hardly matters.”
“Let’s find the bedrooms.”
It took some navigating, but we pulled up the blueprints and found where we were going.
“Ohmygod, you could fit my whole house in here!”
He was overselling it a bit, but really, not by much.
“This bed is bigger than a California king,” he said, dropping his duffel. “You could fit, like, ten people in that.”
“You want this room?” I asked, still holding on to my duffel.
He turned his head to me. “We’re both gonna stay right here. There’s no way I’ll even hear you from another room. We’ll be good and sleep on opposite sides of the bed.”
“And the team will think what about that?”
He pointed at the two oversized chairs flanking the fireplace that reclined into chaises. “I’ll tell them I’m sleeping there.”
I tipped my head at the built-in entertainment center across the room from the bed. “I wonder if there’s closed-circuit video surveillance of the house and grounds.”
A quick text to the tech crew confirmed that the FBI had wired all but the bathrooms and the master bedroom for audio and video surveillance. Dallas had been adamant that my privacy not be intruded upon, but just in case someone had disregarded that request, he and I did a visual scan of the room, checking behind mirrors and paintings, in the fireplace, under the bed, picking up and looking under anything that wasn’t nailed down. We turned off the lights and looked for any green or red LEDs that would indicate the presence of cameras, and used the small professional-grade RF signal detector, which Owen had shipped overnight, to check for bugs. Once I was sure the room was clear, I took a seat on the bed.
“What’s your thought on this? Two days, tops?” I wanted to get a feel for how he saw this playing out.
“Or less. It depends on what they want for Lane, and how much they need to see us doing to take the bait and make the agreement so we can make the bust.”
“I want this done,” I told him.
“So do I,” he agreed, standing and walking over to me. “In the meantime, we’re in here together. I know I can’t touch you, but I can see you and talk to you, and that’s going to be enough, just like it will be during the week, when we’re apart.”
“Can you stop bringing that up?”
“What’s that? Us being in different cities?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he agreed and was quiet a moment. “I have a question.”
I waited.
“Why do you own such expensive suits?”
“I like the fit.”
He nodded.
“Plus, my Ermenegildo Zegna navy suit is made to travel.”
“You brought three different ones.”
“Mixing and matching,” I teased him. “I didn’t expect to spend so much of my time being naked.”
“You’re complaining?”
“Did it sound like I was?”
He coughed softly. “No.”
“Then?”
He gestured for me, and I smiled at him as I moved into his space, and he slipped his hand around the side of my neck and pulled me close, his lips parting to receive me. Before the insanity began, he needed this last moment of connection and intimacy, and since I craved it as well, we came together in a hard, heated rush that was grounding and exhilarating and everything in between. We parted when Dallas’s phone chirped.
