Chapter 37
Thad
I was seriously questioning my life choices.
It had been three days since I’d drunk way too much while celebrating in Vegas.
Three days, and the headache was still present.
Throbbing behind my eyes like someone was pounding a drum in my skull.
The heat and stench of fermenting garbage wasn’t helping.
Zane hadn’t felt an ounce of pity when he sent us down to Mexico only a day after Brooks and Tatiana had said, ‘I do.’ The fucker had drunk as much as the rest of us, yet he woke up the next day bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, barking orders like he hadn’t polished off a bottle of Knob Creek himself.
Now he and his wife, Ivy, were enjoying something she called a babymoon. Whatever the fuck that is . All I knew was, I was walking down Avenida Revolucioń with Max by my side and my Gator sunglasses were doing not a damn thing blocking out the bright rays of the afternoon sun.
Even the brightly-colored buildings were pissing me off.
“You need an attitude adjustment,” Max complained. I gritted my teeth in an effort not to tell him to fuck off.
It wasn’t his fault I was in a bad mood.
Hell, I didn’t even know why I was annoyed.
We’d all had a great time in Vegas and we’d been stateside for nearly three months.
It was the longest I’d been out of the sandbox in recent memory.
Maybe that was what my problem was. Three months was a long time to go without a purpose.
But that didn’t explain my piss poor mood now.
We were back on the hunt. Tex had picked up a trace on Leon Brown.
It wasn’t a great lead but it was a start.
Brown had been seen in Venezuela with a woman.
With any luck it would be Ashaki Maloof.
Though I had a feeling, being CIA she’d be in the wind and back undercover in no time.
And as much as I hated loose ends and not fully understanding who she was and what role she played, she wasn’t our mission.
Omni was. And even if we hadn’t been the ones to take out Prince Al Issa, he was dead. Soon Omni would be scrambling.
I needed to snap out of it and get my shit sorted. It may’ve been broad daylight but there was nothing particularly safe walking the streets of Tijuana. Statistically, I was safer taking a stroll in Kandahar. At least according to OSAC.
“You think Zane put us up in a lime green house just to be a smartass?” I asked Max as we arrived at the Cantina National.
I’d never seen a color so bright on a house in my thirty-two years. It was like a huge neon beacon flashing, alerting all of the homeboys on the block of our presence. We might as well hang a sign outside, too: White boys staying in the lime green house.
“Probably. Something he would do. The color is obnoxious. But it blends into the neighborhood. The one next door is flamingo pink. He coulda put us in that one.”
A pretty brunette with long shiny hair cascading to her waist greeted us.
She was stunning. And young. Way too young for me to be ogling.
Maybe that was part of my problem. It had been a very long time since I’d had the pleasure of anything other than my hand.
So goddamn long I couldn’t even remember the last time I had female company.
“This okay?” the woman asked.
“Yes. Thank you.”
I sat at the table the hostess had guided us to and was grateful Max had been paying attention.
“Earth to Thaddeus.” Max knocked on the table, pulling me from my depressing thoughts.
I felt it before I heard it.
A crackle of energy. High-frequency, high-voltage, alternating current. I remembered that feeling. There had only ever been one person who could evoke the phenomenon. Her touch was like my own personal bolt of lightning.
I finally turned toward the clatter of dishes and had to do a double-take. I blinked and tried looking again. The mirage remained, the same beautiful woman at the next table over was staring at me. Green eyes wide in shock and full, kissable lips pulled down into a frown.
She quickly schooled her features and looked back at her lunch companion.
What the fuck?
Max lifted his chin in a silent question, asking if I knew her.
The answer was complicated. Did I know the well put-together woman sitting there eating lunch with a man in an expensive, perfectly pressed suit, donning a watch that cost a year’s salary, and douchey haircut that would put you back a whack? No, I did not know that woman.
Did I know Emerson Pierce? Intimately. I’d spent hours getting to know every inch of her.
That seemed like a lifetime ago. A silly young man who was so stupid he’d mistaken phenomenal sex with love.
It had been more than a decade since I’d seen her.
I was twenty-two. The sex couldn’t have been as good as I’d remembered.
Back then, I was so inexperienced I’d probably embarrassed myself.
It couldn’t have been that great for her, she’d walked out on me.
Emerson stood and straightened the hem of her stylish short red dress and briefly glanced in my direction.
Her pretty eyes weren’t dancing with desire and lust like they had been the last time I’d been lost in them.
They were pleading. She shook her head ever so softly, begging me not to acknowledge her.
A part of me wanted to stand and demand answers.
But I remained in my seat, not drawing any attention to the fact I could still recall every breathy moan, every groan she made while she rode me.
I could still feel her hands in my hair, pulling as my tongue thrashed between her legs.
She was a wild thing. Totally shameless in her quest for pleasure.
Her expensive heels clacked on the worn wooden floor as she made her way past our table.
If I’d thought the front of her skin-tight dress showed off her curves, it had nothing on the back.
Not only did it hug her ample ass but it exposed the smooth skin of her back.
My eyes were eating up every sexy inch until they stalled on the thick black lettering of her tattoo.
The last word I’d use to describe the lettering would be feminine. It was bold, going from shoulder blade to shoulder blade, the characters unmistakably Greek. The name unmistakably mine.
Θεοδωρο?.
She had insisted on calling me Thaddeus. She said it was strong and sexy, just like I was. She said she’d never forget it. Seemed she was telling the truth.
“You okay?” Max asked.
“Not even a little bit.”
For the second time in my life, Emerson Pierce had rocked my world.
*
Find out how Emerson and Thaddeus know each other in the next book in the Gold Team series— Thaddeus