38. Rhett
I’m antsy as fuck waiting in the car with ten minutes until midnight. Ana was out of my sight for one hour and got herself into a shitload of trouble, so I decide she’s not getting five minutes without me once I have her back.
“What if they grab her before she can make it past the gates?” Adam asks, practically pressing his face to the tinted glass in the back seat.
Rix says next to him, “We have a distraction in place. One gunshot, and their security will flock to the threat before they lock down the shit out of that place. It gives her two minutes tops to take that window of initial panic.”
“I’m going out,” I say.
Rix’s protest is cut off with the closing of my door. My hood is up, and a black scarf covers my lower face. I blend into the bushes far enough away from the White House that no one will make out my figure from there. But I dare a fraction closer to the exit Ana indicated she’d take. I don’t want to risk her not seeing the car, which is black and blends in with the dozen others on the street we’ve parked on. This could be the difference between being home or in a cell tonight, because I’m not leaving her, no matter what.
Exactly at midnight the gunshot goes off, and the reaction is immediate. My attention is sharp, watching bodies dart away from the place Ana should emerge from, but soon they’ll be stationed around the entire perimeter with laser focus.
I could make out Ana in any light or darkness. Even her silhouette wraps my whole being in contentment. She’s so close my body itches for her, but she’s careful, waiting for people to pass before she darts right through the gaps in their net. She’s running straight, but not in my direct path. I risk leaving the cover to intercept her.
My gloved hand muffles her scream of fright, but a second scanning my eyes is all it takes for her to relax in my arms.
“Hello, little bird.”
“Rhett.”
Hearing my name in her breathy voice makes my heart soar. I take her hand, jogging across the street.
“Stop!” someone yells out.
Which of course means “get the fuck out of here.”
I open the passenger door and Ana slips inside, and I look up to gauge what we’re up against. What I don’t expect is to see President Kinsley.
He’s surrounded by armed security, out here likely against every protocol for a potential gunshot threat. Our eyes lock, and even from this distance and in the dark I can see his terror for his daughter. Yet he doesn’t advance, and neither do any of those around him since they can’t break their protection for him even if he demanded it.
He can’t fully see me, but I’m almost certain he knows who I am despite my face covering and his belief that I’m dead.
I can’t waste a moment considering his feelings when Ana is the only thing that matters—and she called for me.
I’m speeding off the moment I’m in the driver’s seat.
“Holy shit, we really just kidnapped the president’s daughter!” Rix says.
“This is insane,” Adam mutters.
Ana twists in her chair at his voice. “Did you get the book?”
“This was all for a book?” I ask irritably.
Sirens wail in the distance, and it’s only a matter of time before they clock our car since we were seen. I try not to speed to avoid flying our guilt like a flag sooner.
“Yeah I got it,” Adam says, passing it to her. “I’ve never seen your dad so pissed, and mine threatened to cut me off if he found out I was hiding things for you. So I… kind of snuck out and haven’t been back. I guess I’m a fugitive now too.”
“Shit,” Ana mutters. Then she giggles and I snap an incredulous look at her.
She only grins wider. “Look at us, a band of the president’s most wanted criminals,” she muses. She’s so casually composed, as if we didn’t just set off a terrorist alarm at the White House, take the president’s daughter right in front of him, and we’re now risking a hot pursuit. I wonder if I should be concerned or proud.
I have no idea how any of us are going to wrangle our way out of the shitstorm we’ve created, but I decide all that matters is that Ana seems happy.
I catch a glimpse of the title on her book. “What is Twilight about that could be so important for this to be worth it?”
I’m met with the combined gasps of Ana and Rix.
“You’ve never heard of it?” Ana questions like it’s a personal offense.
“I have a feeling I don’t want to.”
“It’s like a drug,” Rix says. “Bad, but fucking addictive.”
“Thirty seconds,” I inform them.
“For what?” Ana asks, but we’re here.
Driving down into an underground parking lot, I cut the engine and swing out. Rix and Adam are a heartbeat behind as I open Ana’s door.
“The best way to get out of a police chase is to never let one begin,” I say close to her ear.
“That’s kind of cheating,” she says with a devious smile. “I was looking forward to you wreaking havoc on the streets.”
“I will wreak havoc on you for the little stunt you pulled.”
Two of my guys emerge from each of the awaiting two cars. I toss the key to our getaway car to one, and they get to work on changing the plates before they drive out of here.
“I guess you’ll be working remotely while the smoke clears,” Rix says.
“For a few days. Keep me updated if you find anything.”
“Will do, boss.”
“Stockbridge,” Ana mutters.
I turn and find her with the book open, but she’s holding a card she found within it. Her eyes light up, scanning the front before she flips it over.
“He’s in Stockbridge, Massachusetts,” she says, more hopeful, before holding up what I see is a postcard.
“What does it say?” I ask.
“There’s only a number on the back.”
Rix crosses the space and plucks the postcard from her. “It has to be coordinates,” he says. “I think I like this guy.”
“Let’s hope it leads us to Allie. Can you take care of it? I want to be in on it, but we have Silas and the upcoming Forthson venue opening party.”
It’s tearing me apart not to be able to put my full focus on getting Allie back, but we have so many high stakes on the edge of collapse.
“Of course,” he says, studying the picture with new hope as he heads to his car.
I walk around with Ana to the passenger side, but before she gets in I catch her wrist, spinning her to pin her against it with my hips.
“Good work, little bird,” I say and kiss her hard.
“No reprimand?”
“So eager for punishment,” I muse. “Don’t worry, I’m not finished with you yet.”
I open her door, and her eyes, sparkling with desire, make my cock twitch as she slips inside.
Half an hour later, we’re parked down a deserted dirt road ten minutes from the warehouse apartment. I don’t want to take any risks to compromise that place, and so we’ve switched cars again, and now we’re waiting to see if anyone followed.
In the silence I’m left to reflect on the hour under Oma’s intense interrogation. She dragged all my demons to the surface. Thing is, once she did, they were mine to fight head-on.
I find myself needing to show them to Ana. After all she’s risking for this, for me, I owe her that, in case all of this is for nothing if she decides she wants to leave.
“Alistair kept me in a room. There was a mattress and a TV screen to watch you on almost every day. I think he wanted me to believe you were moving on, that he was succeeding in making you his.” It comes out of me before I can seal it all away again, the beginning of a hellish three months.
She says nothing right away, and the weight of my vulnerability crushes slowly.
“He locked me in a room too,” she says quietly. “You know that, but I want to tell you myself.”
We need this so much. My body locks tense, and I know my anger and resentment will be palpable the more we exchange.
“They would take me out a couple of times a week for various torture,” I say. “Drowning, cutting, electrocution. That part was all a punishment for my desertion.”
I have to know what she’s thinking, but her face only crumples with sadness.
“You’re the resilient one, Rhett. There’s not many people who wouldn’t break under all that.”
I don’t respond, but I appreciate her faith in me.
Ana takes a deep breath to give a piece of her story in return. “He didn’t demand the cuts on my thighs, but I wanted to know what it felt like for you.”
I’m slammed by incredulity and heartbreak. Ana shakes her head, and I understand she doesn’t want to be reprimanded for it.
Ana bled for me . . .
My head tips back against the headrest in disbelief. “I kept track of the days, scoring them on the wall. It took 126 little birds to get back to mine.”
I let the weight of my head fall toward her. Her lip wobbles, gaze dropping to her lap.
“I trained so hard every day even though I knew he had other plans for me. I wanted to be strong and brave and smart enough to get you back, because I couldn’t accept you were gone no matter how much I heard it.”
We give each other pieces like the sharp edges of our terror, and trauma sews us back together. Tighter than ever before.
I swallow hard when I reach the worst of what I have to tell her. “They started to test my limits. Not physically, but emotionally and mentally. I was given a gun, which either did or didn’t have a single bullet—there was no way to be sure. They made me stand before a teen kid and point the barrel at his head. If I didn’t shoot, they had you on a monitor while you were unaware. I don’t think they would have killed you, but I didn’t doubt they were allowed to follow through and at least hurt you gravely. By the fourth kid ...”
I have to pause. My fists clench so tightly in my lap until Ana’s close over them.
I go on. “I would have killed him had there been a bullet in my gun, but they didn’t take the chance. So he was shot by proxy by the one I was always under charge of. One sick, deranged bastard. His name was Micah.”
A shuddering breath escapes her, and Ana quickly swipes a tear. I’m torn apart where I sit, desperate to touch her, but I can’t tell if she’s repulsed by what I’ve done.
She says, her voice wavering, “He locked me in a room with a camera watching me. I had a table and some paper and pencils. I don’t know why. I don’t know how long I was in there. I didn’t think to track time. It was long enough that I lost it for a moment. I got on the chair and tore down the camera, thinking it was a triumph, but it was my biggest mistake. A man came in and barely said anything, but by the dark look of hunger in his eyes, I knew what I’d done. I fought him as best as I could, but it was like everything I’d pushed my body through, every skill and tactic to defend myself, became as good as child’s play. He had me pinned and managed to undo my shorts, and his hand ... his hand touched me. His fingers were inside me. Then I felt one of my snapped pencils, and the next thing I knew, it was in his neck.”
Ana pauses and lets her tears roll down her face, one after the other. Her eyes are terrified when they lift to mine.
“His name was Micah.”
It’s hard to explain the absolute horror that washes through my entire body and punishes the very core of my being. I stare out the windshield into pure dark nothingness, a calm rage collecting a storm inside of me. I want to kill him a thousand times. I can’t ask her, and maybe it’s sick of me to wish him alive only because I haven’t had my vengeance, but if I get it ... he’s going to regret ever being born.
“Say something,” Ana croaks.
I don’t know what to say. There aren’t enough words or gestures to convey how sorry I am to her, and I’m right back in my turmoil that everything she’s suffered is because of me.
She sniffs, and I vaguely hear her shuffling in her seat. Then her hands are on my shoulder, but I’m numb to it. I help her on autopilot as she climbs over, sitting across my lap with her back against the door.
“We both got out,” she says, resting her head on my shoulder. “More times than one.”
“There should never have been a first time,” I say. I don’t feel anything right now, and I know she deserves more.
“I would go through it all again to have you.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you.”
Then I have to look at her. I tip her chin back as her head rests against the window. “Why?” I repeat, more desperate now.
She bites her lip and shrugs. Then her hand reaches up for my jaw.
“I think that’s the thing about love—love like what we have. There is no why.”
How is she even fucking real? I don’t know what I did to deserve an angel in hell’s depths, but I’m the luckiest damn bastard alive.
“You are my life, Ana.”
Her head nestles back between my shoulder and neck where her soft lips press. She’s absolute bliss in this dark world.
It’s safe to go to the apartment now, but I can’t ask her to move with how content I am.
“This is kind of creepy,” Ana says, staring out at the trees in front of us as we sit with all the lights cut under the cover of darkness.
“Afraid of the dark?”
“Not the dark, but what could lurk within it.” She lifts herself from my chest, and there’s an enticing shift in her expression.
“You’re thinking bad things,” I say.
“Or very good things.”
Ana adjusts her position, giggling at the awkward maneuver between me, the steering wheel, and the console. She squeezes and manages to straddle me. I don’t expect her boldness as she drags the heel of her palm over my dick, but it jerks to life at her touch.
My voice turns to thick gravel. “What are you doing?”
“Do I need to spell it out for you?” she says in a tone of lust, squeezing my cock over and over.
“You want a distraction? Then stop being a tease and bury my cock in your throat before I do.”
“Very demanding,” she taunts.
She moves so agonizingly slowly, purposely driving me to the brink of my restraint. Wicked, beautiful thing. She undoes my belt, slips open my button, and drags down my zip, all while her lips press along my jaw. Then her tongue traces up my neck, and I groan, tensing with the madness growing in me for her.
Ana pulls back, straining to reach down between us and under the seat. She feels for the lever, and when the seat slides back she grins in triumph. It gives her barely enough space to slip her knees down to the footwell.
“I don’t want to ask if you’ve done that before,” I growl.
She moves like a pro in this car, and it stirs a dangerous possession in me.
“You just did,” she says with a sultry lilt. Her hand takes my cock, but it’s her alluring eyes locking on me that spurs my lust more. “You’re my first car thrill, Agent Kaiser.”
Her tongue flattens on the base of my cock, licking from my balls to my head in a long, hot stoke. My hand threads through her red hair.
“Suck,” I grind out.
Ana’s small, sinful smile makes my dick twitch against her lips as she torments me to the brink, pressing her lips along my crown and squeezing her hand at my base.
“Say please.”
Oh fuck.
“Please,” I say, barely a raspy breath, without missing a beat.
“Please what, Agent?”
So fast I’m delirious, on the brink of exploding against her lips.
“Please suck my cock before I lose the mind to fucking breathe.”
She chuckles, and the vibrations of it tighten my damn balls.
As soon as her pretty little lips wrap around my dick and swallow me down, I throw my head back with a groan, and my hand can’t help gripping her hair tighter. She sucks me for a moment while I rally composure to watch her. I use both my hands to keep her hair from her face and get the most impeccable sight of her at work with her fist and mouth.
“So beautiful taking my cock in your throat. Deeper, baby. Take all of me.”
I know she can, and she doesn’t need to be told twice. Watching me disappear down her neck seizes me with an impending release. I want to fuck her so badly, but I can’t find the will to get her to stop. I’m too far gone, lost in the heat of her, and I try to match the bobbing of her head, but the tight fit of the car keeps my thrusts shallow.
“Fucking hell, Ana.” I growl her name as my release crashes through me. I slip a hand around her throat, wanting to feel her swallow everything I give her. “My good fucking girl.”
She hums, continuing to suck me dry and stringing out my orgasm as it begins to blacken the edges of my vision. I’m barely holding myself together when she finally lets go, but my abdomen tenses, and I hiss at the aftershocks of oversensitivity when her hand strokes a couple more times.
“Torturous thing,” I mutter, chest still heaving.
She braces on my knees, pushing up to bring her lips to the shell of my ear. “Take me home. You owe me one in return.”
I tuck myself away far too eagerly because I risk getting hard again that quickly. Ana crawls back to her seat.
“I’m going to give you far more than one, little bird.”