Chapter 28
JETT
If Locke was going to make a confession, then I was, too. Because this wasn’t just sex for me, and I was beginning to realize it wasn’t for him either.
The angles of his face in the shadows carried the usual tension, something that had returned after I’d softened them earlier with pleasure.
I hated seeing him unhappy and stressed.
“I knew something more was going on,” I admitted. “But I didn’t know how to get you to admit it.”
His jaw moved, but he said nothing.
If he was upset with me, he didn’t have a leg to stand on. His silence was a pain in the fucking ass.
I shoved him away and sat up, turning to flick on the bedside table lamp so I could see him better. “You’re going to be mad at me?” I asked incredulously. “That’s rich.”
“You manipulated me.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Join the fucking club, Locke. You’ve been manipulating me, too. Or were you really having me look up a location in the Kiel Canal just to test some tech?”
The accusation hit its mark. His nostrils flared, but I also saw a brief look of contrition before he wiped it away.
“Because it was none of your business why I wanted you to look that up. It had nothing to do with you—”
Is he serious?
“You made me feel like an idiot! I kept asking you, begging you to tell me, and you kept insisting that I didn’t know what I was talking about. And this whole time, you’ve insisted you were playing goddamned chess, and in reality, you were—”
Locke’s strong hand over my mouth kept me from finishing the sentence. “No.”
When he finally let go, I lowered my voice even more. “I want to know so I can help.”
“You can’t.”
“I definitely can’t if I don’t even fucking know!”
“I’m not allowed to tell you anything about this,” he hissed. “Telling you puts you in danger.”
“I can handle danger,” I said, unable to spill my own secrets but unwilling to let him worry about me.
He scoffed. “Right.” He stopped and sucked in a breath. “Jett, there’s a difference between living on the streets and going up against people this powerful.”
I let out a soft, incredulous huff. If only he knew what kind of situations I’d been in before. What kind of danger I’d faced and continued to face every day in my job.
The words piled up in my throat, but I didn’t let them out. The reality of asking him to spill his secrets while being unable to spill my own made my stomach churn.
I had more reason than ever not to trust him. But I wanted to trust him more than ever, too.
What the fuck am I doing? When did this get so fucking complicated?
Locke’s eyes stayed on mine. When he spoke, his voice was soft, but his message was firm. “I need you to stay out of this. Stop asking questions. Please.”
He’d moved closer, and I hadn’t even realized he’d been holding my hand until he squeezed it. The warm strength of him was reassuring, and I was a sucker for the fantasy of letting him protect me.
Locke’s other hand came up to cup my face. “Baby. Please.”
There was no way I was staying out of it, but I suddenly wanted to be Locke’s “baby” more than just about anything. So I crawled into his lap and kissed him. “I know a lot of people, Locke. I can help if you’ll let me.”
“You’re helping enough by being here with me,” he said softly.
I knew he meant it, and it felt good. But not being seen as someone with vital information or skills to help in whatever it was they were doing stung.
I kissed him back, hungry for connection despite my frustration.
The kissing turned into Locke’s fumbled reach to pull my cock against his and stroke us off together. It was fast and desperate, his grunts hot against my skin and my face eager to stay pressed as close as possible into the crook of his neck.
“That’s it,” he urged in a broken voice. “Oh fuck, Jett. Baby. Fuck.”
I spilled over his hand and belly, wondering how it was possible to feel this close to someone who didn’t know me at all. Someone who kept secrets just like I did.
Later, when he was already breathing regularly against my shoulder, his body slack from sleep, I couldn’t stop myself from considering the impossibility of the situation.
I wanted Locke. And not just in bed.
I wanted more time with the sweet man who’d taught me Paxis. The one who took care of his people.
I wanted to kiss his jaw when it got tight and smooth the worry from his forehead. I wanted to see his eyes lighten and the tension bleed from his shoulders when we shared a joke or a meal or a touch.
But in what fucking world could the two of us have something other than this?
No world.
He thought I’d been lying to him about Santi when in reality, I’d been lying to him about everything. Who I was. What I did for a living. The reason I was curious about Paxis.
How could he possibly forgive me if I told him the truth? And that was assuming I’d ever be authorized to tell him the truth without losing my job. Which I wouldn’t. Jesus, even the people who shared my DNA didn’t know.
I finally fell into a fitful dream, and when I awoke, Locke surprised me.
“Have you ever heard of Malik Makida?” he murmured sleepily.
I was sprawled on my front with Locke half on top of my back. His stubble prickled on one of my shoulders, and his morning wood nudged my hip.
“No. Who’s that? Am I supposed to know them?”
He sighed and rolled onto his side. “Not at all. I wondered—hoped, I suppose— that you might’ve overheard someone here mentioning the name. But it was a long shot.”
I turned to face him. “I went to school with a Malik, so I would have noticed someone mentioning that name. But Makida…” I frowned.
“Never mind. Forget I asked.” Locke pushed back until he sat against the headboard and rubbed his face. “I should shower.”
My brain shuttled through information, trying to puzzle out why Makida sounded familiar. “Wait, you’re sure it’s not just Kida, right?”
“Positive.” He frowned. “Why?”
“This is gonna sound silly,” I said, sitting up as well. “But Liyana al-Qadiri has two horses. Their names are Kida and Makani, which is kind of like Makida?”
Locke’s eyes widened in surprise before narrowing in thought. “No. This wouldn’t involve al-Qadiri.”
Since I didn’t know what this was, I couldn’t argue the point. “Okay. Malik means king, lord, or master in Arabic. Does that make a difference? The way Liyana dotes on those horses, I could see her referring to them that way.”
His forehead crinkled. I could tell I’d presented him with an idea he didn’t like.
“What’s this about?” I asked carefully.
He hesitated. “It’s about a possible… game infraction.
One of the players here may have been taking advantage of information from the game to grow their personal wealth through stock trades.
That would be a breach of our code, and we take that sort of thing very, very seriously.
Malik Makida is the name of the shell company that did the trades. ”
“Doesn’t seem like the oil sheikh needs more wealth,” I said. “Right?”
“Right. Al-Qadiri’s father-in-law controls an oil fortune, and Liyana is his only child, so it will all flow to Saleem one day,” he agreed, still deep in thought. “Could it be Esteban? Can you think of a way to tie the name to him? Or Ted Harlan?”
“Macana in Spanish means stick,” I offered. “Malìa means… enchantment, I think? In Italian. That’s the closest I can think of, but no one here is from Italy… What about Polish for Drakovi?? Malik is an actual Polish surname… malina is raspberry… makani is to dip, like a chicken nugget…”
I continued muttering through various languages based on who the players were.
Maybe it was because it was so early or because I felt too safe around Locke, but I’d completely forgotten that the man didn’t know just how multilingual I was. Even if I spent my days doing nothing but studying language apps, that kind of fluency would be far-fetched.
When I glanced up at him, he was staring at me. I’d thought he was intense before? That was nothing. His eyes burned into mine.
“Who the fuck are you?” he growled.
I tried giving him the manga eyes, but he wasn’t having it.
“Jethro… or whatever the fuck your name is… you need to tell me what you’re doing here right fucking now.”
Instead of waiting for me to answer him, he struck, wrapping his hand against my throat and pushing me onto my back and climbing over me to glare down at me. “Who. The fuck. Are you?” he demanded again through gritted teeth.
My chest heaved, and my heart hammered, but I didn’t fear his aggression, only his disappointment.
“I promise you I am only here because you invited me. No one sent me, if that’s what you mean.”
“Answer the fucking question. Who are you?”
I grasped his wrist but didn’t try to pull his hand off my neck. He wasn’t strangling me, just holding me in place. If I weren’t so worried about mishandling the situation, I would have been rock hard for him.
“You saw my passport.”
“I have a few of those myself, Jett. A name on a passport means nothing.”
I thought about a new lie. One closer to the truth. About telling him I was Jett Marian, consultant. The same Jett that everyone in my life knew outside of work. The same story my family knew. My friends.
But I couldn’t bear to lie to him again.
And I wasn’t about to give him my real name in a house full of powerful people neither of us trusted.
“Please believe that I’m on your side. No matter what,” I said, trying to make him see the truth of it on my face, in my expression. “That’s the truth. I need you to believe it.”
“Why should I?”
“B-because I…” Because I’m falling in love with you. I swallowed. “Anything I say right now, you’re not going to believe.”
His thumb moved the tiniest bit, smoothing down over my pulse. I tried not to let my eyes flutter closed to focus on the feeling and imagine it being a caress.
Bzzt-bzzt-bzzt.
Our phones both went off at once from the bedside table. The only thing it could be was a breaking news alert.
He moved to grab his, tossing mine at me in the process.
Blockage in Kiel Canal prevents mass casualty in factory explosion.
I stared at the headline before clicking through.
“Are you seeing this?” I asked, reading about an explosion at a plant not far from where I’d found Locke’s spot on the canal. Because of some kind of “accidental ship blockade,” there was no canal traffic nearby when the explosion sent fireballs of flaming debris raining down over the water.
“Fuck. This… this is…”
“Did you cause this explosion?” I asked incredulously. “Is that why you wanted me to find a place on the canal? To minimize casualties?”
He looked up from his phone. “What? No! I didn’t have anything to do with the explosion.”
“You can’t tell me you didn’t know about it, Locke! You had me fucking scout for the spot. This exact fucking spot!”
He reached for my hand, but I yanked it out of reach. “I swear to you, Jett. I knew about the blockade, but I didn’t even know there was a plant there.” His eyes glittered with anger. “I did not cause this.”
“Then who did?”
“I don’t fucking know! How would I?”
“Was it someone here?” I asked.
Locke shook his head, his dark hair still sleep-rumpled. “No. No one here needed to do this. The purpose of the blockade itself was to create a diversion from something happening somewhere else. The canal blockade was enough. It should have been enough. But…”
“But what?”
He glanced back down at his news app. His phone was lighting up with notifications. Then he looked back up at me. “This is better.”