4. Calista
Chapter 4
Calista
H eat coils through me. My throat closes, the inside of my mouth turning into dust like the Sahara during a drought.
What on the fucking planet Earth am I thinking?
My goal was to distract, run, hide.
But that’s not what I am thinking.
I wanted to see if he tasted as sinfully good as he looks.
Thinking isn’t what my brain is doing. No, it is in idiot mode.
Before I can say a word, he catches my chin, then slides his other hand down the side of my body, to my hip. “Don’t even try, Calista Hendrix Price. Because I won’t be a fucking gentleman.”
His hand reaches under my skirt and his fingers are back between my thighs. The heat of shame morphs into heat of desire and heads south. I shift, parting my thighs.
The flare of masculine pride tells me he notices, and I get the feeling not much gets past him .
I don’t even know who he is and he’s slipping fingers over my wet panties that have everything to do with him. His thumb strokes my clit as his fingers slide over my covered folds, pushing the fabric up between my pussy lips.
God, I want more.
Right or wrong. Batshit crazy or mildly insane. It doesn’t matter.
I want more.
Crave more.
And I want to run.
Worse. I want to run and have him chase me down.
I’ve had sex, done some wild things, and I know vanilla doesn’t get me hot. Nothing’s gotten me as hot as when his fingers touched me, felt me up. He unleashed something and I want to bound down that unexplored path. I want to flee in the opposite direction. And I partly want to stand here and just see what he’ll do to me.
Something shifts in him. He stills. Just the slightest intake of breath and tilt of his head. Like he can read me. Like he’s gonna go to town and tear me apart, bit by bit.
Like he knows I’m going to let him.
He still holds my chin as he slides my panties out of the way and pushes two fingers inside of me. A bolt of exquisite delight hits me, making my insides clench at his demanding touch.
He doesn’t stop as those blue eyes glitter with pent-up need. He dips his head, lips brushing against my ear. “What I’ll do is take that invitation.”
The man pushes into me again and I gasp, trembling as another orgasm threatens to hit. He starts to stroke into me and my legs almost buckle from the sensations crashing over me.
“I’ll take it,” he says, “and fuck you senseless. If you try and run, I’ll put a bullet between those pretty eyes and not lose a second’s sleep.”
Now his fingers suddenly stop moving and he pulls his hand away, the loss almost making me whimper. Then he steps away, leaving me to slide, boneless, halfway down the wall.
He turns, sucking his fingers, which is the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. His hard cock catches my attention through the fabric of his pants as the fire in me flares with that erotic act of tasting my juices.
“You’re not going to kill me.”
“I might,” he says, pulling out a phone and looking at something on it. He slides it back into his pocket. “You’re very annoying. Tasty, but annoying.”
There’s charm there beneath the surface, careless and deadly, and probably only doled out on very rare occasions. This isn’t one of them. Just a savageness lurking beneath a veneer of sophistication, behind something masquerading as that careless charm.
And it makes me want to moan.
Crawl to him.
Take him in my mouth and build my own altar and hand him a dagger of my own making.
What I need is to get myself together.
Somehow, I manage to drag myself back into a standing position. “If you wanted to kill me,” I say, “I’d be dead.”
“As I said, you’re very annoying. Consider this a warning.”
“You took me, not the other way around.” I cling to the barbs in his words. They bring the clarity I need to get back onto safer land. “I get to be annoying.”
“You pissed off Big Daddy.”
I go still because I’ve heard that term used before. He’s definitely CIA. Or was. Question is, why him and not someone on the legitimate payroll?
Because there’s nothing legit about this man.
But I also have to play this carefully.
“Who’s that?”
“Your owners? CIA?” He goes into the kitchen without another look at me.
The word run beats hard, but I don’t. No way would a man this resourceful, this clever—and he’s clever, it doesn’t take much to see that—leave me even for a nanosecond if he thought I’d be able to get out.
Maybe I could if I left everything, but I’m not about to do that. If it comes down to me and the government, then I’ll need as many weapons as I can squirrel away.
He comes out with his scotch. I watch him down it, then set the glass down on the living room table.
The lavish apartment’s a mix of decorating styles, but the layout is pure modern with its open spaces. He pulls his shirt off and dumps it on the floor. My heart leaps, but he doesn’t make a move toward me.
“I don’t?—”
His sharp look cuts off my words. “Look, cut the shit. I know your name. I know you work behind a desk for the CIA in information gathering and you’ve been handling a field agent who’s missing. And while most of what you’re doing’s been redacted, the CIA wants you back.”
He shoves a hand through his wet hair. I know I should get my hardware out, even though it’s protected in the waterproof bag, but if I’m going to run, if I manage to have that opportunity, I have to trust that protection.
“We went through this, remember?” he asks. “You lost your agent. You took off for reasons I’m betting have to do with weapons and Bolivia, so spill. ”
“I haven’t ever heard that term used for them. Big Daddy,” I say. “That’s all.”
This man both riles and makes me want to drop to my knees, head down, hands behind my back. He makes me want to fight and to rip his clothes off.
What I need is to ignore those urges and focus on the real issue. I need to find out all I can, to use him, and bottom line, to save my skin. Which isn’t easy when I’ve got no idea who exactly I’m up against.
And when I have a second agenda.
So I gaze at him, like I’m the lowest-level agent who has no idea what the term he used means.
His look calls me out on my lie, but he also can’t possibly see through me that easily.
Right?
“Drink?”
He turns and pours two scotches while I try like hell to pry my eyes from his body.
Lean, muscled, scarred. Enough to make a woman drip. Hell, he’s enough that I am dripping and?—
And he knows what he’s doing to me.
His back is almost completely inked, some writing in cursive and what looks like a wound except it’s a tattoo, and through the open flesh of the art is a hand. Like it’s the Devil reaching out to pull whoever and whatever’s in its way back down into the depths.
I shiver and curl my hand because I want to touch it. When he turns around, I’m struck by the one tattoo on his chest, over his heart.
The USA. I love my country, but in my experience it’s a special kind of asshole who announces it on their skin.
The tattoo’s a line drawing except two states are colored red .
It takes me a moment for my geography to kick in, and when it does… I frown. “Are you from both North and South Dakota?”
“No.”
That’s it. No. Nothing else.
“Then—”
“Go take a shower and don’t think you can get out. There’s a bedroom to the left you can use.” He hands me the drink, sipping his at the same time. “I’m going to my room to do the same. I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes.”
I nod but I don’t move. “And if I run?”
“You can’t.”
With that, he leaves.
And I’m left gaping at so much more than my fugitive predicament.
After my shower, I wander around. I try to jimmy the door and the windows, but the door’s got both a thumbprint keypad and an old-fashioned lock. Damn windows are locked, too. There’s even a keypad next to each of them.
Next, I look for possible weapons. I’m in the study that’s both clean and unlived in—the laptop’s unfortunately dead—when his sigh makes me drop the letter opener I’m considering as a possible weapon onto the desk and whirl around.
He leans against the door and I’m in a T-shirt and jeans that are way too big. Women’s jeans, belonging to someone taller and way shapelier than me.
“By all means, try to pry open the drawers, but if you damage the desk, you’re going to pay for it. And I’ll warn you now, it’s very expensive. ”
He’s in a charcoal suit, gold and green tie, and I nearly swoon, he’s so fucking divine.
“There’s nothing in the desk anyway. I don’t live here, and I haven’t used this place in a couple of years. Others do every now and again, but…” He shrugs. “There’s not a thing here that’s going to help you. Here.”
He tosses me a passport and my heart thumps. With shaking fingers, I open it.
“Juniper Hunt.”
“Your middle name, my last.”
“So what do you know?” I say, snapping the passport shut. “He has a name.”
“Smith Hunt.” His phone buzzes and he pulls it from his pocket. He sends some texts, then he looks at me like he wasn’t knuckle-deep in my pussy barely an hour ago.
Shit, I don’t want to be thinking about that. About what it says about him or me. I clench the letter opener and stomp toward him, wave it at him, and then stomp past. I need another drink.
More importantly, I need to get out of here.
My phone’s on silent and it’s down at the bottom of my computer backpack.
I finish pouring my drink when he comes up and takes it from me, having a sip, and then he hands it back. “Please don’t make me handcuff you. I will.”
“You’re going somewhere?”
“Meeting. Getting you out’s going to be slightly more difficult than I thought.”
I toss my hair and my asymmetrical cut falls over one eye, so I have to blow it back from my face. “Leave me here.”
“Not on your life. You’re worth money, Calista Juniper Price. Where’d you get Hendrix from?” His mouth curls up into a smirk and I want to smack it off. “Henry Xavier, your twin. ”
Panic swoops in, clutching me by the throat. “Leave my brother alone.”
Henry isn’t me. He’s still at school in New York. We used to hack together, but I took the fall because it was my encouragement, my rogue ways that got us caught. Henry… he has different ideas for his life, and getting locked up by the CIA or hurt by this cretin with the magic touch isn’t exactly on his vision board.
“Then behave,” Smith says.
“You touch him and I’ll gut you.”
The smirk deepens. “How about this? I’m going out and you will be good. The whole place is wired, and not even you can unlock it. But if you’re going to wreck my shit, I’ll handcuff you to the radiator. And then I’ll order someone to shoot your brother dead. Got it?”
I stare at him with intense dislike. “Yes.”
“Don’t wait up.”
And he’s gone. I throw the letter opener and it hits the door, embedding deep in the hardwood slats because it’s that sharp.
“You’re a fuck, Smith,” I mutter to the empty room. “And I’m going to make you pay.”