8. Calista
Chapter 8
Calista
H e’s off me in a blink. Then he flips me onto my stomach so hard and so suddenly, the air whooshes from my lungs. It’s like carpet burn, scraping on all my senses and lighting them in the wrong way, the kind of way that’ll pull and stick with me for days to come.
If I even have days.
He uses a zip tie to restrain my wrists, then sits on the back of my upper thighs, my clit mashing into my panties, pushed against the floorboards.
And my heart beats wild and fast.
I’m uncomfortable but humming at the same time.
It’s a low-level buzz that inflames all my nerve endings. The dislike and want for this man moves through me in viscous, equal measures.
He hasn’t kissed me, but he’s touched me, felt me up, and performed lewd acts that on paper don’t amount to much at all. On paper, they could be construed as wrong. But how can it be nothing much, and how can it be wrong when it shakes me to the core, when it sets off a heavy beat of need and longing in me?
I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now other than the fact that I like his little power play games. “Get off me.”
“How come I think you want more?” He strokes my hair, the lightness of his touch sinking down into my depths.
“I don’t.”
He leans in. “You like to be hunted, chased. But, little girl, you’ve found the wrong predator. Because I won’t stop. If you manage to get away, you better be willing to hide the rest of your days because I’ll track you, find you, and destroy you.”
My head spins.
I don’t think he’s talking about killing me or me escaping. Or if he is, it’s on another level completely. A place of sex and bones and teeth and blood. Somewhere I can revel in lust and?—
“Get off me.” I can’t go there. Because I’m shaking.
The chase. Running. Fighting. Going down with him.
This is so new. It’s frightening. Exhilarating. It’s coming home.
I try to breathe. Calm down the beating center of me. Stop the heat that rises from my pussy.
“This is how it’s going to go. You’re going to do what I say, when I say it, or you’re going to wish?—”
“What?” I snarl the word. “That I’d met you sooner?”
“I’m your worst nightmare, Calista. No, you’ll wish you’d made more of an effort in toeing the line. For your brother.”
“You bastard.”
He just laughs softly and gets off me, leaving me there.
It takes a while to realize he’s not coming back. It takes longer to get that he’s leaving me here, on the floor.
One polished shoe lands near my face, and the fine wool of his dark suit pants falls in perfect lines.
He crouches over me and fingers of one hand with silver rings brushes hair from my face, a gentle touch that riles every inch of me.
“I’m going out now. Punishment and reward, Calista. We can get you back and into the right hands the easy way or the hard way. It’s up to you. I get paid either fucking way.”
And then he’s up, and his shoes move to the door. It opens and he’s gone.
“Fucking bastard!” I say. Then I pause. And I scream. “Fucking perverted asshole!”
And the sound echoes throughout the room as I’m left completely alone.
Getting free’s no easy feat. I can’t shake the feeling that it’s nothing more than a warning, a test.
If a man like Smith doesn’t want me free, there’ll be no way I can do it. Even though I kept my wrists loose, but fists pumped, the slack is only in the length between the wrists, not in how the plastic wraps my flesh.
Getting up is less than dignified, as is finding a knife, but at least I’m free now. I’m in the middle of systematically pulling the place apart when someone speaks behind me. I jump and twist around.
My heart sinks. Blond and gorgeous. I’m pretty sure she’s Marta Krause, high up in German intelligence, the BND. I always made it a point to know discreet international operatives because they can be the most dangerous.
She’s effortlessly cool, one of those ageless types who could be late twenties to forties, and she oozes sophistication.
“Marta Krause?” I ask .
A cool smile plays over her perfectly painted lips. “You should know Schmidt knows everyone there is to know.”
Something dark and sharp-edged spins through me. “How did you get in?”
“It was unlocked, so claws back in. I’m your escort, so dress up. Seems Schmidt doesn’t trust you.”
I’m not close enough to the knife, and the black dress she wears is so tight, there’s no way she’s packing under it.
Then again, what did Smith tell me? I’d be surprised by where a woman can hide a weapon.
And the cool smile shifts up a degree in warmth. “I do the boring work now. Desk, liaise, and learn all kinds of interesting things. You weren’t really on the radar of the BND until Schmidt met up with me. All I heard was something about a hacker named Hendrix. Did you steal the blueprints to this weapon?”
“No.”
She blows out a breath and looks at a diamond-encrusted watch on her wrist. “You wouldn’t tell me, anyway. Does the CIA do a high school program?”
I almost snap my age at her, but I hold it in. I don’t even have to look at the door as she turns her back on me and goes to the living room.
“Run, by all means, Baby CIA, but I have people on the ready, and from what I can piece together, you’re going to be safer with Schmidt. There are people with a real hard-on for that weapon and the blueprints.”
I flash her a look of dislike, then shower and do my makeup. Subtle like a grown-up with taste would wear. That’s what this is.
That is, if she’s taking me to the event at all.
I shimmy on the dress and unpack the new wig. Then I edge to the door. Because if he let her in, but her agenda is something else entirely, then I’m screwed.
But she’s speaking German into her phone. “She’s quite the handful, Schmidt,” she says. “Not your type at all. But she’s in one piece. And you owe me.”
When I’m ready, I walk out, and I note she leaves two plane tickets under an empty glass. I don’t ask but assume they’re for me and Smith. “Let’s go,” Marta Krause says.
She also locks the door with a key, one she hands to me, and I slide it into the hidden pocket on the dress.
It’s a nice ride out to the estate where I assume the fundraiser is being held. At the front door, Marta melts away, and I’m not ashamed to admit I’m thinking of making a run for it when a hand comes around my arm and I’m pulled in tight next to the heat and intoxicating scent of Smith.
“That’s a small taste of what I can do and who I know. Eyes are everywhere. Here and in the States.”
I swallow, a bitter taste in my mouth. Henry. He means my brother.
“Leave him alone, Smith, or I’ll?—”
“What?” he says against my ear, “stomp your foot? Run? I’ll give you a safe word for when we play properly, Calista. You’re into hacking. I’m tempted to go for back door, but that might be playing with fire. How about Code?”
“I don’t want a safe word.”
“Like to live on the edge?” he asks, his hand slipping down the silk of the gown, to the low dip in the back, and I look up. His eyes are blazing blue, locked on to my nipples pushing against the fabric. “Maybe you do.”
“They always do that,” I say, lying. My nipples don’t. It’s taken the cold and a guy’s mouth sucking and tugging to make them like this.
Smith ?
He just has to look, and they’re so hard, it’s ridiculous.
“Soft, wet, and hard in all the right places. And hot. Mouth and cunt, Calista.”
“You’re such a bully.”
“No, I just like to play with my food before I devour it. Safe word, no safe word, it’s up to you, but when you run and I chase, when we’re down in the dirt, I see no and yes. The only time I’ll stop is your safe word.”
“I’m not playing with you.”
“You will.”
“Fine,” I say, pushing the word out through gritted teeth, “Code. So… Code times a thousand.”
He laughs against the wig. “Good girl. Now, you want to tell me what the fuck you’re wearing.”
I scowl up at him. “Considering I had to escape your… consequences, I think I look pretty good.”
“I didn’t comment on that looking good or not. I’m fucking talking about how you don’t look like my daughter.”
“You and your fetish.”
Before he can come back on me, a matronly lady comes up to shake his hand. “Herr Hunt. Is this the lovely Juniper…?” She trails off, more an American move than German, but I slide an arm around his waist.
“Frau Hunt, his wife,” I say with a demure smile.
They make small talk as I take my leave to find a drink and check the place out. I could walk out the door. Or through the service entrance. It wouldn’t take much to find my way upstairs to steal a different set of clothes. Or considering the staff are in black, find one of their outfits, either a spare work one or someone’s clothes they wore here.
But I don’t.
And not because his eyes are on me. It doesn’t matter I can’t catch him looking. It certainly doesn’t matter he doesn’t follow as I slip to the door where a garden is artfully lit in twinkling fairy lights.
The man is watching. Stalking.
Always.
He’s waiting to see if I’ll make a break for it, and I’m tempted. I’m so tempted I’m quivering. The light music tinkles with the gurgle of voices in conversation. And I’ve counted all the exits.
But he waits. He wants me to make that move.
And I’m not going to get away.
He’s not about to leave me to explore if he knows I can break out.
Maybe, with someone else, I’d risk it. But I’m not a field agent, and though I have skills that were drilled into me, this man drips the quiet confidence of the best of the best I’ve seen.
I’m not sure if I want to see what will happen if I run.
I don’t know if I want to find out exactly how much I’ll like it.
I start to turn to go back inside when a small gate catches my eye.
Maybe I?—
“Don’t.”
One word. Quiet. No emotion.
Yet it lacerates.
“I just wanted to see.”
He moves then, backing me into the stone wall, and my heels sink into the dirt as I cross the border of the pavement into the flowers.
Smith doesn’t touch me, but his expression is utterly feral, the kind that makes my knees weak and me wet between the thighs. “You wanted to see if you could escape? Or how far, exactly, it’ll take for you to push me into the hunt? ”
I swallow over the burning, sudden lump in my throat. “No, I…”
This man’s taking me home. He’s going to hand me over to someone. I’m pretty sure that someone’s high up with the CIA, but it doesn’t mean that that someone’s on the up-and-up.
I’m in the dark as all the information I’ve collected is shards, things I haven’t put together. All I know is somehow, some way, the Collectors name has shown up in all the chatter. And that makes me uneasy.
Not to mention my agent’s gone.
I also have my private mission. Revenge. And…
I’m in big trouble.
And I might not be able to sort it out before I’m handed over.
Right here and now, I make a decision. I’ll use Smith to get home. And by then I’ll work out how to run. I need to see if there’s a double agent, if everything’s connected.
I need to make sure my brother’s safe.
Smith’s an enemy.
I know this.
He puts a hand next to my head and leans in. “No, I, what, Juniper?”
My middle name caresses my skin with his low voice.
“No. I’m thinking…” I’m thinking I need to get to the bottom of this. I’m thinking how I can turn my enemy into my asset. I’m thinking I don’t know what’s worse, this man or whatever waits at the CIA or out in the wild. “I’m thinking I need my brother safe. He’s innocent.”
He nudges my thighs apart with one of his. “So that makes you guilty?”
“I thought you didn’t care about anything but getting paid?”
“I don’t have to care to like answers. ”
Our gazes meet. Those blue eyes are pools of deception. Cleverness and barbs. Ice and heat I want to touch and melt into.
I don’t really think when I put my hand on his lean cheek, but the moment I do, the world lights up. And then I rise up and press my mouth to his.
For a moment he doesn’t move, and then he kisses me.
It’s a slow, devastating kiss, one that could floor a city to rubble. It makes my blood sing and my brain fog, and in those blissful seconds, all reasoning’s lost.
Slowly, he lifts his head. “Just remember,” he whispers, thumb rubbing on my lower lip, “you started this.”