30. Calista
Chapter 30
Calista
I ’m shimmering with sweat. His body heat burns into my skin.
I think… I think I’ve lost my mind for demanding him to do this thing that both scares and excites me.
Smith pulls out of my pussy and smacks my ass hard, making me cry out. Not from pain because he knows how to do it so that I get a pleasing sting that rushes with pleasure and makes everything sing. No, I cry out because I’m so fucking empty and I need him to fill me.
We should be talking, strategizing. But my God, I want this.
Even as I hate being the weaker one, the prey, I love it, too. I want him to own me, to overwhelm. And I want to both fight and give in to him. I want him to make me do all sorts of sordid things with him. And more than that, I want his cock in my ass.
He paints my asshole with my juices and then slowly pushes two fingers in.
The invasion makes me whimper .
“Oh shit. Wait…”
God. His fingers stretch me open, wide, and there’s a little pain as I clench.
These are just fingers.
They feel huge.
His cock actually is huge. Big, thick, hard, and fucking steel. How the hell…? I gulp. “Wait… I changed my mind.”
Smith actually stops.
He doesn’t pull out, but he stays where he is. “We don’t need to do this,” he says to me like he’s talking about changing the channel. “Do you want me to stop?”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “You’re so big.”
“Is that code ?”
Is it? I gulp. I…
“No,” I whisper. “I’m just… you’re so big.”
There’s silence. And my heart slams against my ribs, hard.
Then he starts to slowly move his fingers in me, his other hand coming around my stomach so he can stroke my clit.
“Your ass is mine, sweetheart,” he says, “but the only time I’ll hurt you is when you ask for it. And it’ll always be a good hurt.”
A shiver of need races through me, and I moan. “You have your prey. What are you waiting for?”
My words hang in the air, and he scissors his fingers before pulling out. He grabs my hips, pulling them higher, and then the thick head of his cock starts to push into me.
Lungs burning because I don’t dare breathe, I wait. He keeps going, agonizingly slow, stretching me open and there’s pain but not too much. He pushes in with something that feels like borderline reverence.
“Not much farther.”
Suddenly he’s in. All the way. All the fucking way and I let out my breath in jagged puffs.
“I feel so?— ”
“Mine,” he says.
And a flare of something sweet and hot lights me up.
“Yours.”
It’s sex talk, I know. It’s weird, a little uncomfortable, and when he starts to move I’m not sure how I feel.
But the weirdness starts to shift, and each withdrawal and push back into me makes my body hum. Smith moves harder, faster. And I groan and push back into him because he’s rubbing against something and it feels good. Better than good.
I start to chant.
“More, more, oh God, harder. Harder.”
“Fuck, yeah.” He starts to slam into me, and the rising pleasure in me bursts into an orgasm but he doesn’t stop.
He keeps fucking me, hard and fast. Smith slides a hand under me, and he starts to rub and pull and twist my clit. And I scream. “Yessss.”
It shouldn’t work, what he’s doing to my clit, but it’s building, and this time my vision wavers and my whole body is hit by wave after wave of violent, gorgeous contractions and I come. I can feel it, warm everywhere. He pulls his hand away and holds my hips tight and starts to slam so hard and deep we both start to move on the floor.
He yells out. “Fuck, Calista. Fuck!”
And then he comes. Inside of me, painting my insides, and his cock twitches. He half collapses on me, then catches himself and rolls me so I’m on him, the hardness of his cock against me.
Smith wraps his strong arms around me, his cock taking its time to deflate.
“Fuck, you’re like the human version of Viagra. You keep a man rock-hard. Jesus.”
He guides my mouth to his and kisses me. Then he slowly rolls us up .
“There are some clothes in the bedroom,” he says, tweaking my hard nipples.
I stand, legs wobbly as he jumps up and throws me over his shoulder. Then he carries me into the bedroom and tosses me on the bed. He tucks himself away and is about to speak when a phone rings in the other room.
“Wait here.”
I glare at his back as he crosses to the door. “Like I can go anywhere?”
Smith doesn’t answer, just disappears out of the room. Soon, I hear him talking, and it hits me that I can also hear another voice.
That wasn’t a phone, it was some kind of weird-ass doorbell.
Someone’s at the door.
I quickly get off the bed and dress in black sweats from inside the closet. They’re way too big, so I kick off the pants and let the long T-shirt fall to my thighs as I rush to listen.
The door is open a crack, but he’s on the other side and I can’t make anything out, at least beyond the words tickets and tomorrow . Heart beating fast, I press closer… something about an explosion? Nothing after that.
Then loud as day, Smith says, “Learn anything?”
I scowl as I push the door open. An array of packages in plain shopping bags is on the floor. Smith is bent down, behind the sofa. He flips back the rug and rises.
“Should I have?”
“I got you the shit you asked for,” he says, ignoring my question as he crosses back over to the bags. “Clothes, computer shit. Everything that can make a little hacker’s heart beat fast.”
“Internet? ”
“Yep.” He tosses me two bags. I catch one, the other falls, spilling dark denim and black cotton.
I look into the one I caught. Hoodies, shirts. Underwear of the cotton variety. Socks and shoes. And I touch one of the sneakers. “Thank fuck, no heels.”
His gaze runs up over me. “I like you in heels. You run like a gazelle in heels. Hot as fuck.”
“Thank you?”
I pull out a variety of clothes and duck back into the bedroom to pull on underwear, slightly too big jeans, a top, and an oversize hoodie.
Smith turns as I come back, and his gaze slides over me, an upturn to that mouth I might crave, and I open the other things. He’s right, my heart’s in overdrive and I am practically gooey inside.
Other girls like rings, flowers. Give me a computer and a modem and I’m in love.
“Everything you could want.” He watches as I set up. “Router, drives, computer… This isn’t my jam. I know some things, but…”
For the first time since leaving Germany, I’m in my element. When I’m done, and I know my signal’s about as untraceable as I can make it on the fly with the VPN and what he’s got—which is pretty fucking sweet—I sit on the sofa, feet on the oak coffee table, and get to work. First, I want to know where that message came from. And from whom.
Aaron’s no rookie and the message he supposedly sent was a rookie move.
In the background, the deep and low and soothing timbre of Smith’s voice washes over me like soft waves. He’s on his phone and I look up to find him leaning on the kitchen counter, back to me, pouring golden liquid into a glass. Scotch, probably .
For a moment I let my gaze linger on the lean, muscular form of him, the narrow hips and long legs, the broad, muscled back. He pushes a hand through his hair as he nods, then drops his hand to the counter, only to push a finger along the rim of his glass.
He’s a conundrum. Soft at times when he should be hardcore and brutal. When he took me, he could have just fucked into me, taken me hard after working me open. Claimed that victory like he could claim a beating heart from a chest.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he waited, went soft, broke his stalker, predatory character. For me, to make sure I felt safe.
I get using a word instead of “no” so I can explore with him the wilds of sex, the taboo, and play in rough games of him taking what I pretend I don’t want to give. It’s a freedom, it’s sweet. And something that needs trust on both sides.
That stops me.
I trust him.
At least on a base level. And sex is as bare-bones as it comes.
I don’t know what it all means. Except it means something.
My computer beeps and I look back at the screen, shooting straight up. After a minute of furious typing, I look at him. “Smith.”
He comes over. “What is it?”
My breath’s caught, and I turn my computer. “I know where the message came from. It’s supposed to have been sent from DC, but we know Riley was here. I… I think someone might be using him. Because…”
He frowns. “Eric T. Brown?”
I pull up another page.
“Remember when I said that Trenton has a son? T for Trenton. This guy’s here, and look… he’s got links to Jon Trenton’s of fshore accounts. The last name here doesn’t matter, his activity does. Because look.”
I point to another account he has, and the donations made from it.
“They’re accounts in Bolivia. A few are bigger, where if you trace the money, it shows whoever that person is—there are a bunch of different people. It’s a network, so sometimes the money gets hard to trace—this money goes to a film company in Bolivia. Shipping, and?—”
“Rare Birds, Inc.” He shakes his head. “What can you find about them?”
I open up the account for Rare Birds.
It seems on the up-and-up, lots of big and small donations, money going everywhere, but soon I’m deep diving into names, aliases, organizations, companies. And finally, I look at him.
“How did you know?”
He spins the computer. “I didn’t. We’ll call it a hunch and look… These are names of Collectors, their companies, and even shipments of bird cages.”
I swallow.
Did they keep my mother in a cage?
“Can you copy that?” he asks. “If this guy’s in on it, a kid of a Collector who developed a taste, and one who works for the senator up close, then this Eric might be the key. The one that’s hidden under everything.”
I pull up Eric T. Brown’s file from DC. The private one. “It says she had him very young. It’s not a secret, but he went to private school in Canada and was raised by an aunt and uncle?”
“Your Riley might be guilty. He’s in New York, his mom just got remarried, and that might all be coincidence. I need to look into him. In person. With the senator.” But he doesn’t move. “ On the bottom of the clothes bag is a phone. Make sure it’s on. And all that stuff you have? The files and code you collected, the things Johnny sent you? I need a copy of everything. Now.”
“If I don’t?”
“Then they probably get away with everything, and I will hand you over because otherwise, they’ll hunt you down.”
I breathe out. “If I do?—”
“Then,” he says, saying words made of magic, “I will do everything I can to get you out of it. I promise. But you need to trust more than just yourself. This is your last chance.”