Chapter 8 Tag
TAG
The words left my mouth before I could stop them. We stood in the bedroom at Dunravin, morning light filtering through windows streaked with rain from the storm. It was zero seven hundred hours. The extraction wasn’t until tomorrow morning—we had another full day here, but I was already losing her.
Rather than argue, she simply looked at me with those eyes that gave away nothing, then turned and walked out of the room.
I followed her downstairs, my bare feet silent on the cold stone. She stood facing the window, still wearing my shirt from last night.
“We don’t need to do this again,” she said without turning around. “You’ve made your position clear. When we leave Dunravin, this ends. I accepted that.”
“Then, why are you planning to disappear?”
She turned then, one eyebrow raised. “What makes you think I’m planning anything?”
“I know you, Leila. I can see it—the way you’re already building walls, creating distance.”
“I’m being professional. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“You can’t just vanish. Not when—”
“When what?” She cut me off. “When I was the one who spotted the surveillance? When I aborted the extraction to save both myself and the agent they were sending? I’ve kept myself alive for three years, Tag. I don’t need you to—”
“To what? Care about you? Want you safe?”
“To make decisions for me.” She turned back to the window. “You and Typhon deciding I should go to Glenshadow. You deciding what’s best. Always you deciding.”
“I’m terrified of losing you.” The admission came out rough and desperate.
She turned slowly. “And yet, we have no future, isn’t that right? How can you lose me if you don’t have me in the first place?”
I gripped my hair, pulling it. “I don’t know how to do this,” I said. “I don’t know how to—”
“There’s nothing left to say, Tag. We made an agreement, and now, we have to stick to it.” She turned to leave. “You made your feelings abundantly clear, and the last thing I want is to hear them again.”
I moved faster, getting between her and the doorway, backing her against the wall. “I can’t let you go,” I said, pressing my body flush with hers so she could feel exactly how much I wanted her. Needed her.
“You have to—”
“Tell me you don’t want this. Tell me you don’t want me.”
Her eyes bored into mine. “It doesn’t matter what I want. It’s never mattered what I want.”
Our mouths were an inch apart, and the air between us was charged with anger and desire.
I don’t know who moved first—maybe we both did—but suddenly, we were kissing.
This wasn’t tender like our first time, or desperate like last night.
This was angry and raw, full of frustration and want and denial exploding between us.
“I hate you,” she gasped against my mouth, her hands fisting in my hair like my own had.
“I know.”
“I hate that you’re doing this to us.”
“I know.”
“I hate that I can’t stop wanting you.”
Her legs wrapped around my waist when I lifted her, and we stumbled toward the carpet in front of the cold fireplace.
We tore at each other’s clothes until we were both naked, then pressed our bodies as close as we could get.
Leila’s nails raked down my back hard enough to draw blood, and my teeth marked her shoulder.
It was an exorcism of everything we couldn’t say, couldn’t be, couldn’t have.
She cried out when I entered her, not from pain but from the overwhelming intensity of it. We met, thrust for thrust, pounding into each other while our mouths and tongues battled in their own way.
“God, Leila, I—”
She raised her hand and covered my mouth. “Don’t.” She rolled us to our sides with strength I wasn’t ready for, but instead of leaving, she pushed me onto my back and straddled me. “I’m in control, Tag. Me.”
I nodded, staring into her beautiful eyes, wishing I could tell her how much I loved her, even if it changed nothing. Instead, I brought my hands to her breasts, tugging at her nipples until her back arched and I could feel her body begin to clench mine.
I rolled us like she’d done to me, driving my cock as deep and as hard as I could into her pussy.
She grabbed for my arms as if holding onto me to keep herself from spiraling into the pleasure she was trying so hard not to allow.
I thrust more, leaned down, and took a nipple into my mouth, sucking hard, then biting before soothing it with my tongue.
When I did it again, Leila came apart in my arms, thrashing as much as writhing, screaming my name again and again.
I stayed with her as long as I could, but as soon as I knew I couldn’t hold back any longer, I pulled out, releasing on her stomach.
Leila turned her head, but I could still see her tears, hating that I was the one who caused them to fall.
Grabbing my shirt, I wiped her stomach. She pulled away without looking at me, gathering her scattered clothes. “This changes nothing,” she said as she left the room without putting them on.
“I know.”
I stayed on the library floor, staring at the ceiling with its ancient beams, wondering how something that felt so right could be so wrong.
I returned to the bedroom, showered off the evidence of what we’d done, then lay on the bed fully dressed. Waiting. One hour turned into five. I could hear her downstairs but couldn’t bring myself to seek her out any more than she’d come to me.
Eventually, I drifted to sleep, wrung out from sex and anger and pain. When I woke again, I could hear her in the hallway outside the bedroom door. I sat up, threw my legs over the side of the bed, and went to her.
Her eyes were swollen and bloodshot from crying, and her shoulders rolled forward as if she was trying to make herself smaller, invisible. “Leila…”
“I need my things.”
I reached for her. “Come to bed.”
She jerked away from me. “I just need my things. I’ll sleep in the other room.”
“Please don’t do this,” I begged.
“This is on you, Tag. Not me.”
I nodded once. She was right, and I was powerless to change it.
I lay awake the rest of the night, talking myself into going to her, lying beside her, just holding her. Then, I’d talk myself out of it.
Zero two hundred came and went. Then three.
Then finally, at four, I heard it—the quiet sound of her door opening, the soft footsteps of someone trying not to be heard.
I listened as her heavy boots landed on each step of the staircase, then counted several seconds before slipping out of the room.
I raced down the servants’ stairs, the ones that would get me to the main entrance before her.
When she turned the corner, pack over her shoulder, I was leaning against the door, waiting.
“Going somewhere?” I asked.
She froze, resignation replacing surprise on her face. “Let me go,” she whispered.
“You know I can’t.” I straightened.
“Why not?” Her voice broke, and she turned her back to me.
“If anything happened to you, it would destroy me.”
She faced me again, wiping at her tears. “Then we’d be even.”
She fought as I pulled her into my arms, but soon, she buried her head in my chest and sobbed.
Eventually, I carried her up the main staircase and rested her body on the bed we’d shared. I covered her with blankets, then lay behind her with our bodies flush.
“Don’t make me go to Glenshadow,” she whispered.
“You’ll be safe there.”
She shook her head. “I won’t.”
“I promise you will be.”
“The only way you can keep that promise is if you aren’t there too.”
Understanding dawned on me. What Leila was saying was that, more than whoever followed her to London, I represented the most danger.
Within minutes, she was sound asleep.
When she woke with the sun, we were in the same position.
“What time do we leave?” she asked without raising her head.
“Eleven hundred.”
“You’re a bastard,” she whispered.
“Yes,” I agreed.
“Just because I’m going with you, doesn’t mean you win.”
“I’m not trying to win. I’m trying to keep you alive.”
We lay side by side for another few hours until I heard someone knock on the kitchen door.
“That’s probably the MacLeods,” I said. “I’ll go let them in.”
Leila’s eyes were on me, and I knew she’d heard what I said, but when she didn’t respond, I left the room and rushed downstairs.
“Madainn mhath,” Mrs. MacLeod said with a wink.
“Good morning to you as well.”
“I’ve come with food for your journey.”
I nodded once. “So you’ve heard we’re leaving today.”
“Aye. The wee Cavendish rang.”
I chuckled at her reference to Renegade. I doubted anyone else in Scotland would refer to him as “wee.” I was six feet five, and he had at least two inches on me.
“How does it look out there?” I asked when Mr. MacLeod joined us inside a few minutes later.
“The landing pad is clear,” he responded. “The storm did some damage, but nothing that will interfere with the helicopter being able to land.”
“Thank you,” I said.
He smiled. “It’s what we’re here for.”
“Take care of the lass,” his wife said, patting my arm.
“I will do. I promise.”
“Come now, Grunny. We’ve got work to get to.” Mr. MacLeod held out his arm, and she took it.
“We’ll look forward to your next visit, Mr. MacTaggert.”
The helicopter arrived exactly at eleven hundred hours, cutting through the Highland mist that still clung to the mountains. I recognized the aircraft as belonging to Con, and the man flying it was Callum, who served as his pilot, chauffeur, and bodyguard. He also had MI6-level security clearance.
Leila had come downstairs a few minutes ago, packed and ready to leave, but looking much the same way she had the day of her brother’s funeral.
We loaded our gear in silence, climbed in, and buckled up. Seconds later, we lifted off, leaving Dunravin behind.
The Scottish Highlands spread beneath us—muted purple heather, silver lochs reflecting the gray sky, and mountains wrapped in clouds. Leila stared out the window, deliberately not looking at me, her reflection showing the exhaustion and hurt she was trying to hide.