Chapter 19
MIA
I emerge out of Global Dynamix and into the bright afternoon, blinking against the sunlight, feeling like I’ve just escaped from an underground bunker turned torture chamber.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I bring it out.
How was your tour? Did she show you the chair?
Nate. I stare at the message, my heart pounding. He knows about the chair. Of course he does—he sits in it every month. But does he know about everything else? The monitoring that goes beyond his watch?
I’m still deciding how to respond when his sleek hover car glides to a stop at the curb in front of me. The window slides down smoothly, revealing a familiar face.
“Miss Baxter.” Danny grins at me from the driver’s seat. “Need a lift?”
I glance back at the Global Dynamix tower, then at the car. “Did Vanguard send you?”
“He might have mentioned you’d be finishing up around now.” Danny’s grin widens. “Said you might need rescuing from corporate purgatory.”
Don’t get in the car. Go back to the hotel. Have your interview in public.
Be professional.
Professional. Cold. Operative.
But my feet are already moving toward the vehicle, my hand already reaching for the door handle.
“Where are we going?” I ask as I slide into the back seat.
“Where do you think?”
The car lifts smoothly into the sky, and for once, it doesn’t make me anxious. Not when I have so much more to be anxious about.
Kat is going to kill me.
So, I reach up and twist my earrings all the way off. No more sending, no more receiving.
Sorry, guys, I think. At least I’m sparing Bayo years of therapy.
The flight to Vanguard’s penthouse takes less than ten minutes. Danny sets us down on a private landing pad, all gleaming metal and potted plants that sway in the high wind, and gestures toward a glass door.
“The elevator will take you straight there. He’s inside. Try not to break anything.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He just laughs to himself and shuts off the engine, seeming content to stay where he is. So, I follow his instructions and go in the elevator, which only goes down a couple of floors.
The doors open into his penthouse, and I find Vanguard in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a cup of coffee in his hands. He’s wearing a simple black T-shirt and jeans, his feet bare, his hair still damp from a recent shower. He looks incredibly normal.
Just incredible, period.
I swallow hard, feeling all my hair stand on end. I’m not going to survive this man, am I?
“You came,” he says.
“Danny didn’t give me much choice.”
“Danny offered you a ride. You could have said no.”
He’s right. I could have. The fact that I didn’t says everything I’m trying not to say.
“How was the tour?” he asks, setting down his coffee. “Did Julia roll out the red carpet?”
“She showed me some things.” I stay near the door, keeping distance between us, though I know it’s futile in the end. “Some biology labs, monitoring stations, that room that looks like a dentist chair from hell.”
Something flickers across his face. “And?”
“She warned me to keep things professional. Between us. Between you and me.”
“Uh huh.” He doesn’t look amused.
“She said you have a tendency to become fixated. That whatever I think is happening between us isn’t real. That it’s just programming.” I force myself to meet his eyes. “Dopamine responses designed to create a bond.”
Vanguard is very still. “And you believed her?”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
I don’t know what this is.
He carefully sets down his coffee. “She told me the same thing. Last night, after the gala. Was sitting here and waiting for me when I got home.” I raise my brows at the idea of her just waltzing in here.
“Warned me to stay away from you. Said I was letting my obsessive tendencies get the better of me.”
“Are you?”
“Probably.” He pushes off the counter, slowly moving toward me with predatory grace. “Does that bother you?”
“It probably should…”
“But does it?”
He stops in front of me, close enough that I can smell what soap he used, can see the pulse jumping in his throat, the way his pupils have dilated, the tension coiling in every line of his body.
No, I think. I want nothing more than this man to be obsessed with me.
“Mia.” His voice is rough. “I’ve spent six years doing what Julia tells me.
Being who Global Dynamix needs me to be.
Performing for cameras and politicians and a public that sees a symbol instead of a man.
” He reaches up, his fingers hovering just shy of my face.
“But on that rooftop, I finally felt like a man. Just a man. Just Nate Whitaker. I felt something real for the first time since I can remember. And I’m not willing to let that go just because Julia Van Veen is threatened by it. ”
“This is a bad idea,” I whisper, feeling the pull toward him like I’m circling a black hole, one that will pull me down and down and never let me go.
“The worst.” His fingers brush my cheek, feather-light, and I shiver, my eyes fluttering closed for a moment. “So tell me to stop.”
I should. I should tell him to stop, walk out that door, go back to the hotel, and figure something out. I should be the professional, cold operative SOE is relying on me to be.
But I’m so tired of should.
“Oh, fuck it,” I breathe.
His mouth crashes into mine, and I surrender to the inevitable.
The kiss is bold, claiming, conquering. His hands grip my face, angling my head exactly where he wants it, and he kisses me like he’s a desperate, drowning man finally getting air.
I grab fistfuls of his T-shirt, pulling him closer, and when his tongue slides against mine, I make a sound that’s somewhere between a moan and a sob.
The inevitable is becoming the unstoppable.
“I’ve been thinking about this all day,” he growls against my mouth. “All fucking day. Couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t focus, couldn’t think about anything except getting my hands on you again.”
“Nate…” I moan against his lips, my breath stolen.
“Do you have any idea what you do to me?” He’s walking me backward, steering through the kitchen with his body. “Any idea how hard it was to let you walk into that building this morning, knowing Julia was going to try to poison you against me?”
My back hits the kitchen counter, and he lifts me onto it in one, smooth motion, stepping between my thighs like he belongs there, my knee-length skirt spreading.
The height difference puts us almost eye to eye, and he takes full advantage, holding my gaze as his hands slide up my legs, pushing my skirt higher.
“I wanted to fly over there and carry you out,” he continues, his voice dropping to something rough and hazardous. “Wanted to take you somewhere the company couldn’t reach and keep you there. Make you forget them, make you forget your job. Make you forget everything except me.”
“That’s—” I gasp as his fingers find the sensitive, bare skin of my thighs. “That’s a bit possessive.”
“I am a bit possessive.” He leans in, his mouth brushing my ear. “And I can be a lot possessive. Does that scare you?”
“No,” I whisper, though it should.
His laugh is low. “We’ll see.”
Then, his mouth is on my neck, teeth scraping over my pulse point, and I stop trying to think at all.
His hands make quick work of my blouse—buttons scattered, fabric shoved aside—and then he’s gently cupping my breasts through my bra, feeling their weight, thumbs circling my nipples until they’re hard and aching.
“God, your tits are unreal,” he says in a quiet rasp.
I arch into his touch, desperate for more, and he rewards me by yanking the bra down and replacing his thumbs with his mouth.
“Fuck,” I gasp. “Oh, fuck—”
“That’s the idea.” He switches to the other breast, sucking hard enough to make me cry out. “But first, I need to taste you again. Been dreaming about it all night. The way you sound when you come on my tongue.”
My god, the mouth on this man—in more ways than one.
He drops to his knees, right there in the kitchen, shoving my skirt up around my waist and hooking his fingers in my knickers. I lift my hips to help him drag them down, and then I’m bare to him, spread open on his kitchen counter like a meal.
“Look at you.” His voice is reverent and filthy all at once. “So wet already. So fucking ready. Your pussy is practically crying for me.”
“Nate, please—”
“Please what?” He presses a kiss to my inner thigh, maddeningly close to where I need him. “Tell me what you want.”
“You know what I want.”
“I want to hear you say it.” Another kiss, higher this time, his wet lips lingering. I can feel him smile against my skin. “Use your words, darlin’.”
I’m normally good at asking for things, normally good at telling people what I want and need. Even when I don’t feel confident, I can act it on a dime, because acting is the basis of being an agent. I’ve even been called bossy.
But I’ve never participated in this kind of dirty talk before, never vocalized this sort of need because I never had anyone to vocalize it to.
Yet, something about the way he’s looking at me—hungry and patient and utterly focused on giving me whatever I want—makes the words tumble out.
“I want your mouth on me,” I tell him, feeling myself slip into the new role of a woman who knows exactly what she wants. “I want you to make me come. Please, Nate, I need it. I—”
He doesn’t let me finish. His mouth seals over my clit, and I nearly scream, my hands flying to his hair, my thighs clamping around his head.
He eats me like he’s starving for it, like I’m the only thing he’s ever wanted and he’s been denied until now, his tongue working in devastating circles while his fingers slide inside me.
“Oh God—oh fuck, right there, don’t stop—”
He doesn’t stop. He groans into me, the vibrations shooting through me like a rocket, then adds another finger, stretching me, curling against that spot that makes stars explode behind my eyes, and I feel the orgasm building with terrifying speed. It’s too much, too fast, all at once.