Chapter Twelve
Unsurprisingly, Pete was already awake, dressed, and caffeinated by the time I made it to the kitchen.
“Coffee’s made.”
He sounded too happy.
I grunted.
“Hurry up and get some of that in you so you can shake off your grouch-ass mood. We’ve got work to do.”
Coffee wasn’t going to touch my mood.
Not this morning.
Not after feeling Calista’s hands on me—her soft, tentative touch. It was fucked, but once I realized she was awake, I wanted to tip her head back so I could see her eyes when she touched me. I felt her shiver, but I wanted to see the accompanying look.
Did the blue of her eyes deepen with lust?
Did her face go soft with desire? I wanted to know almost as badly as I wanted to know if her nipples had pebbled under that flimsy satin robe.
I hadn’t trusted myself to look; that would only lead to me needing to find out if she was as wet as my dick was stiff.
Her pretending to be asleep had been torture.
I’d stupidly given myself permission to allow her hand to move on me freely.
It was nothing more than lightly skimming my chest. I could categorize the whole episode as juvenile.
But it hadn’t felt innocent, and not just because I hadn’t been with a woman in a long-ass time.
Though I could use that as an excuse as to why I got myself off in the shower, remembering how her thumb had felt teasing my nipple.
Christ.
I had to stop this shit. What was next, I’d beg my way to second base and get some side-boob action? I was a grown fucking man jerking off to the hesitant touch of a woman. I had far better memories of past experiences.
Fuck.
I shoved the carafe back into the machine harder than necessary.
“What’d I miss?” Fallon asked as he came into the room shirtless and with his hair still wet.
“Put on some fucking clothes,” I growled.
“Someone needs to crawl back into bed and roll out on the right side.”
“If you think that someone is me, you can shove your opinion up your ass right after you put on a shirt.”
Fallon’s eyes moved to the stairs. When they came back to me, he smirked. “I warned you one day this whole ‘I don’t fuck empty pussy’ would make you snap.”
My already clenched jaw tightened.
It pissed me off he was right. I had snapped.
Though it didn’t have anything to do with lack of sex and everything to do with a woman who had driven me to the brink of insanity.
The vulnerability she’d shown me last night was now at the top of the list that made me insanely attracted to her.
Her bravery was just under that. Her desire to right wrongs was closely under that.
Her smart-ass mouth and the way she wasn’t afraid to give as good as she got were also on the list.
Which meant her pretty face, great tits, and long legs weren’t even in the top three things that made Calista irresistible.
So, no, it wasn’t sex or the lack thereof or the intensifying need to have her that made me finally snap.
But fuck if I didn’t want her hands on me again, this time while my hands were on her.
I ignored Fallon’s comment and his bare chest, opting to pull shit for French toast from the fridge rather than giving him more ammunition to piss me off. Besides, I had no say. Calista wasn’t mine.
I set the carton of eggs and bread next to my untouched coffee, spied my stash of chocolate on the counter, and detoured. The bowl could wait, but the kataifi, pistachio, and milk chocolate couldn’t.
“We gotta go over Calista’s op,” Pete unnecessarily informed me. “Us being here as muscle is a good cover both for her and for us.”
This had already been discussed, so I didn’t know why Pete was bringing it back up.
“Right,” I prompted around a mouthful of God’s best creation.
“Also, Shep got Jack, Catarina, Gavin, and Aiden on a flight. They’re on their way. Ryan’s staying back,” Pete announced.
A twinge of guilt soured the chocolate as I swallowed both down. Instead of being out on the balcony with Calista last night, I should’ve been helping Pete arrange travel for our team, or at the very least stayed downstairs while he briefed Shep and the guys.
“When will they be here?” I asked.
“A little after twenty-three hundred.”
The penthouse had five bedrooms with only one currently available, which meant we’d have to double up. Jack and Cat would obviously share one; that left Aiden and Gavin to bunk with me and Fallon. Pete would sleep on the floor in the kitchen before he’d share a room with someone.
Without permission, my mind wandered to Calista and her bed and what it would be like to sleep next to her again.
Maybe a little forced proximity is what we needed.
Christ, where the hell had that come from?
Needing something to do to purge my mind of all things Calista, I tossed half the chocolate bar on the counter and went in search of a bowl to start breakfast.
“Why do rich people insist on buying shit that feels like it’s gonna break?” I asked as I pulled a bowl from the cupboard.
“It’s called china, you uncultured idiot,” Fallon piped up.
As gently as I could, I set the bowl on the marble countertop. And Christ, what was it with all the damn marble? “I know what it’s called, but does it have to be so thin?”
“I believe it’s also called delicate, not breakable shit,” Fallon helpfully corrected from his place across the kitchen.
“I hope you spill coffee down your front and burn your chest and your—”
“I swear on all things holy,” Pete interrupted our bickering. “It’s like the two of you are twelve.”
“If we promise to be good, can we have dessert, Daddy?” Fallon quipped.
“I can come back later,” Calista said from somewhere behind me.
I craned my neck to see her staring at Fallon, wide eyed.
Shirtless asshole.
“You might wanna close your mouth, sweetness,” I suggested.
Angry blue eyes sliced my way. “My mouth wasn’t open,” Calli snapped.
“Can you not piss the woman off and make breakfast?” Fallon asked. “Or piss her off, but do it out of the kitchen so I can make breakfast. I’m starving.”
“If I have a say,” Pete started. “Stop pissing off the woman and cook. Your French toast is better than Fallon’s eggs.”
Throughout this, Calista’s gaze swung to each man as he spoke until coming back to me with a brow winged up in question. “You cook?”
“Believe it or not, sweetness, I am self-sufficient.”
“In more ways than one,” Fallon muttered.
I quashed my smile at the last second. “Go bother someone else.”
“C’mon, that was too easy.”
Calista glanced around, waiting for someone to fill her in. “What was easy?”
“Nothing, darlin’. How’d you sleep?” Fallon smartly changed the subject.
“Fine.”
The word snapped out of her mouth a little too quickly. I would understand why a few seconds later as she turned to busy herself with the coffee maker, but not before I saw the pink hit her cheeks.
Faker.
Suddenly, I was in a better mood. She knew that I knew she was feeling me up while feigning sleep, and that blush was proof I’d been right. Not that I needed it, but it still felt damn good getting it.
And the pink.
I’d take that too.
“While Mase makes us breakfast, let’s go over your op,” Pete suggested. “Tom sent us over some intel on Amir Bakir and his operation, but I’d like to hear your take. But first, you should know our team’s en route. They’ll be here late tonight.”
I turned just in time to see Calista’s flash of relief before she covered it with a frown.
“Of course he did,” she sneered, even though she already knew Tom had sent us the information on her operation.
“Amir offers his facilities for a cut of the sales, but he doesn’t provide the women. Part of the service he provides also includes vetting, though his idea of screening the clients is verifying they have the money to purchase. Am I understanding that correctly?”
With her mug of coffee in hand, she leaned against the counter next to where I was working and nodded.
“Yes. He only provides the location. From what I’ve gathered for this auction, Ahmad Sindi will be the largest supplier.
There’s also a Russian, Sergei Volkov, who is rumored to be bringing women to sell.
However, Atlanta hasn’t been able to confirm. ”
Ahmad Sindi.
I dropped the fork I was using to beat the eggs and gave Calista my full pissed-off attention. “The same Ahmad who flew to Mexico with his men to pick you up?”
“One ’n the same.”
Her nonchalance only served to piss me off further.
“So your cover’s blown before the operation even begins,” I noted.
“Ahmad didn’t see me. I wasn’t using my real name in Mexico, I won’t be using it here, and no pictures of me were taken. All Ahmad knew was there was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman of Irish descent for sale.”
She was hiding something. There was no way Ahmad would personally fly to Mexico to pick up a random woman.
“It’s like she thinks we were born yesterday on a turnip truck with ‘stupid’ tattooed on our foreheads,” I mumbled.
“Actually, I wasn’t thinking that, but now that you mention it—”
“You’re sure your cover will hold?” Pete cut in before she could finish her insult.
“Yes.”
Without further pushing, Pete went on, “Opening bid for this auction will start at two hundred thousand.”
Fallon whistled. “Do you have an idea what the bids will close at?”
“I had to authenticate I had a million in currency and another five hundred thousand in assets I could liquidate if needed.”
“Tom’s report said Amir hosts these auctions once a year,” Pete went on.
Okay, so, no one else was going to back me up and call Calista out on her bullshit.
“Yes. That’s why it’s important I get an invitation.”
“What do you know about the Russian? Tom’s report didn’t mention him.”