Chapter 8 Ares
“Fuck. The guy wasn’t bullshitting us. Have you seen the numbers? Did you watch that video? I don’t regret bringing Drustan in on this project after all. It’s like a Christmas surprise.” Xander thumped his desk so hard that the elf that was fornicating with the doll toppled to the floor.
“Stone’s people report that other than going to work, the guy’s quiet. Maybe he really is one of the decent ones.”
“Yeah, the numbers are great,” Ares tapped the file on the tablet, to read through it mostly to ignore Xander.
“Can you get over it already?” A foil wrapped chocolate hit the back of Ares’s tablet.
Ares tossed the tablet on the desk. “You’re the only one who gets to hold grudges? You didn’t even apologize.”
Ares stood and paced behind the leather club chairs.
It had been a week since his date with Josie.
Logan tried to initiate a conversation about it, but Ares brushed off his attempts.
Why he was angry that Xander didn’t bring it up when he was unwilling to hash it out with Logan was a question for his shrink.
“Apologize? For being naked in my house, with my submissive, on the way to using my dungeon?” Xander raised an eyebrow.
“I thought it was our house.”
Xander threw his hands up. “Forgive me for not putting a sock on the door. You haven’t brought anyone home before, not since Harper’s lived with us, and you haven’t dated seriously for a long time. Not since Trixie.”
Ares glared at this brother. Xander knew how to open the wounds, but he didn’t want to think about the woman who broke his heart.
“That means I can’t have privacy?”
“Stop being ridiculous. That means that we haven’t had this situation come up, and it’s an adjustment for all of us.”
“Maybe you need to run it through a program.”
The air between them stilled, heavy with unspoken regrets and the past hanging like a shroud waiting to descend.
“Next time you bring Josie around, I will apologize for making her uncomfortable.”
“That’ll make it worse. I don’t think she’s interested. She hasn’t talked to me in a week.”
“You’ve been sitting around moping. What happened to making your intentions clear?”
“I did. She got freaked out by the people I live with.”
Xander glared at him. “Are you sure it has anything to do with us? What happened before we got there? Could she have been freaked out by that? You don’t know because you refuse to go talk to her.”
“Forget it. I’m not talking to you about this.”
“You know I’m right.” Xander pointed a finger at him, then tapped a button on his phone. “Send in Drustan please, Jillian.”
“You’re so much worse when Harper isn’t here,” Ares mumbled.
“And you’re unbearable because you haven’t been laid in forever.”
Ares wasn’t going to give in to his annoyance, wasn’t going to show Xander that he was bothered by his comments because his brother was relentless in fishing out the truth. But he had to consciously will himself to act unbothered by taking a seat.
“Hey boys! Did you see the numbers? Was I right or was I right? I knew this would work! Fucking knew it!” Drustan raised his fists above his head.
“You were right, and we were right to bring you on,” Xander said. “The data is incredibly impressive.”
“Incredibly impressive? Look, I told you I would have the best people on this and I do. Do I get to meet the team now? I want to meet Ida.”
“You’ll get to meet a member of the team, the one responsible for implementing the technology.”
“Yes! I Knew you had her. Now what’s the next step? When do we take this to the government?” Drustan spread his arms wide, making a swimming motion with his hands.
“That’s a great early start,” Xander said. “But we need more testing and we have to run it through our legal team. At least six months out.”
“Six months? No, I want to start talks today.”
“Drustan, I don’t want people to put this on their desk and forget about it. If we take it out in the new year, I think our return will be better,” Ares had read all the reports and had run it through the analytics. He didn’t need to know it, but had already been sent to their government contacts.
“How did you guys even get Ida into the country?”
“We can’t answer that, even if it was true.” Xander stood, pressing a button on his keypad as he did.
“Xander, I don’t think you understand what I want. My intention is to take it to the government and offer it as a trade for protection to Ida. I’ve followed her for a long time. She’s an impressive woman,” Drustan tone turned all soft, without the usual bluster
Ares could count on one hand the number of times Xander was truly taken by surprise, but Drustan lusting after the scientist threw his brother. He paused in what he was doing, turning to Drustan.
“I didn’t realize you felt so deeply.”
“I told you guys! You’re good at protecting people and that’s why I wanted in!”
Jillian knocked on the closed office door. “Mr. Montague, here is Wayne O’Shea to see you.”
Drustan’s face paled, and he sat in the chair next to Ares. “You’re a legend! You worked on this team too?”
“Yes, I did. It was an incredible opportunity.” Wayne, the nanotechnology scientist they’d also recruited, shook Drustan’s hand.
“Drustan has a lot of questions. I’m sure you can have that conversation over lunch?”
“Sounds great! What’s your favourite place to eat, Wayne? Let’s make it happen!”
Drustan raised his fist above his head, the two men went out the room.
Xander slumped in his chair. “When do we tell him that we smuggled Ida out of the country by our country’s request and our country has already paid for the research into this tech and has first dibs?”
“I think you’re going to have to before he finds his way to a podcast or something, no matter the NDA he signed. How is our esteemed guest doing?” Ares pointed to the ceiling, indicating the luxury suites above Xander’s office.
“She’s bored and wants to go outside. According to the report I got this morning, she needs to walk in nature to clear her head and get on to the next stage of the project.”
“We better let her out. We already have one prisoner we have to keep secure; I don’t need another one. We can protect Ida.”
Xander shook his head. “I hate how that whole situation went down. If Erik had called us in sooner.”
“But he didn’t.”
A few months ago, Erik and Kayleigh took down a sex club that was a front for a sex trafficking operation.
It turned out that the ringleader of that operation was the ex-girlfriend of Quinn Walsh, Kayleigh’s brother and one of their former operatives.
Quinn, along with Erik, was now working as communication central for Dax’s team.
Dax’s team was responsible for getting Ida out of her country when it wanted to stop her from using the technology she helped bring to life.
“Any idea of where to store Ida?” Xander raised an eyebrow at him.
“I’m sure you have a plan. It’s your business.”
“Being snarky doesn’t become you.”
“Tell me your solution.”
“We stash her at the training facility with Dax’s team.”
“There are empty cottages. Lots of trees, fresh air.”
“It’s perfect.”
“Great, if only we could stash the other one there.”
“She’s not supposed to come back to this country.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Ares stood, needing to get out of the room. This was his department, the part of the operation he looked after with his sweeper team.
“I know. Hey did I mention that Logan, Harper, and I are leaving tonight to go to Whistler?”
Ares paused at the doorway, glanced over his shoulder at his brother with his feet up on his desk, his arms behind his head, a sly grin on his face.
“You hate Whistler.”
“Yeah, but Logan wants to ski the steepest hill or something. I’ve only seen our chateau once, and it’s my Christmas gift to them.”
“Your presence isn’t a gift,” Ares retorted.
“Me leaving the house is a total gift. We’ll be back on Tuesday and Harper made me promise to call first. See? We can work this out.”
Ares shook his head, wanting to believe that it was as simple as that, but what if Xander had an anxiety attack? What if he freaked out because of the crowds at Whistler and decided it was too much? If the man’s toast was burnt, it could send him packing.
“Harper and Logan aren’t going to let me turn tail. We want you to be happy, Ares.”
“She hasn’t returned my texts all week.”
“Why are you being so passive? Any other woman you’ve wanted, you’ve gone after.”
“I’m not a stalker.”
“I didn’t mean in a stalker way. I mean in a “show them you’re serious" way, not waiting around for the girl to call you. Is it because of Trixie?”
“Enjoy Whistler,” Ares marched through Xander’s door, waved at Harper, passed by Gardenia’s office, and entered his office.
It was the smallest room, but he didn’t spend a lot of time here, and it served his purposes.
He sat with his feet on the desk, closing his eyes.
Xander could never let things be. Ares had loved Trixie.
He dated her for five years, but it was before Xander created his scheduling app before he got himself fully together.
Trixie wasn’t the first woman or the last, but, in every way, she was perfect for Ares. she was smart, willing to try new things. He had that woman in rope so often, his hands itched now to grab a length.
Xander and he both thought that Trixie had enough interests of her own that Ares’s obligations to Xander didn’t bother her.
When Xander created the app, she cheered him on. Ares thought he was going to marry her. Until he came home one day to find her gone, with no explanation.
The night before Trixie had left, he’d had to rush to where the firm Xander was working for at the time because his brother’s severe anxiety left him locked in an office.
Ares didn’t want to chance that kind of heartbreak again.
Up until now, he dated women, even enjoyed a night of play, but he swore off relationships.
Opening his bottom drawer, he took out a coil of hemp rope and played with it, thinking of how he’d love to tie Josie. He knew he was ready to move on.
From the moment he met Josie, he couldn't stop thinking about her and she was the only woman who ever turned him down twice.
He liked that about her.
He liked how she was strong but sometimes indecisive, as if she didn’t want to go out of her comfort zone, but once she was, she did things like feed him whipped cream. He liked that she was kind to everyone and, most of all, he liked how she felt in his arms.
Josie said she was okay with Ares’s circumstances, but is she really? Part of why he has been so hesitant, or passive as his brother deemed it, is because he doesn’t want to screw this up.
There is a connection between him and Josie. He felt it in his soul. And maybe he should help her see it. Picking up his phone, he texted her.
Thinking about how you felt in my arms outside the house by the pool. I wished we had stayed outside forever.
He tossed the phone down on his desk, then brought up a secure line. It was time for him to check in with the sweepers and the prisoner they needed to do something with.
His phone buzzed before his call went through.
[JOSIE]
I liked being in your arms, too.
Warmth spread through his chest. He needed to see her that instant.
I’ve been thinking about how you want to try rope. I want to give you that experience. Want to come over?
He held the phone to his face, hoping for an answer, but after a moment, he put it to the side and went through with his call.
If he didn’t hear from Josie by the end of the day, he’d swing by on his way home and apologize to her again for being interrupted.
He wanted to make it up to her and hoped Josie would give him that chance.