Tease Me: A Stark International Security Novel

by J. Kenner

  So I turn from him and go to the couch. I plop down on it and pull my legs up so that my feet are tucked under me. Then I grab a pillow and hug it. I’m wedged into the corner, fully protected, and yet I feel completely exposed.

  “Everything you’re saying is bullshit,” I tell him, forcing my voice to stay steady. “You know that, right?”

  “I asked you to trust me. Now I’m asking you to listen to me. I need to know who you were talking to in the cafe.” There’s a strange edge to his voice, and I shake my head in confusion.

  “I’ve known her for years,” I say. “She found out I was in town, and—”

  “I need to find her, Jamie,” he says, cutting me off before I can tell him about her fears.

  “Why?” Confusion swirls around me. Is Gabby a witness in some sort of case he’s been working on? Maybe she’s noticed a Stark Security tail and that’s what she’s afraid of?

  “It’s important,” he says, and it’s such a fucking non-answer that I am just seriously done.

  “Shouldn’t you be looking for your text-happy fuckbuddy instead? Is that why she calls herself F?”

  His expression hardens. “I am looking for her.”

  “Well, good. I’m sure you two will be super-duper happy together.”

  “Goddammit, Jamie. I need—”

  “I don’t give a fuck what you need. I want to know why my husband is getting texts from skanks. Is this something to do with work? Is she like an informant? Was that a coded message? Because honestly, if the answer to at least one of those questions isn’t yes, then I think I better just go to bed. Because if you fucked around on me, Ryan Hunter, I swear to God I’m going to cut your balls off and serve them up to you for breakfast.”

  He doesn’t say a thing, but that doesn’t mean the room is silent. On the contrary, it’s loud. Full of the sound of pain and blame and fear and loss. And regret. So much regret.

  Not Ryan’s. Mine.

  This is Ryan, after all. Hunter. He wouldn’t cheat on me. That’s not who he is, and I know that. I do.

  Don’t I?

  I close my eyes. Fuck.

  “Jamie?” His voice is soft and far away. I open my eyes to see him halfway across the room, eyeing me warily. “Do you honestly believe I’d do that? That I’d cheat on you? Hell, that I’d even want to?”

  I shake my head, feeling about an inch tall. “No.”

  I can practically see the relief slide off him. “Good. Because I would never do that.”

  “I know. I’m sorry—I really am. But you’re not telling me anything.”

  “Christ, I told you I would when—you know what? Never mind. Tell me about the woman in the cafe with you.”

  “Gabby? What the hell, Ryan? I believe that you aren’t sleeping with F-the-bitch-skank, but we are not starting another conversation until you tell me what the fuck is going on. Because honestly, you haven’t told me shit.”

  And that’s the bottom line. We don’t have secrets. Or, okay, we probably do. But the little kind. Like when I said I made him a roast chicken when I only re-heated a roast chicken. He wouldn't care one way or another, but sometimes I want the illusion of being the kind of woman who knows how to do stuff like that for her husband.

  And for all I know, Ryan and Damien are secretly watching football and slamming back drinks when they tell me and Nikki that they’re working late. And I’d be okay with a secret like that.

  I’m not okay with whatever he’s not telling me now. Really not okay.

  His shoulders sag as he exhales. “You know the kind of work I do, Kitten. You know that sometimes I can't tell you everything.”

  “So this is one of those times? This is a work thing?”

  He sighs and cups his hands behind his neck, then goes to sit on the sofa. “I shouldn’t,” he says. And there’s real frustration in his voice. Real pain on the tense, tight features of that gorgeous face.

  “Shouldn’t? You’re the one who left a message saying you’d tell me everything if I just trusted you. Isn’t that what you told me?” I still haven’t listened to the message. I probably never will.

  “Yes, Goddammit. But do you know what kind of risk I’ll be taking if I tell you about this? What kind of door I could be opening?”

  His voice is slow and controlled. Reasonable. As if I’m making demands on him that I have no right to make.

  “No.” It takes all my willpower not to shout the word. “I don’t know. Because you’re not telling me shit. Dammit, Ryan. I trusted you. I trusted you more than anyone in the world. With my body. With my submission. Hell, I trusted you with my dreams. I’ve told you things I’ve never told anyone. The good and the bad. Everything. And then you actually bring me to this room and talk about trust and submission and love, and all the while there’s some bitch out there who’s getting off on the memory of you?”

  “Jamie—”

  “Shut up! Just shut the hell up! You don’t trust me enough to tell me what’s going on? You fucking bastard!”

  A tear runs down my cheek, and I brutally brush it away. I know I sound equal parts angry and needy, stern and confused. I want to pull all my emotions and words back in. I want deniability. To be able to say that no, that wasn’t me who was so damn scared and needy.

  But I can’t help it. Until Hunter, I never had a relationship that didn’t end badly. Either the guy left me for someone else, or I got tired and did the leaving.

  But Ryan’s my life now. He’s my everything. And as I stare at him, my mouth dry and my eyes damp, I realize exactly what my problem is—I’m terrified of losing him.

  “I can’t do this,” I whisper, my whole body sagging. “So you tell me now, or I’m moving back to my original room. Because I can’t handle any of this.”

  For a moment, I’m terrified that he’ll actually take me up on that. But then he closes his eyes, and seeing the pain on his face is like a reflection of my heart.

  He nods, then looks at me. “I’ll tell you,” he says gently. “But I’m dead serious, Jamie, you can’t let on you know. You can’t do anything. You can’t say anything. Not to a bellman. Not to Nikki. Not to your goddamn diary.”

  “I don’t keep a diary,” I snap, but my words are only for show. He’s made his point. “Please, Hunter,” I say more gently. “I won’t say a word. Just tell me what’s going on. Tell me who the hell she is.”

  His shoulders sink, and he sighs, sounding like Atlas finally easing off the weight of the world. He glances down, speaking more to the floor than to me. “My wife,” he says. “I’m pretty sure she’s my wife.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Wife?” The word is like Jell-O in my head. It just wobbles around in there, making no sense. Or maybe it’s me who’s wobbling. I’m shaking, that’s for damn sure. And not even with anger. I’m too numb for anger.

  Wife?

  It’s like I’m freezing to death from the inside out. Like I’m dying.

  It’s shock. It’s pain and hurt and betrayal.

  It’s that feeling you get when someone kicks you so hard you literally fly off the planet and all of the air is sucked out of your lungs and you turn cold and gray and frozen, then just float there in space, the world and everything you love ripped away from you with no warning whatsoever.

  It’s horrible, and I don’t know how to make it stop. I don’t even have the energy to try to figure that out.

  In front of me, Ryan swallows, then opens his mouth as if to say something. No words come out, though. Instead, he stands, then takes a step toward me, and I shrink back, squeezing my eyes tight as I curl even tighter in on myself, the pillow held close against me.

  I’m sure I look as if I’m preparing for a physical blow, trying to shield all my soft spots.

  Well, I think, isn’t that what happened? He lashed out. Hit me unexpectedly. My Hunter. The man I love. The man I believed would never, ever hurt me.

  “Jamie.” His voice is soft. Sweetly gentle. But I can’t look at him. I can’t stand kno
wing that when I open my eyes and point them at him, he’s still going to look like the same man he was a few hours ago. The same man I married. The same man I made eggs for back when he was assigned to protect me.

  But he’s not the same. Not anymore.

  “Please. Jamie, I get that you’re shocked. But please look at me.”

  I don’t want to—I’m not even sure where I find the strength—but somehow I manage to lift my head.

  Slowly, I open my eyes. He’s on his knees a few feet away from me, his gorgeous face gray with strain, his eyes dark with pain.

  I’m a physical person, no doubt about it. And by pulling away, I’ve wounded him. But that’s just too damn bad. I’m the wronged party here. And this is Jamie time.

  “Jamie, Kit—”

  He wisely cuts himself off as I tense, a curse forming on my lips.

  “Jamie,” he repeats. “I’m sorry. You have to believe me. I never expected—”

  “What? Never expected what?” My emotions are like a rollercoaster, and after climbing slowly to the top, I can feel myself going over the curve. I know my temper. So does Ryan. It’s going to be one hell of a ride.

  I push myself up to a sitting position, my renewed anger fueling me. “Never expected me to find out? Never thought that your other wife might decide she doesn’t want to hide in the dark?” I make a scoffing sound. “Oh, yeah. I’ll bet you’re sorry.”

  The pain that cuts across his face is like a knife to my soul. “More than I could ever tell you.” He moves toward me, walking on his knees like a supplicant. Gingerly, he rests a hand on my thigh, and though I stiffen, I don’t flinch away. “I swear on my love for you, I never saw this coming.”

  I’ve never seen him this miserable, this unsure. I don’t know if he’s unsure about me or about the bitch-wife out there in the world.

  But maybe it doesn’t matter. Because something has shifted. My heart clenches, and a dam breaks inside me. Silent tears streak down my cheeks. “How? How could you not expect a wife to pop up? How could you go our entire relationship without even telling me that you had a wife before me? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I know. Oh, Kitten, I know.”

  This time, I allow the endearment. Hell, maybe I even welcome it. It’s an intimate piece of our normal life, and right now, the thing I want most of all is normalcy. Well, normalcy and an explanation.

  I straighten my shoulders. “Just tell me. Just spit the whole sordid story out. I can’t deal if I don’t know, and I think we both know that all the things I’m imagining are probably worse than the reality.”

  He doesn’t agree, which worries me. In fact, for a moment, I think he’s going to simply stay quiet. But then he slowly stands. He runs his fingers through his thick, dark hair. His eyes focus beyond me, and when he finally does speak, I realize that he’s not even seeing the room. He’s gone back into the past. And he doesn’t like what he’s remembering.

  “It was a rescue mission. More than a dozen years ago. I was working security, but I was young enough that I was still a bit green. I was doing work as an independent contractor for an international organization that took on high-risk operations in unsettled countries.”

  He pauses and I nod to indicate that I understand. And I do. I’m following him completely. I’m just not sure how a wife factors into all of this, and I’m hoping he’ll hurry and get to that key part of the story. Especially since he’s got some freakish delusion about Gabby folded into the mix.

  “Right, well, my boss—Gerard—he got a call from a guy named Randall Cartwright. Old British money. Probably in the line of succession, but definitely up there in British society and industry. He inherited wealth, but he also built his own business, and part of that business involved tech. Communications and weapons. Design and manufacture.”

  “So he was like Ironman.”

  “I guess he was,” Ryan says, then grins. It’s an honest-to-God Ryan grin, and it’s a nice moment. We both love the Marvel movies, and we’re always first in line at the theater.

  “What did this superhero do?”

  “He had a daughter. Felicia. A few years younger than me.”

  “The F from the text message?”

  “That’s what I’m assuming.”

  “Assuming? You don’t know for sure?”

  He runs his fingers through his hair again as he shakes his head. “Kitten, right now, I barely know my own name. All I know for certain is that I love you. Can you trust me long enough to tell this in order? I’ll tell you about the text, but let me get there my own way.”

  “Okay,” I say, even though I don’t want to wait. But if waiting means that I’ll understand, then waiting is what I’ll do. I want this past us. I want Ryan.

  “Anyway,” he continues, “Randall worked with designers and engineers and marketing men from the Middle East. They’d come to the UK and stay for a few months during product development.”

  I run all those pieces through my head, then nod, figuring if I don’t have it straight, it will all become clear soon. “Go on.”

  “Apparently Felicia fell for one of those men—a guy named Mikal Safar. And Felicia followed him back home.”

  “And Daddy was pissed.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So far this is an interesting little soap opera, but I’m still not sure how you being married to someone before me fits in.”

  “I told you. I’m getting there. Okay?”

  “Fine. Go on. I just want to get to the part where my husband has another wife.”

  He ignores my words and my snipey tone. I can’t say I blame him.

  “Not too long after Felicia followed Mikal, rebels overthrew the government.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  He nods, then moves to sit on the couch beside me. He’s close enough to touch, but he doesn’t reach for me. And I cling tight to my pillow.

  “Her father hired Gerard—”

  “Your boss, right?”

  “Yes. And Gerard sent me. It was supposed to be a simple mission. Get in, find the girl, get out. And it would have been, too, except we didn’t know one thing.”

  I shake my head, wrapped up in the story despite myself.

  “Mikal was the son of one of the country’s leaders.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “The same day I arrived in the country, Mikal and his father were murdered, and Felicia was on the run.”

  My mouth drops open but no words come out.

  “She was young. Early twenties, and pretty naive. She managed to get a call through to her father, and Gerard got through to me. Suddenly my easy escort job was a full-blown rescue mission, smuggling out the girlfriend of a man the rebels had just executed.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Whatever I could. The first days were chaos, and I managed to get us on a train heading toward the demilitarized zone.”

  “And you fell in love with her?” My throat is dry as I ask the question. I knew Ryan a long time before we got together, and I know he went out with various women. But I never got the impression that he was serious about anyone. I suppose I projected what I saw in our present into his past.

  Still, if there’d been another woman he’d loved, I wish he’d have told me.

  “I didn’t love her,” he says, making me frown.

  “Then—oh, shit. Ryan, did she get pregnant? Do you have—”

  I can’t even say the words. Not that long ago, Nikki and Damien had faced the possibility that Damien had fathered a son. Nikki had dealt, but she’d been twisted up inside. I thought at the time I understood. Now I really got it.

  “Do I have a child?” His brows rise and there’s so much surprise in his voice that I immediately sag with relief.

  “You don’t. Thank God.”

  “I married her because it was the only way we had a shot at getting home. We were able to get on that train only because we were married and both from out of the country. And time was of the essence because we knew th
at soon the rebels would start taking Americans and Brits hostage.”

  “But didn’t they know she’d come with Safar?”

  He nods. “The chaos helped. And she worked in her father’s business. We said it had been a business trip. Not personal. And we lied and said that I’d been in the country all along doing work of my own.”

  “So it was just a marriage of convenience?”

  He nods.

  “So nothing physical?” I remember the words of that text—our last kiss—and hope that was all there was.

  “We slept together once,” he says, shattering that hope. “The night of our wedding. We were both emotional wrecks. We—I guess you could say we needed each other. Jamie,” he continues, his voice going low and soft. “I don’t regret it. This was a long time before you, and we were both terrified. That night sealed us to each other. And honestly, it added a sheen to our lie. Not only that, but—” He breaks off with a shake of his head.

  “What?”

  For a moment I don’t think he’s going to answer. Then he draws in a breath, looks me straight in the eye, and says, “She was a virgin. And, well, considering everything, I didn’t regret that night at all. Now, honestly, I don’t know what to think.”

  “Oh.” I rub my palms down the soft material of the pillow I’m holding, not sure I understand what he means by that last part.

  For that matter, I’m not sure how I feel about any of this.

  “At any rate, the bottom line is that what should have been a simple escort scenario turned out to be something out of a goddamn action movie.”

  “But the idea was that you’d get a divorce when you got back home, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “But you didn’t.” It’s a statement, not a question.

  “No.” I watch as his face turns gray, as if the memories are sucking the life from him. “I didn’t think there was a need.”

  Before I can ask what he means, he continues. “She’s dead. Or I thought she was.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “To get out, we had to cross a militarized zone by train. The train was attacked. I tried—” His voice breaks. “I tried to protect her. But I failed. It was me against over a dozen men in a raiding party. I ended up with three broken ribs and a bullet in my side. You’ve seen the scar.”