Pink Slip

by Katrina Jackson

  Maybe it was delusional to think that this meant that she was safe, but the Peters had never once put her in danger and were adamant that she be protected at all costs. They regularly had her car and home swept for bugs. She had a security detail whenever she traveled out of state without them. And if things had ever gone haywire on a mission, Protocol SG directed that she be promptly moved into their home until her safety could be guaranteed. Unfortunately, that had never happened, but Kierra appreciated the sentiment.

  So for the second time today, Monica surprised her.

  “We need you in the field.”

  Kierra laughed, her eyes jumping from Monica’s to Lane’s and back, waiting for the punchline. But Monica didn’t make jokes. And Lane wasn’t laughing.

  “You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Kierra blurted.

  ◆◆◆

  Okay, one drawback to traveling in a luxury jet across the Atlantic was that there was nowhere for Kierra to run and hide.

  Sure, the jet had a private master suite at the tail, but she was still on a plane. She couldn’t stomp out of the office, hop in her car and drive in circles for an hour to clear her head. So she’d stomped, in her very sexy heels – which Monica hadn’t even had the decency to notice, by the way – and laid on the bed. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths, trying to calm her pounding heart.

  When that didn’t work, she wrenched open the door and walked back to her seat. Monica and Lane stopped talking when she was near and eyed her. She eyed them back, grabbed her cellphone from the small table in front of them, and then stormed back to the bedroom. She connected to the plane’s Wi-Fi and sent Maya a message.

  Problem. Help.

  It took less than thirty seconds for Maya to respond. She was always on her phone or computer, a fact that usually annoyed Kierra, but in moments like this she thought it was a lifesaver.

  Listening.

  Kierra had to be very particular about what she typed so as not to violate her NDA, potentially compromise the mission (even with the plane’s encryption) or betray her own feelings. And it was most tricky not to do the latter. She had been able to survive her crush on Monica and Lane for three years by keeping her work and personal lives separate. She didn’t talk about work anymore than was necessary and she certainly didn’t talk about her bosses in any great detail.

  So Maya’s response was just one more shock in a day with a new surprise around every corner.

  Which boss are you jonesing to fuck today?

  Kierra sat up straight and her mouth fell open.

  WTF?

  Maya’s text was an immediate, scathing, but loving, read:

  Was that supposed to be a secret? It wasn’t.

  Kierra frowned and then answered.

  I can’t talk about this right now. Never mind.

  Maya responded with a string of sad faced emojis and then a happy cry emoji.

  Sorry that last one was a typo.

  I’m here to talk whenever. No judgment girl.

  Fuck your bosses, if that’s what’ll make you happy.

  Just protect yourself.

  Your vagina and your heart.

  Kierra wanted to laugh and cry all at the same time. Maya really did give the best advice and usually in the dirtiest way. She sent a heart emoji back in reply and said goodbye. And then she laid back on the bed as confused as before.

  Monica was kind enough to give her a full ten minutes to herself before she knocked on the door.

  Kierra knew it was Monica, because if it had been Lane he’d have accompanied his knock with a suggestive query wondering if she was decent or clothed. Monica knocked and then stood in silence. And when Kierra wrenched open the tiny door, she was standing there, straight-backed. Her thick, glossy hair hanging just past her shoulders, beautiful light brown face bare of any makeup, tight black jeans and practical combat boots. She was taller than Kierra by a few inches and so her tits had the gall to be directly at Kierra’s eye level, high and prominent in her sensible V-neck t-shirt.

  Kierra wanted to be mad at her. She wanted to not want to run her hands over Monica’s hips or slip her tongue into her mouth or beg her to do whatever she wanted with her body. But that wasn’t who she was.

  “Why me?” Kierra asked the question in a hard tone that didn’t betray any of her inconvenient lust.

  Monica’s almost dark eyes were boring into Kierra’s as she looked down her nose at her assistant in a way that managed to be sexually suggestive rather than judgmental. She raised one eyebrow, and then slowly lowered it. Kierra felt a small sense of triumph in the knowledge that it only took three years for her to finally ask a question that Monica would have to answer.

  Monica moved to the side and gestured down the aisle, silently asking Kierra to return to her seat.

  Kierra sighed dramatically and moved past her. Luxury jet aside, the aisle was narrow and even if Kierra had tried to avoid it, some part of her body would still have bumped into Monica’s front. But Kierra didn’t try to avoid Monica, so her left arm and hip rubbed slowly along the other woman’s body. Kierra’s lips parted in ecstasy and she could have sworn that she heard Monica gasp softly, but it also could have been a figment of her imagination.

  Kierra licked her lips and plopped down in her seat with a frown on her face.

  Lane leaned forward and grasped her chin between two fingers. “Don’t worry, sweet girl. We’d never let anything happen to you.”

  She almost asked him what he was talking about, because she’d momentarily forgotten that they wanted her to pretend to be a spy. The feel of brushing past Monica and Lane’s hand so near to her mouth and the way he always called her sweet girl had sent her head spinning.

  It was too much. And yet not nearly enough.

  But then she remembered and she scowled at him.

  Lane just laughed and released her face.

  “Explain,” Kierra said.

  Monica tapped at her tablet and then handed it over to Kierra.

  Kierra read the website for a Club Ménage. “Inventive,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

  “But accurate,” Monica responded, her voice all business. “To get in this club you have to be in a ménage, a couple looking for a third or a single person willing to join a pair.”

  “I’m sure you see our dilemma,” Lane said, his head tilted down as he looked at Kierra through his long, light brown eyelashes.

  She rolled her eyes at him, hating that he seemed to know how much she loved it when he looked at her that way. “Why not take another agent in with you?”

  “We thought of that,” Monica acquiesced. “But we don’t always work well with others.”

  “Trust issues,” Lane offered.

  “We need someone inside who will shore up our cover.”

  “And who we trust completely,” Lane finished.

  Kierra wanted to be angry again. She wanted to tell them ‘hell no’ and stomp off back to the bedroom. But she wouldn’t. And they knew it. Because they trusted her. And she trusted them. Even though they were spies asking her to purposefully put herself in danger.

  She shouldn’t trust them. She knew that. She was 90% certain that Peters was not their real last name and Monica and Lane were also up in the air as their real first names. But feelings were complicated.

  She trusted that they wouldn’t have asked her to come into the field with them if they had any other options. She trusted that they would do their best to keep her out of harm’s way. And at the end of the day, she trusted herself enough to acknowledge that she was half in love with them and had been for years.

  “This is my last week,” she whispered.

  Monica’s back seemed to stiffen.

  “We know. And whatever state the mission is in, we’ll send you home after your last work date. We promise,” Lane said, in a voice that Kierra thought sounded somber. But she quickly decided that that was just her heart playing tricks on her brain.

  “I’m not carrying any weapons,” Kierra d
eclared.

  “That was never an option,” Monica replied. “We’ll protect you.”

  “I want a bonus,” she added grumpily. “A big one.”

  Monica nodded, a smile barely visible on her lips.

  Lane laughed. “We’ll give you anything you want, sweet girl.”

  Kierra refused to soften the glare on her face and betray how her stomach flipped at the way he said “anything.”

  This was absolutely not how she’d planned for her final week of work to go. But a small part of her brain was actually shocked that it had taken three years for her pussy to get her to do something really stupid.

  four

  Kierra was a professional and she took her job seriously.

  Even though she was pissed and had refused to speak to Monica or Lane for the rest of the flight, she still performed her job to her bosses’ exacting standards. She made sure that their inflight meals were to their liking. She handled their (forged) paperwork at customs, giving the customs agent her flirtiest smile while he ogled her body and not their paperwork, and directed their chauffeur in carefully loading their bags into the car.

  When they arrived at their safe house, she walked around the villa making sure that everything was to their personal specifications, while Monica and Lane trailed behind her, making sure that it was to their espionage specifications. She was frustrated by their constant closeness when just a few hours before she’d have craved just that.

  Since she wouldn’t be able to handle the needs of their temporary home while they were out in the field, she gave the cook and maid large pay raises – maybe larger than she would have otherwise, but they could afford it – for picking up the slack.

  Once the house was in order, Kierra tried to excuse herself from their presence to take a nap in her room, located in the same wing of the large villa as Monica and Lane’s bedroom and their weapons cache. But Monica stopped her.

  “Let’s have a full debrief first,” she said, not bothering to even pretend as if Kierra had a choice in the matter.

  Kierra huffed out a frustrated breath and followed Monica to the office space at the end of the short hallway that filled out this wing of their temporary Command. There she found Lane lounging in a plush leather chair around a table.

  He smiled and rose, pulling the chair next to him out for her to use. She rolled her eyes and plopped down into it. He laughed as he always did, clearly enjoying her well-deserved tantrum. “Don’t be mad at us, sweet girl,” he whispered in her ear.

  She was too tired to stop the shiver than ran down her spine. She took deep shallow breaths – into her mouth and out of her nose – and tried to calm herself.

  Lane walked around the table and pulled out a chair directly across from Kierra. She tried not to lick her lips as she watched Monica elegantly lower herself into it. Lane didn’t sit. Instead he did that thing that he knew Kierra loved. He stood behind Monica’s chair as if he were her sentry with that easy smile on his face. She wasn’t sure how he always knew the exact kind of tableau that just did it for her. But he did. And she loved and hated him for it.

  She shifted in her chair, trying to surreptitiously rub her thighs together to ease her ever present arousal as she thought about all of the reasons she had to be mad at them. But then Monica steepled her fingers and her eyes bore into Kierra’s and she’d had enough.

  “Can we get on with this?” Her voice was irritable but her mouth had gone dry with lust.

  Lane smirked at her, which could mean that he knew exactly what she was going through or he just wanted to unsettle her.

  Kierra sighed; it was probably both.

  “Are you scared?” Monica’s voice was serious but soft, which was rare.

  “No.” She refused to look Monica in the eyes.

  “It’s okay if you’re scared.”

  She nodded once. It wasn’t an admission per se. But Monica took it as one.

  “You’re not an agent,” Monica said.

  “No shit.”

  “Which means that the primary mission objective is to keep you safe.

  “And the secondary missionary objective?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  She rolled her eyes, “Because I don’t have clearance?”

  “Yes.”

  She locked eyes with Monica finally. “Will I be in danger?” She studied her face, looking for any of the ticks she’d become accustomed to that indicted when Monica was being less than truthful.

  Monica’s forehead wrinkled as she considered her question. Or more precisely as she considered how to answer it. “I want to tell you that you have nothing to worry about, but I don’t want to give you a false sense of security. I’d rather you be cautious than careless.”

  Kierra was comforted by Monica’s honesty.

  “What exactly do I have to do?” She hated how her voice seemed to shrink as she asked the question, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to be scared, but this was not her job. Getting coffee and light filing and wandering around an open air market buying her bosses their favorite fruit, those were in her remit. Not… whatever they were going to ask her to do. At least she didn’t think it was. But then Lane leaned forward, his thumbs skimming down Monica’s bare arms.

  Kierra wondered if they could see her nipples, suddenly hard and at attention, as her eyes tracked that tiny bit of contact.

  “We’ll only need your help at night,” Lane said as he placed a kiss at Monica’s hairline.

  Kierra pressed her lips together and tried to breath evenly through her nose.

  “We’ll go to Banovíc’s favorite clubs, do a tiny bit of recon and if we happen to get on his radar, then we’ll make contact.”

  “How will we get on his radar,” Kierra asked in a tight whisper. She had an idea; a fantasy.

  “That’s the easy part,” Lane said. “Banovíc likes his sex the more the merrier. We just have to convince him that whatever we three have going on, he might have a chance to join.”

  Kierra gulped loudly. “What we three have going on,” she said in a dreamlike whisper.

  “You, Monica and me,” he said, whispering it straight into Monica’s ear.

  She wasn’t sure what she said in response but to her own ears it sounded pathetic; a guttural moan full of three years of pent up longing.

  Kierra excused herself to her bedroom immediately. She could have sworn she heard Lane’s laughter following her down the hall. And it was still ringing in her ears when she locked the door to her room, stripped off her clothes and fell face first onto the bed. She shoved her hand into her underwear and rubbed fast circles over her clit, coming immediately and passing out.

  This was the first time she’d ended a work day like that.

  ***

  When she woke up, it was dusk.

  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkened room and for her to remember why this room was not her room.

  She wasn’t surprised to find that her anger at her bosses had lessened minutely, but she was still fairly pissed as she rooted around in her private bathroom for toiletries. When she found them she furiously brushed her teeth and showered, hoping that the rest of her anger might wash down the drain. It was only when she was stepping out of the bathroom, an indulgently soft towel wrapped around her, that she realized that she didn’t have any clothes to put on. She stomped through her bedroom door, across the hall and into Monica and Lane’s room.

  Without knocking.

  So it was her fault really that she interrupted Lane spreading oil over Monica’s bare back and ass, his own naked body slightly red, she assumed from the shower.

  Kierra stood rooted in their sitting room, watching Lane’s hands glide over Monica’s skin in the bedroom separated by a small step and curved alcove. It gave a beautiful cinematic quality to the entire scene. And if this weren’t her last week she would absolutely be fired on the spot, but damn would it have been worth it.

  Or at least she thought that would have
been their response to her intrusion. Instead, Monica and Lane hardly registered her entrance. Lane continued smoothing the oil over Monica’s shoulders, he even leaned down to place a small kiss to her ear.

  Eventually Monica turned to Kierra with her regular hard stare. “Perfect. You’re up. We thought we’d have to wake you.”

  Kierra began to stammer her apologies for rudely barging into their private space. Although she didn’t avert her eyes, so that might have lessened the impact of her amends.

  In any case, Monica and Lane didn’t seem to care and cut her off mid-sentence. “We need to get you dressed for tonight.”

  “That’s,” Kierra gulped, her eyes locking onto the way the tip of Lane’s cock was brushing against the curve of Monica’s butt. “That’s why I came in here. I don’t have anything to wear.”

  “We’ve handled it,” Lane said matter-of-factly.

  “Come here,” Monica said. Monica’s voice was always hard, everything she said sounded like a barking demand. It was just her nature. Kierra was never perturbed by her tone. Not even now. Because it did wonderful things to her sex.

  Kierra took a few tentative steps toward her bosses, her mouth beginning to water as she took in the gradient shades of brown of Monica’s breasts and nipples.

  As Kierra neared, Lane pressed one more kiss to Monica’s shoulder and moved away to put on a pair of boxers. Monica stuck her hand out to Kierra, who grasped it, shocked at how much she’d longed to touch Monica in this way, in any way, over the past three years.

  Monica pulled Kierra to the walk-in closet. Kierra turned her head to see Lane following.

  Inside the closet, Kierra could see why it was easier to not have her pack; she didn’t own anything that would have fit the dress code for this trip. Almost every stitch of clothing in the closet was mesh or soft leather or flowing thin silk. All with barely enough fabric to cover her body. She guessed it made sense. Where they were going, the whole point was to see and be seen.

  “I was thinking you should wear this,” Monica said, pulling a slinky jersey dress that Kierra knew would hug every one of her curves. It was a simple but classy deep purple frock that fit Monica’s style perfectly, which Kierra considered to be one of her areas of expertise since she’d spent every morning for three years trying to fashion outfits that might catch Monica’s eye.