Pink Slip

by Katrina Jackson

  But when they spotted Monica and Lane seemingly having an argument down the hall, they all began to quiet down and eavesdrop. Kierra had never seen them fight.

  “That’s a bad idea,” Lane said to Monica who was passing in and out of sight from the hallway to the front door, pacing. Another thing Kierra noted she’d never seen Monica do before today.

  “It’s our only option,” she ground out.

  “It’s not and you know it.” Lane stepped in front of Monica and reached out to grasp her upper arms. “We could just tell her.”

  Kierra felt her face warm at his words and because Kenny and Asif had turned toward her. For a second, her only wish was to crawl into a hole and hide and then she got angry.

  She stepped into the hallway. Kenny reached out, trying to pull her back but she skirted his hands and began to walk down the hall to her former employers. They turned toward her, their eyes riveted to her as she stalked toward them.

  Kierra wished she had packed for this possibility. She was just in a pair of skinny jeans and a t-shirt. If she’d had her choice, she’d have been wearing some barely appropriate short dress, and high-heeled strappy sandals for this moment. But as their eyes traveled up and down her body appreciatively, she realized that she might as well have been naked for all they cared.

  And she’d missed that. The way she always felt sexy and powerful with their eyes on her, undressing her piece by piece.

  Lane

  Lane watched Kierra walk down the hallway toward them, suddenly reminded of her first day at work. It was a memory that he and Monica revisited a lot while having sex, especially during the last three months, when their longing for her had reached a fever pitch.

  She’d shown up for work almost an hour early, eager, caffeinated and wearing a dress tighter than he might have recommended for a first day at a new job, but since her ass looked great in it, neither he nor Monica bothered to correct her. They’d just walked her around their decoy office on the first floor of their home trying not to ogle her as obviously as they clearly wanted.

  She’d been so clueless then; she absolutely was not now. But that wasn’t what brought the memory to the fore. It was the way Monica’s breath hitched as Kierra drew closer to them with confident strides. Lane had always loved the way that Kierra set Monica on edge with just a glance or a smile or a laugh. Even he had to work hard to undo her hard façade, so he always appreciated that Kierra was his own personal shortcut to glimpse the churning heat that lived just under Monica’s surface.

  It was an inconvenient thought at a moment like this, but when had their lust ever been appropriately timed.

  “You owe me an explanation,” Kierra said, when she was just a few feet away.

  “It’s too dangerous,” Monica replied quickly.

  “She has a right to know,” Lane said. Monica turned to glare at him. He shrugged.

  “Tell me. Please,” Kierra said.

  Lane watched Monica’s eyes close and he realized that she would give in. Not because he was right and Kierra did deserve to know why her life was in danger, but because if she’d once been able to deny the attraction between them, that resolve had been abandoned in a Serbian villa in a haze of lavender scented body oil and a bed just big enough for the three of them. But also because Kierra’s normally confident, voice that sounded like ringing bells and went straight to his gut and his dick, had turned the word “please” into a mournful sigh that broke something in Lane. And when he turned to Monica, he saw that it had had the same effect on her as well.

  She turned back to Kierra and nodded. “Let’s go to your room.” Monica turned to walk up the stairs. Kierra followed immediately. Lane walked behind them up the stairs, trying to keep his eyes from drifting down her body.

  He failed.

  ◆◆◆

  In Kierra’s room, Monica shivered at the draft.

  “It’s cold in here,” Lane said.

  “I know. You couldn’t have found a better place to stash me?” Kierra said as she sat on her rumpled bed.

  He gave her an apologetic grin. “We were in a bit of a hurry. But we’ll make it up to you.” He said the last sentence with raised eyebrows and the dirty grin that always made Monica consider giving him exactly what he wanted when he wanted. She never did, but he could always make her consider it.

  “No,” Monica barked.

  Lane turned to her, his eyes dancing. Kierra tried to hide the small movement, but Lane clearly saw her rub her thighs together in his peripheral vision. And with the way her eyes had dilated, he guessed that Monica had noticed it as well.

  “This is serious. No flirting,” she said to Lane. And then she turned to Kierra, “And no…” But she didn’t know how to finish the sentence because Kierra didn’t flirt. Maybe if she did, Monica would have known better how to handle her. “No doing that thing you do,” she finished lamely.

  Lane wanted to chuckle, but he pressed his lips together enjoying watching them dance around each other. He always did like the way Kierra challenged Monica, pressing her to be more open and emote. And Monica, whether she realized it or not, had been for three years unconsciously trying to give Kierra more than her silence and nods and demands. It was cute. And it made Lane hard.

  Kierra leaned back on her hands so that her breasts jutted forward. She kept her knees tight together.

  “That,” Monica said. “None of that.”

  Lane at least had the decency to cover his mouth with his hand, even though the movement barely muffled his laughter.

  Monica rolled her eyes. “Can we- You said you wanted to know what’s going on. Can we get to that?”

  Kierra seemed to deflate at the reminder that she was in danger. Monica waited for her to compose herself before she began.

  “Do you remember Banovíc’s minister of finance?”

  “Martin Stepanov,” Kierra replied dutifully. Lane tried to ignore the itch at the back of his throat.

  “Apparently, he hasn’t taken Banovíc’s death well.”

  Kierra’s eyes widened. “He sent that man after me?”

  “He’s sent a few men after you actually,” Lane breathed. “We’ve been running interference for months.”

  Lane watched as Kierra’s mind rewound the last few months, putting all of the pieces together. “There was someone watching me at the airport,” she said.

  “That’s the guy downstairs,” Monica’s said. “We’ve been tracking him for a while, verifying that he was alone and then trying to figure out where his orders are coming from.”

  “And that car crash a few months ago?”

  Lane smiled, “Yea, but that wasn’t us. We were running down some leads in Berlin and sent those two idiots downstairs to watch after you. Their team is not nearly as discreet as we’d hoped. You wouldn’t have noticed anything at all if we’d been there.”

  Kierra chewed her bottom lip and bent over to drop her head into her hands clearly trying to process this all.

  “We won’t let Stepanov get to you,” Monica said in a fierce whisper. “We would have handled him long before now, but he’s gone into hiding.”

  Kierra raised her eyes to look at her. “He’s not taking over for Banovíc?”

  Monica shook her head and Lane answered. “We assumed that he would make a power grab or suck up to whoever did. We honestly didn’t expect him to go to these lengths for revenge.”

  “But why me?” Kierra asked, her voice turning high-pitched with fear. “All I did was walk around damn near naked. You two killed his friend.”

  Lane watched Monica walk across the room and kneel down in front of Kierra. She grasped her hands and looked her deep in the eyes. Lane might have given her platitudes and consoled her that everything would be okay. But Monica wasn’t good at that. She turned to him, her eyes beseeching him to tell Kierra what she couldn’t.

  “Tell me,” Kierra begged as if she understood Monica’s dilemma.

  “You should have been able to slip out of the country unno
ticed,” Monica said. “That’s why we split up. If we’d all left together, there was a chance that we might have stuck out.”

  “Three foreigners who can’t keep their hands off each other. Not too inconspicuous,” Lane interjected.

  “The only person who knew when you left and where from besides us was our chauffeur. He was part of a rogue faction within Serbian intelligence.”

  “He betrayed us?” Kierra gasped.

  “Only after a significant amount of torture,” Monica said simply. “And they killed him anyway.”

  “So Stepanov’s trying to kill me?”

  “Eventually, yes. But right now we think he’s trying to draw us out. And we’re trying to draw him out. That’s why we needed to get you somewhere isolated. Fewer surprises this way,” Lane said.

  Kierra licked her lips. Lane allowed himself to savor the sight of her pink tongue and wet lips.

  “Did the guy downstairs give you anything useful?”

  Lane laughed as he moved behind Monica who was still crouching negatively at her feet. He put his hands over hers and leaned down to bring his face close to Kierra’s. He heard Monica’s sharp intake of breath as his lips got dangerously close to Kierra’s; the potential for relief so near but still very far away.

  “How about one more mission, sweet girl?”

  Monica wanted Kierra to say no, Lane could feel the tension in her body. They never should have dragged her into this in the first place. But more than anything Lane wanted her to say yes. He knew that if he could keep Kierra close then he could keep her safe. The problem would be letting her go once the mission was complete.

  They’d done it once. Lane didn’t think they could do it again.

  fourteen

  Kierra was trying not to squirm. But the sounds of Monica and Lane’s mission voices (direct, hard, and demanding) were doing something to her that she hadn’t felt in a while. Three months to be exact. Something familiar and very unwelcome, since they were on a plane to Berlin hoping to draw the corrupt Serbian politician trying to kill her out of hiding. But still those voices were washing over her, seeping back into her skin like water on dry, cracked earth. And with the supple leather of the seat against her bare legs, it was like sensory overload.

  Maybe the thin, short and flirty summer dress she’d thrown on for the trip had been a mistake. But when she’d gone to pack her bags to leave the drafty old house that had tormented her for three days, she hadn’t been thinking about wearing practical mission attire. She’d been thinking the same thing she always did when she dressed for the Peters: what would draw Monica and Lane’s eyes and maybe even their hands to her.

  Old habits die hard.

  “Okay, that’s enough for now. We’ll regroup in Berlin,” Lane said, clapping his hands together.

  “Will your contact show?” Monica asked Asif the question with a slight sneer in her voice. Kierra tried not to gloat, but she was still on cloud nine that Monica had knocked him out cold. For her.

  “She’ll be there,” he said simply, absently rubbing at his jaw.

  Monica dismissed him with a curt nod and then turned to lock eyes with Kierra. “Can we talk to you?” She tilted her head toward the back of the plane. Where the bedroom was.

  Kierra knew she should say no. She should say that whatever they had to say, they could say out here in front of Kenny and Asif. That the three of them being near a bed, especially in a small room that was only big enough for the bed itself, was a very bad idea. But the list of all the things she should say only popped into her brain after she had already squeezed between Monica and Lane’s bodies on either side of the aisle and shivered as her bare arms made the slightest contact with Lane’s broad chest and Monica’s hard biceps. And by that point, she rationalized to herself, it was probably too late to turn back. So she lifted her head slightly and strode confidently –excitedly – toward her own personal ruin.

  Old habits blah blah blah.

  There was nowhere else to sit but on the bed. She crossed her legs, the dress’s short skirt skimming very high on her thighs. She’d assumed that Monica and Lane would sit next to her, but they stood instead, their backs against the door, their tall bodies looming over her. Kierra sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and tried very hard not to think about all of the times she’d dreamt of being in just this position or of that one time she was.

  “Well?” She said, lifting her chin and hoping that she seemed annoyed, rather than too aroused to breath more than that one word.

  “We wanted to talk to you about Berlin,” Monica said carefully.

  “Didn’t you just brief us on Berlin for like an hour?”

  “That was about the mission. This is about us,” Lane said.

  It was an innocuous couple of sentences but something about them sent Kierra over the edge. She stood up quickly and pointed a finger at them both. “There is no us. You let me leave Serbia by myself.”

  “It was the best way to keep you safe, Kierra,” Monica said, her voice gritty, as if she was trying to restrain herself. Kierra had never heard her sound quite like that.

  “And then you didn’t call me or anything for three months.”

  “We were busy trying to keep you alive,” Lane said, his voice still affable, but frayed. A very big difference from his regular light and easy.

  “And would that have been easier or harder if you’d just told me what was happening?”

  Lane laughed and Kierra swiveled her neck back in shock.

  “Knowing you,” he said, putting his hands on his hips as if he were so exasperated by her, “it would have been harder.”

  “We thought about telling you,” Monica said, “but you wanted to move on and we wanted to respect that.”

  “No, I wanted to stay. And I told you that. It was you two who didn’t want to be with me anymore.” Kierra took a deep breath in and tried not to cry even though the pressure behind her eyes was building.

  “If we’d have told you, we’d have had to stash you away somewhere. Away from your friends and your life.”

  An angry tear fell down Kierra’s face. “Would I have been with you?” She asked in a small voice, even though the question made her feel foolish.

  “Yes,” Monica replied immediately.

  Kierra refused to give them the satisfaction of knowing how that answer soothed her. She swiped at the wet trail across her cheek.

  “And that would have been a problem,” Lane added gently.

  “Why?”

  He laughed ruefully. “I don’t know how to tell you this, sweet girl, but you’re a big fucking distraction for us. And we can’t be hiding away in a hotel room fucking ourselves into a stupor if we want to find Stepanov and put an end to this.”

  Kierra understood that he was right. But she also heard Monica’s sharp intake of breath when Lane said “fucking” and then she felt moisture pool at her core. Her body was a hormonal mess when she was near them, which made her consider that maybe he had a point.

  Lane shook his head and laughed softly. “See. You two can’t even be angry at each other without getting wet.”

  Kierra’s face warmed and she snuck a peek at Monica, who’d leaned into Lane’s side as if she needed his support, but kept her eyes on Kierra, her mouth parted slightly.

  Kierra lifted her eyes to Lane’s, still defiant. “Well if I’m such a liability, why are you taking me to Berlin?”

  “Two reasons,” Lane answered. “First, we already know Stepanov wants to get to us through you. so if we all show up together, it should draw him out.”

  Kierra nodded, that had been the crux of the hour long briefing, so basically it could have been two minutes, she thought and crossed her arms in annoyance.

  “Second,” Lane began, but Monica finished.

  “We missed you.”

  Kierra lifted an eyebrow at Monica and said in her hardest tone, which wasn’t even a fraction of the steel that Monica could muster, “Prove it.”

  Monica pushed away fro
m the door and would certainly have tackled Kierra to the bed, but Kierra put out a hand to stop her. She had never felt so powerful. Her one slim index finger stopping Monica Peters mid-step. After three years of feeling as if she was caught up in the maelstrom of her own lust, Kierra could hardly breathe with that kind of control literally after her fingertips. She shook her head and walked Monica back to the door, that index finger between them, just barely, but not quite, touching Monica in the center of her chest. Lane grunted his approval.

  Kierra kept moving forward, skimming that finger lightly along Monica’s angular jaw, and pressed her body to Monica’s front. She pressed her lips together to stop from moaning as Monica’s hands grasped her bare thighs. Her fingers dug possessively into Kierra’s flesh.

  Apparently she actually had been missed.

  She let Monica knead her legs, slipping just under her dress briefly, before reaching down to push her hands away.

  “I wanted to stay with you.” She whispered the words against Monica’s lips. “I would have begged, if you’d let me.”

  “Kierra,” Monica moaned.

  Kierra cut off Monica’s words with a sharp shake of her head. “If you want to show me that you missed me, then you do it on my terms.”

  “And your terms are?” Lane asked, an amused lilt in his voice.

  Kierra rubbed herself against Monica and lightly brushed her mouth against her lips. Monica’s lips parted and she leaned forward, but Kierra backed away. “You don’t touch me until I say so.”

  Lane grunted. Kierra smiled and turned toward him. “But if there’s something you want to do to me, you can do it to each other.” She turned back to Monica and traced her tongue along the seam of the other woman’s lips. “While I watch.”

  Monica’s eyes were dilated and bore into Kierra’s. If there had ever been a moment since Serbia where Kierra had thought that Monica didn’t care for her, that they had used her for their own pleasure – and there had – there was no way that Kierra could entertain those thoughts again. Not when Monica was looking at her as if she was the sun.