Absolute Trust

by Piper J. Drake

  She leaned back, braced on her elbows, and closed her eyes.

  The man had learned to do so many things with his tongue. He started in long strokes, drawing out her pleasure until she whimpered. Then he found her clitoris and pressed it over and over with the tip of his tongue before returning to lick her again. He explored every fold of her most intimate places. And then he darted his wicked tongue inside her.

  She bucked in his hands, helpless. He cushioned her behind, then shifted his grip to hold her hips. And then he started licking her again, interchanging long strokes with short ones directly over her clitoris. She squirmed, but his hands held her captive, and his hold only turned her on even more.

  His lips closed over her clitoris then, and he sucked. A shout ripped out of her as the pleasure of it shot through her body. He murmured an approval and swirled his tongue around before doing it to her again.

  The sensations built, wave after wave, and she raised her hips to meet him as he continued to feast on her.

  “Please.” She was completely on her back now and reached to bury her own fingers in his short hair. “Please, I want you inside me.”

  He paused, gazing up at her over the length of her body. The intensity of the hunger in his eyes shot her sensitivity higher than she’d ever experienced. A breeze passed over them, and she felt it over her skin, her nipples, everywhere.

  “Brandon.” She made his name a plea.

  He straightened and then kneeled over her, pausing to lick first one nipple then the other as he watched her watch him. “Do you want me, Sophie?”

  “Yes.” She was almost sobbing with the need for him. “Yes!”

  Bracing himself on one elbow, he reached between them with one hand. Grasping his erection, he dragged the tip of his penis along the length of her.

  She threw back her head and groaned.

  The tip of his penis swirled around her clitoris once, twice, and she lifted her hips, trying to guide him into her. He nudged at her entrance and held them both just at the edge.

  “Do you want to scream?” Brandon’s whisper caressed her ear.

  She didn’t have any more words. She only nodded.

  He slid inside her so fast, filled her so quickly, she screamed.

  He pulled back, almost out. “Good?”

  In answer, she grabbed his hips with both hands, pulling him to her. He plunged back inside her to the hilt and she called out again. He set the pace then, hard and fast and so good. Every stroke drew a sound from her and she had no idea what it was. She didn’t care, either.

  “Sophie.” Brandon’s voice was completely out of control.

  So was she. Her body tightened around him as he filled her over and over again. “Brandon!”

  He adjusted his hips, plunged deep inside her, sending even more sensation through her. “Louder, Sophie. Louder.”

  “Brandon!” she called out, and it sent her over the edge, the orgasm crashing through her as she bucked wildly.

  He drove into her twice more, and with an inarticulate shout, he came, too.

  They lay together, shuddering, limbs entangled.

  After a moment, he murmured against her ear, “Wherever you go, I’ll go with you.”

  She buried her face into his neck and tried not to doubt. He’d left right after their graduation, after their first time together, after he’d said almost the same thing. Things were changing between them but were frighteningly the same.

  She wrapped her arms around him and shoved her doubts as far back in her mind as she could. She wouldn’t be afraid of change. This time, she’d give them a chance; she’d try, and if it got rough, they’d take it at a different angle. But she wasn’t going to give up on this dream.

  Yes, it could get worse, but what if it turned out better?

  Here, with him, was better. She was sure of it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Forte stood on a high hill overlooking the road and the woods around the cidery. His vantage point gave him an unimpeded view of the entire area surrounding his Sophie. The building he’d left her in sat on a hill of its own, too. Even better to be sure no one unusual was approaching her while he was taking care of logistics.

  A nondescript four-door sedan pulled up and Sa climbed out. The man lifted his chin in greeting to Forte before turning to open the back door of the car. A dark black-and-tan German Shepherd Dog hopped out, his attention on Sa as the man took his leash and led him over to where Forte was standing with Haydn.

  “How’s Taz working out for you?” Forte asked, stepping forward and giving the dog a good scratch around the ears.

  The big dog leaned into the petting, his tongue lolling out to one side.

  Haydn, for his part, stood apart and mostly ignored the other dog. They weren’t strangers—having trained on the same property—but Haydn seemed to be going for the mature, no-nonsense attitude at the moment. Or he was jealous.

  “I was glad to get your call.” Sa shook hands with Forte once Forte had finished greeting Taz. “We just got back from Hope’s Crossing and were wondering how you were holding up.”

  “It’s been quiet.” Forte looked back out over the cidery. “I don’t like it.”

  It was going too well. Moments like these, in Forte’s experience, were intentionally created to lull him or his teammates into a false sense of security. Get too comfortable and awful things happened.

  Sa grunted. “My colleague is almost back from her flight to Europe. There were signs of her being followed on the way out of the country, but nothing on the return trip so far. Either she lost them, and she wasn’t trying too hard to do it, or they figured out she was a decoy.”

  So for at least a portion of the time, Sophie’s pursuers had been successfully distracted.

  Forte nodded. “Either way, it’s only a matter of time.”

  Cruz was good when it came to laying down false trails in computer systems. He’d helped blur the record trail for renting the car. But if the person looking for Sophie was as good as Cruz, Rojas, or Forte, or if they had more resources at their disposal, they were going to home in on this location eventually no matter how careful they all were. If Murphy’s Law was involved, it’d be sooner rather than later.

  “How can we be of help?” Sa wasn’t the type to waste time. Forte appreciated his direct approach.

  “We’ll invoke the secondary clause in the contract. I’ll want twenty-four-hour support.” Forte wasn’t going to run yet. Sophie hadn’t made her decision and he wanted to give her as much time as possible.

  Besides, even though he’d offered to go with her, he hadn’t planned it. It’d been an impulse. He wouldn’t go back on his word to her, but he did need time to set his affairs in order. Hope’s Crossing Kennels and anything else in his estate would need to be taken care of so Cruz and Rojas could either keep running the place or go on their own way. Making the change now would be too obvious to someone who knew what to look for, so Forte would have to think carefully about how to make sure his leaving wouldn’t screw over good friends.

  “You got it.” Sa spoke with easy assurance. “We’ll be in range to respond within five minutes or less.”

  Forte nodded. Any closer and it’d be too obvious where he and Sophie were hiding. Having support at some sort of distance still left the chance open to their pursuers passing them by. If shit started, though, Forte could hold off attackers until Sa and his team could arrive.

  “We’re still at an information deficit.” Forte sighed. “We know her employer was laundering money for several clients. She had too much initiative and was too detail oriented, got into files her employer didn’t want her to see. There’s enough evidence to convict him. But we don’t have enough evidence to put away the actual individual responsible for the bomb or the break-in at her apartment. Could be the same person or it could be different people. But we have an idea of what organization they work for.”

  “Seems redundant to invest in more than one resource to eliminate a single civilian t
arget.” Sa sounded hesitant to offer the observation. Then again, they hadn’t worked together in the past. They were feeling each other out.

  “Maybe. One of our close friends had a series of incidents in the last several months. There was a single private investigator hired to track her and a backup team watching him in case he managed to flush her out but didn’t get ahold of her.” Forte didn’t like the way the situations were escalating over the course of the year. With first Lyn, then Elisa, the situations and people responsible had been unrelated for the most part. “We made sure all the parties involved were unsuccessful in acquiring their target.”

  Sa chuckled. “No offense intended, but you all are victims of your own success. You were already making names for yourselves based on the qualities of the dogs you trained. You might be retired from active duty, but it’s obvious each and every one of you is fit for duty with the experience to make you incredibly valuable assets. My squad wants you as allies, but others?”

  “Maybe not so much.” Forte was inclined to agree.

  There was a demand for quality private services, for mercenaries. As long as there’d been acts of war, there’d been a market to hire those with the right skill sets and experience. And it was a valid career choice after service in the armed forces, or even without experience in the military at all. Like any other industry, there were always up-and-coming companies being created and establishing themselves. The best any one person could do was decide what organizations were the right fit for them.

  Different companies with varying levels of ethics and corporate goals meant some would be a cultural match, and some wouldn’t

  “We’ve had a brush with at least one group. The outcome didn’t leave anyone walking away with warm and fuzzy feelings,” Forte admitted.

  Sa grunted. “That’s going to happen. Sometimes you respect each other in the morning and sometimes you don’t. You think they came after your lady to make a point?”

  Yes. “More likely someone offered them money and they were happy to accept a contract on a civilian connected to me and my colleagues.”

  “Gotta love the assholes out there who jump at the chance to be paid for something they probably thought about doing for free.” Sa bent and picked up a stone, tossing it up in the air and catching it. “Can’t say I haven’t considered something similar, but involving a civilian isn’t right. Going after a target like your lady? She didn’t have a chance on her own.”

  “She’s a smart woman.” Forte was sure Sophie would make good decisions in an emergency situation. “Level-headed.”

  Sa nodded. “Not arguing. But a bomb in the car. Without your dog there, would you have known it was there?”

  No. Haydn had been with Forte by coincidence. Forte could’ve had a different dog with him for the outing, one with alternative training like narcotics or corpse detection or human search. And he’d run into Sophie unexpectedly, too.

  “Exactly.” Sa took his silence and filled it. “You all haven’t shared much, but I can piece together the hints. They didn’t intend to give her even a chance to walk away from the encounter. They’d intended to do the job. It was a freak accident she came away from it alive.”

  Forte wasn’t going to argue. He’d gone through the same logic, but there was a sense of validation in hearing it come from someone else. Plus, gave him the chance to take a step back and view the entire situation with some perspective.

  “The break-in, from what I gather, was intended to look like a robbery, but she would’ve been just as dead.” Sa’s tone was grim. “They wrecked her stuff to hurt the people who’d be there to gather up her belongings, to let the people in her life know it’d been done out of spite. The second time wasn’t just about the job and eliminating the target; it was about sending a message to you.”

  The thought process made sense. “They won’t leave room for accidental survival the third time. They’ll want to make sure.”

  “Yeah. They’re going to send in a backup for their backup. It’ll be overkill to make sure nothing goes wrong this time.” Sa dropped the stone and dusted his hands off on his jeans. “You’ve taken steps, but I think my team had better be prepared for things to get messy.”

  “There’s not a lot of time to dig up and figure out the connections from her employer to the person he hired to the group they work for.” Forte was finally admitting the issue that’d been digging at him since he’d brought Sophie there to hide. “If the police don’t come through, she’ll be on the run for the rest of her life.”

  “And it won’t be a long time if an entire organization needs to track her down just to prove they don’t leave a contract unfinished.” Sa sounded grim.

  “We need to face them head on and make this a professional meeting of minds.” It wasn’t about her former employer anymore. Bastard was going to be convicted for his money laundering and anything else the investigation turned up. Now it was about the mercenary group who’d put their reputation into being able to complete the job.

  Put them out of business and Sophie could choose how she wanted to live her life.

  “This ought to be interesting.” Sa turned to him and offered his hand. “You and your friends are good people. It’s a pleasure to be working with you on this.”

  Forte shook the other man’s hand.

  * * *

  “Hi!” Sophie smiled at Brandon. “You asked me to wait here and try some hard cider. It has alcohol in it. You were gone a long time.”

  Brandon stood in the doorway of the cidery, his expression carefully neutral.

  She frowned and squinted. “There’s a smile there for me. Somewhere. There’s always a smile there somewhere.”

  “If you say so, dear.” The proprietress came and took away her latest glass and replaced it with a tall, sealed bottle. “Here’s your favorite to take away with you this evening. Your gentleman friend doesn’t look to be in the mood to sit and stay. Though he’s welcome to, if you’d like, him and his dog.”

  Haydn was with Brandon, a shadow in the door frame. Even his prosthetic had a matte finish so Sophie hadn’t realized he was there at first. But then Haydn dropped his jaw and let his tongue loll out in a friendly pant.

  Sophie beamed at the wonderful woman. “Thank you, for everything.”

  Kind eyes, gentle smile. “Of course.”

  Brandon was suddenly standing there, next to the table.

  The proprietress looked at him. “You are a quiet one, aren’t you? No worries. Your young lady mostly sat here and wrote ideas in her day planner. She was very nice to listen to me natter on, but she’s been doing quite a lot of thinking this afternoon. I was hoping she’d share a sweet story with me, maybe about how the two of you met or what brought you here, but mostly she’s just been thinking real hard.”

  Brandon nodded.

  Sophie sat still, staring at her day planner and the colored pens scattered across the table. She’d been happy to see him, really she had, but she had questions and thoughts to share with him. For the past hour, as the woman chatted with her, she’d used the different colors to write out her questions rather than talking about how she felt about them out loud.

  Looking up into Brandon’s hazel-green gaze she thought she might dive in and drown. “I used erasable ink. My questions will go away if you don’t want them.”

  “It’s okay.” He gave her those words and waited.

  He could mean a lot of things. Mostly, he usually gave those to her at face value, which meant everything was okay for the time being. He wasn’t worried and they didn’t have to run anywhere and he didn’t need her to erase her questions.

  Later, though, he might not like her questions. He hadn’t said it would be okay, after all.

  Sober, maybe, she gathered up her pens and tidied up the table. “My favorite cider was the original Honey Hard Cider. It’s sweet but not too sweet, and it has a hint of ginger at the end of it. It’d go really well with my recipe for red currant scones. I thought maybe you’d like to h
ave some, too.”

  “Could be interesting.” He took the bottle in hand.

  Which was good because she might not be the best person to carry a glass bottle right about now. Instead, she clutched her day planner and her pack of pens to her chest as she stood. His hand pressed gently against the small of her back, steadying her. He didn’t rush her out to the car. Instead, his presence was a solid reassurance. If she stumbled, he’d be there to catch her before she fell.

  She got into the car without a word and waited for him to close the door, get Haydn safely in the back, then climb into the driver’s side. “I guess it felt like you were gone longer than you were.”

  Brandon started the SUV. “I was gone about two hours, total.”

  She nodded. “It felt like all afternoon.”

  “I’m sorry.” His voice was soft.

  She shook her head. “I’m not mad. Not at all. It’s just, I missed you. Which is the wrong thing to say.”

  “Why?” He directed the SUV down the gravel road and out onto the service road leading away from the cidery. “Would you like to drive for a while, see some of the area before we head back to the cabin?”

  “Yes, please.” She watched the rolling farms alternate with bare woods. There was a stark beauty to it all, and she imagined it would all be a verdant, lush sort of green in summer.

  “So why is missing me the wrong thing to say?” Brandon’s prompt held a sort of cautious tone to it.

  She shrugged. “I had time to try all seven ciders. I had questions I wrote into my day planner so I wouldn’t forget to ask you when it seemed like a good time. But you’ve devoted days to being with me every moment. Even when you’re not right next to me, I’ve woken up and known if I called for you, you’d be within earshot. It’s silly for me to say I missed you after just two hours. Clingy. You never liked clingy.”

  Which was something he’d told her back in high school when girls would hang on to him. He didn’t like the way girls followed him around or tried to talk him into asking them out on dates. She’d paid attention because she hadn’t ever wanted to be the kind of girl he avoided. She hadn’t thought she could bear it if he started to brush her away the way he did those other girls.