Undercover Lover

by Tibby Armstrong

  She blinked at the violent picture he painted and heard Simon rest the broom against a wall behind her.

  “I want to please you,” she admitted, choking on her answer. “And all you can see in me is a…a problem. Something you have to work around or make go away.”

  “Unless you can do your job properly, you’re a liability.”

  Taking in his steely stare she wondered that they’d ever shared any intimacy at all.

  “Isn’t part of my job being convincing as your lover?”

  He flinched, but didn’t answer.

  “Chances are I’ll never have to touch a gun during this operation,” she said. “You? I’ll have to touch quite a lot.”

  Nostrils flaring, he turned away. She stalked around him.

  “How do you think the White Tiger’s people are going to react when you make that face when you have to be near me?” The question hurt her pride, but she asked it anyway.

  More silence.

  “Coward,” she whispered.

  “Go back to the cottage,” he said, not looking at her. “Go back now before you push this too far.”

  “Too far? Too far?” She bordered on hysterical, but she didn’t care. “I’m willingly walking into a potential death trap by your side, and you think touching me for the sake of our cover is going too far?”

  Expression terse, Günter looked at Simon over her shoulder.

  “Take her home,” he said and went back to tidying up the weapons.

  Simon stepped next to her.

  “No. Just leave me alone. Both of you.”

  Black powder stinging her nostrils, she grabbed a gun and pushed her way past both men. Standing at the head of the alley she donned her safety gear once more. Not pausing to draw a breath she fired. Again and again and again. Until the magazine was empty. Pressing the switch she brought the target forward and walked away, leaving the gun on the counter, without waiting to examine the results of her shooting spree more closely.

  Stepping outside, she gulped in cold air. Hands on her knees, she bent over and let crisp ozone-tinted oxygen calm her. After a while, she looked around the bleak winter landscape. For the first time since the day in the abbey with Günter she saw something other than gray- and yellow-tinted death.

  A soft snow had begun to fall, cushioning everything in a wonderland hush. There was freedom in the silence that she embraced with a split-second decision. She grabbed her coat from the SUV, found the Thames River path, and decided to walk the miles home.

  * * * * *

  “Want me to do it?” Simon asked.

  Günter stilled, his hands flexing around the barrel of the gun as if it were his second’s neck. Jenny had exited the building fifteen minutes ago and his heart just now approximated a normal rhythm.

  “You’d better not be asking what I think you’re asking,” he said.

  “What?” Simon blinked back at him innocently. Too innocently. “To clean the weapons?”

  Günter snapped one metal carrying case shut. “Yeah. I’d come real unglued if you did that.”

  “What did you think I was asking?” Simon leaned against the table, black boots peeking from under faded denim.

  “Gee, don’t know, Simon.” Günter feigned a nonchalance he didn’t remotely feel as he took a lint-free cloth to an already rubbed down weapon. “Maybe shag Jenny for me?”

  “Do you think she’d let me?”

  A red haze blanketed Günter’s vision and he fingered the trigger. “Have you asked?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t want to.”

  “But you would?”

  “I’d do anything to back you up,” Simon answered, arms folded over his torso as he looked down at the concrete floor. “But I think this is something you should handle yourself.”

  “So, you agree I should do my job for Queen and Country?”

  “You’ll hardly need to lie back and think of England to get through it.” Simon lobbed his analogy back at him. “And I think she’s right. If you cringe every time she touches you, you’re going to blow this.”

  “That’s not what I asked. And I don’t cringe every time she touches me,” he said, thinking of their afternoon interlude at the abbey.

  “Why is there even a question here?” Simon breathed a laugh. “Your junk knows your mind better than you do. You get a hard-on every time she walks in the room.”

  “Keep your eyes off my junk,” Günter snapped, unable to deny Simon’s observation.

  “Keep your hands off it and I won’t have to.”

  Refusing to engage in the ridiculous discussion any longer, Günter grabbed several cases and stopped by Jenny’s alley to clear her target from the clip. What he saw there made his heart leap against his ribs. He folded the paper in quarters and exited the building. Simon followed, carrying the rest of the cases. Swirling flakes caressed Günter’s skin and he breathed deep, relishing the scent he’d come to associate with Jenny.

  “Why don’t you want to sleep with her?” Simon asked, annihilating the barriers of their professional relationship and engaging the privileges of friendship with one fell swoop. “Why are you fighting it so hard?”

  “She deserves better.” He brushed off the question with an answer he knew was trite as he loaded the cases into the back of the car. A hand rested on his shoulder and he straightened to look Simon in the eye.

  “She deserves a man who can bloody well protect her,” Günter clarified. “After everything she’s been through, she at least deserves to be safe.”

  “Seems to me Jenny is a woman who knows how to protect herself,” Simon said before he let his hand fall away.

  Both men looked around, letting the silence of the moment bring them to the same realization—Jenny had gone ahead on foot.

  “So, what now?” Simon asked first. “Where do you think she went?”

  “Oh, I know where she went,” Günter answered.

  “How?”

  “Just do.”

  “She’s in your blood,” Simon observed.

  “Yeah.” Hands in his pockets, Günter rocked back on his heels, startled by the admission he’d made. Eyeing the Thames meandering through the gentle landscape, he made a decision. “You go on. Take the car back to the house.”

  “Where are you going?” his redheaded conscience asked.

  “To find her,” Günter answered over his shoulder as he took his cell from his pocket to make some arrangements. It seemed he and Ms. Ainsley had some unfinished business to attend to.

  * * * * *

  “Whipped cream, luv?” the chocolate vendor asked from her stall on High Street.

  Jenny shook her head. Günter would kill her if he knew she’d wrecked her metabolism with the sweet, never mind the cream. Thoughts of her jailer and his recent penchant for military rations had her turning back again with the cup.

  “I’ll have that cream after all,” she said.

  She and Günter knew there was nothing wrong with her weight. He just believed in conditioning, he told her. Engaging in self-discipline in all areas would see her through their objective. Personally, she thought he just didn’t want to find out what would happen if they both got drunk again.

  She sipped the cream from the top, wondering why Günter treated her like a military school cadet. She was supposed to be his doxy, not his blade. Why couldn’t he just lighten up? After he’d admitted having feelings for her she’d thought he’d relent a little—hadn’t realized he’d meant nothing would change for them sexually when he said he’d drive her as hard as, if not harder, than before.

  Walking with her cocoa she window-shopped along Oxford’s cobbled streets. Decorated for Christmas, the quaint two-story buildings exuded a charm she hadn’t remembered from her childhood in London. When people had cooed over her lingering accent, she’d brushed them off as daft. England was cold and damp, with little central heating and a depressed lower class that frittered away meager earnings on drink. Looking aro
und, she wondered where she’d come by such prejudice.

  White lights and garlands framed shop windows with cheer. The butter-yellow stone buildings glowed warmly in the late-afternoon sunlight and she knew she’d made a good decision to take some time for herself. She’d been spending so much time around the MI-5 crew, it was driving her batty. All those men. All that testosterone. What she wouldn’t do for a nice, long bubble bath in a tub that didn’t have razor stubble lingering around the drain.

  Tilting her neck to one side, she cracked the tension from her vertebrae then laughed. David did that all the time.

  She sobered as she thought of her call to him from a disposable cell Günter had purchased and given to her with strict instructions. She was to quit her job and tell her brother not to look for her—she was all right. God, he must be frantic with worry by now. She’d seen in the papers that he’d postponed his tour and gone home to New York with Kyra.

  Cradling her cocoa in mittened hands, she brushed away her gloomy thoughts and tried to enjoy what little freedom she’d managed to snatch in the past two weeks. Living in utilitarian conditions under veritable martial law, she’d conformed to every demand MI-5 and Günter made of her. But why?

  The man was a martinet. He worked her until she had bruises on her bruises. For what? Not a scrap of praise when he knocked her down five times in a row with the same maneuver, and she managed to dodge him on the sixth go-round.

  All he said was, “Don’t get cocky. You should have had that on the third try.”

  Then he knocked her down again as she stared at him, triumph turning to sawdust in her mouth.

  Rounding a corner near the uniquely round Radcliffe Camera building, she took in carved wooden doors sporting burnished brass pulls. Mythical forms and faces peered at her from buildings across the way. The Green Man stared out from one, while Pan—in two carvings meant to support the vestibule roof—played his pipes on either side.

  The snow fell more thickly now and she ducked under the tiny shelter to look out over a wrought iron enclosed courtyard. Watching the sun slip behind medieval roofs of green tarnished copper and mossy slate, she knew if there was magic anywhere on earth, it was here.

  A bell tower chimed five o’clock, reminding her that Günter probably searched for her. She sighed, knowing she’d have to face his wrath when she returned. He expected her to live like a soldier. React like a soldier. But she couldn’t. Not always. Especially not with him.

  Heavy-hearted, she dragged her boots in the snow, knowing she faced a brutal training session for her disobedience. Disobedience. She snorted at the word. She was a grown woman who could look after herself—had done so quite well before one Günter Faust had brought chaos raining down around her.

  She decided to delay the inevitable confrontation with Günter with a stop at the Turf Tavern.

  The tucked-away pub, Oxford’s oldest, had been her only truly pleasurable excursion with Günter, Ian and Simon the other night. There, she’d watched Günter relax and laugh with his mates as they’d gotten more than a little tipsy and swapped stories. Jenny hadn’t spoken much. She hadn’t needed to. Mesmerized, she watched the spark of light in Günter’s eyes as his dimples came to prominence again and again. He’d well and truly pulled her into his orbit that night.

  At one point, Ian caught her open stare and she’d blushed. He’d only smiled and raised his cup to her in salute before downing the rest of his dark brew. Günter caught the exchange and took Jenny’s ale away. Furious, she’d observed the remainder of the evening as if she stood outside her body, determined not to let him get the best of her again.

  The past two weeks had flown by with him teaching her everything he reasonably could about surveillance—reading body language, nonverbal communication, moving stealthily, and planting and retrieving equipment—as well as the finer points of firearms, hand-to-hand weapons, and how to avoid being killed in a shootout.

  For days now she’d accepted every frighteningly loud gun, every hand-to-hand session, every critique of her skill with tight-lipped acquiescence, and even she knew she was ready to blow from the strain. Physical discipline—a smack to her ass—would have been easier to take than the continued verbal barrage that showcased his disappointment.

  Memories of his hands on her body assailed her, crashing over her will, wrecking her determination not to come to him again with an offer of her body. She groaned her frustration. Knowing the situation had to come to a head before they went to London.

  Rounding the corner to the little alleyway, she recognized it as another avenue to the Bridge of Sighs and decided to circle back around and view the architectural confection once more through the veil of snow before full dark. A light wind blew down from the rooftops, trapping snow in a globe-like swirl that made her clutch her scarf around her face with one mittened hand and her cocoa tightly in the other.

  Her hands thus occupied, she had little time to react when someone grabbed her from behind and looped a bag over her head. Rather than dumping her hot cocoa down his leg she unthinkingly dropped it to the pavement. Hand over her mouth, he dragged her up the iron stairs toward the rooftop of the nearby building.

  Good. She still knew where she was, but she didn’t dare struggle on the slippery climb. They reached a cramped landing and he tugged her hands behind her and bound them with a zip strip before shoving her through a low doorway onto a splintered wood floor.

  She rolled to the side, determined to come up fighting, but he swept her legs out from under her as she struggled to stand. Effectively knocked on her ass, she rolled again and hit a table. The sound of items hitting the floor heavily on the other side gave her the idea to scream.

  Inhaling deeply, she managed to let out a shriek that would have disappointed a tea kettle before a meaty hand clamped over her mouth, cutting off the little oxygen she’d been able to draw through the bag. Cloth, however, was no match for her teeth and she bit down hard.

  A muffled curse indicated her success and she braced herself for a cuff upside the head, but he merely snatched his hand away before ripping the bag off her head and stuffing it in her mouth from behind her.

  “See that bed over there?” he rasped in her ear and her eyes widened as she nodded.

  Dear God, please don’t let him rape me, she thought and fought a heaving in her stomach.

  “You’re not going to move from it.”

  She shook her head and he shook her.

  “Say yes.”

  She nodded and a little sob escaped from behind the cloth.

  “Good girl,” he whispered and scooped her up to deposit her on the bed with her back to the room before running a chain through her wrists and locking it to the metal bedrail.

  Springs poked through the mattress and a musty smell assailed her nostrils, making them twitch until she sneezed. The cloth loosened and she made to spit it out, but he was behind her again, securing it with a rag tied around her head. She whimpered against the pressure, but the sound only served to make him tighten it further.

  He flicked off his flashlight and moved away before opening a door. A slice of light cut the dark in half and then disappeared as quickly as it had come when he shut the door. She lay there, darkness pressing against her eyeballs for what seemed like days. Pressure grew in her bladder, but she didn’t dare move lest he return.

  If she was very still and very good perhaps he wouldn’t hurt her. So far he hadn’t done much more than abduct her. Was he looking for a ransom? Was he the White Tiger? Would Günter find her? Would he even bother to look? As time wore on and no one came for her, her thoughts became more scattered, reminding her of swirling motes of dust backlit by a flickering eight millimeter projector. She began to make promises to God and other random deities if someone would just rescue her. She swore never to go out again without Günter or Simon or Ian unless they said it was safe. Please oh please just let someone find her.

  “Need to use the loo?”

  Jenny jumped, heart racing at the
unexpected sound of the man’s voice. She made a muffled sound of acquiescence. Had he opened the door? How had she not heard him re-enter the attic space?

  “I guarantee you they wouldn’t care,” Günter said in the darkness, unlocking her. “They’d either let you wet yourself or make you go in a tin at their feet.”

  Too angry to care if she did wet the bed, Jenny shoulder bumped herself to face him in the pitch black and made a guttural sound low in her throat.

  “I told you in the beginning what to expect from this training. You agreed. Don’t bother with indignant now.” He moved toward her, the fabric of his trousers rustling in the darkness. “By rights, I should have made you stay all night.”

  Despite her sense of betrayal, her anger waned. He had warned her. The morning after their…interlude—she didn’t know what else to call it—he’d told her he’d spare her no detail of the training he’d undergone. If she wanted to work with MI-5, she had to at least attempt to become MI-5. Ian had agreed. They needed her, but they also couldn’t afford her to be a liability.

  Without unbinding her hands, Günter led her by his flashlight to an open loo in the corner of the room and yanked down her trousers before he sat her down. She made a pleading sound and he clicked off the light but didn’t move from his position in front of her. Humiliation stained her cheeks, and the urine tried to climb its way back up, but the pressure was too great and her bladder released against her will.

  When she’d finished, he lifted her gently and refastened her jeans before reaching behind her to loosen the gag. She spit out the vile cloth and ran her tongue around her mouth to remoisten the delicate flesh.

  Her tongue felt thick as she asked, “Did you do that because I went out without telling anyone?”

  She wished she could see his face when he answered. Something told her he couldn’t be so cold. He had to care more than he’d let on. Otherwise would he really go to all this trouble? It couldn’t be any more fun for him than it was for her.