Bolt Saga, Volume 2

by Angel Payne

  His promise turns the star fire into energy throughout his body. The brilliant force of it makes me wrap my arms around him, hoping some of that cosmic-level faith will rub off—because right now, all I can think about is the bear getting tired of the jabs at its ass and turning around to take out its tormentor…

  Reece’s arms enfold me tighter—once again, seeming to reach into my brain and see every doubt and fear still lingering there. With another fervent kiss against my hair, he whispers the exact words I need to hear.

  “It’s going to be all right, Emma.” His promise matches the unyielding force of the waves that crash and pummel the rocks twenty feet away. “This time, the Consortium doesn’t get to win. However that happens, however long it takes…we won’t let them win.”

  * * *

  Ninety minutes later, as Reece leaves the Tesla’s keys with the Hotel Brocade’s valet and starts walking me across the lobby toward the executive offices, those words keep resounding through my head.

  We won’t let them win.

  Sounding worse now than the first moment I went ahead and pushed the repeat button on it.

  However that happens…

  Sounding more stupid by the second.

  However long it takes…

  No. Sounding like complete lunacy.

  Which, officially, must make me the world’s worst girlfriend. I mean, what woman doesn’t want her man to declare words like this? This is the stuff of dreamers and fighters and heroes. Of Braveheart and Superman and Maximus the Gladiator…

  Who are all fictional.

  And still ended up dead.

  Meaning it’s time to dig myself out of the YouTube tunnel of despair and get back to loving my real-life dreamer fighter hero—who has, uncannily, never fit the role more than in this moment. With his hair a wind-tossed mess, his shirt and slacks casually rumpled, and his trendy glasses emphasizing the gleam in his eyes, he’s like Clark Kent checking back in at the Daily Planet as we clear the back security door into the hotel’s executive offices. One big difference, though? Nobody in this place has gotten over the bombshell Reece dropped on the world three months ago—or is ready to accept the new “reality” we’re still trying to float as fact.

  Accordingly, as soon as we enter, everyone on the nightshift team seems to emerge from nowhere with giddy enthusiasm.

  “Well, well, well. Lucky us. The Bolt God himself.”

  Annnnd some are a bit more jubilant about it than others.

  As Reece endures a hearty handshake from Wade, my onetime workmate with the grin of a Cheshire cat and the humor of a frat boy, the rest of the night crew quickly crowds in behind him.

  “Mr. Richards.” Fershan, his wide eyes contrasting with his skin, doesn’t emulate the handshake. Instead, trembling in blatant hero worship, he leads each comment with a llama-like extension of his head. “It is a grand pleasure to see you again.”

  “You as well, Mr. Bennett.” Reece turns, noticing the new face in our midst: an eager-eyed thing with a spray of freckles across her nose and a knowing tilt to her heart-shaped mouth. The woman is a stark contrast to my friend Neeta Jain, with whom she’s entered—though her girl-next-door vibe possesses a distinct worldliness, especially as she ogles my man.

  Seriously. She’s ogling.

  “Mr. Richards.” She strides forward on ankle boots that add six inches to her petite frame and extends a slender hand. “My name is April Levine. I’m Miss Crist’s replacement.” She adds, practically touching her lips like some starlet who accidentally let a nipple slip, “As the Guest Satisfaction Manager, of course.”

  “Ah. Sure.” Reece is either that out of practice about picking up a woman’s innuendo or more focused on his meeting with “Sally” to care. “Nice to meet you. Welcome aboard.”

  “I’ve been a big fan for a while,” she croons while they shake hands. “I read and notated the articles you wrote for Return on Investment two years ago and even have Team Bolt T-shirts in four different colors.”

  “Yeah?” To my shock, Reece grimaces. “Well, I was a dick when I wrote that piece, and those T-shirts will make nice bathroom cleaning rags for you now. But the good thing is, now is now, and you’re part of a team building a great future for this hotel. Granted, you have huge shoes to fill”—he tucks me against his side—“but with Neeta’s guidance, I have every confidence you’ll do well.”

  Neeta’s flawless skin usually doesn’t give away blushes, but pride beams from her elegant features as she murmurs, “Thank you, Mr. Richards. That is truly appreciated.”

  “Oh, she is wonderful.” April meshes her fingers and crosses one foot over the other, going for the whole fashion-ad-pose-as-social-filler angle. “I mean, the way she can upsell the suites is textbook wow.”

  “That it is.” Though Reece’s clutch on my waist tightens to the point that I yelp. “Baby?” he asks, swooping down a concerned gaze. “You all right?”

  “Dandy,” I mutter, tightening the corners of my return glance. “We were just in the car for a while, and nature calls, so if you’ll all excuse me…”

  With perfect timing, the penthouse’s express elevator arrives in response to Reece’s summons, its doors parting on a whisper. Reece joins me in dispensing our quick goodbyes, and then we’re both silent until the lift carries us about three floors up—

  The moment we break into simultaneous laughter.

  “You can just call me Mr. Textbook Wow from now on,” Reece chuckles out. “Is there a T-shirt for that one too?”

  I give in to a fresh giggle, leaning against the rail next to him. “You sure you even want to know? Though Mr. Return on Investment definitely has a catchy ring…to…” But my declaration is consumed by his—a long, wet, lingering, tingling mesh of his mouth to my mouth, his body to my body, his heartbeat against my own…his erection surging at my slit. We bite and suck and thrash at each other, at once consumed with what feels like a mutual craving to climb inside each other, spiking my blood to fevered intensity and swelling my clit with hot, tremoring need…

  Which all gets a hideous ice bath as soon as the car is filled with the most irritating ding since the brass call bell was invented.

  “Fuck.” Reece drops his forehead against mine.

  I smile and bite my lower lip. “Sounds like a damn good idea to me.” Except I’m not the one with an appointment that had us hauling ass in a custom Tesla to get back here. An appointment I have no damn trouble distracting him from, as he grabs one of my thighs, hitches my foot up to the rail along the elevator’s short wall, and then loops my other knee over his shoulder as he falls to his knees before me.

  “Fuck.” His echo heats the panel of my panties, awakening my entire pussy like a blast of summer sun.

  “As I said…” My ass cheeks constrict. My throat is parched. My nipples are puckered. “Damn good idea.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” With a fast sweep of his finger that peels away the satin covering my sex, he nearly obliterates my control with his sultry breath and his teasing touch. “You’d like me to get inside you right now, with my fingers or my cock…” He interrupts himself with a hum, working those magical fingertips over the outer petals of my sex. “Either would be fine. Perhaps both would be.”

  With slow, tiny circles, he closes in on my trembling, fiery center. Everything south of my waistline trembles, and I buck my hips at him almost as a Pavlovian response. Dear sweet hell, what this man does to me…

  Enrages me. Enslaves me. Engulfs me. Entrances me.

  “And you too.” I gasp it out as he starts those perfect little swirls again, holding my flesh hostage to his touch, binding my mind to every erotic nuance of his voice. “Dear God. Reece. You too, okay?” I slap at the elevator walls where he has me cornered in more ways than one. “Please. I need…I need your cock. Pounding inside me. Coming inside me.” And now, none of this is about being his diversion. It’s about being his completion.

  Needing it…

  “Then tha
t’s exactly what you’ll have, sweetheart…” He rises, skimming my hips and waist as he goes, stretching his arms until his heated fingers thread with mine and his bold, sure mouth teases the top curve of mine…

  For all of five seconds.

  Before he pushes back, visibly fighting for his own control, knocking his head back against the wall as he reaches over and slams the Door Open button.

  “Just as soon as I get my ass back up here.”

  For a second, I don’t move. I can’t. “Wh-What?”

  He drags a hand through his hair. Like that’s going to calm my lust? “I’m sorry, baby. You know I am. But as soon as I get done with this damn meeting…”

  “Right. The meeting.”

  “Goddamnit, Emma. This isn’t just another stockholder or vendor I can push off until—”

  “You made that clear before getting me out of bed in Santa Barbara.”

  He watches as I somehow force enough strength back into my legs to support my weight again. “So that’s how you’re going to be?”

  “Because that’s how you’ve already been?” My shredded panties fall to my feet. I kick them at him with a sharp flick. “Don’t give me gorgeous and confused, Mr. Richards. I know it’s worked for you in the past, but let’s call this one as we see it.”

  He sucks in an audible breath. Doesn’t move his hand from the button. “And how do you see it?”

  I fold my arms, not backing down from his scythe of a stare. “The primeval act as an insurance policy. Making sure you’ve got me hot and bothered enough so I’ll wait for you in the cave like a good little bitch.”

  “Is that what you really think?”

  I don’t surrender my stance. Even through the squirm-worthy silence that takes over. If I don’t move from the car, he has to stay here and deal with me. With this. With the fact that he might as well be sending me off so he can go put on the lightning boy leathers and face down a hoodlum or twelve. He’s evoked the same visceral terror in my blood and disgusting fear in my heart. “I have no idea why you’re even bothering to ask,” I mutter. “Because apparently you already know what I’m thinking. And, for that matter, what information might be useful for me to know and what’s convenient to hide from me.”

  With a sound of raw frustration, he abandons the button and resorts to flipping the red emergency stop. “Damn it, Emma,” he bellows over the clanging alarm bells. “I’m trying to protect you!”

  “No.” I flinch back. “You’re still trying to be a fucking superhero. Only I’m not some fluttering damsel in distress, Reece. I’m the woman who loves you.” I repeat, in a shaky mutter, “God help me…I’m the woman who loves you.”

  He drops his arms. Coils his fists. “Then be the woman who trusts me too.”

  I mirror his stance. “Then be the man who lets me in.”

  With timing that couldn’t be any worse—or better, I suppose, depending on the viewpoint—his phone trills in his pocket. He doesn’t reach for it, and by now we both know why.

  “I have to go, sweetheart.”

  “I know.” My retort is just as stiff, matching my backward steps out of the car. “The cave needs to be tidied anyhow.”

  As I mutter it, the elevator doors start to close. Reece jams a hand into the opening, retracting them. “Emma.”

  I hate myself for being compelled by the sandpaper in his voice. And after my head is lifted, by the aching gray of his eyes. “What?”

  He steps out. Presses the long, tapered fingers of one hand to my cold cheek. “I’m fighting for us.”

  I compress my lips. “Then let’s fight as an us.”

  His eyes slide shut. I get the feeling I’ve said the best thing and the worst thing in one fell swoop.

  But definitely not the thing to change his mind.

  He slides away from me, pushing back into the elevator with a face stamped in determination and a stance stiffened by pure purpose. “I love you, Emma Crist.”

  “Fuck you, Reece Richards.”

  In the silence following the descent of the elevator, I stalk into the penthouse’s living room and plunk my purse and Bendel next to the luggage Zalkon delivered from the airport. I plop onto the couch with a heavy sigh, struggling to listen to advice from my heart. Sagacity that’s been passed down along the ages.

  Don’t go to bed angry.

  It’s so trite but timeless, even Mom likes saying it. But what about when one’s man is a superhuman with electric blood, in denial about his world savior complex? Worse, what happens when one knows he doesn’t give a crap about the fame and fortune of that gig? That his devotion truly stems from a moral calling to set the world right?

  To get trite again, his tortured heart and his burdened soul are both in the right place. He’s just not inviting me to that place.

  I wrestle—okay, throw down a WWE match—with the rumination, even as my exterior starts a weary shuffle to the kitchen to seek out my favorite moping buddies. With a glass of milk, a peeled banana, and a glob of Nutella to dip it in, I hunch over the table in the breakfast nook, fighting not to feel like the girl who wasn’t invited to hang at the mall after school.

  Like Lydia always was.

  Lydia. The thorn in my side but my greatest inspiration, rolled into one athletic, vivacious, and totally sweet package. Yeah, my sister was always everyone’s first pick for those fun excursions…

  No.

  My spine becomes a ramrod as I drop the banana. It splats into the brown topping, as much a fresh mess as my thoughts. There were times that ’Dia got cold-shouldered from the mall too—because the politics of girl packs make Washington, DC, look like Sesame Street—only I never really noticed much because my sister didn’t care.

  My sister, for all the ways she loved embracing the Orange County shimmer-and-shines, would never accept being reassigned to cave duty.

  If she didn’t have an invitation to the party, she’d just write herself one.

  I take a big swig of my milk and swallow it before repeating to myself, “Just write…your own invitation.”

  As I murmur the last word into the stillness of the kitchen, there’s a loud vibration from back in the living room. It’s coming from my purse, still on the floor next to my other bags. I scoop my phone out and smile at the picture of the caller. “Miss Neeta Jain, as I live and breathe.”

  “Miss Emmalina Crist.” My friend’s voice, like a verbal version of a sari from her native land, is colorful but graceful. “Is this a bad time?”

  I let my sigh fill the line. “As much as I wish you were talking to my voicemail right now because I was too busy with other things, I am one-hundred-percent free to speak with you.”

  “Oh, dear.” There’s a soft swish, lending me to think she’s tossing her hair over her shoulder. “That’s what I thought, though was pained about it.” One more meaningful pause. “Reece came back down so fast after you two went up to the penthouse. To be honest, we weren’t expecting to see you two at all. He informed me he would be out of town most of the weekend after picking you up from your trip.”

  “Yes, well…” I inject a dark huff. “The plans changed.”

  “Have you two quarreled?” She adds in a rush, “And I have no right to know if you do not wish to speak about—”

  “Oh, I do wish to speak.” I pace across the room, gazing out over the city through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The twinkling light carpet is restless tonight, as if fighting against the hot winds that got angrier after sundown. I couldn’t think of a better companion for my mood as the Santa Anas whip their heated fury around the sides of the building, making the windows moan. “But more than that, I need some actionable intel.”

  “Information?” Neeta drops into a gleeful whisper. As much as Wade and Fershan are addicted to video rogues, thieves, and gorgons, this woman is a sucker for a good spy adventure. “I’m your inside girl, Emma Peel.” The second she uses her favorite nickname for me, invoking one of the most badass female spies of all time, I know I’ve got he
r on board.

  “And I’m your grateful one.” I’m sincere about it. “Because I’m about to pull you down a rabbit hole so deep you might beg for the nearest exit back out to the looking glass.” I wait for several beats, ensuring the words have a chance to sink into her. “Or, I can limit your involvement to the basics, and you can stay saner and wiser. Think about it hard but not too long. Even seconds aren’t expendable right now.”

  “I’m in.” Her commitment is instant and eager, which means she heard everything I said but the most crucial part. But as I’ve just said, pretty square-on with the summarization of things, even seconds can’t be wasted right now—a concept the woman herself embraces at once. “Just call me Alice—though as long as it’s understood I’m the edgy, ass-kicking Alice from Wade and Fershan’s video game, not the idiot blonde. Not that I don’t have my favorite blondes.”

  I use my laughter for a little bolster while retrieving my running shoes from my luggage. “All right, then, Edgy Alice. Consider yourself forewarned.”

  “Good enough, Emma Peel. I’m on my way up.”

  “Uh-uh,” I rebut. “I’m on my way down. And while I’m handling that, you have some pop-up homework.”

  She breathes in like a kid being given lunch money for the first time. “Do I need to memorize a secret alphabet for our decoders?”

  “Ahhh…no.” I want to laugh again, but she’s really that intent.

  “Wash off my body lotion so the wiretapping tape will stick?”

  “Whoa. Still no.”

  “Practice flipping off the safety on my gun?”

  “You have a gun? And hell no.”

  Her sigh is laced with frustration, but her voice is still eager for adventure. “So what do you need?”

  “Information.”

  “Oh.” And the kid just lost her lunch stash. “Well, all right. If it will help. But I truly don’t know much about her yet, aside from the information on her CV.”