by Morgan Black
I shook my head. “My mom has the kids. She’s fine. She and Fitz are better spies than you and I will ever be and ten times the assassins.” The image of my mother peeling the flesh from a man who was still alive would haunt me all the days of my life.
He nodded, wincing as well. We both would never recover from the viciousness of my mother and Fitz. Thank God they were on our side.
His eyes darted to the ground. “This is going to be another human trafficking case, Evie. I don't want you to see it.” I couldn't help but wonder if that was really what he was worried about. Or if he just didn't want me there because he knew we were nearing the end of us.
Granted, the memory of rescuing children from human trafficking still haunted me. It was something I would NEVER recover from. It was a stain that permanently dyed my heart and soul black.
Not all of me, just the parts that had been previously innocent or naive in any way. They were gone, completely. But the idea of backing out because it would be hard, like I was some sort of delicate female, actually made me annoyed. The stubborn bitch inside of me dug her heels in. “I’m coming.” I had a terrible feeling this was more about me seeing Servario and less about human trafficking.
My heartbeat picked up its pace with just the mention of Servario inside my thoughts. He was the one bad thing I wanted for myself but being a mom and a responsible human being prevented us from ever testing that water out. He was the bad guy and I was the good girl and never the twain shall meet, not in this world. Not even by accident. I had to stop those accidental fuckings.
I glanced at the tense look in Coop’s steely-blue eyes and nodded, not so much at him but just in general.
“You need to consider what we will see when we get there.” His voice was firm as if he were giving me an order.
I shook my head. “I’m going to take it as it comes and pray we aren’t put into a situation that's worse than the others we’ve already survived.”
He stood abruptly, not looking pleased by my choice, but it was still my choice. He might have been my superior at work, but I could tell the order was coming from the guy having the relationship with me. As my boss he had no reason at all to try to make me stay behind. Not since I saved his ass last time we were counting.
We wiped down the room, still living in the awkward silence we had started the day out with. We left it stripped and ready for housekeeping. We looked like we might be polite and helping the hotel staff out, but honestly, we didn't like leaving behind traces of ourselves.
When we boarded the plane I was fortunate to be sitting next to an older lady who was content to show me pictures of her grandkids and tell me about the garden she had grown in the summer. She reminded me of my mother, before my mother confessed to being an international spy and assassin.
Now I saw her more as something from a movie. She wasn’t soft, she wasn’t sweet, and she didn't ever let anyone off the hook. The whole thing was insane and bizarre, and yet somehow true. Finding out my parents were both spies was about the biggest lie I had ever been the victim of. Bigger than the affairs my husband had before he died. Bigger than the lies the government told the rest of the world. Bigger than the lie I told myself about my feelings for a man who was too dangerous for my own good.
Coop had taken the flight before me, just an hour earlier. He was meeting Luce and Jack in London at Heathrow and meeting me in Norwich. We were then flying from Norwich to Dubai on a private jet.
It would have been exciting had it been for any other reason than the one we were traveling for. No one ever said being a spy was fun, no one who actually did the job. The rest of the world saw James Bond and Mission Impossible and believed it was all glamour, sex, and disguises. The movies rarely filled people in on the dirty side, like letting a piece-of-shit cartel rat put his dick in your mouth because it served the greater good. The image of stabbing the last man who had done that to me made me feel ever so slightly less dirty.
My mind drifted as the older woman rattled on and eventually I was asleep.
When I woke we were in Norwich.
I cleared customs as Barbara Newton, a Canadian who was on vacation and visiting her great aunt who was on her deathbed. When I rounded the corner to the baggage claim, my bag instantly caught my eye. Not because it was lime-green and stuffed to the max with vacation clothing, but because the hand holding it made my thighs tighten.
His firm grip and large body made me quiver at the sight. My gaze didn't lift to his face; I didn't need to see it or the smug look upon it.
I knew his hand well enough to know exactly who was holding my bag.
Glancing around, I wasn't certain what my options were. The man holding my bag was the man who also, coincidentally, held my heart captive. He was the ultimate package and not in the way you would expect or want. He was the sort of man who could make you want him—make you choose him over considerably smarter choices. Everything about him was too much. His intense kind of love was the type you dreamt of and avoided at the same time. It burned too hot for you to survive it. The mystery surrounding him was the appetizer, something to wet your pallet and get the games started in your head. Just when you thought you had him figured out, he did something incredibly evil or saintly or sweet. It was confusing in every way. He took opposite stances on discussions regular people wouldn't ever consider thinking.
His name was Servario, Gustavo Servario, and he was a very bad man in all the right ways.
Before my eyes drifted farther than his hands on my bag, he turned and walked from the airport. That was his way of telling me I had to come with him.
He was the double agent every woman wanted to date, or just fuck. But he was also the international millionaire bad boy that every woman in the world, who was in the know, wanted to love. And just for me, secretly and on a level of down-low I didn't even understand, he was the man who had been in love with me for years, watching from the shadows and protecting me.
My footsteps followed him, my vagina tried to convince my feet to run, and my heart desperately wanted to turn and go the other way.
Being around him was nearly impossible. He was the choice I was never going to make. I was a mom and daughter and an agent. Those didn't match his cover—international arms dealer who dabbled in human trafficking and drugs.
It wouldn't have been so bad had he not loved his cover like a real job, but he did.
Every step my ballet flats tapped across the airport and then the parking lot went in the wrong direction in my opinion.
When I got to the black SUV with the tinted windows and the door wide open, I contemplated running in the other direction. Being alone in a car with him was never a simple car ride.
Taking a large, deep, dissatisfying breath, I climbed inside and let the driver close the door. I didn't turn my head to look into Servario’s hazel-green eyes. I knew what lurked in there. He had a history of speaking with a stare. In my peripheral I could see his dark hair was a little long for him. Normally, he kept it short but it seemed to be playing with his ear, resting there with promises of feathery tickles. His skin was paler than normal. Usually he was tanned. Being Italian-Serbian made him a candidate for a year-round summer glow. He wore pale-gray slacks, like he had the first time we met. The way they fit him, you knew they were custom made by the very best Italian tailor.
His shoes were deep-burgundy Italian leather, shiny to the point I could see the back of the seat in the reflection. He wore a steel-colored dress shirt, opened at the top so you got a glimpse of the places your fingers naturally wished to explore.
The man was sex. He breathed sex. Lived for sex. Made you obsess about the type of sex you would have with him. The heat radiating from his body next to mine made me uncomfortable in a variety of ways. The main one was the way my thighs clenched together and my vagina begged me to just strip down and let him force me into positions I wasn't comfortable with.
“Hello, Evie,” he spoke softly but the confidence was there, even in a whispered greeting.
I nodded, forcing my eyes to focus on the back of the seat in front of me. “Hello, Servario.”
His hand moved from the bag. It didn't pause or hesitate. It moved directly to my leg, landing on my knee. He burned me through my pants as he trailed his fiery touch up the inside of my thigh. His hand tickled as it climbed up my leg. My lips parted, my heart pounded, and my insides twitched with the temptation he represented. He wasn't the serpent in the tree, he was the apple.
When he reached the top of my leg, the highest point he could inside of my thigh, he brushed his pinkie finger along my groin. I sucked my breath like a fool, letting him know how desperate I had been for his forbidden touch. He lowered the finger again, delicately and yet with enough force that I could feel every small touch he placed upon my underwear and what was beneath.
He didn't speak or tell me how much he had missed me in the days we had been apart. He didn't try to convince me to run away with him. He didn't offer me the world. He was painfully realistic in what he offered—momentary bliss and then forced abandonment. And for whatever disgusting reason, I wanted both. The ecstasy of the fucking was just as sweet as the longing for the next time. I actually enjoyed the torture of waiting for the moment we would be alone and he would be inappropriately forward and convincing.
His finger ran up and down me, hearing nothing more than the initial gasp from me. I nearly held my breath trying not to let him see how obviously affected I was by even the slightest touch.
We drove a short distance to a sight I still hadn’t grown accustomed to, a private runway. Servario didn't like anyone to know where or when he was traveling. He liked to keep his movements unpredictable. His private jet was something I had grown familiar with in the last few months as we had become intertwined in each other’s lives, professionally and privately.
When the driver stopped the SUV, I glanced at him, finally taking his beauty in and letting my eyes wander his handsome face. “New plane?”
He nodded, smirking. I knew what he was thinking. His eyes were practically giving me the details aloud. He licked his lips, taking his bottom lip in his mouth. “I’m going to have to give you a tour of this one.”
My insides jumped. I nearly abandoned my bag and ran from the runway, screaming and begging for mercy. The first time I had ever been truly fucked by a man, it was on his last plane. It was the first time I knew what it meant to be consumed by a person.
Clearly my expression had answered his request. He laughed, nodding. “Relax, Evie. You know how much you like to fly.” He climbed from the SUV on his own accord as the driver got the door for me. Servario carried my lime-green luggage on board, not looking back to see if I had fled into the forest.
I sighed, hating how predictable I was, and followed him onto the new jet plane.
It was smaller than the previous one, seating only a dozen. The back of the plane seemed to be too large for it to end in a door. I had to assume there was another room back there.
I sat in a seat, not near the one he had put my luggage on, and buckled myself in. When the door was closed the engines started and I turned my head, assuming it was now safe to talk. “Where the hell is everyone else?”
“They’re coming. We will meet them in Dubai. I have a meeting and you will be my assistant.” He smiled from the bar at the back where he was mixing a few drinks.
My eyes narrowed. “What? Does Coop know?”
His smile turned into a grin, a grim one. “He does now. I imagine the orders have come down the line to him.”
His words brought a sigh from my lips. “You have to be kidding me. You mean he and Luce and Jack will be coming to Norwich, waiting for me?”
He shook his head. “No. They were found in Heathrow and redirected from there.”
I turned in my seat, staring at the movie screen at the front of the plane. It was a wide-screen TV. Servario had never seemed like much of a movie buff but the large screen made me think otherwise. There was a hallway at the front of the plane, obviously the pilot’s area and maybe a washroom.
I folded my arms as Servario came and sat next to me, placing the cocktail on my tray. He sipped his scotch, rattling the ice in the glass. The tension was thick enough to get lost in. The heat of his body next to mine in the seat was enough to drive me to naked madness. I turned sharply. “Why are you doing this?”
He shrugged, sipping his drink. “I thought maybe we could talk.”
I rolled my eyes. “You don't talk.”
He reached into the back of the seat in front of me, pulling a folder from the pocket in the chair and placing it in front of me. I stared at it for a long second, worried as to what I would find inside.
He seemed pleased with himself. It dawned on me then, he had pulled the folder from this seat, like he knew I would sit here. I hated being predictable.
I lifted my glass, chugging back the cocktail and passing it to him as I opened the folder. The last time anyone gave me a folder, it was to show me images of my husband and my best friend having an affair. Needless to say, the idea of opening folders made me sick to my stomach.
When I lifted the beige cover of the folder I paused. The image was one I didn't expect. I turned to him, almost scared to ask, “Why do you have a picture of Coop’s sister?” She was the one I had assumed was one of us, an agent, but Coop had sworn up and down that she wasn't.
He didn't answer right away. He looked into my eyes, searching for something. “She works for a man I know. Just thought that perhaps you might want to know about this, before something unfortunate occurs as a result.”
My mouth went dry. “She’s an agent?” I knew it!
He shook his head. “She’s not. She’s sort of the opposite of that.”
My mouth got drier. I reached for his scotch glass, taking it in my hands and lifting it to my lips without taking my eyes from his. “She’s a double agent?”
He shook his head again.
“FUCK!”
“Don't swear, Evie,” he warned as he nodded, realizing I understood what he was trying to say. She was a bad guy, selling information to the wrong people. She and Coop came from a long line of agents. And Rachel was the one sister I assumed was one of us. She just made me think it. Coop believed her cover story of being a clumsy, whimsical, artsy photographer. I think they all believed it. I think I was the first person to see past it, see it for the act it was.
“So she sells secrets, like James had been doing?” James, my dead husband, who had betrayed the world and me with it.
Servario’s stare answered for him. He neither nodded nor spoke.
“How long has this been going on?”
He shrugged. “I know the man she works for. I would assume a while.”
I almost gagged. My insides burned for him—for Coop. I knew this pain. I knew what it felt like to know the person you trusted and loved had not only betrayed you but endangered your life and the lives of millions—billions.
“Why are you showing this to me?” If I knew anything about Servario it was that his desire to fuck with me was stronger than any other desire.
He pressed his deliciously sexy lips together and sighed. “Do you recall when I hung you out to dry, as you so eloquently put it, and left you to fight for yourself so I could save your children?”
I nodded, recalling hating him for leaving me to die but stunned he had been worried about my kids. He had left me to survive on my own, something I hated about him.
“Well, I moved quickly, ensuring the kids and your mother were safe. I discovered Rachel was responsible for your locations being leaked. She is the reason your cover was nearly blown. She was also the reason you were on that boat to fight for your life. She sold you and Coop out to James.”
I paused. The information on the phone—the phone he had traded me for once. “This was the secret on the phone that you traded me to James for? You wanted his informant?”
He nodded slowly. “She double-crossed us all in Split. You were meant to be t
aken to a brothel and sold into sex slavery. I had guys there who would break you free and help you kill everyone in the brothel. When you never showed up I used the new information I had to discover Rachel, Coop’s sister, had sold us out. She was working with James at the time. He sold her out for you, not caring about anyone but himself. He wanted you more than anything else.”
My insides twisted into a knot. “How could you let us go to Coop’s parents’ house and not tell me?”
“I was watching. I was hoping she would slip up but she never did. I needed all the evidence I could gather on her; young Cooper isn’t going to trust me just because he has to. He will think I’m up to no good.”
I tilted his glass up and finished off his scotch with a shiver. As I brought it down he grabbed my face. The kiss he forced on me was unexpected, and yet the most welcome feeling in the world.
The glass fell to the floor as the jet plane took off. Servario cupped my face desperately, sucking my tongue and caressing with his. Our mouths fought the force of the takeoff, frantically clinging to each other. It was madness.
I was dating Coop and despised cheating, but in my heart it didn't feel like cheating. Servario had told me he loved me long before any claim on my heart was made by Coop.
I had told Servario I loved him too. He had tried to force me to take it back but I couldn't. I loved him, even though he was seedy and wrong for me. He unbuckled my seat belt and his, lifting me into the air and walking, stumbling, to the back of the plane.
He pushed us through the door I had pondered, violently slamming it with a rough kick. I broke from the intense kiss to see a small bed and a closet full of women’s clothing. I sighed, “You put a bed back here?” My mood started to drop off.
He nodded, his eyes filled with passion and his lips moving as if he were going to say something but he didn't.
