I rolled her suddenly, taking her off guard. Or perhaps she just let me. I’d never truly know with Charlie. Her back hit the mattress, her head plonked down on the pillow, blonde hair spreading out like a halo. And then my hands were cupping her face as my hips rolled into position and the head of my cock found her wet.
“Adam,” she said on a breath of expelled air.
“Who are you?” I asked softly, bringing her face to mine and making her look me in the eyes while she answered.
She blinked. I waited for the wall to come down, for her to hide her emotions. But then she closed her eyes, and even though I couldn’t see the grey, I saw everything. Her pain. Her fear. Her confusion.
Oh, baby. You don’t know yet, do you?
I reached down and gripped her thigh, and then brought her leg up high around my waist. Her eyes sprang open, stormy grey, so unsure, so uncertain. I held her gaze, let her see me. See everything. If she wanted to, she could have looked into my very soul.
This is me catching you.
Then I rocked forward and entered her in one smooth, tight, deliciously wet glide.
Air burst out of me in a small grunt. She matched me; breathless. Our eyes held, our bodies stilled, but nothing could prevent this from happening. No epiphany. No opening of souls. Nothing.
Fuck, this woman could have it all. And I gave it to her willingly.
Me. My body. My heart and soul. It was hers. And I showed her. Moving tenderly, slowly, drawing out the moment, the feeling, the sensation of her gripping me so fucking tightly and working so fucking hard to never let me go. I pulled back to the tip, my eyes locked on hers, infinitely grateful that she didn’t look away, and then thrust forward. Slightly harder. A little more purposefully. Expelling her breath all over again.
I didn’t let her have a moment to catch it. Pulling back; slow, sweet, tenderly, I then thrust forward on a firm, hard rock of my hips. Again and again.
Her hands came down and cupped my arse. Anchoring herself or drawing me closer, I couldn’t be sure.
But her eyes never left my face. Never left me.
There’s nothing more honest and open than staring into the eyes of your lover while you have sex. It’s deeper than simply fucking. It’s more intense than any words could ever convey. It’s real. It’s a moment that can’t be replicated in any other way. It’s personal and intimate and… sweet. How much sweetness has Charlie had in her life?
How much had Charisse?
“Who are you?” I whispered, my cock pushing forward with a hard thrust and then withdrawing on a slow, smooth glide. “Who are you, firecracker?”
“Don’t ask,” she whispered back, her hands clutching me tighter, her legs drawing me harder against her frame.
“I’ll never stop asking.”
She closed her eyes.
It damn well nearly broke something in me.
Charlie couldn’t be pushed. She’d had too many people do that to her in the past. If I wanted Charlie, I needed to be patient. But fucked if I knew how to do that.
But I’d give her today. This moment. Just this one time. I’d give her her secrets and catch her when she falls. Because Charlie would fall; I was fucking sure of that one fact.
Charlie was meant to be with me. It’s all I could think as I picked up pace and started to love her with every ounce of urgency in me. It’s all I could cling to when my mind flitted briefly to what waited for us outside this bedroom door. It’s all I could hope for when I realised my hunt wasn’t over yet.
My prey hadn’t been caught.
Fuck, I wanted this woman. Did she have any idea how impossible she’d just made it for me to walk away?
“Adam!” she called as she came apart in my arms; a glimpse of honesty in amongst a shield of lies.
Her body convulsed around me; I watched on stunned as her face took on a blissful façade. Beautiful. Stunning. Such a fucking turn on.
And because this wasn’t easy. Because Charlie was making me work for it. Perfect. So fucking perfect.
Maybe I didn’t need her to be Charisse. Maybe I just needed her to be whoever she wanted to be.
Maybe I just needed her to be mine.
I came in a body quaking wave of fucking unimaginable bliss, already thinking of what I’d do next to claim her.
Already aware that I’d, well and truly, been fucking caught.
Chapter 32
But It Couldn’t Be Mine
Charlie
I wasn’t meant to fall in love. I was meant to do a job. Get in, get out. Take no prisoners. But somehow I was falling for Adam.
Or had I already fallen and not been aware? From the very first moment, when my eyes met his and my tongue froze and I had no idea what was happening all around me. Had I fallen in the basement garage of ASI and only now realised how far the fall had been?
Nothing had gone as planned on this assignment since. The Director aside, I’d been made in under 24 hours. I’d never compromised an operation that quickly before. Never.
And then the Maraetai Wharf. The thrill that seemed monumental. The immediate need to protect him afterwards from what I’d assumed was Caleb’s GPS tracker on his Ducati.
The signs had been there. I’d just failed to read them.
I was in love with Adam Savill and probably had been from the very first day I’d met him.
Who does that?
Clearly, I do.
Who would have thought?
His hot, sated body lay down the side of mine. His chest rising and falling a little too swiftly. That hadn’t been fucking. That hadn’t been just sex. I wasn’t certain what it had been, but it had been stupendous. Simply out of this world.
And when had I ever thought sex was out of this world?
When Adam did it. That’s when.
It left me feeling on edge, when the orgasm he’d given me should have relaxed for a fortnight. Too many thoughts whirring around inside my brain; I had to work hard not to show how they affected me.
Because everything affected me now days. Every fucking little thing.
I rolled off the bed and padded across the carpet to the bathroom. I didn’t look back, even though I would’ve bet my substantial bank balance on the fact that he was watching. I shut the door; sending a message I hoped he’d heed. I couldn’t face him so soon after that. After what we’d shared. I couldn’t let him see the real me.
And the real me was staring out of the bathroom mirror, bedhead hair messy, flushed skin, wide eyes, thin strip for lips. I tried to smile. It didn’t fucking work. I tried to remove all emotion from my façade. That failed too. I looked like a woman who’d been well fucked and had just lost her favourite puppy.
The dichotomy made me snort.
And then I noticed the hickey.
I turned my head, letting the light shine down on the bruising. Red and puffy and so fucking obvious it made me laugh. Holy hell but the man had a sense of humour.
My hand came up, fingers touching the spot, feeling the slight tenderness. I lowered them and let out a long breath of air in defeat.
I was in love with Adam Savill. Even the sight of his rudimentary possessive mark made me feel fucking warm and fuzzy on the inside.
I closed my eyes, leaned my hands against the bench, and hung my head. This wouldn’t do. This wouldn’t do at all. My life was never meant to have this kind of complication. Was never meant to carry the burden of a man I loved.
What would the Director do if he knew what Adam meant to me?
What would any number of the people and organisations I’d put behind bars do if they found out?
I let a small sound of distress out, and then turned to the shower stall and started it running. I had one choice and one choice only. I needed to lie.
No one, not even Caleb and Ava, could know that I’d fallen.
Not even Adam himself.
It was for his protection, I told myself, as I climbed under the scorching spray. It was in order to save his life.
I let the water wash away the tears. The sound of heated spray drown out the soft sobs. I let the steam hide the trembling in my fingertips from even me. And I pulled my walls back around me. Pulled on everything I’d ever learnt.
And by the time I stepped out of the bathroom - dressed, ready, calm - no one would have known I’d left my heart behind on the floor of an ASI bathroom shower stall.
No one.
Adam had disappeared, but I found him easily enough. In control. With every other person in ASI, except the spies. My exclusion smarted for a moment. But only a moment. I was Charlie again, not Charisse.
“We think they’ve arrived in the city,” Nick said as I shut the door behind me.
“Who exactly are ‘they?’” Did the Director bring more than just Mal? How many of my fellow colleagues would I have to kill?
“Two men. Private jet at Ardmore airstrip, not Auckland International,” Eric advised, pulling up surveillance footage. It wasn’t clear. The shot was poor quality and taken from some distance away. But I would have recognised the larger man in the photo easily. His face was ingrained on my soul.
“That’s the Director. I don’t know the second man, but I assume he’s my handler. Mal.”
“You don’t know your own handler?” Koki asked.
I speared the Asian with a glance. He held firm, but Brook beside him flinched slightly. I was back on form.
“Even his voice may have been disguised and we only ever talked over the phone.”
Someone whistled; low, shocked. A twist of my head had me identifying Ben. The big Māori threw me a look of challenge. He wasn’t put-off in the least by my impassive stare.
“I’ve checked all your social media sites,” Amber declared, taking it upon herself to offer a buffer. Part of me admired her courage. Another part just thought her mad. “Nothing new to speak of. Your dead drop is clean as well. But there’s a message on your Department email inbox.”
She brought up a screen and I felt myself pause. It wasn’t on my laptop. She hadn’t hacked through the interface there. She’d gone in, on ASI’s own system, and somehow broken through the extensive and formidable firewalls at New Zealand’s highest security ranking agency. It was impressive, but only confirmed my earlier thought of her being mad.
“You’ve got some balls,” I admitted, walking across the strangely silent room, drawn to the Department’s seal.
“Amber is our secret weapon,” Nick offered, moving to shadow me as I approached the wall of screens and the woman sitting before them. I noticed Jason and Eric on one side move closer as well. A flash of dark colours had me swinging my gaze to the left, spotting Adam as he came into my line of sight.
I looked back toward the screen before I allowed myself to register anything more than his presence. I wasn’t entirely sure what would happen if I looked him in the eye.
“She’s not so secret anymore,” I said evenly, as though I wasn’t struggling to keep my head above water.
“Are you going to tell them?” Jason demanded.
I did look at the Captain. Him I could stare down any day.
“I don’t need to. You’ve already been tracked.”
“I haven’t spotted any tails,” Amber advised, tapping away quickly on a keyboard. “The hack was clean.”
There wasn’t time to argue this. Amber Shaw was good, I’d known that. I’d read it in her dossier. Maybe she had come away clean.
But I doubted it.
“What’s the message say?” I asked, returning my attention to the inbox displayed on the largest screen.
“You want to open it in front of everyone in this room?” Nick asked.
I smiled; it felt right. If I aimed it at Brook, he’d probably blanch.
“Don’t be coy, Anscombe. You’ve already read it.”
He smiled back; it was as chilling as mine.
Amber hit a key and the email message opened.
Well, they were persistent, I’d give them that. But they lacked variety.
Tell her I'm coming. Tell her it’s time to face the truth. Veritas Lux Mea. There's nowhere to hide.
“Mean anything to you?” Eric asked, and the way he asked it - carefully, softly, as if he didn’t want to frighten the fawn - made me uneasy. Made me feel entirely too ill.
I forced myself to not rub my stomach as I so desperately wanted to do. I forced myself to face Eric and see what that gentle tone actually meant.
Concern. That’s what it meant and for a moment I was well and truly surprised.
“What does Veritas Lux…?” Brook started, only to have Eric raise a hand and abruptly say, “Don’t voice it aloud.”
My eyes met the piercing green of Eric’s and then I seemed unable to breathe.
“Sit down, Charlie,” Nick said quietly at my side, presenting a chair for me to take. “We’ve found your trigger.”
“My trigger,” I whispered, the room beginning to spin. Veritas Lux Mea. The truth enlightens me.
Son of a fucking bitch!
I’d been PSYOP’d, all right. I’d been brainwashed since I was five and couldn’t even remember. And the fucking bastards had the gall to use these words?
The truth enlightens me.
I was going to kill him. I was going to watch him fucking die.
“What happens if someone says the words?” Adam asked into the stunned silence.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Eric replied, eyes still target locked on mine as though expecting me to explode.
Maybe I would. Maybe we should test it. I opened my mouth and Eric was in front of me, fingers pressed to my lips.
In the next second, he was across the room, thrust up against the wall, every particle of air that he possessed pushed out of his lungs, as Adam’s enraged face came all up and ugly in his mug; teeth bared, lips snarling.
“Easy, ehoa,” Ben rumbled, stepping up to his side. “Just lookin’ out for her, that’s all.”
“We’ve got no idea what will happen if someone says the words aloud,” Eric said steadily, not fighting to get free of Adam’s uncompromising hold. “Even if she says them herself.”
“That would be a pretty poor trigger,” I pointed out, feeling strangely detached from the moment. “I’m sure I’ve seen a movie where someone said those exact words.”
“Maybe they’ve got to be in your presence,” Brook offered.
I shook my head. “Mind control doesn’t work like that.”
“Mind control?” Adam demanded, still holding Eric against the wall, but now looking over his shoulder at me. I didn’t meet his eyes.
“An invasive form of PSYOPS,” I replied, staring at the words on the screen. “Involving methodologies to manipulate people’s mental states and alter brain functions.”
Silence which seemed weighted; weighing down on my shoulders as everyone in the room stared at me with mounting horror.
“How?” Abi asked; her soft voice somehow cutting through the thickness that had made it hard to breathe.
I turned my head towards her; used her steady pale blue eyes to anchor me. Sucking in much needed air.
“Surreptitious use of drugs,” I murmured. “LSD and other chemicals.” Another breath in. A slow release out. “Hypnosis. Sensory deprivation.” Breathe, just breathe, Charlie. “Isolation. Torture. Verbal and…” A soft exhalation of air. “…sexual abuse.”
“Motherfucker!” Adam exclaimed, removing his hand from Eric’s shirt and stepping away. He ran shaking fingers through his hair. Messing up what was already a blatant display of post-sex ruffles. I thought perhaps he’d not combed it on purpose.
Staking his claim.
I looked away.
“Jesus,” Koki said into the silence.
Eric leaned back against the bench before the wall of screens, directly in front of me. Arms crossed over his chest, worry evident in his gaze.
“What do you think they might have intended for you?” he asked, and there was no censure there. Just a troubled look c
ouched in an offer of care.
I glanced around the rest of the room. None of them looked frightened anymore. None of them looked at me with pity or disgust. There was a sense of anger simmering in the multi-coloured irises around me. A feeling of camaraderie and rage on my behalf.
My eyes found the icy blue of Nick’s. But they didn’t seem so chilled anymore. He held my gaze steadily, crossed his arms over his chest, just like Eric had, just like Ben and Koki and Brook and Abi. Unity that stance said. Don’t fuck with us or ours, it shouted.
We’ve got you, it promised.
I turned to look at Adam. He met my eyes, his hands fisted at his sides, but the same message conveyed in his steady look.
I’ll catch you. You already have, Stalker.
What was I to do with this?
“Charlie?” Nick pressed. “Any idea how this could go?”
I looked back at the words on the screen, feeling the bile rise as soon as my eyes alighted on the Latin phrase.
Veritas Lux Mea.
“It’s personal,” I said. Shuffling started up around the room. “If Caleb has a trigger, it won’t be the same.”
“It wouldn’t make sense to use the same word or phrase,” Eric offered. “But you may all have one.”
I nodded. Undoubtedly we did. As far as I knew, we’d all been orphaned at one stage or another when young.
Fucking orphans. They’re a dime a dozen and no one gives a flying fuck about them.
“But the phrase will be personal,” I stressed. “Important in some way or fashion to each one of us.”
“Then how is this phrase personal to you, Charlie?” Nick asked.
I looked back at the words. Forced myself to face them. Own them. They were mine and mine alone. Why?
The truth enlightens me.
“It’s got something to do with my past.”
A prolonged stretch of silence. And then, as if by some unseen signal, Amber jumped toward her keyboard and started typing.
“On it!” she said, conviction making the beautiful brunette seem fierce.
“I’ll question our guest spooks,” Jason offered, starting for the door. “You never know, they might have something to add.”
Sweet Seduction Secrets (Sweet Seduction, Book 8): A Love At First Sight Romantic Suspense Series Page 28
