Love Another Day

by Lexi Blake

  Damn, but she was gorgeous.

  Charlie was behind her, dressed as Wonder Woman and looking every inch the superhero. “She’s a Bond girl, Ian.”

  Tag shook his long blond hair. “Don’t know who that is. Only one true fictional super spy and that’s Pierce Craig. Come on, baby. We’ve got some work to do tonight. Brody, before you head in, Adam is going to meet you in the conference room in a while. He’s got questions for you and Ten’s on the ground in Sierra Leone. He’s calling in from there.”

  Charlotte took her husband’s hand and winked Steph’s way. “Have fun.”

  Steph frowned at him. “Why do you get a tux and I get two inches of Lycra and a big knife?”

  He couldn’t help but grin at her. “Because that’s how Bond girls get their Bond, luv. You look absolutely delicious. And I promise there will be people here with far less on. That swimsuit doesn’t even qualify as fet wear. If tonight were different, I would have you in a gloriously tight corset that would push your pretty tits up, and the only other thing you would wear would be a teeny tiny thong that wouldn’t even cover your lovely cheeks.”

  “Put that way, I think I’ll take the swimsuit. Sounds way more comfortable,” she said.

  He moved in close, staring down at her. There was a faint flush to her cheeks that let him know she was aware of him. He wasn’t sure if she was embarrassed or slightly aroused, but he intended to turn her toward arousal. After they dealt with Adam and Ten. He took her hand and started moving toward the conference room. “Who the hell is this Pierce Craig person? And how does Taggart not know who James Bond is?”

  She laughed, the sound magical to his ears. “You don’t pay a lot of attention to pop culture, huh? Serena wrote a book called Love After Death. I’ve been told it sounds suspiciously like Ian and Charlotte’s real love story, complete with a sarcastic, Viking-like hero named Pierce Craig. It was made into a movie. I think Big Tag likes to pretend like he doesn’t know it’s him, but surprisingly enough he talks about how cool Pierce is.”

  “Ah, that thing Kay’s always talking about.” Kayla loved her romance novels and didn’t mind telling off anyone who said they weren’t worthy fiction. “She’s a big fan of Serena’s.”

  “Kay?” Steph kept walking, but her voice had gone stiff.

  Ah, sweet jealousy. “She’s a coworker in London. I think of her like a little sister.”

  He opened the door to the conference room. It was empty. Looked like Adam hadn’t gotten here yet. That was all right with Brody. He didn’t mind having her to himself for a few minutes. It would give him a bit of time to lay out rules for the night’s play.

  “I find the female agents a bit intimidating,” she said, glancing around the conference room. There were a couple of laptops humming along and a printer. “Erin, in particular, scares the crap out of me.”

  “You would like Kay,” he replied. “And Erin and you actually have quite a bit in common. You were both forced to give birth without your men.”

  That was a mistake. He knew it the moment the words left his mouth, and definitely the second he saw fire light in her eyes. “Her man had been stolen away by a crazy doctor who performed experiments on his memory. You’re just an asshole who can’t check his voicemail.”

  He held his hands up in pure defeat. “Yes, I am. I’m a coward who doesn’t deserve you even looking twice at me again, but I intend to make up for that.”

  She shook her head. “We’re not talking about the future. Nothing past tonight or tomorrow.”

  He conceded because the last thing he intended to do tonight was fight with her. “Tonight, I’m afraid all I can think about is how beautiful you are. Are you cold?”

  She shook her head. “Surprisingly no. They keep it warm in here. I’m surprised you’re not hot. Though I have to admit, you look amazing in a tux.”

  Oh, he was hot, but he wasn’t about to change since she seemed to like him all posh. “I’ll wear one more often if you like. Perhaps after all this is over, we can go somewhere nice and fancy.”

  “No talk about the future.”

  “All right, let’s talk about tonight.” He leaned against the conference table. “Do you want to watch or participate?”

  “I’m not sure. I haven’t done anything like this before.”

  “What are your fantasies like?”

  A sweet blush crossed her face. “I don’t know. Private, mostly.”

  She wasn’t getting out of this so easily. “Nothing’s private here. Not really. Oh, there are privacy rooms, but they’re off limits tonight because the royals are staying here for a bit. They’ve been turned into a large suite of rooms for their use.”

  “So we can wait and have sex when we go back to the guesthouse.”

  “If you like.”

  “But you don’t want to wait?”

  “I can wait for as long as you like, but I would rather get you so hot and bothered that you can’t wait to have me inside you. I want to watch a couple of scenes, maybe perform one of our own, and at some point I want you so wet, so damn aroused that you can’t take another second without my cock inside you.”

  She put her hands on her cheeks, a sure sign of her embarrassment. “How can you talk like that?”

  “It’s easy when I’m talking about you,” he admitted. “I think about fucking you all the time. It’s been pretty much all I thought about the last year. And you should know when I use the word fuck, I mean more than that. I think about holding you and kissing you. I think about waking up next to you in the morning and going to sleep with you at night. But I definitely think about getting inside you and making you scream.”

  She turned for a moment, but not before he saw how hard her nipples had gotten against the thin material of her bikini top.

  He moved in behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Normally we would sit down and negotiate a contract about how we’ll move forward.”

  “I signed the contract Jake brought over.” She leaned back against him. “I read it. Most of it. I understand I’m supposed to respect the other patrons and behave in a manner that won’t embarrass my Dominant partner. I’m to be quiet and respectful during scenes and to leave the dungeon floor if I find I cannot be. It also said a bunch of stuff about obeying you that I’m pretending doesn’t bug me.”

  “It’s only on the dungeon floor,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “No one expects you to do it outside this club. Well, unless you’re in danger, and then you’ll obey me or there will be hell to pay.”

  “Because you’re the man?”

  That was one trap he didn’t have to set off. “Because I’m the one who’s been trained to protect. I promise I’ll let you top the hell out of me in the operating room. I mean it, Steph. I expect you to do everything the bodyguards tell you to do if I’m not around. They’re in charge of your safety.”

  “Even Tucker? Because I think I’m way smarter than Tucker. When we left he was pouring chocolate syrup on microwave popcorn. He called it his grand experiment.”

  “Even Tucker,” he replied. “Tucker might seem like an idiot, but he’s actually quite smart and he knows his job. He knows how to protect you and he’ll do what it takes. But we’re not out there in danger right now and we’re definitely not in an operating theatre so that means that I’m in charge.”

  He was satisfied by the shiver that went through her.

  “What did you want to do tonight, Sir?”

  “First, I want you to call me Brody. I don’t like Sirs or Masters. That’s up to each couple, unless the idea of calling me Sir trips your switch and then I’ll allow it.”

  “I like your name,” she admitted. “I like saying it.”

  This was where he needed her to be. Talking about the future put her on her guard, but this was a place where she could be calm and let herself feel. He wanted her to spend all damn night feeling. “Then Brody it is. You’ll say, yes, Brody. I do want you to touch me. Yes, Brody, I like the way your hand spanks my ar
se. Please tie me up, Brody, and blindfold me because I don’t want to think about anything at all except the way your hands and tongue and cock feel.”

  “Yes, Brody.” She turned and looked up at him, her eyes cloudy with desire. “Do I go with the flow or can I make requests?”

  “Always.” He never wanted her to feel like she couldn’t talk to him. Even when they played around with ball gags. “This is play, luv. It’s play that’s meant to help us explore sex. It’s meant to show you what you like and what you don’t, what your boundaries are. It’s also meant to bring us closer, so you can always ask me.”

  “Will you kiss me, Brody?”

  That was one request he would always honor. “Of course. Don’t you ever be afraid to ask me that.”

  He started to lean over, ready to plant his lips on hers and begin the evening right.

  The door came open and Adam Miles strode in wearing a perfectly pressed suit. “Hey, guys. How’s it going? Steph, looking good there. I like it. It’s very Bond girl. The sexy, dangerous type. Feel free to wrap your legs around Brody’s head and try to kill him that way. That would be an awesome scene.”

  All right, he now understood why Big Tag always wanted to kill the bloke. He had the worst timing. “I think we’ll avoid the more dangerous scenes and skip to the part where they’re all safe and have some time to relax.”

  “Boring, but probably your best bet.” Miles walked straight to the larger of the laptops and flipped the lid up. “Let’s make this quick. I’ve got a naughty schoolgirl to discipline and Jake will kick my ass if I make him wait too long. All right, Tennessee Smith. Let’s see if you are where you said you would be.”

  The screen flickered and suddenly filled with bright light and a man with golden brown hair, a lean face, and startling blue eyes. “Miles? That you? Ah, there you are. Well, well, well. Dr. Gibson. You are looking lovely. Is this a pool party or something?”

  “Costume night at Sanctum,” Adam replied.

  “Damn it. I miss all the fun stuff.” Ten Smith had a slow Southern accent and an easy charm that belied what she knew was decades of work for the Central Intelligence Agency. “Ah, well, Faith isn’t ready to play yet anyway. She’s having too much fun with our baby boy.”

  “How is he doing? You named him Grant, right?” Adam asked.

  Everyone was having babies these days. It seemed a new one popped up all the time. Soon Brody was going to need a chart to remember which poop maker belonged to whom. “Congrats, Ten.”

  Ten grinned. “Yes, Grant Matthew Smith. And I hear congrats are in order for you and the doc. Can’t wait to see that boy when we’re back in the States. Now, I went into the clinic. Took a bunch of pictures, but I was surprised by what I saw there.”

  “What did you see?” Steph asked. “Did you find Anya’s body?”

  His head shook. “I saw nothing, Doc. No bodies. Not of your nurse or of the patient you talked about. I also didn’t find any evidence that you had worked on a patient at all. You clean up real nice, Doc.”

  “But I didn’t,” she replied. “It was late and we were tired. I was worried about the patient dying. Anya and I did basic cleanup, but it was still a mess in there. We hadn’t sterilized any of the equipment.”

  “And yet that place was sparkling clean when I walked in. It was like it was sitting there waiting for the next emergency,” Ten explained. “The whole place was like that. You said the men slept in a couple of the cabins, but every one of them was neatly made up. Not a blanket or pillow out of place.”

  “They cleaned up after themselves. They didn’t want to leave any evidence behind which tells me this is serious and not contained to Sierra Leone.” Brody considered the problem. Most mercenary groups didn’t give a crap about making sure they left a place untouched. They were there to destroy. It all came down to who they were working for and what the job was. If the client wanted discretion, then they would attempt to please them, but this level seemed out of place. “Mercenaries don’t usually care, but then this one brought you a journalist. We have to assume the boss, or whoever the boss was working for, is nervous about the press. Maybe our journalist knew something he shouldn’t. And likely about someone important, hence the whole cleanup project.”

  “That was my first thought,” Ten said. “But I’m surprised because of the location of the crime. Sierra Leone is peaceful compared to a bunch of places on the continent. ISIS and al-Qaeda don’t have a big foothold here. Poverty is a problem, but the government is stable.”

  “You think they took Anya’s body?” Steph asked.

  He slipped his hand into hers, satisfied when she didn’t move away from him.

  “All I found was a shoe,” Ten explained. “The nurse’s cabin was the only one where not everything was perfect. The door had been left open and it looks like she lost her shoe while they were taking her out of there. I talked to a couple of the village kids who saw the group as they were leaving town. One of the kids said there was a blonde in the Humvee and she looked scared. I don’t think they killed your girl. I’m going to look into her and make sure there’s no way she’s got something to do with this.”

  “Anya wouldn’t,” Steph shot back. “They’ve got her and I need to figure out what they want and give it to them so we can get her back.”

  “We will,” Brody promised.

  “Bingo,” Adam said, looking up from the second laptop. “I think I’ve got a name. Is this our guy?”

  Steph looked down and the minute she saw that face, she backed up. He moved behind her, letting his arms go around her.

  “Is that him, luv?”

  She nodded. “That’s him. How did you find him?”

  “You found him,” Adam replied. “You let Kori sketch him this afternoon. She’s not as good as an actual sketch artist, but she’s good enough for a piece of revolutionary software.”

  A groan came over the line. Ten was shaking his head. “Stop the self-congratulations, Miles. Who is it?”

  Adam frowned. “But then she wouldn’t understand how perfect the match is. You see I took that sketch Kori made and put it through my own proprietary software. This sucker is why the company Jake, Chelsea, and I are forming along with Si, Jesse, and Phoebe is going to be the premiere missing persons firm of the future.”

  “I don’t care why it’s perfect,” Steph said. “I just want to know his name.”

  A long sigh issued from Adam’s mouth. “Fine, but the source code on this sucker is brilliant and no matter what she says, Chelsea did not take the lead on this.”

  “Adam,” Brody began.

  “His name is Hans de Vries,” Adam said as his fingers clicked on the keyboard. “He’s a Belgian national. He was in their Army.”

  “Aww, I know the man.” Ten groaned over the line. “Damn it. I need to study this more. De Vries left the Army and almost immediately started up a mercenary unit. He’s worked around the African continent and some in the Middle East. He’s usually got about twenty men on his team. I’ve got files on most of the mercenary groups, but they change up pretty fast. I’m never completely current. I need to figure out who he’s working for right now.”

  Brody had worked on the continent enough to have an idea. “If he’s Belgian, he’s likely working for a diamond company.”

  Ten nodded. “Yeah, that was my first thought, too. I think we should expand the search a bit. I would bet that journalist wasn’t actually working on a story in Sierra Leone. Not if de Vries is working for who I think he’s working for. I’ll call Penny and tell her to start asking around Antwerp.”

  “You think they were working for a company?” Steph asked. “Not one of the governments? I’ve seen a lot of the governments hire outside mercenary groups as security.”

  “I don’t think that’s the case here.” Brody’s mind had hooked the likeliest suspect. “In that part of the world, they’re most likely muscle for a corporation. Since they’re Belgian, likeliest bet is some form of resource mining.”


  “Diamonds is what he means,” Ten said, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Antwerp, Belgium, is the diamond capital of the world. Everything runs through the big diamond merchants. If you buy an engagement ring in the suburban US, you can bet it came from Africa and went through Antwerp.”

  “I think you’re right,” Brody said. “We’ll call Penny in the morning. She needs to know we’re searching for someone who was looking into the diamond mines. Maybe the journalist’s editor will know something.”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to get anything off the sketch of the journalist.” Adam stood up, shrugging back into his jacket. “I’ll narrow the parameters, but given the damage to his face, it could be difficult. Pair that with the fact that sometimes journalists go off the grid for months at a time and we’re going to have trouble. Our best bet is Penny. If he wasn’t supposed to report in for a while, no one is missing him yet. And we have zero idea what his nationality was.”

  “He never spoke to me in English,” Steph said. “He said something to me while I was working on him, but I have no idea what it meant.”

  “I’m betting on European,” Ten replied. “Given what I think he was researching, I’m betting these boys spoke a similar language. I’ll start poking around here. My bet is he started somewhere in the south and was trying to make his way back to Europe. They caught him in Sierra Leone.”

  “And I was the closest clinic,” Steph surmised. “But why does de Vries think I have something?”

  “Likely he was trying to get information out of the journalist and he thinks you’re the only one the man could have passed it to,” Ten replied. “Look, I’m going to make a few calls. I don’t understand exactly why this has escalated the way it did. That’s not how these men tend to work. They’ll do their jobs, but they try to keep things quiet. They don’t want the kind of scrutiny that would come from killing a journalist. Unless whatever he had could kill corporate profits. I would bet we’re not looking for a diamond. We’re looking for information. We’re looking for his report.”