by Helena Maeve
Sound filled the inside of the car. Ulysses wriggled closer, digits slipping through Robin’s wetness as he sought his hole. It was a head trip, a disconnect between what his eyes registered and his hands felt, but one look at Robin’s flushed face was enough to help him make sense of it.
Ulysses entered him with a single finger, breath rushing out of him at the thought of stroking Robin open until he could take his cock. “Fuck, you’re so tight…”
“Been a while,” Robin mumbled, bucking into his hand. Heaving breaths spilled from his lips. “Don’t stop.” It was an order, not a plea. Just in case Ulysses had the smallest doubt, Robin curled his fist around his forearm, holding him in place.
Cock throbbing in the confines of his trousers, Ulysses tried to keep up a steady rhythm. The sensation of Robin’s inner muscles pulling him in was indescribable. He looked all the sexier for it as he raced to a gasping, whimpering climax. His hips arched completely off the seat, spine curving like a bow.
Ulysses slid an arm around his waist and pulled Robin into his lap, cradling him close as orgasm ravaged his body.
He would’ve gone on stroking him with slick fingers were it not for Robin seizing his wrist and stopping him short. Aftershocks sparked beneath his skin in time with the staccato thump of his heartbeat. Ulysses pressed a kiss into his hair, nuzzling into the warm curve of his neck until the cresting pleasure subsided.
At length, Robin turned his head, meeting his eyes as best he could.
“Is this weird for you?”
Ulysses shook his head. “It’s the most normal I’ve felt in twenty-four hours.”
He thought he spied a small, rueful smile on Robin’s lips, but it might have been a trick of moonlight.
“You should…” Robin wiped a hand over his brow. “You should head back in there. They might come looking.”
“You didn’t seem so worried about that a minute ago.”
“Think the flirting’s supposed to come before the shag.”
Perhaps, but Ulysses was still keenly aware of Robin’s cunt throbbing and he didn’t care to dredge up his earlier panic.
Robin squirmed in his lap, triggering a startled gasp. “Ah, now I get it.”
“You don’t have to—”
The protest died on Ulysses’ lips.
Whatever agency he answered to, Robin had obviously been trained to get in and out of holds. He twisted seamlessly on the back seat, one hand inside Ulysses’ pants before Ulysses even knew what was happening.
Air tangled in his throat when Robin squeezed down around his cock.
“Kind of name is Ulysses, anyway?” Robin asked conversationally. “Your parents’re into James Joyce?”
Ulysses squeezed his eyes shut, trying to get his lungs to work.
“Look at me,” Robin whispered into his ear. “Look at me. That’s right… You want to know who I am, don’t you? You and all your fucking questions. Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone, huh?”
“I don’t. I don’t—” Ulysses tipped his head back, hot breath puffing out of his lungs.
He’d been on edge since they picked him up at the hotel. He needed this. Fuck, did he ever need this.
Release lashed through him just as Robin ducked down low, sliding out of his lap, and wrapped his sweet, wicked mouth around the head of Ulysses’ length. He barely had to swirl his tongue over the glans for Ulysses to thrust up, bucking into his orgasm with a guttural moan.
It was a long moment before Robin pulled away, nonchalantly wiping at his lips with the back of a hand. “There. Cum stains would’ve blown your cover.”
“My…what?” Ulysses panted. Two-thirds of his being was still floating high in the stratosphere. Higher brain function was among them.
Robin tucked him back into his pants, then fastened his own jeans and sat back.
“You want to make it out of this alive, we’re gonna have to work together.” He reached between the leather upholstery and Ulysses’ ass, fumbling for only a second before he plucked out the autographed coaster from his back pocket. “What do you say?” he purred, eyes half-lidded. “Let me save both our necks?”
Ulysses swallowed hard.
This, he realized, had been the play all along.
Chapter Five
“São Paolo. That’s what he said?”
“Among other things,” Ulysses confirmed. Beyond the windshield, that evening’s last ferry to Dover was making ready for departure.
His driver tapped long fingers against the steering wheel, idly keeping time with The Smiths. “Such as?”
“Oh, the usual ‘with us or against us’ rubbish. Said you’d kill me if I cooperate and you’ll kill me if I don’t… He also said that this is some sort of inter-agency crusade.” Ulysses looked away from the smudge of white ship against gray clouds. “Is it?”
The tapping stopped.
“The most important thing now,” his companion advised, “is to go back to your life and forget you ever knew Samuel Isbell.”
“I don’t know him,” Ulysses repeated for umpteenth time. He had no illusions about being heard. He was an accomplice in the eyes of the law, despite knowing next to nothing about the crimes at stake.
When the law wore a dark suit and spoke in riddles, it was unlikely to care for such details.
His driver smiled. “Then you have nothing to worry about. Britain has a new prime minister, you are home free and the weather forecast for the coming week is all sun. Oh, by the way, are you planning on running with the UKIP story?”
Ulysses frowned, feeling as though he’d missed a step or ten. “What UKIP story?”
“Ah, you haven’t heard…” His driver shrugged. “I suppose you have been abroad for some time.”
One of his accomplices opened Ulysses’ door.
“Have a safe trip, Mr. Leach.” It was the kind of frosty farewell a butler on Downton Abbey might deliver, spoken by a man who had more in common with Tony Soprano.
“You know,” Ulysses mused, getting out, “this is how people like me end up devoting their lives to exposing people like you.”
“Freedom of the press does guarantee you that right,” the spook agreed, “but we would advise against it.”
The door slammed shut before Ulysses could get another word in. His reflection in the tinted glass wasn’t especially encouraging. It was just as well.
He snatched his shoulder bag from the boot and turned his back to his countrymen. Up ahead, the ferry was a seashell gleaming in the shallows of a Normandy port. No doubt the SIS had already boarded their personnel.
They won’t let you off surveillance now. You’re a person of interest. Robin’s warnings had been whispered between kisses, as Ulysses had still struggled to catch his breath. Do precisely what you’d normally do. Behave naturally. We’ll take care of the rest.
It was easier said than done. Ulysses scanned his fellow passengers with a wary eye. Should he keep his distance from the young couple with the iPads? Or was it the grandmother wrangling two noisy children he ought to avoid?
He found himself a seat on the upper deck as a blast of the foghorn announced imminent departure. The leaden clouds had driven most passengers inside, where they could watch the continent fade in their wake with the foam stirred by the ferry’s massive engines.
Ulysses made his way as close to the prow as he could get.
At his feet, the spearing tip of the vessel cleaved through the water, slowly at first, then faster and faster, froth spattering the rusted flanks. Wind lashed Ulysses’ cheeks as he reached into his coat pocket for his mobile. The urge to pitch it overboard was almost more than he could stand. But that wasn’t the plan.
Ulysses scrolled through his list of contacts until he stumbled across Claudia’s number. His thumb hovered over her name for a long beat. Then he hit Call.
* * * *
Claudia threw up her hands when she saw him. “What time do you call this? And I was having such a lovely dream about Daniel Craig!”
“I k
now, I know…”
There was no need for raised voices. The station was largely empty, the sparse crowd made up a few early birds and panhandlers sleeping off another dismal night—and the two of them, sloe-eyed under the glare of backlit billboards. Ulysses gratefully accepted his ex-wife’s one-armed hug. It was the most affection he was likely to receive for the next few months.
“What happened?” Claudia quizzed, pushing an inky curl behind her ear. “You look like you haven’t slept a wink.”
“Well spotted.” Between Robin and his anonymous foes, Ulysses had found it hard to relax. Yesterday’s cognac hadn’t helped matters any. “Any chance there’s coffee in that enormous handbag of yours? Or a shot of vodka.”
“Yes, because more booze is just what you need.”
“Hair of the dog,” he answered lamely.
Claudia didn’t believe in traffic jams, so she drove a Land Rover in London when everyone else they knew made do with the tube. Ulysses had never been happier to see the khaki eyesore than he was then. He didn’t miss the Ford Focus rental when the Diesel engine rumbled to life with a noisy sputter and he didn’t miss it when Claudia very nearly scraped a concrete pillar with her already dented side mirror.
“I don’t want to say I told you so, but…” She sighed.
“Feel free.”
She peered at Ulysses over the edge of her glasses as they lurched and shambled over speed bumps on the way out of the garage. “Did you hit your head getting off the boat? I’ve never heard you so complacent.”
“My sorrows are several glasses deep,” Ulysses lied. The rule was that from now on he had to behave as naturally as he could. Men in suits had driven home the point when they parted ways, so it must have been his only option.
He believed it the way he believed in aliens—reservedly and with a strong conviction that he was better off not knowing either way.
“So…what’s this I hear about a UKIP thing?”
Claudia didn’t take much prompting to fill him in on the scandals he’d missed. She was an avid pundit and a woman of many convictions—most of them liberal, socialist or outright combative simply because she could afford to be.
Ulysses watched her from the corner of his eye as they wove through uncharacteristically empty streets. Ten years ago, she would’ve picked at the carcass of his defunct story until she was satisfied that his judgment checked out.
Things change. Losing her job—in no small part thanks to him—had left an indelible mark. He hated to think that he was disappointing her again, but there was nothing for it.
“This isn’t the way to the office,” Ulysses noted, five junctions too late to be of any use. “What’re you…” His jaws slackened. “You’re taking me home?”
“You’re about to keel over. Shower, shave… Eat. Maybe take a nap. You’ll frighten the children if you show up like this.”
Ulysses thinned his lips. “I thought the overworked reporter look was all the rage these days.”
“Maybe when you’re Anderson Cooper,” Claudia huffed as she pulled to the crescent where they’d once lived as husband and wife.
Ulysses had often wondered if she regretted letting him keep the Victorian townhouse—all Grade II listed, fifteen hundred square feet of it. It was true she’d been the one to throw up her hands, say, “all right, that’s it,” pack her bags, and decamp from his grandmother’s house one morning after what to Ulysses had seemed like a run-of-the-mill argument about the washing up. But she hadn’t done it without a helping hand from Ulysses.
The Land Rover purred alongside the double yellow strip on the sidewalk. She didn’t have the car before their divorce. She’d called a taxi. Ulysses was suddenly struck by the vivid memory of standing in the living room in his flannel pajamas and sipping coffee while Claudia huffed and puffed at stuffing a few carry-on-sized suitcases and a duffel into the boot of a cab.
He’d had to restrain himself from offering to help her load up the luggage—one of the major bones of contention between had been her accusations that he’d treated her differently since the wedding. Her exact words had been ‘like an idiot child’.
It was one thing to sleep and work together, but marriage had nearly destroyed everything that was good between them.
Claudia reached over the gearshift to give his leg a companionable squeeze. “Seriously. I don’t want to see you in the office before noon.” She wagged her finger like an oddly schoolmarmish sort of way.
“You drive a hard bargain,” he retorted, on the cusp of a yawn.
“Don’t make me come up.”
“Or what, you’ll tuck me in?” Ulysses widened his eyes. “The horror.”
“Oh, just watch, I’ll park myself on the window seat and watch you sleep.”
The threat was a toothless. Since the divorce, Ulysses was becoming adept at telling joke and warning apart—a sixth sense aided by the knowledge that Claudia hadn’t set foot in the house in years. She called it a creaky, creepy death trap. If she offered, it was only proof that she was worried for him.
Ulysses nodded. He must have looked worse than he thought. It was a pity he hadn’t uncovered the Rosetta Stone that helped him interpret Claudia any sooner. It wouldn’t have saved their marriage, but it might have made the breakup a little easier.
He plucked his luggage from the boot and slowly towed his feet to the big black front door. By the time he’d found his keys, Claudia was already at the other end of the street, the thunderous roar of her gas-guzzler fading fast. Ulysses ambled into the house with a sigh.
The heavy black door closed with a squeak of hinges. He couldn’t pretend he didn’t miss sharing his home, but at least this way there was no one to answer to when he dumped his shoulder bag in the foyer and dragged himself to the living room couch like a man twice his age.
With no one to air out the cramped confines of the house since he’d last set foot inside nearly a month earlier, the atmosphere inside had grown slightly bleak. A thin layer of dust coated every flat surface and rose out of the couch cushions when he flopped down.
The muted roar of traffic outside the single-glazed windows was startling after just a couple of nights in the French north. Sleep hadn’t come easily while Ulysses was away—least of all on this last leg of his peregrinations—but he had no desire to waste his return on naptime.
He just needed to rest his eyes for a moment, let the cobwebs peel away so he could play the part of a moderately well-adjusted human being again.
So much depended on a convincing performance.
Surely there was no harm in a quick power nap.
Ulysses startled awake what felt like fifteen minutes later but must have been a lot longer. The house was plunged into compact darkness, moonlight slanting through the living room windows in lopsided squares.
“Don’t panic,” a voice said, close enough that Ulysses did just that.
He sat up so fast that the room lurched violently around him, and reached for the nearest lamp switch. Electric light splashed into the room, banishing shadows in the blink of an eye. It took longer for Ulysses’ heart to settle back in his chest.
“Robin? What’re you… Are you mad? I told them you were going to Brazil, I said—”
“You did well,” Robin said, unflappably calm. “Relax.”
It was a foregone conclusion that Ulysses couldn’t obey that request. Instead, he scrambled to mitigate the fallout. “My phone—”
“Is in the freezer.” Robin cracked a smile. “You don’t sleep lightly, do you?”
Ulysses pushed himself the rest of the way up and swung his feet to the floor. “One of these days you’re going to break into a gun nut’s house.”
“What makes you think I haven’t?” The quip was delivered at a whisper. Robin made no move to approach.
Despite the rude awakening, Ulysses found his pulse slowing, as though his body was becoming familiar with these high-adrenaline interludes. “So you had me lie to MI-bloody-6…”
“No.
As far as they know, I really did board that flight from Paris to São Paolo. It’s just that I didn’t make it to takeoff.” Robin propped up the door frame, arms folded across his chest. “São Paolo was a bad call right now anyway. Brazil can wait.”
“Until you’re done with me?”
“How did you guess?”
I didn’t. Like the better part of the past few days, it seemed that the wildest conjecture Ulysses could come up with was closer to reality than any attempt at using cold, hard logic. He propped his head in his palms. “Bloody hell. I’m going to be tarred and feathered for this… They’re tapping my phone. They’ve probably bugged my house.”
“They haven’t,” Robin assured him. “We’ve been keeping an eye.”
Ulysses looked up at that, the bottom half of his face numbing. “We?”
“You didn’t see Jules on the ferry? As if I’d let you go off without an escort… You think I’m heartless?”
“I didn’t sign up for surveillance!” Ulysses snapped, standing abruptly. “I didn’t ask for any of this—”
“Really? What did you think would happen when you started investigating the fucking SIS?” Robin’s accent came through far stronger when he was angry. It was definitely not from this side of the pond.
“You’re American.” Somehow, the spooks had neglected to mention that.
It wasn’t their only omission.
Robin smirked, but his gaze remained hard. He shifted his weight in the doorway like a bull in the ring. Ulysses had the sudden unhappy thought that he was the red cape.
“I’m whatever I need to be to keep myself and the people I care about alive.”
“I won’t flatter myself with the assumption that I may be counted among them,” Ulysses shot back. He wasn’t that naïve.
“Turn off the light.”
A knot of something not entirely unlike panic snarled in his chest. “Why?”
Robin cocked an eyebrow. “You’re not afraid of me, are you?”
You’re a hit man and a spy. Possibly a traitor. Definitely someone who knows how to stage a suicide.
“Of course I’m afraid, I’m not an idiot.”
