by Helena Maeve
Heart slamming against his ribs, Arthur resisted the urge to pull his mangled fingers back.
Klaus kissed him, hot and rough, hard enough to obliterate all other thought. It was the friction building between their bodies that did it for Arthur, but the kiss was a nice touch. It stopped him crying out as his muscles locked in savage, blissful agony.
He spent all over his belly and Klaus’ dick, shuddering on a keening noise.
Ecstasy rippled over his skin for long moments in the aftermath, flirting with the edge of discomfort as Klaus rutted into the hollow of his hip, taking greedily, taking like Arthur was there for his pleasure. It was a heady thought. Arthur squeezed his eyes shut as another shudder wracked his body.
“That’s it,” he panted. “Fuck, come for me…”
He doubted that it was the plea that brought him off, but Klaus erupted into orgasm on his next breath, arms giving out as he slumped over Arthur. His racing heart was thunderclap and cannon fire, nearly drowning out Arthur’s rushing pulse.
With his last ounce of strength, Klaus pushed himself off and collapsed onto the mattress beside him. His chest heaved, harried breaths echoing against the barren walls, but he’d run out of clever quips for the moment.
Arthur ran a hand through the sticky mess on his belly and chest. He needed to take off his shirt at some point. Maybe even find his way to the shower.
“So about the pool…”
Next to him, Klaus laughed. “You don’t give up, do you?” The mattress dipped as he rolled onto his side and cupped Arthur’s cheek. “S’why I like you.”
A kiss sealed the startling disclosure before Arthur could make heads or tails of it.
Klaus didn’t seem to notice what he’d said as he pulled back to curl against Arthur’s flank.
“No,” said Arthur after a beat. “I think we’re good here.”
* * * *
After much hemming and hawing, Klaus consented to leave the cabin.
Arthur suspected it was less a matter of chipping away at his obstinacy and more a sign that hunger had the same effect on him it did on Arthur. They’d slept through lunch, exhausted after a morning spent almost entirely in bed. They could have ordered in—again—but that entailed a thirty minute wait. Neither of them could wait that long.
Putting in a show of appearance at dinner was pure necessity, nothing more. Yet since it involved Klaus dressing up, Arthur was hard-pressed to mind.
“It’s black tie,” he pointed out, dangling the strip of silk by the fingertips.
“I’m sure that’s simply a manner of speaking.”
Arthur sighed. “You want to brave cruise ship dress codes, fine by me. But know I won’t be jumping in to save you if the captain decides you’re to be thrown overboard for insubordination.”
“Is it the captain who makes the rules?” Klaus wondered.
He slid a hand to the small of Arthur’s back to urge him out of the door. His fingers slipped as they moved through the gap, until he gently cupped his backside.
Somehow, Arthur didn’t think it was accidental. “No idea.” He scanned the deck for some sign of that morning’s crossword puzzle aficionado.
Relief slumped his shoulders. He could find no trace of him. Good. Better to have imagined some dubious tail than to discover there was a real and present danger.
Tomaso’s lifeless body still surged behind his eyes as he drifted off to sleep. The dead were always restless like that.
Arthur stuck his hands into his pockets as they started down toward the restaurant. The air had cooled a little since sundown. Gentle waves lapped at the barnacled sides of the ship, sea and starry sky confounded in the distance.
“Reminds me of home,” he blurted out. A blush warmed his face when he caught Klaus arching a brow in silent interrogation. “Not—we didn’t dress up for dinner or anything. But the water.” The thick night stretching out, edgeless, like the fog that used to hang over the lake. “I don’t know,” Arthur said quickly, “it’s stupid. Forget I said anything.”
“You grew up in a fishing town, yes?”
So much for forgetting.
Arthur waited until they were inside the restaurant to speak. One of the hostesses led them to a table for two right at the edge of the glass-walled room. It was secluded enough that Arthur dared to go on.
“I used to tell everyone I was a city boy ‘cause that’s where I was born, but truth is I had the best of both worlds.” It begged the question of why—or how—he had wound up on the wrong side of the tracks, biting the hand that had once fed him, turning against his own country. Taking up the business of killing folks who didn’t particularly need killing.
He waited for Klaus to head down that route, already hoarding his excuses—money was good, I was never the patriot type—but the interrogation never came. Klaus merely flagged down the sommelier for a bottle of wine. “Something dry,” he requested.
“Really?” Arthur couldn’t school disbelief out of his expression fast enough.
“If you’d prefer—”
“I’m not talking about the wine.”
The sommelier glanced between them, waiting for an order with the slightly embarrassed grimace of someone who had witnessed this kind of tension before.
“Whatever you recommend,” Klaus said and folded the menu shut. He waited until they were alone to level his gaze on Arthur. “I did something to upset you.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Arthur shot back, because it was easier to quip than to put order in his thoughts.
“I apologize.”
He couldn’t stand that aggrieved, understanding note. “So do you know everything? Is that why you’re not even a little bit interested?” Just how much had Robin dug up before he decided to offer Arthur a job in his little organization?
Billie Holiday warbled softly from the restaurant’s discreetly concealed speakers. Klaus rested a wrist against the white tablecloth and tapped the surface lightly with his knuckles as if to mark the tempo. “I don’t know anything about your life prior to you infiltrating the SIS. Whatever is in their files, that’s what I’ve read.”
“Does Robin?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Jules?”
“I don’t know that, either,” Klaus confessed. He sounded genuine, but lying with a straight face was part of the spy toolbox. “If you’re worried that I’ve pried into your past—”
“I’m not worried,” Arthur muttered under his breath.
What good did worry do him, anyway? He’d had the chance to run and he’d let it slip through his fingers because he liked being at Klaus’ side. There. He admitted it.
It was as messed up as it was pathetic, and he was sure that sooner rather than later he would regret rolling over for a man who cared nothing for him.
‘It’s why I like you’, echoed in his ears like the echo of a gunshot. The crackle of a broken spine.
His knee ached. He reached under the table to rub the joint.
“I’d like to know more,” Klaus went on. “But you shouldn’t feel obligated to tell me.”
“Because I seduced you?” Arthur ventured with a sardonic smile. It was his doing all the way, from the first time he walked in on Klaus in the shower to practically assaulting him at the safe house in Istanbul.
Klaus tipped his head into a nod.
“By the way, how’s that going to work when we get to Cairo?” Different agencies had different rules about fraternization. Did Robin believe in banning his minions from seeking comfort in each other’s arms? Did he care? “Do we stop and pretend it never happened?”
“Do you want to stop?”
Arthur thrust out his chin, undaunted. “No.” He slept better with Klaus within easy reach. He liked waking up to the stroke of a hand through his hair, or the gentle suction of lips around his cock. If that made him easy, so be it. He’d been worse things, to worse people, for far lesser reasons than this.
“Neither do I,” said Klaus.
/> “Fine.”
“Excellent.” Klaus smiled and picked up his menu. “Now, tell me more about this fishing town. It sounds idyllic.”
Arthur thought of lying, but they had done enough of that already.
“It wasn’t,” he confessed.
To his surprise, Klaus didn’t so much as blink. “Even better.”
* * * *
They were by no means the last ones out of the restaurant, but the lower deck had emptied of stragglers by the time they made their way back to the cabin. Part of the reason, Arthur guessed, was the evening chill. The ship creaked, buffeted by the current and pushed along by its massive underwater engines. He pressed up against Klaus’ side, stopping just short of twining their fingers together.
“Cold?” Klaus mumbled.
“A little. Gonna warm me up when we get in?” Arthur teased. He thrilled at the sound of Klaus’ chuckle.
Flirting with Klaus was new. They’d done antagonism and verbal tennis. They had broken just about every tenet in the espionage canon. Yet for all that doing things by the book, Arthur couldn’t help feel like this last leg of their trip was a way to dial back the clock.
We had dinner. We had sex.
Drink enough wine and this might start looking like a proper relationship.
Doused in alcohol and month-long doubts, the thought took a while to percolate. People like them didn’t get to enjoy this sort of reprieve. They weren’t built for mundane dates and Valentines and all the rest of that rubbish. They went into the business because they wanted more.
And yet there was nothing mundane about shoving Klaus up against the cabin door to fumble in his pockets for the room key.
Arthur couldn’t resist copping a feel as he retrieved the magnetic card. He nearly tipped his head up to steal a kiss, but Klaus was smirking, expectant, so he turned away.
“So now that we’ve had sustenance,” Klaus groaned, “am I to understand you don’t mind if we stay in for the next twenty-four hours?”
Arthur snorted. Twenty-four hours was more than they had before they reached Cairo. “Who knew you were such a horny…” His breath snagged as he looked over Klaus’ shoulder.
There, at the far end of the deck, where the sleek lines of the cruise ship tapered off into a double row of railings at the stern, stood the man with the baseball cap. The same one Arthur had spotted earlier in the day.
“A horny what?” Klaus wanted to know, still grinning.
Arthur recovered quickly. “Old man? Bastard? Easy mark?” He leaned against the door frame, grinning as Klaus brushed past him into the cabin. “If the shoe fits.”
“What about queer?” Klaus doffed his jacket slowly, his back to Arthur. “Does that fit?”
“Sure, but it might be the least objectionable one of the lot.”
Pulse throbbing in his temples, Arthur caught up to him, the squeak of his rubber soles on the floor telegraphing his approach. Klaus looked good in a suit. It would’ve been Arthur’s pleasure to pry him out of it if not for the rush of adrenaline urging him to act fast, before their time together was brought to a crushing, lethal end. “I’m trying to annoy you, here.”
“Oh, you do that every day…”
Arthur pressed his lips to the top notch in Klaus’ spine, kissing him through the cotton shirt. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should have told you sooner.
“Let me grab a shower first,” Klaus breathed.
Relief rushed through Arthur. “Okay.” He released his hold on Klaus as lightly as he could.
“You could join me…”
It was tempting. Potentially hazardous, but still tempting. Arthur pretended to consider the offer. “Next time.” Something to take care of, first.
To his relief, Klaus didn’t press the point. He’d been good about boundaries before Arthur realized he had any. A rare find.
Arthur sucked in a deep, fortifying breath and made for the door with cat-quiet steps. As far as he knew, Klaus hadn’t brought a gun along, so sheer, brute force would have to be enough.
People drowned in the sea all the time.
Arthur eased the cabin door shut behind him as silently as humanly possible. He couldn’t tell if he succeeded when the staccato beat of his heart drowned all other sound.
The deck was barren, only a pair of women laughing woozily as they stumbled drunkenly toward their berth. Arthur waited until they had disappeared around the corner, bound for the starboard side, before spurring his feet toward the rear of the ship.
Benches lined the sun deck, all unoccupied except for one.
The man with the baseball cap sat back and crossed his legs. A nearby fog light illuminated his features. He must have been in his early thirties, late twenties, stray brown hair escaping from beneath his cap to flutter winsomely in the evening breeze.
The corners of his lips curled in a sly smirk.
“You’ve been watching us,” Arthur said. No need for pleasantries. He’d spent the past months doubting himself at every turn, considering and calculating his escape plan whenever self-flagellation gave him peace. He had fumbled the execution for the last time.
The man did not reply.
“I saw you when we boarded,” Arthur went on, sure of himself. “I saw you this morning… You’ve finished your puzzle.”
“Yes,” said the man in the baseball cap. He had a very faint accent, but Arthur couldn’t tell which part of the United States it hearkened to. He was more concerned with which agency employed the tail and if he had a partner aboard the cruise ship.
Or had Macias sent someone else, as Tomaso had predicted he would?
“What do you want?” Arthur asked, rather than lay all of his cards on the table from the get-go.
The man tipped his head back. Arthur caught a glimpse of heavy-lidded, Brigitte Bardot bedroom eyes. “Did you see me two nights ago, when you were gallivanting around Istanbul like a headless chicken?”
A cold shiver raced down Arthur’s spine. “What?” He searched his memory, but it was no use. He’d been too consumed with figuring out a short-term plan—which ultimately had led him back to Klaus.
“What about at the café, with Sezin?” The man tilted his head to one shoulder, considering Arthur from a distance.
“Whoever sent you—”
“No one.”
Arthur clamped his mouth shut. Klaus would be out of the shower soon. He’d wonder where Arthur had gone, maybe even come looking. “I don’t understand,” he admitted, taking another step closer.
“Why didn’t you run?” the stranger wanted to know. “I’ve seen you in action. You’re deft in a crowd. You know how to pick your marks… Why not take Cal Hooper and ride off into the unknown?”
“There are people after me,” Arthur answered. By now his name and details would have circulated around the intelligence community. He was a live grenade and he was wanted for attempted murder.
“There were.”
It was a pedant’s correction. “I didn’t outrun them,” Arthur snapped, feeling petulant. “Clearly.” Or you wouldn’t be here. He had gone wrong somewhere along the way.
He braced himself as the man pushed up from the bench. It was hard to gauge muscle mass through the denim jacket, but Arthur was the one with the bum knee and crippled hand.
He could predict that the odds were not in his favor.
The American didn’t lunge at him. He didn’t seem interested in a brawl. “Why didn’t you run?” he asked again.
“What do you care?” Arthur shot back and it wasn’t who are you and what to do you want, but he had learned when he was still a child living on a strip of barren rock at the edge of a dead lake to hoard his fears. “If you’re here to bring me in, then go right ahead and try. Whatever torturers you’ve got on staff will get me talking eventually.” Everyone broke sooner or later. The Cottage had taught him that.
The man flashed a sly smile. “Jules said you were a stubborn one.”
“Jules?” Arthur’s first thought was tha
t this was some kind of veiled threat. But there was fondness in the stranger’s voice, as though he was speaking of a friend. Arthur felt the muscles in his face slacken. “You’re—”
The man held a finger to his lips in silent warning. “Shh.”
“Creepy,” Arthur finished.
So many questions surged to the forefront of his mind. He wanted to grab the guy by his lapels and clock him in the nose. He wanted to take a baseball bat to his head.
Who do you think you are, fucking with my life like this?
He didn’t move. The soles of his patent leather shoes might as well have been bolted to the deck.
“It’s a beautiful night. Be a shame to waste it.”
Arthur sneered. “Is that your way of saying ‘go forth and fornicate’?” We don’t need your permission somehow never made it past his lips.
The quip earned him an enigmatic little smile. He could see himself growing to measure his successes by the slope of that wide mouth, as pathetic as a dog wagging its tail for a treat.
“Wait.”
The man in the baseball cap stopped, his back to Arthur. Two fog lights split his shadow into quarters, one of them long enough to melt under Arthur’s heel.
“I’m still a wanted man,” was all Arthur could think of to say. “I’m still a threat to the SIS.” To your people. Killing Manuel Sosa would still fulfill the contract he’d signed. It could buy him time, if not fast-track him back into his employers’ good graces.
“Yes. But now you’re also one of us.”
Footfalls creaked along the deck, the strangely quaint noise growing fainter and fainter.
Arthur didn’t move until he could hear no other sound than the rhythmic thump of his heartbeat and the whoosh of waves against the hull. Then he shook himself.
The cabin door yielded easily to the press of his hand. He heard the shower as soon as he stepped over the threshold, the pitter-patter of water on tile echoing through a flimsy sliding panel. Steam eddied out of the bathroom, sticking Arthur’s shirt to his skin as he stepped inside. As if he needed another reason to shed his clothes.
