by Mary Calmes
“Really?”
“Yes. Last year there was a drug cartel head’s daughter who spent three days on the site asking for things like the gun that Jack Ruby used to kill Lee Harvey Oswald with.”
“Isn’t that gun in a museum somewhere?”
“I have no idea, but we certainly don’t have it.”
I grunted.
“She asked for alien spaceship pieces and parts of Amelia Earhart’s plane.”
“Okay, I get it.”
Sello thanked the chef, who came to our table to explain the pork, pickled young garlic, pine and black currants leaves that we had next. Everyone was so gracious that even being interrupted was not annoying.
“There are specifics I can share with you if that’s what you want,” she assured me once we were alone. “Is that what you want?”
I wasn’t sure what I wanted. “Tell me the way it works.”
“First you need special software to find the site. This isn’t on Google, you understand.”
“The dark net.”
“Yes.”
“All right.”
“You find the site, and once there people type in what they would like to place with the vault. The doors monitor the site, of course, seeing all activity, knowing precisely who is online and has access to registration at all times.”
“Go on.”
“The doors funnel the requests to the vault, who then agrees to or denies the request.”
“That seems like a lot of work.”
“Not really, not that part of the process.”
“Why not? The requests must be in the thousands.”
“Oh, no, not at all.”
“No?”
“You have to think about it logically. Most of the powerful people in the world are also ridiculously well off, so they have their own protocols, their own safes, and their own places to hide their dirty little secrets. The only people who reach out to the vault don’t want to have daily access to whatever it is they need to have protected.”
“Sure.”
“They’re throwing something down a well, as it were.”
I nodded.
“So the number of people who actually contact us is between ten to twenty a day.”
“Really.”
“Yes. It’s not like the return line at Target the day after Christmas.”
I chuckled. “Retail frightens you, does it?”
Her eyes widened. “The mall is terrifying.”
“I can’t say I’ve been.”
“No kids?” she asked.
“No.”
Quick nod. “Well, believe me when I tell you, there is not a lot of traffic on the site.”
“But what there is, is life and death.”
“It is, that’s true.”
“And so where do you come in, precisely?”
“As I said, once the transfer is made, we disband until the time comes for a new vault to be chosen.”
I absorbed that. “May I ask, why not have someone within your organization become the vault? Why let Zineb choose and whoever before her?”
She shook her head. “It has to be someone neutral, it can’t be anyone who knows that this is planned for them.” She said with a deep sigh of contentment as the last plate was taken away. “It must also be someone well acquainted with death.”
“Someone who’s killed for a living,” I said implacably.
“Yes,” she agreed, leaning forward to put her hand on mine. “Many of the people who come together to manage the process of the transfer of power have never been in the field and have no idea what taking a life feels like.”
“And it’s important to you that the vault knows that,” I stated.
“Yes. The vault is responsible for saying yes and no, and if you’ve never been responsible for a life, for taking one or not, how can your decisions be truly informed?”
It made sense.
“Well,” she said brightly, “we’re about to have dessert and coffee, and it will take another hour at least, and we have to move from the table, so… do you want to wait until that’s done, or would you like to give me an answer now?”
I stared at her face.
“Well? May I tell the others that you’ve accepted your fate?”
“Really? This is my fate?”
“Isn’t it? I mean, truly, what else are you going to do with yourself?”
She had a point.
Chapter Three
NOW, SIX months after making Ceaton Mercer my knight and living my new life as the vault, I was working on getting Trevan Bean and his husband out of Detroit in one piece, so, of course, this was the time I was suddenly faced with my ex, Homeland Security Agent Efrem Lahm. At the moment, he was pacing in front of a steel table in one of the many interrogation rooms at the Office of Homeland Security down on Fort Street, where he brought us after the police turned us over to his custody.
I had no clue where Trevan was, but that was all right. He wasn’t in any danger. This wasn’t some frightening rendition of a situation with my ex, and even if it was, I could count on my bishop to get me out.
“Explain yourself!” he roared.
The outburst was surprising, not because of the volume, but the intensity.
“Darius!”
I smiled. I couldn’t help it. He caught me when he turned. “Sorry.”
Moving fast, he slammed both hands on the table and loomed over me. “What the hell is so funny?”
I shook my head. “Nothing’s funny, it’s just nice.”
“Nice?” he demanded, the outrage clear in his voice, beside himself with anger, indignation, and confusion.
“Yeah, nice,” I said, looking up into his face. I would have reached for him if my hands weren’t shackled to the top of the table. “Just happy to see you.”
Efrem was angry: I could hear the sharpness in his voice and the snarl, see the fury spilled across his features in the clenching of his jaw, the cording of the muscles in his neck, and the furrow of his golden brows. With the twitch in his left cheek and the splotchy flush on his throat, he looked like his brain was going to explode. Of course, none of that detracted from how drop-dead gorgeous he’d become. I’d thought he was pretty when he was in his midtwenties—the last time I saw him—but at forty-three, he was blinding.
His frame that had once been thin and rangy was now more filled out, resembling a swimmer’s body with long, lean muscles, broad shoulders, and a chest I wanted to get my hands on. His coloring was the same, the light golden tan I knew from past experience covered his entire body. As usual, though, what mesmerized me were his eyes and the sharp, defined angles of his face, the light golden stubble, his long lashes, and the curve of his mouth. I squirmed in my seat, surprised I was having such a visceral reaction to being close to him but also aware that this was Efrem, after all. I had never stopped wanting him, loving him.
“Where have you been?” he asked, his voice cracking at the end, making him sound heartbroken in the midst of what was supposed to be an interrogation about why Trevan and I were in the home of Marc Eastman.
I would have thought he’d forgotten me after a little over sixteen years. I’d been very careful to never look for him before my circumstances changed.
Even before I became the vault, with my security clearance and the traveling I did, I’d had the power to find out where he was, then arrange to run into him on the street or when he turned a corner. Or I could have just been wherever he was when he walked in the door at the end of the day. I killed people for a living. It was my job. Most of the time it had been for my government, in the name of democracy and being the safety net of the world. I committed those murders to prevent bigger crime with a much higher body count… most of the time. But I also killed when it was necessary to make sure my friends were secure. It didn’t happen often—I didn’t have that many friends—but no one asked what I did when I wasn’t on the clock, and I didn’t volunteer anything. Everyone had plausible deniability that way.
B
ut none of that mattered at the moment, because Efrem Lahm was waiting for answers.
“Answer me!”
I cleared my throat. “I never looked for you.”
Several ticks of the clock went by.
“I just wanted you to know that, so we’re clear.” I needed him to understand that I had not, and would never, interfere in his life.
More silence, until “What?”
“I don’t want you to think I was stalking you or anything.”
The muscles in his jaw twitched again. “I’m sorry?”
“I never went near you.”
“I’ve missed a step.”
I cleared my throat. “I could have found you, but I didn’t want to just show up out of the blue. I didn’t want to create any complication in your life.”
Again there was a lull.
“I would never have intruded,” I explained. “You get that, right?”
“Intrude?”
“On your life,” I repeated, and then it occurred to me to ask, “Are you listening?”
“So you stayed away on purpose?” he clarified.
“Of course,” I replied.
He took a breath, and I saw him grip the edge of the table.
“Are you all right?”
It took him a moment to collect himself, and I watched a deluge of emotions chase themselves across his chiseled patrician features and cloud the normally limpid green gaze.
“Ef?” I said, the shortened version of his name coming back that fast. I’d used it for the five years we were together; sixteen apart didn’t erase it.
“I— Where—”
“Do you need to sit down?” I asked, worried a bit because of how pale he appeared under the flush that pinked his cheeks. Maybe, just possibly, he was going to puke. “You’re not going to hyperventilate, are you?”
“I don’t—” he choked out. “I haven’t done that in—”
“Do you have an assistant or—”
He shot me a look of annoyance. “You act like you could actually just open the door and get someone in here.”
“Well, no,” I admitted. “But I could yell for help if you were going to pass out or something.”
He opened his mouth to speak.
“But if you could hold on until Lee gets here, that’d be great.”
The bracing he did—clenching his jaw, straightening his shoulders, crossing his arms over his chest, opening his stance, planting his feet—was telling.
Still, after all this time, it appeared he was possessive. The behavior, what it looked like on him, had not changed, and I had to admit, it was endearing. I would have missed it had it been gone.
Once when we were on leave in Rome, we’d been out at a club, and a guy sauntered over to where we were holding up the wall and asked if I wanted to dance. Efrem had adopted the same battle stance then as he was now. Clearly he was bothered, and though having him be possessive was a big fat turn-on, I needed to clear this up.
“Lee Tae San works for me,” I said.
A scowl darkened his face. “What?”
“You’re getting all worked up, which is kind of hot, but I want you to know Lee is my bish—my second, he works for me, that’s all.”
“Hot?” His voice rose a bit higher than I thought he would have wanted.
I nodded.
“You think—”
“I do,” I insisted. “And yeah, you being jealous is crazy hot.”
The existing flush didn’t slowly creep up his neck and spread to his cheeks. It wasn’t that subtle. He turned bright red, and his pupils dilated to big black marbles in seconds.
“I don’t care if you have—I mean… I don’t care who’s coming to—”
“Yes, you do,” I replied with absolute conviction.
“I—what? You can’t know that,” he protested. “You don’t know anything about me! You have no idea how I feel or who I am any—”
I snorted out a laugh.
“Darius!”
For the longest time, before I’d stepped in and taken Ceaton and his crew under my wing, Efrem Lahm would have been the only one who would see me and connect that name with my face. It was nice now that more people knew it, but hearing the first man I’d ever trusted with the name use it again washed me with happiness. I didn’t know how much I’d missed hearing that until I started using it again.
I now had all his attention.
“What in the world are you—”
“It’s my name.”
“I don’t—”
“It’s because you used to be the only one who used it, and even though you’re not anymore… it still means the most coming from you because, for a long time, you were the one and only keeper of that secret.”
“Darius—”
“Remember when I told you?”
His eyes searched mine.
I could recall with absolute certainty when I’d told him.
We rented a houseboat from the Antelope Point Marina and took it out on Lake Powell. Everything we needed came with the seventy-five footer: food, too much alcohol, and a fantastic view of the red sandstone cliffs. It was stunning, and between the sparkling clear indigo water, my golden browned man, and the gorgeous pink and purple sunsets every night, I’d taken the plunge and unburdened my soul.
He was out on the deck, stretched out, sipping on the beer I’d given him when he walked by. I stood in the doorway and studied him.
After a moment, he turned to look at me, and the smile I got creased the lines around his eyes, made his dimples pop, and his lips curled dangerously. “Why don’t you sit with me?”
I cleared my throat. “I, uhm, need to tell you something.”
The smile disappeared instantly, as did the languid recline. He sat up and turned, feet on the deck, waiting.
I smiled slightly. “No, it’s not all that. Our vacation hasn’t been cancelled.”
He released his lungs of air, like he’d been holding it, in greeting my announcement. “Okay, good. I haven’t seen you in a month, so I don’t want to have to tie you up, but I did come prepared for that possibility.”
“Oh, is that right?” I said, chuckling, because it was sexy, yes, that he wanted me, and we were being playful, but mostly it spoke volumes to how much he’d missed me. Not that I wasn’t feeling it myself. I had counted the minutes during the last three days of my mission because if nothing came up in seventy-two hours, it normally meant all systems were a go. I could count the vacation as really happening once we hit that mark.
No one was supposed to know, and after the deployment he was just one buddy picking up another from the airport. We had to wait as my team swirled around us, exchanging only pleasantries as we walked through Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix until finally, we were at his car. He’d parked in long-term even though he was just picking me up because there was very little coming in or going out, just us on a stretch of pavement.
He’d rented an enormous Lincoln Navigator with blacked-out windows, and it made no sense until I closed the door and he was on me.
“Come here,” he snarled, wrenching me out of my seat and shifting us between them to the folded-over seats he’d already laid flat and covered under a beach blanket. All of them, two rows that could comfortably accommodate seven, were now down, space to be used in whatever way we wanted.
Bumping, jostling, him tugging on my clothes, me trying to get us gently situated was a struggle until we hit the blanketed, uneven backs of the seats, and he rolled me to my back, straddling my thighs.
“You missed me,” I stated unnecessarily, reaching for him.
He choked out an answer that was sounds, not words, and dove into my hands, trembling as I slid my fingers over his face, traced along his jaw and his throat and around the back of his neck.
As I eased him down, he opened for me when I kissed him, his moan full of ache and need, completely unselfconscious, trusting me with the knowledge that I had power over him.
“I missed you too,” I s
aid between mauling kisses, taking his mouth, making him mine, uncomfortable underneath him, my erection straining against my fatigues.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he cried out when I let him breathe, the kisses coming one after another, the sensations rolling through me like waves, the rise and fall of surging want. “You have to quit and be home when I get there every night.”
I smiled against his lips before I put him on his back, never stopping my assault, letting him take gulps of air between his words.
“I’m rich—my family… I’ll take care of you and—Terrence!”
The bite on his throat caused the jolt and the yell, and I took that opportunity to put him on his belly with his ass in the air.
“Rich, huh? How rich?”
He shivered as I slipped off his sneakers before going to work on his belt. “My family owns an oil and gas company in Oklahoma.”
“So, a million?” I asked, unsnapping his jeans and getting the zipper down so I could shuck everything, briefs included, first to his knees, and then, after lifting each leg, to his ankles and off.
“More than that,” he croaked as I bent and licked over his crease, needing my hands free to loosen up my clothes enough to let my hard, aching shaft bob free.
I’d thrown my duffel behind the front seat, which was lucky. I’d bought lube and put it on top so it would be easy to grab. “Billions?” I offered, keeping him talking as I slid an arm around his chest, settling my weight against his back.
“Not quite billions,” he rasped, bucking under me at the sound of the cap snapping open.
One-handed, I squeezed out lube and smeared it on my fingers, coating my cock, the entire length that had in the past been too much for other men. It was too wide, too long—a club, one guy had said, that he knew he could never take in. Others had been all too happy to try, but only Efrem had never made it a thing, simply part of me, a part he craved as much as the rest of me.
“So you want me to do what?” I teased, pressing my slick fingers into his ass, the lube cool, bringing up a deep, lusty moan. “Just sit around all day and wait for you to come home? Won’t I get bored?”
“I… you….”
“I’m a Ranger, you know. We don’t just stay home and garden.”
