Elle was gulping in air, boneless, aware only of the slight scratchiness of the comforter as Reese rose above her, covering her with his hard body as he thrust into her with a single push. His mouth swallowed her cry as his lips claimed hers once more. His hands caught hers, his fingers threading through hers as he again pushed her hands down into the pillow. She wrapped her legs tight around his waist, wanting him close, as close as she could get him, as he began to move.
She caught his rhythm almost instantly, meeting each of his thrusts as he moved faster and deeper, while her heart pumped faster until her back arched, pressing her against him. Both of their bodies tightened as they cried out, neither able to stop the spasms that racked them.
***
When Elle could breathe somewhat normally again, she observed the bumpy hotel ceiling in the dim light that shined through the crack of the heavy curtains. The warmth of Reese’s body beside her felt good, especially since they were still lying on top of the bed spread, uncovered.
“Like your new experience?” There was a teasing note in his voice.
She stretched. Sex was better at loosening up muscles than an intense sparring session followed by hot yoga. “Amazing.” What to say now? “Thank you.”
He chuckled as he reached over and gave her thigh a squeeze. “Pleasure was all mine.”
She hoped so, although she doubted it, so she stretched again. She wanted to snuggle into the heat of his body, rest her head on the bulk of his shoulder, and go to sleep, but she couldn’t let herself forget the score. Not this time.
Which led to the question: how did she go about her extraction?
She was still wondering about it as he stretched himself before sitting up and then standing. Oh, yeah. He had to get rid of the condom. This was as good a time as any.
After he made his way to the bathroom, she forced herself up off the bed and started feeling around for her clothes. Luckily she hadn’t been wearing much. She had her leggings, bra and top on and was zipping up her boots when he came back out of the bathroom.
“Hitting the road?” he asked.
It was too dark for her to make out his face, but he didn’t sound upset. He was probably relieved she knew the score and wasn’t making this awkward.
“Yeah.” She tried to sound nonchalant, as if she did this every day. “I have to be at work early tomorrow.”
She stood and felt around for her purse, which was on the floor near the door. “Um- are you sure you don’t want me to pay for my half of the room?”
He had insisted on paying downstairs at the front desk when they checked in. The hotel was right across the street from Shore Leave. If the person working the front desk wondered what they were up to, he hid it well.
“Don’t worry about it.” He began rummaging around for his clothes. “It was worth every penny. I’d be up for an encore sometime.”
She would not, could not, let herself forget the score.
“I’d love to, but- but I-” It was hard to talk when the words flashing through her head were YES! YES! YES! “I just got out of a relationship-” Like less than five hours ago.
“Hey, I’m not looking for anything serious.” He held his hands up; she was glad he didn’t have his shirt on yet: the view was mouthwatering. “In a few weeks I’ll start a deployment on a sub for six months. I’m just looking to blow off steam until then.”
So he was a sailor. He’d be gone in a few weeks. Nothing could get serious in a few weeks, could it? She and Preston had been working together, for, what, a couple of months before they started sleeping together?
She needed to keep things vague. “Well, I- I’ll see you around. At Shore Leave, maybe.” She fumbled with the door, opening it a little before remembering he was still half naked, which stopped her from opening it wider. “Take care, Reese.”
She thought he said something but wasn’t sure as she slipped out the door and closed it behind her, hurrying for the elevator. After a few moments of waiting at the elevator she decided to take the stairs. How awkward would it be for him to come out while she was still waiting?
As she hurried down the stairwell, she couldn’t stop herself from grinning like an idiot again. She’d done it. Successful completion of her second op.
Chapter 7
“Check out the after glow!” Marni greeted Elle with her pronouncement as soon as she opened the door.
Elle laughed and raised her duffle bag in triumph. “Seventy-two hours later and I could still sing a song.”
Marni engulfed her in a hug. “I know you can’t get trashed, since you have to go to work tomorrow, but you need to join us for a celebratory drink.”
She hugged her back. It was hard for her to hang out with Marni and her law school friends sometimes because she did have to get up and go to work in the morning. They didn’t always have to be up as early as she did, so going out for drinks after a day of studying wasn’t unheard of for them, even if their drinking sessions seemed to serve the dual purpose of arguing the merits of legal cases and interpretations of judicial decisions as well as unwinding.
“Yeah, I do,” Elle agreed. She may have to be at the office by nine, but she could still enjoy at least one drink. She deserved it after successful completion of two ops: one professional and one personal. Somehow, she was keeping everything on track.
***
“Sorry about you and Lyle,” Daniel told Elle a couple of hours later over beers.
Lyle and Daniel had always gotten along well when he came up to Charlottesville to see Elle. He used to tease them about what was coming once they left “the hallowed hallways of academia and started to practice real law.”
Elle was a little surprised it was rather hard for her to smile. “Thanks.” She hadn’t thought about Lyle much in the past few days and hadn’t heard from him, so he’d obviously made up his mind. Instead, her thoughts turned to Reese at night. She could still see him, feel his touch. He’d made quite an impression.
“She’s better off without him,” Marni said, interrupting her conversation with another friend, Jessica. She was sitting by Elle and reached over to give her hand a squeeze.
“It’s probably for the best,” Elle agreed. She focused on Daniel as Marni and Jessica began talking about something that happened in one of their classes. “My schedule keeps me really busy.”
Daniel gave her a nod, his face sympathetic. “You are on the go a lot.”
“Tell me about it.” Elle rolled her eyes as she drank some more of her fruit-flavored beer. She was enjoying a drink but didn’t need anything heavy.
“So you work for the Library of Congress and the university libraries?” Daniel always seemed to be trying to figure out what, exactly, Elle did.
She nodded. “I’m implementing optimized search programs throughout the Virginia university libraries.” She figured terms like “optimized search programs” would keep him from asking too many questions. “I’m about to start supplementing the library documents collection with some things at the Library of Congress, too, now that a lot of the Congress’ library is digitized.”
After a moment of blinking Daniel laughed. “I won’t even try to pretend to know what that means,” he said, raising his glass, “but I’m sure you’ll be brilliant at it.”
She joined in his laughter, clinking her glass to his before they both drank some more. He was quieter than Marni, a calming influence to complement her whirlwind-type personality. They balanced each other well.
“Hey Daniel, do you know what the hell Wilkins wants us to write about?” Jessica asked.
And just like that, he was sucked back into the other law students’ conversations.
All of them were nice; Elle could see why Marni liked them. It made complete sense that they lived, breathed, ate and slept the law: they were law students, after all.
But she wasn’t.
She listened to them complain about outrageous professors. What would they make of Mason and his demand for perfection when he wanted s
omething? The thought of them spending one full day at the CIA made her smile. They’d be relaxing in their classes after that.
“So what’s going on at work?” Marni finally asked Elle. Everyone looked at her.
Elle wished she could talk about her Bermuda op: Marni would get a kick out of it, but she couldn’t. “Nothing big, just implementing the new search programs.”
“Are you doing it for Lexus, too?” Jessica asked.
She shook her head. “Lexus is pretty well-developed for law materials; there’s no need to modify it.”
“Anything else going on?” Marni asked.
It was like her friend had a sixth sense as she studied Elle. Elle wasn’t just flush off the excitement of her hook up; she had formally achieved her field rating and completed her first op. It was a huge step in her career at the CIA, yet she couldn’t share any of that, so she just shook her head.
“Why do I feel like I’m not getting all the deets?” she asked Elle.
Elle raised her hands in surrender. “Please, no cross-examinations tonight.” She laughed but hoped Marni would take the hint. Like Lyle, Marni could also tell that something “wasn’t quite right,” but they had been friends for so long, some unexplained stuff could be tolerated.
“The Library of Congress project sounds big,” Daniel said.
Then it was Elle’s turn to blink in confusion. Oh yeah, that. She nodded. “It will be. Soon, information that’s been buried in the Library of Congress for years will be available.”
“Do they have information on laws and policy?” Jessica asked.
“Some.” Although everything at the Library of Congress was supposed to be open to the public, that wasn’t quite true. She gave all three of them a grin. “In theory, they provide more information to the Congress than they receive, but this is the government we’re talking about.”
“With the internet, is there all that much left in books?” Daniel asked. “Look at the whistle blowers that are coming out about government surveillance. It’s all wireless and digital these days.”
He was more right than he knew, but Elle just laughed. She couldn’t afford to play coy with some veiled response there.
Marni’s sixth sense was in fine form, however. “Come on, you can tell us.” She leaned in, and Jessica immediately leaned in close, too, their eyes shining. “What shit are you hiding at the Library of Congress?”
Elle’s mouth dropped open for a moment. How could she answer that one? The Library of Congress did have some unofficial collections, but they were not publicly acknowledged. Besides, Daniel was right: the intel these days wasn’t often found in books or even printed documents. Yet she wasn’t supposed to know that.
She paused for long enough for even Daniel to raise an eyebrow in interest. “I thought you were talking shit,” he told Marni, “but not anymore.” He focused on Elle as Marni nudged her shoulder.
“Come on,” she said, “spill. Who would we tell?”
The silence lasted a little too long before Elle burst out laughing. Her laugh was fueled by nervous energy more than anything. “You guys got me.” She leaned in close, too. “There’s this entire underground compartment where secret documents are held.”
“Really?” Jessica’s eyes were wide.
Elle nodded. “It’s the size of DC. A secret city-”
That got them all laughing and groaning as Marni said, “Keep your secrets for now” before the conversation moved on to something law school related.
She glanced at Marni’s forehead, unable to stop herself from looking for the scar. It was just past her hairline, hidden under her hair, but Elle knew it was there. When a terrorist named Kagan had become suspicious of Elle, he had her followed. The people following her broke into the apartment she shared with Marni after seeing Elle go there. Unfortunately, Marni was the one who was there when they broke in. They knocked her unconscious before ransacking the place and stealing a few things to make it look like a burglary.
As far as Marni knew, it had just been a burglary.
For that reason, Elle made sure not to develop any sort of predictable routine around Charlottesville. She didn’t work out of that office on a set schedule someone could track. She kept a close eye out on what was occurring around their new apartment complex, too. Mason said Kagan had been satisfied by not finding anything suspicious, but she wasn’t so sure. He was still at-large, although he was monitored by the CIA.
It made her feel good to know Daniel was there more nights than not these days. At least one of them was doing well in the romance department.
After finishing her drink, Elle checked her watch. She caught Marni’s eye. “I’ve gotta head back.”
“Already? It’s only a quarter to ten!”
“You forget,” Elle grinned as she rose, “I work for a living.”
“Want me to walk you back?” Daniel asked. They were only a few blocks from the apartment.
“Yes,” Marni said as Elle shook her head.
“I appreciate the offer,” Elle told him, “but it’s not necessary.”
“It’s dark out there,” Marni argued.
She had been well trained in fighting in the dark. “There are street lights.”
Before Marni could argue further, Elle said her good-byes to everyone and headed out the door, heading back to the apartment alone.
***
Even after a year of working there, Elle still appreciated the beauty of the stately library in Charlottesville. While the library in Norfolk was very modern with lots of glass windows and steel, the library in Charlottesville looked like it was built a couple of centuries ago, although it was thoroughly modern on the inside. The columns and staircase, however, were straight out of the eighteen hundreds.
Her cell rang as she made her way up the stairs.
“We need to meet now,” Mason said as soon as she answered the phone. “Do you have any meetings scheduled within the next hour?”
Elle checked her calendar on her phone. “Nope- nothing.” She entered the library. “Come on over.”
“We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
A visit from Mason guaranteed her day would be even more interesting. It was a good thing she had stopped for a cup of coffee on her way in. Elle took a sip and waved at the students working the circulation desk as she made her way through the large reference room to her office, which was on the far side of the reference room off a hallway. She wasn’t surprised Mason had contacted her as soon as she got to Charlottesville; it was about two hours closer to DC, where he was based at Langley, than Norfolk. She had sent him the unencrypted data. It looked like a variety of things, from lists of names to schematics. Once she’d organized it as best she could, she had sent it to him.
As Elle sat down at her desk, she realized something: Mason had said “we.” He had never come with anyone else before. More people knew she worked for the agency now that she was field rated, but it was nowhere near as many as a regular CIA employee. She still wasn’t supposed to go to Langley unless it was absolutely necessary. Who would he be bringing to the library in Norfolk?
Elle had enough time to log onto the computer and respond to an email from her supervisor in Charlottesville, Janet Kress, before there was a knock on her door. It opened before she could even answer, revealing Mason in his usual “disguise” of jeans and a college t-shirt.
Even dressed in jeans and a baseball cap, Elle recognized the man standing behind him. The casual clothes did nothing to hide his Hollywood good looks.
It was Preston Raddick.
Chapter 8
Elle nearly choked on her coffee, but thankfully she was able to gulp it down.
Mason was unzipping his backpack and pulling out the white noise machine as Preston followed him into her office and shut the door behind them. Preston gave her a look- was it apologetic? - as he took a seat in front of her desk. Mason missed it because he was busy dealing with the machine.
Elle couldn’t even bring herself to give him
a polite smile in return. She hadn’t seen him in over a year, since he had dumped her while she was lying naked in bed after having sex with him.
She didn’t even realize Mason had sat down next to Preston until he said, “Ms. Paquet, you remember Agent Raddick.”
Of course he got called Agent, a courtesy Mason continued to refuse her.
Elle nodded, forcing herself to focus on Mason. Was this another dig at her, an attempt to unsettle her, revenge for having the temerity to get field rated? She wouldn’t put it past him. What an asshole.
“What was on the disc you recovered,” Mason said as he pulled two folders out of his backpack, “was a considerable amount of classified intel: far more than we were anticipating. Agent Raddick has past experience with these individuals, so you two are going to be paired up on this op.”
Paired up? With Preston Raddick? Of all the operatives in the agency, it had to be this one? Preston’s face revealed nothing as he looked at her as if she was just another field operative. Wasn’t he surprised, even a little, to see her in this capacity? She felt as if lasers were beaming out of her eyes, but his expression was unruffled, almost friendly. Damn him.
Mason handed Preston one folder and dropped the other on her desk. As she reached for the folder, her hand grazed the coffee cup. Of course the “graze” caused the cup to tip over, spilling black coffee all over the top of her desk. Elle couldn’t believe what she was seeing as the dark liquid gushed over the manila folder.
Mason snatched the folder back up with a muffled curse as Preston began to press napkins into the puddle of coffee, stopping it from spreading.
Oh Jesus Christ. Had she seriously just done this?
Elle could practically feel Mason’s eyes on her as Preston continued to mop up the spill. She fumbled around for something- naturally this was the day she hadn’t picked up any napkins at the coffee shop- and started pulling tissues out of the tissue box on her desk, using them to mop up coffee as well. The coffee soaked through the tissues instantly, forcing her to reach for more.
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