“Must say it scares the daylights out of me as well.”
Roy slid his hands around her waist from behind.
It took only the slightest shift in weight to be leaning back against his chest.
“Somehow, Sienna, that doesn’t make me feel much better. We snipers want our National Security Advisors to be supremely confident. You know, in addition to already being brilliant and stunningly beautiful.”
“I’ll file your request in a suggestion box. In the meantime I’ll do my best to not show that I’m freaking out.”
“Maybe this will help.” He removed one hand from around her waist, and hit the light switch. The room was plunged into semi-darkness, only the lights of D.C. filtering through the sheer curtains she’d closed against an earlier sunset, and the open door behind them. Then he swung the door shut and he turned the lock with a click that seemed to echo through the room.
“What are you playing at, Roy?”
“Not playing, Sienna. ’Less you say stop, I mean to have my way with you.”
The NSA was horrified at taking such a liberty in this pristine office. But he hadn’t called her Ms. National Security Advisor. Not once in the whole evening, perhaps not once since she’d met him.
He always called her Sienna.
And it made all the difference in the world.
She was ready to be turned and pinned against the door. She was even ready to have her beautiful dress damaged as he tore it in a frantic need to get skin to skin. Neither thought upset her particularly.
What she wasn’t ready for her was for him to wrap his arms back around her. He simply buried his face in her hair and held her tightly against him. She could feel his arousal pressing against her from behind, but he didn’t make any moves.
Instead, he held her tighter and tighter until she could barely breathe. Then his hands began to roam. His rough calluses caught slightly on the jersey fabric and offered teasing glimpses of how his hands would feel on her skin.
“Having his way with her” was apparently a slow study. A hand brushing over the curve of her hip. The other sliding upward between her breasts, and a single finger tracing the line where her collarbone was revealed by the dress’ scooped neckline. When his finger traced just the slightest rise of her revealed breasts, she wanted to shout at him to get on with it. But she discovered that this time she actually was far too close to hyperventilating to speak.
At quite which juncture his hands went from being outside the dress to the soft material being a puddle about her ankles and his hands on her skin, she couldn’t quite trace back to the point of occurrence.
Though she absolutely remembered the moment he removed his own jacket and shirt. The flash of heat when he finally let them connect skin to skin took her knees right out from under her.
He let her momentum take them to the thick carpet.
“I don’t—”
“I do,” his whisper cut her off.
“You’ve had protection with you all night?” She actually giggled at the image of him shaking the President’s hand with a pocketful of condoms. “At the reception?”
“Protection is part of my job.” He actually said it with a matter-of-fact voice rather than a wry tone which had her giggle escalating.
“Did you bring more than one?”
“I didn’t bring a whole box…but I came close. Do you always ask so many questions when a man is about to ravage you?”
Sienna figured she probably did. So she stopped and concentrated on giving as good as she received.
And Roy was absolutely incredible at making sure she truly received.
Chapter 6
Roy felt as if he’d slept a dozen hours, though he knew for a fact it was less than two. A man didn’t get his chance with Sienna Arnson and waste a moment of it on sleep. Somewhere after they’d transitioned to his apartment, but before she’d demonstrated what she could do to him with a bar of soap in his shower, they had collapsed into his bed.
Not once had they performed the frantic-coupling-and-done that defined so many of his experiences. Not that all of their lovemaking had been slow or gentle, but it had been very mutual.
He’d learned many things about Sienna. She liked to snuggle. Most women clung, Sienna snuggled. She was easily enough embarrassed to appear shy or inexperienced, but like she did everything else, she made love with a complete commitment to the task at hand. She gave of herself more than any woman he’d ever had.
And whether it was due to imagination or prior experience—which he promised himself he’d never ask—she was a very creative woman. A couple of things he asked her to remember just what she’d done, because he’d been in such throes that his memory was faulty.
Like the shape and feel of her. She wasn’t a workout queen, but he could feel the contours of the muscles that lay beneath that ever-so perfect skin. She must rule a stair stepper or some similar machine. Her glutes, when he cupped her exquisite behind with both hands to drag her more tightly against him, were astonishing.
So, he was on the bounce when he entered Frank Adams’ cubbyhole office at one minute to eight the next morning.
And one look at Frank Adams’ desk was enough to make him feel as if he hadn’t slept in a week. Adams was one of those neat-freak managers, so his desk rarely held more than the day’s duty roster and the all-important Action Sheet that was every known movement of all of the White House protectees. On the wall hung only two small photos: his and Beat’s wedding photo and an autographed picture of the President shaking Frank’s hand.
This morning there was a stack of four two-inch black training binders and Roy had the nasty feeling all of that reading was for him.
“Good morning, sir.” He tried to make it as cheerful as he’d felt the moment before he stepped into the room, but Adams was back to being the Head of the PPD—one hundred percent hard-ass.
“Roy Beaumont,” Frank flipped open a file, but didn’t bother to look at it.
Roy could see it was his personnel file.
“You master every task I assign you more rapidly than any other man on my team, yet you make no effort of your own to improve your position.”
“Kee Stevenson may have pointed that out to me earlier this week, sir.” He’d meant to give it more thought, but spare time had been a little sparse on the ground these last few days.
“Sit, but don’t speak again.”
Roy sat and barely managed to bite back the “Yes, sir.”
“You are one of the best technical shooters we have. Your teams consistently have better attention to task, even when you are merely a team member rather than a leader. The thorough analyses you made of route protection plans last week were both insightful and better than the double-blind originating marksman.”
The first Roy had heard of it.
“And Ms. Stevenson remarked on your exceptional ability to acquire and integrate new skills rapidly.” Adams closed the personnel file, still without looking down at it.
Then he slid the stack of training notebooks across the table. “You have forty-eight hours to digest these.”
Roy had worked through these types of manuals before; it was technically possible to plow through one of them in a week if he did nothing else.
“Four—”
“I did not give you permission to speak yet, Beaumont.”
Roy bit hard on his tongue, but kept his anger to himself.
Adams spun the pile so that Roy could see the bindings.
Head of Protection Detail Procedures
Protection Detail Management: Domestic
Protection Detail Management: Abroad, France
National Security Advisor: Protection Requirements and Methodology
Adams was turning him into the head of Sienna’s Protection Detail.
“Now you can speak.”
Roy didn’t know what he’d say if he could. But it didn’t matter, he couldn’t manage a word.
“Yeah, bro,” Frank’s voice slid into a funky uptown Manhattan, way uptown, that Roy had never heard from him. “Dat exactly how I be feelin’ when dis shit come down on top o’ my head.” It was a level of accent that couldn’t be faked. Frank Adams was from the streets of upper Manhattan, maybe even the projects by the sound of it, and that was a bad place to climb out of. What’s more, he was revealing his past to Roy who had never even heard it whispered about.
“But I’ll be responsible for…” Roy gestured helplessly toward Sienna’s office, “…her life.”
Frank dropped his accent and said kindly, “Welcome to the club, Beaumont. Now get to work.”
Roy took his manuals and got.
# # #
Sienna tried not to be piqued when Roy didn’t respond to her message asking if he could join her for a quick lunch.
It was harder when he ignored the dinner request.
If this was his idea of morning-after treatment she was going to murder him. The man didn’t get to wholly redefine “great sex”—which he absolutely had—and also lead her to discover an inner passion that she hadn’t known she possessed, and then get all…guy on her.
Knowing that Roy’s life wasn’t necessarily in his control, she tried to take it easy, but every time she looked about her office, she couldn’t. She believed that he had no intention of “marking” her territory, yet he absolutely had.
This morning she’d taken two steps through the door and been standing on exactly the first place they had made love. It would always be that spot of carpet, right there by the door, their first time ever together. And the couch he’d eased her onto afterward and given her a splendid naked massage while his body had recovered enough for her to take him by straddling his lap while he sat in the chair she usually occupied at the head of the conference table. They’d flirted and petted against the side of her desk when she had to turn on the desk lamp to locate her underwear, which for reasons unknown had been in the exact middle of the conference table.
It was by the soft glow of that lamp that they had stood back and inspected each other. Roy’s sturdy power wasn’t only in his face and his strength went far beyond his hands. He was beautiful in the way a Navy destroyer was—his looks so perfectly suited to what he was: incredibly male. And his long soft whistle as he inspected her had left her blushing and foolishly pleased. It wasn’t a wolf whistle, but rather one of simple astonishment. And all of that had been only a prelude to the romp at his apartment. Completely unlike her, wholly unbelievable, and absolutely glorious.
Then today Roy Beaumont had gone silent though they worked only one floor apart in the same building.
She didn’t have time for dinner anyway, so by nine o’clock she was exhausted, hungry, and the woman in her needed some slight reassurance that the best night of her sexual life had not been a one-night stand. She dropped down the stairs by the Cabinet Room that landed close by the door into the Secret Service ready room. If Roy wasn’t there, maybe she could still find Frank Adams.
She spotted Roy right away, it wasn’t difficult as he was the only person in the land of low cubicles and conference tables. He was at the far back of the room studying something on his desk.
“Hey there.”
He didn’t respond.
She wove her way in between the tables. One had maps of Boston and a binder labeled “Presidential travel: July 12.” A whole set of tables had an Africa tour laid out on them country by country even though she knew that wasn’t scheduled until September.
She tried another “Hey!” when she was nearly to Roy.
Nothing.
That’s when she realized he was asleep sitting up. His head was propped up on his fist. A black notebook was opened before him. She read the page title: Acceptable vehicle selection for protectee transport post-attack (categorized by medical condition). A list of vehicles followed with advantages and disadvantages listed.
No wonder the man was asleep.
His desk included the remains of a couple of sandwiches. There were also several cans of Coke. If she drank that many in a day she’d be vibrating with manic energy for a week, yet Roy slept. His phone lay on the desk, shoved to the side. She tapped it awake and could see her text messages.
When she touched his shoulder, he jolted awake as fast as his phone screen. It wasn’t some smooth, clean rousing of a lover. One moment Roy was completely out, the next moment he had a hand clamped around her wrist and his other hand resting on the butt of his sidearm.
“Oh. Sorry.” He let her go immediately and looked at her with those clear blue eyes that were wide awake. They were the eyes of a wide awake agent triggered into full alert mode.
She waited as his gaze slowly softened. When he finally smiled, she figured the man was now awake as well.
“Hey beautiful,” he murmured after glancing about the room to make sure they were alone. Definitely awake.
“Hey yourself. You didn’t answer my messages.”
He scrabbled for his phone, checked them, and cursed. “Sorry, I set the damn thing on silent so that I could concentrate.”
“Yeah, I see you concentrating,” she made a deeply nasal snoring sound.
“Didn’t realize I’d nodded off. It’s a bit dry,” he slapped at the notebook in disgust.
“What are you reading?” She flipped it closed to read the title.
He grabbed it to block her, but the open notebook had been propped against three others.
Her attention jumped straight to: National Security Advisor: Protection Requirements and Methodology then Head of Protection Detail Procedures.
“Adams made you…” she couldn’t even say it. She could process information quickly, but this was too much. Too big.
“The head of your protection detail? Yes. At least through France.”
“You would…” How in the hell was it possible? “Take a bullet for me?”
“Lady,” he reached out and took her chilled hand in his big, warm one. “I’d have done that since the first time I met you.”
It was too big for Sienna to comprehend. But she did know one thing for certain, there was going to be at least one more morning-after.
She tugged on their joined hands.
“Lady, I need my sleep tonight.”
“So do I,” she agreed and managed to get him moving. “So we won’t try to finish the rest of your protection supply just tonight…maybe only half of it.”
They barely managed to use one before passing out in each others’ arms.
Chapter 7
It was Adams himself who drilled Roy the morning before the flight.
And Roy totally blew it. He had the reporting structure correct, but the timing of “all safe” updates wrong. He kept allotting more duties to himself than he should have as head of detail.
“Trust your people to do their part of the job,” Adams admonished him again and again. Then completely destroyed the lesson by saying, “But if anything goes wrong it lands a hundred percent on you, not on them.”
Adams kept at him for two hours and Roy would swear that half of it wasn’t anywhere in the manuals. Throughout the interview Adams didn’t refer to the manuals or any testing sheet. Everything must be engraved in his memory. That’s when Roy realized that a lot of those procedures had probably been written or at least heavily updated by Adams personally. It made him both more and less daunting. Those books represented every practical lesson learned by prior protection details since the 1901 assassination of President McKinley. Adams had had to flog his way through them once upon a time and then enhance them from his own experience.
The idea that Roy might be adding to those one day wandered into his sights and he liked the way that thought felt. He would have to study them more on the flight.<
br />
Adams slipped a plastic-coated card across his desk to Roy. Rather than being some sort of a failing grade, it was a list of contacts. Secret Service overseas, USEUCOM search and rescue, French Ministry of Defence, the French COS (their version of the US Special Operational Command), Paris police… It was an amazing compendium of phone numbers and radio frequencies.
“Now forget the damn manuals,” Adams waved a dismissive hand. “Trust your instincts. We’ve spent a lot of money training those over the years. Remember! Nothing is more important than the survival of your protectee, nothing. You come under friendly fire from a Paris SWAT team, you find a way to take out that SWAT team and clean up the political fallout later. If there’s a bomb blast, there had better be a Beaumont-shaped shadow covering your protectee. We clear?”
“Clear, sir.” Despite his desperate need for sleep, he’d lain awake for hours the last two nights with Sienna snuggled hard against him. Whether it was his Yankee upbringing, his father’s taciturn training, or something inside himself, he’d always felt the need to protect. The Secret Service had been a clean fit to his way of thinking.
But with Sienna curled back against him, his arm tucked around her, and her fingers laced into his even in sleep, he’d found an entirely new meaning to the need to protect. He’d been trained endlessly that his life was less important than that of the person he was protecting until it came to him naturally. He’d thankfully never had that training tested in a real-life situation, but he didn’t anticipate any of the common problems like freezing under fire or second thoughts.
He hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d told Sienna he’d have taken a bullet for her from the first time they’d met. There was something precious about her. The world would be a lesser place without her in it. And his own world was infinitely expanded by having her in it. He’d finally slept with his nose in her hair and woken with her in his arms. Nothing was more important than preserving that.
“Roy,” Adams eased back in his chair and sounded almost friendly, the way a black bear appeared friendly the moment before it tore you into tiny pieces. “Your instincts are among the best I’ve ever seen. Trust them. Because, believe me, nothing prepares you for when it goes wrong. If it makes you feel any better, when it does go south and you feel like you’re just making it up as you go, we’ve all done the same.”
Roy's Independence Day Page 11
