by S. K. Lessly
We ate ice cream and talked a little, which I had to say made my week. Hell, it made my month. Freaking year. I really enjoyed the rare times when my mom was able to carry on a conversation with me. We talked about my job and my future. She knew and could tell how unhappy I’d been, but she couldn’t understand why I didn’t change my circumstances.
Growing up, she used to say, “Alexis, don’t be a victim of circumstance. You are in charge of your own destiny. If there’s something in your life you don’t like or want, change it.”
Well, it was a nice thought, but I wouldn’t know how to begin creating my own destiny. For now, I wasn’t going to think about it. Maybe if I ignored it, it being my life, things would fall into place on its own.
Yeah right…
“Where’s Ethan?” my mom asked me, switching the subject from my lack of happiness to my current despair.
I shrugged. “Not sure, Mama. He went back home I guess.”
“He is such a sweet boy. Why didn’t he ever ask you out?”
I shrugged again. “Not sure. Probably because he doesn’t like me like that.”
She shook her head. “Oh no. I know that’s not the reason.”
“How do you know?” I asked her, trying not to get too excited.
“He told me. He said to me one day, ‘Mama Millie, I’m gonna marry Lexie.’”
I laughed. “Oh Mama, he said no such thing.”
She nodded emphatically. “Yes, he did. Right in that kitchen he told me.”
“Maybe he was joking.”
“Now, I know I can tell when someone is joking or being serious and that boy was serious. He told me he loved you and wanted to marry you. He told me he would do that as soon as you two was of age.”
I smiled at her trying to fight back the tears welling in my eyes. It reminded me of the letter he sent, the promises he didn’t keep.
“Well Mama, maybe he changed his mind,” I said, taking her empty bowl to the kitchen, needing a break to get myself together. When I came back and sat down in my seat, my mom continued to lay it out for me.
“No baby, he hasn’t changed his mind. He just lost his way. You’ll see. Once he finds his way back, you’ll know what I’m saying is right.” She looked at me and placed a gentle palm to my face. She then said to me, “You are an amazing young lady, Alexis. You don’t give yourself enough credit. You’re smart and caring and you have an enormous heart just waiting to love someone worthy. There will come a time in your life where you will have to make a difficult decision that could change your life forever.
“Promise me you will follow your heart and not your mind. For once, don’t make the logical decision, as you always do, but make the radical one that has an abundance of uncertainty. I wished I did that in my life. I wished I had the courage to go with your father. To tell him how much I still loved him, but I was afraid and now it's too late. Don’t live your life like I have, afraid of taking risks. Take all the risks you can and benefit from the rewards they bring.”
I stared back at my mom, stunned. She has never spoken so many words to me in a very long time. But before I could absorb her words and react, she started watching television again. Our moment was gone, and it made my heart break in little tiny pieces.
This woman was all I’ve known for so long. She was my constant and to think I would lose that soon made my heart ache. I tried not to think about that truth, but I couldn’t do it.
The first tear began to fall just as the TV blared, “Hello boys, I’m baaaackkk!"
Life sucks!
Chapter Seven
Ethan
“Holy shit, baby. That was intense!” Jessica Walbash crooned, kissing my chest before shifting her weight off me and rolling to her back. Her breaths were coming out in sharp pants. Sweat glistened along heated skin, our hearts pounding, and our bodies completely satiated. I closed my eyes, catching my breath and allowing my mind to drift.
Jessica and I had been partners for about three years. We met the day I joined the unit. We took one look at each other, felt the pull of kindred spirits, and have been partners ever since.
My unit was currently headquartered in D.C.; however, we planned to move our operation away from the prying eyes of all the intelligence agencies our government possessed. To say we were hated by the other government agencies would be an understatement.
We didn’t play fair and we didn’t share. We worked independently from any other with tasks that were very sensitive in nature. That didn’t go over very well in the intelligence community, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it. No one knew what we did for the country but the president. No one understood how we were solving cases others couldn’t, and they weren’t too keen on the power and autonomy we had.
Hell, that last one I didn’t understand fully. On the flip side, if we got caught in a country that we didn’t have permission to be in, doing shit that we shouldn’t be doing, we were on our own. We had no backing. We had no country. We had to survive on our own, which made us deadly, determined and extremely unpredictable.
“I swear, baby, I’ll never get used to how good you make me feel.”
I sent a grunt her way and covered my eyes with my forearm.
I felt the bed shift with her weight then her hand was on me, sliding over my abs, chest, to the side of my face. I kept my eyes closed, resisting the urge to push her hand off me. Her touch was setting my skin on fire and not in a good way. “I'm glad you said yes tonight. I thought I would never get a taste of you again.” Fuck, I was a bastard.
Even though I took what she had offered me, a night of mind numbing, emotionless sex, I was beginning to regret saying yes. My mind was heavy with shit I couldn’t make sense of. I needed the distraction, but I wasn’t sure if Jessica was the one to distract me.
We were here in D.C. for a meeting with our boss, George Walker, which had been scheduled for a week ago. Something had come up and he rescheduled the meeting for tomorrow. Because of the change, I had about a week to myself. I took advantage of the time and had been working my ass off conducting some investigations of my own. I needed to prove Lexie's innocence and so far, I hadn’t found shit. I was annoyed to no end and quiet as kept, sexually fucking frustrated.
I wanted to wring Lexie’s neck for getting into this mess. I also wanted to stick my tongue down her throat, consume myself with her taste, then rip her clothes off and slide inside her tight sheath. I needed to feel her. Feel her body close to mine, feel how tight she was for me, how wet, slick. I wanted, no fuck that, I needed to fuck her until we both passed out.
Got damn it she had me so wound up, I couldn’t see straight. And she hadn’t done anything to make me this way. In fact, it had been a bit awkward between us when we went to dinner both nights. However, that had nothing to do with Lexie and everything to do with me. I had been trying to do my job, be the tough emotionless agent I was when all I wanted to do was take her in my arms and kiss the fuck out of her.
Ever since I laid eyes on her I wanted her; I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. I had been secretly pining to claim this woman for years. That shit didn’t die, no matter how hard I tried to bury it. I was going out of my mind to take her, to finally have her in my arms. Or at least fuck her out of my soul. But that was a bad idea. She was a suspect in an ongoing case. She was suspected of being a traitor. So, being the bastard that I was, when Jessica called me to meet up, I dropped whatever I was working on and took her up on her offer.
I knew what I was looking for wasn’t in between Jessica's smooth thighs. But she had made a compelling argument, or rather she cupped my dick, squeezed and stuck her tongue down my throat. In my defense, I needed a release, or I’d fear I’d explode. Which was why I brought Jessica to the Hamilton hotel on 14th Street NW tonight and fucked her brains out.
My relationship with Jess hadn’t always been like this. We escalated our relationship to a physical one a few months ago. It wasn’t something we planned; that shit just happened. Add
a little gun play, being chased by a shitload of bad guys along streets you knew nothing about in a country that hated Americans, and shit happens. It also helped that she and I had no ties to anyone and never planned on having that.
Needless to say, after we escaped sudden death, we had been itching for release. We drank a shit load of alcohol and one thing led to another, and I ended up fucking her senseless on the balcony of her suite in Paris. I thought of our extracurricular activity as a way of letting off steam and since we both enjoyed it and each other, we’ve been secretly hooking up ever since.
But sex between us was just that, sex. It was passionate, rough, and raw with no strings attached, just as I preferred it. We knew each other inside and out; or, we knew what we wanted the other to know. One thing I knew for certain, she and I refused to allow ourselves to feel anything but pure lust for each other. Neither one of us were capable of anything else. We both knew that and had accepted it long ago. So why not enjoy each other for a little while? That was my thought process.
Except things started to change for me. For the past, let’s say two weeks or so, I started to feel something else, something strange in my chest. It only happened when I thought about Lexie, or when I was around her, which didn’t make sense. I wasn’t the type to harbor feelings. I didn’t do emotions and yet the tightness in my chest, around my heart was saying otherwise and it scared the shit out of me.
Feeling Jessica's unwanted scrutiny, I turned my head to face her and opened my eyes. I unabashedly took her in. Jessica was a beautiful woman, sexy as shit with thick auburn hair and eyes as gray as clouds on a winter day. Those eyes could also be just as cold, but not tonight. Tonight, she was looking at me with heat blazing in those empty depths of hers.
“What?” I asked, annoyed at the silence and judgment in her eyes.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“No, what did you say?”
“I said that I was glad you took me up on my offer. I thought we would never hook up again.”
I shifted away from her, guarded, hoping she wasn’t about to piss me off.
“Why is that?” I asked her, knowing in fact she was about to piss me off.
“Well, you reuniting with Tinker Bell. I thought you were getting a little soft there. All hearts and feelings and smiles. It’s not a good look for you, Wolf.” She laughed. “I mean, really. What the hell did you see in her back then? She is such a boring little miss brainy geek that if she was on fire in a room, you still wouldn’t notice her.”
I gave her a hard look that stopped her from touching me, which was smart on her part. I could be cold too and I was better at it than she was.
“Don’t say shit like that,” I barked coldly, getting up from the bed and walking, naked, into the bathroom to dispose of the used condom on my now soft dick.
I wasn’t sure why her words pissed me off. I hadn’t seen or spoken to Alexis in twelve years. I shouldn’t care about the opinions of others. But no matter the time spent apart, I had to regretfully admit, she was still under my skin. I felt protective of her and I wouldn’t stand by and let anyone say hurtful shit about her, even if it was behind her back.
I peeled the condom off, tied it, wrapped it in toilet paper and flushed it down the drain. When I returned from the bathroom, Jessica was still lying on the bed, propped up by her side and elbow. I allowed my eyes to peruse her body with mild interest. Jessica had a great athletic body, a perfect set of breasts that felt good to my touch, a pussy that was hungry and a mouth that was greedy. She was a good lay. But one thing I didn’t like about Jessica was when she used her mouth for evil.
Jessica got up from the bed, not shy at all, and sauntered up to me. “You’re still taking up for her after all these years. Why?”
She touched my chest and tried to warm up to me, but the moment we had just shared was ancient history.
I walked away from her and went to the window. I looked out over the city of D.C., my thoughts shifting to Lexie. “We need to check in.”
Jessica sighed, annoyed. “Ethan, she’s fine. I’m sure. You told the bus geeks to call you if anything happens and we haven’t heard a peep from them since we’ve been here.”
She walked over to me and rubbed my back. I was tense. She knew why and so did I. I still had pent up aggression I needed to get out. Usually, I’d relax some under her touch, but sadly, not tonight. I turned around to face her, hoping like fuck this feeling now gripping my chest would fade.
She wrapped her arms around me and kissed my neck. I closed my eyes and allowed the feel of this sexy as fuck woman wash over me. But as I closed my eyes, another woman's face popped into my head.
Got dammit!
I had thought fucking Jessica would rid me of her, but it hadn’t. It made me want her more. It made me want only her.
Fuck this!
I trapped Jess's face in between my hands and took her mouth with mine. I picked her up by her waist, walked back to the bed and dropped her on top of it. She smiled as she bounced and watched me with hunger in her eyes as I grabbed another condom from the nightstand and covered myself. I didn’t waste another second; I spread open her legs, pulled her closer to me by her ankles and pushed inside her warm pussy hard and fast.
Maybe if I concentrated on fucking Jessica, I wouldn’t think about her this time around.
***
The drive back to Delaware the following day was spent with me bathing in fury. The meeting I had with my team leader, George, and Jessica didn’t go very well. Hearing the constant shit about Lexie was getting old. I was sick of this shit, fucking sick of telling these people Lexie was innocent. Granted, I had zero proof to support my claim, which by the way was also pointed out. That still didn’t mean I was wrong.
“Look, Wolf, we have proof that she’s guilty,” George, my team leader, so graciously reminded me.
George Walker ran Code One. He was in his late fifties, tall, still in great shape with gray eyes, a strong jaw and dark hair. He had been a one star general before he left the army, in charge of a special forces unit called 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta.
I met George when I was part of Delta. He ran my unit for a year before he got promoted to work on some wartime committee in D.C. He stayed there for years, doing shit he wouldn’t talk about, before he retired from the military to work for the defense department and the Secretary of Defense.
Due to some very touchy situations the US was dealing with overseas, the president at the time decided to create a private and elite hit squad of his own to fight the wars that the NSA, CIA, DEA, FBI and others couldn’t win. He had asked George to head up that group and for the last ten years he had done just that, despite who was in the White House.
Code One was a force to be reckoned with; truth, not a biased opinion. It had agents all over the world, and some in country, getting involved in shit that would give Americans nightmares. There were about seven teams total, varying in numbers of personnel, each with its own team leader. I was the team leader of my group along with about six agents reporting to me.
George vetted every unit member that worked for him long and hard. He followed careers, putting them through a series of tests to make sure they were equipped to handle any job asked of them. For some reason, he saw something in me that no one else had seen. Some believed I was a natural born killer, a very unhinged individual. It was rumored I had no conscience and I acted thoughtlessly, viciously, with unabashed aggression and violence.
That was farthest from the truth, at least when it came to me having a conscience. The other shit was true. Yeah, I did have a conscience. I also ran out of “gives a fuck” when I was fifteen, so I didn’t care what I did or who I had to kill to get the job done. If that made me a monster then… I guess that was what I was.
I did whatever was necessary to get the job done, end of story, and George could see that. He also saw the potential in me, the skills and intelligence I possessed. I could speak four different languages, a
nd I had the skillset to get a confession out of anyone. My superiors loved that about me. What they hated was my attitude.
I had a temper. A bad one. If didn’t agree with an order given, I had no problem making my feelings known. If I was told to do something that I didn’t agree with, I wouldn’t do it. Of course, I behaved myself in the service. I kept my head down and did what I was told, for the most part. Fortunately for me, I had a smart lieutenant who knew what the fuck he was doing. And fortunately for me, now I was in charge of my own team.
I did what was right and I never put my team in harm’s way. George knew that and he trusted me, trusted my judgment on every case I worked on so far, except this one.
“Sir, with all due respect, where is this so-called evidence?” I questioned, not at all hiding my annoyance.
We were in an office he commandeered, specifically for this meeting, in an office building on 15th street, which was close to the Pentagon in D.C. The office wasn’t anything to write home about. Four walls painted a drab off-white, filing cabinets to one side, a large window on the other side. No pictures on the walls, nothing identifying who occupied this space. There was a huge oak desk that sat in the center of the room with a monitor, a laptop, and a phone being the only items on the smooth surface. George sat comfortably behind the large desk. Jessica and I sat in two uncomfortable chairs facing him.
My goal today was to debrief George on how the case was going so far. I wasn’t sure how the meeting turned south, and it was pissing me off. He was pissing me off. I watched my boss, the tension in my body escalating, as he gave Jessica a look I didn’t like before he sat forward, rested his hands on the desk, and laced his fingers. But before he could say something to really set me off, I spoke up.
