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“Can we agree, for now, not to talk about it?” she murmured.
I wrapped my arms around her waist. “Of course we can.” I bent my neck and kissed the soft skin under her ear. She shuddered. “Ali…”
“What?”
“Is that short for anything?”
“No. My mother…her favorite movie was ‘Love Story.’”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
She laughed. “Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw fall in love, and she dies.”
“Ah, so you were named after the character.”
“No. The actress. The character’s name was Jennifer, and my mom said there were a million girls my age with that name.”
“Tell me more about them falling in love.” I moved her hair and ran the tip of my tongue down her neck.
“It wasn’t meant to be.” She groaned when I reached up and pinched her nipple with my fingertips.
“Why not?”
“He was rich. She was poor.”
“Was that all?” I cupped her mound with my other hand and slid one finger inside her.
“His family was powerful. They tried to break them up.” Ali writhed against me.
“But he wouldn’t stand for it.”
She shook her head.
“How did she die?”
“Cancer.”
“Tragic.”
“It was a movie.” She moved my hands and stood, holding hers out to me. I took it and stood too.
“I’m insatiable when it comes to you.” I picked her up and climbed out of the tub, carrying her into the bedroom. I set her on the bed.
She wrapped both arms around me, resting her cast on my shoulder as I plowed into her warm wetness. I had to pull out, put on a condom, but wanted to feel her pussy clench my cock without any kind of barrier.
“Squeeze me.” She did and I almost came. When I tried to pull out, Ali wrapped her legs around my waist. “I don’t have a condom on, baby.”
“I know.”
Ali slept after I wrung her dry with pleasure. I stared up at the ceiling, stroking her hair with my fingers.
The last time Decker and I spoke, he asked if I wanted him to run a check on the reporter. I told him I already had. We both knew he could go deeper, and I didn’t want him to. It was careless, but I wasn’t ready to let her go. I might never be ready.
For the first time in many years, I’d started to see life beyond the mission Irish and I had taken on. Never had I dreamed it would go on as long as it had. Worse, the longer it did, the more agents we lost.
During the hotwash of one of our Chinese missions, Irish informed me his gut was telling him the targets knew their attackers were coming. While he’d made it out alive, three other agents hadn’t. When it happened again a few months later, we both began paying closer attention.
The once-robust espionage network the agency had worked so hard to put in place in China, began falling apart. In the last five years alone, the loss of agents escalated at an alarming rate. Dozens of CIA informants had also disappeared—either jailed or killed.