Page 15

ERO

“ T ell me again what you’re going to do to me when we finish this?”

“I’m going to spank the shit out of you if you don’t quit distracting me,” I rasp, forcing down my body’s response to her smoky voice. Down, boy.

“Mmm…as long as you tie me up first.”

A highlight reel of the past few weeks loops through my mind at the suggestion. We’ve been on a roll since our initial rocky start. Nonstop jobs. Check-ins with the boss. Ananke.

Now there’s an instant boner-killer. My thoughts snap back to Circe.

Her flawless figure. The rampant sex.

I hold my breath as a guard shuffles past, no more than a foot from my hiding place. A step to the right…

Circe slips out of the shadows, jabbing a knife into his neck. I step out, catching the falling body, hauling him into a locker. Check our six. Clear.

“Prisoners are up ahead,” Cirs mutters, scanning the tunnel while I guard her assessment, peering around a load-bearing pillar.

“How many?”

“Infrared shows three more Numbers gang thugs patrolling the cells. Most hold four or more Zef-Con. Tight quarters. Lot of cross fire. Terrible backstops.”

The gangs of South Africa have been at war for decades. Not sure why we’re here to single out and help one in particular. I’ve reconciled not asking anymore.

“Roger that.”

Circe shakes with suppressed laughter. “Ten-four, Big Bear, we got bogies on our tail.”

“Your southern accent is terrible.”

“My worst is still better than your best.”

Bitch. I tap her shoulder, ready to breach.

The rest is autopilot.

I trigger the blast, blowing the door. Circe tosses a smoke bomb, I lob a flash-bang.

Slash, bang, boom. Mostly just slash, slash, stab.

All three guards are down. The Zefs handle the rest once we disable the electronic locks on the holding cells. Twenty minutes later, the whole abandoned prison is back under their control, and Circe and I are speeding away in a Jaguar without a second glance.

I know it seems calloused. Abrupt.

They always want us to stay. To help them fight.

It was the same in Beirut. And in Thailand. Eliminate a rebel leader. Rescue the son of a politician. Steal a priceless tapestry from a slave merchant in Indonesia. Each time, it’s very specific.

They offer us money to help them with other targets, or uprising, or drug smuggling. Every time we run it up the ladder, Ananke tells us to move on.

Not that I want to get caught up in someone else’s war.

That’s not my job.

But what we’re leaving in our wake is…concerning. Large forces indebted to Pantheon. Usually leaderless. I try not to think about it.

Especially when there’s a rewarding distraction waiting for me. From South Africa, we head up the coast to Madagascar.

White sand, crystal waters.

A private beach to ourselves.

Circe’s skin has grown deliciously golden from our after-mission endeavors. And not a single tan line to be seen…

Our nights together have become relentless. Addictive. She’s insatiable. My thirst for her is unquenchable.

She’s thrilling. Inspiring. Fearless.

The private jet out of Melbourne carries a safe and the only woman in the world with the biometrics to open it.

We take over the crew, hijack the flight.

Safe to say that we retrieve the documents in the safe.

Circe is even kind enough to bandage the woman’s missing finger and eye before sending her on her way with a parachute.

Set the plane to crash in the ocean, make our escape.

I’ve jumped out of planes before.

But never one in a nosedive.

By the time we land on a floating dock waiting for us in the drop zone, we’re both down to our swimsuits. A boat is fueled and waiting. Let it wait.

I take her right there in the middle of the Pacific, water lapping across the deck and great whites circling. Pure. Adrenaline.

Just like soaring through the Alps a few days later wearing squirrel suits, gliding at breakneck speed.

Raid the office at the secret mountain home of a certain Prime Minister with his hands in several underworld cookie jars. Leave no witnesses. Spill no blood.

Tricky, if you don’t have a good sleeping agent to deploy. Fortunately, the staff is enjoying a bit of wine that somehow got spiked. Which inconveniently includes the driver of the supply van we stowed away in to get there.

Good thing we brought our own way out.

The back terrace overlooks a ravine, the view almost as stunning as my cohort. Circe drags me into a deep, brain-melting kiss as we stand on the railing with nothing but a hundred foot drop awaiting us.

Then the bitch pushes me off!

Of course, I snag her suit with my foot and send her spiraling. It isn’t the only time either of us almost die in the flying race to our safe house that follows. The same safe house we accidentally burn down the next day after a wild night of brutal lovemaking.

Ananke nearly blows a fuse when we tell her she no longer owns a Swiss chalet.

Playing by the rules seems to be a good way to earn back some favor.

A.k.a. playing police for a heroin dealer in Myanmar. Locate the players, follow the product, the money, tracing it back to the kingpin, the growers. What most law enforcement agencies can’t do in months, we do in two weeks.

With the head of that snake removed, we set fire to acres of poppies and vanish. Ananke will no doubt be livid. So we don’t bother checking in for a week and a half.

Bangkok, Saigon, Hainan Island, Taipei, all the way to Seoul.

“I hope you two got it out of your system. You’re heading inland.”

Straight through China, Circe altering our appearances along the way. By the time we reach the highlands, I don’t recognize myself in the mirror.

Makes it much easier to blend in as we take to horseback across the Mongolian plains.

The Triad gunrunners we ran afoul of outside of Beijing give us a hell of a chase.

More or less remedied when we offer them a cut of the weapons stockpile we were sent to locate and retrieve. They’re even nice enough to smuggle the arsenal to the coast and load it on a ship headed for wherever the fuck Ananke wants them.

Easy enough to forget about staying at a monastery near Sireet Ulaan Mountain.

It’s the first time I find a hint of quiet inside. Well, in the few hours the two of us aren’t engaged in hours-long bouts of tantric, body-bending sex.

Circe’s legs behind her head…

Lifting her off the ground as I arch into a reverse push-up…

Locked in a pretzel of limbs, joined at the waist, barely moving as a ten-minute, multifaceted orgasm electrifies my fucking soul.

Returning to civilization definitely puts a damper on the ascendant experience, but I feel…vibrant. Shit, I mean, we barely even bicker for more than five or ten minutes at a time anymore.

Tokyo feels charged when we land.

Ananke’s contact meets us at the airport, taking us on a roundabout tour of the city before delivering us to the Yakuza kobun , a captain, and an old acquaintance of Circe’s. He’s our only point of access to one of the oyabun .

“I am intrigued by you, Ero-san.”

“How so?” I tilt my head casually as we wait outside the meeting room of the picturesque estate home of Haru’s senior.

Haru’s a full head shorter than me, no more than five-two.

Maybe a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet.

And I guarantee he could probably whoop my ass with that blade at his side.

“You sit like a teenager, slouching and lazy. Yet you stand like a warrior. You move like a cat.”

“And you sit like you’re still in class, about to be dressed down by the teacher.”

“Proper, you mean?”

“And pompous to boot. Reminds me of someone I know.” I glance toward where some of the attendants took Circe to change into something more traditional for our negotiations.

“That is no coincidence. We studied under the same sword master.”

Which means Haru might remember more about Circe than even she can.

Not that I have a clue what she can remember. We still avoid our pasts as much as possible in conversations. Might be augmented by the fact that every time we check in with Ananke we seem to lose half a day. Wake up disoriented.

“Was she always so stubborn?”

“Forged from steel. No man I ever met could tame Obake . Not even our master.” He grins as he nods in her direction.

“ Obake ?”

“A demon who changes form. Your companion earned this name after training here many years ago.” Haru’s eyes never stay still, scanning the room, the door, me. He’s keen. Sharp.

More than that, he seems to look through everything…

“She’s mentioned something to that effect.” Very little, actually, but still. “But any man who thinks she is tamable is a fool.”

“Then you are not one, I take it. She would only ever accept an equal. Which means you are formidable indeed.”

Despite his soft voice and calm demeanor, there’s a sparkle to his eyes. A thread of humor to everything he says, like a double meaning laced under every word. And a piercing quality to his gaze as he meets mine.

“Oh, I am most certainly a fool. But I am also formidable, yes.”

“A smart-ass, as well,” he snickers. “Do not confuse foolishness for a shadowed soul. Coal and soot obscure even the most rare diamonds. They must be cut and cleaned to find what lies at the core.”

A shiver claws down my back.

How can he see me so clearly? Am I so clouded in my judgment, even of myself, that a stranger can single out my greatest flaw?

I’ve always been able to read my opponents, to see them for their weaknesses, their motives. To pinpoint how they will react, what they fear, what will break them.

Haru is unreadable.

“And what if there is no diamond beneath the dirt? What if there is only an empty hole?”

“Then you will collapse. Implode. However, there is no void within any man. Our souls will always be filled with our choices, our actions and their consequences. If you do not choose what to be inside, you will fill up with the poison of doubt and cowardice.”

“Because only a coward does not take responsibility for his actions.”

“Precisely. You are not a fool. Not a coward. But you are afraid, and rightly so.”

“What am I afraid of?”

“Yourself.”

“You’re a blade in your own right, Haru,” I mutter, shaking my head slightly in disbelief and a little irritation.

“Hm. The sword is only an extension of the soul, the mind.”

“Is that like guns don’t kill people, people kill people?”

“Violence is only a result of choices made. Like you: you cut yourself as often as you cut your enemies. As often as you and Circe cut one another.”

“When this business is concluded, perhaps we might cross blades,” I offer.

“I accept. It would be good to see the retreat where we trained again.”

“You honor me.”

“I also protect my Raibaru .”

“Competitor?” And how do I know that word?

“You…love her, don’t you?” I ask, no emotion in my tone. It’s a statement, a fact.

“Not exactly. Raibaru means rival. Someone who challenges you. Much like a sibling, a member of your family. Circe is mine.”

“How does training me protect her?”

“I would make you a weapon better honed to guard her back.” He smiles, rising as an attendant enters to accompany us inside. “I would prevent her from harm, from a betrayal.”

“How would you do that?”

“I will kill you.”