Page 15

In the SUV, going back home, Metal went into warrior mode again. The smiling guy at ASI disappeared and super-spy took his place.

He was quiet as he drove quickly back to his house in the worsening weather. The snow had never really stopped all day but now there were flurries. He was a superb driver, though fast. With anyone else she’d be a little scared of this speed in icy conditions but the vehicle felt solid and safe under her at all times.

He only spoke when they were close to his house. Ordinarily she didn’t pay much attention to geography when someone else was driving but they passed that pretty park with the fountain and the statue—the fountain frozen and the statue dusted with snow—and she knew they were near.

The trip was hazy, since she had so much to think about. It still seemed absurd, that a former member of the KGB could be after her, but for her parents it wouldn’t have been absurd. They’d been terrified all their lives, even after the KGB was disbanded. The KGB had been this historical artifact for her, dead when she was a child. Given her parent’s penchant for talking around things elliptically instead of imparting information, she’d simply taken the letters as a stand-in for some mythical monster like the bogeyman.

She remembered Googling the initials when she was twelve and being surprised that the KGB had been an actual thing .

It had scared her that, though tossed on the dustheap of history, part of a country that didn’t exist any more and was in any event on the other side of the world, the initials could still make her mother pale.

She didn’t have enough data to make any meaningful assessment of this and she wanted to avoid the fog of panic that had surrounded her parents. She was not her parents. She had spent her entire life not being her parents.

Sometimes she thought she had immersed herself in the tech world, with its young geeks who thought the world began the year they were born and knew no history at all, so that she could escape her parent’s nebulous world of unspoken and unseen terrors, all from the past. Since she discovered computers she had dived right in and disassociated herself from their world as much as possible.

They had anxieties she couldn’t understand and that had clearly wrecked their lives and she hadn’t wanted that for herself. Still didn’t want that for herself.

And anyway her attacker wasn’t KGB. He couldn’t have been much over thirty when the KGB had disbanded. He was now the CEO at Intergaz. Borodin hadn’t been an active member of any secret service for over a generation. That atavistic stab of terror had been a reflex, more her parents’ fear from beyond the grave than her own.

Anatoli Lagoshin was the man to be worried about, and he was an MBA, not a former member of Spetznaz. The further away she got from the situation the crazier it was. Nothing made any sense at all.

It was easier to focus on a problem that she could meaningfully assess. John’s job offer. She could assess it, but she didn’t know how to think about it.

As a principle, Felicity was really happy freelancing and being her own boss. She’d had a brief unhappy stint in a corporate job and had realized within the first month, when she’d been gently chided for not following the ‘dress code’, that it wasn’t for her.

She liked making her own hours and rising or falling on her own work ethic.

But…there’d been something really nice in the air at ASI. A sense of comradeship. Of close team work. They also had a sort of no bullshit thing going on. Certainly there wasn’t a dress code.

Coming out of the main office, Metal had greeted two guys who looked like they’d just been sprung from jail. He’d introduced them to her and the two guys had been super polite and so friendly she forgot immediately that they looked like they could slit her throat with no trouble. They listened to the same music she did, she discovered as they chatted.

Having John and Douglas as bosses didn’t seem like such a bad thing. Working in that office…well it beat working in her dusty little house. They did exciting stuff. And presumably they’d take care of billing and filling out the endless paperwork for taxes and business compliance she found so tedious and baffling, so she could concentrate on her work.

And living in Portland… It was cold here, so that was good. She didn’t think she could do Miami. She had Lauren here, who’d showed over and over that she was a true friend. And Suzanne very definitely could become a friend. Lauren talked often with warmth of Claire and Allegra. Two potential friends right there and she wouldn’t have to do anything but sit back and be liked.

Jacko…Jacko tolerated her, for Lauren’s sake. Though at times she thought she saw a smile lurking in his dark eyes when he talked to her.

And there was Metal. Yeah…

As if thoughts were tangible, he turned to her.

“So,” he said, his voice expressionless. “MIT, huh?” It was the first thing he’d said to her in the SUV.

He gave her nothing by which she could read his mood. Not his face, not his voice.

Only one answer.

“Yes.” Was this going to be a problem?

“Goddamn.” He shook his head. He was smiling now. “A brainiac. Do you know I never went to college? Enrolled in the navy right out of high school.”

“I know you became a medic. Lauren said Jacko said you know as much as any trauma surgeon.”

“Lauren talks too much. What was it like graduating from a place like MIT?” His voice was cautious.

“Okay,” she said. “It was okay.” Though to tell the truth, she’d barely noticed the campus and spent the entire time at MIT in the underground computer lab.

“So…I guess you’re smarter than me.”

“Probably.” She kept a poker face. “But you can shoot better than I can.”

“Damn straight.” A corner of his mouth turned up. “Cook better too. So I guess we’re even.”

She was smiling too. “Not quite. I’m still prettier than you are.”

“No contest. We’re home.” Metal turned and drove up the driveway. The garage door rolled up and rolled back down when they entered the garage. She barely had time to unbuckle herself before he was at her door, helping her down. She needed the help. Her side was sore but more than that, she was tired.

She had a sedentary job and didn’t go out much. Her only exercise was halfheartedly following yoga tutorials on youtube and she wasn’t assiduous about it. At the end of the day she could be mentally tired but rarely physically tired.

Now she felt physically tired for the first time in years. Exhausted, actually.

Metal put an arm around her waist and as they walked into his house from the garage she was grateful for the support.

The house was warm, welcoming and she smiled as she crossed the threshold. When she returned home after going out her house felt stale, as if even the dust motes hadn’t moved in her absence. Metal’s house somehow felt alive, embracing them, saying – welcome back .

Which was insane of course. She must be really really tired if she thought Metal’s house was talking to her.

“How about we mix things up?” Metal asked. “Instead of tea how about I make you some hot milk with honey and then feed you dinner and you make it an early night?”

“I feel like a two year old,” she complained. And yawned.

“Uh huh.” Metal walked her into the bedroom, turned down the covers, helped her out of her coat and boots. It felt familiar. Hadn’t they done this already a couple of times?

“It seems like you’re always putting me to bed like a sick child. I’m sorry. That’s not very sexy, is it?”

Metal froze. His big body simply stopped moving but it looked like a nuclear explosion had gone off inside his head. “You think I don’t find you sexy? Is that what you think?” he asked hoarsely.

“Well…”

His face was stretched tight with tension. He took her hand and, shockingly, placed it on his groin. Oh man. Either he was really excited or he’d put a big steel tube down his pants when she wasn’t looking.

“Feel that?”

Felicity couldn’t answer because the instant her hand touched him, his penis moved. A strong surge of blood—that was the mechanism, wasn’t it? Because it sort of felt like magic—pulsed through him and the steel tube grew longer and harder. He placed his hand over hers to keep it there though, really? It was so fascinating she couldn’t force herself to pry her hand away.

His penis was hard but also hot. She could feel heat through his briefs and jeans. Man, it was like a furnace. And just like that, heat coursed through her, too, just from touching him. He was watching her closely, eyes slitted. Under his hand, she tightened her grip around him and his eyes closed briefly. He looked like he was in pain but when he opened his eyes again, he said—“Do it again.”

She didn’t have to ask what. She knew. Pleasure was coursing back and forth between them and she could almost see the lines of it, as if it were a physical thing. Her hand tightened and his penis surged again.

Oh man. Amazing.

Metal put a big hand to the back of her head and took a step closer. Her hand was trapped between their bodies.

All that tiredness? Gone, as if it had never been. Energy pulsed throughout her body, head to toe, down to her fingertips. Particularly the fingertips of the hand that curled around his penis. That hand felt zapped by some energy beam.

Metal brought his forehead down to hers. “That feels so good,” he whispered.

“Yeah,” she whispered back. It did. It felt really good. She remembered with intense clarity when his hand had been on, been in, her sex. That had felt like pleasure central.

This was just so amazing. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before, ever. With hindsight, sex had been this lukewarm thing, when it hadn’t actually been downright chilly. Sex before Metal had been a simulacrum of this, like eating wax food instead of the real deal. Just being near Metal, near all that male power and his intense focus on her, was better than any sex she’d ever had.

She ran her hand along his hot, hard length and Metal gave a sigh that sounded like pain. Only it wasn’t pain because his penis did that jumping thing again. She was tempted to conduct a little experiment—to see what happened if she continued holding him. Every time her hand moved he seemed to become harder, longer. Was there an end point? Maybe it would explode.

Be fun to find out.

And then a thought jolted her. For the first time in her life she had a whack at a relationship. A real one. Maybe. Not with a nerd but with a man. He’d seemed really happy at John’s job offer. He seemed really happy being here with her. He wasn’t looking for the exit, he wanted her close.

There might be more of this in her future. Lots more. Wow.

“I think I should see about getting you fed. You must be very tired.” His face was so close she could feel the puffs of breath as he spoke.

There might be lots of this on offer in the future, cuddling and kisses and rainbows and unicorns, but sex was on offer right now. She wasn’t tired any more, not at all. Her stitches didn’t hurt and anyway she trusted Metal to be really careful.

“Felicity?” There was a load of meaning in the word. “You’re tired, right?”

She lifted her head back, looked him straight in the eyes. “Not that tired,” she whispered.

Oh man. Not that tired. That was an invitation. Definitely an invitation. Wasn’t it? True, he wasn’t thinking too straight because all the blood was gone from his head, but even he could tell that she wasn’t saying no. And if the words weren’t enough, her face told him yes, too.

She was bright pink, her sky blue eyes were glowing. Her lips looked a little swollen as if they’d kissed, even though they hadn’t.

Well, that was easy enough to remedy. Metal bent and touched his mouth to hers. He didn’t have carpeting he had hardwood floors but it seemed like static electricity sparked between them when their lips met. They both drew in their breaths.

His mouth settled on hers again, tongue stroking hers and he felt heat surge through him at her every touch. Come on, they were just kissing and he felt like the top of his head was about to blow off. He’d kissed a million times before—though he couldn’t quite remember the women he’d kissed. They were like fuzzy background images and Felicity was sharply detailed, full color, hi-def.

Everything crystal clear even with his eyes closed. Each touch of her fingers felt like fire, burning him without hurting him. This wasn’t pain, no.

He lifted his head. They were holding tightly to each other. With her head tipped back over his arm he was able to look down at her and see every feature clearly.

God, she was beautiful. He kept finding new ways she was beautiful, every time he looked at her. Her straight little nose, the platinum fuzz around her temples, her deep pink mouth. The most beautiful woman he’d ever held in his arms. The smartest woman he’d ever held in his arms, too.

And she had this incredible sweetness tempering the smarts. Metal had once dated an international banker. God knows why he’d thought that a good idea. Lee. She’d been ferociously smart too, but it was all in the service of proving herself better than anyone else. She had a burning need to be the smartest person in the room and wasn’t shy about letting people know about it. She was competitive and used language as a tool to hurt.

Felicity wasn’t like that. There was nothing sharp-edged about her, nothing there that wanted to hurt.

He bent down for another kiss and she closed her eyes, smiling. He kissed her again. He knew how she liked being kissed. She liked it the way he did, long and languorous.

It hit him like a hammer blow to the heart that…he was going to learn everything about her. Learn all her pleasure points. Learn how to make her come every single way there was.

She was going to stay here, in Portland. He wasn’t going to accept anything else. He was going to find the fucker who was after her, eliminate him, and keep Felicity close. This was it. She was the one.

She was going to accept John’s offer. Wasn’t she? John was a great boss and he liked Metal. Metal and Jacko got great Christmas bonuses and Midnight and the Senior both said they were deserved. But Midnight was a hardass. He didn’t offer jobs out of a soft heart or because he liked the boyfriend. He’d offered Felicity a job because she was really good at what she did.

Felicity. Living here in Portland. Maybe…living with him?

The thought shook him. Felicity pulled away a little and looked up at him puzzled. She’d felt something. Had she actually felt the thought? She was so smart maybe she could do that. Read thoughts or something. It should scare him but it didn’t.

“Metal?”

He didn’t say anything, just looked down into her lovely face.

He opened his mouth then closed it. Because…well, it was too soon. Wasn’t it? She’d only been here in Portland for…he couldn’t count the hours because his brain was blasted. But not long. She’d been weak and wounded for a lot of that time.

She had someone after her. She wasn’t in any position to think about the future.

They hadn’t actually even had sex, though what they had had was the best sex of his life.

So he should shut up, enjoy the moment, protect her until they found the fuck, give her time and space. Make sure she liked it here. Let her breathe.

But the connection between his brain and mouth had been severed.

“Are you going to accept John’s offer?”

She’d been expecting a kiss, her face lifted to his, eyes closing. They popped back open again. “What?”

Shit shit shit.

But he’d said it and he couldn’t unsay it.

“John made you a job offer. Are you going to accept it?” Damn. His voice came out rough, demanding. He couldn’t modulate it. What the fuck was wrong with him?

“I—” she looked confused. “I don’t know.”

Of course she doesn’t know, you asshole.

Lighten up.

He kissed her then lifted his head and used his mouth for something else. He knew better, he did, he really did. But he couldn’t help himself. “Midnight and the Senior—John and Douglas—they’re really good bosses. Really good. They are results oriented and as long as you know what you’re doing—and you do—they won’t bug you. The pay is generous and you saw the premises—it’s a great place to work. The guys are great, too. The whole place is…” He faltered because she was simply staring at him. He swallowed. “Great,” he finished lamely.

“Metal, I—” There was a little frown between her eyebrows. He didn’t want that frown there. Only one way to get rid of that frown. He bent and kissed her again. Longer, deeper, hotter.

Turned out his head only had room for one idea at a time. The job offer was pushed out by the next thought.

Sex.

Then that thought was shoved out by another. Sex in a way that wouldn’t hurt her.

Metal placed little biting kisses on that luscious mouth as he pulled her sweater up over her head and ran his hand over her narrow back to unhook her bra. She was there with him every step of the way. She lifted her hands so he could get rid of the sweater then placed her hands on the bottom of his sweatshirt, pausing a second.

Was she waiting for permission?

“God, yeah,” Metal muttered against her mouth and felt her mouth smile under his.

“Going to need your cooperation,” she said, a little breathlessly.

It was hard, but do the hard thing was the SEAL unofficial motto. Letting go of her was hard. Metal stepped back so she was no longer in his arms and bent down so she could slide the sweatshirt off him. He didn’t have a bra she had to fiddle with. He didn’t even have briefs. All that was left for her to do was unzip his jeans and take off boots and socks.

Which she did. When she’d finished they both looked down at him, her eyes a wide pool of blue.

Man, it didn’t look like a human organ, it looked like a club. Metal shrugged. “I’m really, really excited.”

She was bright red now, fighting a smile. “I can tell.”

“How about you?” Metal’s rough voice was hard. He smiled at her. Tried to smile at her but the smile didn’t stick on his face. He was feeling too… something to smile. Emotions were boiling inside him, clanging around inside and he felt like he was going to explode. Words wouldn’t form in his head and if they did he wasn’t sure he could get out what he wanted to say.

Lots of things he wanted to say. Stay being uppermost. But it was like he’d had a seizure or something and bits of his body and head were not connected. And his dick was on a mission of its own without any command and control function at all.

“Me?” Felicity lifted her eyes from his dick to his face and maybe his face was as frightening as his dick because they grew wide and the smile disappeared.

This was all wrong. Metal wanted lightness here in the room with them. She’d been through so much and through all of it she’d been a real trooper. Someone had tried to kidnap her, that someone might be connected to the KGB, the same KGB her parents had escaped from. And her story—fuck. A lifetime under cover, hunching to avoid attention.

She didn’t deserve that. She was beautiful, bright, kind hearted. She deserved a life in the light instead of in the shadows.

She certainly deserved better than a man who could barely talk and whose dick was flying in her face, dark red, shiny at the tip, just about ready to blow.

She deserved soft words and softer kisses and gentleness and romanticism.

What she had, instead, was him.

“Let’s see.” His voice had gone guttural and her eyes widened. God, he had to get himself under control.

At least he could keep his touch soft. He stepped closer to her, slid his hand over her belly, down between her legs. Automatically, she opened her legs for him and he wanted to weep in gratitude. Particularly when he stroked her and found her wet. For him.

Other signs, too. Bright pink, down to her breasts. The nipples were a darker pink and hard. The left breast was trembling from her rapid heartbeat. He could probably gauge her pulse from the beat in her breast if he were capable of counting above three.

He hated it but he probably even looked a little threatening. God, please no. But right now, though he’d been in control of himself all his life, he felt that control fraying, slipping through his fingers.

She didn’t looked frightened of him, though. Thank God. Like he’d done, she lay her hand on his chest and slid it down. She didn’t have far to slide, because just below his belly button, there he was. Stiff as steel.

She opened her hand and grasped him and the pleasure was so great it was almost pain. She must have felt him pulsing in her hand and tightened it. His lungs and voice weren’t working because if they were, he’d tell her to stop. Or something. Because he was a second from shooting his wad and embarrassing them both.

Words weren’t going to do it, actions were.

She had on what Lauren had called yoga pants but were really sex pants because they had an elastic waist and just slid down her legs, easy as you please.

Yes. Now he was working really fast. Sock, boots, off. Pants off, panties off and holy hell there she was, naked.

You are so incredibly beautiful. I can’t believe you’re here. I feel like I have been waiting for you all my life. Please stay here, with me.

Those were the words he wanted to say but his throat simply closed up.

She looked up at him, a little shy, a little uncertain. What a fuckhead he was.

Well no one had ever called him a man of words. He was an action-oriented guy. Maybe he could show her.