She opens her mouth, likely to scream, so I don’t waste a second. I cover her lips with my palm and wrap my other arm around her torso, wrenching her free.
“She’s mine,” I say coolly, dragging Z to a corner alcove, the last remaining free one in the room.
I know that Z can hold her own against anyone in this room, but I also know that she is out of her element here, whereas I’ve frequented clubs such as this across the globe. Never, though, with a partner and certainly not one who in my younger years took both my innocence and my heart.
Despite my feelings about Z’s betrayal, if anyone else in this room lays a hand on her, I’ll cut the appendage off before the assailant has time to blink.
I hold her body flush to mine, my cock rigid against her lush, firm ass.
“Twelve o’clock, nine o’clock, six o’clock,” I whisper.
She nods, noting each alcove that hosts a dom and a sub in “private” one-on-one sex play.
From the intelligence I’ve collected, Price doesn’t engage in the group acts, but he watches them. Those he finds most entertaining he invites into his private viewing room. All we need is to get a private audience with him and then we plant the seed. “Do you remember your role?”
She slams her ass into my cock, and I grunt from both the pleasure and the pain.
“I take that as a yes,” I growl into her ear.
Anyone who wants to do business with Price needs an in. This is ours. Once we get an official invite, we become business associates of an arms trader who wants to check out Price’s inventory.
I wrap my end of the leash around my wrist and spin Z to face me.
“Nothing we haven’t done before, right?” I say bitterly. “And I’ve got something that’ll make it like old times.” I pull a silk blindfold from my pocket and tie it over her eyes.
“Fuck you, X,” she hisses.
I grin. “That is the plan.” Then I press a palm to her shoulder. “Now kneel, Princess, and show me how you worship your king.”
She obeys, playing the part of the good little sub. But once on her knees, she does nothing more.
“Did I stutter, Princess?”
“No, Highness,” she answers, whatever expression her eyes hold hidden behind the blindfold.
“Then tell me why you pay no reverence to your liege.”
My cock throbs behind the zipper of my jeans.
“Because.” She shrugs. “I’m a bad little princess. You’re going to have to make me worship.”
If we don’t give Price a worthy show, then this evening was for nothing. So I grab the knot of hair on her head and yank it hard. Because of the blindfold, she doesn’t see it coming, and she cries out as her head jerks. Then her ruby-painted lips part into a devious smile.
“Worship,” I growl, giving the leash a slow tug, knowing the metal ring rubs along her folds every time I do.
She unbuttons my jeans and lowers the zipper, and there it is again, the smile that tells me this agent is far more trouble than I anticipated.
She rips my jeans to my ankles, nodding at the small weapons in each slot of the hidden holster that only she can see.
“What’s the matter, X? Don’t trust me?”
I raise a brow. “Not even a little bit,” I say without hesitation.
She simply grins, then licks me from balls to tip—knowing despite her mask that I was commando inside my jeans.
She sucks me to the very base, and I grit my teeth to keep from roaring like a goddamn caged lion. Immediately, my body responds like I’m a teenager who needs one thing—to coat her throat. I begin to move my hips in time to her bobbing sucks, growling with pleasure as she exhales through her nose, controlling her gag reflex.
My fingers twitch, itching to bury themselves in her hair and imprint my taste on her tongue.
Damn it. I love every second of this assault.
If I am the dom, why the hell does it feel like she is the one in control?
“No,” I grind out, realizing more than one thing feels off. “This is not the show Price wants.”
I pull Z up and pivot her so she is against the wall. Then I lift her hands above her head to where handcuffs hang from a bar attached to the small alcove’s ceiling.
I lock her there—arms raised and wrists shackled, her blindfold securely fastened.
“Pick a safe word,” I tell her. “Quickly.”
“Why?” she taunts. “You don’t scare me.”
“Not for here,” I tell her. “For when we start working with Price. If we ever get separated—if you’re ever alone with him and need out fast—we need a code word.”
She bristles. “What if you need out fast? Why do you assume I’ll be the one in trouble? Because I’m a woman? Honestly, X. I could kill you before you even knew I betrayed you.”
“Maybe,” I say. “If I still trusted you.”
I pull another piece of silk from the pocket of my jacket and gag her, partly to play our role and partly so she cannot press the issue.
“The safe word is La Seine.”
She thrashes as I strip to nothing, and I relish her reaction.
The first time we met as anonymous lovers was in the back of a limousine parked along the Seine River in Paris.
But it is also the place where at seventeen we spent the weekend holed up in a cheap inn where she gave me her virginity and I gave her mine.
Fucking hell, I was a fool. She all but told me who she was years ago, and I missed every goddamn sign. I wonder now at the betrayal she must have felt at finding her first love—a trained assassin and spy—unable to recognize the girl who should have been his.
I tear off her G-string and slam into her to the hilt. The thrashing stops. Instead, our bodies pulse in time with the music beyond the walls. I lift her booted legs, and she hooks them around my waist. How I want to rip the gag from her mouth and kiss her until the decades between us melt away. But this night isn’t about Max and Lora. It’s not even about X and Z. It is a mission. A job. A means to an end.
This isn’t tender lovemaking. It’s a hard fuck.
And it doesn’t change the fact that every thrust sends the memories swirling.
Her back slams into the wall, and she bucks against me.
It’s our first year at Frasier. I sneak up to her table in the library where she sits alone and pull the book from under nose.
Slam.
“What are you reading?” I ask, wrinkling my nose at the old Agatha Christie mystery.
Slam.
“Nothing, now that you’ve stolen my book. Return it, if you don’t mind.”
Slam.
“Take it, then. If you can.”
Slam.
She stands from the table as I hold the book high above her head. But in mere seconds she has my arm wrenched behind my back, and the book falls to the floor.
Slam. Z cries out around her gag and I’m breathing heavily.