Masked Read online

Right, right. Technically, they were still labeling Newport’s compromise as “house arrest,” but she wondered how many noses across DC were growing longer at this very second. Nobody halfway close to the situation was in the dark about the backdoor bullshit Newport would start once he’d showered off the prison stink. Perhaps before that.

  She fell into one of the break room’s steel chairs, along with the new java she’d poured into her travel mug. The liquid was hot and strong and bad. Juuuust perfect. The bitterness on her tongue was a perfect match for the seething emotions in her heart.

  “Bloody good thing you really don’t have laser capabilities.” The jest came from the guy who’d just appeared in the doorway, finger-combing his rambunctious curls as he closed the space to the tea station. “I wager that report would be ashes by now.”

  She glanced over as Alex Kenyon filled a cup with hot water and then dunked in a bag of Earl Grey. The analyst was a fresh transport to the CIA by way of five years at MI6 and had already broken a swath of hearts Stateside with his dry British charm and soccer-player body. He was too smooth for Tess’s tastes, but objectively she understood the appeal. And right now, smooth was what her roiling stomach needed.

  “This isn’t pretty,” she muttered.

  Alex settled into the next chair over. “Neither is the escalating tension with the Russians.” He blew on his tea and met her gaze with the blue clarity of his own. His eyes were several shades lighter than Dan’s, but she couldn’t help using them as a jumping point for wondering how Dan’s gaze would change once he knew Kirk Newport’s demands were a signature away from being approved. Depending on how busy the president’s day was, the former four-star general could be kicking up his heels—still dripping with the blood and guts of the innocents he’d walked over—in front of his fireplace by dinner hour.

  “How the hell am I going to break this to him?”

  Alex rubbed her forearm in reassurance. He knew the “him” to whom she referred. Ever since those weeks she’d spent nearly every day by Dan’s side in the burn unit, everyone had known.

  “You’ll find the words,” Alex assured. “You always do.” He sipped his tea and arched both brows, teasing a little. “We’re all just glad it’ll be you and not any of us.”

  Tess glared at the report again—and now really wished she could laser the damn thing too. “This is fucking unfair.”

  “War is hell, buttercup.”

  “This isn’t war, damn it!” She bolted back to her feet. “This is a stupid pissing match that could be handled with a closed-door meeting over a large bottle of vodka. Newport knows the exact same thing, but he’s leveraging his ‘sacred advice’ about these bastards for everything he’s worth—which isn’t much, now that he’s been disgraced like the cockroach that he is.”

  Alex thrust out his lower lip. “Mr. Wonderful, indeed.”

  She dumped her coffee down the drain with a violent thrust. “I can’t consider what Newport will be capable of. That report only scrapes the surface.”

  She dropped her head into her hands as her mind jumped back a year, remembering the frenzy around here once everyone realized that one of the country’s biggest, most horrific biomedical experiments had been conducted for years right beneath everyone’s noses, in a secure building at Area 51—because of Kirk Newport’s collusion.

  “I’ve seen enough of the paperwork to have a good idea,” Alex declared. “The Big Idea project, turned into a cover-up under the Verge Pharmaceutical umbrella. Splicing human and animal DNA. Bollocks.” He peered back up at her. “Wasn’t one of Dan’s friends one of those poor souls?”

  Tess nodded. “Shay Bommer. He gave himself up to Stock, Newport, and the brains guy, a whack job named Homer Adler, to save a bunch more of the test subjects. His friends tried to intervene, but the mission went really sideways. One of the guys took a bullet in his leg, and a couple of nurses died in a massive structure fire. It would’ve been three nurses if not for Dan.”

  “And that was how he got burned.” Alex grimaced. After Tess nodded again, he asserted, “Bastard’s a bloody hero.”

  She swallowed against the sharp sting behind her eyes. “Yeah. He is.”

  “Well, then.” The guy rose, clearing his throat. “Good move, dumping the coffee. Just move on to the vodka, duck.”

  “Not a bad idea.”

  She scooped up her copy of the brief and made her way back down the utilitarian halls to her desk, with all its familiar piles of prioritized cases. Normally she’d be eager to turn on the laser and get to work, but today she plopped into her chair and gloomily eyed the stacks.

  Maybe she could turn them into a little forest and hide out from making the inevitable phone call to Dan. Just thinking about Newport again, with a dozen canaries in his fat-cat belly, made her crave a punch—or ten—at the wall.

  Her cell phone rang to life. Incoming call. Generic ringtone. The source number wasn’t one she recognized, making the hairs on her neck prickle.

  “Get a grip,” she rebuked. “Telemarketers find their ways.”

  Two more rings. She lifted her thumb, eager to shoo the call straight into voice mail, but a rebellious grin caught her lips. Telling off a pushy asshat might be just what the doctor ordered for her craptastic morning.

  “They’re your data minutes. Start talking. And make it good.”

  “Little rose.”

  Shit.

  Shit.

  Time stood still. Jolted ahead. Froze again. Then broke free, racing to catch up with the electrons she’d once called a body, now splintered into a thousand tiny sparks that both fought and resisted the confines of her body. As if she had a choice in what they did now. She was a prisoner of the voice that still reverberated in her ear, its technically altered tone as low and sensual and beautiful as she remembered. The sound curled through her, taking over cell by cell, awakening her on every visceral level once more.

  “Are you there?”

  “I’m here.” She tightened her grip on the phone so hard, it tumbled to the desk and slid beneath her file rack. “Crap, crap, crap, crap!” When she resettled it against her ear, his chuckle rumbled the line. “I… Sorry. I’m here. Really.”

  “And truly?” he teased.

  She whooshed out a breath. “It’s…you.”

  “Really. And truly.”

  “Shut up,” she lobbed. But when he complied with that, she didn’t know what to fill the silence with. “I…I just…” Had never expected to talk to you again. Had never hoped to. “How’d you get my number?” Because of her national-security clearance, her name never showed up on her personal line, but the fact that he had it was a little weird. Which should’ve been unnerving—if her nerves would calm down long enough to be undone.

  “I asked Max for it.” Even his weighted pause brought a new round of Where’s Waldo for her heartbeat. “But that might depend on your definition of ask.”

  “Oh.” While she hoped his innuendo didn’t mean he’d literally forced the answer out of Max, his revelation clutched at her lower belly.

  “So…how are you? Are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right.” She brushed fingertips along her hair, having gone glam pin curls with her style in honor of actually facing the world again. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Because I haven’t been.”

  She swallowed and tried to breathe. Then again. He’s only checking on you. Stop reading a thousand meanings into his words. Of course, the tight growl he finished with, along with the voice-alteration device, didn’t help things by a damn bit.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally managed. “Are you not feeling well?” That had to be it. He’d come down with something over the weekend and assumed he might have already been contagious on Friday night, so he was calling to warn her about it. “Did you catch something yucky?”

  “Yeah. I caught something.” The words fortified the lead lump in her stomach, but his tone was all off. A man newly felled by cold or flu rarely sounded so vi
ctorious about it.

  “Damn,” she murmured to be polite. “What do you have?”

  “A craving for you again.”

  Forget trying to catch her breath this time. “Oh.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m…uh…” She grabbed a curl and twisted it around a finger. Think you could add any more clichés to this? She ducked her head like a shy teenager—guess the answer to that is yes—and murmured, “I’ve missed you too.”

  A rumble emanated from him, confirming his thoughts had ventured at least halfway down the same path as hers. Damn. That voice enhancer, especially over the phone, turned him into something dark, wicked, and barely tamed, making her very skin ache from yearning to be his prey once more.

  “Missed me.” His echo was a challenge. “A little or a lot?”

  She twisted her hair tighter. Damn it. Talk about a case of rock and hard place. If she said a little, he was going to detect the lie. If she said a lot, then she became the picture of desperate and horny. Okay, she was desperate and horny, but that was none of his business.

  “A…a lot.”

  On the other hand, maybe it was fully his business.

  Take forehead. Drop to palm. Could you be any more of a dork? But was she supposed to have played it differently, when just the sound of his voice disconnected her mind from her body, except to acknowledge the fire in her blood, the tingling in her breasts, the exquisite pressure in her sex? It was as if part of her had been sleeping for the last four days and now received its perfect, Dominant wake-up call.

  “Good.” He said it like he expected it but still rejoiced in it. The sound was verbal sun, warming her enough to lift a cautious smile.

  “Well, now that we have that established…”

  “Meet me again.”

  The room spun once more. “You,” she stammered. “I mean me. Well, and you.” Been forming coherent speech for long there, sister? “You want to…meet me again? Where? You’re not even here anymore. You had to leave—”

  “And it tore my fucking gut out to do so.”

  “So I heard.” She winced. Well, there’s the coherency—along with its new best friend, snarky bitch. She added in a hurry, “But it was all okay. Honestly.”

  “The fuck it was.”

  His vicious tone was not to be debated—so she didn’t. Probably a blessing in disguise. She might’ve blurted things she shouldn’t, like, How the hell do you just know what I went through with the sub drop? And why the hell are you so furious about it?

  “Well, it’s not going to happen again.” His voice mellowed a little. A little. “I changed my workload around to get more done from my Vegas office this week. This time, you’re going to be pampered…after I tame every part of you again.”

  She gulped before managing, “That…that sounds pretty nice.”

  A savoring growl answered her. “Oh, it’ll be nice.”

  Dilemma. Follow him down the path of yummy, dark, verbal debauchery he offered or seize the other opportunity too good to resist: the chance to possibly learn more about the man behind the mask?

  “Your ‘Vegas office,’ hmmm? As opposed to the other office…where?”

  No more than two seconds passed before his blunt reply. “I want to see you again, Odette. The sooner, the better.”

  Well, that was the last time she let curiosity win out over horny. “I…really think I’d like that.”

  “Good.”

  “Errrm…anyplace in mind, then? Are you a let’s-do-coffee guy? Or is happy hour and bar mix more your speed?”

  Another significant pause. Then, with low-toned care: “Was our time at Catacomb that awful for you?”

  “Our time was heaven for me,” she answered without thinking. She shrugged, despite knowing he couldn’t see her. “I just didn’t want you thinking that was all I wanted.”

  His chuckle filled more than just the digital line between them. It plowed through every cell in her body. He wasn’t a man who laughed often. She had no idea how she knew that, but it was a fact as certain as the sky was blue and Nutella was nectar from the gods.

  “Isn’t that supposed to be my line?”

  “Why?”

  She could hear the gravity descend over him again. “Oh, little beauty.” He exhaled at length. “You truly don’t realize what kind of a gift you gave me on Friday, do you?”

  Heart, meet moon. Fighting the stars cascading over her spirit from the impact, she rasped, “Just as you don’t see what you gave to me.”

  “Hmmm.” There was a creaking, as if he leaned back on expensive leather. Lots of it. Did he work in a corporate environment? If so, did he have his own office with one of those palatial chairs? What would it be like to kneel for him there, be ordered to pleasure him while he took a phone call from another powerful businessman?

  So much for fighting off the ache between her thighs—which spread even deeper as he concluded, gravel thick in his voice, “It sounds like we’re at somewhat of an impasse.”

  She sniffed delicately. “Respectfully speaking, Sir, it’s only an impasse if both parties aren’t determined to move beyond it.”

  “Hmmm.”

  That hum again. Why did he keep doing that? At this rate, he’d be making her come right here from the force of the syllable alone.

  “Is that what we are, little red?” he murmured. “Two determined parties?”

  She threw out a flippant laugh—which probably sounded more like a dying seal. “I’m in if you are, honey.”

  His sharp hiss would’ve been a complete excuse to giggle again—until he followed it with a growl that grabbed the middle of her clit. “Let me tell you what I’m determined about, sweet one. I’m determined about seeing you again. All of you. Bared to me. Naked for me. Once you’ve peeled off every thread of clothing, revealing every inch of your incredible skin, I’m determined to take that breathtaking body and turn it into a thing of ecstasy. I’m determined to push its limits, learn its fears, and then explode it past them all, until you’re flying so high, you don’t remember—or care—which direction the ether takes you.”

  She undoubtedly sounded like a creepy bitch by now, breathing as hard as she did—but she was beyond caring. “Y-Yes, please.”

  His gruff huff filled the line. “So fast to agree—when you have no idea what I want to do to you.”

  She shifted again in her seat. It was the only way to assuage the pressure, continuing to take over new parts of her pussy. “If it’s anything like last Friday, then do away.”

  His pause was a torture of silence. His reply was even more ominous. “I’m not going to play you easy this time, rose. Not by a fucking long shot.”

  And delicious.

  And breath-stealing.

  “Was Friday your idea of easy?”

  And has Tess ever heard of a filter?

  “Friday was my idea of heaven.” The line sounded so much better with his resonance applied. At this moment, she didn’t care that it was artificial. “But there are so many depths you haven’t explored yet.”

  “Depths?” she repeated. “In heaven? You mean heights, don’t you?”

  “All depends on what you consider ‘heaven,’ dear one.”

  Dear one. Oh, that was by far her favorite. Her eyes closed from the impact. Her head dipped. She longed to keep going, to crumble to her knees for him even now. “I want to go to heaven, Sir.”

  “I can hear that.” His comeback was threaded with the same brutal desire pounding her bloodstream. “But now…plead it to me.”

  Deep gulp. Her head dipped lower, along with her voice. “Please, Sir. Take me to heaven.”

  “Gorgeous,” he praised. “Now…from your knees.”

  Her eyes flew open. “My…what?”

  “You heard me, Odette. Do it. Say the words from your knees. I’ll wait.”

  Tess snapped up her head. Peered around. Her normal workday view awaited. Filing cabinets. Supply closet. Pen cups. Staplers. Sticky note holders. Everything was the same
—but it wasn’t. “I’m at work,” she whispered.

  “At your desk?” he persisted.

  “Yes. But—”

  “Then be creative. Did you drop something, perhaps? Looking for something in your purse?” A knowing pause. “See, little one? Masquerade can be fun.”

  “Don’t be a smartass.”

  “And don’t talk back to your Dom.”

  “You’re not my—”

  “Right now, I most certainly am. But you still have a safe out. Just hang up, and we can be done at this point. No harm, no foul. You’ll be on your way, I’ll be on mine, and—”

  “No.” She hated the desperation in her voice.

  “Then you know what’s required, rose. Lower to your knees…and imagine how good it will feel to do that in our own room at Catacomb. Imagine my hand against your cheek as you say the words to me in person.”

  Ohhhh, shit. The man was like a damn drug. His voice rendered her so woozy, the whole knees-on-the-floor thing might happen in spite of her reticence. “You won’t even know if I’m really doing it or not,” she groused. But lying to him was a seriously shitty choice. Trust was a two-way street, especially in the world of D/s.

  “I’ll know.” He constructed a wall of command around each word. No option to do anything but believe him.

  After one last little grunt as salvage for her dignity, she pushed her ass off the chair and slid her knees to the floor.

  The second they hit, something crazy happened.

  Crazy and wonderful.

  She forgot all about her dignity. And remembered every tingling detail about the little preview Sir Sexy had just provided. His hand against her face. His approving growls in the air. His body in front of her, proud and hard and majestic, making her feel small yet sheltered…and so thoroughly a woman.

  “Please, Sir…I want to go to heaven. Led by you.”

  The words brimmed from her in whispers, as natural as mist off a lake at dawn, pierced by the sun that was him. His response drove into her with the same power, thorough and primal and unalterable.

  “Tomorrow night. Ten o’clock. Catacomb. I’ll meet you at the door.”

  * * *

  For the first time in her life, she hated herself for being obsessively punctual. Fifteen minutes had never felt more like fifteen hours—especially when every passing moment brought the chance to think more deeply about the strangeness of this moment.