Page 22 of Tamed Enemy
“I wasn’t ly?—”
I set one fingertip against her lips. The effect is more powerful than if I shoved a ball-gag in her mouth. She cuts herself off mid-word.
“You can’t lie to me. Not by pretending vanilla gets you off. Not by faking an orgasm. You can’t ever fake. Faking says you don’t trust me to be here in the morning.”
“I trust you,” she finally says. And those three words aren’t whispers. She’s found her voice.
She can’t understand the gift she’s giving. She doesn’t know how I’ve felt, always plotting, always lying, always taking advantage of the weakness in others.
With Kate trusting me, I don’t have to be Shannon’s broken little boy anymore.
Nearly a minute passes before she speaks again: “I’ll never fake again.”
“Thank you,” I say, and I’m not whispering either. I say the words like we’re standing in a church, in front of an altar, renewing our vows.
That’s the very definition of irony, of course. In less than a month, we’ll be dissolving our marriage. Nikolai Tarasov will pry us apart, unless I find some way to stop him.
But that’s a problem I can’t solve tonight. Tonight, my job is to convince my wife I love her. I can navigate us both through the channel of this miserable day—Barry Lynch practically a vegetable, Orla Lynch scheming, Ilya Danilov making his opening bid for power.
I use my free hand to smooth Kate’s hair from her brow. I touch the tip of her nose and the arch of her lips. I retrieve the sheet from her tangled feet, and the blanket too. And when she’s ready, I take the pillow from her yielding grasp, returning it to its place at the head of the bed.
It takes her a moment to turn onto her side. A full minute at least before the locked gate of her shoulder blades starts to open. She sighs, though, when I lie down beside her. Consciously or not, she starts to mimic my intentionally measured breathing, and soon she falls asleep.
If I check the clock, I might wake her. Same, if I slip out of bed and go to the computer across the room. I can’t get a drink of water or ease out of my boxers or stretch my right foot, which is starting to cramp.
But I set my jaw against my aching arch, otherwise holding myself perfectly still. The pain passes, and so does the night, minute by quiet minute.
At four in the morning, I finally work my way out of bed. Kate murmurs, but I tell her she’s safe. She falls back to sleep in a heartbeat.
I retrieve clothes from the closet, my usual summer uniform of black cotton shirt, black linen pants, socks and boxers, belt and shoes. On my way out of the room, I retrieve the carry-on bag Nilsson always keeps prepared. It contains three identical outfits, clean and ready to go.
I don’t know if Kate remembers my schedule, if she knows I’m driving to Delaware for the monthly meeting of Diamond Freeport’s billionaires. In an unusual move, Trap Prince, the tax haven’s president, has warned us to set aside three days for this month’s outing.
This is a terrible time to go.
I want to be here when Kate awakes. I want to greet her while she’s still flushed from sleep. I want to slip matching black neckties around her wrists and ankles and tie her to the bed, prove that I can have her screaming my name before she’s awake enough to ask for coffee.
I want to make that coffee for her while she’s showering off our exertion, and then I want to settle in next to her at the massive desk in my office, our computers side by side, the screens on the far wall filling with code as we work our way through all the thickets of building RedBear crypto.
I want to feed her lunch and dinner too. I want to hear her ideas for recruiting new Lone Wolf employees, listen to her thoughts on new ways to protect my clients, on firewalls I’ve never seen. I want to keep her mind as busy as I want to keep her body.
I want her.
But Trap Prince understands the constant stream of demands on every one of his high-stakes clients. If he’s asked for three days, he’ll be certain to make it worth our while. If nothing else, meeting with my peers might open doors as I wrestle with the massive tax debt looming over my head.
And there’s another reason I have to go. This is the first Diamond Ring meeting since Prince expelled me from the freeport. I need him to understand how much I value this second chance.
I have to go.
Jacobson is waiting by the reinforced SUV. The man might sleep even less than I do. Of course, he did go off duty after we returned from Baltimore.Hewasn’t initiating a new BDSM dungeon for the better part of the evening.
Traffic is almost nonexistent on the familiar drive from DC to Dover. Jacobson handles the country roads easily, flying past tiny hamlets and family farms. When we arrive at the Delaware airfield, I say, “This is the end of the road for you.”
“That’s not acceptable.”
“It’s not up for debate. For the next three days, I’ll be in confidential business meetings.”
“Where?”
