You Only Love Twice (19 page)

He shoved another inch in and she took it, her tongue
swirling around his stalk. Her hand worked the base. She gripped him hard and
gave him the slightest edge of her teeth. He couldn’t take another second or he
would come right down her throat, and that wasn’t how their first time was
going to go.

He pulled away and she looked up at him, her mouth a
gorgeous red. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, but it’s my turn. It’s my turn to put my mouth on
you. It’s my turn to taste you. Lie back and spread your legs again.” His cock
was throbbing, but he was determined to make this night last.

* * * *

Phoebe didn’t think. She simply reacted to the command in
Jesse’s voice. She let her body sag down, allowed herself to sink into the
softness of the comforter at her back. Her brain was fuzzy with desire and she
was riding the wave.

Strong hands gripped her ankles and pulled her to the edge
of the bed. She looked down the length of her body at him. He was spectacular.
Tall and lean, every inch of him perfectly muscled. She loved how strong he
was. And she couldn’t take her eyes off his cock. It stood out slightly from
his body. She could still taste him on her tongue. Salty but clean. The feel of
his skin was burned in her brain.

He pulled her legs apart, exposing her again. He’d stared at
her before. It had been odd, but she’d loved how desire had lit his eyes as he
looked at her pussy, how his hand had moved toward her as though magnetized to
her.

Now it wasn’t his hand that moved to her. He dropped to his
knees in front of her and then his mouth hovered right over her pussy. His
breath heated her, making her flush again with arousal. Every time she thought
she couldn’t get more turned on, he did something else that threatened to blow
her mind.

She watched, unable to take her eyes off him. She watched as
he lowered his head to her pussy, covering her with his mouth.

Pleasure coursed through her. She couldn’t help but gasp and
try to move. His tongue was soft against her flesh, sending tingly bliss all
through her system.

“Don’t move.” Jesse’s command rumbled along her flesh. “Stay
still or I’ll have to spank you and then we’ll start again. This is my time and
I will have it. And if you think I wouldn’t do this in front of a crowd, you’re
wrong. I would eat this pussy in front of them and let them know you taste as
sweet as honey.”

She couldn’t help it. Just thinking about it did something
for her. She held herself still as he devoured her. His tongue traveled the
length of her female flesh, delving inside and then licking its way back to
torture her clit with slow caresses.

Over and over again he stroked her with his tongue, leaving
no part of her unloved. His fingers parted her labia gently, giving himself
access to her core. She felt one finger slip inside her, finding a rhythm and
rotating while he tongued her clit.

It was torture to lie there. She wanted to move, to fight
him for her pleasure. She wanted to force him to give her more. More of his
talented tongue, more of his lips and teeth and fingers. More Jesse. She wanted
all of him and she wasn’t sure she could settle for less.

But he’d earned her submission. He’d been patient and kind
and he’d taken her to places she’d never been before. So she fisted her hands
in the silky comforter and let him pleasure her at his slow, decadent pace.

“I want you to come for me. I want you to come all over my
tongue.”

He gave her a second finger as he drew her clit into his
mouth and sucked hard.

Phoebe couldn’t hold out. Sensation swamped her, dimming her
sight as he took her over the edge. She cried out his name as her body was
suffused with pleasure.

Before she could come down from the crazy high he’d taken
her to, he was up on his feet. In the hazy aftermath, she watched as he rolled
a condom over that beautiful cock of his. Alarm bells went off in her head, but
they were a distant thing. What was more relevant was the fact that she wanted
to give this man everything he’d given to her.

She made no protests when he moved her up the bed and made a
place for himself between her legs.

“You’re so fucking gorgeous when you come. Let’s see if I
can make you do it again.” He pressed his cock in.

She was sure if she hadn’t been so well pleasured from
before, it would have been difficult to take him. He was so big. He was bigger
than…

He pressed in until there was no room, until there was
nothing between them.

“Oh, Phoebe, you feel so good. Do you know what you do to
me?” He gave her his weight and she was deliciously crushed. So unlike…

He kissed her, making all thoughts flee as he held himself
hard inside her. His tongue glided against hers. She relaxed again and allowed
her hands to find his back. Jesse pulled out slowly. Inch by inch she could
feel him moving. He dragged his cock out almost to the end and then pushed back
inside.

He picked up the pace and she matched him. This was what
she’d been waiting for. She slammed her hips up. He stared down at her, his
gorgeous face tight with desire.

“Give it to me,” he growled. “I like the way it feels. I
like your little claws in my back.”

She hadn’t even realized she was sinking her nails in, but
it seemed right to do it. This was a struggle, a sweet struggle. She held on to
him as he fucked her hard. He wasn’t polite or gentle about it. He pounded into
her and her whole body and soul responded. This fight was what had been missing
before. She wasn’t something sweet and gentle. She was his equal. She was his
mate and she could prove it.

His hips twisted, grinding down on her clit just as he
stroked deep inside. Phoebe went right over the edge again, crying out and
calling his name this time.

Jesse’s body tightened and he held himself still, his chest
hitching as he dragged air in. He relaxed finally and rolled to his side. He
reached out and put a hand on her belly. “I’m crazy about you, Phoebe. I could
love you if you let me. This could be good between us. You don’t have to go
back to Virginia.”

The words sank in. Virginia. Home. Where she and Jamie
lived, except Jamie wasn’t alive anymore.

She’d just slept with a man who wasn’t her husband. Shame
flashed through her system. She sat up. “I need a minute.”

“Phoebe?”

She didn’t look back. She ran to the bathroom and shut the
door, her insides turning. She’d made love to someone who wasn’t Jamie. They
were supposed to be forever. She’d taken vows. She’d made promises.

She closed her eyes. She did it all the time. She closed her
eyes and summoned up a picture of Jamie in her head, except she couldn’t quite
see him this time.

She’d given herself to another man and then thought about
how much better the sex was. How could she do that? How could she even think
it?

She looked at herself in the mirror and didn’t recognize the
woman staring back. She wasn’t the controlled and contained woman she’d become
under Franklin Grant’s tutelage. She wasn’t Jamie’s wife. This was Jesse’s
lover, his sub.

She wasn’t ready. She couldn’t let go.

Tears rolled and she let herself slide to the floor, feeling
further from both of them than she could have imagined.

Jesse couldn’t even look at her. It hurt too much. He knew
the minute she walked in the conference room. It was like his body had an
active radar where she was concerned. How long would it take before he couldn’t
feel her under him? Before he couldn’t taste her on his tongue? He feared he
might die remembering what it felt like to make love to Phoebe Grant.

And he remembered what it felt like to hear her crying in
the bathroom, a locked door between them.

Despite his promise to Ian, he’d slept in Kai’s room the
night before, ceding the guest room to Phoebe so she wouldn’t spend all night
in the bathroom.

He hadn’t seen her all morning. She hadn’t come to the
kitchen for coffee or breakfast. He’d knocked on her door when Tag texted him
to come to the conference room and he’d been told she’d meet him there.

It was like nothing had happened between them at all.

“Tell me you have something.” He was careful not to look her
way. If she was crying again, he wouldn’t be able to take it. Listening to her
cry the night before and not being able to do anything about it had made him
feel like a criminal, like he’d stolen something from her when all he’d wanted
to do was give.

She was still in love with her husband. Last night had proven
there was no place in her heart for him.

Big Tag sat back, his eyes going between them like he was
trying to figure something out. Ten watched him, too. He had the sudden urge to
walk out before they both knew just how much he’d fucked up. “We don’t have as
much as we wish we did, but I think we’re getting closer.”

“We need to get this thing done. I can’t keep the team here
in Dallas for much longer,” Ten admitted. “I don’t want to take this team out
into the field unless I’m sure we’re solid. We’re supposed to be in Dubai in a
week for some energy conference. We’re gathering intel on some of the new
players.”

Tag nodded. “Yeah, we’re running security for one of the
smaller countries attending. Jesse’s supposed to go, but I think I’ll have to
send Alex instead.”

They were working for the king of a small country named Loa
Mali. Big Tag had met Kashmir Kamdar when he’d worked an op in India. The
country was putting an enormous amount of their money and workforce into
sustainable energy. Though they were small, the king still required a security
detail, and he’d offered McKay-Taggart the job fully knowing they would also
have their own mission while there.

“You can’t do that,” Jesse argued. “He just had a kid.”

Tag’s eyes flared. “Well, they’ve all just had kids. I swear
this team breeds faster than horny rabbits. I promised Kash I would send at
least four of us. Erin and Simon and Li are going. I need one more. I can’t
send Adam. I need him here solving this problem. So I’m down to Alex or Jake.
Jake is a whiny bitch about out of country assignments since Princess Serena
gifted the world with his son. Alex just met his little poop machine. How
attached could he be?”

“God, I love you, Tag. You make me look sensitive,” Ten shot
back.

Tag and Ten started in on each other and Jesse wondered how
much more he could seriously fuck up. He was supposed to be on that detail.
He’d been prepping for the assignment for a month. He’d been looking over the
profiles Adam sent him and memorizing the power players. Though he was mainly
there as muscle, Tag wanted the team to investigate some of the CEOs of the
energy corporations for possible Collective ties. The shadowy group had been
quiet since losing their head bad dude a couple of months back, but Jesse had
no doubt they would come back with guns blazing at some point.

“So what exactly have you found out?” Phoebe asked and he
finally looked at her. She was clean, neat as a pin. Her hair had been pulled
back in a severe bun. She looked nothing like the woman who had screamed in his
arms the night before. Contrary to his fears, she didn’t look vulnerable at
all. She looked hard, focused. This was the CIA operative.

“Chelsea found that someone used several of the Agency
assigned cells to call a number in Turkey. It’s never a long conversation. Not
really a conversation at all. It’s more like ten to twenty seconds and then the
call is disconnected, but Chelsea assures me there was a connection,” Ten
explained.

“Why not use a burner?” Jesse couldn’t understand why this
person would risk getting caught when he could easily use a burner phone.

“When we’re on assignment, they’re not allowed to have
anything non-Agency assigned with them. No ID, no equipment, and definitely no
personal cell phones. Their packs are checked before they get on the plane.
These calls occurred while they were on one particular mission.”

“Whose phone was used? That’s simple.” Phoebe set down her
coffee mug.

Ten shook his head. “No, it’s not. It’s four different
phones. They belonged to Malone, Boomer, Deke, and Ace. None of them have
relations in Turkey. The operation in question wasn’t in Turkey and had no ties
to Turkey. We were in Southeast Asia.”

Turkey was considered to be the gateway to the Middle East
and the jumping off point for radicalized Muslims joining the jihad from the
west.

“The calls all happened in a two-day period. Nothing
suspicious before or after,” Ten explained.

“Someone’s desperate,” Tag said under his breath.

“Then we’re looking for an inciting incident. This person
has been careful up until now. Something spooked him,” Phoebe pointed out.

“Or his employer.” Ten sat back in his chair, his eyes
serious.

Li’s words played around in Jesse’s head. He’d said he
thought that this was about him.

You’re the answer. You’re the one who leads us to the
sleeper. This is about you. We have to figure out why they want you dead.

He had to find the answer. He needed to stop thinking about
his nonexistent love life and concentrate on getting them out of this
situation. He had to think about what the real question was, and he had two men
in front of him who might give him the answer.

“Why me? Like what are logical reasons someone would want to
take me out?” Jesse mused out loud.

“It could be personal,” Tag replied. “But it doesn’t feel
that way to me. Instinct tells me it’s bigger than that. Besides, why would
someone on Ten’s team have something personal against you?”

He could only think of one incident. “I clocked Boomer after
he and Malone shoved Si and me in that shed.”

Ten shook his head. “Everyone’s clocked Boomer at one point
in time. That boy’s had more concussions than a quarterback. He’s not the type
to get pissed about something like that. Now you take his Cheetos and he turns
into the Hulk. That boy is all about his gut.”

“I don’t think this is personal,” Phoebe said, sounding
deeply professional. “If this guy really is a sleeper, then he wouldn’t risk
his position on a personal grudge. This was expertly set up. I was the one who
screwed everything up. If I hadn’t been made, no one would have been the wiser.”

“So if this is a professional hit, it’s got to be about
stopping you from doing something.” Tag tapped his pen against the desk. “The
only op you’re scheduled for right now is the one in Dubai, but you’re one of
four agents. So why you?”

“It could have been a message to you, Tag,” Ten offered. “We
just never got the message because he didn’t actually die.”

They started arguing, but Jesse tuned them out. This wasn’t
about Tag. It wasn’t about the team. It was about him.

“What are you thinking?” Phoebe asked, leaning toward him.

“That this is about me. I just can’t figure out why.”

“Taggart’s right. If this is about you then it’s about
stopping you from doing something.” She frowned as Ten and Tag continued to
argue. “Or it’s about something you know that you shouldn’t.”

A bitter laugh came from his mouth. “Yeah, well, we all know
I don’t know much.”

“Jesse…” She turned again, facing him, and her face had
flushed. “You didn’t do anything wrong last night. That was all about me.”

God, he’d heard this speech before and he didn’t want to
hear it from her. He nodded when he thought he should, but he didn’t really
hear her as she started to explain how she wasn’t ready and it wasn’t a good
time. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

It all came back to
I don’t want you, Jesse.

He knew that. He knew what it felt like to be rejected. If
this was about what he knew, rejection was high on the list. Other things he
knew—how to be tortured and nearly turned into a mindless slave. He knew the
sound of pure evil. Yeah, that was a good one. He knew what the devil looked
like.

In the end, there was really only one thing vitally
important that he knew and no one else did. Him. The man in his nightmares.

“I know him.” The truth hit him square in the chest. “I know
him
.”

Phoebe stopped her obviously prepared speech. “Who?”

Even Ten and Tag were now paying attention.

“The Caliph. That’s what he called himself. I’ve seen him,
heard him. I’m about to go back to the Middle East. One of the things you had
to do for the conference was send in the names of all security personnel. We’re
required to go through checks, too. Kamdar had to submit our names in order to
bring us as his security detail. What date would he have done that on?”

“Grace did it.” Tag was suddenly on his laptop, his hands
working the keys in a staccato rhythm. After a few seconds he reached for one
of Ten’s notes and groaned. “Shit. She did it the day before the phone calls.
She submitted those names and that is what led to the phone calls. He couldn’t
be careful anymore. It was too important.”

“He has to have taken or borrowed those phones. I can’t
believe I’ve got four traitors.” Ten had gone a little pale.

“Why would this man care if you were at a conference?”
Phoebe asked. “Obviously I understand that he wouldn’t want to be recognized,
but why would he be there in the first place? Shouldn’t he be running his
little army somewhere?”

“He was an educated man. Highly educated. In that part of
the world, it means he’s wealthy. He spoke English with a British accent.” He
wracked his brain for everything he could think of about the Caliph. It was
hard because a lot of the time he’d spent with the man had been in a
drug-induced haze. “He talked about Oxford.”

“So he’s very wealthy.” Ten sighed and restacked his papers.
“And that means oil in the Middle East.”

“Shit. The last thing he wants is to be outed as a jihadist
at this thing. This conference is for moderates only,” Tag explained. “One of
the things they’re supposed to discuss is how to deal with resources falling
into the hands of radicals and how to protect their companies from it
happening. Jesse, I think you’re on to something.”

He shrugged. “It was really Li’s idea. He thought it was
about something I knew.”

“Dude, take a compliment. You sound like a girl who doesn’t
want to be told she’s pretty more than a thousand times. You were smart. Not
going to say it again.” Tag’s words came out of his mouth with the efficiency
of a machine gun.

“I didn’t know you said it the first time,” Jesse muttered
under his breath. Somehow, in telling him he was smart, Jesse still managed to
feel dumb. But Tag was right. He was on to something. And he had another
theory. “What if I wasn’t the Caliph’s first? Deke told me you have a couple of
people on your team who were captives at one time or another. Who was gone the
longest?”

Ten opened his laptop. “Ace and Deke were both gone for a
couple of months, Ace slightly longer. Boomer was held for a week before he
managed to escape. He made a sling shot, if you can believe it. Fucker took
down three men with rocks, escaped, and then almost got his ass caught again
because he got lost in the center of Kabul. Some friendlies took him in and hid
him until his unit managed to pick him up. I don’t think this is Boomer.”

“No,” Jesse agreed. Boomer was too open, but the other two
were candidates. “It makes sense if we run with the idea that the Caliph
doesn’t want me to potentially identify him, it would be his man who would make
a move to take me out. What if I was a failed experiment? That doesn’t mean
others didn’t succeed.”

Ten ran a hand through his hair and his jaw tightened. “I
can’t believe it.”

Jesse shouldn’t have expected different. He wasn’t
intelligence. He was just a dude with a gun and protective instincts. “All
right. What do you think?”

Ten glared his way. “I think you’re right and I don’t want
to believe it. Are you always so literal?” He slammed the top of his laptop
into place. “I’m sorry. I’m struggling with the fact that I have a traitor in
my midst and I haven’t seen it. He could have hurt my men. I take them
seriously. That team is my responsibility and I fucked up because I’m missing
something. I didn’t see something.”