He froze when he looked down. Something ran through his body, a subtle tension I could barely discern and couldn’t define. He shook his head briefly, as if to clear it. Then he continued inside, and I might have imagined it, except for the sensual awareness awakened in my own body.
He had seen me as a woman and wanted me. That wasn’t the surprising part. A moderately pretty girl, young and friendly, I could find interested men by walking into the nearest bar. They wanted to fuck me and leave me, though I never gave them the chance. Even if I did consent to fuck them, just to see if this time, this time, it would be different, I was always the one who left first.
No, it wasn’t surprising that he wanted me. The truly surprising part was that I wanted him right back. Wanted his body, his attention.
And strangely, wanted him to stay.
I led him to the table in the kitchen, a piece made of reclaimed wood I’d found on a weekend trip to the coast. The top was a slab of thick slats that used to be a fence. The legs were connected with old brass door hinges. The man at the farmer’s market expected me to haggle, but the table was worth far more than I paid for it. It gave me a kind of contentedness every time I saw it.
We spent the night combing the files, drinking his beer and ordering a pizza to help us through. Sometimes when he looked at me, it seemed like…well, but he never acted on it. There was no touching or anything too inappropriate at all, just two agents working a case together.
Colleagues, yes.
Friends, maybe. Friends who kissed.
But lovers? The official Bureau regulations would bar such a thing. I couldn’t let personal feelings get in the way of catching Laguardia, and I doubted Hennessey made such allowances either. He hadn’t gotten to be a renowned agent by getting distracted by prettily painted toes.
Although, he had shown up at my place, instead of calling me into the office. Instead of waiting until morning. So maybe he was a little interested. And judging from the way he kept glancing at my body, a little distracted too.
Hours passed going through pages and pretending not to notice how close he was to me. The hour hand crossed the midnight Rubicon and continued into the early hours of morning. My eyelids drooped, blurring the words in front of me. Both of us were moving slower and talking less. We were falling asleep, neither of us willing to end this tenuous peace.
A ringing sound startled me, and I dropped the pen I was holding. His cell phone.
He sent me an apologetic glance. “I’ve got to take this.”
“You can use the living room,” I offered, for privacy.
I could still hear him when he answered brusquely and spoke in low tones, but I couldn’t make out his words. Just as well, because my mind was mush at this point. Maybe I’d rest my eyes so I could be alert and ready to work when he was done with his call.
The steady murmur of his voice was my lullaby, a gentle shove from the shores of consciousness. I drifted away, barely aware of the papers pinned under my cheek. Barely aware of the gentle caress of my temple, brushing my hair from my face. Barely aware of the strong arms lifting me.
He shushed my mumbled protest, carrying me to my bedroom. The sheets were cool along my body. Too cold. I wanted him to join me, but by the time I reached for him, by the time I opened my eyes, he was already gone.
*
On Saturday morning, we met in the office. He shared a secret sleepy smile with me before speaking to the group of agents he’d called in to work the weekend. We knew which warehouse Carlos would be using, and we had three possible dates for the shipment.
The first window was only four days away. We already had surveillance on the location so we could watch guard activity and learn their security protocols. With painstaking timing and coordination, we established a plan to bypass the outer perimeter and then confront each inner level until all opposing forces were subdued. That was the hard part.
We’d find out then if Laguardia was among them. Only after would we know if we’d caught our prey. We didn’t have anything as precise as a harpoon. We had a net that would scoop out fish and debris and a hundred other things—and hopefully the shark as well.
Hennessey headed joint task force meetings with the DEA and the local police. Together, we planned the operation with cunning and expertise, and the entire time, I waited for Brody to tell me there’d been a mistake. I wasn’t meant to be part of something this big, this important. I waited for Hennessey to ask Brody for another partner, and for real this time. He’d be better off with someone more experienced than me, wouldn’t he?
But neither of those things happened. Someone else served up the cold reminder of how poorly suited I was for the job. Lance.
“You seem tense,” he mumbled when I’d fallen back in my chair on a rare break in my cubicle. Hennessey had disappeared for some meeting with the bigwigs, so for the umpteenth time, I was left to go over the plans by myself.
I shrugged. “It’s a big deal.”
“For the Bureau or for your career?”