Blowback (8 page)

“I guess so,” Victoria said into her drink. She didn't seem convinced.

“When are you heading home?” David asked, trying to get the conversation back on neutral ground.

“In a couple of days.” Her face brightened. “The scientist is giving his fracking talk tomorrow, I think, and then I'll report on it from here, and then fly home.”

For a while they discussed the food, and Greece, and how they all wished they had a little down time there to vacation a bit. Eventually, a silence fell as they finished the last remaining morsels from their plates. David reached for his wallet, but Victoria held up a hand. “No, it's okay. I've got this. Expense account. I'll just say you're informants. So you know, make sure you are!” She smiled and left a bunch of euro notes on the table. “I better get back. I'm meeting a new cameraman in twenty minutes. I have to break a new one in almost every trip it seems.” She smiled, squeezed Molly's shoulder as she passed, and bid them goodbye.

As she left the restaurant, Molly leaned forward and gave him a kiss.

“What was that for?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

She looked bemused. “Because I wanted to. That's okay isn't it?”

He smiled in response, not knowing what the right answer would be. A guy had to keep some stuff back, if only for his own sanity. A “yes” reply would probably infer that they were in a relationship, and he wasn't sure if that was true. Not exactly true, anyway. And a “no” might cause some kind of hiccup in their recent…physical activities, and he wasn't prepared to put a stop to those, regardless of what the long-term situation could be.

“Want to get out of here?” he asked.

She raised one eyebrow. “Sure,” she drawled, ripe with meaning.

“I meant for coffee…but if you prefer…”

She laughed, as he'd meant her to do. “Coffee's great too.”

Molly reached into her purse and brought out a five-euro note. “She didn't leave enough for the waiter,” she said, as she took a few steps toward the bar at the back. She held out her hand as if to shake the waiter's, but slipped him the banknote.

In an instant he remembered.

David was pissed. At himself, and her. As soon as he'd seen her pass the waiter's tip, he remembered Molly doing the same to Doubrov.
Fuck.
He'd forgotten about that until he saw it again.

After about fifteen minutes of weaving around squares, street corners, and pedestrians, he found a café with chairs and tables in a square across the road.

She seemed normal, but man he wanted to shake her. Instead he pushed her toward some iron tables in the square. “Sit, stay.”

He heard her murmur, “I'm not a dog.” Before he disappeared into the shop to place his order. All the while the man was making their coffees he kept an eye on Molly across the small street. What was she up to? She kept checking her phone. Goddamnit. This made him mad. He'd been so wrapped up in her that he hadn't even stopped to consider that she was up to her freaking eyeballs in this simply because
she was really up to her freaking eyeballs in this
. He was sure she was up to her neck in something she didn't fully understand.

The Molly he'd met last year was an innocent. A bystander. But clearly that had changed. He just didn't know if it was worth his own peace of mind to stand with her in whatever shit she'd fallen in. Every part of him wanted to protect her, but the voice of his work therapist telling him not to get involved with anything that wasn't sanctioned also echoed. It was a compelling voice. It was on her say-so that he would keep his new job.

He tipped the man behind the bar and took his two caffé freddos out to the table.

“What's this?” she asked.

“Cold cappuccino,” he replied sitting down.

“Did you think to ask what I wanted? Maybe I like tea.” She definitely sounded pissed off. “So what's wrong? You switched into automaton-David as soon as we left the restaurant, and you dragged me here as if I'm some kind of suspect in something. What happened?”

He couldn't even bring himself to try to talk her down. He just sighed and raised his eyebrow at her. “You slipped Doubrov something. I saw it, and forgot it with all the—” he waved his hand at her “distractions.”

“Distractions? You mean me? Is that what I am?” She sat back in her chair and leveled a look at him.

“Nice try, Mol. Enough with your tangents. What did you pass him?”

She paused and took a sip of the coffee and shrugged. “I don't like tea, actually. I love freddos. I just…” She took another sip.

“You just wanted to be contrary, didn't you?” He put his sunglasses on and relaxed a little. He was going to get to the truth, if they sat there all day. “We should have spent more time together in Iraq.” Let her try to chat her way out of it, but he'd get his answer.

She leaned forward. “You were working for the bad guys.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but so were you.” He shrugged, but inside, poking at this wound made him nervous. Making light of his nightmare year working for a private security company that turned out to be full of criminals and murderers felt wrong. But easy. Easier than being real anyway.

“That's so unfair. I didn't even know I was working for the bad guys. You, however, did. Wait. Didn't you?” She shoved her sunglasses on her head as if to see his expression better.

He kept a poker face going. That he was good at. “I had an idea. I just didn't know how bad it was until all the shit went down. And what you saw, that wasn't even the half of it.

Concern etched her forehead as she watched him. He wondered if she was genuine or if she was wondering how to play him. Or if he was just too suspicious of everyone. This wasn't how meeting Molly again was supposed to go down. Amazing sex followed by revelations and suspicions.

“What happened after Iraq for you?” she asked, unwrapping a straw and sticking it in her coffee.

“Not nearly as much fun as happened to you, I think,” he said. “I saw you on television. A lot.” It had been a sweet torture. Seeing her in his room, on the airport TV screens, her voice speaking to him, had been agony. But the positive outcome of seeing her on TV was that it had fooled his body into thinking she was unattainable.

“Well, Harry thought that the more coverage we got, the safer we all were. If anything happened to us, journalists already had us on their radar. Stuff would have been harder to cover up.

Harry—or Henrietta—Molly's boss, and David's friend's wife, had been smart. And lucky. “No one I ever worked with at the company was scared of being found out. Few were scared of anything. That's why I mostly rolled alone.” And that was still true.

“So what happened?” she persisted.

“Not much. I had to give evidence at a few committees, none of which made C-SPAN, thankfully. I stopped my short-term relationship with bourbon and severed my ties with MGL Inc. That was the easy part, as most of my bosses had gone to live in federal prison. There were so many charges.” He shook his head. “Then a friend hooked me up with Barracks Security and gave me a second chance doing some good. The company's a good one. Not driven by money. They only take jobs for the good guys. It makes a difference.

“What about you? What happened after the cameras stopped rolling?” He was determined to get to her truth one way or another. God she looked good in the sunlight that dappled her face, shining through the trees, playing light tricks over her lips. He wanted to grab her and kiss her right now. And that pissed him off.

“When we got back from Iraq, our team was sequestered while they rounded up all the ringleaders. Then we were questioned. A lot. Debriefed, over and over. They wanted to know everything. We'd been working for tomb raiders for three years.” Her voice rose in indignation.

“Tomb raiders?” he suppressed a grin.

“That's what one of the senators called it. I mean, we never found a tomb per se, but they did take our site research and just plundered those areas, stealing everything they found there. It was heartbreaking to find out what they'd been doing.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. He'd known she was finishing up her studies at the time, and he imagined that discovering the last three years of her life had been nothing short of criminal must have been devastating.

She shrugged. “The State Department debriefed us, and then I basically went on the speech circuit, warning people about the stolen artifacts and the dangers of private archaeology. And how easy it is to proliferate a country's history across borders. And demanding that the government establish some way to monitor private archaeologists. But, actually, when my speech here is done, I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing next. Harry's taking a break from the company”—her eyes lit up—“She's pregnant.”

He smiled. “I know. Matt told me a couple of months ago when I ran into him in Florida. Very good news.” Matt was one of David's old EOD buddies he'd met up with again in Iraq at the same time he'd met Molly for the first time. “Anytime I get down, I remember what they went through, and figure if they can make it through hell and out the other side, then I can.” Shit. That was a little too much information to share with someone he didn't know if he could trust. He decided to cut to the chase. “Okay. Enough about history. Let's talk about last night. What were you trying to slip Doubrov when he got shot?”

She sat up straight. “Dr. Doubrov? I don't know…”

“Sure you do, sweetheart. And whatever it is nearly got you shot.” He moved in for the kill. “I've waited a year to see you, and if you die here, because you didn't clue me in on what you're doing, I'm just not sure I could handle it.” True, but also, he hoped, a good enough manipulation to make her talk.

Instead she got quiet. Crap, was she going to cry? Her lower lip trembled, and he wondered what black magic he'd used to make her so emotional. He'd better dial it back down.

“David, I…” Her phone bleeped, and she grabbed it off the table like it was alive. She pressed a button. “Hell…what? I can't hear you. Say again?
What?
”

I
t was Brandon Peterson at last, but he was breaking up really bad. “Don't say…I can't help…my flight lands in three…Trust…one. Stay away from…”

“I can't hear you. What?” She plugged her finger in her other ear and waited, but there was just silence. She looked at her phone. The phone just showed a photo of the beach near her house.
No!
He had to call again. Who was she supposed to stay away from? Not one word of his fractured message had been comforting. Whatever he'd meant, she figured she'd better just stay mum until he got there. For David's sake. She didn't want to involve him in whatever she'd gotten herself messed up in. She'd just have to wait for Brandon to arrive and dig her out. Which was three hours, or maybe three days. Crap. Well she could maybe hold it together for three hours. If she could distract David. Everything would be better when Brandon got there. He'd always seemed on top of things during her debrief the previous year, someone she could trust. At least he was a US official, and presumably he knew what was going on. He could take over, and she could concentrate on giving her speech to some very important and influential people from governments all around the world. Butterflies danced in her stomach as she remembered the speech she had to give.

But then there was David. David, who set her body on fire, whose intensity made her heart pump pure emotion through her veins. David, who was killing her by asking for details that she couldn't give him. She couldn't tell him what she'd agreed to do for the State Department, because she'd been told not to. She didn't know if she could totally trust him anyway. Sure, the sex was great, and he seemed caring, but she didn't really know where his head was.

“Damn,” she said under her breath, finally putting her phone on the table.

David paused, and then leaned forward, elbows on the table. He opened his mouth to speak, but someone walked by speaking on a cell phone. He waited for them to pass. “I'm not sure how to tell you this, but you are in danger. The Russian government wants to question you about whatever you were slipping into his hand when he was killed. They are telling everyone that the United States is trying to pick them off one-by-one, and the Greek authorities won't protect you from them. I'm waiting for a call from my boss to reassign me, so it could be just you and a KGB officer in a few hours.” He shrugged and leaned back.

She did not want to be alone with the Russians. Just the idea made her start breathing faster. A part of her wanted to tell him everything. Leave every part of her open to him as she had done this morning. It might be her only option. She just needed time. Time for Brandon to get there, time to think.

Was it really fair for the State Department to have put her into this position?

David realized that she'd clammed up good and proper about Doubrov, which confirmed that there was more going on than he knew. She was up to her sweet neck in something, and if she didn't tell him about it, he couldn't help her. The only thing he could do was to keep her safe.

David knew that he was going to have to come up with an exit strategy sooner or later. Sooner, since his objective was to get Molly out of Greece immediately after she finished her speech. He basically had just under twenty-four hours to keep her safe and away from prying eyes. He hated himself for wishing Mal were still here to help out.

After they got back to the hotel and unpacked the few belongings they had, David excused himself to get supplies for their stay. He wanted to keep her in the room until five minutes before her speech, hunkered down and out of sight. And he needed some things for that. Food, drink, and more condoms. He planned on enjoying every moment he had left with her, whether he got to the bottom of her involvement or not. He could see in her eyes that she didn't really trust him, and maybe she was right not to. But the truth was that very few people trusted him, and he'd spent the past year trying to prove to the people around him that he could be relied on. He didn't want to leave Molly with the impression he couldn't be counted on. And to do that he had to be counted on.

His whole job with Barracks Security was to protect people. He never asked what their motives were, or what they were hiding from him. So why should he worry about that with Molly? He was beginning to think that maybe she was right not to tell him what was going on. If he didn't know all her secrets, it would make it easier to leave her as she seemed to want. “No tomorrows,” she'd said.

It made for a cleaner getaway.

He hoped.

When he got back to the room, music was playing, faint strains penetrating the closed door. He double checked the door number, and inserted his key card. The lights were dim and the music, some kind of lazy jazz, swelled as the door opened.

Molly stood in front of the window. Dusk was falling, and he blinked a couple of times to make sure he was seeing what he was seeing. She had swept her short wavy hair up into some kind of updo, and was wearing a black, sparkling, floor-length dress and what must be high heels. Rimmed with smoky-gray makeup, her light eyes shone.

“I feel a little underdressed,” he said softly, so as not to disrupt the mood.

“Then we're even. I was underdressed at the party, where I should have been wearing this.” She smiled and twirled.

The skirt of the dress peeled back into small panels of separate material, all the way up to her thighs and beyond, showing her impossibly high, and impossibly sexy sandals. Jesus. If he'd seen her in that at the cocktail party when he was so sure he'd been hallucinating he probably would have passed out.

She came to a halt, and the dress swung around her just a little, teasing with what he knew was under it. He shut the door and locked it, then swung the metal security bar over its hook.

As he got closer, he realized that the top of the dress was not much more than some kind of see-through black chiffon. He swallowed hard. Her breasts were clearly visible through it.

“It comes with special underwear to preserve one's modesty. But I figured that since we weren't going out…” She shrugged.

He tried to speak but couldn't. He had to clear his throat before he could agree. “You are beautiful.”

She swung around in a little half circle as if she were embarrassed. “Why, thank you, kind sir.”

He smiled. “I brought food.”

Her eyes lit up. “What did you bring?”

He mentally winced as he realized how inappropriate the meal was. “Meat wrapped in pita bread.”

She closed her eyes and inhaled. “My favorite. Let's eat.”

“How hungry are you, exactly?” he asked, putting the bags down on the desk.

She paused. “I can wait.”

“Good answer.” He shrugged off his jacket and walked over to where she was still standing, in front of the large French window. “I meant it. You really are beautiful.” He reached out and cupped her face in his hands, gently stroking down her neck to her collarbone. It was naked, and he suddenly had a vision of himself buying a diamond necklace to adorn it.

The see-through material was soft and silky, and his hands continued slowly exploring. Her shoulders, down to her breasts, her nipples already straining against the thin material. He rubbed his palms gently over them with open hands. “When you imagined going to the cocktail party, did it ever cross your mind to go like this? To not wear the underwear designed for it? To let the other guests see you like this?”

Her eyes fluttered closed for a second. “No. Well, it crossed my mind, but only as a fantasy. I had no intention of actually doing it.”

“Because it's only a turn-on if people think they're seeing something private, more like a wardrobe malfunction than a deliberate flash?” His voice slowed down, and he stroked a different part of her with virtually each word he said.

“Yes. Yes. How did you know?” she moaned, as he nipped at her nipples through her dress.

He raised his head and whispered hot into her ear, “Because I know you. I see what turns you on as easily as I see what turns me on.” David slowly walked around her and found the dress's zip. He peeled it down, slowly, so very slowly, kissing her skin as he descended with the fastener. As he reached the small of her back, the dress fully dropped to the floor, leaving Molly naked except for her impossibly high heels.

Unadulterated desire spread through him, heating his very core so much that he wanted to tear off his clothes just to be able to devour her. He pulled off his shirt in one movement, and opened the French doors in the other. A warm breeze flickered across his chest.

Molly turned slowly to look out of the window. They were so high up the people below looked tiny. For sure, no one could see them unless they had binoculars. She inhaled a shuddering breath.

“Do you like being outside?” he asked, taking her hand and urging her closer to the threshold of the door.

She took another shaky breath, and closed her eyes to the view. His hand stroked along her spine, up and down, up and down, so gently, that goosebumps erupted along her arms. When she opened her eyes, they were glassy. “Do you think anyone can see us?”

“Maybe. Would you like them to see me touch you?”

She bit her lip and nodded. His dick was already as hard as he'd ever felt it, but he wanted the moment to be hers. For now. He stood behind her and lightly pinched both her nipples between his fingers. She leaned back into him as he shucked his shoes and pants and continued playing with the tight nubs.

A car's horn echoed through the square they were looking out on, and Molly jumped slightly. David knew that certainly no one in cars could see them, but he was sure that it was probably adding to her fantasy.

He nudged a knee between her legs and urged them apart. Her ass was pressed into his groin as he snaked his hand to her pussy. She was already so wet his own knees nearly buckled with absolute need for her. He used his foot to spread her legs even farther. This time, he jerked her back, so her ass cradled his dick as he spread his hand over her flat stomach, and slowly reached down.

Molly whimpered as his hand floated around her mound, not touching anything other than the heavy fluid that touched the very top of her thighs. His other hand joined in, wrapping his arms around her. He held her open to the air and took pleasure in the gasp as the breeze played against her clitoris. “David” she moaned. “Touch me.”

He withdrew his hands and raised her own arms, wrapping her fingers around the side of the door frame. She stood spread-eagled as he ducked under one arm and knelt before her. He felt light-headed with the need to taste her, to have her writhe and come in his mouth. To have her imagine she had an audience.

His tongue darted out straight to her clit. No fluttering or stroking, but a full-fledged assault. His fingers spread her wide as he pressed, nipped, and thoroughly tongued her into submission. Her gasps and moans drove him close to his own climax. But as she crested her own wave, he pushed two fingers into her, allowing her to ride them through her orgasm. She felt like molten lava around him, and he wanted nothing other than to feel his dick inside her.

“Jesus, David. What have you done to me?” she breathed, as he rose and took her in his arms.

“I'm not finished yet, babe. I'm not nearly finished with you.” He couldn't wait a second longer. He brought her fully out onto the balcony and bent her over, allowing her to brace herself against the concrete railing. In a second he slid inside her, feeling her whole life pulse around him. She ground back on him.

“Harder.” Her voice carried lightly on the breeze, belying her obvious need. He thrust into her hard, and she met every stroke. He couldn't tell where she ended and he began. She felt like a part of him, as if he could feel her arousal as well as he could his own. His desire for her amplified by the second when they were joined together. Electricity thrummed through his lower back, sparking a reaction in his balls. As if she knew, she reached back and squeezed them. Heat fritzed through his spine up to his head as he came inside her, pulsing, throbbing, and flooding her with his naked desire. As he finished, the walls of her pussy gripped him as she came again. Sharper and faster than before.

He brought her upright, so she could rest against his body, and he held her around her waist, and looked out at the city.

“Do you think anyone saw us?” he murmured into her ear.

She giggled and turned to him, hugging him close. “I don't know.” She hid her face in his shoulder, and he guessed that now the erotic moment had slipped by, she was a little embarrassed. She was such a contradiction. All roaring blatant sexuality, followed by a slight shyness.

He took her back in, and grabbed a fluffy dressing gown that the hotel had left artfully fanned out on the bed. Wrapping it around her, he kissed her forehead.

“Dammit all to hell,” she said.

Alarmed, he stepped back. “What? What's wrong?” he looked around the room to see what could have elicited her comment, but her eyes were on him.

“I thought if I wore high heels you wouldn't be able to kiss me on the forehead anymore, and that you'd have to kiss my lips.”

Shame flooded through him. He hadn't even kissed her before taking her out on the balcony. He raised her chin and kissed her gently and slowly on her mouth. Warmth rushed through him like the desert sun. He teased her tongue gently with his. Without the immediacy of sex, it felt more intimate. More like a declaration. It didn't stop him.