Authors: Olivia Thorne
Tags: #Romance
“Yes,” Mailin says.
JP raises an eyebrow.
“They assured us they wouldn’t make a fuss,” Mailin promises.
Dominique makes a clucking sound like she doesn’t believe him.
“Don’t worry, I’ll fly you to Switzerland and get you a limo back to Paris,” Grant promises.
“Damn,” Mailin mutters. “Kind of makes me wish
I
was an international fugitive.”
“There’s room on the plane.”
Mailin grins. “I’ll think about it.”
I’m the last one to turn over my signed documents. Once I do, Mailin and I stand there looking at each other.
“Well,” he says.
“Well,” I say awkwardly.
“I guess this is it.”
“I guess so.” I stand on tiptoe and give him a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks – for everything.”
He blushes and smiles. “You’re welcome.”
Grant is a little jealous. “We good to go?” he asks brusquely.
Mailin looks from me to him, then back to me. “Yeah. You’re good.”
“Great. Thanks again,” Grant says, then takes me by the arm and leads me towards the door.
“Hey Eve,” Mailin calls out. “Maybe I’ll… see you around online sometime?”
I smile over my shoulder at him. “You know where to find me,” I say as I walk through the lobby, arm in arm with Grant.
“Hasta la vista, baby,” Mailin calls out in a thick German accent.
“Jesus, do
not
tell me you actually had a thing for that guy,” Grant mutters.
“Shhh,” I whisper and giggle as we walk out the glass doors into the night.
JP, Dominique, Grant, and I are all free.
The first thing we do as soon as we step out of FBI headquarters is to look at each other and cheer. Hugs, kisses, and joyous shouts all around.
Second is Grant calls his company. They’re a little freaked out to hear from their on-the-lam boss, but after they check with the FBI, they send us a limo – with a laptop.
Third thing on the list is I stop the document dump. And backup all the files to a half-dozen other servers… just in case.
Fourth is we book the penthouse at the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill. Actually, Grant’s company books it; we just get smuggled in through the back door. Once we’re up there, Grant orders the entire menu from the nearest pricey restaurant, plus six bottles of Dom Perignon from room service.
“To a job well done,” Grant toasts us.
“To ten million dollars,” JP adds cheekily.
We tell and retell our versions of the rescue over dinner. After all, Grant has no idea what happened on our end after he jumped out of the boat and into the Seine.
“What were you thinking?!” I exclaim.
He shrugs. “They were going to chase us. I could either give myself up and make sure you got away, or we could both be captured. I chose the first option.”
“What if something had gone wrong?!”
“It didn’t.”
“But what if – ”
“I trusted you,” he says, looking deep into my eyes. “I knew you’d come for me.”
I melt into his arms after that.
After we drink and eat our fill, JP and Dominique retire to their separate rooms for the night. JP is the happiest I’ve ever seen him. Dominique? Not so much.
She pauses at the door and looks at both of us… then looks at Grant… and kisses him on the cheek. She whispers something in his ear, then leaves the penthouse.
“What’d she say?” I ask, a little bit jealous.
“She said, ‘She’s a lucky girl,’” Grant says.
One corner of my mouth turns up into a half-smile. “I am.”
“And I’m a lucky man,” Grant says as he takes me into his arms and kisses me.
Have you ever had a really bad fight? The kind where everything spirals out of control? There’s shouting, you cry, doors slam, and you think,
It’s over.
And then – two hours later, or 24 hours later – you see each other again, and all you can do is say
I’m sorry, I’m so sorry
, and you can’t keep your hands off each other? Because the only way you can feel closer at that moment is to have him inside you?
Make-up sex is amazing.
Well, ‘reunion sex after a near-death experience’ is ten times better.
Imagine that you thought the person you loved most in the world is gone. You’ll never, ever see them again. Imagine all that grief, all that pain. Imagine all the things you wish you’d told them. Imagine all the times you would have made love, but never got the chance.
And then suddenly… they’re back. They’re alive. And they’re in your arms again.
Think of the flood of emotions. The gratitude, the love, the joy.
Think about how you
thought
you would never make love to them again… and now they’re right there in front of you, both of you naked, skin on bare skin?
They say that all great literature is about sex and death.
I can tell you this: impossibly great sex comes when you stare down death, and love wins.
We kiss tenderly at first, then feverishly. I can’t get enough of the taste of his mouth. The smell of him. The feel of his skin under my fingers. All the tiny details I’d taken for granted, and now I’ve been given another chance to be grateful for them again.
His hands touch every part of my body – over my clothes, then under them. I unzip his sweatshirt and run my fingers over his skin, feeling every muscle he has, from his arms, to his chest, to his abs, to his back.
Then I go lower. I stroke him through the flimsy material of his warm-up pants, running my fingers up and down his shaft as we passionately kiss. At first he is soft, but still thick and firm; within 60 seconds, he is pressing insistently against the cloth, his cock straining in my hand.
Finally I can’t stand it anymore, and I sink to my knees. I ease the waistband over that beautiful pink head, then pull his pants down to the floor. As he steps out of them, I hold his shaft in my hand, lovingly appraising the weight of it, the girth. I kiss all the way up from his balls to the crown, and then I take him in my mouth.
God, he tastes so good. He
smells
so good. Musky and masculine and clean.
I take as much of him as I can in my mouth. He’s so big, it’s not much – but I love hearing his groans and curses as I pleasure him. I lick him, squeeze him, tease him, until eventually he can’t take it anymore and he pulls me to my feet.
He carries me over to the bed, and all I can think is,
This might have never happened again. I might have never had this again.
As he tears off my clothing and kisses my body, I feel like a woman dying of thirst who gets a taste of cold, clear spring water.
This is all I want. HE is all I’ll ever want.
His tongue finds my mouth, then my nipples, then my clit. I am writhing on the bed under him, and all I can do is moan, “Yes… yes…
yes
… YES…”
He pins me naked to the bed, his hands on my wrists, his legs forcing mine open. I resist for the sheer theater of it, because I want nothing more than for him to take me. At last, when our bodies are aligned, and I can feel the tip of his cock pause at the lips of my aching pussy, he stops and looks me square in the face.
“I love you,” he whispers. “I love you so much.”
I am about to whisper
I love you, too,
when he enters me, and all I can do is cry out with pleasure.
But as he rocks inside me and I gradually recover from those first few seconds of bliss, I chant, “I love you, too… I love you, too… I love you, too…”
He takes me. Possesses me. Makes love to me. From minute to minute, I don’t know which to expect. Soulful gazing into my eyes while his finger brushes my lips… to grabbing my shoulders and forcing me down on that gorgeous cock… to gently rocking inside of me while whispering my name over and over.
And I give as good as I get. I pour every ounce of my love down on him, using my body as a vessel… and I fuck him like his sole reason for existence is to make me come. I tease him… I please him… I scratch, I bite, I suck, I lick. As we switch positions continuously, I bring him to the edge of orgasm, then take him out of me, leaving him hanging… only to bring him even closer to the precipice just moments later.
And I tell him I love him at least a thousand times.
Over the course of an hour, I lose count as orgasm blends into orgasm. He ravishes me with his cock, then withdraws and caresses my clit with his tongue… then repeats the cycle until my mind is obliterated and I can’t even say my own name.
And I make
him
come, multiple times. Every time he does, I keep going, not letting him get soft, not letting him rest. It is a marathon of sex, with the unspoken understanding that we are working out our fear – the fear that we might have lost each other forever. We are running from something terrifying, something that nearly destroyed us both, and we have only our bodies and souls to comfort each other.
When we finally collapse, unable to go on, I start to cry. I don’t know why, I just do. He holds me in his arms, rocking me back and forth, whispering
I love you, I love you
until we both slip into a deep, dreamless slumber where there are no more threats, there is no more fear, and we can stay in each other’s arms forever.
The next morning is lazy. All four of us sleep late, then have breakfast together in the penthouse. The Frenchies nurse their hangovers with Bloody Marys as we watch the FBI’s press conference on CNN.
“ – a raid on a Marin County estate yesterday, whose owner was suspected of funding terrorism abroad – ”
“What?!” Grant shouts at the TV.
“I guess we’re not the only ones who can tell whoppers,” I remark.
The FBI spokesperson never mentions serial murders, the house in Bel Air, the name ‘Dieter Lassenbach,’ or anything remotely approaching reality. And it takes a full five minutes before they state that the ‘suspected terrorist’ hired a group of mercenaries to pose as FBI agents.
“It was those mercenaries who raided the Manhattan home of billionaire architect Grant Carlson almost a week ago. It also appears that the stolen works of art found in Carlson’s penthouse were planted there by the suspect, in some sort of bizarre feud between the two parties.”
“About time they got around to that,” Grant grumbles.
We watch until the press start asking questions. Most squabble about the name of the ‘suspect’ – which the FBI refuses to reveal – but one finally asks,
“Does this mean that Grant Carlson did NOT own those stolen paintings?”
“Yes, that is correct, to the best of our knowledge.”
“So he’s innocent?”
“Yes, to the best of our knowledge.”
“‘To the best of our knowledge,’” Grant grumbles. “They might as well have said ‘Sure, we guess so.’”
Somewhere in San Francisco, I’m sure Duplass is having at least a tiny laugh at our expense. If he isn’t getting fired for all the screw-ups and disasters on his watch, that is.
After the press conference is over, we turn off the TV and drown our rather minor sorrows in more Bloody Marys.
Half an hour later, Grant’s company delivers a selection of suits, and he chooses a beautiful worsted wool with a crisp blue shirt.
“Way better than those FBI sweats,” Grant says as he checks himself out in the mirror.
“I kind of liked those pants,” I whisper in his ear. “You could feel a
lot
through them.”
He laughs. “Maybe I’ll wear them again, just for you.”
“You better,” I say, right before I kiss him.
The morning turns to afternoon, and our lightheartedness turns bittersweet as JP and Dominique prepare to leave.
Grant’s company arranges a private jet for Dominique and JP, to a secluded airfield in Switzerland, as promised. Once they’re back in the European Union, there are no passport checks at borders. They can take the limo that will be waiting for them all the way back to Paris.
We ride with them to the airport, and all stand on the tarmac saying our goodbyes. I even manage to hug Dominique – and neither of us pulls away with a dagger in our backs.
“Guys… thank you,” Grant says. “From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”
“If you need to be saved again, let me know,” JP says. “But the price goes up next time. Speaking of which – ”
“Speaking of which,” Grant says, and pulls out two slips of paper. “Eve took care of it this morning. Bank account numbers, password – it’s all there.”
“Mwah!” JP says as he kisses his slip of paper. “
Je te remercie,
Eve!”
“If that was ‘thank you,’ then you’re welcome,” I laugh.
“Except I should warn you, it’s not ten million dollars,” Grant says.
JP stops and gets a look on his face like he’s about to finish what Epicurus started. “
Putain d’merde,
you cheap bastard – ”
“It’s thirty. Million,” Grant adds for emphasis.
JP just stands there, his eyes glazed over and his mouth wide open. Dominique looks about the same.
“That should set you up nicely in French Polynesia.” Grant squints his eyes. “Although, now that you just called me a cheap bastard – ”
“I did not mean it, I swear! Get on the plane, Dominique, before he changes his mind!”
Dominique ignores him and hugs Grant again. “Thank you,
mon cheri
.”
“My pleasure, Dom. Thank
you
for helping save my life.”
The instant before she pulls away, Dominique manages to plant a kiss on Grant’s mouth. She laughs and links her arm with JP’s. “Run, Jean-Paul, before Eve shoots me!”
I scowl – I’m not that happy about the kiss – but I soften as they board the plane and wave their goodbyes. Once the door is closed and the plane taxis onto the runway, I look at Grant and wipe a smudge of lipstick from his lip.
“That was all her, not me,” he says with a grin.
“Mm-hm,” I murmur disapprovingly.
“Well… what do you want to do now?”
I look at him standing there beside me, and suddenly I feel a little lost. We’ve been
go-go-go
for the last week, with our lives on the line every moment of every day, that I don’t quite know how to process the utter freedom of having nothing to do and nowhere to go.