“I’ve tried. Often, agents are at the bottom of the information totem pole. Politics are always on a need-to-know basis, and they think I don’t need to know.”
“Are you f**king with me?”
“Right now, I don’t have the energy. I just want Callie back, a decent meal, and a good night’s sleep—in that order.”
Thorpe wanted that, too, along with a passionate, grinding slide into Callie’s undoubtedly tight pu**y so he could hear her cry out in his ear while she dug her little nails into his back, just as she’d done to Sean. He didn’t like another man f**king her, but he liked the fact that he’d never had the pleasure of feeling her himself even less.
Listen to him whine . . . He wasn’t in her best interest. Whatever Mackenzie’s flaws or agenda, the fed loved her—enough to risk his job for her. Thorpe couldn’t fault Sean for that.
“So, about the ex-wife, Melissa . . .” Mackenzie began.
Thorpe choked, then took a swig of cold coffee to recover. “Nothing to say about her.”
“She left, so you’re bitter? Or gun shy?” Sean probed.
“Where the f**k do you get off questioning me? We’re talking about Callie.”
“I’m trying to understand you. Your bad experience with the lousy ex is the reason you kept Callie at arm’s length all these years, right?”
No, but he wasn’t spilling all his demons for Sean. “There’s a significant age gap, too.”
“Which is more your hang-up than hers, I’d bet. What else?”
Thorpe glanced at his crappy burner phone, wondering where Logan’s call was that Callie had reached Vegas all right. If Logan didn’t call in five, he’d ring the former SEAL. But whatever he did, he wasn’t replying to Sean.
“So it’s mostly your own fear.” The fed supplied his own answer. “I guess that makes sense in a chicken shit sort of way. But one thing has me stumped. Why decide to get possessive after I entered the picture? You’re off relationships because of the ex, so you tell yourself that you don’t want Callie. But you don’t want anyone else to have her, either. You’ve got your head up your ass, Thorpe. It’s not fair to her.”
Sean’s words echoed Lance’s and rang a little too true. Damn it if he didn’t want to punch the man. “None of this is any of your f**king business.”
“It is if you want to know anything else in Callie’s file.” Sean gave him an expectant smile.
Thorpe rubbed his broad forehead, wishing he could massage away the beginnings of his headache. He really wanted to toss Mackenzie from the vehicle, but that wasn’t in Callie’s best interest. She had to be priority number one. “At first, she’d barely talk to me. After she’d been at Dominion a few months, I used her for a teaching demo. Of course I was attracted to her from the beginning, but Callie was a pure novice. I didn’t know if she was truly submissive or was pretending because she needed a job. I found out quickly that she was. Our chemistry was . . . not like anything I’d ever experienced. It shocked me.”
“So you backed away?”
“No. I should have, but Callie was far more submissive than I’d dared to hope, not to mention addicting. It wasn’t long before I used her for every demo. It was the only excuse I would give myself to touch her. She still kept her distance more often than not, but damn, the way she responded to me . . . I was very seriously considering breaking my own rule about never taking an exclusive sub.
“Then I was watching some silly news program one day. They showed a picture of Callie at sixteen, the same one you have on your phone. It all clicked. I hoped I was wrong, so I invented a new excuse to touch her and see if she had a scar on her hip where that bullet got her.”
“And when you found it, you cut off all but the most professional contact.” Sean didn’t phrase it like a question. He knew the answer.
Though Thorpe didn’t like being transparent, he supposed his motives weren’t that hard to deduce.
“Yes. She was always going to leave me. It was just a matter of when.” As soon as he’d had to stop touching Callie, Thorpe realized just how attached to her he’d become. And it had scared the hell out of him. He’d punished her by being an absolute bastard.
God, didn’t he sound like a pu**y, afraid of his own emotions?
“You didn’t want to endure heartache again after your divorce.”
Sean didn’t know the half of it.
“Something like that. But seeing you with her . . .” Thorpe let out a deep breath. “I realized then that all my attempts to deny my feelings had been a f**king waste. Happy now? Can we change the subject?”
“Almost.” Sean cut a stare over at him. “If we find her, are you going to be willing to risk your heart for her? Because if you’re not, you shouldn’t bother fighting me for her. We both agreed that she’s not meant to be alone.”
Thorpe wasn’t sure what the hell he was going to do. He wanted to fight for her . . . but what was best for Callie? “You’re not entirely prepared to handle her.”
Sean crossed his arms over his chest. “What does that mean?”