butt plug, looking a bit shocked as he did.
“Yes. And?”
“You . . . use this?” He stared at it, then her.
“Yes.”
His mouth opened and then closed again. Finally, he said, “And we can, you know, use all this stuff now?”
“If you’d like.”
“Fuck yeah, I’d like.” As he tossed items onto the bed, she decided to let herself forget about tomorrow and just be engrossed in tonight.
She’d be strong and break this part of their relationship off tomorrow. For now, let the fun begin.
TWENTY
He was dehydrated and covered in sweat and lube, and he’d never felt better.
Flat on his back, panting as if he’d just run the obstacle course on base, he pivoted his head on the pillow to see Alicia next to him. “Hey. You wanna meet me at McP’s tomorrow afternoon?”
“Do you need me there?” she asked.
“Need you there?”
“For your teammates. For the ruse.”
The ruse. He’d had sex with this woman six ways to Sunday. It sure as hell didn’t feel like a ruse to him any longer.
He shook his head. “No. I mean one of the guys might be there but that’s not why I invited you. I thought it would be fun.”
She pressed her lips together and drew in a breath in a move that didn’t look promising. “I don’t think so. It’s probably best if we keep our arrangement professional. But thank you for the invitation.”
He huffed out a breathy laugh. “Yeah. Sure.”
Professional?
In his peripheral vision, he could see the pink vibrator and empty condom wrappers and the contradictions of this situation mounted.
He’d figured he spend the night like he had the first time they’d been together. Now, in light of her statement, that was looking less and less likely.
Glancing at the clock he said, “It’s getting late. I’ll get out of your way.”
As he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the mattress he half expected her to say he should stay. She didn’t. Instead, as he dressed, she stood, put her pajamas back on and started to gather the remnants of their sexual encounter.
With cool efficiency, she put the wrappers in the garbage, the lube in the drawer and the toys into the bathroom sink, he assumed to be cleaned. Then those too would be stowed away and his being there in her bed, in her, would only be a memory.
Why did that thought bother him? It shouldn’t. But it did.
It bothered him enough that after he said goodnight, without the expected accompanying kiss, he headed directly to a convenience store, picked up a six-pack and headed home.
He intended to drown out these strange new feelings, if it was the last thing he did.
What he needed was some action. Action of the non-sexual kind. Military action.
Maybe that was the problem. After being in the thick of things for three months, it was hard to acclimate to a world where his biggest problem was that Alicia didn’t want to meet him at McP’s.
An odd mood hung over him through the remainder of that night and through the next day. It lasted through his drive to the base Monday morning and all the way to the meeting room, where the rest of the team had beaten him.
“About time you got here,” Liam said, poking at Brian’s already inexplicably foul mood.
He shot Liam a sideways glance. “I’m on time.”
“You’re still last through the door.”
“Some of us have lives,” he hissed as the lieutenant commander headed to the front of the room.
Liam’s brows crept up as he shot Brian a look. “So things are going that good with the new woman that she’s got you rolling into meetings last, huh?”
Keeping his eyes forward as he wished this meeting would get started already, he lied, “Yup.”
“Anas Haqqani . . .” the lieutenant commander began.
The name stopped the low murmur of conversation in the room, silencing even Liam’s smart-ass comments about Brian’s love life.
The commander continued, “He’s the son of the late Jalaluddin Haqqani, founder of the Haqqani network, and youngest brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the current leader of the group and the deputy of the Taliban. Anas is one of the Haqqani militant group’s leading figures and fund-raiser. He’s also the prisoner who was released in 2019 along with two other senior militants in a prisoner exchange for two westerners.”
Brian stifled a rising groan as he waited to hear what new evil the man, who had once been imprisoned but had then been released, was perpetrating.
There was nothing worse than knowing they had captured the bad