I mutter, dropping the note to the floor.
“Sorry, love, it appears that will be my job,” a deep voice growls from my left, and just like that the balcony door slides open, and in steps a blast from my past. The moment I’ve been waiting for with equal parts anticipation and dread.
He’s over six feet tall and built like a swimmer, all broad shoulders and a trim waist; his flat abs are shown off to perfection by the tight tee over a pair of faded, low-slung black jeans. His close-cropped dark hair is flecked with strands of silver that match the small, sharp spikes gleaming along the arms of his leather jacket.
“Max?” My voice is nothing but a squeak. Not exactly the sultry, bored intonation I’d been rehearsing for weeks in anticipation of this encounter.
“Agent X,” he corrects coolly, his icy expression traveling my exposed body. “Nice to finally meet you in person...Agent Z.”
“I...” A lifetime flashes past me in the span of seconds. This powerful silver fox with the wolfish expression was my first lover. After falling for each other at Frasier Academy, the Highland boarding school we both attended once upon a time, we stole away for a weekend to France. Maybe a cramped bed at a dodgy inn isn’t the most romantic place for two teens to lose their virginities, but it was for me and Max—because it was us.
Before words like duty and mission replaced hope and love.
“Right. Well. You and I are going to have some serious catching up to do.” He mutters the understatement of the year before glancing at his Rolex with a frown. “But that little reunion will have to wait. We’re going to be late if we don’t leave now.”
It’s only then that I register the tic in his jaw. The quiet, suppressed fury.
He is seriously pissed about this situation, and I can’t blame him.
The room seems to spin, but I don’t falter or faint.
He disappeared at eighteen, breaking my heart into a million tiny pieces. It wasn’t until ten years later, well after I became Agent Z, that I discovered the full story of what happened to him. He had been recruited by the Order, as well.
I should have stayed away. But just over three years ago, I emailed him from the Hong Kong office, a short, perfunctory message on an arrest for a sex trafficker from Belgium.
He responded, asking a few clarifying questions, and we struck up a conversation of sorts.
And against every bit of my common sense, I eventually asked for a meeting. He had no idea I was Lora from Frasier Academy. He just knew me as Z. And I made damn sure he never saw my face. At my request, he wore a blindfold to every one of our meetings. I wore one, too. Mostly. It was for protection. So we couldn’t betray each other if we ever fell into the wrong hands.
And so we began our torrid little affair.
In this way, I was able to have my lover back. He never recognized my voice or my body. I had more curves with age and made sure when I spoke to him it was only ever in a husky whisper.
I deceived him.
Now he knows the truth, and I don’t have time to explain. Tonight we are assigned to a job where we are to revel in desire, where I’m to serve his every command. And from the way his nostrils flare as he opens the door, holding it for me, I realize that I’m about to be literally and figuratively fucked.
“Ready, Princess?” X asks.
But his expression is hard. I would bet he doesn’t take deceit lightly. If the tables were turned, I’d be hell-bent on revenge, and I wonder with a tinge of both fear and desire if he feels the same.
“Of course, Your Highness,” I drawl. “Lead the way.”
X
My molars crush against each other as we slip into the Jaguar limousine; any more pressure and they’ll shatter. The driver, a junior agent who can barely grow peach fuzz, closes the door behind us before reappearing again in the driver’s seat.
“Pardon me for saying so, but I’m quite looking forward to this assignment, Agents X and Z. Your missions are legendary, both of you.” His enthusiasm is mixed with his northern English accent. “I mean, X, that time you drove a Rolls-Royce onto the top of a train and then had to jump off? With an Edenvale prince in the car with you, no less!”
I open my mouth to cut him off, but the bloke barely takes a sip of air before rambling on again.
“And Agent Z—you wing walked from one plane to another, entered the aircraft from the storage hold and landed the beast after both the pilot and copilot had been poisoned. And you got them to the hospital in time to save them!”
I raise a brow at this, turning my attention to Lora. I mean—Agent Z.
The woman who has been fucking me—and with me—for years.
“That was you?”
She simply shrugs.
The rook—the Order’s name for agents in training before they earn their crow’s-feather tattoo—opens his mouth to speak again, but I press the button to close the soundproof partition.
“Thank you. That will be all for now,” I say as the tinted glass slides shut, his eager young profile disappearing before he can protest.
The kid doesn’t realize this gig isn’t all about catching bad guys. It’s about learning that the world isn’t black-and-white, but merely shades of gray.
And the scantily dressed woman beside me is the grayest of gray characters.
Z stares out the window as we pull away from the curb, and I stare at her thigh-high black stiletto boots, the smooth-as-silk skin of her legs barely covered by the black netting of her—hell, I don’t know what you call it, but whatever it is, it shows off every dip and swell of her curves. Beneath it, she’s covered by a leather G-string and ruby-red pasties that form an X over each nipple as if she’s marked them just for me. Coincidence—or another one of Lora’s attempts to further toy with me? It doesn’t matter. She looks bloody fantastic, and though I would never admit it to her, it will require little effort for me to play my part tonight. We’re the same age, and if I saw her on the street I wouldn’t imagine she was a day over thirty. Whatever genetics are in her lithe body deserve a prize.
Fuck her for fucking me all those times and knowing it was me.
“You never struck me as the type who played games,” I say with practiced nonchalance. If she thinks I’m going to give her a big dramatic performance, she’s got another think coming. She’s played me with ice-cold precision for years, so I’m dialing the temperature to Antarctic levels.
She rolls her eyes but doesn’t peel her gaze from the window.
“And you said you loved me and disappeared without a trace,” she snaps. “Potato, po-tah-to, Max. You were playing your little spy games years before I was even recruited—years when I didn’t know if you were alive or dead. Don’t try to tangle with me or I’ll tie you in knots.”
“X,”
