Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 146392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
“TJ and I have never been together that way. He’s in the Army, and I only see him from time to time.” She would see him less now that they were in a fight. He hadn’t called in weeks. He’d probably found a girlfriend. Well, that wasn’t the word she should use. He’d found a sub to top for a while. He tended to go silent for weeks at a time and then she’d hear a rumor he’d been playing. He never acknowledged it to her, never mentioned it and never brought one home, but she knew. When he was at The Hideout he always took dungeon monitor duties and watched anyone she played with closely. He could be a dick about it.
But she knew there were nights at a place called The Club.
There was only the tiniest ounce of her that kind of wanted to see what TJ would think of her dating Dennis. But only a little. It was time to end this somewhat toxic cycle in her life. “But I should tell you I don’t know anything could work out between us. I would like to see some of the people from high school, but…”
“You want to go as friends,” he finished for her.
“I wouldn’t say we’re friends,” she corrected.
“Not yet.” He sat back and looked her over. “I meant what I said, Lou. I liked you then. I like you now. I agree to all your terms. Come with me, and we’ll see what can happen when TJ Taggart doesn’t come between us.”
“Lou, I need to talk to you.”
She turned, surprised because she knew that voice. Zach Reed was standing right there in the middle of the coffee shop. Zach shouldn’t be here at all. He should be at CIA headquarters. Zach was the team’s military liaison, and when they weren’t working, he went back to DC where he coordinated with other teams as well. So why was he here? “Zach? How the hell did you…”
“It’s work,” he said with a grim twist of his lips.
Of course. She grabbed her bag and shot Dennis an apologetic look. “Sorry. Work calls. Something must have broken down. But I will join you at the drinks reunion thing.”
“That would be great. I’ll text you, and maybe next time we can have lunch,” he offered. “It was good to see you.”
“We should hurry, Lou,” Zach said. “It’s about the LT Project. It’s in trouble.”
A shiver went down her spine. It was an old joke between their parents and TJ. They still sometimes called him the littlest Tag, though he certainly wasn’t. That was how they often referred to him when they spoke in code. He was LT. TJ hated it, which was probably why the twins loved it.
TJ was in trouble?
What if he hadn’t found a woman and gone dark for a few weeks? What if something had gone wrong on a mission?
What if someone was after him?
She ran out, following Zach and completely forgetting about Dennis.
It looked like things weren’t over between her and TJ. Not yet.
* * * *
Somewhere in Germany
In his dreams, things went differently. It was weird. TJ knew he was dreaming, knew his body was hanging by chains waiting for the next brutal assault, but in his head he was in a completely different place. A place where the pain couldn’t touch him.
With her.
He walked into one of the smaller rooms at The Station, the BDSM club in Sydney where his unit had collided with Lou’s. Somewhere in the club there was a pissed-off Canadian operative, and he rather thought Tash had some serious explaining to do to the dark-haired dude she seemed to have some connection with, but none of that mattered.
Lou was here, and she’d thrown herself in his arms when he’d called for her, and all was right with the world.
She turned, looking up from her laptop and smiling. “Hey, is everyone still alive? It looked like it was getting pretty heated down there.”
That was what happened when the left hand didn’t know what the right one was up to, but that was the Agency for you. He would rather be working for Lou’s team, but he was still a grunt for the most part.
He moved in and hugged her, unable to keep his hands off her. He shouldn’t have been able to see her for another couple of months, but here she was. He fucking hated that she worked for the Agency, but at least she was safely behind a computer. She wasn’t a field operative, at the whims of bosses who wouldn’t care if she lived or died as long as the mission got completed. She was the brains of the team, and they wouldn’t let her do anything dangerous.
The minute she was in his arms it was like the world slowed down and made more sense.