Chapter 2: Lies Over Linguine, Lust Against Glass
The debrief was a sterile, fluorescent-lit ordeal. Flint sat perfectly still in the hard plastic chair, hands flat on the metal table, and lied. He described a fierce hand-to-hand struggle in the vault, a well-placed knee to his groin, a smoke grenade he claimed she’d secreted in her uniform. “She was gone before the air cleared,” he said, his voice a dry report. “My apologies, sir. The intel on her capabilities was incomplete.” The words tasted like ash. Hawk’s eyes, sharp and discerning, lingered on him a beat too long before dismissing him.
He took Lady Jaye to dinner because it was expected, because he needed the cover of normalcy, and because the guilt was already a cold stone in his gut. The restaurant was all warm shadows and intimate booths, a world away from frostbitten concrete and ghostly hums. Her hand rested on his across the table, her touch warm and familiar.
“You’re quiet,” she said, swirling her red wine. The candlelight caught the gold in her hair. “Mission hangover?”
“Something like that,” Flint said, forcing a smile. He took a long pull of his whiskey, the burn doing nothing to scald away the memory of a different, more dangerous taste. “Just running the op over in my head. What I missed.”
“You didn’t miss anything. She’s a ghost, Flint. Everyone knows that.” Jaye’s smile was easy, trusting. She forked a bite of osso buco. “You got closer than anyone else has in months.”
He pushed his own food around the plate, the rich smells of garlic and braised meat suddenly cloying. Her laughter at a joke he’d mumbled echoed in his skull, hollow and distant. All he could hear was a whispered chemistry. All he could smell, beneath the wine and the candle wax, was a phantom trace of jasmine and musk.
Later, in the dark of her apartment, her touch was an anchor he desperately clutched. He kissed her with a focused intensity that made her gasp into his mouth. “Whoa,” she breathed, pulling back just enough to look at him. “Eager tonight.”
He didn’t answer with words. He answered with his hands, peeling away her clothes, his movements efficient, almost rough. He needed to feel something real, something his. He pushed her back onto the bed, her body a familiar landscape under his palms. She arched into him, her fingers digging into his shoulders, her breath coming in happy, expectant hitches.
He entered her in one firm, deep stroke. She cried out, a sound of pleasure, her legs wrapping around his hips. This was their rhythm, the trusted, loving syncopation of years. But as he moved, driving into her warmth, the vision fractured.
The feel of her thighs became sleeker, stronger. The cadence of her moans shifted, morphing in his mind into lower, more controlled sighs. He saw not Jaye’s flushed, open face beneath him, but pale skin framed by severe black hair, glasses reflecting the dim light. He felt not the eager, reciprocal rise of Jaye’s hips, but the calculated, undulating counter-thrust of the Baroness—a taunting, expert grind designed to unravel.
“Fuck,” he grunted, the curse torn from him.
“Yeah… oh, God, yeah,” Jaye moaned, mistaking his torment for passion.
He pistoned into her harder, faster, trying to outrun the phantom. The slap of skin grew louder, wetter. He could almost smell the venom in the sweat-slicked air. His jaw clenched so tight it ached. He was fucking his partner, his love, but he was seeing, wanting, his enemy. The betrayal was a fire in his veins. When his climax ripped through him, it was vicious and brutal. He buried his face in the pillow beside Jaye’s head, his body seizing, and as the waves crashed, he bit down on the meat of her shoulder to stifle the snarl, to cage the wrong name that surged to his lips.
He collapsed beside her, spent, heart hammering against his ribs. The silence was broken only by their ragged breathing.
Jaye shifted, turning into him. She traced the sweat on his chest, her touch feather-light. A delighted, breathless laugh escaped her. “Holy hell,” she whispered, kissing his collarbone. “What got into you tonight?”
The question was a knife. He stared at the dark ceiling, the afterimage of black glass lenses fading slowly. What got into him? A poison. A scent. A kiss that wasn’t a kiss. A card burning a hole in the locked drawer of his desk back at his quarters.
“Just missed you,” he said, the lie as easy and sickening as all the others. He pulled her close, letting her settle against him, her contentment a physical weight on his conscience.
Long after her breathing evened out into sleep, he was awake. Seeing green-tinted steel. Feeling cold alloy against his knuckles. The coordinates on the card were a pulsing beacon in his mind. He hadn’t just lied to Hawk and Jaye. He was lying here, in this bed, beside the woman he loved. The truth was in that drawer. An invitation to a place where he wouldn’t have to lie about what, or who, he truly wanted.