19. March 6th

MARCH 6TH

Waters

She'd caughthim by surprise when she sat up in the bed, pulling on his arms for him to sit up as well. Normally able to hide his emotions, right now, he was incapable of schooling his face into a detached mask.

What is she going to do?

She was raised up on her knees, her hands resting on top of his shoulders. Holding his breath, he watched as she leaned down and softly kissed the ends of each of the three Kraken tentacles at the top of his right pec. Her lips were burning against his already fevered skin. Slowly, she traveled around his body, crawling around him, tracing the edge of a fourth tentacle across his clavicle with her tongue, over his shoulder to the body that covered the entire expanse of his upper back. He kept trying to reach for her so he could put his mouth on her as well, but she brushed his hands away.

He gave up the fight. It just felt too damn good, especially with her bare breasts brushing against his skin. "Fuck, baby. Use that hot little mouth on me. Anywhere. Everywhere. Don't stop," he groaned.

She steadied herself by placing her hands on his shoulders, continuing to trace the new tentacles curling over his other shoulder. When she reached the end of the Kraken, the other four tentacles strangling a bleeding human heart decorated with the letter "S," he was speaking softly, nonsensically to her, finally able to anchor his hands in her hair and hold her close as she sucked at the skin. "Mark me, Kubrick." He hissed at the sting of her teeth biting down on his nipple, followed by the lapping of her tongue to remove the sting, and finally, the cool breath she blew across his wet skin. She pulled away, admiring her handiwork at the small love bite she left on his chest.

Her index finger traced the heart in the tattoo.

"The ‘S' is for Sarah." She looked up at him. He wavered, but it felt like he had to tell her something. Maybe it would ease if he said it out loud. "She was—"

That same finger went to his lips. Once he was silent, her palm went flat to his chest over the letter. "You're carrying this loss and pain with you every day. Therefore, whoever it was, this person is important to you. I respect that."

It was then he saw her truly notice for the first time the other marks on his body, and confusion spread across her face. Softly, she touched each one as she investigated, her expression becoming more intense with each brush of her fingertips. He swallowed hard as she did, watching her face intently for disgust, waiting for the inevitable questions. He really didn't want to have this conversation with her. Anyone else, he'd redirect them. Any other woman, he'd simply get out of the bed, dress, and leave. But he found he couldn't do that with her. However, the situation was not pretty, and he wasn't sure how either of them would react to his answers.

She'd moved on to his back, and he heard a soft gasp, then a fluttering over his skin, not even enough to be called a touch, at where his right kidney should be. He swallowed again, looking over his right shoulder at her. The soft, warm touch of her lips dropped onto the jagged scar that reached from the base of his shoulder blade to disappear below the waist of his pants, then her arms came around his shoulders from behind, hugging him tightly. She buried her face in his neck, and he felt wetness hit his skin. His hand reached up to grab her forearm that stretched across his chest, holding it lightly, and he dropped a kiss to it. No question came.

She's giving me an out. She knows I might not want to talk about it, so she's just showing me she hurts for me. Christ, how can she possibly think she's not "good enough"?

"Afghanistan." Clearing his throat, he swallowed again, then continued to speak. "The details are pretty grim, but the short of it is, I lost a kidney. Most people have their scar in the front, but my circumstances were a little unique."

Silence followed. Just a kiss pressed behind his ear. She just held him close.

Good goddamn.

"It's why I had to leave the Navy. You can't have only one kidney and be a SEAL." His thumb stroked her forearm. "Tell me what you"re thinking, baby."

"There are even more of them, aren't there?" Her voice was small from where her mouth rested against the back of his shoulder. Her fingers gently ran the length of the scar, top to bottom.

Nodding, he confessed, "Yes, but most are not from Afghanistan. Five years ago, when I was recovering from the kidney, I was brought into Tribe. God hired me from my hospital bed. I had a bit of a reputation for my analyst skills already, as well as a reputation for authority issues, and he had apparently been watching me for a while." He brought his lips down to her forearm again as if drawing strength from her arms to say the words he needed to say. "Three years later, I was on a recovery job in Egypt. It would be too simplistic to say that it went badly. In the past, I had a very bad habit of rushing in where angels fear to tread, so to speak. I was quiet, but if there was trouble, I'd be first in line to meet it and the last one to leave it. I never thought before I acted. Just reacted. On that last project, I was captured. My rash decision forced my team to come in and get me."

"You were tortured."

In more ways than one.

"Yes."

She crawled around to the front of him. Remaining on her knees, she took his face in her hands and lightly kissed him. "Your knee? It didn't heal properly. That's why you limp sometimes."

"I honestly didn't think the limp was that noticeable anymore."

Blushing, she gave him a sad smile. "I may watch you quite a bit."

He grinned. "Quite a bit, huh?"

"Saucy," she warned, throwing back at him his favorite word for her.

He pulled her close and fell backward on the bed, gathering her close, her head under his chin, his arms wrapped tight around her. "Don't feel bad for me. It's nothing compared to what it could be, and probably far less than I deserved for being an idiot. I'm alive. At least I could walk, and I was able to come back to work. Everything else healed, but the marks will always be there to remind me of my mistakes."

She raised her face to his, placing a kiss on the side of his mouth. "At least they left this beautiful face alone."

"Mmmm. This beautiful face doesn't want to talk about it anymore. I have much better things to say to you while we're in this bed. Now shut up unless you're moaning my name."

Two hours later,Waters left Kubrick sleeping in the bed. They'd spent most of that time making out like teenagers. Eventually, they'd both ended up naked under the sheet, swapping positions, exploring each other, and Waters finding out exactly where her sweet spots were. He grinned to himself, recalling a certain area on the inside of her knees that was particularly stimulating to her.

For the first time in his life, Waters felt like sex was fun again, and he wanted to savor the time with a woman. He didn't need to experience it all in one night. In fact, if it had taken weeks to get to sex, he would have been more than fine with that. He also didn't want her to think that all he wanted was sex.

Wow. You just told her that's all you can give her, but you don't want her to think that's all you want? Way to send mixed messages, asshole.

The irony was not wasted on him that now that he'd found someone he would love to explore more than a short-term arrangement with, he couldn't.

Closing the door of her suite behind him, Waters sat in the high-backed leather chair behind the desk. He powered up his tablet and dialed the office for a video conference after punching in his security codes to scramble the service. As Midas answered, the screen split in two, showing the cyber guru on the left and a black box with a voice sound wave depicted on the right for God.

Time to get roasted for real.

"Well, hel-lo there, stud muffin. Nice hickey."

Waters flipped his middle finger. There was no hickey.

Well… not on my neck. Can't say that for other areas. My right ass cheek still smarts.

Midas made a show of checking his watch. "Only two hours and forty minutes? I'm disappointed in you. I figured we wouldn't see you until tomorrow." He grunted. "I would have thought that would be goddamn embarrassing for a former SEAL. Where's your pride? And fuck, that also means I lost the pool." Midas consulted the bets on the whiteboard behind him. "Steel won. He picked two hours and thirty-eight minutes. He know something about you we don't?"

Waters shook his head at the shit-talking. "Everyone's gotta come up for air sometime. Can you go that long without breathing?"

"Niiiiiiiiice," Midas drawled. "Almost makes me wish I was a chick."

In the background, he could hear Steel mumbling to himself in Spanish. Waters refused to translate out of fear of what he would hear. Instead, he redirected. "Updates?"

"Can I put the camera back up?" Midas asked.

Waters turned his head toward the suite door. "Leave it a bit longer. She doesn't know, and I don't want her to be embarrassed unnecessarily." He turned his gaze back to the screen. He prompted again, "So. Updates?"

"Other than Nemo getting his ass bit by a snake, Demon and TB report nothing amiss. Enigma prowls a lot at night but primarily to Vixen's room. He's not exactly spending a lot of time in his own bed."

"No surprise. Any luck with Ka-Bar?"

"No. I'm starting to get twitchy. And I don't get twitchy, so that means we've got problems. At this point, if I can't find him, I'm worried he's nowhere to be found. Or at least not without a cadaver dog."

God asked, "Do you think Kubrick might know somewhere he would go that we wouldn't think to look or be able to find?"

"I don't know. She doesn't talk about him at all except when I ask directly, so it makes me wonder how close they actually are."

"They're close," Midas affirmed. "I can find pictures galore of them together, and not just prior to his military days. She's been his plus-one at a number of military events over the years. As recent as last year. I think I see Fourth of July decorations in the corner of one picture, but I'm not one hundred percent positive. Her hair is a little different in the picture than it is now, too. And they email all the time. Granted, there are huge gaps, which coincide with when he's out in the field, but it's at minimum daily when he's not in action."

There was a crunching noise over the speakers. "Do you think she knows anything she's not telling?" God asked around the candy he was pulverizing.

"I don't think so. She's not exactly a ‘subtle' kind of woman. She pretty much lays everything out there for you to see, although she can mask her emotions most of the time."

Except when it comes to you.

Waters grimaced at a particularly loud crunch. "I thought Cherry took away your suckers?"

"She did," God growled.

"Yeah, she did," Midas confirmed, "but he just went online and ordered them to be shipped directly to him in his batcave. I think they're being delivered by drone."

God grunted. "Listen, Waters, we're coming up empty, and under normal circumstances, I'd say we're spinning our wheels. But with Ka-Bar up in smoke, I'm thinking it's even worse than we imagined. I think it's time to push her for anything at all she might have, even if it seems insignificant or totally useless."

Waters sighed. "Yeah, not sure how she'll take the fact that I'm really on this job with her because we think Ka-Bar's in trouble, and somehow she's leverage."

"Worse will be when you tell her that Ka-Bar is missing," Midas added.

"Yeah, then there's that."

Running his hands over his head and to the back of his neck, Waters leaned forward on his elbows on the desktop. "I'll see what I can do. I'm gonna need a little time."

"Don't be a pussy, Waters," God warned. "The longer we go with no leads, the worse things look for Ka-Bar, and the more in the dark we are with how Kubrick is involved. Time is running out."

God wasn't just warning him about finding Ka-Bar. It was also a reminder that his time with Kubrick was also finite. "Roger that."

Waters shut down his tablet and sat back in the chair with a sigh. He was not looking forward to questioning her and wasn't even sure how to go about it. His best approach was probably just straight at it and confess everything. But he wasn't sure if she was going to be mad, scared, both, or something else altogether. And God was correct. They didn't have time for him to be overly cautious because with each minute they didn't act, if Ka-Bar was being held hostage, the more time that passed, the less likely he would be alive when they found him. If they ever found him.

Pushing up on the arms of the chair, he headed over to the doors of Kubrick's suite. Quietly, he opened the doors, and just as silently, he shut them behind him, turning the lock once more. If she tried to storm out on him, he'd at least have the extra second or two that unlocking them would give him.

She lay diagonally across the bed, the foot of one bent leg peeking out, the sheet around her hips, her bare back beckoning him. He remembered covering her with his body earlier, kissing his way up from the top of her waist to the nape of her neck. Her skin was incredibly soft to the touch, and as always, the ever-present scent of lilacs seemed to surround her. Her face was turned to the window in sleep, hair thoroughly tousled, one hand tucked into her chest, the other straight along her side.

She was perfect.

He needed more.

Walking across the room, he stripped off his T-shirt and pants that he'd pulled on in haste to go make his call, quickly folding them and placing them on the chair in the corner of the room. He turned back toward the bed and lay one hand gently on the ankle of her partially exposed leg, then slid it loosely up the calf muscle. When his hand reached her knee, he leaned down and kissed the back of her thigh, pointing his tongue and licking a stripe up to the underside of her ass. He brushed the sheet aside, exposing her naked form to the room. A quick nip to the cheek directly in front of him caused a soft noise to come from her throat, but it was the very deliberate tongue swiping between the two cheeks he gently pulled apart, from her pussy opening to the dimpled mid back that caused a sleep-hazed gasp to emerge. He smiled against her lower back, and he knew the smile was wicked.

Yeah, it isn't an ass fetish, but I am definitely an ass man. And hers is as wicked as I imagined.

Just to be greedy, he repeated the tongue swipe, a second of pressure and a swirl against her back hole, then continuing up to the lower back where he breathed an openmouthed kiss.

Bracketing her thighs with his knees, he placed both hands at her hips, sliding them up her back, then brushing the mass of blonde hair over the nape of her neck. When the space was clear, he closed the distance between them, bracing himself just above her body, his teeth taking light purchase in the skin there. He brushed aside his subconscious, making snide comments about claiming what he couldn't, before he moved his mouth to where the nape met the shoulder. One hand tunneling underneath the blonde hair and gripping firmly, he sucked hard enough to raise a bruise.

She moaned with need in her sleep.

After admiring his work, one fingertip brushing the marked skin, he slid to her left and lay on his side, the hand that had been gripping the roots of her hair brushing tendrils off her forehead. He caressed the silk skin of her breast, feathered kisses along her shoulder, touched the tip of his tongue beneath her ear, sucked the lobe briefly into his mouth, trailed his lips across her cheek to the corner of her mouth, the Monroe beauty mark, the tip of her nose and the corner of her eyebrow all in an effort to sweetly wake her up in anticipation of, hopefully, more snuggling and kissing.

You have really got it bad, dude. Snuggling? Kissing? The guys are totally going to take your Man Card and rip it into shreds.

Her hand smoothed over the mattress and up his chest to curve around his neck. "Hey," she whispered.

"Hey," he returned, foreheads touching. "Sleep well?"

"Mm-hmm." Her eyes closed with a deep inhale, and they reopened on the exhale. "I thought I woke up, and you were gone, but I must have dreamt it."

"No"—he kissed her lips—"I did leave for a couple of minutes. I needed to check in with the boss."

Kubrick leaned up, pulling the pillow tight to her chest to prop herself up. "Something wrong? You look sort of… uncomfortable."

"I am," he admitted.

She lowered her head to lie on the scrunched-up pillow but kept her eyes turned up to his. "Everything okay?"

He looked at the door over her shoulder, not really seeing it, thinking hard before he spoke. Then he decided to just rip the duct tape off in one quick swipe.

"It's about your brother." He returned his gaze to hers, drawing his index finger up and down her bicep.

"Ah. I wondered when he might come up."

"You did?"

"Yes. I'm not stupid." He opened his mouth to deny he thought so, but she beat him to the comment. "I'm not saying you think I am. I'm just saying that I know more about you and your company than you likely believe I do, and I know that he sent me to you not just because there were SEALs working at Tribe. He's an overprotective ass, and as soon as I heard he called ahead, I figured something must be going on that he wanted me under someone's watchful eye; otherwise, he would have been my consultant."

"So you're not mad?"

"About what?" He gestured between the two of them. "Did this happen as some sort of interrogation ploy because you need to ask me about whatever's going on with my dumbass brother?"

"This afternoon? No."

"Then, no, I'm not mad."

Thank fuck.

He let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding inside. "Not what I was expecting. But… I still need to ask you a couple of things."

"It's not good, is it?"

"I honestly don't know, Kubrick." He grabbed her hand closest to him and held it tight. "He's missing. Midas has been looking for him since he called in Steel's marker. There's nothing, and even if he were on a mission, for my teammate to find nothing… the odds are similar to being struck by lightning three times in one's lifetime. Is there anywhere he might go if he thought he was in trouble?"

Kubrick appeared to turn her thoughts inward, her face screwing up in concentration. After a few moments, she replied, "The last I knew, he was stationed in Egypt. He had just returned from an assignment, and he emailed me about the package. A day or two later, there was another email, but it was just a two sentence thing with Tribe's phone number."

"Think hard. What did it say?"

"Just something like ‘Call Tribe. They don't normally do consultations, but you're short on time, so they can help you with what you need.'"

"‘Short on time? Help you with what you need?' Those were his words?"

"Yes. Something to that effect." He saw the exact moment she caught where he was going with his question. "You're thinking that he didn't mean the movie."

Waters swore under his breath. Kubrick was definitely in trouble. "No, baby, but he used that as your ticket in the door to us to prevent you from panicking. He used a marker from Steel, so we were pretty sure he was asking us to protect you. The fact that he didn't outright ask? That's even more concerning. That means he couldn't. He probably thought somebody was watching him."

"But I know nothing about what my brother does. He tells me nothing about his work—not even what he had for lunch that day. He's fanatical about it." She squeezed Waters' hand. "I'm dead serious. Not a smidgen of information."

"But you've visited him overseas, so you could have easily been seen with him if he were being watched. They might not know your exact relationship; they could even think you're lovers and not siblings. There's no official paper trail showing your connection, so it wouldn't have been obvious whom you were to each other without digging deep. And they wouldn't be able to be sure what you know and what you don't, so they might not be willing to take the chance."

"Who're ‘they'?"

"Whomever he might have pissed off."

"So, he didn't come home to help me because he's out in the field. You think someone took him."

He grimaced. "There's no chatter, and we can't find a digital footprint. Your brother is sort of a recognized expert on disappearing. Normally, when someone disappears, they leave at least a breadcrumb for someone to find in case it's under duress. We have several typical ways, and then we're trained to look for atypical things. But he didn't. So, we're not sure if he's really in trouble or just hiding really well."

"I'm sorry. I want to help, but I really can't. I'd do anything to help him."

"Any place he would go to be alone, some place no one but him would know. Does he have any friends in Egypt he'd go to if he were in trouble? Or maybe just over the border?"

"Again, he never spoke of knowing anyone outside of the embassy. He was close to Jacques, the French Ambassador, but I'm guessing that's not the kind of person you're looking for. You're looking for exit contacts."

He smiled with a wink and tapped the tip of her nose. "Clever girl."

She huffed. "I read, Waters. And I make movies, including an espionage thriller, remember?"

"Yeah, that one was probably my favorite." He gave her a wicked grin and several quick eyebrow raises.

"Gee, I wonder why. Was it that beautiful red-haired spy, I wonder?"

"Mmm. Very sexy. But I know someone sexier," he teased. He framed her face in his hands, looking her over, amazed that he was actually in bed with this woman.

And you're not fucking her, you moron.

"Not to beat a dead horse, but I need you to think about anyone Ka-Bar might contact, anyone he knows in Egypt, no matter how insignificant. If you think of anyone, I need you to tell me. And if you remember anything… anything at all that someone might be angry at him for or want to teach him a lesson for… I need you to tell me that, too. Even if it seems long past, petty, or not worth mentioning."

"I guess I would suggest starting with talking to anyone who was there when we lived there. I was between nine and ten back then. About nine months total, I think. I mean, the embassy was crawling with all kinds of people living there, working there, visiting there. They would have registration books, much like a hotel, recording every time anyone came in and out the doors. It'll be a shit-ton of people. Hope your tech guy is a robot. It'll take forever to comb through them all."

Waters kissed the tip of her nose. "You're so damn smart."

She rolled her eyes, shaking her head. "I don't want to talk about my brother anymore. It might ruin the next little while." Pushing him onto his back, she lay on top of him. She worked her way down his front, her nails dragging behind, causing him to groan. When she reached his navel, she looked up at him through her lashes. Then she went back to kissing him, following the cut of his hips.

The first swipe of her tongue had him groaning. "Kubrick, you don't have to—"

"Shut up and enjoy it," she mumbled.

And when she took the tip of his cock into her mouth, he was a goner. He fisted her hair gently and watched her do her magic.