Chapter 3

three

“Ah, my new bodyguard,”says Mark as I’m let into his office by Ms. Lim.

He’s standing up from his chair and his suit jacket is off, thrown over the side of his desk next to a laptop, a folder, and his seemingly perennial glass of vodka or gin on the rocks. The other day on the roof, I saw his proportions under the immaculate tailoring of his suit, but without the jacket, with only the expensive cotton of his button-down shirt, I can see that he’s more than just well shaped. The neat lines of his waist leading into his trousers and the curves of his arms and shoulders are those of a man in his prime.

Goran had showed me a gym here—available for all club guests and employees—but strangely, I can’t picture Mark in it, fussing over the kinds of muscles that are for show. He’d be more into running and calisthenics, maybe. Push-ups in the morning, squats and sit-ups after.

I tell myself I’m only noticing because I may need to help scout running routes when we travel. His habits are my business now.

“Good afternoon, sir,” I say, coming to stand in front of his desk.

“I take it Goran has taken care of the paperwork and the essentials. He explained the dress code to you?”

“Yes, sir.” It isn’t much of a dress code—suits in black or gray, an issued firearm, and a leather shoulder harness for wearing said firearm. But there is a stipend for the suits at least.

Mark looks at the suit I’m wearing now, his gaze trailing from the slightly too-short trouser cuffs to the tightness at the shoulders. It’s something my father bought me after I graduated West Point, saying that a man always needed at least one suit for the occasions he couldn’t wear his dress uniform to. It’s eight years old now.

“I’ll give you the name of the tailor I’d like you to see.” He holds up a hand, as if forestalling any protest. “I’ll make sure the club covers it. You are mine now, so I’ll need you to look the part.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Those army manners,” he says. “They’ll fit in well here. Did you meet Sedge?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He will email over my schedule each day, along with travel itineraries. I’ll try to give you as much notice as I can with travel, so you can make whatever security arrangements you’ll need to make, but many of my trips are unexpected, so my promises are cheap. When we’re here at the club, most of my meetings will be here in my office—and for most of those, you will be asked to wait outside, as a show of privacy and discretion for my members.”

I nod.

“In the evenings,” Mark says, lifting his jacket off the desk and shrugging it on, “if I’m not traveling or having dinner in the city, I’ll generally eat in the club and then make my presence known after. I’ll take meetings there too, more informally. Unless I’m in a private room or I explicitly dismiss you, I’ll expect you to be close.”

He tugs at the cuffs of his jacket sleeves with crisp efficiency. I see that silver watch again and think of how it would glitter through the trees or from the window of an abandoned building. I was able to return fire at someone in a dark alley once because they were wearing a watch just like that.

How strange life is now, that wearing something that can reflect light feels unbearably and ostentatiously reckless. Mark’s hand drops to the folder on his desk, his fingertips skimming the front. “You emailed over your consent to what you might witness at the club and your limits.”

My eyes drop to the folder. He gave me the folio filled with terms and explanations. He sees stuff every day I can’t even imagine; what’s more, he facilitates it. It should not feel like such a private thing to share, what I can withstand watching in a professional setting.

“No waterworks or scat,” says Mark, not flipping open the folder, as if he already has the salient points of its contents memorized. “That’s quite all right, as we don’t do that here at Lyonesse. You seem comfortable potentially witnessing everything else, which I’d expect from someone with your record overseas. Watching someone happily being caned is certainly better than watching someone’s fingers get blown off because they lit a cigarette after dusk. Although?.?.?.?”

I know what’s coming. When I’d walked in, I’d automatically shifted into a parade rest position, my feet planted and my hands behind my back, and now I feel the tiniest impulse to fidget, to rub my thumbs together. I resist.

“You’ve annotated wax play here,” continues Mark. “Not as a hard limit but as something you would find hard to watch.”

His blue eyes lift to mine, and I feel the penetrating force of his gaze.

“Normally, I wouldn’t interrogate someone on limits, but we’re in a special circumstance and wax play is exceptionally common. And”—a small tilt of his head—“rather initiatory-level stuff when it comes to kink. So I admit I’m curious. And for work purposes, I do need to know if this is a mild aversion or if it’s something more painful than that.”

“No,” I say before I can think about how I want to phrase my explanation. “Not painful. And not an?.?.?.?aversion.” And then I flush. Embarrassingly, humiliatingly.

I’m twenty-nine and I’m hot-cheeked about wax.

A beat passes as Mark studies me. “I see,” he says. “And so the other thing you’ve marked here—breeding kinks—”

I have to look down at the floor. “Also not an aversion,” I manage to say. My jaw is tight, my face is on fire. “I just wanted to tag that I might struggle to stay professional if we were watching something. Like that.”

I hear footsteps; when I’m able to force my eyes up, Mark is in front of me. He’s shaved since I saw him last, and his face without stubble is like something from a magazine. Too handsome, too striking, too entrancing to be hidden under a helmet and protective eyewear. No wonder the CIA poached him and sent him out to woo and lie and kill.

“Breeding,” he murmurs. The word on his lips is sinful.

“Sir.”

“Is it about pregnancy? Procreation?”

I want to die. “It’s not about pregnancy.”

I have to dredge the words out of my chest. It’s the first time I’ve ever spoken about this. Ever. “I like?.?.?.?I like the closeness,” I add with some difficulty. “The idea of leaving part of yourself inside someone.”

“So it’s about the fluid itself. Like a creampie kink.”

“Yes, but—” I’m struggling. It’s so much easier to type breeding into a porn site and let the search engine do the work than frame this in words spoken out loud. In front of my boss. “It’s more than unprotected sex.”

It’s the ownership, the claiming. The idea of using someone?.?.?.?or being used myself.

“It’s not about actually making babies,” I repeat, just to make it extremely clear. “I, um. The breeding kink is for me too. Not just for what I’d like to do to someone else.”

Mark’s expression doesn’t change, but his pupils do.

They bloom.

“Good to know,” he says after a minute. “In that case, rest assured that I don’t expect you to be made of stone when it comes to the things that happen at Lyonesse. In fact, I’d be rather disappointed if you were.”

“Sir,” I say. It takes more willpower than I’m proud of to hold that sharp, perceptive gaze.

The corner of his mouth indents. “Well, with that settled, I have a meeting in the city. You may as well come and begin getting acquainted with the little chores that make up my day.”