Blacklisted: Blacklist Operations Book #1 (17 page)

“Oliver isn’t dead, Veronica.”

“Sophie.”

“Veronica.”

“Is my sister.”

“I can’t let you go.” He ran a hand through his hair, gripped and pulled. “You’ll try to hurt him again. This time he’ll kill you.”

“As if he could.”

“He’s better than you Veronica, and when he wakes up he’ll be done playing games. He’s let you be this long because it amused him. Oliver liked the stories. Now you put a bullet in his lungs.”

“Sounds like that’ll make it hard for him to give a kill order.”

“Stop making jokes,” Aidan snapped, frustrated. “What am I supposed to do here?”

Part of her wanted to argue, but the sun was encroaching on the deepest part of dark and the pale light washed his face with exhaustion. Sophie didn’t want to put the look there, didn’t want to see it at all.

“Just touch me.”

“What?” He shook his head, his hand reflexively gripped and unclenched.

“I want you.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“And maybe Oliver will make you kill me tomorrow. But I haven’t been able to be close to a man since my sister died. Aidan, it’s so good between us.”

Sophie wet her lips, enticing him. Though she continued speaking, his mind searched for a way for it to work. Still. Despite everything. Despite the betrayal and Oliver and what he’d done to Venus. Hadn’t told her that yet. Wouldn’t, until she asked.

“It can’t work.”

“You can leave my hands cuffed,” she said, not comprehending what he meant. He didn’t correct her, Foolish to discuss feelings when she was warm and soft beside him. When she wanted him.

Maybe the most foolish thing was that he believed her. She did want him. Unless he was less perceptive than he’d imagined—and he knew he was damn good at his job, at understanding
people, at seeing what they were hiding—she’d wanted him in London. She’s moaned and writhed under him, dug her nails deep into his back.

He wanted that again. Wanted her. Couldn’t trust her. Fuck.

Aidan was too aware of her breathing.

The rise and fall of her breasts. The pink of her nipples barely discernable through the short nightgown.

The wet heat he knew he’d find between her thighs.

God.

He wanted to touch her.

He’d been denying himself exactly what he wanted. Everything he wanted. For years.

His breathing turned erratic. She just watched him.

“You can leave me tied up,” she said again. “I’m not going to try to escape either way.”

He couldn’t trust her.

“I just want you, Aidan.” She breathed in hard. Whoever she was, whatever she was, she smelled like vanilla, like roses. It teased his nose, sparked his senses.

He was fucked.

She shivered when he knelt on the bed between her spread thighs, leaning down to take a nipple in his mouth. He sucked hard through the rough fabric and shivers erupted through Sophie’s body. Seeing her uncensored response to him made him want to take more from her. To take all from her.

Aidan moved down between her legs, using one hand to push up her nightgown while the other toyed with her wet, hard nipple. Once the white fabric was bunched around her flat stomach, he could see her spread pussy only inches from his mouth. In London, the taste of her had nearly driven him crazy.

Now he plunged his tongue into her slick folds, dragging it up to tease her clit and he knew that he’d lost his mind. She tasted better now, like amber honey on his tongue. The low moans
spilling from her mouth urged him on, and he didn’t stop even when her thighs quivered in the bonds.

“Aidan, please,” she said, and he sucked her clit into his mouth until she came, thrusting her hips into his face shamelessly.

“More,” he growled against her wet flesh. Her entire body was shaking, but he didn’t care. He wanted to wring her of all her passion, to take her until she was as empty as he’d felt when she left. Aidan released his hold on her nipple, flicking it once before bringing his hands down to tease her sweet pussy.

Two fingers pushed inside her. His cock tightened when he felt her heat surrounding him. She was so fucking wet. For him. No matter what else had been a lie, this response wasn’t.

“Please,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Make me come again.”

He nodded and licked her clit, pumping his fingers deeper inside her and stroking her shivering pink pussy. When she started to spasm, he licked faster, not letting up the pressure. Her body erupted again.

Aidan pulled back and looked at her. Bound in the moonlight that spilled through the windows, she was a goddess. Her hard nipples poked through the white cloth, pink and aroused. Her pussy was glistening with moisture that he wanted to lick and suck until she was screaming against him again.

So he did.

Again and again he brought her to the brink of orgasm, then pushed her over. Even when Sophie begged him to fuck her, he denied her his full possession. Aidan ground himself against her, but wouldn’t take off his pants. All he wanted was what she was giving him—her full and complete surrender.

She shivered when he wrapped his hand around her arm, pressing against her elbow. Every inch of her body was thoroughly used and stimulated. Sophie raised her eyebrows when he removed a key from his jeans with his other hand and released her right arm from bondage. He used his hand to gently massage the skin that had turned red and irritated with her struggles. Repeating the action on her left side, then held her wrists between his hands, not speaking.

“Are you sure?”

“I know what you are now,” he said simply.

She stopped thinking when Aidan moved his hands to her ankles and gently untied the ties, then ran his fingers up her legs, teasing her thighs with gentle strokes. Moving his hands to her arms, he leaned in and took her mouth with his. Not like the fake kiss in Dubai—not even like the night in London when she was still lying to him. Now he knew who she was. And he kissed her anyway.

Sophie answered his mouth with a ferocity that she’d never felt before. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she moved until she was straddling him, her knees planted on either side of his thighs. When she took his lower lip between her teeth and bit down he groaned and pushed her down until she was laying supine on the bed.

He covered her, ground his erection into her until she moaned, panting against his mouth. She wanted that hard, hot heat driving inside her until everythin
g else faded to the background. Every lick of his tongue on her hypersensitive flesh had made her feel more desperate for his cock. She wanted it thrust deep inside her so badly that she thought she would die without it.

Not waiting for permission, she reached down and undid his fly, letting his massive erection spring free. It was heavy and veined in her hand, and the first touch of it undid her. Even knowing who she was, Aidan couldn’t deny that he wanted her. Not when his shaft was throbbing against her hand.

She raised her body above him until the head of his cock was just barely teasing her weeping flesh.

“I need you in me,” she said, looking directly into his eyes. “I need you to fuck me.”

“I’m going to fuck your perfect fucking pussy until you pass out,” he growled, wrenching her down and sheathing himself inside her with a single thrust.

She gasped, stretched to the limit around him. He didn’t wait for her to adjust. Instead Aidan threw her to her back, took her legs in his hands and drove into her, never looking away from her face. Sophie didn’t try to hide her response, understanding that he needed to see what was real. What she felt.

The bed shook under them as Aidan slammed his cock into her again and again. Unlike the night in London, he was fierce and wild. He didn’t hold back, and Sophie met his every thrust, glorying in the power of their bodies.

“Play with your clit,” he groaned, dipping his head down to bite one of her nipples until she yelped and gasped.

She obeyed, reaching between their bodies to stroke her clit, driving herself closer to a climax. With Aidan buried inside her, it was going to be stronger than any she’d had that night. Though her body craved it, part of her was scared to completely lose control.

He wouldn’t let her withdrawal, though. Aidan circled his hips and hit just the right spot inside her, leaning down to take her mouth as she started to come, her pussy squeezing him tight.

She was still shaking as he slammed in to her, pulling her close and let himself follow her into the dark.

Chapter Twenty-One

“What do we do now?” Sophie asked him, moving her head until it rested on his arm. She kissed the tattoo that decorated his pectoral softly, then blew on the moisture her mouth had left behind.

“I don’t know. I can’t trust you.”

“I know,” she said. “But there are bigger issues.”

“Synthesis.”

“Yes. It’s going to happen soon and I don’t know how to stop it.”

“Which is ironic, considering that you were instrumental in its inception.”

“Oliver is the trigger on Synthesis, Aidan.”

“Lyle.”

Just like that, they were stuck again. Sophie sighed and rolled away from him. “What if I could prove it to you?”

“I can prove to you that it isn’t Oliver.”

It was so frustrating for her to be so close to him as herself, and for him not to believe her. Divine retribution for all the time that she’d spent lying to him. Sophie counted herself lucky that he wasn’t killing her or restraining her anymore.

She wasn’t a martyr. It was easy to tell herself that she deserved his distrust, but she’d been doing her job and trying to take out a man who truly deserved execution in one fell swoop. If she’d used Aidan—and she had, she admitted—it still wasn’t all fake. When he touched her, everything was real.

“It’s happening next week,” she told him. He turned to her, disbelieving and then watched her stand and cross the room to her vanity. She pulled out a box, punched in a code and then pressed her thumb so a scanner. The locks hissed and disengaged, then she set the box on the bed and offered Aidan the papers inside.

“What is this?”

“Look at the images. These are from a factory in Kyoto, Japan.” She watched as he flipped through the grainy black and white images. They were the best she’d been able to pull from the surveillance videos Aaron had left in the van with Veronica.

“Dima,” Aidan said softly, dragging his finger over the image of a man standing and facing the camera.

“He came to tour the lab from Russia,” she said. “They were researching the active ingredient in Synthesis. It wasn’t ready to go airborne until that was added—that’s what Dima was doing, Aidan. He wasn’t curing it. He was activating it.”

“So you did kill him?”

“No,” she said, shrugging. “Someone I work with did. I really was taking a trip to Dubai.”

“He was a good man.”

“No, he wasn’t. You need to accept that some of the people you work with are not only bad people, but they’re lying to you and others you work with about their real intentions.”

“That isn’t possible.”

“It is.” She watched the struggle on his face and hurt for him. “It’s never black-and-white, Aidan. I’m sure Oliver sent you on a fair amount of operations where you did good in the world. But their endgame isn’t good.”

She sat across from him, drawing her legs under her and handing him more images. They showed Oliver, Dima, vials of what was unmistakably Synthesis. The containment was so extreme that it was easy to tell the virus apart from other things in the lab.

“I don’t believe you,” he said at last. “If I did, though—what makes you think it’s happening so soon?”

“Oliver was just waiting to get the activation instructions. Another agent stole them, but she was killed while you and I were traveling to London. Enough time has passed that the virus will definitely be able to go airborne now.”

“Why would Second Division do that?”             

“Money. It’s all about the money for these people.”

He looked overwhelmed. It was there in his stark eyes. “I can’t think about this. I need time.”

“Daisy definitely needs to go out by now. Would you like to go with us?”

He nodded.

They took the Dalmatian outside and let her run around the yard. Aidan grabbed a tennis ball from a bowl by the door and threw it as far as the gate, then took it from Daisy’s mouth and threw it again. Sophie sat on the stairs, enjoying the sight.

She liked Aidan, Sophie realized when Daisy returned the soggy green ball to him. Her snout brushed his hand, nudging it, enticing him to throw the ball again. She let out a yip of joy when he did; tearing across the law toward the fence, Daisy raced after it one more time.

“What’re you going to do when Oliver wakes up,” Sophie asked.

“Not kill you.”

She let the subject drop and just watched them play. She couldn’t give him the same assurances. When Oliver woke up, she’d kill him again. Again, again and again until the she was dead or the monster killed her, even if Aidan couldn’t see what was under the man’s mask.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

“You’re always hungry.”

“I know. Venus told me once—.” She stopped cold. “How did you find me?”

“Venus,” he admitted. She had to stop herself from launching at him when he confirmed her fears. There were people walking by, on their way to bakeries or work. Sophie planned to live in her apartment for a long time and didn’t want to get a reputation as the kind of person who beat up men in the front yard.

“Did you kill her?”

“No.”

“Is she hurt?”

“She was, but not damaged in any way.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t want to tell us where you were.” He nodded, refused to look away from her eyes. “I am what I am, Sophie, and I needed to find you.”

“Where is she now?”

“Comfortably ensconced in a friend’s country home. She’ll either be handed over to the government or let free after Synthesis is resolved.”

Sophie laughed. “That would be something.”

“What?”

“Handing her over to the government.”

“Why?”

“Whatever you might think of me or Lyle, we work for the government. You’re the one who doesn’t. Please turn her over to the government.”

Her casual comment and laughing eyes haunted him more than 100 accusations would have.

“I’m a little surprised you didn’t kill her. Seems like it would have made things easier.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, taking the ball from an excited Daisy and throwing it hard. “You wouldn’t have been happy though.”

“You thought about me, even then?”

He didn’t say anything, just waited for the dog to return once more.

“I’m not Veronica, Aidan.”

“She was thinner than you are,” he said suddenly. “Smoked.”

“I warned her that the cigarettes would lower her life expectancy.” Sophie remembered how Veronica had laughed at that, in the house where they’d once lived with their parents. How she’d laughed and said that once you’d killed a man smoking was the least of your worries. “She didn’t grow old enough to find out for herself.”

“How did she die?”

“Oliver.”

“No.”

“She died less than an hour after I pulled her from the van he’d put her in after he tore her apart.”

“Oliver.”

“He tortured her. Didn’t kill her. She was too valuable to
Second Division.”

“You’re neglecting to consider that Oliver thinks Veronica killed his daughter.” Sorrow filled her eyes at her words.

“She did—”

“No,” Sophie said, looking at the pavement. “She didn’t. We were victimized at that age, made to contain a power that was too great for us to handle. Modified without our consent.”

“Sophie.”

“No. Listen. It was worse for Isabella. Worse. She was a container, like us, but what she held wasn’t power. It was death.” When Daisy returned with the ball, Sophie reached over and took it in her hand. Wiping the saliva on her pants leg, she set it on the concrete and rubbed her hands over Daisy’s head. Recognizing that Sophie was unhappy, Daisy curled up next to her, put her head in her lap, and huffed out a breath.

“What do you mean?”

She was so tired of speaking of death on sunny days. “Where do you think Synthesis came from?”

“Lies.”             

“No.”

“You might believe it. Might have been told it. But you’re lying.”

“She was a container. Unwilling but still contained it. Why do you think she ended up with Veronica in the first place?”

“You’re saying she was infected with Synthesis.”

“They lost years of research when Oliver killed her. Years of his plans, gone forever when Izzy spotted the gun and threw herself in front of my sister in the split second before Oliver pulled the trigger.”

“Oliver wouldn’t have killed his daughter.”

“You keep believing that,” she said and rose.
“There’s one more thing I need to show you.”

“Does it have to be now?”

“Yes.”

She took his hand and led him down the hall to her second bedroom, which was set up as an office. On the wall was a picture of her with her arm around another girl. Another Sophie. She pulled down the picture and handed it to him.

“That’s Veronica with the pigtails. I’m the one with the short hair. I used to keep it short, before she died.”

“This can’t be real.”

“I have videos. Albums with hundreds of photos. You can look up our parents and see our birth announcements, if you need to.”

“Sophie, I…”

“It’s okay, Aidan. I know it’s a lot to take in at once. I just want you to know that I’m not Veronica, and that she wasn’t the monster you thought. I also know for a fact that Oliver killed her because I saw the tape of him doing it.”

“How?”

“I took it from the van the night I tried to save her.”

His eyes went stark and a shudder ripped through his body. “I’ve trusted Oliver with my life for years.”

“I understand.”

“I need time.”

“I want some fruit. Something before it gets too hot. I’m going to walk down to the market.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet, pushed some Euros into her hand. “I’m going to stay here.”

“Are you sure?”

“I need to make some calls. No matter what you think of Oliver, we need to stop Synthesis. Then we’ll deal with everything else.”

“I could run.”

“I’d find you,” he said, suddenly cold.

“I guess it’s time for us to start working on that trust.” She smiled and rose to her toes, pressing a chaste kiss onto his cheek. “I’ll be back in less than an hour. Watch Daisy for me.”

Still in her lounging clothes, she sauntered down the block. He knew there was a market in that direction and perhaps he was a fool to believe she’d really come back to him. But he thought she would.