I want to cry, but I don’t.

I lay my head back on his chest, too disheartened to look at him anymore. I stare out across the spacious room, my fingers arched on his upper chest muscle.

“I think the only thing I can do is to let you live your life—”

“But—”

He squeezes me again.

“Let you live your life,” he goes on, “but I’ll visit you from time to time. Make sure you’re doing OK, that you’re safe and you have everything you need.”

I’m not satisfied with that, but I know too that it’s all I’m going to get out of him. And it’s better than nothing. He’s right and I can’t deny it. I want to be with him always, in whatever way he’ll allow himself to have me, but I can’t expect him to risk either of our lives to make that happen.

I have to let him go…

“That is if you want me to visit,” he says.

I detect a shift in the moment to something more lighthearted. It strikes me as odd coming from him. I raise up from his arm and prop my upper body on the weight of one arm, looking down at him.

He’s smiling. Not just his eyes, but his lips, too. He’s so beautiful to me. So dangerously beautiful.

I go with the moment and shove my free hand playfully against his side, laughing lightly under my breath.

“Of course I want you to,” I say.

Then he takes my wrist and carefully pulls me down on his chest. He runs his fingertips down one side of my face and then the other, all the while peering into my eyes, though beyond them. I wonder what he’s looking for in their depths. Whatever it is, I hope he never finds it so that we can stay like this forever.

He places both of his hands on the sides of my face and draws my lips to his.

“What have you done to me?” he says.

“I was going to ask you the same question.”

I nibble his bottom lip. He presses his c*ck against me gently.

“It seems we’ve created a bit of a problem,” he says and pushes against me a little harder.

I do the same. I gasp lightly, my skin breaking out in shivers and heat.

He kisses me, but then pulls his mouth away an inch from mine, teasing me. I lean over farther, pressing my br**sts against his chest, wanting the taste of his mouth but he only gives me a little. He thrusts his h*ps again, holding his c*ck against me, his firm hands gripping my ass. He’s so f**king hard. I want it. My mouth parts halfway and my breath shudders through my lips.

“Do you want me to f**k you?” he whispers. “Is that what you want?”

I gasp at his words on my ear. I can’t answer. I can’t think straight.

“Do you, Sarai?” he adds, the heat of his breath dancing on my parted lips.

I force my h*ps against him, trying to position myself on his c*ck in a way that I can push it inside of me without either of our hands having to do it.

“Yes…,” I gasp. “Fuck me like you would’ve f**ked Izabel.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes….”

I can’t breathe.

“Say it again…Izabel.”

My eyes open heavily as I look down at him. I pant lightly through my lips. He touches them with his.

Before I can respond, he lifts up from the bed into a sitting position, keeping me on his lap. The tip of his tongue moves along my collarbone. Both of my br**sts are crushed in his hands.

“Say it, Izabel,” he demands and flicks his tongue against one nipple. “Tell me you want me to f**k you.”

“I want you to f**k me.”

He twists the back of my hair in his hand and stands up from the bed with my legs straddled around his sculpted hips.

He carries me to the table by the window and forces me on top of it on my belly. My arms come out ahead of me knocking his cell phone and his gun onto the floor, my hands gripping onto the rounded edge of the table. His fingers dig into my h*ps as he jerks my body backward toward him. He squeezes my ass. Hard. I inhale sharply when I feel his hands between my legs, spreading me apart for him. The heat of his hard body encompasses me when he leans over across my back, dragging the tip of his tongue across the back of my neck. I feel his c*ck right there waiting for me and I try to force myself backward against him, but his hand braces the back of my neck, forcing my cheek against the tabletop.

“Please, Victor,” I say breathily, every part of me opening up to him.

I gasp and moan loudly when he shoves his c*ck inside of me, my teeth clamping down on his index finger as his hand presses gently against the side of my face.

No, I never imagined that sex could be like this….

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

We oversleep the next morning and are awoken by the housekeeper knocking on the door outside the room. I guess he wasn’t just putting on a show at the Hamburg mansion when he said he always misses an early flight if he doesn’t get enough sleep the night before. Or, maybe it was just my fault. I guess I have thrown him completely out of his normal routines.

Victor gets out of the bed and I can’t help but admire his nak*d form before he gets dressed quickly. He opens the door to tell the housekeeper that we’ll be leaving late and not to come back for at least an hour. I don’t want to go anywhere. After last night, I just want—

“You get ready to go,” he says walking back into the room with me. “I’m going to take you to stay with a lady I know in San Diego. You’ll be safe there until I can get the rest sorted out, get you set up in a place of your own. But right now, I have to make a call to Niklas to let him know about last night. And I’m fairly certain I’ll be making a trip to Germany soon to meet with my employer.”

I just want to talk about last night, or do last night over again right now.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I say as I get out of the bed. I got a bad feeling when he said the part about meeting his employer.

He steps into his shoes and drops his duffle bags on the foot of the bed.

“No, it’s usually not,” he says, rummaging through the bag. “These last two missions have created a lot of questions about me and my ability to carry them out as ordered. I’ll have to report to him face to face to give him a more thorough explanation of what went on and why things happened the way they did.”

“What are you going to tell him about me? Do you think he’ll know I’m still alive?”

He finds a small handful of bullets and starts loading his 9MM.

“I’ll figure that out on the way.”

That too, gives me a bad feeling.

“OK, so who’s this lady in San Diego?” I look at him now with a wary eye. “She’s not someone you—”

“No,” he says, hiding the gun in the back of his pants. “She has nothing to do with my Order and doesn’t know anything about what I do. She’s just a friend. Met her and her husband on a mission five years ago. It’s a long story, but no, it’s nothing like that.”

“What about her husband?”

He looks up at me once.

“He’s not there anymore,” he says.

“Why not? Did he die? Are they elderly?”

I can’t help but ask all these questions; I want to know as much as I can about the place he’s going to take me.

Victor pauses and then says, “Yes, he’s dead. He was my target.”

“Oh….”

I don’t feel so confident anymore about going there.

“You’ll be fine,” Victor says, noticing the worry on my face. “She doesn’t know that it was me.”

He walks over to me, placing his hands on my shoulders. “I’m going to go downstairs to the front desk and get the room squared away and call Niklas.” He leans in and kisses my forehead. “Take your time. I’ll be back in a few and then we’ll leave.”

I nod, looking into his eyes. “OK.”

Victor leaves the room and I grab a more casual dress this time and a clean pair of panties and head for the shower.

Victor

Niklas is angry with me. I can hear it in his voice though he’s trying hard not to be too obvious, which in itself is out of character for him.

“You said you’d contact me as soon as the mission was over,” Niklas says into the phone. “If it was carried out last night as planned then why are you only now calling me half a day later?”

I let out my breath through my nose.

“Take it for what it is, Niklas,” I say, growing as irritated with him as he has been with me. “You’ve got to stop concerning yourself so much with me.”

“I am your liaison,” he snaps.

“Yes, but the part of you that has become so painfully assiduous about how I choose to do things, is my brother. Perhaps you should reacquaint yourself with your liaison half, that way we can both go back to a simpler, strictly professional relationship.”

“I see,” he says. “You don’t need a brother anymore now that you have that girl. Obviously she’s still alive.”

I should’ve seen that coming but I didn’t.

“You have not been replaced, least of all by a woman,” I say.

Maybe Sarai hasn’t replaced my brother, but she’s become something so much more to me and I can’t explain it. Not to myself and definitely not to Niklas.

“I have new orders,” Niklas announces, leaving the bitter topic alone. “They are last minute, but I think it’s best to get them over with before you head to Germany to meet with Vonnegut. Don’t give him any more reason to doubt your abilities.”

“Is it a mission?”

“It will be one,” he says. “The client is there in Los Angeles and would like to meet with you personally.”

“That is not standard,” I say. “First Javier Ruiz, now this one wants to meet face to face?”

I prefer to go only through Vonnegut and never meet a client in person, but unfortunately sometimes bigger risks must be taken.

“She’s a very meticulous woman,” Niklas says.

“What are the orders?”

“Meet with her outside at 639 South Spring Street. She will be wearing a white blouse with a silver butterfly broach on the left breast. She’ll be there at one-thirty.”

“That’s in less than an hour,” I say, glancing at the clock high on the wall in the lobby.

I lower my voice to a whisper when a hotel guest walks by.

“You have plenty of time to get there from the hotel,” he says. “And please…contact me this time the moment the meeting is over.”

I sigh quietly. “I will,” I say and hang up the phone.

After paying for another full day for use of the room since it appears we’ll be here for longer than another hour, I take the elevator back up to let Sarai know of our minor change of plans. Afterwards I head out, leaving her in the room so that I can meet with the client privately. I drive toward the location, arriving with several minutes to spare and park in a side lot just feet from where I am to meet her.

I stay inside the car and wait.

And all I can really think about is Sarai.

Sarai

I’ve never been to San Diego before. Technically, this is my first time in California. I wonder what this lady will be like, what she knows, how she and Victor are friends. I have a lot of questions, as usual, that I won’t let Victor get away without answering while on the way there.