Things Happen That Way Page 2

  “Thank you.”

  I hiccupped and felt myself blushing. “Pardon me.”

  “No problem. And if you ever decide you want a job as part of the entertainment, Liam and the boys would love to have you. They were really impressed with your dancing.”

  “That’s very kind of you. I’ll keep it in mind.”

  Mark who’d returned in time to hear the offer of a job, almost choked on his laughter. “Come on, Baryshnikov.”

  “Yes, Mark.”

  “Good night, gentlemen. I hope you’ll come back and visit us soon.” Mary Kate smiled and went on to other patrons

  I wrestled into my jacket with a little help from Mark, and then we headed for the door. Once out into the night, I began to hum “The Seven Drunken Nights.”

  The remainder of the night was a chilly blur, although to my embarrassment, I clearly remembered falling asleep while attempting to give my lover a blow job in his car.

  However, that was all I remembered.

  When I woke in the morning, I discovered I was in Mark’s bed. I had my arms wrapped around him, holding him tight against me, while my cock nestled in the crack of his ass. I nuzzled his ear and let my hand wander over his chest, down past his waist, and through the tight curls that surrounded his cock.

  “Mmm.” He turned his head and did a little nuzzling of his own. His exhalations teased the hairs under my arm, and I couldn’t prevent a gasp as my cock hardened and I shivered.

  I had no hangover—I never did, but I was mortified when he told me a cop had arrived while my face was buried in his lap.

  He insisted it was okay, but the fact that the cop knew him made it even worse. “Your reputation—”

  “Quinn, everyone thinks I’m a sociopath. What do I care if they think I’m a sociopath who likes guys?”

  “But….” I hated when he referred to himself in such a cavalier manner. And I blamed it on that smug, supercilious idiot, Jonathan Drum II.

  Mark was still angled away from me, but he curled his arm around and petted my hip. “I tell you what, Sleeping Beauty. If you want to make it up to me, I’d have no objection.”

  I paused in mentally castigating myself. “Excuse me?”

  He turned in my arms and indicated his very erect cock.

  “Ah. I see what you mean.” More than anyone I had ever... been involved with... Mark could raise my spirits. I began edging down between his legs.

  He caught my shoulders, stopping me. “Why don’t you swing that sweet ass of yours around so I can give you some attention too?”

  My previous lovers were gracious in their reciprocity, but none had ever been as enthusiastic as Mark.

  “I’d like that,” I murmured as I changed my position.

  “Then hop to it. Time’s a-wasting, and we still have to have breakfast.”

  “Mark, I….” I shivered as he ran his tongue over my cock. Mark had never declared outright that he loved me. Oh, he’d said “forever,” and I was willing to accept that from him, but while he’d been away I’d come to the realization not only that I loved him, but that he was, to put it bluntly, my one. I’d always thought Armand had broken my heart, but if Mark ever walked away from me, I wasn’t sure how I could survive it.

  “I love the way you taste,” he growled, distracting me.

  “Do you really?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “In that case…” I set about making up for the previous night’s fiasco.

  “There—there really is no justice, y’know?” Mark muttered as we both struggled to bring our breathing under control.

  “Oh?” I dragged myself around and up over his body, and collapsed across his torso.

  “Oof.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No problem.” He ran his palm over my ass, then stroked a fingertip over my hole, and in spite of having just come, my cock twitched with interest.

  “You have got to be kidding!” It was my turn to mutter.

  “Huh?” Mark started to take his hand away, but I grabbed it and replaced it.

  “Never mind. Why is there no justice?”

  “No one would ever guess you were smashed last night.” He appeared so disgruntled by the fact that I didn’t have a hangover, in spite of the amount of ale I’d drunk the night before, I was tempted to act as if my head were pounding and my stomach roiling.

  I imagined he’d just have to get used to it. Most people thought I got my ability to handle alcohol from my father, but it was actually from my mother. Her brothers often spoke—not in her presence, of course—of how in her younger years she’d discreetly drunk some beau or diplomat under the table.

  Would Mark fuss over me, if I were… unwell? It was a gratifying thought, because other than Mother and Gregor, no one had looked after me when I was less than 100 percent. Well, there hadn’t been much need. Grandmother had told me I took after the Sebring men and was disgustingly healthy.

  Of course there were times when it wasn’t a matter of being ill, but rather of being injured in the line of duty: when I’d been shot by Buonfiglio a couple of years ago, while I was attempting to meet with Dr. Bruchner and obtain the formula for his renewable energy source, and then last May, when I’d been kidnapped by a rogue antiterrorist organization. One of the men who was supposed to guard me took pleasure in using me for a punching bag. With my hands restrained, I hadn’t been able to put up much of a fight, although I had managed to get in a kick to Gaston’s balls.

  The beating that resulted from that left me fearing my lungs had been punctured, but fortunately, it had only bruised my ribs.

  Mark had come after me, and I recalled the expression on his face after I’d been shoved into the interrogation room. I was no longer pretty, but rather battered and gaunt, my clothes a disgrace, and I had no doubt I smelled rank, although I’d grown so used to my own odor, I was unable to tell how bad. I wasn’t certain how he would react to that.

  I should have known it was unimportant. After I’d dispatched the madman who ran Prinzip with a scalpel to the throat and Mark and I had both dealt with my guards, he’d seen that I had medical care. Finally, with a prescription for painkillers in hand, he’d taken me to a nearby hotel and looked after me until I was well enough to travel home.

  And that was one of the reasons he’d been so… cross… with me when I’d slipped out to take care of Drum while Mark dozed.

  “Fuck it.” Mark’s expletive pulled me out of my thoughts.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Let’s take a shower. We don’t want to be late meeting your mother.”

  “All right, Mark.” But I made no effort to move off him.

  “Okay.” His palm was back on my ass. “I’ll give you half an hour to move your gorgeous butt.”

  You sweet-talker, you. “And then?”

  “Then I’m going to screw you to within an inch of your life.”

  “Well, that will guarantee I don’t move.” I grinned into his collarbone.

  And half an hour later, he made good on his promise.

  I smiled to myself. Yes, there were the weekends, but on occasion I didn’t wait for them.

  It was a dreary, wet Thursday. I stared out the window of my office at Langley, watching as raindrops chased one another down the windowpane, and I decided this would be a perfect day to spend with my lover.

  I retrieved my overcoat from the coat closet and went into the outer office. “I’m taking the rest of the day off, Janet,” I told my personal assistant.

  She smiled at me. “Have a good afternoon.”

  “Thanks.” I definitely intended to. “Why don’t you finish off the last of that paperwork and take the afternoon off yourself?”I knew she was seeing someone from the Treasury Department, and I wondered if the scent of orange blossoms would be in the air soon.

  “I think I will!”

  I drove to Mark’s condo and let myself in.

  A couple of weeks before, he’d given me a swipe card for the building’s door a
nd a key ring with six keys on it. “This is this week’s sequence.” He told me, showed me, then locked the door and made me try it.

  Robert Sperling hadn’t realized there was more to those locks than a manic need to prevent anyone from getting past them, and when he’d tried to enter Mark’s apartment in Forest Heights, all he’d succeeded in doing was setting off an explosion that did more damage to him than to the apartment. As a result, Mark had been asked to leave Forest Heights, but that led to him moving in with me for a couple of months.

  Once he was satisfied I wouldn’t blow myself up, he urged me to enter his condo with a hand at the small of my back. I liked how cared for that gesture made me feel.

  Now I strolled into the master bedroom and turned on the gas fireplace. Then I stripped off my clothes and called Mark.

  He sounded a little stressed, so when he got home, I let him know I was taking control. I was the one who prepared his body, working lube-coated fingers into his ass. I was the one who put on the condom, although he slicked it up, and then I slid into him. The heat of his channel, the ripple of his internal muscles as they clenched and caressed my cock, driving me closer and closer to the edge until we both finally tumbled over—this was a fantastic pleasure I could live with the rest of my life.

  What would it be like without the latex barrier between us?

  I knew Mark never had sex without a condom, but it was a fantasy I’d treasure during those nights we were apart.

  We spent the afternoon, evening, and early hours of the following morning making love, and before I left for Langley the next morning, I ravaged his mouth, swallowing his moans of pleasure....

  Chapter 2

  It seemed the piper always had to be paid, because late that Friday afternoon, I was told Major Jonathan Drum II “requested” my presence at the Pentagon, and since my department had been ordered to cooperate with the OIG in this instance—the possibility of an audit loomed over us—I had no choice but to go.

  So now, there I was, waiting to hear what allegations might be filed, but instead of listening to Drum drone on and on about preventing or detecting fraud and abuse, to my astonishment, all he did was complain about my lover.

  Of course the major had no idea Mark was my lover, but I had the feeling that either way it wouldn’t stop him.

  “I’m telling you, Mann, he’s a sociopath! He needs to be put down like a rabid dog!”

  “You’re going overboard.” I fully understood why Mark tended to lose his patience with Drum. I could feel my blood pressure rise and my hands curl into fists. I was known as the Ice Man, but it took the restraint I had learned from my parents as a child to keep from punching him in that perfect nose of his.

  “No, I’m not! Have you heard the latest about him?”

  “I don’t have the time to listen to gossip.”

  “It’s not gossip! This is intelligence that will affect everyone in DC!”

  “Indeed?” Had word of what had really happened to Richard Wexler—that his having a stroke and flipping his car was no more an accident than the hit-and-run that had resulted in Mother being hospitalized—come back to haunt us? I kept my expression neutral.

  “Yes, indeed.” He looked annoyed.

  “In that case, I definitely haven’t heard. Why don’t you inform me?”

  “He’s taken up golf!”

  I bit down hard on my inner cheek to keep from laughing. “Seriously, Major? That’s hardly indicative of someone being a sociopath.”

  He scowled at me. “He’s up to something—he has to be! Since when does a senior special agent of the WBIS golf?”

  “If I recall correctly, Trevor Wallace golfs.”

  “But he’s not a senior special agent!”

  “If it comes to that, neither is Vincent. He’s Director of Interior Affairs.”

  “What? When did this happen?”

  “Last December.”

  “Didn’t he have to be Deputy Director first?”

  “The spring before that.” My cell phone rang, “Such a Night,” and I cursed myself for not putting it on vibrate.

  “A lady friend calling?” Drum arched an eyebrow. “You want to take that, Mann?”

  “Now that would be the height of rudeness.” I let the call go to voicemail.

  “Self-righteous, arrogant bastard.”

  “I’m cut to the quick.”

  Drum flushed, and I realized I wasn’t supposed to have heard that.

  He cleared his throat. “Okay, so why wasn’t I informed of Vincent’s promotion?” He glared as if this was part of my job description, and then his eyes narrowed. “And how is it you know?”

  “Really, Drum, it wasn’t a secret. Didn’t you hear about the explosion that killed Director Sperling?” I’d thought it was Mark’s body on the slab in the morgue, and I’d been stunned by the devastation I’d felt. That was when it first occurred to me that what the WBIS agent and I had going between us might be more than mind games.

  “Uh… Yeah, but I figured it was just one less sociopath on the face of the earth.”

  “I know WBIS agents don’t have the best reputations, but tell me something. Where does your animosity toward Vincent come from?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” He was going for lofty indifference, but I could see the unease in his eyes.

  “Come, come, Major. Such hostility has to spring from somewhere.”

  “It was his fault my ass... uh... what happened last spring happened!”

  “How do you account for that?” I strove to appear as puzzled as I sounded, but of course I knew what he was talking about. At the same time the disaster that was Prinzip was unfolding, Drum had crossed Robert Lynx—head of the Division—and wound up as his plaything for a period of time. And when Lynx was done with him, he’d had the name Marie-Ange tattooed on Drum’s ass, a joke not many were in on. Marie-Ange was the given name of Anacapri, Lynx’s psych operative. At least Lynx had made sure Drum was dropped off near my hotel and saw I was notified. Or perhaps it was Pierre de Becque behind that mysterious phone call. I’d assumed the woman’s voice belonged to Anacapri, but it could just as well have been Femme, who ran the Division’s intelligence extraction department.

  “He was in Paris!”

  “So was I. Are you going to insinuate that I had something to do with your condition as well?”

  He flushed scarlet.

  I hadn’t been in good shape myself, but I’d managed to get Drum to a hospital, where he “dried out.”

  Mark, who was out making arrangements for our return to Washington, wasn’t pleased with me when he discovered what I’d done.

  “Goddammit, Mann! You could have pulled your stitches!” he growled.

  I gave him the cool stare that had seen me labeled the Ice Man. “I don’t have stitches, Mark.”

  “My God, you drive me crazy!”

  I realized how distressed he was when he removed my clothes with careful fingers and examined my body, which was still bruised from the beatings I’d received at Prinzip.

  If this had been one of my previous, restrained affairs, nothing like that would have happened, simply due to the nature of the companion I chose. And if by chance it had happened… well, I’d have walked away. However, nothing about my relationship with Mark was like anything I’d had before, and that was only in part because the majority of the people I’d dated had been women. The last man I’d had in my bed had been years ago in Ireland, the summer after my graduation from Harvard. I’d flown to Europe to do some odd jobs for my uncles and had met Donnel O’Hara, a sweet-natured Irishman. Perhaps that was why we didn’t last longer than the three weeks I was in Tullamore.

  Mark Vincent, on the other hand, was snarky and testy and, as he would be the first to declare, the best at what he did. He was a challenge—mental, physical, and eventually, emotional. Perhaps that was why we were still together, more than a year after I’d learned he’d had the audacity to pretend to be an old schoolmate and intervi
ewed my mother.

  Once Mark was satisfied I had no new bruises, he pulled me—gently so as not to hurt me—into his arms and kissed me.

  So no, I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I know what I know!” Drum’s lower lip thrust out. The man was actually pouting.

  “I’m sure you do, Major.” Although I sincerely doubted that. The Division’s R&D had come up with a drug that was—libido enhancing, to say the least, making a man crave cock without regard for his actual sexual orientation. If the antidote wasn’t given, if the subject recovered cold turkey, he would recall the days and nights he’d spent spread under a man who should have been nothing less than his worst enemy.

  However, the antidote had been given, and Drum’s memories of that time were replaced with something more innocuous and suitable to his sexuality—a buxom, long-legged brunette by the name of Marie-Ange, and a souvenir of his time with her was the tattoo on his ass. And what he couldn’t remember—how he’d met her, why they’d parted, why he’d done something so out of character—was explained away by the amount of alcohol in his system.

  I glanced at my watch. It was getting late. Drum had been ranting for three quarters of an hour, and I still had no idea why I’d been summoned here. If this meeting didn’t end soon, I wouldn’t have time to shower and change before meeting Mark at Raphael’s for dinner. “Suppose we get down to business?”

  “I’m telling you—”

  “You’ve told me nothing. Look, what did you need to see me about?”

  His scowled once again. “Didn’t I make it clear? I want you to get the goods on Vincent.”

  “Goods? What goods?”

  “How the hell should I know? Make something up for all I care! He’s WBIS—he has to have done something illegal. I want him in Lee!”

  “You’d send an innocent man to prison?” I stared at him, dumbfounded. Lee was a maximum security penitentiary in Southwest Virginia.