Sharing a bed with Sergeant First Class Cassius Callahan—after finally getting physical—was a transformative experience. Savvy watched the big, beautiful, naked man as he slept. The power had gone off at four in the morning, and they’d kicked off the covers in the increasingly hot bedroom, leaving Cal’s body exposed to her avid gaze.
Power outages were common in Tanzania, where only one-third of households had electricity at all. She and Cal had both woken at the sudden silence of the air conditioner. A quick check using her cell phone showed it was a problem with the grid and not of special concern to them. Power was expected to return to the city in eight to twelve hours. They’d gone back to sleep—after making love again in the silent darkness.
Now dawn had risen, and the bright sunrise breached the curtains and caressed his smooth chestnut skin. She’d never seen a more beautiful body. That it belonged to this soldier who was the epitome of honor and strength made her heart squeeze. She could—almost certainly would—fall in love with him. But they both knew there couldn’t be a real future for them. Not when she was SAD stationed abroad and would have more missions like this, and he was Special Forces, based at Fort Campbell but spending months at a time deployed in whatever hotspot the Army chose to send him. All they could have was now.
But she’d take now, without hesitation or regret.
For the rest of her life, she’d guard her memories of this night with him. She knew the fragility of memories, how they could be tainted or lost in a swirl of emotion. But last night had meant something deeper to him too. He didn’t need to say it for her to know it was true. A man didn’t make love like that if he didn’t care. And she would hold on to that knowledge forever, no matter what happened when this mission was behind them.
She reached out and touched him, running her hand over his chest, down his abs. His cock thickened and his mouth curved in a smile, but he didn’t open his eyes. She leaned down and licked his nipple, which puckered. His smile deepened.
She followed the path of her hand with her tongue. By the time she reached his penis, he was fully erect. She watched his handsome face as she took him in both hands and stroked the shaft. “Will you let me go down on you now?” she asked.
He made a sound low in his throat and nodded.
She leaned down to take the tip in her mouth, and his eyes popped open. She held his gaze as she ran her tongue around the head, then opened wide and took him as deep as she could. She sucked as she stroked the base. He was hard and smooth and perfect, and she loved giving him this pleasure. She ran her tongue along the shaft from base to tip, then sucked on him some more, making eye contact as she did so.
Hot brown eyes stared back at her. He threaded his fingers in her hair. “So beautiful to see your mouth on me like that, Freya. So hot.”
She released him, keeping a hand on his shaft and stroking as she said, “You shouldn’t call me that.”
He gave a slight shake of his head as he ran a thumb over her bottom lip. “In bed, I refuse to call you anything else. You aren’t Jamie. I’m not having sex with Savvy. I’m making love with Freya, the person, not the covert operator.”
She could argue that Freya was the covert operator. Savvy was just a fake name and didn’t change who she was.
But then she remembered the real meaning behind her alias and was glad he only wanted to call her Freya as they shared their bodies. She ran her tongue over his cock again, then said, “Okay, Cassius. But only in bed.”
She went down on him again, and he wrapped his fingers in her hair. His hips thrust upward, pressing as deep as she could take him. “What’s your last name?” he asked, his voice husky as she pleasured him.
She used the excuse of having a full mouth to avoid answering. It hadn’t been her fault he’d learned her real first name, but she wouldn’t violate the oath she’d taken by revealing her last without cause.
She released him from her mouth and straddled him. He slid inside easily, sending pleasure rippling through her. She rode him, using her knees to control his thrusts. He sucked on her nipples and stroked her clit. Pleasure swirled from the points of contact, and she came hard, shuddering and groaning with the sharp, powerful orgasm.
He rolled her to her back as her body continued to pulse, and thrust into her, bringing her higher as he reached his own climax. The room was stiflingly hot with the closed windows, and they were both sweaty and smelled of sex, and she was ridiculously happy. She laughed with the joy of it.
They made a good team, in and out of bed.
He kissed her as his breathing returned to normal. “You just fulfilled a fantasy of mine.”
“What’s that?”
“Waking up to oral sex.”
She smiled. She’d been careful to make sure he was awake before she’d made that move, but it was close enough. Knowing it was a fantasy of his, she might be even bolder tomorrow, assuming they were still here.
Shit. She needed to send him back to Camp Citron now so she could finish the mission. Except, maybe she couldn’t, because they’d been compromised. It might not be safe to send him back to Djibouti.
All at once, her happy mood evaporated.
She’d hoped to protect him from the truth, to give him plausible deniability, but she had to tell him everything. Now.
Cal was feeling about as relaxed and happy as a soldier could while on a covert op in an African country where being found could mean death. But then Freya’s demeanor changed. It was subtle, but pressed close to her as he was, naked and exposed, it wasn’t something he could miss, even in a postorgasm haze.
“What’s going on?” he asked. He heard the tension in his own voice and knew that, as much as they’d shared, he still harbored a remnant of suspicion when it came to Savannah James.
In a flash, Freya the lover was gone. She was Savvy. Had always been Savvy. Any glimpse of Freya had probably been a trick of his mind.
The thought triggered an ache. Not her fault he’d seen something that wasn’t there.
She rose from the bed and turned to her suitcase. She pulled out a silk robe she’d purchased in keeping with her role of Jamie the courtesan. “I need to download Lubanga’s files and see what we got.”
“No electricity.”
“I’ve got a fully charged portable satellite hotspot.”
“You said last night we might be compromised. Why?”
“When I was uploading Lubanga’s files, I saw a document named Zagreus.”
Cal felt the blood drain from his face. He imagined he’d turned some sickly shade of gray. “What the fuck? How is that possible?”
“Either Special Forces or the CIA gave him information.”
“SOCOM wouldn’t—”
“You’d be surprised what they would do. But I’m with you on this one. I don’t think it was SOCOM.”
“How many people knew the code name?”
She shrugged. “Not many. I named him, by the way. The name is unique. Relatively unknown.” She flushed. “My mom was a Greek scholar. She wrote a paper on Zagreus. I chose the name for her.”
He frowned. Was this mission personal for her, in a way she hadn’t told him? “Does Lubanga have anything to do with your family?”
Her eyes widened. “No. The CIA wouldn’t allow that. It just…was meant to be a reminder of why I do this shitty job. Both my parents were scholars. My dad studied Vikings—hence my name. Dad named me. Mom named my brother, Apollo. But there’s no connection between my parents and this mission.”
She had a brother. Parents. It shouldn’t surprise him, but still, it did. She seemed so very alone. As if she’d sprung to life from foamy waves, like Aphrodite. “What happened to them? Why do you do this shitty job?”
She shook her head. He knew she’d refuse to answer, but it had been worth a try.
“So we’re compromised.” He rose from the bed. “What do we do now?”
“I need to go through the files, to be certain. But you need to leave Tanzania. Head back to Kenya, or catch a flight from Dar back to Djibouti.”
“We,” he said. “We leave together.”
“I can’t leave.”
“Why not?”
She held his gaze for a long moment. Finally, she said, “It depends on what I find in the files, but…for now, officially, my mission isn’t complete.”
“Your mission was to get the files from Lubanga. You did that.”
Her jaw tightened. Her eyes flared with…remorse?
His stomach clenched. “What haven’t you told me, Savvy?”
“I’m sorry, Cal. The mission changed after I first recruited you. I didn’t know about the change until Seth and Harry arrived. Then Harry—”
“Skip the excuses and get to the fucking point.”
“Lubanga’s rise in power is a threat to the stability of DRC. The US wants him removed as a player.”
“Removed how?”
“I was ordered to kill him.”