I’d never expected to have a guy like Quinton Mann in my life. They called him the Ice Man, but they were idiots. Maybe that was true when it came to business, but in bed? I’d never had a hotter lover. The first time he’d gone down on me, after the birthday dinner he’d bought me at Raphael’s… well, can we say “blown away?”
The thing was, Quinn worked for the CIA, and CIA and WBIS—Washington Bureau of Intelligence and Security, which I worked for—didn’t mix any better than oil and water. Added to that, he was considered royalty in the intelligence community. On his mother’s side were agents going back to Richard III, although on his father’s side, they only went back to the Spanish American War. Still, Manns were involved up to their hazel eyes in every conflict, major or minor, since that time.
Me? I was just a blue-collar kid who couldn’t trace his ancestry back more than two generations. My old lady was an abusive drunk, and all I knew of my father was he was buried in some nameless grave in Europe.
So it made sense we’d have nothing to do with each other. And beyond the professional, I’d never paid any attention to him.
But then we’d crossed paths at the Wyman Brothers Warehouse on the Patapsco River. He was going after something the WBIS wanted, and I intended to see we got it and he didn’t.
No one had ever tried to face me down before, not without crapping their pants, but there was Mann, wounded and hurting, shot by a rogue spook, and he still refused to surrender the briefcase with Bruchner’s formula for a renewable energy source.
Now here we were, more than a year after that first blow job, and you’d think things would have cooled off a little, but we still went at each other hot and heavy. What the man could do with his cock!
And his mouth and his ass and….
But that was how it started with me and Quinn.
Who’d have fucking thought I’d wind up in a relationship with a spook from the CIA?
Who’d have thought I’d be in a relationship with anyone, period?
But I was. We were.
I hadn’t been certain.
Senator Wexler’s ambitious plan was to become president and have Portia Mann as his first lady. It resulted in the accident meant for Quinn, which instead left Portia in a coma for a couple of days.
Quinn had been distraught.
And even after she came out of it, Portia had been in a good deal of pain. She’d been forced to use a walker and then a cane for months after, and couldn’t ride or dance. Her inability to climb the steps into her own house had been the icing on the cake for Quinn, and he’d not only asked me to deal with the good senator, but he’d insisted on coming along with me.
After taking care of Wexler a few weeks earlier—as sort of a birthday present for Quinn—I’d given Quinn the opportunity to back away. It was one thing hearing or reading about what I was capable of, another to have a front row seat, watching while I did it.
But Quinn surprised me. Seeing me with my hands around Wexler’s neck, putting just enough pressure on the arteries running to his brain to result in paralysis…. What I’d done hadn’t changed how Quinn felt about me.
Well, he could be pretty ruthless himself, especially where those he loved were concerned.
Wexler was still alive, machines feeding him, breathing for him…. I had hopes he’d continue that way for a long, long time.
I thought it made a nice little payback.
***
Quinn and I had come back from Isla del Placer Escarpado, my island off the coast of Costa Rica. Between dealing with Wexler and getting things straightened out—no pun—between me and Quinn, we didn’t get back to DC until after my birthday.
I didn’t need a party or anything, although I wouldn’t have said no to a gift like the one he’d given me last year—a blow job was always a good gift.
What he did give me was a first edition of Louis L’Amour’s Hondo. It replaced my father’s copy, which had been destroyed when that bastard Robert Sperling had tried to break into my apartment and the place had exploded.
Now we were sprawled on the bed in my condo, watching the DVD of Hondo. Portia had given it to me as a token of her gratitude after I’d rescued Quinn when he’d been kidnapped by a rogue anti-terrorist organization.
Mother and son both knew what the book and the movie meant to me.
John Wayne had just finished telling Geraldine Page about the squaw-seeking ceremony, where they said one word: varlebena, which meant forever.
I looked into Quinn’s eyes and said, “Forever, Quinn.”
His eyes were almost green. “Forever, Mark.”
That was nice of him to say, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think I was his “one”—how long could the prince stay in love with the commoner? There would come a day when he’d find the love of his life, but until he did, I’d hold on to what I had with him. And afterward, I’d cherish the memory of it.
I lowered my head to take his lips in a kiss that would lead to some hot, sweaty sex... and my cell phone rang.
I would have let it go to voice mail, but the ringtone was Bad to the Bone.
It was Trevor Wallace, the man known as The Boss, and yeah, that was with caps. He ran the WBIS, where I’d worked for the past sixteen years.
“Sorry, babe. I have to take this.”
Quinn was a professional, in spite of the fact he worked for the CIA. He didn’t hassle me over it, just rolled off the bed and gathered up the bowl of popcorn we’d been munching on. “I’ll see about getting dinner started,” he murmured, and he left the room.
If it had been anyone other than The Boss, I’d have gone after Quinn, admiring his ass and drooling every step of the way.
Instead, I touched the button on my phone. “Yes, sir?”
“Mark, I have a job for you in Phoenix.”
“Yes, sir.”
He gave me the details and I made some notes, then hung up, took a suitcase from my closet, and began packing just as Quinn came in.
“I thought I’d make rigatoni….” He stopped as he realized what I was doing. “No, I guess I won’t be making rigatoni.”
“Sorry, babe. I’ve got a job.” There had been a time I’d never have told him that, but that time had long passed.
“Okay.” He sat on the edge of the bed and put on his shoes.
“I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.”
“I’ll see you then.”
“Quinn.”
“Yes?” He looked up when I didn’t say anything more, and I could see his surprise when he realized what I was offering him: a ring of keys that would let him enter my condo. If the locks weren’t undone in a specific sequence, the door exploded. Robert Sperling hadn’t known the code and had wound up a crispy critter in the DC morgue.
I didn’t want that to happen to Quinn.
“Come on. Let me show you the sequence.”