Evie

“I love you, too.” My words filled the silence surrounding us. In the minutes that had passed since we’d climaxed, our breathing had evened out and our heartbeats returned to normal. My body wasn’t in its usual post-orgasm relaxed state, though. Even with Alex’s body wrapped around mine, pressing me against the wall, my muscles were clenched and butterflies swirled in my stomach as I considered how to talk to Alex about my job. About my decision to put myself at risk when I’d taken the shot at the bomb he’d improvised back at the safe house.

This was a discussion I’d never planned to have with my husband, the sexy man with a boring job as a contracts attorney. Turning in his arms and looking up at him, I knew there was no avoiding it any longer. He was a covert operative who knew exactly the kind of things Scarlett had been up to as a black ops assassin. I’d managed to put it off for the last couple days, but no more. Not when my strong man had actual tears on his cheeks over something I’d done.

I reached up and swept the moisture away with my thumb. “Thanks for the save back there.” I slid my hand down his neck, across his shoulder, and along his arm to twine my fingers with his and tug him over to the bed. He sat when I gave him a little push, and I climbed onto his lap. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

“Damn straight I was scared. What you did was reckless, putting yourself in the line of fire like that, instead of waiting to see if the acetone peroxide would ignite on its own.”

“I wasn’t reckless,” I argued. “I took a calculated risk, a necessary one since a team of hitmen had already marked our location. If your device hadn’t gone off, we would have been at a serious disadvantage. They were well-armed and all we had was my makeshift pipe gun.”

“Which you could have given to me so I could take the shot,” he growled.

“No, I couldn’t,” I sighed, hoping I’d be able to make him see reason. “Not only were we running out of time, but I’m the better shot.”

He stiffened under me and I hurried to explain. “I don’t mean that as an insult, Alex. It’s just a fact. I’m damn good with a gun. Any kind of gun. I have been ever since my dad first put one in my hands when I was little.”

“Your dad taught you to shoot?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “I remember being six years old, out in our backyard with cans setup on the fence. My dad was lying next to me with a .22 propped on a sand bag. His arms were around me as I tried to line up the sights and pull the trigger. I hit one of the cans on my first try.”

I hadn’t shared many childhood stories with Alex since it was hard to talk about my dad. Even after all these years, and knowing the culprit had paid with his own blood, it hurt to think about how he’d been stolen from me. Alex’s expression softened and his arms tightened around me in comfort. “Six seems early to teach you how to shoot.”

“Maybe, but it had only been a couple weeks since my mom had bailed and I think he was looking for a way to connect with me. He’d spent so much time on missions as a SEAL that we hadn’t really had enough time together to bond before she walked out on us.”

“Any time you’ve mentioned your dad, it sounded like you two were really close before he died.” His words held a questioning note in them.

“Shooting helped bring us together. That, and him leaving the Navy the first chance he got so he could be there for me,” I explained. “Target practice in the backyard turned into trips to the range. Eventually, he was taking me to marksmanship competitions and we bonded over all the awards I was winning. He was so damn proud of me, bragged to all his SEAL buddies about how his little girl could outshoot the lot of them.”

“With what I’ve heard about Scarlett, it’s not hard to believe he was right.”

“Oh, I proved it more than a few times,” I chuckled. “The guys got such a kick out of it that eventually, they all chipped in to teach me the skills at which they excelled. Hand to hand combat, knives, reading people, and foreign languages. My education was unusual, to say the least.”

“It’s hard to argue with the results because you turned into an amazing woman.”

My muscles unclenched a little at the pride in his eyes. Opening up to him like this and showing him the side of myself I’d kept hidden was scary as hell, but it didn’t seem to be changing his feelings for me. If anything, I found myself feeling even closer to him.

“An amazing woman who knows how to handle herself in tough situations.”

“I’m not trying to take that away from you, baby.”

It kind of felt like he was, though. I wasn’t sure how to make him see it from my perspective, but I needed to try. “I was recruited straight out of college, on the heels of my dad’s death, and went straight into dark ops after they helped me hunt down his killer.”

His eyes lit with understanding. “That’s how they got you, by playing on your vulnerability after your father died.”

“No, they played on my need for vengeance,” I corrected. “By the time I got it, I’d been sucked in too deep to walk away. That was years ago, Alex. It will be even harder to get out after everything I’ve done since then.”

“Will you try? For me?” I felt Alex’s chest expand as he took a deep breath and held it, waiting for my answer.

I nodded jerkily. “I think so. Maybe. I hadn’t really gotten far in my thinking process yet, but when I made the decision to stop taking my pills it was with the knowledge that something was going to have to change, because I don’t want to be out of the country for missions all the time. If we have a child, I want to be there for him or her in all the ways I wish my mom had been for me.”

“Thank you, my Evie,” he breathed out.

“Don’t thank me yet,” I warned “I haven’t figured it all out yet, and I’m not going to do so during the course of this mission. I still have orders, and I’m going to follow them through to the best of my ability. Once this is over and the dust settles, then I’ll talk to my boss about making a change.”

He opened his mouth, and I slapped my palm over it. “In the future. When I’m ready, which very well could be months or even years from now if it takes us awhile to get pregnant.”

His lips moved underneath my hand, making me glare down at him until he stopped trying to talk.

“I’m not saying I’m going to walk away from this world completely. I’ve carved my place in it with blood, sweat, and tears—earning my place. But I’m willing to consider making some changes, if my boss will allow it. Only time will tell I guess, but he did let me alter my mission parameters a few years ago when I told him I couldn’t take anymore up close kills after a mission where I ran into some issues, and you noticed the bruises which hadn’t healed entirely by the time I got home..”

His eyes bugged out, and I pulled my hand away from his mouth. “You told me it was a car accident! That the taxi you were riding in had been in a minor fender bender and you bumped your head because you weren’t wearing a seat belt.”

“It’s not like I could have told you the truth,” I reminded him, kissing his cheek before climbing off his lap. “I said what needed to be said so you didn’t worry about me.”

“No more secrets,” he growled.

“I need food,” I blurted out, unwilling to touch that verbal grenade. We were spies, the both of us. Secrets came with the job. With us working for different divisions, and me in a position where the agency couldn’t even acknowledge my existence, it was what it was, even if it sucked. “And so do you. That might just be a graze, but you need some protein to help speed along the healing process.”

I felt his stare on my back as I grabbed my clothes from the floor and tossed them on. I glanced over my shoulder when I neared the door and found him glaring at me, spread out on the sheets in all his naked glory. His cock was semi-erect, lengthening farther under my gaze.

“Or maybe I’m the one who needs protein to keep up with you,” I joked. Striding into the hallway, I heard his laughter through door after it shut behind me.

“If only I were kidding,” I muttered to myself, slumping against the wall for a moment. Between the adrenalin crash, hot sex, and opening myself up to him the way I had, I was exhausted. My stomach growled, reminding me I needed food before I could sleep. We only had another eighteen hours or so before we hit the Port de Barcelona. While it might sound like a lot of time, we couldn’t just eat, sleep, and fuck our way across the Tyrrhenian and Balearic Seas. The ferry had an internet cafe, which meant we could get some research done before we arrived in Barcelona. I hadn’t ever run an op there before, and I needed to get a lay of the land before I’d feel comfortable. Luckily, the language wouldn’t be an issue, although the locals might snub their nose at my Latin American dialect.

Weaving my way upstairs to the deck with the a la carte restaurant, I sweet talked the host into letting me place a carry-out order. Twenty minutes later, my hands were full. He’d packaged the boxes into a bag to make it easier for me to carry back to our room, which allowed me to carry the bottle of Ferrari Perlè sparkling wine he’d talked me into purchasing, along with two flutes. Wandering past the swimming pool, casino, and disco on my way back to our room, I couldn’t help but wish this trip was for pleasure instead of business. Alex and I had taken many vacations in our years together, but we’d never done a cruise. Probably because neither of us wanted to run the risk of being caught at sea if something went wrong while the other was unaware of our career as a spy. Maybe now that the secret was out, we could consider taking one in the future—after I figured out what to do about my job. And before he managed to knock me up. The last thing I needed was to combine morning sickness with being at sea.

Chuckling to myself at the thought, I bumped my hip against our door, and it only took a moment for Alex to open it and let me in. He took the bag out of my hand, pulling the boxes out and setting them on top of a towel he’d laid on the bed. When he glanced at the wine and glasses in my hand, he quirked his head and raised an eyebrow at me.

“The host did me a favor getting our carry out order ready so quickly, I couldn’t say no when he recommended the wine.”

He peered at the label and chuckled. “If I had to go out on a limb here, I’d say you didn’t argue too hard since it’s a spumante.”

I blinked up at him, trying to look as innocent as possible. “What can I say? I was lucky he suggested something I knew I’d love. In my defense, I did choose some of your favorite foods.”

I flipped open the lids on the boxes filled with a mushroom and crispy bacon risotto, sliced black Angus steak, an Italian cheese platter, and fresh pineapple.

“Pineapple?”

The contents of that box did look a little out of place with the rest of the food, but I hadn’t been able to resist. Being on a mission with Alex had apparently sent my hormones into overdrive. “I thought maybe later we could test to see if it changes the taste of your come.”

He popped the cork on the bottle of wine and filled both glasses, handing me one while he dove into the pile of pineapple. After eating, sleeping, and completing all the prep work we could before we made it to Barcelona, I had the chance to test the pineapple theory. In case you were wondering, by the time he blew down my throat, the last thing on my mind was the way it tasted. I was too far gone to pay attention to anything other than my next orgasm.