Chapter One

 

Mud was everywhere. Under my nails, in my ears, streaked in my hair despite me tying it back in a tight bun. And this wasn’t typical mud either. This was thick, sticky red Georgia clay. It smeared when you tried to wipe it off, tenacious and clinging like the kudzu strangling the trees around us.

My team was fourteen hours into a three-day training exercise in the foot of Appalachian Mountains in a county named after some long-forgotten Indian tribe overly fond of vowels. There were five of us—four men and me, the lone female. It was an interesting dynamic. Two didn’t think a woman had any place on the squad in the first place, one was more interested in fucking me than the mission, and the other was my dirty little secret.

Adam.

Well, that wasn’t his real name. It was the one assigned to him by Apollo headquarters. But it was the name I’d whispered when I came on his tongue. Or fingers. Or cock. I wasn’t picky. I’d take what I could get, when I could get it.

We’d been fucking for the last month whenever we could wrangle a few minutes alone with a modicum of privacy, which wasn’t often.

The training program purposefully didn’t allow much downtime. And fraternizing? Strictly forbidden.

Which was interesting, since a clandestine affair was one of the most common cover stories used in the world of espionage.

You haven’t heard of Apollo before, unless in reference to the former space program headed by NASA.

You haven’t heard of it because as far as the general public was concerned, it didn’t exist. It was the undercover intelligence division of Greenbriar Financial, the elite offshore investment group that catered to the richest and most dangerous individuals in the developed world. As a private company dealing with shady individuals, it paid—literally—to know secrets.

Secrets were far, far more powerful than money.

And in exchange for turning a blind eye to some of the more illegal sides of the business, Apollo handled some of the country’s more sensitive national security threats. The ones that couldn’t be done through legal channels.

Becoming part of Apollo’s elite spy network? Almost impossible.

You didn’t apply. You were recruited.

They looked for certain types of individuals. Loners with high IQ’s and a penchant for getting in trouble who wouldn’t be missed. They particularly liked smart kids who’d aged out of the foster care system. The ones with sealed juvenile detention records that indicated a predilection for bending the rules. The ones struggling to make ends meet in a world that didn’t believe in giving anyone a break.

And once you were recruited, Apollo erased you, gave you a new history, a new name, a new purpose. And after twenty years or so of getting paid to do things you’d only dreamed about, you could retire in the prime of your life with more money than throwaways like us would ever know how to spend.

I’d admit, it didn’t take much to convince me to sign on the dotted line—the very last time I would ever use my birth name.

Now, I went by Lex.

No last name. I’d be assigned one of those when I graduated from training later this year.

Not if.

When.

Because there was no way I was going back to my former existence. By day, I’d worked in some tiny cubicle, testing security protocols for a major cell phone company. In plain speak, I was paid just over minimum wage to try to hack their system, which I succeeded at doing more often than not. At night, I’d taken the free online college classes offered by MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley. I might not get actual credit for any of them, but I didn’t let that stop me from getting an education. A diploma was just a piece of paper, and records were easy enough for forge.

But none of my computer skills were doing me a damn bit of good right now, covered in sticky red clay, hungry, and tired after hiking all day in this unforgiving terrain.

This survivalist nonsense we were doing? It was mostly bullshit, in my opinion.

Today’s modern terrorists worked behind screens, manipulating data not foot soldiers. Apollo believed in thoroughness in every aspect of their business though, and they were the best for a reason. If I ever found myself spying on some archaic, lost Amazonian clan who somehow posed a worldwide security threat despite their lack of basic technology, I’d be prepared.

We were using a paper map picked up a Georgia welcome center to find our way through roughly forty miles of forested nothingness.

Nothing, that is, except for the fake ambushes that Apollo rained down on us with alarming regularity.

Between the five of us, we were as well outfitted as an average Boy Scout troop going to summer camp. No weapons fancier than a decent pocketknife. Our mission was concealment and evasion, avoiding enemy detection at all costs. Our food consisted of whatever we could stuff in our pockets—mostly protein bars, electrolyte gels, and, in my case, single-serve packets of peanut butter. With honey.

What? I liked sugar.

A rock caught the toe of my hiking boot, and I stumbled, the sound of a branch cracking echoing through the woods.

“Can you be any fucking louder, Lex?” Cooper snarled as he shoved me from behind.

I gritted my teeth and focused on putting my feet exactly where Mark in front of me placed his, leaving fewer tracks.

“Leave her alone, Coop.” Wesley came to my defense, no big surprise as he also wanted to come between my thighs.

I ignored them both. Cooper had lost the trail an hour ago, hence our increased pace as we tried to make up ground.

Adam glanced back at me for a second, wordlessly asking if I was alright. I gave him a barely perceptible nod, and, satisfied, he resumed leading the way through the shallow creek we were following.

The sound of the water muffled our steps and covered our tracks. Plus, it was clean enough to drink, meaning we weren’t having to haul extra weight for water at the moment.

The scenery here was straight out of a hillbilly wet dream.

Scraggly pines, granite outcroppings, slick clay creek bed just begging for us to take a wrong step. The elevation changed drastically, making each mile of progress on the map feel like three.

“It’s gonna be dark soon,” I said. The patches of sunlight were getting smaller and the mosquitos were coming out in full force to feast in the growing twilight.

“No shit, Sherlock.” I could feel Mark rolling his eyes in front of me.

“We camping or hiking straight through?” I ignored Mark, ignored the ache in my thighs from the hours of hiking we’d already done. My pride wouldn’t allow me to show any weakness in front of these guys.

At the front of the line, Adam paused to consider my question. Even the other guys quietly deferred to his judgment. The last ambush had been two hours ago. We were due for another one before midnight, by my best guess.

Adam squinted at the map in the failing light. The paper was limp from the pervasive humidity of late summer. It was weird. Back in Colorado, where I was from, late September would be well into fall, but down here, summer still had a stranglehold on the region. The leaves remained crisp and green, the days were long and hot, and the fucking bugs. The fucking bugs were everywhere the mud wasn’t.

He looked at the map, then up the hill we were climbing again. “If we’re on track, there’s a lake another mile or so up ahead. Let’s try to get there before stopping for the night.”

No one argued. For that matter, no one agreed either. We just fell into line behind Adam, accepting his decision as the right one.

He had that kind of presence about him. That innate aura of authority. Even his voice resonated with it, firm, commanding, resolute. With his square jawline, strong Roman nose, the harsh slash of his brows, he even looked like every fucking stereotypical all-American hero. It’d be just as easy to picture him as a firefighter or a cop or a farmer as it would a soldier, mercilessly gunning down the enemy. He looked comfortable getting his hands dirty, but I’d also seen how well he cleaned up in a tux, when we’d attended a cocktail party at the Italian embassy last month.

His hands were as gifted with a gun as they were with my body. Deft and sure, with no wasted movements.

Adam No-last-name handled control like a fine-tuned sports car down a back country road, comfortable with the weight of responsibility and consequences resting on his broad, gorgeous shoulders. Not gonna lie, I liked his shoulders. And his ass. And the rest of him.

The lake finally appeared, but it felt like much farther than a mile. It was medium sized, not so big we couldn’t see the other side, but large enough to swim in.

I stifled a groan of relief. Finally, we could stop.

We eased our gear into a pile and split up the duties for setting up camp. I didn’t even complain when they sent me off in search of edible plants to supplement our dinner. I thought I’d spotted some wild berry bushes not far from here, so I backtracked to see what I could scavenge.

Blackberries. Perfect.

I filled two pouches with the sweet fruit and made my way back to camp.

Three crude pallets made out of pine boughs were in place under lean-to made of sturdy branches. Two of us would be one watch while the other three slept in shifts.

No fire. It’d make us too easy to spot. Plus, we didn’t need the heat.

I made two more trips gathering berries, eating a couple handfuls as I picked them.

An ambush was imminent, although we suspected Apollo would only launch one of us during the night. In the failing light, we set up another shelter on the far side of the lake, anticipating that one would get destroyed.

And then, after a meal of berries and whatever we had in our pockets, we waited.

I volunteered for first watch. I wasn’t tired yet anyway.

So did Adam.

My nipples tightened behind my muddy shirt as we strolled away from the rest of the group, taking our backpacks with us. When we were on the far side of the lake, out of earshot of the group, Adam grabbed my arm and halted me.

“Wanna swim?” His husky whisper raised goose bumps on my arms.

I glanced back at camp.

His fingers brushed mine in the darkness. “They can’t see us or hear us… as long as we’re quiet. And we’re both filthy.”

I didn’t even want to think about how bad I smelled.

My bag had an extra set of clothes in a drysack. The appeal of being clean was too strong.

I didn’t reply, just started peeling off the muddy layers.

Wading in the cool water up to my knees, I quickly scrubbed off the worst of the dirt from my clothes, then laid them over a boulder to start drying. The granite was still warm with retained heat from the sun earlier.

Retreating to the lake again, I waded deeper, ducking under the water to rinse out my hair and clean off the sweat.

When I came up for air, Adam was inches away, the planes of his bare chest wet and firm and right there for the taking.

I didn’t hesitate. Opportunities came along too rarely to pass up.

My hands clutched his lean hips. He was already hard, ready. My thighs clenched.

He cradled my jaw in his strong hands, pressing his fingertips in the tight muscles at the base of my neck, tipping my face up to meet his.

Our lips met in a hot, impatient kiss full of clashing teeth and eager tongues. The kind of duel that ended in two victors.

Without breaking apart, we lowered ourselves in the lake until just our heads were visible.

The water eddied around us, our restless movements below the surface disturbing the stillness above.

Crickets chirped and leaves rustled, but all I heard was our short breaths and water sluicing between us. The stars blinked at us lazily, unconcerned with our primal urges.

My legs circled his waist, anchoring me to him. His skin was hot, so much hotter than the water, even hotter than my own feverish flesh. I wanted him to burn me.

His lips fused to my neck, tracing each dip and curve, while my palms delineated the exact breadth of his shoulders and every ridge of his abs. I could never get enough of touching his skin, touching him.

Adam cursed softly when my hand slipped lower, over his hard length rising up between us. I rubbed my thumb over his sensitive crown, secretly thrilled with his reaction, the way his mouth fell open in pleasure and eyes squeezed shut.

I felt more powerful bringing this beautiful man to his knees than I ever did holding an assault rifle. Lust and seduction were always the strongest weapon a woman could wield, if she did it right.

“I’ve missed this.” His voice was nothing more than a whisper against my ear, the blatant need making me shiver.

“I’ve missed you.” I bit my lip after my admission.

We didn’t talk about us. Or a future. We couldn’t.

It wasn’t allowed.

And it made everything that more urgent. The feeling of having to take what we could when we could.

His teeth flashed in the moonlight, and with a smothered groan, he buried himself inside me, sliding deep in one hard thrust that had me tensing my legs and throwing my head back at the welcome invasion.

I held his shoulders for balance as he found his rhythm, leaving his hands free to tease my nipples. He plucked at the tight buds, pinching hard the way I liked it.

Yes, just like that, Adam. More. I only said the words in my mind, but my eyes must’ve relayed the gist of my message, because his hands squeezed my breasts from the outside in to my aching nipples, repeating the action over and over again in synchrony with his hips.

A whimper escaped me.

Sex had never felt as good as it did with him. Maybe it was the innate chemistry between us. Maybe it was the fact he stretched and filled me like no other before him. Maybe it was a simple as we, in any sense of the term, were strictly forbidden.

Or maybe he was just that good.

Next month, we started formal training in flirtation and seduction. Private company, remember? Nothing was off limits.

He didn’t need to improve. On anything.

The pad of his thumb brushed over my clit, lightly circling it as his pace increased.

My breath hitched, and I locked my ankles behind his back.

His other hand dug into my hip, pulling me to him harder, faster. The water churned around us, the starlight twinkling off the ripples like glitter.

My eyes clung to his, the need to be silent heightening the other sensations. The heat of him inside me as the water sluiced between us. The perfect roughness of his thumb on my clit. The hard tension of his back and ass as he thrust between my spread thighs. The urgent way he gripped my hip, the drag of the water preventing him from going as fast as we both wanted.

“Adam.” I couldn’t stop myself from murmuring his name as the tautness stretched tighter. He narrowed his eyes in warning.

I mouthed the other words.

Fuck. Yes. Please. More. Now.

I bit my lip hard as comets and meteors and supernovas exploded behind my closed eyelids.

The motion of his hips grew jerky as my orgasm sent him over the edge and he pulled out, emptying himself into the lake.

The weightless post-orgasmic haze settling over me felt more surreal than normal as I floated in some nameless lake in an unpronounceable county next to a guy I only knew by a pseudonym.

Everything seemed bigger. The moon. The way the sky bent at the edges of the horizon. The emotions welling up in my chest, making me want to spout ridiculous words about feelings I wasn’t supposed to feel. The thump of my reckless heart against my ribs.

The barriers keeping us apart.

A stupid lump formed in my throat and I had to wipe away the drops of water that must’ve splashed on my face as I floated there.

“Lex.” His voice was close, hushed.

That wasn’t my name, but sometimes, when he said in that tone, it felt more real than the one I was born with. I swallowed hard.

“Yeah?”

“We need to go. I think I heard something.”

Shit.

That’s right.

The mission.

The mission that was not about how good Adam and I felt together.

I straightened, my feet finding purchase on the rocky bottom. I pushed my wet hair back from my face, wringing out the water as we moved in unison toward shore in silence.

Retrieving my drysack, I dressed quickly, twisting my hair into a bun at the nape of my neck. If I left it like this, it’d probably still be wet when the mission ended, it was so thick. My other clothes were still damp, but I folded them and packed them away.

That hoot coming from the left side of the lake. Something about it sounded off. Not like a normal owl hoot.

My eyes met Adam’s, confirming he had the same suspicions.

The next ambush was coming.

We backtracked our path around the lake, moving as fast as we could without giving away our position.

Adam paused once on the trip back to skip a rock across the lake, our signal to the guys, if they were still awake, that an ambush was coming. And they heard it. By the time we got back, the evidence of the lean-to and the pallets was nothing more than scattered brush on the forest floor. Mark, Cooper, and Wesley were shrugging on their packs and looking to Adam for instruction.

I wondered if he even noticed. The way people around him instinctively sought his leadership. The way his decision was the one the group defaulted to. No sign of hesitation or indecision twisted his mouth. No, his beautiful lips were hiked up on one side in a cocksure grin.

“Mark, Cooper, you fall back the way we came, back down the hill. Lex and Wesley, take the long way around the lake to the other shelter, staying hidden until they’re gone. I’m gonna go stir up some trouble and lead them off the wrong direction. Plan to rendezvous in two hours at the other camp.”

He didn’t wait for confirmation, just veered off to the right, headed straight for the approaching Apollo ambush.

Wesley touched my elbow and tilted his head, indicating I should follow him. I swallowed back my automatic irritation over his assumption that he would lead the way, remembering this particular training exercise focused on teamwork, and acquiescence was the path of least resistance.

We maneuvered through the woods, sticking to shadows, crouching low behind brush and boulders as we wound our way around the serpentine edge of the lake. Somewhere along the way, I switched places with Wesley. I wasn’t sure it was so much my impatience at his bumbling steps, or his realization that he could stare at my ass more easily if I was in front, but either way, he found countless instances to unnecessarily reach out and touch my hip, urging me down with the hand signal that the enemy was close.

Every time, I dropped down and held still. It was easier to spot movement than pick out which shadow was out of place. And every time, Wesley fell half on top of me, his misguided efforts to cover me conveniently allowing his unwelcome hands to grip my thighs, his cheek pressing against the outer curve of my ass once.

The next time he gave the signal, I ignored it, continuing my furtive creep through the night. Apollo was nowhere near us. There’d been a commotion a good half mile across the lake, the direction Adam had gone when we’d split up.

When Wesley hissed at me to slow up, I whirled back.

“Move your ass faster and keep your fucking hands to yourself, or get there on your own.”

His eyes widened, the whites showing in the moonlight that filtered through the canopy of branches overhead.

But he didn’t touch me again, and we reached the campsite without further incident. Cooper and Mark showed up at the end of the two-hour window, and Adam finally appeared just as I was contemplating going off in search of him, even though that was against standard protocol.

My eyes roved over him, automatically assessing for any injury. He had a wide scrape along his cheekbone, superficial, but bloody. I took a step his direction, my hand reaching for his face, but his eyes cut to Wesley before flicking back to me, and he gave his head a slightly shake, warning me off. When I glanced over my shoulder, Wesley’s eyes were narrowed on me.

“I’m gonna clean this off. Apollo’s gone. I doubt they’ll try anything else before daylight. It was the same guys that have been tailing us all day and they looked pretty tired. Wesley, you and Mark good to take the next watch just in case though?”

They couldn’t disagree without looking like assholes, so they nodded and set off away from camp a bit to keep a look out. I settled onto a pine-bough pallet, an end one, and Cooper did the same, leaving the middle one for Adam.

By the time Adam returned, the worst of the blood rinsed from his cheek, Cooper was snoring softly.

“You okay?” I murmured.

He shifted onto his side until he was facing me and his teeth flashed. “Were you worried, Lex?”

I bit my lip and glanced away. Adam could take care of himself. And I knew that. But I didn’t like the idea that he was hurt, that he had any physical vulnerabilities that might one day steal him away from me. I forced a smile. “Just didn’t want to fail the mission for returning without you.” I kept my voice light.

He reached out in the darkness and touched my hand, his thumb brushing against the sensitive underside of my wrist where my pulse thrummed. “You won’t get rid of me that easily. I’m not ready to give you up yet.”

I didn’t want him to give me up at all.

The unbidden thought burned hot in my gut, twisting and tightening.

Apollo spies were destined for short-lived affairs that served strategic purposes. Connections—emotional connections—were liabilities. They clouded your judgment and slowed your thinking and were the quickest way to lose your job when you fucked up as a result.

Sex was just a tool. Same as a gun or a credible piece of intel. Just another part of the arsenal we’d wield in our quest to keep the world a safer place.

Just a tool, I reminded myself.

And yet, when his fingers tightened in mine, and he brought my hand to his mouth and pressed a silent kiss to my palm, the voice inside me sputtered into silence.

The rest of the mission went relatively smoothly, the only hitch coming when Wesley tried to cop a feel of my ass under the guise of helping me up a steep incline. Adam intervened quickly, taking his place and asking Wesley to lead for awhile since he was so good with the map. Wesley’s ego was his weakness, and Adam’s praise had him squaring his shoulders and rushing to guide us the last half dozen miles of the mission without incident.

Later, once we’d been congratulated for passing the exercise and debriefed, I stole away to my room, craving a hot shower even more than a celebratory beer with the guys.

I made quick work of washing my hair, scrubbing the sweat and dirt from every inch of my skin, then shaving my legs and underarms until I felt clean and sleek and human again.

And then I stood there under the pulsing spray, just enjoying the feel of the hot water on my sore muscles. I was humming to myself, an old love song one of my foster moms had sung all the time, when a faint click from outside the bathroom door caught my attention.

I stopped humming, every muscle tensing automatically with a fight or flight response. I grabbed my heavy liter bottle of shampoo, the only weapon I had within reach. The bathroom door opened with a slow creak, and I pressed my back to the far corner of the shower, a shadow appearing on the other side of the thick plastic shower curtain.

The rustle of clothing. The quiet snick of a zipper. The thud of boots hitting the tile floor.

I gripped the shampoo tighter, plotting my attack.

And then, that voice, the one I’d know anywhere, the one I heard in my dreams, the deep timbre thick as the steam in the air.

“Want some company?”

Adam.

I dropped the shampoo bottle with a thud, narrowly missing my toes.

He drew back the edge of the shower curtain and grinned crookedly at me. His shirt was gone, his pants undone and hanging loosely on his hips. He propped one bare foot on the edge of the tub, learning forward to test the water temperature with his open palm.

My mouth was dry despite the spray of the showerhead dousing me.

“I picked the lock.” He held up the mangled paperclip for a moment before tossing it on the laminate countertop. “I wanted to see you and you weren’t answering your phone and I couldn’t fucking wait another minute, knowing you were in here, alone.”

I licked my lips, my eyes dropping down the length of his lean torso, fixating on the open placket of his pants. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I swore the bulge behind there grew as I watched.

With a hum of approval, he hooked his thumbs in the waistband and pushed the rest of his clothes off in one efficient move, tossing them on top of his discarded shirt.

And then he was naked, tall and proud and naked and climbing in the shower with me, making the space too small because he took up all the room, but that was okay, more than okay, because I wanted to be swallowed up by him, utterly consumed by everything Adam.

He was already clean, I realized belatedly. His hair still damp from a previous shower, his face and neck clean of trail grime.

So when he pulled me to him, his back blocking the worst of the spray, all I smelled was soap and a hint of mint and the growing scent of my own arousal.

“Lock picking is a handy skill.” The words fell from mouth just a moment before he sealed his lips over mine, his tongue delving inside, seeking, taking, coaxing.

And I submitted, my hands smoothing over his shoulders, his biceps, the serrations of his ribs, and down to the points of his hips. Every texture was worth its own novel of description. And the sound of his breath hitching when I cupped his balls? It deserved its own feature-length film, dedicated to capturing it in crisp Dolby surround sound, shot from every angle in high definition.

I licked the corner of his mouth, nibbled the edge of hard jawline, then buried my face in his shoulder, unable to do anything but feel, feel, feel as his hands stroked every inch of my wet skin, pausing on the sensitive curves of my breasts, the hollow of my throat, the dip of my waist and flare of my hips, and the firm roundness of ass. He squeezed there, pulling me snug against him, so not even a water drop could slide between us. I shivered.

He shifted until his lips were at my ear and his hot breath fanned my cheek. “Turn around and bend over, Lex. I’ve been dreaming of watching your ass bounce as I claim that sweet pussy of yours for far too many nights now.”

When I hesitated, picturing the scene in my mind, his palm came down sharply, the sting on my left ass cheek goading me into motion and sending a rush of reciprocal wetness between my thighs.

This man. He made me crazy enough to want to risk everything. My pride, this job, my future… if only he’d say the word, I’d walk away from all if it, follow him anywhere he wanted to go.

After I was positioned to his liking and he stroked me with one long finger down my seam and found me slick and ready, he growled his approval. And before I could draw my next breath, he was nudging his way inside me, his fingers plucking at my nipples the way he knew made me writhe with unmistakable arousal, my hips flexing and extending to meet his strokes.

“I’m yours.” The words fell from me, unplanned, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from spilling any others.

But the declaration seemed to inflame him, and grasping my hips with his big hands, he slid fully in on the next thrust. “Mine,” he agreed, pulling out almost to the tip before slamming his hard length into my tight pussy again.

I didn’t correct him, couldn’t correct him, my mind overloaded with sensations of pure pleasure, unable to handle advanced processes like rational thought.

My fingers scrabbled for purchase on the fiberglass shower wall, the force of his downstrokes almost enough to knock me off balance.

My eyes were squeezed shut, my mouth open and sucking in the sparse oxygen as he entered me again and again.

And when I felt the pressure beginning to build, the first needy moan escaping my panting mouth, he stopped, twisted me back around to face him, and cupped his hands under my generous ass to hoist me in the air, pinning me against the long wall of the shower.

Then, slowly, so slowly I held my breath from the exquisite torture of it, he lowered me back down on his proud cock, until he was planted even deeper in me than before, until every millimeter of him was inside me, my legs wrapped around his hips, ankles crossed above his firm ass.

“Open your eyes.” It was an order, one I obeyed without thinking, my eyelids flying open until our gazes clashed and held. “Watch me. Watch my face. Watch what you do to me.”

And then he fucked me so slow and so deep, I thought I’d splinter into pieces long before he’d ever finish, the pleasure inside twisting higher and tighter and he brought me to the edge.

“Yours, Lex. I’m yours too.”

His words broke me, the coil inside me springing free and launching me into an orbit I never wanted to come down from. I whispered his name over and over and my pussy rippled around him, and he moved even deeper than before, something I would’ve sworn was impossible, until it felt like were fused at a molecular level, our protons sharing the same orbit as we crashed together and made something brand new and spectacular, some new element never before seen on this planet.

He held me like that, him buried to the hilt, me curled around him like calligraphic flourish, until my legs went numb and my teeth chattered from the cool water now coming from the showerhead. And even then, he didn’t release me, only shifting enough to turn off the water and snag a towel from the bar on the wall, wrapping it around me.

“Trust me, Lex. Apollo, at some point, they’ll figure this out. They’ll see the look in my eyes when I watch you, or the way your steps slow so we can walk together, or they’ll see the motherfucking sparks that light up the room when our fingers so much as brush. And they’ll try to tear us apart, because we’re both too fucking good at this game for them to risk having to kick us out. But trust me, Lex. Trust me, not them. I will always come for you. I will always have your back. I will always be yours.”

And I nodded helplessly in agreement, his dick stirring to life again inside me, because I had no choice. My feelings for him weren’t something I could control, weren’t something I wanted to stop or reign in or define with something as plebian as words.

We were bound, him and I, by the forces of chemistry and fate and the cosmos, and who was I to fight the evitable?

Yes. I trusted him. For better or worse, I trusted him, my future be damned.

Because I didn’t want any part of a future without him.

So I did the unthinkable.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Lex.”

And when the whole world rocked on its axis, two Apollo almost-spies uttering the most dangerous words in the organization, I wasn’t the least bit surprised.