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“I fell asleep?” Her voice is raspy.
I grin. “Not your fault, Piglet.”
“Oh, God…”
I tuck the covers to her shoulders, and she looks up at me one more time before her eyes drift shut.
* * *
Barrett
Being near her— I’m still fucking hard. I move silently into her office, where I sink down in her desk chair, lean my head against the back of it, and think of Gwen’s sweet pussy as I jerk myself off under her desk.
I come into my hand when there’s a box of tissues right in front of me because I’m so damn fixated on Gwenna. Even with her asleep on the other side of a wall, my mind and body feel as if they’re anchored to her.
As I wrap a wad of Kleenex around my dick, my knee bumps the underside of her desk. The monitor lights up, displaying her desktop.
…She has no password?
I blink at the background: a luscious summer shot of the Rocky Mountains in what looks like June or July. Hmm. It’s just a nature shot, no Gwen anywhere in sight, so I turn my attention to the folders on her desktop. Dammit. For all Gwen’s teasing, I never did like the tradecraft, secret agent shit. I feel like I’m violating her. Which is ludicrous, considering.
I push past that and quickly find the place she keeps her camera footage: Cam Archives, the folder says. I luck out and find she’s got a folder inside labeled The Ghost!
She’s got the spook part right, anyway.
It doesn’t take me long to sift through what footage she has of me and modify it some—just enough so no agency would recognize my Operator tells. Within Spec Ops, there are little things each group does differently. The way I’m walking in the footage, the way I scan the woods, is very Ranger. Despite some changes in the organization over the last ten or fifteen years, the Unit still recruits more from the Rangers than any other group. Even I can’t see much of myself—I make a mental note to burn the very, very good camo I was wearing here—but I would still think ‘Ranger’ from the little bit I can see. And the way I took that glove off, stretching my numb fingers, is a major fucking clue, unique to me.
I take care to doctor the images slightly enough that if Gwen takes another look at them, she won’t feel crazy; the edits are too subtle for her to notice. Then I take the dates on the shots and use them to lead me back to the longer reels from those days I was captured on her cams.
I spend an hour searching for myself in spots she might have missed me. Sure enough, I see myself a handful more times when Gwen didn’t. From that footage, I erase myself completely.
Twenty minutes later, I’ve erased my tech tracks, modified the computer’s sleep/wake log—fucking hard on a damn Mac—and stood up from her desk, a wad of cum rags in my hand and the weight of guilt on my chest.
I can hear the echo of her voice and feel the ghost of her touch as I move quietly into the kitchen. Channeling Gwenna, I tell myself not to worry too much about things, not when I’m about to fix it all. I dispose of the tissues, wash my hands, and stare down at our cake. It looks damn good, but I’m not cutting it without her. I look around for a cake cover, and when I don’t see one, I know where to look.
I step slowly into the laundry room. On the floor beside the washer, there’s a single, milk-white petal. I can’t resist picking it up, even though I know my hands will stain it brown. I press it to my cheek and inhale deeply, slowly, until my heart starts pounding like I knew it would.
It’s just a fucking flower.
I tell myself to grow a pair. Cold sweat sweeps me, and I sit down at Gwenna’s kitchen table.
I tell myself to focus on the softness of the petal. Soft like satin… Soft like Gwenna’s skin.
I peek down at the blue of her table.
She moved the flowers into the garage for me.
Anguish stirs inside me…
I don’t know why. Why did she do it?
It doesn’t matter, I tell myself.
I bring the flower petal closer to my nose and inhale. Heat prickles my skin, and I can feel my throat tighten, but I keep breathing: slow and steady. I fucking hate the smell…the feeling of that day… It’s all twisted up, mashed into one long, awful reel of horrors, from seeing Maliha dash into the square, to the moment I had to jump off the roof, to the awful, awful moments looking down at Breck. The fucking shock of it. And waking up so fucked up at Landstuhl.
I can almost hear her whisper, “It makes so much sense.”
Does it?
