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I wasn’t sure she understood the last words I groaned as I pushed into her. Feeling her tight pussy taking hold of me was like coming home; like when the man who’d trained for the marathon finally gets his medal. Like when the lonely miscreant finally realizes he’s not alone anymore.
When for one fucking moment, everything in the world was the way it was supposed to be, and all the interlopers and degenerates were consigned to hell.
Only she could bring me that peace.
Only she could make me beg for release: release of pleasure, release of pain, release from the past.
“Please,bambina,” I moaned as I entered and withdrew from her again and again in that search for relief. “Give it to me. Now.”
I was still selfish enough to demand what I wanted, to take what she offered freely to me.
Her shattering orgasm was beautiful, but it was my surrender that I sought. It was my admission that this woman was worth everything to me. She was my beginning and my end. I knew as I shuddered with pleasure and came deep inside her that we had sealed a bond that would never be broken. Not as long as there was breath in my gasping body.
“I fucking love you,” I moaned, taking her quivering lips in a kiss of pure surrender. “I love you,” I repeated. I didn’t care whether she said it back, or if I saw that answering echo in her eyes. It was enough that she let me say it to her. She didn’t need to love me in return. She just needed to let me love her.
***
NOEMI FELL ASLEEP INmy arms again, not long after she whispered, “I love you, too,” into the side of my neck, making me smile at the return of her shy side. I laid there, her declaration continually whispering in my ear as if she were still awake repeating it. My family showed affection, and I knew how we all felt toward one another. Noemi was the first person to ever use words to tell me she loved me.
My heart thudded loudly in my chest while the blood rushed through my head. She was mine now. Not just physically, but with every bit of my being I claimed her as mine. What awed me more was that I belonged to her as well. Three little words could own a man and for as long as I lived, I was hers.
I couldn’t wrap my head around it. My body wasn’t used to the emotion. It created a turmoil within me that wouldn’t subside. I needed to do something, to stay busy, to let my mind and heart grapple with this new revelation.
With a restless growl, I gently rolled Noemi to her side and continued my habit of leaving her alone as she slept. I checked my emails when I got to my office and found my first message from Marco. He sent me a section of the files he extracted from Delacroix’s computer system. There was more to come, he said, but this was the first chunk he’d managed to pull out.
I had asked him to find references to me or Noemi, but after seeing Delacroix in the pictures last night, I decided to take a different approach and search for the names Gerald Petrafuso, Daniel Rubinstein and General Bailey as well. It was another hunch that my gut said would pay off. I could work on the search while Noemi napped. There may have been information that would be valuable during our discussion with Willis. I knew he’d be the soul of discretion. He couldn’t afford leaks any more than I could. I needed to go armed with every piece of valuable information I could find, hoping that he would reveal more without knowing that he had done so.
I locked my office door and ran the decryption code on Marco’s file. It would take a while, so I decided to fish around and see what the internet had to say about General Bailey and Daniel Rubinstein. Once I was done with a contract, I almost never followed up on anyone involved. Phillip McKenzie was the rare exception to that rule. And since I wasn’t bidding on a contract for any of these men, all three were fair game.
I started with Bailey. Back then, he had been the most public figure of the four. McKenzie made the most headlines, but not until his death. I quickly scanned the top three links for General George Edmund Bailey. I didn’t pay much attention to politics. It seemed our friend Bailey was a top runner to take over as Director of the CIA. That would be a damn good reason for him to take desperate measures to make sure his past remained in the dark.
“What the fuck would that have to do with Noemi?” I muttered, not seeing a connection.
I should have dug deeper but my inner voice said not to delay in looking up Rubinstein. Quickly, I found that I could take him off the list. His online obituary nauseated me as it droned on about his accolades and all the prestigious government positions he’d held, including what would have been his highest honor had he lived long enough to accept the position—Director of the CIA.
Fuck. I had to read through paragraphs lauding his contributions before I found an article that mentioned his cause of death. Accidental drowning. How the hell did a sixty-year-old man accidentally drown to death? I skimmed about ten more articles but couldn’t find anything that questioned the coroner’s ruling as the cause of death. Rubinstein was found face down in the pool at his Florida estate. Was he drunk? High? Did he have a coronary while swimming? On the surface of what the internet provided, all my questions remained unanswered. Wasn’t it fortunate for Bailey that the man who was the original choice to be the new head honcho at the CIA was also a man who could one day testify against him in a sex crimes case and that man met an untimely death?
In my line of work, I learned that coincidences of this magnitude were not just rare, but non-existent. Bailey’s greed outweighed his friendship with Rubinstein. Rubinstein wouldn’t have talked about the past. If he had, he would have endangered himself. He and Bailey could have taken their secrets to the grave and never have put the other into suspicion. But something made Bailey nervous. Something alarmed him enough to remove his competition.
The picture was getting clearer, but I needed the center, those key pieces that made all the others make sense.
I received the notification that the decryption was done. I wasn’t sure I needed those files anymore, but that nagging inner voice told me to run a quick search.
Before I hit the search bar, I read Marco’s note again.
This was easy. Too easy if you know what I mean. I’ll have more soon. Will probably be done tonight.
I mulled over his words while I typed in General Bailey, Bailey, George Bailey and a few other combinations that came back with zero entries found.
Frowning, I tried again. Rubinstein. Daniel Rubinstein. D. Rubinstein.
Nothing came back for him either.
Delacroix was up to no good, but he hadn’t been in contact with or discussed either one of those men. At least, not electronically.
I went with what my gut told me to do next. I typed his name in slowly, as if typing it too quickly would achieve a different result.
Gerald Petrafuso. Zero hits.
