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If he didn’t get his bloody hands off her, I was going to separate them from his body.
6
Gabe
I jolted awake with my heart racing and sweat pouring down my face. It was the same nightmare I’d had a hundred times before. The burning plane, the smoke, the screams… and my father.
In the dream, I was trying to save him, but he wouldn’t let me. Instead, he made me swear to protect my sister Saffron and her legacy. I had no idea what he meant by that, but the urgency in his voice always left me shaken.
I took a deep breath and tried to shake off the feeling of dread. It was just a dream, nothing more. But no matter how many times I told myself that, the images always lingered.
My heart wouldn’t stop hammering. Didn’t dare slow. As if I was the one who had watched them die without being able to say goodbye.
The minutes ticked by, and I employed all the deep breathing techniques meant to keep an operative calm in the field until I could breathe again.
But the moment I could let go of the fear, something else was back.
My bloody lips still tingled. They hadn’t stopped tingling since she’d kissed me.
Tabatha had bloody kissed me.
For a mission.
Anyone in recovery would tell you it was best to not even get a taste of whatever your vice was, or it could have dire consequences. Like if I had a gambling addiction, even small dares and bets with mates was a bad idea.
I’d had a taste now, and the taste of her was never leaving my tongue.
I rubbed my eyes. I was bloody knackered and needed some damn sleep. After the stag do the other night, the wedding, and then tonight, I could have used a night of turning off the adrenaline spigot. Maybe it was time to head out to the house in Hampshire. I’d get some fresh air and a couple of days of solace and forget that I knew Tabatha tasted of spun sugar and the strongest spiced rum.
And maybe, after I cleared my mind, I’d get some clarity on why Oversight had gotten tonight so wrong. Rogues were the team you called in for the darkest, dirtiest, most difficult missions. Tonight had been a waste of time and resources.
That happens sometimes.
Yes, sometimes we got bad intel. But bad intel always ended up blowing up in our faces. Not fizzling like a limp dick. Something was off. Very off.
The shit soup of the mission churned in my skull as I tried to go back to sleep. That's when the wretched phone pinged with a coded text from Gennifer Goode.
Oversight wants your cock:
"Are you still up? We need to talk about tonight. Meet me."
For fuck's sake, what the hell did she want? Was her name in my contacts immature? Yes. Was it accurate? Also, yes. She had made no bones about it. Call me a fool, but I liked the idea of my cock still being there when I woke up in the morning.
You know what she wants. Ignore it, mate. You don't want to do this.
I didn’t. But I couldn’t ignore a summons either.
Rogues operated mostly independently. As Ops Command, I was the head of Rogues. We worked for the British government and served at the pleasure of the monarch. In this case, Chuck, as I liked to call him. I received assignments from the Prime Minister and Home Office, and occasionally directly through the particular arm of government that needed our assistance. But all missions were vetted and scrutinized by a panel of representatives from each arm called Oversight.
Oversight was designed to move quickly without much of the bureaucracy our government was known for. I was often dragged in to explain myself or give mission profiles. Sometimes I was called in to advise on other Home Office concerns.
However, the charter Grandfather had set up when he created Rogues stated only a full-blooded Abott could sit as Operations Command. But if an Abott was not yet twenty-five, an interim Ops Command would be chosen. And in the case that there was no full-blooded Abott to take over, the division would be disbanded. All personnel would be dispersed into the standard government divisions.
I was just the temporary Ops Command until Saffron Abott-King was ready to take the helm. If she felt ready, she could take over now, but she’d only been a field agent for a little over two years. She needed seasoning. More time. So until then, I kept the promise I’d made to my father and watched over her legacy.
I kept the seat warm for Saff and made sure she had a seat to fill when all was said and done.
Lately, Oversight was gunning for control over Rogues since technically a blooded Abott wasn't Ops Command. To fight off that takeover, I had been trying to speed up Saff's training. I wanted to make sure those who wanted control over Rogues wouldn't be able to take it easily. Or worse, black box the division.
