The Espionage Effect(26)
The concept struck me as foreign and familiar all at once. The loneliness he had to have felt mirrored what I’d experienced in a house with a roof over my head and an official mother and father.
“Where did you live?” With every hushed word as I waded into more sensitive waters, the tension between us thickened into something far heavier than sexual.
Wordlessly, we drove across the wood-slatted bridge that spanned a wide swamp area. According to the driver who’d first brought Anna and me from the airport, crocodiles lived in that dark, placid water.
Ignoring the danger outside the vehicle, I turned toward Alec, watching his profile as he focused straight ahead with a stony expression.
When the road widened enough to let oncoming traffic pass, it opened into the circular entrance of the resort. A long rectangular fountain stretched on our left toward the resort’s entry steps, stone sculptures spouting arcs of water into its shallow pool which was dotted with lily pads.
He eased off to the side and stopped the Jeep in the dappled shade of towering trees, about thirty feet short of the parked resort SUVs and far enough away from the attention of the valet staff. He cut the engine, then removed his sunglasses, but continued to stare forward as a muscle in his jaw clenched.
“On the street,” he finally replied.
“But where did you sleep?” The outrageous concept wouldn’t settle into my brain.
His hands clutched the steering wheel. “Wherever I found a safe place. An abandoned garage one night. Storage shed the next.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered. I failed to fully comprehend what he’d endured. I’d had to steel myself against a home devoid of love, but he hadn’t even had a home. “For how long?” My tone remained soft. I was afraid any greater volume could fracture the fragile moment.
“A few years. I was eleven when I lost my parents. They’d been drinking at a party and drifted across the lanes of a highway. They overcorrected. The car flipped, then slid on its roof off the edge of a bridge.” His voice cracked on the last few words.
It was the most significant disclosure he’d made so far. And I had no idea what to say. But the pain of his loss cut deep, mingling with my own. I instinctively reached out my hand and wrapped my fingers around his forearm. He didn’t pull away.
A few slow beats later, he turned toward me, gaze fierce. “What I am was born that night. With no relatives, social services came looking for me the following day. But I expected them. Anticipated their arrival. Had already stolen away every valuable thing we owned that I could carry and hidden them in locations around the neighborhood. Later, moved them into hidey-holes around the entire city.”
“How did you know what had happened?”
His gaze dropped to my lap in thought. “It was the first time they hadn’t left me with a babysitter. I was too excited to sleep, so I watched television shows they’d forbidden me to see. When midnight came and went without them returning, I began to panic; they’d always come home hours before then.”
He paused. I waited as his face tilted up and he stared out the windshield, gaze unfocused. “I grabbed my bike out of the garage. They told me what restaurant they’d made late reservations at after the show. I knew how to get there, had traveled our whole part of town on my bike as a kid. On my way, the flashing lights of emergency vehicles blocked the bridge. More lights came from below, and I went down to investigate. The drought had been bad that year, the water level a tenth of normal...”
I tightened my hold on his forearm. “Alec…”
Slowly, he turned toward me, expression blank—all except for stark pain that shone vividly in his eyes.
My brows furrowed. “It’s okay. I…” No part of me wanted to rob him of this cleansing moment, but I’d been stricken by the depth of his kind of pain before, knew I needed to pull him back. “I understand.”
“You do…” His tone fell flat, like my relating to him wasn’t such of a surprise. His gaze searched mine until he gave me a sharp nod. Then he glanced away on a deep inhalation, not asking me why. As if the tone in the car weighed heavy enough. And we needed to be able to breathe.
He dropped his hand from the steering wheel, then gave my knee a light squeeze. “Anyway, I remained on the streets until seventeen. Someone from the organization stumbled across my path and recruited me.”
Curious about what attracted their attention, I cocked my head. “Just like that?”
“Yes.” He started the Jeep’s engine again and shifted into drive. “Just like that.” In the seconds it took to coast to the valet waiting for us on the resort’s front steps, he added, “Turns out anyone who can steal the wallet of a field operative…automatically passes the entrance exam to be considered as a field operative.”
Not skilled enough to pick pockets to impress EtherSphere One, I parted my lips as we exited the Jeep, readying to ask what other tests they might have.
“Hungry?” He tossed the keys to the valet who’d already jogged around the back of the vehicle.
“What?” My question about spy-organization entrance exams dissolved on the tip of my tongue as my mind searched back to the last time I’d eaten.
After he’d delivered me a mind-blowing orgasm...
My cheeks flushed hot as I blinked at him.
His lips curled into a devious smirk, like he’d known exactly where my dirty mind had traveled. And his had tumbled right down into the same gutter. “Food. Have you eaten since…” His gaze held mine while he reached into the back of the Jeep and pulled out his mysterious black leather bag.