Page 48 of Beehive
18
Will
“Well, those were four hours I’ll never get back,” I said, shrugging off my overcoat and falling onto the edge of the bed.
Thomas shut the door behind him and began stripping out of his coat.
“We should go through the binder,” I said, pointing to the notebook. “There’s better light in the bathroom. Can you help me translate?”
There was little point to even looking at the pages the Soviets had prepared. They would, no doubt, have tossed in a few nuggets for us to find, pieces of value whose owners were still alive and hoping to see them again. Unfortunately, most of the items would be figments of some creative soldier’s imagination. I doubted many listed on those pages ever existed. Most of the supposed owners were likely long dead.
I appeared to have more optimism than Thomas. Leaning against the bathroom doorway, I stared at him with an irritated scowl.
Reluctantly, he pushed himself up and off the bed to follow me into the restroom. Once inside, I closed the door, turned on the shower and the faucet, then spun to face him. The notebook lay on the countertop near the commode, no longer of any interest to either of us.
I stepped close and pressed my body against his. His scent filled my nostrils. I breathed him in as deeply as my lungs would allow.
I leaned forward, intent on nibbling his neck, when two palms pressed into my chest and gently shoved me back. My head cocked like a befuzzled labrador.
Thomas leaned forward until his lips were almost touching my ear. “The notebook is useless. One of our people in the west can go through it and pick out anything of interest.”
“Okay, so what now?”
“We do the meetup and go from there,” he said. “We don’t have enough information to make a better plan. We need guidance. Hell, we need contacts, assets, information, and a laundry list of other things I haven’t even thought of. We’re wandering blindly around an enemy controlled—”
Between Thomas and me, he was usually the strategist. His background in Naval intelligence made him a far better planner. It was interesting to see him ignoring the smoke and heading straight toward the fire. It was odd . . . and a little exciting.
“Dear God,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
Confusion flooded my face.
He turned his head so his lips brushed my ear. “You get me so hot when you talk business. Say something about tradecraft. I bet I pop a boner right here.”
I snorted, then slapped his chest with my hand. “I’m trying to plan, and all you can do is think with yourlittleone?”
“Hey!” He pulled back so our eyes could lock, then mouthed, “It’s notthatlittle.”
I snorted again.
For a moment, I thought he might pull me back into his embrace and continue our impromptu potty room planning session. Instead, his fingers gripped my belt buckle and began tugging off my trousers. His eyes never left mine as my pants hit the floor. Before I could step out of them, Thomas dropped to his knees, yanked down my boxers, and took me in his mouth.
I had to brace with both hands against the counter to keep from tumbling over.
In seconds measured by strokes of his tongue, I was harder than the hotel bed, and Thomas was a man on a wholly new mission.
Our hotel room reeked of cheap varnish and paranoia . . . and sex. The overhead light buzzed, as if mocking us with its constant presence.
Thomas and I descended the stairs, nodded at the bored-looking woman at the reception desk, and stepped outside, presumably to smoke at the tree we’d claimed for our own.
“Tails are still there,” he whispered between puffs.
I grunted agreement. “One new man. Tall. Black hat. Smokes too much. Belly looks like the top of a poorly baked muffin.”
Thomas chuckled. “Goes by Sergei, probably, or Boris.”
“Can we not name the minders?” I said. “It’s like naming a goldfish. It’ll be harder to flush them if they die.”
Thomas snorted, then shook his head. He tossed his cigarette on the ground and snuffed it with his shoe. “Let’s go get ready. We need to leave in twenty minutes.”
