Page 123 of Whistleblower

She nods enthusiastically. “I just have to find someone to watch Mouse.”

“Look how far we’ve come, baby. We officially have baggage now,” I say, laughing.

Vesper never liked us to have pets. Now I have a dog. We’re not supposed to get married. When the time is right, Dr. Eden Abbott will become my wife. We can’t have kids, but from everything the doctor has told me, my sterility might not be as permanent as I thought. If Eden wants children, we’ll find a way to open that door.

It’s time for new rules. A new PALADIN. A new way to live.

“Well, if we’re going on vacation next week, I need to get this mess in order in a hurry then.” Wiggling out of my arms, she collects a box cutter from her desk. She begins opening the brown packages one by one.

“Eden?”

“Yes?” She spins around and matches my stare.

“I know you like to work, but it doesn’t have to be here. The dust has settled and you can have your old life back. If you want to work in San Francisco, we can move. Vesper can deal if I don’t report to the compound every day.”

Eden makes her way back over to me and grabs my hands, weaving her delicate fingers in mind. “She needs me.”

“What?”

“Vesper…she says she needs me. I want to be here, Linc, because somehow I matter here. I think I can do more good with PALADIN than I’ve done at any job before. I want to stay.” She squeezes my hand.

I look around the room filled with office supplies. “So, Vesper needs you to be her little errand girl, huh?”

Eden laughs. “No. She says… Never mind.” She tries to pull away but I yank her back.

“Vesper says what?”

“That I’m her canary. That I’ll keep PALADIN from losing its way. She trusts my conscience more than her own. She doesn’t need me to hold a gun. Vesper needs…my heart.”

That makes two of us, then. I press my lips against Eden’s forehead and breathe her in. “Okay, baby. How can I help?”

“Umm,” she mumbles absentmindedly, “I just need to start unpacking everything to see what we have.” She hands me the box cutter. “Here. You open them, I’ll do inventory.” She grabs a pen and clipboard off of her desk.

“What is all this?” I move towards a small box on top of her desk to start.

“Just office stuff.”

“What is ‘office stuff’ exactly?” I cut through the thick tape of the flat square box and see a small silver case of some sort.

“Um,” Eden says over her shoulder, distracted, as she mentally counts the contents of a box, “mugs…t-shirts…pens…mouse pads…that sort of thing. Vesper is working on having a more face-forward division of PALADIN. I think we’re calling it a private investigation agency as a cover. Ha!”

“Mugs? Mouse pads?” I ask with a big teasing smile that she can’t see behind her back.

“Yes—”

“So not butt plugs and lube?” I try to hold in my cackle as I pop the lid on the flat silver case and find three butt plugs of different sizes with little gemstones on the base. The freebie gift from her order is apparently a small bottle of scented lubricant.

Eden freezes and lets out a loud, deep exhale before she spins around to face me. She looks mildly horrified. “Did you get that off my desk?”

“Yes.”

“That was a personal package. I meant for you to open those,” she says pointing with her pen to a large stack of heavy-looking boxes. Her cheeks are growing even redder and more flushed if that’s possible.

“Well, I didn’t,” I say, unable to hold in my laughter. “You’re caught red-handed, Bambi.”

Covering her eyes, she ducks her head. “I just thought if we wanted to try that again, it’d be better to work our way up.”

Our sex life has been tame over the past few months. Eden was healing, so we didn’t fuck. We had careful, tender sex which was just as gratifying for me. But now that my girl is fully healed and feeling more like herself, I see that familiar flicker in her eyes.

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