Page 65 of Taming Achilles

Stop it, Pip. Get yourself together.

“Pip, you know as well as I do that the four of us are equal partners.” Callum had a smirk on his face as he looked between me and Geordie. “We’re a congress.”

“How sweet,” I said, channelling the MI6 persona I had adopted in conference rooms of men who looked at me as a little woman, or a useless model because of my cover. I always had to come in, stomping, ready to rip off heads and put everyone in their place. “We, on this side of the table, aren't a congress.”

I looked over at Brett and smiled, and he stifled a cruel chuckle.

Ajax leaned forward on the table, and glared right at Geordie. He clearly knew everything that had transpired between me and Geo. Brett had a hell of a time keeping secrets from Ajax, and I'm sure he'd spilled the beans. They were like two hens in a chicken coop.

With a small smile, I growled, “We’re a murder.”

Chapter 31

Geordie

So she was friends with them. Close friends, it seemed, if she shared our particular arrangement with them. And it was sordid, and I would never have considered such a thing six years ago. But I was a different man now.

She could deny that she wanted it. She could cry it to the high heavens. But she was a liar. And I was certain that somewhere in that little heart, behind that solid mask of hers, she knew it too.

I could beckon her to sit on my lap with a crook of my finger. When she obeyed - because she would obey - I’d relish in the delicious war that would happen in her eyes. Her need to deny me. The wish to give in, and lay naked in my arms as I had my way with her. Making her the whore she wanted to be … but only for me.

She’d deny it to her little friends, and to herself. Right up until the moment I pulled the melody of her confession from her as I played her pretty cunt like an instrument.

“A murder, is it?” I leaned back in my chair. Ajax had said it, dripping with the sound of a threat. I turned my question to her. “And who would you be murdering?”

These fuckers didn’t scare me. And clearly, they were used to people recoiling from them. Secret agents. Spies. Assassins. They were always used to being the scariest thing in the room. Like they were the thing that went bump in the night. But I was the knight standing vigil against those monsters. They moved in the cloak of secrets and darkness. I stood in the light, placing myself between them and my charge.

So no, they didn’t scare me.

“Me? Is it?” I said, with a smirk, and she flinched. Oh, she could play a hard game and threaten. She could probably kill me too, if she really wanted to. She’d kept her ties to the Circus underwraps for God knows how long. I had been in her, not just with my cock. But for years - damn near our lifetime - I had been in her soul. I had known her thoughts and needs before she had them. Except this one single thing. The thing that tainted everything else.

I flicked a thumb at myself and tilted my head and smiled at them. “You’re going to murder me?”

I was calling her bluff. She didn’t hate me. She needed me. More importantly, she wanted me, and she’d never do me any harm.

“Strong words for a woman who’s wearing my ring,” I nodded to her left hand where the Edwardian ring still sat on her finger. She looked at it, astonished. As if she had forgotten that the ice rink was there.

I probably shouldn’t have said that. Callum’s head turned to me with a quizzical expression, and then turned to Pippa. Then to the offending finger. He let out a low curse under his breath. I don’t know if that meant he was going to give me another punch to the face, or if he was just surprised. Whatever it was, there’d be time to handle it later.

My nose could take it.

Her normal tactics were clearly not working. And they never would. Not with me.

She turned to Cal, then asked with a straight face, “May we speak in private?”

“No,” I interjected.

Her eyes flashed to me, but turned pleading as she looked to my best friend.

We might be best mates, roommates from boarding school into uni. But he’d weigh his options. Probably weighing his loyalty to me versus his friendship with her. She was also clearly in trouble, and he’d stand bodily in front of her to protect her.

“Before I send them out, I want to ask you something,” he said, finally testing the waters. “Was I supposed to be your cover?”

“Yes.”

“For him? A straight answer!” I said, astonished, throwing my hands in the air in exasperation. But neither of them turned to me.

“And how necessary was I to it?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

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