Page 93 of Dash

He dove one final time. His groan announced the release of his seed in my body and the return of Dash to my forever. Good or bad, whatever happened now, we’d face it, together.

Chapter Twenty-six

Dash

The library was a hotbed of brain activity. After upgrading the room’s technical capabilities, we’d ditched Richard Astor’s dark and gloomy study and I’d designated this bright and airy space as our main command and control center.

I sat at the head of the big mahogany table in the middle of the ornate room, surrounded by expensive wood and tons of marble. A glass cupola rained sunlight on the table, illuminating the stacks of files spread over the polished surface and the focus on my crew’s faces.

The guys sat before their tablets, dividing their attention between reviewing the files and blueprints and studying the information livestreaming on their screens. There was a lot of new intel, so I needed to give them time to catch up.

I got up from the chair, stretched my back, and paced the length of the library to work out the cramp torturing my stiff thigh. The muscle was doing better, but I was feeling the intense workout the crew and I had put in early this morning.

Damn, I was getting old. Maybe I should’ve kept the cane around for a little while longer.

I clasped my hands behind my back, parked in front of our security setup, and studied the automated screens. They displayed live feeds of the wall’s perimeter and all access points to the property and tracked the action inside the house’s public spaces as well.

The defense system would respond to outside threats automatically. It was wired tight and backed-up with a number of redundancies. The only way to neutralize it was to deactivate it from the inside out and even that took some doing, not to mention a series of codes. I checked the control panel.Everything was operational.

I paced to one end of the massive room, where Mina talked on her headset, coordinating with her cyberteam, pounding her keyboard, and monitoring several screens. She was so focused on her work that she didn’t even know I was there. She continued to make progress. I was giving her space to get us something concrete we could use to find the Astor women.

Whirling on my heel, I turned around and headed toward the opposite side of library, where Thena had set up shop. Sitting at the neatly organized reading table, she singlehandedly ran the Astor Group, solving one problem after another with astonishing efficiency.

Since she worked covertly under the system’s overlay that allowed her to sound and look like me, she wore comfy clothes, tennis shoes, leggings, and a jersey that matched the pearly color of her eyes. Her hair spilled over her shoulders, lustrous and silky. Her curls were mostly blond and yet her darker roots were beginning to show at either side of her part.

I studied her from afar. The combination of Dr. Jacob’s treatment, good food, clean air, and Sandy and Cook’s pampering was working miracles. She’d also struck up a friendship with Mina. Given that Thena missed her sisters fiercely, I loved that she had Mina for company.

I hoped that I, too, was helping Thena get better. Over the last few days, I’d devoted every free second to be with her. Whenever we could get away, we donned our winter gear and took walks around the property. We’d inspected the empty stables and the sad gardens. Thena had ordered some new seeds online and planted them in pots in the solarium, “to be ready for spring,” she’d said.

It thrilled me that she looked forward to spring, for the gardens, for us.

Our bodies were making up for lost time. We slepttogether every night in her tower. We’d had a mild winter so far, and we’d made good use of our little nest in the roof. Her bed was also getting a lot of use, and so did every private space we could claim for quickies around the house. Improvising was part of the fun.

Yeah, that was me all right, up to my eyeballs in the mission and yet relearning fun because Thena had returned to my life. When I thought about last night’s amazing fuck fest, the heat rose in my body. The mental picture had my dick reacting like a race car revving its motor.

I couldn’t get enough of her. My craving for her would never wane. We worked hard, but the moments we claimed as ours were medicine to my soul.

Thena had been busy and not just with work and me. Last week, she’d obtained authorization from me and arranged for Dr. Weston, the town’s dentist, to come up to the house. Before I knew it, she’d persuaded Bozeman to sit in a treatment chair at the spa room. She’d actually held his hand as Dr. Weston did the work and,presto, Granite was no longer in pain and a hundred percent operational.

She’d also made a point to spend time with Guzman. It was as if she sensed the inner turmoil he hid so well. They bonded over their love of Wyoming whiskey, which neither one of them was allowed to have. She got his jokes and he in turn came up with more jokes for her. I appreciated his efforts to make my woman laugh.

I’d also discovered Thena and King hunkered down in the theater room, watchingLilo and Stitch. I had no idea what that was about, but King didn’t give a fuck when the guys gave him shit for it. He was the kind of guy who didn’t have to prove anything to anyone. He told the others they should all watch the movie and learn something.

For Shaw, who didn’t drink, Thena made sure freshlemonade was available at every meal. For Cooper, a classic night fridge-raider, she made a Dagwood sandwich every night before she went to bed. For Ferranti, she expanded the cable subscription to include soccer and rugby, sports he loved. Whenever she got a chance, she baked cookies for the crew.

It was as if, instinctively, she understood that each man needed her time and attention, and that our team needed to gel. Given the amount of petty bickering going on among my crew, I welcomed her efforts.

Taking care of plants, animals, and people was right up Thena’s alley. Her combination of brains and beauty kept me tuned into her around the clock. Even now, as she sat at her workstation talking to someone on her cell, my dick went hard when she moistened her lips, rubbing them against each other as she often did right before she took me in her mouth. I was stuck with an excruciating hard-on.

As I got closer to her desk, the tension in Thena’s voice pinged my radar. I frowned, and pretending to study the titles on the shelves, moved closer to listen in.

“I won’t sign the contract,” she was saying. “The company is a front for a Chinese state-owned outfit that uses slave labor. I also gave Paolo instructions to divest from any company associated with the governments of countries that are enemies of the United States.”

She paused for a few seconds, listening to words I couldn’t hear.

“Yes, my decisions might ruffle some feathers.” She contracted her fingers around a rubber stress ball. “But there are better ways to make money, Monique, ways than don’t require us to undermine our country.”

I gathered that Thena was taking her stand, and her staff was riled about it.

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