A/N: y'all ready for this? let me hear you SCREAM! xoxo Ami

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eighteen | paris

the Eiffel tower is the most valuable landmark in Europe, valued at an estimated four-hundred-and-thirty-five billion euros

RAYNA

May 8th, 20:44 (GMT +2)
7 days until it happens

YEAH, I SLIPPED a sedative into Steve's drink. No, I'm not guilty about it.

My heels clink against gleaming hardwood as I escape the ballroom en route to Drapeau's personal office.

The official part of tonight's mission was to bug Nikitin and monitor his conversations for info about Cassidy. (Which is fucking stupid, since I am 96% certain that he has no idea where that spoiled brat is, and that he really couldn't care less.) The unofficial goal that wasn't included in the mission brief is to learn what Dalton is hiding. We need to figure out why our governments are pretending that Cassidy is missing, and why the Russian mob is happy to take credit for it.

When I left the ballroom, Drapeau was in the middle of a raucous argument about the relative merits of assorted French vineyards. His office is unguarded; Jake is already inside.

I lean against the doorjamb. "You suck at this whole teamwork thing, you know that, right?"

He doesn't look up from the stack of papers he's perusing. "Teamwork is for those too useless to do things properly on their own."

"You're an arrogant piece of shit."

"Nothing I haven't heard before, darling."

After abandoning me with that insipid, self-absorbed, ignorant cringefest, he deserves a knee to the nuts. I'm trying to be upset with him, but he looks really damn handsome in a tux and my ovaries won't fucking shut up about it.

His broad shoulders fit snug beneath the black fabric as he leans over the solid walnut desk. Dark, closed-cropped stubble shadows his strong jaw. The bowtie knotted around his neck is a deep blue-grey, the same glacial shade of his eyes. Old British money, privilege tainted with carelessness. Dapper is the only word for him. Dashing and roguish. Alright, apparently there are more words.

As if sensing my thoughts, he lifts that iceberg gaze towards me and catches me checking him out. With a wolfish grin, he quips, a quiet rumble, "Take a fucking picture, why don't you?"

Warmth attacks my neck but I ignore it. I join him behind the desk, my gown swooshing around my ankles. "What've you found?"

"Trying to decipher these financial records," is all he says. My knuckles catch a cool scrap of his cufflink as I peel a sheet from the top of the pile.

I study the numbers and charts. Our arms bump when I point to the dates listed in a column. "Look at these. The cost-per-share of Dalton Enterprises took a huge jump the day they announced Cassidy had gone missing, and it's been trending high ever since."

Internally, he crunches through the calculations. "The market has been abysmally low for months, but Dalton's profits have spiked by hundreds of millions of dollars in less than a week."

There are only two reasons why people do shady shit: money and sex. "It's all about the money," I whisper. It's corrupt as hell but it makes total, complete sense. "Ayb el shoum. You mean... They sent us on a wild-goose-chase following cold leads all around Europe... Just to give Elias Dalton's stock price a boost?"

He scratches the nape of his hair. "Doesn't explain why the mob is claiming responsibility for Cassidy's disappearance. Yeah, they have grievances against Dalton for cutting into their profits, but what does this charade accomplish?"

"Look," I propose, "I think we should be pursuing the whole mob angle more seriously. There's obviously something more happening, so–"

He cuts me off like the imperious bastard he is, "The only thing we should be focusing on right now is locating Cassidy and putting an end to all this nonsense. Even if she's not in imminent danger, the orders we've been given still stand."

Frustration simmers through my veins. This man, wallahi, I swear to God... "Why do you have to have such a stick up your ass all the time, huh? Need me to reach up there and pull it out?" I'm sure he'd love having my fingers wedged inside him. "Aren't you curious about what's really going on here?"

He stops leaning against the desk and rises to his full height, glowering down at me. "Why must you insist on complicating things?"

"Why don't you just fucking listen to me for once? Contrary to what you might think, you're not always the smartest person in the room–"

"In this one I am, yeah."

We glare at each other. I'm starting to think his chiselled face would look really good with his nose squashed in–

Male voices echo from down the hallway, spilling in through the open door. We both curse beneath our breaths, shoving the files back into place and rounding the desk. The plodding footsteps are approaching too fast. They're going to catch us snooping, and we will be charged with trespassing, and the entire mission will be compromised.

My mind scrambles for a solution. Just before they reach the threshold, I grab Jake by the collar of his shirt and yank our faces together, forcing my tongue into his mouth.

He freezes, resisting, but after a moment, he catches on and his lips soften. His fingers find the hollow of my spine. He tastes like spearmint, smells hazy like smouldering wood.

Just so he doesn't get the wrong idea, I jam my heel onto his toe, five inches of pure-steel stiletto piercing forcefully into his thousand-dollar leather shoe. He grunts into my mouth, his fingers bunching my hair and tearing. With a wrenching tug on my waist, he angles me against the ledge of the desk so the hard metal of his pistol punches painfully into the tender groove of my hipbone. My teeth sink into his lip so savagely I taste blood.

"Oi! Qu'est-ce que vous faites ici–oh, mon dieu..."

I break away from Jake's face, feigning startlement. Sheepish, blushing, breathing hard, I thwack him playfully on the arm. "Richard, honey! I told you we weren't supposed to be in here..."

He scrubs a palm over his mouth, his pupils blown wide. My heart stammers. His hair is mussed from the tousle of my fingers. He directs an apologetic look to the security duo at the door. "Sorry, mate. Got a little carried away."

The guards exchange knowing looks with each other, vaguely amused. "Allez-y," one of them waves. I take Jake's hand, screwing my fingernails into his flesh.

Once we're a safe distance away, I release his grasp and make a show of looking disgusted.

He regards me, wholly unimpressed. "Richard? Really?"

"Mhm." A plastic smile. "Dick for short."

His tongue flickers along his bottom lip and my gaze is drawn to it. "I can promise you there's nothing short about it, love."

My lips tingle, but I mask whatever the fuck I'm really feeling with a veil of irritation. "You're a shit kisser, by the way."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Limper than your drooping dick. You're fucking lucky they believed you were serious. I shoulda brought Steve along instead, I bet he'd actually make it look convincin–"

With an exasperated growl low in his throat, he hooks his thick hands onto my hips, smashing our bodies together and silencing me with a rough, bruising kiss. His lips are fierce and his tongue is wet and his mouth is punishing. In seconds, he has me pinned between his tall, hard body and the wall.

His tongue teases mine, lingering. He smooths a warm palm down my arcing spine to give my ass a ragged squeeze while raking a coarse thumb along my jawbone, tilting my head so he can kiss me deeper, pull me closer, steal every last drop of air from my flailing lungs.

My hands fly to his strong shoulders, sinking into the rippling muscle. He suckles my lower lip as he scrapes his fingertips along the soft strip of bare skin peeking from the slit of my dress, and it sends a violent shiver of heat scorching up my thighs.

His kisses are frustrated and hungry and undeniably lethal. With a sharp, demanding jerk of my hips, he's nudging his knee between my legs so I can press myself against his solid thigh, straining into him. Through his slacks, he's hard and huge, and he makes sure I can feel it by digging his arousal firmly against my stomach. I moan around the deft stroke of his tongue and I hate myself for it.

He has the nerve to chuckle; the rasping sound of it rolls through me. His breath streaks hot against my forehead when he grumbles, "Next time you're so desperate for a snog, try asking me nicely."

And then he pulls away, leaving me breathless and reeling and aching.

Every inch of me is clenched tight with need, but I rein it in, cool it down, because I'm a goddamn professional and because there is no way in hell that Jake motherfucking Morgan is ever gonna bring me to my knees.

But before I can get the last word, he's already turned his back to me, striding down the corridor out of sight.

***

Author's Note [Nov. 11th, 2022]:

Ugh, Jake makes me so horny smh

Hi angels! What's happening in your lives? Me: the snow is finally here, school is draining, my friends are awesome, and surprise surprise, I'm still single AF. Ugh.

Do y'all remember for a little while there while I was writing All the Other Pearls I'd give you random insect sex facts from a class I was taking? Well, I don't have random sex facts, but I'm happy to share random medical tid-bits:

Did you know that the most consistent phase of everyone's cycle is the luteal phase? It's usually ~14 days, over which time the corpus luteum (remains of your egg) degenerates. So generally, you can subtract 14 days from the length of your cycle to find the date of ovulation. Your fertile window will be about five days before ovulation and a day after. E.g. if your cycle is 26 days (number of days from the start of one period to the start of another), then 26 - 14 is 12. Your day of ovulation is day 12 and your fertile window is day 7 to day 13. Ofc, this is a ROUGH estimate and everyone's cycle varies.

xoxo Ami