A/N: Y'all, buckle up — this is of my fav chapters of the book, wink wink. xoxo Ami

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fifteen | vienna

the oldest zoo in the world that still exists today can be found in Vienna; constructed in 1782 by Emperor Francis Stephen of Lorraine, the menagerie held an exotic collection of captive animals for the royal family to admire

JAKE

May 8th, 13:11 (GMT +2)
7 days until it happens

"YOU STUPID BITCH-ASS motherfucking son of a bitch-ass motherfucking cunt!"

The bloody foul mouth on this one, I tell you...

After she mugged me off last night and smeared a steaming pile of shite all over MI6's public image, Chief Mills himself gave me a right nasty chewing out. If it wasn't for a decorated list of past accolades and my nearly perfect case-resolution statistics, I probably would've been sacked. As it is, I had to lather on a mountain of charm to persuade them to keep me on the mission. A rogue foreign agent with a vendetta, I explained. I'll take care of it.

And that's not to mention the bloody thrashing my father called to lash me with this morning. A disgrace to the family name. Contemptible. When I was out in the field, I never, not once, ever made myself look so bloody foolish. No, of course not. Even if he threw a fucking grenade at it, butter wouldn't melt.

As I shove Rayna into a high-security holding cell in the basement of the British embassy in Vienna, she savages me with an expression of such vile hatred that a rivet of heat tightens my gut.

There's a toilet, a sink, and a chair. Everything is drab and grey. A camera is fixed to a corner of the ceiling. The squeaky metal cot is nailed into the cement floor; I release her handcuffs but shackle one of her ankles to the bed's bottom rail with a long chain, like a feral dog.

I'm taking care of it, just as I promised.

"You can't keep me here," she threatens, her arms crossed sullenly over her ample chest. (I let her throw on a shirt before we left her hotel room, in case you were wondering.) "It's a violation of my rights. My government will sue your fucking ass."

"You drugged a federal agent of the crown," I remind her flatly. "We have the right to detain you for questioning."

With an angry sound – something between a purr and a growl and a whine, bloody adorable, really – she pounces at me, but I take a few steps back towards the entrance and her cuffed foot jangles and jerks, keeping her stuck right where she is.

She practically snarls at me. I gift her my most charming grin. "Try not to have too much fun, now," I warn, just to rub it in. A vulgar string of Arabic obscenities insulting me and my mother and my father and my sisters and every other conceivable relative rips after me as I take my leave.

Once the door is locked safe and sound with her trapped behind it, I make a trip to the control room down the corridor. There are two chaps from MI5 monitoring the security cams today, Derek and Hasan. "Keep a sharp eye on this one, yeah? She's bloody shifty."

"Bloody fit, she is," Derek counters with a wide, slanted smile.

"We'll keep a very close eye on her, mate," Hasan agrees.

My jaw ticks. For some indecipherable reason, their enthusiasm is irksome.

Gruff, I tell them, "Ring if there's a problem, alright? I've got to dash."

To blow off some steam, I take the stairs rather than the lift up to the sixth floor. With each step, I allow myself to remember, just for a fleeting moment, the way Rayna's tits nearly spilled from her bra as she sat with her legs spread around my thigh earlier. It was the plainest sort of undergarment there is – nude, basic, no-nonsense – and yet it fucking set my bones alight. She had her dainty fists wrapped around my throat, breathy and flushed, her lush brown skin petal-soft. That sweet waft of rosewater was taunting me to lob her onto the bed and kiss her bloody senseless. In fact, I'd bet good money that she would've kissed me back.

Of course, instead, I bound her, kidnapped her, and caged her like a wild animal. Bloody primeval of me, really, but it was the only sure-fire way to get her out of my damn hair so I can finally focus properly on this case.

I snag a quiet desk in one of the upstairs offices. Now, the hardest part of my job. I need to sit and bloody think.

I pull up the video that HQ blipped me a couple hours ago, of Cassidy Dalton pushing her way through a throng of tourists, being manhandled by an unknown male dressed in black. I click rewind, and play it again, and then again.

It feels off to me, but I cannot articulate why. My index finger taps my knee as I try to work through it.

Petite, bobbing blonde head; Burbury trench-coat; the faintest glimpse of a Chanel handbag clutched tight to her shoulder.

It hits me, suddenly. She looks exceptionally well-groomed. Sporting her usual dry-cleaned designer wardrobe, tidy make-up, not a single golden hair out of place. Certainly not the appearance of a woman being held prisoner by a band of unscrupulous brutes.

Slowly, the discordant, mismatched pieces of this hellish puzzle begin to slot themselves together. From the start, none of it seemed to fit. Dead end after dead end, promising leads vanishing into the ether.

Now I know why. The hairs on my arms tingle with vindication and alarm.

It's all because Cassidy Dalton has been—

The shrill ringing of my phone cuts off my train of thought. Irritated, I jab the green button and snap, "What is it?"

The line crackles. Hasan sounds... titillated. Immediately I'm bracing myself for something peculiar. "Uh, mate. Rayna, she, uh..."

"Well, bloody spit it out, then."

Derek chimes in, "Erm, she jimmied open the lock on her restraints, and, uh..."

My eyes swirl towards the rafters with a loaded sigh. Useless plonkers. "Then fucking go in there and refasten them. And put those bloody handcuffs back on while you're at it." I can hear them both breathing heavy through the speaker. One of them squelches with muffled laughter. "Derek, did you just fucking giggle? What the bloody hell are you both on about? If it's too fucking difficult for you, then I'll come down there and do it mysel–"

"Morgan, mate, you should probably, er..." More snickering. "She's, well, she's asking for you. I mean, sort of." In the background, Hasan guffaws. "The thing is, she's, uh..."

"I swear to fucking God, Derek–"

Choked with amusement, Hasan spills, "She's having a wank."

"She's what?" The blood drains from my face and collects somewhere else entirely.

"You know," Derek tries to clarify, "Pumping one out? Flicking the bean. Jerking off, as the Americans say–"

The call disconnects. In thirty-four seconds flat, I've clambered down seven flights of stairs. I burst into the control room to find Hasan and Derek with their grubby noses pressed to the screen, eyes bugging out of their daft skulls.

The audio from Rayna's cell is cranked up to full blast. A searing bolt of static rips down my spine when a long, breathless, high-pitched moan funnels into my ears.

Over Hasan's shoulder, my eyes scrape across the monitor. Rayna is sprawled along the tiny cot, the chain discarded on the blanket near her feet. Her jeans and jumper are piled on the ground. She's peeled her camisole up to her neck, her naked stomach lurching. One of her hands is wedged between her parted thighs while the other squeezes her tits through her bra.

I clamp Derek and Hasan by the shoulders, ripping them away from the computer. "Turn it off."

"What? Come on, mate—"

"Turn it off now, or I'll chop both your fucking knobs off."

They gripe and grouse and reluctantly click at the mouse til the livestream shrinks to black. I swipe a pair of handcuffs from the desk and stuff them into my rear pocket. Before they can curse at me further, I'm already in front of Rayna's room, digging into my jeans for the key and jamming the lock open.

The door slams shut and I lean against it. From the cot, she peeps her head over at me, groaning distastefully, her hands falling to her sides. She props herself up on her elbows and tucks her bare legs together. Her voice drips with acid. "Can I help you with something?"

"What..." I curl an unimpressed eyebrow, "The fuck do you think you're doing?"

With a sarcastic tilt of her mouth, she quips, "Aw, honey. Did your parents never give you the talk? Let me explain, then. It's called masturb–"

"You never shut up, do you?"

She tosses her head back and laughs. It's such a full sound, tinged with joy and so much absolute wickedness that I feel it pierce into my skin. "Why don't you make me?"

I shake my head, even though the idea of shoving something into her mouth to silence her – my finger, my tongue, my dick, anything – is excruciatingly fucking tempting. "Because you'd like it too much."

Her hands fidget boredly with the bedsheets. "So, what? Did you come visit to get a front row seat, or...?"

I try my best to appear utterly disinterested. "I came to tell you to fucking knock it off."

She tsks her tongue at me. Then she pouts and her voice becomes all whiny, like a cranky adolescent. "But before you left you told me to have fun, remember? I'm doing exactly what you said I should, Agent Morgan."

I did say something to that effect, out of a sense of irony, because of course I thought there's absolutely zero bloody fun to be had in a room the size of a matchbox. But once again, she's managed to surprise me. "I told you not to have too much fun, if I remember correctly."

"This is just the right amount of fun."

I rummage a hand through the top of my hair, ruffling it.

"Now, if you excuse me..." She shoos me away with a disdainful fling of her wrist, "I'd like to continue where I left off after you so rudely interrupted."

Walk out the door, Morgan. If she wants to have a bloody wank, then who the fucking hell cares.

I gesture towards the camera above me, though there's not a single doubt that she's already keenly aware of it. "You're distracting my men."

"Not my problem." A breezy shrug. "I don't care if they watch. Let them enjoy the show."

"They have work to do." I'm not being logical, in this moment. But all I know is that there's no bloody way I'm letting those two buffoons watch as Rayna sticks her fingers up her pretty pink cunt.

"Boo fucking hoo. Let them watch or turn the cameras off or whatever." She wrinkles her nose at me. "Is my pussy that much of a threat to your fragile male sensibilities that you need to control what I do with it?" She snorts. "You're not secretly an American, are you?"

"Ha ha." She's fucking witty, I'll give her that much.

She spears me with a cunning, suggestive look intended to trick me into saying something foolish. "Why is it such a big deal to you, anyway?"

I am inexplicably agitated. And for what? Because I thought she'd want me to watch instead of telling me to eff off? I skip over her question and turn the subject around instead. "The lads told me you were... how did they put it? Moaning my name?"

She doesn't even bat an eyelash. "Mhm. Yeah, you wish."

I do wish. I would love to hear her whimper my fucking name while I split her in half.

She's messing with me. Scheming something. I know it. She knows that I know it. But I can't help myself from playing with fire. Just a tad. Waving my toes over the flames to feel how exquisite the singe of it is.

"I think..." She bites impishly into the full flesh of her bottom lip. "You wanna watch. That's why you're here, right?"

"I'm here because you invited me."

"Bullshit. Turn around and leave, then. Right now."

You heard her. Move your sorry arse.

Her sparking grin ignites to a roar when, instead promptly exiting the room, like I should, I step towards her.

She rises to her knees at the foot of the bed and I come to stand just a half-metre away. Our noses are nearly level like this, though I still have a handful of inches on her. Her pale camisole is thin as skin, revealing a streak of her tan stomach. Her knickers cling to her, simple black cotton, insubstantial. I could tear them to shreds with one hand.

Our eyes crash. Hers are warm and dark and glistening with unleashed chaos.

We watch each other. The million different things I could do to her in this very moment scud through my head in a blurry tangle.

She holds my gaze captive as she slowly, slowly slips the pads of her fingers past the waistband of her knickers. She lets out a teeny, contented sigh. I can see the gentle, nudging swirl of her wrist as her fingertips float over herself.

My pulse fucking shatters as she reaches out her other wrist and wraps her fingers around my hand. She drags my palm towards her, brings it near her face. Instinctively, my thumb stretches to catch her lower lip. Her fingers release me and she captures my thumb with her tongue instead, letting it glide into the wet heat of her mouth.

She sucks, hard. My cock throbs in my pants. She nibbles on the tip of my thumb, gazing at me with heavy eyes as she continues to touch herself, gradually pressing firmer and faster.

Her tits peek at me from the edge of her top. Suddenly, I imagine burying my face in them, burning them red with the scruff of my jaw.

My thumb falls from her mouth. I push my hand up her cheek, into the back of her silken hair, tugging at the roots hard enough to prickle. "Mm..." she hums, her breaths pouring past her lips in shallow bursts.

I'm going to fuck this woman to pieces, and she'll thank me for it afterwards.

Soft, teasing, I grunt, "You know there's no fucking way I'm gonna let you come, yeah?"

Her fingers twist a little more insistently between her parted thighs. Her pupils flare. She likes it when I'm nasty to her. "Just let me get close, then..."

She reaches for me again, this time skating her fingers along the hem of my t-shirt. She skims her cool knuckles over my navel and a low, thick sound grates from the centre of my chest.

Sucked into the swelter, I lean in, closer, closer. Her dark eyelashes flutter. She's staring at my lips, now.

The faintest whistle of clinking metal shifts through the room. Just when I think she's gonna plant a whopping smacker onto my mouth, my wrist is bracketed by an iron clamp.

"There," she whispers angelically, drifting a kiss to the tip of my nose and throwing my words from earlier right back at me, "Exactly where you belong."

Before I can punch out my arm to grab her by the throat, she's traipsing away. With an insolent little grin, she pops a shining fingertip, slick with her juices, onto her tongue, and moans like it's the most delicious fucking thing she's ever tasted. "Be a good boy and maybe next time I'll let you have a taste."

"You're a fucking prick-tease, you know that?"

"Mm. A professional fucking prick-tease, as a matter of fact."

She flicks her clothes off the floor and dresses swiftly while I yank at the bloody shackle fastening me to the bed frame, fucking fuming at her, at myself for falling for it.

She can't help herself from milking my humiliation for all it's worth. With a wink, she glides up close to me, slanting her face and murmuring, our bated lips nearly brushing, "Try not to have too much fun without me now, okay?"

The handcuffs from my pocket are snapped into place around her wrist before she can pull away. With a nimble dart of my fingers, I click the other cuff onto the chain dangling from my forearm. When she realizes her mistake, having been a little too glib about her deception and leaving herself exposed to a counterattack, her eyes taper to slivers. Her fingertips claw vengefully into my t-shirt, the entire length of her seething body crushing up against mine.

Despite being partially-bested by her (again, for fuck's sake), I find myself laughing.

I glance up at the camera, certain that Hasan and Derek watched that whole entire scene unfold, howling their bloody arses off. Before I can call for them to fucking set me loose, my phone pings with an incoming message.

BREAKING! Urgent news: Elias Dalton releases official statement splitting prize contract in half. Canadian and British security services ordered to collaborate as of immediately. Report to HQ ASAP for further details.

My throat closes in on itself.

No. No.

There is no fucking way.

Tucked into my hip and snooping at the screen, Rayna cackles. "Guess you're stuck with me. Literally."

I rattle the metal links strung between us. Fifty different shades of red blare across my retinas.

I would rather burn in hell.

END OF PART I

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Author's Note [Oct. 28th, 2022]:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH hahahaha did anyone see that coming?

Tell the truth. Anyone thinking that Rayna & Jake (Jayna? Rake?) might be even more fun than Layd? Be honest! I won't tell Kayden and Layla, I promise!

xoxo Ami