Radclyffe - Oath of Honor
I’ve got a ton of things to do.” At her mother’s frown she added quickly,
“And I promised Emory I’d go out with her and Dana tonight. So I do
have a social life, you know.”
“Are you taking a date?” Denny asked, an eager glint in her eyes.
Wes instantly thought of Evyn. Like every time she thought of
her, the memory of Evyn pressed close in the night flooded through her.
Pleasure warred with pain, and she schooled her face to remain neutral.
“No.”“Huh. What aren’t you telling us?” Denny narrowed her eyes.
“Nothing. I’m just getting together with some friends.”
“Let her be, Denny,” Doris said.
Her mother studied Wes with that laser-beam look that made Wes
think her mother could see inside her head. Considering all she could
see was Evyn naked—moving under her, rising above her, crying out as
she came—she slammed the mental door as quickly as she could. Some
things her mother definitely did not need to know.
“She’ll tell us when she’s ready.” Doris rose and gathered her
things. “She always does.” She kissed Wes on the cheek. “You’ve
always done more than you were asked, and you’ve always been asked
a great deal. They couldn’t have chosen anyone better. We love you.”
“Thanks,” Wes said, her throat tight as she hugged her mother and
sister good-bye. “I love you all too. I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
She had a couple of hours before she was due to meet Emory and
Dana at the Black Fox. She would have canceled, but she knew Emory
would hound her for her reasons. And what could she say? She was
beat after a lousy night’s sleep when she couldn’t stop thinking about
a woman who disordered her orderly world—a woman she’d be much
better off not thinking about at all? No. She’d go out with her best
friend and her lover and do her damnedest to put her night with Evyn
in the past.
She headed to the House. Work might not be everything, but it was
everything she’d always had. Work had always defined her—her goals,
her sense of self, her pleasure, and often her pain. There was comfort in
the familiar, and as her family drove out of the city and the loneliness
seeped back and lay heavy in her throat, she needed a little comfort.
v
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The door opened behind Evyn and she didn’t bother to turn around,
saying to Gary, “You’re early.”
“For what?” Wes said.
Evyn jerked and twisted in her seat. She hadn’t expected to see
her—they didn’t have anything scheduled. Just the night before, she’d
submitted her report to Tom. The long and short of her assessment was
that Wes was not just qualified, she was an excellent choice to head the
WHMU from an operational standpoint. She worked well with a team,
didn’t buck the chain of command, and knew when to take charge when
medical issues demanded. She didn’t have an excuse to spend extra
time with Wes any longer. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
Wes, in dark trousers and a pale blue shirt open at the throat, stood
just inside the door, looking better than Evyn remembered, and she’d
been remembering a lot. The instant her eyes had opened that morning,
like most every morning, she’d thought of Wes. Wondered what Wes’s
day would be like, if she’d moved yet—if she needed help. If she’d
call. And in her next breath, she’d remembered how she’d lain in the
dark torturing herself—rekindling the fire Wes’s hands had ignited in
her belly, savoring the slow buildup while replaying the sound of Wes’s
murmurs in her ear, her low moans, the quick gasp as she orgasmed.
She’d fallen asleep on the crest of her own orgasm with the memory
of Wes’s mouth moving over her skin, so knowing and so sure. She’d
awakened ready for another and would have indulged again if her cell
phone hadn’t vibrated with a message from base advising her she was
needed to fill in because POTUS had decided to go OTR. At the sight
of Wes, the low-level arousal that she had lived with all day, every day,
leaped to life. She worked on sounding casual. “Did you get moved?”
“Just this morning.” Wes headed for the coffeepot, poured a cup,
and gestured with it toward Evyn. “Refill?”
“I’m good.”
Wes put the pot back and gathered herself. She hadn’t expected
to see Evyn, and the surge of pleasure at finding her there took her by
surprise. “I thought you were off today.”
Evyn shook her head with a wry grin. “POTUS decided to go
Christmas shopping.”
Wes rested against the counter and sipped her coffee.
“Something tells me that isn’t your most favorite thing.”
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“Unscheduled trips are about our least favorite. No advance
planning, lots of civilians, way too much exposure.” Evyn laughed.
“We like things to be orderly, controlled, planned out.”
“Sounds a lot like my life,” Wes said.
“Well, you know what happens when all that goes out the window,”
Evyn said softly.
Wes set her coffee aside. Evyn’s eyes were so dark, so deep, Wes
couldn’t look away. The pull on her body to move closer, to touch, was
nearly irresistible, and she gripped the counter to keep herself in place.
“Dangerous.”
“And scary.”
Wes had been scared plenty in her life—scared of what would
happen to her family when her father died, scared of what would happen
if she didn’t get a scholarship, scared of who might pay if she failed to
do her job in the classroom or the field. She’d countered that fear by
working harder and longer until she was absolutely certain the outcome
was in her control. She didn’t leave room for failure. “Sometimes being
scared forces us to be stronger—better.”
“Oh, no question. Nothing like a challenge to make us dig deep,
find out what we’ve really got.”
“And who we really are?” Until recently, Wes had known who she
was and what she wanted. Now she wasn’t so sure.
“That too, sometimes.”
“This is crazy, you know that, right?” Wes murmured.
“Maybe. Probably. I told Tom you were right for the job and field
ready.”
“Did you.” Wes slid her hands into her pockets, crossed her
anklesEvyn swallowed. “Mmm. Last night.”
“So I guess I’m not a squid anymore.”
“Nope.” Evyn laughed.
“No more sims?”
“’Fraid not.”
Wes smiled. “I’m not.”
“No—I imagine you’ll be glad to be done with our daily dates.”
“You too, I imagine.”
“Not so much,” Evyn murmured.
Wes knew exactly what she should do to extinguish the possibilities
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that seemed to be growing without any intention on her part. She knew
what to say, but she’d never been a coward. “I’m meeting friends of
mine”—she glanced at her watch—“in an hour. You like jazz?”
“Sure,” Evyn said, her gaze fixed on Wes’s face.
“When are you going to be done?”
“My push is due in half an hour—” Evyn laughed, shook her head.
“Are you inviting me to go out with you?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing, but I like being with you. Pretending
I don’t when we’re going to see each other every day isn’t going to
work.”
“I’ll come find you when Gary shows up,” Evyn said. “I’m usually
pretty good at pretending, but not so much with you.”
Wes warmed inside. “Tonight…just so we’re clear, it’s just—”
“I know,” Evyn said quickly. “Just friends. I know. That’s good.”
Wes nodded, grabbed her coffee, and left before she said anything
they wouldn’t be able to take back, or live with. She was halfway to her
office before she recognized the ache in her middle was gone.
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chapter twenty-six
So,” Emory said, leaning across Dana at the table and grasping
Wes’s arm, “how did you meet Evyn?”
“We work together.”
“I remember her,” Dana said. “She was at the wedding. One of
the agents.”
“That’s right,” Wes answered while watching Evyn thread her
way through the crowd toward the back of the bar. She looked great
tonight, in plain dark trousers and a white shirt. More than a few people
watched her pass, and Wes struggled between possessiveness and pride.
Both sensations were foreign.
“She’s very nice,” Emory said.
“Yes,” Wes said. The band was good, and the bar was packed.
There hadn’t been much opportunity for conversation, for which she
was grateful. Emory wasn’t as relentless as her mother or Denny when
she wanted to know something, but she didn’t let up. Her curiosity
had been apparent from the instant Wes had introduced Evyn, and
understandably so. Evyn was great company—sociable, funny, at ease
in any situation. Wes doubted she would be as comfortable meeting
any of Evyn’s friends, but then she wasn’t particularly comfortable
in social gatherings to begin with. She hadn’t had much practice.
Evyn undoubtedly had, and thinking about her in a bar, comfortable,
charming, connecting with other women, the twinge of possessiveness
swelled to a surge of jealousy. She promptly extinguished it. She didn’t
have any claim on Evyn, by her own choice.
“Sexy too.” Emory plucked a handful of peanuts from the bowl
on the table.
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Oath Of hOnOr
“Yes,” Wes said.
“When did you lose your powers of speech?” Emory asked with
exaggerated politeness.
Dana cautiously eased her chair back from the table, clearing the
space between Emory and Wes.
“I could use a break here, Em,” Wes said quietly.
“I can see that—you’re out with a great-looking, sexy, charming
woman and you’ve been trying to pretend all evening that she wasn’t
there.”“That’s not true.” Wes could hear the testy tone in her voice and
tried to dial it back. Emory was her friend. “It’s complicated.”
Emory laughed. “Of that, I have no doubt. Neither of you strikes
me as simple. Although sometimes, I think you’re kind of simple-
minded.”
Dana stood up, the loud scraping of her chair audible even over
the music. “I’m gonna go get refills. Another drink, Wes?”
Wes eyed her half-finished beer. She’d had her hand clasped
around the bottle for most of the last set, and the beer was warm. She’d
feared if she let go, her hand would end up on Evyn’s thigh, the hard,
sleek thigh that had somehow come to rest against hers soon after
they’d all sat down. The entire length of her leg tingled, as if Evyn had
been sending a low pulse of energy into her for the past hour. “I’ll have
another Pilgrim.”
“Coming up.”
“So what’s really going on?” Emory asked as soon as they were
alone.“I don’t know, Em,” Wes said, weary of pretending everything
was fine and exactly the way she wanted it. “I’m still trying to sort
things out.”
“But there’s something going on between you. That’s pretty
obvious. She’s been watching you the entire night.”
Wes stiffened. She’d been hyperaware of Evyn since the moment
they’d left the White House and driven to the club in Evyn’s car. They
hadn’t talked much, but the silence hadn’t been uncomfortable. All the
same, every time she looked at Evyn, she’d known the silence was
masking what they both wanted to say. Even the noisy bar and the
diversion offered by Emory and Dana’s company hadn’t diminished her
awareness of Evyn next to her. Her brain registered the music, followed
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along in the conversations, and prompted her to answer when spoken to,
but all she really noticed was Evyn—the heat of her body, the sound of
her voice, the space she occupied at the table. Watching Evyn’s fingers
curl around her glass, all Wes could think of was the sensation of those
fingers gently clasping her breast, stroking her, turning her blood to fire
and her mind to a sea of pleasure.
“You’re attracted to her,” Emory said, making it a statement, not
a question.
“Yes.”
“Which one of you is throwing up walls?”
Wes laughed. “What makes you think we are?”
“Oh, come on. You’re both acting as if it would be a crime to
touch each other.” She shook her head. “The two of you actually go
out of your way not to touch when it would be perfectly natural to do
so—it’s so obvious. So who shot who down?”
“No one,” Wes said, at a loss as to how to make sense of everything.
“It’s mutual—we decided not to go that route.”
“What route?”
“Intimacy.”
“You mean sex?”
“Come on, Emory,” Wes said. “Don’t make this any harder for me.
You know what I mean.”
“Honest, I don’t. Is she married?”
“What? No.”
“I know you’re not.”
Wes shook her head. “Can we not—”
“She’s straight?”
“No,” Wes said definitely. Her stomach twisted, remembering
the way Evyn made love to her, so confidently, so perceptively, so
powerfully. “Definitely, no.”
“And I know you’re not.” Emory raised an eyebrow. “Are you?”
“No,” Wes said, laughing despite her discomfort.
“So what’s the problem? You’re both available, you’re both gay,
and you both obviously have the major hots for each other.”
“We work closely together—a personal relationship could
seriously disrupt the team.”
“May I say, major bullshit?”
“You don’t understand—”
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Oath Of hOnOr
“More bullshit.” Emory spoke without the slightest bit of heat,
just calm certainty. “I know you, and I’m betting any woman you’re
attracted to would be pretty similar as far as this is concerned. Nothing
compromises your work. I bet Evyn is the same way.”
“I’m what way?” Evyn pulled out her chair and sat back down
