A/N: I forgot to mention last time that due to the subject matter addressed in this chapter, the rating is going up to M. Hope you all still enjoy.
Now they're going to bed
And my stomach is sick
And it's all in my head
But she's touching his chest now.
He takes off her dress now.
Let me go.
And I just can't look.
It's killing me
And taking control
Mr. Brightside – The Killers
"No really, what's your plan?" Auggie asked Eyal as they sat at Allen's Tavern going through a pitcher of Killian's faster than they had anticipated.
"Same as always. Make contact, seduce the woman, get what I need, get out before anyone's the wiser." He responded.
"You realize that's not going to work, right?"
"Trust me Auggie, this is not a department I have trouble in." Eyal found it slightly disconcerting when the blind man rolled his eyes at him.
"Yeah, except this time Annie's going to be right there beside you. You really think you're going to take this asset to bed with her watching?"
"That's basically the assignment. Why not?" He tried to be flippant about it.
"Right…" Auggie let the single word draw out.
"If there's something you want to say to me Auggie, why don't you just go ahead and say it."
"There is no way you are going to have sex with this asset."
"I've been doing this a lot longer than you have…" Eyal started.
Auggie interrupted, "I didn't say you wouldn't be able to get the woman to sleep with you, I said you wouldn't do it."
"You have no idea what I would or wouldn't do." Eyal contradicted.
"I know you wouldn't hurt Annie like that."
And to that, Eyal had no response.
Auggie continued, "Face it, everyone in the department, except for Annie herself, sees what's going on."
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Eyal immediately took a long swig of his beer and realized that there was no polygraph in the world that he would have been able to pass with that one.
"Right. Because you're not in love with Annie."
Eyal opened his mouth to object, but realized there was no way he was going to get that lie past the blind man across the table from him. "I suppose we can smell our own…" he mused.
"Touché." Auggie answered.
They both sat and drank silently for a moment.
Eyal broke the silence. "Do you think that Joan realizes that by partnering me with Annie, she has effectively castrated me?"
"I'd bet she's fully aware of that fact."
"Arthur is a much braver man than I." Eyal quipped.
"I'll second that." Auggie agreed and held up his glass. Eyal clinked his against it and they both smiled and took a long swallow of the reddish amber liquid.
It was a few moments before they spoke again. Auggie decided to change the subject. "So you never did tell me what happened on the way back from Mexico."
"Nothing." Eyal laughed. "She's getting better at lying you know."
"I hadn't noticed. But then I don't usually give her a reason to need to lie to me."
"Well she had me completely convinced for a solid twenty seconds that she was going to take me up on my friendly offer to induct her into the Mile High Club."
"Really? Because in what world could you ever actually imagine her doing that?"
"Exactly. She's getting that good."
"Or you're getting that desperate." Auggie smiled as he said it.
"I prefer to believe the former."
"Whatever helps you get through the day. And more importantly, this mission." Auggie drained the rest of his cup and reached for the empty pitcher. "One more?" He asked when he realized they had finished it.
Eyal nodded and signaled to the waitress. A moment later she brought the pair a fresh pitcher. They turned the conversation to more trivial matters, like Argentina's chance at the World Cup this year and whether Stu's new girlfriend, that he had introduced to the guys from work the previous weekend , was actually a hired escort.
…
Joan sat in bed reading, waiting for Arthur to join her. He had been stuck late at the office and finally gotten home a few minutes earlier. He had inhaled the left overs she had saved for him in the refrigerator without even warming them, then hurried up to meet his wife in their bedroom. Things had been going well between them since she had admitted to her relapse. He had been supportive, and with the improved morale in the DPD, she was feeling even more confident in her recovery. It had actually brought them closer together.
Arthur stepped out of the bathroom, and joined her in the bed. "I hear you're doing some very naughty things with your new toy." He smiled lasciviously at her.
She closed her book, put it on the night stand, and turned to him. "You are going to have to be more specific." She replied with a coy smile.
He raised an eyebrow slightly at his wife. "I was referring to the Reed mission. Sending Walker and Lavin into a swinger social club..."
"I needed a pair of agents that could pass as a couple and are attractive enough to hold the interest of the targets. They were the logical choice."
"Except for the part where he's in love with her, and you're making them seduce other people in front of each other. What could possibly go wrong with that?" He added the last bit sarcastically.
"I'm also not entirely sure that Annie doesn't have feelings for him as well." Joan added.
"All the more reason that they may not be the right choice for this."
"It's the perfect mission for them." Joan defended. "If they really do have feelings for each other then they will either need to learn to put their feelings aside for the mission or become resourceful enough to work around them. If they can't, it's better to know now before we invest any more time or resources into Eyal."
"Not every partnership in the Agency works out the way ours did." Arthur cautioned her. "If this ends badly, you'd still choose to keep Walker over a highly trained former-Mossad assassin?"
"Yes, I would keep Annie in the DPD. I'm sure you could find something to do with Eyal. Send him off on covert missions like you did with Ben Mercer. You could make a whole black-ops department of Annie's cast-offs." She smiled glibly at her husband.
"My concern is that if you have to separate them, we'll lose Lavin. He's already shown a stronger loyalty to that young woman than to his own country and agency." Arthur warned.
"Well, then let's hope they can find a way to get through this mission." She stubbornly smiled back.
"You're hoping for an awful lot from these two. You know how hard it is for operatives with emotional attachments to each other to work together in the field and survive it."
"We did it."
"But that was no walk in the park. You aren't starting to buy into all the office scuttlebutt that people are saying she reminds them of you when you were fresh off the farm, are you?"
"Is it so hard to believe that there's still a little bit of that hopeless romantic you fell in love with left in me?" She smiled softly at him and put a hand on his chest.
"I don't know. Let's see if I can find it." He rolled on top of his wife and began to kiss her as he reached over and turned out the lamp on her night stand.
…
"I still don't get it." Annie sighed, frustrated.
"We suspect her boyfriend has been giving classified missile component specs to his new girlfriend, who is likely an FSB agent. What's not to get?" Eyal shrugged.
Annie, Eyal, and Auggie were sitting at her desk in the DPD as the last half hour of the official work week ticked slowly away. "I get the mission. What I don't get is the lifestyle choice."
"Ah yes. 'The Lifestyle'." Auggie interjected. "Turns out that it's actually much more common than people believe, especially in this part of the country."
"What's so hard to understand ?" Eyal questioned. "It's an excuse for people that are unhappy in their relationships to have sex with other people."
Annie wasn't convinced. "That's what I always thought too, but look at this woman that we're supposed to turn. Sasha's been with this one guy, Phillip Reed, for six years now. They date, they go on vacations together, they do everything a regular couple does, but then most weekends they go to this club, meet other couples and trade partners for the night. They aren't married. They don't have kids. They don't even live together. If the relationship is missing something that badly, why not just break up?"
"Maybe they really do have strong feelings for each other?" Auggie proposed.
"Then why did Phil start up with a second girlfriend?" Annie railed.
"That one's easy." Eyal commented. He and Auggie nodded in each other's general direction and sniggered.
"So she's a model from the Ukraine and almost half his age. Is that really all it takes?"
"Yes." Both Eyal and Auggie answered definitively at the same time.
"Men." Annie grumbled. "But why take this Sofiya on as a girlfriend? Why not just sleep with her on occasion? It's not like making her his girlfriend makes her stop sleeping with other guys? I mean, she sleeps with other guys in front of him!"
Eyal just shrugged his shoulders. "It's fortunate that we don't have to understand their kinks, just exploit them."
"And Walker, I'm just going to throw it out there, but you're going to have to pretend to be one of them tonight. You might want to tone down the revulsion just a bit." Auggie suggested.
"I know that." She glared at him, ineffectively. "That's why I was hoping I could understand all of this better. Maybe if I could get some of the motivations I could connect with Sasha more easily."
"I'm pretty sure you're not the one that Joan intended to connect with Sasha tonight." Auggie leered.
Eyal seemed suddenly uncomfortable, but didn't say anything.
"She doesn't actually expect us to sleep with these people." Annie defended with conviction. She looked back and forth between her two friends and found them both diverting their eyes. "Right?" She added, a little less convinced now.
"There's really only one reason to send a pair of operatives into a swinger club." Eyal finally responded quietly without making eye contact.
Annie was unable to hide her disgust. "Tell me you're not actually considering doing that?" She worried that it came out sounding as jealous as she felt when he lifted his gaze from the floor to meet hers.
The look in his eyes was pleading and apologetic. "We're being sent to turn this woman. I'll do whatever I have to to complete this mission. Like it or not, that's our job."
"Can you even turn an asset without sleeping with her?" Annie sneered at her partner. "From what I've seen, you're kind of a one trick pony." She hoped the teasing would camouflage her actual concern.
"I have other means of handling assets."
"That don't involve blunt force trauma?" She questioned.
"My repertoire may be limited, but it remains effective." He defended jokingly.
Annie barely forced a smile. Her mind was reeling and she was being overrun with at least a dozen different emotions at this new revelation of what she may actually be in for later that night. She had slept with a target exactly once in her career. Joan was well aware that that scenario had not ended particularly well. She couldn't imagine that her current boss actually intended for them to have sex with these people to get what they needed. That was Lena's style, not Joan's. But Lena had been right. It was no secret that the Agency had no qualms about putting male operatives in the position to use sex to turn assets. Is that why Joan had picked them? Rather had she picked Eyal for the mission and Annie was just stuck tagging along for the ride as his handler? The thought of having to watch and even play along as he took another woman to bed turned her stomach as violently as that Mexican grouper sandwich had the week before. She was fairly certain that she was actually beginning to have a panic attack.
"Earth to Walker?" Auggie interrupted her downward spiral.
"What?" She snapped back.
"Where did you just go?" He asked.
"I'm right here. I was just thinking about what I should wear tonight." She lied and hoped they wouldn't see through it.
"It's a swinger club." Eyal responded nonchalantly. "You should go home, open up your closet, ask yourself 'what in here looks the sluttiest?' and chose that." He went so far as to use a falsely high pitched voice for the part of the statement where she addressed the closet.
"Probably not a good idea." Auggie disagreed.
"Why not?" They both asked.
"Because you have to keep up your cover." Auggie glared in Eyal's general direction. "If you can't take your eyes off her, nobody in that place is going to believe you're there to hook up with other people."
"Then maybe you should pick out my outfit." Annie teased him.
"Actually, that's not a bad idea."
"You have got to be kidding." Eyal laughed.
"I'm serious." Auggie insisted. "We should both be there." He nudged Eyal's shoulder.
"That sounds like the opening line of a bad porno." Annie glared in the men's direction.
"He's got a point." Eyal added. "People are going to be watching us and judging us all night. Bring your things to my apartment this evening. We'll get ready together. It will make everything less awkward by the time we get to the club."
"And Auggie's invited because…" She asked with a raised eyebrow.
"To keep your cover this weekend, you're going to have to do God knows what with each other and the targets, and possibly in front of any combination of the above. If you two can't change clothes together in front of a blind guy without getting awkward, your cover's already blown."
Annie realized that they had a point, but it still just seemed creepy. Then again, everything about this mission was creepy to her. Why not try to get some of it out of the way sooner rather than later at the club when their actions would be scrutinized by a room full of people trying to find a way to get them into bed. "Fine." She grumbled her ascent.
"Well that's settled then." Eyal announced. "My apartment, seven o'clock?"
They all agreed and checked the clock. It was finally 4:55, so the trio disbanded to their respective desks and began shutting down computers for the weekend and preparing to leave the office. They all regrouped at the DPD door and walked through the building together.
"You didn't have anything better planned for this evening, did you?" Eyal asked Annie after they said goodbye to Auggie at the front entrance and continued on to the parking lot.
"Just to try to get in a quick run if the weather stays nice. I should still be able to squeeze one in."
"You do seem to enjoy your little jogs, don't you?" He smiled.
"We can't all stay as naturally fit as you." She bumped her shoulder into his intentionally. "You're welcome to join me."
"I think I'll go home and rest. Who knows if we'll be getting any sleep tonight." He wiggled an eyebrow at her suggestively. She shoved his shoulder and rolled her eyes before they parted ways to find their respective vehicles.
…
Annie knocked on Eyal's door at 6:58. He opened the door and found her standing there with a garment bag over one shoulder and a large duffel bag over the other. He quickly took the bags from her and stepped out of the doorway so she could enter.
"Oy gevalt Neshema!" He greeted her, "Did you bring everything you own?"
"Not nearly." She smiled back. "Seeing that the whole point of the evening was to pick what I should wear, I figured that I should bring options. And in retrospect we probably should have done this at my place."
He led them into the bedroom and placed the bags on the edge of the bed. Annie tried very hard to avoid looking at the bed. Even though she had slept in it for weeks, now that he had returned, it was all his. And standing that close to his bed, with him hovering over her was just a little much with all the thoughts running through her head on this particular night. Especially when he had obviously just gotten out of the shower. His hair was still damp, and his skin was moist and smelling like soap. He had thrown on a t shirt and jeans, likely for her benefit, but had not yet shaved or taken any other steps to prepare.
Annie opened the duffel and started pulling out a few items. Eyal's continued hovering just inside the limit of her personal space kept her slightly unnerved. "I should go shower." She nearly stuttered when she looked up at him.
He was staring down at her intensely, and she was sure that he was about to let slip some comment about how he should have waited to shower with her. He surprised her when he reached out and took her hand and began, "Annie, I wanted to talk to you before Auggie gets here."
"Ok." She couldn't hide the nerves in her voice and he realized it.
The nervous expression on his face quickly dropped to a soft smile. He let go of her hand and reached around to pull her into a hug. He still felt tense, and the friendly gesture didn't exactly calm her down any.
"Neshema, I have never seen you this nervous."
"It's this mission. And it doesn't really help that you're on edge too." She retorted.
He chuckled softly and she could feel him start to relax in her arms. She let her head rest on his shoulder and realized that she was beginning to unwind a bit as well.
"Everything about this mission is just so far outside my comfort zone." She finally admitted.
"Then it's a good thing I'll be there with you." He comforted.
"Given the nature of this mission, I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse." She leaned her head back and looked up into his eyes.
"Why do you think that is?" He asked cautiously. There was a glimmer of something resembling optimism or hope in his voice and in his eyes.
Was he really doing this to her now? Was he really trying to get her to admit her feelings for him out loud? She wasn't sure she could say it first, wasn't sure she was ready.
He picked up on her hesitation instantly. She registered the slightest disappointment in his eyes before he filled the silence. "Think of this like any other assignment. It's all acting for the sake of completing a mission. Nothing that happens tonight is going to change anything between us." He paused and lifted a hand to the side of her face. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before re-opening them and looking her in the eyes. "It doesn't change how I feel…"
He was interrupted by a fervent knock on his front door.
Eyal dropped his hand from her face and hung his head briefly before muttering, "Auggie." He stepped back, sighed, and looked at her again. "Is his timing always…"
"Yup." She answered. "I'm gonna go take that shower."
Eyal walked to the door and unlatched the deadbolt. He caught sight of his Sig sitting on the hallway table in his peripheral vision and briefly debated shooting the visitor on the other side of the door. Auggie's timing was a constant source of frustration in his life. He had probably killed men for less before. Unfortunately, Eyal knew that killing her best friend would probably put him on the outs with Annie, so he left the gun on the table and opened the door. In his mind he reserved the right to at least knee cap the guy if he interrupted any more intimate moments in the future.
"Auggie, come on in." He put a hand on the man's elbow and led him to the couch in the living room.
"Walker here yet?" He asked.
"She just stepped into the shower."
"And you're out here with me. Night's not off to a very good start for you, is it?"
"You could say that." Eyal mumbled.
"Would this help?" Auggie opened his bag and pulled out a bottle of tequila.
"Absolutely." Eyal smiled and patted Auggie on the shoulder as he walked into the kitchen to grab a few glasses.
Eyal liked the blind man. He was Annie's best friend and obviously also harbored deep feelings for her. A lesser man might have taken offense to Eyal's sudden butting in on his turf. Instead Auggie had embraced his arrival and presence in Annie's life. While Eyal thought that it would have been easy to be only jealous of an interloper such as himself, Auggie actually seemed happy to have someone to commiserate with over the trials and tribulations that defined Annie Walker's affections. Eyal respected him for that.
"Have you given any more thought to how far you're going to let this go tonight?" Auggie asked.
Eyal returned, handed Auggie a glass, and placed two on the coffee table. He poured a few ounces of the tequila into each and settled into the armchair. "I've decided not to decide." He announced. "I'll let her take point. She can call the shots and decide how far anything goes. I'm just there to have her back."
"Damn." Auggie sighed. "Handsome and smart. Now I really am screwed." They both laughed a little.
"You've known her much longer than I have." Eyal asked, "How long do you think this getting ready is going to take?"
"Your guess is as good as mine." Auggie replied. "And it pains me to tell you this, because I'm sure you'll use it to your advantage at some point, but if you are looking at simple duration of acquaintance, I've only known her about three weeks longer than you have."
Eyal was shocked.
"That's a shocked silence if ever I've heard one." Auggie smiled.
"In Zurich I knew she was green, but only three weeks off the farm?"
"Actually, she hadn't even finished her training, officially. Joan pulled her for a specific mission before she finished her fire arms certification, and decided to keep her."
"That explains the gun issue." Eyal contemplated. "I suppose she was just blessed with a natural aptitude for spycraft."
"She's certainly not your typical field agent, but I think that's what makes her so good." Auggie mused.
They both sipped at the tequila for a while. Eventually Eyal turned on the television and they were able to catch the tip off of a college basketball game. A few minutes later they heard the shower cut off. A minute or two after that they heard a hair dryer turn on. They still had plenty of time, but Eyal was getting bored. There were other things he could have been doing in preparation for this mission. Instead he was entertaining his friend-slash-romantic rival while he waited for Annie to blow dry her hair. When had this become his life? He downed the rest of the tequila in his glass.
…
Annie stood in front of the mirror and took a few deep breaths. She had taken her time showering to attempt to calm her nerves. Despite the mid-sentence interruption, the conversation that Eyal had tried to have with her did make her feel a bit better. This was just their job. What they would do tonight would be no different than when actors walk out onto a set to film a risqué scene for a movie. It wasn't real and it wasn't them. She finished drying her hair and straightening it. Then she put on some make-up. This time she went with a smokey eye and a more muted lipstick. She pulled Eyal's robe, that she had commandeered after the shower, tightly around her and poked her head out the bathroom door into the bedroom. Fortunately it remained empty and the door leading to the living room closed. She could hear the sounds of a basketball game on the television and the occasional voices of her friends from the other side.
She stepped up to the door and called out through it, "Is that Auggie that I hear out there?"
"Your ears do not deceive you." He called back. "And I brought a little something to help take the edge off."
"Just tell me it's not tequila."
There was an extended pause before he responded in a less than confident voice, "It's not tequila."
A shot of tequila probably would have done some great things for her nerves, actually, but even the thought of the amber liquid conjured up the vivid sensory recall of vomiting in a hotel bathroom.
"So how much of this outfit do you guys need to approve?" She called out as she began sifting through the lingerie she had brought with her.
"All of it." Auggie yelled back.
"You seriously want me to walk out there in my underwear?" She knew what the answer was going to be, but she asked anyway.
Both men yelled back a synchronized "Yes."
She rolled her eyes. "Any suggestions?"
"If you guys get to the point where somebody's going to see it, it better be something you feel comfortable in. Go with your gut. We'll let you know what we think." She swore she could hear them giggling out there when Auggie had finished.
Her gut was telling her to go with something that she would feel sexy in. It might also be fun to blow Eyal's mind just a little. She knew exactly what to wear.
It was a set she had gotten from Victoria's Secret the previous fall, but hadn't had a chance to wear. She refused to let her mind even register that she had bought the lingerie while still seeing Simon and his untimely death was the reason it remained unworn. Tonight she had more on her mind than getting depressed about a past she could not change. She shimmied into the short black lace and silver accented bustier that incorporated a push up bra and stopped just below her ribs. She slid the side zipper all the way down and admired what it did for her figure. Then she pulled on the matching lace low rise micro-mini skirt/thong/garter belt combination. Lastly, she slipped her legs into a pair of black lace topped thigh highs and connected them to the garter belt. She pulled on the black Manolo Blahnik pumps that would match the skirt she planned to wear over the lingerie and took a look in the mirror. She ran her fingers through her hair a few times, but felt like something was still missing. Then she spotted her necklace sitting on the counter where she had placed it while she took her shower. She slipped it over her neck and let the old key dangle just below the swell of her breasts. It matched the look perfectly and she couldn't help but feel that Simon's old key hanging from the new chain Eyal had given her was a nice homage to the original intent of the outfit and its new repurposing.
She took another deep breath and let her new-found confidence take over. It was like Auggie had said earlier. If she couldn't walk around in her underwear in front of the two men she trusted most in this world, she had no business stepping foot into that club tonight.
…
Auggie seemed a bit more excited for the lingerie fashion show than Eyal, which he felt was odd since it wasn't like the man next to him was even going to see any of it. Eyal wasn't about to turn down a chance to see Annie in any state of undress, but he was realistic about it. Odds were high that whatever simple bra and panty set she chose to wear would probably actually cover more skin than the bikini he had seen her running around in all afternoon last week. Would she still look amazing, of course, but of all the things that could happen tonight, this was not the event that was going to make him lose his cool.
He heard Annie yell through the door again, "Alright. I'm coming out. You'll be honest about if this looks ok, right?"
"Sure you don't want a shot first to take the edge off?" Auggie offered.
"Keep that tequila away from me. Just let me do this before I lose my nerve."
Just as the sound of the doorknob turning registered, Auggie shot out his hand and grabbed Eyal's wrist. Eyal was about to say something about it, but then the movement in the bedroom doorway caught his eye. As Annie stepped into view he couldn't have said anything if he'd wanted to. He had lost all ability to speak. He also couldn't breathe, and he was certain his heart was about to either seize or explode, he wasn't quite sure which. She had made eye contact with him as soon as the door had opened and had kept her eyes trained on him the entire time, He had been unable to keep his eyes from moving up and down over her form in reverence, but eventually they met hers again and locked. Whatever her insecurities earlier in the night, she had obviously worked something out because she stood in front of him, slack jawed leering and all, completely poised an confident - the Annie Walker he had always known.
"Hot damn Walker!" Auggie announced eagerly.
She rolled her eyes at him. "No offense Auggie, but that doesn't exactly mean much coming from you right now. You have no idea what I'm wearing."
"That may be true," then he held up Eyal's wrist and they all now realized that he had his fingers on the other man's pulse, " But I do know that his heart rate just jumped about 60 beats per minute and his pulse feels like his blood pressure probably just spiked about thirty points. I'm guessing you look smokin' hot."
Eyal shook off the other man's grip and looked slightly embarrassed.
Annie smiled, looking pleased with herself. "Well I hope so, and thank you."
Eyal was just thinking that he might have regained his power of speech when she started walking towards him. For a moment he thought she was about to crawl into his lap, which would have absolutely ended him, but instead she perched herself on the arm of the over-stuffed chair he was sitting in. She slowly crossed her legs, making the little so-short-it-really-shouldn't-even-be-considered-a-skirt rise even higher up her thighs. Then she leaned forward and all he could see was the necklace he had bought for her cascading down the cleavage the bustier had enhanced.
"So you're being awfully quiet." She looked at her partner. "Do you think this will work, or should I try something else?"
He had no idea how she was staying so calm. She might as well have been sitting there in sweats, as relaxed as she seemed. He forced himself to take a deep breath and mentally chastised himself for getting this out of control. If she could do this, so could he. "I think that will do." It came out as nonchalant as he had hoped it would.
"Good. That means it's your turn." She put a hand on his back and gave him a little shove forward out of the chair.
"Fine. But are you done in the bathroom? I need to shave."
"Don't!" She blurted out. "At least let me see how it looks with whatever you're going to wear. Right now it's giving you this… rugged charm."
He rolled his eyes at her, unconvinced, and retreated into the bedroom.
Annie got up from the chair and sat down on the couch next to Auggie.
"I had my doubts, but I think this really was a good idea." She smiled at him.
"And here I thought we were just being a couple of pervy guys abusing an opportunity to see a hot woman in her underwear."
Annie shoved his shoulder slightly.
"But there is something I wanted to talk to you about before he gets back." Auggie leaned in and spoke in a subdued voice.
"Ok."
"I heard some things today around Langley."
"What kind of things?" She questioned.
"Just some whispers out of Arthur's office. It sounds like he's making some discreet inquiries into options for alternative uses for Eyal in case you two can't work together."
"What!" Annie barely contained her rage. "We work together just fine. There hasn't been a single problem. Why are they doing this?"
"Nothing is in action yet, but it sounded like they will be watching how you two handle yourselves on this mission very closely."
"So if something goes wrong tonight, it's all over?"
"I don't know anything for certain, but I get the impression that they are concerned that you two are too close to each other to objectively handle certain situations in the field."
"And that's not at all ironic coming from Arthur Campbell." She spat.
"I'm not saying I agree with it." Auggie attempted to calm her down, "I just wanted you to know what you're up against. The best thing you can do tonight is stay focused. Make contact, turn this asset, and get the details to catch the FSB operative and stop the information leak. They can't argue with results."
"Then I'll give them results." The determination in her voice was almost palpable.
"That's my girl." Auggie smiled and moved to put a hand on her knee in what was intended to be friendly gesture of support, but his aim was slightly off and the hand ended up around mid-thigh. Then they both became acutely aware of what she was wearing.
"Thigh highs?" He asked.
"Yeah." She responded a little bashfully.
"Garter belt?"
"Maybe…"
He downed the rest of the tequila in his glass in a single swallow. "Go easy on him tonight." Auggie moved his hand to her shoulder and patted it reassuringly.
Just then Eyal walked out of the bedroom wearing a black pair of nicely fitted slacks and buttoning up a black dress shirt over his bare chest. "Is the black shirt too much?" He asked and raised his eyes to take in the scene. He saw Annie sitting on the couch next to Auggie, and briefly caught a glimpse of him moving his hand from her thigh to her shoulder. She was smiling demurely and Auggie looked just a little bit too happy about the predicament.
Annie noticed the flash of jealousy in his eyes and realized how her position with Auggie must have looked. She also didn't miss the instinctual darting of his eyes from the offending scene to the hallway table where his gun sat. When he looked back at her she smiled and slightly shook her head side to side at him. She hoped he could reign in his jealous and overly protective nature for at least the night. It sounded like their partnership depended on it. She stood and walked up to him.
"I like it. It looks very Johnny Cash." She smiled up at him and fastened the last two buttons for him. "And definitely leave the stubble." She ran a hand softly along his cheek then patted his chest.
"Auggie?" He asked for the other man's opinion.
"I know that tone of voice. You do whatever she says." He laughed.
"And hey!" Annie suddenly looked put out. "You're fully clothed. How come you didn't have to parade around out here in your underwear?"
He leaned in and whispered in her ear, "Because I'm not wearing any."
"Oh." She blushed slightly as he pulled back and smiled at her. "I guess I should finish getting dressed then."
"Or not. It's your choice really." He smiled at her.
She rolled her eyes and walked back into the bedroom. She opened the garment bag and pulled out a deep teal colored sleeveless cowl neck blouse. She tucked it into a high waisted black skirt that hugged her curves and stopped just above her knees. It was sophisticated but sexy. She left the key safely tucked between the shirt and the bustier so that only a portion of the chain showed. Then she touched up her make-up, ran a brush through her hair one more time, and gathered her things. She walked into the living room carrying her bags and quickly dumped them near the front door. Then she turned to the two men, held her hands up and spun around slowly for their inspection. "Acceptable?" She asked.
"You're gonna have to help me out on this one." Auggie looked to Eyal.
"I'm no help." He admitted. "She could be wearing a burlap sack and it would still look sexy because I know what's underneath."
Annie gave Eyal a little half smile and briefly described the outfit to Auggie.
"So kinda like what you'd wear to work but a little tighter and with a little more cleavage?" He asked.
"Exactly." She smiled at her friend.
"That should do it." He replied
"Then it looks like it's time to get this show on the road." She suggested.
They pulled on their coats, turned off the lights, and headed out the door together. Eyal drove and they had agreed to drop Auggie back at his apartment on their way to the club. While all three of them were still together they reviewed the case file.
"So we believe that Sofiya, the new girlfriend is really an FSB operative." Annie recited.
"The stolen tech info began appearing almost immediately after she came onto the scene, so it's a pretty safe bet." Auggie confirmed.
"Plus look at her and look at him. She has to be working him for something. No way a woman like that ends up with a man like him." Eyal added.
"What we don't know," Annie continued, "Is if the target, Phil, is a willing participant in the espionage or if she is gaining access to his work without his knowledge."
"With the amount of security clearances and safeguards in place to protect that data, it's hard to believe that a woman that spends two nights a week with him could gain access without his help." Auggie supplied.
"But we have seen it before." She gave Eyal a pointed glance.
"And that's why we're trying to turn girlfriend number one. So that we can have the access to find out." He responded.
"And that's who we are approaching tonight. The file says that Phil usually spends Friday nights with Sofiya, then the rest of the weekend with Sasha. If we can get to Sasha tonight, then it will give us fourty-eight hours to get everything we need on Phil before Sofiya finds out we're onto her." Annie filled in.
"What intel do we have on the players on a personal level?" Eyal asked.
Auggie retrieved the brail file from his messenger bag and began to summarize. "Sasha Tester is thirty-eight, grew up in the Williamsburg area and divorced from an abusive seven month long marriage when she was twenty. It appears she was introduced to 'The Lifestyle' a few years later by a boyfriend with an adventurous side. After a few months she ditched the boyfriend, but kept the new hobby. She's been a regular on the scene pretty much from that point on. She keeps an apartment of her own near Dupont circle that she shares with a platonic roommate and an aging cat. She works as a dental assistant for a small family owned orthodontics practice in DC, where her co-workers describe her as hard working and nice enough, but with a tendency to go a little overboard on the explicit TMI."
"So if she weren't a swinger, she'd be a giant nobody." Eyal summarized.
"Precisely." Auggie continued. "About seven years ago she began playing a recurring role in the sex life of one Phillip Reed, a now 42 year old engineer that owns his own tech firm and frequently contracts out to the military industrial complex. He had two girlfriends when he met Sasha, but eventually ditched both of them to take up with her as a full time partner just over six years ago. Together they've made quite a name for themselves and are considered to be nearly royalty in the DC swinger community."
"But it sounds like there's trouble in paradise." Annie commented.
"Right you are." Auggie smiled at her. "About three months ago Sasha and Phil broke their tradition of exclusively swapping with other couples and brought the solo Sofiya Kravic home with them for a little ménage a trois. At twenty-four years old she may have aged out of the modeling scene in her homeland of the Ukraine, but Phil doesn't seem to mind. A few weeks later word got out that he had taken her as a second girlfriend."
Eyal questioned, "But he remains with Sasha as well. Do we know why?"
"Or why she stays with his big lovin' polygamist ass?" Annie added.
"The motivations behind that relationship remain a mystery. Sofiya's motivations, however, are a bit clearer." Auggie finished. "Almost immediately after she and Phil sealed the deal, an FSB operative was detained overseas in possession of specs from Phil's company's most recent DOD contract project."
"Wouldn't be the first time an agency used washed up models to seduce foreign targets." Eyal shrugged.
Annie didn't seem that impressed. "Not very original. Or subtle."
"But apparently still effective." Eyal sounded a bit sarcastic with his remark.
"What this tells me," Annie began, "Is that Sasha is still in love with Phil. No matter what she says or what their anti-monogamist hobbies might include, she can't be happy about Phil taking a new girlfriend after six years of being his one and only. Since the one time they broke their routine of both swapping with partners from another couple is when she ended up getting hit with this new complication in her relationship, I doubt she's going to break from that routine again."
"Meaning?" Eyal asked.
"Sorry to rain on your parade partner, but since she's going to be solo tonight there's probably no chance that anything will happen until Phil joins her tomorrow."
"So the focus of tonight is ensuring that we are the couple that gets the invite for tomorrow night's private party." Eyal smiled.
Annie wasn't sure, but she could have sworn he sounded slightly relieved. She certainly felt relief at the realization that the odds were not in the favor of having to be the third wheel while Eyal seduced another woman tonight. Now all they had to do was get Sasha to take them to Phil tomorrow night. More than likely they could get whatever information they needed out of Phil to determine if he was a willing participant in the classified info dissemination long before any clothes started coming off. She added, "Once we can get to Phil, we find out if he really doesn't know what is going on. If not, we can read him in and use him to help catch Sofiya. If he is part of it, he's headed for federal prison, and Sofiya isn't far behind. The secret is keeping her out of the loop just long enough to spring the trap on her."
"That means absolutely maintaining out cover until we know his level of involvement and can set up a trap for his handler." Eyal eyed Annie incredulously.
"Which brings us to your cover story." Auggie chimed in. "Tonight you are Alexis and George, transplants from New York City where you had met Rhonda and Michael Stevens, who are your references for this evening. Entrance into the club requires a reference from a previous or current member couple. They were fairly popular in this scene and even swapped with our targets a few times before moving to NYC a few months ago. Details beyond that are up to you."
At that time the car approached Auggie's building and Eyal parked on the street in front.
"Anything else we need for tonight?" Annie asked as he started to get out.
"Yeah. Good luck." He answered with a smile and let the doorman help him towards the door.
It suddenly began to feel slightly awkward in the car with just the two of them. Annie looked at the man on her left as he concentrated on driving through the downtown traffic. He seemed more tense than usual, but that wasn't really a surprise. If Joan had wanted to put them to a stress test, she'd found the perfect mission. While she really hoped that her insights into Sasha's mindset would be accurate, there was no guarantee that something untoward wouldn't still happen tonight. She wasn't sure she could handle it, but she didn't have any options. She knew that if she wanted him to stay as her partner, as part of her daily life, all of this was going to have to go smoothly. That meant she would have to do the one thing she had never quite seemed to be able to do in the past – separate her personal feelings from the mission entirely. Separation of personal and professional feelings had proven time and time again to be her white whale. Tonight the mission and her partner, the person she probably had the strongest personal feelings for of anyone currently in her life, depended on her ability to do just that.
Eyal decided to break the silence. "So we are agreed? The purpose of making contact with the asset tonight is to ensure that she provides us access to the target tomorrow. We will maintain our cover and we will not be reading her in on this."
"Agreed. I can't get a good read on Sasha. Her motivations and allegiances are just too unclear to trust her."
"I'm glad to see that you are starting to be a little more conservative in whom you will place your trust." Eyal shot a sideways glance and smile at her.
"You could say I learned my lesson with Megan." Annie admitted. "An asset in love can be unpredictable. As important as this mission is, we can't leave it up to chance."
"So tonight we are Alexis and George, swinger couple. No matter what?"
"No matter what." She confirmed. She convinced herself of it as she said the words. She gave it a moment for everything to sink in, then asked, "So why is it always 'George'? I hear George and think of Costanza, who you totally do not remind me of."
Eyal smiled at the Seinfeld reference. "Do you promise not to laugh?"
"If you have to preface this explanation with that question, absolutely not." She grinned.
"I know it's a bit before your time," He started mock-condescendingly, "but when I was growing up in the seventies there was this movie called Star Wars."
"Really? I've never heard of it. Did you have to ride your dinosaur to the theater to see it?" She smirked.
"Excellent. You're teasing me about my age. This will undoubtedly end well." He huffed.
"You started it."
"Very mature."
She stuck her tongue out at him. He rolled his eyes.
"Never mind. If that's the way you are going to be…"
"No, go ahead. As you were saying - long long ago in a galaxy far far away…"
He rolled his eyes at her again. "As a child, the most remarkable thing about that movie wasn't the special effects or the extraterrestrial creatures, it was the fact that the story telling was so good, that for two hours every single person in that theater was willing to forget what they knew to be true and they became willing to believe in space travel and epic intergalactic battles. So, when I go out into the field on a mission that depends on me being able to convince a target to believe me instead of what they have always known to be true or right, I think of that movie. I think that if one man could tell a story so well that he made millions of people believe in Ewoks, it can't be that hard to make one single target believe what it is I need them to believe to complete my mission."
"So it's Lucas, not Costanza."
"Not Costanza." He confirmed with a slight smile.
She smiled back at him, and she internally marveled at the contradiction that he represented. On paper and by all outward appearances he was a stone cold assassin with a short temper and unmatchable skills in deception. Yet, ever since their first meeting in Zurich, what she had found most interesting about the man wasn't his exceptional skill set as an operative, but those rare instances when this very unexpected sentimentality would manage to shine through. She wondered how many people ever got to see that side of him. She wondered how she was supposed to look at him tonight and pretend she didn't see it.
About two feet, and an entire world of thought away, Eyal was busy wondering why he could never stop himself from telling her these things. Since telling her about the missed ferry that led to their meeting in Zurich, to showing her his son that most of Mossad didn't even know about, to all these silly embarrassing stories, he had always felt the need to show more of himself to her than to anyone he had ever met before. He knew it was likely because of how deeply his feelings for her ran, and he wasn't about to attempt to deceive himself into thinking otherwise. He just wished, that for once, he could treat her the way he treated everyone else he worked with and every other mission. But he supposed if he could do that, he wouldn't be in the position that he would need to.
Eyal sighed and pulled up to the curb. They were there. They both simultaneously took a deep breath and put on their game faces. The valet quickly took Eyal's place in the driver's seat as he walked around the car and opened the door for her. She accepted his hand and she stepped out of the sedan. Once standing together on the sidewalk she took his arm and they walked to the door. Part of her mind focused on holding his arm, smiling just enough, sucking in her stomach and sticking out her chest - all the typical feminine appearance concerns. The other part of her mind scanned the street, cataloguing the faces she saw entering and around the building, noting where the valets kept the keys, and determining the most and least visible entrance and exit points from the building – all the typical spy concerns. The building was a renovated civil war era tobacco warehouse proudly displaying the name "Tabu" in neon above the door. As they approached the door, an imposing man and a provocatively dressed woman with a tablet greeted them.
"Welcome to Tabu. Tonight is a private event, so I need to ask if you are already on our list or are accompanying one of our members."
Annie answered with an intriguing smile. "I believe we were put on the list already by our friends the Stevens, Rhonda and Michael."
"Alexis and George is it?" The hostess asked after a few flicks of her finger on the touch screen.
Eyal smiled and raised his eyebrows in confirmation. Annie kept up the pleasantries. "That's us."
"I see this is your first time here at Tabu. Please allow me to show you in and introduce you to some of our members." The hostess smiled and ushered them into the club.
The interior was dimly lit yet more upscale than the average night club. A large bar lined the majority of one wall. There was an area set aside as a small dance floor, but it remained empty. Most people were either at the bar or congregating around the many booths or casual seating areas lining the perimeter of the room or the small tables scattered throughout. The music was not nearly to the decibel level of most clubs and the emphasis seemed to be on interacting and socializing between the couples.
"Tabu is what we call an 'off site' club. While we are pleased to be able to introduce couples looking to share experiences, we do require that such experiences take place at another location. Also, we do understand the sensitive nature of public opinion surrounding The Lifestyle, especially in such a politically charged area as this. Some of our members may use pseudonyms to protect their identity, especially when interacting with guests. We hope that you do not take offense to this small measure of maintaining privacy."
"Quite understandable." Eyal answered.
They hadn't finished more than half a lap around the open space before a couple approached them. The woman was petite, in her early thirties, with dark auburn hair and a pale complexion, while her partner was of a similar age, average height and build, and had medium length slightly wavy dark blonde hair.
"Alexis, George, this is Claire and her husband Bill. They are some of our regulars and an excellent choice if you are new to The Lifestyle."
Claire smiled flirtatiously at Eyal and Bill took Annie's hand from Eyal's arm and kissed the back of it.
"What a pleasure to make your acquaintance." Eyal purred.
Annie was busy trying to seem attentive to her suitor but also continued scanning faces in the crowd looking for their target. She hadn't seen Sasha yet and hoped she was in one of the groups over near the bar in the part of the club they hadn't cycled through yet.
"Why don't we go over to the bar and all have a drink together? Get to know each other." Annie suggested excitedly.
"Please allow us to buy you your first drink of the night." Bill grinned and took Annie's arm.
"It'll be the first drink for me, but someone decided to have a drink or two earlier while I was getting ready." Annie giggled and unexpectedly gave Eyal's back side a little squeeze.
"They just don't understand what goes into preparing for a night like this." Claire winked at Annie. She put an arm around Eyal's waist and let her hand dip notably south of the border as they all walked towards the bar.
As they approached the bar Annie thought she caught a glimpse of Sasha amidst a crowd a few booths away. All it took was a few nearly imperceptible shifts in her shoulder posture and eye movements in the general direction for Eyal to get the hint and take a look on his own. A subtle tip of his chin was all the conformation she needed. She made sure to position them at the bar such that Eyal was in the best line of sight possible. If she wanted Sasha to come to them, they'd have to put out some bait.
They made small talk with Claire and Bill for a little while before their bait started to become just a little too attractive. The next fourty-five minutes were a barrage of flirty couples. There was Sandy and Rob the real estate agents, Elaine and Chuck the slightly overweight couple, Tara and Mark who seemed to just want to borrow Annie for the night, Linda who seemed to have very little interest in finding new partners and her husband Weston who didn't seem to notice or care about his wife's disinterest, and Kyli and James who were just a little too forward and hands-y. About the only person in the bar that didn't come over to investigate the new couple was Sasha.
Annie excused herself briefly to go to the ladies' room and temporarily escape what seemed like a never-ending bizarre-o episode of the bachelor. The way things were going so far hadn't been that bad at all. The night was actually going well so far. Sure Eyal was flirty with the other women, and some of them were a little more hands-on than she would have liked, but it was all just acting. She almost felt bad for all these naïve women that actually thought they might have a chance. And it was fun to work a room with Eyal again. They hadn't been in a crowd situation together in ages. There was something infinitely reassuring about going into the field and knowing that you weren't alone, that you were with someone you unquestioningly trusted to have your back. She contemplated how she had become so quickly accustomed to having a partner and wondered what she would do when her role as Eyal's temporary handler was no longer necessary and he was allowed to start functioning independently. How would she go back to working alone after this? Then a small nagging voice in the back of her mind reminded her that if they didn't establish contact with Sasha and advance their plan for gaining access to Phil, that day when she has to work alone again might come sooner than she thinks.
While Annie had escaped to the seclusion of the women's rest room, Eyal used the opportunity to extract himself from the legion of amorous couples. He walked to the end of the bar closest to where Sasha had ensconced herself and saw that her entourage had diminished down to a single dark haired man wearing a black polo shirt that identified him as one of the club's bouncers. He seemed to be making a rather strong attempt to become intimate with her. He would run a hand through her hair, lean in a bit too close, and seemed to enjoy carefully playing with the rather gaudy looking gold charm bracelet she was wearing. Eyal didn't try to hide that he was watching her, and she soon noticed. She whispered something into her suitor's ear and he suddenly looked a little put-out. He stopped playing with her jewelry and abruptly got up and left. Eyal realized the opening for what it was, collected his scotch on the rocks from the bartender, and walked over.
"I noticed you noticing me." He said with machismo as he slid into the booth across from her.
"Well aren't you just overly confident." She said neutrally
"Hard not to be around here. I've lost count of the number of women that have wanted to take me home tonight." He countered boastfully.
"You're new and shiny, that tends to attract all sorts of attention."
"But you've had no shortage of attention yourself tonight, and I highly suspect that you are anything but new to this place."
"How very observant of you." Eyal could hear the difference in pitch of her voice. She had gone from disinterested to intrigued. After a brief pause, during which she seemed to be considering something, she added, "And you and your girl are quite evenly matched. That makes for a very appealing swap. You two should have no trouble finding a couple to break you into this gently. I see you already met Claire and Bill. They are notoriously easy on the newbies."
"Don't get me wrong. They seemed nice enough, but…" Eyal started, but was interrupted as Annie appeared, slid into the booth at his side, and took a long sip from his drink.
"…but we're not exactly interested in starting out with training wheels." Annie finished for him. Then she extended her hand across the table in a polite gesture. "I'm Alexis. It's nice to meet you."
"Sasha." She shook Annie's hand and slightly smiled for the first time in the conversation. "So what made you two decide that tonight was the night to come out to this club and try out The Lifestyle?"
Annie answered. "It's the first weekend since we moved down here that we are really settled in enough to start going out. We've been looking forward to trying it out since we left New York."
"But you two weren't active in the scene up there?" She asked.
"We'd never really considered it." Eyal responded. "We'd never been exposed to it and with all the stereotypes…"
"Until we met Rhonda and Michael the night before we left town." Annie finished.
"So you met the Stevens." Sasha grinned. "They were an adventurous couple. I was sad to see them have to move for Michael's job. How did you run into them?"
"It was a very random chance meeting at a restaurant bar while we were waiting for our tables." Annie began to divulge their agreed upon cover story. "Michael kind of caught my eye from across the bar and I didn't even realize it, but George here…" she nudged Eyal with an elbow. "…had an eye on Rhonda nearly since we walked in. They actually approached us and introduced themselves. It was a little embarrassing at first, but we started talking and ended up having dinner together. They were not at all what we would have expected when people talk about swingers. We had been packing all day and our apartment was a mess, so we were in no position to really do anything that night, but they told us about this place for once we got down here to DC."
"So you two are looking for another couple, not some unicorn to take home with you for the night." Sasha seemed relieved.
"Unicorn?" Eyal asked.
"It's what we call single women in The Lifestyle. They are highly sought after, but they're so rare that you always hear about them but never actually see one." Sasha informed them.
"Cute." Eyal responded.
"We want this to be something we try together, so yes, we are looking for a couple." Annie supplied, paused, then added, "So you're not a unicorn, right? Which one is your guy?" Annie looked around the club.
"No." Sasha answered. "I'm with someone, he just couldn't make it tonight." Then her tone turned a little sour. "Phil's taken up a new little hobby that keeps him busy on Friday nights."
"Well good for you!" Annie cheered. "You don't let whatever lame thing he's doing tonight stop you from getting out and enjoying yourself. That's admirable."
Sasha's more pleasant demeanor returned at the comment. "I try. And it does give me a good opportunity to get to know new people that we might be interested in spending time with. I seem to be a much better judge of character than he is lately."
Annie worked very hard not to let any tension or excitement show at Sasha's statement. It sounded like they were getting close to getting an invitation for tomorrow night and that Sasha already has some misgivings about Sofiya. Maybe she knows or has seen something.
"So what makes you interested in a new couple enough to decide that you might want to spend more time with them?" Eyal asked smoothly.
"He doesn't waste much time, does he?" Sasha smiled at Annie.
Annie smiled broadly, remembering all the times she had made a similar comment to him about his forwardness. "You could say that."
"I like you." Sasha said to Annie. "I've learned recently to almost be more picky about who Phil will be with than who I will be." Then she turned to Eyal. "But you're direct, and I like your attentiveness. Both qualities that are very fortunate for me in a more private setting."
Annie's brain split between imagining what it would be like to be the object of Eyal's direct attentiveness in the bedroom and a disturbing image of the woman across the table from her getting to find out. Before she could outwardly react to the two warring mental images in her head, she saw Eyal smirk at the woman across from him, but also felt a reassuring hand placed discretely on her leg under the table, telling her to calm down and not to worry.
"If you two are interested in doing some partying tomorrow night," Sasha asked calmly, "I think we could potentially arrange something."
"Potentially?" Eyal questioned.
"Since Phil's attentions have recently become divided, I like to make sure that the time we do get to spend together is put to its best use. Since I don't know you two, I hope you wouldn't be too offended if I asked that you give me a little bit of… let's call it an audition… for tomorrow night's starring role."
Annie's chest constricted. She hadn't seen this coming. What was this woman going to want? "What kind of audition are we talking about?" She tried to sound intrigued and aroused but wasn't sure she sold it.
"Don't worry honey. Threesomes really aren't my thing." Sasha smiled and toyed with the bracelet on her left wrist in what looked like a nervous habit. "But I would like to see what kind of tricks you two have up your sleeves. Phil keeps a small studio just up the street for when we don't want to go all the way back to his place after a night out here. If you are serious about this, we should head over that way and you can show me what you've got. I'll just observe. You can take it as far as you want, but I need to be convinced that it will be worth my while to bring you home tomorrow night."
As Sasha had outlined her request, Eyal had decided to focus on the rather ugly bracelet the woman fidgeted with as a way to hide any outward signs of his emotions on the topic. He tried to identify each of the five charms dangling from the gold chain. There was a cat, obviously a reference to the pet Auggie had mentioned earlier, a tooth , he hoped it was just a slightly disturbing nod to her occupation, a heart, a key, and a large slightly rectangular cube charm that he finally recognized as an ugly looking lock, probably meant to match the key. He wasn't sure that he'd ever seen a more odious piece of jewelry. He felt like the absurdity of the piece matched the request its owner was making of them.
Annie, on the other hand had been paying rapt attention to every word out of Sasha's mouth. She tried desperately to release the breath she had been holding in a controlled manner that wouldn't betray her relief. Sasha just wanted to see her with Eyal. That didn't seem so bad compared to the alternatives.
"You don't have a problem with somebody watching, do you?" Sasha was looking for a response now.
"We've never tried that before, but it sounds interesting." Annie answered.
"Your request is a little… different, but not unreasonable." Eyal addressed Sasha. "But since this is the first time for us with all of this, can we have a moment to discuss it all before we commit?"
"Absolutely. I need to go get a new drink any way. Just don't take too long to decide." Sasha slid out of the booth and walked towards the far end of the bar where the dark haired man from before seemed to be waiting for her.
Once they were alone Annie looked up at Eyal. "So we're doing this, right?"
"Are you sure you're ok with it?" He asked.
"What's not to be ok with? We go back to this apartment, let her watch us make out a bit, put on a show, and we're set to make contact with Phil tomorrow."
He gave her a look that was full of incredulity.
"It wouldn't be the first time we've fooled around." She whispered in his ear.
He smiled mischievously at the memory and then turned to whisper in her ear. "Perhaps I am slightly more cautious because I am the one that ended up getting shot at the end of that encounter."
She rolled her eyes at him. "Sasha is not going to shoot us."
"Fine." He acquiesced. "But I'm leaving how far this goes entirely up to you. I'll play along with whatever you want, but I'm warning you. This is going to get weird and messed up a lot faster than you are thinking."
"Come on, partner. It's you and me. It's already weird and messed up." She smiled and patted his chest before sliding out of the booth.
He sighed and followed her.
As they approached Sasha, the overly-attentive bouncer once again took notice. He was holding her left wrist and gently tracing a finger along her palm as she laughed at something he said into her ear. Again he instantly backed off and disappeared into the crowd with a slight nod at Annie and Eyal. Eyal supposed that he probably shouldn't have been getting that friendly with the clientele while on duty and was just showing some concern for his employment, but it was slightly odd. He took a little closer note of the man's descriptive features just in case.
"So are you in?" Sasha asked.
"All the way." Annie smiled.
Sasha finished the remaining half a glass of liquor in a single swallow and stood from the bar stool. "Then we should get on our way. That's something I share with you, George. I hate wasting time." She wrote something down on a bar napkin and handed it to Eyal. "I assume you drove? The valets lock up when the club closes, so it would probably be better to get your car out now. I'll meet you both at this address in fifteen minutes." Then she walked towards the door.
Annie and Eyal followed and collected their car from the valet. Eyal held the door for her before tipping the valet and getting into the driver's seat himself. As they drove the two blocks down the street to the overnight public parking, he became slightly concerned that she didn't seem as concerned as he was.
"You seem a little too excited about this." His voice started off concerned but quickly turned sarcastic. "I had no idea you wanted to get me into bed this badly."
They both laughed a little and it broke the tension. "I'm just glad that out of all the twisted things she could have suggested for tonight, this is all that we're going to be subjected to. I mean, could you really have kept our cover if she had suggested we go have a threesome?"
"I'll pretend that you didn't just refer to making out with me as something that you are going to be subjected to, like water-boarding or sensory deprivation." Eyal smiled at her. "Though I will admit that there are numerous scenarios she could have suggested that I would not have been willing to engage in with you here with me."
"You mean what you'd be willing to do tonight would be different if I weren't here?" Annie was a little confused and a little disgusted.
"Let's just say that what I'm willing to subject myself to in the name of completing this mission and what I'm willing to subject you to are two completely different standards."
She still looked upset. "I don't need you to protect me."
He was a little annoyed at her stubbornness. "I can think of a half dozen times that say differently. Zurich, Paris, Russia…" He began to tick off.
Annie was getting frustrated. She had needed him to be focused on this mission. What if Arthur was right and they couldn't work through these types of situations together? What if they really were too close to stay partners?
While he wasn't sure where it was coming from, he could sense her mounting desperation. He wasn't going to fight with her. Not over this "When we are in the field together, you are my partner. That means something Annie. That means that I put keeping you safe above my own safety, above the mission even. It changes the game. That's why this so rarely works in our line of work."
"But you can't." Annie blurted reflexively. "The mission, this mission has to be your priority." She hated having the crucial piece of knowledge about his potential fate with the CIA that he didn't.
"No matter how important the mission or what is at stake, there are some lines that I just am not willing to cross when it comes to you. If you doubt my sincerity on this particular topic, I believe Rivka can attest to it."
Annie had always known. He had never come out and said it directly, but she knew that she was the reason he had quit Mossad. He had given up his country for her. How was she supposed to convince him that he needed to forget all that, or at least put it aside when they were in the field. How was she supposed to convince him to do it when she couldn't do it herself.
"So what happens when it comes down to crossing that line or compromising the mission?" She asked.
"I am confident that you and I can always find an alternative."
"What if there is no alternative?"
"Annie, where is this coming from?" He couldn't figure out what was driving her end of the conversation.
She fought with herself for a long moment while he pulled into the parking structure and began scanning for spots. Should she tell him? Would it make things better or worse if he also knew that their partnership hinged on this mission? In the end, she simply couldn't keep it from him.
"Arthur's got concerns that our feelings for each other are going to get in the way of our missions. He's started looking into which departments he can reassign you to."
He chuckled and visibly relaxed as he pulled into a parking spot. "This is nothing new. He told me that was their biggest concern before they brought me into the agency. He started trying to figure out what else he could do with me before the ink was dry on my paperwork."
"And it doesn't make you nervous that they are just looking for a reason to separate us? That if they do, we might never see each other again?"
He turned off the car's engine and focused his attention on her. "Not in the slightest, and I will tell you why. It is the same reason I gave Arthur that day. Whether that's what they were calling us or not, we have been working as partners for three years now. No one had to order us to work together, or told us that we could trust each other. We just have. Ever since Zurich. And we have never failed. With no backing and no support we have always accomplished our missions together. Now we have resources, the support of our agency, and no secrets from each other. We can only do better as we get closer."
"You're not afraid that closeness will make some things harder for us?"
"Like this mission?" He asked knowingly.
"Yeah." She admitted begrudgingly.
"Absolutely not." He was confident.
"I'll be honest. I'm having a much harder time with this than I would have back when we were in Zurich."
"I know." He smiled proudly at her. "I've known from the minute Joan gave us this assignment what our biggest problem was going to be."
"And what's that?" She asked unbelievingly.
He looked at her with a softness and sincerity that she hadn't seen from him all night. "Your worst fear is that you are going to have to stay in cover and watch me be with this woman. You don't think you can do it."
"How do you…"
"Because my first thought the minute Joan said the word 'swingers' was that I would rather take another bullet to the chest or be dead center of another unplanned explosion than to have to watch this target have his way with you."
"Oh."
"So while you've been worrying yourself sick, I've been planning a number of different contingencies to avoid getting into one of those situations." He smiled at her.
"So the moral of this story is that next time I should probably just talk to you." She gave him a small apologetic smile.
"I'm your partner. I should be the first person you come to if you have concerns about your feelings." She gave him a raised eyebrow look and he continued. "Regarding the mission of course."
They smiled at each other knowingly and got out of the car. He walked around ad took her arm. They walked a few paces before he leaned in and spoke softly into her ear. "Or if you have any other feelings or needs that I might be able to help you do something about, you should probably still come to me first."
She laughed out loud and bumped his shoulder with hers. How was it that he could turn any situation into sexual innuendo? It was truly a gift. She felt confident and maybe just a little excited as they walked together towards the building on the napkin. During their little talk in the car they hadn't actually admitted their feelings for each other, but they had tap danced around them enough to make each other confident enough that their feelings were reciprocated. However, once they got into the building and reached the elevator she began to feel a little concerned. Instead of internalizing, she was going to do exactly as he'd recommended.
As the elevator doors closed with just the two of them in the car she turned to him. "I'm nervous. What if we can't convince her that we'll be good enough to warrant swapping tomorrow night?"
"That is the last thing you will have to worry about." He nearly laughed at her.
"But what if I get nervous and we seem awkward?"
"If you feel yourself getting nervous or it gets awkward with her there, just look at me. Look in my eyes and you'll know that I'm right there with you. You are not alone in this, and you have all the control. I will back you wherever you want to take this."
She smiled and rolled her eyes at him playfully before admitting. "Ok. Maybe talking to you does really help."
Then the elevator reached their floor and they stepped out. They found the appropriate door and knocked. Sasha appeared a moment later and showed them in. She took their coats and hung them near the door. The studio was small and definitely gave off the feeling of a sex pad. The floor plan was entirely open and the bed took up a large portion of one corner. There were sparse decorations and nothing personal. The whole set up was so tacky that Annie had to work not to allow a giggle to slip out. There were candles lit around the space to add some ambiance to the dim lighting, smooth jazz was playing from a stereo system on the far side of the room, and Annie was pretty sure those were silk sheets on the bed. She felt like she had just stepped into the Playboy Mansion in miniature. A quick glimpse at Eyal let her know that he was likely thinking the same thing.
"Would you like something to drink?" Sasha asked holding up a wine bottle in one hand and a half filled glass in the other.
"I think we're good." Annie answered. "How do you want us to start this off?"
"Eager to get at each other, are we?" She smiled. "Don't let me stop you. Just pretend I'm not here and have each other like you usually would.
Eyal opened his mouth to say something but Annie cut him off. "I'm pretty sure she doesn't mean usual like our usual quickie after SportsCenter before you pass out for the night."
Sasha laughed a little and Annie smiled, preparing to make a little more small talk, when Eyal's mouth suddenly crashed down on hers. It was unexpected and her instinctual shock made her open her eyes and look to his. He had his back to Sasha and pointedly held Annie's eye contact in an attempt to reassure her. After a few seconds she relaxed and felt him do the same slightly. They deepened the kiss and she pulled him close to her. He started with a hand on the base of her neck and on the small of her back while she slid hers up under his arms and gripped his shoulders. Then she moved a hand to his cheek and slowly started backing them up towards the bed and changed the angle to give Sasha a better view. Then she raked her nails down his back and felt him nearly growl into her mouth.
He pushed her back against the wall before they could make it to the bed and pulled her shirt over her head. Then he was against her again and began to trail kisses along her collar bone and the base of her neck.
She knew enough of Eyal and the way his body felt to know that, despite the show, he was still completely restrained and in control. It almost felt like he was only partly present in the moment, like he was probably dissociating somewhat. But he could still put on quite an act. She wondered if this is what it was like for him all the times Mossad sent him to seduce and turn unsuspecting assets that he had no actual interest in. Had any of them been able to tell that at least part of his mind was somewhere else? She looked over his shoulder as he kissed the base of her neck, to check on Sasha. They both may have been phoning it in, but Sasha sure seemed to be buying it. She sat in a nearby armchair staring, sipping her wine and crossing her legs so hard in made Annie sore. This would be easy.
Annie wrapped one of her legs around Eyal's as he continued to pin her against the wall. Then she slowly drew the toe of her shoe up along the inside of his calf as high as the skirt would allow. He groaned, pulled her back from the wall, and moved his lips to her ear.
"Two can play that game." He ran his hands down over the curve of her backside and back up to her hips while sucking on her earlobe.
Annie was happy to see him engage in their activities a little more enthusiastically, though he remained in control. She made quick work of the buttons on his shirt and pulled it out from the hem of his pants. His hands moved to the zipper at the back of her skirt, but didn't move any further until he stole a glance at her face and made sure she gave him the go ahead with her eyes. She looked him straight in the eyes then moved to devour his mouth. Within two seconds the skirt was pooled around her ankles. She stepped out of it as she pushed his shirt back off his shoulders, and he let it fall to the ground. She repeated the maneuver from before, but this time she was able to trace the pointed toe of her shoe all the way up his inseam before hooking her knee around his waist. His neck arched backwards and he pushed his hips into her as a throaty moan escaped him. It was the first wholly organic response he'd given all night, and it excited her. While emotionally separating from the acts unfolding between them may have been his way of dealing with the situation, she found it easier to just lose herself in the acts and forget about everything else around them.
Then she heard Sasha start to make a few encouragements like "Oh yeah." and "Come on, yes!" Annie tried really hard not to pay attention, but she could tell that the voyeurism was uncomfortable for Eyal as well. She took a deep breath and remembered what they had agreed upon. She pulled back slightly and looked into his eyes. This time it seemed like they were reassuring each other, but it still worked.
She released her hold on him and took a few steps backwards towards the bed. When the back of her legs brushed against it she stopped. Eyal leaned in over her and ghosted her every move as she sat and slowly slid backwards onto the bed. He ran a hand along the length of her thigh and down her calf to her foot, removing the shoe as she moved further back. She kicked off the other one herself. They were smiling at each other as he climbed onto the bed with her, remembering that move from their previous almost-tryst. She remembered the last time he had done it and the way it had almost made her reconsider having to use the zip-ties as the means to keeping him occupied for about an hour.
Her hands reached for his belt buckle as he crawled on top of her. It was quickly undone and the belt slid easily from the belt loops as she pulled on it. Annie was about to drop it off the side of the bed when she heard Sasha make some raspy comment that sounded like, "Ooo, what are you going to do with that?"
One glance over at the woman made it obvious that she fully expected them to use some props. Eyal knew Annie wasn't about to get into whipping him and there was no circumstance of Earth that could cause him intentionally inflict pain on Annie, so he came up with a slightly less repugnant idea. He took the belt from Annie, and slowly pulled both her hands above her head. He held them there with one hand while sitting over her hips and slipping one end of the belt through the buckle. He slid the noose over her hands and wrapped the free end in a few more loops to loosely secure her hands together. Then he gave her a slightly mischievous grin and whispered, "You asked for this."
He trailed kisses down the middle of her chest and abdomen. He couldn't hide a smile at the way she twitched slightly when his lips met the exposed skin at the bottom of the little corset she was wearing. He stopped before he got passed her navel and repositioned himself further down the bed.
Annie wasn't quite sure what he was about to do, until she felt his nimble fingers quickly undo the attachments of the garter belt to her thigh highs. She had an idea what was coming and realized that she really did have no one to blame but herself for this. He placed a kiss on the inside of her thigh, at the top of the stocking before deftly and gently taking the top edge of the thigh high in his teeth and slowly dragging it down her leg. The move would have been simply arousing if not for her earlier insistence that he not shave. The ruggedly charming stubble now left a sensation that was a mixture of ecstasy and tickling in a trail down the inside of her thigh. When he moved to the other leg she couldn't suppress a whimpering little laugh, and she strained against the belt on her wrists.
He smiled triumphantly as he crawled back up the bed to plant a kiss on her lips. She brought her bound wrists down and wrapped them around his neck. Then almost entirely using her legs, she flipped him over on the bed so that she was straddling his waist. She sat up and held her hands down towards him. He reached up and undid the belt. She smiled and moaned slightly as she ground down against hip hips, purely in retribution for the grievous misuse of his prickly facial hair, then leaned forward and pecked him on the lips.
Annie started to dismount Eyal and they both looked over towards Sasha. Their performance certainly should have earned a spot for tomorrow night, if not and Academy Award.
"That's it?" She said. It sounded displeased.
Annie sat on the edge of the bed next to Eyal and hoped that maybe she just wanted to see what they would say. "You said we only had to go as far as we wanted. We were hoping to save something for tomorrow night." She rolled her bottom lip between her teeth seductively.
"All I've seen is you two make out like teenagers. The trick with the belt was a nice start, but I'm going to need to see more."
"What exactly are you looking for?" Eyal sat up and asked, trying not to sound as frustrated as he was.
"I'll be blunt." Sasha started, "Phil has decided one girlfriend isn't enough after six years, so he's also started swinging with this eurotrash slut. Little Oksana Baiul apparently used to be a model, so she brings around all these barely legal other former eurotrash model sluts. If the women I bring to him can't compete with that, then I'm going to become redundant. And redundant things get discarded. Let's be honest. I need to see what kind of actual skills you have." She said looking at Annie, then turned to Eyal. "And with those pants still on I have no idea if what you've got in the garage is a Hum Vee or a Mini Cooper." She took a big sip of wine and continued. "I'm not saying I have to watch you fuck him, but this is DC. At least show me that you can give a decent blow job."
Annie didn't have to look behind her to know what Eyal's expression would be. She could feel his blood boiling. She couldn't believe this was happening. This was exactly one of those situations that they had talked about earlier. There wasn't any way around it. Either she did this or they weren't going to get to their target. If they didn't get to their target she could lose Eyal. These were not the circumstances under which she had imagined this type of thing happening between them for the first time, but if those were her only options, this was one of those situations she was willing to subject herself to for the sake of their partnership.
"Fine." Annie said to Sasha before Eyal could say anything else. "That's reasonable." She turned and looked her partner in the eye, hoping he would remember his promise to let her take the lead. "Don't you think?"
Eyal could see it in her eyes. As much as she didn't want to do this she was determined to. As much as he hated it and as much as it went against every fiber of his being to allow this, he had promised her. He put on his best indifferent face and replied. "Sure, if you want to. I mean you'll be the one doing all the work."
She could feel the change in him even though it was probably imperceptible to anyone else. He had checked out again. Enough of him remained to stay in character, but that was all. She knew that he was doing this for her. Yet another sacrifice he was willing to make on her behalf. She shoved his chest until he lay back flat on his back again. "Then why don't you just lay back and enjoy this."
He had really really hoped it wouldn't come to this. This mission already reeked of sleaze and he didn't want any of it to taint any memory he might have of the first time he and Annie did anything together. What they were asking him to let her do to him was intimate and personal. And she was willing to cheapen and degrade herself by doing it on display for this deviant merely to keep their mission on track so that he wouldn't get reassigned. She crawled on top of him again and he couldn't imagine a situation where he could feel any less turned on. The Agency knew she'd be willing to do this because of the threat to their partnership if they failed. They knew he'd let her do it because he would never deny her anything. They were being used. It was the doctored Khalid photos all over again. As Annie leaned over him and traced kisses down his bare chest he was beginning to wonder if there were only two options a pair of romantically involved spies - for them to remain star-crossed and separate or to be constantly used and abused for their trust. Neither was pleasant.
Then her mouth reached the southernmost limit of bare skin above his pants and she paused to nip slightly at the delicate skin above the fabric. That managed to bring him out of his reverie. She settled herself on the bed between his legs at the level of his knees and leaned forward over him, placing her weight on her left forearm that rested on the bed next to his hip. He wasn't sure that he would be able to stay in any proper condition for this particular activity given his current distaste for the situation, but then she rubbed the heel of her hand over the front of his slacks and applied just the right amount of pressure. He responded with a moan and a reflexive thrust back against her hand. At least that part of his body was willing to go along with whatever Annie wanted, even if his mind was not. She looked up at him one last time before taking the final step across the proverbial line. With his eyes he pleaded with her to change her mind about this, to just let him threaten and beat on the creep in the chair next to them, even if she was a woman. He begged her not to do this. But ultimately the look that she accepted was the one telling her to do what she thought was right and that he would be there to support her no matter what, as promised.
She broke the eye contact and turned her focus to the front of his pants. As she undid the button he couldn't look. He turned his head to the side to bitterly see if Sasha was enjoying herself. The woman was so engrossed in what Annie was doing that she didn't even notice Eyal scowling at her. She watched with rapt attention, her right hand pressed between her thighs and her left hand beginning to fondle the upper part of her right breast. Again Eyal turned his focus to the hideous charm bracelet and its four ugly charms.
As Annie's hands moved to his zipper he registered the missing charm. He picked out the cat, the tooth, the heart, and the key. The big rectangular lock charm was gone. Had she lost it? Then he felt Annie's key hanging from the replacement necklace he had given her sway with her movements and brush against his thigh. That reminded him of something he had been playing with on Auggie's desk a few weeks earlier while they had been waiting for Annie to finish paperwork and join them for lunch. It was a silver earring, an exact replica of the ones Annie always wore, but was specially designed to contain a micro flash drive that she had previously used on a mission to sneak data through airport security.
As Annie slowly pulled down his zipper his mind raced back to the club. The bouncer with the odd behavior had kept playing with the bracelet. As Eyal went through the mental images of the man that he had catalogued he realized that the dark hair pale skin could easily have come from a Russian parentage. That's why they had never pinned down Sofiya's handler or contacts. She wasn't the one stealing the info. She was the reason the info was being stolen.
Just as Annie finished with the zipper and began to pull on the hem of his pants he blurted out, "Stop!"
"It's ok." She tried to assuage him one last time.
"No, Annie, stop."
His use of her actual name made her freeze.
He jumped up and scrambled around her to get off of the bed and zip his pants at the same time.
"What are you doing?" Sasha sounded upset.
Eyal looked to Annie, "We don't need to do anything else to trick this degenerate into taking us to the target. Our target is right here."
"Eyal, what are you talking about?"
"Sofiya's not a spy. Sasha is the one that's been stealing the information, I'm guessing to get back at Phil for taking on Sofiya as another girlfriend. I didn't recognize it for what it was, but the handoff was earlier tonight at the club. That bouncer was her handler and one of the charms on her bracelet was a micro USB."
Just then she tried to bolt from the chair towards the door, but Eyal caught her neck in his hand and slammed her back down into the chair. "I think it's time for me to use that other method of asset handling you give me so much grief about."
Annie walked over towards the door and found her purse on the rack next to her coat. She fished around in it and found her cell phone. She walked over and handed the purse to Eyal as she hit the contact icon for the DPD emergency line. "Be my guest. I'm not going to stop you tonight."
He looked down into the purse and saw his 9 mm amongst the other items. He smiled at just how well the blonde woman understood him. Then he withdrew the gun and waved it in front of Sasha's face. "You're going to tell us everything you know about the man you've been handing the information off to and how this got started."
By the time the clean-up squad arrived Annie and Eyal were fully dressed again and Sasha had spilled her guts about everything. When questioned, neither Annie nor Eyal could remember how she got that very nasty looking back eye and the broken finger. They assumed it must have happened during the struggle when she tried to escape that one time.
With the description and the information Eyal was able to give the recovery team about the bouncer/handler they were able to pick him up as he left the club at the end of his shift. He still had the charm/jump drive in his possession and it did, in fact, contain stolen information from Phil's most recent project that had been accessed through a remote link to the server on his home computer. The time stamp on the data confirmed that it was downloaded during a time that Sasha, and not Sofiya, was in the house with Phil. Poor Phil, it turned out, was none the wiser. After six years of being able to trust Sasha explicitly, he had not taken nearly the same security precautions when she was around as with his new girlfriend.
Annie and Eyal stood quite tall in front of the apartment building as Sasha was led out past them into an unmarked sedan. Annie looked over at Eyal and admired their work. "In less than six hours we just overcame some severely faulty intel and our supposedly emotionally compromising feelings for each other to capture not just the leak, but an FSB operative as well. Let's see Arthur Campbell try to say anything about that."
He smiled at her and put an arm over her shoulder. "Normally I would say that if anyone has a problem with how we worked together, they could mtsots li ta'zain, but somehow tonight that doesn't seem appropriate."
Annie couldn't help but laugh. Once she started laughing at the absurdity of the situation he joined in as well. Then they were laughing at each other, and it ended up taking a few minutes for them to get themselves back under control. Any lingering worries that the events of this night were going to in any way damage their partnership evaporated on the spot.
"Let's go home." Annie looked up at him and smiled.
…
A/N: "mtsots li ta'zain" is a Hebrew translation for "suck my dick"
…
Eyal stepped through the door to his darkened apartment first, and Annie followed behind. While he closed the door behind her and secured the dead bolt, she walked into the kitchen and grabbed two beers from the fridge.
"After tonight I think we need this." She held out a bottle to him, trying to break some of the sexual tension that had built up.
She was surprised when he stepped towards her and took both bottles out of her hands before she could open hers and placed them on the counter. "What I need tonight, is for you to leave." The tone in his voice was a little harsher than she ever would have expected under these circumstances.
"I'm sorry?" She started unbelievingly and a little hurt, "You want me to leave?"
His voice was softer and a little more desperate sounding. "No Annie," he reached out and gently took her wrists in his hinds, "I really want you to stay. That's why I need you to leave."
"Oh." It was all she could get out as she looked into his eyes. He hadn't turned on any lights and the apartment was still fairly dark.
He held her eye contact and took a step towards her. "When I take you into my bed for the first time, there will be no kinky lingerie, no deviant watching, and it will have nothing to do with a mission. It will be only you and me, and it will be about more than simple urges or pure need."
Annie's mental capacity to form words began to fail her. There were so many things she wanted to say to his admission, but the only thought that managed to escape her mouth was a sarcastic, " 'When you take me to bed?' Somebody's a little presumptuous."
The corner of his mouth twisted upwards in a dark grin as he inched closer to her. He stopped just far enough away that they weren't technically touching, but it was so close that they could feel the body heat radiating from each other. He gently placed the back of his right hand on the front of her left shoulder and softly traced his knuckles downwards along the side of her breast, along the side of her rig cage, past her waist, and then down to just in front of her hip bone before opening his hand and lightly gripping her hip.
The sensual caress caused Annie to arch towards him reflexively, closing the gap between their bodies and pressing her up against him. His grip on her hip tightened and there was nothing she could do to stifle the soft moan that escaped her lips.
He whispered softly in her ear, "I maintain that 'when' was an appropriate choice of diction." Then he released her and stepped back.
Annie heard the words come out of her mouth before she could register thinking them, "And what, now just isn't a good time for you?"
He was back against her in a heartbeat. He pressed into her, and she felt the edge of the counter dig into her back. He put his arms around her and gripped the countertop, pinning her arms against her sides. He got right in her face and ground his hips and his painfully engorged erection against her. His expression was dark and his tone husky, "Since we walked in that door, the only coherent thought in my head has been wondering if I can get you all the way to the bedroom, or if I should just take you right here on this counter."
She swallowed nervously. He made no attempt to hide the lust and want in his eyes. With the pressure of the entire length of his body against hers, she wasn't sure she wanted him to. "What's holding you back?"
"If we do this now, we'll always associate it with this night, this mission. Always wonder if it would have happened differently if we didn't let it get us so worked up. It wouldn't be just about us." His tone had softened towards the end and she realized that he was regaining some control. He released the counter and took a step back. Then he gently cupped the side of her face with his hand. "Please understand that when I say I need you to leave, it's not because I want you to leave, rather I want to avoid doing something we will both regret."
She could see it in his eyes, how torn and conflicted he was. It made her heart melt just a little. "I'll see you tomorrow Eyal." She said sweetly and smiled at him.
He dropped his hand from her cheek. "And we're ok?" He asked somewhat hesitantly.
She leaned up on her toes and kissed him softly on the cheek, the stubble she had insisted he leave scratching at her lips. "Always." Then she stepped past him and walked towards the door.
Seeming reassured, he added, "I'll come by tomorrow morning. We can go for that run you keep hounding me about."
"Only if you think you can keep up." She smiled over her shoulder as she grabbed her bags by the door and stepped out into the hallway.
…
Three hours later she was home, in bed, and still unable to sleep. She looked over at her clock for what had to be the fourteen thousandth time. It was only 4:02 am. She wasn't surprised that she couldn't fall asleep. Between the excitement of the mission, the sexual frustration, and all the new feelings that Eyal's admissions had brought up, she'd be surprised if she would sleep any time in the next week. She wondered if Eyal was fairing any better than she was. Was he lying in bed thinking about her and wondering if she was thinking about him? She doubted it. He was probably asleep. He was the kind of person that if something bothered him that much, he would just do something about it.
At that thought she heard a sound from the other room. It only took a second for her to recognize the distinct rattle and click of a lock pick in her front door. I guess he isn't asleep. She thought to herself. She got up, grabbed her robe from beside the bed, and swung it on.
She started talking to him as she walked towards her bedroom door. "Eyal, it's 4am. This better be about earlier, because if you think I'm going for a run this early you're insane."
Then she stepped into the living room. Instead of Eyal there to greet her, it was three men wearing all black, including ski masks. She turned to dive back into the bedroom, but she was too slow and they were already too close. She struggled against their grip, but a cloth was quickly placed over her mouth and she could taste the chloroform. Before she could do anything the world went black.
A/N: This was actually the second chapter I came up with when I thought about writing a sequel and getting to this was the reason Next Tuesday is a series instead of a Christmas one-shot. Sadly, reality is often much stranger than anything I could come up with, and the swinger characters are based (with very little actual differences from reality) on a woman I once worked with and her boyfriend. She really enjoyed talking about "The Lifestyle" at work, so at least I've finally found something productive to do with all this previously useless knowledge floating around my brain.
Next time on Covert Affairs: Next Tuesday – Annie's been taken captive, but by whom? Can Eyal and Auggie work together to get her back? Ok that's a stupid question… like there's anything that the awesomeness of Eyal + Auggie couldn't accomplish...
