There are very few ways to wake up that are quite as pleasant as after a night of vigorous sex. The pleasant ache in the muscles, the slow ebbing away of drowsiness, it was hands down the best way to wake up in Aliza's opinion. She rolled over, expecting a warm soft skinned blonde, but found only empty sheets. It shouldn't have been surprising, plenty of those who shared Aliza's bed were gone before she woke. Lily was almost always gone in the morning so she could catch an early flight. For some reason, Tracey struck her as a late sleeper. Ah well, Aliza thought, Tracey was right, I did need a good lay.
And by god, Tracey hadn't disappointed. She was, by far, the best sub that Aliza had in over a year. She'd played the game perfectly, resisting in all the right places, giving in at all the right times. Contrary to what most thought, a sub's role wasn't just to take whatever a domme threw at them. It was okay for amateurs, and even for the adept it wasn't a bad experience. But it got… boring, BDSM was all about the game, the fantasy. Yes, it's a game where one person is designated to lose, but any professional athlete or veteran sub will tell you, there's a big difference between losing and throwing the game.
The best thing by far had been the fact that Tracey was clearly a natural submissive and knew it. That, more than anything else was what made last night more enjoyable than any of the others since Aliza had arrived in Los Santos. Someone who was uninitiated in BDSM tended to have trouble letting go, the sex was good, but it required a very slow pace and a lot of working through the nervousness. In BDSM, if one person isn't having a good time, neither person can. And with two dominants, it was a power struggle, neither willing to cede control to the other. But an experienced sub that knew their preference, that was the best sex in the world.
Aliza pulled herself out of her musings and stretched like a cat, her bones popping like cracking ice. Then she noticed that one of her robes was gone. Maybe Tracey hadn't pulled a disappearing act. She grabbed her kimono and slipped it on, tying the belt. Then she smelled the deliciously familiar scent of Latin cooking. She stepped out into the main room of her apartment where she found a very beautiful blonde with damp hair in her kitchen putting the finishing touches on a plate of huevos rancheros.
"Oh hey, I hope you don't mind, I figured I'd make some breakfast." Tracey's cheeks colored slightly as she realized she'd dominated Aliza's kitchen without asking.
"A beautiful blonde making Latin food in my kitchen after a night of passionate sex, what's there to mind?" Aliza was deeply aware of the meaning that Tracey making breakfast had. You didn't stick around and make breakfast for a one night stand, you did that if you were starting a relationship. For the moment, Aliza was more than willing to give that a shot. "Where does a girl like you learn to cook?"
"Cookbooks, cooking shows, a few classes, and a little help from my maid. Drunk dad and drugged out mom, remember? I had a little brother to take care of, so it was kind of a sink or swim kind of thing."
That made sense, "I thought you hated your little brother, 'a stoned out perv mentally stunted at the age of thirteen."
Tracey sprinkled ground pepper over the eggs as the finishing touch. "Well yeah, but he's still my little brother, no matter how much he needs his ass kicked."
Breakfast was delicious, Aliza had to hand it to Tracey, she was an amazing cook. At the very least, she could cook amazing huevos rancheros. The conversation was easy and light, comparing the idiot celebrities that Tracey hung out with in Los Santos to the idiot celebrities that Aliza had spent time with on the Liberty City party circuit. When they were finished and had cleaned up, Aliza went to get a shower. When she got out, she found Tracey had gone, leaving a note saying that her father had called and that apparently her brother had gotten into trouble again and he wanted her home, it also had her phone number and address on it.
Aliza shook her head, family dysfunction magnified by money. It was a story older than the Romans. She ran through her messages on her phone. Simeon had a fresh list of cars that he wanted, Lamar wanted her to help with some ideas he had to impress the high ranking members of the Families, and Gerald wanted to talk to her about something that he wasn't willing to say over the phone. None of that sounded appealing to her right now, she marked Simeon's list as read, she sent Lamar a text saying that she was busy today and to run them by Franklin before doing anything, another text went to Gerald telling him that they could meet up tonight, naming a time and a place.
With that business attended to, she went into her study and went through the eight different news sources she subscribed to. The American government was still deadlocked, the Middle East was still a mess, a heroin shipment had been seized in the port of Los Santos, the usual stuff. Nothing too odd, but David's presence still hung on her mind. Whatever had happened, whatever summit had been hit, and Aliza was sure that a summit had been hit, it was just the beginning.
She sighed, it may be the beginning of something huge, but she wasn't going to learn anything right now. There was nothing she could do until David read her in, unless she hit up some of her contacts. But she wasn't willing to trade favors for something she was already going to get. Still, she hated that part of intelligence work, hated letting someone else be in control. She was a dominatrix for crying out loud, she was the dominant one, she was always in control. Shaking her head, Aliza got up, she needed a few dozen laps in the pool to clear her head.
….
It was dark. He couldn't figure out whether it was the room or if he was unconscious again. The bonds on his wrists and ankles that restrained him to the chair were soft leather. That wasn't a good sign, soft leather wouldn't leave ligature marks. He knew from the methodology that it had been Seals that grabbed him, he'd been one after all. If they were planning on legitimately prosecuting him, or even just tossing him in Gitmo, he would be handcuffed. Soft leather meant that he was being held in a black site by people who held no legal connection to the United States government.
He didn't know how long he'd been in there. The room, the darkness, the lack of sound, of smells, of anything to latch onto. It was near complete sensory deprivation. He knew how it worked, he'd been through SERE, this was to soften him up. Once they'd let him stew for a while, then they would come in and start asking questions. After that, it would depend on who was in charge of the interrogation. Some liked the new way, pumping the subject full of drugs to transcend the conscious mind and making it impossible to resist, turning the whole thing into more of a medical procedure than anything else. Others were old school, sticking to the greatest hits, waterboarding, a set of jumper cables in uncomfortable places, amateur dental work, the works.
In all honesty, he was more of the latter. In the environments he was expected to work in, you usually had to work with what you were given. That, and it was more satisfying to rip someone's teeth out with a pair of pliers than to hook them up on an I.V. of sodium pentothal. In any case, he was prepared for either scenario. He had a foolproof plan to get through the interrogation.
Finally, the lights all came on at once, sensory overload, another parlor trick. The hood was violently ripped off of his head. He blinked to help his eyes adjust and rolled his neck to loosen the sore muscles. A woman sat before him in an unflattering gray pantsuit. She was flanked by burly men in blue collared shirts. The woman's face was severe, making it pretty clear how this meeting was going to go.
"Your name is Ronald Porter, up until 2005, you were a BUDS Instructor at USNSWC. You were given a dishonorable discharge because you were caught having sex with the seventeen year old daughter of an admiral. Since then, you've been offering a crash course in advanced warfare to everyone from corporate security firms to the insurgents whose camp we pulled you out of." Of course she brings that up. Ronald rolled his eyes. It was the 'we know everything about you' bit.
"Now listen, let's get one thing straight. She came on to me while I was visiting the admiral. It was her eighteenth birthday party, what was I supposed to think? How was I supposed to know they were having the party two weeks before her actual birthday? Who does that?"
The woman just glared at him. "I don't give a damn about that. You no longer exist. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you died along with everyone else in the airstrike on that camp. That means we can officially make you our bitch. You will give us everything on your employers, the only question is this. Will you do it the easy way or the hard way?"
Really, did she have to go and use that dumb old cliché. It was a cool line the first time he heard it back in the eighties. Now it was just annoying, it had been used too many times. Regardless, it was time to put his plan to get through this into place. "Alright," he said, "I choose the easy way."
The woman looked dumbstruck. He could understand it, no professional ever just gave it up. She got herself together pretty quick, he had to give her that. She most likely assumed it was a trick, that he was about to spit out a couple of dozen lies to buy himself time. Boy was she in for a surprise.
"I'll tell you everything you want to know, but I'll expect a deal in return. I'm going to need a new identity, fully backstopped, and twelve million dollars." It was a bold move for a man tied to a chair. But hey, as the SAS said, who dares wins. Ronald leaned back in his chair and tried to look as relaxed and smug as possible.
"You're in no position to be demanding anything. You're officially dead, we have all the time in the world to find out what you know. And you and I both know that you'll crack. Everyone does, it's just a matter of what's required." It was true, every man had his breaking point, Ronald wouldn't deny that.
"True, but you and I both know how messy that is. I'll throw out a whole bunch of bullshit and you'll have to double check everything I say against current intelligence. It'll take weeks just to break through my defenses and actually start learning anything, even then, you'll never get everything. I'm a pretty fit guy, but I'm not nineteen anymore, the old ticker doesn't work as well as it used to. My heart will give out before you even start getting to the good stuff. This way works out better for the both of us."
The woman looked unconvinced. "I think we can manage. You're right, we won't get everything. But we're good at this, so we'll get most of it. Anything we miss, we'll be able to get somewhere else, so no, I think we'll do things the hard way."
It looked like it was time to play his ace. "Oh really, well then, I guess you don't care to know why the entire threat matrix went dark for a month. And you don't want to know about the Los Santos network. And you certainly don't want to know who the man who got away from the hit on the financial counterterrorism summit."
That certainly caught her attention. "You don't know who that is, you're bluffing. We've been beating every bush there is. No one knows who that was. He's a ghost."
Ronald felt his confidence building, he had them. "He is a ghost, you guys have let an entire network of ghosts slip right under your noses. There are only two people alive who know who got off that boat, one of them is that person, and the other is me." She still didn't look entirely convinced. She wanted proof, "He jumped off the back of the ship, it was a jackknife dive."
He saw it in her eyes before it crossed her lips. She hid it well, but he saw it. He'd won, he knew that he had. Finally, she said it.
"I'll take this to my superiors."
So now we find out who the SEALs grabbed. Oh and by the way, the grab was one of the ops that Ed mentioned being greenlit during his meeting with Ben in the SCIF. I had another event planned for this chapter, but I decided against it for now. I might still use it, but maybe not.
R&R People.