“I’d like to bring in my own team. I’ll want to put a couple on staff. Have we made contact with the cruise line?” It was a piece of shit assignment, but if it got him back in the field, he would work it with everything he had.
“We’re stretched a bit thin, Knight. With Harris and Keller out of the picture for a bit, I was thinking about sending in a couple of analysts.”
Good god. That would be perfectly dreadful. He needed operatives. He needed people who would take the shot when they needed to. Analysts would sit down and go through all the reasons why they shouldn’t fire the gun before maybe taking the shot.
“I believe I have a friend who owes me, and he won’t need to be brought up to speed about the lifestyle.” He’d done Ian Taggart a favor by not hauling his information broker wife back to England. Ian and Charlotte would be perfect as long as he could keep them from having sex all over the ship.
And Taggart came with a whole crew he wouldn’t have to train.
“Does he have a woman you can take in as your sub?”
Damn, it was weird to hear Nigel say the word “sub” and not mean something nautical by it. Damon ran through the women of McKay-Taggart. If he had to spend any amount of time playing in public with a sub, there was the chance of sex, the possibility that they would look odd if they weren’t sexual in some fashion. He rather thought Ian would protest if he used his wife, and Alex would just shoot him first and ask questions later once Eve’s name left his mouth. The rest all recently had babies.
Chelsea? She was smart and a bit ruthless and so uncomfortable with her own body that she would never work.
And it would be so much better to have someone who spoke a couple of languages.
“What about the blonde?” He tossed it out casually, not wanting Nigel to know how anxious he was. Penelope worked in translations. She was an analyst. Pretty, petite, perfectly round with nice-sized breasts and an ass that he could squeeze. Sweet. Submissive. His groin, dead since the accident, gave a good flare of life.
A quizzical look crossed Nigel’s face. “Blonde? We have a few.”
How did he not give himself away here? “She’s a translator. Not sure what she translates. German, maybe. Curly blonde hair. She’s complete shit at dressing herself. Pretty girl, but she doesn’t know it.”
“Are you talking about Penelope Cash?” Nigel’s mouth practically hung open.
Penny Cash. God, her parents must have hated her. “I believe so. She would work.”
“You want to take Penelope Cash on a fetish cruise? Well, uhm, she actually speaks German, Danish, and Finnish and her Russian is fairly good.”
“She sounds perfect.” She was a mouse, a cute little mouse who obviously needed a very good fuck. She was kind and sweet and a bit of a doormat. He might be able to teach her a thing or two. And he might be able to break out of his rut. Seven months and not a single erection. He was a bit worried that it didn’t work anymore.
“All right. I suppose it’s your team, but she’s very quiet. I don’t know that she’ll suit you at all.”
She was quiet, submissive. She wouldn’t give him hell in the field. He should be able to control her. He didn’t need a woman he had to worry would disobey him. He needed a sub, and from what he’d seen, Penelope fit the bill better than anyone else in the office. Coupled with the fact that she spoke the languages and he could halfway see himself fucking her—she was practically perfect.
It wasn’t that he was really attracted to her. It was just that she was his type. That was all. He would have to keep an emotional distance from her. No, the fact that he’d thought about her when he’d almost died had been random. She’d simply been kind to him and he liked to reward kindness. In this particular case, he might reward her kindness with multiple orgasms.
“She’s not married, is she?” He hadn’t seen her in seven months. A lot could happen. He’d heard she’d been engaged at one point. That wouldn’t suit. He really would likely have to screw her and possibly in a public setting. It didn’t bother him at all. He could fuck with an audience all day, but some husbands might object.
He didn’t like the thought of her having a husband.
“Penelope? No. I don’t believe she even dates.”
Excellent, then no one would get in the way. “Perfect.”
“Well, you have to convince her first.”
Damon huffed, allowing a bit of his arrogance to show. He might have lost a step or two physically, but the bullet hadn’t taken his charm. “I think I can handle one small female.”
She wouldn’t turn down the chance to serve Queen and country. Of course, in serving Queen and country, she would find herself serving him. His cock stirred for the first time in forever.
Yes, going back to the field would be good for him.
* * * *
“I’m sorry. What did you say, sir?” Penny asked because she couldn’t possibly have heard him right. No. He hadn’t said what she’d thought he’d said.
Nigel Crowe hadn’t just told her he was partnering her with Damon Knight and putting them in the field together where they would pose as lovers. He hadn’t said that because that would be utterly ridiculous.
And she really wished Damon Knight wasn’t standing behind him, looming over the proceedings like a gloriously dark angel. The man was far too big, too grim, too gorgeous for her to be able to breathe in the same room with him.
The head of the double 0 program shook his head. “I seem to be having an enormous amount of difficulty making myself plain today.”
She was screwing up. She was a bloody translator. She understood words and their nuances in many different languages, but nothing was computing today.
“He meant what he said.” Knight’s voice was like rich dark chocolate. It seemed to flow from those gorgeous lips of his to caress her skin as though he was talking only to her, and no one else in the world mattered. She’d never had that deep voice turned specifically on her. Oh, he’d said the occasional hello before and once he’d thanked her for baking him a cake—though he hadn’t eaten it—but she’d never held an actual long conversation with him.
Which was good because apparently she struggled with the power of speech around the man. Their whole relationship involved him asking her to translate things and her acting like a drooling idiot.