Chapter 2

Nikoloz rolled his eyes and returned to his reading. The man couldn’t even last a full day without a sexual release. It was going to be a very long week.

T.H.R.U.S.T.—Tactical Homeland Response Unit and Security Taskforce—had paired him with the American a couple of years ago, after Nikoloz had graduated from their Special Forces training. Section 3 routinely sent the pair on troubleshooting missions around the world, particularly against their rival organization, F.I.S.T. (the acronym was rumored to stand for Federation for the Instigation of Suspicion and Terrorism). Vincent was a seasoned, top-notch agent, but Nikoloz often wondered why he’d been partnered with the man. Vincent was emotional, vain, and headstrong. Nikoloz preferred to analyze a problem from a distance before acting. Vincent liked to rush right in, guns blazing. And of course there was the little issue of the man’s sexual appetite.

Nikoloz liked to think he was a normal male—”red-blooded” as Vincent put it. He enjoyed the act and, contrary to gossip at headquarters, had bedded several of his fellow agents. He just didn’t advertise the fact as some of them did. His partner seemed to think the whole thing was some sort of contest, perhaps with a trophy for most bed partners.

“You know,” Vincent said that evening as they sat around the campfire, “us being in the same boat and all, we could help each other out.” He gave his partner one of his patented smiles—the one that made every woman in headquarters (and not a few of the men) go weak in the knees.

Ah, finally getting to the point Nikoloz had anticipated from Day One. Next would come the “What’s a little blowjob between friends?” speech. Americans. Nikoloz raised an eyebrow, shot one glance at his partner, and pulled out the second journal he’d packed.

Vincent snatched it from his hands. “Damn it, you’re not going to sit there and read the entire week while I suffer!”

“You are hardly suffering, my friend. After all, there is, how did you so quaintly put it? ‘Mother Hand’?”

Vincent rolled up the journal and slapped it against his palm as he spoke. “Entirely unsatisfying and you know it. A man like myself just can’t live on that sort of thing.”

Nikoloz forced himself not to reach for the journal. It would only result in a game of “Keep Away,” and that was exactly what Vincent wanted. “You forget: I am also male. Just because you have an erection does not mean you have to have sex.”

Vincent’s eyebrows went up. His cheek dimpled. “And waste a perfectly good hard-on? I’m surprised at you, partner.”

Nikoloz rolled his eyes and heaved a sigh of his own. Vincent was on the verge of broaching the subject now. It was a foregone conclusion, and had been from that first mission. Why fight it? Other than the fact that it was so very amusing to see his partner squirm. It wasn’t as if Vincent would be his first, after all. His KGB training had been thorough. An agent who was captured must be able to resist any sort of discomfort, and most men found that act quite discomforting. Nikoloz had long since lost any aversion he might have once had. It would hardly be an imposition to go along with his partner. And Vincent did have one thing right: it would help relieve the tension between them. Tension that had been evident to Nikoloz from the moment his partner’s eyes had swept over him, sizing up the new recruit. Those eyes had widened just a bit, the pupils had enlarged, his gaze lingered perhaps a moment longer than it should have, before he’d extended a hand and said hello

“Would you like to read that issue?” Nikoloz now asked, widening his own eyes and raising both eyebrows. “I have several more journals in my bag.”

He waited until Vincent had shoved to his feet and whirled away in frustration, then he released the smile that had his cheeks aching trying to hold it in. His face was expressionless when Vincent turned back around, both hands clenched around the rolled up journal as though it was a F.I.S.T. agent’s neck—or Nikoloz’s.

“For a man as smart as you are supposed to be,” Vincent said through gritted teeth, “you are as dense as a post when it comes to understanding your fellow man.”

“I have never found my fellow man worth understanding. Most of them want the same things: money, power, or sex.”

Vincent dropped back to a cross-legged seat by the fire. “I ought to burn every one of those damn magazines.”

“They are scientific journals, and I hope you do not. I find the wait every bit as boring as you do.”

“Just boring?” Vincent raised an eyebrow and shot him another of his grins.