Secret Service

by Tal Bauer

The Roosevelt Room is empty until nine a.m., when the deputies from the cabinet are meeting. I know this place inside and out, know every room, every schedule, every agent on duty. I know how to take down an armed attacker within a three-foot kill zone, how to pull an unconscious man from a sinking car and swim him to shore. I can sling lead downrange into perfect bull’s-eyes every time I pick up a weapon. But I don’t know what the hell is going on now.

“Mon cher, no. Nothing like that. I’ve been dreaming of you.”

“You’re under my skin. You’re inside my mind. You’re down deep in my bones. You’re everywhere, and you’re everything. I can’t escape, but I also don’t want to escape. From you, or from this.” His eyes are huge, tumbled sapphires lit on fire. “You feel inevitable. Like I’ve been waiting for you.”

“That’s how you make me feel. I’ve kept this inside myself for years, and then I met you, and… You make me dream impossible dreams.”

He kisses me like the sun kisses the earth when it rises. Slow, an unfolding of warmth, of playful light and hints of heat. And then, all at once, bright and hot and burning away all doubt. We come together like this is fate, like I was always meant to kiss him and he was always meant to kiss me.

I’ve been going a thousand miles an hour for months now, juggling my duties and this slide into depravity as I compromised both myself and Brennan. Spent time I never should have chasing him and the witchcraft between us. Black lightning. Dark love spells. Destiny and fate. The best man I’ve ever met. The man I love. The man I can never love.

My lips clamp shut. Those are old truths. The truths that should keep us apart. I’ve tilled those worries into the fallow fields of my psyche, harvested centuries of pain for my efforts. There is nothing new there.