As soon as the heavy door to the apartment closed behind me, I felt a wave of anxiety take over my body. Forget butterflies in my stomach; I was full-on panicking even if my exterior was business as usual.
"Gaël, I'm home from the market!" I called out through the apartment in Russian. Ashton would know something was up since I wasn't speaking English nor was I using his first name.
I kicked my heels off before moving to set the groceries on the counter. I would have put them away, but Ashton came out of our bedroom with a smile on his face, playing the part.
"Hey, Babe," he murmured before I pecked his lips. "Was it busy?" Curiosity and worry were lurking deep in his pupils.
Ashton started to put the bags in the fridge. It was all of them but I don't think either of us was focusing on the chip bags in the fridge. This was a matter of life and death. "Not too bad for mid-day," I hummed, brushing past him and heading to our bedroom. My feet padded on the wood while I shook off my black coat, placing it on the bed. "When did you get home?" I asked with the intention of finding out if Ashton had been him this afternoon or if Potvin had called him in for another favor. It seemed he was doing that more and more often, taking advantage of Ashton's skills and hands before we travelled to Israel. Even before the sniper assassination, Potvin had been getting more needy. Now we were at the apex of dependency.
"Ten minutes ago," he responded casually, following me into the bedroom. "What do you want to do for dinner?"
"I was thinking we could go out," I turned to face him, speaking to Ashton with my eyes. There were bugs in this apartment, I was sure of it. Every conversation as of this afternoon, at the very least, was being recorded. Who knows if they have cameras too. Considering the fact that both Ashton and I are extremely valuable targets, I would expect there to be video recorders. It's not like we could check though, it would just tip our CIA friends off. If they thought we were clueless, the easier our escape would be. If we were really lucky, they'd believe our acts and think they had the wrong people, especially since they had only just found us today.
"But we both have to shower first. It's disgustingly humid outside." Humid and subzero; the perfect recipe for hypothermia. Tonight would be fucking fun.
"Mhm," Ashton hummed, putting his hands on my broad hips and walking us backwards.
"Maybe I could join you."I smirked, my delicate hands running from his neck down his T-shirt covered chest as my feet hit the cool tiles.
"I think that's a great idea, Baby." Ashton pushed me back, his hands lifting my thighs as he did so, so I was sitting on the edge of the counter in the bathroom. His plump lips brushed mine before kissing me more aggressively. I had kissed Ashton in public before, but this was a completely different type of performance. I wasn't going to fuck him, but we both knew we had to get pretty darn close to it for this to work.My hands slipped under his shirt, feeling the ridges of his abs while pulling the grey cotton over his head, momentarily parting our lips only for Ashton to return them to my jawline. He peppered firey kisses until he reached my neck where Ashton started to nip at the sensitive skin. One of his hands unhooked my bra while the other held firmly on my ass at the same time as I undid his belt buckle, breathing heavily and letting out the occasional moan as Ashton worked his way down my creamy skin.
Most were fake but I'd be lying if I said one or two weren't real. I think anyone could make you moan if they happened to hit your sweet spot, so I didn't think much of it. I couldn't afford to.
Ashton was too dangerous for me to catch feelings for. Besides, he was hot. That's all this was.Ashton pulled off my bra and my sweater easily, palming my right breast somewhat roughly while I kissed the base of his caramel-colored neck, tasting his clean skin. Ashton undid my black ripped jeans at the same time I started to move his black jeans down, exposing his defined V-line. Our hours at the gym made this much more distracting then it needed to be. But I suppose that just made this whole thing more authentic.
In the CIA stuff like this happened all the time but I can't say it had happened to me specifically due to my location, but I'd heard of it happening to agents in other countries. Everything was moving so fast, with both of our minds so far away from what we were actually doing that I barely noticed when his large hands slipped my jeans off, leaving me in nothing but my thong while Ashton quickly turned the water in the shower on high, trying to create as much steam as possible to cover us in just moments.
When he returned to my body, his lips tickled my ear, both of his hands holding my generously sized ass very intimately. His touch was like fire on my nerves, sending my brain to an even more frantic place than it already was. My heart was pounding and there was no controlling it.
"Just do it already, this needs to be convincing if we want enough time to get out of here," I murmured in his ear low enough that the shower would drown out my voice to the recorders in the apartment.
"Knowing you, you'll cut off my hand after this," Ashton muttered, dipping his head to my breast, just above my nipple, and sucking a hickey. The right hand he was worried about losing carefully moved over my hip and between my legs.
He had already had to help me remove a sponge from my vagina, so what difference does it make that there were currently two slender fingers inside of me? All is my sanity is gone. That's the only rational answer.I threw my head back and moaned loudly, wrapping my legs around Ashton's waist to further the illusion that he was fingering me. Ashton's warm mouth released my flesh, going back to my lips and kissing me intensely before starting to remove my underwear. I used my own hands to do the same to him before putting my legs around his waist again to cover for us both. With my hands on his neck and Ashton's hands on the backs of my thighs, he picked me up and brought us both to the scalding shower, my right hand turning the temperature down to a slightly more bearable level and dropping my feet to the ground. Ashton's right hand pinned both of my fists above my head, his intense blue gaze pinning me down in my frantic state.
"I am 100% certain I saw a CIA operative following me today. The apartment has to be bugged. We need to get out of here and fast." I told Ashton in a rush, my voice still quiet but slightly more audible.
"How do you know it was the CIA?" Ashton asked me, water droplets gathering on his tan skin as he looked down at me with all the intensity in the world. He was in full-on mission mode.
"It has to be. His ring was on the left hand. Besides, Jacs said his handler shows up here every three weeks. It's three weeks and his prints are in the FSB's system by now. They are either going to kill me, me and you, or kidnap us and take us to a black sight if we don't get the hell out of here."Ashton nodded in thought, picking my legs up and wrapping them around his waist again. I moaned his alias loudly for the cameras. I felt like a porn star to be completely honest. My breasts were brushing Ashton's hard chest as the steam filled the air, thinning my breath.
"The best option right now is to steal a car outside of Moscow, take it as far as we can, and then backpack across the border to Belarus. If we can make it to Minsk and stay for two days, I know a guy that can get us new ID's and papers that will hold up under scrutiny. From there we can get a flight to Tel Aviv and backpack to Dimona." Ashton told me without skipping a beat despite our situation.
"Tel Aviv? You were Sayeret Matkal for six years," I hissed. "No one will recognize you for face value, but you are in their system. You know how intense their customs officers are. You are a young, Arab, male who is most likely in their database. You are the prime example of what they deem 'high risk'."
"Don't worry about it, Margaux. We can practice questions in Belarus and dye our hair. As you said, I was Sayeret Matkal for six years. I know how to handle myself in front of their officers. You and I wouldn't have survived this long if we couldn't fake our way through an interview." Ashton tried to reason with me but there was still clear scepticism on his face.
Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport was notoriously famous for its intense questioning of international passengers down to the high school they went to and the car they drive. People that were single, male, Arab, and young were especially targeted by their risk rating system. If Ashton got selected for additional questioning we would be screwed and there would be an incredibly high chance of Ashton ending up in an Israeli prison, if not by himself then with me too.
But right now I didn't have many options to get to Dimona.
"Let's do it. We take our guns, the warmest clothes we have, all our cash, some food, the chip, and we hightail it out of here tonight," I agreed with a nod. "I'm going to tell you about how I dropped my earring, that's your signal to get the drive, cash, and guns from under the bed. From here until we get out of Moscow, we go with our covers."
"Deal. Now let's wrap this up because I'm pretty sure all the skin on my back is burnt to a crisp," Ashton muttered. "Now make your orgasm very convincing. I wouldn't want our audience to think Gaël can't perform," he smirked down at me in the way he usually did.
And just for the hell of it, I gave the vocal performance of a lifetime, internally laughing at myself and Ashton's suggestive teasing for what might be the last time, because at this rate I could be dead in a few hours.
When we turned the water off, Ashton and I both went to the bedroom to find ourselves some clothes. I picked out a T-shirt and my warmest sweater along with a pair of black jeans without holes in them. Ashton dressed similarly, both of us wearing a pair of logistic combat boots for a 'hike at East Moscow Mountain' before dinner at a cozy soup place downtown.
"Hey, Babe?" I asked after putting our hiking packs next to the bed where the pulled up floorboard was. "I noticed at the market that I was missing an earring. Can you help me find it before I forget?"
"Sure," Ashton responded while tying his shoe. I got on my hands and knees near the dresser and pretended to search while Ashton looked under the bed.
"It's the silver one with the sapphire stud on it," I described, trying to remember what the last pair of earrings I wore was. It was an expensive pair of sapphire Tiffany's that I wore to the art gala all those weeks ago. Times were much simpler back then, though I wouldn't have thought it at the time.
Ashton knocked over one of the bags by 'accident', sliding in all of our magazines, weapons, money, Potvin's burner, and the coin with the chip in it. "I'm sorry, Baby. I can't find it. Maybe it fell out at work yesterday. We can check your office on Monday."
"Okay," I sighed while getting up from the floor. "I'll just grab us some water and protein bars and we can go. We should get to the top by sunset if we leave now."
"Sure thing, Margaux," Ashton murmured as he got up off the ground and pecked my lips.
Goodbye Moscow, hello Belarus.