Chapter Five - Pretend

Celeste

Michael tried to teach me how to pretend to be rich. I let him go for almost a minute because it was entertaining.

“Stay close to me.”

“How close?”

“Within reach.”

“So less girlfriend, more kidnapping victim.”

“We need to appear established.”

I fastened an earring. “We’ve been together three years.”

Michael stopped. His cover story had given us six months.

“Why three?”

“Six months invites questions. Three years makes people assume they’re rude for not already knowing.”

“That creates unnecessary history.”

“History is what makes relationships believable.”

His expression suggested he remained unconvinced.

I picked up my clutch.

“Darling, I’ve been pretending to like rich men since I was sixteen. Keep up.”

His expression was priceless.

“Now, You’ll follow my read, and if I touch your elbow twice it means you’re talking too much.”

He went quiet. I’d surprised him. I was starting to enjoy that.

The event occupied a glass room above the river, all champagne and low laughter and people who’d priced each other on the way in. Michael saw cameras and exits and the two men by the service door who were carrying more than canapés.

I saw everything else.

The Vesper director stood near the fireplace holding champagne he wasn’t drinking. His wife was across the room pretending to enjoy a conversation with a property developer while monitoring him through the reflection in a mirror.

“She knows.”

Michael followed my attention.

“Knows what?”

“Her husband is sleeping with the woman in silver.”

“Evidence?”

“The wife hasn’t looked directly at either of them once. The mistress has touched him twice but only when his wife’s back was turned. He keeps repositioning himself so he can see both women.”

Michael studied the group.

“And this matters because?”

“The mistress has a Vesper access band.”

His gaze dropped to her wrist. A thin black bracelet.

He went quiet. I smiled.

“You can say it.”

“Say what?”

“That I’m useful.”

“I didn’t think you weren’t.”

“That’s impressively irritating.”

“You got all of that in ninety seconds?”

“I got all of that walking in the door. I’ve been getting it my whole life. You people just decided it was gossip.”

He looked at me then in a way he hadn’t before, and I filed it away to examine later, when he wasn’t watching me file things away.

A woman approached, jewelled and sharp, our host’s gatekeeper. “I don’t think we’ve met. And I know everyone.”

I almost laughed in her face, mentally thinking she had to be the only person in London who didn’t see me naked and accused of murder last night. But then, maybe she hadn’t.

And this was the test. If she decided we didn’t belong, we’d be walked out before the terrace, before the office, before anything.

Michael opened his mouth to be plausible.

I kissed him instead.

I meant it to be a performance. A quick, convincing kiss, the kind married couples give in public and forget by the cloakroom.

It stopped being that almost at once.

Because my body already knew his. It knew the shape of him from a dark room where I’d been no one, and it didn’t care that the lights were on now, didn’t care that I hated him, didn’t care about anything except the low sound he made when I pulled him closer than the performance required.

When I stepped back, the gatekeeper had softened into a smile. “Oh,” she said. “Newlyweds.”

“Practically,” I said, and my voice was not as steady as I wanted.

We found a shadowed library off the main room. I don’t remember deciding to. His hands were in my hair and mine were under his coat and the wall was cool against my back and none of it was for the room anymore.

“Still pretending?”

“No.”

“Good.”

I kissed him. Then I pushed his jacket off and opened his shirt while he kissed down my neck.

“Celeste.”

“Don’t talk.”

His mouth moved lower.

“That wasn’t talking.”

I laughed, then his hand slipped beneath my dress. Two fingers stroked over my underwear.

My knees weakened.

“You’re wet.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I’m not.”

He pulled the fabric aside. His fingers moved over my clit with maddening precision. I gripped his shoulders.

“That.”

He did it again. I kissed him to keep myself quiet. His finger slid inside me. Then another. I made a sound against his mouth.

His thumb pressed harder. My hips moved against his hand. He kissed me, deep and slow, while his fingers worked inside me until I was close enough to forget why doing this was a terrible idea.

I opened his trousers. His cock was hard against my palm.

Michael’s head lowered to my shoulder. The reaction gave me back a little power. I stroked him once.

Again.

His fingers stopped.

“Celeste.”

I looked at him. Not the mask. His face.

Michael Harbinger.

The man who knew who I was when I hadn’t known him. The man who still hadn’t explained everything.

I removed my hand.

“Stop.”

I pressed a hand against his chest and let go of his hard cock.

“No,” I said. “Not like this. Last time I didn’t know who you were.” I steadied my breathing. “This time I do. That makes it worse.”

He went still instantly. Both hands lifted away from me at once.

“All right,” he said. Nothing else. No argument, no coaxing, no wounded pride. He simply stopped, and stepped back, and let me have the space.

I straightened my dress with hands that weren’t quite mine yet. “The office. Vesper keeps its records on the upper floor. Let’s do what we came to do.”

The upper corridor was empty. So was the office when we reached it, dark and clean and too easy.

“There’s nothing here,” Michael said, already suspicious.

A screen woke on the far wall.

For a moment I thought it was security footage of some other room. Then I saw the library. The shadow. A woman in silver and a man in a dark coat, her back against the wall, his mouth at her throat.

Us. Three minutes ago.

Text bloomed across the image in clean white letters.

WELCOME BACK, CELESTE.

The cold started at my scalp and went down.

RECOVERY KEY ACCEPTED.

Michael moved to the screen, fast now, reading everything.

The third line appeared.

MICHAEL HARBINGER DETECTED.

And I watched the most controlled man I’d ever met go completely still. He wasn’t calculating. For the first time since I’d met him, something had gotten ahead of him.

“Michael,” I said. “What is it?”

“They weren’t waiting for me,” he said. His eyes came up and met mine. “They were waiting for us.”