"You didn't," he said shortly, "everything's on that flash drive?" Maura nodded, pulling it out and handing it to him. Taking it, James looked her over again, that slow, searching scan from bottom to top. He pulled the hideous smoked lens glasses off her nose so they were eye to eye.
Looking up at him, her eyes were wide and questioning, hair piled up in a sloppy bun. She flinched for a moment as his long, calloused fingers ran over her neck, idly pressing the slim column of her throat between thumb and fingers. "I want you to erase any trace of a search from Masoud's transactions, you won't speak of this to anyone, not even Holbrook." She pressed back further into her chair as his grip suddenly tightened. "Is that understood, Maura?"
She licked her suddenly dry lips, staring up at the thin line of his mouth. His grasp on her windpipe was tight, not yet quite cutting off her oxygen, just making it clear it would be easy to do. "Of course, Mr. Pine," she managed.
His grip suddenly loosened, and a smile came over his narrow face. "What do you call me?" His low voice was sin, silky and dripping with intent. He could see the pulse on her neck fluttering rapidly as Maura leaned back from him. He grinned, enjoying the game and following her retreat. "What. Do. You call me, pet?"
"S- sir-" she began, then gasped as her elbow knocked over a glass, the shards cutting into her forearm. "Bloody hell!" she hissed, holding her arm and grabbing some paper towels to hold the cut closed.
James frowned, taking her arm and putting pressure on the wound. "You need to see Dr. Kennedy." He pulled out the pocket square from his expensive suit and wrapped the linen tightly over the bleeding cut. "Head over there now."
Edging to the door, Maura nodded, "Of course. On my way." She didn't quite scamper down the hall, but her breathing finally returned to normal as she made her way to the doctor's sanctuary. Any organization as bloody as theirs needed a full-time physician on staff and the Big Three used any extra information gleaned from medical exams and treatment to keep a thumb on their employees. "Dr. Kennedy?" She made sure the office door shut behind her. "I had a small accident, I don't know if this will need stitches-" The sour-faced, gray-haired doctor emerged from her examination room, a cigarette hanging from her thin lips.
"MacLaren," she intoned, making it sound deeply disapproving. Ushering her into the inner office, Kennedy shut the door. Maura pulled the flash drive from her pocket and raised her eyebrows. Clicking on a recording of her dry voice droning on during an examination, the doctor nodded her to the table. "What do you have?" She took her arm, briskly cleaning off the blood and poking at the cut.
"Pine came in today in a rage, looking for a transaction from the Masoud Group." She waited while Kennedy numbed the area around the wound and started stitching. "It's to do with a twenty-two-million-pound transaction for chemical weapons and surface-to-air missiles to Morocco. Here's the part I don't understand- the buyer? The buyer is French."
Dr. Kennedy’s brow furrowed as she pulled the needle through Maura’s skin. "French who?"
"That's what doesn't make sense, it's the French government." Maura shifted uncomfortably. Kennedy was not gentle with wound care. "Pine gave me strict orders to wipe anything that looked like a search from Masoud's transaction. I ran the thumb drive before backing out of the system and then cut myself to get an excuse to come here."
If she was waiting for praise, she was mistaken. The doctor tied off the last stitch, her lips pursed. "Give me the flash drive and get back to work, MacLaren." The senior agent walked out of the room, lighting a new cigarette and pocketing the precious bit of information. Maura rolled her eyes and put on her own bandage.
***
Getting home that night, Maura headed straight for her shower, piling her curls on top of her head. She still had dried blood caking on her arm and a scum of cigarette smoke on her clothes from Kennedy's office. Scrubbing around the cut, she ran through the transaction records search over and over. She'd been chastised before for trying to connect the dots before. "Your job is to find the intel and bring it to me, MacLaren, not to pretend you get the big picture,” she mimicked Dr. Kennedy's supercilious voice.
But it didn't make sense. Chemical weapons were an utter violation of the Geneva Convention. And who would the French government be supplying with weaponry in Morocco? Why did James suddenly seem pleased? Wrapping a towel around her, Maura walked into the main room, brow wrinkled in thought.
"If you keep frowning like that, it's going to stick."
"Ah!" Maura gasped, nearly dropping her towel. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Mr. Pine! You have to stop creeping up on me like that! What are you, part snake?" She was too startled to be afraid of the man seated on her couch.
He chuckled, standing up and absently straightened his jacket. "I came to check on you. Did you need stitches?"
"You could have called," she grumbled, getting out a bottle of water from the fridge with a shaky hand. "You're going to give me a nervous tic."
James raised an eyebrow. "Are we forgetting our manners?"
Maura tightened her towel, "You're the one who broke into my boat," she said churlishly. He was in front of her in a second, putting a finger under her chin and lifting it sharply, making her focus on his stern face.
"Nonetheless. You will address me properly at all times." His beautiful voice was back to cold and indifferent again.
She nodded reluctantly, his hand still on her chin. "Understood."
He leaned in, so close that she could see his dark stubble dotting his cheeks and chin, smell the spicy tones of his aftershave. "Understood, what?" James enunciated.
"Understood... Sir," she managed.
Still crowding her, James took the bottle of water out of her hand and pulled her arm up gently, peeling back the bandage to look at her cut.
"How many stitches?" he asked, his warm fingers sliding over the sensitive skin of her wrist.
"Just five," Maura shrugged, still breathing in his scent and wishing he didn't smell so damned good. Carefully replacing the bandage, James's fingers trailed up her arm, the calloused pads striking little sparks under her skin. Her breath caught as his fingers trailed across her collarbone, gently sliding back and forth, dropping closer to the top of the towel with every pass. "I'm just... ah... going to put something on," she said, clearing her throat.
His other arm snaked around her narrow waist as his azure gaze rose from his close examination of her soft skin to pin her with his gaze. "I don't believe that's necessary, darling." Her dark lashes fluttered as his warm fingertips slid across her breasts, working the towel loose a bit each time.
"Mr. Pine, I can't- please don't ask this of me." His eyes moved back up to hers, turning a frosty blue.
