“No, no way. You’re still recovering and—”
“I’m fine.” My jaw tensed. “Back to normal.”
“And you’re away with your woman. We can handle this.”
“You know I will if—”
“We’d all rather you were getting laid. You deserve that after taking a bullet for the team, and you know, your ex, Sarah, and all that crap she put you through.”
I pursed my lips. Shit going down without me…that was not easy to justify in my head.
I did like getting laid, though.
Big time.
“You’ll let me know how it goes?” I said gruffly.
“Of course, I’ll call you after we’ve taken the bastards out and got the women to safety.”
“You do that.” I paused. “Anything else on his phone?”
“Yeah, an insight into the way he was luring women to the UK. He’d been messaging over fifty foreign women, flattering them, telling them he wanted to help and could get them visas and jobs once they got here and he’d take them for dinner and around the sights in London. Images he showed of himself were of some gym dude with perfect teeth and no warts. A far cry from his ugly mug.”
“What an asshole. Have you let the women he was messaging know?”
“First thing we did. We sent a message to all of them telling them they were not only being scammed and lied to, they’d also nearly put themselves into a very dangerous situation. Hopefully they won’t fall for those kind of tricks in the future if they want to get to the UK.”
“We can only hope.”
“So that’s you up to date. I won’t keep you.”
“Thanks for the call, Prof. I appreciate it. And let me know how it goes at the farm. Be safe, yeah, we don’t want any more Galahad guys with bullet holes in them.”
“Sure thing, mate. Take care, don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”
“I can’t promise that.” I chuckled and hung up. Took a left under a giant fig tree and onto the track that led to the villa.
It did niggle me that Galahad were on a mission without me; a fruitful one, too, by the sound of it. But when I really thought about it, I was glad not to be going back to that crappy old farm. I didn’t have the best memories of being there.
Soon I was pulling up in front of the villa. The huge white building was covered in dazzling pink bougainvillea, the vines stretching up into the sky like thin sun-worshipping arms. Thick marble pillars supported the porch, and upstairs, on the balcony, white nets fluttered in the sea breeze escaping from an open door.
I let myself in and paused. Took a deep breath, my heart squeezing with emotion. It was silent now. Last week it had been full of the boys’ voices, their music, their shrieks of delight as they’d played in the vast pool.
But now they were gone.
I dropped the keys into a bowl shaped like a shell and wandered through the cool interior, past the enormous living area with its cinema-sized TV and the kitchen any chef in theworld would be excited to cook in—the sea view alone was worth a million quid.
The doors to the pool area were flung open, and I stripped off my t-shirt and kicked off my sliders. Amy would be out there, she was a sun fiend, I’d discovered, and her skin had gone from pale to golden in a matter of days as well as producing a beyond cute crop of freckles over her nose that weren’t drawn on.
For a moment I stopped and took in the scene before me. The azure sea, the blue sky, the swaying palm trees, and the glistening pool complete with smallsplashing waterfall. To the right of the pool, beside a cactus garden, Amy lounged on a sunbed.
She wore a sinfully tiny yellow bikini, huge dark sunglasses, a floppy straw hat, and there were AirPods in her ears.
She was also sucking on one of the strawberry lollipops the boys had left in the sweet bowl and tapping her foot to a beat.
My cock stirred instantly. The way her cheeks hollowed with each little suck, and the thought of how easily that bikini, with its tie-at-the-side bows, could be discarded, had lust flooding my system.
I guessed her eyes were closed because she didn’t appear to notice me approach. Sitting at her side, on another lounger, I reached for the lollipop and pulled it out.
