Halfway through the movie, Noah noticed Reign wasn’t watching, the demon’s attention on him rather than the screen.
“Reign?” He pulled his legs in and wrapped his hands around them, resting his head on his knees sideways.
“What is it, Noah?”
How long would this last? The contract between them? How long did he have left?
Noah almost asked but ultimately didn’t dare, afraid that maybe Reign had somehow found out. That he knew now when the end would come, and it was why he was making Noah feel special.
“Are you enjoying the movie?” he said as casually as he could muster.
“I am,” Reign replied, not even pretending he had any intention of watching the movie.
They didn’t stay for dessert. They left as soon as the credits rolled, somehow making it to Reign’s SUV despite Noah’s insistence that they could totally fuck in one of the small back alleys.
“I love how greedy you are for me, Noah,” Reign praised as he slid inside Noah, the stretch and burn familiar and so very good.
“Harder, Reign,” Noah demanded, pushing against Reign to meet every thrust.
Reign obliged, pounding into him from behind, his pace quick and unforgiving. Noah’s moans were loud inside the car, Reign’s grunts spurring him on. It was a quick fuck and it didn’t take long, Reign losing it the moment Noah’s ass clenched around him. They did it twice more, once while they were taking a shower together and once more when they lay in Reign’s bed, that third orgasm so intense it left Noah so boneless and blissed out he drifted into sleep not even five minutes later.
27
The meeting with the Head of Intelligence happened in mid-February.
Noah’s nerves were on edge as he followed the gorgeous fairy-like blonde he’d seen at the Welcome Gala to the bigshot’s office. Reign and Barbatos were with him, too.
“That’s Paimon,” Barbatos informed him in a whisper when they stopped in front of a massive carved door. “No glitter today, though.”
“I can hear you, Barbs,” Paimon shot back, her voice betraying a smile that disappeared when she knocked and announced their arrival.
They were let inside promptly, the space modern just like the Intelligence’s building itself. Officially, Noah was visiting the Foreign Affairs’ office again, checking in and supposedly discussing Church business with Reign right this moment.Unofficially, this was the meeting he’d been looking forward to for an entire month so he could introduce himself to the person who could potentially grant him the asylum he needed so badly.
“Hello, Noah, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” the half-Korean, half-Indonesian woman who was sittingbehind the grand desk greeted him, standing up so they could shake hands.
She was beautiful like Paimon, with chiseled features, waist-long braided hair and captivating dark brown eyes, though Noah didn’t think she was a demon. Or, at least, he didn’t feel that way toward her presence, which, while strong, didn’t have the peculiar note of intimidation that all three demons in attendance seemed to exude. Then again, Noah wasn’t an expert on the supernatural, so maybe he was wrong, and she was better at hiding it.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you as well, miss…”
“Amisha Seongyun.” She sat back down in her chair and Noah settled on the one in front of her, with Reign claiming the one on the left while Barbatos leaned his back against the wooden bookshelf that spanned the right wall. “Right, then, I’ll skip straight to the point. Reign told me about you. I am certainly interested in a mutually beneficial arrangement. We’ve never had an inside person, so you open a lot of potential opportunities for us. What we offer in return”—she crossed her hands in front of her, giving Noah an inquisitive look—“depends on what you are willing to do for us.”
Noah didn’t even need to think about it. He had already made up his mind. “Whatever it takes so I can stay here after my visa expires.Indefinitely.”
A pleased smile stretched the woman’s cherry-colored lips. “That works for us.” She produced a data chip in a glass holder from the top drawer of her desk and placed it in front of Noah. “What I need is very similar to what the Empire asked you to do. This contains spyware, which has to be installed on a central server. This means the one that can directly communicate with the Empire’s main network. I trust you will be able to locate it?”
As far as Noah knew, that server wasn’t on the embassy’s premises and, technically, it didn’t fall under his specs to have any interaction with it. However, he could track it down since he had the clearances to access the entire data logs of the Embassy. The problem, then, was how he was going to bug it— physically offload the spyware—without alerting the Empire that he was at the data center where he had no reason to be.
Screw worrying about it now. He was going to figure that part out later.
“Yes. It sits in a data center somewhere in Seoul. I can find it,” Noah assured the Head of Intelligence.
“Obviously, if something happens, this can’t be tracked back to us. As for our end of the deal, once things are in place and we start receiving the data we need, I will personally make the necessary arrangements. Please keep in mind that this will make you an enemy of the Empire, so if you have any doub—”
“I don’t. I want to do this,” Noah cut her off, his heart galloping.
He was doing it. Thiswashappening, this was… He was so close he couldn’t believe it. All he needed to do was figure out how to bug the servers and then wait long enough so that the data started flowing in.
“Very well. Then take this and let me know when everything is in place. I’ll inform my people to be on the lookout for those logs.” She stood up and so did Noah, and they shook hands again, her grip firm like the first time. “I’m looking forward to working with you, Noah. And Trevor, I do expect you to continue ensuring we keep feeding the Empire fake communication logs without them knowing until we have what we need from them.”
