The lock on the suite door clicked softly. Marcus entered, a silent shadow in the opulent room. The air was stale, thick with the lingering scents of expensive scotch, musk, and another man's sweat. It was a smell he knew well. The smell of a successful operation. He saw the wilted roses on the table and his lip curled in a faint sneer. Pathetic.
He found Selene in the bathroom. She was standing under the spray of a scalding hot shower, her back to him. Steam billowed around her, but it couldn't hide the rigid set of her shoulders. She was scrubbing her skin with a rough loofah, her movements methodical and fierce. She was not cleansing herself. She was scouring away a contamination.
Marcus didn't speak. He went to work. He moved through the suite with an assassin's economy of motion, his eyes scanning for the tiny devices. He retrieved the micro-camera from the smoke detector first, then the one hidden in the base of the ice bucket. He disabled the audio recorder tucked behind the headboard. He was a professional, dismantling the stage after the performance was over.
When he was finished, he walked to the bathroom doorway. Selene had turned off the water. She stood wrapped in a thick white towel, droplets of water clinging to her lashes. She looked at him, her eyes clear and cold. The queen had returned.
"Did you get it?" he asked. His voice was a low rumble.
"Everything," she replied. "General Atwell. The entire board of Aerodyne. Account numbers in the Caymans. He sang like a canary."
A slow, dangerous smile spread across Marcus's face. He held up the tiny memory card between his thumb and forefinger. "The spoils of war."
She walked past him, into the main room. She dropped her towel onto a chair, completely unselfconscious in her nudity. Her body was a pale, flawless weapon. Marcus's eyes followed her, a familiar heat stirring in his blood. This was for him. This body, this mind, this soul. It was his alone.
He inserted the memory card into a sleek, encrypted laptop and brought it to the bed. They sat side-by-side, leaning against the headboard where another man had spilled his seed and his secrets only an hour before. The laptop's screen cast a cold blue light on their naked skin.
He pressed play.
The video was perfectly clear. The audio was crisp. They watched Congressman Daniel Whitman, a pillar of the conservative party, grovel and confess his crimes. They saw his sweaty, desperate face, his eyes glassy with lust and submission. They heard his pathetic moans and the treasonous words that tumbled from his lips.
Selene watched without a flicker of emotion. It was like a general reviewing reconnaissance footage. She analyzed his weaknesses, his tells, the moments where his ego cracked and his fear poured out.
"We don't expose him," Marcus said, his voice a low growl. "Exposure is messy. It creates chaos we can't control."
"No," Selene agreed, her eyes fixed on the screen. "We don't expose him. We own him. His vote on the appropriations committee is now our vote. Aerodyne's next contract will have our silent partners attached."
"He will be the first stone in our new foundation," Marcus said. He closed the laptop, plunging the room back into warm, musky darkness. The only light came from the city glittering outside the vast window.
The silence that followed was different. The clinical, strategic tension bled away, replaced by something older, hotter. Marcus turned to her. He could still smell the ghost of Whitman on the sheets, in the air. A possessive, primal anger rose in him.
"He doesn't deserve to touch you," he growled.
"He didn't," Selene said, her voice dropping into a husky register he knew so well. "He touched a ghost I created for him. He never touched me."
Marcus reached out, his hand wrapping around the back of her neck. He pulled her to him. His mouth crashed down on hers. It wasn't a kiss. It was a claiming. It was rough and hungry, a brutal erasure of the man who came before. He bit her lip, tasting her blood, and a low groan rumbled in his chest. She responded with equal fire, her nails digging into his shoulders, her body pressing against his.
This was not a performance. This was a war they both intended to win.
He pushed her down onto the bed, his body covering hers. He was all hard muscle and rough skin, a warrior's body built for violence and passion. His stubble rasped against the soft skin of her throat, her breasts. She arched into him, a silent demand for more. He gave it to her. His hands roamed her body, not with gentleness, but with a fierce familiarity. He knew every curve, every dip, every place that made her gasp. He had known this body across lifetimes.
He entered her with a single, powerful thrust. She cried out, a sharp, ragged sound of pain and pleasure. This was real. This was the truth of them. There was no manipulation here, no cold calculation. There was only a raw, desperate need that had spanned two thousand years.
Their lovemaking was a storm. It was the clash of swords, the thunder of marching legions, the fall of an empire and the promise of a new one. He moved inside her with a relentless, driving rhythm. She met his every thrust, her legs wrapped around his waist, her hips rising to meet him. She clawed at his back, leaving red marks on his tanned skin, a map of her pleasure. He whispered her true name in her ear, the one no one else living knew, a litany of their shared past.
The pleasure built into a blinding, unbearable peak. They moved together as a single being, two halves of a soul fused by fire and ambition. Their climax was a shared cataclysm, a violent shattering that left them breathless and trembling in the darkness, their bodies slick with sweat.
For a long time, they lay tangled in the sheets, the city lights a silent witness. Marcus's heart hammered against her ear. Selene traced the faint, silvery line of a scar on his shoulder. It was an echo of the wound that had killed him in another life, another world.
"He thought he was powerful," she whispered, her voice venomous and soft. "They all do. They build their little empires of glass and steel. They think it makes them gods."
Marcus turned his head, kissing the palm of her hand. He looked into her eyes, seeing the ancient fire that burned there, the same fire that had captivated him on the banks of the Nile so long ago.
"And we will take them," he growled, his voice a raw promise in the dark. "One bedroom at a time."