Title: The Chief
Series: Under Red Sky, Book Two
Author: J Calamy
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 11/30/2021
Length: 93200
Genre: Contemporary Thriller, LGBTQIA+, action/adventure, criminals, consulate, military, foreign service, genderfluid, gender-questioning, bisexual, pansexual, PTSD/post-traumatic stress, Cognitive Disability, TBI survivor, Over 40
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Description
Legendary counter-terrorism agent Natalie Chevalier is finally retiring. The first nonbinary Regional Security Chief in DSS history, Nat’s last post lands her on the gorgeous sapphire isle of Sri Lanka. All she wants is a few peaceful months before she retires, and an anonymous hookup with a gorgeous, bisexual surfer is the perfect start. Until Nat learns that he is her final assignment.
Alessandro Benitez travels the world buying gems, surfing, and raising his teenage brother Max. His is a charmed, luxurious life made possible by his position laundering money for Red Sky, the biggest crime syndicate in Southeast Asia. When Alex meets Nat, their scorching encounter leaves him questioning not only his precarious career choice, but also whether his life has been as charmed as he’d thought.
Tasked to spy on him and persuade him to defect by any means necessary, Nat struggles to follow orders as her relationship with Alex heats up, blurring the line between professional and personal. She can’t deny how much she wants to be with him, but helping him means treason and erasing her ceiling-shattering career.
While Red Sky destroys itself from within, Alex becomes trapped in a nightmare as everyone he knows either defects or turns up dead. His loyalty to the elusive boss of Red Sky is absolute, but he’s desperate to escape before he or his brother gets caught in the crossfire. As his world crumbles around him, Alex realizes Nat is the only person he can trust. While Nat’s feelings for Alex grow more complicated, the CIA’s desperate methods to bring down Red Sky call into question everything she once thought she stood for. Now she must expose her dirty boss and get Alex safely out of Red Sky before her reputation and her heart suffer the consequences.
The Chief
J. Calamy © 2021
All Rights Reserved
NATALIE
During Natalie’s first time on leave, she had stayed inland, up in the dark forests and craggy outcrops of the national parks. But the silence had been too much. She’d spent fifteen years in war zones by that point. Fifteen years of sleeping with one ear open. Fifteen years of noise, where silence meant danger. She lasted one night, riding back to Colombo the next day, bleary-eyed and hypervigilant. It was Donovan’s idea to go to the beach instead.
“You need people-watching, and the sound of the surf, Chief. Build you a nice SOP for leave, a routine.” He was right.
So she had a schedule and checklist for leave, as she did everything else. A way for her body and mind to settle, to understand they were off duty. She could put down her situational awareness a little, relax. Stop being in charge of everything and everyone.
The first night she’d watch the sun go down from the beach, take her time, drink fruity cold drinks with a fair measure of gin, breathing in the sound of the waves. The booming rollers reminded her that the Indian Ocean was an ocean, not a sea. It meant business. The surfers would stay out as late as they could during the season. They were mostly local guys, skinny twentysomethings with burnt-cinnamon skin, long hair, and blinding smiles. There were white kids mixed in, the sweet hippie traveler types, wearing hemp necklaces and bandanas, as harmless and oblivious as they came. They were children to her eye, or dolphins. They laughed and smoked weed and adopted the local dogs into their fire and drum circles.
She stayed in the same hotel every time, a little place up the coast from the main part of Hikkaduwa. It had a bar on the beach, nothing but a wide plank cut from who knew what monster tree. It was lashed between a couple of palm trees with stools lined up so she could sit and face the waves, enjoy the shade of the trees behind, and have a nice waiter bring her drinks and dinner. No shoes required.
Every trip the same: she got to her hotel, ditched her work clothes and bag, and threw on her shorts and a loose cover-up. The only things that mattered were digging her feet in the sand and a drink at her elbow.
The ocean was a deep-blue turquoise close to shore, contrasting the gold of the sand in front the hotel. Farther up the beach, there were coral reefs, harsh broken things built up by the churning sea. The drop was steep, the waves big and booming, with distinct curls, depending on the time of year.
Nat’s first night, she’d eat alone, without even a book, staring at the ocean and not thinking a single thought. Day one on leave was about being totally undistracted. Calm. That last part was important. She didn’t have a single uninterrupted moment at work. And so three solid days of peace were worth their weight in gold. No distractions, no—
Except one of the surfers, hefting his board and shaking the water out of his hair, was very distracting. Every inch of skin on her body tightened at once, cheeks flaring into heat before she had even fully registered. She looked at her drink as he turned her way so she could watch him behind her shades without being obvious. But goose bumps chased down her back. She took another swallow of mango and mint; her mouth was dry as a bone.
For one thing, he was older. Much. His dark hair had streaks of gray in it, so did his neatly trimmed beard. He should have been too big to be a surfer, tall and straight-backed like a fighter. He had wide shoulders, olive under a tan. And Nat knew all that cinnamon skin was from the sun because, God help her, his swim shorts were barely hanging onto his hips, held up by one of those asses—round, perfect, and pale compared to the wide wedge of his muscled back. It was a man’s body, not a boy’s. He had the start of a belly, with winding swirls of hair leading down to—
She turned away again, this time in embarrassment. That bathing suit— It left nothing, nothing to the imagination. Against the setting sun, she had one perfect glimpse of the outline of his cock, the wet suit plastering against it in a way that made her brain short-circuit. He had those lines—the ones over a man’s hips? There was a name for them, but her recall wasn’t great in that moment. She doubted she could have said her own name right then. And aren’t you a little old to have a full body thirst attack? Nope, not really—and shit, he’s as old as me. Daddy as hell.
Nat wasn’t much a of a legs person, but his thighs were thick and strong, proportioned with his heavy upper body. He was a big guy, with a strong body, and that was that. Of course, anyone over five foot six was big to her. She’d guess he was a hair over six feet though. Build like a brick shithouse. He drove his board into the sand and hiked up the shorts, shifting his hips side to side in a way that made his heavy package swing. She experienced another of those whole-body shudders. I know it’s been a while since you looked at a man, but damn, calm down, Nat!
Was that it? She always considered herself bisexual. But the older she got, the less she tolerated men and their bullshit. She tried to remember the last man she’d had. Three years? Four maybe? Some Aussie she bent over the tailgate of her vehicle, pegging him with the handle of a screwdriver.
His shorts semi-decent again, hot surfer guy picked up his board and headed straight toward her. Had he seen her ogling? The chain around his neck, some kind of medal, probably Saint Anthony, glinted, swinging as he walked. As he got closer, she saw laugh lines around his eyes, a crooked nose, broken a couple of times, and a full mouth, turned up at the corners, dimples under his neat beard. A face used to smiling. Her toes curled in the sand. Was he staying in the same hotel? Oh, Jesus, he was climbing onto the patio, had handed his board to one of the staff and wrapped a towel around his waist. The towel wallah shared a joke with him, clearly familiar and friendly. Sure enough, he walked right over to the bar, taking a course that would put him directly by the stool she perched on. He had a limp, enough for Nat to notice. A bad cut, stitches still visible, marred his muscled calf. But his face was open, smiling, clearly still in the Zen headspace of a surfer who had caught the right waves. His dark hair plastered in unruly curls over his forehead. She glanced at her drink. How much gin was in this? She was sweating! Sweating over a man.
He gave her a quick smile and nod as he passed, and she tried to do the same, telling herself to be cool, for fuck’s sake; fly casual, Natalie. He smelled like the sea, and sun, and sweat, and she tried to be discreet about inhaling a lungful as he passed. But damn. His forearms were strong, covered in dark hair, and he wore a heavy dive watch and a couple of gold chains. He had wide hands with long fingers. No wedding band. And no liar line.
Well, so much for her uninterrupted, distraction-free evening. Goddamn it all to hell, her routine was totally thrown off. She forced herself to keep her eyes front, on the water, watching the other surfers pop in and out of the long curl in front of the hotel. Couples strolled by, taking selfies, picking up the odd shell. The setting sun made the gold sand pink and bronze, the purple shadows of each little dune and footstep like writing. She took a deep breath, re-centering herself, getting back to people watching.
This hotel wasn’t anywhere near as crowded as the bigger places but still had plenty of tourists. The Russians were her favorite. They always seemed so miserable, wherever they—
“Mind if I join you?”
Her “sure” came out as a squawk, the drink threatening to come up her nose, as mister gorgeous surfer came and sat on the stool beside her. He had thrown on a short-sleeve button-down shirt, hanging open. Natalie Chevalier, a hero, did not look at his crotch as he perched on the stool beside her, even as he spread those strong thighs to maneuver under the bar.
“The tables are all taken,” he said. “And I like to watch the waves.” She cocked a brow at him and stared pointedly down the length of the bartop, with its rows of empty stools. He had the decency to look sheepish, rubbing the back of his head and peering at her from under his brow. He had clearly dried his hair with a towel, and she fought the urge to smooth it. The gray in it shone in a very distracting way.
“Okay, I admit that I saw you from the water,” he said. “And I have never seen someone like you here.”
His English had an accent she couldn’t place. She wanted to guess he spoke Spanish, but it could as easily have been Italian. Whatever it was, it was all oranges and sun-soaked stones and— Her mind wasn’t firing on all cylinders.
“Someone like me?” she asked. She kept her voice light, inviting him to try whatever BS line was coming.
“Sí. You are different. You do not seem like a tourist,” he said. The waiter came and placed a plate of fried pakoras between them, along with water and a drink like hers for the man.
“I’m not a tourist,” she said.
“You are American?” he asked. She gave him another flat look. He tossed a pakora into his mouth and closed his eyes in pleasure. His lashes were long and smudged with sea water. And when his eyes opened again, she saw they weren’t merely dark, they were inky black. Pure, perfect black with a shine like obsidian.
“Apologies. I am—Raul,” he said and held out his hand. If that was his real name, she was the pope, but it relieved her of the burden of guilt about lying too.
“Sara,” she replied, choosing her standard vacation identity, and shook his hand. She was hyperaware of how his hand swallowed hers. Unfair. Unfair. Her mind was still running all the calculations. Could she sleep with him? Yes. Should she? Maybe. The pros and cons, the million possibilities from “he’s a counter-intel plant” to “I haven’t been with a man in three years” to “I wonder if he likes it rough?” all ran through a kind of triage in her mind.
“I will stop prying,” he said with a wink. His teeth were white and straight in his beard, except for a little chip in his front left tooth. It was an easy, relaxed smile. He raised his glass. “I am on vacation. I thought I would like being alone, but I am not so sure. After a few days, I am tired of the angry Russians.”
She almost spit her drink again, laughing and hiding her face in her elbow. Her loose, long-sleeved linen shirt was practically a dress on her, comfortable and somewhat shapeless. But that didn’t mean she wanted to spray gin and mango all over it. His eyes crinkled as he laughed with her.
“Why are they always so unhappy?” She made it a conspiratorial whisper.
“I do not know,” he said in the same tone, leaning his head in toward hers. They were shoulder to shoulder, and the heat coming off him made her a little dizzy. “I have two very good friends who are Russian, and they are never miserable like this.”
They watched a couple walk by, arguing about something. Russian had never been her language. But the man, bright pink with skinny legs and a big, heavy belly hanging over his speedo, was clearly blitzed, berating his wife about something. She gave as good as she got, her dyed-orange hair barely held in a red sweatband, flopping as she snarled at her man.
“Sara and Raul” made small talk, or rather she asked him questions about the surfing, trying to tease out information. Such as he lived in Hong Kong, but knew Sri Lanka well. He talked about the waves on the other side of the island, and Indonesia, gesturing with his wide hands to show the shapes and movements of waves. His speech pattern and accent were South American Spanish, she decided. She also decided he was not foreign intelligence. He had the occasional American idiom in his speech and had clearly worked in the States at some point.
“Goldman Sachs,” he said with a delighted smile. “How did you know?”
“You said ‘the city’ when you meant New York.” He was ridiculously sexy when he smiled. And clearly no threat. Mentally, all her no’s switched to maybe’s. If it was a charm campaign, it was working.
“Raul,” she said. “Why did you come and sit by me?”
“Well, you see—”
“We’re both adults,” she interrupted him, laying two fingers on his forearm. The muscle there twitched, like a horse. He acknowledged her words with a quick bow of his head.
“I’d like to take you to dinner,” he said. He jerked his thumb back at the hotel restaurant. “Or rather, I’d like to sit with you at dinner. I am not sure if this would count as taking you?”
He leaned on his elbow, fist against his temple. His shirt, wet from his skin, hung open, sticking to the perfect round of his bicep, pulling tight over his wide shoulders. Caution did not make her immune to such things. The dark valley between his pecs drew her eyes again and again. Little rivulets in chest hair mapped a river delta. Not letting her gaze follow those little streams down to their destination was taking superhuman effort at this point in her alcohol consumption. Christ, he was fine. Big, dark, cheerful, maybe a bit of a himbo, but so, so fine. Screw caution. If he tried anything she could fold him like laundry.
“I’d like that,” she said since “I want to bury my face in your chest” didn’t seem polite to say right off. They finished their drinks with more small talk before he excused himself and strode off. She caved and let herself take another long look at his perfectly round ass before he turned the corner. Damn.
Now she had to decide what to wear.
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J Calamy is a disabled vet and foreign service wonk who spends a good part of the year bouncing down dirt roads in the back of Range Rovers with men with guns. Coffee, romance novels, and embassy scuttlebutt are her last remaining vices.
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