by D. Laine
The rumble of my empty stomach encouraged me to stop before it was too late. If I was hungry, she had to be starving.
“Come on.” I took her hand and peeled her away from the wall.
Her steps were slow with trepidation. “Are there people out there? Are they going to know—”
I shushed her with a quick kiss. “Relax. Just walk out like it’s no big deal. I doubt anyone notices.”
That was a small white lie, but I thought it best if she didn’t know any better for now. She was anxious enough without knowing the reputation the storage room had for random quickies.
Not that a random quickie had been my intention when I followed her. I had come in here to rip off the band-aid, to tell her the things I wanted to tell her. I surprised myself by how much I had gotten off my chest. Not everything, but enough to open the gates. The rest would flow with time.
The quickie had been a bonus.
Fortunately, when I cracked open the door, I spotted only two assassins focused on sparring each other. Everyone else had gone to the mess hall.
“Come on.” I waved Thea out. “It’s all clear.”
With my hand on the small of her back, I led her across the expansive room. We made it nearly to the door without anyone noticing our speedy exit, and I felt Thea relax beside me. The heavy door swung open seconds before we reached it, and we skidded to a stop when Tanner stepped in our way.
“There you are,” he breathed, like he had turned the compound upside down looking for us. His cold eyes leveled on me, hinting that this had something to do with my act of revenge on him earlier.
I gave Thea a nudge toward the door. “Go on. I’ll meet you in the mess hall.”
She hesitated, tossing a worried glance at the back of Tanner’s head.
“Go ahead,” I assured her. “I’ll be right there.”
I returned Tanner’s glare as the door banged shut behind Thea. When he didn’t say anything, I sighed. “What do you want, Eggnog?”
“You know I answer to Spence,” he informed me.
“Okay . . .” We all answered to Spence. This wasn’t news to me. Nor was it important, which I let him know when I shouldered past him.
His hand shot out to latch on to my arm, temporarily stopping me. “I’ve requested a transfer out of the field.”
“Oh, I see,” I smirked. “You got your brother killed, so now you want to be a CeeCee brownnoser. I get it.”
“I didn’t—” His lips thinned. “He vanished. If I have any chance of finding him again, I’m going to get it working up in the mothership. Not in the field.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep better at night,” I smarted. “Why do you find it necessary to tell me?”
“Because—” His jaw clenched. “I just want you to know I answer to Spence. Not you.”
“Got it.” I shrugged and started past him again.
“He’s giving your little girlfriend to Jake,” Tanner called out.
I kept walking. “Good. Jake will do a hell of a lot better than you did.”
“I didn’t want the stupid job anyway!” He yelled after me now, since I refused to give him any more of my time. “She’s your responsibility now!”
“I gladly accept that,” I shouted over my shoulder.
“You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into!” Tanner continued his crazy-man rant. “No idea what’s coming!”
I rounded the corner with a dismissive wave. The traitor didn’t deserve a response when he started spouting nonsense.
Sure, I felt bad about him losing his brother. I had heard about Trent’s disappearance—and assumed death—the day before I had been sent out on the mission to Bozeman. But that didn’t excuse Tanner for being an asshole, and it certainly didn’t excuse him from his treatment of Thea.
I spotted her the moment I pushed through the door to the mess hall, seated at a table with Jake, Marcus, Maria, and the Ringers. Though they had been friends of mine for years, we tended to seek each other out more so now. Hell of a bonding experience we all went through together.
I quickly collected a tray of food and joined them, claiming the seat between Thea and Keith. My thigh brushed against Thea’s as I picked up my fork and took a hearty bite. Both her and the food forced a low moan to rumble up my throat, and I quickly shoveled in another bite. My mouth stuffed, I finally glanced up to find three sets of curious eyes fixed on me.
I focused on Marcus’s since he sat directly across from me. “What?” I mumbled.
He waved a finger back and forth between Thea and me. “You’re going to sit there and pretend we don’t all know the two of you just came out of the fuck closet?”
I shifted uneasily in my seat at his less-than-flattering terminology. Beside me, Thea stilled.
“Fuck closet?” she repeated.
I glared at Marcus until he had the decency to look guilty. I couldn’t even look at Jake. If I did, I knew I would see a similar glare on his face—directed at me.
“It’s exactly what it sounds like,” Maria supplied. “My sick brother coined the phrase. Or was it you?” She swung her gaze on me at the same time I redirected the direction of my scowl.
“Do you ever use the filter in your brain?” I growled at her.
“I remember now.” She ignored me in favor of continuing her one-woman bitch act. “You were the one that discovered it. Of course, Marcus had to come up with a fitting name for it. Fuck closet certainly was accurate for what you all used it for.”
I sat mutely in my seat, unable to say anything to refute Maria’s explanation. She hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true. That didn’t mean she had to go and say it in front of Thea. That was simply an act of pure bitchiness.
Thea popped the last bite of food into her mouth and stood with her tray. Silence stretched to uncomfortable levels when she wordlessly walked away, though I expressed plenty with a murderous glare directed at Maria. She did an excellent job of ignoring it.
I inhaled the rest of my food, swallowed it down with a swig of water, and pushed out of my seat. Before I made my exit, my gaze finally drifted across the table to meet Jake’s.
“Fix it,” he told me.
I gave him a nod, then took off. Minutes later, I stood in Jake’s suite and rapped on Thea’s door. I expected to be ignored. I was fully prepared to do a fair amount of groveling through two inches of packed wood.
When the door immediately ripped open, I took a surprised step back. That was probably the only thing that saved my balls from being permanently relocated to my throat by her knee. For a graze, it sure hurt like hell.
My breath flew from my mouth as I crumpled over. My hands instinctively cupped my junk, protecting it from further attack. “What the fuck, Thea?” I peered up at her through blurry eyes.
“You deserve it,” she informed me.
She backed into her room. Her hands gripped the door, preparing to swing it closed. I put my forearm out to stop her and stood to my full height. She retreated as I stalked into her suite. My steps faltered when I glimpsed the flash of fear in her eyes. I blinked away the scowl on my face until I likely resembled a kicked puppy.
I shut the door softly behind me with a sigh. “I’m trying really hard to be the kind of guy you deserve. I know my past is making that a little difficult, but you need to understand all of that is in the past.”
“It was thirty minutes ago, Dylan!”
“That’s not—” I bit my tongue on the sharp tone trying to creep in, and gritted, “But it was with you.”
“Gee, thanks for sharing your fuck closet with me,” she smarted. “I feel so special. Is there a club I can join?”
To hell with the filter. “Don’t act like you didn’t want it. You’re the one who asked me if the door was locked,” I reminded her.
“You’re the one who had already locked it!” she fired back. “Is it second nature for you now? An automatic reflex when you find yourself alone with a girl? Never know when the opportu
nity to get laid might present itself so you—”
I threw my head back with a growl. “What do I have to do for you to believe me when I say it’s different with you?”
“Different?” she spat. “You just treated me exactly like every other nameless female in the ‘I Fucked Dylan Romero Fan Club.’”
“You couldn’t be more wrong.”
She scoffed.
“You—Jesus, Thea, it’s not like that with you.”
“How?” she demanded. “How is it different with me?”
“It just is,” I insisted. “But I can’t go around broadcasting it to everyone who will listen. We have to keep this a secret if the three of us want to stay together.”
“Secret?” She jabbed a finger over her shoulder. “Everybody already knows!”
“Those guys aren’t going to say anything,” I assured her. “We have each other’s backs. It’s the agents we need to worry about. Spence will split us up in a heartbeat if he knew. Is that what you want?”
“Of course not,” she snapped. “But I don’t want to be treated like some groupie either.”
“You’re not—” The veins in my neck were dangerously close to popping. I ran both hands over my face as if that would help my frustration. It didn’t. I saw nothing but red when I pressed my knuckles into my eyes. “What the fuck do you want from me?”
She was silent for so long, I feared she had somehow slipped out of the room. I dropped my arms to my sides with a huff and immediately felt like shit. My stomach churned at the sight of the teary eyes staring back at me.
“Nothing,” she whispered. “I want nothing from you.”
She started toward the back of her suite, where I knew she would lock herself away in her room if I didn’t stop her. My arms snagged her around the waist. I expected a fight, but she wobbled like a wet noodle in front of me. My grip tightened around her, pulling her to me.
“Just tell me what you want,” I pleaded. My face buried in her hair. “I told you earlier, I’ll do it. Whatever it is, I’ll do it. I just need an idea, because I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“I only know what I don’t want you to do,” she murmured into my shirt.
“Okay.” I rubbed a hand up and down her back. “Let’s start with that.”
“Don’t hurt me,” she whispered.
“I’m trying not to.” I forced her head back to peer into her eyes. “I would announce how I feel about you through the fucking intercom if I could, but I can’t. I can’t risk losing your brother as a partner, and I can’t lose you. So grand displays are going to have to stay between us.”
“Grand displays?”
“No one can know how important you are to me,” I tried to explain. “I can’t tell anyone. I can’t show anyone, except for you. Only you can know . . .”
I pressed my lips to hers to emphasize my words. I did it softly, so as not to confuse her with my intentions. This was the grand display I referenced—not a greedy attempt at self-gratification. My mouth moving slowly across hers, I hoped, showed her that.
But things were never clear-cut or easy where Thea was concerned. It didn’t take long for my gentle hint to turn into something else. Something we both knew well, and were pretty fucking good at, by now.
Her lips parted with a sigh, and I dove in seeking more of what she gave me. My hands fanned her ribs, itching to drift higher when she moaned into my mouth. Self-control was a bitch, but I could do it. I firmly believed that . . . until she changed gears on me.
Her hands rubbed my shoulders when she pulled out of the kiss. “So show me,” she ordered softly.
I leaned forward, searching blindly for her lips with my eyes closed. “What’s that now?”
She shifted and I heard the click of the lock on the door behind me. “There’s nobody here but us,” she told me. “Show me how you feel about me.”
My eyes snapped open at the sound of rustling fabric. I watched with growing interest as she whipped the shirt over her head, then swallowed hard at the sight of her smooth skin on display. I grew hard instantly. By the time my gaze inched its way up to her eyes, I was grinning.
“It might take a while,” I warned her. “Sure you’re up for it?”
Her eyes darted to the front of my jeans. Then she nodded, and it was on.
SINCE THAT GLORIOUS AFTERNOON, I had found plenty of ways to show Thea how I felt about her. Sometimes I took my time showing her. Sometimes it was a quick reminder. It wasn’t always sweet, but she never complained. I showed her all hours of the day—mornings, afternoons, and especially at night when the rest of the compound slept.
The agency came to a standstill otherwise. Days passed without another mission being handed down to Jake and me. At first I thought Spence felt guilty about sending us to Los Angeles unprepared. But as more teams returned from the field and fewer teams were sent out, I suspected he had something else in the works.
“Do you think he’ll send all of us?” I questioned Marcus as he lined up his next shot with the agency-designed, semi-automatic crossbow.
We had been at the shooting range for hours already this afternoon and still hadn’t tested out all the new weapons rolled out by the agency over the past few weeks. I didn’t need to try them out. I preferred the ones I had been loyal to from the beginning. But Spence insisted I try, and Marcus wanted to play.
He pulled the release on the bow, striking the man-shaped target fifty yards away between the eyes, before turning to me with a shrug. “It’s Lucifer’s vessel,” he stated matter-of-factly. “If we don’t get him, game’s over. Spence isn’t going to half-ass this one.”
“Yeah.”
This dance with the devil would end one way or another. And soon.
I snuck a peek toward the far side of the range, where Jake watched Thea position her weapon with critical eyes. I had to admit, he was a good instructor. Far better than I would have been. Considering the two of us couldn’t be in the same room for more than a few minutes without ripping each other’s clothes off, I didn’t doubt training her would have been a complete disaster had I taken on the job.
In addition to all the sex we were having now, things had been good between us. Better than good. There was still an undercurrent of half-truths between us, and she knew I held some things back, but she made it clear that those things didn’t matter as long as I didn’t lie to her. She didn’t push for the parts of my past I kept heavily guarded. She was patient, and I loved that about her.
I promptly fired a round to push that trespassing L-word out of my head before it got too comfortable. Problem was, it had started visiting more and more since the day Jake had subtly planted the suggestion, to the point that it no longer gave me hives at the mere thought.
I didn’t know how I felt about that.
“Hey, Marcus?” I wondered out loud as he switched out the bow for something else.
He glanced up distractedly. “Yeah?”
“You ever been in love?”
He nearly dropped the pointy end of a steel blade on his foot. “What?”
“Nothing.” I peered through the scope of the gun in my hands in an attempt to avoid eye contact with him, and pretended I hadn’t just spewed the thoughts in my head to him.
Finally, he collected himself long enough to respond. “You’ve known me since we were twelve years old. When do you think I would have had time for that nonsense?”
I shrugged casually. “There are girls here. We all grew up together, and—”
“No. Never,” he answered swiftly.
I wasn’t surprised by his response. Honestly, I had no idea why I had asked him. It wasn’t like I—Mr. No Commitment—would ever really entertain the idea of—
“Oh, shit,” Marcus groaned. I glanced over my shoulder to find his wideset eyes on me. “You’re fucked, man. You’re seriously fucked.”
“No, I’m not,” I returned automatically. “That’s not—I don’t even—What are you trying to
. . .”
“You are so fucked.” He swatted his thigh with one of his mammoth hands and cracked up.
I made a face to let him know his assessment couldn’t be farther from the truth, because apparently I couldn’t actually say the words to tell him so. A single shot echoed behind me, and I turned to watch Jake high-five his sister for what I could tell even from the distance was an exceptional hit on the target.
My heart skipped a beat as it swelled up with pride. I groaned when I realized I was grinning like a goon. “Shit.”
What if Jake and Marcus were right?
17
DYLAN
Because I was an assassin, I threatened Marcus with bodily harm if he so much as thought about our exchange. Later, because I was not-really-dating but definitely-having-sex-with my best friend’s sister, I tactfully dodged eye contact with Jake as I passed through his suite to knock on Thea’s door.
I was seriously starting to doubt my status as a tough guy. I concluded Thea was worth it the moment she swung open the door. I observed her damp, recently washed hair with a grin.
“Aw, I missed you in the shower again,” I groaned. “I told you to tell me next time.”
“You think you’re so funny.”
“And you still think I’m joking when I’m definitely not.”
“Dylan . . .”
God, I loved it when she sighed my name like that. It made me think of all the other times she had sighed, moaned, or screamed my name recently. Shit, I was already getting hard.
“It’s your fault, you know,” I pointed out. “You made that one shower so much fun I can’t wait to do it again.”
Jake grumbled behind me, reminding me that he was there. “I do have ears.”
I flashed my grin at him before turning back to Thea. It melted away at the look of horror on her face. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, God.” Her wide eyes swung from Jake, to me, then back to Jake.
In an instant, Jake was at my side. He reached for her, and she shrank away, shaking her head rapidly. My body tensed. I slipped into assassin mode, though I didn’t know where the danger was coming from. Judging from the direction of Thea’s panicked gaze, it was . . . me.