Fit to Be Tied

by Mary Calmes

“My wife is trying her damnedest to fix that,” he snickered.

  Sharpe ordered a round of Kamikaze shots for the women, and Ian turned and stepped into my space before I could order a beer.

  “You wanna drink or go home with me?”

  What was I, nuts? “I want to go home with you,” I replied adamantly.

  His laughter was warm. “You’re so wasted, but it’s nice that even though you are, you pick me.”

  “Always,” I burped. “But I’ve been much more wasted than”—Eric Lozano—“than now and—wait.”

  “Why am I waiting?” he pried, leaning in like it was noisy, so that’s why his mouth was so close to my ear, but in reality his breath was there, on my skin, and—

  “Shit,” I gasped, jolting away from him, reaching out and grabbing his bicep. “Ian, I think Eric Lozano walked into the bathroom.”

  “What?” he asked harshly, clearly annoyed. “I’m trying to—”

  “I swear to God.”

  And that fast, because he was not only my lover but my partner as well, he brushed off seductive mode and stepped back into the marshal. “Let’s go.”

  There was no thought given to alerting Sharpe and White. We simply bolted.

  Ian went first, as usual, and we waited until we were outside the bathroom to draw our guns. But as soon as we stepped into the bathroom, we first, quickly and quietly, made sure it was clear, and then walked to the last stall, where it sounded like Lozano was getting lucky.

  I myself had had many encounters in restrooms over the course of my sex life, but never with women. So I was impressed, really, by the balance displayed by Lozano’s lady friend, who had her legs wrapped around his waist, her back arched like a rainbow, and her hands on the rim of the toilet. It was important to note that she had wads of toilet paper between her palms and the seat.

  “Why didn’t you simply bend her over?” I asked from where I stood, up on the toilet in the next stall over.

  “It’s a good question,” Ian apprised from where he was standing on the toilet in the stall on the other side of them. We had them bookended.

  Lozano’s head snapped up and his eyes bugged out, glancing from me smiling at him to Ian, who was scowling over the top of the dividing wall on his other side, and back to me.

  “It would’ve been faster.”

  “And easier,” the girl said, because, really, what the hell—why wouldn’t she weigh in?

  “I’ll fuckin’ kill you guys,” he threatened, which really showed a lot of balls, because for one, his pants were around his ankles, and for two, there was no way he was getting out of the stall without getting her legs off him.

  “We’re federal marshals,” I informed him, holstering my gun under my sweater even as Ian lifted his over the side of the divider so Lozano could see the P228 clearly. “You wanna maybe rethink that?”

  He sighed deeply. “I thought I gave all you guys the slip when I left Des Plains.”

  Ian lowered his gun, knowing as well as I did that Lozano wasn’t going to give us any trouble. We were already talking like regular people, and we’d been marshals long enough to know what that meant. Lozano, like most of the people we busted—when they knew we had them—was going to come along easy.

  “You were in Iowa?” I grimaced. “Aww, man, I’m sorry.”

  “Hey.”

  The new voice made me look up, and I saw three men behind us, all in trench coats, all in suits, and I wondered, as I often did, why these guys didn’t simply put on nametags that said “Hi, I’m a mob enforcer.”

  “Hey,” I greeted them loudly, putting on. “Come watch my buddy take a shit, man. We’re putting it on YouTube!”

  “He’s gotta stand over the bowl,” Ian announced, even louder than I was, before he pretended to fall off the toilet in his stall. “Oh fuck!”

  I howled with fake laughter. “Awww, man, you didn’t get shit on you did you?”

  The one in front pressed his closed fist to his mouth, one of the guys behind him turned and darted, and the third guy almost retched.

  Shooting people in the head was one thing. Getting some other guy’s fecal matter on you was a whole other ballgame.

  The guy in front was breathing quickly in and out through his nose in an effort, I assumed, not to hurl. “You assholes see anybody else come in or outta here?”

  “No,” I cackled, lifting my phone. “Dude, you gotta see this… it’s epic!”

  That was it—he pivoted, shoved his friend who was also trying to not throw up toward the door. They were gone seconds later.

  Ian came out of the stall and knocked on the one Lozano and his girl were in. “Kick your gun out under the door, and then you and—”

  “Donatella,” she chimed in.

  “You and Donatella come out of there.”

  His Heckler & Koch P30 slid out under the door and Ian stopped it with his foot.

  “Do you want mine too?” Donatella asked.

  “Yes, please,” I answered as Ian did a quick brass check on the gun.

  Donatella’s micro Uzi was a surprise.

  “I have a big purse,” she said defensively as the door opened and she and Lozano stepped out. And she was right; her Juicy Couture bag was enormous.

  I held up the automatic weapon for her. “Why do you need this?”

  She gave me a look like I was stupid, made all the more obvious as her eyes were so heavily frosted and her lashes so very fake.

  “Okay, fine. Tell me why you’re meeting Lozano here to fuck in a bathroom stall. You seem classier than this.”

  “Oh, do I?” she baited.

  I took a step forward and stared her down. “Yeah, Donatella, ya do. I think the Four Seasons or something. I think this is slumming, for you.”

  And with that, the dam broke and she launched herself at me, wrapped her arms around my neck as she sobbed and chanted over and over that she loved him, hand to God.

  “For crissakes, Lozano,” Ian said, waving the gun he’d picked up. “Why didn’t you tell the marshals that took you in that Donatella had to come with you?”

  His brows lifted almost to his hairline. “I can do that?”

  Ian groaned and Donatella lifted her head to peer up at me with her now swollen raccoon eyes. “I can go to Iowa too?”

  “Well, it won’t be Iowa anymore,” I assured her as I pulled my iPhone from the breast pocket of my slim-fitting motorcycle jacket and called the office. We needed backup.

  “Yeah? Could it be Brooklyn? I got family there.”

  I rolled my eyes as she sighed and cuddled against me, fiddling with the hem of my gray cashmere sweater.

  “You gotta girl at home, marshal?” she asked seductively.

  “What?” Ryan barked from the other end of the phone.

  “That is not a greeting, asshole,” I assured him.

  “What the hell do you want?”

  “I need Ching and Becker and an extraction team to meet me and Ian at Kid Lobo over on Clark Street. We’ve got Eric Lozano and his friend Donatella—”

  “Fenzi,” she purred, tightening her arms and nestling even closer. “I hope you have a girl, marshal, ’cause all this here should not be going to waste.”

  “Fenzi,” I repeated as Ian grabbed her arm, spun her around, and shoved her at Lozano.

  “Are you fucking with me?” Ryan cracked, sounding incredulous. “You and Doyle caught Eric Lozano, accountant for the Tedesco crime family?”

  I moved the phone from my mouth and watched Lozano smiling down at Donatella, who was wrapped around him even tighter than she’d been around me. It was easy to see the difference between the friendly, appreciative hugging I’d been getting and the seductive body press she was giving Lozano. Sadly, Ian didn’t have any female friends, so he didn’t know what the friendship kind of snuggling looked like.

  “You’re an accountant?” I asked Lozano.

  He looked over at me. “Yeah.”

  “I thought you killed people.”

  “N
o, man—I do taxes, I launder money, move it around, shit like that.”

  “Do you even know how to fire a gun?”

  He made a face like maybe and then nodded.

  “What the fuck, Jones,” Ryan grumbled over the phone.

  “Extraction team,” I insisted.

  “Coming now.”

  “We’re in the bathroom.”

  “Of course you are,” he said as though he were in pain, clearly appalled. “Where are White and Sharpe?”

  “Doing shots.”

  “You know what, don’t tell me anything else. I’m hanging up now. Just stay there. Ching and Becker will be on site in twenty.”

  “Way-way-way—is the ballistics report back on the shooting?” I asked eagerly.

  “What shooting?”

  “The car!” I rasped, dying.

  “The car?” He was indignant.

  “Come on,” I whined. “Are the guns back yet?”

  “You look like a grown-up, but you’re actually only ten,” he groused.

  “Please,” I begged with a little whining thrown in for good measure.

  “Doyle shot the car,” he informed me. “You hit one of the tires and Sharpe hit a tree. Happy now?”

  “What? That can’t be right.”

  “You were running; so was Sharpe. Do you have any idea how hard it is to hit something when you’re moving?”

  “Shit.”

  “You will never hear the end of this.”

  He had no idea.

  “Ching and Becker are eighteen minutes out. Do not move from that bathroom.”

  “Did you just tell me to stay in the bathroom?”

  Apparently I was too annoying for words, as evidenced by him hanging up on me. I was going to explain to Lozano and Donatella that these were their tax dollars at work, but as they probably didn’t pay taxes, the observation would be lost on them. Also, they wouldn’t have heard me anyway because they were much too busy making out. I would have made them stop, just to be a dick, but I felt lips on the back of my neck.

  “Get off me,” I complained, not meaning it.

  “I told you I shot the car,” he murmured in my ear.

  Yes, he had.

  “We should go to the shooting range, and I can give you some pointers.”

  I stalked away from him and went to the bathroom door, making sure no one could come in.

  “You want me to come over there and protect you since I can shoot straight?” he teased.

  “I have the Uzi,” I volleyed.

  “Yeah, but what can you hit with that?”

  “Fuck you, Ian!”

  He lost it.

  IT TOOK the whole night and into the early morning before we were done processing Lozano and Donatella, and when we finally got home, I was not only hungry and sober, but tired and prickly, having been rubbed raw by the ribbing from every single person on my team, including my partner.

  I was surprised when I was seized from behind and shoved down on the couch. Ian followed fast, curling over me, grabbing hold of my legs and wrapping them around his hips.

  “What’re you—”

  “Kiss me,” he demanded huskily, rubbing his groin against mine before bending to capture my mouth.

  I evaded his lips. “That teasing was brutal, Ian.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “You were an ass.”

  “Yeah, but you love me when I’m like that, so who cares?”

  He was right, I did. I loved him like crazy.

  “So,” he said, his voice cracking as he gripped my thighs, making sure I stayed there, “could you get over being annoyed and kiss me already?”

  “You know, that was pretty great what you did earlier.”

  “What was that?” he asked as he shifted over me.

  “Just the way you followed me, no questions asked.”

  “Always,” he said, smiling at me. “So… about that kiss?”

  “Yeah,” I sighed, taking hold of his tie and easing him down to me. “I think I can manage that.”

  OCTOBER IN Chicago was already cold, so as we sat outside in the car on the moderately busy city street, I turned the heater on. The problem was, though, that once Ian got warmed up, he was out like a light. Because of his military training, if Ian wanted to sleep, he could do it on command. It took maybe a minute for him to be dead to the world, and it was annoying as hell, because I had to power down my brain to reach that same REM sleep he could achieve so easily. Even sex wasn’t a certainty for knocking me out, and I was frankly more than a little resentful.

  “Will you wake up?” I growled, jabbing him with my elbow to roust him.

  “What?” he complained, sitting up, scowling at me. “Don’t be jealous.”

  I went back to checking the street with the binoculars as he got situated again, leaning his head against the driver’s-side door. We were a street over from the house we were monitoring, our fellow marshals, Eli Kohn and Jer Kowalski, were across the street, and Chicago PD was there with cars on the other three corners of the block. It wasn’t for our case, or even a fugitive the marshals were looking for, but instead another task force op.

  “Hey.”

  My gaze flicked over to him.

  “Why don’t you just tell me already?”

  I had no idea what we were talking about. “You lost me,” I said, again glancing around the perimeter to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.

  “We both know that ever since Altman was here you’ve been even weirder than usual.”

  This wasn’t the marriage thing. This was something else, and I really didn’t want to get into it. “I don’t know what you’re—”

  “Stop,” he ordered. “Spill.”

  His Army buddy, Sean Altman, was one of the guys in the twelve-man team Ian was a member of, and whenever Ian was away on a mission, Altman was with him. He was in charge of communications, while Ian was a weapons specialist. Altman had expounded, because I’d asked, what kinds of tasks Operational Detachment Alpha did. He talked about training, and that each member of the team had an insertion specialty—which of course made me snicker, because no matter how old I was on the outside I was still a little boy in my head—but didn’t give me more details about the group. And while I understood, I felt like he shouldn’t have asked what I wanted to know if he really couldn’t say.

  I had excused myself to give the two men time alone, but I got annoyed that Ian didn’t stop me, didn’t want me there. Upstairs in bed, I realized how possessive and idiotic I was acting, made peace with the fact that I was being an asshole, and let it go. They stayed up into the early morning hours talking, and I finally fell asleep around two. When I woke up to make coffee, I was surprised that Altman wasn’t passed out on the couch where he’d been the day before.

  “Where’s your buddy?” I asked Ian as he walked up behind me and planted a kiss on my bare shoulder.

  “He had to go,” was all he said.

  But there had been more to it than that, because another week later, Ian had to report to training because Altman had been replaced with a new guy in their group. When I prodded him, he told me he wasn’t sure why Altman had transferred but he was certain the man had his reasons.

  “Everyone has reasons, Ian. Don’t you care what they are?”

  “It’s none of my business?”

  “He’s your friend.”

  “He is.”

  I was confused. “So I could go ahead and request a new partner, and you wouldn’t want to know why?”

  “That’s different and you know it,” he husked, leaning in, hand on my cheek to keep me still as he kissed me. He put his coffee cup down and used his free hand to divest me of my sleep shorts. When he dropped to his knees, I forgot why I cared that Altman hadn’t stayed in my house.

  As the weeks wore on, my mind kept returning to Altman, and now, in the car on a stakeout, I had no way to tiptoe around the subject.

  “Miro?”

  I was good and caught. “What?�
��

  “Don’t do the what, just ask your fuckin’ question.”

  I coughed softly. “I want to know why Altman left that night and then later left your group.”

  Ian let his head roll sideways so he could see me. “He wanted to fuck me.”

  I accidentally inhaled the water I was drinking and nearly drowned right there. “Jesus Christ, Ian!” My roar was loud in the car. “Are you tryin’ to fuckin’ kill me?”

  “Nope,” he sighed, “only answering the question.”

  “Ian!”

  “Stop yelling,” he said with a yawn.

  “Then explain.”

  Quick shrug. “He told me he was gay.”

  “Why? Why would he do that just outta the blue?”

  “It wasn’t like that. He trusted me ’cause I came clean with my team the last time I saw them.”

  “You did?”

  “Sure I did,” he explained. “I couldn’t have them find out by themselves down the road. It wouldn’t be fair. So I told my CO first and then the rest of the team.”

  I was overwhelmed. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “You have to be honest with the men you serve with—they have your back.”

  “And do they still have yours?”

  “Of course,” he said irritably, like how dare I doubt them. “They know me. They’ve been in combat with me. What would have changed?”

  “People are stupid sometimes, and the gay part freaks them out.”

  “Yeah, okay, but not—you know, my guys. They’re soldiers first. The only thing that matters is do you carry your weight.”

  I understood that too.

  “But so I told them, and that night Altman was here, he propositioned me.”

  I tried hard not to sound defensive. “And what’d you say?”

  “What the fuck do you think I said?”

  It was the niggling fear in the back of my head… what Ian could have or could do with someone other than me. I wasn’t the only man able to tie him down; he knew others.

  I stared at him. He stared back.

  I relented. “You trust those guys too.”

  “Meaning what?”

  I shrugged.

  “I’m that easy to give up?”

  “You know that’s not how it is.”

  “Oh yeah?” he taunted. “How is it, then?”