by Layla Reyne
“What was it last week when you jumped out of the van and ran toward the Kristićs’ building?” Cam replied. “Or when you ran out of Mel and Danny’s condo the other night, charging for the park?”
Effectively silenced, Nic scoffed and turned away, hands braced on either side of the window frame, glaring out at the ocean.
“I can do this,” Cam said to Aidan behind him. “I can close this case.”
And he’d try not to get himself killed in the fucking process.
Chapter Sixteen
After seeing Lauren and Aidan out, Cam made his way back across the patio to where Nic waited inside the warmly lit cottage. He’d claimed he was staying behind to take back his truck. Cam figured he wanted one more chance to plead his case. Not that it would change Cam’s mind. He knew what he needed to do.
About Nic too.
Bucking up his resolve, he entered the cottage and closed the door behind him. Nic didn’t flinch, arms still spread on either side of the window, his back to the room. Sleeves rucked up to his elbows, Nic’s toned forearms were on display, as was the perfect V of his torso. Broad shoulders that led down to a trim waist and a firm, round ass. Cam’s pulse ticked up, remembering the tattoos on Nic’s chest, imagining the JAG emblem on his hip, wondering about the ink on his back. Something was definitely there, the spindly ends of it had been visible on Nic’s shoulders and sides the other night, but Cam hadn’t gotten a look before they’d been interrupted. He wanted to see it now.
But he needed to set something else straight first.
Nic, however, as Cam anticipated, wasn’t ready to let go of their earlier argument. “I don’t like this plan,” he said, still glaring out at the ocean.
“Of course you don’t.”
“We have no idea who is playing who here.”
Not exactly true. “Kristić’s at the top.”
Nic spun, blue eyes flashing. “You think Kristić’s at the top but you don’t know. Either way, there are two crews working every heist, and you want to walk right back into the crosshairs.”
“Says the ex-SEAL.” Cam took two steps forward, bringing them face-to-face. “This is my job.”
“Do you often do your job with this many unknown variables?”
“Not if I can help it, but it’s not unheard of.” He’d gone on less before. Nic had too. “Shouldn’t be hard for an ex-SEAL and prosecutor to grasp.”
Nic threw a hand out toward the house. “We don’t even know if our own CI is still on our side.”
Now they’d reached the conversation Cam wanted to have. “You haven’t doubted Abby before. Granted, I’ve had mine, but evidence indicates you were right. She’s an unwilling participant, one way or the other.”
“Unwilling.” Nic scoffed, turning back to the window.
Cam fought not to smile. He really shouldn’t take any delight in this, but Nic was playing right into his hands. “What’s really going on, Price?”
“You know damn well what’s going on.”
Laying his hands on either side of Nic’s spine, Cam slowly glided them up his back, drawing out a tremble. “Then why won’t you turn around and kiss me?”
The tremble gave way to a jolt, then a harshly bit out, “After you just kissed her?”
“I didn’t kiss her. Brady kissed her.”
“Semantics.”
“Says the lawyer.” Cam was intentionally needling him, using Nic’s own tactics against him as he poked holes in the prosecutor’s argument.
In his protective outer layer.
“She knows who you are, Boston.”
Cam coasted his hands over the packed muscles of Nic’s stiff shoulders. “It’s still a cover. While evidence points to her being cooperative, if Abby decides Becca’s a better bet than us, I’m gonna need to convince her I’ve gone rogue so I can stay close and protect her. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Nic was silent a long minute, the building tension heavy in the small space. “This is why you’re not supposed to get involved with colleagues.”
Finally, an opening. Cam closed the distance between them, winding his arms around Nic and hugging him from behind. Body warm, despite the cool night, Cam wanted to get even closer to it. They might both get burned, but he was done watching the fire from a distance, holding himself back from the heat.
“Technically, we’re not,” he said.
“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
“If it wins the argument with you, yes.”
Nic chuckled, hanging his head, and Cam skirted his nose and lips along the nape of his neck. Nic’s quiet laughter died on a breathy gasp.
“Turn around, baby,” Cam whispered. He stepped back, only far enough for Nic to rotate, then pulled him close again. “We’ve been dancing around this for months,” he said, walking them back toward the desk, Nic bumping up against it. “You want this as much as I do, if the two kisses we’ve shared are any sign. Unless I read them wrong?”
Chin down, Nic glided his hands up the outsides of Cam’s arms and over his shoulders, leaving a trail of goose bumps in their wake. “You’re not wrong.”
It was a miracle Cam had held out this long. This close to what he’d desired for months, the wild part of him desperately wanted to break free, wanted to play rough and hard with Nic. “Then what’s the problem?” he asked. “You came to my place the other night. You made that move.”
“A lot can change in forty-eight hours,” Nic said, angling his face away.
Cam didn’t let him get away with it, trapping Nic’s chin between his thumb and forefinger and righting his gaze. “The way you feel about me?”
“This is messy, Boston, for a number of reasons, the least of which is you could get killed tomorrow.”
Nic’s blue eyes swirled with a stormy mix of lust and hesitation, the former on the cusp of winning out. Cam just needed to push a little harder. Hands traveling north, he tangled them in Nic’s hair and tilted his head back, exposing his neck for Cam’s mouth. “The last thing I want to do,” he said between kisses there, “is get killed before I get my dick in you.”
A deep groan rumbled against Cam’s lips. Nic clutched his waist, holding him close. And tight.
“That’s what you like, isn’t it?” Cam taunted, kissing a path up the column of Nic’s throat. He wedged a knee between Nic’s thighs, as he’d done the other night, and pressed his own need into Nic’s hip. No hiding that, or the way Nic ground an equally hard cock against his thigh. Cam trailed his open mouth along Nic’s stubbled jaw and up to his ear.
“Boston...” A warning wrapped in so much desire it might as well have been a plea.
“You’re standing here, jealous and angry my cover kissed someone else.” Cam brushed his lips over the hinge of Nic’s clenched jaw. “Worried about my safety and about what our friends will say.” Nic opened his mouth to protest, and Cam pressed his lips to Nic’s chin, forcing it closed. “Don’t deny it.” He dipped down, suckling the other man’s bobbing Adam’s apple. “It’s part of what’s kept you away all these months. Me too.” Then back up, a peck in the hollow of Nic’s cheek, before Cam dragged his lips back to Nic’s ear. “But most of all, you’re turned way the fuck on and ready to bend over this desk for me.” He punctuated his assertion with a roll of his hips. “Have been for months.” Nic’s hands slipped from his waist, onto his ass, and hauled him closer, so close to conceding the argument. Cam ground against him. “Stop pretending the mess doesn’t already exist.”
Cam was surprised when Nic’s hands left his ass to grip the sides of his face, Nic forcing him back enough for their eyes to lock. “Is this going to push you over the line? Break one rule, break them all?”
Cam’s heart stuttered in his chest. Nic was hesitating out of worry for him, over what he’d said the other night at the house. Cam was nowhere near good e
nough for this man, probably never would be, as dirt-broke and as screwed up as his past had been, but fuck if he could hold himself back now, the chemistry between them winning out over good sense.
“I broke the rules the minute I laid eyes on you, Dominic Price.” Shaking off the hold, Cam leaned forward, brushing his lips against Nic’s. “Now you’re the fucking rope keeping me tethered to shore.”
As if a judge’s gavel had fallen, Nic came after him, hard and fast. Clutching his ass in one hand, the back of his head in the other, Nic hauled him into a kiss that had blood roaring in Cam’s ears, loud enough to drown out the crashing waves.
Case closed.
Finally.
Onto a more pleasurable argument, which Nic was already winning. Hands beneath the hem of Cam’s shirt, he forced it up and their lips apart long enough to tear it off Cam’s head. They fought for whose lips would hit whose neck first, and Nic won, biting and suckling a path over the temporary tattoo. “I like the ink, even if it is decades out of style.”
Cam laughed. “Good thing it’s not permanent.” Head titled back, he struggled blindly against Nic’s buttons, too many valuable seconds passing before he reached warm and hard skin, searing against his palms. “Doesn’t hide as well as yours.” He tried to look down, to the ink that still surprised him and turned him on to no end, but Nic had other ideas.
Long fingers tunneling through his hair, Nic tilted his head back even farther. “Like the hair too,” he said, before licking into the hollow of his throat.
Knees going week, Cam flipped their positions while he still could, resting back against the desk. “Reminded me of you.”
“I’ll give you something else to remember,” Nic mumbled, before dropping to his knees and giving Cam’s belly button the same attention he’d bestowed on his neck, and fuck if that didn’t have Cam gasping toward the ceiling. If Nic’s hands weren’t already working on his zipper, his hips would have been off the desk, dick begging for attention.
As it were, Cam lifted them the instant he heard the zipper rip, helping Nic get his jeans and briefs down, but after that, once Nic circled the tip of his cock with this tongue then swallowed him whole, the most Cam could manage was flailing.
“Holy hell,” he cursed, the arm braced behind him giving way. Lie back or watch the show? No question. He curled forward, hands diving into Nic’s hair and down his neck, creating a cocoon while he watched Nic blow him. “Oh, fuck yeah.” He babbled, all manner of curses and Hail Marys, as Nic worked him over. Long pulls, suction like Cam had never felt, and a tongue teasing with each wet slide down his cock. Over and over. Cam dug his fingers into Nic’s shoulders, leaving bruises. Maybe even breaking the skin as Nic ventured off his dick and to his balls, one then the other in his mouth, before aiming lower still.
If Cam let him go on, it’d be sentencing over in no time flat. And Cam wanted more. He hadn’t been lying before when he’d said he wanted his dick inside Nic before walking back into the line of fire tomorrow.
Hands drifting back up, weaving again through Nic’s hair, he pulled him off his cock, and with a foot beneath Nic’s balls, forced him up.
“My turn.” He yanked Nic into another kiss, their tongues battling, as Cam kicked his pants and boxers off and went to work on ridding Nic of his, satisfied when the metal belt buckle hit the floor, taking pants and briefs with it. He wrapped his hands around Nic’s cock, groaning to find it hard and dripping already. He couldn’t wait to ride it, but tonight, he’d be the one riding. “Please tell me Eddie’s got condoms and lube in here somewhere.”
“One thing you can always count on with Eddie...” Nic leaned to the side, opened a desk drawer, and pulled out two foil packets. “He stashes this shit everywhere.”
“Good friend.” Cam grinned, snatching the packets from his hand, and while Nic seemed momentarily blinded by the smile, flipped their positions again, manhandling Nic around so he was chest down on the desk, Cam’s hand planted in the center of his back.
His eyes went first to the JAG tattoo on Nic’s hip, as striking as Cam had fantasized. But it was nothing compared to the single tattoo spanning Nic’s back. Cam was struck speechless, a curse too crass for this kind of beauty and a prayer not holy enough. Tossing the packets on the desk, he brought his hands back together at the small of Nic’s back, then repeating his earlier motion, coasted them up his spine, tracing the trunk of a giant cypress tree. At Nic’s shoulders, Cam’s hands separated, following the limbs out, his fingers feathering along the twigs and branches that crept over his shoulders and down his biceps. Now he knew what was peeking out from under Nic’s sleeves and collars. The artwork was so delicate and precise, the opposite of the beautiful yet stark symbols inked elsewhere.
“My God, Nic, this is incredible.”
Nic trembled beneath him again, his breath coming in shorter pants as Cam traced the most striking feature of all. Initials carved into the trunk of the tree. Worked into the knots of the wood, Cam hadn’t seen them at first but now they seemed the most obvious and important part.
“Who’s GS?”
Nic stilled, completely, and when he spoke, Cam could barely hear him. “The worst mess I ever made.”
The agent part of Cam’s brain went into overdrive, wanting to know more, to know everything, but with Nic stretched out under him, just as they were getting this thing between them going, just as it could possibly end tomorrow, now wasn’t the time.
He ran his hands the rest of the way up Nic’s back again, then out over his arms, blanketing him and nestling his aching cock between those firm, round ass cheeks that had tempted him for months. He dropped a kiss on Nic’s shoulder. “I knew there was a body under that suit, but this.” He traced his tongue along the branch that disappeared over Nic’s shoulder. “This, Dominic, fuck.” He thrust against Nic’s backside. “Can you feel what it does to me?”
Nic reared up to his elbows, tried to reach a hand down and around his cock, but Cam caught his wrist, pinning it to the desk and keeping him spread. “Nuh uh-uh.”
Countering, Nic pushed his ass back against Cam. “Don’t forget, Boston. I argue for a fucking living.”
“You want to talk fucking?” Cam sucked three fingers into his mouth, wetting them good, then backed off enough to tease Nic’s rim. “Try that power bottom shit all you want, but I will win this argument, Counselor.”
Groaning, Nic squirmed and chased after the touch. “Jesus Christ, need you to fuck me, now.”
Cam pushed a finger past Nic’s rim, eliciting a strangled moan. “What was that?”
“With your dick, for fuck’s sake.”
“I don’t know.” He inserted a second finger, spreading Nic open. “I’m enjoying myself here.” And a third, pumping.
Nic rode back on his fingers, panting. “Not the time to argue.”
Leaning over him, Cam nipped the back of his neck. “Thought you said you could play this game.”
“Prosecution rests.” His braced arm gave out and he sank, lying flat out on the desk again. “Please, Boston...”
Cam couldn’t get the condom on and his dick lubed up fast enough. “I got you, baby,” he whispered, as he lined up and slowly pushed in. Groaning, he filled up every inch, and once fully seated, bowed over Nic’s back and rested his forehead against his shoulder. “Fuck, you feel good.”
Did this feel better than any other time he’d been with someone, or had it just been too long? Everything fit and moved just right, his cock inside Nic’s tight, hot ass, his body stretched over that amazing body, they’re breaths heaving and hips rocking as one, neither of them having to think about it. Just doing it. Presenting the argument together, like they had been the entire time on this case.
Nic pushed up to his elbows, bringing their bodies closer, and Cam kicked his legs farther apart, changing the angle, the both of them strangling their screams as Cam slid in deeper, p
ounding Nic’s prostate. Nic forced them another degree upright, enough for Cam to get one hand around his chest and the other around his dick, jerking him off in time with the thrusts of their hips and the thrust of their tongues, mouths meeting over Nic’s shoulder.
Cam barely won the argument, Nic crying out as he came first, coating Cam’s hand. The warmth of his release, combined with the tight clamp on Cam’s cock, gave Nic the final word. Cam followed him over the edge, falling further than he thought possible.
Case closed, sentenced to life.
Chapter Seventeen
Cam did a double take as Abby punched the elevator button for the fortieth floor. “Aren’t we on forty-five?” He’d only been to Becca’s base of operations once, but he distinctly remembered being forty-five floors up.
“Becca’s text said Unit 4042. That’s floor forty.”
It was the right move. Change locations after another near bust but stay close to their target. There were fiftysomething other floors in this building to choose from. Becca’s crew wasn’t one of the best for no reason. Granted, things had gone sideways on this particular job, but Cam attributed that to his agency’s interference and Kristić. Man clearly had trust issues.
Abby clicking her rings dragged Cam out of his thoughts. She stood in the far corner, jittery and nervous. “Hey,” Cam said, sliding along the rail over next to her. “I can push the red button right now, call security, and have them turn this cab around. I’ll tell Becca I lost you last night and I sent that text from your phone. You don’t have to do this.”
He’d laid out the game plan to Abby this morning, carefully stepping around his rogue contingency and his suspicion about Kristić. He needed both to register as real surprise with Abby, if he had to use them. He’d given her the option to bail, multiple times, but she wanted to see this through. He wasn’t surprised she hesitated now; most sane people would.
“I do,” she said quietly. “A woman died.”
Cam laid a hand over hers, stopping their restless motion. “You tried to stop that. You went to Nic.”