by SE Jakes
Prophet was hiding something. Correction—Prophet was always hiding something, but this was bigger than most. But he evaded any of Reed’s questions by conveniently not being available for a face-to-face meeting before the op. Instead, Reed worked with Mick, who seemed a little wound up himself but was on point once they broke down the door and watched the kidnappers scatter like bugs.
But they’d regrouped, and he and Mick had made quick work of them. In reality, Reed would’ve liked more of a fight. Had needed more of a fight.
“This went goatfuck in like three seconds,” Mick grumbled, but he wasn’t unhappy about getting to punch someone either.
According to the files, all Reed and Mick had to do was make the drop, collect the merchandise and move on. In theory.
In reality, the whole thing was a setup, which became evident as more men rushed in behind the ones they’d taken down.
Reed grabbed the arm around his throat, but it was, predictably, like steel. Instead of fighting it for long, he threw an elbow and broke the man’s rib.
A howl and the guy loosened his grip, but not before getting a nice slice in along Reed’s forearm. Reed turned and dropped him smoothly with the side of his palm jabbing at the man’s throat. Breaking the Y bone wouldn’t kill him, but it could disable him with pain and stop him from calling out.
He’d interrogate the second one who came at him from the side. Reed gave a hard shove, a quick kick to the front of the knee and he went down, landing on his elbow, the gun he’d been holding clattering away.
Reed went for it first, shoved it into his pants and stood over the man, his booted foot on his throat. “Who do you work for?”
He eased up on the pressure for a few moments, letting the man collect himself. And then he spat up at Reed, who put his foot back down, blocking his air. “Have it your way. I can do this forever, although it’s going to be boring as hell.”
In the end, the man had taken an hour to give up the intel. Reed used a pressure point so he went unconscious instead of killing him. His own people would take care of that. And then he and Mick had moved swiftly back into the plane with their cargo that Mick had found under the floorboards.
Being a doctor in this case was handy—get yourself cut, stitch yourself up and move on. Reed did just that, whizzed the needle through the cut on his arm, shot himself up with antibiotics and moved on.
Shane’s body was still humming from the blowjob—the most intense one he’d ever received. And then he’d fallen back into a deep sleep, no longer noticing or caring about the wind that seemed like it would whip the house off its foundation.
Now, he heard it still howling outside. The storm was far from over. Keith was checking the laptop next to him, reached a hand out and ruffled his hair.
Shane ducked his head into the pillow. “Morning.”
“You had some dream last night,” Keith told him.
His stomach tightened and he sat up. “Shit, did I yell and wake you?”
“You woke me, yeah. But it wasn’t a nightmare.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve seen your nightmares.”
“Then what the hell was I…oh.” Oh was right, because the dream came flashing back to him at top speed. Him. Keith. Him, being fucked by Keith on the kitchen table.
“My name was used several times.”
“Not in vain,” Shane offered, his face heated.
“Now you’re shy?”
“Come on. I’m a red-blooded male who needs a good fuck—and soon.”
But Keith didn’t do any more than ruffle his hair again and get up to head to the shower. Shane lay back against the mattress, frustrated. It was obvious that he’d gotten a reaction out of the man, because that was more than simple morning wood he’d seen rising between the man’s legs, tenting the shorts he’d worn to bed. But he was being held at arm’s length.
What did you expect—they’d just invite you in to become a threesome and you’d be one big happy family?
Well…yeah. So stupid on him.
Keith took his phone with him when he showered, keeping it close, just in case. But Reed called when he was making breakfast. He could hear the noise of the chopper blades, knew Reed was yelling even though Keith couldn’t hear him well. But they were used to these conversations.
“How’s he doing?” Reed asked, his first concern for Shane over telling Keith that he was fine.
“He’s okay. Coming around.”
“I’m fine, Keith. Everything went as expected.”
“Which means everything was goatfuck from the first second.”
“Pretty much, yes.” He heard the laughter in Reed’s voice—fuck-ups like that kept him happy. “Business as usual. I’m in one piece. So’s Mick.”
Keith had watched their movements for most of the night, heard the interrogation through the earbud Reed and Mick had both worn for this job. This ring of dealers had been on their radars for some time—they were responsible for nearly killing several young men while using an experimental drug, and Prophet’s boss had been tasked with taking them down. Mick was running point on the mission, but bringing Reed in first for the initial sweep was a bigger part of the plan. After that, Mick would reveal himself to them as a dirty fed who would get the group what they needed to continue with their illegal enterprises.
They’d run scams like this before on criminals, but it was always risky.
“Come home,” he told Reed now.
“Can’t wait, love.”
Keith smiled into the phone. Reed wasn’t always affectionate, but the times that he was, even with a single word, he warmed Keith to his damned soul. “We’ll be waiting.”
“I like the sound of we,” Reed said. “He makes you happy. Make him stay.”
Keith paused for a long second, considering the he-makes-you-happy part and still refusing to admit it, and then said, “For you.”
“For all of us,” Reed said simply before he cut the line.
Keith wouldn’t do anything until he’d watched Reed get onto the helo and got the call saying everything was good.
“Another successful mission,” Shane said.
“Now we train,” Keith told him, brushing past him and forcing Shane to follow into the padded room.
“Did you add this on?”
“No, this was here.”
“Looks like a big dining room or something.” He pointed to the ceiling pattern. “Are you sure this place wasn’t ever an inn?”
“Not that I was ever able to find out—and I tried,” Keith told him. “Are you stalling?”
He was, knew he’d have to fake it a little during this, for self-preservation. He knew Keith would be looking for signs of what he could do…but he was still weak enough that he honestly didn’t have to work very hard on evasion at all.
“Yeah, I’m stalling.” Shane rolled his eyes.
“Might want to lose the attitude,” Keith said casually after he’d flipped Shane onto his back and held him there with a foot on his chest. Shane was breathing—wheezing more accurately—like an eighty-year-old smoker. Everything felt tight, his muscles ached simultaneously from both over- and underuse. But at least his ribs were wrapped tightly enough that they were protected.
They were nearly healed anyway.
“So you and Reed would really consider giving me a job?” Shane asked from his position on the floor.
“Don’t you need one?”
“I need to deal with Guthrie first.” And then the CIA would clear him. And then…
“I know you need to take care of Guthrie. But that can’t be your whole life. Kyle wouldn’t want that.”
Shane wanted to be angry with Keith for bringing up Kyle’s name so freely but in truth he was sick of being angry. Keith and Reed made him feel something other than that emotion.
“Work first, talk later.” Keith asked him more about his training, and Shane lied and said that Kyle had taught him a great deal. “Good, show me.”
Keith l
ooked like a serious brick wall. Kyle told him men like that went down hard, but after Shane tried a few moves on him, it was apparent that didn’t hold true in all situations. And Shane had to hold back. As an operative, he learned a lot of different fighting methods, including the ways a Force Recon Marine would’ve trained. But he’d be giving himself away if he made any moves that belied anything beyond Army Ranger.
He was out of shape as well, which would help with the ruse.
“You didn’t do badly,” Keith told him later. Shane didn’t have the strength to speak, just gave Keith the middle-finger salute.
“Hey, I expected you to be in way worse condition,” Keith offered.
A rare, if not grudging compliment.
He and Keith lay on their backs on the mat, sweaty, tired and flying, much like they’d be after sex. And God, it would be so easy to roll over onto Keith right now and ask for what he wanted.
Too easy. And he never took easy.
He couldn’t remember why, though. Maybe there had never been an explanation. And so to distract himself, he said, “It must be hard for you to let Reed go on jobs without you.”
“Is that the same thing you asked him while I was gone?”
“Yes.”
Keith laughed a little. “He and I are good together on missions, but we’re also a liability to one another. It’s too personal. And it took us a long time to recognize that.”
“I can see that. You know, Reed doesn’t look like an operative at first glance. He should, because once you see him move, you know, but…” Shane couldn’t explain it, but Keith nodded.
“That’s the thing with Reed. They don’t see him coming.”
“I would,” Shane said.
“But you were trained to spot predators.”
Shane considered the truth in that.
“Were you courted for Delta?”
“No.” That was the truth.
“What about Kyle?”
“He liked being a Ranger, but he knew being asked for Delta was major. He just wanted to be the best at what he was, you know? Always training, looking to learn more from everyone. He was the least cocky guy I knew…and somehow, that made him the most cocky.”
Keith grinned like he knew the type. Because he was the damned type, but Shane wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of telling him that.
“What are you thinking about?” Keith asked, rolling onto his side to stare down at Shane.
“Suppose it doesn’t work out?”
“Which part, Shane?”
“Both. Or suppose just the job works but the other…”
“Then you could still work for us—with us—and live someplace else. It’s not an all-inclusive deal. And you might decide you don’t want the job.”
But Shane did. One look at the kinds of things they did and he knew he was all in. They helped people in need and apparently, it wasn’t all about the money. The clients they took, many of them, couldn’t afford to pay.
He hoped he could also be one of the success stories. He liked the fact that they didn’t expect him to sit back and do nothing. And after he showered, he made up a file on Guthrie, culling everything he could from memory and listing it all in one place. Making his case, figuring ways to catch him.
It felt good to do something besides run and hate.
Kyle might want him to find peace, but he’d also know Shane wouldn’t have let his good name go unavenged.
“You smile when you think about him, you know,” Keith said. “It’s a good sign.”
“You think?”
“Took me months before I could think about Bobby and be happy at all. But then I started thinking about how we first got together—how he was frustrating as hell and what a pain in the ass I was to him because of it…”
He shook his head at the memory, and Shane understood what he meant. Kyle had been equally frustrating in the beginning as well. He’d had to chase the man carefully, as he’d been an officer and Shane was a private and it was all so inappropriate. Which made Kyle’s surrender—when he’d finally given in—that much more satisfying.
He told all that to Keith, who said, “So what finally happened?”
“After that barfight and the kiss I told you about—he practically shoved me into my car and for weeks we pretended it didn’t happen. But one night, I just showed up at his place, finally knocked on his door and didn’t give him a chance to say no.”
“You took a big risk.”
Not really, since he wasn’t exactly Army, but Kyle could’ve reported him anyway. But he hadn’t. Instead, the man kissed him back and Shane dragged him to the couch, bent him over and fucked him until he was barely coherent. And then he’d taken him to the bedroom and fucked him more.
From the first time he’d talked to the man, he’d been pretty sure he’d been in love with him. By the end of their first weekend together, he knew he was.
Keith studied him for a while and then said, “Why don’t you tell me everything you know about Guthrie. I don’t want to do a search on him and raise any flags. And he sounds like he’s good.”
Shit. Shane should’ve anticipated this. Keith was alternately relaxing him and then pumping him for intel—and it should’ve been intel that Shane could easily talk about. Instead, he’d need to proceed very carefully, trying to remember the lies and half-truths he’d been taught about Guthrie, the CIA agent he was working undercover with.
“He is. He was a Ranger for twenty years. Took early retirement.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of what?”
“That he was only a Ranger?”
Shane should know better about trying to fool Keith. “As far as I knew, yes.”
Keith seemed satisfied with that.
“I didn’t know much about him—he was in Kyle’s company, not mine.”
“How old would he be?”
“Maybe forty?” he guessed. But in reality, he knew the man was forty-two, knew his birthdate, his address, his bank account number. He knew more about Guthrie than Guthrie did.
Then why are you still running?
That was the one question he still wasn’t able to answer.
Chapter Fifteen
Shane heard the bathroom door open and pretended not to. The glass in the sauna shower was clear, and although they were steamed up, he was pretty sure Keith could see most of him.
He figured he came in for a towel. After last night and the blowjob, the reference to Shane’s dream, Keith acted like he was nothing more than a friend and now, especially after the sparring and talk of first times with Kyle, Shane was hard and more frustrated than he’d been in a long time.
Maybe last night was something Keith regretted, although he didn’t seem like a man who lived with regrets or did things he regretted in the first place.
He’d been so deep inside his own head that he hadn’t heard the shower door open or close, but then Keith was at his back under the spray. Shane tensed at first, because his scars were on full display, especially when Keith circled his wrists with his hands and pushed them forward.
“Hold the tile,” he told Shane who wanted to buck at the commands. He was the one who would normally be giving them, but his body seemed to melt and follow whenever Keith spoke.
Keith ran his hands along Shane’s arms. “You’re going to be sore tomorrow.”
Shane didn’t know if he was talking about the workout—or referencing what would happen now. And what was worse, he was praying it was the latter.
He hadn’t thought about the dynamics of being alone with one man or the other. How did that work?
He guessed he was about to find out, but if you’d asked him a week ago, he would’ve guessed he and Reed would’ve been together first. Keith intimidated him, for some reasons he’d figured out and others he hadn’t.
But oh, how he wanted—wanted to be taken by this man. He rarely bottomed, never gave much thought as to why, since when it was the right top, it was goddamned motherfucking awesome.
“What did I do to you in your dream?” Keith asked.
He closed his eyes, his cheeks heating. “You…I…”
“Relax, Shane.” Keith kissed the back of his neck, rubbed his back until Shane was able to start over.
“I was mouthing off to you at the table.”
“Dreams imitating life,” Keith murmured.
“And then you grabbed me and pushed me down. And you fucked me over the table. And I loved it.”
His voice was hoarse on the last words. Broke a little too, which he didn’t understand. Keith sucked the back of his neck and then turned the shower off, dried them both. And then walked them out to the kitchen, as Shane suspected.
He whimpered a little when they got close to the table and Keith brushed a palm over the smooth surface, as if readying it for him. And then he pointed for Shane to bend over it and Shane knew he’d blush every goddamned time he sat here from now on.
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I don’t bottom.”
“Ever?”
“Not for a long time, Keith.”
“But for me, you want to.”
Shane opened his mouth and then closed it, because Keith spoke a truth he hadn’t been able to see, even though it had been right in front of his face.
But then Keith touched his ribs. “We’ll save this for later.”
“I don’t want to save anything.”
“I’m still fucking you, Shane—just not on this surface.” His hand brushed Shane’s still-healing ribs and Shane shivered at the warmth, especially when Keith’s arm wrapped around his waist and led him back toward Shane’s bedroom. Gave him a slight push onto the bed.
Shane gathered the pillow under his head, his hands fisted into its underside as he lay there, vulnerable. He tensed as Keith’s tongue ran along his lower back, but Keith either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Figured it was the latter and willed himself not to pull back.
Excitement and nerves bundles together in his gut as he pushed onto his hands and knees, spread his legs, opening himself to Keith. An offering, something he didn’t do easily.
Keith licked along the crease of his thigh, his ass. He heard himself suck in a harsh breath and then released it with a huff. His entire body simultaneously tightened and subsequently relaxed as the pleasure jolted through him.