by Elle Kennedy
He almost regretted offering the warning. He would’ve loved to find release in her warm, eager mouth, but Penny never stayed with him till the end. Her hand quickly replaced her mouth and he spilled into her palm on a choked groan, hips thrusting for several more seconds before his body grew still.
“Jesus,” he mumbled as Penny got to her feet. “That was amazing.”
At only five-one, she had to crane her neck to look up at him. Her brown eyes danced with mischief. “I aim to please.”
Laughing, he wandered over to one of the night tables to grab some tissues. While he cleaned himself up, Penny dug around in her purse for her makeup bag, then examined her reflection in a small compact mirror.
“Ugh,” she griped. “I definitely look like someone who just had sex.”
Liam arched a brow. “You didn’t have sex.”
“Your dick was in my mouth—that’s sex.” She giggled. “And I told you we could find a way to make these Sunday brunches more fun.”
He wanted to argue that the weekly Macgregor brunches were fun. Because they were.
But . . . they were also agonizing. Ironic that fun and agonizing could exist in the same realm, but it had always been that way with his family. He loved them deeply. His brothers, his sisters, his parents, the parade of nieces and nephews. He loved the laughter and the chaos and the good-natured ribbing. Yet, at the same time, it was all too . . . normal for him.
This two-story town house he’d grown up in had plenty of windows, plenty of doors. He wasn’t, and had never been, a prisoner here. He could walk out at any time, and yet a part of him felt oddly trapped when he was home.
Before he’d joined the DEA all those years ago, he remembered sitting at that dining room table listening to his brothers talk about their day at the police station, celebrating his sister Rose getting her teaching degree, watching everyone fall in love, get married, have babies.
And it was all so unappealing to him. He’d dreamed of adventure. He’d wanted to shoot big guns and blow shit up. He’d wanted to feel that adrenaline high he got whenever he and Tommy G jumped off the Carson Beach pier into the South Boston harbor.
He hadn’t felt alive, truly alive, until he’d left Southie and become a federal agent. And then, eight years after that, he’d resigned from the DEA and landed an even more exciting job—a soldier on Jim Morgan’s mercenary team. He’d gotten to shoot guns and blow things up, all right. Being a merc had given him the biggest thrill he’d ever experienced and introduced him to some of the greatest people he’d ever met. Kane, Trevor, Luke, even that prickly bastard D. They’d become his brothers, but none more so than Sullivan Port.
Except Sullivan had been more than a brother by the end. He’d been . . .
Liam shut out the thought before it could take root.
“You ready to go downstairs?” Penny asked.
He mustered up a smile. See, this was the reason he couldn’t think about Sully anymore. Penelope Doyle, the woman he’d been seeing for almost a year. When he’d returned to Boston two years ago, he hadn’t intended on making it a permanent stay. He had every intention of going back to Morgan’s compound in Costa Rica, where Liam had lived before that final mission in Mexico.
He’d come home to visit his family and recover from the memory of watching Sullivan get on that yacht, from the pain of knowing he wouldn’t see his best friend for who knew how long, from the sorrow of realizing he couldn’t be what Sullivan needed at that time. Liam would’ve done anything to help Sully kick the drugs he’d gotten hooked on during captivity, but his friend hadn’t wanted his help. Sully had wanted to do it alone.
The thought of returning to Costa Rica without Sully had been too much to bear. So he’d stuck around in Boston. Eventually, a few weeks had turned into a few months, and suddenly it was a year and he was doing what he’d sworn he’d never do—working a nine-to-five job at the security firm his brother Kevin had opened after retiring from the force. It was pretty tame shit for the most part, though Liam always begged Kevin to give him the riskier assignments.
Yeah, so risky, bro. You’re really straddling the danger line here.
Fine, so maybe the most exciting thing he’d done was accompany a CEO to Los Angeles for a three-day stretch of business negotiations. Terrifying shit, apparently, negotiations.
But he’d resigned himself to the fact that this was his life now. He wasn’t a mercenary; he was a security consultant. And he was dating a lovely woman. Penny was smart, funny, and kinky enough to satisfy the wild sexual streak that ran through him. Plus his family adored her. She’d gone to college with his younger sister Becca, who was the one to introduce them.
“Liam?” Her voice jolted him out of his thoughts. “Are you coming?”
He nodded. The boisterous voices of his family wafted upstairs from the lower level, intermingling with the happy shrieks of his sister Monica’s three daughters and his brother Denny’s two sons. Only four of Liam’s seven siblings were at brunch today, but each one traveled with an entourage of spouse and a minimum of two kids.
Liam’s back pocket vibrated as he headed toward the door. “Hold that thought,” he told Penny. “Let me check who this is.”
He pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen. Kane.
Shit.
Kane was probably calling to beg him to come back again. A few months ago it was Trevor who’d made that call, a not so subtle attempt to bring Liam back into the fold. Trev had mentioned a tricky extraction in Colombia as an incentive, and Liam, who’d just come home after a boring day of providing bank security, had almost taken him up on the offer . . . until Trevor asked if he’d heard from Sullivan.
Just like that, the desire to reunite with his team had evaporated. How could he ever go back when the most important person in the world to him wouldn’t be there?
“I need to take this,” he said curtly.
Penny’s forehead wrinkled. “Who is it?”
“Just an old friend. Give me a second?”
She hesitated, then stepped out the door.
Liam pressed TALK and brought the phone to his ear. “Hey,” he greeted Kane.
“You still in Boston?” was the brusque response.
Liam frowned. Weird for Kane to forgo a hello like that. He wasn’t Morgan, the tight-lipped bastard. Or D, who communicated through grunts.
“Yeah. Why? What’s going on?”
“I take it you haven’t listened to your messages.”
“Nope, haven’t had a chance. I’m at my folks’ place.”
“Gotcha. Well . . . if you can hop on a flight and get over here, it’d probably be a good idea.”
Liam’s stomach went rigid. Okay. That didn’t sound good. “What’s going on?” he repeated. “And where is here?”
“Guatana.”
“The hell are you guys doing over there?”
“Cate ran into some trouble so we flew in to extract her. Shit went south.”
His instincts began to hum ominously. “Who’s hurt?”
There was a pause, long enough for Liam’s palms to dampen. He expected Kane to say Sullivan. Expected to hear that Sully had rejoined the team and gotten hurt somehow. Or worse, that Sullivan was back on the drugs.
Those fears were put to rest and replaced with new ones when Kane said, “It’s Jim. He got shot.”
“How bad?” Liam demanded.
“Bad. Bullet lodged in his neck. Two others removed from his back. He’s still in surgery, but . . . ah, doctors don’t know if he’s going to make it.”
His heart stopped. “Jesus Christ.”
No way. This wasn’t possible. Jim Morgan was frickin’ invincible. He got shot, he got back up. Bullets didn’t keep him down. Nothing did.
“So yeah . . . ,” Kane said, his tone flat. “If you can afford to take the time off, I suggest you come her
e. Might be your only chance to”—a cough—“say good-bye.”
Liam’s heart started up in a fast gallop. Good-bye? Shit, this was serious.
“And if you have a way to get in touch with Sullivan,” Kane went on, and that magic word—Sullivan—succeeded in making Liam tremble. “Do me a favor and call him for us. I can’t get him on the radio.”
“Will do. I’ll be on the next flight out.”
Still feeling shaky, he hung up the phone and collapsed on the edge of his bed. Well, technically it was his brother’s bed. Denny had slept in the bottom bunk because Liam had claimed the top one—even back then he’d wanted to live on the edge. He remembered doing somersaults and flips off the top bunk while his brothers chastised him to stop. He hadn’t stopped, though, and ended up cracking his forehead open one time and requiring twenty-two stitches.
He dragged one hand through his hair, unable to process what Kane had told him. But if it was true, then no way was he staying in Boston. He owed it to Morgan to go to Guatana.
Jim Morgan had given him the opportunity to live the kind of life he’d always craved. Because of Morgan, he’d made friends. He’d met Sully. He’d felt whole for the first time in his life. Not the way he felt here, like an empty shell that walked and talked and laughed and smiled on command, when a part of him knew he would never truly belong.
Morgan had done the same for Sullivan. Sullivan was an orphan and Jim had given him a family.
Fuck. Sully needed to know about this.
Liam’s fingers shook as he pulled up his contact list. He had another way of reaching Sully that wasn’t the radio. Before they’d parted ways, he’d given Sully a burner phone and promised his friend that he’d be the only one with the number. In that first year, they’d spoken several times, but they hadn’t had any contact this second year. Hell, Sully might have tossed the phone overboard by now.
Praying that wasn’t the case, Liam took a breath and made the call.
Chapter 10
San Nicolas, Aruba
Torture. The deep timbre of Liam’s voice in Sullivan Port’s ear was bloody torture.
And that was saying a lot, considering he’d literally been tortured not so long ago. For months on end, Sullivan had been trapped in a cell, pumped full of drugs, and raped by a woman he despised. He’d lived and breathed torture in Raoul Mendez’s private island hellhole, and yet those gruesome memories didn’t come close to evoking the unbearable pain he felt hearing the voice of the friend he hadn’t spoken to in a year.
“Boston,” he said, putting on a careless tone. Maybe if he pretended that no time had passed, then it wouldn’t be awkward between them.
“Sully. Hey.” It was impossible to miss the note of discomfort in Liam’s tone.
Yeah, this was gonna be awkward, all right.
“Long time,” he said lightly.
“Yeah.” Liam sounded distracted now. “Look. I know we’ve got a lot of catching up to do, but that’s not why I’m calling. You on the water or mainland?”
Frowning, he rose from his lounge chair and walked across Evangeline’s upper deck. He stopped at the railing and stared out at the marina, at the gleaming hulls of the other boats bobbing in the calm water.
“Mainland,” he answered. “I’m docked in a private cove off the coast of Aruba.”
“Can you get a charter out of there?”
“Yeah,” he said uneasily. “Why?”
“Kane just called. You weren’t answering the radio.”
“It’s busted,” he admitted. “It’s one of the reasons I came to port. Need to get the bloody thing fixed. Why didn’t he call this phone?”
“Because he doesn’t know the number.”
Sullivan blinked in surprise. “You didn’t give it to him?”
“I promised you I wouldn’t,” was the gruff response. “You didn’t want anyone to have it, remember?”
Yeah. Fuck, yeah, now he remembered. That was two years ago, when he’d still been a pathetic mess. Going through withdrawal, detoxing himself on the open water. It was a miracle he hadn’t died, that some random fishing boat hadn’t come across Evangeline drifting aimlessly in the ocean and found Sullivan’s decomposing body below deck.
But he’d survived somehow, and he’d done it all by himself. He knew Liam would’ve come with him in a heartbeat, but it hadn’t been his friend’s responsibility to dry Sully out. And he hadn’t wanted the rest of the team calling him every other minute asking if he was okay. He hadn’t wanted to hear the pity in their voices. He fucking hated pity.
“What did Kane want?” he asked, pushing the bleak memories away.
“Morgan was shot in Guatana. Apparently it’s bad. Critical condition. They don’t know if he’ll make it.”
Sully sucked in a breath. “Bullshit.”
“I know, right?”
“Jim Morgan doesn’t go into critical condition. He’s a bloody superhero.”
A heavy sigh echoed in his ear. “No, he’s a man. Mortal just like the rest of us.”
He gulped. There was something so . . . sad in Liam’s voice. Sully wanted to ask his buddy if he was okay, what he’d been up to since they’d lost touch, but it was too awkward, so he forced himself to swallow the urge. Ironic, because he was the one who usually spoke his mind without thinking. Liam was the calm, composed one. Liam assessed and analyzed, weighing every word before he said it, while Sully just blurted shit out, his words like gumballs popping out of a candy machine and flying haphazardly in all directions.
After several more seconds ticked by, Liam finally spoke again. “You stopped calling me.”
Sullivan nodded, then realized his friend couldn’t see him. He cleared his throat and said, “I know.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Fuck that. He did know. He knew exactly why he’d stopped calling his best mate.
Because Liam was bloody in love with him.
He’d wanted to give the guy time to get over it. He’d prayed that maybe with enough time, their friendship could go back to normal. Except he’d let the radio silence go on for too long. Weeks had turned into months and the next thing he knew, half a year had passed. By that point, Sully hadn’t known what to say if he called. He’d hoped that Liam would be the one to reach out first, but that hadn’t happened.
“Will you come to Guatana?”
The abrupt change of subject startled him. “Yeah. I’ll find a pilot the moment we get off the phone. You?”
“Same.” Liam paused. “He’s gonna make it, bro. You know that.”
“Yeah.” Sully swallowed again. “Of course he will.”
Another long pause.
He hated this. He really, really hated this. From the moment Liam had joined the team, the two men had been inseparable. They could talk about anything. Sullivan had told Liam about his past. He’d shared more details about himself than he’d ever done with anyone else, except maybe Evangeline. He’d never kept secrets from her.
Even thinking about Evangeline caused pain to ripple through his heart, so once again he pushed the memories aside. He was good at blocking out pain. Just ask Mendez. Ask Mendez’s daughter, who’d taken great delight in sexually tormenting him.
Sully raked his free hand through his hair as the silence on the line dragged on. Lord, he’d thought he’d put all that bullshit on Mendez’s island behind him, but evidently not. The memories were twisting his gut into knots.
He hated that he’d been that man—helpless, broken, trapped in a cell. And everything he’d done afterward still haunted him.
Killing Angelina Mendez with his bare hands . . .
Yelling at Liam . . .
Offering Liam sexual favors in exchange for heroin . . .
Jesus bloody Christ. He’d humiliated himself. Demeaned himself. How in the bloody fuck did a man ever come ba
ck from that?
Maybe he couldn’t. Hell, maybe he shouldn’t. His life had been a shit show since the moment his druggie mother abandoned him on the front steps of a church in Sydney. He’d been an orphan, a drug dealer, an addict, a total fucking mess. Nothing good ever lasted in his life. The one bright spot, the only happiness he’d been lucky enough to experience, had been stolen away from him.
And even after he’d cleaned up his act and joined the army, he’d still been a mess. Terrible at relationships, unable to sustain friendships. Except with Liam. That friendship had been different. Liam was different.
A tired sigh slipped out of his mouth, followed by three quiet words that Sully couldn’t rein in. “I miss you.”
There was a hitch of breath on the other end.
“Boston? You still there?”
After a painfully long pause, Liam murmured, “I miss you too.”
The next round of silence stretched on even longer than the first, until Sullivan cleared his throat again. “Text me the team’s location. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
* * *
“Who was that?”
Liam’s head jerked toward the door at the sound of Penny’s shrill voice. For some reason, the suspicion flashing in her eyes irked him. His former boss was lying in a hospital bed fighting for his life and she was pissed because . . . what? She thought he was cheating on her? Over the phone?
“Just a friend.” He stood and tucked his phone in the back pocket of his cargo pants. After a moment of hesitation, he said, “I have to go.”
Her eyes narrowed further. “What do you mean, you have to go? Your mom’s about to serve dessert.”
“Well, I’m gonna have to miss dessert. There’s somewhere I need to be.”
Penny blocked his path before he could reach the doorway. She crossed her arms over her chest, luring his gaze to her ample cleavage. Christ, she had great tits. Big and bouncy. Add to that her tiny hips and firm ass and her body was a walking wet dream. The teenage boys at the Catholic high school where she taught probably jacked off to thoughts of her every night, confessed the sin every Sunday, and then repeated the cycle.