That was it. Nothing personal, no demands for explanations, no pleas for understanding. No hint he’d spent six months falling deeper and deeper in something with this strange, unsteady man. Or four months in growing frustration, waiting for his return. Or four weeks making up for lost time, only to ruin it all by a single, bad choice.
“It’s up to him now.” Jack handed back the phone.
McIntosh gave him a single nod. “Let me know the moment he gets in contact.”
“Of course, ma’am.” A promise he actually meant. Ethan wouldn’t want to come here, so Jack would have to go to him, wherever he was, and that would mean begging, demanding, or simply telling his director he was leaving the building.
With an indelicate snort, McIntosh nodded again. “In the meantime, you have work to do. I wasn’t just trying to piss Dumay off. We’re going to find the Judge. Go. Lewis is waiting for you. I’m going to have a talk with Donald.”
Jack watched her go to politely but firmly tell off the senior Ex Mon supervisor, once more glad he’d accepted a position with ITA over ETA. Director Alex Tan of External Threat Assessment had a well-deserved reputation for bending the rules until they fractured. ETA jobs were always given the widest possible operational parameters, and the assets were, for the most part, unconditionally covered by Tan when they overstepped those boundaries. Jack had banked on Tan’s habit of retroactively approving unsanctioned activities to cover him during the whole Harraway deal. And it had been Tan’s idea to “keep Blade happy” so he might consider working with them in the future. Tan had even offered Jack a place in ETA, weighting it with promises to make it worth Jack’s while.
Not exactly giving Tan a definite no, Jack hadn’t yet regretted his decision to stay with ITA and McIntosh. For the first five years of his career with the Office, Jack had believed his director to be a straight-down-the-middle player. She abided by the rules and enforced them when required. Tough but fair, direct but compassionate. Leading up to Jack’s fifteen months undercover operation with Valadian, and in the year that followed his return, he’d seen another side of Donna McIntosh. She respected the rules and followed them diligently—until they didn’t work for her. When that happened, McIntosh quietly and calmly did what was required to get the job done. She didn’t flaunt it, like Tan, or do it for her own benefit, as Harraway had. McIntosh’s goal was that of the Office. To protect. Righteous was how Harraway had described her, and in the midst of all the filth and evil Jack had to suffer during his job, he needed to know McIntosh’s honour was there to guide him out of the shadows.
Buoyed by the fact McIntosh had come personally to get him out, Jack headed towards Lewis’s operations room. As he crossed the floor, he got a series of pats on the back and welcome-homes from his fellow ITA assets. This, too, buffered his mood, knowing these people were happy he was back.
All of which was reinforced when the door to the operations room banged open and Lewis stepped out, eyes shining and one hand clenched over his heart.
“My boy,” he proclaimed in weepy relief for all to hear. “Finally released from the clink. I don’t care what you did wrong, just so long as you’re home now!” Arms spread, he gestured Jack in for a hug.
Jack rolled his eyes but had to work hard at not grinning at his friend. One thing he could always rely on from Lewis was a joke to lighten just about any mood—and a serious, glad-you’re-back chin lift when Jack avoided the embrace and just squeezed his shoulder in thanks. Which nearly reverted to a full-on hug when Jack noted Lewis was wearing the same clothes as he had been yesterday. His mate had pulled an all-nighter, and it was now nearly 5:00 p.m. Jack mollified the sudden warm rush with a gruff “Missed you, too, dickhead.”
Lewis gave the spectators a final “My boy will always be innocent to me,” and then ordered Jack into the operations room.
The team had rapidly expanded since Jack had been arrested that morning. The room, which had comfortably held them all the previous week, was now bursting at the seams. People crowded around the big table in the middle of the room, working diligently with a minimum of fuss and noise. Jack did a quick count as they made their way to where Lydia stood, and noted that there were more coffee cups than humans in the room, a testament to how long and hard they’d all been working.
“Jack,” Lydia said, genuinely pleased. “Good to have you back. How are you?”
Knowing he looked like twice-pummelled crap, but grateful for her concern, he said, “Better now I’m here. Pity I don’t come bearing good news. The police know Lewis and I were in Bangkok. They questioned me about it.”
Lewis’s eyes widened, and Lydia’s narrowed.
“Any idea how they discovered it?” she asked.
“They have pictures of us there. Someone got shots from the city CCTV feeds. McIntosh is already down at Ex Mon, snap-freezing Robson’s nuts off.”
Lewis cringed. “Poor bastard.”
“Don’t feel too sorry for him yet. Detective Connors recognised you from your ASIO days.”
“It was a possibility,” Lewis said, instantly serious. “Ted Connors. We looked into him at the start of the operation and knew he’d attended some of the antiterror exercises we did with the New South Wales police a while back. After the joint exercises, he kept applying to ASIO, and they kept finding one reason or another to knock him back. He’s an able investigator, but he takes it all personally. Swears undying vengeance at least twice a week.”
“You must have made an impression if he remembered you.”
Lewis snorted. “I doubt it. He’s the sort of person who ‘keeps tabs’ on those he finds ‘suspicious,’ and to him, anyone who’s smarter, better-looking, or richer than him is ‘suspicious.’ In this case, it’s my looks.”
“Of course,” Lydia murmured dryly.
“Well.” Jack stretched the word out suggestively. “I wouldn’t be too dismissive about it. I mean, in an effort to cover our presence in Bangkok, I had to tell him you’re gay now.”
While Lydia laughed, Lewis said darkly, “You didn’t.”
Jack patted his pockets. “I have his personal phone number for you.”
The closest assets snickered, and Lydia had to walk away to get herself under control.
Lewis glared at the assets, then at Lydia, then at Jack. “Absolutely last time I let you organise anything, Reardon.”
“Either way, we’re both on his radar now. If he decides to look into Bangkok, how much damage could he do?”
“He’d be well out of his jurisdiction, but that doesn’t mean he can’t pass whatever he finds on to someone in a position to chase it.”
Jack took a steadying breath. “Do we need to take him out of the game?”
The Messiah case was too sensitive to risk. If Connors went blundering in and actually found something, the potential disaster resulting from the exposure of the Messiah’s current whereabouts wouldn’t bear thinking about.
“We’d risk sending up flares that there’s something important to find.”
“Let’s feed him false information,” Lydia suggested. “Let him run, but we make the course for him to follow. Steer him away from the Messiah.”
Jack nodded. “It’s about our best option.”
“I’ll go talk to Wade,” Lydia said as she headed for the door. “He’s running the ETA team on Theta Subject now.”
Still glad they didn’t have to deal with the Messiah directly, Jack returned to their immediate concern. “We might have some help with the Judge, at least. McIntosh gave the go-ahead to call in Ethan Blade.”
Despite the general hum of people working industriously around the room, Jack’s quiet words were heard. Everything went silent, and a dozen pairs of eyes focused on Jack. Even people who hadn’t been there at the time of Ethan’s sojourn with the Office knew all about it. The next big drama for everyone to fixate on couldn’t come soon enough for Jack.
“Are things that bad?” Lewis’s expression was wary and a bit disappointed.
Jack could understand. Lewis was very good at his job, but hearing your bosses were thinking of bringing in your sworn enemy because you weren’t getting results fast enough was disheartening.
“Bad enough, and we’re coming late to this party,” Jack said grimly. Lewis would get over it. “Blade might be our best chance of catching this psycho before he kills again.”
After a long moment, Lewis nodded, then smirked. “Not to mention helping you with that nasty case of Garrote you picked up.”
And he was over the hurt.
He was also wrong. Even if Ethan didn’t hate Jack now, the fact he’d “retired” meant he could very well be out of the country and unwilling to return to help them with a problem he was partially to blame for.
The quiet words arrested Jack’s pointless search. Gaze snapping back to Ethan, he frowned. “You what?”
“I haven’t taken an official job in over eight months, Jack. There’s been no . . .” His lips twisted into a self-conscious grimace. “I haven’t needed to work since we started seeing each other. The—for want of a more accurate word—compulsion just hasn’t been there. You once asked me if I liked what I do. Did. The better question would have been, why I did it.”
Jack recognised the force behind the sudden rush of words. Ethan was nervous and uncertain, and for someone with a driving need to have things ordered and precise, such wild emotions were strange and overwhelming. Once, Ethan’s go-to response in similar circumstances was a deadly detachment, the same unfeeling, remote mindset he used in order to kill. Somehow, Jack had elicited a different reaction. There had been times when Jack’s unrelenting contrariness had pushed Ethan into his stone-cold killer persona, but at other times, he had been on the receiving end of this—a guileless word ramble that revealed far more than Ethan was probably comfortable with.
“I have certain things I have to do,” Ethan continued. “Things that have kept me alive all this time. Things that I trust. Like scrambling after a job. Getting away, getting secure works, so it’s what I always do. Then there are things I must do because without them, I would lose myself. For the longest time, Jack, I believed working, picking up tickets and hunting targets, was one of the latter things. I stopped once before. Years ago. It was when I decided I couldn’t work for anyone else. That I didn’t want to be run. I wanted to make my own choices. So I broke away and stopped doing what they wanted me to do. What they’d trained me to do.”
Jack knew Ethan had been in some sort of military organisation in the past. Had suspected they were the ones who’d taken an already troubled young man and turned him into a remorseless killer, but this was the closest Ethan had ever come to admitting it. Hearing it spoken aloud kicked Jack’s protective streak into high gear. If he ever found out who was responsible for doing this to Ethan—to Paul St. Clair—he wouldn’t stop hurting them until they were as damaged as Ethan. More so.
“But something in me wasn’t right. I couldn’t not do anything, Jack, and the only thing I knew how to do was stalk and kill. Only when I was on a job did I feel balanced. Like I was real. So I went back to it and two years ago, I found something else that made me feel balanced. Someone who made me feel real.”
Unable to hold it in anymore, Jack whispered, “Ethan.”
Ethan held up a hand. “Please, Jack. Let me finish. I’m self-aware enough to know swapping one crutch for another isn’t healthy, and it does scare me how much I want to be with you. But not enough to turn me away, clearly. Coming to accept that helped me realise that what propelled me to work wasn’t one of the things I have to do to stop myself from getting lost. It was simply something I’d done for so long, it was habit. Like scrambling after a job. So, I’ve stopped.”
Jack eyed him warily. “Just like that? You stopped?”
Lips twitching with a couple of false starts, Ethan settled on, “It’s been eight months in the doing, but yes, effectively. I just had to sever ties with my associates and ensure certain people wouldn’t take exception to my decision. But it’s done, Jack. I’m here and I don’t want to leave—oh!”
All pretence at restraint gone, Jack hurled himself onto the bed. After a mad struggle to untangle arms and legs, to align bodies, and then tangle arms and legs in a more pleasing configuration, Jack sighed and sank into Ethan’s body. Face buried in the warm, safe haven between his neck and shoulder, Jack reassured himself Ethan was really here, that it wasn’t just some wish-fulfilment dream.
Long, long minutes later, stroking Jack’s back, Ethan murmured, “Jack, are you all right?”
He lifted his head enough to move his lips. “You’re not going to leave after a week?”
“Not unless you kick me out.”
“Good.”
Jack turned the word into a kiss on his neck. Then another kiss and another. Ethan shivered, his strong fingers digging into Jack’s back. Jack worked his way up the firm line of his neck, to the corner of his jaw and his earlobe, nibbling and sucking until Ethan was breathless. Then he abandoned the ear for the soft, sensitive spot behind it. Jack ran his hand through Ethan’s hair, shifting his head for easier access as well as looking for, and getting, the man’s instinctual response to push into his hand and shudder.
“Jack” Ethan squirmed under him. “You need to get undressed. Now.”
It had to be the fastest horizontal strip in history. Definitely a personal best, especially considering that while at the foot of the bed, shoving his pants and underwear off, Jack also helped Ethan wiggle his way out of his briefs. All the records went flying out the window, however, because Jack stalled where he was, captivated by the vision stretched out on his bed, stunned by how much he wanted this man.
It wasn’t just the pale skin with its scars—each a tale of survival, a mosaic of his life—over sleek, lean muscles and not one iota of spare flesh. Or the dark hair flopped over his forehead and a faint touch of pink colouring his cheeks. Or the way long lashes swept down as he squirmed under Jack’s scrutiny, biting his lower, plump lip.
It was the way he trusted Jack, how he made himself vulnerable for him. How he would laugh when Jack teased him, or unleash his rare, wicked sense of humour. It all made him beautiful.
Christ. A burst of heat and light went off under Jack’s ribs. It had happened so many times in the past, he’d come to think of it as his personal grenade, exploding at times like this, or when Ethan was being particularly endearing or innocent, even sometimes when they argued. Fingertips against his neck, or a hand on his thigh, often pulled the pin, too. Or a laugh, or a smile. Or watching Ethan drool in his sleep.
Each time it exploded now, Jack knew what it meant, had accepted it, had meant to act on it, but then Canberra happened, followed by four agonising months alone, and when Ethan did appear it was to bare his soul, leaving them both too raw for anything other than what they knew worked. Namely, mind-blowing sex.
Starting at Ethan’s socked feet, Jack worked his way upwards with hands and lips. He kissed and stroked and licked and tickled until Ethan’s pale skin was blushing and Jack could all but hypnotise himself with the contrast of it against his brown fingers. He spread them out over the inner curve of Ethan’s thigh, feeling the muscle quiver at his touch. It fascinated him, this clear delineation between their bodies, so obvious right now, but later, when Jack was lost to the motions and sensations, it would all blur and mix until he didn’t know where he stopped and Ethan began.
Abandoning that pleasure before it could overwhelm him, Jack nuzzled into the crease between thigh and groin, drowning himself in that strong scent of blood-warmed skin, a hint of sweat, pure musk, and, as always with Ethan, just a touch of gun oil.
“God,” Jack moaned. “I’ve missed this.”
Ethan laughed, startled and a little ragged. “That doesn’t make the rest of me feel superfluous at all.”
Suppressing his own chuckle, Jack licked a long, curving route to Ethan’s belly button. “Don’t worry, there are other bits I missed as well.”
The body
under him tensed, and Ethan’s breathing shortened. His navel was highly sensitive, and he was always wary of Jack paying it too much attention. Jack teased the rim of it with his lips and tongue, loving the way Ethan squirmed and bit back groans. Strong fingers curled through Jack’s hair, just holding on for now. When Jack dipped his tongue in a little too deep, however, Ethan’s hand fisted and tugged Jack’s head up and away.
“No?” Jack asked to be sure.
“No.” Ethan gave a gentle pull, and Jack went with it, sliding up until they were face-to-face.
“Then what do you want?” Though he could guess, by the way Ethan’s legs lifted, knees clamped to Jack’s ribs, hips rising, rubbing their dicks together. Jack pushed back, a slow, meaningful glide. Yes, it said, we’ll get there, but first . . . “Anything you want and I’ll do it. Anything.”
Jack had offered this a couple of times in the past, hoping Ethan would take advantage of the open invitation. Maybe he’d want to top, or possibly try blowing Jack, to see if his dislike for sucking dick had changed at all. Or perhaps, he’d accept what Jack was really offering and ask for a kiss.
Kissing on the mouth was the line Jack had drawn. Fucking could be just physical, or it could be intimate, but for Jack, kissing was always intimate. The lips, the mouth, the tongue, these were the things that shaped a person, that most readily told you who they were. How they spoke, what they said, if they laughed or scorned. So much of who someone was came through the mouth that Jack sometimes wondered why everyone didn’t feel as he did. Sex was great. Sex with someone he really liked was even better. It was mind-blowing with someone he cared for deeply. But a kiss meant so much more.
Ethan had always respected Jack’s wish. Other men had teased and cajoled and outright tried to force it, but never Ethan. He’d simply accepted it and happily taken everything else Jack had willingly given. Just as Jack would never push Ethan about the blowjob thing. But his issue, the kiss thing, was starting to feel pointless and silly. Jack wanted it, wanted Ethan to want it, but it had been so long. Twelve years since Jack had last kissed someone like that. It had been Jack’s fault Hamish left him, clearly and unarguably, and that mistake had left a scar. Wounded Jack deep enough he’d believed he wouldn’t ever recover. Now, however, when he knew he wanted to kiss like that again, he couldn’t make himself cross the line. The memory of the pain, of the guilt for failing Hamish, was a razor-sharp barrier holding him back. He needed someone else to push the blade into him.
Why the Devil Stalks Death Page 7