Several boxes filled with pizza sat unopened on the low table in front of one of the couches.
“Oh, thank god.” Oliver jumped up when he stopped in the doorway. “I’m starving.” The man opened the nearest pizza box and filled a paper plate with several slices. Pia did the same and then resumed her seat next to Oliver.
“Where’s Holden?” He glanced around.
“He said he ate earlier,” Oliver piped up.
“I got every kind,” Luke said to him. “Help yourself.” The general served himself some pizza and then sat on the vacant couch and hit the play button.
The movie, John Wick, started and he knew it was the first five minutes because he owned it. He couldn’t count the times he’d watched it. Usually, he’d watch all three in a marathon with Oliver.
Dillon hurried over and snagged up some pizza onto a plate. He dropped down onto the cushion next to Luke as the opening scene started.
“Love this movie,” he murmured around a bite of pizza.
“Me too,” Luke said.
He never in a million years would have thought that he and Luke shared the same tastes in movies and it suddenly made him think of what else they might have in common.
Not that it mattered.
He was leaving.
Luke
He thought he’d bust a nut when Dillon had checked him out in the hallway.
It took all of his self-control to turn away from the desire in Dillon’s eyes and walk into the den. He’d felt those intense eyes following him, glued to his ass.
Right at that moment, his thigh was inches from Dillon’s leg. It would only take a shifting on the couch to touch.
Just as the ending credits for the movie rolled, his head of security stopped in the doorway.
“I’m heading out for the night, Mr. Rhine.”
“Thanks, Scott,” Luke said, rising from his spot on the couch.
“See you tomorrow.” The man smiled and waved.
“Well,” Pia slapped Oliver on the arm, “that’s our cue.”
“You two going to be okay not sleeping?”
“Yeah,” Oliver told him with a grin. “We got your back and with Dillon in the house, there’s nobody getting in here.”
“Thank you,” he told the pair and they left.
The silence in the room felt heavy and he turned to Dillon. The man hadn’t moved from his sprawl on the couch. Legs splayed, with one arm on the couch arm and one stretched across the back of the sofa. He realized that Dillon had his arm back there while they had been watching the movie.
“John Wick Two?” He quirked one eyebrow.
A muscle ticked in Dillon’s jaw.
Luke rubbed his hands down the front of his shirt and Dillon’s eyes followed the move. “I have others.”
Dillon stood fast, catching him by surprise. He stood his ground, curious as to what the soldier’s next move might be. He wasn’t crazy.
When the soldier’s big body drew near, Luke had to slightly tip his head back. Dillon studied him with those glittering eyes and Luke felt the air around them crackle. He held his breath and parted his lips, imagining how Dillon’s mouth would feel on his. Anticipation tightened his gut and his hands balled into fists.
The attraction between them was a very real thing. He knew it, but Dillon didn’t want or wasn’t ready to cross that line. Perhaps, he should be the one to do it?
He stepped closer to Dillon, but the man stepped around him abruptly, as if the invisible thread hadn’t been connecting them.
“I’m making my rounds. You should get some sleep,” Dillon rumbled, pausing in the doorway.
Luke clenched his teeth and snatched up the remote. Heat filled his face, and it was with more than embarrassment. He had to get out of this room before he humiliated himself further, damn it.
He was almost tempted to watch the second one anyway, but in truth, no matter how crazed Dillon made him, Luke wanted Dillon to watch it with him.
“Tomorrow night then.” He snapped off the television and stalked toward Dillon.
He felt the quick inhalation when he brushed past the soldier, but he didn’t stop. Instead, he glanced back rather dismissively. “If you’re not on outside duty.”
That caught Dillon by surprise and he knew it by the way the man’s mouth suddenly dropped open, but Luke kept going. He headed up the stairs, hiding his satisfied smile. Dillon had never been on outside guard duty since his arrival at the estate or at the ranch for that matter. But maybe he should be, a little voice niggled at him. Perhaps distance was what he needed. After all, if Dillon wasn’t going to act on their attraction, then what was the point of pursuing him any longer?
He snapped the door to his room closed and headed to the shower. Damn, but he wanted Dillon and no other man would do. He lingered beneath the warm water, rubbing the soap over his body, picturing Dillon’s strong hands instead of his own closing around his throbbing cock.
He squeezed at the head and soaped up his balls. Swirling his fingers around his sack, he spread his legs and leaned against the cool tile.
The warm water sprayed down over his stomach and cock and he increased his stroking. Lifting his free arm, he placed it against his mouth as he fucked his hand. All it took was closing his eyes and Dillon appeared as if there with him. He muffled his shout as he spurted over his hand and onto the shower floor, grunting several times until he grew still. Lowering his arm, he blinked his eyes open to the empty shower.
In another few minutes, he was clean and stepping out of the shower to towel off before pulling on sleep pants and climbing into his wide, empty bed.
“Sir?”
He froze, and then sat up when Dillon rapped on the door.
“Yes?”
There was a moment of silence.
“Just making sure you’re all right. You didn’t answer my earlier knock,” came the muffled reply.
“I’m fine.” He must have missed Dillon’s first check. “I was taking a shower,” he said for good measure.
There was a long silence and he thought that Dillon had left, but then came a soft, “Good night, sir.”
“Night.”
He waited, not sure for what. Was Dillon still standing there? After several more minutes, he was almost tempted to creep to the door and check, but instead, he plopped back onto the bed with a sigh and pulled up the blankets.
Yeah, this wasn’t going to work. He rolled onto his side. Dillon wanted out of going on his next trip, so he made a mental note to contact Liam in the morning.
Perhaps a break apart would do them good.
His phone lit up with a text and he grabbed it. For some silly reason, he thought it might be Dillon.
It was his stepson.
Eric: I need an answer.
Luke: I told you we’d talk back at the ranch.
Eric: Come on! It’s not like you can’t afford it.
Luke: What do you need fifty thousand dollars for?
Eric: I told you, I’m going to get away and relax.
Try pulling another one, he thought. His stepson wasn’t the adventurous type.
Luke fired back: If you’re so hell bent on getting away and relaxing, why didn’t you go golfing with me at Dave’s?
His stepson avoided him like the plague whenever he invited him anywhere. The cursor on the screen blinked for several minutes.
Eric: You know what? Screw you! Give me the money!
Luke: No, I’m not going to give you the money.
The texting stopped and the next moment, his phone buzzed with an incoming call from his son. In no mood to listen to Eric, he let it go to voicemail. The young man was prone to fits of rage since his mother’s death.
He sighed thinking of Vanessa. Their marriage had been a cover. She’d needed him and he’d thought he needed a beard.
She’d been the wife of his best friend growing up. When Edward had died of cancer, Luke had helped Vanessa handle everything. They’d remained friends, and for the next few ye
ars, he had been there when Eric got into trouble at school, when the boy started using drugs, and when he got thrown in jail for stealing. He’d used his pull to keep Eric home and not serving time.
Luke had had his own shit to deal with. He’d been moving up in rank, but rumors started surfacing about him being gay. He’d taken the easy way and suggested to Vanessa—who knew he was gay—that they get married. He would financially support her and sixteen-year-old Eric at the time, and she would be his beard. It had worked for five years and then suddenly, it hadn’t.
It had been about that time when Vanessa had become unhappy.
“I feel trapped,” she’d complained.
“I’m sorry.” He hadn’t known what else he could say.
“Me too. I think we need to separate,” she whispered. She’d moved from the ranch into the estate a few days later. He didn’t blame her. He’d seen the desire in her eyes and had felt guilty as sin that he couldn’t return it.
A few weeks later, he’d flown into the city. They’d been having tea at breakfast and discussing the divorce papers when she’d complained of a headache and then collapsed. She never regained consciousness. The doctors said it had been a brain aneurism.
Eric, twenty-one and refusing to go to college, had arrived at the estate raging that Luke was responsible for his mother’s death. The doctors had explained what happened, but the boy remained resentful.
It hadn’t been his finest moment, but he’d given Eric money, thinking that would make him happy. It did for a while, but then Eric came back for more and more until Luke started to suspect that the young man had a drug problem again. He’d hired an investigator, who had found that while it hadn’t been drugs, Eric did have a problem with gambling. That had been three years ago. The war over money wasn’t a new thing between him and his stepson.
His phone lit up in the dark room and he touched the screen.
Eric: You owe me!
“Fuck,” he muttered, letting out a long slow breath before he shut off his phone.
Rolling, he faced the wall that separated him from Dillon’s room.
Feeling more alone than he’d ever felt, he closed his burning eyes.
Dillon
Stalking through the house, he mentally kicked himself in the ass. One, for staying to watch that movie and the other for freaking out when Luke hadn’t answered his door.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
No, he had to open the door and call Luke’s name only to find him standing naked in the shower.
Jesus Christ, Luke was exquisite. His body, even in his late forties, was rock solid. Dillon couldn’t tell through the fog of the glass what color the hair on his chest was, but he made out the length and width of the man’s cock and the hand Luke had wrapped around it.
Dillon had stumbled from the room and gently closed the door. Leaning against the wood, he’d closed his eyes.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there when Oliver came around the corner.
“What’s up?”
“Just checking on the general.”
“You go in?”
“Of course not!”
Oliver continued along the hallway before he turned around. “You going to knock or what?”
Snapping his teeth together, he lifted his hand and knocked on the door.
Oliver’s laughter floated down the hallway. One day, he was going to strangle his best friend.
Dillon heard the surprise in Luke’s voice, but he also heard the sleepy satisfaction from having rubbed one out, and fuck if his cock didn’t respond. Christ, Dillon envied the man’s hand.
He made his way down the back stairs and double checked the lock and security camera. While Luke slept, he would keep watch. When Luke’s head of security arrived back in the morning, Dillon and his team would sleep for at least six hours. That was all the sleep he needed when he was on a job. Sometimes, on a mission, he didn’t sleep for days.
His phone vibrated with an unknown number and in his gut, he knew it was from a burner phone. With his heart in his throat, he punched the answer button.
“Isaac?”
“Yeah, bro, it’s me.”
“Fuck.” He sank against the wall in the dark hallway and squeezed his cell phone. His relief was so overwhelming that he couldn’t get words out.
“I know,” Isaac said, because he got it. If anybody in the whole world knew him, it was his younger brother. A brother he’d protected when they were little because that was what big brothers did.
They were as different as night and day. Isaac made friends quickly, while Dillon had been aggressive, hot tempered, and volatile.
His lively brother took after their lovely blonde-haired, blue eyed mother. Dillon didn’t make friends very fast, and he’d gotten the short end of the stick by taking after their ugly as fuck sperm donor.
“How are you?”
“How you holding up?”
He laughed, or he thought he did, but it came out as a strangled sound. They frequently said the same things almost simultaneously. Isaac laughed as well, with a hitch in his throat.
“You first,” Dillon rasped.
“I’m good. Still tender, but the doc said I’d make a full recovery and he was right.”
“Thank fuck.” He let out a deep breath. If Zane, one of Infinity’s soldiers, hadn’t killed the guy who had stabbed Isaac, Dillon would have tracked the fucker down.
“What about you?” Isaac murmured quietly.
“I finally put up my speed bag,” he admitted.
“Yeah?”
He grinned at the smile he heard in his brother’s voice. “Yeah. It’s the best present you ever bought me.”
“I hope it keeps you from pounding in heads.”
He went quiet.
“Dillon,” Isaac groaned.
“What? I’m flawed.” He sent frustrated fingers through his hair.
“What happened?”
He told his brother briefly of the asshole wife abuser he’d decked in the small bar not far from the ranch. “It’s not my fault,” he growled, touching the puckered scar. “The fucker reminded me of him.”
“Dillon, you’re not flawed. I honestly can’t fault you for hitting the guy. I would have done the same thing.”
Isaac may have been slimmer and not one to fight when they were younger, but his brother had made up for lost time. Isaac was buff now and one of the most badass soldiers he knew. His brother was a force to be reckoned with. And force or not, Isaac wouldn’t change his mind about being flawed. He knew he was. Isaac knew it. Hell, even Liam knew it. Too bad Luke hadn’t caught on yet. It was only a matter of time, though. Sooner or later, Luke would see his temper and that would be it. Luke might think he wanted to start something with him—yeah, he’d felt it—but the reality of the way he was would soon send Luke running for the hills.
“Why you calling from a burner phone?”
“I had to ditch mine.”
“What’s going on?”
“As soon as I can, I’ll tell you. I promise,” Isaac responded.
They talked for several more minutes before Isaac ended the call. He knew Isaac would dispose of the burner phone, and even though he didn’t have the facts, Dillon deleted the call history on his own phone to be on the safe side.
He pulled his weapon and checked the clip before tucking it back away. Taking the stairs upward, he reached Luke’s door and eased it open. He spotted Luke asleep in bed and smirked, closing the door. Luke slept tucked beneath the covers with only the top of his head showing.
Making his rounds took him down the front stairs, across the lower level, and around the inside perimeter. He stopped beneath the wide patio doors on the first floor. Above him were both his and Luke’s bedroom balconies. They could easily be scaled if a person had the right equipment. The challenge would be getting on the estate. Nothing stirred outside.
The place was protected like a fortress and made his job so much easier. Now, if only the
man inside was that easy to handle.
His phone buzzed and he grinned at the text from his childhood friend.
Beckett: You still coming to visit over the weekend?
Was he? He’d contacted Beckett when he made the decision to not go with Luke on this next trip.
Dillon: Thinking about it, but it may not be doable.
Beckett: Ah, okay, but we’re still on for the summer, right?
Dillon: I wouldn’t miss it.
Beckett: How’s the pooch?
Dillon: Probably missing me. I didn’t bring him on this assignment.
Beckett: Can you?
Dillon: Yeah.
He walked through the kitchen and into the dining room waiting for his friend’s response.
Beckett: Go by your place and grab Cricket, you’ll be glad you did.
Dillon huffed out a small snort and responded.
I’ll think about it. I’ll let you know if I decide to come that weekend. It might be last minute.
Beckett: It doesn’t matter, I’m here.
Dillon: Thanks, man.
Beckett: Anytime.
He tucked his phone away and walked through the remaining rooms before heading back upstairs.
A chair sat in the hallway against the wall that separated his room from Luke’s, and he sat down to stretch out his legs.
The more he thought about his shaggy, mixed, eleven-month-old pup, the more he decided they were stopping by his apartment and picking him up.
Cricket would love the ranch and the ranch dogs.
Luke
“Just look at it this way. It’ll give you a break from me. Maybe by the time I get back, you’ll want to stay.” He gave Dillon a teasing smile. One that wasn’t returned. If anything, the man’s face turned to stone.
“Wrong.”
“Wrong?” He frowned.
“I’m not staying behind.”
“You’re not?” Okay, that surprised the hell out of him. Last he’d heard from Liam was that Dillon was complaining about going with him to the charity benefit in New Orleans. He’d told Liam to let Dillon off the hook. Liam had agreed.
Whatever It Takes (Code Of Honor Book 5) Page 6