Pros & Cons of Vengeance

by Wasp, A. E.

  “Then I am, too,” Steele agreed.

  “Sounds lovely,” Carson said.

  “Yep. Whatever.” Leo tipped back the rest of his beer. “No preference.”

  “But, Josie, I still don’t understand…” Ridge said, shaking his head.

  Josie clapped her hands again and smiled broadly. “Excellent! I love it when a decision is unanimous. Now, shake a leg, boys!” She darted back into the house but paused on the threshold and swiveled to face us. “I’m really proud of you, you know. All of you. And Charlie would be, too.” Then she turned back to the house and disappeared, with Greta following after her.

  “What the hell is going on?” Ridge demanded as we all slowly vacated our seats and moved toward the door.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Carson said slowly. “And my Slovenian’s a little rusty. But I’m pretty sure Greta just asked Josie where to put the rest of the fireworks.”

  17 Steele

  When Breck and I finally emerged from the house about eighteen hours after we’d arrived home, once I’d thoroughly examined every inch of his skin inside and out, we were greeted by applause, hoots, and hollers from the motley group of professional cons sprawled out on the Adirondack chairs around the fire pit.

  Orange flames cast flickering shadows across their faces and the aromatic smoke blended with the sea scent of the night.

  Breck bowed even as he blushed from the bruise marks on his neck to the ones on his ribs. (I’d done a lot of my examining with my mouth. A lot.)

  Leo tossed me a water bottle. “You’ve got to be dehydrated.”

  I would have said something cutting if I weren’t sucking down the blessedly cold liquid without stopping for air.

  Breck dropped himself onto Danny’s lap and motioned for Leo to toss him one, too. “The doc recommended bed rest,” he said, draping an arm around Danny’s neck. As usual, the kid was shirtless. I was beginning to wonder if he actually owned any shirts.

  “What doctor?” Wesley asked, flicking a beer bottle cap across the blazing fire at Breck.

  Danny knocked the cap out of the air with a wa-pow sound. “I got mad Ninja skills.”

  “I think Breck means Doctor Luuuurve,” Josie said with a wave of her giant wine glass.

  “Looking very old Hollywood, Miss Josie,” I told her. Her ivory satin nightgown and feather trimmed, high-heeled sandals looked like the kind of thing the women wore in the movies my mama liked to watch. I’d bet she and Josie would get along.

  Maybe one day I’d get up the nerve to visit her. Maybe.

  “Give me my boyfriend,” I said to Danny.

  “But he smells so nice.” Danny snuffled at Breck’s neck, making my boy laugh brightly. A weight had lifted off both of their shoulders, and it was really great to see them joking and laughing.

  I lifted Breck and carried him over to an empty chair next to one that, to my surprise, contained a very casually dressed Miranda Bosley. “Ms. Bosley. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “How could I miss the celebration of your first successful mission?” She twirled her champagne flute delicately between her fingers. “Are you going to sit down, or just stand there holding Mr. Pfeiffer all night?”

  The woman flustered me. Blushing, I set Breck down in the seat. I really hoped she hadn’t been around during our sex-athon. I’d been told I could be loud, and Breck wasn’t shy about telling me exactly what he wanted and how he wanted it.

  The sparkle in her eye told me she probably had been there.

  I needed a drink. “Give me a beer, Bond.”

  Wes shook his head. “It’s a whisky night, according to the bartender.” He lifted his heavy tumbler in Josie’s direction, and I saw her trusty bar-cart tucked next to one of the brick pillars holding up the deck.

  “Sit down,” Josie said. “I’ll get you one.”

  It was a gorgeous night, and the fire added a warmth that went beyond simple heat. There was something about sitting around a campfire with friends that satisfied the deep, caveman part of my brain. We weren’t quite friends, yet, but there was definitely respect and a level of trust being built up. Any of these guys would have my back against a saber-toothed tiger attack, though Josie and Miranda would probably be the ones to kill it. Without dropping their drinks.

  “So what did we miss today?” I took the seat on the other side of Breck, reaching blindly for his hand. His fingers intertwined with mine.

  “Well,” Wes said, crossing his legs. “Against my objections, we turned the senator’s treasure-trove of blackmail material over to the individuals affected by his illicit recording activities.”

  “Wasn’t that the plan?” Danny said.

  He really was an innocent underneath the thin veneer of street dirt that covered, but didn’t eliminate, his innate sweetness. The only way that kid was going back to the street was over my dead body.

  From the confused glares Wesley keep shooting at him, I thought I wouldn’t be alone in my objections.

  “Yeah, but people would have paid big bucks to get those tapes back,” Ridge said with a pat on the kid’s arm. “And we just handed them over with a smile.”

  “We’re good guys, now!” Wesley announced with a smile and a toast of his glass.

  “Pretty sure I always was,” Leo commented wryly.

  “Oh, me, too,” Wesley assured him.

  We sat without speaking, listening to the crackle of the fire, the susurrations of the waves rolling onto the beach, and the screeching of the cicadas. The smoky whisky went down smoothly, warming me from the inside. Between the multiple orgasms over the past day and the alcohol right now, I slipped into a light daze, letting the conversation roll over me. Memories of other fires, other nights, and other friends tickled the edges of my mind with a combination of happiness and sorrow.

  A soft touch to my arm pulled me back to the present.

  “Mr. Alvarez, come take a walk with me.” Miranda smiled and nodded toward the pool, and I stood up to follow. Miranda’s fingers trailed across Josie's shoulders as she walked by her chair.

  Breck watched us leave.

  Miranda was barefoot, and she took a step down into the hot tub that jutted out from the main pool. I watched the shadows of the ripples dance across the bottom of the tub.

  “What are you going to do now, Mr. Alvarez?” She sipped her champagne.

  I sat down next to her, sighing as the warm water enveloped my feet. “Please, call me Steele.”

  “Will you call me Miranda?”

  “Will I get the chance?”

  “That’s completely up to you.” She kicked her feet slowly and leaned back on her hand. “Charlie loved this hot tub,” she said with a small smile. “I always knew where to find him when I came by. Sometimes I still feel like he’s here with me. Seeing you guys take care of his jobs helps with that, so thanks.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “But my part in this is done?” I didn’t know what answer I wanted to hear.

  “You did what Charlie needed you to do. The reports you were worried about have been…taken care of. As far as the U.S. Army is concerned, the incident in Afghanistan never happened.”

  “I wish it never had,” I admitted.

  I’d expected to feel better at hearing this. All this time, I’d been waiting for the sword to fall, waiting to be called out or possibly being taken out like the loose end I was.

  Now, that was never going to happen.

  Miranda laid a comforting hand on my knee. “Charlie understood that better than you know.”

  She seemed ten years younger out here under the moon than she had the first time we’d met.

  “Is that why he set up all this…?” I waved a hand back to the crowd.

  She laughed and drained the last of her drink. “I don’t know why Charlie did anything he ever did. I don’t think even he knew what the hell he was doing half the time. But he liked you, you know.”

  “What?” A bat fluttered overhead, feasting on the bugs attracted by the pool
lights. “I barely spoke to him.”

  “The most important skill for a con man is being able to read people quickly and accurately. Charlie was the best I’d ever seen at reading people. Better than me.” She shook her head as if she had thought that was impossible. “He handpicked each of you because he saw something in you. A goodness.”

  I pondered that for a few minutes. “So, this is some kind of present from him?”

  She looked pointedly at the grand mansion behind us and the luxury at our feet. Josie’s laughter drifted towards us over the deeper rumble of men’s voices.

  “If I leave, do I get to keep the AmEx?” I asked with a grin.

  “Sadly, no. But if you do chose to leave, you will be more than adequately compensated for your time.” She stood up, shaking the water off her feet. “You’ll be compensated ‘up the wazoo,’ as Charlie’s will stipulates. I do hope you will consider staying, though. There is more work to do. And those men need you.”

  I looked up at her. “And it’s all going to be like this? Bringing down the bad guys by using other bad guys?”

  “I don’t know any more than you do. Remember, I’m just Charlie’s emissary here, making sure his instructions are carried out. But if I had to guess, I’d say it definitely involved bringing down bad guys…and maybe figuring out that none of you are bad guys.” She rested her hand on my shoulder and gave it a strong squeeze. “The offer to stay applies to Breck, too. I’m sure we can find plenty to keep him busy as well. Think about it and tell me in the morning.” She left wet footprints behind her as she walked away.

  I stared up at the moon as it played hide and seek with the thin cloud cover.

  I felt Breck come up behind me. He sat down, leaning against me, and I hugged him close.

  “Hey.” He turned his face up for a kiss, his lips still slightly swollen from all the previous kisses I’d given him.

  He tasted like whisky.

  “So, everything good?” He kicked his feet in the warm water the same way Miranda had.

  I nodded. “Yeah. Everything’s taken care of.”

  “How does that make you feel?”

  I looked up at the sky and thought about it. “I don’t really know.”

  “I get that, believe me. I really do.” He leaned against me. I wanted to stay in the moment forever and not have to face the hard decisions, danger, loss, and whatever other bullshit the future was going to throw at us. But time and tide waited for no man, and I could feel both slipping away from me.

  “What are you going to do now?” Breck asked quietly.

  “That’s what Miranda asked me, too.”

  “Hmm. And what did you tell her?”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, answering his question with my own and taking the coward’s way out.

  He pulled away just so he could give me an inscrutable look. “Well, that partially depends on you.”

  My heart skipped a beat. That was one of the most terrifying things I’d ever heard, and one of the best. “I want to stay with you.” Admitting that was the bravest thing I’ve ever done.

  His smile blinded me. “I want to stay with you, too. It’s not going to be easy, baby. I can be kind of a dick. Ridge and I have more in common than just incredibly good looks.”

  “Rumor has it, I can be pretty difficult to live with, too.” I pulled him against me, kissing him. I missed the taste of the whisky in his mouth, so I urged him to take another sip.

  “Are you trying to get me drunk and take advantage of me?”

  “Sweetcheeks, I couldn’t take advantage of you again tonight if you begged me.”

  His eyebrows rose, and with an evil grin he slid his hand up the leg of my shorts. “Really? Not even if I begged?” His fingers were cool on my skin as he tickled the hairs on my leg. “I thought you liked it when I begged.”

  I groaned. “You’re going to kill me.”

  “And you’re going to love it.”

  “Fuck yeah, I will,” I breathed.

  He pulled his hand out of my shorts and leaned his elbows on his knees. “But first, I want to apologize for fighting with you before the mission.”

  “It’s over and done,” I told him. “No use rehashing it. And you apologized already.”

  “Over the comms, when you were about to shoot me? Feels like a lame apology. And besides, I wasn’t really sorry then.”

  I snorted. “Oh yeah?”

  “I mean, I was sorry to be fighting with you. I hated having that hanging over us when we had a job to do, and I was sorry I got angry, but… I didn’t get it. Even then.”

  I frowned. “Explain.”

  “You said that you wanted to keep me safe. That was your priority. And I was trying to convince you that it was more important to take down Harlan and protect other people. I wasn’t really thinking about what you’d been through with Asadi, or what you’d go through again if something happened to me.” He took a deep breath, and his big blue eyes met mine in the moonlight. “I’m not saying that I would do anything different – I still wanted to be there, and despite everything, it felt so fucking good to look that bastard in the eye and tell him to fuck off – but I should have tried to understand your position, the way you tried to understand mine.”

  “Give and take,” I told him. “It’s not going to be easy, you and me.”

  “But it’s worth it. And now we’re free, both of us, to make a new start.”

  “That does sound nice. Does making a new start mean no more escorting for you?” I suppose I should have said I didn’t give a shit if he chose to keep doing it. Hell, I’d never been the jealous type in the past, and I knew the difference between what Breck and I had and meaningless sex.

  But surprise, surprise, I found I was the jealous type, so I wasn’t gonna say any of that.

  Breck sighed. “I can’t say I loved it, but it did make some really good money. I know you want me to quit.”

  “I want you to quit not because I judge any of it. It’s just too dangerous. Unless I’m in the room, I can’t really protect you. And even then, I can’t prevent it. I can only avenge you. I can only hurt the people who hurt you.”

  “Like Harlan.”

  “Like Harlan.”

  Breck sighed. “I don’t want to go back to college, and I want to stay with you. That’s what I know. But I’m never going to be your button-sewer, Steele. So what are my options here?”

  “Miranda said she wants you on the team, if you want.”

  His jaw dropped. “Really? She wants me to help? And we get to take down more assholes like Harlan?”

  I shrugged. “Who knows? She could ask us to do anything from picking up trash off the beach to taking down a small nation. But, yeah, she implied very heavily that there would be more taking down of the bad guys.”

  “Vengeance will be ours?” he said with a smile.

  I sighed heavily. “I guess.”

  “What’s so bad about getting a little vengeance? We stopped Harlan from hurting any more people. That’s a good thing.” He stood up, staring down at me with his hands on his hips. Even scowling at me, he was so beautiful, with his blond curls hanging down around his face and his strong, slender body. I reached for his hand. He took it suspiciously, but he let me pull him back down.

  “I’m thrilled we took him down. And I can’t deny it felt good. But vengeance.” I shook my head. “It’s never enough. It doesn’t undo the hurt, it can’t erase the memories. I’d rather try to keep you from getting hurt in the first place.”

  “I could die crossing the street.”

  Of course he was arguing with me. I had a feeling that was going to be a very common occurrence. “I know. But you do what you can to prevent it, right? You look both ways before you cross the street. You assess the traffic and make your decisions based on the most likely scenarios. You cross at the green, not in between.”

  Breck raised his eyebrows and smiled.

  I mock glowered at him. “You do cross at the green, right? No j
aywalking?”

  He crossed his heart with a finger. “From now on, I promise. No jaywalking.”

  I pulled him onto my lap, and he ended up straddling me, his arms over my shoulders. He leaned in and kissed me long and slow. My hands went to his hips, thumbs stroking the soft skin of his abdomen. Maybe I could take advantage of him one more time. If I ate something.

  He nipped at my lip and then pulled away. “You worry too much.”

  “No such thing,” I said. “Do you know how easy it is for someone to kill another person? If you don’t care about the consequences, you can walk up to pretty much anyone and shoot them. Stab them. You can shoot them from across the street if you’re good enough. If you pick someone at random, someone you have no connection to, there’s a good chance you could get away with it.”

  Breck pushed my hair back from my face, staring into my eyes. “But how do you watch out for that? You can’t go through life assuming everyone is going to kill you.”

  I slide my hand up the back of his shirt. It was going to be a long time before I stopped needing to touch him to make sure he was still there with me. “Sure you can. I can. I’m a paranoid bastard, and I have all the best training Uncle Sam could provide.”

  He grinned. “But it sounds like you’d have to be around me all the time.”

  “Probably, just to be sure. It’s safest.”

  “Well, I guess I can live with that. So we’re staying in Florida? Forced to live surrounded by all this luxury?” He bent down and trailed his fingers in the warm water, then flicked them at me.

  “Looks like,” I agreed. “For a little while anyway.”

  “Good. Besides, don’t you want to see if Wes and Danny end up fighting or fucking?”

  I laughed. “Nope. They’re going to do both eventually.”

  “Yeah, but which one first? My money’s on fighting, and the winner depends on how much of a shit Wes is beforehand.”

  “I’ll take that bet. They’re gonna fuck before they fight. Wes looks like he wants to throw the kid down on any flat or semi-flat surface and show him how well a gamer can handle his joystick.”

  Breck giggled.

  “Want me to open it up to the other guys?” I asked. After all, now that Breck and I were firmly together, we’d need something else for everyone to gossip over.