by Angel Payne
“You trust the polls?”
“Now who’s dodging the issues?”
“Fine. I don’t think you can address the issues until you deal with the attraction.”
A laugh barked out. He ignored the burn churning up his throat at the same time. “Deal with it, huh? Just like that?”
Zeke cast his gaze toward the ceiling. It was going to be a good look for his daddy-o arsenal. “I didn’t say you have to flog her and fuck her. Go meditate it off if you have to.”
“Meditate it off?”
“Or pray to the island gods. Or take a cold shower. Or cut your goddamn balls off.” He unfurled his arms and tossed up both hands. “I don’t care what you do, asshole; just get your shit together about whatever you’re feeling for the woman. Though for the record”—he wheeled around, grabbed his beer bottle, and knocked back the remaining gulp inside—“don’t blame you for the caveman urges. She’s a gorgeous woman, and you did just save her life.”
“And then there’s the polls…”
“And there’s you with the dog eating the homework again.”
For a long second, his fixed stare felt like the best choice of reaction. If he moved right now, he’d either hug or deck Zeke. Neither was acceptable; both were lame extremes; completely blamable on the relief of coming clean with at least one person about this crazy…
Thing.
Fuck.
Fine. He admitted it. Even knowing what kind of a damn dilemma came skipping along in the wake of doing so.
The conflict of knowing Z was right. About all of it.
He had to clean this shit up. His conflict was collecting on his cracked engine like used motor oil, meaning he risked making everybody else on the team crash and burn too. Not cool when there were lives at stake. Important ones.
In short, if he wanted to keep his big head on straight about protecting Tracy, he had to take care of the issues in his little head. Somehow, in some impossible way, he had to.
Damn it. You’re Special Forces, asswipe. Suck it up, buttercup, and make this mission happen.
His brain two-by-foured it into his senses.
But where the hell did the other voice come from, fronting its retort like an emotional I-beam?
Easier said than done, fucker. And my name isn’t “buttercup.”
Worst of all? The way Z’s gaze bounced with amusement—as if the jerk were actually listening to his internal dialogue and finding it as amusing as a Who’s On First reboot.
Franz narrowed his own glare. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
Z’s lips twitched. “Immensely.”
Deep breath. Another. They didn’t help much, except for fortifying his posture. Better than seething here like a stooped old man.
“Glad to know you’re entertained.”
“Immensely,” Z echoed.
“All right, then, smartass.” He jerked up his chin, an unwritten version of paying deference to the guy who’d once been hailed “The Dark Night of Seattle” because of his own damsel-rescuing exploits—most notably with the woman who now carried his child. “You’ve been in these moccasins a little before, yeah?”
Zeke’s expression sobered by a few degrees. “You could say that. A little.”
“So how the hell did you fight it?” Franz demanded. “You know what I’m talking about, so don’t pretend you don’t,” he pushed. “When wanting to protect the girl so badly, you fantasize about just tying her up yourself…” He stopped. Exhaled hard. “And then doing other things…”
“While she’s still tied up?”
“Fuck,” Franz grated. “Yeah.”
A look of commiseration fell over the guy’s face. After seeming to make an inner decision, Z wheeled back toward the kitchen. Grabbed a new beer from the fridge and popped the cap by leveraging the edge of the counter. Before lifting the thing for a swig, he shrugged and tapped the bottle’s neck in the air. “Word of advice? Don’t.”
“Tie her up?”
“Fight it,” he countered. “I’m serious, Franz. Just don’t fucking fight it.”
Franz growled softly. “I was afraid you’d say that.” I was hoping you’d say that. “You know what you’re advising me to do, right? And to whom?”
Z plunked down the beer. Spread both hands along the counter. “I only know that you asked me how I fought the craving to have my woman beneath me, as opposed to protecting her behind me. I’m assuming you’re talking about my Ray-bird and what I had to do when that asshole Mua came after her.” His head dropped for a second. Still shaking it slowly, he went on, “That was a crazy couple of weeks—that probably would’ve got a lot easier if I’d trusted my instinct about Rayna to begin with.” Strangely, a serene smile worked its way back onto his face. “And straight-up truth? You’re able to think much clearer about guarding them when you’re not preoccupied about getting inside them.”
John blew out a long breath. Scraped a hand over the top of his head. “Wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear, man.”
“But it’s what you asked for,” Z rebutted. “Same as what you’ve always asked me for, my friend.”
Franz slid his hand to the back of his neck. Murmured dismally, “The truth.”
Zeke shrugged. “Sometimes it really can set you free.”
“Not what I wanted to hear either, assface.”
His friend’s teeth were a brilliant crescent as Z burst into a hearty laugh. “I love you too, honey.”
Chapter Seven
“You are so dead.”
“Says you.”
“Peachy go…peachy go…yessss.”
“Whaaaa?”
“Score! Princess power!”
“That was intense.”
“Darn right. And the girl owns your guts—again.”
Tracy closed the book she’d been attempting to read as a distraction after six hours of cable news binging. With Ronnie and Gem handling all the latest from the internet feeds, she’d been left to listening for carefully couched clues in the broadcasts about the investigation’s progress. After one hour, the duty could be qualified as tedious. After two, as enjoyable as babysitting snails. After six, the existence of usable gray matter was dubious—evidenced by the fact that Mario and Princess Peach were suddenly more interesting than getting lost in a moonlit French garden with a French princess and the Versailles viscount assigned to protect her.
Mia started a new game, including Ethan on the challenge this time. He picked Donkey Kong as his avatar, launching the teens into a meme quote war—and blasting Tracy a cue to dive back into the book.
The viscount and his lady were the last of her options, perhaps her sanity. No way could she sit in Zeke’s office and watch another second of talking heads, but Gem and Ronnie were also on break, so entertainment options were limited at the moment. Franzen tossed her phone before they left Vegas, adding to the ruse that she’d died there—and to be honest, she hardly missed the thing. A break from being tethered to the device had been heaven, though she couldn’t claim the same for all the other restrictions the dragon put into place. No eating too many Nutter Butters, her go-to comfort food, because somebody might notice the boxes in the trash. No doing her daily round of jumping jacks, burpees, and high-knee jogs, because Rayna and Zeke had confirmed they were gym rats when Z was stateside, and the neighbors would get curious about their “odd behavior.”
None of it made her as crazy as the windows.
No peeking from one, let alone opening one. No sky. No clouds. No treetops. Not even any panoramic city views, which she’d only guessed at by the distant traffic sounds she could pick up—through the closed condo windows.
She hadn’t even been dead a day, and she really missed windows.
“La la la la…smash!”
“Seriously?”
“Luke. Dude. You keep leading with the same move.”
“Because it’s a good move, Ethan!”
“The definition of insanity is trying the same thing and expecting
different results.”
“More Franzen wisdom?”
“Errrm…that’s Albert Einstein, kid.”
“Huh. Just sounded a lot like Franzen.”
And there it was.
Again.
Franzen.
The subject making her more restless than the window ban. The man who wouldn’t leave her memories—and her imagination—alone. Not since he’d stepped through those midnight shadows, shattering the lustful tension between them. Fitted his huge cock to her thrumming cleft. Filled her senses with his exotic scent. Drenched her every breath with hot, illicit craving for him…
Restless?
No.
This wasn’t “restless.”
This was a fever she couldn’t bring down. Fire, licking at her skin, she couldn’t douse.
Desire she just couldn’t write off.
She gulped down a breath. Slid her eyes shut. Prayed the black curtain over her vision would conquer the flashbacks as easily as Mia kept pounding Luke in their game.
Fail.
The darkness simply allowed the man better access to her mind. Let him invade her mind’s eye like he’d annihilated her personal space in the bedroom. Silently. Dangerously.
A torment she could no longer ignore.
“I need to grab a shower.”
Gem cracked a sleepy eye open from her end of the overstuffed couch. To her left, Ronnie was curled so deeply under a blanket in the recliner, only a poof of her strawberry strands showed. She didn’t move a muscle as Gem mumbled, “Didn’t you already do that today?”
Leave it to Gemini Fiona Vann to remember something like that, even half-comatose. Plus side? Her best friend really was half-comatose.
“I’m jittery.” Not a lie. Not one damn bit. “I’m hoping it’ll help take the edge off.”
Also not a lie—just probably not in the way Gem assumed. And that was fine. If either of her friends knew how Franzen had gotten under her skin like a million fire ants, they’d corn-feed the critters until they were the size of centipedes and then try to convert Franzen into a centipede enthusiast.
Wasn’t going to happen. The man was already clear about how much “enthusiasm” he was willing to commit to their attraction. To her at all. His flesh was willing but his stubborn, baggage-bearing mind was certainly not weak. She’d seen the weight of that baggage in his gaze—along with the obvious conclusion to that. A “casual” roll in the hay with her would drag all that bullshit out of his psyche again. He’d have to look at it all again…
She understood that. In a normal world, could even be okay with it—because in a normal world, they’d have time to develop a normal relationship…
But this wasn’t a normal world.
She was like Mia’s peach princess. Running into an impassable wall. Knowing there was treasure on the other side but trapped, unable to get to it.
Trapped…
Sometimes, the princess had to opt for a cold shower instead of the treasure.
“Hummm.” Gem’s sleepy moan brought her sights back down. Her friend squeezed Tracy’s fingertips and then used her free hand to muffle a yawn. “Okay, honey. Have fun.”
With a smile, Tracy tucked Gem’s hand back under her lap blanket. Sweet, exhausted woman. There was a damn good chance she and Ronnie had slept as little as Franzen last night. The evidence of their nocturnal activity was still strewn all over the dining room table. Armed with only a bunch of legal pads and short spurts on the deep web, they’d managed to learn little beyond the information already carried via the TV networks. The hits on seven different world leaders, across just as many cities, were as horridly unexpected as they were meticulously planned—by a web of operatives deeply embedded in each country’s government. The individuals who’d turned traitor on their lands were in tight connection with each other and had been for a very long time.
Encouraging each other…as they watched every move their targets made…
For how long?
The question was a specter in her mind, haunting every step she took down the hall toward the master bedroom.
In how many ways?
Did they know that Craig took ten minutes out of every morning to keep up a handwritten journal? Did they know he tried to keep Wednesday nights free so he and Norene could maintain their pizza night tradition from college? Did they know that every day when he called or came by Tracy’s office, he brought a new Broadway trivia question to try to stump her?
What if they knew all of that?
What if they knew even more?
By the time she entered the master bathroom, a shiver defined her steps. Thankfully, there was a switch for a wall heater. She pushed it on before even activating the lights. As soon as all those were on—the set over the shower stall, as well as the main overheads and the vanity illumination—she finally turned and shut the door.
Staring, for a very long time, at her trembling hand against the knob.
Ordering herself to let it go.
Wondering why the hell she’d even come in here.
Franzen.
Yes.
That was it.
What he’d done to her. What he hadn’t done to her. The needy, hot mess her mind and body had become because of obsessing over it, to the point she was nearly crawling out of her own skin…
To the point she’d fallen prey to fear like this.
Let those bastards, whoever the hell they were, take her into this hell again. A trembling, terrified zombie, trapped in a torment she swore she’d never enter again. She’d served her penance here already—starting on the day she’d had to tell her son his father was never coming home again.
Fate had noted her vow. And honored it.
Until yesterday afternoon, when the bastard screwed the entire planet at once—a catastrophe she’d accepted with surreal serenity, even to her own mind, until just now, when looking at Ronnie’s frantic notes, and recognizing the delayed reaction shock had kept from her.
Not anymore.
It was all sinking in.
Completely.
Ruthlessly.
Shooting down the vortex of her exhausted mind, directly into the core of her consciousness. Reminding her, inside one freezing minute, that hell wasn’t brimstone and flames. It was ice—and fear.
And solitude.
Isolation that claimed even more of her in its frosty fist. Choked the air from her throat. Yanked her down, sliding against the wall, until she curled to the floor in a ball of shivering aloneness.
No.
No.
She couldn’t do this.
She had to get through this.
Had to fight her way back…
To what?
To what?
She crawled across the floor, dragging herself to the shower and popping the stall door back. A weak laugh broke through—that was a good sign, right?—when she saw the embossed letters for the temperature controls. This had all started with her actually thinking she needed a cold shower. Her only obsession now was cranking this shit as hot as it would let her.
She had to get through this.
She was stronger than this.
But even as the spray hit her, warming every second, her legs didn’t reinvigorate to stand. Her body wouldn’t cooperate with her will. The heat just seemed to open more vortices now, into which her heart melted…and her grief poured.
Beneath the pelting heat, she curled into a new ball. As the water soaked her clothes and then her body, she let the pain drench her defenses…
And topple them.
Chapter Eight
Still frothing with irritation at Z, Franzen kicked off his flip-flops—Zeke’s flip-flops—and then barreled across the master bedroom in full target lock mode.
Cold water. His body. Right now.
It’d be a shitty excuse for how he normally handled stress—in Special Forces leadership, the skill was as essential as reading a mission or stomaching ration packs—but right now, there wasn’t an ocean
to swim in, a gym to pump in, or a dungeon full of subbies ready to give him an hour or two of Dominant escape. There was only the shower and the restart of sanity it would give in the form of ten freezing minutes.
He hoped.
If not, this day was going to get a hell of a lot longer. And more painful.
As if he needed a reminder of exactly that, he took a recharging breath and instead got a lungful of one distinct scent. Tracy. The woman with the sassy, sexy name and the huge kitten eyes smelled like ginger and jasmine and vanilla, filling his senses with a spring he wanted less than the sunshine—but couldn’t desire more.
So the spring turned into summer. Suffusing him. Centering, as always, on the part of him craving her the most.
“Fuck.” He gritted it as his dick punched his sweats. Again. He needed that cold shower five minutes ago.
The purpose drove him across the last few feet of the bedroom, throttling him through the bathroom door…
Where he entered a bank of solid steam.
“What the—”
He pieced his mind together long enough for two possible conclusions. One, he’d somehow fallen asleep and now dreamed of some jungle-based mission. Two, Z and Rayna had installed a bathroom sauna and it had somehow been turned on. Admittedly, he’d started leaning more toward option two…
When the reality of option three set in.
The shower was on. And there was someone inside it.
But why was the door open?
More importantly—why was that person sobbing?
More urgent than that—where was she? And was it a she?
The answer to the last was as certain to him as his own heartbeat. Yes. It was a woman. More definitely, even without having a visual on her, he knew exactly which woman. As soon as the shock of the steam wall wore off, he’d known. Had felt her down to the marrow of his bones, an awareness begun in the sizzle of his blood, the burst of his senses…the fullness of his cock. It was the same jolt she’d given him yesterday, before they’d even met. Then again after the sound check, when they’d been briefly separated so he could discuss the driving route changes back to the Bellagio with Sol. And now—God, especially now. The air was different with her in it. His entire body was different.
