by Angel Payne
Gashes from an attack he’d even known to prepare for. A plan he’d prayed they’d never have to use.
Because the assets had never been more invaluable.
And who the fuck was he kidding with that platitude? Assets? Invaluable? If they genked this up, there wasn’t any “sweating it off” with hours in the gym or “drinking it off” with hours in the bar. There’d be no erasing it, period. This time, the assets were the woman who’d given him back his spirit and the boy who’d given him back his smile.
But they were prepared. And preparedness was half the battle, yeah?
What the fuck moron had said that?
Because he sure as hell wasn’t prepared for this. Yeah, the logistics were clicking. Yeah, the details were being handled—technically. But none of it eased the mounting dread in his gut, the relentless pressure on his chest. On his heart.
Yeah. There it was again. And right now, he didn’t even try to deny it. He didn’t even want to.
He pulled in a long breath. Several more. He could do this. He’d been under worse stress before and kept his shit together. Okay, maybe not—but maybe that all figured into the preparedness thing too. That was the shit the woman in the bathroom needed to hear, especially now. Tracy’s anxiety was palpable, even through the closed door. The little huffs she made, hurrying to get back into the black dress along with the legging things Rayna sent along with Hawk, dug fresh gashes into his own composure—reminders of how high the stakes really were. The instant replay of Garrett’s words, bringing fresh bile along with his recall, were another “convenient” cue.
Of course we’re sure. You think Z would’ve called and told me to get my ass over here if we weren’t? Ethan’s been listening for an hour now. It’s definite chatter, and it’s absolutely not ours. They’re referring to something called “Tigress’s cave” and urging someone to “get the cub first.”
That was all Tracy had needed to hear.
It was all he’d been able to do, forcing her to calm down, get dressed, and trust Zeke and Max were completely handling things upstairs.
Yeah. As in getting those two teenagers and her two best friends out of that condo as fast as they possibly could.
Because if something happened to Luke Rhodes, the country could go ahead and get used to Blake LeGrange in the Oval Office. There’d be nothing left of Tracy Rhodes to fly back to DC.
And if there was nothing left of Tracy Rhodes, there was nothing left of him.
Damn it.
It was the most dangerous mindset for approaching a mission. The hugest liability a soldier could strap to his psyche. Effective warriors cared about the objective but not about the asset. In the name of protecting humanity, they disavowed their own. When their focus strayed from the bigger picture of the horizon, they tripped over their own two feet. Began making decisions from places other than where it mattered the most. The cold, incisive surety of their mind.
Franzen was certain he wouldn’t recognize his mind if it bit him in the ass right now.
A situation not helped by the rising panic of the woman behind the bathroom door.
“Shit!” Tracy bit it out seconds before a thwump rattled the door, followed by the sound of towels whizzing off the rack.
“Ma’am?” Hawkins yelled it, rushing to the door. “Are you all—”
“She’s fine.” Franz shouldered him aside, acknowledging and owning the overprotective ass factor of the move. “And don’t call her ma’am.”
He left Hawk behind, still smirking at him like a pretty boy wise-ass, as he rushed into the other room without knocking…
Nearly causing a second crash when he tripped over Tracy’s prone form.
“Shit. Kitten.”
“I’m all right.” But her voice faltered like the tufts of towel lint on the air. “I—I just can’t think. I can’t even put these damn tights on. I can’t think!”
Her desperate rasp brought him to his knees. “Ssshhh.” He scooped her close, pulling her hair free of its pins and bands, letting the strands fall loose around his massaging fingers. “Ssshhh now. You need to breathe for me.”
“Trying.” She gripped his forearms, pulling at the hairs in her desperation. “Damn it, I’m trying.”
“I know.” He meant it. He felt how she quaked, wanting to lose her shit a lot worse than this, but if this was going down—if the chatter Archer picked up was real—he needed her buy-in on trusting him now more than ever. Yeah, even more than the moment he’d tugged her to the middle of a kink club stage dressed in nothing but a latex kitty hood and electrical tape.
“Luke—”
“Is going to be safe.” He gave it as an order. No way would he let her think otherwise. “You want to know why? Zeke Hayes himself is upstairs, personally making himself the kid’s body armor if it comes to that. He’ll do the same for Mia, Gem, and Ronnie too. He isn’t playing games with this shit, kitten. He even called in Hawkins to help—and that big ape doesn’t ask for help easily.”
As her body settled into longer intakes and exhalations, he tucked her even closer. “This is all probably nothing but a giant coincidence,” he asserted. “But if it isn’t, we’ll handle it. Somehow, we will. We’ll take care of Luke—and you.”
He let his eyes close for just a moment—telling himself to savor this. Exactly this. The perfect weight of her in his lap. The exultation of her total trust, her full belief. Completion. Connection.
The perfect space.
The room he’d been looking for since walking into the kink mansion, all those years ago—though only now arriving at the atrium of epiphany in that place.
BDSM wasn’t the key to his perfect room.
It had only been the door.
But he’d kept pounding on that door, for a dozen damn years…expecting it to magically open…
When he never had the key.
As if the universe really needed to pound that one into his gray matter, Tracy’s soft chime of a laugh echoed through his whole body. Before he even asked, she explained, “You know, if word gets out that the bad-ass dragon was found cuddling on the bathroom floor with his mission target…”
A wry snort escaped. “Dragon’s cover was blown long before we met, woman.”
Weirdly, she reacted to that by pulling back by a few inches—and surprising him even more with her newly insightful gaze. “Because of the op you led in Kaesong?”
Okay, ditch surprised. Astonishment took over, hiking both his brows. “Whoa. That sit-rep made it all the way up the Hill, eh?” Just as swiftly, he let his expression tighten. “That’s comforting, in a jacked-up way. Guess I went out a notorious man.”
“Well, we weren’t passing it around like the newest memes of the day,” she countered. “And when I first heard you mention it, I wasn’t sure you were that guy, from that mission—”
“But now you are.”
Her lips hitched into one of her mysterious smiles. “Yeah.” Her hand, pressed to the side of his neck, squeezed in. “I am.”
Nothing about that smile, or the energy accompanying it, should have had his gut cranking out new acid. Nevertheless, the bite of it had him shifting on his haunches. “And now debating the best way to gracefully exit?”
He meant more than just the bathroom, and she sure as hell knew it. He’d seen a lot of rapid changes to her face over the last week, but nothing like the shadows falling over it now. “The hell?” she spat back.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t hear the juiciest parts,” he countered. “I openly defied CentComm orders, Tracy.”
“Yeah. To let three scientists defect, rather than return to a country who’d use their hard work for destruction and subjugation.”
“And almost started a war.”
“Against a disgusting dictatorship? Like CentComm shouldn’t be behind that.”
One patience-gathering breath. Another. “Some things aren’t that black and white.”
She snorted. “And some things are.”
�
�Your friend Craig probably wouldn’t have agreed with that.” The sheepish aversion of her gaze confirmed that truth. “I’m wondering, if once you’re filling his shoes, you won’t change—”
He said nothing else because Tracy didn’t let him. By slapping him.
His ears had barely cleared out the stinging ring when she seared them all over again. “You know what, Captain? Screw you.” She shot to her feet, efficiently yanking on the leggings now. With a barely disguised grimace, John watched the black spandex cover her ass. He could’ve gazed at those perfect swells for hours—especially when they bore the dark-pink reminders of where he’d spanked her, flogged her, fucked her. He was pretty damn sure that wasn’t what her present challenge represented, backed up when she reiterated, “Screw you—and every lachrymose delusion you’re clearly still carrying about this bullshit.”
Another adjustment on the haunches—though he finally pushed up, parking his ass on the closed toilet seat, fighting to process what unnerved him the most about her accusation. “Delusion?” he growled. “Still?” And what the hell did “lachrymose” even mean?
“You think I don’t see it?” she retorted. “That I haven’t seen it since that first day, when you moped in your milk with Dan and Shay about it? That I don’t see your woe-is-me inner dialogue about it?”
He jolted to his feet too. His new height gain didn’t change an inch of her defiance. And he’d really expected it to? “My what?”
“You heard me.” She jogged up her chin. “You heard me loud and damn clear because it’s true. Because it’s easier for you to play misunderstood hero than take responsibility for what you did and know it was the right thing.” With a lengthy huff, she curled a hand around one of his elbows. “You did the right thing, John—no matter what those asses in the big office think.”
Air escaped his own lungs in harsh bursts, drawn out by the warmth of her confident grip. His sights tunneled on her, needing and hating her words at the same time. He looked down, dazed, as her fingers slid down to cover his white-knuckled fist.
“Not every hero gets the pomp and parades, Captain.” Her voice moved over him like her touch, a river of empathy but encouragement, admonishing but acknowledging. “They have only the true north of their own compass, confirming they took the right path when it most mattered. And if they’re lucky”—she wiggled his arm and flashed a winsome wink—“they also get a cute-as-fuck subbie to remind them about the other ways they can be heroes.”
That was it. She was no longer a river. Franz pushed closer, letting himself drown in her breathtaking, beautiful ocean. Letting his gaze get lost in the gray foam of hers, as his fists unraveled…
So he could yank her even closer.
And breathe her in.
And all but feel her heartbeat, slamming as hard and fast and brutal as his, as he considered just opening his damn mouth and telling her…
Just telling her…
I love being your hero.
Because I love you, Tracy Rhodes.
“Mrs. Rhodes?”
They broke apart, flustered as if they’d been trading more than moony-needy gazes with each other, when a distinctly female yell came through the door.
Franz stepped around Tracy to jerk back the portal. Rayna Hayes stood there, a glowing smile on her face and a pair of tennis shoes in her hands.
The sight of her was…weird. Yeah, he was more than aware of how she and Zeke had moved to the building for its proximity to Bastille, but the idea of her in this club, as a willing subbie to the guy he’d slept in jungles with… No. Just no.
As a matter of fact, after tonight, he wasn’t certain he’d be able to see any other submissive in this place but the woman behind him—and now, thank fuck, stepping in next to him, tucking into the crook of his arm. He’d worry about how to deal with her kitten-sized ghost in this place later.
Rayna bit her bottom lip and held up the shoes. “Zeke sent me down. He thought you might need these. Just in case something happens, I mean. Which it won’t, but…”
“Thanks.” He fought to say it like he meant it, as Tracy actually accepted the shoes. But if Z was sending Rayna down here with a fucking shoe delivery…
He beat back the downhill of that conclusion—at least long enough to move around and stride toward Garrett, already modulating his voice so the women couldn’t hear.
“Hawk.” He hooked the guy’s elbow, directing him even farther away. “What are you hearing from upstairs?”
The guy’s bearing, twice as rigid as two minutes ago, was a crappy prelude for the reply. “Not a damn thing.”
“Fuck.” He gritted it under his breath.
Hawk jabbed hands into his front pockets and rocked back on his heels. The bastard’s call-sign should’ve been Opie. He was the king of hiding a thousand dark secrets under that aw-shucks exterior. “About sums it up.”
“Who has the radio?”
“Zsycho.”
“And you’ve hailed him?”
“Five times in the last minute.”
“And he didn’t respond?” Franz persisted. “Not even to give notice he was sending Rayna down?”
Hawkins ticked his head in a terse negative. “I almost shot her head off because of it too.”
“Fuck.”
“Believe you covered that one already.” The guy arched a meaningful glance at Tracy. “Likely in more ways than one tonight?”
He ignored that—also in more ways than one. First, no matter how many state secrets Garrett Hawkins would take to his grave, the guy didn’t need to know what his old CO and his new president had been up to a few rooms over. Second, Tracy wasn’t going to be anyone’s next president if they sat here like the stupid people in a horror movie, waiting for their friends to get back from “checking out what was in the woods.” Z didn’t ignore radio hails. Ever.
And with that, a new realization.
Silence really could be sickening.
“Tracy.” He skipped both the formal address and her nickname in favor of snagging her attention as fast as possible. No time for anything else. If Z was holding off hostiles upstairs, whatever the hell that meant, they had a few minutes at most. If they’d already taken him out—Franz avoided even glancing at the guy’s pregnant wife while thinking it—then they had only seconds.
Thank God for the woman’s supernatural perception. All the apprehension he’d only sprinkled into the word was now on full display in her eyes, bright as quicksilver. “What is it?” she rasped.
“Tie them.” He jerked his head at the shoes she’d pushed her feet into. “Fast.”
Under any other circumstances, he’d have watched her do it with lingering pleasure. She was so damn cute, with that slinky cocktail dress now joined by the leggings and runners, he longed for even a second to watch her moving around in the funny outfit. Then another second more, to put his own brand on the look with a hot, deep kiss.
Seconds they didn’t have.
Another horror movie trope feeling the necessity to prove itself, the second she rose and he grabbed her hand…
And the world hit an insanity he never thought he’d experience this side of the Pacific.
Resolve fought reality. Adrenaline battled gelatin. And no matter how desperately he craved to hit the hidden transporter button, to materialize at Point B from this disgusting Point A, it wasn’t fucking happening.
The combat zone began now.
The ferocious face of his best friend, charging out of the connector tunnel at them, confirmed that fact with sickening surety.
“Z’s right behind me.” Max, looking every inch the marine he used to be, sounded as if he’d swallowed half a bunker’s worth of dirt. Like Hawk, a gun holster bisected his torso—making Franz feel, for the first time all night, stark naked. Dilemma handled, as Max hefted over the MP5 hanging off his back.
Regrettably, it was a tiny umbrella in the shit storm he’d brought with him.
“And you’re telling me he’s not alone.” Not a
question. Franz already knew the nerve-singing answer.
“It’s the whole goddamned Death Star,” Max growled back. “Whoever or whatever gave us away did it really fucking well.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Fuck.”
It wasn’t the version of the word she’d expected Franzen to be ending their night with. To be honest, even after Garrett showed up, it wasn’t how she expected things to go at all.
As the reality set in, so did the terror. The nerve-stealing, mind-gripping, I-can’t-think-anymore fear, driving only one thought up from her senses—the same word that bled, raw and full of pain, from her lips.
“Luke.”
Franzen spun her around. Shook her, forcing her to meet his gaze. His eyes were the darkest she’d ever seen them. Ruthless as coal. Rimmed with smoke. “Listen to me. He’ll be safe.” His jaw turned to equal flint. “I promise you, Tracy. He’ll be safe.”
Somehow, her head wobbled in a pathetic semblance of a nod. “Okay,” she rasped, only to stammer the next moment, “Please…John…”
He cupped the back of her neck. His stare searched hers now, all the fire and brimstone suddenly lost. In their place was a wash of what looked like wonder, perhaps even awe—and something else. A something echoed in the deepest reaches of her soul.
She swallowed hard. That something had a name.
But not right now.
The only name she cared about right now was Luke. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else made sense. It also explained why John’s shout of her name sounded as if he was on repetition three or four, to which she finally gave a mumbled, “Wha…?”
“I said, you need to go with Max. Right now.”
“No.” She gaped at him as sharply as the lucidity rushing back in. Was he nuts? She refused to acknowledge the answer that surged from her gut. He wasn’t nuts. He was John. He was Sir. He was the one who saw her, who knew her—who made every damn decision with her happiness and confidence and well-being in mind. Who always made the right decision…
Yeah, well. Everyone was due an off night.
