The Muscle

by Amy Lane

  How could Dylan Li never have been anybody’s baby?

  He got to the bathroom and found Grace sitting on the side of the tub—which looked blessedly uncomfortable because it was a narrow strip of enamel or whatever—probing disconsolately at the feet in the water.

  Some of the water swirling around his toes was pink, and Hunter could see that he’d taken the top of one of his toes off when he stubbed it, and peeled the toenail back. Grace had grabbed his ankle and was hauling his foot up so he could inspect the damage when Hunter let out a sigh.

  “Sit on the throne,” he said. “Let me do it.”

  “If you think I can’t tape my own toes…,” Grace argued, but Hunter held up a hand.

  “No, I’m sure you can,” he said, helping Grace up off the tub and onto the toilet. The lid creaked—plastic—and Hunter assisted him to sit up on the sink instead. If it had been anyone else, he’d be afraid the counter would collapse, but there was something delicate about Grace’s build. Muscular, yes, but also fine-boned.

  Not the kind of body that could break things with his ass.

  “Then why you gotta treat me like a kid?” Grace asked, and for a moment, Hunter saw the sullen loner that Grace liked to project when he was at his most annoying.

  Never been anyone’s baby before.

  Josh’s voice, harsh and unhappy, kept banging around in his head.

  They were important words. They made Grace a totally different creature—when he’d already been fascinating before they were even uttered.

  “Not like a kid,” Hunter said gently. “Like a colleague who’s been hurt.” He stood at the sink, ran warm water over a clean washcloth, and looked at the pile of first-aid implements somebody—probably Josh—had dumped on the counter.

  Okay. Neosporin with lidocaine and some cloth-covered bandages. They were in business.

  He lathered up the washcloth, making sure it was warm and sudsy, and took Grace’s heel in his palm.

  Grace sucked in a breath and regarded him with wide eyes.

  “I’ll be careful,” he said, keeping his voice mild.

  Grace’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. I’m not helpless.”

  “No, you’re not,” Hunter reassured him, wiping the toes carefully, being sure to treat the cuts and bruises with gentleness. He smiled a bit at seeing the muted purple, pink, and blue nail polish. “Pedicure much?”

  Grace’s guarded expression turned dreamy, and his shoulders rippled in sheer hedonism. “We dancers beat the shit out of our feet,” he admitted, and Hunter could see that. Crooked toes spoke to breaks, and bunions spoke for themselves—all part of a life in service to the beauty of the dance. “Having someone rub my toes twice a month is like my reward for not killing people.”

  Hunter chuckled. He could understand that. He’d paid for massages after he’d run ops for the same reason. “And the polish is for fun,” he said with a wink.

  The dreaminess faded. Turned sullen. “You think it’s too feminine, right?”

  Ouch. “No! Not at all. It’s sort of adorable.” Only stony silence, which told him that Grace didn’t buy it. That was a shame. Hunter was being sincere. Shoes probably hid the nail polish more often than not. This thing Grace did only for himself, because he liked beauty, and Hunter appreciated that. But Grace didn’t want to hear it now. He’d have to try something else. “That move you pulled on Broadstone, that’s pretty damned spectacular.”

  Grace’s smile lost the sullenness. “I’m pretty awesome,” he agreed.

  “You really are.” Hunter wiped carefully, wincing at some of the rawer places on the balls of Grace’s feet and his heels. “And you knew I was coming for you,” he said, gauging Grace’s reaction carefully.

  Grace glanced at him and glanced away quickly.

  “You said you were coming.”

  “And you trusted that I would get there and not let anything happen to you,” Hunter murmured. In the other room, through their coms, the discussion of exactly what Broadstone and his security guy had been doing in Artur’s bedroom was going on, but Hunter had practice tuning out things on his coms that he didn’t need.

  And what he needed right now was for Grace to understand trust.

  “You don’t let Josh down,” Grace murmured.

  “I won’t let you down.”

  Grace shrugged. “Sure. Because I’m Josh’s friend.”

  Hunter cocked his head. “Why not because you’re you?”

  Grace gave him a bleak, bitter smile. “Only Josh has ever done that. I’m too much of a pain in the ass for anyone else to care about.”

  Hunter patted Grace’s foot dry and reached for the gauze, his heart twisting a little. “I’m a trained killer,” he said into the muted silence of the bathroom. “I’m not fun at parties.”

  Grace lifted a shoulder. “I’m great at parties,” he said blithely. “People just don’t care where I am afterwards.”

  “Except Josh.”

  “And his family,” Grace added loyally.

  One side of Hunter’s mouth pulled up. “Of course. Maybe, you know, the rest of the crew cares too.”

  “They can’t find a better thief,” Grace said, coldly assessing his worth to them in an act of hubris.

  “I bet Josh is pretty good,” Hunter told him. “And Danny, for all his talk of being too old.”

  “Danny doesn’t age,” Grace said, and Hunter looked into that piquant, young face, trying to gauge whether he was being serious or not. “It’s true!” Grace defended, completely serious. “I used to be the only one who could see Danny. He was sneaking around to see Josh and not run into Felix, and Josh let me see him so I didn’t think he was imaginary.”

  “How old were you two?” Hunter asked, a little jealous of Josh, who had known Grace since childhood and had all sorts of secret passwords that Hunter did not.

  “I was eleven,” Grace said. He leaned his head back against the mirror and closed his eyes. “Josh was so hurt when Danny left. But then he started getting letters and postcards and secret visits. And it was exciting, and he shared.” Grace’s mouth pulled up at the corners. “I kept thinking that sometimes people don’t leave. That even if they’re far away, they can still care for you. That maybe, since Danny kept coming back to be Josh’s Uncle Danny, someone far away could care for me too.”

  “Mm.” Hunter swallowed past a suspicious lump in his throat and moved on to Grace’s other foot. “But someone here cared for you.”

  Grace nodded. “That’s why I didn’t get too jealous when Josh met his own friends. You’re a tough guy—Chuck too. You’ll take good care of Josh and his family.”

  “And you too,” Hunter said softly.

  Grace met his eyes directly, his gold-brown gaze suddenly not wandering into the past, not directed somewhere else, but boring right into Hunter’s soul.

  “Nobody takes care of me. That’s not the way the world works. But some people will miss me when I’m gone.”

  Hunter scowled back at him, not wanting to admit that his heart was feeling as scuffed as Grace’s feet, but knowing it just the same.

  He didn’t answer for a moment, taking his time with the other foot, applying Neosporin and antibiotics to the stubbed toes, which made his ass clench looking at them. He wrapped everything with gauze and taped it, and let Grace have his foot back with a tenderness he hadn’t planned on.

  “I would,” he said softly into the sudden bathroom quiet. Grace pulled his attention from smelling the soap and shampoos and stared at him.

  “It’s not nice to mess with people’s brains,” he snapped, clearly annoyed.

  Hunter stepped between his knees, spreading them a little with his thighs, leaning in close so Grace could see he wasn’t kidding. “I would,” he repeated. “I would miss you. And right now, when I say I’m coming for you, I’m coming for you. Not Josh’s friend. Not the thief in our outfit. That’s me, coming for you. I was afraid you would get hurt tonight, Grace. I wanted you to be okay.”

>   Grace’s full lips parted, and his pink tongue darted out to wet them—an unconscious invitation this time, Hunter was sure. He’d seen Grace do it plenty of times when he was flirting or trying to get Hunter’s attention—but that wasn’t what was going on now. Right now, in the stillness of this impersonal bathroom, Grace was nervous. The pulse in his neck fluttered, and his eyes rounded wide as he stared at Hunter, obviously thinking the same thing Hunter was.

  Would one taste be enough?

  “I’m always okay,” Grace whispered.

  Hunter shook his head. “Then maybe I wanted you to be better than okay,” he whispered back. “Maybe I’d like to see you great.”

  Grace wrinkled his nose and opened his mouth, probably to say something obnoxious and sexual and meant to dig under Hunter’s skin.

  Too late.

  Hunter leaned forward and silenced him with a kiss before he could extend his claws.

  For a moment, they were static, lips to lips, before Grace sucked in a breath of surprise and let him in.

  Hunter took advantage—that’s what men like him did. They saw their advantage and they took out their opponent.

  In this case, Grace was his opponent, and Hunter swept his tongue through Grace’s mouth, eliminating all opposition.

  Grace sighed and opened a little more, allowing Hunter full access, and Hunter got to taste him. Finally. He tasted sweet, like gum, which he chewed a lot, and earthy, like his absolutely dreadful sense of humor, and… and lost.

  Hunter pulled back and sucked on his lower lip. “Play with my tongue back,” he said, almost puzzled.

  “Oh, okay.”

  Hunter plunged in again, and Grace met him, stroking back when Hunter stroked, taking over Hunter’s mouth when Hunter let him in. Ah, yes! An equal, a worthy opponent, a tender foe.

  “Guys! Get in here. We need to talk.”

  Josh’s barked command got Hunter’s attention, and he pulled back reluctantly.

  “Almost done in here,” he said, inches from Grace.

  Grace regarded him with sober eyes.

  “He took good care of me,” he said, obviously for the coms.

  “Yeah, well, Hunter’s good at that. Get out here ASAP, though. We’ve got some interesting shit to sort.”

  “Hear you.”

  But Hunter wasn’t moving yet. He raised a finger to Grace’s cheekbone and stroked gently. “You and me,” he said softly, “are going to finish this convo when we’re not mic’d. But I want you to remember something.”

  Grace blinked slowly. “What?”

  “I’m here to keep you safe. You. Dylan. Not Josh’s friend. Not the thief. You. Remember that. You’ll be less inclined to scare me if you do.”

  Hunter finished cleaning up, but he held out his hand when Grace was about to hop down from the counter.

  “I’ll get you,” he said mildly.

  Grace just gaped at him. “You’ll wha—”

  Hunter scooped him up, damsel-in-distress style, and carted him into the main room, where he deposited Grace on the bed and made sure he had pillows.

  Grace leaned back delicately and eyed Hunter with open suspicion until Josh called everybody’s attention to the matter at hand.

  “So what I understand is this,” he said before checking his computer. “Danny, Felix, you there?” He swung the laptop so Hunter could see the two men on Skype, because that had happened while they were in the bathroom too.

  “We’re here,” Felix said. “Keep going.”

  Danny grinned and waved, and Hunter didn’t miss the fact that Grace smiled and waved back, even though it was unlikely he would be spotted from his location so far back from the screen.

  He’s never been somebody’s baby before.

  The thought made Hunter rub his chest.

  “So,” Josh said, focused wholly on the op. “Lucius here has been getting his R and D ideas ripped off once a quarter, but not by the same firm. He and his firm’s lead investigator—”

  “Also known as the douchebag who shot at Grace,” Molly all but snarled, and Grace gave her an impudent grin.

  Hunter could have hugged the girl.

  “Yeah, that fucker,” Josh agreed. “Anyway, Mikey Jenkins, midfifties, very fit—”

  “Fast,” Grace agreed.

  “And currently missing.”

  “What?” Hunter asked, irritated. As far as he was concerned, they couldn’t make enough of a deal out of shooting at Grace.

  “Mom and Molly got to the exit from the stairwell while you were hauling ass after Grace,” Josh said. “The guy was gone. Anyway, Lucius claims he inherited Mikey as security from his father—”

  “Which I did,” Lucius muttered from the office chair currently in the middle of the room. “The guy hated me, but I thought at least he was loyal to Dad’s company.” He let out a rather fractured sigh.

  “Why’d he hate you?” Josh asked, and Hunter was grateful—he’d been a little curious too.

  Lucius raised a shoulder. “Same reason the old man put off passing the company over to me until he was practically eating out of a tube. Le gay.”

  The collective eye roll was punctuated by Molly’s frustrated, “Goddammit! It’s like a conspiracy.”

  “You don’t like gay people?” Lucius asked.

  “Oh, please. I am surrounded by gay men, most of whom I adore. I just want my own boyfriend, thank you.” She crossed her arms in a fit of temper, and Julia patted her shoulder in commiseration.

  “I particularly like the subtle way you go about it, sis,” Stirling murmured, and Molly—in good sibling tradition—stuck her tongue out at him.

  “You do have to admit that our Mr. Broadstone is sort of a dish,” Julia said, flashing her dimples at Lucius. “But we must continue with his story. So you inherited your security man, and he told you that your last bit of stolen information would be in Artur Mikkelnokov’s room. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” Lucius said. “I went to school with the manager of this particular hotel, which I guess I should have seen as far too fortuitous. I had Mikey get access to her floor plans on the pretense that I was thinking of holding a convention here. He figured the best way to search Mr. Mikkelnokov’s rooms was to come in through a ventilation port in the closet.”

  “And he brought a gun,” Hunter growled.

  Lucius let out a breath and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yes. And he brought a gun. I cannot apologize enough.” He turned so he was looking at Grace directly and gave a wan smile. “Please, allow me to apologize—both for the gun and for running you down. I just….” The smile faded. “Over two thousand employees are depending on this next quarter’s income. And more than that, I’ve got charities that are depending—depending—on our profits so women and children don’t end up on the street. I saw what could happen if we didn’t get ahold of our security leak, and I panicked. I’m sorry. I should have checked Jenkins out more thoroughly. I thought if there was one thing—one thing—I could depend on, it would be my father’s employee to uphold his legacy.”

  “I guess that was the one thing you could depend on,” Felix said kindly from the screen. “And we’re sorry. But we know most of this. What we don’t know is what you thought you were looking for.”

  “A thumb drive?” Lucius said, shrugging. “A microchip? Something that could hold many terabytes of information in a very small space?”

  “A pretty present in an ostentatious gift bag big enough to hold a jeweler’s box?” Julia suggested.

  Everybody in the room except Lucius snorted, but Lucius wasn’t stupid.

  Neither was Artur Mikkelnokov.

  “Is that why you’re all here?” he asked, and Hunter wondered what they’d told the gentleman to get him to join them in the very cramped hotel room. Then Artur turned toward Grace accusingly. “Is that why you asked to accompany me?”

  Grace seemed to shrivel, and Hunter moved so he was between the old man’s glare and Grace.

  “Your granddaughter was terrified f
or you,” Julia said, her voice brooking no argument. “She confided in Grace, and we’re Grace’s family. We showed up to help.” She glared at Lucius. “And it’s a good thing we did, young man. Your friend with the gun might have decided to use it on Artur had he awakened, and then where would you be?”

  “In prison,” Lucius said grimly. “But not before I figured out what Mikey Jenkins knew that I didn’t.”

  “You would have gone to prison for that?” Hunter asked, disgusted.

  “Underdeveloped sense of vengeance,” Stirling murmured.

  “He has no concept of the superhero origin story,” Molly agreed. “Don’t you know that you’re supposed to escape prison, go after him yourself, make him pay horribly for his crimes and for dumping his bullshit on your head, and then continue on as a zillionaire superhero, funding the opposite of whatever nefarious scheme Jenkins was a part of.”

  “Poisoning also works,” Grace said. “Or, you know, drugging him, stripping him naked, and duct-taping him to the police station.”

  “Or hacking the most wanted list and putting him at number seven,” Stirling said.

  “Not number one?” Lucius asked.

  “No, one is too conspicuous. Everyone would be, like, ‘Wait a minute. I know who number one is—who the hell is this guy?’ But anywhere on the top ten and he still has a very good chance of being caught.”

  “Particularly if you broadcast his financials to every news agency in the country,” Josh agreed.

  “Or track down his old exes and tell them he won the lottery,” Grace added.

  “That’s a good one,” Danny said admiringly from the screen. “I’ll have to remember that. But the point is, Mr. Broadstone—”

  “Who is who he says he is!” Felix called, looking around Danny, who appeared to be sitting on his lap. Hunter had to hide his smile, because they were both in their forties and how cute was that?

  “Yes. Mr. Broadstone, who has missed the Fortune 500 by just a few bodies to walk over, is exactly who he says he is.”

  Lucius pursed his lips, his nose wrinkled in annoyance. “Thanks for that assessment. So proud. You have no idea.”