He pulled Jacob into his arms, holding him close. “No more punishment.”
“Are you talking about the spanking?”
“I’m not talking about me, sweetheart. I’m talking about you. You’ve been punishing yourself for too long, taking on everyone else’s burdens so they don’t have to. Enough is enough, Jacob.”
His eyes rounded as he stared at Lee like he’d lost his mind. It fueled him to keep going. “Let me take care of you for a change. Let me ensure your safety, as is the role of the Dom.”
“I’m not very good at letting others take care of me.”
“Then it’s high time I train you on how to be a proper sub.”
“It may take a while. Are you willing to stick it out with someone as damaged as me?”
Lee grinned. “We’ve got all night and every night after that. And Jacob?”
“Yeah?”
“I won’t tolerate my sub punishing himself. That’s my job.”
“Yes, Master.”
17
What was he doing?
Jacob paced in front of the bedroom wall housing the window, each time stopping to check the scene as he passed. Nothing had moved in hours. Then again, it was almost midnight.
He knew better than to stay in the city tonight. He knew better. That didn’t stop him from saying yes. It had nothing to do with Lee as the Master, Jacob as the sub, or vice versa. It had everything to do with Lee the man and how much Jacob needed him.
It was more than attraction. More than sex. It was an underlying feeling of safety he felt with him. For him. Because of him. He had an obligation to keep him safe. He’d made a promise. Their roles may have changed, but the promise hadn’t.
“Can’t sleep?” Lee sat up, rubbing his eyes and looking so goddamn innocent it almost hurt to see.
“No.”
He reached over and turned on the lamp. They both squinted from the intrusion. Lee leaned against the headboard. “Me either. I’ve had a hard time sleeping since the attack.”
Jacob looked at him and sighed. “Is it really that bad for you?”
Lee dropped his gaze. “What do you think?”
“What can I do?”
“Reverse time,” he muttered and rested his forehead on his knees.
“You don’t know how badly I wish I could. I can’t undo what happened that day, Lee.”
“Superman reversed the Earth’s rotation to bring back Lois Lane.”
“I’m no hero.”
“Yet you take on the world’s burdens as if they’re your own.” He lifted his head and nailed him with a knowing look.
“I take them on because no one else will.”
“But they aren’t yours.”
“Someone’s got to be that guy.”
“Why you?”
Jacob forced his fingers through his hair as his frustration grew. Lee knew how to push his buttons, he’d give him that. “Because I do.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re going to get.” He grabbed his jeans, thrusting his legs in before grabbing his shirt. He couldn’t stay in this room right now, not without giving in to the man’s pleas and opening up again. He still hadn’t recovered from the rawness his confessions earlier had caused.
Where were his boots? Damn it. He took them off in the living room. Moving to the door, he tried to throw it open, only to run up against all the locks. He growled and rested his forehead against the door.
“Why won’t you give me a straight answer?” Lee wouldn’t let it go.
“Why do you keep pushing it?”
Lee swung around and put his feet on the floor. He reached down and grabbed his PJ bottoms to slip them on. “Something has you pissed all the time, Jacob. It isn’t healthy.”
“But this is?” He rattled the door and the locks shivered, sending a round of metallic clinks into the tense air.
“We are both all kinds of seriously screwed up.”
“No argument there.” He returned to the window and narrowed his gaze when he thought he caught movement.
“I was hoping for a little bit of an argument.”
“Sorry I missed my cue.” There. In the southeast corner. A shadow shifted. Jacob caught a similar shadow approaching from the southwest. Shit. No doubt, he’d find two more shadows to the north.
As casually as possible, he scooped his phone off the nightstand and held it in front of him as he placed his back to Lee, his finger hovering over the immediate response indicator every TREX field agent had on their phone. Although he was no longer an agent, he was still associated with the agency. He’d bet both his thumbs the indicator activated when pressed on an associate’s phone just as well, sending an alert to HQ and pinging every agent within five miles like an Amber Alert. He’d never had to use it and hoped he wouldn’t have to break that streak tonight.
The Farm was twenty-five miles away, well out of range of the alert. If he wanted to let his team know anything, he’d have to reach out to them.
“I have to make a call.” He got to work on the door locks. They didn’t have any time to lose.
Lee slipped on his glasses before glancing at the alarm clock. “It’s after midnight.”
“I never did tell Walsh we weren’t coming.”
“Don’t you think he got the message when you canceled the car?”
He couldn’t get through the damn locks fast enough. Those shadows more than likely had friends. “A little help?”
“Tell me who you need to call and why you can’t do that in front of me.”
Screw it. He grabbed the knob and gave it a hard pull, breaking the locks he hadn’t gotten to.
“Jacob!”
“Stay here.” He stormed out, punching the number as he grabbed his boots, then entered the bathroom and closed the door behind him, locking it. Knowing Lee, he’d barge in if the door wasn’t locked.
“Malone,” the former agent assigned to track down the threat against Lee groaned into the phone. His southern drawl came through in his groggy response. “This better be good.”
“It’s Burns.” He sat on the toilet to shove his feet into the boots and lace them up.
“Shit.” Scrambling. Footsteps. By the time he came back on, he sounded a bit more awake. “Jacob? What’s going on?”
“We’ve got movement outside the building.”
“It’s the city,” he countered, sounding annoyed. “There’s gonna be movement.”
“Not like this.”
“Y’all sure it wasn’t a cat?”
He jumped to his feet. “Damn it, Derek!”
“Okay, okay.” He yawned. Audibly. “Give me the coordinates.”
“Same address I gave you before.”
“Wait,” he sang. “You stayed at his place? Slut.”
“Hold your tongue, boy.” Walsh came on the line.
Jacob’s thumb hovered over the end call button. “Am I on speaker?”
“You are now,” Walsh replied. “Talk to me, son. What’s going on?”
“I’ve got fleas.”
Malone snorted. “Fleas?”
“It means he’s got some unwanteds and they are closing in,” Walsh explained in a growl. Malone stopped laughing. “Burns is spec ops. He wouldn’t call unless he needed our help.”
Is spec ops. Not was. Not used to be.
“What do you need?” Malone was all business now.
“Retrieval. ASAP.”
“Are you in trouble, son?”
“I hope not.”
“I’m calling it in, just in case.”
“No,” he said quickly, remembering the last time he made a call. Allen had called it in just in case. Next thing Jacob knew, he’d become the newest resident of the Farm. “If I need immediate response, I’ll signal.”
“Y’all got the TREX signal?” Malone burst in. “That’s better than the bat signal.”
Every agent on the payroll had the same signal on their phone. Since TREX knew about the
side jobs Walsh headed up, chances were they’d already changed out all the residents’ phones, clearly without some of their knowledge.
Jacob didn’t have the patience to explain what it meant to be an agent. He’d have a little chat with Walsh over his training techniques later. If they were going to take on jobs, they needed to know every resource available to them, regardless whether they’d ever expect to use them. One week ago he’d never expected to call for backup protecting a man he’d been contracted to find a year prior. Contracted to do so much more than that.
He couldn’t think about that now and welcomed Walsh’s comment, distracting him from that troubling truth he’d eventually be forced to face.
“Son,” Walsh said, no longer on speaker. “I need you to talk to me. This ain’t no drill.”
“I’m in Lee’s condo. On my last perimeter sweep, I caught sight of two shadows closing in from the south. I don’t have visual on the north.”
“I bet you’d find the same.”
“That’s my guess.”
“Okay, here’s what we do. You and Mr. Lamont hole up as best you can. We’ll be there in thirty. Do you have any weapons?”
Jacob glanced around the bathroom, spotting at least half a dozen items he’d be able to use to deliver adequate pain. “I can improvise.”
“No fire power?”
“No.” Unfortunately.
“We’ll be there in twenty. Don’t die on me, Jacob. We still haven’t had our talk.”
“Yes, sir.” He ended the call and threw open the door, not surprised to see Lee standing there.
“Are we in danger?”
“I’m not sure.” Jacob pushed past him.
Lee followed. “Now isn’t the time for you to keep secrets. Tell me what’s going on.”
Jacob scowled, not knowing how else to respond to demands he didn’t want to acknowledge.
“Give me that look. Snarl. Growl. Break another door if it makes you feel better. I don’t care. That may have worked on the people you pushed away before, but it won’t work on me. Yes, I eavesdropped. No, I’m not sorry. You rushed off. I followed. You locked yourself in the bathroom. You left me no choice.”
McKoy’s words echoed in his head. Cause and effect. It didn’t mean he deserved the shit hand. It meant he had no one to blame for his current situation but himself.
Something he planned on remedying as soon as he neutralized the threats closing in. The shadows couldn’t hurt Lee if they were immobile. Or worse. If Jacob got the jump on them, they’d never see him coming.
Until it was too late.
18
“Stay here.” Jacob worked up the row of locks until only the top two chains remained fastened. He threw the door open, breaking Lee’s precious chains, and walked out. He just…walked out. Lee stood there, stunned, and stared at the open door, shocked he actually left. What happened to protecting him at any cost? How could they keep each other safe if he stormed off every time he had to talk about something that made him uncomfortable?
Damn him. Jacob ran every time it came to talking about anything personal. He’d do whatever he could to avoid the topic, like storm off when they were supposed to be keeping each other safe.
Lee knew him, even if he refused to believe it.
He deliberated his options. The smart thing would be to stay inside. Lock the doors. Call the police. All the smart, common sense things went right out the door with the stubborn jackass. He’d broken several locks on his way out, too.
With only a few working locks left, no weapon anywhere in the condo, and no ex-spec ops agent for protection, he was a sitting duck in here. Outside, he’d be able to run for help. He’d rather face the danger head on next to Jacob than wait for the danger to find him, trap him, and surely kill him. As much as Lee didn’t want to leave the safety of his home, he didn’t want to be away from Jacob more.
“Shit,” he muttered and ran out of the condo, not slowing until he rounded the start of the stairs. All the stairs. He’d never hated living on the fifth floor as much as he hated it this very second. By the time he reached the street, he was out of breath, even going down the stairs. He really needed to get back to the gym.
The freezing wet ground numbed his bare feet. Why didn’t he think to grab shoes? Strike that. Why the hell did he think this was a good idea? None of the self-defense classes had prepared him for this. He debated which way to run for help. In pajama bottoms, no shirt, nothing on his feet.
He turned in circles, looking up and down the street, desperate to get his mind to fire off. What the hell was he doing? He had a phone. Which, of course, he left in his condo when he ran out. God, he was an idiot. His brain completely shut down when he panicked.
Like now.
As he turned to go back inside, he slowed, expecting the movement he caught out of the corner of his eye to be the man he was ready to throttle for running off. Again.
What he found instead was a set of headlights as they suddenly glared to life. Lee put up his hand to shade his eyes and squinted toward the lights.
“Jacob?”
His heart stopped when the screech of tires sounded. He froze as the headlights grew closer. For some reason he couldn’t move and stood there, paralyzed, as the car barreled toward him.
Someone screamed his name a second before something huge and hard hooked around his waist and pulled him out of the way. The impact sent the air whistling out of his lungs as he crashed to the hard pavement. He would have hit his head against the ground if it hadn’t been for the enormous chest that cushioned his fall.
Cushioned? Shit. The chest was as hard as the damn cement.
Time slowed as Lee blinked to pull things back into focus. A million thoughts raced through his mind as he heard cursing, mostly from Jacob as he pushed Lee behind him when the car skidded to a stop in front of them.
“What the hell are you doing out here? I told you to stay inside.” He lifted Lee to his feet, his attention never leaving the car as two figures stepped out. Jacob stiffened suddenly and dug his fingers into Lee’s arm. He winced but said nothing. He was too freaked out to form a coherent thought.
The red glow of the brake lights obscured his vision. They never dulled, which told him the driver remained in the car, his foot on the brake. Did Jacob already make that same connection?
“Who is that?”
“Get out of here.” Even though Jacob barked his order, he held him tight as he kept his body between Lee and the men.
“Well, well, well.” One of the men sang into the night, sending a set of prickly chills washing up Lee’s spine. He knew that voice. He recognized that gait, the way the man shuffled toward them, favoring his left side. Lee had steered clear of every man favoring his left side since the attack, just to be safe.
All for nothing. Despite everything he’d done to protect himself from this exact scenario, he’d walked right into it. He practically served himself up on a silver platter to the man from the alley, the man who’d shot Lee and left him for dead.
“J-Jacob,” he whimpered, the rest of his question freezing on his lips as his paralysis moved to his mouth. His heart hammered as the entire world tilted. The man had come to finish the job.
“Look what we have here. It’s a two-for-one special.”
Jacob squared his shoulders and countered with, “Looks like I should have shot you more than once, Freddie.”
Freddie? Lee jerked his attention to the man he now hid behind. “You know him?”
Jacob didn’t answer, which didn’t surprise him but did add to the panic currently coursing through his system.
“Sergio is going to love this,” the other man stated in a thick Italian accent. He wasn’t the kid from the alley, but looked remarkably like an older, fatter version of him. “He’ll never believe who we found in bed with the target.”
“You got that right, Geno. I guess news of his death was a bit exaggerated.” He chuckled acidly and regarded Jacob. “Sergio thinks you’re dead. I c
an’t wait to tell him you’re alive and well. And have apparently switched sides.”
Jacob took a step back, forcing Lee to retreat. He told Lee under his breath, “Get ready to run.”
Run? Hell, Lee could barely stand under his own power. The men mentioned Sergio, as in the man Jacob used to work for. He tried to peek out from behind Jacob but fell to the ground when Jacob pushed him back. He pulled himself to his feet and brushed the gravel off his hands as he glared at the back of the man’s head.
“Get ready to run,” Jacob repeated. He then regarded the men. “I see you recruited Luigi’s bigger, dumber brother.” He had an insulting arrogance to his calm, even tone.
Geno immediately grew crimson. “You do not speak of my little brother, stronzo. You killed him. He was just a boy.”
“He was in the game,” Jacob countered. “He knew the score.”
“A score I am here to even.” He drew a gun.
“Run!” Jacob rushed Geno. Before he got off a shot, Jacob had him down with a solid jump and punch to the temple. He caught the gun as the man collapsed and squared it on Freddie. “Hiya, buddy.”
He smiled. The man actually smiled as he faced certain death. His reaction drew the same from Jacob. Why the hell were they both smiling? They were insane. Lee was about to completely lose it, and these two smiled.
“What do you say? Want a shot at the title?” Jacob uncocked the gun and tucked it into the back of his pants. Was he crazy?
“You don’t have a title, Burns. Not anymore. You’re no longer in charge.”
In charge? Lee jerked his attention to whoever spoke as he desperately tried to make sense of the scene as it played out. It couldn’t be what raced through his mind. Please God. It couldn’t be the obvious conclusion.
He hyperventilated as the realization sank in. They didn’t used to only know each other. They didn’t used to only work together.
Jacob ran the show.
No. Oh Jesus. No! Jacob couldn’t be the one calling the shots. He couldn’t be the one Sergio had originally sent after Lee. It explained everything. The chance meeting at the coffeehouse wasn’t a chance meeting at all. He’d planned it from the start.
Jacob Page 16
