by Alex Lidell
“But… I don’t… How could… When?” I stutter out, a million thoughts bubbling through me, not one of them making any sense.
“This morning.” Cullen starts toward the back of the house as if the conversation was over instead of just starting.
Quickening my step, I get in front of him and turn, cutting off his path. If possible, he’s somehow even more beautiful than usual now, the light playing off his fitted sweater to sculpt the muscles beneath. Looking at that strong jaw and those mossy-green eyes, I can’t help feeling my thighs tingle even as I really, really want to put my fist through that perfect mouth.
“Eli, could you please go host somewhere else for a moment?” I ask, my eyes gripping Cullen’s like iron spikes. My pulse quickens, my hands opening and closing at my sides. This morning, after we held each other in the night and had a companionable breakfast, the man had gone and upended my life. And he’d lied to me to boot. “So now I know the truth about your bogus admin stuff. How did you even get inside my apartment?”
“Liam owns a security company,” says Cullen, not flinching one bit from my ire.
Seriously?
“And that somehow gives you the right to break in?”
Cullen sighs and shifts his weight as if his patience is running low. “No one broke in. Liam handed the landlord a hundred dollar bill, and the ass was more than happy to open up the place. The movers packed you out carefully and brought everything to a safer location just down the street from the Rescue. There’s no sense in you living in a drug den when it’s unnecessary. If you’re really that nostalgic, I’ll go back and get the mice for you and bring them over. Should I grab the cockroaches while I’m at it?”
My hands curl into fists, which I place squarely on my hipbones. “How do you know whether I can even afford this so-called better and safer location?”
“It’s rent controlled. It’ll cost you about the same as your current monthly payment.”
“And how the fuck do you know what my current rent is, Cullen?” The swearing, which I usually try to keep in check when I’m talking directly to someone, escapes in a possibly Freudian slip. Before this moment, I would have sworn that being murderously furious and ridiculously horny were two utterly conflicting sensations, but my body is proving that wrong.
Up above, the clouds shift, letting a new ray of sunlight play across Cullen’s much-too-old-for-twenty-eight face. “Security and background checks were run when Catherine employed you. You signed the forms.”
“Yes, I signed some forms, but not one of those forms said anything about digging so deeply into my financials that you can recite my bank account number. I also never authorized you or your Trident gods to go through my personal effects. What is wrong with you? What gives you the right to ride roughshod over all my boundaries?”
For the first time since I cut him off, Cullen’s eyes flash, his voice changing from indulgent to machine gun fire that sends a jolt of energy down every single one of my nerves. Suddenly, the man standing before me isn’t a business executive or even a rowdy paramedic, but a predator in a man’s skin. The kind that could give an order and have hundreds of men follow. And now the whole of that power is turned on me. “When you decided to risk your life.”
“That’s my decision,” I snap right back at him, my heart pounding so hard that it must be bruising my ribs.
“Welcome to the world of consequence.”
I swing my hand at his face, all my common sense rushing from me.
Cullen catches my wrist in midflight, his strong fingers going easily around my wrist. Something primal and predatory flashes in his eyes, turning the moss green to a dark, dark brown just as he presses his mouth against mine, the heat of him rushing through my whole core.
21
Cullen
Cullen felt Sky’s mouth yield to him and pressed onward with all the frustration and need that was ripping him apart inside. His tongue raked over her mouth, deep and rough and punishing, even as his cock grew so hard, he was ready to scream from the pressure. Sky’s mouth gave so beautifully, so generously as her small body vibrated in his arms, that Cullen felt absolutely drunk on the taste of her.
Inside his grip, Sky’s wrist was pulsing hard enough that he felt the rapid rhythm of her heart. Pinning her wrist against her body, he wrapped his other arm around her back, his mouth devouring her softness. Live currents of electricity sang through his veins, as if Sky’s passion and determination and everything that made her unlike him now flowed through his blood, mixing with the fury that woman sparked with such damn efficiency.
And when Sky’s mouth returned the kiss, her own body pressing against Cullen’s, the sensation seared a path from his mouth right to his full, full cock.
His heart was hammering as he pulled away, his chest heaving with harsh deep breaths. The realization of what he’d just done washed over him with a mix of ice and flame that was as disorienting as a flashbang grenade.
Her head tipped back, Sky stared up at him, her perfect mouth soft and slightly open and so tempting that it was all Cullen could do to stop himself from taking her right then and there.
“Cullen,” she breathed, her eyes dropping to where he was still holding her wrist tightly enough to cut off circulation.
He couldn’t have let go quicker if he’d touched molten lead. “I—” He stopped, words failing him, together with his common sense. Cullen didn’t know what to say, and was slightly afraid that his pulsing erection would make anything he did try to utter sound high-pitched.
Sky bit her lip, her beautiful and all-too-intelligent eyes seeming to see right through any shield Cullen put up. The tip of her tongue flicked out to moisten her now-swollen lips.
“Everything all right?” Eli stuck his head out the backyard gate fence. “You lot coming in?”
“Yes,” Sky and Cullen said at the same time.
Eli raised a brow and quickly retreated.
By the time Cullen had found his voice again, Sky was straightening out the material of her pale yellow dress and walking with purpose toward the party. Hanging back a moment, he couldn’t stop himself from watching how the fabric hugged her curves, gliding over the kind of ass that made a man hard from one glance. He shuddered, took one step to follow, and then turned on his heel and marched himself into Eli’s house instead.
He needed an ice-cold shower.
When he rejoined the party fifteen minutes later, he surveyed Eli’s backyard to find his Tridents gathered together at one end, while Jaz, Catherine, and Sky chatted inside a gazebo. With its octagonal cedar construction, the building complemented the other structures on the property. The evergreen scrubs and flowering trees along the perimeter of the backyard were as well designed as everything else in the mansion—all perfectly calculated as a fuck-you from Eli’s mother to the son she never wanted.
“What the hell happened to you?” Eli asked as Cullen grabbed a local craft beer and joined the group, positioning himself with his back toward Sky. “Did our new recruit rip you a new one like I told you she would?”
“It’s fine.” Cullen took a sip of his beer to buy himself another moment. He still couldn’t explain the kiss to himself, so he sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to explain it to the Tridents. All he knew was that somewhere in the middle of his fury, an irresistible pull from Sky made him lose all common sense. “We’re fine.”
“Famous last words,” said Liam.
Cullen flipped him off.
Liam rubbed the back of his neck, studying Cullen with an intrusive gaze he usually reserved for play partners. Liam was the only one of the Tridents who came from poverty, and he’d learned to read everything about body language at a young age. That type of scrutiny made Liam invaluable in interrogations and, from what Cullen gathered, in his recreational activities. But it made him damn uncomfortable as a friend.
“What?” Cullen demanded.
“You’re allowed to like Reynolds,” Liam said.
“I don’t like
Reynolds.”
Liam shrugged one shoulder. “Fine. You’re allowed to be sexually attracted to Reynolds. She may not be my type, but the woman is smoking hot. Look me in the eye and tell me you’ve not noticed.”
“I’ve noticed that Jaz is at the Rescue barbecue,” said Cullen, knowing it was a weaselly way to avoid the subject. “Did someone hire her and forget to tell me?”
“Eli invited her,” Kyan said, flashing their host a venom-filled gaze that set the conversation off in a new direction that Cullen pretended to follow.
After half an hour separated by gender groups, Eli declared his party wasn’t a middle school dance and lured everyone together with a promise of burgers. Jaz, who was in the middle of describing her adventures backpacking through Europe the summer prior when Cullen and the others came up to join them, stepped back to widen the circle.
“I’ve climbed in Frankenjura, Germany; Finale Ligure, Italy; Osp, Slovenia; and on the sea cliffs of the Formentor Peninsula in Spain,” Jaz’s eyes sparkled with each memory. “Looking down to watch the waves crashing below is like nothing else.”
“I’m adding that to my bucket list.” Sky’s musical voice shot straight into Cullen’s chest. “In fact, I’m earmarking my savings for it now.”
“Do you travel a bit for journalism?” Jaz asked.
“Not yet, but I’m on track for investigative reporting, so I hope to in the future.”
Investigative reporting? Cullen filed away the thought, remembering Sky’s original line of questioning when she’d first come up on him and Eli.
“Why Denton Valley? I can’t imagine there’s much here. Is there?” Jaz dropped her voice, leaning closer; Cullen fighting the urge to do the same.
“Actually, there is something,” Sky told Jaz. “Or might be. Yesterday, when I went to the scene, Channel Thirteen was already there, but the cops weren’t. It’s come to my attention since that Denton’s emergency assistance comes much more quickly to those who live in these types of neighborhoods…” She gestured around Eli’s opulent abode, “than to the Lincoln Drive-type dwellings. If that’s true, it’s not okay.”
“Agreed.” Jaz nodded vehemently, and Cullen made a mental note to check in with the chief of police to see if there was something to the claim.
“The first part, though, is actually checking the facts and the environment, both in terms of records and local sentiment. Seeing whether things match. It could be a self-fulling prophecy. For example, Lincoln Drive residents might be so demoralized with prior police response that they no longer call. So the police don’t know to come, and it all reinforces the neighborhood’s belief that cops never show up. Point is, a problem can’t be solved unless its causes are fully understood. And that’s what I’m going to do, starting with interviewing Lincoln Drive residents.”
“Like hell you are.” The words slipped from Cullen’s mouth before he could even consider putting them in more diplomatic terms. Hell, fuck diplomacy. The woman was less than twenty-four hours out of the ER and she was already talking about going back into a drug den.
“Opining on my business again, Cullen?” Sky shot him a fire-filled gaze that made him go hard all over again. “This is becoming a really bad habit of yours.”
“What part of ‘stay out of danger, Sky’ don’t you understand?” he demanded.
“Likely the same part that confuses you in ‘stay out of my decisions.’” Sky’s jaw tightened, and, though she was much smaller than Cullen, she met the whole storm of his wrath without backing away one step. Most SEALs couldn’t do that. And yet here she was. “You don’t own me.”
“Never said I did.” Cullen felt the air around them heat several degrees, the others staying quiet as he and Sky faced each other in a duel. Cullen’s pulse quickened, and he had to remind himself to breathe several times before trying for a reasonable tone. “But it seems Frank Peterson does. If you want to be an investigative journalist, why are you working for a piece of shit of a human running a glorified tabloid?”
Sky swallowed, vulnerability flashing in her gaze for a heartbeat before her fists clenched at her sides. “I’ll write the story in such a way that he can’t refuse to publish it.”
Liam, who stood behind Sky, frowned. This was the second time in the conversation Sky had avoided the why here question, and Cullen’s security operations friend had caught on as well. Cullen’s gut tightened. Maybe he was going about this all the wrong way. Maybe—no, certainly—he was a blind, bullheaded asshole. “I have a win-win solution,” he said, capturing all Sky’s attention and savoring its intensity. “Work at the Rescue full-time. You have the skills we need, and I’ll make it worth your while. Cut Frank out of the picture completely—he’s not a man you want to be dependent on for anything. Trust me on that.”
To his utter bewilderment, Sky shook her head. “You don’t get it, Cullen. This isn’t about Frank. This is about my career. Journalism is in my blood. And the free press? It isn’t a paycheck, it’s what makes a free society stay free. Just like your work at the Rescue—”
“You want to know the first goddamn rule of rescuing?” Cullen’s blood, which had cooled to a reasonable simmer, shot right back up to his head. “Dead rescuers help no one. And I am not okay with you—”
“You’re not okay with—” Sky shouted over him.
“Stop.” Liam’s low, powerful voice cracked through the conversation. Striding forward as if he owned the very air between Sky and Cullen, Liam looked between them and—for once—Cullen shut his mouth in deference while his chest heaved. Liam nodded as if he expected nothing less from both parties. “My line of work exists because too many people need to go into dangerous situations that they, in a perfect world, should not be going near. But this isn’t a perfect world. If a doctor or a diplomat is needed, you can’t send a marine instead. So we mitigate. We use trained security. And we target harden.”
He twisted toward Sky. “You want to go into danger? Learn to defend yourself. Or take someone who can do it for you. Preferably both.”
Sky’s spine straightened. “No one is coming on my interviews with me.”
“Then I’ll see you on the mat at six a.m. tomorrow morning,” Liam told her.
Sky, whose mouth was hanging slightly open, shut it with a resounding click. Liam was very hard to argue against when he got persuasive. There was just one last point to address.
“She can’t do tomorrow morning,” he told Liam. “She’s just been through hell and—”
“And if you can’t stand watching, Hunt, stay the fuck home,” Liam shot back. And that was that.
22
Frank
Frank Peterson ran a hand through his thinning hair, frustrated beyond belief. One would think that between owning the whole damn medical industry in Denton Valley and being worshipped by everything with two eyes and a pussy, Cullen Hunt would have better things to do than insist on ruining Frank’s life at every turn. But no. No, not at all.
After failing in his scheme to block the Peterson family from collecting the military’s death benefit for Bar—Frank’s own little brother—Hunt got busy conspiring with the gold digger who’d tricked Bar into marriage. And now… Now Hunt was going after Frank’s piece of ass.
Frank’s hand tightened around his beer, the tinted glass reflecting the dark granite countertop of his kitchen island. It had been bad enough to discover that Reynolds never reported back on her assignment yesterday. It was worse to learn why she hadn’t called in her story. Because she was busy fucking Cullen goddamn Hunt.
After everything Frank had done to secure the little journalist, to give the bitch a job when no one else would, to fucking spoon-feed her leads while she teased her way around the newsroom and never put out—after all that, the skank dove for Cullen’s cock the first chance she got. Did Sky imagine Frank wouldn’t find out? That he’d just keep waiting for her indefinitely while she sampled the whole damn town?
Well, at least Frank now understood why Hunt had thrown su
ch a temper tantrum at the Vault. The asshole thought he had some sort of claim on Skylar and had been acting in accordance. Because, as usual, Hunt had wanted what Frank already had.
Fucker.
Frank threw his empty beer bottle into his kitchen sink, feeling the slightest bit of relief at the sound of the glass shattering into hundreds of pieces. He imagined taking one of the sharpest shards and slitting Cullen’s throat with it, just to be rid of him once and for all. But then Frank leaned on his granite counter, taking some labored breaths. He had to be careful. The fucking Trident gods were beloved by many in Denton Valley, especially by members of the powers that be. If Frank crossed any of them in too direct a manner, he’d end up with more trouble than he could shake a stick at.
One tenet Frank lived by above all else was the value of plausible deniability.
Ironically, that lesson Hunt himself had taught Frank back in adolescence. And of course, it all started with a skank. Not any skank, however, but one Frank was taking to the eighth grade dance. Sick of being a virgin, Frank had chosen a girl he knew longed to spread her legs for him—and would most certainly have done so had Hunt not interfered. Reaching up, Frank rubbed the bump on his nose, which had never healed right from Hunt’s knuckles.
The worst part was that Hunt’s only punishment had been a fancy new school and a shiny uniform—but Frank had realized something important over that incident. If he’d gone through with what he (and secretly she) had wanted that evening, the whore might have twisted things into making Frank the villain. And since Frank had never been as lucky as the town’s precious Trident gods, there might have been a good dose of nastiness poured on his head.
In other words: distance was key.
