by Krista Wolf
He dropped limply on top of Holden like a bag of bricks.
In a burst of illumination, the overhead lights clicked on. For a few agonizing seconds, I was utterly blind.
“WHAT THE FU—”
Randall was there in a heartbeat, kneeling beside Holden. Shoving some big, dark-haired giant of a man off his friend’s chest.
“Hey!” he cried, blinking up at me. “What just happened?”
“I— I don’t know! This guy broke in… and they started fighting… and… and I…”
Holden groaned and sat up. Aside from a trickle of blood at one corner of his mouth, he looked okay. Relief flooded through me.
“Holy shit,” swore Randall. He looked from me, to the unconscious assailant, then back to me again. A smile formed. “You rang his bell!”
I was standing there, arms shaking, still holding my weapon. Which as it turned out, was an old brass boxing bell.
I gasped and dropped it with another CLANG.
“There’s a bunch of old cord over there,” Randall pointed, as he helped his friend to his feet. “Grab it?”
I moved quickly, returning with a long, thin coil of wool rope. Randall used it to tie the intruder’s hands behind his back, using a series of impressive knots I assumed only a sailor would know.
In the meantime, I slid an arm around Holden. He was upright now. He was no longer groaning, but he was holding his shoulder. He looked more angry than hurt.
“Gotta fix it again?” asked Randall, who was now binding the man’s feet.
Holden nodded mechanically.
“Hang on, I’ll help you in a sec—”
“Put some fucking clothes on first?” Holden grunted.
I had to stifle a laugh. In all the chaos, I hadn’t even noticed my other lover was still naked. He’d apparently leapt out of bed so quickly he hadn’t pulled on his boxers.
“I’m cool with the clothes being off,” I teased.
Holden grunted again. Randall shot me a look and winked.
“See? Barbie’s okay with it.”
He stood there looking hot and amazing, all muscles and tattoos and smile. And… dangling. Very impressively, might I add.
“I’m okay with lots of things,” I smirked, allowing my eyes the joy of a quick wander. “But being called ‘Barbie’ isn’t one of them.”
Randall chuckled apologetically and took off. When he was gone, I spun to face Holden.
“You okay?”
He nodded. “Shoulder’s dislocated. Happens a lot.” He wiped the blood from his chin using the back of one big hand. “We’ll put it back easy enough. But first…”
Together we looked down at the guy I’d practically brained. He was absolutely enormous. At least six and half feet tall, his arms and chest all thick with muscle.
He had a handsome, angular face too. One that made me inwardly glad I didn’t ruin it.
And he had dark hair.
A dark beard…
“HOLY SHIT!”
Both of my hands flew up to cover my mouth. It happened so fast I couldn’t stop it.
“What?” asked Holden.
For a long moment, I was utterly speechless.
“Andrea what is it?”
My eyes betrayed everything. He had only to look at them, and he knew.
“You know this guy?”
Taking my hands away, I slowly nodded. I couldn’t believe it. It just didn’t make any sense.
It was the guy from the palace, on the isle of Rhodes. The guy from the shadows of Kyrkos’s supposed bedchamber.
The guy I’d fucked.
Holden was still looking back at me, examining my face. Reading my expression. His eyes narrowed, like he’d discerned something.
That’s when Randall came jogging back. He stopped just in front of the dark-haired giant and planted his hands on his hips.
“Hey,” he said jovially. “What’d I miss?”
Twenty-One
MARCUS
Every time my eyes focused, the pain came rushing back. And it was crushing pain. All-consuming. My head felt like a concrete mold that had been filled with lead.
“Wake the fuck up, asshole…”
It took a while to remember where I was. Or even who I was. Or what I was doing in this dirty old boxing gym, surrounded by…
“Who are you?”
The man slapping my face repeatedly was covered in tattoos. He had a beard longer than mine. Constantly shifting, wild dark eyes…
“Nevermind who you are,” a second voice demanded. “Who sent you?”
I opened my mouth and spat. Blood came out. It landed a little too near the foot of the first guy, who jumped back deftly and swore at the same time.
“I’m gonna kick the shit out of—”
“Randall, stop.”
The third voice was feminine. Exceptionally beautiful. I turned my head…
… and there she was.
What the—
It was unmistakably her. The gorgeous blonde in the tight dress, from the upper chambers of the palace. The one who’d seduced me. Who’d fucked me. Who’d fled with me.
The one who’d nearly put an ice pick through my neck.
“You…” I gurgled.
All eyes were on her now. Both the others — the guy whose ass I kicked and the tattooed crazy one — were staring back at her, expectantly.
“How did you get here?” the blonde asked. “How did you find me?”
I coughed again, involuntarily. White sparks of pain flared from the base of my skull.
“I wasn’t looking for you,” I winced. “I was looking for them.”
Now the guys looked at each other. Everyone was in the dark, apparently. Everyone except me.
“I know who you are,” I continued. “You’re Lieutenant Holden Serrano. SEAL team ten. First platoon.”
He stared back at me without flinching. I looked at his partner and went on.
“And you’re Randall Forrester, same platoon. Don’t know your rank, though. Got a little hard to keep track, your file being so thick and everything.” I squinted at him and sniffed. “You were demoted a bunch of times, weren’t you?”
“Four in total,” he smiled back at me, as if proud. “Unless I missed one.”
“The only thing you missed was an asskicking, like the one I gave your friend here. If you hadn’t blindsided me from behind, I—”
“He didn’t.”
My eyes shifted back to the blonde. She was in a long sleep shirt, her legs tantalizingly bare. Her silk-spun hair was tousled, like she’d been sleeping on it, or—
“That would’ve been me.”
I started to laugh at first, then stopped myself short. The look in her eyes told me she wasn’t lying. That… plus I remembered how fast she’d been with the ice pick.
“Well then… fuck me.”
Her blue eyes flared, wildly. Silently, they seemed to say: I did that, too.
Slowly I let all the air out of my lungs and checked my bonds again. I was tied far too well to escape. Expertly, in fact. Right now I was sitting on a low, three-footed stool — the type used by trainers in the corners of a boxing ring, between rounds. Which made perfect sense considering where I was, but was still totally baffling at the same time.
“So are you going to tell us who you are?” asked Holden. “Or are we supposed to just guess at—”
“Corporal Marcus Alvarez,” I interrupted. “Third Ranger battalion, retired.”
“Corporal?” snickered Randall. “That’s all you made of yourself, before—”
“I left, yes.”
Flexing my calves, I checked my ankles. They were tied even tighter.
Damned SEALs…
“So tell us Corporal,” spat Holden, as if the word tasted foul. “Why would you be looking for us? And what the hell makes you desperate enough to break in here in the middle of the night?”
“Alexander Kyrkos. He’s the one looking for you.”
The SEALs glanced at
each other. Though they were trying to hide it, I could see the concern on the faces.
“Not you specifically,” I amended. “I’m still pretty sure they don’t know your names. But they’re looking for you here in Athens. And they definitely know her.”
The blonde stiffened a little, and my heart fluttered. It was almost uncanny.
She looks exactly like her.
I shook my head. No, not exactly, but certainly close. She had the same build, the same pouty lips and platinum blonde hair. All the same curves, too…
She looks just like Haley.
A different type of pain returned, boiling up from within me. It was a pain I was sure I’d buried. A wracking, debilitating pain that had almost killed me the first time around.
“So yes,” I continued, before I was consumed with looking at her again. “I know who you are. I know you’re about as ex-Navy as I’m ex-Army. I know you came here with the intentions of killing Kyrkos, and I even know why.”
Holden’s head tilted an almost imperceptible degree to one side. It was a gesture of warning. A little slice of body language that told me I needed to be careful with whatever I said next.
“But I still don’t know who she is…”
The blonde staring back at me shifted a little in her stance. She looked comfortable standing between these guys. A little too comfortable.
“Well that’s funny then,” said Holden. “Because she definitely seems to know you.”
“Oh we’ve met,” I admitted, biting back a smirk. My eyes found hers, and a look passed between us. “We uh… bumped into each other on Rhodes. Didn’t we?”
Still holding my gaze, she slowly nodded. Even the way she folded her arms reminded me of Haley.
“You’re after Kyrkos too,” she said eventually. “You were there with me, in the upper rooms of the palace. Hunting him, just like I was.”
The two SEALs seemed to be at a loss, at least for now. I could tell it wasn’t a position they were accustomed to.
“So you’re an assassin?” Randall guessed, raising an eyebrow. He expression had changed to an almost child-like intrigue.
“I’m independent,” I said, ducking the question.
“And who were you working for last night?”
I paused for a moment. The girl’s eyes were still on mine. It occurred to me that I didn’t even know her name.
“Last night was for myself,” I said. “No one else.”
“So you want Kyrkos dead. Is that it?”
I nodded again, this time choking back a rising anger. “I don’t just want it,” I growled. “I need it.”
The words came out laced with more emotion than I would’ve liked. Still they were raw. Undeniably truthful.
In the midst of their scrutiny, I closed my eyes to a fresh round of pain. My head was still ringing… still swimming with a thick fog that made thinking straight almost impossible. And although I couldn’t reach up to feel it, I could tell there was a peach-sized lump at the base of my skull.
It was the girl who finally moved. She drew a knife from somewhere near Randall’s belt, walked straight over to stand behind me…
… and sawed through my bonds.
“Andrea…” Holden protested. “What the hell?”
Andrea.
The ropes binding my arms dropped to the floor first. As she knelt to work on my ankles, I began rubbing the circulation back into my wrists.
Even her name is beautiful.
“He’s not lying,” she said simply. “He came here freely, to warn us. And I know for a fact he’s after Kyrkos.”
She finished with a jerk of the blade, then turned to face the three of us at once.
“Like it or not we’re all on the same side.”
Twenty-Two
ANDREA
It was crazy, seeing him here. Seeing him again. He looked even bigger now that we weren’t draped in shadows, or bent over from running full-tilt through the opulent palace halls.
Also, seeing him made my stomach do a sexy backflip.
Andrea, stop.
I couldn’t stop. Not after what we’d done. At the time I thought I’d been hate-fucking Xander Kyrkos — giving the murderous asshole one last happy sendoff before I stabbed him through the throat. But no. As it turned out, I’d fucked a very sexy stranger. One with shoulders that seemed more like a wingspan, and arms so big they looked to be the same diameter of my thighs.
And my thighs were pretty muscular.
Now that I was looking him over, my whole body tingled without my permission. It was like it remembered him. Like my pussy recalled the indescribably hot way he’d plunged into me from behind, pile-driving me face first into that bed until tears of euphoria were streaming down my cheeks.
Fucking him as Xander Kyrkos had been so forbidden, so taboo. So vile and disgusting and glorious and exciting. A clash of extremes — the best and worst of everything. All of it, surging through my brain, temporarily slaking my thirst to kill him with a nourishing flood of lust and desire.
But then learning he wasn’t Kyrkos…
Well, that was thrilling too. Like feeling guilty about something secretly magnificent… and then having that guilt lifted like a veil, all at once, in one quick rush of total absolution.
I’d run through the palace holding his hand, still seeping from where he’d ravaged me. At the time, I couldn’t think much about this incredibly hot stranger who’d given me the fucking of my life. But now…
Now he was standing before me, in the flesh. The same square-cut jaw, same intense, penetrating eyes. Same chiseled body. Same long, thick, incredibly hard—
“Alright,” said Holden, breaking me from my daydream. “What now?”
“Now we go,” said Marcus.
Marcus. Shit, even his name was hot.
“Why go now?” asked Randall. He yawned. “What time is it anyway?”
Marcus ignored him. “If I was able to find you, how long do you think it’ll take Indigo?”
The question was met with a span of uncomfortable silence. I knew right then and there, we were definitely leaving.
“Alright,” nodded Holden. “Randall, gather our shit.”
“Mind telling me where we’re going first?”
“Anywhere but here.”
The SEALs were fast and efficient. We dressed quickly, and it took them less than five minutes to gather everything they needed — my stuff included — while Marcus and I watched the door. At first it was awkward, standing there with him. Neither of us said a thing, like two shy dates in the back of a school dance, each waiting for the other to make the first move. And then:
“So how long have you been fucking them?”
I choked — physically choked — on my tongue. “W—What?”
“You didn’t think I just broke in here, did you?”
I stared back at him, mouth open, still totally at a loss for words.
“Fine,” he sighed placatingly, “how long have you been working with them?”
“I’m… I’m not. I mean, I wasn’t.”
“Obviously they extracted you from Rhodes. There’s no other way you got off that island by yourself.”
“I’ve got no reason to lie,” I shrugged. “I met them ten minutes after I met you.”
His mouth curled into a wicked smirk. “Met me?”
Somehow I returned his smirk with one of my own. “You know what I mean.”
Marcus nudged the door open another inch with his foot, and checked the alley. When he was satisfied he looked back at me, then threw a quick glance over to the pair of mattresses in the middle of the boxing ring.
“So was it fun?”
The nerve! I couldn’t believe the balls on him! And yet…
“Yeah. It was.”
“I’m talking about me, not them.”
I shrugged again. “Okay. You both were.”
He laughed — a deep gruff laugh that was as baritone as it was honest. I wasn’t sure why, but I got the distinct
impression it was his first good laugh in a very long time.
“Well at least you’ve finally got pants on,” he said, looking me over from top to bottom. “I guess that’s a first for us.”
Our gazes met, and for a long moment neither of us said anything. Something unspoken passed between us though. Something akin to an understanding.
“Andrea… are you okay?”
The gesture was sweet. Genuine. I nodded back at him and smiled. “You said my name.”
“Well considering what we’ve been through…” he said with a wink. “I figured I should probably know it, yeah.”
Voices floated down the corridor, in our direction. Holden and Randall were finally coming.
“Oh, and what happened between us?” said Marcus, abruptly. “In that bedchamber?”
He leaned in close, his voice dropping to a whisper. As his lips brushed my ear, a shockwave of exhilaration rippled through my body.
“We’re definitely doing that again.”
Twenty-Three
ANDREA
We dropped Holden off in front of a low, grey building, just as the sun cracked the sky. The four of us needed to get somewhere new, someplace safe. Somewhere we could regroup, and figured out what happened next.
All of that depended on Holden’s contacts.
“We’ll contact you when we get to where we’re going,” said Marcus, slipping Holden what amounted to an antique phone. It was pre-flip-phone. One of the oldest cellular phones I’d ever seen. “Otherwise—”
“No chatter,” Holden nodded. “Got it.”
As for Marcus, he had allies of his own. ‘Friends’ he called them, who were supplying him with intel and what he referred to as ‘more in the way of hardware.’ That part seemed to excite Randall. Then again, Randall was an excitable person. He’d turned it into a useful trait, though. One that also made him lovable and endearing.
A hour later we were still in Athens. Still driving randomly through the city’s streets, which were now starting to finally wake up. We were in a drab green truck, an old one too, picked up in an alley three blocks away from the gym. I wasn’t sure if Marcus owned it or stole it. I didn’t care either way.
