Holding Fire

by April Hunt

  “See!” Trey glowered. “I have a surplus of friends. You have jack shit.”

  “This isn’t going to be the end of it,” Alley Man growled. “No way in hell am I just going to walk away now.”

  He released his hold on Elle’s neck and flung her forward. Her balance lost, she tumbled headfirst into something hard and unforgiving. Pain erupted on the side of her head, followed by a gorgeous display of stars. Around her, voices shouted. People moved.

  Gentle hands brushed the hair off of her face. The ground. She was lying on a cold, hard ground.

  “I think she’s okay,” Charlie’s voice drifted in on a fog. “Bloody hell. We have to get her out of here. Trey! Leave him. We have to get her out of here. Now.”

  “Give her to me.”

  Elle barely registered the fact that she was moving when she felt a warm, thundering wall beneath her cheek. She burrowed her nose into the familiar musky scent and felt the hovering dark cloud close in around her.

  “Sweetness, you can sniff me later. Right now I need you to stay awake.” Trey’s voice was weighted heavily with concern.

  Elle tried to listen…but the dark cloud swept right in and took the stars with it.

  Chapter Six

  Nursing a slight headache, Elle inconspicuously pinched herself on the thigh and hoped she’d wake up to realize that everything that’d happened in the last few hours was nothing more than an extremely high-adrenaline dream—the airport, the father-daughter chat, the gala. Everything.

  But nothing happened.

  She either needed a large-bore needle to the ass, or to accept that at some point, her life had taken a drastic turn, morphing into a real-life action movie; or maybe a romantic comedy, considering her one-night stand and the man responsible for her protection were one and the same—and sitting next to her in the back of an SUV.

  Elle fought the urge to glance at Trey and instead, stared out the window. They’d left the city two and a half hours ago, and in the last thirty minutes, there hadn’t been much around in the way of scenery. Behind them, the headlights of the SUV carrying the rest of Alpha Security occasionally lit up a lone tree or, like now, a handful of glowing eyes from resident deer.

  Civilization had long since disappeared.

  Eventually, she’d start demanding answers to the questions loitering in her head, but every bit of energy currently in her possession went to avoiding Trey. And it was difficult, almost impossible, when the heat of his gaze shifted—and stayed—on her.

  God, the things he’d heard at the gala—about James, the accident. The only good to come out of that conversation, other than that it eventually ended, was that James hadn’t taken her hospital slip-up and elaborated for all to hear. It wasn’t others knowing about her condition that bothered her. It was what had come after; how naive and trusting she’d been in thinking that people who were supposed to care would actually be there for support.

  Instead, they’d torn her down—and Elle wasn’t going to put herself in that position again.

  Ever.

  Unable to resist Trey completely, she performed the side-eye glimpse she’d perfected while working in a pediatric unit. An unapologetic intensity radiated from his body. That had been fine in Thailand, when she’d thought she could enjoy his strength and then walk away, but it was beginning to unnerve her in her uncertain future.

  “One step closer to home-sweet-home.” Rafe’s announcement veered Elle’s attention away from Trey to the open field in front of them.

  An airplane hangar loomed in the distance, the only building—or anything—in the immediate area except for the jet sitting atop a macadam runway. Rafe pulled up to the plane just as the stairs descended.

  Car doors opened and closed as everyone piled out of the SUVs. Elle caught sight of a tall, dark-haired man unfolding himself from the driver’s seat of the second SUV. With a full beard and dark eyes, he looked a bit older than the rest of Alpha. His hair was still more pepper than salt, but there was something in the way he carried himself…almost as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.

  This man had seen a lot, Elle thought to herself.

  He spoke with Vince and Rafe a minute before letting the two men head toward the plane.

  “Miss Monroe.” He approached, holding out his hand, and introduced himself. “I’m Sean Stone. Sorry we couldn’t meet during better circumstances.”

  Logan sauntered by, a heavy duffel braced on his shoulder. He clapped Sean hard on the back and kept going. “This here’s Alpha’s head honcho. The Boss Man. The Captain.”

  “So you’re the one who can tell me exactly what’s happening?” she asked directly. “Or are you the one who gave the order to keep me in the dark?”

  There were a few throat-clearings as people shuffled around.

  “I’m sorry for all the hush-hush, but it’s what’s best for now.” Sean’s apology didn’t really sound like an apology. “Just know that we have your safety in mind. Which means that we need to get you on that plane.”

  Elle wanted to disagree, but she also knew staying in the open probably wasn’t a good idea.

  Sean turned to Trey, who stood just behind her shoulder. “You and Elle are taking the plane back to headquarters. Vince and Rafe are going with you. Chase, too, so he can help keep an eye on her head. The rest of us will drive the SUVs back.”

  “Sounds good,” Trey acknowledged. “We’ll see you back at headquarters.”

  They boarded the plane, and Vince raised the stairs before he and Rafe disappeared into the cockpit. A third man she didn’t recognize stepped out from a back room—an entire freaking room—on the plane. Sweet heavens. She was starting to think Trey didn’t have any ugly friends.

  Tall, blond, and broad, he flashed them a smile. “Was starting to think I was going to have this entire bird to myself.”

  Trey palmed the small of her back and introduced her. “Elle, this is Chase, our medic. He’s going to take a look at your head.”

  “I’m fine.” She waved off the concern.

  “But he’s checking you out anyway.”

  Trey’s tone of voice made his words sound more like a demand than a suggestion. Hands braced on her hips, she turned to look him in the eye. “I’m a trauma nurse. I think I’d be able to tell if I have a concussion—which I don’t.”

  He folded his arms across his chest and didn’t even blink. “And as the person who carried your unconscious body out of the hotel, I say you need to get checked.”

  From somewhere within the plane, a clock ticked. No one had ever infuriated Elle so much—not even her father or James. When she went toe-to-toe against them, she wanted to throttle them. Period. When she butted heads with Trey, she had to stop herself from throwing herself into his arms and shoving her tongue down his throat.

  “This plane isn’t taking off until it happens, sweetness,” Trey warned.

  “Fine.” Elle clenched her teeth and turned toward a waiting—and uncomfortable-looking—Chase. “You can check my pupil reactions, but I’m telling you that they’re fine. I don’t even have a headache anymore. I know my name, the date. The only thing I don’t know is where I am or where I’m going, and that’s because no one will actually tell me.”

  Elle took a seat on the leather couch and waited. Chase knelt warily, his penlight in hand. “I’m beginning to see why you and the doctor are friends.”

  Shay.

  A swarm of guilt flooded Elle at the thought of her best friend in this madness because of her. God, Elle wouldn’t blame Shay for disowning her—or moving and not sending her the new address.

  “Were you the friend that Trey said was with her?” Elle asked.

  Chase nodded as he studied her pupils. “I was. That woman could curse the paint off walls—especially when she’s worried about you.”

  Elle smiled, wondering if Shay had pulled out the curses she’d learned from her Sicilian grandmother. “The feeling goes both ways. Are you sure she’s okay?”

/>   “Oh, she was seriously pissed at first—at not being with you. But she eventually realized that you’re where you need to be.” Chase skated a look to Trey, who was watching from a distance, and murmured, “And go easy on him, will you? I know he makes not throttling him really damn hard, but he means well…and just wants to make sure you get where you need to be too.

  “You’re all good,” Chase announced a little louder, and stood. “I think I’m going to keep Vince and Rafe company up front—unless you kids need a referee.”

  “Bite me, Kincaid,” Trey offered.

  Chase laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Careful. I hear you may need a little backup when we get to headquarters. Be nice or I’ll take away my support.”

  Chase disappeared toward the front of the plane, leaving her and Trey alone. Trey’s presence filled the interior of the plane. He tracked her as she finally took the time to study her surroundings, making her feel like a bug under a microscope. She wasn’t sure what he was thinking, or if he expected her to say something.

  Heck, she didn’t know what to say that didn’t sound awkward or ungrateful. He’d given her the best sex of her life and had also saved her rear end—twice.

  “You can relax here on the couches.” Trey gestured to a pair of leather sofas. “Or there’s a bedroom in the back, if you want to lie down. It’s not a long flight, maybe an hour and a half max. Bathroom is halfway down the hall.”

  Elle took one couch while Trey took the other. Their knees brushed from the close proximity, and she had to fight against doing it again, but on purpose.

  “So,” she broke the silence, “I’m sure this is probably shocking to hear, but my father has the tendency to rub people the wrong way…rub them to the point of blisters. If I had a security detail every time it happened, I’d never, ever be alone. What makes this time different?”

  “You mean other than the fact that these are more than just threats?” Trey lifted a single eyebrow and propped his elbows on his knees. “They’ve attempted to abduct you twice now, each time a more brazen attempt than the last. Are you seriously about to try and downgrade it?”

  Elle’s smarted at his words. “Considering I’ve had a gun drilled into my ribs twice in the past twelve hours, no, I’m not downgrading it. But I’m wondering who my father pissed off, and the list is too long to narrow down easily—or at all. You know what? I think I am going to go lie down.”

  She stood, planning on getting as far away from Trey as the private jet allowed, when his hiss of pain stopped her. His arm was outstretched in her direction, but his attention—and hers—was focused on his red-tipped fingers.

  “What happened?” Elle crossed the distance to him in a rush. Despite his protest, she turned his arm to search for the source of the blood and found a frayed slash in his dress shirt and a painful-looking scrape on the back of his bicep.

  Trey tried pulling his arm from her inspection. “It’s just a scratch. I don’t even know how it got there. I’ll slap a bandage on it and it’ll be fine. No worries.”

  Elle drilled him with her best nurse’s glare, the one known to strike fear in even the unruliest of patients. “I’ve seen ingrown hairs put men bigger than you in the intensive care unit. It doesn’t take much for just a scratch to get infected. Tell me, Mr. Commando, how will you do your job then? Can you work your gun trigger with your tongue?”

  “Don’t underestimate the talent of my tongue, Elle.”

  Like she could. Her face heated with the not-so-hidden innuendo, and when Trey’s lips twitched in the formation of a grin, she looked back to her task. She felt marginally better seeing it with her own eyes. The fabric of his dress shirt had protected him from a more serious laceration.

  “First aid kit?” she asked.

  He nodded toward the small kitchenette. “Under the cabinet in the corner, but this really isn’t necessary.”

  “Yes, it is.” She gently pushed him back down onto the couch. “Sit and be quiet.”

  Elle retrieved the kit and used the time to try and pull herself together before kneeling between his outspread thighs; thighs that strained the fabric of his suit pants; thighs that practically hugged her waist. She fought to get the jitters out of her hands as she worked.

  Trey’s proximity affected her like no other patient she’d ever had. Three seconds ago, she wanted to wring his neck. Now she was dangerously close to begging him to take her to that aforementioned bed down the hall and strip her out of this dress.

  Work. She needed to focus on work. “Take your shirt off.”

  “Excuse me?” Their eyes locked. There was that damn smirk again.

  “Shirt. Off.” Damn, those words were a lot harder to summon than she’d like. “I need to clean the entire thing, and your shirt’s going to get in the way. You may be the professional when it comes to guns and grunting and stuff, but this is what I do. Shirt. Please.”

  “Well, since you said ‘please.’”

  Elle thought she’d sufficiently prepared herself to come face-to-chest with Trey again. She hadn’t. He started undoing his dress shirt, and each time another button popped through the hole, Elle’s mouth got a little drier. Her gawk-fest started at his chest and slid down to where his abs put a generic six-pack to shame. No wonder she’d gone a little out of her mind back in that Thailand bar.

  Whoa boy. Her gaze caught the line of tattooed script skating up the right side of his torso, reminding her that only a few short days ago she’d counted—and tasted—every colorful ink work on his gorgeous body.

  “What does the tattoo on your side say?” She returned her focus back to his arm.

  “Always fight. Always live. Always love.”

  Well, that wasn’t what she expected him to say. “That’s kind of poetic. Do you read poetry?”

  He watched her clean his scrape and reach for the antibiotic ointment. “Do those songs they make you recite in kindergarten count?”

  Danger! Danger! Humor and sexiness definitely didn’t help keep her mind from wandering to dangerous places. She needed metaphorical distance, and quick. “Guess you probably don’t get a lot of reading time in with a job like yours. Rescues. Bodyguarding. Although I have to admit, it’s pretty smart of you to sleep with your… What did you call me? Asset? It ensures you’re close to them at all times, right?”

  Mission accomplished.

  Trey’s smirk melted, doling out a sliver of guilt to go along with her much needed buffer.

  She finished cleaning and bandaging his bicep, then stood, with every intention of hiding in that bedroom for the remainder of the flight. Two steps in, his hand captured her wrist.

  Elle couldn’t look him in the eye. Instead, she studied his fingers, long and wide, with the exact right amount of callus to let a woman know he didn’t work in an office. He used his hands and he used them well…both in his job and on her.

  And that right there was the problem. He affected her too much not to make her nervous.

  Chase’s voice announced their impending takeoff, and Elle was forced to sit. She chose the couch opposite Trey and prayed for a quick takeoff. He didn’t speak. She didn’t even know if he blinked. He stared, silently searching every inch of her face before his focus dropped to her mouth. On reflex, her tongue flicked out to moisten her dry lips.

  The second the unbuckle sign lit above them next to the PA system, Elle did so quickly. But Trey was quicker. He was unbuckled, on his feet, and standing in her way before she could make an escape to the back of the plane.

  Gently cupping her cheek, he tilted her face—and her eyes—up to his.

  “Is that what you seriously think?” His thumb faintly brushed over her dry bottom lip as he questioned her. “You think I’d sleep with you just to keep you close?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know what you’d do—because I don’t know you.”

  “You know me, sweetness. Biblically.”

  She slipped from Trey’s touch, despite the fact she longed to close the gap even more
. It was like her body was magnetized toward his. “I know what you look like naked. I know you’re badass with a gun in your hand. And I know you obviously don’t like to be argued with. But I don’t know you, just like I don’t know a thing about what the hell’s happening in my own life.”

  “We’re going to tell you everything we know. We’re just going to—”

  “Make sure I’m out of danger first,” Elle finished. “That’s what your boss said too. But it doesn’t mean that I have to like it.”

  “When the hell would you have liked me to give you an update? While I was preventing you from getting abducted the first time, the second time, or when you were lying unconscious in my arms?”

  “How about before you slept with me!” Elle shouted. It wasn’t often she raised her voice. Maybe it was that she’d never been quite so fired up. She took a deep breath and summoned her inner calm. “You know what? It’s fine. What we had was one night, and one night doesn’t deserve life stories and meaningful conversations. So you can keep your secrets and your agendas to yourself.”

  “Is that really what it was?”

  She gave him a confused look. “What do you mean?”

  “Is what happened really a one-night thing?” Trey clarified. He took a small step closer.

  The question, innocent enough, made her heart jump. “Considering that it happened the one night…in technical terms, that is what they consider a one-night stand.”

  Trey’s heated gaze feasted on her face. He took another step. “One-night stands are meant to be fast.” Step. “Forgetful.” Another step. “You do what you need to do to get that release and then you move the fuck on.”

  Elle’s throat went dry.

  Trey stepped so close that their shoes touched, and despite the fact that she knew she should move, she couldn’t. Her feet were rooted into place. “You’re right on all fronts.”

  Trey’s arms wrapped around her waist, so slowly, so gently, that she could’ve pulled away at any time. She didn’t. She rested her hands on his bare chest and felt the quickening thump of his heart beneath her palms.