“You mean Abby? She’d kick your ass if I’d let her.” Jacoby shut the door behind him and strolled over to the couch, like he owned the place. He shrugged his leather jacket off and flopped onto the couch, all the while holding Ward in his dark-eyed gaze. “And I know you’re calling me a fucker in your mind,” he offered.
“I’ll call you that to your face,” Ward shot back. But his tone softened when he said, “I’m glad you’re okay. You have no idea.”
“I think I probably do.” Jacoby’s voice was suddenly thick with emotion. “Abby hated you because I couldn’t.”
“I made a promise and I broke it. I fucked up,” Ward stated, automatically glancing down at Jacoby’s hand, noting that Jacoby had put the ring back on for this reunion.
“As much as I’d love for you to fall on your sword for me, I can’t let you fall alone,” Jacoby told him. “I fucked up too. But she’s gone. So we did it—we saved people from any more hurt. And we saved ourselves in the process. And Bren.”
“Is he speaking to you?”
“I didn’t give him a choice. He’s still not thrilled with me…but he understands.”
“Yeah. Ditto,” Ward said.
Jacoby bent down and unzipped his boots and took them off, throwing them to the side of the couch, directly in the path that Ward would take to the kitchen. Jacoby didn’t do it on purpose. It was habit. And it took Ward back in time with a flash of memory.
Before Jessica’s attack on him, he and Jacoby had been sleeping together for five out of the six years they’d known each other, the closeness between them growing naturally because of what Ward had helped him through and the amount of time spent with really just the two of them as Jacoby healed…and Ward became his confessor.
“You were my sin eater,” Jacoby said tightly.
Ward didn’t disagree with him. Couldn’t. Still…“They weren’t your sins, J.”
“But I did have them.”
“I wanted to take away all your pain. I’d never been able to do that before. It’d always been about absorbing the evil.” But with Jacoby, it’d been so different.
“All those years…in the beginning, we both pushed each other away. Constantly.” Jacoby’s voice sounded far away at the remembering. “But we couldn’t stay apart for long.”
Jacoby spoke the truth—they’d never really lived together in the traditional sense. Jacoby always went into the field for training and on jobs away from Ward, and he’d used Ward’s house like a flophouse.
Ward hadn’t ever objected. Mainly, it’d been a perfect situation for a workaholic like himself and a young man he was afraid wouldn’t truly live his life if he were tied to Ward. When he told Jacoby this, Jacoby stared at him, then smiled and said, “Yeah. But now?”
“I want you tied,” Ward said roughly.
“Sounds dirty.”
“I’ll give it to you any way you want it. Every way.”
“Because I love you,” Jacoby said firmly.
“Because I love you,” Ward echoed. “Because we made it through to the other side.”
*
Ward knew they’d made it when Jacoby pulled into the driveway…but there was still more to get out. Jacoby knew it too, finally managed, “I wasn’t holding back—you know that,” his words spilling out quickly. “At least not to hurt you.”
Ward stroked Jacoby’s cheek with his knuckles. “Babe, I know that.”
“Do you really, in here?” Jacoby tapped on Ward’s chest with the edge of his fist over Ward’s heart.
“At one point, you told me I didn’t have a heart.”
“Nah. I always knew it was in there. Somewhere.” Jacoby smiled, leaned in until their foreheads touched.
Ward closed his eyes in anticipation, because when Jacoby was feeling sentimental he was almost shy. It was a vulnerable side Ward rarely saw, and whenever he caught a glimpse of it, he took full advantage. “Yes, well, you bring it out in me. You’ve had that effect on me from day one.”
Jacoby pulled back a little, tilted his head. “You told me once that we start out keeping our secrets, until one day we wake up and realize our secrets have started keeping us. That’s what happened, to both of us.”
Ward couldn’t argue. “My own words, thrown back at me,” he muttered instead.
“I’m going to start doing that more often.”
“And here I thought you didn’t take the time to listen to me.”
Jacoby gave a wan smile. “We can’t do that anymore. Let’s drink to it. Got any more whiskey?”
Half an hour later, with some light food in them to absorb the alcohol that burned down their gullets, they sat in Ward’s bedroom. They were no longer prisoners while Jessica roamed free…unless Ward let her continue to take over his mind.
That fateful night when she’d carved it can always be worse into his chest, the cuts were so deep that getting rid of it would require a skin graft that had a fifty percent chance of not working. Twenty letters that branded him, the same twenty she’d carved into Jacoby’s chest and back, along with multiple other brand-like markings. Now, Jacoby rubbed the tattoos on his forearms, his only concession to the bureau’s request to keep them covered so he wouldn’t scare other victims.
That had hit home for Jacoby—Ward remembered him going out to the tattoo parlor immediately after that talking-to from Cullers.
“He’s serious,” Cullers had told Ward. “Always a good sign that he can care enough about people he has no ties to.”
“If he’d refused, would you have kicked him out?”
Cullers’s answer had been, “I knew he wouldn’t.”
Ward reached out and ran light fingertips over the tattoos. If Jacoby had refused, left the bureau…
Don’t go there. Too many possibilities, none of which actually happened.
It was too soon to know whether or not Jacoby would remain in the field, or even in the FBI at all. In time, he’d know the right thing to do…and Ward would follow his lead.
“You’re thinking too hard,” Jacoby told him. He was on his third glass of whiskey, his cheeks flushed…and he was half-naked. They’d been making out like teenagers as they reveled in their freedom.
“I wasn’t the only one.”
“I was thinking about sex,” Jacoby murmured.
“Shocking,” Ward said dryly.
“I was thinking about that first time—our first time,” Jacoby clarified. “I wasn’t thinking it would be like that. I mean, I was working by rote. Auto-pilot. The immediate physical pain was pretty well gone but everything else was just starting, and I didn’t want to deal. I was feeling things and I wanted to be numb because it was goddamned scary. And I was always numb during sex, so I wanted to use you to numb me. But I knew it wouldn’t work because…fuck, when you touched me.” He shook his head at the memory and Ward’s cock swelled just thinking about that.
He remembered being surprised at Jacoby’s responsiveness and had wondered if Jacoby had been faking it. But no one was that good of an actor when they were coming. No one. “It was a good night. First of many.”
“Surprised the hell out of me,” Jacoby mumbled, his cheeks flushing a little. “I got way more than I’d bargained for.”
“Same here.”
“Want to do it again?” Jacoby asked hopefully.
Ward reached over to pull Jacoby close to him. He linked their right hands so their rings clinked together. “Every second of every day.”
*
Don’t miss MIRROR ME: Book 1 in the Mirror series, on sale now
Kayla Peters hasn’t been Claire Cooper for six years…but the past is about to catch up with her, and nothing will ever be the same.
Kayla’s in witness protection, being hidden from her twin sister by the US Marshals Office. When Kayla moves in next to a former Special Forces operative, she discovers that he’s got a dark, dangerous past of his own…and that he might be the only person who can help her survive.
Teige doesn’t want to like
Kayla. Since the death of his CO and Teige’s retirement from Delta Force, he’d been taking on the most dangerous jobs, pressing the luck he feels has followed him his entire life. He’s convinced it’ll run out, because he knows no one can be that lucky all the time. And when he discovers who Kayla really is, and what kind of trouble’s following her, he realizes he’s up against the most dangerous—and personal—job of his career.
*
And coming in 2016, WALK IN MY SHADOW:
Mirror Novel #3
(Featuring Abby Daniels)
*
visit Superiorz.Club for more ebooks
About the Author
Stephanie Tyler is the New York Times Bestselling author of romance novels spanning multiple genres, including Romantic Suspense, New Adult, Paranormal Romance and Contemporary Romance. She’s a hybrid author who writes for multiple publishers, including Random House, NAL/Penguin, Harlequin, Carina Press, Mammoth Books, Belle Books and Samhain Publishing, as well as Riptide (under SE Jakes) and Indie publishing. Her books have been translated into half a dozen languages, nominated for an RT Reader’s choice award and garnered top picks from RT Magazine as well as starred reviews from Publishers Weekly. She’s a frequent workshop presenter and has contributed stories for anthologies for charities, including SEAL of My Dreams, which has raised over 150K for the Veterans Medical Association.
SE Jakes is the pen name for New York Times Bestselling author Stephanie Tyler, and half the co-write team of Sydney Croft. First published in 2011, SE Jakes has quickly risen to be a bestselling author in the LGBT romance genre, as well as a fan favorite. Her books are frequently highlighted in USA Today and her books have been reviewed by Library Journal and RT Books Magazine. She’s been nominated by several sites for Favorite M/M author of 2013 and finaling in the Goodreads MM Romance Readers Choice Awards in 7 categories. She’s a hybrid author writes for Riptide Publishing and Samhain Publishing, and she Indie publishes as well.
Sydney Croft is the alter-ego of Stephanie Tyler and Larissa Ione, two New York Times bestselling authors who blend their very different writing interests into adventurous tales of erotic paranormal fiction. Together, they developed a world where people with extraordinary abilities, like the power to control storms, could live and work with others like them. The series has been described as “Erotica meets the X-Men,” and is unique in its own “erotic super hero romance” niche. Larissa and Stephanie live in different states and communicate almost entirely through email, though they often get together for conferences and book signings.
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