by Joss Wood
It took all she had to keep the Thank God from passing her lips. She’d heard a little about Hell Week and she knew it was, literally, one of the hardest tests of mental and physical endurance on the planet. Mike had said it was the worst week of his life, and she wondered what it was that these men had that allowed them to succeed when most of their comrades didn’t.
“How did you make it through?” she asked, curious. “Mike said that he nearly quit a couple of times. He said that everyone wants to give up at some point, so what kept him going? What kept you going?”
The three men just looked at her, but she could see that they were processing her question, thinking about why they pushed through.
Kai was the first to answer. “I didn’t have a plan B. It was either become a frogman or go back to the streets. I wanted, for the first time, to succeed at something important. To be the best of the best.”
Reagan turned her glance to Sawyer, wanting Axl to answer last.
“My uncle was a SEAL and, in my eight-year-old eyes, he was invincible. He was big and ripped and I thought he could do anything. Ever since then, all I ever wanted and cared about was being a SEAL. So as sleep deprived, exhausted, and starving and crazy cold as I was, I wanted to be part of the teams more than anything in my whole life. Nothing meant more to me, so I wouldn’t let myself quit,” Sawyer quietly stated.
Reagan allowed the handle of her now-empty coffee cup to dangle from her finger as she waited for Axl to answer her question. If he did, he would surprise her. In fact, she was impressed that she’d received any type of answer from Kai. He wasn’t a great communicator but he’d become a lot better since falling in love with Flick. Sawyer, although not precisely chatty, was more open than Kai, but Axl never explained, never opened up. He’d created the persona of being big and bad, and answering questions was not who he was or what he did.
Reagan only realized that she was holding her breath after he started to speak. “For me, and for all of us, including Mike, I think we also saw Hell Week as a competition. We didn’t just want to survive, we wanted to be seen as being the best of the best.”
Sawyer and Kai nodded their agreement. “Mike was super competitive. God, the man was a machine. He just plowed on through. Single-minded and tenacious, so driven.”
“My dad is like that,” Reagan commented.
Sawyer looped an arm around her neck and rubbed the top of her head with his knuckles. “And you’re not? Honey, you don’t get apples from orange trees.”
Reagan scowled at him as she stepped away and tried to smooth down her hair. “Thanks for that.” She looked at Axl, who was staring at the rope climb. “That was Mike . . . What got you through Hell Week?”
Axl shrugged. “I was too stubborn, too stupid to quit.”
“That’s a cop-out answer, Rhodes,” Reagan murmured.
Axl scowled at her as he rubbed the back of his neck, obviously uncomfortable. “I couldn’t leave them, wouldn’t leave them.”
“Kai and Sawyer?” Reagan asked.
“And Mike. If I quit, they would have to haul the damn boat without me. I wasn’t going to do that to them.”
Kai reached out and clasped Axl’s shoulder in a brief but telling show of affection. “That’s the thing about training, Reags, something that civilians never realize. Hard training like that weeds out the douche bags, the selfish, and the insecure. Army, Navy, security operations like ours need the team players, the people we can count on to be there when we need each other.”
“It was the ultimate test of tenacity, of determination. But it showed us that we were capable of so much more than we ever thought we could endure,” Sawyer added.
Axl sent her a sexy, semi-evil grin. “And that’s kind of what we want to do to you. And our other possibility.”
“And who is that? Jack?” Reagan demanded, frustrated.
“That’s not your problem. Your problem is how we intend to torture you,” Axl calmly stated.
Couldn’t be worse than standing in front of him, not being able to touch him, not being able to get him naked. Judging by the way the corners of Axl’s eyes crinkled and the twitch in his lips, he knew exactly what she was thinking. Dammit.
Pulling her thoughts way from getting naked and sliding all over him, Reagan turned her attention to the obstacle course. “So, what are you thinking?”
“A twenty-four-hour endurance race,” Kai said, sounding far more enthusiastic than he should. “A long run—”
“How long exactly is long?” Reagan asked, her heart sinking.
“Forty-odd miles,” Sawyer replied. “Then you’d swim five miles and then you’d have to do about eight laps of the obstacle course. Rope climbs, slant walls, mud crawls, upper-body pull-ups, carrying jerry cans and bags of sand. Ramp walls, mud and sand dunes separated by waist-deep troughs of water. Under, through, and over walls.”
Reagan knew that he was referring to wooden walls which you scuttled under, launched yourself through a window in the second wall and over the top of the third. She swallowed nervously; she was fit and toned and strong but this was the closest she’d ever come to Hell Week and they knew it. Trying to keep her face composed, she shrugged once. “You have a few of the obstacles, but you’d have to build more and that seems like a bit of a waste for just me and the other candidate.”
Axl nodded his agreement. “We were discussing that. The thing is, as soon as we put only two of you through a course like that, the rest of the agents are going to wonder why and will start asking questions. We have always kept MKR under the radar, and I don’t want those questions raised.”
Judging by the smirks on their faces, she knew that she was going to be doing this test come hell or high water and they’d found a way around that problem. “Oh, God,” she muttered.
“We’re going to do a race, a fun event, and we’ll open it up to the community. There will be a course for kids, for those who are moderately fit, and the extreme event for Cas agents and anyone else who has the balls to do it. We’ll charge an entrance fee and that can go to charity—whatever we decide—and the new obstacle course will be a good investment. It’ll only add to what we have,” Sawyer said, sounding far too enthusiastic for her peace of mind. “We’ll hire an events coordinator to run the event, to do the publicity, to take care of the logistics. I’ll get someone working out here to design the additional obstacles.” He grinned at her, green eyes flashing with excitement. “It’ll probably start off small but it could become a great event and could provide great exposure for the Cas brand.”
“Yeah, two entrants into the day-long challenge will be a hell of a start,” Reagan sarcastically muttered.
“Oh, we’ll do it too,” Axl said, gesturing to Sawyer and Kai. “And, I’m sure, many of our other employees will join in, especially if we offer a cash prize to the winner. Might as well hand over the cash now, to me, and be done with it,” Axl said, smug.
Kai groaned and Sawyer rolled his eyes. “He did beat us in the last three triathlons we did together,” Sawyer reluctantly admitted.
“Oh, really?” Reagan asked, lifting her eyebrows at Axl.
Axl grinned, looking excited. “I told you, I’m competitive, and I’d need to show you—we’d need to show you—what the standard is.”
Reagan thought about braining him with her coffee cup and forced herself to meet his challenging stare. “I can take everything you throw at me.”
Axl’s eyes started to smolder, and suddenly the previously perfect air was lacking oxygen. She knew that he wasn’t talking about the race anymore. He was remembering how they made love, how she’d happily followed where he led.
“As you should know,” she quietly added, feeling the heat between her legs, the insistent throb in her womb. What was it about this man who rocketed from zero to tart in ten seconds flat?
“Dammit.” Axl jammed his hands into the poc
kets of his jeans, and Reagan just knew that he kept his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching for her, so as to not grab her in front of their friends.
Their friends, where were they? Reagan looked around and realized that Sawyer and Kai were already at the door leading into Caswallawn’s gym. She hadn’t even noticed them leaving, she’d been so focused on Axl, trying to keep herself from launching herself at him.
She watched as the door closed behind them, and turned back to look at Axl. “What must they think?” she asked and heard the worry in her voice.
“I think that they knew that this was coming, that this, us, was inevitable.” Axl raked his fingers through his hair. “They will, however, kill me if I end up hurting you.”
“What if I end up hurting you?” Reagan asked.
“I’m not the type to get hurt, Reags,” Axl stated, his voice calm but his eyes focused. “I’m not looking for another complication, another responsibility. Getting emotionally involved with you would mean both. Although I already feel responsible for you and that would rocket upwards if we entered a relationship.”
Responsibility again. Reagan kicked a tuft of grass with her foot and tried to ignore the immediate burst of annoyance his words solicited. He didn’t need to be responsible for her, she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Hell, she’d been doing it all her adult life. She made, and lived by, her choices. She didn’t need him to look after her! What would it take for him to get past that?
“A relationship doesn’t mean that you are responsible for me. I don’t need you to rescue me,” Reagan stated, her eyes and tone hot.
“Is that what you want? A relationship?” Axl demanded, and she knew that he’d rather have his nails trimmed with a chain saw than have this conversation.
Reagan tipped her head and tried to wipe the expression off her face. “We might not be in a romantic relationship but we’re in a relationship, Axl, of some sort.”
“Yeah, we’re friends. The thing is, do you want to add benefits to that friendship for as long as that works for both of us?”
“I take it that you do?”
“I’m a guy and we rocked having sex. Of course I want to do it again, for as long as possible,” Axl stated. “It’s your choice, Reags. You need to know whether you can balance having me as your boss and your lover.”
“Will you stop telling me what to do and interfering in my life?” Reagan asked.
Axl shook his head. “No. I will always look out for you and I will always be the first one to open my mouth if you do something I disagree with.”
Reagan pushed the tips of her fingers into her forehead. Nothing would ever change with Axl, Reagan realized. No matter what she did or how skilled she was, she would always be Mike’s little sister, weaker and in need of his protection. “So you are still going to be bossy and controlling but the flip side is that I’m going to get some great sex?”
Axl looked at her, his eyes searching. “Is me being protective over you such a bad thing, Reagan?”
Reagan stared down at the ground as she considered his question. She could brush off his words and end this conversation right now but, for some indefinable reason, she wanted to explain. “It makes me feel weak, Axl. Less than.”
“Less than what?”
“You, Mike, my father. You are all such strong personalities and I’ve always felt like my opinions, my thoughts, don’t matter. When I left home, I made a solemn promise not to let anyone make me feel like that again.”
“It’s your choice to feel like that. I’m not making you feel like that,” Axl pointed out. “I just want you to be safe.”
“When you tell me what to do I feel like you are controlling me. I was controlled all my life, Axl. My father wasn’t interested in me but he did lay down the law and expected me to keep it.
“Mike, on the other hand, could do no wrong. He went to parties, to the movies, came home late, did what he pleased. There was one set of rules for Mike and another for me.”
“I’m sorry, Reags.”
Reagan waved his words away. “I promised myself that I would never allow myself to feel like that again . . .”
“So that’s why you don’t do relationships? Because you’re scared of being controlled?”
“I’m not good at them, Axl. I try but within a week or two I feel constricted and smothered, controlled. I like not having to answer to anyone, I like the freedom of being single.”
“But?”
How on earth had he heard her silent but, that little note of dissent? Reagan shook her head, not willing to go there.
“Come on, Reags, ’fess up.”
Reagan blew air into her cheeks. She knew that Axl was stubborn enough to stand there until she told him the truth. So she shrugged and tried to look blasé. “Sometimes I think it would be nice, you know. Nice to have a strong chest to rest my head on, someone to talk to at the end of the day. Someone who is solidly in my corner.”
Axl lifted his hand to swipe the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip. “I can be that person, Reags.”
Reagan frowned at him, not sure what he was offering. Her heart rate increased and the moisture in her mouth disappeared. “You’re going to need to explain that, Rhodes, because that sounds ominous.”
Axl just smiled at her. “You need a friend, Reagan. A real friend, someone who you trust implicitly. You’ve kept people out for far too long, Reags.”
Reagan bit her bottom lip and stared at the hollow triangle at the bottom of his throat, exposed by the open collar of his shirt. “Let me be that person, let me be your friend.”
“But we are friends. Aren’t we?” Reagan asked, confused. “I mean, I know we argue all the time, but we’ve slept together, we like each other on some level.”
“It’s a great level and I intend to explore that level more fully. But while I am going to turn you inside out sexually, I also want to be that person who you run to, who you can bounce shit off, who’ll listen to you ramble at the end of a long day.”
Reagan swallowed and lifted her hand to hold his wrist. “So you’re talking about being my friend. With benefits.”
“I want to be your best friend, with benefits. I want to be what you need. I’d like to be the safe place for you to fall.”
“I don’t know, Axe. It sounds like a real relationship.”
Axl shook his head. “Yeah, but we’ll have all the good stuff without the angst and the commitment and the fear of what will happen when we break up.”
Reagan felt skeptical. This all sounded too good to be true. “Okay, say we do, and what happens when one of us wants to move on? You might meet someone you can’t live without.”
“If, and that’s a very big if, I met someone like that, and I don’t see myself doing that, ever, then my loyalty or my friendship with Sawyer and Kai wouldn’t change. So, why would it with you? We’d just stop sleeping together and we’d remain friends.”
“It sounds too simplistic.”
“Why does it have to be complicated? You don’t want to be in a committed relationship, neither do I. We both love the sex and we seem to like each other, more than we thought. What could go wrong?”
Reagan lifted her eyebrows. “This is you and I we’re talking about, Rhodes. We’re not the easiest people on the planet. Will you still boss me around?”
“Yes.”
“Are you still going to give me a hard time about joining MKR?”
“Yes.”
Reagan sighed. “So nothing much will have changed except that we will be sleeping together?”
Axl’s mouth brushed against her, his lips warm and soft. “So are we going to do the friends with benefits thing?”
“We’ll give it a month and we’ll reevaluate,” Reagan murmured, wishing he’d get on with it and kiss her like she was so desperate for him to do.
“Do I get immediate access to the benefits?” Axl asked, his hand slipping under her jacket and shirt and into the warm space between her jeans and her dental-floss thong.
“New rule!” Sawyer yelled from his office window. Axl didn’t release her but he did turn his head to look up at his friend.
“No making out on Cas premises!”
“When you get Kai to obey that rule, let me know and I’ll consider doing the same!” Axl yelled back before finally, finally, kissing Reagan like she’d been wanting him to do.
Chapter Nine
KelbyKelly: Challenge accepted for the Hell Race, Water Squirters. A team of four, best combined time wins. What’s the bet?
JasonSturgiss: Dear Mercy PD Chief. Your men are a bunch of pantywaisters and it will be our pleasure to KYA. Kind regards, JSturgiss, Fire Chief.
KelbyKelly: You’ve gotten very cocky since your recent promotion, Sturgiss. And, BTW, I specialize in ass kicking.
CoolGranny: Stop! You boys are making me hot!
Reagan, after a day with dealing with a grumpy Knox, a belligerent Coe, and an out-of-sorts Bryn—Pippa had, apparently, rejected his offer of dinner—was thoroughly exhausted. And, because currently Axl was more out of Mercy than in, she was also sexually frustrated. She’d had very little of the benefits they’d spent so long discussing.
Since Axl was again unavailable to provide any benefits tonight—he’d returned to Brazil days ago—all she wanted to do was sink into a hot bath with a glass of wine and a good book and chill.
Reagan stepped over Rufus’s bulk and shrugged out of her coat, hanging it on the row of hooks behind the door. Hearing voices, she poked her head into the sitting room adjacent to the hall, and three female faces whipped around to look at her.
Unwinding her scarf, Reagan greeted Pippa and Flick and nodded to Tally, Kai’s sort-of sister, sort-of ward. Always observant, she noticed the tight jeans, the newly applied makeup, and the painting-the-town-red hair. The girls were on their way out and she would have a quiet house . . . Bliss!
