Chapter 2
Freya
“Slice up that steak for us, now that it’s rested for a few minutes,” I suggested, sensing that he needed a nudge to get moving. “I’ll get the rest of it on the table.”
He did so, while I swiftly brought all the other dishes to the table. “Wine or beer?” I asked.
“Wine, with the steak, I think.” He still sounded distracted.
I started in on the pineapple, which I hadn’t gotten around to cutting yet.
“Oh, hey. No pineapple for me,” Jed said.
“No? Do you not like it? It’s a good one. Sweet and juicy.”
“I love the taste of them, but they burn me,” he admitted. “Just one bite makes my mouth raw and sore for days.”
“Wow. Who knew. Okay, your reduced fruit plate contains melon, kiwi, strawberries, and blueberries.”
“Sounds delicious. So how is it that we’re alone tonight? Holly’s usually here with us for dinner. And always when Ethan’s out of town.”
“Ethan will be back really late tonight, so Angela took Holly upstairs for a Pizza and Princesses night,” I told him. “Angela thought you and I needed a little private couples time, right before the wedding. Bless her.”
Angela was Ethan’s chef and housekeeper, and she had also become a benevolent and tender grandmother figure for Holly, my nine-year-old niece. We were lucky as hell to have her. I laid the fruit on the table, and poured out the wine.
Jed brought over the platter of steak, which looked juicy and delicious. “Sorry I glitched on the steak,” he said gruffly.
“Not at all,” I told him. “It’s perfect. In my own personal perfect range.”
He shot me a suspicious look. “Get out.”
“No, really,” I assured him. “I like it just like this. Medium rare, but tending to medium. Not too red, just pink. Ethan likes it rarer, so we always fought when we cooked a steak together. This one is just right for me. For future reference.”
“Humph.” He sat down and served me a couple of juicy strips of steak as I spooned out some of the rosemary roasted potato and spring onion concoction.
“Damn, that looks good,” he said. “Better than mortal man deserves.”
“Certainly not better than you deserve,” I told him. “You deserve this, Jed. A safe, beautiful place, a good meal, a glass of nice wine, a woman who loves you beyond reason. And trusts you with her life.”
“Don’t overdo it,” he muttered.
“Overdo it, my ass,” I responded tartly as I served myself potatoes. “I have not even begun to shower you with my favors. You have no idea what you’re in for.”
His eyes got that hopeful gleam. “Yeah? What favors? Hot, sexy favors?”
“Exactly.”
“Ooh,” he murmured. “You’re making me blush.”
I gave him a flirtatious, up-through-the-eyelashes look. “Speaking of blushing, wait until you find out what I have in mind for dessert.”
His eyes lit up. Sure as sunrise, the prospect of sex was a tried and true conversational lightener. For both of us. Worked like a charm every damn time.
“I stand ready, night and day, to fulfil your every sexual whim,” he said.
“No matter how insatiable?”
“Especially the insatiable ones,” he said. “They’re my favorites.”
And just like that, we were blushing for real. He had hot streaks on his chiseled cheekbones, and my face felt feverish. I shifted and squirmed on my chair, squeezing around that sweet ache of yearning that was never far when he was around.
I swallowed hard, breathless. “Maybe we finish dinner first? While it’s hot.”
“Sure,” he said. “We need our strength. Some salad?”
He scooped some salad onto my plate, but now there was sex in the air, and it was like static, filling the airwaves between us.
There was always sex in the air, when I was with Jed.
He was so freaking gorgeous, it kept on shocking me, again and again.
From the moment I’d seen him at the Kalaharee prison, shackled, confined, behind armored glass…
and none of that had blocked the sexual energy from blasting off him.
I’d dreamed and fantasized about him for year, but here he was. Wanting me for real, and more intensely than any of my fantasies could have foreseen.
We had lived through our nightmare, and found each other.
Which somehow made it right. Maybe Nicole had wiggled away from us, maybe that sick bastard Wex Boer had died before he could be questioned about Shane’s whereabouts, but damn, we got through all of it intact.
We still had each other. That was incredible.
I would not let our enemies cheat us out of our one good outcome. I served him another ladleful of potatoes, making my voice deliberately light. “Funny, how we came at this relationship thing ass-backwards.”
“How so?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Usually, in a budding romantic relationship, there’s a get-to-know-you period.
Lighthearted, flirtatious. That’s when you gather a person’s basic stats, and find out whether you eat pineapple, how rare you like your meat, filtered versus unfiltered beer, what you put in your coffee.
Boxers or briefs? Favorite breakfast cereal?
Do you love cilantro, or hate it? How do you like your eggs?
Do you mix ketchup and mayo for French fries?
You and I skipped all that. We went straight to mortal combat and deathless love.
And now, after the cataclysm is over, we’re slowly discovering all the other little details, one by one. ”
He sipped his wine with a rueful grin. “Want to know the truth? I probably wouldn’t have been able to answer of those questions before I knew you anyhow.”
“No? Why not?”
He puzzled it out. “I just never thought in those terms,” he said.
“Before Mom died, I was scrambling to keep a roof over our heads, and the lights on. After she died, I joined the Army. It’s a big institution.
It trained me and housed me and fed me. I did combat tours for years.
I worked hard. I ate what I was given. I wore whatever was regulation.
Preferences like that...they’re for a different class of people. ”
I savored a bite of juicy steak as I considered it. “I see where you’re coming from, but you’re in a different place in your life, now. You chose me, right?”
“That was more like getting hit by lightning than a choice, Frey,” he told me, a gleam of humor in his eyes.
I smacked him on the arm with a snort of laughter. “Oh, get out of here. I’m not that bad.”
“No, you’re fucking amazing,” he said, his voice low and intense. “You changed everything for me. I’m just afraid that…”
“That what?” I demanded.
He waved his hand defensively. “That I won’t be up to it. Protecting you, I mean.”
“Ah,” I said. “Here we go again.”
“For real, Frey,” he said. “It’s a valid fear. Like this wedding. It’s so fucking dangerous to open the house up to all those people. So many variables. You can’t control them all. Same thing with the honeymoon idea.”
“Oh, babe. We’ve been through this, and through this,” I said gently.
“Traveling to freaking Indonesia? Really? Staying someplace we’ve never seen with our own eyes, or completely analyzed, or prepared?”
“Amos and Darius looked over the place with their actual eyes,” I argued.
“They’re very competent, Jed, as you well know.
And they assured us that they would be able to secure us there.
We’ll have all three of them. It’ll be kind of weird, having our sexy romantic honeymoon happen right under their watchful eyes, but it’s better than nothing.
And you’re the one they’ll tease about it, thank God. Not me.”
“Yeah, yeah. I just…the wedding freaks me out.” He shook his head, his eyes troubled. “So goddamn many people, all together.”
“Not really,” I coaxed. “We kept it very small. There aren’t even all that many of the Unredeemables around, since all the others are out on jobs overseas. But Colonel Hobart’s coming, although I have my doubts about him.”
“Why?” he asked. “He was Ethan and Shane’s commanding officer, too.”
I shrugged. “I know, but he makes me tired,” I admitted. “He talks over people, especially women. He mansplains, endlessly. And he never gives poor Milla a break. He is so hard on her. In public, too. He wants her to be someone else.”
“Milla? Wait, she is…”
“His daughter,” I specified. “My friend. She’ll be there. She’s a bridesmaid.”
“Ah, yeah. I heard about her, but I never met her.”
“She’s one of my besties,” I told him. “I got real tight with her back in high school, when Shane was overseas. But of course Colonel Hobart has to come to the wedding. He’s like that annoying uncle you have to invite, the one who’s bound to get drunk and start lecturing the room about something politically sensitive.
Milla is one of my Badass Bitches. She has one of my BBBags, like Rose. Who is also coming.”
“All three of the Badass Bitches, together. Whoa.” Jed looked impressed.
“They are perfectly lovely,” I told him. “And they can’t wait for a chance to meet you. They’ve heard me talk and pine about you for years, and I mean...years.”
His eyes flashed. “Wow.”
“I am by far the scariest of the trio,” I told him.
“It’s an intimate guest list. Very reasonable, very doable.
Nicole won’t piggyback with any of these people, Jed.
You are not working security at your own wedding.
You’re the groom. You get to relax and enjoy the day.
The Unredeemables will be all over it, and those guys are plenty suspicious enough to compensate for your absence. So please. Relax.”
“Really, Frey?” His voice was bitter. “Relax, with Nicole out there, gunning for you?”
“Screw her,” I said forcefully. “We’re in this together. And we have Ethan and the Unredeemables to help us. It’s not you all alone, trying to save my ass from death and destruction, like before. You’re family now. We’ve all got your back.”
“I’m not sure Ethan feels the same,” Jed said glumly.
“Oh, he’s coming around,” I said impatiently.
“Yeah? Since when?”