Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Zenko lightly shook Shaun. Now that he knew he was an operator, he didn’t want to startle him awake and find out the hard way exactly how deeply those trained reflexes ran.
The footsteps pacing up and down the hall outside the door told him they couldn’t stay where they were much longer, though.
Whoever was out there had been patient so far, but Zenko figured they had about five minutes before patience ran out and the asshole started hammering on the door again. “Shaun?”
Shaun shifted on his chest and patted Zenko’s chest. “Shh, five more minutes.”
“There is someone waiting outside the door,” Zenko whispered softly. “They just haven’t knocked yet.”
“Let the cockblocking assholes wait,” Shaun grumbled back without opening his eyes.
“I don’t think you can call it cockblocking when my dick was buried in your ass twice in the last hour.”
“Argh.” Shaun rubbed his hand over his face and opened one eye to peer up at Zenko. “It was, wasn’t it?”
“Yup.”
“Fuck, well, they don’t know that,” he muttered and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Who’s out there?”
“One of yours,” Zenko told him. “I don’t recognize the footsteps.”
“Ugh.” Shaun moved to get up, but Zenko caught him and pulled him back, searching his face for a couple of seconds before he kissed him.
This one was different from the wild fury of the hot fucking they had done earlier.
He took his time, keeping the kiss soft as he tasted Shaun’s mouth and tried to memorize every second of it.
They still didn’t know what Noble and Rock had decided downstairs, or whether the orders waiting for them would send them in the same direction.
If he was about to get dragged onto one mission while Shaun disappeared onto another, then he wanted this.
He wanted the taste of Shaun stored away somewhere he could pull it out when he needed something to ground him.
Shaun slid a hand up Zenko’s chest before settling against the side of his neck, holding him there as he kissed him back with the same unhurried care.
Zenko had no idea what was going through his head, but he didn’t need to.
Shaun was still here, still kissing him, and for however long they had before the asshole outside finally lost patience, Zenko was keeping him close.
When he finally let him go so they both could breathe, Shaun rolled off the bed and winced as his feet hit the floor.
He bit back a grin when Shaun straightened carefully and shot him a look that suggested he knew exactly who was responsible for the way he was moving.
If anything, the sight made Zenko want to drag him straight back into bed and give whoever was pacing outside the door something else to fucking complain about.
“I’ll shower in the main bathroom; you use that one.” Shaun grabbed his jeans and pulled them on before pointing to the closed door. “If we get in the shower together, then we aren’t coming out for a month.”
“Sure.”
Shaun grabbed his shaving kit and winked at Zenko before leaving the room.
Zenko heard the bedroom door open, followed almost immediately by a muffled curse from the hallway.
“Fuck, Jesus, Grif, what the hell?”
A thump against the wall told him Shaun had probably collided with whoever had been pacing outside their door. Grif’s answer confirmed Zenko had been right about the footsteps belonging to one of Shaun’s team.
“Rock is raging.” There was another scuffle outside before Grif continued, “He wants to talk to you before we move forward with the plans. You have about five minutes before he comes up here.”
Zenko heard the bathroom door open across the hall, followed by the pipes knocking somewhere inside the wall when Shaun turned on the shower.
“I suppose it’s too much to ask if there is any hot water left in the tank?” Shaun called from the bathroom.
“There are nine guys in this house. What do you think?” Grif answered from the hallway.
“Damn it.”
Zenko snorted as he finally dragged himself out of bed and headed for the shower attached to the bedroom.
By the time he stepped out of the room, his hair still damp and dripping onto his shoulder, he found Grif slouched against the wall next to the main bathroom door.
So much for hoping the asshole might have wandered downstairs while they showered.
“Griffin?” He pulled the bedroom door closed behind him and glanced toward the bathroom where the water was still running.
“Rock sent you up here to make sure we didn’t disappear back into bed, huh? ”
“Yup.” The corners of Grif’s lips quirked up as he smirked at Zenko. “Said you need to stop acting like horny teenagers and get your asses downstairs so we can get to planning.”
“He and Noble came to an agreement then?” Zenko asked. That was the part he actually gave a shit about.
Shaun’s voice drew Zenko’s attention to the now-open bathroom door, and the smile came before he could do a damn thing to stop it.
He jerked to the side when Grif shoulder-bumped him. “You have it bad, dude.”
“Yup.”
Grif’s rich laughter filled the hallway. “Fuck, you really never saw him coming, did you?”
“Nope.” Zenko was done second-guessing himself.
They could figure out a way to make it work.
It didn’t matter a damn that they were both covert operators for different branches of the military.
Life takes you to places and through situations you may not necessarily plan for…
this one, Shaun, he was grabbing with both hands and keeping.
“I’ll be down in a sec.” Shaun stuck his head out the door. Zenko fucking loved that he was still shirtless and that he could look his fill, but he couldn’t stop the growl that rumbled in his chest when he caught Grif looking at Shaun, too.
“Hey, man.” Grif held up both hands in front of him as if trying to ward him off.
“I don’t poach ever, and I have two of my own to keep me out of trouble.
” Grif headed toward the stairs, and when he reached the top, he turned back to say, “But just because I am on a diet doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate seeing the menu. ”
“Fucker.”
“He’s winding you up, babe, ignore him.”
The words made the breath catch in Zenko’s throat.
Babe?
I could get used to that.
Shaun led the way downstairs and pushed open the door to the kitchen at the back of the house, waving him through ahead of him.
Zenko had barely crossed the threshold before the sight of Allie stopped him dead.
Shaun almost walked straight into his back, one hand slapping against the door frame as he caught himself.
“Jeez, Zen, keep moving, will ya?”
“What’s going on?” He shifted farther into the kitchen, his attention fixed on Allie and Noble.
Shaun nudged him aside so he could see around him, but Zenko barely noticed.
Allie sat at the table with Noble standing at her shoulder, and whatever answer he’d been expecting to his question disappeared when he saw how badly she was trembling.
The cell phone shook in her hands as she fumbled with the screen and swore under her breath, her fingers refusing to cooperate with whatever she was trying to make them do.
At the rate she was going, Zenko figured the damn thing was about five seconds away from being launched across the kitchen.
“Use the voice feature, Allie,” Shaun called out from behind him.
“Voice feature?” Allie looked at Shaun, and Zenko caught the tear tracks running down her cheeks.
She had finally let herself cry, although her hands were still trembling badly enough that the phone shook between her fingers.
He had seen enough people hold themselves together until the moment they knew they had somewhere safe to fall, and Allie looked like she was fighting that battle right now.
Whatever came next, he suspected it wouldn’t be tears for long.
There was a hardening around her mouth that told him the anger was already waiting underneath the tears.
“Yeah.” Noble reached toward her, probably intending either to take the phone or show her where the activation button was. He sighed when she slapped his hands away. “Swipe up from the bottom, and it’s one of those four.”
“I knew that,” Allie muttered under her breath as she fiddled with the phone again. A second later, she lifted her chin and spoke clearly into it. “Call Micah.”
Zenko watched the phone respond, and the sudden shift in Allie’s expression told him she had finally found the one thing she needed to get past the trembling. Help was coming.
“GO!”
The grunted greeting that came through the phone didn’t surprise anyone in the kitchen. Operators rarely answered a phone with their names, even when the person calling was family, and Zenko had spent enough time around people who lived by those rules to recognize the habit.
“Hawk, it’s Allie. Can you get Micah for me?”
“Sure, Allie, you good?”
“Just get Micah,” Allie repeated, and the tremor still running through her voice was enough that Hawk inhaled sharply on the other end of the connection before answering.
“Done, he is on his way.”
“You mean you pushed that giant red buzzer under your desk, and now you have an all-hands-on-deck alert going out across the property,” Noble said, his voice loud enough that it carried through the phone’s speaker.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Zenko glanced toward Shaun when the unfamiliar voice coming through the phone dropped several octaves.
The question came out as a growling, suspicious challenge, and he could hardly blame the man.
If he had answered a call expecting his sister-in-law only to hear some unknown male voice speaking in the background, he’d have wanted to know exactly who the fuck had been standing beside her, too.
“That’s Noble, babe, our cousin.” Another voice came through the speaker, and the relief that crossed Allie’s face told Zenko this had to be her brother, Micah.