Chapter 7
ALEX
“That’s a round,” Parker Holt called out as we walked through the door to the team’s lounge.
I silently calculated the number of rounds we were up to as I looked around the room Parker Holt led us into. I’d heard about the hazing teams laid on their newbies, and if this was as bad as it got, I could deal.
The guys spread throughout the room, which resembled the living area of an open-concept apartment.
There was a full L-shaped kitchen, a long table surrounded by office chairs—the same chairs as those around the conference table in the ops center—enough to seat the entire team plus a few more.
Then there was the living area, grouped opposite the kitchen, with a large sectional couch, a couple of chairs, plus a coffee table, end tables, and even an entertainment center, a rug anchoring it all.
Opposite the kitchen, a couple of offices lined the wall where the bedrooms would be if the space were actually an apartment.
Between them sat a bathroom, if the sign was anything to go by.
“Pretty fucking sweet, innit?” Parker asked.
I nodded. The setup was pretty fucking sweet.
As the rest of the team milled about, I realized there was another guy in our midst I hadn’t met yet, but who tickled the gray matter so much so that I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
The more I watched him, milling about in the kitchen making coffee, the more familiar he seemed.
“Cat got your tongue, kid?”
My chin wobbled back and forth, denying the insinuation even though I said nothing. Finally, I couldn’t help but ask? “Whose the guy in the kitchen?”
“Hmm?” Parker asked.
Sighing, I pointed at the guy with my chin. “The guy in the kitchen making coffee…”
Parker leaned to the side, blocking my field of vision as he looked around the guys blocking his view. “Daniel! Come meet the new guy!” Parker’s words hung in the air.
The guy turned, his eyes rounding as they met mine.
Holy fuck.
It couldn’t be. It couldn’t fucking be him.
But I knew, as did my dick, that it was.
It was him. The guy I went home with that one weekend during all those weeks of training, that I let my focus slip.
That I let myself feel, and want, and experience.
Not a good fucking idea. Not at all. The last few weeks of training dragged by at a gruelingly slow pace.
Every moment since we met, I fought myself. I spent every day telling myself it was just a hookup. It didn’t have to be. I knew where he lived. Hell, we lived in the same apartment complex now, but I still kept myself in check. I refused the connection. I had to keep my head on straight.
Straight.
Gah. I fucking hated that goddamn word. Almost as much as I hated hiding. And I hated hiding with a fiery passion that burned my insides until the only thing that helped with the rage hiding in a closet set fire to was running.
He lifted the mug in his hands to his mouth.
I envied that cup. I remembered what his lips felt like against my skin.
That morphed into another memory. One that threatened the minuscule control I had on my cock.
It had already lengthened and thickened at the sight of him, but watching his lips wrap around the rim of that mug, and remembering them doing the same to my cock.
The slow, steady roll of his hips as Daniel walked toward me made my dick twitch in my uniform pants. The ones that were too snug to hide what my traitorous memories were giving rise to.
Down boy.
The admonishment might have worked if I’d not grasped Daniel’s outstretched hand. Tingles shot through me like lightning bolts, and the rasp of our palms sliding against each other robbed me of words. Luckily, he covered my idiotic ass.
“Nice to meet you.”
I nodded, then croaked, “Same,” before dropping his hand as soon as possible. That didn’t stop the tingles from continuing to dance through my system before gathering in my crotch with all the blood and intellect I possessed.
Parker tossed an arm over Daniel’s shoulders.
Jealous rage, the only name that described what I felt, even though I’d never experienced the emotion before, joined the indignation of having to live in the closet to achieve my dreams. I wanted nothing more than to reach out, remove his arm from Daniel’s body, definitely, and if that removed it from his body, I was alright with that too.
A smirk graced the asshole’s face, and I wanted to remove that as well.
“Daniel, here is our resident spook.”
I nodded, biting my cheek to keep from saying anything while my eyes danced between his face and Daniel’s.
“If we’re the spear, then he’s the hand that points the spear,” a voice said from behind me.
I looked over my shoulder. One to see who spoke since I didn’t know the team’s voices yet, and two, to give my eyes a break from the sight standing before me…my sexy as fuck team leader and the man who’d inhabited my thoughts since he fucked me silly.
“Good to know,” I told Josh Kettles, the team’s number three guy and their breacher.
I took a deep breath, then turned back to Daniel, steeling myself. Only Parker’s smirky fucking gorgeous face, while still smirky and gorgeous, was no longer where it had been. He now stood behind Daniel, looking over Daniel’s shoulder at me, his arms crossed over his chest.
Fuck me.
I wouldn’t last the month if I didn’t figure out a way to rein in my reaction to this guy. I didn’t know why I couldn’t have answered it if someone had a gun to my head.
What was it about this guy?
Yes, he was hot.
He was sexy.
And he could definitely fuck.
But he wasn’t the first guy that I’d been with who was hot, sexy, and who could fuck. So what was it about him?
What made me so incapable of locking down the way my body responded to him?
“It’s nice to meet you, Daniel. I’m Alex Madison.”
His eyes widened, hardened, and then darted around the room. The tic in his jaw gave him away, but he covered what I had to assume was ire at being lied to by lifting his coffee cup to his mouth again.
My dick twitched.
Again.
This was fucking ridiculous.
“Nice to meet you…Alex.”
His tongue, the way he paused, the inflection—everything about the way he said my name told a story.
One I didn’t want told. Plus, that name, the one only my father, his staff, and his cronies ever used, sounded so wrong coming from his lips.
Alex was the name I used for the closeted guy I hated.
Xander, that was the real me. The person who felt free to explore and be and fuck.
Alex was none of the things that Xander was. And I hated him. I hated even more that it could be me. I hated that splitting myself in half was necessary. I hated that I couldn’t introduce him to the guys I would need to entrust my life to, couldn’t know who was actually serving beside them.
I loathed that the government, the same government I vowed to protect, to give my life for, said that I was less than. All because I fucked men. Some people, Kelly comes to mind, would ask why?
Why enlist? Why serve? Why put myself in the line of fire?
Some people are “called” to do things. Being a SEAL, it’s my calling.
It had been since I was a kid. I’d sit on the patio of my father’s cold, austere mansion looking out over the bay at Coronado—training ground for the US Navy SEALs—and dream.
They were warriors. Year after year, rotation after rotation, SEAL after SEAL, I watched.
As I got older, dreams turned to plans, and plans turned to training.
This was my life’s goal. My calling. And I made it.
“So, what’s on the agenda for today?” I asked, knowing what…
Right on cue, Marcus Risner, the team’s number two, yelled, “That’s a round on you, newbie!”
A throat cleared, his throat. All eyes turned to him. “I’ll leave you guys to haze the new kid,” Daniel said, moving toward one door near the offices.
He disappeared through the door, my eyes locked on his retreat until the door slammed between us and blocked my view.
I wanted to go after him. Not just because his comment about me being a kid rankled.
I wanted to talk to him, to explain. I wasn’t a fucking kid.
I didn’t know how old he was. I didn’t fucking care, but I knew how old I was, and I cared he thought I was a kid.
Parker pulled me toward the wall of offices. “These officers belong to Navy intelligence. The agency has offices in the building, too. They’re just not in this portion of the building.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” I said.
“You’re welcome. Daniel is a great guy,” Parker said.
Fear, anxiety, trepidation, whatever word I landed on, all of them failed to describe the emotion that overtook my body accurately. Skin crawled. Hair stood on end. Nerves flared to life as if singed by an inferno.
Parker slapped a hand down on my shoulder, gripping it tightly. Lifting my eyes to meet his gaze, I found him looking over me toward the room and the men behind me. When his gaze came back to mine, he dipped his chin, lowered his voice, and in a gruff whisper, said, “You’ve nothing to worry about.”
His hand left my body before the words completely died between us, and he clapped his hands as he stepped around me, “Let’s break this newbie in right, whaddya guys say?”
The reactions of the group came to me, muffled as if they had traveled over a long distance or through thick cotton batting.
Did he know? Had he guessed?
Like a teammate who scored the winning point in a buzzer-beater, the guys surrounded me, cheering and pushing me toward the exit sign of a door I’d not yet been through.
Still, their words became muted. I felt stuck, paralyzed, as if the only things moving me through the world and keeping me upright were the guys standing to my left and right, and those standing in front of and behind me.
The room on the other side of the door held cages.
They showed me this room first. The logistics officer had met me there and explained which weapons I had the option to carry.
They even pointed out which cage would be mine, and as I looked in that direction, I noticed it now contained shelving, uniforms, weapons, body armor—pretty much anything a SEAL needed to get the job done.
“Get jocked up, newbie,” Dom Vinetti said, his voice drawing me out of the fog Parker had put me in. Dom was the team’s sniper and the number four guy in the squad. He was big, broad, and looked like he lived in the gym.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when a hand landed on my back, smacking it a few times. “Yeah! We want to see if you live up to the hype.”
Hype? Shit. As if I wasn’t stressed enough.
I looked around. Chris Houser, the K9 handler, moved past me, completely kitted out and ready to go.
Behind him, the guys had nearly finished suiting up.
I rushed into my cage, pulling on my gear as fast as I could.
When I walked out, Parker and Marcus waited for me, but the rest of the guys were gone.
“Marcus will get you straightened out. He’ll make certain you know the way we do things. My job is to watch over the team and make certain we all get home. Marcus’s job is to watch my ass and yours. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Parker shook his head. “Ditch that shit right now. We’re brothers. I’m Parker, you’re Alex. That’s Marcus. Understood?”
“Yeah, Parker.”
“Good job. Most people still say, sir,” he smacked Marcus on the back, gripped my shoulder, and gave me a shake, and then disappeared out the door we had entered earlier in the day.
“Well, let’s see how you did,” Marcus said.
I felt like a schoolboy, but bit my tongue and showed him where I kept everything. Some ways I did things he liked, some he hated. When we found a happy medium where I would keep things in my kit, on my belt, and in my ruck, he smacked me on the back and pushed me towards the door.
“Now, as Dom said, let’s see if you live up to the hype.”
I still didn’t know what hype they were talking about. It worried me, but I knew I had to get through this first training with the guys and live inside the closet I chose. My head was not how that was going to work. Everyone said a 3-foot world is where I needed to focus.
I just hope my three-foot world didn’t include the man who turned my world upside down weeks ago so much that I hadn’t been able to right it since.