Chapter 12
DANIEL
The door clicked open, then slammed shut, and he was gone. Rising to my feet, I moved to follow him, but stopped when the clock on the wall caught my gaze.
“Fuck!”
I turned back to the bedroom. If we were getting spun up, I’d need my go bag, too. Xander kept my head spinning like a top through dressing and packing. Hell, for as much as I felt his presence on the drive to base, he might as well have been sitting his fucking ass in my passenger seat.
The world passed by in a silent blur of black dotted with glowing spots of white, green, and red outside the windows of my car.
Like the lights that streaked by, emotions and thoughts raged so fast I couldn’t identify them.
At least not well. Nor could I grab on to just one, and the ones that did land only fucked with me.
The hotter-than-hot sex, the banter, the way he went from shy to domineering, hell, even the Daddio shit—it all combined in my head to make Xander the first guy I felt I could possibly build something with—something long, steady, lasting.
Which made me wanna pull my hair out because Xander was so fucking young, buried so deep in the closet, with good reason, but still. And then there was the issue he seemed to have around the word “need.”
I came to a stop at the gate behind several other cars.
Parker, who had a long drive from the fancy-ass beach house his mega-rich family owned near Pendleton, sat just in front of me.
Waiting for my turn at the guard check, I got out my credentials and rolled down my window.
With every car granted access, I noticed a change.
Base security was always a concern, but not like what I saw ahead. When Parker moved into place, that’s when it hit me. The security forces stationed at the gate and around the guard shack were on high alert. They always checked things out, but not like this.
This included mirrors scanning the undercarriage of vehicles, dogs sniffing the outside, and then the inside of Parker’s car.
Parker Holt—son of an admiral, a Navy SEAL legacy, Team 3 Echo Platoon squadron leader, SpecOps golden boy who never got more than a cursory glance and wave through from gate security, that Parker Holt—was being turned inside out as if…
“Holy fuck.”
I reached forward, my skin crawling with fear and anxiety as I flipped the radio on to the local news station.
“If you’re just joining us, two planes have struck the World Trade Center in New York City in what President Bush is calling an act of terrorism.”
My stomach fell. The world screeched to a halt.
The prior attacks…the threats…all of it…holy fuck!
We were at war.