Chapter 8 #2
She sought any distraction—
And instead looked right at the man who left her reeling hours after they gave in to their desires.
His dark eyes locked on to hers, and the air vanished from her lungs like someone had punched it out of her. Heat flared low and sharp, stealing all reason.
One heartbeat.
Two.
She couldn’t move. Couldn’t look away. It felt like standing in the crosshairs—except she didn’t want to escape.
After she wrenched her gaze away, she could still feel his stare sliding down her body inch by heated inch.
Her fingers still hovered over the tablet, but the offshore routing numbers only jumbled into a tighter black knot.
When someone touched her elbow, she sucked in a breath, expecting to catch Angelo’s body-tingling scent, but Opal was standing there.
Her friend was studying her, and if anyone would see how off-balance Ellory was, it was Opal.
She attempted to slap a pleasant look on her face.
“Come on.” Opal pitched her voice low so as not to interrupt the discussion of thermal signatures from the SEALs clustered around the big screen.
Ellory lifted a brow. “Where are we going?”
“Let’s let them work.”
She blinked at her friend. “But they need me here. My skills.”
She wasn’t some civilian who needed to be shuffled out when things got serious. She’d tracked down financial data that led to people connected with Cipher. She’d survived an attack.
She’d earned her place at this table.
Opal’s expression was full of understanding, but her words were firm. “I know. But sometimes being part of the team is giving the team space. And giving your own mind a break.”
Ellory glanced at Con, who was assigning their final roles. Where Ash—Angelo…god, she didn’t even know what to call him now—sat with every line of his body hardened like he was ready to raid bunkers in third-world countries.
The memory of those shoulders flexing above her last night sent an unwelcome rush of heat through her veins. His hands had been everywhere. Rough. Demanding. Then achingly gentle. And his mouth…
Not now.
She forced the images away and looked back at Opal, who was watching her like she’d seen too damn much.
“All right.” Ellory saved her work and stood.
She opened her mouth to say something to Opal, but her friend was already moving down the hallway with purpose. When they walked into the kitchen, it was alive with activity.
Kennedy stood at the big island with a fat loaf of Italian bread on a cutting board in front of her. Her blonde hair was twisted into a perfect knot on the back of her head, and even in a T-shirt and jeans, she looked sensational.
May was at the range, bowls lined up in front of her as she mixed what had to be meatballs, judging from the garlic and herbs perfuming the air.
Alyssa claimed a stool at the corner of the island, a cutting board in front of her and a pile of vegetables for a salad. Izzy was pulling plates out of a cupboard.
“Italian night,” Opal announced, steering Ellory toward the stove. “On nights when they have missions, we cook together.”
Ellory glanced at the faces of the women gathered here. More than one bore a crease between their brows or a drawn expression that told her they cooked as a way to keep their minds off what the men they loved were walking into.
Opal opened a large drawer to reveal pots and pans. She pulled out a hefty pot and set it beneath the filler spout on the range. As water trickled into the stainless steel, she tilted her head toward the refrigerator.
“Sophie already made her famous marinara sauce. Do you mind getting it out?”
Ellory drifted to the fridge and located the big plastic container in the well-stocked depths. All around her, the room hummed with the ladies’ conversations. It was such a normal thing. Such a domestic thing that shouldn’t fit in so easily on a ghost ops base.
And yet the way the women moved around each other spoke of a ritual born from too many nights of waiting, of needing something to do with their hands while the men they loved ran into danger.
Ellory carried the container over and set it on the counter next to the range.
“Oh, damn,” came a breathless curse.
Ellory glanced over to see Alyssa climbing off the high stool and attempting to pick up the dropped slice of bell pepper with her pregnant belly impeding her movement.
“Let me.” Ellory rushed over and scooped up the rogue veggie.
Alyssa straightened, palm spread over her stomach and a smile on her beautiful face. “Thank you. I can still bend, but it takes a little longer now.”
“No problem.” Ellory rinsed off the vegetable and set it on the cutting board with the rest.
Alyssa pushed a spare knife her way, so she began chopping, the familiar sound soothing after the intensity of the war room even though Ellory probably fit in better there than here.
“You settling in okay?” Alyssa’s tone was casual but her eyes sharp.
“Getting there.” Ellory worked through a cucumber, concentrating on keeping the slices the same size. “I’m still figuring out how everything works here.”
“It’s a lot,” Kennedy spoke up from her spot nearby. She had sliced the loaf into long halves and was spreading garlic butter thickly over each. “It took me months to stop feeling like I’d wandered onto a movie set.”
May laughed, the sound rich and warm. “I still have those moments. I came from a family of men who specialize in explosives. Walking into this”—she waved a wooden spoon at all of them—”made me wonder if this was actually my life.”
Sophie walked in, followed by Elin. Both women wore slightly glazed expressions after emerging from the data that meant life or death.
“They kick you out?” Opal called over to them.
Sophie wordlessly headed straight for the wine that Izzy set on the counter.
“We gracefully excused ourselves.” Elin’s smile was wry. “But only after Dante went a little alpha on us, saying he could handle the rest of the work.”
Kennedy sucked in a small gasp, butter knife halting mid-spread. “He didn’t!”
Sophie poured herself a glass of wine. “Don’t worry about giving him a piece of your mind, Kennedy. We were almost finished anyway.”
She knew from working with Sophie, Elin and Dante that the trio were close and fiercely protective of each other, acting more like siblings who got on each other’s nerves at times.
Ellory kept chopping while listening to the conversation flowing around her. The women moved like a task force of their own, passing bowls and never getting in each other’s way, making it obvious they practiced this dance almost every day.
Opal brought the pasta water to a boil, the steam making her black hair wave at the ends. May shaped meatballs like she specialized in the dish instead of explosives. And Izzy helped Kennedy by setting the garlic bread on baking sheets, ready for the oven.
Ellory thought about that look she and Ash exchanged in the war room. For that brief, throbbing heartbeat, she felt exposed…like everyone could see exactly what they’d done in the darkest hours of the night.
And what was still happening between them.
A hot blush crawled up her throat, and feeling Alyssa’s gaze moving over her, she cast around for something to say.
She picked up another cucumber and began slicing. “So how did you all end up here?” The question emerged before she could second-guess it. “I mean, I know you’re all with guys on the team, but…were you assigned here by other government agencies?”
Alyssa and Kennedy exchanged a glance. Kennedy grinned. “Well, Alyssa and I worked together. She was an ambassador. I was her assistant.”
Ellory turned to Alyssa in surprise.
“Until I became one of Cipher’s targets. Blackout was brought in as my protection detail,” Alyssa said.
May spoke next. “I was brought on to work with Charlie after an explosive was shipped to a military base. I fell for AJ when we started working together.” May saw Ellory’s confusion and smiled. “You know him as Chickie or Henner.”
“So many names.” She chuckled even as she realized that she too used Ash’s first name in between the sheets.
Say my name.
A heated shiver worked down her body and settled low in her belly.
Izzy drifted closer to Alyssa. “I was a hostage and Alyssa negotiated for my release way before Blackout. But when I surfaced into the public eye again, Cipher set his sights on me too. That’s when Hudson realized he couldn’t resist me.
He fell for me hard.” She flashed a grin that had all the ladies laughing.
Elin shared a story about how she believed her ex—Mason—to be dead. But her superior skills as a hacker allowed her to learn the truth…and they’d been together ever since. And of course Sophie was recruited by Con to crack Cipher’s cryptograms.
“And the rest is history.” Sophie lifted her glass in toast to everyone.
The easy way they all spoke about it—about danger and protection and falling in love in the middle of chaos—made Ellory’s chest tighten.
Last night with Angelo had been intense. The kind of intense that left her skin buzzing hours later and made her hyperaware of his every move.
And remember his mouth on hers. Between her thighs.
His hand fisted in her hair and the rasp of his voice in her ear when he’d—
Izzy lifted her wine in a toast. “Now we’re family. All of us.”
She looked around the kitchen at these women, each one with their own complicated path that led them here. So many tales that ended in—from what she could see—true happiness.
“How do you all make it work?” she asked. “I mean, everyone has a strong personality. The guys are…intense. How do so many people live on top of each other without getting into arguments?”
Opal stirred the big pot of pasta. “We don’t have to worry about the logistics the way other people do—the little things that cause fights in other families. The bills are paid. And there are more than enough of us to pitch in with chores.”
“So we get to focus on relationships.” Alyssa picked up the thread even as she cupped her hand around her unborn baby. “We treat each other like equals.”
May slid the meatballs into the oven. “Though the guys have a slightly different hierarchy based on team roles.”
Sophie added, “But that doesn’t extend to us. We’re their partners. Not subordinates.”
Kennedy giggled. “C’mon, girl. We all know you’re the real leader of the team. I’ve seen how you keep Con in place.”
That made them laugh, and Ellory joined in as she turned it all over in her mind. The pros of life with the Blackout team meant security and a built-in community of people who understood the unique pressures of loving someone who walked into danger as a job requirement.
It happened for other military wives too, but Blackout Charlie was isolated from the world in a way others weren’t.
“And when they’re on missions…” Opal trailed off.
“We cook.” Elin gestured at their Italian feast. “We stay together. And we wait.”
May met Ellory’s gaze. “And we trust that they’re the best at what they do. That they’ll come home.”
Ellory thought about Angelo. Through the eyes of these women, she saw him a little differently now.
He wasn’t just the man who followed orders and took out threats with brutal efficiency. He also knew how to move with a different kind of precision—learning her body…and finding every spot that made her gasp and shudder and forget her own name.
The way he’d looked at her with that searing focus made her wonder if all the men of Blackout Charlie looked at their women the same way.
The garlic bread went into the oven. The pasta started boiling. The meatballs in the oven filled the kitchen with rich, savory scents. And the women of Charlie pulled Ellory into their orbit like it was the most natural thing in the world.
If only it were that easy to belong…well, anywhere. She was The Accountant—the one person in the room who could keep following Cipher’s money as it moved.
They needed her skill.
That didn’t make her one of them.
Not when she could never, ever mention the secrets she held close to her chest.
Chase poked his head in. “ETA on food? The briefing’s wrapping up.”
“Twenty minutes,” Alyssa called to him.
Twenty minutes until Ellory would see Angelo again.
Until she’d have to figure out what to say to a man she had no ties to, yet whose taste still lingered on her tongue.
Until she had to figure out if this flutter in the pit of her stomach had to do with seeing him, or was dread about seeing him walk out those doors on a mission.
This was what it meant to be part of this world. These women learned to live in the space between goodbye and come-home-safe.
Even if she was given a choice, Ellory didn’t know if she wanted to be part of it at all—especially when she wasn’t sure if she had what it took to survive it.