Chapter 9
NINE
Ash was halfway through a plate of meatballs and a deep study of Ellory across the dining room table when new intel came in.
It wasn’t unusual for the team to scramble in the middle of a meal, but as he scraped his chair back with his brothers, the look on Ellory’s face made his chest tighten.
When they reached the war room, Dante pulled up new satellite imagery showing they needed to strike fast because the target site had gone hot—vehicles arriving, heat signatures inside the warehouse multiplying. Whatever operation Cipher’s people were running, it was already underway.
Con dismissed them with a single nod that set them all in motion. Ash was out the door before the others had fully pushed back their chairs.
He moved fast through the corridor and hit the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. It was in that climb—in those few seconds when his body was occupied and his mind had half a breath of space—that a memory surfaced. Of Melina.
She always entered his thoughts before an op. It wasn’t grief—not anymore—but something quieter and more permanently part of him. A reminder of what could go wrong.
He hadn’t made that call fast enough. Hadn’t changed course after receiving new intel the way Con had. And for that, Melina died.
He didn’t let himself stop moving. He just let the memory do what it always did—sharpen him like an edge of a steel blade.
He pushed up the last flight of stairs and turned toward the only thing he cared about in this moment.
He knocked once, then opened the door before Ellory could answer.
She sat at the small desk with her laptop open, glasses sliding down her nose, legs crossed in that prim, sexy secretary way that had his balls clenching with need.
As he burst in, she pushed halfway out of her seat, something moving through her expression that made his heart slam.
In three steps, he crossed the room and pulled her up out of the chair. Before either of them could think too hard about it, he kissed her without holding back, slamming his lips over hers. Taking. Claiming.
She issued a tiny sound against his mouth, and then her hands were on him, gripping his shirt, twisting to bring him closer.
He yanked her flush against his body and kissed her the way he’d been imagining all goddamn day. When she was across the table in the war room with the whole team surrounding them, he wanted to sink his tongue between her sweet lips.
When she sat across the dining table from him, twirling her pasta around her fork, he wanted to leap over the table, pin her to the wall and kiss her just…like…this.
He plunged his tongue inside her mouth, and she stroked it in return, as unhurried as he was urgent.
He fisted a hand in her hair to tilt her head back, and the other spread over the small of her back.
In some distant, still-functioning part of his brain, he registered he had only twenty-five minutes left. He was not going to regret spending a single one here.
She sank her fingers into his shoulders as she anchored herself against him, pressing onto tiptoe to kiss him back like she understood what he couldn’t say.
With a deep rumble of want, he walked her backward until her shoulders met the wall, breaking the kiss just long enough to drag his mouth along the line of her delicate jaw.
Her breath caught at his ear, the small undone sound that had been its own spotlight in his memory since last night.
He swept his mouth down the arch of her throat to the smooth point where her pulse was tripping fast and hard. When he pressed his mouth there and felt how crazy he was making her too, he let his eyes drift shut.
He made himself memorize the rhythm, because twenty-three minutes wasn’t enough time and he needed something to carry with him.
She slid her hands up into his hair and curled against his scalp as he traced her throat with his lips, taking his time even though time was exactly what he didn’t have.
When he found her waist and worked his hands under the hem of her shirt to spread across the bare, warm skin of her back, her breath hitched.
“Angelo…” She gulped as he held her where he wanted her. “We…have time?”
He pulled back enough to look at her. Her lips were kiss-swollen, her blue eyes as dark as the sky at twilight.
It cost him so damn much to say it. “No,” he grated out.
She held his gaze for a moment before she dropped her forehead to his shoulder with a quiet exhale.
He gathered her in and held her there, one hand cradling the back of her head and the other pressed between her shoulder blades. He didn’t move as he soaked in this moment of raw want twisted up with regret that he couldn’t give her more.
Couldn’t fucking hold her after she shook apart in his arms.
“When you get back.” Her words were muffled against his shirt, and it wasn’t a question.
He drew back enough to see her. And Christ, that look on her face knotted something deep in his chest.
He slammed his mouth over hers again, the kiss moving from wild to deep and thorough, to slow and tender.
He had twenty minutes. Maybe less.
When he tore from the kiss, he made himself step back and drop his hands to his sides. If he didn’t put space between them, he couldn’t trust himself to stop.
“When I get back.”
She wrapped her arms around herself like maybe she was holding herself back too.
He started out the door.
“Angelo!” she called.
He swung to look at her, a dozen unspoken promises behind his lips.
“If you find…”
“Find what?”
She looked like she wanted to say more, but finally just shook her head.
“Be safe.” Her whispery tone spiked his desire all over again. The words did things to that place in his chest.
Before he could ravish her again, he gave her a hard nod and strode out.
By the time he reached the locker containing his gear, his mind shifted from sweet goodbyes to battle. As he suited up and double-checked his kit, the rest of the guys flooded in.
Only the clank of gear filled the air. In times like this, Ash always thought his brothers-in-arms were silent and serious because they were as locked in as he was. But now, he wondered if their minds were really on what they were leaving behind.
Chase was going to be a dad soon, and he had a lot more reason to come home safe. Hell, some of the other ladies might be expecting and just hadn’t made announcements yet.
In minutes, they were running across the yard for the chopper, ducking under the blades and strapping in.
The landing zone was a quarter mile from the target, a clearing in dense woods that would swallow sound and make them invisible.
Their target: five guys in a house owned by Cipher.
Ash took the rear of the formation as they moved swiftly through the tree line, his rifle up, scanning sectors. Con and Chickie were on point. Chase swept in on the left flank, Steele on the right. The rest of them were strung out across the line, and the comms were silent.
The house emerged through the dark.
“Fucking place looks like a family lives here. Not a terrorist cell,” came Sinner’s voice in their ears.
The two-story bungalow was gray-white in the night vision with a welcoming front porch where the owners could sit and sip lemonade. Except the house was owned by Cipher and the only thing he used it for was planning evil.
“Two lights on inside. Ground-floor front room. Upper left bedroom,” Ash informed the team from the layout they’d memorized an hour ago.
He pressed his body behind a wide oak, rifle trained on the northeast corner.
Chickie’s voice came low in his earpiece. “I don’t like this.”
“Something stinks,” Steele agreed. “This feels too much like Apollo.”
The name and what it meant to the team hit Ash.
During a raid that should have been routine, a member of the Blackout Charlie team—Apollo—had been killed in action.
Or so they all believed for months, until it was discovered that the mangled body they’d found wasn’t Apollo, and that the man had really gone even deeper undercover to stop another terrorist.
Ash let out a grating noise. “Not today, Charlie. I got your six. If I have to sweep every damn inch of this house, I’ll make sure every last one of us comes out.”
Silence throbbed over the comms as though what he said had stunned them.
He locked his jaw and waited for Con’s signal.
When it came, they moved.
The flash-bangs went in through the ground-floor window. The sound was a concussive crack that flattened the night. Then Con’s voice—“Go, go, go”—and Ash was in motion.
He took the back door with a single kick, high and hard, just above the lock. The wood splintered, and he went through fast and low.
He swept the kitchen and hooked left into the hallway.
Shouting came from upstairs. Orders flooded Ash’s ear.
“Two down. Moving to stairs.”
Ash held the hallway with Sinner pulling up on his six.
“Clear, second floor east.”
“Clear, main room.”
“I’ve got one in the yard,” Steele said over comms. “Request backup.”
“Copy. Moving.” Ash backtracked through the kitchen and circled to the door he’d come through. Instantly he picked out the target in his night vision—male, crouched, trying to be invisible.
Ash signaled Steele with two fingers.
They rushed in and had the man pinned down before he could even think about running. While Ash held him in his sights, Steele zip-tied him.
“Got him,” Steele informed the team.
“Five for five,” Con’s voice filled their ears. “Threats neutralized.”
Ash looked at the house. It didn’t appear to be so ordinary now. He could no longer see normal people sipping lemonade on that porch. Now, it was one less link in Cipher’s network. Five fewer men under Cipher’s control.
He let himself take a deep breath, lungs filling with pine and clean air.
He felt the shift of his mind, from war back to reunions.
He let himself take a deep breath, lungs filling with pine and clean air.