CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Laughter rang out, loud and boisterous, from the group playing cards at a beat-up table across the fire.
Though we’d wanted to keep our “roughing it in the woods” plan a secret unless necessary, we hadn’t been given much choice when we showed up to the pasture runway to see a Gulfstream idling, ready to go, with Paride frantically rushing us aboard.
In what had to be the most harrowing takeoff in history, the luxury jet barely cleared the forest, the uneven ground canting the wings off-kilter so they clipped a treetop. I sent a mental prayer of gratitude to whoever had trained Paride to fly, because he managed to straighten us out.
Apparently, the aircraft was hot, and he gave no explanation of who would be looking for it—just said the less we knew, the better. Because it was wanted, though, he said he’d need to ditch it far away and double back below the radar, then he asked where we’d like to be dropped off. Since we didn’t trust anyplace within civilization with the CIA’s proclivity of bugging any and everything, we’d turned down the numerous list of safe houses and directed him to a small airport in Serbia—Brock’s home turf.
From there, we’d spent three days traveling in boosted vehicles or nearly empty trains, gathering supplies until we reached some end point in Brock’s mind. There, he looked around the mountain clearing just ten minutes outside of an abandoned village and decided to set up camp.
We’d make the return trip to meet Paride in one more week at a predetermined train station on the outskirts of Belgrade.
Bryce sat next to me on the log, holding out a canteen in offering.
“Thanks,” I whispered, watching the others have fun. My throat spasmed as the sip of liquid I drank burned like a mouthful of napalm. “What is that? Gasoline?” I gasped, wiping my mouth on my coat sleeve.
Bryce flashed a wicked grin. “Nope. Aleks found an old bottle of rakija in a pub. Try another sip. It’s fruity, and although it’s not that good, it’ll warm you up.”
I showed the full weight of my doubt at his assertion, even as I obliged. Expecting the burn this time and not flavorless, innocent water, I braced myself through the sting, and yeah, there might have been hints of grape or berry lingering in the aftertaste. “Did he find that table in the same place?”
Bryce took a pull himself when I returned the canteen, his face calm without a single muscle twitch after downing the liquor. “Yeah, he somehow convinced Brock to help him lug it here. Knowing Brock, he probably caved just to get five minutes of peace.”
Aleks had been growing restless, wanting to wrestle or shoot something at any given chance. He’d taken to cooking strange concoctions that only he enjoyed but wanted to share with everyone. The last one was a hamburger patty made of squished bugs.
Even I hadn’t given into his puppy pout on that.
There wasn’t much to do to entertain ourselves, apart from ransacking the small mountain village that had been deserted with the mass depopulation several decades ago, and Payton limited those excursions after Corbin fell through one of the clay tile roofs. The degraded structures and crumbling foundations were also the reason we’d set up our tents out here instead of sheltering inside an actual four walled structure.
I tossed another piece of the stick I’d been breaking up onto the fire, watching the flames devour it.
Bryce sighed. “Callie, you’re being melancholic, all broody and alone over here. That’s my job—or Brock’s. Come on. You should join us.” When I continued to stare at the dancing embers, he leaned into my line of sight, physically blocking my view. “Don’t make me beg. You know I much prefer our roles be reversed in that scenario.”
It might have been the rakija or just a sustained lack of privacy, but my insides tickled with heat at his words.
Oh no.
Clearly, I needed a distraction. “Sure, why not?”
He smirked. “Atta girl.”
Bundling my coat around me, I stood to follow him.
“You want one more sip?” he asked. At my hesitation, he did a little shimmy with his hips. “Come on. We’re in the Balkans. Live like a native.”
“In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess.” I swiped his canteen and upended it.
Bryce’s eyes widened as he rushed to pull it away. “Callina!”
I gasped, leaning upright when he’d freed me from the burden of holding the container. With the bigger gulps, my tongue numbed to the burn and sampled the flavor profile better. “Whoa, that’s not grape. What is that?”
Bryce was frowning at me. “According to the bottle? Plum.”
I leaned into his side. “Oh, that’s right. You can read Serbian. Brock taught you when your parents hired him as your kid bodyguard.” I licked my lips, wondering if the liquor had numbed them to the lingering winter chill that had made being outside away from the fire miserable. The persistent cold that never quite left, despite the arctic rated sleeping bags, had disappeared entirely. “I can’t read Serbian,” I continued, looping my arm through Bryce’s.
“Neither can I, but the bottle has a picture of a plum on it.”
I giggled before tugging. “Oh, but you speak Serbian. Like me! But, shh, don’t tell Brock.”
“Don’t tell Brock what?” Brock demanded.
“Quiet.” I shushed him too. “I can speak Serbian. Well, he knows I can speak it, but I don’t think he appreciates how quickly I pick up languages. Promise you won’t tell him! It’s so cute when he explains things to me because he thinks it’s a word or phrase I’m unfamiliar with.” I sighed, a small smile dancing on my lips. “He takes it so seriously. I just want to kiss him silly until he smiles.”
Bryce coughed, and I reached over to pat his chest, possibly getting in a quick grope, but no one noticed.
The stars were out tonight. The smoke and sparks from the fire danced up to greet them through the budding trees and thick pine boughs.
“Oh, but his smile,” I continued. “He has these dimples. I can’t even think straight when they pop out.” This time, I released a wistful breath of air. “I wish those dimples were here right now.”
Bryce coughed again.
I turned to him, worry tingling in my gut. “Oh no. Living on this mountain has made you sick. You’re catching brontisi—er, broch, I mean bronchi… the flu.”
Bryce nudged aside the finger I’d pointed at his face, which ended up bopping his nose because I misjudged the distance. His eyebrow piercing glimmered with the firelight. “I’m fine, Callina.”
Brock glared at Bryce. “How much did she drink?”
“Aw, if he’s frowning, I’ll never get to see the dimples,” I whined, not caring that I’d missed his arrival.
Consolingly, Bryce patted my hand that he tucked more securely into the crook of his elbow when I tried to sway for dramatic effect. He held up his fingers and ticked them off as he answered the question. “Barely a taste, a tiny sip, and then, inexplicably, she chose to gulp it down.”
“Well, why’d you offer that stuff to her more than once?” Brock retorted. “We don’t know if it’s safe enough to get hammered on! If she gets alcohol poisoning, we’re days away from any decent medical facility.”
“It’s not my fault that she flipped one-eighty from sweet and innocent to Girls Gone Wild.”
“It absolutely is,” Brock snapped, and I couldn’t restrain myself any longer.
I rushed over to Brock, who automatically brought his hands up to hold me to his chest, stumbling only a step to steady us. My fingers poked his cheeks, looking for the dimples.
“Besides,” Bryce continued, sounding amused, “people pay tens of thousands of dollars for wine from certain years, and drinking old alcohol hasn’t killed them yet. Lighten up, dimples.”
“Don’t you fucking call me—du?o, what’s wrong?” He spread his thumb across the bottom lip I hadn’t realized had jutted out. That liquor had created a shield against the cold.
“It’s not working,” I murmured to myself.
“What’s not?”
“Your smile button.” An idea popped into my head. “Oh, I bet I need to kiss it instead, like those magical, true love kisses.” Even as I spoke, my words had worked their own kind of spell because a single, cute dimple popped out on one side with his crooked grin. “Never mind! I just needed to say the magic words! Wait, no, they disappeared again.”
“Du?o,” Brock growled and pulled me into a deep kiss, threading his hands through the hair at the nape of my neck.
When the kiss ended, honey sang through my veins, giving me the jitters of the sweetest sugar rush. I was beaming ear to ear when he pulled back to see my eyes, but I’d already locked onto the scruff on his cheeks—twin dimples. “I was wrong. The kiss works so much better.”
The spots deepened.
A sigh slipped free from my lips. I was in heaven.
“Medvezhonok!”
Oh no! The dimples faded.
“Medvezhonok!” Aleks persisted. “Come here. I will teach you to play poker like man.”
The dimples vanished entirely.
A swat landed on my behind. “Stop pouting, Callina,” Bryce chided, guiding me over to the action.
“I’m not pouting,” I whined, pouting.
“Sure you’re not, Damsel,” Jace scoffed, tugging my hand. Without Bryce’s arm bracing me, I might have spilled over into his lap. As it was, Bryce seemed content with me right where I was because he didn’t let me go.
I cast an apologetic look in Jace’s direction.
His brother’s jostling had CJ peeling his eyes away from his computer, and he beamed. “Callie! I’ve been wanting to talk to you about a way to mask our presence from the CIA while we wait for Petrov to contact us. I—”
“Yeah,” Bryce interrupted, readjusting his grip from around my shoulders to encircle my chest and under my other arm. It was a childlike hold. “You might want to save the tech talk for later, CJ. Callie’s a little—”
My mind decided I didn’t appreciate childish treatment, being all but propped up on his hip like a toddler with a tendency to run away. I slipped his hold and plopped down between the twins, smiling at Jace in thanks when he scrambled to make room.
CJ’s screen was on the dimmest setting, probably to conserve battery since the solar charger Brock packed wouldn’t last much longer into the night. Still, despite the low lighting, I squinted, trying to bring the code into focus. “Really? You got a working VPN put together without internet access to test it? Is it dynamic so that the address will change with every connection so the CIA can’t pick up a pattern?”
Bryce cleared his throat. “Consider me schooled, Callina. Apparently, she’s all yours.” He ambled away, and I took a moment to study his backside. It was easier to focus on than the tiny font on the command screen that made my eyes cross.
“Callie?” CJ asked, wide-eyed.
I poked him in the chin, probably a little too hard because he flinched. I couldn’t be sure because my fingertips were numb like my lips. That part was bad. How could I use my computer superpowers if I couldn’t feel the keys? “Stop that.”
CJ rubbed his chin, staring at me like he’d spotted a feral beast. “Stop what?”
“Why are you looking at me like you asked me a question? It was your turn to talk.”
Jace snorted from my other side. “He’s looking at you like that because of what you mumbled, Damsel.”
I turned to him. “I mumbled?” Was that important? Nah. “Never mind, back to my question. You think you have a way to do it?”
“Uh, yes, I’m fairly sure. We’ll have to wait until we have internet access again before we do any trials. This is all theoretical.”
“Don’t be so modest, CJ. You’re a master with computers.”
Jace pretended to gag. “If you both get cheesy over technology, I’m gone.”
That didn’t seem right. Turning to him, I frowned. “But I thought you liked twin sandwiches? Bryce said so.”
“Did he now?” Jace asked, staring at the man in question.
“Why are you angry? Is it not true?” I tried to recall the discussion, assuming that the twins knew I knew, but Aleks had taken over, and it’d been in Russian, so… yeah. Maybe they hadn’t known I knew about their twin sandwiches, or had Bryce been wrong?
Jace looked to be at a loss for words before he shared a glance with his brother over my head. “Well, it’s not, not true.”
“So you’re neutral about it?”
Jace scrubbed a hand through his golden curls. “Callie, that’s difficult to explain.” Without a word, CJ and Jace climbed to their feet, shuffling me along between them but away from the group.
I turned. “But Aleks—”
“What about him?” CJ asked.
“He wanted me over there with them.”
Jace patted the arm he’d taken. “Aleks will be fine. He’s too busy getting his ass handed to him by Mr. E.”
“Oh. Okay then.”
Just inside the tree line, they braced me against the thick, damp trunk of an ancient-looking tree. The moon offered minimal light, making it challenging to see their expressions so far from the fire’s glow.
I couldn’t differentiate between them in matching black coats, which bothered me. Had they switched sides when they turned me? Who had been on my left? “I can always tell which is which.”
“What?” one of them asked.
I stared hard, scouring for any clue. It’d always been a point of pride that I could identify the two, when others often needed to see a computer in CJ’s hands to figure it out.
“What?” the other one repeated, pretty much identically to the first, not helping things.
Without nicknames or computer speak to help me out, I was adrift without a float.
“Nothing,” I answered. “You wanted to talk?”
“Yeah.” They shared a look, and I had a hunch that Jace was the one talking since he tended to take the lead, but I couldn’t be sure. Would they think I didn’t care about them individually if I guessed and messed up? “Callie, we wanted to mention this naturally when things progressed far enough, not be forced to share this before you were ready.”
My head canted to the side, but my balance didn’t care for that. Flame orange highlights and blue, moon-kissed lowlights danced in a dizzying pattern of bark and stubborn snow. I squeezed my eyes shut. “Ah, ready for what?”
They turned to each other. “She’s not even sober,” one hissed.
“It’s too late anyway. We were dragging our feet.”
Another beat of silence passed before—I’d call them Twin for now—Twin spoke up. “We do enjoy sharing a girl between us.”
I blinked my eyes open. “Well, yeah. That seemed kind of obvious. You’re both dating me—along with the rest of the team.”
Twin snorted, the other twin, and oh, this was too confusing. I’d call him Left—and since they were a pair, Twin could change his name to Right.
Right snorted, and Left smiled and said, “Okay, that’s a fair point. We walked into that one.”
“That we did,” Right agreed. “Damsel—”
“Finally!” I shouted before catching the startled looks on their faces. “Uh, sorry. Don’t mind me. Jace, continue.”
Jace did so, though he hesitated long enough that I wondered if he’d need prodding. “As I was saying, Bryce was correct. We do like to share a little more than just dating the same girl. The—”
“Twin sandwich thing,” I supplied.
“Yeah, that. We didn’t want to overwhelm you with that until we thought you were ready,” CJ finished.
“But I’m fond of that too,” I replied, confusion marring my features.
Jace smiled, tucking my hair back. “Listen, Callie, you don’t have to say that just to—”
“But I do!” Only pure will allowed me to repress the urge to stomp my foot in true temper tantrum fashion.
“Callie, you were a virgin when you met us. The idea of being with two men at once might seem like a fantasy come true, but there’s a little more to it when faced with the reality. For example—”
I placed my hand over Jace’s mouth, muffling him. “He wasn’t listening.”That seemed important, so I repeated it to the perpetrator. “You’re not listening, Jace. Bryce and Brock do the twin sandwich thing too. Only, wait, they are not twins, so it’s just a sandwich, I guess, but that is beside the point. Focus, Callie. Where was I? Oh, right. What I was trying to tell you is that I’ve already been making sandwiches.” That sounded weird. “Is that how you say it?”
Oddly enough, it was CJ who jumped in this time. “You’ve done it before?”
I nodded.
Jace removed my hand from his mouth.
Oops. Maybe that was why he hadn’t spoken.
“Since when?” he demanded, sounding indignant.
“Since I covered your mouth?”
“What? No, I mean since when have Brock and—actually, you know what? Never mind. The important thing is that we can do this and not stress about freaking you out.”
“Do what—mph.”
My words cut off as Left—er, CJ kissed my lips. Then, a hand moved my hair while a second mouth explored my sensitive neck.
Yes! my horny brain screamed because it was physically impossible to do so aloud with CJ’s face dancing a tango with mine.
“What in the bloody hell is going on?”
I’m getting kissed, and it’s oh so delicious. Is that someone’s hand on my breast? Hell-o, lovely. When did you get there? But wait, my lips are free. Why are my lips free?
I blinked away the tempting haze with herculean effort, hearing the tail end of CJ’s stuttered explanation.
“Honest, Mr. E! She said she—”
“She’s not in her right state of mind.”
When had Payton arrived? His accent was so delicious.
Say more words!
My mental urging worked. “You’re taking advantage of her.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it was her tongue down my brother’s throat. Not the other way around,” Jace corrected, his sigh like a goodbye kiss against my throat before he straightened.
Payton floundered. “Well, it’s still not right. She’s not ready for those types of relations!”
Jace snorted. “Oh, believe me. We thought so too, but apparently, she loves her time with Brock and Bryce.”
Payton’s jaw dropped, like cartoon character dropped, as he stared at me with questions buzzing in his eyes.
CJ and Jace moved to take their leave, and unbidden, my hands reached for them. “No.”
Jace dropped a kiss on my forehead. “We’ll continue this later, but I think Mr. E needs a moment with you.”
With great reluctance, I released him.
At the edge of the woods, Jace turned and added, “We keep underestimating her. She can handle a lot more than we assume. Just food for thought, Mr. E, if you’ve been holding out on her because you presume you’ll corrupt her with your interests.”
Interests? I questioned through a yawn before my eyes grew heavy.