Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
IRIS
Sunday dinner at the Guardian Peak lodge is chaos.
Beautiful, loud, disorienting chaos. A toddler named Elena runs laps around a long oak table while her father, Decker Cross, pretends to chase her with all the intensity of a man who once led Delta Force operations.
His wife Vivian laughs from the kitchen doorway, wine glass in hand, dark hair loose around her shoulders.
She's gorgeous. Sharp eyes. The kind of woman who could cross examine you in court and make you thank her for it.
"You must be Iris." Vivian extends her free hand. "He's talked about you."
My gaze cuts to Jax, who is very deliberately not looking at me while he sets a dish on the table.
"He hasn't told me much about you either," I say. "So we're even."
Vivian grins. Immediate ally. I can feel it.
The lodge is warm, wood beamed, full of people who clearly love each other.
Cade Marshall, the team medic, has arms the size of my thighs and the gentlest face I've ever seen on a man over six feet.
His wife Natalie sits beside him with a hand resting on her pregnant belly, talking to Sadie Chen, Wolfe Hendrix's wife, who is simultaneously nursing a conversation and bouncing a dark haired baby on her hip.
Wolfe himself stands near the back wall. Silent. Watchful. Those wolf gray eyes land on me once, assess, and move on. He gives Jax a single nod that communicates an entire paragraph.
Boone Garrett pulls out a chair for his girlfriend Mara, who has her phone out and appears to be running a Fortune 500 company between bites of Cade's pot roast. Hayes Donovan, the youngest operative, catches my eye from across the table and flashes a grin so charming I almost forget he's a combat trained pararescueman.
"Heard you're CIA," Hayes says. "Fancy."
"Former."
"Even fancier. What's Priest like when he's being a spook? Does he do the whole mysterious trench coat thing?"
"Hayes." Jax's voice from behind me. One word. Low.
"Just asking." Hayes winks at me. His girlfriend Lex, a platinum blonde who radiates CEO energy from her pores, smacks his arm without looking up from her plate.
The whole table feels alive. Arguments about whose turn it is to wash dishes.
Elena shrieking with delight as Mace Hunter, the second in command, swoops her up and deposits her in her high chair.
Natalie asking if anyone wants more bread while Cade hovers behind her, his hand on the small of her back, ready to catch anything she might drop.
This is what Jax built when he left the CIA. Or what his team built around him while he hid in his mountain cabin pretending he didn't need any of it.
Watching him navigate the room is revelatory.
He speaks less than anyone. Sits at the corner of the table where his back is to the wall and his sight line covers both the front door and the kitchen entrance.
Classic. But his eyes move with something other than tactical assessment.
When Elena reaches for his water glass, he moves it closer to her with one finger.
When Sadie asks him to pass the salt, his hand brushes hers during the exchange and she beams at him.
When Cade tells a terrible joke about a bear and a surgeon, the corner of Jax's mouth twitches.
He has a family. A real, messy, too loud, completely dysfunctional family.
The realization settles in my chest with a weight I wasn't expecting.
After dinner, Deck briefs the team. Jax stands at the front of the room with the hard drive data projected onto a screen Sully set up.
He walks through Volkov's network, the kill list, the timeline.
Every operative in the room goes still. Tactical brains engaging.
Threat assessment running behind their eyes.
"Sully's trace on the Frankfurt server cluster confirms Alexei Volkov is coordinating through a former SVR communications hub." Jax changes the slide. "He's using retired Russian intelligence infrastructure. Funded through a shell company registered in Cyprus."
"So it's a state adjacent threat with private funding." Deck leans forward, elbows on knees. "What's the timeline?"
"Based on the interval between previous kills, Iris has approximately two to three weeks before the next team reaches U.S. soil. Possibly less if they're already here."
Two to three weeks. The number tightens my stomach. Across the room, Mace meets my eyes. His expression is calm. Steady. The kind of face that holds a room together when things fall apart.
"She stays at your cabin?" Deck asks Jax.
"Nobody gets past my perimeter without me knowing."
"I'll run overlapping thermal sweeps on the north and east approaches," Sully offers, adjusting his glasses. "Can integrate your trip wire data into the main sensor grid by morning."
"Wolfe, I need you running tracking rotations on the fire road. Forty eight hour cycles." Deck doesn't ask. Commands. "Boone, contingency plans for three threat levels. Mace, you're liaison. Anything Iris or Priest needs, it goes through you."
The team moves into action without hesitation. Assignments absorbed, processed, executed. Watching them work together is like watching a machine built from mismatched parts that somehow runs perfectly.
Jax catches my arm as the room clears. His fingers circle my wrist. Warm. Firm. My pulse jumps and there's no hiding it because his thumb rests directly over the vein.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine."
"You haven't been fine in six days." His voice drops below the noise of the room emptying. "You don't have to perform for them."
"I'm not performing."
"You've been smiling for two hours straight. You don't smile when you're scared. You smile when you're terrified."
The accuracy of that observation steals my breath. Seven years apart and he still reads me better than anyone alive.
"Can we go?"
He releases my wrist. The absence of his touch registers immediately, a phantom warmth that lingers on my skin while we walk back up the mountain trail in darkness.
The cabin is cold when we arrive. He restarts the woodstove while I stand in the middle of the room, still vibrating from the evening. From the team, the family, the way he moved through that space pretending he didn't belong to it while clearly belonging to nothing else.
"They love you."
He crouches by the stove, feeding kindling. "They tolerate me."
"Cade's wife is pregnant and she still made sure your plate was full before she sat down. Hayes teases you because he wants your approval. Elena tried to give you her stuffed rabbit. That's love, Jax."
His back stays turned. The fire catches. Orange light crawls up the cabin walls.
"You had a family this whole time." My voice catches on the last word. "You let me think you were alone."
"I was alone."
"You were surrounded by people who care about you."
He stands. Turns. The firelight cuts his features sharp. Silver hair, pale eyes, jaw tight. Six foot five of lethal, disciplined, achingly beautiful man who has spent seven years punishing himself for sins he committed in service to a country that will never acknowledge what he sacrificed.
"None of them are you."
The words gut me. Clean. Precise. No wasted syllables.
Something breaks loose. Whatever leash I've been holding since I climbed this mountain, since I walked into his cabin, since I saw him step out of the dark on that fire road with a gun in his hand and my name on his lips. The leash snaps.
Two steps close the distance. My hands find his chest. The thermal is thin and underneath it his body is hard, hot, his heart slamming against my palms.
"Tell me to stop," I say.
"No."
"Tell me this is a bad idea."
"Worst idea either of us has ever had."
"Good."
His mouth crashes down onto mine. Both hands grip my hips, pulling me flush against him.
The kiss is seven years of silence, seven years of unanswered phone calls, seven years of sleeping alone in beds that didn't smell like cedar.
His tongue sweeps mine. His teeth catch my lower lip.
A groan vibrates from his chest into my mouth.
My back hits the wall. His thigh presses between my legs, the pressure exactly where I need it. One hand slides under my shirt, palm spread flat against my bare waist. The skin to skin contact makes us both freeze for a single second.
Then he lifts me. My legs wrap around his waist and his cock presses hard against my center through our clothes.
He carries me to the bed, sets me down, pulls my shirt over my head in one motion.
His mouth finds my neck, my collarbone, the top of my breast above my bra.
He unclasps it with one hand. Experienced. Focused.
"Seven years," he breathes against my nipple. Then takes it in his mouth.
My back arches off the bed. His tongue circles, sucks, teeth grazing just enough to make me gasp. His hand slides down my stomach, pops the button on my jeans, drags the zipper. Fingers push past my underwear and find me soaking wet.
"Christ, Iris."
Two fingers slide inside me. His thumb presses my clit in slow, firm circles. He knows exactly where. Remembers exactly how. My hips roll against his hand, chasing the pressure.
"More." The word comes out wrecked.
He adds a third finger. Curls them. His mouth moves to my other breast, sucking hard enough to leave a mark while his hand works me steady, relentless. The orgasm builds fast, too fast, my body starved for this specific man for too many years.
"Come for me." Low. Commanding. Priest's voice. The voice that used to order teams into combat zones. Directed at my pussy while three fingers fuck me against his mattress.
The orgasm rips through me. My hand fists in his hair, pulling hard enough that he groans. His fingers don't stop, working me through it until my thighs shake.
Before the aftershocks fade, he strips my jeans off. Then his own clothes, all of them, fast. Condom from the nightstand drawer. He rolls it on and sinks into me in one long, deep stroke.
Full. Stretching. Exactly how I remember. Bigger than I remember.
He pulls out slow, pushes back in hard. Sets a rhythm. Deep, steady, punishing. His forehead drops to mine, our breath mixing. Every thrust pushes a sound from my throat I can't control.
"Look at me." He grips my jaw. Gentle despite the force of his hips. My eyes open. His are pale blue and devastated. "I need you to look at me."
So I look at him while he fucks me. While he takes me apart with his body the way he took me apart with his words this morning on the porch. Honest. Brutal. Beautiful.
My second orgasm builds slower. He feels it, reads the tightening of my body, shifts his angle. His pelvis grinds against my clit on every stroke. His hand leaves my jaw and grips the headboard for leverage, driving deeper.
"Jax." His real name. The one nobody uses. The one that belongs to me.
He comes when I do. Both of us. His forehead pressed to mine, his groan muffled against my mouth. My nails rake down his back. His hips stutter, then still.
Silence. Breathing. The fire crackles in the stove.
He doesn't pull away. Doesn't roll over. Stays buried inside me, weight on his forearms, eyes closed.
"Don't leave again," I whisper.
His eyes open. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Promise me."
"I promise."
And because I'm an intelligence analyst who's been trained to verify every claim, I pull his mouth back to mine.
Verification accepted.