Chapter 14
Tyrone forced another bite of his sandwich, his jaw working mechanically. Grilled cheese had never tasted so good. Glenna’s hands had made it, and now his fingers were wrapped around the same damn plate she’d touched, and that was the problem.
It’s only a problem, if you let it be a problem.
He could just about make out the faint slosh of water from the bathroom, along with Kelsey’s occasional giggle.
Sounds that had no business making his pulse kick like a drumline.
Especially, when they made him wonder things, he had no business wondering.
What it would be like to have this every day.
To have a home to come to. A woman and child who were waiting just for him.
He knew better. He did, but there was the tiniest part of his soul, that had been buried deep beneath the scars of war that whispered… maybe you can have it…if you want it badly enough.
He took another bite and chewed slower, because he couldn’t bring himself to leave just yet. He should go. Right now. Before Kelsey finished her bath, before Glenna stepped back into the room with those damn eyes that both saw too much and yet seemed oblivious to what was right in front of her.
Maybe she’s just not interested.
Wouldn’t that be a kicker. The first woman he could see himself needing forever and she couldn’t see past the ghost of the man who had been one of his closest friends.
If you were as close as you thought you were, Dwight would have fucking told you about them.
The bathroom door opened, and Kelsey emerged.
She was scrubbed pink from her bath, a joyful blush on her cheeks, and Tyrone caught the whiff of strawberries drifting down the hall.
Her dark hair clung damply against the collar of her pajamas, a bizarre, glittery princess nightmare adorned with enough ruffles and frills that he couldn’t help but stifle a strangled chuckle.
I gotta get one of those for Zenko Marks, it would fit right in with all his glitter shit.
He might need to give Zenko’s man, Shaun, a head’s up first though. Because the last thing he wanted was the Ghost Operator gunning for his ass for sending him glitter shit in the mail.
In her small hands, Kelsey clutched a battered paperback, the sort that must have been loved intensely, its corners worn soft from all the reading and re-reading.
“Zorro?” Her voice was thick with sleep, that sweet drowsiness twining around her words.
That simple plea tugged at something deep inside him. “Will you read to me?”
Hid ribs locked in a vice of hesitation.
No.
Bad idea.
Danger.
Danger.
Retreat STAT.
Reading to Kelsey meant stepping into a role that felt heavier than any weapon he’d ever carried.
It posed risks he didn't want to consider—the warmth that could wrap around his heart like a noose tied tight, the way her laughter could echo in the stillness of his soul long after she and her mom were gone home. He opened his mouth as if to refuse, the words lodged in his throat and refused to come out. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Glenna’s shadow ghosting along the hallway behind Kelsey, her fingers nervously twisting the hem of her shirt.
She was silent, her presence betraying a thousand unspoken anxieties.
She didn’t need to say a word; the weight of unacknowledged emotions hung in the air, he was enthralled, enticed, and oh so fucking screwed.
Kelsey, oblivious to the tension, climbed onto his lap, “Please? It’s the one about the dragon who doesn’t wanna burn stuff,” she begged, her eyes wide and pleading, sparking with innocent hope.
How the hell do I say no to that?
How?
He couldn’t, and he knew it. “All right, let your mom tuck you into bed, and I’ll read the story.
The mattress dipped as he sat beside her.
The book landed in his lap, its pages falling open to an illustration of a scaly green beast with the saddest, droopy eyes he'd ever seen. The image resonated painfully, a reflection of his own burdens, or maybe even the quiet longing for something he didn’t think he’d ever had in his entire adult life—emotional safety.
Kelsey yawned and cured into his side, her small frame fitting perfectly against him as though she had done it a hundred times before.
That warmth spread through him like a balm, momentarily warding off the cold, hard reality.
This was a pipe dream. Happy endings weren’t for the likes of an operator from the wrong side of the tracks in Chicago.
Maybe Glenna and Kelsey could be the ones to change that?
Dwight’s woman.
Dwight’s child.
“You’re not reading.”
“I was just trying to find the right page.”
“It’s got number one on the end.”
“Oh, it does, does it?” With a deep exhale, he flipped the pages, surrendering to the moment.
His voice emerged rougher than he intended,.
“Once, in a valley where the wind always howled—” As he read, it felt like the world faded away, as he lost himself in the faded illustrations and the simple joys of storytelling, where dragons could learn not to burn and where innocence somehow triumphed, even against the darkest of odds…
“And the all lived happily ever after. The End.”
If only this shit happened this way in real life.
Carefully, he stood off the bed, and tip-toed out of the room, pulling the door almost shut behind him.
He found Glenna on the couch, with one leg tucked under her, the other was barefoot with her toes curled against the cushion. A glass of red wine sat on the coffee table, in front of her. She didn’t look up from her phone, fingers tapping the screen in slow, absent rhythm.
“There’s a glass for you on the counter.”
Her voice was soft, but it hit him like a round to the vest.
Escape route: compromised.
Scratch that. Escape route: eliminated.
“You didn’t have to?—”
“Drink the wine, Tyrone.” Glenna peered at him over the top of the phone, “it’s just a thank you for reading to Kelsey.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Unable to resist the invitation disguised as an order, he grabbed the glass and returned to the couch. The cushion dipped as he sat next to her. Glenna’s thumb swiped upward on the screen, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.
He gulped a mouthful of wine, then he saw the words on her phone. His hands slid down her spine, fingers digging into the dip above her?—
Is she reading sex?
The wine almost went down the wrong pipe, but he managed to figure it out without alerting her to the problem. His pulse hammered in his throat, heat flooding his system like a flashbang—sudden, disorienting, and oh so inescapable.
Glenna’s breath hitched, and she made a little whimpering noise that went straight to his balls.
As if she realized she’d made the noise, and he’d heard it, her shoulders tensed and she tilted the phone a little, as if she might hide the screen.
Then she hesitated and either changed her mind or decided to torture him as she angled it toward him.
Just enough so he could read it clearly.
Tyrone’s gaze locked onto the words, the scene unfolding in his mind with brutal clarity. A man’s mouth on a woman’s neck. The scrape of teeth. The way her back would arch, the gasp torn from her when?—
I’m so fucked.
Challenge accepted.
The air between them thickened.
He shifted, the denim of his jeans suddenly restrictive, the seam pressing against the hard proof of his body’s betrayal. His free hand fisted on his thigh, knuckles white, and bit back a groan.
Glenna’s tongue wet her upper lip. The movement was innocent. But it gutted him. She finally looked at him, eyes dark and knowing, the phone still clutched in her fingers. “You okay?” Her voice was smoke and sin and wouldn’t be out of place on a sex line.
He swallowed and the wine almost refuse to down, as he lied between his teeth. “Peachy.”
Glenna set the phone face-down on the cushion beside her. “You don’t strike me as the romance-novel type.”
“Not usually, but when you’re overseas for months on end and bored out of your brain, you’ll read anything you can get your hands on.” He took another swallow of wine, the liquid heat did nothing to cool the fire in his veins.
Glenna shifted, the couch cushion sighing under her weight. Her knee brushed his.
Was that an accident or did she do it on purpose?
“I’m not very good at this am I?”
He blinked in confusion. “Um…good at what, Glenna?”
“Seducing you.”
His body reacted to the faint rasp of her exhale like she’d struck a match.
One second. That was all it would take. He could lean in, close the distance between them and find out if her mouth tasted like the wine or something sweeter, something hers— His pulse roared in his ears, drowning out logic, drowning out everything but the heat of her knee pressed against his and the way her breath hitched when his thumb brushed the condensation on the glass.
Glenna’s lashes lowered, her gaze dropping to his mouth.
His cock twitched, the traitorous bastard.
Now he had blue balls and a hard dick—exactly what he didn’t need when he should’ve been telling her about Qasos, about the threat they posed.
Instead, here he was fantasizing about dragging her onto his lap, burying his face in her neck, finding out if she tasted as good as she smelled.
Sitting next to her had been a dumb move on his part.
He should’ve sat in the armchair. Should’ve kept his distance.
Should’ve left the second Kelsey conked out.
But no. Now he was trapped, his body primed and ready to roll, his mind supplying images in vivid, cruel detail of Glenna straddling him, her nails digging into his shoulders, her voice rough with need as she?—
Christ.
Stop.
He shifted, the denim of his jeans abrasive against his erection. The movement drew her attention, her gaze flicking downward before snapping back up, her cheeks flushing.
She knows.
If anything, that made it worse.
He needed to move. Needed to put space between them before he did something irreversible. But his body refused to cooperate.
Glenna’s tongue darted out, wetting her lower lip, and his stomach clenched. “You’re tense,” she murmured.
No shit.
He exhaled through his nose, fingers flexing against his thigh. “Just… long day.” It was a lie. A pathetic, transparent lie. But she didn’t seem to notice.
“If you want to leave, that’s okay.” Her fingers curled around the stem of her glass, the knuckles whitening. “But if you want to stay…that’s okay too.”
His cock pulsed, a demanding ache.
Move. Now.
Don’t fucking leave.
He turned his head, just slightly, and—goddamn it—there she was.
Close enough that he could see the faint freckle beneath her left eye, the way her pulse jumped in her throat.
Close enough to count the individual lashes framing those dark, knowing eyes.
Close enough to kiss. Close enough to taste. His breath hitched.
Glenna’s lips parted, the movement barely there, but it gutted him.
Invitation and temptation all rolled in to one.
There it was the line he wasn’t sure he could stop himself from crossing.
The line he knew he shouldn’t cross. His vision blurred at the edges, his body coiled tight, ready to—”Fuck it.
” His hand moved before his brain could stop it.
His calluses caught on the softness of her inner wrist as he gripped her, his thumb pressing into the flutter of her pulse. Her skin was fire, branding him through the contact, and when she gasped his vision whited out at the edges. “This is a bad idea.”
“Probably,” Glenna’s lips parted, her breath coming faster now, her chest rising and falling in a rhythm that matched the frantic beat of his heart. “But I don’t care.” She surged forward.
Their mouths crashed together with no finesse or gentleness, just heat and need and the sharp, desperate slide of their lips.
Tyrone groaned into her, the sound ripped from his chest, his free hand sliding up to tangle in her hair, his fingers tightening in the strands.
She tasted like hopes, dreams, and the lifelines drowning men spoke of and like the drowning man he was unable to resist.
Glenna made a noise—half gasp, half moan—and then her hands were on him, her nails digging into his shoulders through the fabric of his shirt, her body pressing flush against his.
The couch groaned under the shift of their weight, the cushion dipping as she straddled him, her thighs bracketing his hips, the heat of her core a brand against the fly of his jeans.
Fuck.
Tyrone’s hands dropped to her waist, his grip bruising as he hauled her closer, the friction maddening, but also not enough.
Her back arched, her breasts pressing against his chest, her nipples hard points even through the fabric separating them.
He could feel the ridge of her ribs under his palms, the way her breath hitched when his teeth grazed her lower lip.
She whimpered, and the sound shattered what little control he had left.
His mouth slanted over hers, tongue sweeping in deep, doing what he’d convinced himself he hadn’t wanted or needed—claiming her.
She met him stroke for stroke, her own tongue bold, demanding, and hungry.
Her fingers speared into his hair, her nails scraping his scalp, the sting grounding him even as his hips jerked up, the hard ridge of his cock grinding against the heat of her.
Glenna tore her mouth free with a wet gasp, her lips swollen, her eyes dark and dazed. “Ty?—”
I fucking love the sound of my name coming out of her mouth.
He crushed his mouth to hers again, swallowing her moan, his hands sliding down to grip her ass, fingers flexing into the soft flesh. She rocked against him, the friction sending white-hot sparks through his system, making his cock throb and demand more.
The couch creaked, the wood frame groaning under the force of their movements.
Glenna’s teeth sank into his lower lip, the sharp bite of pain cutting through the haze of lust. Tyrone growled, his hands tightening on her, his hips pistoning up in a rough, desperate rhythm.
She was everywhere—her scent, her taste, the way her body moved against his like she was made for this, made for him—MINE.