Justice (Bad Boys of X-Ops Book 2) (6 page)

The arterial wound. The gusher of blood pumping from his thigh. Using my knife to gouge through flesh and muscle. I knew enough to be dangerous.

Texas passed out.

The rest died.

I held his head in my lap, my machine gun in my hand, and killed every single haji who entered the room.

Daylight brought APCs and reinforcements.

Eight hours of shit. And piss and puke and blood and death and gunfire. And me. With a fucking first aid kit and a gun. Patching up. Taking heat.
Saying last rites.
Saving letters to loved ones. Closing dead eyes.

Texas and I were the only ones who walked out of that stinkhole.

Well, I walked. Dead on my feet. Carrying Texas. Because I would not let one more person die.

I got him on a stretcher. Watched him being loaded onto a truck.

I wiped a bloody hand across my face.

“You’re the one everyone’s talking about. Gunnery Sergeant Chase.” The officer had piercing eyes, a grim face, and he had a rep of being one of the hardest working sons-of bitches this side of Afghan-land.

“Captain Maverick, sir!” I saluted, all but swaying on my feet.

“Nice work.”

“They died, sir.” Swallowing through the dry dust in my throat, I clenched my jaw.

He placed a hand on my shoulder. “You didn’t kill them. Pretty sure you would’ve saved them all if you could’ve.”

Surprise. I didn’t sign up for another tour after that; that was for damn sure. But trying to assimilate into civvy life had made me twitchy. Just didn’t work.
I
no longer worked as a normally functioning human being.

I did my best. I got into computers after I didn’t re-up. Computers didn’t lie. People did.

I tightened up on emergency medical procedures. Because I frigging
needed
to be able to help save lives.

When I slept I relived all the bad things that had happened, and it wasn’t just war.

The things I’d survived made a man feel fifty-eighty instead of twenty-eight.

I didn’t think about Texas anymore. Tried not to. Because he’d died last year, and Captain Bo Maverick and his first sergeant Slade were the only men left alive that time.

And now I was numb. Except when I was on the job, or when I was fucking a woman . . . I was numb.

Bo Maverick had talked to Walker. And Walker had told the T-Z recruiters. And when they came with a job offer, I thought I could do some good in this world. Maybe I was better prepared this time.

The rescues for me far outweighed the slick, sleek, in-and-out assassinations.

For damn sure we’d get this one done right. No casualties. Because I could only keep joking around so long when people—worthy people—died on my watch.

Stretching to my feet, I left the kitchen. I used the dark like a blanket around me. A silent assuagement. My feet made no noise. I breathed in a steady rhythm, holding the H&K pistol aloft with Zero Dark Thirty my only companion.

Bathroom. Empty of all vital threats unless you counted the interminable drip-drip-drip of the sink.

Storm could fix that in the morning.

I checked the next room. Bane, Storm, and Walker roughed it on the floor instead of making use of the beds. The three of them slept like the dead, but I knew if I made so much as a noise they’d pop to their feet, firearms in hand, battle-ready. Their bedrolls were spread close together with Walker between the pair who couldn’t stand each other. A buffer of sorts. I peered closer and snorted quietly. It almost looked like Walker was snuggling up to Storm.

Edging out, I softened my footfalls even more. Air circulated through the safe rooms, but it was stifling and hot, not a pleasant seventy degrees of cool A/C. A drop of sweat trailed from my temple to my neck, and I brushed my face against my shoulder to wipe it off.

Peering inside the room Tilly shared with her dad, I scanned the interior. She lay closest to the door, a hand curled around a pillow. I peeked at her face, slumber-soft and probably warm to the touch. She looked childish almost. Trusting. The hair surrounding her face formed a wavy cloud, and she slept with one arm flung out.

Her lips looked plump and pink and probably tasted like pillows of heaven. Long eyelashes curled against her cheek.

She looked luscious. Ready for a tussle.

A hard jolt hit my groin and, guiltily, I stepped back.

I stalked back to the bunker room where I inspected the door to the tunnel. Storm had done a bang-up job. Every crack and edge soldered with seams of cooled metal.

I bent my head against the cold door, but it didn’t take my temperature down one single notch.

I kept my watch in that room, memorizing every detail of the bland surrounds instead of wondering if Tilly usually slept in a nightie or shorts and a tank top . . . or nude.

I listened to the tick tock of my watch as my throat grew thick and my cock grew hard and stupidly erect in my pants. The soles of my boots beat on the floor when I skidded down the wall and drew up my legs.

The one good thing about this
trapped-under-a-microscope
situation was the barricaded rooms were all interior. No windows, no outside doors. As the night waned toward dawn, the noise from outside—shrill shouts, rattling gunfire, smaller explosions—quieted, leaving me with more thoughts.

Thoughts of Tilly. Unwarranted. Unwanted.

I’d thought her hair was the color of peaches. But I was wrong.

Apricots. Ripe apricots.

I imagined her holding her rifle and taking a bead on her prey.

I saw her teaching a classroom full of college students—men who probably wanted to be teacher’s pet more than anything.

Her mouth wasn’t just utterly kissable, it was feisty as hell.

Groaning, I pulled out my notebook, now folded and pressed into a pocket. And a pen.
What a laugh. I wasn’t a writer. I was a fighter.

Whatever. That shit with Walker cuddling with Storm was going into the book.
Fais do-do
, the Cajun called his beloved sack time when he didn’t use the term to refer to party time. I chuckled, wondering what the equivalent phrase was in the Lakota language.

But not one single damn word about Tilly would be included in the book. Nothing, absolutely nothing about her.

Sitting with my head bent over, I scratched across the page, concentrating on the present. Bane and Storm and Walker. Not Texas or the sand pit. Not a normal life I could no longer have. Definitely not Tilly Lawless.

A shadow fell over me, as dark as a cloud across the form of my body. Dropping the notebook, I swung my Heck & Koch up, acting on pure instinct. My finger started squeezing the trigger, and I almost let the bullet fly before I realized the person was a woman.

Tilly.

Primed and Ready

OH FUCK ME.

The midnight watch during a standoff was not the time to worry about my ins and outs, especially not when Tilly showed up, forthrightly staring at me.

I dropped the gun to my side. “
Do not
sneak up on me like that.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to catch you unaware.”

I kept my face averted and in shadow, because a different kind of hunger—greedier and wild—struck my gut and lit up lower at the very sight of her.

A sight I quickly scanned and catalogued: loose shorts low on her hips, a big T-shirt billowing out over her body but stopping just short of her waistband so a forbidden slice of flat skin appeared, and tits that had to be as unbound and unfettered as the wildly drifting hair around her shoulders.

Bare feet.

Pink toenails.

She paused in the doorway, crossing the sole of one foot over the top of the other, which threw her hip into a jut and accentuated a soft and toned female body I wanted to sink my teeth—and my cock—into. Immediately.

Temptation in the flesh.

“I think you’d best get some rest, Matilda.” My voice came out low but razor sharp, my words blunt and unmuffled.

If I had to be an asshole to her to maintain the necessary distance I would, because the suddenness of wanting her so damn much was painful.

And futile.

And stupid beyond belief.

“
Tsk.
” She waltzed into the room all bare, tan legs and warm, soft scent.

Her fingers flicked at my forehead, and I reared back in surprise.

“Tilly,
Ah
told you. Only my grandmother has ever called me Matilda, and she’s so stiff I think she was molded into the apron she put on after she got married in 1948. I am
not
a Matilda.”

First of all, I couldn’t believe she’d flicked me. Me! A goddamn ex-marine and special operative.

And second, a grin crept up one side of my mouth, but I swallowed down the laugh that wanted to follow.

“What’s that?” Tilly pointed at the notebook resting in my lap.

“
Uh
.”
Fuck.
I’d completely forgotten about the damn thing. “Nothing.” I quickly rolled it up and stashed it in my pocket. “Bullshit on pages. Gonna make a bonfire out of it later.”

I pulled out a throwing star I always flipped back and forth between my fingers. It flashed like lightning, throwing sparks of light across the room.

A much more manly pursuit.

Jesus. I am losing it.

Maybe I need some sleep after all.

I groaned.

Tilly plopped right down beside me with upraised legs, leaning the back of her head against the wall. “God, but it’s hot in here.”

Plucking at her shirt that ballooned before settling back against the firm round hills of her tits, she rolled her head toward me. “Justin, right?”

I met her eyes for a moment to see the twinkle in her irises.

“Justice.” I growled.

“Justice?
Hmm.
Justice what?”

“I’m not giving out that information.” I made my frown as formidable as ever, but I could tell she didn’t give a shit.

She leaned close enough her warm breath caressed my ear. “Who would I tell?”

“Chase . . . Justice Chase.” The words tumbled from my mouth.

She clapped a hand over her mouth to withhold a giggle. “Well, that’s not so bad, is it? Imagine if it was Chase Justice.”

“It’s not that.”
Maybe a little.
“No one’s supposed to know . . . who I really am.”

“Lawless and Justice,
huh
?” Her hand found my forearm, and her fingers squeezed the steel cable muscles. “Sounds like an outlaw movie. The next big blockbuster. I promise to keep your secret, Justice Chase.”

Spunky Tilly somehow lifted all the fatigue from my body, and I aimed a feral grin at her.

Her eyelashes fluttered. Her smile became a softer curve of her lips.

Her fingers traced all the way down to my wrist where a pulse pounded a heavy beat before she skimmed her hand to my thigh and down to the floor between us.

She made my body thump and my blood race. She made sensations fire like a network of heat to the center of my groin.

Maybe it was just the day, the night, the adrenaline rush that hadn't worn off and probably wouldn't. The same thing happened with every op—unleashed energy I usually slaked afterward by fucking. Fucking hard. Randomly. Anonymously. 

Here there was no one to screw. Except Tilly.

There was no escaping her presence either, and, man, did I want to fuck the living daylights out of her.

I lifted one knee and casually—oh so casually—crossed a forearm over it so my hand nearly dangled in my lap, obscuring my growing hard-on from view.

“You should stay in your quarters, Matilda.” My voice sounded like gravel, and I shifted again.

“Is that a direct order, sir?”

I sensed the half smile in her voice. I’d be handing out plenty of orders over the next couple of days, many of them probably unpleasant, so I merely grunted.

She took that as the negative it was—an invitation, albeit unwilling—for her to stay, and settled more closely beside me.

Suddenly I was glad I’d washed off the soot and sweat and grime earlier. She smelled so clean and looked so . . . untouched, I felt like I dirtied her with just my presence.

Last time I’d tasted someone as fresh as her—touched, made love to, talked sweet with—had been too long ago to dig up the memories. The memories that still haunted me.

“Is it lonely? Doing what you do? Never settling down?” Studying my face, she couldn’t possibly ignore the hard jut of my jaw, bristled with a day’s growth of blond stubble.

“No. I prefer it.”

Liar.

I liked the job well enough. Hated solo missions though. At least when Walker, Storm, Bane, and I were together as a team I was never bored. I didn’t have to talk to myself inside my head, because I could rarely get a word in edgewise with those yahoos around. Any thoughts I had ended up scrawled in ballpoint on the page.

I’d always imagined being a single child meant I was cut out for being alone. The opposite turned out to be true: sometimes in my darkest moments I wanted nothing more than my own busting-at-the-seams family. A loud house with lots of rooms filled with teasing and laughter and light and love.

But that didn’t matter.

I’d forfeited it all.

And now I sat in dark and shadows, hid my true identity behind dozens of fake ones, fucked women I’d never see again.

I lazily flipped the shuriken back and forth with every taut muscle of my body straining—tensile—toward Tilly like a cocked but unfired weapon.

“Should I be worried, Justice?”

Her hand moved back to my arm, and I knew I shouldn’t return her touch, but I laid the throwing star down and covered her hand with mine.

I gave her what little I could while keeping myself carefully guarded like a goddamn fortress against this insatiable need to
do
something—to fight or to fuck with all the pent up ache growing in my body.

Touching her wasn’t helping matters.

I withdrew my hand and clenched it in a fist at my side.

“You don’t need to worry until I tell you to. And when I do, you better act fast.” Placing another inch between us, I added, “And you need to be careful, Matilda.”

My words amounted to nothing more than gruff comfort coupled with a helping of cold shoulder, because I knew it was the only way to keep my distance.

She hissed in a breath when I said her real name, her full name, once again. “I’ll do that.”

Silence beat between us, and the dark of the night was too close.

Examining her profile, I took in the apples of her cheeks, the curve of her neck.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“’Course,” she answered.

“Where’s your mother?”

“My mom?”

I thought a glimmer of wetness showed in her eyes before she glanced away.

“She died two years ago.”

A lump formed in my throat I struggled to speak over. “I’m sorry.”

“Breast cancer. She fought it for ten years, but it spread.” Tilly linked her arms around her upraised knees and pressed her face against them.

Rolling her head aside, she managed to keep her tears from flowing over. “I wanted to quit grad school. Stay home with her. She wouldn’t have it. Made it to my graduation while the cancer ate through her bones and Dad took care of her, night and day.” A single teardrop, fat and round, slid down her cheek. The corner of her mouth rose sadly. “She died the week after.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated, balling my fists so I didn’t, wouldn’t, reach for her.

She wiped her face against her knees. “Me too. But she’s in a better place. The pain is done. And Dad . . . well, those years were rough on him.”

“What about you?”

“It was hard.” She swallowed and a shiver worked down her spine. “But I’m pretty resilient.”

“How old are you?” I couldn’t detect a single a wrinkle around her eyes that shined light green when she was amused, and I imagined she was the type to laugh a lot, despite what she’d lived through.

“Twenty-six. You?”

“Ancient.”

Not much older, but the shit I’d survived made me feel ancient next to her.

“I’d imagined so.” She lightly punched me in the stomach where nothing but hard rolls of muscle met the impact of her slight fist. “All sagging paunch.” She puffed out a laugh.

God, but it was easy being with her. Easy, and thrilling, and way too fucking tempting because she was just so damn gorgeous.

Straightening, she reached across me, carefully caressing the cold steel, Black Ronin hari-shuriken. “You use these a lot?”

I bent my face in her direction. There was little light, but I had pretty damn good night vision. Clear eyes rose to mine, and Tilly slowly pulled her hand back from the sharp-multi-bladed weapon. Her fingers rode over my hip and across my stomach.

A million hot prickles danced over my skin from her contact.

My abs contracted beneath her touch, and her lips parted on a rush of air.

Her fingertips drifted to the other side of my black shirt where the bones of my ribs were padded by thick muscle. It tickled. It made me steam under the collar and in my tightly conforming pants.

I cleared my throat as her hand stilled on me.

“That’s right. You’re something of a markswoman, aren’t you?” My deadly low voice rumbled from the depths of my chest.

Tilly concentrated on her fingers she drew off of me with a flirty tilt of her eyelashes. “Well, occasionally
mah
aim is off, but this time
Ah
don’t think so,” she drawled with just the hint of suggestion.

“Maybe I’ll show you how to use it sometime,” I said with a predatory grin.

“
It
?” She looked up, biting into her bottom lip.

And we both knew what she was talking about. Not the silver weapon, but the hard cock barely concealed by my black combat pants.

Voices interrupted the strained moment, and I jumped to my feet on instant high alert.

Foreign words echoed toward us beyond the vault-like door, from far away in the tunnel outside.

With a finger to my lips, I cautioned Tilly.

She stood at my back as I tested the soldered shut door and listened.

They weren’t close. The tunnel had collapsed after us. They’d have to mine through that fucking rubble to reach us.

But that didn’t mean they couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. Given time.

Turning back to Tilly, I ushered her from the room. I walked her down the hallway to her quarters,
just to be safe
I told myself.

“Are they close?” she whispered.

“No. We have time for now.”

She stopped outside the door, and I hovered behind, looming above her.

In an oddly intimate moment, her low voice crept out. “Goodnight, Justice.”

And her apricot-colored hair brushed my bare arm.

“’Night . . . Tilly.”

Her breath caught before she disappeared into the blue-black shadows beyond.

One intimate moment in a life lacking so many—in a completely incongruous and increasingly complicated situation.

Tilly Lawless.