Mud. So much mud that he could barely see through it. Wiping his face didn’t help—his hands were just as dirty, the gloves doing nothing to keep the cold at bay.

Rain was pouring down hard. A puddle was growing around his calves, the mud turning into a slosh of grass and chunks. Two men flanked his side, a couple feet back.

Brothers. They were his brothers. From training to combat, to stealth to torture. All of it. Jace and Brody were his two fail-safes. They had each other’s back in everything—and that meant even now, when they were circling in on the enemy, the darkness creeping into the corner of their eyes as quickly as the sun was falling.

He shared a silent look with the two of them, then nodded, pointing out.

Go.

He dragged his weight through the mud. His backpack, his gun. The hundreds of extra pounds on his back were nothing, not anymore. Not after years of carting it around.

The only sounds in the night were the soft sprinkles of rain as it fell and their legs gliding through the water. Despite that, they still had to stay low. The grass was over grown and tall, weeds serving the purpose of cover. It was perfect. This was perfect.

It was the calm before the storm—although with the way his heart was moving in his chest, you’d think it was the storm before the calm. It pumped furiously, threatening to quicken his breathing.

It couldn’t, though. It had to stay under control—no, he had to stay under control. With a quick glance at his brothers, both of them looking like large, muddy, moving rocks just like he was sure he did, he paused.

The calm before the storm…

Lights flashed from a distance. Flashlights. The sound of barking dogs. Snarls and howls mixed in the air, a sign that their scent had been caught. A sign that the storm had finally found them.

It was expected. It was what he’d planned. Stay covert yet leave a trail. Draw them out into the open, then ambush them before they had a chance to attack. Risky, so risky, but so worth the return. Fifteen men taken out by three—while the rest of his squad stayed at the camp and monitored. If anything went wrong, they’d be there in a heart beat. But this was a job easily taken care of, a job they’d done a hundred times.

The three of them had this…perfected.

He sat in the grass, knocking his fingers off in both directions, and that’s when they branched out.

Risky. This was so risky, but he wasn’t worried. His gut told him everything he needed to know, and that was—

To his left, just a few feet away, where Jace should have been, was a pop and then a hiss.

“Jace,” he snarled, taking his eyes away from the objective. He never took his eyes away, never lost focus—but that sound had been everything he didn’t want to hear.

The second he took his eyes away, shit hit the fan. Lights flashed and he dove, shouting. For Jace, for Brody. A grenade—he should have known what the sound was, but the rain—the rain had muffled it. Now, all he heard was the dim yet growing sound of pounding, of banging. He pressed his face into the ground to shield from ricocheting bullets and reached around for his gun. The banging became louder, the pops overwhelming all of his senses.

Bang. Bang. Bangbangbangbang—

His eyes flipped open, body jacking into a sitting position.

“Fuck,” he whispered raggedly, dragging a hand over his face. He pulled it away, needing to see, needing to make sure. In the dim light of the room, the moon only illuminating a portion of the room, his hand was clean.

No mud.

No blood.

He would have closed his eyes in a sigh of relief, but they were peeled open. Sleep wouldn’t come to him any time soon, and he sure as hell didn’t want to risk seeing that again.

Moaning, he started to lay back—until he noticed the door was cracked open, a lock of black hair shielding the face that was peeking into the room.

He sat back up, frowning.

“Hello?”

There was a tense silence, and then he heard the sigh, the door opening a little wider to reveal a thin, short woman wearing nothing but an overly large T-shirt and thigh length shorts.

“I—I’m sorry,” she said. “I heard something—“

“You heard nothing.” Blunt. Brutal. Being caught by his friend’s wife having a night terror was not how he had planned for tonight to go. No, he’d planned on escaping his cheating girlfriend for a single night, going back there in the morning, and then throwing all her shit onto his front lawn. Having to deal with this sort of embarrassment hadn’t been on his list of things to do.

“I… Of course. I didn’t hear anything.” She went quiet again, this time looking down at the ground, brows lowering and her lips moving in a silent, obviously frustrated mutter. With him? With herself?

“Do you want—do you want some water?” She shook her head, backing out of the room. Her hair slid back from her cheek as she did so, the moon light slanting across her cheek just right. “Wait, never mind. I’ll let you get back to sleep. I’m sorry for barging in, that was uncalled for.”

He threw his legs over the side of the bed, keeping his eyes locked on her. She was awkward, he thought. Her shoulders were drawn inward, her arms were crossed over her chest. Black hair was a tangled mess around her shoulders and her eyes were hidden beneath the silken shield. From the small glance he’d gotten a moment ago, he knew that her eyes were large but almond shaped, obviously of Asian descent.

“I’ll take a glass of water,” he said, watching her reaction. She froze for a moment, and then nodded that mane of black hair. Again, a lock slid back from a pale, high cheek bone, revealing a patch of skin that didn’t match the rest.

“Well, just stay here and I’ll bring you one.” A smile, nervous and tight-lipped, stretched over her face.

“No, that’s okay. Have to use the bathroom anyway.” Wasn’t a lie, either.

“Oh, then… Okay.”

Gage followed her out, grateful he’d slept in clothes. He had figured something like this would happen—he’d wake up in the middle of the night, sweating from a night terror. He just hadn’t counted on being caught.

“So, uh…” She glanced back at him, then faced ahead as she walked through the hallway. In the next room over from his, he heard the whirring of a washer machine. “How do you know my husband? I’ve never seen you around before.”

“Old friend. I didn’t know he had gotten married. If I’d known you were here, I would have introduced myself. Name is Gage.”

“No, no, it’s no big deal,” she said, waving a hand. “I wasn’t really…available. I’m Kate. His wife. Justin’s.” The awkwardness poured off of her, and it was almost…endearing? He mentally shook the thought out of his head.

“Ahh,” he said, letting the conversation die off. He wasn’t a talker. Even before the Marines, he hadn’t been big on small talk, but it seemed that was all she could muster. He didn’t hold that against her. If he were honest with himself, he’d like to ask her about her face. He’d seen enough violence in his life to know that with the way she held herself, and the mark on her face, that she hadn’t just “slipped and fell” on her face.

Despite that, when she walked in front of him, her natural gate had her hips swinging, her tiny frame alluring to him.

It wasn’t his fault. It had been four years since he’d been with a woman, since he’d slept in an actual bed. He glanced away from her, from his best friend’s wife—a wife that he might be beating.

“How long have you two been married?” he asked, following her into the kitchen. If he were any other man, he wouldn’t have noticed the way her feet faltered over the threshold, the way her body became tense.

Because of his question? Or something deeper?

She went to the cupboard, looking over her shoulder again, this time past him. Like she was keeping an eye out for someone—Justin. Fear was in her eyes. Vaguely, but still there.

He casually braced himself in the door jam, shoulder resting on the wood trim, arms crossed over his chest. He was large enough to fill the frame and block anyone from entering.

As if subconsciously realizing that, the black-haired woman reached for a cup and then went to the fridge. As she pressed the water to the nozzle on the fridge, it filled. “Oh, we’ve been married for three years.”

“So you met…?”

She tilted her head to the side. “A year before that, I think?”

He raised a brow. “That’s kind of quick to marry someone, don’t you think?”

Her lips pressed. “I mean… Yeah, it is. But we were eager and the setting was right, so it just sort of…happened, I guess?”

“Ahh.” He followed her movements when she came over to him, holding out the cup. Her hand trembled slightly, the water dipping and sliding up the side of the cup until he took it.

Their fingers brushed, and that’s when the tension changed. It had been there before—he was feeling her out, she was weary of him. She probably wondered what his motive was, why he was here.

He didn’t know the answer to either.

So he didn’t say anything. Even when her brows lowered over her eyes because her fingers happened to linger, even when he didn’t take his hand back until she’d let the cup slide from her fingers. Even when his stomach tightened and blood shot straight to his balls.

There wasn’t much he could say.

He didn’t know her full situation with Justin. If they’d just gotten into an argument and that was why she was weary of seeing him again, or if she really had managed to fall on something.

For even letting their one touch linger, he was a hypocrite. He planned on kicking Brittany out of his house in the morning for cheating on him, yet here he was, unable to look away from the black-haired imp, the wife of his best friend.

His jaw ticked.

Being overseas for four years wasn’t an excuse to be a POS. Neither was not having the touch of a woman for just as long. There was no excuse, and he had more restraint than to ogle a woman he had no business ogling.

He lifted the cup to his lips.

“I think… I’m going back to bed now,” she said, smiling gently. It didn’t reach her eyes, not like the shock of touching his hand had.

“Think I’ll do the same.”

He pushed off from the door jam and left her, confused with the situation, disgusted with himself, and worried—for her.