CHAPTER EIGHT

NICK

Bang, bang.

And on it went. The blasts came fast and furious from way too close by for comfort. My body’s response was immediate. Without the need for conscious thought, I reached for my gun, drew it, and put myself squarely in front of Alicia.

In the back of my mind, the consequences of what had almost just happened were starting to form, but now wasn’t the time to dwell on it.

“Stay behind me,” I barked.

Alicia was breathing fast behind me, though I couldn’t be sure if it was lust or fear. Probably a mixture of both. I could kick myself for nearly giving in, for how close I’d come to surrendering to what my cock wanted. My rules were in place for a reason. If I let myself get distracted, people could get hurt. Alicia could get hurt.

“Do you think that’s them? The people who want to kill us?” Her voice was shaky, but sure. I turned to her quickly.

“It could be. Let’s go.”

Alicia didn’t hesitate to slide from her stool and press up close to my back. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“I need to check this out, but I can’t leave you in here alone and unprotected, so you’re going to have to come with me.” My tone was clipped, efficient. “Stay behind me at all times. Do not so much as peek around me. Got it?”

“Yes. Stay completely covered behind you.”

In these kinds of situations, most of my clients froze up, some of them started crying or randomly running, but not Alicia. Aside from the slight tremor in her voice, she was calm. Ready to follow orders without argument and her shoulders squared in quiet resolve.

“Right, let’s go,” I said.

I kept my weapon drawn and tuned myself to Alicia’s heat radiating behind me so I would be able to tell if she was no longer there without having to look at her. Then we set off out of the kitchen. Room for room on the way to the side door of the house, we cleared each one.

Living room: empty.

Dining room: empty.

Graystone’s home office: empty.

By the time we made it to the door, I was satisfied that there was no one in the house. On the bottom story, anyway. But there wasn’t time to check out the top. Not now.

Not with the loud pops continuing to sound from outside. They were irregular. It had sounded a lot like gunfire at first, but I wasn’t so sure anymore. There were several at a time, followed by a few brief moments of silence.

My mind was alternating between the possibility of grenades and something else, maybe even something that was designed to draw our attention. Considering the latter possibility, I was torn between leading Alicia outside and simply locking her in Warren’s home office.

But I couldn’t leave her alone. Even behind a locked door, she wouldn’t be completely safe. The only real option was to keep her close to me.

Another loud bang sounded.

Fuck.

We had to get out there.

“When we get outside, stay close to the wall,” I told Alicia as I cracked open the door. “As close as you can get.”

The banging sounds were coming from the back of the house, so it would be a bit of a trek to get there from our position, but it would allow me to clear the area before we reached the potential luring point. That way, I would know there was no one hiding out around the corner or in one of the shadowy, dark alcoves created by the design of the house. If whatever those sounds were turned out to be someone trying to lure us out, at least I could be sure that there were no hidden threats.

I stepped over the threshold, grabbing Alicia’s hand as we headed outside. Scanning the pathway that led around the house, I breathed a sigh of relief when we found it clear. “So far, so good.”

“Okay,” Alicia said against my back, mirroring my relieved sigh. “That’s a good thing, right?”

“Maybe.” We didn’t have time to stop and talk, so I dragged Alicia along the side of the house, following my own advice and hugging the wall as we went.

We reached a courtyard, where a quick appraisal of the space, lit up with a single outdoor light, told me that it was empty. We kept going, creeping around the side of the house. My weapon remained drawn, ready to fire if need be. Another bang sounded, much louder now that we were no longer separated from it by thick walls and a vast expanse of space.

The sound was familiar. Definitely not gunfire. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, though. It seemed out of place in my mind. Not a sound that I associated with an attack, as I had been expecting it to be.

We rounded the last corner to the dark backyard when the sky lit up suddenly above us, followed almost instantly by another bang.

I stopped short, releasing Alicia’s hand. “Fireworks.”

When the next bang sounded, colorful lights burst through the dark night, fiery blooms among the stars. The lights had been hidden by the house, but in the backyard, we had an unobstructed view as they exploded over the ocean.

“Oh,” Alicia gasped, stepping around me and gazing up at the sky. She let out a relieved shout of laughter, and I couldn’t hold back a quick laugh myself. “Well, that’s the best possible ending that I could’ve possibly imagined for those bangs.”

“Yeah, really not what I was expecting,” I admitted, running a hand through my hair and gripping it at the roots as relief set in. My shoulders unlocked, and I performed a last sweep of the backyard before holstering my gun.

“I love fireworks,” Alicia said, breathing out a dreamy sigh. She started for the very edge of the property, the closest point to the ocean. I followed her without hesitation. “There is so much hope in a firework. Don’t you love them?”

More fireworks cut through the black sky like they’d been super-imposed on the night. Some shot straight up, while others swirled and soared before they extinguished back to black.

“It leaves an invisible residue of magnesium over everything,” I muttered.

Alicia giggled beside me, then poked my shoulder with her forefinger. “Don’t ruin this for me.”

“Okay.” I might not have seemed the type, but I actually kind of liked fireworks, not that I was admitting that to her.

It was the tincture of gun powder that they gave the air that made me like them, though, not so much the whorls of the color that lit up the night. It was the smell of my childhood, of visiting the range with my grandfather on Sundays, learning how to shoot and properly handle a gun.

It was the smell of my training, hours upon hours spent honing my skills, getting to know the guys in my unit. The ones who would become my brothers and the ones I would fight beside. Finally, it was the smell that I associated with defending my country.

I was born to become a SEAL, just like my father before me, and his before him. It was an honor that I’d worked my whole life to attain, and while getting shot at in some dust bowl sandpit on the other side of the world might not seem like a fond memory, it was for me. To a certain extent.

My decision to retire from active duty hadn’t been an easy one, but ultimately, the deciding factor came when my father told me that my grandfather was ill and his prognosis wasn’t good. I didn’t want to be a world away when the worst happened, and I didn’t want to abandon my grandfather in his last days, not when he’d always been there for me. So, I didn’t. I stayed and joined the Firm instead.

That was five years ago, and although my grandfather was long gone, I stood by my decision. I’d briefly considered going back on it shortly after my grandfather’s passing, but then I’d been assigned to a particularly vulnerable client, a child who I felt compelled to protect, and took it as a sign that I was needed stateside.

I hadn’t looked back since.

Standing there under the night sky with Alicia, watching her expressions and how the fireworks lit up her face as she smiled looking up, I had to admit that I was happy that I had stayed on this path.

I loved my job. Protecting people was my thing, and I was damned good at it, too. I might not have liked the fact that my dick was obsessed with the person I was protecting this time around, but those were the breaks.

Besides, I was just a man, and even I had to admit that Alicia looked beautiful out here with the breeze sweeping her hair away from her neck and her face lit every so often with the light from the fireworks drawing patterns in the sky.

Every single damn inch of me wanted to lean over and kiss the exposed skin on her neck and hear the moans I was sure it would elicit. I wanted to haul her over my shoulder and drag her back to the kitchen to finish what we’d almost started.

That would be colossally stupid. A mistake of monumental proportions. It should never have happened in the first place, but I’d been thinking with my dick and not with my head. Especially not when her soft mouth wrapped around my fingertip and her tongue brushed lightly against its pad.

My traitorous mind had immediately replaced my finger with my cock, and before I knew it, I was leaning into her, desperate to replace the mental image with a real one.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Alicia asked quietly, her round gray eyes seeming almost clear in the moonlight.

Damn it. Could she not have asked that while I’d been thinking about my childhood?

“Nah, it’s nothing interesting.” Or that I should share with you.

“Shouldn’t I be the judge of that?” she asked, shifting so that the precious few inches of space I’d managed to keep between us disappeared.

Her arms were covered by her sweater and mine by my suit, but I could still feel her heat against my skin, causing my blood to simmer again.

“Nope,” I said.

Alicia smiled but sighed, turning her gaze back to the sky, and her arm pressed up against mine. “One day, I’m going to get you to tell me these things,” she said.

“Don’t count on it,” I told her. There was no way I was ever going to admit out loud that I’d been thinking about my dick in her mouth as she stared dreamily at the fireworks.

“You’ll see,” she said confidently.

A voice carried over the ocean, speaking through a loudspeaker. “Ladies and gentlemen, the finale of this year’s fireworks display is starting in five minutes. I repeat. Five minutes.”

Alicia and I stood silently as we waited for the display. She didn’t need to tell me that she wanted to watch it. I already knew that she did. So, I stayed with her, a comfortable silence stretching between us as we waited.

And what a finale it was. Brightening the black sky, the stunning, multicolored streaks of light lit up in the darkness like someone had poured fuel on a raging fire. Glints were reaching up high, while massive star-shaped bursts whizzed around and around as multiple explosions of flames happened together in the sky.

Alicia and I were both riveted to it, but somewhere along the line, she reached for my hand, her soft palm pressing against mine as our fingers intertwined. I didn’t pull away, even though I knew I should.

If I held her hand under the stars, it would be tantamount to leading her on, making her believe that something could happen between us. It wasn’t going to, so I really should’ve let go.

The shining lines of color in the sky above fought with each other as they pushed one another to be the center of attention, but my focus was no longer on them. It was on Alicia’s warm hand and the way that it fit perfectly into mine.

I was going to hate myself for it later, but I didn’t let go. Instead, I held her hand in mine, hyper aware of the fact that the fireworks lighting up the ocean made the scene way more romantic than anything I should’ve been experiencing with her.

When the display was over, it was like I was released from some sort of spell. She pulled away at the exact same time that I released her hand like it’d burnt me.

“I should go back inside,” Alicia mumbled. “Do you—”

“I’ve got to go check the perimeter again. Just to be safe.”

It was a bullshit excuse, but I couldn’t let her finish that question. Because I absolutely couldn’t answer it the way I wanted to, and after being drawn in by her twice in one night, I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t do it again.