14. Kai

FOURTEEN

Kai

For a moment, I thought he was going to kiss me.

Please kiss me.

But with a muttered curse, he released his grip and took a step back, his chest heaving with exertion and frustration. He was close to the edge. This wasn't the time or place for him to lose his head, nor for me to push him. He had to understand why I did it, and hell, we had a job to do, and letting this get emotional and fraught would jeopardize the mission.

But it was my fault. I was the one who'd thought on my feet, but with what we had between us, all the simmering angst Zach carried inside, it was the wrong kiss at the worst possible time.

I'd acted on impulse, high on adrenalin and arousal as I held Zach against the wall, then stiffening and fighting back, a mix of frustration and defiance. The raw intensity of the moment ignited something in me, the way I curled my hands in his hair and yanked his head back when I'd kissed him, a spark of desire within him clouding my judgment as our lips met.

Fire.

But the adrenalin faded, and reality set in, and now I was confused and conflicted. I didn't want to feel anything for Zach, with his emotions, and his kid, and the way he put thoughts of family and friendship before the mission. So why was the push to kiss him again undeniable—frustrating and a goddamn distraction? Allowing anything like lust to surface could jeopardize our partnership and compromise the mission.

But the thought of me pushing him to his knees, gripping his hair, tilting his face, watching him as he swallowed me down…

Fuck.

It had taken everything not to get off to the thought of me pushing my cock between his lips.

The stakes were too high, and distractions could prove fatal, and I couldn't afford to let emotions get in the way.

Detach.

Do not focus on sex.

Instead, I stared out of a gap in the blinds. Cedar Ridge was in the Rainy River District. Remote and surrounded by dense forests and numerous lakes, there wasn't much of a view unless you were a big fan of trees and rain. Beyond the trees, way into the wild, was the illegal operation that went unnoticed and was what we were here to gather intel on.

No shooting or knifing, apparently, but they were searching for pilots, and with Viper out of the way, I was up next.

Zach paced from one end of the room to another, glancing at his watch. We were ten minutes from check-in, and that was a long space of time to fill with him all worked up and me feeling right and then guilty all at the same time. I knew Bulldog and Viper, crossed paths with them in the two weeks we'd been in town, me in a shitty 1950s hotel room in desperate need of an update, and Zach in this house. He wasn't on the ground with these assholes, didn't know some of the disrespectful and criminal shit I'd witnessed.

Bulldog was a follower, Viper, the cocky pilot with a grudge against the world and a need to take everyone on. Together, they were in town, running their mouths and acting like the big I-am, which was dangerous. They had the backing of a crooked Russian billionaire and acted as if consequences couldn't touch them. They were right—the town was scared of the big bads out in the forest and the rumors of murder. It had only gotten worse since that guy Lucas had been dumped outside the mayor's office, sprawled in the street, as a warning.

The mayor had put it down to a bear attack, the sheriff backed him up, the people locked their doors and stopped leaving garbage bins outside, and went on with its life. Still, a man had died—horrifically—and although our plan had been simple, a fight where Viper got hurt, it wasn't supposed to have gone bad and put Zach in danger.

My skin prickled with the fear of him dying on my watch.

Of his body, torn and lifeless, dumped in the middle of Main Street, Cedar Ridge.

As he paced, my thoughts drifted back to the moment I'd crossed the line, pretending he and I were together, outing myself to the two idiots whose resulting shock made me want to laugh. It had been a risky move, one I knew Zach wouldn't approve of, but it'd felt like the only one we had. Imagining Zach taken down with a bullet to the brain was all too real in my head, even if I knew he'd take them down first.

But in doing so, he'd break his cover.

The kiss was a dangerous play, putting him in the spotlight, outing me, and having serious repercussions. But at that moment, all I could think about was how much I wanted to kiss Zach again.

"Zach?"

He stopped by the window, his back to me, his shoulders tight. "Not now."

"Come on, you know it was the only way."

"I can handle myself," he said, sounding more tired than angry .

"Former-SEAL Zach can handle himself. Glasses-wearing, researcher-nerd Zach wouldn't be expected to have the skills to take them down if things went south. You coming at them would?—"

"I wouldn't have been coming at them, I was defending myself?—"

"—they would have known something was wrong."

He cursed again, but at least his shoulders dropped a little. As much as I longed to explore all these feelings about who did what and why, I knew now wasn't the time with lives on the line and no room for distractions.

Feelings continued to simmer beneath the surface, threatening to boil over at any moment, and I almost said something, almost lost control, when he turned to me.

"Okay," he offered in a soft voice. "I get it. I'm not stupid, and I would have done the same thing. But we said… we promised we'd never do that again."

"It was the mission." I was a lying liar who lied. We couldn't ignore these feelings forever, and eventually we might break, and it would be our place as a Shadow Team unit that suffered, or it would be our weird friendship.

I couldn't face either option.

"We need to explain to ops," he summarized in a flat tone as he flicked open his laptop, setting it on the desk, connecting, then sitting on the edge of the bed.

"I know. "

"Sierra Base," a voice crackled over the line and then Ethan, aka Sierra 1, manning ops, moved in front of the camera.

"Sierra Two," Zach identified. "Plans have changed."

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line, the faint sound of static filling the silence. "Go ahead."

He took a deep breath. "My cover is now an environmental researcher with a side order of me and Sierra Three being fuck buddies." He threw a glance at me, and I returned his accusing gaze steadily. Seemed as if he'd said he was okay with the change in cover, but I could tell he wasn't one hundred percent there.

"You're what now?" Ethan said.

We'd had to pivot on missions before, so this couldn't shock him too badly, right? Given he himself had completed several skin jobs where he ended up sleeping with the mark—before he'd gotten together with Josh, of course—he knew what it was like to use sex as a tool to take down a bad guy.

Not that Zach and I were the bad guys.

And the implied sex was between two Shadow Team agents.

Yeah, the analogy wasn't working here at all.

"Getting the pilot out of the way took a direction we weren't expecting," I interjected, then I dragged a chair over so the boss could see us both. I wasn't letting Zach take any shit for this .

I imagined the cogs turning as Ethan processed Zach's report. "Threat assessment?"

"Apart from me killing Sierra Three?" Zach muttered.

"Like to see you try," I deadpanned.

"Jesus, Kai!"

What did I tell our team leader back in Maine, all cozy in his safe house and not in Cedar Ridge way up in northwestern Ontario? How did I tell him everything had changed the moment I grabbed Zach's hair and yanked him in for a kiss? Fuck the mission.

And worse, he'd shoved me back and somehow dialed into one of my biggest kinks, and I liked it way more than I should have.

"Neither of you kill each other," Ethan said with barely restrained irritation. "Is the mission still on course?"

"Yes," I said.

"No," Zach tried to be heard, only my yes was loudest.

"Which is it? Sierra Two? Yes or no?"

Great, he was asking Zach to clarify—was I not loud enough?

"I'm expecting Sierra Three to get a call requesting him to replace the target." He glanced at me, and I stayed silent. "So, yes, but the complication is that I'm not entirely separated now, and have no plausible deniability, not to mention Kai claiming me in a bar has messed with my cover. What happened has pulled me in too deep." He inhaled sharply after the run-on sentences, then exhaled and kept his voice steady. "But we'll get the job done."

"Good. And Kozlov?"

"Still no sighting."

Vladimir Kozlov, former Russian oligarch, murderer, and all-around asshole, was our target. Sanctioned internationally, he'd then turned to other means of financing his lifestyle, keeping the billions steady, and he had way too much control over the illegal mining network in the Canadian Shield. Driven by profit and wanting to regain his status, he was happy to steal natural resources to rebuild his fortune and influence, not to mention have a hold on the amount of drugs leaving the same area. He was a man who operated from the shadows, bribing officials, which is where the Shadow Team had come in after his group of mercenaries had threatened the wrong person—or the wrong person's family, at least—and killed a man to leave a message.

"Noted," Ethan muttered. "Okay, work this new angle, and hope that Kozlov doesn't drop you both."

"On it."

That was it; the report was done, and there was nothing else to say.

I watched Zach closely when the screen went blank, his guarded expression betraying little .

Now, he was lost in thought, thinking through the change with his usual fierce commitment to the mission I couldn't help but respect, even if he was furious with me. Despite my prickliness and issues, and the stick he sometimes kept up his ass, I was still his partner.

He scooped up the files and the laptop and headed out into the kitchen, not surprised when I followed him.

"Zach, this is stupid. We should just talk," I began.

He rounded on me. "No," he snapped.

He was done with me. The senseless want consuming me that made me edgy with need had no outlet. Nor would it if he had anything to say on the matter. The whole making me promise we wouldn't touch each other again was very much front and center.

I hated it.