Absolution (The Protectors 1)

“Please, Mace,” I whispered, hating how urgent my voice sounded. But I needed his touch because even now, I could feel the pain unfurling in my stomach and I knew the feeling of his lips on mine would keep that at bay.

He must have sensed my need because his next kiss was longer, heavier, sweeter. I didn’t know how long that kiss or the ones that followed went on for, but he never once asked for more. At some point, I’d wrapped my arms around his neck and he’d pulled me flush against his body. The tight hold he had on me should have had me trying to escape but I just wanted more. More warmth, more safety, more him. On the next pass of his lips over mine, I opened my mouth enough to let my tongue slide over his lower lip. Mace tensed against me but instead of shoving into my mouth, he opened his. I went willingly and moaned when his tongue greeted mine. I took my time exploring his mouth but then it wasn’t enough anymore and he and I both knew it and when he finally did take my mouth, I felt a rush of air escape me. My back hit the wall again as Mace plundered my mouth and then his hands were all over me, palming my flesh, kneading it, setting it ablaze with sensation.

I’d never really liked kissing but it wasn’t until that moment that I realized that the men who’d smashed their mouths down on my mine and thrust their tongues between my unwilling lips weren’t kissing me. Not even close. They’d bought and paid for me so they’d taken what they felt was their due. Everything Mace was taking from me, he was giving back a thousand times over, because I’d never felt more cherished in my entire life. From one fucking kiss.

I’d lost all track of time and our surroundings as Mace drove me higher and higher with each burning kiss but when he froze in my arms, I instantly stopped. His hands, which had been gripping my hips, fell away and his eyes opened and then shifted to the right.

I was about to ask what was wrong when I saw what was happening for myself as Mace turned his head. Even in my inexperience, I knew that what I saw pressed against the back of Mace’s head was the barrel of a rifle. I swallowed hard as Mace took a few steps back from me but when I saw Cole standing directly behind him, rifle in hand, I literally couldn’t move. I couldn’t even process what was going on.

For all I knew, I could have been standing there for a minute or a hundred before I finally managed to say, “Cole?”

While I’d been frozen with fear, Mace had managed to turn around, his arms held out. His body wasn’t completely blocking mine so I could see Cole and the way he kept his eyes on Mace. There was a long black bag on the floor at his feet and I could only assume it was for the rifle he was holding.

“Cole, what are you doing?” I asked as fear for Mace and myself threatened to consume me.

Cole’s eyes never wavered from Mace as he said, “You want to tell him or should I?”

Chapter Twelve

Mace

I ignored Cole’s question and asked one of my own. “How?”

“Frogman,” Cole muttered. “You’ve called me that twice now. Problem is, I never told you I was a SEAL. I never told Jonas either. He only knows I was in the Navy.”

I watched as Cole expertly kept my rifle trained on me as he tossed something to the floor at my feet just beyond my rifle bag. I recognized the tracker I’d put on Jonas’s car.

“I found this on Jonas’s car today.”

“What is that?” Jonas asked.

“It’s a tracking device,” Cole answered.

I heard Jonas suck in a breath behind me.

Cole ignored Jonas and continued. “I followed you after the party.”

Which meant he’d seen me drive the van to the garage and then walk to the apartment building across from Jonas’s gallery. And since he was holding my rifle, he’d clearly been waiting for me to leave so he could search it. How the fuck had I not even noticed him?

Because I was too consumed with the devastating realization that I’d fucked every part of this job up. It was what had driven me across the street to confront Jonas. My plan had been to question Jonas earlier tonight when I’d followed him down to the barn, but I’d arrived just in time to see Cole and Jonas in an intimate embrace. I’d held my breath as I watched them together and I was actually disappointed they’d been interrupted.

Once it was just me and Cole in the barn, I’d felt an insane need to force Cole into admitting he wanted Jonas, but he’d caught me off guard with his accusation that I was fucking with Jonas’s head. And then those devastating words that had been both the answer I was looking for and a truth I couldn’t fathom.