Ignite (Unbreakable Bonds 7)

He broke off the kiss and smiled. “JB is a nice guy. Raised by an incredibly nice family. When he came out as bi, his mom immediately started trying to set him up with cute guys as well as girls.”

“Probably raises orphan bunnies and takes little old ladies shopping on the weekends,” Rowe grumbled.

“Don’t know. Maybe,” Noah teased. Rowe growled and released him, starting to move like he was going to push Noah away, but Noah grabbed a fistful of Rowe’s hair, forcing him to look up at Noah. “I don’t care. I just know that JB isn’t the soft-hearted, stubborn, dirty, evil fucker beneath me right now.”

One of Rowe’s eyebrows came up. “Soft-hearted, evil fucker? You’re not making any sense.”

“You don’t make sense on your best day, but I still love everything about you. You’re the one I want. Always have been.”

Rowe relaxed under him and his hands returned to his waist, tenderly massaging muscles. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Nope, but—”

Whatever Noah had been about to say was cut off by a thunderous crash from the next room. Using Rowe’s shoulders as leverage, he shoved to his feet. He raced to the dresser where he’d set his bag and weapons when their own motel door exploded inward. He barely managed to grab his gun before shots were fired through the opening. This was definitely not the cops. They would have been shouting that they were the police. Noah managed to get off a couple of shots before diving into the little niche for the bathroom.

“Rowe?” Noah shouted. He hadn’t seen what had happened to his lover. Rowe’s gun had been closer at hand on the nightstand.

“I’m good. We need to get to JB.”

There was so much noise in their motel room that he wasn’t sure what was happening in JB’s. Unfortunately, they were pinned down in the room with no clue as to how many people were outside.

How the hell had they been found so fast?

Gunfire slowed as magazines were emptied. They needed to make a move while the men were changing out. But what? There was only one way out of the motel room and that was currently under fire.

The door that led into JB’s room exploded open. Noah raised his gun and started to take aim at the figure who flew horizontally into the room but stopped himself at the last second as he realized it was his Army friend.

“Frag!” JB shouted as he flew through the air.

Noah had a second of denial, confident that there was no way these fuckers had gotten their hands on a fragmentation grenade. But the near-deafening explosion in the next room had Noah hunching down. The worst of the bomb wasn’t the explosive force, but the little metal shrapnel that was sent in every direction. He could hear it pounding against the drywall and embedding in the concrete outer walls of the building.

“We are getting the fuck out of here,” Rowe snarled. Noah had to agree. They couldn’t wait around for these assholes to throw another grenade in their direction now that they were all gathered in one room.

“Lead!” JB called out as he rolled to his feet. He fired twice, taking out one guy who’d been peeking into the doorway.

Noah took a second to secure his bag on his shoulder and shove a fresh magazine into his front pocket. Rowe followed quickly on JB’s heels, adding to the suppressing fire that was backing up their attackers. With those two pushing back the enemy, Noah rushed forward and grabbed Rowe’s bag from beside the bed and car keys off the nightstand.

Stepping out onto the narrow walkway of the second floor of the motel, Noah quickly counted two dead bodies outside their door and one outside of JB’s. They wore nondescript jeans and black T-shirts, but gloves on their hands as if they didn’t want to risk leaving behind prints.

Moving around the bodies, Noah quickly crept down the walkway, his gun at the ready, while Rowe and JB provided cover. He caught glimpses of two other similarly dressed men running for a dark SUV idling in the parking lot.

“Move your ass, Keegan!” Rowe roared.

Noah glanced over his shoulder to find both Rowe and JB heading down the concrete stairs to the ground floor. Noah’s Jeep was less than a hundred feet away. Reaching into his pocket, he tossed the keys to Rowe and hurried to the stairs. Their booted feet thumped loudly on the concrete as they raced to their vehicle.

In the distance, they could hear police sirens growing closer with each passing second. They needed to get gone before the cops arrived. He wasn’t too worried about going to jail since they were the ones who’d been attacked, but the police would only slow down their investigation into what happened to Chris and Paul. And Rowe had proved to him more than once that they worked so much better without the police meddling in their business.