Submission Impossible (Masters & Mercenaries Reloaded 1)

He was right back to Ian being the father he’d never had. Now he had to navigate this tricky situation for the man. He had to start to get a real handle on who Kyle Hawthorne was.

“Of course.” Hutch passed him a glass. “This is an excellent Scotch.”

Kyle took a long swig. “Yeah, I hear that from my stepdad a lot. He’s all about the Scotch. I can’t tell the difference between Scotch and whiskey. Or bourbon, for that matter. It’s all one long burn to my belly. So, you are a naïve idiot when it comes to women. Crazy doctors aside, of course.”

Most of the military guys saw him that way. He was the funny one, the one who looked younger than he really was, the computer geek. “I’m not naïve. What I am is pretty damn good at figuring out who will hurt me and who won’t. I learned that while I lived on the streets, and then I learned it in prison. I learned it when I was on a CIA team.”

“Then you should know that you can’t be sure of anyone.”

“Of course I can. You’re sure about your family, right? No one could ever say anything to you that would make you doubt your mom?”

Kyle sank down to the sofa. “Of course not, but they’re my family. I’ve known them all my life. This isn’t the same thing at all. My mother and my brother are above any suspicion.”

Hutch noted that he’d left an important person off that list. “You don’t trust your stepfather?”

Kyle shook his head. “Not true. I trust him in a lot of ways. I trust him with my mother, with my brother. With my life. But Sean’s a hard guy still in a lot of ways. I don’t think he trusts me entirely, and that means I can’t totally trust him.”

“Why do you think he doesn’t trust you?”

“That’s a longer story than I’m willing to get into with you because despite your penchant to go deep as fast as you can possibly go, I don’t swim that way. I don’t know you, Hutch.”

He found it interesting what Kyle wasn’t saying. He trusted Sean with everything but his secrets. He wanted to press but he was good at this, was good at sensing when to take a step back. This was as far as Kyle was willing to go on this subject. “No problem. I’m cool not talking at all. When Cara gets through telling Noelle whatever important information she needs to tell her, we can all head our separate ways for the night.”

Kyle sat for a moment before reaching out and refilling his glass. “What game are you playing with her?”

“Game?”

“Yeah, with Noelle.”

Hutch shook his head. “I’m not playing a game. I’m into her. Way into her. I had all day to think about it and while we moved too fast, I don’t see why we can’t be together at the end of this. So I’m showing off my boyfriend skills.”

A brow arched over Kyle’s eyes. “Are you serious? Because that sounds…”

He honestly didn’t care what anyone thought. Another lesson he’d learned from Tag. The most badass thing he could do was be himself with zero apologies. “It sounds like what, Kyle?”

Kyle seemed to realize he was about to say something offensive and backed off. “I don’t know. It doesn’t sound… Whatever.”

He was not letting Kyle off the hook so easily. “Are you trying to tell me I’m not being masculine?”

Kyle shrugged. “I’m trying to figure out a way to express that without fucking up too badly.”

He could only imagine how a guy like Kyle would handle the situation. “I suppose you would club her over the head and drag her back to your cave.”

“Nope. First of all, I wouldn’t have decided that she was mine after a single night. Second, if she’d turned me down, I would have walked away with some dignity,” Kyle replied.

“Then you haven’t met a woman you truly care about yet.” Hutch wasn’t going to argue about the value of dignity. Or the meaning of the word. He wasn’t sure how fighting for the woman he wanted meant he lost his dignity.

“Or I’ve done the head over heels love thing and realized what a lie it is.” There was no way to miss the bitterness to Kyle’s words. “What you call love…it’s nothing more than lust. It’s a biological imperative to breed, and when you wake up you’re going to realize you don’t know this woman at all.”

Oh, so Kyle was projecting. Hutch had to wonder if this bitterness was coming from Kyle’s most recent relationship. “So my wanting Noelle is nothing more than my primal need to mate kicking in? Do you think Noelle is giving off hormones or something to attract me? I’ve had a lot of sex. I wonder why I’m desperate to mate with only her.”