All Kinds of Tied Down (Marshals 1)

“Did you get water for me?”

Ian Doyle stood over me, dressed casually with his military backpack slung over one shoulder.

We weren’t supposed to stand out in any way; we weren’t marshals transporting a witness, instead we were just two guys on vacation. But there was no way for him to blend in. Even in the junker pants and military boots, the white T-shirt under the heavy wool sweater, and the duffle coat I’d bought him for his last birthday, he looked amazing. Nothing he had on went together at all, and yet, the smirk made that fact meaningless. I was weightless with happiness.

“Oh shit.” I whimpered without meaning to, leapt to my feet, and grabbed him tight.

Because he was slightly taller, whenever he hugged me, he leaned heavily, giving me more of his weight than he was probably aware of. I loved it because it meant that, every time, we notched together tighter than I did with anyone else but a lover.

“You thought I’d make you have to endure a whole day in a car with Becker?”

He smelled so fucking good, like the damn citrusy soap in his bathroom and the aftershave he bought at a little place in Chinatown. Supposedly he wore it because it took care of razor burn, but I didn’t care. I liked the way it smelled. It was like mint with a trace of lemon, and woodsy and smoky at the same time.

He chuckled. “Did you miss me?”

“Yeah,” I whispered, realizing that for once, he was hugging me back as hard as I was hugging him.

“That’s good.”

He already had clear blue eyes and dimples, a smile so incredible that once you saw it you’d do anything to see it again, and a long and lean powerfully muscled frame. It was ridiculous, really, that he also smelled like heaven. To be fair to the rest of us, something needed to be wrong with him. Various women in his life had complained about everything from intimacy issues to him being crappy in bed, but I didn’t actually buy that he wasn’t perfect. An asshole, absolutely, but no more than any other guy I knew.

I pulled back, because any longer and the hugging might have been weird for him. I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable. “So,” I said, smiling like an idiot, I was sure. “You look good, no holes or nothing.”

His brows furrowed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Right shoulder and left collarbone?”

“What?”

“Where you were shot?”

“Oh. Yeah.” I put my hand on my right shoulder. “Both went straight through, so it was no big deal. I was really lucky.”

The muscles in his jaw tightened, and I slipped my hand around his throat, rubbing over his jaw with my thumb.

“It’s okay.”

His gaze stayed locked with mine, and then I noticed the feel of Ian’s whiskers under my callused thumb and realized what the hell I was doing.

Coughing, I moved my hand. “I’ll go get you some water,” I announced. I didn’t wait for him to say anything, bolting away instead.

When I returned to the gate, he had his coat off, discarded on the seat next to him, and was bent over, hunting for something in his backpack. As I watched, he pulled off his sweater, rucking the T-shirt up, revealing the bare stretch of skin of his powerful back.

I was abruptly bumped from behind and twisted to see a woman looking at me, mouth open, before she snapped it shut.

“You walked into me,” I teased.

She bit her lip.

“’Cause you were looking at the pretty man.”

A nod.

“So was I,” I confessed, and she smiled at me before she rushed off.

After taking a steadying breath, I walked up to him at the same time as he pulled a dark blue Henley over his head and tugged it into place.

“What was wrong with the sweater?” I grumbled as I flopped down into my chair and held the bottle of water up to him.

“I’m burning up. It’s hot in here.”

“Could you not get naked in front of everyone?”

He squinted at me. “I’m not naked. I’m taking off my sweater.”

I pretended to be engrossed with checking my phone for any status changes until the call came for boarding.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked while we stood in line, his backpack slung over one shoulder.

“Nothing,” I said, because it would pass—the feeling I always got when he returned home. The surge of possessiveness nearly choked me every time. It was like I needed him marked or something, I wasn’t sure how, or… I just needed people to know he belonged to someone and that they shouldn’t think he was attainable.

“You always get like this when I come back.”

I ignored the comment even though he was right. Immediately after the vicious desire to keep him—to tie him down—dissipated, I was hit with the exhaustion of having to redo all my work. Getting Ian comfortable with me, getting him to trust me, was like housetraining a feral cat. His time away always erased whatever had been built up and I was back to square one. He would come back to our world and his training would be riding him, looking for threats from every corner, and that included me. It was so tiring, the uphill battle of returning to Ian Doyle’s circle of trust.