Only Ian made sorry sound like he was doing me a favor and why was I being such a dick at the same time. It was impatient and growly, and fuck me, but I found it utterly endearing. He was not, as a rule, in touch with his feelings. They wandered all over the place, and trying to get them all together so he could speak definitively about them was like herding cats.
“Are you?” I gave him the out because the way he was touching my face felt really good, and something about the hold was rough and tender at the same time. I had no doubt Ian loved me fiercely and truly and with just a trace of scary possessiveness that was very hot.
“You know I am,” he grumbled, letting me go, scowling. “I just want to be home with you, not off wherever.”
“Okay,” I said, grinning. “Then think before you speak, jackass, because you sound a bit muffled when you talk out of your ass.”
“I just—if I’m not your partner, who’s gonna watch out for you, and look what happened today just because I was across town!”
He was getting worked up again, so I reached out and cupped his cheek, feeling the rough stubble under my hand, seeing the laugh lines around his eyes and dragging my thumb across his bottom lip. “Baby, it’s the job. Even when you’re right there, I can still get hurt, yeah?”
His growl as I dropped my hand was adorable, and the urge to kiss him in the middle of the sidewalk became almost unbearable.
He closed his eyes a moment, raking his fingers through thick hair that had grown out quite a bit in the last few months. Normally for the Army he kept almost a buzz cut, but now it was longer, still high and tight on the sides, but longer on top so there was more texture and more to pull. My own hair never went back to its former pomp after I let it grow out during Ian’s last deployment. So now it fell below my ears in a tousled, layered mess I was honestly surprised Kage had not insisted I cut yet. Either he didn’t notice or didn’t care, but either was fine with me. Watching Ian tug at his, though, made me think about bed.
“Ian,” I began, sounding breathy, needy, my voice almost a rasp. “Can we talk about the rest of this tomorrow?”
“Miro—”
“In the morning,” I pleaded, looking him up and down, hearing my exhale, feeling the tremor run through me.
He glared at me. “I’m not going to—”
“I drank a lot.”
“So what? You can handle your liquor better than most people I know.”
“Aww, that’s nice,” I placated, stepping in close and kissing the side of his neck, ending with a bite before stepping back. “But I want to get in bed with you now, and my brain is pretty much completely occupied with that.”
He coughed softly. “So you’re asking me to table our discussion about life here so we can go home and have sex.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
He ran his eyes over me from head to toe. “Yeah, okay, let’s go.”
It was nice he had it just as bad as me.
Chapter 5
AS SOON as we walked through our front door, after I turned off the alarm and hung up my coat, I took off my ankle holster and my gun and passed them to Ian. He ran our Glocks and his SIG Sauer P228 upstairs—the Glocks to the safe, the weapon into the top drawer of his nightstand. Until Craig Hartley was apprehended, I couldn’t imagine Ian not being able to roll over and be armed. Also, as a soldier, whether he was on active duty or not, being prepared had been drilled into him. Being anything less than ready was simply not an option.
I checked my text messages, thanked Aruna for keeping Chickie Baby, our werewolf, for the night, and saw I had one from Kage that told me and Ian to report to his office the following morning. I turned to yell for Ian, but when I did, I found him frozen under the arch that led from the kitchen to the living room. It was new, Ian having made the slight home improvement himself. Now that he was no longer constantly deployed, he had a lot more time to devote to fixing up our Greystone.
“You all right?” I asked. He was frozen in place, and his color was strange, off, a bit pale, waxen, like he was sick.
“Jesus, Miro,” he said, sounding strangled, like he’d swallowed down a sob. “Your face.”
It took me a second, but my mind jumped to where he was. Under the club lights and in the darkened street, apparently the stiches and bruises appeared bad, just not like they did in our kitchen. At home where I was sitting on the counter, Ian walked into the room and nearly puked.