Fit to be Tied (Marshals 2)

“What shooting?”

“The car!” I rasped, dying.

“The car?” He was indignant.

“Come on,” I whined. “Are the guns back yet?”

“You look like a grown-up, but you’re actually only ten,” he groused.

“Please,” I begged with a little whining thrown in for good measure.

“Doyle shot the car,” he informed me. “You hit one of the tires and Sharpe hit a tree. Happy now?”

“What? That can’t be right.”

“You were running; so was Sharpe. Do you have any idea how hard it is to hit something when you’re moving?”

“Shit.”

“You will never hear the end of this.”

He had no idea.

“Ching and Becker are eighteen minutes out. Do not move from that bathroom.”

“Did you just tell me to stay in the bathroom?”

Apparently I was too annoying for words, as evidenced by him hanging up on me. I was going to explain to Lozano and Donatella that these were their tax dollars at work, but as they probably didn’t pay taxes, the observation would be lost on them. Also, they wouldn’t have heard me anyway because they were much too busy making out. I would have made them stop, just to be a dick, but I felt lips on the back of my neck.

“Get off me,” I complained, not meaning it.

“I told you I shot the car,” he murmured in my ear.

Yes, he had.

“We should go to the shooting range, and I can give you some pointers.”

I stalked away from him and went to the bathroom door, making sure no one could come in.

“You want me to come over there and protect you since I can shoot straight?” he teased.

“I have the Uzi,” I volleyed.

“Yeah, but what can you hit with that?”

“Fuck you, Ian!”

He lost it.

IT TOOK the whole night and into the early morning before we were done processing Lozano and Donatella, and when we finally got home, I was not only hungry and sober, but tired and prickly, having been rubbed raw by the ribbing from every single person on my team, including my partner.

I was surprised when I was seized from behind and shoved down on the couch. Ian followed fast, curling over me, grabbing hold of my legs and wrapping them around his hips.

“What’re you—”

“Kiss me,” he demanded huskily, rubbing his groin against mine before bending to capture my mouth.

I evaded his lips. “That teasing was brutal, Ian.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“You were an ass.”

“Yeah, but you love me when I’m like that, so who cares?”

He was right, I did. I loved him like crazy.

“So,” he said, his voice cracking as he gripped my thighs, making sure I stayed there, “could you get over being annoyed and kiss me already?”

“You know, that was pretty great what you did earlier.”

“What was that?” he asked as he shifted over me.

“Just the way you followed me, no questions asked.”

“Always,” he said, smiling at me. “So… about that kiss?”

“Yeah,” I sighed, taking hold of his tie and easing him down to me. “I think I can manage that.”

OCTOBER IN Chicago was already cold, so as we sat outside in the car on the moderately busy city street, I turned the heater on. The problem was, though, that once Ian got warmed up, he was out like a light. Because of his military training, if Ian wanted to sleep, he could do it on command. It took maybe a minute for him to be dead to the world, and it was annoying as hell, because I had to power down my brain to reach that same REM sleep he could achieve so easily. Even sex wasn’t a certainty for knocking me out, and I was frankly more than a little resentful.

“Will you wake up?” I growled, jabbing him with my elbow to roust him.

“What?” he complained, sitting up, scowling at me. “Don’t be jealous.”

I went back to checking the street with the binoculars as he got situated again, leaning his head against the driver’s-side door. We were a street over from the house we were monitoring, our fellow marshals, Eli Kohn and Jer Kowalski, were across the street, and Chicago PD was there with cars on the other three corners of the block. It wasn’t for our case, or even a fugitive the marshals were looking for, but instead another task force op.

“Hey.”

My gaze flicked over to him.

“Why don’t you just tell me already?”

I had no idea what we were talking about. “You lost me,” I said, again glancing around the perimeter to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.

“We both know that ever since Altman was here you’ve been even weirder than usual.”

This wasn’t the marriage thing. This was something else, and I really didn’t want to get into it. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“Stop,” he ordered. “Spill.”

His Army buddy, Sean Altman, was one of the guys in the twelve-man team Ian was a member of, and whenever Ian was away on a mission, Altman was with him. He was in charge of communications, while Ian was a weapons specialist. Altman had expounded, because I’d asked, what kinds of tasks Operational Detachment Alpha did. He talked about training, and that each member of the team had an insertion specialty—which of course made me snicker, because no matter how old I was on the outside I was still a little boy in my head—but didn’t give me more details about the group. And while I understood, I felt like he shouldn’t have asked what I wanted to know if he really couldn’t say.