Twisted and Tied (Marshals 4)

“Okay,” I said with mock seriousness, “release the Kraken.”

“This is not funny.”

I leaned toward him anyway, wanting a kiss, needing it before I started whatever the day was going to be.

“No.”

I froze, mid lean, mid pucker, and grinned. “No, what?”

“That won’t work,” he told me flatly. “You don’t get to be adorable or irresistible or any of the things I normally find you.”

This was news. “You find me irresistible?”

“And sexy and everything else,” he concluded. “But right now that doesn’t matter.”

“Why doesn’t it matter?” I really wanted to know, because him wanting me was always a very good thing, and he didn’t cough up the vault of his heart often.

Ian still, after so long, was not the kind of man who revealed much about his own thoughts and feelings. It simply wasn’t him. I didn’t know if it had to do with his mother and how emotionally closed off she became after his father left, or the military, or whether it was simply him. But I did know things learned and seen when you were a kid didn’t just poof into the ether when you hit puberty. Life lessons were just that: they stayed forever.

“We’re not going off on a tangent,” he explained, his tone, that fast, already irritated. “All kissing, touching, hugging, anything is off the table until we have this out.”

I was crap in the morning before I had lots of caffeine in me, and he knew that. I had no idea why he was trying to—

“Drink more of that,” he commanded, tipping his chin at the tantalizing cup of coffee. “Hurry up.”

I took several sips because it wasn’t scalding—it was drinkable, yet another truth he knew about me. “Okay, now, what are we having out?”

Arms crossed, legs braced, I got the picture. We were picking up where we left off last night in the street. This was us talking about our career paths.

“So we’re going to discuss me not wanting to wear Kevlar.”

He waited, those gorgeous clear eyes of his on me just as they were the night before. But now instead of blown pupils and the struggle to remain open, I had hyperfocus that was really a lot to deal with so early in the morning.

“And I get that this is serious, but why can’t I touch you?”

“Because I can’t concentrate if you do, and I wanna know what the hell is going on with you not wanting to be my partner anymore!”

And I got it, I did. He’d left the Army for him, not me, but still, being my partner, being there when I needed him at work in the capacity of being my backup, was also a big part of why he could give up being in Special Forces. So me telling him the path he wanted to take was not the one I felt was best for me was, to him, a betrayal of trust, hence the yelling. It all made sense; it was just a lot of volume in the space of the bathroom.

I left, taking my coffee with me. He caught up easily—he was not carrying precious liquid—and barred my path.

“Talk to me.”

“Then sit while I find something to wear.”

He grunted but let me pass, and I took several sips before leaving the cup on the nightstand to go rummage through my closet.

“Now,” he insisted, taking a seat on the bed to watch me.

“Kage and I went up to Custodial to speak to—”

“No,” he stopped me. “Go back to you getting hurt and go forward.”

Ian was a details guy; he liked to know all of them. It was not a surprise that me starting midstory wasn’t going to work for him.

“It all started with seeing Wen Li yesterday,” I began. “She was placed in a home that pimps out little girls.”

He didn’t say anything, so I glanced over my shoulder and saw the stunned expression on his face.

“It’s true,” I sighed, turning to face him. “You should have seen them, both girls with bruises, both of them—” I couldn’t tell him they both had STDs, both jumped at every loud noise, recoiling from every man who came near them except me. When Han saw me walking into her room, she’d hyperventilated with happiness. “It was horrible.”

“And where are they now?”

“With their aunt in San Antonio.”

“Where the hell was the aunt this whole time?”

It was a long story, so I hit the high points for him, running down the connections.

“Well, good,” he sighed, “at least they’re safe now, but what the hell does this have to do with you not working with me?”

“Because what happened to those two girls, no one looking out for them, has been happening to a lot of the kids in Custodial.”

The realization of where I was going with this spread slowly across his face. I saw the dread appear as he furrowed his brows and clenched his jaw, and then, of course, he crossed his arms over his wide, muscular chest.