Unexpected (The Protectors 10)

I should have been jealous, and I was, but not for the right reasons.

The sight of Gage with his hands on Everett should have had me wanting to stride in there and rip them apart. But a deeper need had taken root inside of me from the moment I’d stepped into the open doorway and discovered the two men in an intimate embrace.

I’d wanted to join them.

It was fucked up, but it was true.

I couldn’t be jealous of Gage, because he was doing something I wasn’t capable of – giving Everett what he needed. I was envious that Gage had both the instincts to recognize Everett’s pain and the balls to do something about it.

I felt my skin tingle and looked up from where my eyes had been stuck on the way Everett’s fingers were pressed into the skin of Gage’s muscled forearm.

Gage was watching me.

I expected him to send me one of his little smirks that he knew pissed me off, but he didn’t. I waited for him to use the opportunity to make me jealous, but all he did was hold my gaze for the longest time.

I knew that he knew about me – about the secret I’d been hiding. Despite our limited interactions, he’d picked up on it pretty quickly.

Probably even on the very day we’d met.

I also figured he likely knew about my attraction to Everett and my desperation to hide it.

Which meant he had a very powerful weapon to use against me.

Even now, he had the chance to rub it in my face, but his hands never strayed from their position on Everett’s body. He didn’t press into him just a little more, he didn’t let his mouth travel over all the spots I would have explored if I’d been fortunate enough to be in his position.

No, he just let his eyes hold mine until I finally cleared my throat. The move had Everett quickly pulling free of Gage’s hold. His eyes went wide when he saw me. I felt sorry for him as I recognized the familiar look in his eyes that I knew were so often in mine.

That fear of discovery – that the truth you’d been hiding from for so long had just been thrust into the spotlight.

“Nash, we were just—”

“Excuse me,” I interrupted, since I didn’t want Everett to have to try and explain himself to me. The man didn’t owe me or anyone else any kind of explanation, and the sooner he understood that, the better. I held Gage’s gaze as I said, “Would you mind showing me around the main house? I didn’t want to just enter.”

Gage studied me for a long moment and I barely resisted the urge to squirm under his intense perusal.

“Sure,” he finally said. “Everett, would you like to join us? I can introduce you to my father and show you where Reese will be staying.”

Everett managed a shaky nod, but didn’t say anything.

We walked in silence toward the main house. I’d already done my reconnaissance of the outside of the property and I wasn’t thrilled with the layout. With all the sheds, pens, and outbuildings, there were way too many places for an assailant to hide, but at least I had one thing going for me – Everett’s anonymity. The number of people who knew where we were staying were pretty small and the location was remote enough that the likelihood of Everett being spotted and recognized were limited. Of course, all it would take was one person to see him and it would all be over. The place would be swarming with reporters, then both supporters and detractors, and finally, potential attackers. If that happened, all hell would break loose and I’d have to reach out to the director of the Secret Service and tell him the truth about what I’d done.

And then I could pretty much kiss my career goodbye.

I shook off the morose thought and followed Gage and Everett into the older farmhouse. I’d thought the outside property chaotic with its mix of all sorts of animals, but the inside was nearly as bad. The one mastiff, Happy, had followed me all over the place when I’d been doing my walk-through, but had disappeared once I’d left her outside the door to the smaller house Everett and I would be staying in. She’d made her way back into the bigger house and along with Zeus, aka Grumps, she greeted us as we walked into the kitchen. I hadn’t had the opportunity to spend much time around animals when I’d been a kid, but there had to be something unnatural about the way the female mastiff followed me around.

In addition to the two large dogs, several cats were hanging around the kitchen as an older man worked behind a steaming stove. There was a huge parrot sitting on the back of one of the kitchen chairs, and lying on the seat of the same chair was the fattest cat I’d ever seen.