Buggering fuck!
“Get your weapon ready,” he told Ben. “We need to hit ’em in the car park before they go inside.”
* * *
Colby “Ace” Ventura’s heart pounded a mile a minute.
Not because they’d gone and blown up one car, stolen another, and were trying to get the holyfucking guacamole out of England in case the world’s most deadly crime lord had somehow found them and was currently on his way to have them fitted with extra holes in their heads. That was all pretty much SOP for a man in his line of work. In fact, he’d go so far as to say it was a fairly uneventful day, all things considered.
Whatwasmaking his heart go pitter-pat was Rusty.
Rusty,the biggest, most beautiful redhead he had ever had the pleasure of meeting. Rusty, the man he had been not-so-secretly pining for since he first set eyes on the guy five days ago. Rusty, the man who’d had an arm around his shoulders for the last hour.
It’s just to give us all more space, Ace assured himselfandhis silly heart.
The latter didn’t bother to listen. It kept thundering away,especially when—
Did he give me a squeeze?
It certainlyfeltlike Rusty’s arm had tightened. Then again, Ace could be imagining things, building sexy little sand castles in the sky. It’d been a really long time since he’d been attracted to a man. Even longer since he’d been this close to a man he was attracted to.
“Okay, I give. Why have you been mumbling under your breath this entiretime?” Emily turned to glower at Christian.
“I’m reciting my prime numbers.” Christian’s head was pressed against the back window, as far away from Emily as he could possibly get in the cramped space.
“What the fuck for?” Bless her, the woman had a filthy mouth.
“Mental exercise.”
For once, Ace was glad for the distraction Christian and Emily provided. It would take his mind offbeing able to feel every one of Rusty’s fingertips where they pressed into his shoulder.
Did his thumb rub back and forth?
Or perhaps that small caress was simply a product of the truck’s bad shocks.
Emily looked fiendish as she smirked at Christian. “You can’t fool me. Your brain is as sharp as a tack.”
“That was a compliment.” There was genuine shock in Christian’s tone. “That’stwo in one day. Am I dreaming? Quick, someone pinch me.”
“You’re not trying to get mental exercise,” Emily asserted. “You’re trying to distract yourself.”
“From what?”
“From your ashy dick and the fact that I have a… How did you put it? ‘A small but rather plump ass.’”
“First of all, I thought I made it clear you mustn’t take any of that personally. And second of all, I saidbottomnotass.I would never be so crass.”
Ace took it back. He was no longer happy for the distraction Emily and Christian provided.
Listening to them snipe at each other made him want to reach over and knock their heads together. He knew that despite Christian’s insistence to the contrary, what Christian felt for their resident office manager extraordinaire wasverypersonal. The same couldbe said for Emily. Their feelings toward each other were written all over their faces anytime they were in the same room.
If Ace was forced to describe it, he’d say it was a dash of longing mixed with a dollop of lust sprinkled atop a near-nuclear pile of need. But to his everlasting dismay—and irritation—neither seemed willing to admit it.
Really, what the holy duck fuck was their problem?
They were both attractive. Both single. Both engaged in espionage and blacker-than-black missions. However—and this was a pretty big fracking however—for reasons he highly suspected stemmed back to trauma in their childhoods, neither of them expressed any interest in romantic relationships.
He got that. Lord, did he ever. The things a person endured in childhood often left indelible marksas an adult.
