Down boy.
The admonishment might have worked if I’d not grasped Daniel’s outstretched hand. Tingles shot through me like lightning bolts, and the rasp of our palms sliding against each other robbed me of words. Luckily, he covered my idiotic ass.
“Nice to meet you.”
I nodded, then croaked, “Same,” before dropping his hand as soon as possible. That didn’t stop the tingles from continuing to dance through my system before gathering in my crotch with all the blood and intellect I possessed.
Parker tossed an arm over Daniel’s shoulders. Jealous rage, the only name that described what I felt, even though I’d never experienced the emotion before, joined the indignation of having to live in the closet to achieve my dreams. I wanted nothing more than to reach out, remove his arm from Daniel’s body, definitely, and if that removed it from his body, I was alright with that too.
A smirk graced the asshole’s face, and I wanted to remove that as well.
“Daniel, here is our resident spook.”
I nodded, biting my cheek to keep from saying anything while my eyes danced between his face and Daniel’s.
“If we’re the spear, then he’s the hand that points the spear,” a voice said from behind me.
I looked over my shoulder. One to see who spoke since I didn’t know the team’s voices yet, and two, to give my eyes a break from the sight standing before me…my sexy as fuck team leader and the man who’d inhabited my thoughts since he fucked me silly.
“Good to know,” I told Josh Kettles, the team’s number three guy and their breacher.
I took a deep breath, then turned back to Daniel, steeling myself. Only Parker’s smirky fucking gorgeous face, while still smirky and gorgeous, was no longer where it had been. He now stood behind Daniel, looking over Daniel’s shoulder at me, his arms crossed over his chest.
Fuck me.
I wouldn’t last the month if I didn’t figure out a way to rein in my reaction to this guy. I didn’t know why I couldn’t have answered it if someone had a gun to my head.
What was it about this guy?
Yes, he was hot.
He was sexy.
And he could definitely fuck.
But he wasn’t the first guy that I’d been with who was hot, sexy, and who could fuck. So what was it about him?
What made me so incapable of locking down the way my body responded to him?
“It’s nice to meet you, Daniel. I’m Alex Madison.”
His eyes widened, hardened, and then darted around the room. The tic in his jaw gave him away, but he covered what I had to assume was ire at being lied to by lifting his coffee cup to his mouth again.
My dick twitched.
Again.
This was fucking ridiculous.
“Nice to meet you…Alex.”
His tongue, the way he paused, the inflection—everything about the way he said my name told a story. One I didn’t want told. Plus, that name, the one only my father, his staff, and his cronies ever used, sounded so wrong coming from his lips. Alex was the name I used for the closeted guy I hated. Xander, that was the real me. The person who felt free to explore and be and fuck.
Alex was none of the things that Xander was. And I hated him. I hated even more that it could beme.I hated that splitting myself in half was necessary. I hated that I couldn’t introduce him to the guys I would need to entrust my life to, couldn’t know who was actually serving beside them.
I loathed that the government, the same government I vowed to protect, to give my life for, said that I was less than. All because I fucked men. Some people, Kelly comes to mind, would ask why?
Why enlist? Why serve? Why put myself in the line of fire?
