“I look forward to your love tap,” Jamie said with feeling.
It wasn’t exactly a lie.Portraying the rich, arrogant asshole the MDF needed him to be was going to drive him crazy.That wasn’t who he was, not anymore.Jamie needed Katie to knock him back down to the ground when the trappings of his life became too much, too real, too cutting.He privately thought it might be easier this time around, if only because Kyle would be with him.
Jamie’s gaze drifted away from Katie to search out his lover in the group of people scattered through the private jet.Kyle was playing a first-person shooting game with Alexei on the other side of the lounge area.With anyone else, it wouldn’t be a fair fight.With Alexei, it was pretty much even, only because the older man had no qualms about shoving his hand in Kyle’s face to make him miss.
“Foul!”Kyle yelled as his soldier took a hit that looked fatal in the projected holograms of the game.“I call foul!”
“Is not my fault you bad shot,” Alexei said with a straight face.
Kyle tossed his controller at Donovan and lunged for his brother, the pair of them getting into a wrestling match on the couch while Madison stole Alexei’s controller and challenged Donovan to a round.
“All y’all better quit messin’ around back there and buckle up.We’re landin’ in ten,” Annabelle said testily over the comms, apparently still mad that all the coffee was gone.
Trevor separated Kyle and Alexei with the help of his telekinesis, pulling them apart without lifting a finger from where he sat at one of the window seats.“I’m calling this one a draw.”
“Fine,” Kyle said mulishly.“I won.”
“Did not,” Alexei retorted.
“That’s not adraw,” Trevor said.
Jamie biolocked his tablet and tucked it into an inside pocket of his suit jacket.“Game over for everyone.Let’s get ready.”
Everyone immediately obeyed his order, even Sean.The agent had kept to himself for most of the flight over, taking up a small table between two window seats at the far end of the lounge area.His presence wasn’t exactly welcome, but he didn’t seem to care about the cool distance the team was treating him with.Alpha Team had a long history of being antagonistic toward outsiders.Only Kyle and Alexei had ever managed to break through the team’s defensive walls.The team would work with Sean; they just wouldn’t like it.
Jamie got up from the couch, rolling his shoulders a little to get the dark gray suit jacket he wore to fall correctly before buttoning it up.He grabbed the champagne bucket and was about to take it to the small kitchen beyond the lounge to empty it out when Madison popped up beside him.
“Nuh-uh, boss,” she said, taking the bucket out of his hands.“Cleaning up after yourself isn’t in character.We’re the ones looking after you, remember?”
Jamie bit back a sigh.“Fine.Have at it.”
Everyone’s cover identities for this mission were grounded in their real ones.It left them all more than a little on edge, knowing they couldn’t resort to code names.Under the trappings of this mission, they were supposed to be human, not metahumans.Which meant the only weapons they were supposed to have was the gear stowed in the cargo hold of the jet.The UMG had pre-cleared every last one, right down to the ammo.On one hand, Jamie was glad he’d made the team train without their powers over the last few months.On the other, sometimes he hated the fact nearly all hisjust in caseplans were almost always needed.
That being said, Jamie could grudgingly admit Sean’s detailed cover identities for the team passed Jamie’s notoriously high-threshold level for good work.Each cover took into account each person’s strengths and weaknesses, making it easier to pretend to be someone else when that someone was a colder, more ruthless version of themselves.
Katie, as founder and CEO of Root Source, Inc., could rely on her background as a sergeant and second-in-command to be the cool, demanding businesswoman her role required.Alexei, as her business partner and COO, made sure what she wanted got done, even if it required a few threats here and there.Sean had plied deep into Alexei’s childhood background as a refugee, playing up aspects of his years in Ukraine to hint that his family hadn’t been quite on the up and up as their generational refugee asylum request indicated.There was nothing like the possibility of criminal undertakings within a business to make someone of the same ilk sit up and take notice.
With Jamie bankrolling the whole operation and on the outs with his family, he’d turned to his team for support they gladly gave him.He’d hired Donovan, Trevor, Annabelle, and Madison as his personal security after they left the Marines, which gave them an excuse to stick close and be armed.Kyle’s role was the one Jamie had told the director, in no uncertain terms, needed to change.Nazari may have been initially reluctant to grant Jamie’s request to change Kyle’s role from personal security to just personal, but Jamie had made a compelling argument.
Surprisingly, Sean had backed him up because one less person to bring into the mission was one less detail they all had to account for.Sean had amended their service records to include an investigation into an inappropriate relationship charge between officer and subordinate that didn’t pan out due to lack of evidence.Pretending to be together for the sake of a mission while hiding the fact that yes, actually, theyweretogether was bound to backfire spectacularly in some way, no matter how careful they were.The team would watch out for them because they already knew about Jamie and Kyle’s relationship, but Sean wasn’t part of the team.He didn’t know and couldn’t know.
It was a risk, but it was one Jamie was willing to take.As much as he loved the time in bed he shared with Kyle, Jamie had come to the realization months ago that he wanted to do more.He wanted to take the other man out to a dinner that was just for them and not hidden beneath the team’s weekly get-togethers.He wanted to take leave with Kyle and fly him to cities the younger man had always wanted to visit but knew he never could, not as a poor kid growing up in an abusive household.Jamie wanted to just be with Kyle, in private and in public, with no fear that word of their relationship would get back to their superiors if they were seen kissing each other outside the walls of their home.
If this was the only way Jamie could be with Kyle in public right now, then he would take it.It was a role both were willing to play, even if it meant they’d have to bury their wistful dreams ofwhat ifwhen the mission was over and they resumed their regular lives again.
Playing the part meant snagging Kyle by the hand when the other man was all set to grab his personal bag with his handgun from the storage compartment in the back.“Someone else will get it,” Jamie told him.
“I can carry my own stuff,” Kyle snapped.
“You can, but you won’t.Not while you’re with me.I pay other people to handle the logistics of my life so that I don’t have to lift a finger, remember?”
Jamie squeezed Kyle’s hand gently to make a point.Kyle’s sharp-eyed gaze dropped down to their linked hands as the rest of the team moved around them, pointedly ignoring them.Jamie pulled Kyle close, leaning down a little to whisper into his ear.
“Just be yourself and you’ll do fine,” Jamie said in a low voice.
“You say that like it’s supposed to be easy.Pretty sure someone of your status wouldn’t look twice at a guy like me,” Kyle muttered.
“You’d be surprised at what people of my status want.”
