Page 35 of The ARC Unit: Breach

He turned to me, bracing both hands on the sink behind him and tipping his chin up like he had absolutely no problem being looked at. His body was leaner than Wolf’s but cut hard through the shoulders and stomach, with defined muscle running down into the sharp V of his hips before disappearing beneath the waistband of his briefs.

Tattoos covered enough of him that I kept finding new pieces the longer I looked. A black-and-gray dragon curled over one shoulder and down across his ribs, broken up by smaller designs and lines of Korean lettering worked into the rest of the ink.

My eyes drifted lower before I could pretend they hadn’t. Two words were tattooed in English low over his hip bones, one on either side.

USE

ME

I stared at them for a second, then looked back up at him. “That feels less like a tattoo and more like a set of instructions.”

Jackal’s mouth pulled into a slow grin.

Just then, the door opened behind me, and Hawk slipped through carrying a small toiletry bag. He moved around me, opened a locker, took out deodorant and closed it again with barely a sound.

I turned.

“Where did you come from?”

Hawk paused. “Hallway.”

“I didn’t hear you.”

“I know.”

He left.

Jackal watched the door close and nodded thoughtfully. “He does that.”

“It’s unsettling.”

“You get used to it.”

“Everyone keeps saying that about things I have no intention of getting used to.”

A fourth person appeared in the doorway.

Viper.

His shorter blond hair was flattened on one side from sleep, and his expression suggested consciousness itself had offended him. He looked at me, then Jackal in his underwear, then the closed shower curtain hiding Raven.

“Too many people,” he said in a tired voice.

“Finally,” I replied. “A reasonable person.”

Viper walked to the sink beside Jackal. “You’re also here.”

“Never mind.”

He turned on the water. I picked up my shampoo and headed toward the last stall.

“If anyone else walks in, I’m filing a complaint.”

Jackal leaned his hip against the sink. “With who?”

I stopped. I had no answer for that before Wolf appeared in the open doorway.

He was already dressed in black tactical pants and a fitted charcoal shirt, a plain black covering hiding the lower half of his face while his dark hair remained exposed. It had not yet been wrestled fully into the zig-zag headband he wore around the compound, leaving several thick waves loose around his forehead. He took in the room once, from Raven behind the shower curtain to Viper at the sink, before landing on Jackal nearly naked beside me. Nothing about his expression changed.