The Muscle Read online

  And with that, he shed the slick leather jacket he always wore—form fitting, zipped up the front, had lots of clever little zippered pockets for weapons and tear gas or whatever—off his shoulders and went to lay it down.

  “You can’t do that!” Grace cried out before it hit the ground. “That’s a five-hundred-dollar jacket!”

  Hunter blinked owlishly. “And I have others,” he said. “One of them in my luggage. Your feet are hamburger, man. Take the help.”

  And Grace was torn, because his feet did hurt, and he was pretty sure there was blood and he’d need Band-Aids up the wazoo! But he’d be… be beholden to Hunter for this little bit of kindness, and oh, that didn’t sit well at all.

  Hunter seemed to know this. He regarded Grace impassively while the bad guy squirmed on the ground at their feet.

  “Look, we need to get moving. People are going to start noticing this guy, and I’ve got no place to stash him.”

  “Aren’t we going to ask him who he works for?”

  Hunter breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. “If I lay down my jacket, will you jump so we can do that?”

  “Fine,” Grace muttered, and Hunter spread his jacket on the ground and waited while Grace let go of the limb.

  He hissed when he landed, the pain considerable, and then stumbled. Right into Hunter’s arms.

  For a moment, the sting in his feet faded away, and he was warm and sheltered and cared for, and Hunter’s well-muscled arms promised him that nothing was going to hurt him tonight. He looked up in surprise and saw those penetrating gray eyes darken with hunger—and wonder.

  Grace sucked in a breath, and his mouth parted. Oh. Oh, this was what lay beneath that guarded exterior. Look at the passion and the heat. No wonder Hunter was always so contained. If all of that got out, the results would be incendiary!

  The pop of shattered plastic broke the spell, and Grace stumbled back as Hunter turned to tackle the escaping prisoner.

  “Asshole!” Hunter snarled, doing a wrestling throw on the guy and flipping him hard onto his back.

  He lay there, stunned, and Hunter looked at Grace in irritation. “Don’t just stand there—look at the inside right vest pocket. I’ve got some ankle shackles in there!”

  Grace hopped off the coat, inwardly mourning the blood and dirt he’d left on the fine satin lining, and started rooting around the vest pocket. “You cannot possibly…. Oh, wait. Oh my God!”

  Grace reached in and realized that the jacket was double lined and that Hunter’s body—obviously strong—was actually a bit leaner than Grace had imagined.

  Also, that the jacket weighed around twenty pounds.

  Wait.

  “Is this lined with Kevlar?” he asked, flummoxed. For one thing, that meant Hunter had run around the building and to the marina in record time while carrying the equivalent of a twenty-pound daypack on his back.

  For another, Hunter had let Grace wipe his feet on this super expensive Kevlar daypack.

  “The shackles, Grace!” Their bad guy was wriggling a little, and, well, people were starting to stare.

  “Oh, yeah!”

  Grace rooted into the pocket in question and pulled out clear plastic shackles. Well, not plastic. Something stronger than plastic. Something knife resistant. Yeah, sure, it was probably possible to machete through these babies, but where was a machete when you were shackled in the basement, right?

  He handed them to Hunter and then resumed his futile brushing off of the coat. Hunter must have been frustrated, though, because the guy getting shackled let out his first sound.

  “Ouch! Dammit, I’m cooperating!”

  “You. Tried. To. Escape.”

  Grace actually shuddered. God, he hoped he never got on Hunter’s bad side. Those clipped words were definitely Hunter’s bad side.

  “What were you doing anyway?” Grace asked. “Why was your buddy searching our rooms?” He had a sudden thought that brought him to his knees next to the guy’s prone body. “Did you hurt the professor? Did you?” He started rooting through the coat with more ferocity. “There is a fucking knife in here, and if you hurt the professor—”

  “Hold it, hold it, precious,” Hunter muttered. “Josh, did you check?”

  And Josh chimed in for the first time since the chase had begun. “Yeah. Mr. Mikkelnokov is fine, Grace. Don’t worry. He’s a little confused and wondering where you’ve gone and why in the hell I’m here, but he’s fine.”

  Grace let out a little puff of breath. “Oh, good.” He scowled at the enemy. “What in the hell were you doing there?”

  “Hey! It’s us who should be asking you that question.” The man struggled to sit up, knocking his balaclava off—and it was, as Grace suspected, a ski mask. “You’re the ones with our stolen tech.”

  “Your what?”

  The guy let out a grunt. “We think,” he amended. “We… we were getting a little desperate. See—” He looked down at the shackles, and then back at Hunter. “—I am sitting in the mud. I don’t know where my colleague is. And I’m starving. Is there any way we could do this somewhere else?”

  “Sure!” Grace said, because he was starting to get a little peckish himself, just as Hunter said, “Not on your life.”

  The guy was pretty good-looking, now that Grace wasn’t terrified of him. He had nice hazel eyes—not as piercing as Hunter’s, but not bad—and a clean jaw, with short-clipped brown hair. He turned those eyes onto Grace, who would readily admit he was the easier mark, and said, “Can I at least know what you did to my head of security?”

  “Your head of security took a shot at my friend here,” Hunter snapped. “You’re lucky his nose isn’t sniffing the back of his own skull!”

  “He did what?” The blank surprise on their bad guy’s face seemed to make him not such a bad guy, but then, what did Grace know? He was a thief.

  “There was a shot,” Grace agreed. “In the stairwell. Why did he do that, by the way?”

  In defeat, the man slumped backward, obviously no longer caring that he was lying in sopping wet grass and bare mud. “I have no idea,” he muttered. “Dammit.” He opened his eyes again. “I’m sorry,” he said to Grace. “I’m sorry about chasing you. I’m sorry about scaring your friend. I was just—we were at the end of our rope, and we let desperation get to us. God, you’re not going to call the police, are you?”

  “What were you desperate about?” Grace asked curiously. He shifted his weight on his feet again, grimaced, and was about to sink down to sit in the muddy grass next to their friend when Hunter grabbed his upper arm.

  “Stop,” he said. “Look—mister—”

  “Broadstone,” the man said. “Lucius Broadstone.”

  Grace grinned. “No shit?”

  He got a dry look in return. “No shit. Why are you impressed?”

  “Because that is an amazing name. Isn’t it?”

  “I’ve got it,” Stirling said tersely over coms. “Consensus here is that it’s an amazing name. It’s also the name of a billionaire who owns a zillion acres of cattle ranches outside of Peoria and runs a decent-sized tech-development company there by the name of Broadstone Industries. Ask him if he’s that billionaire.”

  “Great,” Hunter rasped. “Mr. Lucius Broadstone of Broadstone Industries, if we help you up and let you walk, will you tell me why your head of security was willing to shoot at my friend so that you two could break into a room?”

  “He’s gone, by the way,” Julia said over coms. “We came back when we heard the ruckus. The zip ties are on the ground, snapped, but there’s a little bit of blood here, so whoever it was must have been fairly desperate.”

  “Well, this guy snapped his zip ties too,” Hunter muttered. “I’m starting to think I should just cuff people and get it over with.”

  “Took a class,” Lucius Broadstone said, smiling prettily. “I did. On how to get out of zip ties. Self-defense. Worked wonders.”

  Hunter glared at him again, and Lucius quiete
d down. “I….” He sighed. “Look, I already know where your hotel room is. How about you take me back there, lend me some clothes, and I’ll pay for room service. I think we can straighten this out.” He frowned. “And about Jenkins using a gun? That was… that was not in the plan.” He gave an apologetic smile. “Sorry?”

  Hunter snarled—actually snarled, lips drawn back from bared teeth—and Lucius flinched. “If your guy had hurt Grace, you would, indeed, be sorry.”

  Lucius sobered, then nodded. “Yes,” he said clearly. “That was… irresponsible of me. Not to know who I was working with. I apologize.” He slumped down a little more. “Please. I’d like a chance to explain.”

  Grace huffed out a breath. “Sure. C’mon, Hunter, let his ankles free. If nothing else, you can tackle him again.”

  “I’d rather you not!” Broadstone said in some alarm. He shook his head. “I played college football—I’ve never been brought down like that.”

  “Shot! At! My friend!”

  Broadstone’s eyes narrowed. He nodded in agreement but seemed to find something suspect about that. “Friend. Sure. I hear you. Now, could you help me up?”

  “Fine.” Hunter matched his action to his words and grabbed Broadstone’s upper arm before hauling him unceremoniously to his feet.

  Standing, Grace was reminded of why he’d been running so fast, because the guy, while not tall, exuded a sort of no-bullshit physicality. Yeah, this guy could fuck you up, no question. He frowned. “So, what were you going to do if you caught me?”

  Broadstone glared at him. “Ask why you’re trying to destroy my company!”

  Grace blinked at him, unimpressed. “Mister, I was this many minutes old when I met somebody from Peoria. Why would we give a cow’s shit about your company?” He looked at Hunter. “Is there, like, a back way we can get into the hotel? I would really love it if we didn’t have to deal with security after that exit.”

  Hunter gave a disgusted sniff. “That was hella sloppy. I can’t believe that happened.” He glared at Broadstone. “Why in the fuck did you chase him?”

  “Because he ran!” Broadstone argued. “Jenkins told me Mikkelnokov’s friend had caught him and was giving chase—in his bare feet!”

  Grace smiled, pleased with himself in spite of the aching in his toes. “I beat him. And you. Fucking amateurs.” Then, to Hunter again, “Why aren’t we moving?”

  “I’m afraid if we move, this asshole will chase you again!” Hunter gave Broadstone a shove, and Broadstone gave him a dirty look.

  “You would have chased him too. You know it.”

  “I would not!” Hunter snapped, shoving Broadstone around toward what was apparently the back entrance of the building.

  “No?” Grace asked, absurdly stung.

  “Well,” Hunter amended, giving Grace a quick look from under thick sandy-brown lashes, “I would have known what to do with you.”

  Grace grinned but kept his eyes on his battered toes so he didn’t stub one again. “You called me baby,” he murmured.

  “What?” Broadstone asked, but that hadn’t been for him.

  Hunter just grunted. But Grace snuck a look at him. A tiny flush was riding his pale cheeks in the cold.

  Change in Temperature

  HUNTER COILED against the hotel room wall in his usual position, with one eye on Lucius Broadstone, whom he still didn’t trust, and part of his attention focused on the running water in the bathroom, where Grace had gone to wash his feet.

  His bleeding feet.

  Hunter’s professionalism had gotten him in and out of some of the world’s most violent hotspots. He did not stop for personal reasons; he did not let himself be distracted; he got in, got the job done, and got out.

  Period.

  The. End.

  But halfway across the lush green grass of the Westin Bayshore Hotel, he’d been tempted to just hamstring Broadstone (and seriously, what a fuckin’ name) and swing Grace up in his arms like a romance heroine so he could cart the man away to get some first aid.

  But Grace wasn’t a damsel in distress. He was a mostly grown man whose little acrobatic trick at the end of that chase had literally knocked Hunter’s breath out of his body. Damn, son—that wasn’t for the weak or the stupid or the faint of heart.

  Hunter spent a lot of time honing his body, making it the most effective weapon in his possession. He didn’t like guns. That didn’t mean he couldn’t use them, but he didn’t like them, and—particularly when he was around civilians in what was supposed to be a mostly covert op—didn’t carry them. Oh yeah, he knew they were out there. That’s why the Kevlar had been built into his leather jackets. But if there was a sniper’s rifle trained on him that he didn’t know about, no .38 was going to save his life, and it just might kill someone who’d been going about their day.

  Keeping himself fit and hard and ready to play at a moment’s notice was Hunter’s best bet at keeping himself—and his team—alive. And by God, he could appreciate the hell out of someone who dedicated himself to his craft the way Grace’s lithe body was dedicated to dancing.

  He’d damned near tap-danced up a potential enemy and served him to Hunter on a silver platter.

  Hunter approved.

  But Grace had also gotten hurt, and while Hunter had plenty of scars on his own body, he wasn’t okay with Grace having scars on his.

  And the reason he wasn’t okay with Grace and scars hadn’t beat him over the head until just this moment: he didn’t like to imagine Grace in pain.

  Also, hidden behind training and layers of scar tissue guarding his own heart, Hunter liked to imagine all of that smooth, tawny skin bare and graceful and….

  Intimate.

  Hearing Grace muttering to himself as he slept had been both mortifying and titillating. Mortifying because Hunter felt like a first-class predator, listening where he wasn’t wanted, and titillating because Grace was a walking contradiction, a vocal, irritating, unpredictable mayhem machine with no moral compass and an almost alien disposition. For a little while, Hunter had gotten to observe Grace when he hadn’t been preening or parading or showing off his formidable physical skills, and he’d been….

  Vulnerable.

  Gah!

  And now he was hurt.

  With an effort, Hunter dragged his attention back to Lucius Broadstone, who, it appeared, was not an assassin, or even muscle. He was just a businessman tired of losing his shirt to his competition.

  “So,” Broadstone was saying, “once a quarter, like clockwork, when my department heads report to me about what’s in development, we do a search to see if any of the proposed projects have been put into production with any other firm. Doubling up happens—a lot—but if someone’s been working on, say, a wheelchair that responds to eye movement on a lightboard that could fit onto spectacle frames, we want to know so we can either decide whether to catch up with that or let the other guy pass us by and put our energy elsewh—”

  “Is somebody?” Grace called from the bathroom.

  “Sonova—” Hunter glared at the partly closed door. It would figure the little shit was still on coms.

  “Is somebody what?” Broadstone asked politely, looking around from his perch on Stirling’s desk chair to see who had spoken.

  Grace called out again. “Is somebody making a wheelchair that responds to eye movement on a pair of glasses?” and he was loud enough that everybody in the room winced because of the feedback into their earbuds.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Josh muttered. Artur—who apparently had been dragged into the hotel room by Julia and Molly, no longer working under pretense—massaged the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

  “Grace!” Hunter growled. He looked apologetically at Josh, who shook his head.

  “You go get him,” Josh said. “I need to hear this.”

  “Uhm, yes,” Broadstone said, nodding. “At least it was something we’ve been refining. But why would he want to know that? It has nothing to do with what I wa
s saying.”

  “Because I thought it would be cool!” Grace called from the bathroom, right when Hunter, exasperated to the point of seriously considering spanking the impossibly crazy damned thief, cried out, “Grace! Dammit!”

  Josh gave Hunter a level look. “Go talk to him,” he said. “We’ll fill you in.”

  “I don’t get to listen to the club meetings anymore?” Hunter was… well, stung, that was the word. Hurt. Immeasurably.

  “Yes!” Josh snapped. “Any other minute of any other day, you would be in the clubhouse!”

  “Then what?”

  Josh cupped his ear, because they both knew it dampened the sound, and Hunter—and Stirling, Julia, and Molly—did the same. “You called him baby,” Josh murmured. “And he’s never been anyone’s baby. Go fix it.”

  Hunter let his hand drop and stumbled for the bathroom, his brain buzzing.

  Nobody’s baby? How could that be?

  Hunter’s parents, Jim and Susie Rutledge, lived outside of Kansas City, Missouri, in a patch of horse property because Susie liked to ride. Jim ran the cattle farm; Susie was a teacher. They had four sons, and they’d both been so proud of Hunter when he’d signed up for the armed forces after college. He’d done a lot of terrible things since then—and a few decent ones—but even in the middle of the world’s worst hellholes, he’d managed to send them Christmas and birthday cards, because he knew if he was sent home wounded or dead, Jim and Susie Rutledge would care for him… or mourn him.

  He was their baby and always had been.

  His first boyfriend, during basic training, had been a sweet kid named Miles who was planning to get his teaching degree after the military. He might already have it. Hunter had called him baby every day, and not just in bed.

  He’d had a few boyfriends since—many of them like Miles in that they were sweet and a little naïve and a little too pure for the likes of the man Hunter had molded himself into. And of course there had been hookups in between. He wasn’t a monk. Sex was great! Physical, fun, great stress relief—and intimate, if he was leaning that way.

  But he’d never shied away, particularly skin-to-skin, from being kind or protective. That was a perk, he thought, of having a lover. You got to call them baby.