Page 4 of Under Cover

That got Crosby to move. He stood and buttoned his jeans, then gathered his sweater, his fleece, his boots. Garcia ran to the bathroom, probably to give himself the same sort of regimen Crosby had, and Crosby picked up his phone and texted Harding, their Agent In Charge, that Garcia would pick him up on the way.

Nobody would ask, he knew. Buddies coming to work together. Like him sleeping on Gail’s couch before the roommate complication. Nothing to see here, folks; no mind-blowing sex, no uncomfortable emotional attachment.

But even as he thought about that, thought about making it clear he wouldn’t be sleeping with the roommate again, he fought off the obvious, the thing neither of them had said.

If they only hooked up with each other….

If they worried when weapons were drawn….

If they pretended they weren’t doing the thing….

If Crosby marked Garcia like Garcia marked his home, making the man his and fuck anyone else who looked at him….

If these were the truths they were living with now….

It wasn’t a hookup anymore. It had never been one in the first place.

Covert—Backing Up to the Beginning

Six Months Earlier

JUDSON CROSBYwoke up on his best friend’s couch and groaned.

“You awake?” Gail Pearson had long blond pigtail braids and cornflower blue eyes—and some of the keenest knife skills Crosby had ever seen. Unfortunately those knife skills hadn’t saved her from a kick from a perp that had caved her knee in exactly the wrong direction knees should go, and she’d been laid up for the last two months, acting as their team’s backup hacker because Kylie, their regular hacker, had just gotten married and taken a leave of absence.

Gail was going nuts, and she was driving her roommate nuts, and Crosby had been called in to mediate a week into her “incarceration” at home. Crosby had shown up to be Gail’s legs and her ride to work, and had stayed—on and off—for the sex with Iliana, her roommate. Iliana, who was as tall and dusky as Gail was tiny and blond, worked as a commander in Active Crimes in a precinct next door to the precinct that patrolled their street. To say Iliana’s sex life was a closely guarded secret was to say Fort Knox was closely guarded. Crosby knew he was a means to an end, a flesh-covered dildo, as it were, because Iliana was straight with him—and that was fine.

But it meant that on the nights they weren’t doing the quick and dirty, he was out here on the couch, because Iliana’s room was Iliana’s room, and he wasn’t welcome, and he knew it.

It was a good thing their couch was a sweet, sweet ride to dreamland, or he’d be forced back into his own apartment, where his roommate’s other guests had probably had sex on every surface, including the ceilings, with every gender known to or yet to be discovered by humans.

Toby Trotter was a great guy, but he was not—not—an ideal roommate.

Crosby’s days often turned into weeks in the Special Crimes Task Force. A collaboration that borrowed officers from the police, the FBI, NCIS, ATF, and probably a few other alphabets as well, the SCTF was funded by the military but under the management of Lieutenant Commander Clint Harding. Clint—formerly covert ops, though some speculated CIA while others speculated black ops, deep—answered to no other master than the Attorney General of the United States, and sometimes they had words. His job—his only job—was to track down felons who had eluded capture in their particular jurisdiction, often felons who were in the middle of a crime spree.

Clint’s unit’s job was, in his words, to keep the blood from spilling and to bring the bad guy in. He preferred alive, and he made that plain, but he also preferred his guys alive to the bad guy if it came down to that, and his unit was grateful.

Crosby had been tapped for SCTF as a homicide cop in Chicago, but he’d lived in New York for a year to be part of the unit. He’d managed to find a roommate—his old college roommate, actually—who was making a lot of money as a DJ and was happy to let Crosby stay in his spare room. Toby was a great guy, and he’d stayed true to his offer of showing Crosby around the city. The deal had seemed too good to be true when it had first been offered.

After a year and a half of dragging his bloody, bruised, exhausted ass into the apartment to find the party he’d left two days ago still going strong, Crosby had recognized that seeming too good to be true was oftenbeingtoo good to be true. He’d jumped at a chance to help Gail out and get some sleep, and then he’d awakened one night to Iliana taking off her robe in the middle of the living room and saying, “I don’t want strings, I just want dick. You in?”

Well, if nothing else he’d needed to work off some stress.

With a moan he turned his head now to see Gail holding out a mug of coffee. He whimpered and sat up, taking it from her hands. “We got a call?” he asked.

“Yeah. I told Clint it would take us half an hour. You showered last night, because you’re considerate as fuck, and I just need to change.” She shook her head. “You know, if you weren’t banging my roommate, I’d be afraid you’d perv out on me when you had to help me change, but you seem to be a perfect gentleman.”

Crosby sipped his coffee—hot, with cream—and smiled a little. “She make it back last night?”

“Yeah. Late, though. Does she really only let you sleep in the bed when you’re having sex?”

He grimaced. “She actually asks me to leave if we don’t fall asleep. Don’t worry. I have no illusions as to intimacy or monogamy. I know what I’m here for.”

Gail sighed, the breath stirring the fine strands of gold hair that curled from her tight braids. “You have to forgive her. I mean, I was super excited when you guys started hooking up—after Danny….” She trailed off. Iliana’s boyfriend, Danny Aramis, had been killed in a train derailment up in Pennsylvania on a business trip. Apparently it had been true love for them, and according to Gail, Crosby was Iliana’s first step into the land of the living in over two years. Her job at the Forty Third Precinct—she was in charge of the Active Crimes Division—kept her too busy to have much of a social life, and here, neatly delivered, was a person who got law enforcement hours and was pretty decent (if Crosby dared say so) in bed.

It was starting to dawn on them both that Crosby was a means to scratch an itch—he was most assuredly not an emotional act of bravery.

“Yeah, well….” He shrugged. “I was willing. But the good news is I can get up now and get us dressed, and I don’t need to kiss anybody goodbye.”