Page 33

They stayed in silence a moment longer. Flint walked up the stairs and shook himself, droplets flinging at them. Then he sat down in front of them like a sentinel, watching Zorro with a quiet understanding only animals seemed to carry.

“Does your shit have anything to do with a certain CIA operative who showed up unexpectedly. Not on an op, in a hotel with all these beds?” Zorro murmured.

Bear’s jaw clenched.

Zorro lifted a brow.

“Fuck you and your damn intuition. How did you?—”

“I’ve seen the way you look at her. Those moments when that stoic, hardass face softens. She’s fucking stunning, so sharp she cuts, and her instincts are off the charts. I get it.”

“It’s a stupid fucking dick ache,” Bear muttered. “She’s vital to ops. Don’t dip your wick in the place where you work.”

Zorro tilted his head, water still trailing down his jaw. “Right…a dick ache.”

Bear didn’t rise to the bait. “She’s based in DC. I’m in Coronado. We only collide during missions. That’s it. That’s reality.” The silence that followed wasn’t long. But it was deep. Bear heard the lie as it left his mouth. Then, softer, quieter… was it?

Zorro didn’t press. Didn’t tease him anymore. That wasn’t who he was, not when it mattered.

Bear looked at him fully now. At the fatigue in his bones. The restlessness in his swim. The ache he hadn’t spoken out loud.

“She’s a thoughtful and mostly fair person, Z. She was fed some bullshit by her dead husband. We all know that if Joker was involved in that op, it was clean,” Bear said softly.

Zorro’s eyes closed. “I can’t put it down.”

Bear’s voice dropped into something raw.

“Don’t then. If you can survive Operation Ropeburn…

” He chuckled softly. “I’m sorry I missed it.

You can work this out with the Doc. She’s so into you.

I saw her face when she came out of that examination room.

That was a woman who was running from something she wanted desperately.

You, kola . She wants herself some of that Martinez energy.

” He rolled his eyes. “Spirits watch over her.”

Zorro let his head fall forward, water dripping off his chin. “Fuck you, and your spirits.”

He huffed out a breath, voice thick. “She kissed me. Once. When I was unconscious.”

Bear didn’t move.

“She’s been running ever since. Every look, every word, half desire, half guilt.”

He dragged a hand over his face, breath catching. “That mix? It makes me want to fucking howl at the moon and find some way to heal her.” He choked back the next word. “I’m not good at waiting when I know what I want.”

Bear thought of Ayla. Of the ache that had never eased.

Of Bailee. Of the terrible gravity of hope.

“Sometimes,” he said quietly, “wanting something you can’t have is a kind of grief too.

” Zorro looked up. Bear met his eyes. “Sometimes,” he said, voice low and fierce, “it’s just about thinking with the right head at the right time. We are cursed with that dilemma.”

Zorro swallowed.

The lights of Rio shimmered across the pool, catching on every ripple between them.

Bear grasped the edge and pulled himself out, water dripping off him. He bent and picked up the towel he’d dropped, going to his knees to rub it over Flint’s fur. Zorro followed, grabbing up his own towel.

He reached out, set a firm hand on Zorro’s shoulder, warm skin, damp with effort, steady heartbeat beneath.

“Get your mind right. Be ready for her when she comes,” Bear said. Then he rose and turned, walking away.

There were battles you couldn’t fight for your brothers.

But you could swim with them, shoulder to shoulder, until some of that tension eased.

Zorro dried off in silence, toweling his hair until it stood in unruly dark waves.

The rooftop pool behind him had gone quiet, the night closing in like a secret only the two of them knew.

He reached for his tee, still damp from earlier, and pulled it over his head, the cotton sticking briefly to his skin.

His phone buzzed on the chaise lounge where he’d dropped it. He froze. One glance at the screen and his gut clenched. Everly. Her name was in his mind like an explosive exhale after pain.

He opened the message, his thumb hesitant in a way that had nothing to do with calluses or muscle. Just nerves. Just hope so raw it stung.

You are the sweetest goddamned man I have ever had the pleasure to fight with, kiss, and drive crazy.

Thank you for telling me about your day, about your selflessness, your steadiness, and the thing I’m not ready to say out loud yet.

Wait for me just a little longer. I don’t want to run. Not anymore.

He didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Oh, fuck, there was that fear in those words. Not anymore.

The breath that left him felt like it had been trapped in his chest for weeks.

A smile ghosted across his face, but it was soft , vulnerable, not the grin he weaponized in the field. This wasn’t victory. This was relief . This was the kind of message a man got once in his life, if he was lucky.

He stared at her words again. Then again. Wait for me.

He would. Of course he would. But he wouldn’t just wait silently. His fingers hovered over the screen. Then, slowly, he typed.

He took the stairs two at a time, damp from the pool, the night wrapping around him like a fever. His towel was slung around his neck, the weight of the message she’d sent coiled like a live wire under his skin. Zorro stopped at her door. Not his. Hers.

His pulse kicked. His heart beat so fast it felt like a weapon trapped in his chest. He braced one hand on the doorframe, the other tightening into a fist at his side.

His dick stirred beneath the towel, slow and deliberate, thick with anticipation that had nothing to do with fantasy and everything to do with truth .

She was going to come to him. He could feel it in his bones.

Not because she wanted his body, though fuck, she did and that thought only made him harder, painfully engorged.

He hadn't fixed a goddamned thing, but she still wanted him.

That felt so fucking surreal, unbelievably good, like being let out of a tight, dark space.

She thought he was sweet, and she wanted him .

All those thoughts nearly dropped him to his knees.

I don’t have to earn her through sacrifice.

I am worthy…even when I’m wounded. Even when I can’t save the day.

His palm pressed to her door. He wanted to breach it.

Kick it open, find her inside, and just…

sink into her. Let go in the only way he knew how, through touch, through heat, through entering her body to claim everything she was, through the act of fusing with her mentally, moving with her emotionally, taking her physically.

He shook with the effort it took not to knock.

She was making him see things in such a different light, something he'd believed his whole life. Every rule he’d lived by.

Every unspoken oath about what made a man worthy of a woman like Everly .

She was doing it without even trying. This fucking beautiful woman who had knocked him on his ass with her courage, her fire, and her relentless need to work through her own shit before offering him anything half-formed .

He set his palm against her door. Just for a breath, and swore he could feel her breath, feel her heartbeat through the wood.

Then he turned. Walked to his room and ducked inside.

He showered in silence, steam curling around him as water sluiced over his skin. His dick throbbed, rubbing against his abs with every movement. Heavy. Hot. Demanding. Nope. Neither head was clear tonight. Both were on a swivel . Goddamn , he wanted her.

When he finally slid into bed, still towel-damp, still pulsing with ache, he didn’t bother covering himself. He couldn’t. He lay there naked, hot, exposed, ready. This was what he was for her now. Not armored. Not savior. Open. Vulnerable. Aching.

He showed his need through the body that had carried teammates through fire, shielded hostages from gunfire, delivered babies in the jungle, and tonight, burned for her.

He breathed deep. Closed his eyes. Adrenaline spiked like he was standing on the ramp before a thirty-thousand-jump. His voice cracked the quiet. “Everly…” A whisper. A plea. “I need you so damn much.”

The dark had shifted when she woke again.

She was warm. Still wrapped in his shirt.

Still drowsy with memory and ache. But something in her was different now, settled, like silt after a long storm.

For the first time in weeks, she didn’t need the armor.

Didn’t need to second-guess everyfuckingthing.

Didn’t need to keep proving she was untouched by the feelings she wasn’t supposed to have.

Her breath slowed. Her heartbeat settled.

Something inside her softened, and in that hush, somewhere between waking and dreaming, the thought unfurled: If I can’t go to him, how will I face myself in the mirror?

How will I hold my own gaze and say, I am still good.

Even when I feel. Even when I want. Even when I choose these emotions over control.

Even when I long for a man who makes me burn and unravel and hope in the same breath.

Maybe, just maybe, integrity isn’t found in being untouched by need.

Maybe it’s found in the courage to admit it .

To stop equating love as something only perfection could earn.

To stop tying virtue to silence. To stop fearing that stepping toward Zorro would become less.

The truth was that she didn’t have to be perfect to be the woman he wanted.

She didn’t have to be flawless to be the woman he needed .

She just had to be honest. Compassionate. Brave.

She stood, Rio’s nightscape shimmering behind the curtains. The clock on the bedside table read 1:07 a.m. With her bare feet brushing cool tile, she moved toward the bathroom.

She met her own gaze, those same eyes Zorro had seen in his dream. Not illusion. Not perfection. Just a real woman. With real need. Real want.

The fucking right to both.

She had the right to crave him. To need him. To believe there was a life beyond the prison of perfect. That didn’t define her.

Her humanity did.

No one, not even the almighty Rob Quinn, was flawless— far from it. Yeah, Rob, you soul-sucking fucker. I was too damn good for you . End of story. So, fucking end of that story. Her new life waited for her across the hall. None of it written yet. But she was so damn good for him, always for him.

She stepped from the bathroom, picked up her phone. She didn’t need reassurance. All she needed was to see what he had texted back, and there it was. His response. Fierce. Full. Unapologetically Mateo Martinez.

I’m not fucking going anywhere. If you run, you better move fast. Yeah, that’ll be me breathing down your beautiful neck.

She closed her eyes and groaned softly, knees buckling as fire cascaded through her. Her breasts swelled, nipples tightening to the point of near-pain, and a liquid heat coiled low between her thighs, wet, needy, pulsing.

She set down the phone, clutching the hem of his shirt in both fists. She already was his woman and she was going to take him, have him, and make him her man.