Swallow (Kindred Book 2) (12 page)

After she swallowed what Brodie fed her, he slipped out without further discussion or drama, which was sort of odd because they hadn’t put a plan together and she wasn’t clear on what he’d done that morning. But there was still CI work to be done, so she put Kindred business to rest and got on with her day job. If they were having visitors tonight then that should mean there’d be forward momentum once they had all the information and ideas on the table.

It was nearly the end of the day when Grant returned to her office, he’d never been in here so frequently before. But he came in and stayed by the door. “I don’t want him in here again,” Grant said.

He was well within his rights to ask that, just as she was well within her rights to refuse him. But with tensions already stretched to breaking point, she wasn’t sure how much more her relationship with Grant could take, and the Kindred still needed someone on the inside.

Taking a cleansing breath, she closed her laptop. “You have to stop seeing him as your enemy,” she said without using Brodie’s name. If Grant could trust his brother then he could maybe be tempted into seeing things from the Kindred’s point of view. But after his earlier confession that he didn’t trust her, she couldn’t risk sharing any privileged information. “He’s a part of my life.”

“I told him that our father was a fool,” Grant said, strolling farther into the room. He retrieved a chair from the corner of her office and brought it over to put it in front of her desk. She didn’t often have visitors and when she did they were subordinate administrative staff. Her furniture wasn’t as luxurious as Grant’s, but he didn’t seem to care. “If you’re inviting Brodie into CI, I can only assume that your allegiance remains with him. So you have to understand the truth. Do you remember I told you that we argued, fifteen years ago?”

She remembered. Both McCormack brothers had told her that they’d fought, but neither had admitted what it was about. “I remember.”

“I don’t know what either of us expected. Seeing each other again like that. We hadn’t been alone since before we lost them and then when we did find ourselves alone…”

“You talked about your parents?”

When it came to history they shared, their stories were often similar. Sometimes they matched. Other times, it was easy to see how their opposing emotions colored the situation.

Recounting events seemed easier for Grant or maybe the words were just easier for him to say because he never doubted the merits of his actions or memories. “We were raised with every privilege, with the best educations, and every luxury in life. I took it for granted, but Brodie, he hated it, snubbed the life others would covet. Maybe that’s why he idolized Art in the way he did, Art had adventures, he had no responsibilities. I wanted responsibility. I thought it made you somehow invincible. I worshiped my father and this company.” Lifting his attention, he scanned her office, but he seemed somehow numb and didn’t register or react to the environment. “We have always been different. We were never close.”

Could that explain why they were so averse to each other? Why they couldn’t trust each other? Maybe it did, but it also made her see that these men could never be tempted onto the same side. Their objectives were complete opposites.

After his brief moment of private reflection, Grant carried on. “I started to tell him about CI, about how well it was doing, he cut me off and told me he didn’t care. He was so aloof. I berated him for being so hateful of what our father loved. Brodie gave me some spiel about how the only thing our father loved was our mother. I laughed at him. He’d been listening to too many of Art’s tall tales, I was sure of it. Art idolized his sister, our mother, almost as much as Brodie idolized Art.”

She gave him a verbal nudge to encourage him on. “So you argued?”

“I argued. He lashed out,” Grant said with a growing scowl. “Art heard the scuffle, he came in and called Brodie off like a disobedient pup… I’ll never forget the disdain on Art’s face after Brodie left. He must have heard everything.”

She could picture the teen McCormack’s pushing each other, goading each other. Both believed themselves to be powerful, Grant in the boardroom and Brodie in combat. For years after that, they didn’t see each other or doubt their goals in life. Until Grant’s guardian, Frank Mitchell, died, the status quo kept the brothers apart.

Thinking of the negative aspects of their past would only increase the brothers’ dislike for each other, and she didn’t appreciate anyone thinking ill of Brodie. “You told me once that you thought Brodie was a hero,” she said. “That his life of adventure was one you craved.”

Grant didn’t hesitate in his rebuttal. “Then I saw what it took,” Grant said, making eye contact. “Art is dead, he’s destroyed your innocence, and for what? Just to prove to me that he’s better than I am? That he’s right and I’m wrong? He’s doing now what he couldn’t do that day fifteen years ago. And without Art around to call him off, I don’t know where he’ll stop and I’m scared that you’re going to be pulled into his destruction.”

She wasn’t afraid of Brodie and didn’t need Grant’s protection. “All he has tried to do is protect people, to stop people from being hurt,” she said.

“He’s killed more people than anyone else involved in this,” Grant said. “He’s not a hero. He’s manipulated us all. How can you trust him?”

“You need to stop taking this so personally,” she said. Her words startled him. She wasn’t usually so bold when it came to her boss. But she was beyond pandering to him now that she knew where his loyalties were. “Sutcliffe is the villain here. He recovered from his broken leg and the first person he came after was you. He killed two people in your life. Then he chose a bar on the same street as CI, one frequented by me and other CI employees              , as his first public stand. Elvis was supposed to lead those men and without him the unit fell apart, so I’d guess the men need more training. Why does he need soldiers if he doesn’t plan to go to war?”

“He wants to protect this country.”

Grant was adamant, but she was losing patience. “I am so sick of hearing that argument. If you want to protect this country, then go join the marines, donate money to a charity whose mission it is to save the victims of civil war and religious uprising… You don’t charge in with weapons of your own and expect not to cause more damage.”

“And who is going to protect the homeland when they come for us?” Grant said. “They’ve done it before, you know it. We can’t afford to be blindsided like that again. We have to be proactive. You have to join our cause.”

The rich and privileged seemed so entitled. Being right didn’t guarantee victory and she couldn’t ever trust Grant or Albert Sutcliffe to be right.

“I haven’t made my decision yet,” she said, because she would need to consult with the others in the Kindred before destroying her connections to Grant and CI.

Her boss wasn’t satisfied. “What was Brodie’s reason for being here?” he asked, going back to his original reason for coming to her office.

“I’ve been encouraging him to get out and about,” she said. Brodie wouldn’t relish the idea of being portrayed as weak or vulnerable. But it made sense to minimize the threat Grant might view him as, because they might need Brodie doing his thing sometime soon and he worked best with the element of surprise.

“I don’t want him coming back here,” Grant said, rising to his feet. He turned as if to leave, and she guessed he didn’t want to address any opposition she might put up to this command.

“Grant,” she said, stopping him before he opened the door. “I’m doing you the courtesy of not dismissing your request out of hand.”

“And I appreciate that,” he said and his curiosity made him turn back to her.

She doubted he would, but wanted to even things out between them. “Will you consider the fallout? Think about the man that Albert Sutcliffe is and what the repercussions of Game Time will be if he’s successful? Please, just think about it?”

He nodded. She couldn’t read his expression, so she didn’t know if he was simply humoring her. But she had to take any chance that she could to poke holes in his affiliation with Albert Sutcliffe. The only thing scarier than Sutcliffe and his army was Sutcliffe and his army with corporate sponsorship.

Going down the back stairs of CI after work, she emerged into a service alley and from there ran out to the street. Grabbing a cab, she was dropped off at the beach and walked along to the private gate where she knew her jeep would be parked, ready to take her to the house. It had been Art’s way of zipping around the grounds and now it was hers.

At the house, she expected to see Brodie in the kitchen but found him in their bathroom instead, wearing only a towel around his hips and sporting a bruise on his jaw that made her inhale. That wasn’t the only thing that took her aback. He’d trimmed his stubble and his hair was clipped in a buzz cut that made him look way more dangerous than he had before and she didn’t think that was achievable.

Trying not to come off as the judgmental parent or the eager girlfriend, she restrained her desire and focused on concern. She wanted to know where he’d gotten his injury. “I’m hesitant to ask,” she said, unzipping her jacket and leaning on the doorframe.

Unwrapping his hips, he wiped the moisture from his skin, then threw the towel into the hamper chute, which sent their dirty things straight down to the laundry room.

“Saint Grant released you then,” he said, running his fingers over his hair then spraying on deodorant.

His scowl and icy reception bothered her. She tried to keep the conversation breezy to avoid any argument he might be angling for. “I was at work. I wasn’t his prisoner, so of course he let me go. And I would like to think that if I was being held against my will, you might have stuck around to help me out.”

“No white horse, baby,” he said, coming over, glancing at her briefly as he squeezed past her, managing to not make any physical contact.

Wondering at his aloofness, she slid her arms out from the sleeves of the jacket and followed him into the walk-in under the guise of shedding her outerwear.

She took a hanger from her part of the closet and hung up her jacket, trying to be casual as she asked about his day in the way any other couple might. “Did you get into trouble?”

“Maybe,” he said, pulling on his jeans while being dismissive and distant. “But I got out, that’s what counts.”

He started for the door and she got in his way because she wanted to maintain the progress they’d made today and didn’t want him shutting her out again. Opening her fingers on the corrugation of his abs, she stroked and pouted. “What happened? Tell me… don’t think about blowing hot and cold on me and—“

Snatching her jaw, he spun her around to press her into the wall. “Get something straight, girl,” he snarled. “What I do is my business, you understand me?”

After all they’d been through it was impossible for her to believe that trust was still dubious between them, so she sensed something else was at work in him. Turning her fingertips inward, she scratched his belly.

Showing strength was the only way to break through his foul mood. “Don’t play games with me,” she said, clenching her jaw against the force of his grip. “I stuck around through three months of your bullshit. Do you think one hissy fit is going to scare me away?”

Lowering to her level, he spoke through gritted teeth. “You don’t have the first fucking clue what I’m capable of.”

Her brows rose. “Don’t I? ‘Cause I remember standing there when you downed two of Sutcliffe’s men right in front of me. I was the one kissing his nephew when you put a bullet through his skull.”

Compelling her head back, he brushed his mouth over hers. “And he’s the last man who’ll try it,” he hissed between her lips.

That reminder of her and Tim boosted his ire until his gaze became black. “What happened, baby, huh?” she asked. For him to be this overwrought, something major must have occurred this afternoon to rile him. “Whatever you had to do—“

“It should never have happened,” he growled, shoving her face away before turning his back on her. “There’s no substitute for accurate and recent reconnaissance, jumping in without—“

With a short breath, she caught up with Brodie’s thinking. “This is about Art,” she said, resting a hand on his back to move in and press her lips to the sinews that shifted when he flinched at her comforting affection. “You think you let him down because you got yourself in a fight?”

Turning his head, she glimpsed his profile but kept on kissing because she could feel him yielding as she soothed and stroked with her hands and mouth. “He’d be so pissed that those guys almost got the drop on me,” he murmured. “I was outside CI… listening to you with Saint.”

She shook her head, sweeping her lips on his flesh and digging her nails into him, confusion made her frown. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

“I bugged your office,” he said. “I put one in his jacket too.”

The reason for their lunchtime date made more sense now. He hadn’t been visiting her, not like he wanted to spend time with his girlfriend. He hadn’t even been there to share information with her. He’d come up to her office to get close enough to bug his brother.

“What?” she asked, sensing there was more.

She’d have appreciated him giving her the heads up about the surveillance, but at the same time, she was grateful to him for not asking her to incriminate herself at work. Now it made sense why he’d been so eager to come up to her office at lunch instead of in the morning when he dropped her off—he’d gone back to base for supplies.

The Kindred could still see into her apartment and she’d come to see their video and audio surveillance as comforting because it kept her safe and proved to her that these men cared about her. Having a watchful ear at work just increased her protection.

“Now we can listen in any time we want,” he said.

“You were listening to me and Grant? Were you worried about me?”

His frustration kept his expression hard and his body tense. “He should never have told you what he did. You don’t need to know that shit,” Brodie said.

“I do need to know that shit, I love you, and just because I heard the story from his perspective doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

Something else made him prickle, and she rubbed her cheek on his back while she waited for him to spill it. “When you talk to him it’s… different than when you talk to other people.”

“He’s my boss,” she said, skimming her hands over his obliques and around him to hold herself close.

He was being honest and didn’t sound as riled, so her stroking must have worked to calm him and reconnect them. “No, it’s not a professional distance. I can tell you’ve known him a long time… you’re friends.”

She couldn’t decipher what emotion was carried through his voice, whether it was hurt or jealousy or anger or something else. She let her hands slide down his abs into his front jeans pockets.

“I’m friends with you too,” she said, pressing her lips to his spine.

“No,” he said, taking her hand out of his pocket, he moved it across to the loose opening of his jeans to curl her digits around his exposed dick. “You fuck with me.”

With the way his mood had been, she hadn’t thought he was interested in being friends. He wasn’t the type of guy who would take the time out of his life to shoot the breeze with his buddies.

“He’s pissed at me about us and wants Game Time back. I don’t think he’d class me as a friend. His mood has been erratic,” she said, happy to squeeze and milk his shaft. Erratic moods must be part of the McCormack bloodline too. “If you want to be my friend—“

He released a long breath. “I don’t want to be your fucking friend. I’m your guy. I own you.”

Kissing his skin, she let the tip of her tongue tickle him as she whispered. “I’d give him up in a heartbeat if you told me too.”

“Damn right you would,” he groaned.

His hips moved into her teasing hand, she was surprised when he withdrew from her crushing grip and spun around. But his motive became clear when he took a handful of hair on top of her head and rushed her backwards at the same time he forced her downward.

Pain shot through her skull when she stumbled, and the only thing that prevented her from hitting the floor was his fist tangled in her locks. But her gasp gave him the opportunity to slide his cock deep into her throat.

Although she gagged against the intrusion, he didn’t seem to notice. With his palms on the wall, he pumped his hips back and forth, screwing her face without permission or grace. Zara took hold of him to try to guide the union, but he snagged her hand and fumbled for the other one to slam their backs onto the wall, so he could lock his fingers around her wrists to prevent her from moving or touching him.

“You feel so fucking good,” he panted. “My dick belongs in your throat.”

Pushing into her mouth over and over, she sucked and breathed concentrating on her rhythm to get him off as quickly as she could to give her stretched throat a reprieve.

The slick, thick gift of his milk hit the back of her tongue and he surged in so deep, she tried to scramble for air, but he went farther. If she wasn’t used to the filth that came out of his mouth on climax, she might have blushed.

As it was, all she felt was relief when his now softening cock broke the seal it had formed to block her windpipe.

“Jeez,” he said, taking time to level his breathing out, just as she had to.

Sliding his hands up to lock their fingers together, he dragged her hands up the wall, pressing his body into hers for support and urging her arms farther until they were stretched high above her head and she was on her feet.

“Five for dinner,” he said, kissing her hairline. “Have we got enough food?”

She struggled to remember her name, let alone think about tonight’s menu. “Food,” she murmured, dragging in a ragged breath. “That’s what you’re thinking about?”

“We haven’t all just eaten,” he said, making eye contact while trailing a hand down her arm, over her breast to her stomach where he pulled up her shirt to massage her taut tummy. “Nice to know my guys are swimming around in there, filling you up.”

And she liked to see that he wasn’t wallowing in his grief anymore. Getting over Art’s death would be an ongoing process, but it was reassuring that the severed connection had had such a profound bearing on her love. It proved his ability to feel at that depth and meant he had the potential to feel that strongly about her. Although their relationship seemed assured, she had never received any concrete confirmation from him that she meant anything to him beyond being a fuck buddy with exclusive rights.

Art had let her into this house, encouraged their relationship, and then died. She had to wonder if without Art’s impetus their relationship would die too. Brodie would eventually get bored of screwing her if there was nothing more than sex between them, and then she’d have her answer. That day could come tomorrow, next week, or next year. Until he declared his feelings, she’d be in the dark.

He retreated enough to fondle her breasts, bent to kiss her cleavage, then with his fingertips on her cheekbone, he made her look at him.

“Dress nice for dinner,’ he said. “You’ll want to make a good impression.”

Tucking himself back into his jeans, he snagged a tee shirt and left her alone. So she was supposed to dress nice, but he was dressed as he always was, so he couldn’t mean that this was a black tie affair. She’d never seen him in a suit or anything formal. After he’d issued these cryptic clues, she was more intrigued about this night than ever.

Making dinner was the easiest part of the night. While doing it, she speculated about who they might be dining with. Art had told her only six people had set foot in this house since Brodie inherited it. Of those six, she only knew four: Brodie, Art, Tuck, and herself. That left two vacant spots.

The Kindred included those four and the other two aliases she’d heard were Falcon and Wren, neither of whom she’d met. Falcon’s real name was Zave, and Wren’s was Thad, she knew that much. She also knew that they were cousins to each other and to Brodie. Other than that, she wasn’t too sure how they all fit together. Zave’s special skill was hardware, Brodie had told her that once. Wren’s contribution was a little murkier. But these people were important to Brodie and so they were important to her.

At regular intervals, she glanced back toward the kitchen door, expecting strangers to walk in at any minute. They never did. She had just come upstairs from the cellar with the wine when the kitchen door opened and Tuck came in.

“Hello,” she said, pleased to see a friend. “You’re just in time.” Handing him the bottle, she pulled the corkscrew from a drawer and put it on the counter before going back to the stove to stir the sauce. “What time are the guests arriving?”

“Everyone is already here, come on,” he said, putting the bottle aside with the corkscrew. Following her to the stove, he stretched an arm out to snag her shoulder before sliding it all the way around her. Urging her away from her task, Tuck pulled her toward the door.

“Where are we going?” she asked, dropping the spoon into the pot and shuffling along beside him.

“It’s time to meet everyone,” Tuck said.

When they ate as a group at the manor, they always ate at the kitchen island. Apparently, this time it was going to be different. Instead of everyone coming to her in the kitchen, as she’d expected them to, the dinner party was going on elsewhere.