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Chapter Eight
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Still frothing with irritation at Z, Franzen kicked off his flip-flops—Zeke’s flip-flops—then barreled across the master bedroom in full target lock mode.
Cold water. His body. Right now.
It’d be a shitty excuse for how he normally handled stress—in Special Forces leadership, the skill was as essential as reading a mission or stomaching ration packs—but right now, there wasn’t an ocean to swim in, a gym to pump in, or a dungeon full of subbies ready to give him an hour or two of Dominant escape. There was only the shower, and the restart of sanity it would give in the form of ten freezing minutes.
He hoped.
If not, this day was going to get a hell of a lot longer. And more painful.
As if he needed a reminder of exactly that, he took a recharging breath, and instead got a lungful of one distinct scent. Tracy. The woman with the sassy, sexy name and the huge kitten eyes smelled like ginger and jasmine and vanilla, filling his senses with a spring he wanted less than the sunshine—but couldn’t desire more.
So the spring turned into summer. Suffusing him. Centering, as always, on the part of him craving her the most.
“Fuck.” He gritted it as his dick punched his sweats. Again. He needed that cold shower five minutes ago.
The purpose drove him across the last few feet of the bedroom, throttling him through the bathroom door—
Where he entered a bank of solid steam.
“What the—”
He pieced his mind together long enough for two possible conclusions. One, he’d somehow fallen asleep and now dreamt of some jungle-based mission. Two, Z and Rayna had installed a bathroom sauna and it had somehow been turned on. Admittedly, he’d started leaning more toward option two—
When the reality of option three set in.
The shower was on. And there was someone inside it.
But why was the door open?
More importantly—why was that person sobbing?
More urgent than that—where was she? And was it a she?
The answer to the last was as certain to him as his own heartbeat. Yes. It was a woman. More definitely, even without having a visual on her, he knew exactly which woman. As soon as the shock of the steam wall wore off, he’d known. Had felt her down to the marrow of his bones, an awareness begun in the sizzle of his blood, the burst of his senses…the fullness of his cock. It was the same jolt she’d given him yesterday, before they’d even met. Then again after the sound check, when they’d been briefly separated so he could discuss the driving route changes back to The Bellagio with Sol. And now—God, especially now. The air was different with her in it. His entire body was different.
Even now, with the force of her presence carrying her distress. Sorrow that clenched his gut, vise-gripped his muscles, and redirected all the pain in his groin to the plain of his chest. It choked up to his throat, turning talking into a torment.
“Tracy?” he forced out, while clearing the space to the shower in two critical strides. By the time he got to the lip of the stall, his feet were soaking wet. No way had she just turned on the spigot—
A fact verified, as soon as he saw her.
Still fully clothed. Huddled against the stall’s wall, her head leaned against the wall. Her eyes were vacant but her face was crumpled in a sob.
“Tracy,” he croaked again. “Kitten. Shit.”
Without second thought, he scooted in next to her. Leaned over but stopped short of touching her. Aside from laying a limp hand on his knee, she didn’t acknowledge his arrival in any way. Didn’t look at him. Still didn’t speak a word.
“Tracy.” He intoned it more firmly, in service to the field commander he allowed to take over his psyche. Franzen the man was still in there, only running around like an idiot gaping at a spreading fire with a dead phone and an empty bucket. Thank fuck for Dragon the captain, ordering the lunatic to take a seat so he could speak to the shock clearly claiming her from head to toe. “Ku’uipo…can you hear me?”
She blinked. Just once. He accepted it as progress.
“Okay. So try to hear me some more.”
“No.”
