Page 71 of Fixed Asset

I pulled out. Kissed the mark on her ass, rolled to my side, pulled her with me, and fitted my chest to her back. Catarina snuggled back and tangled our legs together.

“Do we have time to snooze?” she said as she yawned.

“Yeah, baby. We’re not meeting the team for another few hours.”

It didn’t take long for Cat’s breaths to even out and her body to go lax.

I wasn’t the type to lie in bed and cuddle. When I was awake, I was up. I had better things to do than laze around. But I couldn’t get myself to let her go.

This was not the first morning I’d woken up to Catarina wrapped around me. But it was the first we’d woken up together in our bed, with no bad guys lurking. No immediate threat of danger.

Yet, there would be soon.

We’d be leaving for Mexico, on a favor for a shady CIA officer who I didn’t trust. Catarina would be back in the field, in the line of fire.

That scared the fuck out of me.

I thought back to our conversation on the drive home from the airport. We were talking about having babies. Then I went to the conversation in the bathroom before our shower—long term, our future. I wanted that—all of it. Marriage, children, the whole thing. I just needed her to be with me to have it.

I blew out a breath.

Catarina was well trained, skilled, smart. But that didn’t mean that reckless streak had dissolved.

Fuck.

I kissed the back of Cat’s head and rolled out of bed.

I needed a workout and to make a call, not in that order. I grabbed a clean pair of sweats out of my dresser, went into the bathroom, cleaned up, tagged my phone off the nightstand, and made my way downstairs, scrolling through my contacts until I found the one I needed.

“It’s early,” Lincoln Parker answered.

I couldn’t call the man a close friend, but he was a friend. He also had married a woman who was arguably more badass than Catarina, and that argument would be flimsy. Both women were insanely tough.

“If you’re not busy, I need some advice.”

“Whatcha got.”

“It’s personal,” I warned.

I heard him chuckle.

“A woman’s got you tied in knots,” he rightly surmised.

“Catarina Keys.”

Linc whistled before he said, “Damn, brother. Jasmin met with her a few months back, tried to get her to come work with us at Z Corps. Cat turned my wife down. To say she was bummed would be an understatement. She’s wanted Catarina Keys on our team for a long time. Jasmin’s of the mind they’re twins born a few years apart by different mothers.”

I knew Jasmin had approached Cat after our mission in Las Vegas. It had been an excruciating debriefing with Wilson McCray as we wrapped up our final report on the mission. At the time, I was doing everything I could to stop myself from calling Cat. Unfortunately, it was a battle I’d won, and I lost time with her.

“How do you do it?” I cut to it.

“Do what?”

“Not lose your mind every time Jasmin goes out on a mission?”

“Who the hell says I don’t? Brother, you think watching her strap a vest on is easy? That I haven’t had to stop myself from ripping the damn thing off her body and cuffing her to the desk to keep her ass in the office? Every. Damn. Time.”

They’d been together years, had twin boys, and by the sound of it, he still struggled.