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“If we agree,” Keller started, stroking his jaw, “where do you stand on-”
“Children?” Alden interrupted him. Keller shot him a glare.
I couldn’t figure out how Alden managed to suppress his nature enough of the time to adhere to Keller’s authority. It was clear both men were domineering and used to being in charge, and yet Keller was very much the appointed leader of this group. It wasn’t just because he was the highest ranking either. He’d earned each man’s respect. Maybe that was it. Alden respected and loved his cousin enough to back down when he absolutely needed to. It was also apparent that when the team was working Keller gave Alden a lot of slack. He allowed Alden to take over when needed and shared a lot of the leadership responsibilities with him. Somehow they made it work.
Rush and Torque seemed extremely laid back compared to the King cousins, but I knew if someone met them alone, they’d seem far more controlling than most men. All of them were formidable.
Getting back to his question I said, “I’m not opposed to children.” I folded my hands on the table. “I just don’t want you railroading me into a decision before I’m ready.” I chose my words carefully. I could see how difficult this was for Keller. If he was trying to work with me, I would make sure not to set him off.
Torque snickered and I frowned at him. “Railroad. Trains,” he explained, grinning as he did so. My eyes narrowed as I tried to follow his line of reasoning. I couldn’t see the joke.
Rush rolled his eyes. “He’s making a lame joke about us all…” he broke off as he tried to find a polite way of saying it.
My cheeks heated as I realized what he wasn’t saying. That they’d run a train on me. I leaned over and slapped Torque on the shoulder. “Focus please,” I told him in a droll tone. Usually I appreciated his humor. It often cut the tension in our little group debates, but for now I needed him to be serious.
He wiped the grin off his face and nodded. My brows lifted in surprise as I watched him put on a serious face. I so rarely saw him this way and it was a shock to watch how quickly he could flip the switch. I eyed Keller wishing he could do that as well. Watching him turn from an asshole to sweet would be a real treat. I sighed inwardly because I knew he wouldn’t be my Keller if he did that. Damn it, I was stuck with the grumpy jerk because I’d gone and fallen in love with him.
“How do you propose we compromise about when to start having kids when we all want to begin now and you want to wait?” Alden asked.
“Well, I’d like to point out that this is a shitty time for me to get pregnant. We’re going to be going into who knows how many dangerous situations trying to capture Roj.” It seemed pretty logical and straightforward to me.
“Zinnia.” Keller’s eyes pierced mine. “You realize that—though you’re a part of this team—we never intended to take you inside the strongholds, right?” He leaned forward over the table, as though he thought that intense gaze wasn’t enough to get his point across. “It’s not your job to capture him.”
“That’s our job,” Rush agreed.
“Your job is to…” Torque trailed off and waved a hand at my laptop and the notebook I had tucked away over in the corner.
My mouth opened as I started to object. If they weren’t going to use me as a field agent, why was I even here? Alden beat me to it before I could put anything into words.
“You’re here so we have an intelligence agent who can help us get the most updated information as quickly as possible. If we had to wait to make phone calls back and forth we wouldn’t be able to do our job as effectively. You were never meant to fight, Little Mouse. We’ve never brought an Agency Ghost into combat with us.”
I glared at them. “Then why the hell did you spend a week beating the crap out of me before we came here?”
“So that in case you needed to fight, you’d be prepared, Things don’t always go as planned,” Keller answered.
As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t fault the logic. I wanted to help them in any way I could—in that moment—and I realized that they were right. This was how I could help them. At the core of my training I was an intel analyst. I found the patterns that no one else could find. Giving them actionable intel was important, without it they wouldn’t be able to find Roj, or would walk into a trap.
On top of that, it didn’t really make sense that if they cared for me that they’d want me running into battle with them. Although, tactically speaking I could be an asset, the reality was I would be a liability. They would be more focused on me than on the mission. The ambush at Karbala proved that. They split up in order to protect me, versus staying together for a proper counter attack.
“Why don’t you want to wait until we get home?” I asked, getting back to the matter at hand.
Keller’s jaw flexed. “This is a way to tie you to us. Permanently.”
I shook my head, not understanding. “Tie me to you?”
“We all want to be in a relationship with you, Z,” Rush explained. “Once we get home it gets real. We don’t want you to walk off, ‘thanks for the gangbang guys, have a nice day’.”
“There are a lot of things that could rip a new relationship apart,” Torque added before I could protest Rush's statement. “Especially a non-conventional one like this.”
“Why do you think we waited until we were overseas to pursue anything with you?” Alden pointed out. “We all wanted you from day one, but it wasn’t until we got here that we could take advantage of the situation.”
“Being here offered more freedom for us to explore whether this would be the right fit for you. For us,” Keller said, taking back over. “Now that we’ve all made our decisions and have agreed to move forward, I want to make it impossible for you to change your mind.” Something possessive flashed in his green eyes.
“I don’t plan on going anywhere. You don’t need to manipulate me to guarantee that.”
“You say that now,” he countered. “But what are you going to say when you have to tell your family that you’re in a long-term relationship with four men?”
I had to swallow hard because my mouth and throat had gone dry at the thought. I could already hear my mother’s words in my mind.
