“Jonas.” A growl in his ear.

  “What?”

  “Stop talking.” Danny’s hips shifted. The first brush of the rigid line of his erection against Jonas’s broke him.

  And then he forgot all about pain and balance and good deeds and age. He forgot about all the reasons he couldn’t do this, forgot the line he tried so hard to draw in the quicksand at his feet. His fingers fumbled at Danny’s waistband, not fast enough, and he dimly heard laughter as he struggled to get the man’s pants off. Was it his own? Why couldn’t he tell the difference?

  Why didn’t it matter?

  Lust rode Jonas’s brain, a need sharper than he’d ever known.

  Somehow, Danny’s jeans peeled off. The sweatshirt followed, leaving the athletic man outlined in the unforgiving lamplight. It traced his muscles, taut with youth and sculpted by days spent doing . . . whatever it was he did . . . It didn’t matter. Jonas didn’t care. His gaze skimmed the man’s long limbs, his sculpted chest beneath the bandage and his trim waist, the dark thatch of hair across his chest, narrowing below his navel to circle a cock Jonas craved.

  There was something wrong with that. Something wrong with the way he lusted after a twenty-something-year-old like a cat in heat.

  He raised both hands to his face.

  Danny caught them in his. Pulled them away. “Look at me some more,” he ordered, a whisper. His eyes shone, black and hungry. “Just like that.”

  Jonas’s throat closed. His mouth dried. He sat on that damned busted-out couch, fully clothed, a hard-on jabbing into his zipper and his hands held away from him like an errant kid, and he’d never been so turned on in his life.

  Or felt so fucking wanted.

  He wrenched his hands away.

  A split second of uncertainty flickered across the other man’s face. A moment of doubt, of hurt, but Jonas didn’t give him time to make a decision he should have been the one making. He struggled to his feet, used the grip Danny curled around his wrist to pull himself up. Mouth set, pulse hammering, he stripped off his long-sleeve shirt and dropped it to his bare feet.

  Every scar shone in smooth, mottled flesh a few shades darker than his naturally pale skin. Danny’s eyes flickered as Jonas pushed his jeans down his legs, revealing each mark—the patch at his hip, the darker discolorations at his thighs, the obviously twisted direction of one leg, and the shrapnel divots where no leg hairs had grown afterward. Grooves where the flesh had been torn away.

  “Oh, angel.”

  Ice splashed into his gut. Frigid, painful. He stiffened, as much as he could, ignoring the pain that lanced down his spine. “I don’t need your pity.”

  Danny shook his head. “I don’t pity you.” He stepped forward, erection bobbing between his muscled thighs, but he didn’t make a grab. Didn’t try to seal the distance with a play, the way every other man who’d tolerated Jonas’s scars had.

  Ice shimmered to confusion as Danny sank to his knees in front of him.

  Confusion erupted into a supernova of need, of strangled panic, as the man wrapped both arms around his waist and lay his cheek against the shiny patch of skin along Jonas’s hip. He froze, one hand hovering over Danny’s dark hair. The other held out, as if he could find something to hang on to, something to give him balance in this suddenly shark-infested territory.

  Danny didn’t say anything more. God, what was there to say? His lips brushed over the patch of skin. Rasped over his hipbone, licked a path to a mass of shrapnel ridges.

  He kissed them, feather-light, his eyes closed.

  Jonas stared, knees shaking, his heart shattering against the cage of his ribs.

  And then Danny turned his head, his cheek against Jonas’s upper thigh, and those ink-dark eyes opened. Met his own.

  When his lips closed over the head of his cock, Jonas jumped. Danny’s fingers dug in to his hips, held him still as he reverently slid his tongue down the shaft. Tasted him, took him in so completely. So many words surged into Jonas’s throat, so many sensations whipped through his body, but all he could do was groan, “Fuck,” and curl his fingers into Danny’s soft, thick hair.

  His hips jerked. Wave after wave of pleasure, stretched taut and inches from snapping, crashed over him. Rippled through him as Danny took and sucked and licked like he had all the time in the world.

  He didn’t. Jonas couldn’t. Another curse tangled behind his teeth, and Danny stood so fast that Jonas didn’t have time to lose his balance, or even register the cool air where the heat of the other man’s mouth had been. The room spun, the couch springs creaked under his weight as Danny pushed him gently to his knees on the cushions.

  “Just like this,” he whispered, sinking to his knees behind him. “Don’t move. Jesus, angel, you’re—”

  Jonas gripped the back of the sofa as Danny snaked an arm around him, fisted his erection and pulled, his grip firm. Fingers closed tightly. Once, twice. Three times, until he couldn’t hold back his moan and his head tipped back on Danny’s shoulder, hips thrusting helplessly into Danny’s hand.

  So damned good. Jesus, so not soft. Not kind or gentle.

  Exactly right.

  And then he heard the wet sound unique to fingers and lube, that sound he knew from so many other encounters, and he twisted in shock, but Danny bent until the weight of his chest forced Jonas to grab the back of the sofa. To spread his knees for balance. “Where . . . how did you . . .?”

  “Later.” Strong teeth closed over the flesh of his back, and Jonas shuddered. A shudder that erupted into a ragged sound of tension and surprise and visceral craving as slick fingers found him, slid over him. Pushed a little bit inside.

  He breathed out a needy sound, eager, ready; damn it, were those his panting breaths? Desperate, hectic. Behind him, Danny’s lips traced the line of his spine as he replaced his fingers with his cock. Found Jonas ready, found him slick and soft and pushed in.

  Slow. Cautious.

  Not enough.

  Because Jonas wanted it to hurt. To feel like every punishing one-night-stand where he’d used them as much as they’d used him, just another guy in the dark, no names. No lingering good byes.

  No rules. Just pleasure and pain.

  His fingers twisted into the stretched couch fabric, he tilted his hips and pushed back harder. Faster. Danny’s breath fanned over his ear in a surprised, ragged exhale, hot and damp. “Oh, God, do that again,” he commanded hoarsely.

  Jonas did. He did because the first time made him throw his own head back and clench his teeth, and the second time blew every thought out of Jonas’s mind. Somewhere along the way, Danny’s groans peppered Jonas’s gasping breaths and there was only heat and skin and sweat and slick need, until Jonas didn’t have it in him to hold back anymore.

  Danny’s fingers wrapped around his straining cock and that was it.

  “Oh, Christ,” Jonas panted. “Oh, God, there—yes.” He came in a rolling tide of pleasure, a visceral burst of everything that was right and hot and addictively perfect. Danny’s hips locked against his; he bucked, weight landing hard on both hands on either side of Jonas’s shoulders as he gasped and followed.

  THIS WAS IT. This was the one.

  Danny didn’t need witchcraft or signs or portents to know it. He didn’t even need his grandmother’s advice. Nothing about this made Danny question what-ifs or possibilities. He knew.

  Jonas was his one.

  They made it to the bathroom, somehow managed to find the shower before Jonas’s clever fingers wrapped around Danny’s cock and he lost all sense of time or reason again. And then again on the living room floor, because watching the entertainment feeds wasn’t nearly as interesting as the bone-deep need Danny felt to explore every inch of Jonas’s body.

  Crooked in places, yes. Scarred, thin—too thin, even, but nothing some solid meals wouldn’t cure—and battered; but God, Jonas was strong. So much will locked behind those owlish glasses. Those beautiful green eyes with the dark brown rims.

  And Jonas was more than strong enough to pin Danny to the floor when Jonas had enough of Danny’s teasing, take his turn to drive Danny out of his mind. To leave him gasping, practically begging until pleasure overtook him and he moaned Jonas’s name on a ragged edge of satisfaction. Only then did Jonas let himself go over.

  Danny wasn’t new at this. He knew.

  Now he lay in a sweaty heap on the floor, Jonas collapsed across his back. His breath warmed Danny’s shoulder, as fast and labored as Danny’s was. As shocked.

  Good sex wasn’t anything new, either. But this—Jonas. It blew everything he’d ever had out of the water. Didn’t even come close.

  This could be love.

  Jonas stirred, his hips twisting as he pushed off Danny’s back. The arm in his peripheral vision flexed with the kind of ropy muscle developed from everyday use; he noticed Jonas carried a lot of his own weight on his shoulders and arms. It took the strain off his legs, maybe.

  Danny sighed as Jonas got to his feet, rolling over to prop his head on one hand. Unabashed, he watched Jonas limp to the tangled pile of denim on the floor. He crouched, one leg tilted awkwardly, and Danny hissed out a breath as his previously sated body twitched appreciation.

  Never enough.

  Jonas pulled on his pants with sharp, jerky motions. “I think it’s safe to say you’re feeling better,” he said. That sweet, post coital glow rippled into the first inklings of worry. He couldn’t be sure, but when Jonas spoke in that breezy, everything is A-okay way of his, it wasn’t right.

  Wasn’t him.

  Danny sat up. Didn’t miss the way Jonas’s gaze slid sideways to watch him do it.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. And then flinched as it came out sharper than he’d meant. Way to sound like a child.

  Jonas stiffened. “Nothing’s going on.” He tossed Danny his jeans, reached out and hooked both discarded shirts in his fingers. Danny caught the flailing denim, his throat closing.

  Lie.

  He stepped into the jeans, cheeks burning. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Oh, Jesus.” Jonas pulled his shirt over his head, yanked it down. “I need my glasses.”

  Danny made no effort to catch the sweatshirt chucked his way. It hit his chest and slid to the floor. The man hesitated, frowning blankly at the floor at Danny’s feet, then turned away. “Jonas.”

  “Look,” the man said sharply, cutting him off without looking away from his search, “don’t read anything into this.”

  “This.”

  “This!” He flung an arm out to the living room. Danny stared at his back. “You, me, sex, it’s just adrenaline, okay?”

  Danny’s fingers clenched. “Don’t do this.”

  It wasn’t that simple.

  He couldn’t make it that simple.

  “Where the fuck—Christ, already.” Finding his glasses discarded on the floor by the sofa, Jonas bent, snatched them up and pulled them over his nose. Only then did he glance Danny’s way.

  Oh, damn. Sympathy.

  Fucking sympathy.

  Jonas was going there.

  Danny’s heart cracked. “Don’t say it,” he said quietly.

  “It’s just sex, Danny.”

  It wasn’t.

  “Don’t read anything else into it, okay? You’re feeling grateful, that’s all.”

  That crack turned into a fracture, and the blood surged to his cheeks. Filled his head with the roaring sound of his own pulse. His own shame. Danny raked a hand through his hair before those same fingers did something stupid.

  Like punch a man.

  “Grateful,” he repeated, and almost swore aloud as he heard his own voice. Nice and easy. “Yeah. That’s it.”

  Oh, Jesus, was that relief flickering across Jonas’s thin features?

  He turned away. “I’m so grateful,” he continued on a razor’s edge of civil, “I fuck all the people I want to thank.”

  A pin could have dropped on the thin carpet and the noise would have shattered what was left of Danny’s heart. Stupid.

  When would he learn there was no such thing as the one?

  “Danny—”

  A perfunctory knock interrupted whatever it was Jonas was going to say. Maybe for the better. Anger and frustration knifed through him as the door swung open on Naomi’s voice. “Morning! We’ve got—Oh.”

  “Shit.”

  That one, a chest-deep rumble of masculinity, jerked Danny’s attention around, his sweatshirt only half applied.

  The broad figure behind Naomi practically screamed I am man. Shoulders like a brick wall, a chest made for heavy lifting, and serious, focused gray-green eyes all conspired to give him an air of intensely solid presence. The kind of man anyone could rely on, come hell or high water.

  The color staining his cheeks as he stared sheepishly at the ceiling would have been cute, if it weren’t such a painful fist to the stomach.

  “Shit, man,” he said into the silence. To the ceiling. “Sorry.”

  Unlike him, Naomi didn’t bother to hide her laughter. “I told you we were coming,” she said, amused. Her eyes slid over Danny, who hurriedly pulled on the sweatshirt shoved up on his arms. Embarrassment warred with temper.

  Both lost. What was the point?

  “Perfect.” Jonas shoved his portable computer into a bag, his mouth a thin line. “Get him somewhere safe. I’m going back to work.”

  “Need anything?” Naomi asked.

  “No,” he snapped, and Naomi stepped aside as he hobbled past her.

  Her gaze settled on Danny. One dark eyebrow arched. A slow, deliberate question.

  Danny looked away. “So.” A non-starter. “Who’s your friend?”

  “Silas,” said the friend, who wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I’ll get the truck ready.”

  He left, strangely quiet for such a large man, leaving Danny staring at his own feet. His bare feet. Where were his shoes? His socks?

  “Ah, hell, kiddo.” Naomi left the door open as she sauntered inside. “Don’t take it personally.”

  “How, exactly?” It seemed pretty personal to him.

  She just shook her head. “Get your things. Trust me, Danny, it’s not the end of the world.”

  Maybe not for her.

  He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Do you, uh . . . Does he . . .?”

  She didn’t pretend not to know what he meant. “Does he always go storming off after really great sex?”

  His ears caught on fire. “How do you know? I mean, how can you—” Oh, God, his rational brain had been taken over by a toddler. He couldn’t form the thought. Frame the question.

  “Nobody gets that worked up about bad sex,” she pointed out dryly, ignoring the way his face burned in embarrassment. As she picked up his discarded bag, Naomi shrugged, handed it to him, pointed at his shoes as if he needed help to function, and added simply, “I don’t know how to read his mind, kid.” Her gaze fell on the forgotten crutches tucked on the floor behind the couch, and her lush mouth quirked. “But you know what? That’s the most sincere I’ve ever seen him.”

  Chapter Seven

  * * *

  “WHAT ARE THE chances of getting inside?”

  “Now?” Jonas leaned back in his chair, tucking one fist into his lower back as it locked in a sharp spasm. Grimacing, he rubbed it idly while he calculated events that he could only guess at. “Based on what I know, slim to nil. Not when they’ve got all the cards and they’re on high alert.”

  “Blast it. How long before we can move?”

  Parker Adams’s voice tended toward cool, especially when working. The fact that she wasn’t officially working anymore didn’t change anything. The supplanted Mission Director still fell back on the icy, even tones of pure professionalism.

  He couldn’t blame her. Not more than a week ago, her entire sector had gone up in smoke. Literally. That kind of betrayal hit a body where it hurt the most.

  He leaned his head against the back of his chair, closing his eyes to block out the faded blue glow of his monitors. The flicker was starting to get to him.

  Which was bullshit and he knew it. Fifteen years of this, and the flicker had never gotten to him.

  He knuckled one eye socket. “Right now? I’m sorry, boss, but I don’t know. I can’t get inside the Holy Order’s mainframe without being on location. Even May can’t do it. We have no people up there. They’ve all been replaced by Sector Three goons.”

  “And you can’t get up there without being recognized,” Parker finished, static undercutting her words over the comm. “Damn. Damn.”

  Even ice couldn’t cover everything. Jonas straightened. “It’s Simon, isn’t it?”

  A pause. Then, quietly, “He’s getting worse, Jonas.”

  Shit.

  Like Silas’s girl and the witch from the Wayward Rose Mission docket, Simon Wells was one of many witches all bearing the stamp of the Salem Project. As a double-agent for Sector Three, Simon had been instrumental to the entire coup.

  He just hadn’t played his part the way Sector Three wanted.

  Without him, Parker would be dead. Jonas would be dead.

  But now he paid the price. All the Salem Project witches broke down over time. Degeneration was the official term, and Jonas hated the fact that the man who’d saved his life was now losing his.

  And Jonas couldn’t do anything about it.

  Hell, he couldn’t even do anything about his own messed up existence.

  He rubbed both hands over his face. “Okay,” he said on a hard exhale. “Stay out of sight, Parker. I’ll renew my efforts here. There’s got to be a weakness or a pattern I can exploit.”

  “What about May?”

  May hadn’t been in touch for three days. Three freaking days of silence and isolation.

  Telling himself he preferred it that way didn’t fool anyone, least of all the stinging lacerations of his own conscience.

  Besides, it wasn’t May he was avoiding.

  “I’ll work with her on it,” he promised. “Just do what you can for Simon, okay? I’ll start a crawl through some of the data the Leigh kids lifted from GeneCorp and see if there’s anything . . .” No matter how small. How hopeless. He cleared his throat. “Hang in there, boss. If there’s a miracle to be had, I’ll get it for you.”