Monkey Business by Tymber Dalton
They probably think I’m a troll.
She dragged herself out of the shower, dried off, and pulled clothes on. She had to admit sharing a bed with them, even though it was platonic, wasn’t exactly a sacrifice.
It would feel weird returning to Chicago and sleeping in her single bed, on the old, lumpy mattress that had been new when she was about five years old.
Alone.
Without being sandwiched between two warm, comforting bulks of beefcake.
Stop it. You wanted this. You wanted a story, you’re getting it. You’ll have guys falling out of your ears when you break this story.
I don’t want “guys.” I want them.
She took her stuff into the bedroom they were sharing. That was where the men caught up with her a few minutes later, closing the door behind them.
She sensed something different about them. Determined, yet hesitant. “What’s wrong?”
“We need to talk to you,” Doc said.
“This sounds serious.”
“It is.” He glanced at Tango, who nodded. “We want you to consider staying.”
“What?”
“Staying. Don’t leave at the end of two weeks. Stay. Permanently. We…we want you to stay.”
She fought a surge of irritation. “Look, I said I won’t do anything to out you guys and I meant it.”
Doc stepped closer. “You’re missing the point.”
“Then try again.”
Doc stared her down. “You don’t get it. We want you. Both of us. We’re asking you to stay here, with us. Not just as part of our deal you made, but to be a part of us. Part of our group.”
How can my heart both be pounding and almost frozen at the same time?
“Well, maybe not here,” Tango added. “We likely will be on the move.”
“What?” she asked. “Stay…as in for good?”
“But with us,” Doc said. “It’d break our hearts to lose you.”
“I…I don’t understand.” She didn’t want to assume they were speaking her greatest desires to her. That’d just break her heart if she was hearing them wrong.
“This isn’t complicated,” Doc gently said. “We want you. You.”
She couldn’t think. Hell, couldn’t breathe! “The military won’t let you do that,” she said, knowing she was right and praying they’d have an answer for that, too.
“Military won’t know,” Doc said. “You’ll be part of us.” He smiled. “Think of it this way. You said it yourself, it’s the ultimate embedded assignment.”
“Yeah,” Tango agreed. “What better way to get your story than to be on the front lines of creating it?”
“You’ll be helping to change the world, just like you want. And when we’re done, you’ll be able to write your own ticket,” Doc said. “Hell, screw CMM and write a book. You’d be set for life.”
At war within her, the emotions she knew she was quickly—and irrationally—coming to feel for the guys, and the desire to make a better life, a difference in the world for her niece and nephew.
“I can’t afford to,” she lamely said. “I have to work or I don’t get paid.”
Both men arched eyebrows at her. “Seriously?” Doc asked. “You don’t need to worry about that. The unit has funds.”
“How do I explain it? To my sister? To work?”
“We’ll figure that out, don’t worry.”
More processing time needed. “Wow, you just hit all the right buttons, doncha?” she asked as she stared at them.
“Well?” Doc asked. “Tell us it would be a bad thing to stay with us. Tell us you feel absolutely no attraction to us. But if you go back to Chicago, even if the government or somebody doesn’t grab you along the way and reel you in for questioning, you know damn well you can’t break the story until Quong and the others isolate a reliable vaccine. You know as well as we do that has to take precedent. Your conscience won’t let you blow our operation out of the water and risk all those countless millions of lives.”
“You’re a good person,” Tango said. “A good woman. You don’t like what’s happened, how this came about, any more than the rest of us do. But you’re also smart. And you know we’re all right about this.”
Fuck. Yes, they were right.
About everything.
Including the fact that she didn’t want to leave them behind, either.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Celia stared at the men, more than a few nerves sending her stomach fluttering like a crazed bat caught in a room. She flicked her tongue over her lips to wet them.
Where the hell did my lip balm go, anyway?
Wait, focus.
The two men stared back, ready, bodies tensed. She knew the next words she spoke to them would make or break her future.
Their future.
Did she really want to keep soldiering on alone in life? Or did she want to take a chance?
This was big. Bigger than rising up the food chain at CMM. Bigger than bumping her pay up a bracket to the point she could afford more than a bedroom that wasn’t much larger than her cubicle at work.
Bigger than her.
Much bigger.
And from the looks of the bulges pressing against the front of the men’s pants, they weren’t exactly anything to sneeze at, either.
Wait, focus, dammit!
It was too easy to get distracted by the fact that she hadn’t been with a guy in two years. The way Doc’s hair fell over his brown eyes. The way Tango’s intense blue eyes seemed to grow darker by the second, almost the midnight blue of the ocean she’d flown over to get here in the first place.
And they wanted her.
“So what exactly are you saying?” she finally forced out through her parched lips.
Neither man moved. “Us,” Doc finally said. “Together. The three of us. And we can’t let you go back to Chicago, either. They know who you are. They’ll be watching for you. Waiting.”
“They, who?”
“That’s the problem,” Tango said. “We don’t know for sure yet.”
“But what about my sister and her family? Aren’t they in danger?”
“Probably not,” Tango said. “Not if you just drop off the face of the planet. At least until the doc gets the vaccine perfected and we can spread the word about it. That’s our mission. Save the farking world.” He glanced at Doc, who nodded. “And we want you with us.”
Two hunky guys who wanted her?
Wait, what’s wrong with this picture?
Well, besides someone trying to kill her…
“It won’t be easy,” Doc said. “We can’t promise you an easy life. But if you go back, someone’s going to try to grab you, or kill you. At least this way we can protect you.”
“Can’t you go back with me?” she asked, knowing the answer already.
The smile looked sad on Tango’s face. “No, babe. We have a mission. And we’re going to do it or die trying. We’re all up in this. By the time this shakes out, either we’ll succeed or…” He finished with a shrug. “Hopefully on the other end of this we’re raising our glasses together and giving a mighty middle finger to the fuckers that be. Until that happens, we’re living day to day and just trying to keep each other alive.”
Who the fuck am I kidding? She didn’t want to tell these guys no.
“I don’t want to… I mean, the other guys are nice and all, but—”
“We don’t share,” Doc said. They stepped forward, close enough she had to look up to meet their gazes. “Well, you know what I mean. Tango is basically my brother. I have his six, he has mine. That’s the way we do things. The unit as a whole, we’re all brothers in spirit, but this is closer.”
“Like Oscar and Yankee without the DNA,” Tango teased.
Yes, the twins were hunks, too. Every guy in the unit had at least one feature besides his body that made him appealing.
But something about these two men, in particular, had snuck under her skin and pierced her soul. She didn’t know
“So then what happens…after?” she asked. “I’m going to go on the assumption we’re successful. That the scientists figure it out, we all get vaccinated, the world settles down, and then you two are free. What then?”
The men shared a glance before returning her gaze. “Whatever you want,” Doc said.
“Yeah,” Tango agreed. “You follow us through this, and then we follow you.”
Bitterness tried to creep in. “Then you dump me for someone prettier or richer?”
“No!” they both said, so forcefully she drew back.
“We don’t play games like that,” Tango said.
“Yeah, I don’t care who screwed you over in your past,” Doc said. “We’re not them. We wouldn’t be asking you this if we didn’t mean it seriously.”
Tango gently took her hand in his and held it against his chest. “What’s your dream, sugar? What do you want out of this life?”
It was really difficult to think with his hands cupping hers against his chest. “I thought I wanted to be a reporter. But if I have a chance to help find the vaccine, I want that more. I want to make a difference.”
“You can still be a reporter,” Doc said. “You’ll be on the front lines of what’s happening. You keep notes. Be our official recorder of events, so to speak.”
“We get through this,” Tango said, “and you can make a fortune knowing and telling the full story.”
Doc smiled. “And we’ll be your personal bodyguards.” He caught her left hand in his and brought it up to his lips, his gaze never leaving hers. He turned her hand palm-up and feathered his lips across the inside of her wrist. It sent warm, pleasant shivers straight up her arm and to her clit.
Hmm. I never realized those two were connected.
Wait, focus!
Then Tango pressed his lips to her palm. “Babe,” he said, his drawl sounding hoarse and throaty, his breath warm against her flesh, “we never did just fuck around. Not going to deny we’ve had others, even shared most of them since we’ve been partnered. But nothing ever like this, with you. We’ve never met a woman like you before. The guys can bust our balls all they want about us later, but the truth is I think they’re jealous as crap of us right now that we were the ones who got to know you.”
“Yeah,” Doc said. “They envy the fact that in the middle of this fucking hell we’re all stuck in, we’ve got a little slice of heaven to retreat to.”
Uh-oh. “But how is that going to go over with them, then?” she asked.
They both scowled. “They will protect you like you’re their own,” Doc said. “Just like we would protect any woman they were with. You’re part of our family now. Because that’s what we are, a family.”
Tango pressed her palm against his left cheek, his flesh warm against hers, stubble pleasantly raspy against her skin. “And we need your help. You have your friend. The two of you working together did something that the idiots in the CIA and NSA didn’t even manage to accomplish. That’s huge. That might have turned the tide in all of this in a good way.”
“I don’t want to put Mike at risk,” she said. “He doesn’t deserve that.”
“We’re working on that,” Doc assured her. “We have connections, too. But it’ll be nice having someone we can trust who can dig up stuff for us.”
“What do you say?” Tango asked. “Be ours.”
“You barely know me.” Her unspoken argument was that she barely knew them, yet she felt more for these two men in such a short time than she’d ever felt for any of her previous boyfriends, ever, combined.
And then there were the shadows of pain still clouding her thoughts, past betrayals when she dared hope too soon.
Doc’s smile disarmed her heart and soul. “We know you. We know all we need to know about you.” He kissed his way up her arm, to the inside of her elbow. “We know you’re dedicated, focused, caring, and brave.”
“I wouldn’t say brave.” Then again, it was all she could do to force herself to say anything with all the feelings swirling through her right then. Not just what their touch was doing to her, but their words, their voices.
“Sugar,” Tango said, “you are brave. Not many people, men or women, would attempt what you did. Cross the world on a hope and a prayer to see what they can find. In hopes of making the world a better place. That’s brave.”
She was stalling and she knew it. “What if I say no?”
Both men froze. Doc’s voice sounded sad. “Are you saying no?”
“No. I mean, no I’m not saying no.”
Tango finally smiled. “Then are you saying yes?”
“I…I don’t know what I’m saying.”
Doc clasped her hand in both of his and stared at her with those sweet brown eyes. “If you tell us no, then we stop. We still protect you while you’re here, but we can’t and won’t force you to be with us. We’re not into that.”
“You could force me. You’re both way bigger and stronger than me.”
Tango’s expression hardened as he lowered her hand. “You think that about us? That we’d rape you?”
“No!” Jeez, she wanted to make a living with words, and here she was fucking this up horribly. “That’s not what I meant.”
The men exchanged a confused glance. “Then what do you mean?” Tango asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m ready for whatever this is.”
“Whatever this is might only be a few weeks or months, depending on Kite,” Doc said, his tone somber. “For any or all of us. Or for the whole world. I spent most of my life worried about making a mistake. I’m done with that. Mistakes fucked up the world. TMFU started a ticking clock. We have a chance to stop that clock and turn it back permanently. Well, until the next massive snafu happens. I’m following my heart this time instead of my fear. If I let fear guide the rest of my life, my life might be fucking short indeed, and I know it’d be miserable without you in it.”
Back to Tango. He raised her hand again and held her palm pressed against his chest, over his heart. His pulse raced, throbbing against her flesh. “You feel that, sugar? Doc can tell you normally nothing rattles me. The thought of losing you scares me shitless.” His gaze narrowed. “What he said. We don’t have any guarantees what’s coming next. But if I go out of this world without having at least told you how I feel, I know that would haunt me for eternity and then some.”
There was the cliff. She couldn’t see over the edge into the abyss.
Maybe that was the point.
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
Fortunately, they understood what she meant. Maybe that was what finally tipped her over the edge into the free fall.
The men’s expressions softened and they stepped even closer, on each side of her, their other arms around her back even as they held her hands against their chests.
“We’re scared, too,” Doc gently said. “And it’s okay. We’ll be scared together.”
Oohhhh, she wanted this. Them. Wanted them more than anything she had ever wanted something in her life. Was this really okay? When hundreds of millions had already died or were dying or would soon die, for them to find a little slice of heaven when hell raged around them?
“I had a five-year put in last fall,” she said, her voice trembling. “When…everything. I wasn’t with anyone at the time, but I didn’t want the risk of getting pregnant with…all of that. TMFU.”
Slow smiles lit the men’s faces. “That’s all right, sweetie,” Doc said. “I think that’s best. Let’s survive first. We get to that point where TMFU and Kite are just something they talk about on the news in the past tense, then we can decide if that’s what you want.”
“All I want right now,” Tango said, “is you, and to keep the three of us alive as long as possible. Hopefully the rest of us. To get through our mission. As stupid as this sounds, it’ll be easier on
Her soul’s free fall ended in a gentle landing, cradled against their bodies, as she nodded. “Then yes,” she said. “I want this. You. Both of you.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Doc released Celia’s hand and reached up, gently turning her chin to face him. The smile on his face erased lines and years from around his eyes. “You won’t regret this, sweetheart. I promise. We promise.”
He kissed her, holding her in place, the hand behind her sliding down to the small of her back and pressing her body against his. She didn’t need any encouragement to open her lips to him because she wanted him. All of him, all of them. If she was going to do this, she would do it all the way, fully committed.
What good was surviving in this crazy world if she couldn’t snatch at least a little happiness from it while she did?
Tango nuzzled the side of her neck. “Sugar,” he whispered, “we’re gonna love you and keep you safe, or die trying.”
Doc broke their kiss. “Let’s leave off the dying talk for little while at least. Okay? We know the reality.”
She turned to look at Tango, pulling her hand free and sliding it up the back of his neck to tangle in his short hair. “Shut up and put your hands on me, you damn monkey.” She smiled.
He responded with a grin, kissing her hard, fierce, sweeping the breath from her lungs with the passion she felt from him. Along her back his hand rose to the nape of her neck, finding and twisting in her braid, holding her firmly in place as he ravished her mouth.
A happy sigh emerged from her soul. This felt right. This felt real. She’d coasted along for so long, she’d forgotten what true passion felt like. Or maybe she’d never known it before these two men. They were grit and gum and grunge and it would get damned gory in the near future, she had no doubt.
But they wanted only her.