3
Ruby shifted, the unfamiliar sensation of something warm and smooth beneath her cheek rousing her from a fitful doze. Buttery leather creaked a bit as she resettled where she had curled up. Ah yes, on the couch in Liam and Ace’s apartment. It smelled so nice, like them. She snuggled under the super-soft blanket Liam had draped over her as she had drifted off, exhausted and crashing from her adrenaline high following their team brief. Despite the perfectly toasty setting on the guys’ thermostat, she hadn’t been able to stop shivering. In the twilight space between sleep and wakefulness, she let her mind wander to anything but the traumatic events of the evening.
It was weird how each of the Shields had the same amount of space within the building, but the Powertools crew, led by James, had managed to create so many different layouts. On top of that, Laurel and Kate had designed a wide variety of decors to ensure each of them felt right at home. To be honest, Liam and Ace’s style was the most like hers. If they’d knocked out the adjoining wall between their homes, the transition would have been pretty seamless.
There wasn’t too much glass or steel like in Marcus’s modern and sophisticated pad. Or the jungle of plants and bronze highlights of Aarav’s. No, their place was leather and comfort. Slate grays and blues on the walls and furniture you weren’t afraid to slouch on. The only difference was they didn’t have nearly as many tech gadgets or elven swords lying around as she did. Her inner geek was hard to suppress.
Ruby sighed, reminding herself not to get too comfortable in their home.
Even now, she could hear them speaking, low and urgent, not quite arguing but…tense…all because of her and the shit she’d stirred up. Her stomach clenched and she gripped the throw, tuning in to what the guys were saying to distract herself from the dread that threatened to swamp her again.
“Look, Jordan was right. We should get some rest.” Ace seemed to be trying to defuse Liam. He was good at knocking the serious edges off the guy with his antics, and probably with his body when no one else was around. “This JRad dude will be here in the morning and that’s when this is really going to ramp up. Whatever they find, we’re going to have to fix eventually, once we take this shit offline and into the real world.”
Ruby hadn’t thought that far ahead, but he was probably right. The Shields weren’t the sort to sit by idly and allow someone to abuse the system, not when the repercussions could affect nearly every person on the planet. Whoever was doing this would have to be stopped. Not only by squashing the malignant code they had already engineered, but also by preventing them from ever creating more like it.
She blinked her eyes open and couldn’t peel them away from the two men sitting across from each other at their kitchen table. Liam took up so much space, not only with his broad shoulders or the physique he worked hard on in the gym every damn day, but also with his presence. He wasn’t the sort of guy who blended into the background. No, he drew attention. Especially hers. His wheat-colored beard was a shade darker than his hair, but both were groomed perfectly. They framed golden eyes flecked through with bits of russet and moss that never ceased to dazzle her in bright light.
Across from him, Ace slouched in his chair with his shirt off. Black-and-gray tattoos wound around his arm and spilled onto one side of his chest. They were only interrupted by the raw slash of pink from his fresh scar. Though he was more compact than Liam, he reminded her of some primal predator with barely enough fat padding his muscles to prove he was more than capable of fending for himself.
“I’ll stay out here and watch over Ruby. You go ahead.” Liam folded his hands on his stomach.
“No way. You go andI’llcover her,” Ace argued. Knowing they had her back did far more than their blanket to warm her up from the inside out. She wished it had something to do with her personally rather than the fact that they were noble as fuck beneath Ace’s ink and Liam’s dense skull. “All I’ve been doing lately is fucking resting and I’m sick of it. You’ve been out there taking on the hard work while I’ve been sitting around with my thumb up my ass. I won’t let anything happen to her.”
“Ace…”
“Don’t you trust me anymore?” he asked quietly, his dark scruff moving as his jaw clenched. Wrecking his arm had apparently broken a lot more than his perfect form. His confidence had shattered along with his bones. And Liam babying him because he was freaked out about almost losing the guy wasn’t helping in the least.
Ruby had the urge to get up and hug them both. Instead, she cowered under her fuzzy blanket and eavesdropped, still traumatized by her earlier encounter and the lingering guilt that somehow she’d brought this massive pile of shit on them.
“Of course I do.” Liam cleared his throat. “It’s just that the stakes are really high. I’m as freaked out as you are that those assholes could actually find her, and I don’t want anyone hurting either of you.”
“Are you my partner or my dad?” Ace scoffed.
“Fuck that. You know I don’t think of you like a kid, never mind my own.” Liam growled, sending shivers down Ruby’s spine. Fuck, that was the sexiest sound she’d ever heard in her life. It was also a warning, one Ace apparently didn’t intend to heed.
“I don’t know shit anymore. Everything changed the minute I got hurt on the job.” Apparently Ace wasn’t any clearer on their relationship status than Ruby or the rest of the Shields, though she and her friends had certainly speculated about it more than once.
“It wasn’t a fucking paper cut. You took a bullet. It shattered your fucking arm. A few millimeters in another direction and it could have done a hell of a lot worse.” Something—a vein, a tendon, Ruby wasn’t an expert in anatomy like Kennedy—in Liam’s neck bulged like it had when she’d studied it up close earlier while he’d held her.
She probably should have let her hosts know she was awake, but who was she to interrupt what was obviously an important conversation for Ace, if not for them both? Ruby knew what it was like to doubt herself. Unlike Ace, she didn’t have anyone to grab her by the throat, literally, and remind her of her value. To reinforce how much they cared.
She didn’t blink one single time as Liam drew Ace to him with that huge hand on the other man’s neck and crushed his mouth to Ace’s. Their kiss started kind of awkwardly, Ace stiff in Liam’s grasp. But it didn’t take long for Liam to melt Ace’s unusually prickly exterior.
Liam slid his hand up to Ace’s hair, his fingers brushing over the short-cropped onyx strands and massaging Ace’s scalp. Ruby imagined how good it would feel to relent and admit Liam’s probing tongue between her own lips, as Ace reluctantly did.
She could see him fighting a losing war. One where he tried to hold himself separate from Liam when it was obvious he wanted nothing more than to be close to the man.
If Liam had been leveling that smoldering stare at Ruby, she wouldn’t have stood a chance. She’d have flung herself at him, knocked his chair over, and still not stopped making out with him even as they crashed to the ground.
Ace emitted a sound that was half plea and half strangled resignation. Tortured and desperate, it did weird things to Ruby’s insides. Made everything from her toes to the tips of her fingers tingly and restless. He wrapped his arms around Liam’s shoulders and hugged him as he leaned into the exchange. Liam rewarded him by deepening their kiss, tilting his head for better access.
Ruby’s eyes grew wide in the dim light as she strained for a better view of what she’d heard so often but only imagined in the past. Liam was a rock in human form—steady, solid, unflinching. Ace was a flirt with a puppy-dog demeanor, which necessitated being bopped on the nose every once in a while. Together, they were the best of both worlds.
She wasn’t sure exactly how long they went at it while she stared, transfixed by their dysfunctional beauty, but she could have watched them tasting and tempting each other for hours.
Eventually Liam leaned in and his hands dropped lower to Ace’s ass. He cupped it and squeezed, lifting the guy—who was not exactly delicate himself—into his lap. Their chests pressed together and Ace’s arms went immediately around Liam, his injured one on top. He ground against his partner even as Liam guided his hips.
And when Liam broke away long enough to bite Ace’s lips, he groaned.