Club Sin is just what it sounds like. A sex club where you can freely fulfill all your fantasies and sexual desires. Mainly multiple partners and several flavors of kinks are on the menu. I could read you the pretty brochure tucked into my suit jacket’s inner pocket, but it boils down to the place offering its members sex between willing adults in a safe environment.
My cell phone vibrates. I pull it out of my front pants pocket and put it on the table between us. Raja’s picture is in the middle of the screen offering us a door we might not be able to walk out of when the time comes if I answer. I have no damn clue what the right answer here is but I know something has to change.
I point at Gage. “The worry lines across your forehead are only getting deeper and every time I hear a sound even remotely like a gun I am grabbing for mine. And you.” I point at Rush. “Last night you screamed in your sleep so loud I fell out of my bed getting to you.”
Rush puffs out a heavy breath, his brows pinched together. “I know, I was there. Remember?”
I hold my hands up in a gesture of friendship. “Not judging, just pointing out—”
“—everything we already know,” Gage finishes for me. “We’re all wound tight.” He pauses. “Since nearly losing you, I know your feelings have changed about keeping to ourselves.”
I nod not wanting to rehash the time a bomb nearly killed me.
The phone in the middle of the table dances over the hardwood and we just sit there looking at it like it’s a live grenade.
Instead of answering Raja’s call, I ask my brothers, “Now that we are all on the same page, what about our rule? Everyone willing to set it aside for a while? It’s not like if we do this we are signing a marriage certificate.”
Rush presses his fingers into his eyes and makes a groaning sound that comes out like he’s being tortured. “That fucking rule has kept me horny for ten years. How long can we stay disconnected from life, brothers?”
He’s reading my thoughts to the letter. Gage is thinking the same, too. It’s written all over his tight expression. The fact he didn’t tell Raja no the second he proposed the idea is proof my brother is growing restless in the romance department, too.
“We have one month to get our shit together or Uncle Sam is going to give us our walking papers,” Gage says flatly.
Gage is always keeping everyone on task. Muscle ripples and bulges under the sleeve of his dress shirt as he rubs a hand through thick, black hair. His lips pull into a tight, white line and I can already tell where the other man’s thoughts are headed.
Silence moves in and for a while, I don’t do a damn thing but sit there. Getting these two to talk is as painful as catching a bullet.
“What happened wasn’t your fault man. Shit happens out there and you can’t always control how missions go down. Doesn’t mean you have to suffer through the rest of your life because everything didn't go as planned.”
Dark eyes turn to mine. “You don’t need to coddle me, Aziel. Keep all your emotionallet’s talk about it shitto yourself.”
“Touchy. Maybe less of this and more talking.” Rush tries to move the whiskey bottle away earning him a deathly growl from Gage.
“Fuck that.” I take it and empty the last few fingers worth into each of our glasses before heading for a fresh one from the bar. “But Rush is right about one thing. You keep what happened on this last mission jammed inside you and someone else will get hurt. Maybe not now, but at some point, it will get someone else killed. Me, Rush, another member of our team. That, my brother…. that shit will beyourfault then.”
Gage’s animalistic growl claws up my spine and instincts warns me to grab for my weapon.
I breathe in and exhale slowly, stretching my fingers at my side. Thirty-five years as the man’s best friend cools my jets and I keep walking to the bar until I get what I am after.
“We need to step away for a beat and remember we are human. Not killing machines,” I add, back at the table. I brush aside the chips and forgotten cards so we can have room to read over the sample contract Raja forced into my hands.
“This says we only have to watch out for her safety and ours. That we have a clean bill of health and are willing to fuck in front of a room full of voyeuristic clients of the club. Pretty easy.”
Ignoring my points, Rush takes the bottle and cracks open the seal.
“The fucker had a sniper riffle, man. We were all tucked in waiting him out. We did what we could. What we trained for.”
“For fucks sake,” I groan. “It’s like I’m talking to rocks.”
Gage drops an ankle over a knee and swallows what is left in his glass. He slams it on the table with a loud thunk. “Still doesn’t change the fact we lost brothers. And innocents.”
I sit back and consider my friend’s white-knuckle grip on his glass.
“No one in that village stood a chance.” Rush follows up in a rough tone, fast to back up our buddy before the room falls silent again.
Jesus H. Christ. Needles of irritation chisel at my brain. Are we all going to fall apart here? My chest tightens and I fist my tumbler. After a few minutes of silence, I measure my next words. “We use our leave time for what the CO said. Get our heads together. Regroup.”
Gage slaps a hand on the table and braces his elbows on his knees. “And just forget everything that happened?”