Bane: Elite Operatives (Bad Boys of X-Ops Book 4) (6 page)

Band-Aids for Bullet Holes

I SAT AMONG THE carnage, my teeth gritted as splinters of pain shivered from my thigh to my groin. “Dammit. Are we all destined to get shot up before this op’s over?”

My knuckles swelled as I ripped the hole in my pants bigger, impatiently inspecting the oozing wound.

Kiki kneeled at my side with a suture tray she’d swiped from my triage.

“It’s through and through.” I lifted up to show my ass, and the exit wound, when I whipped down my pants. “Just pack it. I’ll be fine.”

“Macho, annoying, egotistical . . . balls bigger than his brains . . .” Kiki tossed insults at me while she started gathering alcohol and gauze. “
Too stupid to live
.”

“
Mucho
annoying
more like,” Storm commented as he checked every last dead tango on the premises.

He came up with exactly nada.

“She sounds like Jade.” Walker rubbed his jaw, gleefully watching me as the patient.

“You’re one to talk. Walking ass-wound.” I hissed when Kiki swabbed antiseptic around the open fucking hole in my leg.

“At least I
am
walking.”

“Two days later. Dickbreath.”

“Missed the major arteries.” Kiki tossed swabs aside. “Good thing since the one in your brain is already short-circuited. Obvs.”

Jus laughed. “Ya know? If we didn’t hate her, I’d probably really like her.” He gave Kiki a hand bandaging my leg while she glared death threats at him.

“Pain killers?” Justice helped me to my feet.

“Yeah. Tequila. And my blades.”

“Tough guy.”

“Sure. I’m the one man mafia.” I stumbled backward, unbalanced.

Storm caught me. “You need morphine.”

I snorted. “Not fucking likely. Not gonna get caught with my pants down again.”

Blaize appeared in front of us, and Storm rolled up to her.

I heard him say
cher
, and that was about it because my head was reeling from the events of the night.

The next thing I knew I was back in the chair, my leg raised and cushioned.

Surrounded by KIAs.

Nice
.

Blaize paced back and forth, in full battle mode. “We’re clearing out ASAP. Gather guns, gear, intel, and the computers.”

“Where’re we headed, boss?” Walker already had a pack on his back, and here I was, two steps behind everyone else.

“The prearranged locations. I’ve vetted them.” She nodded her head when Storm took the dismantled mini-MASH unit out to a waiting van. “We’re splitting up.”

“If we’ve been made, who’s to say we won’t be at the other houses?” Justice toed over dead bodies, shouldering a sack of weapons.

“Because you and I are the only ones who know about the safe houses.” Blaize directed Jus to the second black van with his cargo. “So if we get ratted out there really is a nark in our midst.”

Cold comfort.

We dismantled the crib in twenty minutes flat.

Okay, I didn’t do much of the heavy lifting given I was still spilling blood, but the place was cased clean and quickly abandoned.

Our presence erased.

I shut myself inside the passenger seat of the SUV beside Kiki who slid behind the wheel.

Storm teamed up with Blaize.
Natch.

And Jus and Walker commandeered the third vehicle.

“I want everyone checking in before noon and after midnight. Bane and Kiki, you make that drop tomorrow night with Carlos and remember we want the location and names of the terrorists they’re supplying. Next objective. We need actionable intel.” Blaize hopped into her ride.

The three-car convoy hauled ass out of the warehouse, splitting directions at the nearest crossroads.

Fuck the dead cunts we left behind all but toe-tagged. Whoever hired them could do the cleanup from our kills.

And Kiki and I were alone.

****

We arrived at the safe house with morning barely starting. A crystal clear and cold dawn on the horizon. Almost December.

Kiki and I humped our shit into the house, locked all the doors, set the alarms, drew all the blinds. She called in to Blaize on a burner to say we’d landed safe and sound.

Meanwhile the packing around the wound on my thigh was becoming blood-soaked.

Not to mention that shit was beginning to twinge a little bit.

I locked myself in the bathroom and pulled a well-stocked medkit from my go-bag.

Last time I’d been in this position it’d been goddamn Yemen. On the run. Cut off from Justice and Tilly after we’d escaped from the embassy siege. That time it’d been Ambassador James Lawless, Tilly’s dad, whom I’d sewn up after he’d taken a bullet to the leg.

Over twenty-four hours out of contact with Tilly and Justice. We’d found them by scouring the hospitals in the
most
inhospitable city. Tilly unconscious with septicemia, Justice half out of his mind with worry over the woman.

I was glad there was no one to worry about me now.

Kiki knocked on the bathroom door as I laid out the antiseptic and suture kit. “You okay in there?”

“Peachy.” I winced, thunking off my boots and unzipping my pants.

“You’re not seriously considering stitching yourself up?” Exasperation colored her voice.

“That’s the plan.”

She rattled the doorknob. “I know how to pick a lock, you know?”

“Just go away.” Biting off a hiss, I started peeling off my torn pants.

“Not gonna happen.”

“Goddammit, Katherine! Leave me the fuck alone.” I punched an already torn-up fist down onto the sink.

I heard her fiddling with the door a few seconds before the lock popped open and the knob turned.

Thought about booting my foot against the door. Reined myself in. Would probably topple over if I tried, especially with my pants stuck at the top of my thighs.

I edged against the sink, and Kiki slipped inside.

She’d disarmed, leaving just the clothes she’d thrown on earlier, and her pink-striped fauxhawk trailing in soft-looking lengths down her back.

“You’ve never called me Katherine before.” She gently pushed me aside and began washing and sterilizing her hands.

“Blaize told me.” Didn’t I feel just a little bit off-kilter with my pants half down, my cock half out, and blood seeping from a bullet hole. “So did you. And if your fucking
papi
can call you
Cataleeena
. . . Unless you wanna be forever known as Baby Spy?”

“I didn’t mean to poke the wounded bear.” A beat of laughter lifted her voice.

Want to hate her. Can hardly keep my hands off her.

I grunted instead of replying.

After drying her hands, she turned to me. “Think you can get the pants the rest of the way off? And don’t be a tough guy about it.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” I gritted my teeth and start pushing the sticky pants down my legs.

I got them as low as my calves, all my muscles straining and sweat popping on my brow, before she kneeled down and took over.

Nice.

Exactly the position I wanted Kiki in—on her knees with my cock level with her face.

Wrong fucking context, though.

I almost smiled as my dick started plumping up.

Guess the plumbing still worked regardless of the wound to my leg.

Oh yeah, Kiki noticed. Her cheeks took on a hint of pink, and she kept her gaze lowered as my pants fell to the floor.

Then she peered up, licked her ripe lips, and asked, “Anything else I need to look at while we’re at it?”

All In

“DOWN THERE?” I ASKED.

Kiki rolled her eyes, a smirk forming on her mouth. “Anywhere.”

Well . . . how to answer that? Ask her to open wide so I could shove my cock into her lush mouth? The idea had definite merit. But considering I was having a hard time keeping my knees from buckling and if she was gonna give me head I didn’t really want it to end with me squashing her when I collapsed on top of her, I merely shrugged.

She rose up, unnecessarily—but very welcomingly—brushing against me.

Who needed painkillers when she was playing nurse? My favorite fantasy.

“Let’s get this off too.” She tugged at my shirt.

Full monty? Sure. Why not?

Weaving on my feet, I got stuck in the tight shirt. Kiki’s hands went to work on me, her warm fingers clearing the clinging material from my chest, shoulders, and my head.

“Think you better sit down now?” Her eyes roamed boldly over my body, taking in the tats, the scars, the slabs of cut muscles.

The cock, the PA piercing.

That motherfucking throbbing wound.

I planted my ass on the closed toilet lid.

How fucking romantic could a guy get?

My dick was still hard, though.

Kiki chose to ignore the thick staff rising up from my groin to my abs.

Bummer.

“Get me a drink before you start on me?” I asked with a lift of an eyebrow.

She nodded and left the room.

“You done this before, or you need directions?” I called after her.

She returned with a glass of tequila, which I quickly downed. She’d brought the whole bottle. Smart girl.

Her smile flitted across her lips as she bent over me. “I rarely need directions for anything, Bane.”

Why wasn’t I surprised?

“Want me to glove up?” She got down beside me.

“You wanna glove up?”

“You diseased?”

“Only in the head.”

She chuckled. “Great. That makes two of us.” She snapped on gloves without a wasted motion.

Kiki prodded the ragged hole with gentle fingers then made me lift up, my cock pretty much dangling in her face.

She didn’t take the bait.

Bummmmer.

A nice cocksucking would take my mind off the fact I was about to get stitched up minus opiates.

Whatever.

Not the first time.

She motioned me back down, and guess what? Her soft breath hit the underside of my engorged dick.

“Through and through,” she said, her eyes not on the real prize.

“I know,” I grumbled.

“I want to make sure no major arteries nicked.”

“Fuck.” I braced myself, fixing my eyes on the blank white wall above her head. “Go on then.”

When Kiki probed the bleeding hole it felt like she was ripping me open from the inside out, but I didn’t flinch.

Swore a lot, though. Even invented a few new curse words.

“Good.” She peered up at me, her face a white mask.

Reaching out, I grasped her chin. “Where’d you learn how to fix people up?”

“In the field. When I had to. Just like you, I’d imagine.”

“You okay to go on? Because I can—”

“I don’t need you to be strong or stoic about this, Griffin.”

I smiled when she used my first name.

“But I sure hope I don’t make you cry.” A sadistic light flashed across her pale blue irises.

“Girl . . .” I growled out.

She set about patching me up, and though her face remained blanched, she wasn’t squeamish. I’d give her that.

I sucked in ragged breaths, refilling on booze every time she took a break.

“Nice sutures.” Sweat trickled down the center of my chest, and my lips formed a grim line as she inspected her handiwork.

“I thought you were going to kill that guy with your bare hands tonight.” With a frown on her forehead, she motioned me to roll.

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” I turned so she could get to the exit wound after she stitched the front.

“Yeah?”

“You know your little nursery rhyme?”

She pushed the needle through my skin, sewing up the hole. “
Mmm
.”

“Mine ain’t so pretty. Killed a man. Crushed his windpipe. In the ring.”

“Boxing?”

“Cagefighting.”

“So you beat
yourself
up about it.” She tied off the last of the sutures.

“No one else to blame.” I tested her work with my fingers, grunting with satisfaction.

Kiki urged me to my unsteady feet, and I grabbed the towel rail, almost pulling it off the wall with my weight.

“You didn’t mean to kill him.” She disinfected the area again then started wrapping it with clean gauze.

“So that’s okay then? What about the people we do mean to kill.”
Her
, for one.

“It’s for a reason. So better people live.” She rinsed her hands in the basin after ungloving.

“It’s not black and white.”

Wringing out a washcloth, Kiki motioned me toward the door and into the hallway. “No, it’s not. But we choose, don’t we?”

“I follow orders.”

“Blaize’s, because you trust her.”

I let Kiki steer me to a bedroom. The fan motored above, reminiscent of the rotors on many a helo Storm had hijacked.

She prodded me to the bed, pushed a towel beneath me, and started giving me a sponge bath.

Of all the fucking things.

“I can clean myself.”

“No shit?” Kiki swiped the cloth down my chest. “Take it easy, big boy.”

Kiki climbed up after me, smoothing the warmth along my legs. She eased my thighs apart, cleaned my shoulders, and arms, and hands.

After rinsing the cloth, she swept it over my face. “I like your eyes.”

“They’re fucked up. Just like the rest of me.”

She snorted. “Helluva antihero complex you got going on.” Her lips nudged mine, and I gasped at the touch of her tongue lightly tracing my mouth. “Do you know how sexy you are? So fucking big.”

I hardly fought against her as she held my shoulders down to the bed.

“And your eyes. One blue.” She kissed my closed eyelid. “The other hazel. Gorgeous.”

Her hands roamed lower, to my abs that clenched.

Something wet worked hot heat along my pelvic muscles, never once hitting my cock.

Pushing an arm over my face, sucking in deep a breath, rolling my hips, I wordlessly begged for more.

“Must not hurt that bad.” Her warm breath washed across my muscle-padded ribs.

“It’s you.”

“Me what?” She dribbled an ice cube dipped in tequila against my lips.

“Fuck, babe.”

She raised the glass to my mouth. “Drink.”

I did. Big gulps.

Bullet wound or not I was fired the fuck up.

Needed something to dull the ever-present pain.

Sex always worked.

Sex with Kiki Damage?

I’d probably never see straight again.

“What happened to you, Griffin?
Before
the cagefighting.”

“
Ah
, shit. I’m not up for this.”

“If you don’t talk, I don’t fuck.” She dragged my arm from my face. “I told you my truth.”

She sat beside me. This vixen. The enigma. The gorgeous streetwise woman who was possibly a traitor.

“Shit. What? I killed man in the cage. Big deal. You know that now.”

“The medic stuff?”

“Are you digging for intel on me?”

“You have some serious trust issues, you know that?” Kiki huffed, turning her back.

I grasped her shoulder. “I learned it from watching you.”

A grin cranked across my lips when she wheeled around and hit me on the chest. “Tell me the truth.”

Her hair hung over us, bright swathes. And her beautiful face was so close to mine . . . she was the only woman who could cool the fever inside me.

“No formal training. Fuck. I constantly stitched myself up during my years in the underground fighting ring. But when I killed that guy . . .”

“You were charged.”

“Yeah. Jail time.” Pulling myself against the headboard, I stacked pillows behind my back. “Miss Carmichael got to me in there. She found me. She took me on.” I shrugged. “She knows I’m a stone cold killer.”

“Is that how you see yourself?”

I wrangled Kiki down to me, squashing a groan when her leg nudged the wound on my thigh. “What are you? A shrink?”

“No more than you’re a doc.” She kissed my chin.

“Hey. I did the civvie thing. Physician assistant and ER training. Just because I’m not an MD doesn’t mean I don’t have fast hands.” I put those hands to use, squeezing her ass.

“Why do you think she put us in play together, Bane?” Kiki braced above me.

Looking away, I murmured, “She didn’t.”