Page 34 of The Wild Charge

So, it’s okay to come in, but nobody gets to leave without permission.

Interesting.

He let the crowd move him, shifting with their energy rather than against it, so as not to draw any attention. A trio of loud girls hip-checked him through a tangle of couples grinding against one another on the dance floor, and he slipped sideways between two arguing frat boys – “Dude, you knew I was into Mackenzie, what the fuck?” – to land at the foot of the staircase he’d spotted the moment he entered the club. It was metal, industrial, and led up to a catwalk, not unlike the one at Tastes Like Candy in Amarillo. Except, unlike Michelle’s bar, this catwalk was totally vacant. And there was a white plastic chain roping off the staircase, marked with a sign that read STAFF ONLY.

Fox hopped lightly over the chain and went up to the catwalk. It was plain, dark, poorly-lit, but it fed past the main body of the club into a narrow hallway – at the mouth of which he was met by two hulking bouncers.

“You can’t be up here,” one of them said.

The other added, “Guests have to stay on the main level.”

“Oh.” Fox ducked his head, hiding his face beneath the bill of his hat. “Sure, man. That’s cool. Got lost looking for the bathroom.”

“It’s down there,” the bouncer said, pointing below. Over his shoulder, Fox glimpsed a door opening down the hall, a wedge of light skimming across the floor. Probably an office, or a security headquarters. Locker room, break room.

“Oh yeah, sure thing, man,” Fox said, tossed up a wave and a dopey smile, and turned back the way he’d come.

As he descended the stairs, he searched for his tagalongs, and didn’t have to look hard. His erstwhile assassins stood squared off from one another in the center of the teeming dance floor. Reese had his arms folded, mouth tweaked by a small frown. Even from behind, Fox could see the stiffness in the set of Tenny’s shoulders.

He spared the briefest thought that his youngest brother was simultaneously the most useful, and biggest pain in the ass of his siblings; Reese truly did deserve better.

Then he hopped over the chain and melted back into the crowd as he slipped out his phone.

~*~

Tenny was acting strangely. It had started back at the hotel, when Reese stepped out of the bathroom wearing this useless outfit, and only gotten stranger from there.

He’d ridden in the front in the rental car, beside Fox, which was fine; Reese didn’t care about driving, and the tinted windows in back offered him a better vantage point from which to scope out their destination when they arrived. Fox had twisted around once they were parked, and delivered a few last-minute instructions, all of it repetitions of what they’d decided back at the hotel. Tenny had grumbled to himself about not being an idiot, or a child, to which Fox had smirked.

Then in the vestibule, Fox had shot a glance over shoulder and smirked again, right at Tenny, and repeated the door bouncer’s line about girls. That in and of itself hadn’t been remarkable; Fox sniped at people, it was just his way, especially with his brothers. His smiles were never warm and kind, his words never gentle. He didn’t rib Reese, for the most part, because Reese never, as Fox would have put it, “started shit.” They hadn’t seen eye to eye at first, but, now, after the op in Texas, Reese felt like they’d arrived at a place where they could communicate effectively; at least, he felt like Fox thought him capable and worth investing time in.

Fox hassling Tenny wasn’t new behavior – but Tenny’s reaction to itwas. Rather than bite back with one of his usual, equally cutting remarks, ones that usually managed to target Fox in some pointed way, his rebuttals now were lifted middle fingers and snappish orders to shut up. In the blue glare of the hotel parking lot lights, Reese had even seen that Tenny wasblushing. Cheeks dark, jaw clenched, gaze furious. Most of the time, he looked at least a little pleased when he had verbal sparring matches with Fox, but not tonight. Tonight he looked…flustered.

That was the only word Reese could come up with, as Tenny whirled around to face him now, in the middle of a pulsing nightclub dance floor.

Bodies shifted and gyrated all around them. Above, the lights were a wild, swirling mix of red, purple, and blue, a scattershot of winking diamonds when they hit the slow-revolving disco balls and flashed across the lenses of Tenny’s fake glasses…

And flared like lit matches in blue eyes that looked hunted, and nothing at all like what they were supposed to.

Reese frowned. “What’s wrong?”

Tenny’s brows lifted up above the rims of his glasses, and for one startling second, he looked taken aback, before a scowl overtook his face. That wasn’t right, either. This was an op, and they were supposed to be playing rowdy college students, not letting…whatever was going on in Tenny’s head…get the better of them.

“What?” Tenny asked, shouting over the loud thump of the music. His lips curled in a familiar snarl.

Someone bumped roughly into Reese’s back – it was an effort to ignore it, and not drop down into a defensive crouch, ready to go on the offense; just a drunk civilian, he told himself – and he stepped forward into Tenny’s space, bracing a hand automatically against Tenny’s chest as he was bumped again. He was surprised to feel Tenny’s pulse galloping wildly beneath his palm; to see the way Tenny’s snarl flickered, and feel the rush of his sudden rough exhalation.

“What’s wrong?” Reese repeated, louder, right in his face, so there could be no mishearing this time.

Tenny actually flinched back away from him, snarl morphing into something less aggressive. If Reese hadn’t known better, he would have called the expressionvulnerable.

Thought of the word brought to mind sweat-slick skin spread out on crumpled sheets; the sloped roof of a barn attic, smell of wood, and the outdoors in his nose while Tenny’s hands clenched again and again in his hair. The sound oflove, hushed and pleasure-drunk.

Now was not the time to think about that. But as Tenny wet his lips, and his gaze flicked down toward the too-high hem of Reese’s tank top, he looked like he was thinking of exactly that.

“Are you–” Reese started.

Tenny lookedpanicked–

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