Page 1 of Carrick
1
Carrick
“That’s it,baby—take my cock like a good girl.”
I stared at the ceiling and seriously considered smothering myself with my pillow.
Three days. That’s all I’d had since getting back from a month-long op crawling through the swampy Everglades playing nice with criminals who didn’t know I was there to burn their whole operation down. Three lousy days of trying to get my head right, get my ribs to stop aching, and maybe get a full night’s sleep for once. I wanted quiet. Stillness. Just one fucking evening where no one bled on my floor. Or moaned through the drywall.
This was true torture. This was worse than anything I’d survived undercover.
“Say it. Say you’re mine.”
“I’m yours, Sir. Fuck yes, I’m yours!”
I groaned, dragging the pillow over my face and debating whether to end it all right here, or just throw something at the wall. Niko’s headboard pounded against the wall like a drum line of torture, and Maddy’s moans were getting breathier by the second.
“Call him Daddy!” I yelled through the wall. “He likes that shit!”
Maddy let out a laugh—high, breathless, and not at all sorry. Niko chimed in with a loud, self-satisfied grunt that sounded way too smug for someone ruining my goddamn night.
“Do you two ever take a goddamnbreak?” I snapped, slamming my fist into the wall so hard the frame above my bed rattled.
No answer. Just more moaning, set to the rhythm of the headboard smacking drywall like it owed them money.
Hell wasn’t a pit full of fire and brimstone. Hell was coming home expecting peace and quiet, and instead being handed a front-row ticket to the Nikolai and Maddy porn hour.
I sat up with a groan, every muscle in my body barking out a fresh round of complaints. My ribs throbbed like someone had taken a bat to them. Which, technically, someone had. My shoulder still twinged every time I moved wrong, a reminder of the dislocation I’d had to reset myself behind a dumpster. Gauze wrapped my left thigh under my sweats, hiding a long gash that hadn’t stopped itching since it started to scab.
My last mission had been hell—fifteen weeks embedded with a crew of drug runners who didn’t trust their own shadows. Three months of constant code-switching and sleeping with one eye open, ready to kill or run or lie at any second. I’d lost ten pounds, cracked a rib, and spent the final two days cramped in the bottom of a shipping container, pissing into a water bottle and praying the damn thing didn’t get rerouted to Venezuela.
But now, I was home.
If you could call it that.
I dragged a hand through my hair and looked around the room. It was dim, bare-bones, and smelled like leather, sweat, and whatever cinnamon-sugar air freshener Maddy had plugged in last week. The place still looked like a half-finished bachelorpad, because I couldn’t be bothered to pretend I gave a shit about throw pillows or warm lighting. One desk, one bed, one weapon rack.
Simple. Functional. Mine.
The house itself looked normal from the outside. Like the kind of farmhouse you’d find on a dusty Kansas back-road; two stories, a wraparound porch, and faded white siding. Quaint. Unassuming. The kind of place you’d expect to find a tire swing and a golden retriever in the yard.
But inside? It was a fortress.
Steel-reinforced walls. Bulletproof windows. Hidden bolt holes, perimeter surveillance, and enough firepower hidden under floorboards or in secret compartments to make a government agent sweat. We built it that way. One piece at a time. A haven for the five of us, after being subjected to the kind of mental and physical torture only the military could provide. We’d wanted to disappear. So we had.
To outsiders, it was rustic. Safe.
To the five of us, it was home. And it was supposed to be peaceful.
I heard the tinny chimes of Niko’s phone ringing through the wall. The secure line.
Thank. Fucking. God.
The moaning stopped. The headboard finally stilled. I heard Niko answer, then there was silence for a long beat.
“Yeah,” Niko finally muttered. “Hang on, Quinn. Gimme two minutes.”
I opened my door just as Niko cracked his open. His hair was a mess, shirt clinging to one shoulder, and Maddy was lounging behind him on the bed, looking like the poster girl for post-orgasmic satisfaction.
