Hard Beat

It’s my ass on the line. And I’m good with that. Too bad now my ass means Beaux’s too.

I grunt a nonresponse. “Don’t think I don’t see the setup here. The babysitting job you guys dropped on me because you think I’m unstable. I’ll do my job, Rafe, and I’ll do it damn well.”

“I never said that you wouldn’t.”

“You didn’t have to say it. I’ll be waiting for your call… and for your sake, she’d better be able to do her job.” I hang up before giving him a chance to respond, the range of emotions from this morning making me more bitter than normal.

Tossing my phone onto my unmade bed, I strip down, the hot water of my shower calling to my sore muscles. When I enter the bathroom, I look in the mirror and flex out of habit to see whether this morning made any difference in the definition of my abs and biceps. But when I draw my eyes up from the lines in my torso, I take in my dark hair, worn a little long, and the stubble I sport when on assignment so that I can fit in as much as possible with the locals. I’m already missing my clean-shaven face and hair trimmed off my ears like I prefer when I’m at home. When in Rome…

I look like shit. My violet eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep with dark smudges that look like bruises beneath them. I scrub a hand over my face and blow out a breath to shake away the ghosts I see hiding in the mirror and head for the shower. Productivity is my number one priority.

Chapter 6

“I

t’s driving you crazy, isn’t it?”

I look at Pauly through the steam of my coffee before answering him because his words are more true than I’d like to admit. “Of course it is… but isn’t that how it is here, always feast or famine? Weeks on end of waiting for something to happen and then riding that high when it does only for the boredom to hit tenfold until the next time. It’s just taking a bit of time for all of my sources to know I’m back.”

Pauly rolls his eyes and laughs. “Only you could think that you’ll return to this shithole and things will start happening.” When I raise my eyebrows with an unabashed shrug to remind him of all the times this has happened, he holds up his hands in surrender. “Forgive me, wonder boy. We all know you walk into a room and shit happens that only you know about.”

“It’s good to be me.” I flash a smirk his way before taking another sip of coffee. We’re sitting by the front windows of the hotel where we can watch life outside to pass time, but on the far left of us are some makeshift desks where a few reporters work on their laptops. To the right is the reception counter, and at the opposite end of the room, across from where we sit, is the bar. We’ve kind of commandeered that too – all sixty of us reporters and photographers from various agencies – and made it our second home since our rooms are so small and nothing beats boredom better than company.

There’s a crappy pool table a few of the guys found abandoned somewhere in the early days of the conflict. It was broken and battered, but in between air raid sirens and being confined in here for safety’s sake, they made it a mission to repair it with whatever they could find. It’s a patchwork quilt at best, but it works, and we’ve all spent endless hours playing on it, trying to pass time during lulls.

Pool’s not really my thing, though. Not enough action, enough adrenaline, not enough of anything really, but when I glance over to the table at the right of the bar, my pulse jumps. Because bending over the table, lining up a shot with her spectacular ass directed my way, is Beaux.

And even if I didn’t have firsthand knowledge of how those curves look without those ass-hugging jeans on, I’d still guess it was her from a mile away because bodies like hers are few and far between.

The crack of the rack of balls breaking up rings out across the lobby, and it’s only when she stands up to full height that her long mane of hair falls down her back. Damn it. I’m a sucker for women with long hair so when all of it falls to rest above the swell of her ass, I curse under my breath.

Visions of wrapping that hair around my hand and pulling her head back as I’m burying myself into her from behind fill my head instantly. It’s one thing to push a woman out of your head when you wonder what someone feels and tastes like, but it’s almost impossible to do that when you know those truths from personal experience. Images from that night flash through my mind: her tits bouncing with each thrust, her lips parted with want, that small strawberry birthmark on her hip bone.

When Pauly clears his throat, the sound pulls me from my thoughts to realize I’m blatantly staring at Beaux. I turn my head toward him to find his eyebrows raised and tongue tucked in his cheek. “Must be a pain in the ass to look at that sight all day.”

And fuck, I can deny it all I want, but Pauly will think I’m full of shit and assume more, so I might as well tell partial truths. “It’s brutal, I tell you,” I say as he groans when she positions herself perfectly in his line of sight across the table for a shot.

“I mean the lengths you go to for your job, Nanny Tanny…” His voice fades off as we turn our heads to watch her maneuver around the table.

I choke on my sip of water. There’s no way I heard him correctly. “What did you just say?”

“Nanny. Babysitting…” He shrugs. “Nanny Tanny.”

“Dude, that’s so wrong.” I laugh.

“You can be all kinds of wrong because I bet with a body like that, she’d fix it with all of her kinds of right. Man, I’d tap that in a heartbeat.” He’s all talk, but I laugh with him anyway. “On our next supply run, you should probably stock up on lube… Wouldn’t want you getting calluses unnecessarily now, would we?”