Full Throttle
Chapter One
Hotel Novotel
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Present day…
Carlos Soto, known to everyone in the spec-ops community as “Steady,” lounged at the end of the ritzy hotel bar, casually watching his best friend, Ethan “Ozzie” Sykes, work his masculine wiles on the cute off-duty Secret Service agent seated at a nearby table.
“Ozzie is a serial seducer,” Dan Currington observed from the barstool beside him. Dan was the third and final member of Black Knights Inc. to accompany him on this mission. BKI being the covert government defense firm that operated under the guise of a custom motorcycle shop—okay, and sometimes Steady still had trouble believing such an entity actually existed; it was like something out of a bad spy novel.
“Sí,” he admitted with an affectionate chuckle, smiling as Ozzie leaned over to whisper something into the shell of the agent’s ear. The woman blushed and giggled, and Steady could only shake his head. “But the ladies never seem to mind. I don’t know how he pulls it off time after time.”
“You don’t?” Dan turned to lift a dubious brow as he took a leisurely sip of seltzer water. “I thought you two were neck and neck in that whole notches-on-the-bedpost race.”
Steady frowned at the bottle of Tiger beer in his hand. It was true. For a couple of years there, he’d given Ozzie a run for the money in the bedding of bar bunnies. But recently the…er…hunt had lost its allure.
“I think I’m about done with all that, hermano. It just seems so…” He twisted his lips, searching for the word. “Superficial, I guess. Unfulfilling? I don’t know.” He shrugged. “And besides, I was never as good at it as Ozzie.” He tipped his beer toward the table where the unrefuted king of casual relationships was now fiddling with the agent’s fingers. Julia Ledbetter. That was her name. And she resembled a Secret Service agent about as much as a Chihuahua resembled a Doberman. But Steady supposed that was part of it. Protection through subterfuge and meek-but-mighty camouflage. Although, if you asked him, there was something to be said for the fierce, bulldog demeanor that good ol’ Agent Mitchell had sported.
He wondered what had happened to the guy. Come to think of it, he wondered what had happened to all the agents who’d been assigned to Abby’s protection detail back in the day. There wasn’t a familiar face among the seven in her current bunch.
Then again, a lot could change in eight years. Just look at him. He’d gone from medical student to soldier to clandestine government operator in the space of that time. Hell, even his name was different…
“Never as good as Ozzie?” Dan’s second eyebrow joined his first somewhere near his hairline. “Well, I, uh…” He cleared his throat. “I hafta say, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard a man admit his sexual prowess lacked in comparison to—”
“That’s not what I meant, pendejo. And you know it.”
Dan tucked his tongue in his cheek, nodding. “The beer bottle incident?”
Steady fingered the small scar cutting through his scalp above his right ear. He’d received it courtesy of a one-night stand whom he’d thought understood the nature of their relationship. But when she caught him locking lips with a curvy little mamacita outside the back door of Red Delilah’s Biker Bar—his local watering hole in Chicago where Black Knights Inc. was based—she’d shouted obscenities that questioned his mother’s morals before hauling off and smashing a bottle of Bud over his head.
“I told her I wasn’t interested in anything serious,” he said in his own defense. “I don’t know how much more specific I could’ve been.”
“Mmm,” Dan answered noncommittally, causing Steady’s scowl to deepen. His entire life he’d been accused by family, friends, and teammates of being oblivious when it came to dishing out details, but he disagreed. He said what needed to be said when it needed to be said. He just wasn’t all that elaborative, that’s all.
“Look,” he continued, choosing to ignore Dan’s non-answer and getting back to the point. “I’m only saying I might be ready for something…more.” He blinked. A little astonished he’d climbed out on this conversational limb. After all, the Knights were a far cry from the touchy-feely sort. In fact, their discussions tended to center more on the latest weapons, motorcycle exhausts, and Chicago Cubs scores than anything that came close to resembling, you know, actual feelings.
He waited for Dan to say something along the lines of whoa there, compadre, what are we? Girlfriends? So he was shocked when instead Dan went with, “Are you telling me you’ve sowed your last wild oat?”