Joyful Engagement (A Trinity Masters novella) Read online

  Roman and Scarlet, sitting side by side on the bed, looking a little bored, answered at the same time. “A Hayden.”

  Another twenty minutes passed, during which Tate tried to take apart the plumbing under the bathroom sink by hand so he could use the pipe as a baton. That didn’t work.

  Twenty minutes after that, Tate lay on his back across the foot of the bed, his hands over his face. Scarlet had her heels propped on his thigh, while Roman’s legs were bent, forearms on his knees.

  “Just so we’re all clear,” Scarlet said. “We are actually trapped here.”

  Tate didn’t bother to open his eyes. “Give me a minute and I’ll try breaking through the door.”

  “If it’s steel core…” She trailed off.

  “Don’t break your leg,” Roman advised.

  “This is my worst nightmare,” Tate said.

  “Getting kidnapped?”

  “No, getting kidnapped by amateurs. My roommates will literally never let this shit go,” he groaned. “They’re relentless fuckers.”

  “The Warrior Scholars?” Scarlet had been fascinated by the idea of a group of former military men, now graduate students at Ivy League schools, serving as bodyguards for the Trinity Masters.

  Before Tate could answer, there was a soft knock on the door.

  Tate was on his feet, motioning the others to get behind him, before the third knock sounded.

  “Roman?” Selene called. “It’s me. I just…”

  Tate looked at Roman and used hand signals to indicate he should keep her talking. Roman and Scarlet just looked at him, utterly confused.

  Right. They weren’t military. Argh.

  Roman shrugged and stepped toward the door. “Selene, you need to let us out.”

  “I came to say I’m sorry. Actually, I came to ask some questions, but if I were you, I wouldn’t answer them, and even though you’re a better person than I am, I’m betting you won’t, either.”

  Tate circled his hand in the air. This time, Roman understood and nodded.

  “What questions?”

  There was a beat of silence. “It’s just...I’m sorry. Tell my family…”

  “I am your family,” Roman said, his lips near the small gap between doorframe and door. “Selene, don’t do something you can’t come back from.”

  “I fell in love.” She laughed, the sound barely audible. “Totally, stupidly in love.”

  “This is heartbreaking,” Scarlet whispered. “I had contingencies for multiple bad reactions from Oscar, but this…”

  “What were your questions?” Roman asked, trying to keep her talking.

  “It doesn’t matter. But if you can...if there’s anything you can do, without getting yourself in trouble, to make sure they don’t come after us…” Selene’s voice was soft and muffled by the door. Tate inched forward so he could hear better.

  “I know the price for disobedience,” Selene said after a momentary pause. “Oscar and Luca…they’re not legacies. They know what will happen but not the way we do. I realize that we’re dooming ourselves, but a few months...years...with them is better than a long life without them.”

  Behind him, Scarlet made a soft, sad sound. Tate glanced back to see there were tears on her lashes and she had one hand over her mouth. He wasn’t unaffected by the romantic, tragic picture Selene’s words painted.

  Roman, however, thumped his head twice against the wall beside the door. “For God’s sake, Selene, just go talk to the Grand Master so this misun—”

  Too late, Roman caught himself, teeth clicking together as he closed his mouth.

  The silence from the other side of the door was deafening.

  “This misunderstanding?” Selene asked, her voice calculating.

  “You need to go to Boston, like the letter says.” Roman was backpedaling, hard.

  Scarlet put a hand on Tate’s arm and mouthed, “Should we tell them?”

  Tate shrugged, but Roman shook his head.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” Selene demanded.

  “Nothing. All I had to do was give you the letter.”

  “Roman, you tell me right now.”

  “No.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No.”

  Their tone of voice had lapsed into a familiar, familial, rhythm.

  “I’m going to make you tell me.”

  “Selene, open the door and let’s just go to Boston. We’ll even—” Roman glanced at Tate, then Scarlet. “We’ll even let Oscar travel with us.”

  That had not been a part of the plan. Oscar was supposed to find his own way there, but given the circumstances, Tate was sure they could justify the deviation from orders.

  “Ha, like I’m going to fall for that.” Selene paused. “Last chance, Roman. What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Last chance or what?” Roman’s exasperation was in the emotional driver’s seat. “You’ll do something dumb? Too late.”

  “Ohh, you’re calling me dumb? Still pissed I scored better than you on the AP Calculus test, aren’t you?”

  “Grow up.” Roman’s deep, demanding voice somehow managed to make that childlike phrase sound stupidly sexy.

  “You grow up,” Selene retorted.

  Tate put his hands over his face and wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or cry. This was not the Roman he’d come to know over the past couple of weeks. His image of the cool, dangerous, accountant shattered. Strangely, he found this side—though somewhat outrageous—even hotter.

  “I’ll be right back and you are going to tell me what I want to know.” Selene sounded coldly dangerous.

  “Oh, I’m really freaking scared,” Roman replied in an exaggerated bored voice.

  “Uh, maybe don’t antagonize the person threatening torture,” Tate said. From outside the door, he heard the sound of light, fast steps. Selene was leaving.

  “This is completely ridiculous.” Roman crossed his arms, his expression stubborn—an emotion Tate hadn’t seen from him before. Standing there, he resembled some kind of barbaric, take-no-prisoners, accountant.

  Was that even a thing?

  Only Roman could blend dominance and geekiness so flawlessly.

  “I would really rather not be stun-gunned again,” Scarlet said, but there wasn’t fear in her voice, just a sort of irritated resignation. “It hurt.”

  She pulled the hairband from her hair and attempted to gather the thick, wavy, unruly tresses back into some semblance of a ponytail. She missed a large chuck of hair on the left-hand side, but Tate didn’t mention it because it looked cute on the typically put-together woman.

  Tate cracked his knuckles, sensing they were close to seeing some action. He preferred that to remaining locked in a room with no way to break out. “They’ll have to open the door if they’re going to try to threaten us to get information. Once they do, I’ll take them.”

  “Unless they stun you first.”

  “They took me by surprise,” Tate growled. “It won’t happen again.”

  Tate was a dangerous guy. That was a fact, not bravado. Since leaving the military, he hadn’t needed to be dangerous on a daily basis, considering most of his work as the Grand Master’s pet henchman involved serving as a bodyguard at a hotel. But he’d spent a lot of years as a sniper, one with fifty-four confirmed kills under his belt, and from the wary way Scarlet and Roman were looking at him, it was clear that right now he was more deadly Marine than German philosophy grad student.

  Tate started to glance away, not wanting to see two people whom he thought of as friends, whom he’d planned with, traveled with, flirted with, look at him like he was dangerous, but after that momentary stillness, Scarlet licked her lower lip and Roman blew out a slow, uneven breath.

  “He just got like...scary hot, right?” Scarlet asked.

  “Yes. Yes, he did,” Roman replied.

  Scarlet gave him a long, considering look. “Real kidnapping sucks, but maybe when this is over, we could pretend—”

  As much
as Tate really—really—wanted to know how Scarlet’s sentence ended, he held up a hand to silence her. He’d finally heard the sound he’d been listening for.

  Footsteps.

  Scarlet and Roman positioned themselves against the wall where he pointed, and Tate took up a position just behind the door. When they opened it, his foot would stop them from swinging it all the way open. The bottleneck of the half-open door would make it impossible for Oscar to avoid sticking some part of his body into the room, even if it was just to reach around and blindly shoot the Taser. This time, Tate would be ready.

  The footsteps stopped outside the door, the old wooden floor creaking enough that Tate was sure it was all three of them, Oscar, Selene, and Luca. He braced himself, listening for the sound of the door being unlocked.

  Instead, what he heard next was the cheery sound of a Bluetooth speaker turning on.

  Tate, Scarlet, and Roman all looked at the ceiling. An innocuous white fixture, totally unnoticed, located as it was next to the smoke detector, was dinging as it connected.

  The room had a speaker system.

  Okay, that was fine.

  They were probably going to use that to talk to them rather than yelling through the door, which meant Tate’s plan for escape was foiled.

  “Roman, what do you know?” Selene called out, but her voice wasn’t coming through the speaker.

  “Selene, you need to obey the Grand Master and just do what the letter—”

  “Wrong answer,” Oscar called out.

  A second later music started, quietly at first, and then louder, and louder still, as they ratcheted up the volume.

  Baby shark, do do do do dodo, baby shark do do do do dodo...

  “No,” Scarlet breathed in horror. “Dear God.”

  Mommy shark, do do do do dodo, mommy shark do do do do dodo...

  Roman leapt for the door, pounded on it. “Turn it off!”

  Tate stared at the speaker in the ceiling, more stunned than he’d been when Oscar tased him.

  Daddy shark, do do do do dodo, daddy shark do do do do dodo…

  Tate put his back against the wall and slid to the floor. He thought he knew what horrors the world had to offer, thought he knew what it meant to truly suffer. But he didn’t really know what torture, what suffering was, until that moment.

  This. This...

  Baby shark, do do do do dodo, baby shark do do do do dodo.

  This was his worst nightmare.

  Chapter Four

  “Here’s your crash course on SERE.” Tate looked grim as he perched on the closed lid of the toilet. They’d retreated to the bathroom since it was as far from the speaker as they could get.

  Scarlet was sitting in the tub, while Roman perched on the edge.

  Roman reached down and back and grabbed her foot. She hadn’t even realized she was tapping her foot against the porcelain in time with that godforsaken song.

  “Sear?” Scarlet asked. “Like...sear a steak?”

  “Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape,” Tate and Roman said together.

  Scarlet and Tate looked at Roman.

  “I am considered a medium value target,” he said almost apologetically.

  “Ha! You’re secretly CIA.”

  “Nope.” Roman shook his head. “I turned them down.”

  “How long has it been?” Scarlet asked almost desperately. “Two hours, three?”

  “Forty-five minutes.” Roman glanced at his watch.

  Only forty-five minutes? Sweet Jesus…

  Tate had tried to break down the door, but the damn thing was, apparently, steel core, which only a security-conscious paranoid lunatic would bother to have in a residence.

  With escape impossible, they’d turned their attention to muffling the god-awful song. They disassembled the bed, standing the box spring on its end and then stacking bedding and pillows on top of it until they were able to wedge the folded duvet against the speaker.

  It muffled the sound but didn’t eliminate it. It was still there.

  Baby shark, do do do do dodo, baby shark do do do do dodo.

  “Step one, remind yourself that you are worth more alive than dead,” Tate began.

  “I don’t think Selene is going to kill us,” Roman said.

  “Just make us wish we were dead,” Scarlet countered grimly.

  “Step two, reaffirm your mission.”

  “I’m pretty sure our mission is dead,” Scarlet said. “There is no way we’re getting all of these people, and us, back to Boston in time for the wedding. All my planning…” She let her head thunk back against the tile in time with the song.

  It was faint but still audible. Mommy shark, do do do do dodo, mommy shark do do do do dodo.

  “It would have been beautiful,” Roman said in a conciliatory tone.

  Tate continued with his list. “Step three, occupy your mind with something secondary to the mission.”

  “I thought you just said ‘reaffirm your mission’.” Scarlet frowned, confused.

  “Reaffirm your mission means remind yourself that you’re a loyal patriot—” Roman grimaced slightly at the phrase. “—and cannot, will not, betray your country by revealing information, even under torture.”

  “And then after that, you try to distract yourself from either being tortured or worrying about impending torture?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Tate said, though she didn’t think he sounded as confident as his words indicated.

  Scarlet tilted her head. “Great, I can do that. I’ve been trying to figure out how long it will take them to decide to call the Grand Master, and if, when they do, she will just tell them that they are going to be in a trinity?”

  “No.” Tate was decisive. “Because if you fix a timeline in your head, and then that time marker comes and goes without a change, you’ll get discouraged.”

  “And Selene is stubborn and smart.” Roman put his elbows on his knees. “She won’t risk contacting the Grand Master unless she thinks it’s the only way. I mean, I tried to encourage her to do exactly that, but she doesn’t take direction well. Never has.”

  Scarlet uncrossed her legs, switching which one was on top. She was fighting to keep her toe from tapping in time with that damn song.

  “The Grand Master isn’t going to tell her anything,” Tate said. “She issued the command to come to Boston, and until that order is obeyed…”

  The Trinity Masters was, decidedly, not a democracy.

  “What should we talk about then, to distract ourselves?” Scarlet asked, because the truth was, despite Tate’s coaching, she was fairly close to cracking under the stress. She’d put a lot of time and effort into planning the most perfect, most elegant New Year’s Eve wedding for these three psychopaths and despite this current abuse, she couldn’t let go of the idea of a dramatic, elegant ceremony, the expensive six-course candlelit dinner with menu items created by a guest chef. At midnight, a mixture of matte gold confetti and white rose petals would fall from the ceiling while everyone kissed… She glanced at Tate and Roman. Either one or—preferably—both of them had been the star of her New Year’s Kiss fantasies.

  “Truth or Dare?”

  Scarlet and Tate both looked at Roman, who regarded them levelly, as if it were totally normal for an NSA budget analyst to propose that they play a sleepover game.

  Scarlet realized she was tapping her foot again in time with the song. Part of her feared the earworm would become permanent, something she’d hear in her head forever. She sat up in the tub. “You know what? I’m in. Why not? This whole thing is already ridiculous.”

  “Dares might be a little hard, given our limited space,” Roman said.

  But Scarlet had an idea. A very, very dangerous idea.

  Maybe it was because her most vivid memory of Truth or Dare had been the time she played it at her friend Veronica’s house, on a night when Veronica’s twin brother, Viktor, was also having a sleepover, making it a coed sleepover.

  “Tate, I dare you t
o take off your shirt,” Scarlet said.

  Both men looked at her, and the looks they gave her were intense...the looks predators gave their prey.

  “You’re supposed to ask him ‘truth or dare’,” Roman said slowly.

  Scarlet let out a noisy sigh. “Tate, truth or dare?”

  “Truth,” he said with a smirk.

  She rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine...have you been practicing your ménage sex?”

  Tate ran his tongue over his teeth. “I’ve had a few threesomes.”

  “Two girls? Two boys? One of each?”

  “Ah ah ah, you already asked your question.” Tate waggled his finger at her.

  “Oh, we’re going to play it like that, are we?” She shook her head in mock disgust, but her body was warm with burgeoning arousal, and it looked like, seemed like, the guys were also ready to play the game the sexy way.

  Not that she’d really doubted that. There had been this underlying sexual attraction between the three of them since the first day they met at headquarters.

  “Roman,” Tate said. “Truth or dare?”

  “Dare.”

  Tate looked back and forth between her and Roman. “I dare you to kiss Scarlet.”

  Yes! Yes yes yes.

  Scarlet sat up, even as Roman slid off the side of the tub, kneeling on the floor and facing her, his hands braced as he leaned over.

  Just before she closed her eyes, Scarlet’s gaze met Tate’s, and in that shared moment, she knew that this would only be the first kiss of the night.

  Roman continued to be a surprise, one constant stream of contradictions. He never acted the way she expected, and this kiss was just one more example of that.

  He was a fairly staid, serious man, but in this moment, he kissed her with a roughness, a passion, that quite simply took her breath away.

  One minute his hands were braced on the side of the bathtub, the next they were tangled in her hair, pulling it just enough to tingle, then burn. He pressed her lips apart, their tongues stroking, tasting.

  One of his hands released her hair and he gripped the back of her neck, keeping her lips against his when she started to pull back. Not because she wanted to stop but because she needed air. She was light-headed. And horny.

  She was really fucking horny.