Page 48 of Danger Close
“Kai.”
Ezra, from the bench press, didn’t even look up.“He texted you again?”
“I never gave him my number!”Hogan snapped.“And yet ...here we are.”
Ricky tried not to laugh.“What’s he sending?”
“Well, yesterday it was explosion emojis and sunglasses.Today it’s an eggplant, a smirking face, and glass of water and a ...salad bowl?”
Ezra choked on his water.
Hogan narrowed his eyes.“What the hell does that even mean?”
Marsh chose that exact moment to stroll in with a protein bar and the worst timing known to man.“It means he wants you to eat clean, hydrate ...and destroy him in bed.Probably in that order.”
Hogan’s face turned bright red.“I—what?”
“Oh, yeah,” Ricky grinned.“That tracks.”
Ezra finally sat up, grinning.“Look, you should probably know—Kai’s technically DEA, but he also works freelance.His methods are ...not always legal.”
“Understatement,” Marsh muttered.
“Which is why,” Ezra continued, “when you asked him if helping us would get him fired and he said, ‘which job?’, you should’ve known.”
“I did think that was weird,” Hogan muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.
“He flirts like a sledgehammer,” Ricky offered.“You either duck or fall.”
Marsh, deadpan, “Or combust.”
Hogan growled and stormed off, muttering something about “damn emoji code” and “not having time for this chaos.”
“Save me a dance,” Ezra had called after him.
But even with everything going well—contracts, peace, Sophia laughing again—Ricky had one growing problem.
One bedroom.One child.One severely neglected sex life.
It wasn’t that he didn’t love having Sophia curled up between them with a picture book, or watching Ezra sing her to sleep with lullabies in the language Van once used for battlefield code.
It was just...
“Every time I get him naked,” Ricky muttered, “someone knocks on the damn door.Or she asks if I’m hurting him.”
Blake, sitting at the kitchen counter with a mug that said “Sleep is for the weak”, raised a brow.“You realize you two are basically parents now.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t realize parenthood meant celibacy.”
Blake snorted.“God, you sound like Bateman when Celia was teething.”
“I’m dying,” Ricky said, deadpan.“Literally dying of sexual repression.”
He rubbed a hand across his jaw, then sighed, more heartfelt this time.
Blake rolled his eyes and reached for his phone.“Fine.I’ll take her for a sleepover tonight.”
Ricky blinked.“Wait—seriously?”
