Desire Me If You Can [Novel] - Chapter 16

Grayson was smiling, but the team members, seeing his face, felt a cold sweat trickling down their backs.
“No, really, we don’t know either…”
“Give us some kind of clue! How are we supposed to keep track of who did what in that chaos?”
“Look, when a job’s done, it’s done. We don’t nitpick about who did well and who didn’t. Even if we find out who made a mistake, it’s to come up with solutions to prevent it from happening next time, not to assign blame.”
They all made valid points, but Grayson wasn’t interested at all in those words. His only concern was the identity of the Extreme Omega who had knocked him unconscious with their pheromones.
“Is this really everyone on the team?”
Grayson asked, pointing with his fingers, and Wilkins replied curtly, his face etched with displeasure, “Yes.”
“Ah, Dane’s missing.”
Someone spoke up, and everyone looked at him at once. Grayson muttered, looking past the team members who were silently cursing him with their eyes,
“Dane?”
He raised an eyebrow at the name, and another team member replied with a smirk,
“Yeah, the guy who almost smashed your head in with a fire extinguisher.”
Chuckles erupted from here and there. Grayson smiled too, but his eyes remained cold.
“He tried, but he didn’t succeed.”
“Ah, what a waste. He almost had you.”
Grayson smiled back at the man who’d made the teasing remark, laced with mock regret.
“I think so too.”
The underlying meaning of his words was clear. In the renewed, chilling silence, Grayson emptied his remaining beer and looked around the group.
“Excuse me for a moment.”
They stared at him blankly for a moment as he turned around and walked toward the restroom.
“Why is that guy looking for Dane?”
Ezra, who had spoken first, was immediately met with a barrage of questions.
“Ezra, what happened back then? We went along with your story, but…”
“Wasn’t that the first time he clashed with Dane today? Wasn’t he out of his mind back then? There wouldn’t have been time for them to talk.”
“What happened that made this bastard so obsessed that he came all the way here?! Tell us, so we can figure out what to do!”
“Wait, wait a minute.”
Ezra held up his hands, flustered by the barrage of questions. He looked at the expectant faces around him and said with a troubled expression,
“I don’t know either. I just arrived at the scene with you guys.”
“I wasn’t there. Explain it in detail.”
Wilkins had been directing the operation from outside. If he had known this would happen, he would have gone inside himself. He received reports after the incident, but information like who rescued whom was generally irrelevant. He had no idea what was happening with his team.
“Well… um… we followed Dane, and he found Grayson and two other victims. You know, those crazy twins… They were already out of it, and he was the only one who seemed fine. But for some reason, those two kept going crazy, and it was a real struggle…”
“And?”
Unable to contain his impatience, Wilkins urged him on, and Ezra pointed in the direction Grayson had disappeared, his face contorted.
“Suddenly, that bastard fainted.”
“What? Why?”
“Suddenly?”
They all reacted the same way to the unexpected news. Ezra shook his head, equally perplexed.
“I don’t know why it happened. I didn’t see it myself, but I think Dane did something.”
“Dane? How?”
Someone asked, curious, and another voice chimed in, as if remembering something.
“Oh, now that I think about it, didn’t Dane say he was in the military?”
“Yeah, he said he was deployed to the Middle East.”
With that, the same thought crossed everyone’s minds. He must have used some special technique he learned in the military.
“You know how in those YouTube videos, they show people knocking someone out by hitting their neck
like this?”
One of them made a chopping motion with his hand, prompting another to share their own knowledge.
“I heard you can knock someone out by pressing a certain spot.”
“There must be more than that. He would have received special training.”
The gathered people nodded in turn, forming a collective understanding.
“Anyway, after that guy fainted, the other two calmed down a bit… they were rescued separately, and
Dane and I threw that bastard out the window.”
“…Did something happen to his head because of how he was knocked out?”
“No, knowing his personality, he’s probably just pissed that he got hit.”
“Yeah, that makes sense why Miller is looking for Dane.”
“So he’s looking for the person who hit him. Does that mean his ‘repayment’ is actually revenge?”
When someone spoke, Ezra stepped forward and added,
“That’s why I’ve been trying to hide it. Especially after what happened this afternoon, if he finds out the guy who knocked him out then is the same guy he fought with today, he’ll really try to kill him.”
Everyone agreed, but one of them raised an objection.
“Even a Miller would have a hard time getting away with murder.”
“A Miller doesn’t need to resort to physical violence, there are plenty of other ways to do it.”
The objection quickly died down. In the end, they all reached a unanimous decision. No matter what, under any circumstances, they would never reveal that the person Grayson was looking for was Dane.
Swearing on their loyalty to their colleagues, who risked their lives every day.
Idiots.
***
Grayson walked across the hall toward the secluded restroom, his face set in a grim expression. It was obvious they were hiding something. Should he grab them one by one and break their fingers?
He could think of many ways, but there was no guarantee they would tell the truth. There were countless studies showing that torture wasn’t effective for obtaining confessions. There was no point in going through the trouble if it wasn’t for his own amusement. More than anything, Grayson wanted the truth. He didn’t want to waste time on pointless endeavors if it wouldn’t help him find it.
Is waiting the only option?
It’s not that he hadn’t ruled out this possibility. Wasn’t this the reason he had become a firefighter in the first place? In any case, he would eventually find him if he observed them closely.
The thought energized him, dispelling his fatigue despite the late hour. He would finally meet his destiny. The anticipation alone was enough to banish his irritation and fill his body with energy.
Despite his repeated failures, he always allowed himself to get carried away by hope. Imagining his future partner like this was the most enjoyable part of Grayson’s life. He might not be able to sleep properly until he found the one destined for him. But even so, he wouldn’t feel the slightest bit exhausted. After all, the
most important moment of his life was right before his eyes.
Right now.
As he whistled and opened the door, something caught his eye. A woman, her arms braced against the wall and her upper body bent over, moaning softly, and behind her, a man moving his hips…
…and his chest.
Grayson stood there without even blinking, staring intently at the man’s large, firm breasts. Every time the man moved, they tightened and loosened enticingly. Grayson was momentarily mesmerized, watching the muscles flex and relax.
The man’s body was like a well-sculpted statue. He caught glimpses of a thick cock below a clearly defined
six-pack abs. The two were joined as one, the man thrusting into the woman in steady strokes, one hand gripping her breast, the other her waist.
It was then that Grayson vaguely realized that he had mistaken the store’s storage room for the restroom.
It had only been a few seconds, but the moment he belatedly realized that he had been staring blankly at someone else’s genitals, or rather, at the body of a man who was engrossed in fucking a woman. Suddenly, the man turned his head. A handsome face, slightly flushed from sex, came into Grayson’s view. The moment the image of fiery reddish blond hair and blue eyes was imprinted on his pupils, the man’s
well-shaped brows furrowed in annoyance.
Oh.
That was the last thing Grayson remembered.