by Cindy Dees
The big bad commando’s head lowered to Chas’s shoulder and rested there for a moment of vulnerability that made Chas’s heart swell in his chest. Gunner trusted him. It was possibly the sexiest thing the man had ever done around him.
Chas reached out and fumbled in the nightstand drawer. “I might just have taken a chance and stashed some lube in this drawer.”
“Oh, you might have, huh? Confident much?” Gunner murmured.
Chas lifted his head from the pillow and kissed Gunner firmly on the mouth. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting for this?”
“Yeah, actually. I do.”
“Smartass,” Chas muttered.
Gunner grinned and lightly bit Chas’s shoulder.
Chas squirted lube into his hand and smeared it generously on himself. Next time Gunner could do the honors, but tonight was about showing Gunner the basics. He squirted another handful of lube and reached between them for Gunner’s throbbing erection. He smoothed his fist up and down the shaft, loving its slippery slide almost as much as he loved the way Gunner’s breath hitched in his throat at the sensation.
“Let’s keep this simple since you’re new to it,” Chas murmured, wrapping his legs around Gunner’s hips. “Pretend I’m a woman and just aim a little farther back.”
Gunner laughed under his breath. “Yeah, but I’m not drunk. I have to be drunk to even think about having sex with a woman.”
Pumping his fist up and down Gunner’s cock one more time, he replied archly, “You obviously don’t have to be drunk to have sex with me.”
Gunner went still, apparently absorbing the significance of that. “Well, if I’m going to have sex sober, I’m glad the first time will be with you.”
“Aww, Gunner. You have no idea what this is gonna be like.” Chas did. He’d been fantasizing about sex with Gunner since high school. All of his lovers over the years had been Gunner in his mind. It might have been someone else’s body, but it was always his best friend’s face, his heart, in Chas’s imagination.
“Let’s find out, shall we?” Gunner murmured.
Gunner reached between them, and Chas relinquished control of Gunner’s cock to him. He shifted a little beneath Gunner to help his aim and angle, and then that blunt heat touched his ass. Pressed a tiny bit.
He groaned aloud.
Gunner stopped immediately.
Chas’s eyes flew open, and he realized Gunner had an alarmed look on his face. “You didn’t hurt me. That felt amazing. Do it again.”
“You sure?”
Chas laughed a little. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. If you don’t fuck me right now, I’m basically never going to forgive you.”
“You’ll tell me if it hurts?” Gunner asked anxiously.
“Promise.”
“Okay.” Gunner positioned himself again, and this time he pressed a little harder. He was a well-endowed guy, and Chas’s body resisted the invasion.
“Go ahead and push all the way in,” he instructed breathlessly. “Just go slow and let the lube do its job.” He took a deep breath and pushed back as his muscles gave way all at once and Gunner’s erection slid deep, deep inside him.
“Oh. Wow. Jeez,” Gunner mumbled.
“Like it?” Chas panted as his body adapted and relaxed. It had been a while since he’d had sex.
“Uh-huh,” Gunner panted back.
“Nice and easy. Slide out a little and back in, a little deeper,” Chas said.
Gunner’s ass flexed beneath his legs, and Chas grunted as his entire ass filled with Gunner’s cock. “Oh, yeah. Like that,” Chas muttered.
Gunner withdrew partway and stroked home again, more strongly. “Oh my God,” he groaned in Chas’s ear.
Exultation filled Chas with every slide home of Gunner’s cock, and he caught the rhythm, rising to meet Gunner’s increasingly eager thrusts.
“That’s it, Gunner. Fuck me.” He wrapped his arms around Gunner’s back and tightened his legs around Gunner’s ass, urging him deeper, harder, faster.
Gunner buried his face against Chas’s neck, his breathing ragged, his body arching harder against Chas’s. It was, in a word, magnificent.
“Am I hurting you?” Gunter panted at one point.
“God, no. I can take it. Give it all to me. Don’t hold back,” Chas bit out between ragged breaths of his own.
Gunner did cut loose then, slamming into Chas’s welcoming body with all of his prodigious strength. Chas’s dick was caught between their bellies, and his erection leaped and throbbed, loving the friction. His balls tightened until he thought they might explode, and Gunner continued ramming into him like a piston over and over until he couldn’t form words, let alone breathe properly.
Gunner’s hips picked up speed, his thrusts shallow and fast, and then, all at once, he slammed all the way home, filling Chas until he thought he’d been split in two by the excessive pleasure. His orgasm exploded hot and sticky between them, and Gunner thrust his hips forward hard, his entire body arching into Chas’s, and gave a muffled shout of his own into the pillow.
Pulsing heat filled his body deep, deep inside as Gunner emptied himself into him. It was bar none the most intimate moment they’d ever shared. It stripped away everything else, all the years, all the hurts, all the secrets. They were together. This was right. And they could never hide from it again.
Gradually, the tension drained from Gunner’s big body, and Chas reveled in how Gunner’s weight pressed him deep into the mattress. He continued to hold Gunner close with both arms and legs, their bodies still joined.
Eventually, Gunner mumbled, “I’m crushing you.”
“It’s okay. I like being a pancake.”
Gunner rolled off him but looped a lazy arm around Chas’s shoulder and dragged him against his side. Chas rested, replete, with his head on Gunner’s shoulder.
They lay together like that in silence for a long time, basking in the afterglow, catching their respective breaths, and processing what had just happened.
Finally, Chas ventured to ask, “Did you like it?”
“What do you think?” Gunner asked.
“I think you’ve been missing out your whole life and are just now realizing how much you’ve got to make up for.”
Gunner’s chest vibrated with a silent chuckle. “Just gotta rub it in, don’t you?”
“I would never dream of saying I told you so.”
The chuckle became audible. “Jerk.”
“Double jerk,” he replied affectionately. “Wait till you take me from behind. You’ll be able to fuck me even deeper and harder that way.”
“I like looking at your face,” Gunner objected.
“I like looking at you too. But don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”
Gunner grinned. “I’ll take you up on the offer. But right now, duty calls. I need to get outside and make sure nobody has followed us.”
Chas groaned in protest as Gunner rolled out from under him and headed for the bathroom. He sprawled lazily on his stomach, loving how thoroughly fucked he felt. “What will you do if you find someone out there?”
“Depends on how many and how well armed they are. Fight if I can beat ’em, run if I can’t.”
“I hate running,” Chas replied lazily.
“Don’t fall asleep without getting dressed. And leave your shoes beside the bed. If we need to bug out, I’ll need you to move fast.”
“Buzzkill. You’re supposed to tell me how much you liked fucking me and that you hope you can do it again.”
Gunner strode into the bedroom, fully dressed, bent down, and pressed his lips to Chas’s ear. “I loved fucking you, and I am going to do it again.”
Chapter Ten
GUNNER FELT too damned exuberant to just sit in the living room of the tiny cabin, so he decided to run a little patrol. He preferred being outside over being cooped up behind walls in general, and he loved a brisk night like tonight, with a million stars dusting the sky and his
breath hanging in the air in puffs of exhaled fog.
It was a little after 2:00 a.m. when he heard a faint whirring noise. Startled, he looked up at the sky. It almost sounded like a—
He swore as the whirring became the distinctive buzz of a drone. It was the middle of the freaking night. No amateur was out here flying a drone for grins and giggles.
Gunner took off running down the hill toward the cabin, dodging among the trees, which weren’t giving him shit for cover after most of the leaves had come down in yesterday’s wind storm.
He thought fast as he ran grimly.
He could shoot the drone down, maybe. Bad guys might have a second one to launch. But if nothing else, it would take them a few minutes to put a second drone in the air. Range on a small military drone could run to something like fifteen kilometers, so the hostiles weren’t necessarily on top of them.
But the drone explained how they’d caught up with the three of them. It also meant these assholes were no garden-variety thugs. These guys had training, skills, and smarts. And yet again, they’d caught him flat-footed.
The noise got louder as he approached the cabin. Fuckers were hovering over it, checking it out. The drone was only about fifty feet up. He paused just inside the trees and drew his pistol. He would much rather have a rifle for making this shot, but when he’d bolted from that hospital room, he hadn’t had time to grab his field kit out of his equipment locker. He had only the handgun Rafael had given him as he got off the jet in Misty Falls.
He found a tree branch about shoulder high and rested his wrists on it as he lined up the shot. He would get one chance at taking the drone out before its pilot fled the area.
He guessed the windage as best he could, took aim carefully, exhaled, and took the shot. The drone lurched sideways, pieces flying every which way. Before it had even crashed to the ground, Gunner had taken off at a dead run for the cabin.
He burst inside, calling, “We have to go. Now. I’ll get Poppy. Run.”
Chas bolted out of the bedroom, his hair standing up every which way. “What’s up?”
Gunner scooped up Poppy, blankets and all, snagged her baby bag, which he’d repacked after supper, and ran outside without bothering to answer. There’d be time for that later, assuming they made it out of here alive.
Poppy started to cry, and he shoved her across the front seat to Chas as he started the car and hit the gas. They flew down the hill without headlights, and he was abjectly grateful he’d walked this road several times in his patrols and knew it reasonably well.
They hit the main road and he accelerated hard. Chas quieted Poppy with her pacifier and strapped her into her car seat. He flopped back down into his own seat, and Gunner said, “Look outside for me, Chas. Watch the sky for any drones.”
“Drones? Like kids’ toy helicopters?”
“That, or maybe bigger. Could be the size of a table.”
Chas leaned forward, peering into the sky. “It’s dark as heck. How am I supposed to spot a drone?”
“You’ll see a black silhouette against the stars.”
“Maybe you might see something like that. I don’t have x-ray vision, and we’re going about a hundred miles per hour.”
“We’re only doing eighty.”
“What’s the speed limit on this road? Half that?”
“Something like that,” he answered grimly. Gunner drove a few minutes, thinking hard. “Can you find me the nearest tunnel?”
Chas frowned. “Like where a road cuts through a mountain?”
“Yes. Doesn’t Pennsylvania have a bunch of them?”
“I guess.”
Chas started poking at his cell phone, and in a minute or so he said, “There’s one about forty miles south of here. Sidelong Tunnel. Over a mile long. It’s on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.”
“That’ll work. Give me directions to it.”
Chas called a couple of turns, and then they hit the turnpike, racing west on the mostly deserted highway at nearly the hundred miles per hour Chas had accused him of before. Drones might be maneuverable little bastards, but they weren’t all that fast. If he could outrun the drone and get under cover, he might be able to throw the hostiles off their tails. If he could outrun it.
They never did see a drone, but the tightness across the back of his neck told him that one was likely up there, tracking them. His intuition was rarely wrong, and he trusted this one.
“There it is. The tunnel,” Chas said tightly as a brightly lit arch came into view ahead of them.
Gunner careened into the tunnel and went about a quarter mile before he slowed the car and pulled off onto the narrow shoulder. Then he turned off the ignition.
“What are you doing?” Chas squawked.
“C’mon. Grab the baby bag. I’ll get Poppy.” He quickly opened the hood and propped it up as if the car had broken down. Then, leaving her strapped in, he picked up Poppy, car seat and all, and lifted her out of the car. They crossed the center median quickly and stood by the side of the road.
Gunner made sure Poppy was clearly visible to any oncoming traffic, and as an eighteen-wheeler’s tall headlights came into view, Gunner waved his free arm over his head. The big rig’s brakes squealed as the driver came to a stop beside them.
“Got car trouble?” the driver yelled down.
“Yes, sir. We could really use a lift,” Gunner said in his friendliest possible voice. “It’s cold out here for the baby.”
“Get in,” the driver said.
Chas climbed in first, and Gunner handed up Poppy and then climbed in the high cab. “We really appreciate this,” Chas was saying warmly.
“Where you headed? I’m going the opposite direction from y’all,” the driver said, pulling into the lane of traffic and accelerating slowly.
“Any place we can rent a car would be great,” Gunner answered.
“No problem. I’m headed for Philadelphia, myself.”
“Perfect,” Gunner responded. “We’re from there. We’ll just head home and cancel the whole vacation.”
The trucker nodded, and Gunner sat back as they exited the tunnel. It was tempting as hell to lean forward and look for a drone hovering at the entrance, but odds were the thing was waiting at the west end of the tunnel for them to emerge.
They’d caught this ride fast enough that he figured the hostiles would wait another ten or fifteen minutes for their car to emerge from the tunnel before they actually drove in to flush them out. By that point, they should be long gone from the area.
About a half mile east of the tunnel, he spotted a black SUV parked on the opposite side of the turnpike. He tried to catch a plate inconspicuously, but it was too dark for him to pick it up. Smug, he sat back in his seat and listened to Chas and the trucker chatting about where the trucker was from and what he was hauling.
It was a couple of hours later when they arrived at the outskirts of Philadelphia. Gunner picked a likely looking truck stop and got out there, claiming that they would grab a cab the rest of the way to their house. With a word of thanks to the trucker, he ordered a ride-share service on his cell phone.
“Where are we going?” Chas asked as they waited inside the warmth of the convenience store beside the gas pumps.
“Airport.”
“We flying somewhere?”
“Not without risking some difficult questions over the baby. But I can get a decent rental car there.”
An hour later, as Gunner loaded a sleepy baby and a nearly as sleepy Chas into a turbocharged muscle car, Chas commented dryly, “So by decent, you meant a fast car.”
“Hell yeah. I need to be able to outrun those fuckers if they manage to find us again.”
“Language,” Chas mumbled, his eyes already drifting closed.
Gunner was tired too. But he had a lot more experience with running on empty than Chas did. He got in the car and headed south. Time to call in reinforcements.
He drove about two hours, until the sky started to lighten in the east, an
d then he pulled into a random hotel—random but relatively nice. For some reason, people on the run tended to stay in dives. He supposed the assumption was a sleazy motel manager would be less inclined to talk to the police. But in their case, an upscale hotel manager would be less likely to talk to a bunch of criminals without badges asking questions about the guests.
He carried in Poppy, asleep in her car seat, and led a sleepy Chas to the room.
Chas mumbled, “Can I take off my shoes?”
“Yes. We should be safe here. Sleep. I’ve got a few phone calls to make.”
Chas tumbled into the bed, and Gunner looked longingly at it. He would love nothing more than to crawl in with Chas, snuggle up to him, and crash for about twelve hours. Instead, he went into the bathroom and closed the door.
He called Spencer Newman. The guy wouldn’t mind a phone call in the wee hours of the morning—he’d been an operator long enough to know that trouble didn’t always come during daylight hours.
To his credit, Spencer sounded alert when he answered his phone. “Hey, Gun. What’s up?”
“I’ve got a problem. I haven’t been able to shake whoever followed us out of Misty Falls. I’ve got the kid and the guy who rescued the kid with me. We’re in a hotel about an hour outside of Washington, DC.”
“Just a sec. I’m gonna put you on speakerphone so Dray can hear too.”
Drago Thorpe and Spencer were partners, both personally and professionally, these days. Dray was ex-CIA and apparently a hell of a black ops man.
“Hey, Gun.” Drago sounded noticeably sleepier than Spencer.
“Sorry to wake you up.”
Spencer said briskly, “What can you tell us about your tails?”
“They’re good. They had a tracking burr in Poppy’s clothes, and—”
“Poppy? Is that the kid’s name?”
“Nah. It’s just what we call her. The night Chas found her, she was wearing a shirt with a big red flower on it.”
“Cute. Continue,” Spencer said.
“I put the burr in a truck headed for Canada, but the hostiles didn’t bite. My best guess is they tracked us with a drone into Pennsylvania. I shot down one drone, but they must have put up a second one. We switched vehicles in a tunnel, and I think we’ve lost them for the moment. But I could use some backup. I haven’t gotten much sleep in the past several days, and I’ll need some extra firepower if these assholes close in on us.”