by Fields, MJ
He brushes his lips against mine then sits back. “I won’t.”
“Do I have your word?”
“You do, but I need to put distance between us.”
“You mentioned that this morning, yet here I am.”
He glances at me from out of the corner of his eyes then looks away as the corner of his lips curves up.
“I also want to know if this thing with your father needs addressing immediately or you wanna hold off.”
When I look down, he lifts my chin, his eyes expectant.
“I’m sure it can wait,” I answer.
“How bad is it?”
I look from one of his eyes to the other. This is a man who says what he means and means what he says. I take immense comfort in that.
“I don’t ever want to expect you to be one hundred percent honest with me and not give the same to you.”
“That’s a damn good thing, Doc, so spill it.”
“You know my father was a Marine.” I look down as insecurity takes hold, doubting myself for the first time since that first night here with him.
He takes my hand. “Go on.”
“He was always a good father.” I take a deep breath and force myself to look at him, needing to see it in his eyes if something changes. If this fear comes to fruition. “Something changed in him at GITMO. My mother, whose world revolved around him, left him. For a year, they were apart. When he left there, he came back to us, and they eventually got back together. Like I said, before GITMO, he was the best man I had ever met and an even better father. I knew part of that had changed, but I never doubted he wouldn’t pull past it.”
“Understood.” He begins to move his thumb back and forth across my knuckles again, soothing my insecurities and coaxing me to continue.
“When we lived in DC, I could tell something had changed.” I lean back and continue looking at him. “I remember a man he used to meet at the park that he’d take me to when Mom wasn’t with us.”
“A man?” he asks.
“His name was Arthur Deveraux.”
“More.”
“I think he worked for him.”
“And you think he had something to do with Will’s death?”
“I think the way he reacted when I told him Calee was Will’s was completely out of the norm.”
“We’ll find out.”
“We, Tanner—me and you.—not the others. I don’t know what I want to do with this yet, but I want your help figuring it out.”
“Understood, but no promises, Doc. If he was behind Will’s death —”
“We,” I cut him off. “You and I make that decision together. There can be no room for assumptions. If I’m going to turn my father in, I need to be one hundred percent sure.”
“And how sure are you?” he asks.
“I wouldn’t have come to you if I wasn’t pretty sure.”
“Do you have evidence?”
I shake my head. “I know my father, and I know the way Deveraux has looked at me since Calee.”
“How often have you seen him?”
“A couple times.”
“Where, Doc?” His voice shakes.
“After college, I didn’t see him for years. The first time I saw him again was after I’d seen him at the hospital after Jaxson’s accident. I saw how you all reacted to him and asked my father if he was the same man.”
“What did your father say?”
“He said to stay away from him and to stay out of it. He even asked that, when my term with the hospital was up, Calee and I should move back to California to be closer to him and Mom.”
“What’s the term with the hospital?”
“Eight years and my student loans will be paid off.”
He nods, and I see the wheels turning.
“Then, I saw him at family court, when Lawrence represented Lily when Jaxon and Frankie went for custody. And a few times at the hospital and when I have been out and about.”
“So every time you saw him was after Jaxson’s accident?”
I nod.
“And you didn’t think that maybe it was something to bring up to us?”
“Not until recently.”
“Fuck,” he sputters. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
He starts to stand without thinking, and I grab him so he doesn’t fall. “Careful.”
“Me be careful?” He laughs uncomfortably. “Me? How about you?”
“I’m fine.”
“The fuck you are. That man is evil.”
“We’ve been fine.”
“Yeah, you won’t be if he sees that you’re sniffing around me.”
“Sniffing around you?”
“Don’t get pissy with me, Doc.”
“I’m not getting pissy. I’m getting whiplash, which is par for the course.” I stand up and start to walk away.
“Don’t you walk away from me.”
“Then don’t make it so damn easy to want to.”
“How did you think I’d react, Doc? Jesus.”
“Not like I’m the damn enemy! Do you know how hard this was for me? This is my father.”
“Fuck your father! This is you, and this is Calee.” He tugs me back. “Now stop being a pain in the ass and sit. You and I have a lot to hammer out before you leave. And when you do, you and I are nothing until this is done.”
“Fine.”
“Fine,” he repeats my word and the tone it holds.
We look at each other, both angry, both frustrated, both in emotional distress, and one in physical pain. Then he grips the back of my neck and pulls me toward him. Our lips connect in a hungry, angry, needy, desire-filled, passionate storm.
When he pulls back and we both fight either wanting more or needing air to fill our lungs in order to survive, he growls, “This was bad timing, Doc.”
“Then forget I ever told you.” My emotions begin to get the best of me and my voice breaks. “Just forget about me.”
“Fuck that.” He grips the back of my head again as he lies back, kissing, licking, and sucking at my lips, my tongue, my mouth, my jaw. “Lose the fucking pants and sit on my face. I wanna taste your cunt one more time before we part ways for a while.”
He and I both tear at my clothes, and when they are off, he pulls me toward him, and I lift my leg, sliding it between him and the couch. I grip the arm of the sofa with one hand and the back with the other as he grips my ass and pulls me fiercely onto his face. Rocking me against him, he groans while flicking his tongue across my heated flesh. His tongue-flicks then turn into nibbles, and then his nibbles turn into slow, hard licks.
“Yes, yes.” I grind against his mouth as I lean back, placing my hands on his hips.
He leans in farther, gripping my ass tighter, and then I feel him push a finger inside me, one then two, as he sucks hungrily on my lips, my clit, and …
“Oh God.”
“Come all over me, dammit.”
I quickly dismount and turn my body, push his shorts down, take him in my hand while settling back on his face so he can continue eating me while I suck his massive, hard cock. His appreciative groan vibrates against my pussy.
“I want you with me, dammit,” I beg.
“Then get me there,” he says, lips still against my flesh.
I take him as far as I can, pumping firmly on the extra inches I can’t get in my mouth. He grips my ass harder now, his licking and sucking intensify, and so does mine.
“Fuck.” He thrusts his hips. “Fuck yes.”
When I feel him tense, I take him as deeply as I can, closing my eyes and hollowing my cheeks as I grind against him, taking what I can from him while giving him all I can.
Right now, we aren’t ending this—whatever it is. We are without masks, our insecurities be damned, our doubts disintegrated. We are connected deeper than ever, body, mind, and soul. We are heat to heat, heart to heart.
“I’m gonna come!” I cry.
“You better,” he says as he sinks a finger deeper into me and s
ucks at my clit unforgivingly, while I do the same to his dick. When I feel his thick veins harden further along my tongue, I lay it flat and firmly against the underside of his massive erection. He hisses.
“Come with me, Doc. Come with me.”
I come harder than ever before as he presses his hands firmly on my ass, sinking his fingers almost painfully into my flesh as he thrusts, coming in harsh jets of warm cream that fill my mouth so full that I’m unable to drink him all in.
Panting, I lay my head against his leg as I attempt to catch my breath while licking him clean in slow strokes.
“Get up here,” he demands.
I carefully move my leg over him then cautiously turn my body.
He pulls me down. “Give me your mouth.”
The way he grabs the back of my neck and pulls me toward him, the way his mouth takes my lips and his tongue pushes into mine is no less hungry than he was before he came.
He allows my tongue to now explore his mouth. I taste myself on his tongue and suck it gently as he groans. When I regretfully pull my mouth from his and rest my forehead to his, I see a light return to his eyes that hasn’t been present since his accident.
“You’re going to listen to me, Doc, and you’re going to do what I say, because I can’t imagine never again licking your cunt, your mouth, or every fucking part of you I haven’t yet had the pleasure of at this point.”
I close my eyes and take in the promise that I thought had been lost moments ago.
“I need you to be safe, and I don’t want you to do a damn thing off schedule, including coming here.”
“But—”
“It raises flags. We don’t need to raise any damn flags. We need to fly beneath the radar and do it with a deliberate and swift plan. One I will be working on.”
“We do this together,” I remind him.
“But separate. I know things you don’t. You know things I don’t. We gather intel and, when we can compare notes without raising suspicion that will put you or Calee in harm’s way, we do that.”
“And what about you?”
He pushes my hair behind my ear and looks me over. “I’m going to be doing what I do best.”
When I feel my face flush, his eyes widen in amusement. “So I can do the other thing I’m as good at when this is all over and done with.”
“And what am I going to do to help?”
“Stay safe. And at Sunday dinner at Jax and Frankie’s, ask her about Deveraux, about Jax’s past with that shitbag, even before the custody thing.”
I nod.
“And do it without her catching on to what it is you’re doing.”
“Anything else?”
He nods. “Sleep with Calee, let Rosa and William stay every night if they want to. I’ll have one of the men in a car outside your house at all times to make damn sure you girls are safe.”
“You have to do something for me, too.”
“What’s that?”
“Trust me.”
“How the fuck could I not?”
19
In the Eye
Titan
How many times have I judged Irons or Shadows for diving into something without a plan? The answer is simple. Every fucking time they do it. But I get it now. I understand what it is that pulls them to be reckless at times.
When the heart leads, you have no choice but to follow.
I want to jump in and fix everything all at once, but unlike them, I can’t just jump in with both feet and hope it turns out okay. I have to do it with one.
Before she left, I gave her a burner phone for emergencies only. It also shares her location with me, the only contact she has in it. She insisted she change my dressing, and even though I already did, I let her anyway. I like the way she takes care of me. And I love the way she looks at something most view as monstrous or with pity as art. I suppose it’s because she’s the artist who created it. Christ, even Calee seems unaffected. She’s the reason I know why the bottom of it is extremely sensitive to touch.
When Doc tore my house up and Calee lay on the couch, watching Looney Tunes, with me half in and out of sleep, she hugged my damn stump and traced the bottom of it with her curious, little fingers. When I flinched, she looked up at me and whispered, “Sowwy.” I winked and told her it was okay, and she smiled and blinked back at me.
Involuntarily, without warning, or a logical explanation, another piece of my heart was owned.
I fell in lust with Doc when she and I finally gave in to an attraction I had fought for months to hide. I knew there was no turning back after that. Hell, I didn’t even feel like I had betrayed Will, which was why I had never made a move to begin with.
When I saw her in Germany, my feelings that were on high alert already couldn’t be stopped. I knew logic was betraying me then, too.
She needed me. I needed her.
She wanted me. I wanted her.
And for the first time ever, a female demanded my respect, and I gave it to her freely yet still fought.
When I saw how she fought for not only me but Laylee, I realized I would never be able to walk away from her.
Three females now own my heart, and I will protect them until I can’t anymore.
“Hey, man.”
I jump when I see Johnny walk into the room.
He chuckles. “Sorry.”
“Who’s on Doc?”
He shakes his head and laughs. “She was on you a few minutes ago.”
“Watch it.”
“Started to then looked away to give you both some fucking privacy. Not sure you realize this, but your neighbors might not be so kind.”
I look out the window. “How the fuck could you see from your car across the street?”
He laughs again. “I’m just busting your ass. I was walking up to the house to give you some intel. But seriously, lights off when you have women over here, riding your face. Rev, Russ, Rex, or any of the new guys might not be so inclined.”
“Who’s on Laurie?” I ask again.
“The Rev is. Russ and Rex are in Syria.”
“Good.” I nod.
“Now that we found them, how long are you gonna pay ten Gs a day to have them tailed?”
“As long as it takes.”
He laughs. “I’m gonna end up owning this house and your share of the cabin.”
“I highly fucking doubt that.”
“Your medical discharge only takes six months. Then that fat salary is gonna be gone. I know you four were always about saving the world and heading to Pennsylvania Ave, but I could use you on my team. I pay better than the US Government.”
“You also work outside the law.”
“On occasion, the law is wrong.”
“And, on occasion, you drop more than a dime bag of some shit in the middle of a jungle.”
“Off US soil. And unless you’d like me to get philosophical and be here until four a.m. debating wrongs and ri—”
“Just make sure your ass doesn’t get busted and it doesn’t reflect negatively on us.”
“I hire it done. My hands are clean. No one’s talking. In fact, natives love seeing Uncle Johnny coming. It’s like fucking Christmas.”
“You could be legit, Johnny. You could easily—”
“I was a twenty-two-year-old kid walking into a desert with the same attitude you had. I was gonna save the world for the love of my country. One accident, one organ no longer working, and I was out on my ass with an atta boy, promised a once a month check, and half-ass medical coverage for the rest of my life. Reality hit home when I was dropped back in New Mexico with nothing but all the time in the world to drink, fuck, and stare at the walls of a shitty little apartment.
“Less than thirty days later, and I had enough of that lifestyle. They build men with honor, courage, and commitment on base then send us packing with the I’m-better-than-where-I-came-from attitude. Home wasn’t enough for me. It won’t be enough for you.”
“That’s my point, man. Join us.�
��
He laughs. “Then who’s going to chase down women for Shadows, hunt down daughters of one of the most sought-after terrorists on the planet because your friend’s balls got twisted and he caught the feels, or look after Irons’ family—do the shit you all can’t without getting your hands a little dirty every once in a while? As Rev says, judge not, Titan, because, without me and my men supporting you all fighting the good fight, you’d all be like I was back then.”
“Not judging, just offering an out.”
“Irons has already tried that, and we had this same talk. He realized real quick I was right.”
“Offer will always stand.”
“I appreciate that.” He sits down, leans back into the soft leather couch, and yawns. “Because you and I are friends, I’ve had Rex and Rev make sure they head toward Turkey.”
“Why Turkey?”
He sighs. “Because I know you, and this shit isn’t going away.”
* * *
I was late for the weekly Sunday dinner due to PT kicking my ass. And because I refused not to drive, since I was completely off medication.
As soon as I walk in, I see the most beautiful smile then hear an ear-piercing squeal and know damn well I have to brace myself for impact.
“Calee, no!” Doc yells.
I see her running toward me in my peripheral but am razor-focused on the little beauty and trying to figure out what the hell she’s going to do.
Realization dawns on me. Kids are like wild animals—you never know what they’re going to do or how they’re going to react.
I crouch a bit, hold out my hands, and brace for impact. She laughs while jumping into my arms.
“You godda new leg!”
I allow my back to hit the wall, less than a step behind me so that we don’t fall to the ground as she hugs me. I realize quickly this one is like a baby koala bear—she constantly needs to be wrapped around something. As odd as it seems to me, I also realize I’m glad she’s like this with me.
“Your mom had it made. Just starting to figure it out.”
“She taked yous leg and gave yous a new one?” She leans back, linking her fingers around my neck and looking at me thoughtfully. “She dos cwazy things like that.”