SEAL'd Trust (Brotherhood of SEAL'd Hearts)

by Gabi Moore

  I laughed. “Some things never change,” I said, but the second I did, I felt sad. Lots of things had changed. In some ways, he was the cute stud I had met in my hapless aunt’s kitchen so many eons ago; in other ways, I barely recognized him now. I felt childish around him. Again.

  “We had some good times, didn’t we?” he said, and to my surprise, my face flushed hot and I realized I was probably blushing.

  “Some very good times,” I said quietly.

  Fearing I might burst into tears and dissolve into a blob of inconvenient emotions, I smiled and tried to lighten the mood a little.

  “You were the bad boy, remember?”

  “Yeah and you were the good girl,” he laughed, putting scare quotes around the “good”.

  “God, we were both so messed up.”

  “Mostly you,” he said.

  “Shut up!”

  “Seriously you were a royal pain in the ass.”

  “I know.”

  “Hey Jared I’m sorry, I’m really sorry I said all the things I did that day, I was just being an idiot, I didn’t mean what I said at all, it’s just that I was -”

  Oh here we go. The inconvenient emotions were coming out regardless. But he was shushing me, reaching over a friendly hand to rest over mine.

  “Hey, don’t apologize, please. If anything, it was I. I was in a bad place. We were quite the bad influence on each other, weren’t we?”

  I laughed.

  “And holy hell were you obsessed about me taking your virginity,” he continued, and I hid my face, giggling.

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry, I’m cringing to think of it all now …can’t we just chalk it up to my strict upbringing and not talk about it? You weren’t an angel either you know…”

  His expression changed a little and I wondered if I had hurt him again. I couldn’t help asking, “Well, do you still, you know…?”

  He put the box firmly on the table and fixed hard eyes on mine.

  “No” he said simply, a small vein twitching in his jaw. I thought he was about to launch into an explanation, tell me that he had hit rock bottom, that he had learnt his lesson or something, found Jesus, won the lotto, met a girl, anything really. But he simply said “no” and kept looking at me, and I sensed that this was the only answer I was getting. Shame for me had only been a game. Something sexy to toy with. But I realized then, staring at his young face, how much pride there was in him, how different his demons were to mine.

  I kissed him quickly, once, and something like happiness flickered in the corners of his mouth so I kissed him again, this time more deeply. His lips were as smooth and yielding as ever, and his tongue as soft and luscious as I remembered. We smiled tenderly at one another for a moment. With some hesitation I touched his arm, the little hairs there rising up to meet my fingertips.

  “I’m kind of sad you’re going, to be honest.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  I don’t know how it happened, but his tongue was in my mouth again, and we kissed slowly and with delicate purpose, feeling out one another as though we hadn’t already done it so thoroughly so long ago. We had both been worn a little by life, humbled a little, with our strange edges rubbed off, but I was thrilled to find that same boyish deliciousness in him still, that same elasticity in his movements, the way we could lap each other up, how his tongue would respond so swiftly to mine.

  The same naughty thrill rushed all through my body, but this time it felt more naked, unencumbered with my …well, “issues”. Back then, I had made him manhandle me; he had thrown my young body around, squeezed my wrists, bruised my hips. I had egged him on, thinking that more was better, always more. But now, with his subtle, inquisitive tongue, it felt like we were doing something that even we were too afraid to do back then.

  It seemed as though the more softly his lips touched mine, the more intensely my body pulsed and ached; the more slight the delicate caresses on my wrists and forearms, the deeper the pining in the rest of me grew. He sensed this too, it seemed, judging by the tender, almost pained expression he had as he stroked my arm, trying to discover if I, too, was the same.

  Our clothes came off easily. First him, then me, then him again, then me again, until we were naked as the good lord made us, bare as Adam and Eve before the fall, only not quite so innocent. His caresses continued, flowing smoothly all over my whole body, missing nothing, lavishing warmth and attention onto each part of me. Had we done this before? Why not?

  His lips and tongue now followed where his hands had traced, and my skin thrummed and prickled in response. He lay the full length of his nude body against mine, the heat of our flesh so surprising I smiled into the new kiss he was giving me. His warm dick was between us, hardening. Cradling my body in his hands, I undulated up into him, stroking the length of his shaft with my belly, kissing every part of him with every part of me. Then, with no force, and no resistance, the thick head of his cock found its way to my slit and sunk into me slowly, and easily. I exhaled loudly, this single thrust melting away all my doubt, my body melting onto him and swallowing him with something that felt like gratitude. He mumbled something into my ear, both hands cupping each of my breasts, and I curled my hips up to pull him more fully into me.

  The moment was swollen, and slow. His movements were almost graceful, hips describing big, round, subdued shapes and the weight of his strong body bearing down on my thighs, pressing them open. Each movement was so precise, so exquisitely tuned into every little breath and moan, that it wasn’t long before I was quivering right on the precipice of a great, towering orgasm.

  To my delight, he skillfully kept me lingering there, pushing my body right to the edge and pulling back slightly, letting me relish the moment, so full and so close to splitting right open. It was quiet, fragile fucking, and at its apex, I sat twitching round his hard body, his heavy dick stirring me into a frenzy, teasing me, leading me down thick, syrupy paths of pleasure. He detected my pussy whispering round him, drew me closer to him.

  “Come,” he whispered.

  I moaned, and he pushed once more, his fullness stretching me. Under his comforting weight, I whimpered and came, hard, crying out as deep thundering strokes moved through me. He smiled down at me, taking in every quiver of my lips, every flash on my expression. With each ripple of my pussy, I pulled him further down with me, and eventually he gave in and came tumbling after me in an orgasm that made him grunt, and press down into me with his broad, manly hips.

  I clung to him with my legs and anchored against his sweaty form. We both giggled. He stroked a piece of wild hair from my face and smiled that sideways smile at me.

  Ladies and gentlemen: it was my first time. I had fucked Jared millions of times before. But this time we had done something else. Something both of us had never done before. With anyone.

  Chapter Fifteen

  My name is Melanie, and I’m a pretty good girl.

  I have just one secret.

  Judging from what a crazy mess the world is, and how awful most people are, I would rate I’m not doing too badly if I only have one.

  My secret is that I have fallen in love, and I don’t know what to do, or how to do it.

  “You don’t have to make a decision yet,” he was saying, his warm hand resting on my lower belly. He wanted me to move in with him, pack up everything and come run away and join him in his new life and his new job. Now was the perfect time, he said, and every time we met up again he had some new detail to add: I could help him decorate. They had this amazing park there I’d love. We could bring Buttons. It would be great.

  “But just think about it?”

  I hemmed and hawed, and played at thinking about it, but honestly my mind was already well made up. He sat up quickly and gave me a more serious look.

  “Mel, I’m going to show you something now, and it’s a secret, and you’d better promise not to tease me about it.”

  I looked at him with new interest.

  “A secret? I’m sure I know all
your naughty secrets…” I said with a cheeky smile.

  “No, I’m serious though. Promise you won’t judge me?”

  “Well just how bad is it?”

  “It’s …it’s kind of bad …just promise you won’t be mean if I show you?”

  I was curious now. I sat up as well. What dirty secrets didn’t I know about? Didn’t we know everything about each other by this point? Was he more of a “bad boy” than I had thought?

  “Yes ok, show me.”

  He pulled out his iPad and started to swipe. Glossy images whizzed by on the screen. I peered over, intrigued. He took a deep breath and then turned the screen around to face me. A Pinterest board. With dozens of colorful pins of home décor. Pages and pages and pages of tasteful shabby chic quilts, Scandinavian style furniture, light fittings, Japanese crockery.

  “What’s …what’s this?” I asked.

  “It’s my Pinterest account. This is my ‘Home’ board. Come and live with me. Come and live with me and we’ll make a house that looks like just this.”

  I burst out laughing.

  “That’s very, very bad of you!” I giggled, swiping through the pages, barely believing my eyes.

  “Well, will you come?” he said again, boyish puppy eyes staring at me.

  It was naughty, I know, but something made me rest my hand over his, and trace his fingers downwards, where I was still slick.

  “Sure, but you’ll have to convince me first,” I said and, you know, we both still knew how to play that game.

  - THE END -

  Rough - A Bad Boy Romance

  Chapter 1 - Tyler

  The human body can descend from five stories into the water in just under one second. I worked the math out well after the fall had taken place, in an effort to reconstruct exactly what had happened.

  When you go through your basic training, there is a lot that you don't think about.

  You don’t think about what it’s actually going to feel like when you’re stranded from the other members of your team. You don't think about whether or not what you are doing will have long-term ethical consequences beyond the security of the nation. You don’t even imagine what it might be like to have a family, or a person that you would commit yourself to, beyond the desire to become a soldier.

  For the most part, being a soldier means that you tend to be on one of a few different varieties of ego trips.

  Either you think you know what is righteous and good, and therefore, you should be free to go about and become an enforcing member of society. Or, you believe that you know what a man is, and therefore must take action to become that man. Or perhaps still, you think you know what it is to seize power — independent of ethical constructs or gender identity, and as a result, you move toward the most powerful group of fighters in the free world.

  I couldn’t tell you which one of the three I was when all of this started, but now that I look back, I can tell you that I saw a little bit of each one inside of myself, and still do.

  The difference between training and being on a mission is that the premise of your work being a drill no longer has the total absence of emotional content that is built up during months of training.

  When you kill someone, regardless of whether or not they deserved it, you now take the responsibility for that life with you throughout the remainder of your own. As for the defensive component of all of this, the lives that you fail to protect will haunt you as well. The latter happens to be one of the strongest forces in perpetuating either side of a given conflict. When you’re in the heat of it, politicians and morality tend to go out the window for most people. All you really want to do is get yourself, and your friends, home safely — though that doesn’t always work out as planned.

  No amount of brotherhood mentality can offer the protection necessary to fail-safe a doomed mission.

  We trained to be aware of eventualities and to prepare the foundational skills necessary to engage the unknown. As Navy SEALs, we were called to do things that most will only watch in the movies.

  While all the world passively watched Hollywood’s fiction, it was our job to live the ugly truth, so the civilians could remain blissfully ignorant.

  In the movies, you can’t feel the terror, or isolation. You don’t reach that edge of existence where you aren’t sure if you will ever return to ‘normalcy’. Most of my life I took that for granted. The ability to live life on the edge like that is what makes a good soldier, and an anxiety-ridden civilian.

  In the moment, we are taught to keep calm in difficult situations. We are taught to anticipate, adapt and achieve. When the lull after the action comes in, and there is enough time for reflection, that’s when things get hard.

  I didn’t have any time to think until after the fall, so that’s probably the best place to start our story.

  The human body can descend from five stories into the water in just under one second. Problem was that my fall wasn’t graceful, and it wasn’t without molestation. I was snagged in the back of the head by a round on my way down to the water. I was lucky as hell, as the bullet only gave me a concussion, but head trauma is no way to start a five-story dive.

  When you’re facing an absence of consciousness, you are spared the terror of impact, as well as the shock of the cold water. These things do not disappear completely. Instead, they tend to take form as echoes, or impressions more than concrete facts.

  When semi-automatic weapons are firing overhead, and you’re outgunned, it’s a good idea to take the plunge regardless if you can see the water.

  The positive thing about not being able to see the water at night is that anyone who shot after me wasn’t able to see very well either. They also clipped me in the shoulder, though I only remember that shot because of the scar.

  I’m positive that if they had been able to see me, I would be a dead man.

  When my body hit the water, the impact and the cold brought me back to my senses. The fact that I had just been hit didn’t mean much. My SEAL training provided an automatic baseline survival set.

  Truthfully, there was little else going on, cognitively.

  Can you move your limbs? was an automatic question I heard within myself.

  Some folks have out of body experiences. They get to watch themselves go through traumatic events and hope that they make it out on the other side.

  There is an element of detachment and unreality in these scenarios. People often report a lack of immediate awareness of the fact that they are in fact dead. They think they might wake up soon, and they think about noticing things that are happening around them.

  I’m no psychic, but I can tell you that if you have trained something into your mind for long enough, that information is there in the sub-conscious state, just waiting to be utilized. Sub-conscious internalization of procedure is the mecca for recruitment officers and cult leaders alike.

  I had retained enough of my motor skills to swim, though I didn’t have anywhere to go. The longer I swam, the more confused I became. My movements were like I was operating my body from within the confines of a dream. The connection between my physical body and the mind which commanded the muscles was at a hopeless gap. I totally lost my sense of direction, as well as my environmental context. Keeping up the movements was exhausting, and eventually, my will failed to be enough to save myself. Sooner than later, my ability to move slowed, and eventually stopped altogether.

  Your best bet in that sort of situation is called the ‘Dead Man’s Float’. A bit ironic, that name, though completely understandable.

  Had I been in that position for any longer, I’m not sure I would have made it. The water was cold, dark, and I should have died. In fact, I’m certain that the only reason I’m alive is because of my training, sheer stubbornness, and probably more than a few neglectful moments from whatever fallen angels should have come up to claim my life.

  While I was floating, I had lost consciousness. When I woke up, I didn’t have any memory of the night before, and I didn�
�t know where I was.

  All around me were the simple accommodations of a house by the sea. We’re not talking one of those fancy playboy mansions. I mean an honest to goodness, wooden shack. I knew I was at the sea, because when I woke up, I could smell the saltwater in the air. I could hear the wave lapping up against some type of structure just outside of the building. The smell of the sea was the only familiar element in my entire worldview. Thank God that one ocean is just as good as another.

  For someone who made it their life’s mission to work around the water, the similarities make it less difficult to get homesick.

  There was nobody around the shack when I first woke up. As a consequence, I had a bit of time to investigate the surroundings. Looking out the window in the room, I was able to see that the buildings were built close together. They were small, which meant that I wasn’t in a wealthy area.

  My clothes were simple, layered, and from the looks of it, second hand. I was dressed in thermals that were gray and off-white. There were a few holes in the clothes, but because I was wearing layers, the holes only showed other fabric.

  I reached my hands up to feel my face, and my fingertips brushed against a thin scrub of facial hair.

  How long have I been out? I thought, reflexively moving my fingers and toes to make sure I retained a full range of motion.

  I had shaved every day of my life since I was fourteen years old. I strained my head to figure out why I was there, but I couldn’t put all of the pieces together. I was alive, but so much of the other information was either scrambled or simply absent when my mind attempted access.

  I was fortunate that I had ten uninterrupted minutes to take in my surroundings.

  I stood up out of bed, and immediately felt weak. My shoulder had a severely limited range of motion. Upon closer inspection, I realized that not only had I been shot, but there was a scar on the outside of the entrance point of the wound which indicated that someone had performed surgery.

  Damn, I was gone, I thought, realizing that I had no idea where the wound had come from.