Gifts of Honor: Starting from ScratchHero's Homecoming

by Gail, Stacy

  Sully’s thought processes hit a brick wall, a jagged sound of torment ripping from him when a hot hand wrapped around his stiffened flesh.

  “Lucy... God...!”

  “You mean hot, right?” Her hips arched up another inch as she guided him to her entrance, her fingers squeezing him near the darkened crown until it was a magnificent agony to bear. “I want to see if you can find my most important erogenous zone.”

  The shallow panting of his breath never reached his ears as he put all his concentration into not coming right there in her hand. With a feverish delight he surged into her, the tension coiling in his lower region so intense he trembled on a pleasured-pained edge he never knew existed. The muscles sheathing him were so hot, so slick, he half feared he’d lose consciousness it felt so damn good. He rolled his hips in the same relentless rhythm she used in riding his hand, and with each stroke her hips lifted higher, taking more of him in. When he impaled her up to his hilt she cried out, an incoherent sound of euphoria, and it destroyed what little restraint he had left. Furiously he rammed himself into her, the island’s foundation squeaking under the relentless assault, speeding faster and faster until he thought he’d die from the burgeoning pressure...

  A frenzied spasm of ecstasy bloomed inside him—his body, his senses, his mind. Everything he knew swamped with a lush pleasure so profound that he knew nothing else, even as her cries of completion joined his. Molten heat milked his staff, her contractions of rapture gripping him so fiercely the strength to stand almost left him. Shattered, he collapsed on her back while his release emptied into the deepest part of her, and for the briefest moment, regret that she was on birth control zipped across the blank canvas of his mind.

  Her breathing was little more than helpless sobs, and he kissed her wet cheek even as he reluctantly slipped from her depths. He ignored the fleeting sense of loss by dragging the comforter off the floor, wrapping her up and carrying her to the platform bed. She didn’t protest, not even when he got them both snuggled under the covers and arranged her so that she lay like a limp rag doll over his chest.

  “So?” Delighted at having her so near, Sully buried his mouth in her hair and breathed in her scent. “Did I win our game, Luce? Did I find that one last zone?” Nothing wrong with fishing for a compliment or two.

  “I’d give you a cookie as a reward if I could move.” Her lips barely shifted against his skin, sounding more asleep than awake. “See you in the morning.”

  That was when it hit him that not only was she not throwing him out, but that his constant craving for cookies was nowhere to be found.

  * * *

  “Here. Merry freaking Christmas.”

  Coe glanced up, startled, as Lucy plunked a large gift bag on the counter next to him. The Dirty Duck was more packed than usual, something Lucy hadn’t counted on. But despite it being Christmas Eve and the parade still a few hours away, apparently people seemed happy to while away the hours by hanging out and enjoying the festive spirit of the season.

  Everyone except her. If anyone so much as smiled at her, she didn’t trust herself not to snarl.

  “A little early, aren’t you?” Taking a peek into the bag, he moved it down between his feet and out of the way of a nearby diner seated at the counter. “I thought we were supposed to exchange gifts tomorrow.”

  “Traditions were made to be broken. After today I’m taking a break from the outside world until the New Year. And by the way, while the ukulele and sidewalk chalk were a breeze to find, that lightsaber pen you wanted was a real pisser, so it’s on back order. I got you a Boba Fett pen as a temporary replacement, and if you don’t like it, you can kiss my butt.”

  “Sweet, Boba Fett rules.” He handed her a menu when it looked as if she was just going to sit there and do her best impersonation of a thundercloud. “I take it your morning at the mayor’s house wasn’t the dream everyone imagines it to be?”

  “I swear to God, that prissy woman gives me a headache.” Lucy scowled at the menu without reading a word. “She’s the one who wanted the gingerbread house to be fresh, despite the fact that these things are usually done the week before. Why does she want it fresh? Because she wants it to be eaten at the end of the Christmas Ball and she doesn’t want it to taste stale. But she wants it to be decorated—with the royal icing all set and dried—by tonight. Apparently she believes I learned my baking skills at Hogwarts.”

  “Honeydukes would be more appropriate.” Then he ducked when she swatted the menu at his head. “Easy, slugger. What’s got you in such a snit?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know.”

  “Sad to say, my telepathic abilities haven’t been the same since the last solar flare.”

  “You mean you really don’t know?”

  He stared at her warily. “Oh, hell. Did I miss some weird friend-related anniversary that women make a big deal of, but men couldn’t give a shit about?”

  “Sex,” she hissed so that the rest of The Dirty Duck patrons didn’t hear. “I had sex with Sullivan last night. I thought you saw him leave my place early this morning, around the time I left to put together Her Majesty’s stupid gingerbread house from hell.”

  She had to give it to him—Coe could pull one spectacular surprise face when he wanted to. “What. The actual. Fuck.”

  “That phrase has occurred to me as well.”

  “He’s recovering from a closed-head injury. What’s your excuse?”

  “I knew it would be hard to live in Bitterthorn once Sullivan returned home,” she muttered without answering. Basically because she had none. “But I thought I was prepared, you know? Even before his brain hit the delete button when it came to me, I wasn’t sure where our relationship was headed after he’d re-upped. I talked myself into believing I could live in this town when he came back and not...not...”

  “Have sex.”

  She sighed and set the menu aside. “Yeah.”

  “Sometimes I wish you were a guy. This conversation would be way easier if you were a guy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know you, Luce. I know how you view sex, and I know how the male gender looks at it.” He waited until she gave her order to the waitress before continuing. “This’ll probably come as a shock to you, but guys look at sex differently than you hearts-and-flowers women.”

  “Wow, you’re right. I’m shocked beyond words. What a freaking news bulletin, Captain Obvious.”

  “Guys are simple creatures,” he said, ignoring her. “They just want to get laid. It feels good, so they do it. But you women are hardwired to think for the long-term—could this guy be a good provider, a good breeder? If he is, I want to be with him for the long haul, so I’d better get all romantic and lovey-dovey so I can stomach his ass for fifty years. That’s when it gets messy.”

  Lucy tilted her head, considering. “I don’t think I’ve ever consciously thought of the word breeder in my life. Oh, wait. I just did.”

  “The point is that if you thought more like a guy, you’d be happy with what you had and move on from there.”

  “Last night I thought I could do that. I really did. But then morning came and reality came with it.”

  “Oh, that sucks. I hate it when it does that.”

  “It was so perfect, waking up with Sully.” She dragged a hand through her hair, trying to find the right words. “But then it hit me. While last night had been fun for the both of us, I was the only one thinking how wonderful it would be to wake up with him every morning.”

  “Like it was in the past?”

  “Exactly.”

  Coe shook his head. “The past is dead and buried, Luce, and if you keep trying to hold on to it, it’s only going to kill what you’ve got in the present. You can’t keep sinking yourself into misery every time Sully looks your way.”

  She arched a h
aughty brow as her lunch arrived. “I don’t sink myself into misery.”

  “You love Sully, even though he not only doesn’t love you back, he doesn’t even remember you, right? Sounds like misery to me, and that’s sad to watch, because you’re the only one who can pull yourself out of this.” He gave the meager cup of soup she ordered a dirty look. “That’s all you’re having?”

  “I have to hurry back to the gingerbread house of horrors and finish decorating it with Pauline,” she muttered, grabbing up a spoon. “What do you mean, I’m the only one who can pull myself out? What am I supposed to do, wave a magic wand and bring all of Sullivan’s memories back?”

  “This isn’t about Sully. It’s about you. You could try being happy with what you have, live in the moment and move on once it’s done. That’s so much better than living in the past and lamenting how much you’ve lost, isn’t it?”

  Part of her knew Coe had a point—she should be happy with the time she’d had with Sully when he’d come so close to dying. And maybe it was selfish to wish for him to remember her, when he’d gotten so much back. But Coe made it sound like cutting off her emotions was as easy as turning off a light switch. It wasn’t easy and dammit, she was selfish—selfish enough to hold out the stupid hope that somehow, some way, a miracle would happen and she’d be important to Sully once more.

  Chapter Ten

  Not even his physical therapists had put him through this much torture, was all Sully could think. Sandwiched in between an empty-headed beauty queen and the mayor, there was no way to escape the horrific rendition of “Sleigh Ride” played by the town’s high school band. With a chubby-cheeked kid clacking two pieces of wood together whenever the spirit moved him rather than at the end to emulate a whip cracking, Sully thought of faking a headache to get the hell out of there.

  From what he could see as he checked out the other attendees of the Christmas Ball, he wasn’t the only one hoping to make an exit, discreet or otherwise. Though the turnout for the mayor’s Christmas Ball was good, no one seemed happy to be there. Most were dressed in Christmas finery, with dresses that sparkled like ornaments and tailored suits with appropriately festive ties no self-respecting guy would have picked out himself. Somehow he’d gotten talked into his medal-bedecked ASU—Army service uniform—along with several former members of the military now residing in Bitterthorn, but the uptight formality made him want to break out in hives. Worse, the mayor’s mausoleum-like manor only added to the pretentious atmosphere. Every available inch of mahogany-paneled wall space in the great room was covered in gilt-edged family portraits. Most of the people in the paintings looked as disapproving as the current Mayor Weems, with her helmet of brown hair and pinched face that hadn’t changed from the time she’d first been elected mayor when he was a boy.

  If Lucy had been there, they could have built a great hypothesis on whether or not the good mayor’s own portrait was actually hidden upstairs with Dorian Gray’s.

  His sigh was covered by the orchestra’s abysmal transition from “Sleigh Ride” to “My Country, ’tis Of Thee”—two pieces that, until now, had never been put together in the history of music. Lucy. No matter where his thoughts began, they always wound up on her doorstep. He would have loved it if they could have spent the day together, but apparently even on Christmas Eve there was work to be done. When he’d stopped by Pauline’s, she’d been nowhere to be found, with the kid behind the counter assuring him that Lucy was busy putting the finishing touches on the Christmas Ball catering so that it would be the best ever.

  He didn’t give a damn about it being the best ever. All he wanted was Lucy.

  At last the interminable concert was over. Before Mayor Weems could make yet another speech over how proud the town was to welcome him home and how she personally appreciated his service to the country, he pretended he saw someone he needed to speak to. Without looking back he headed determinedly out to the foyer and wondered if enduring that opening concert—no doubt the longest ten minutes of his life—was all that was required of him. Hadn’t his father said everyone would understand if he blew out of there early? Ten minutes was definitely early, but was it too early?

  Lucy would know. If she’d been with him, they probably would’ve already been planning their escape.

  Ah, Lucy. I can’t even figure out how to gracefully bail out of a party without you.

  The grand foyer was like a mini-rotunda with fluted columns around the room and there was a dizzying pattern in the inlaid green-and-white marble flooring that made him feel ill. A thin spire of a Christmas tree stood at the center, encased in white decorations, ribbon and white lights. It was about as warm as an icicle but at least the whimsical gingerbread castle set before it to greet the guests softened the soulless holiday decor. The table on which the castle sat was also part of the scene, covered in white and surrounded by a forest of upside down ice-cream cone “trees” that were decorated as lavishly as the candy-button and gumdrop-festooned castle. A small army of gingerbread men and women covered the grounds as well—some skating on a pond of aluminum foil, while others seemed to be decorating trees, while still others were in caroling groups. The scent of creamy rich sweetness perfumed the air, bringing back memories of the night before. His body tightened with the rampant desire to get the hell out of there and just...find her. Seduce her. Make himself as necessary to her as air. There was no reason why he should be made to stand there without Lucy in his arms. It was a goddamn travesty.

  “Do you like it?”

  For a moment Sully believed he was hallucinating. His heart paused as his eyes opened, braced to find himself alone with his lover’s voice proving to be nothing more than a phantom concocted by his scrambled mind. But there Lucy stood, in simple black pants and a white top, looking tired but pleased with the gingerbread display.

  “Pauline and I worked on this candy-coated nightmare all freaking day but it turned out great. Just don’t touch any of the icing until Weems lets the guests dig into it. It’s still wet.”

  “Is it?” A giddy thrill at having her there sent his spirits soaring, and without a qualm he swiped his finger at a gooey drift of white icing.

  An angry-cat hiss escaped her. “Do you want a spanking?”

  “Hell, yes please, if you’re offering one.”

  “Sullivan...”

  “I’ve been craving you, sweetheart.” With his blood doing a slow burn in his veins, he smeared the icing onto her unpainted lips before pushing his fingertip into her mouth. He groaned, helpless, when she automatically sucked his flesh clean, her tongue lapping at him while her teeth held him still. Hot damn, he had to do this with his dick when they were alone tonight. “I smell anything sweet and I go insane with needing you.”

  He heard her breath tremble as he leaned in to lick the icing off her lips. It was the most arousing sound in his universe. Ravenous for more, he took her mouth under his and savored the sweetness of sugar and the flavor that was uniquely Lucy. His thoughts went into a tailspin as her kiss filled his senses, and he could only marvel at her staggering effect. Every time. Every damn time she brought him to his knees. And God help him, he couldn’t be happier about it. All the training he went through to be unyielding, all the missions he went on that had made him as hard and cold as steel—all of it was nothing in the face of Lucy. She unmanned him simply by breathing.

  A bright laugh sounded in the direction of the great room, a rude reminder that they weren’t the only people on the planet. Sullivan lifted his head, still lost in the lush fog of need, but that fog quickly cleared when she stepped out of his reach, wiping a violent hand over her mouth as if...

  As if she wanted to erase his kiss.

  “This isn’t going to work.” She said it as if she were remonstrating herself for being a bad girl, and alarm jolted through him when she lifted eyes full of raw anguish. “I thought maybe I could be like a man and enjoy a purel
y physical relationship, no strings attached. But...I can’t. I’m one huge massive ball of fail at separating my feelings. Physical and emotional...it all gets confused in my head, and now I’ve set myself up for yet another doomed relationship with you. If I stop now, before we get too involved, maybe it won’t hurt so much the second time around.”

  This didn’t sound good. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about facts, and the fact is you don’t love me, Sullivan. You never did.”

  He almost flinched as something icy plunged into his chest. “Why do say that? We were married.”

  “Your being married to me doesn’t mean you loved me. At least, not the way I loved you. I’ve grown enough over this past year to admit that I need more. But deep down I know I’ll never get that from you, so as much as I love being with you, there’s no point in prolonging this.”

  The words hit him like a slap in the face, and that gnawing, frustrated sense of failure that always came with the blank spots in his memory exploded in his head. “So...what? You’re just going to give up on me because I wasn’t perfect back then? Because I don’t even remember not being perfect? Do you want me to apologize for whatever happened in the past? Do you want me to apologize for not being able to remember it?”

  “No, of course not. If anything, I wish I had retrograde amnesia too. That way we’d be even, and I could forget all about you and not feel anything.”

  If her earlier words were a slap, her genuine longing to forget him was a bare-knuckled punch. No matter how unfair it probably was, it hurt like hell that she didn’t want to have even a memory of him in her mind. “Maybe that’s what I did,” he growled, his teeth bared as he let the anger swallow up the hurt inside. “Think about it. I’ve come to remember nearly everyone in town, but not you. So maybe you’re right—maybe I didn’t love you and I wanted to forget you. Maybe I couldn’t wait to forget you.”