Bears of Burden: STERLING

by Candace Ayers

  She cleared her throat and willed herself to be the professional she knew she needed to be for him, whether he wanted it or not. Besides, there was no way she was going to blow off—or hand off to another psychologist—her first case. Not. Happening.

  “I can’t do that, Petty Officer. I’m not putting my license on the line to lie and say—”

  “I’m fine.”

  “To say that you are fine, then, when I haven’t evaluated you. I know you’ve been on missions where men were lost before, but this time, from what I understand, you lost a friend. Don’t you want to talk about Jonathan?”

  Raw, naked agony shown in his eyes, but only for a split second. She could see the emotional wall that he’d built to keep the world from witnessing his pain. In a second, he was on his feet. She’d just sat down, but she rose again to meet him.

  “No, Sweetheart. I don’t want to talk about Jonathan. I don’t want to talk at all.”

  His mouth was on hers again, this time in a hard, bruising kiss that she couldn’t help but respond to completely. His hands were on her, everywhere, bringing back all of the sensations from last night. Without alcohol to dull the effect of his touch, she felt him even more. Every caress sent pleasure so intense it bordered on pain shooting through her core.

  By the time he picked her up and sat her on her desk, she was beyond caring about proper. He pushed her skirt up around her full hips and she wiggled to make it easier for him, then gasped as his hand slid between her legs, unashamed of how wet she was for him. It was all she could do when he slid one finger into her not to cry out. Instead, she whimpered and writhed against him.

  He seemed to know what she craved. One finger moved up after he moistened it with her glistening need to lightly circle her tight bundle of nerves, while the other hand traveled up her shirt to massage her breast. It only took his skilled fingers minutes to bring her to a pinnacle, then let her fall apart against him.

  He could have taken her then. She would have let him, would have thrown away her career, her life’s work, if she had been caught. He didn’t press on though. Instead, he held her to him and stroked her hair gently, a bemused smile on his face.

  She melted into him, but only for a moment.

  “Well, doc…is this the initial work-up you give all your crazies?”

  The caring man she’d glimpsed moments ago, was gone. His callous smugness shattered the moment, and with the return of reality, mortification filled her. She quickly jumped off her desk and tugged down her skirt with shaking hands. She couldn’t even bring herself to meet his eyes, instead focusing on the floor while she spoke.

  “I think you need to leave Petty Officer. If you want to be cleared for duty, schedule another appointment.

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Everly.” The tone was mocking, an obvious effort to distance himself after the lapse in his defenses he’d shown her in an unguarded moment.

  “I’m serious. Will Thursday work for our next appointment? I can’t help you unless you want it, Connor.” She finally looked up to meet his eyes so that he could see her sincerity for himself.

  His gaze was pure masculine heat. “Oh, I want it alright, and you can help me any time.”

  Chapter Five

  The following days fell into a predictable pattern, one Connor remembered from his earlier days in the military. He went to the range more often than not after a vigorous morning workout. Then, after the duty day was over, he would work on his Harley. It was the only thing that he truly enjoyed beyond the military. Unfortunately, he couldn’t look at the bike now without thinking about Everly’s luscious form pressed against it in the velvety shadows of the night. Fuck, he deserved as much. With time, the memory would be a good one, but right now it bordered on painful, and filled him with an aching need to be inside her again.

  So his days went…exercise, range, Harley, and sleeping alone, aching for a woman that he couldn’t have. Though the endless training seemed pointless, as his tactical skills were finely honed, he knew that if he let himself, he might begin to get rusty. That couldn’t be allowed. He needed to be sharp. He needed to be prepared when his chain of command was ready for him to deploy again.

  That might happen sooner, he admitted to himself contritely, if he scheduled another appointment with Everly. There was no way he would be cleared without her go-ahead, but their last encounter had left him…unsettled. He’d wanted nothing more than to bring her to orgasm, but once he had, Connor hadn’t been able to seek pleasure for himself. He’d gazed down at her, and while he’d wanted her more than he had anything in his entire life, he hadn’t been able to take her. Not when doing so would risk her getting caught and, more likely than not, fired. He’d held her for a fleeting moment while he’d cursed himself for being the worst kind of asshole to come so close to endangering her career.

  If caught, he might have gotten in a bit of trouble for what they’d done—probably not—but she could have lost her job if someone had walked in on them. And while he’d wanted her, he’d also been acutely aware that he was using her desire for him as a weapon, a way to keep her from seeing him vulnerable. He wasn’t the kind to commit, but he had never been this…calculating, either.

  He would schedule the appointment, and this time he wouldn’t touch her, he promised himself. He sure as fuck wasn’t going to go crying to her about his feelings either. He’d go and get cleared for duty, nothing more and nothing less.

  The following afternoon, Connor was just about to gas up his bike and was taking his helmet off when he spotted Jonathan’s widow, Marsha, across the parking lot. She was trying to put air in the tires of her old suburban with a baby on her hip. Her second youngest had unbuckled and was trying to climb out of the car while her oldest, who was only around five years old, cried her heart out in the back seat. Marsha looked nothing like the young, confident woman he’d known. No, this Martha was haggard and worn, with hard lines about her mouth and eyes that spoke of hard living or grief rather than age. In her case, Connor knew, it was grief.

  Remorse swamped him. Guilt at not bringing his best friend home to his family, at not helping with the children whose father he’d failed to bring home. Connor had promised Marsha at the funeral that he would be by to help out, but every time he had thought of making good on his promise, pain and remorse had choked him. He’d tried to rationalize it with himself, told himself that it would just hurt Marsha to see someone who reminded her of what she’d lost, but he hadn’t believed his own lies.

  He could go over there, talk to her. It would be easy to grab the baby for a moment while she filled the tires with air, or to go sooth her daughter’s tears. He didn’t though. With guilt churning in his gut and the ashy taste of regret on his tongue, Connor refastened his helmet and rode home. He sat alone in the dark that night. He’d given up on a shot glass after a while and was drinking his whiskey straight from the bottle.

  The bitter, burning liquid did nothing to numb his pain. Perhaps, Connor thought, that was because numbness was a relief that he was unworthy of. That didn’t mean he couldn’t try for oblivion though. He swallowed from the bottle again and again until finally he passed out in a hazy, anguish-filled stupor. Even then, Jonathan haunted his dreams, but not the friend he’d known. Dead, lifeless eyes stared at him accusingly as Jonathan asked him with bloodied lips again and again why he’d made Marsha a widow. Nothing would allow Connor to run from his demons, for now, they took the form of nightmares ghosting through his head until the blessed light of dawn could pull him back into the waking nightmare and the guilt that was slowly eating him from the inside out.

  Chapter Six

  Everly found herself going through Connor’s case file again on her lunch break, even though she knew it would be better to use the time to unwind, or to review the files of one of the patients coming for an appointment that afternoon.

  She didn’t know why she bothered pulling the thing, really. She practically had it memorized word for word. Connor Mitchell was a
highly decorated Seal with an impeccable record. He’d been on numerous black ops that were outlined. All of them were violent, bloody affairs, but usually the bleeding was done by the enemy. That certainly hadn’t been the case with Connor’s last mission.

  Connor’s sniper team had been in position to take out a lower profile target, a terrorist who was killed as a matter of opportunity rather than for his political or tactical significance. Connor had cautioned them that going that far into the heart of the terrorist compound would be no easy thing, but his chain of command had insisted. After a successful kill, his team had been ambushed.

  They’d fought and held their position on the rooftop they’d been holed up on, but by the time his team had been extracted, only two men were still alive. That in itself wouldn’t have been surprising, considering the odds against them. It was the rest of the story that seemed strange. The reasoning behind the mission didn’t make sense, first of all. Why travel into the heart of enemy territory for a seemingly worthless target? That could be a result of doctored files though, changed to hide sensitive information. The damning evidence was the .556 caliber round that had been found in Jonathan’s skull. It was a different sized round than the AK-47’s their enemies typically preferred.

  That, too, might be written off. While every effort was made to keep US weapons from falling into enemy hands, it was, from time to time, an unfortunate reality. It was the words of a dead man, though, that had led his commanding officers to question Connor’s stability. Before dying in transit, his team member’s last words had been, “Mitchell took him down.” While most had written off the statement, assuming that he’d been referring to their target, the origin of the round that had ended Jonathan left a nagging question in the minds of some. Had Connor truly been overrun, or had he betrayed them, at the cost of his best friend’s life?

  Because there was no one left to ask what had really happened that day, no formal charges had been filed. Rather than accusing him of anything, the chain of command had decided to honor his previously spotless record by first finding out whether or not he was mentally stable. Everly’s job should be an easy one, but Connor was being so damned uncooperative…and the evidence was pretty damning. Even as Everly mentally shied away from the idea that she might have made love to a killer in a darkened parking lot, she couldn’t help but wonder. Was it possible that Connor might be insane?

  Chapter Seven

  Connor had kept his promise to himself and scheduled another appointment with Everly. He’d seen her a few times now, but every time he had managed to keep conversation away from what had happened on his last tour—away from that and anything else that might make him look vulnerable.

  So it was that he found himself in the waiting room once again, mentally shoring up his defenses before he began another session of ‘the healing’, as he’d come to refer to it in conversation with his supervisors. As long as she didn’t see him upset, he reasoned, she would quickly realize that he was fine. He would answer her questions this time, he promised himself. It was obvious the stubborn beauty wasn’t going to clear him if he didn’t.

  He smiled to himself when she called him by his first name rather than his rank and last name, wondering if she’d even realized she’d done it. He rose and strode across the room into her office.

  “I’m ready, Doc. Let the healing begin.”

  He didn’t miss the momentary tightening of her lips before her features became concerned but professional—she hadn’t liked it when he’d referred to it as her ‘head shrinking mask’—and she addressed him in a calm, even tone.

  “At some point you’re going to have to take this seriously Connor, or I’ll never be able to clear you for duty.”

  Connor bristled internally. Though some part of him realized that he’d been telling himself the same thing out in the waiting room, he couldn’t help feeling like she’d issued a challenge—or a threat even. Now if only he could remind his raging hard-on that he wasn’t happy with her at the moment.

  He kept his face deliberately blank—two could play that game—and said, “Okay, Doc, shoot. What do you want to talk about?”

  Surprised satisfaction flitted across her face before she answered, “I need you to tell me what happened the day Jonathan died.”

  “I think you just summed it up pretty good yourself. He died. Next?”

  “We have to talk about this, Connor. Give me something more. What do you remember?”

  In a cold voice he recounted his official statement word for word. He knew that it was part of his file, knew that saying the words would give her nothing more than she already had, then she could clear him and he could go back to work, problem solved. She waited patiently, though, the look on her face told him she knew exactly what he was doing. She was silent, and that silence eventually drove him to speak again.

  “Fine. There was smoke, noise and blood. Worst day of my life to date, though being forced to come in here and get my head shrunk rates a close second.” He’d meant to be flippant, but pain had lanced through him at the thought of Jonathan’s blood staining the ground, the life fading from his eyes—Damn. He didn’t need this crap.

  He looked over at Everly, and the compassion in her eyes made something inside him snap. He stood and walked toward her, then crouched before her. He smiled without mirth when his closeness made her flinch.

  “Gosh, Everly. I feel so much better already.” He broke off with a harsh laugh when she hesitantly reached toward him. “What do you know about a man dying anyway, Doc, laying in a puddle of his own blood?”

  He saw the raw pain that had flashed in her eyes, but the same self-destructive streak that led him to drive away everyone else—everyone besides Jonathan, and look where that had gotten his friend— had him pressing on anyway.

  “I can see why you’re concerned. Enough to drive a man crazy, right?”

  He leaned in so close that he could feel Everly’s breath feather soft against his lips.

  “Do you want to know what’s driving me crazy?” She didn’t answer, but he could see her eyes dilating as his nearness brought her arousal. “Not being inside you, right now.”

  She was still and perhaps willing, but Connor stood with a smirk and sauntered back to his seat.

  “I think you need to leave now, Petty Officer. Come back when you’re ready to actually talk this through. Until then, don’t waste my time.”

  Connor felt like an ass as soon as the moment had passed. She’d been trying to drag up painful memories—forgivable, considering that it was her job—and he’d reacted with condescension and petty anger. And, he thought, if that flash of pain was any indication, he’d dug up some painful memories for her as well. Yes, he was a first-rate asshole. But then, he’d known that all along.

  He pushed the guilt to the back of his mind. It was a drop compared to the sea of regret he was drowning in. He pushed his way out the front doors and sped off on his bike, intent on going straight home and taking a couple shots, just to take the edge off a little bit.

  Maybe he would apologize at his next appointment…if he decided to make another.

  Chapter Eight

  Everly watched Connor’s lean, muscled form as he left her office. She shouldn’t have let him get her riled up like that. She understood that he was lashing out to defend himself, not out of a desire to hurt her. In truth, that wasn’t really why she’d asked him to go.

  He had gotten under her skin like no one else had ever done. It couldn’t have been the ‘dark and dangerous’ thing that had her insides doing flips when he turned his naughty gaze on her. As a military brat, she’d been raised around young, handsome, dangerous men. She had thought herself immune to their charms. Why, then, could she not be in the same room with Connor without wanting to tear his clothes off?

  She had to maintain her professionalism. Not only was Connor the first case she’d been handed to evaluate in her new position, he was also obviously a man close to his breaking point. If he crashed and burned,
Everly admitted to herself, a part of her heart might just shatter right along with him. She took a few deep, calming breaths before picking up the phone to call his commander.

  Connor’s CO turned out to be a man who was clearly battle-hardened, but still good and true at his core. When the commander agreed to meet with her, he confirmed what Everly had already come to realize. Connor was also a good man, a good man who took his job seriously and followed orders.

  In a gruff, no-nonsense tone, the CO informed Everly that Connor was a military man through and through. He couldn’t see Connor in the role of traitor or murderer, and neither could Everly. Though it was humbling, Everly confessed to him that she hadn’t been able to get through to Connor at all. His brisk nod told Everly that her words came as no surprise.

  “I’d be more worried about him if you had gotten him to open up so quickly, Ma’am. Petty Officer Mitchell isn’t the type to let anyone close, not even those he served with overseas, except Jonathan Mills. They’d been thick as thieves since they were children from what I understand, even lived in the same foster homes from time to time.”

  Though there was no emotion in his voice, something in his eyes, when he raised them to meet hers, told Everly that the man truly cared about Connor’s wellbeing.

  “The man’s hard, but he’s not a man who takes joy in killing, and he’s sure as hell not a traitor. Even if he was, Jonathan Mills is the only soul in the world that he wouldn’t turn on. The higher-ups want the investigation, so they’ll have it. Me? I just want to make sure that Mitchell’s okay. You can’t go on the types of missions my men do if you aren’t up to the task mentally. I have to be sure.”