There was something about his hand on her head and the way he held her just so, that turned Meghan on like nothing she’d ever experienced before. Just about the time their kissing started to veer into animalistic territory, he wrenched his lips off hers so suddenly that a thin ribbon of saliva kept them connected for another heartbeat.
Absofuckinglutely, the last thing she expected was his pained growl as he pushed her away and put a good amount of space between them. When her butt slammed onto the seat again she was startled and confused. Had she done something wrong? Maybe been too aggressive? After all, she’d had her fingers so tight in his hair he probably had a bald spot now.
“Get out of here before we do something we shouldn’t,” he ground out in an angry voice.
Half of her hair was falling down from having his hand gripping the curly mane. She missed the power of his touch against her head. What in the hell was happening?
“I don’t understand. You started it,” she choked out.
“Yeah, I did. And I’m stopping it too.”
“Why?” Her voice sounded anguished and forlorn.
“You shouldn’t be here. None of this should be happening.”
Meghan tried to wrap her mind around what he was saying but surging hormones and blank confusion was making that impossible. Trying to fix her hair with badly shaking hands, she felt panic seep into her senses. She wasn’t the type to fall so willingly into the arms of someone she barely knew. To make it worse, he clearly wasn’t having any of it. But he did start it, right?
Embarrassed beyond belief, she floated to the side of the tub and swung over the side. Coming to her feet on the stone tiles, she quickly snatched up a towel and wrapped it around her trembling body. If she didn’t think she’d end up flat on her face, Meghan would have run at full speed away from the mortifying scene. At twenty-eight, she was hardly a girl, but the only thought rattling in her skull was that girls shouldn’t play with grown men. She was way, way, way out of her league. The hard, closed off expression on his face wasn’t helping things.
Then the echo of his words, “None of this should be happening,” screamed in her mind. Before fleeing she chanced a look at his scowling face and asked breathlessly, “Why? Why was kissing me so wrong?” She needed to understand. Her self-confidence was hanging by a thread.
“Because if it wasn’t for me, you’d be happily married by now; living the future you and David planned.”
Wait. What? Married to David? Well, that actually wasn’t how their engagement was going to pan out but that was a drama for another day. And besides, there was a dark undercurrent to what he’d said. If it wasn’t for him? Dammit. She was missing something important, she was sure of it.
“Alex,” she murmured, “I wasn’t really going to marry David.”
He cut her off before she could continue. “Doesn’t matter. Fact is, he’s not here because his commander let him down—him and a whole bunch of others. Don’t look back, Meghan. I’m not worth it. Just get your ass out of here before I forget myself and make things worse.”
She didn’t know what exactly triggered his reaction, and she definitely didn’t understand why he thought he was responsible for her fiancé’s death but she knew an emotional brick wall when she saw one. Or when she slammed into it at Mach two.
Walking away was proving more difficult than she thought. Embarrassed? Yes. Mortified? Yes. Confused? Hell yes. Had she read the situation so badly? Her heart clutched when she glanced at him and found him staring at her with an expression of utter desolation. He looked…well, he looked like he didn’t have a friend in the world and yet she knew that not to be true. Good people who obviously cared for and held him in high regard surrounded him. What in holy hell had happened in his life that left him so wounded in spirit? His injuries were one thing, but whatever happened in his soul had left deeper and much uglier scars.
Mentally pulling her big girl panties on, Meghan reached deep for some confidence. When she found it, she fixed him with a look that suggested he listen to what she had to say. “We may have just met Alex, but I feel like we’ve known each other forever. I wanted you to kiss me.”
His dark expression suggested he really didn’t want to hear that. Tough. Things might be somewhat awkward right this moment but he hadn’t seemed all that reluctant when his hand was tangled in her hair and his tongue was exploring the deepest recesses of her mouth. Pushing aside her embarrassment she told him, “I don’t know what just happened here but you are so worth it.”
Clutching the towel, she shivered in the cool night air, put her head down, and fled. He was clearly uncomfortable, she was freaking out, and nothing more would come of trying to figure out what was actually happening tonight.
Alex watched her go while an unfamiliar ache invaded his chest and his stomach turned to one big knot. He’d kissed his fair share of women but none of that mattered the second his lips took hers. Not all kisses were created equal and the one he and Meghan just shared brought that point home with alarming precision.
At first he’d been surprised by her obvious lack of experience. Probably been wasting her time with twenty-something dickheads who didn’t appreciate that kissing was all about the build-up. He remembered being young and stupid, thinking with his cock—focusing on the end and not the journey.
She got up to speed quick though, giving him access to her mouth, tongue, and lips with a fervor that sent all the blood in his head racing with alarming speed to his groin. He thought he’d died and found heaven when those voluptuous curves shimmied on his lap in the swirling water while her hand clutched at his hair. Her passions ran deep. For the right man. And no matter what he was feeling, that man couldn’t be him.
Seeing her all but run back to the Villa gutted him. She was embarrassed. Who could blame her? One minute he was devouring her mouth while she surrendered to him with a sweet vulnerability that fired up his passions, and the next he was a snarling, growling asshole. Yeah. He’d handled that with the finesse of a cranky three-year-old.
He didn’t know where the fucking thought came from but the moment he remembered who he was, who she was, and what had brought her here, nothing could stop a cascading waterfall of icy memories. He’d killed her fiancé. Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best way of putting it, but it was how he felt. There would never be enough time or denial to overshadow what were the undisputed facts of the situation.
David Anderson was a soldier under his command and he and a shitload of others had been killed or injured on his watch. There was not a snowball’s chance in hell of Alex ever atoning for what he felt had been his failures as commander.
Not only did he not have the right to be lusting after a dead man’s fiancée, the burden of guilt he carried from those days made that lust feel immoral. He was a fucking pig for coming on to her. Didn’t matter that she met him halfway and returned his desire kiss for kiss, lick for lick, and nibble for nibble. She didn’t know what he knew. Didn’t know her future had been wiped out by his failure to stave off that last horrific bombing. But he knew it and that was enough.
Plus, there was also the matter of his need for unconditional control. There was something about having power that was an absolute for Alex. While he sneered at the term dominate, it was an apt description of him. For him though, the mastery and control couldn’t be taken or forced. He needed it to be given, freely. He wasn’t a fool. Alex realized that the trust required in giving so much of one’s self was the thing he desired most. Maybe that was what he needed to heal his soul—trust and control. He doubted someone as inexperienced as Meghan would understand the fierce desires fueling his lustful appetite.
Dragging himself from the bubbling hot tub with leaden feet, Alex toweled off, then set the timer for the lights and jets before he headed back inside. Looks like his original plan to drink the discomfort away was back on the agenda. Only now he’d be drowning his inappropriate desire for the sexy teacher at the same time.
Making his way wet and barefo
ot to the study, he shut the door firmly behind him and immediately peeled off the damp bathing suit leaving it in a pile on the floor. With the towel wrapped around his hips he made it to the wet bar in record time, pouring a tumbler of Glenfiddich that he easily tossed back like water, making his eyes water and throat burn. Fine with him. He didn’t care at that moment if the Scotch burned a fucking hole in his stomach. The goal was to obliterate the memories dragging him into the shadows, make the sharp ache in his leg go away and turn off the current of desire for a woman he couldn’t have before all three consumed him.
He must have tied on one hell of a drunk because that’s where they found him the next morning when Cam and Drae came to grill him about the surprising guest he had stashed in the main house.
“What do you make of this?” Cam asked Drae as the two of them surveyed the scene they found in the study. They’d come to talk to Alex about whatever the hell it was that was going on.
Seasoned surveillance experts, they didn’t need to look very hard to see a shit-ton of evidence that created a pretty interesting picture of how Alex’s night had ended.
Both noted the swim trunks inside the door and the towel that at one time covered his nakedness bunched in a ball and now stuffed down next to his passed out body sprawled in a recliner.
A big tumbler, one made more for water than sipping expensive whiskey, sat on the side table next to him while an empty Glenfiddich bottle lay on the floor.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Drae muttered. “Looks like Papa Bear had a bad night.” Cam snorted in agreement.
“Told ya,” Cam snarked. “He was too quiet at dinner. I knew something was up. Lacey did too.”
“Yeah, I know. Victoria talked my fucking ear off after we got home. I swear to God, being pregnant has made her some sort of empath. She picks up on everything. Even the little shit. She said Alex watched Meghan all through dinner and not in that eye fuck kind of a way. There’s something else going on here. And now this bullshit.” Drae was less than pleased.
“Fucking, eh,” Cam bit out. “What the hell do we do now?”
“Well let’s start by getting him cleaned up and some coffee down his throat. You go wrestle up a pot of that black sludge he likes while I destroy the evidence and try to wake him up.”
Cam wandered away muttering, “Great fucking way to start a day.”
Sighing, Drae cleared away the tumbler and empty bottle, picked the swim trunks up off the floor and cracked open the shutters to let in a bit of light but not too much. He was no stranger to a whiskey hangover. Alex wouldn’t appreciate the glare of a sunny day.
He also knew better than to try and rouse him with a touch. Good way to get his arm ripped off so he gave the recliner a good kick with his booted foot to see if that got a reaction. Alex groaned but that was it. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He kicked the chair again and barked out Alex’s name. A deep, menacing growl split the air as his old friend started to come around. Drae had the good sense to back off a few paces; not knowing what to expect once Alex came to. Prepared for a blind rage, he was mildly surprised when first one blood shot eye and then the other slowly cracked open and instead of fury he saw something else, an unguarded expression that was deeply unsettling. Drae knew that fucking look. Knew what a disturbance in the force looked and sounded like.
“Brother, you look like shit,” he told Alex quietly. The bloodshot eyes slowly focused, chasing away the unguarded expression Drae had just seen.
Seeing Alex reach up and cover his eyes with a hand that was more than a little shaky made Drae wonder just how much of that bottle he’d had to drink. Judging by the evidence right in front of him the answer was probably, a lot.
The door to the study opened briefly then shut again as Cam carried in a tray with a carafe of coffee plus a couple of mugs and dropped it on the wet bar.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Yeah. He’s on his way back,” Drae answered with a look he hoped Cam would pick up on. They’d been through a lot, the three of them, and Cam’s quick nod meant he understood Drae’s unspoken signal that shit was off the hook.
Pouring them each a cup of steaming coffee, Cam walked one over to Alex and put it on the table next to his chair.
“Dude. Coffee,” was all he needed to say to pry Alex’s hand from his covered eyes as his gaze searched for the mug. When he sat forward the recliner returned to chair position and he leaned his head into his hands with his elbows resting on his knees. It took him a good minute or two before he was able to reach for the mug with a steadier hand. Drae and Cam calmly drank theirs and waited.
They knew he was back to the land of the living when his hand scraped back and forth against his skull making his mess of hair all the worse. After a few minutes Drae asked, “Better?” Alex nodded but they both knew his head was probably pounding like a motherfucker.
“Where are your clothes, man? Gotta get you dressed. We don’t need to see Mr. Winky, bro,” Cam snickered good-naturedly. Guy talk was generally a safe bet. They didn’t want an unruly, hung over Alex on their hands.
Having it pointed out that he was butt ass naked, Alex grimaced and fell back into the chair as if it was too much to even sit up. Well, this was going just great, Drae thought.
Eventually, Alex managed to haul his uncooperative body from the chair and to standing on his unsteady feet. Naked and scowling at the other two he staggered awkwardly to the half bath at the back of the study where he shut the door behind him. Drae was going to let him have a few minutes to get his shit together, but if he didn’t reappear in a timely fashion they would probably have attempted to offer some bathroom assistance. Part of the Bro-Code.
Inside the bathroom, Alex thought his brain was going to explode. Or maybe it already had and what he was feeling was the aftermath. In any case he felt like fucking shit. Luckily he found a pair of sweats hanging on the back of the door that he barely managed to slip on without falling on his ass. His stomach rumbled and for a second he wondered if he was going to puke his guts up. Why not? What his pounding head needed was a little bit more indignity just for shits ‘n grins.
When he was finally able to stumble from the bathroom he found his two best friends and de facto brothers waiting for him. The conversation he knew they were about to have would have been better without the hangover, but there was no use crying over spilt milk or an empty bottle as the case might be.
Drae, the cool headed analytical one of their group, went first. “I wouldn’t even know where to start so how about you just tell us what brought this on.”
“And what we can do to help,” Cam added.
Alex folded onto the sofa like a rag doll losing its stuffing. A strange feeling grabbed hold of him, almost like he wanted to cry. The very thought freaked him out more than the indulgent hangover. Guys did not boo hoo like chicks. Fucking hell, man. Talk about indignity. Emotional blubbering wasn’t his style.
With his head against the back of the sofa, Alex flung his arm over his face to cover his eyes. He struggled against the tingling in his nose that went along with the battle he was waging to fend off some uncool and very unmanly waterworks. Fuck.
Swallowing the lump that formed in his throat he sat up and heaved a deep sigh, letting loose with the first thing that came to his mind.
“The anniversary is next month.”
“Shit,” Drae growled.
Cam followed up with a pithy, “Goddammit.”
A couple of intense, silent minutes passed as each man considered what that meant.
“Alex,” Cam grumbled, about to say his piece. Alex didn’t let him, it would be a waste without knowing it all.
“Wait. There’s more,” he told them.
This was the hard part. He wasn’t sure what to say, how much to tell them. It wasn’t that he was trying to keep anything from the two people he knew would always have his back, no matter what, but this was emotional landmine territory for all of them. Especially him and they didn’t even know th
e half of it.
“I met Meghan in Germany when I was at Landstuhl Medical Center. Actually, that’s wrong. We didn’t meet until yesterday.”
“Uh. Okay,” Drae said calmly although the confusion in his reply was obvious.
“Shit. This is coming out all wrong.”
Cam passed Alex his coffee mug and told him, “That’s okay, man. Just say whatever it is. We’ll figure out the details as you go along.”
He didn’t mean for his voice to sound shaky but it did. “I wrote to her. As the C.O. Hated writing those fucking letters.” Cam and Drae wore expressions that let Alex know they understood what he was referring to.
“Oh, fuck,” Cam muttered as the realization of where this was going dawned on him.
“Yeah, dude. Oh fuck, only it’s worse than that. Remember The Kid? David. David Anderson was his name, and she was engaged to him. I wrote her one of those bullshit screeds about service, sacrifice, and war. We exchanged a bunch of letters. Kept it up after I came back to the states. It was a bad time for me—the surgeries, rehab, and therapy. I looked forward to her letters, because they took my mind off everything else.”
Drae looked like he was having a coronary. “Holy shit Alex.”
“Right?” Alex answered with a snort of disbelieving agreement.
“You’ve been in touch with her all this time?” Cam asked.
“Yes and no. After my discharge it was mostly an annual Christmas card. Nothing more.”
“So, this visit is what?” Leave it to Drae to ask for clarification.
Alex just looked at him, I mean what else could he do or say? There was no fucking way he could explain the connection those letters had forged.
“She doesn’t know,” he murmured, ominous and low. “Thinks I’m some sort of shining hero because that’s how The Kid talked about me. Shit got out of hand last night after you guys left.”
Drae again. The man should have been a prosecutor. “Meaning?”
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