Jasper wouldn’t admit it, but it’d felt good to have his hands on the wires of a sleek car again, even if it took a specialist training in electronics to bypass security features on the newer models. Thankfully, the Navy had seen to that for him. “I’ll fix it with McBain.”
“I know it.” Knowing it was rare, Jasper appreciated Twist’s sincerity. He also knew it wouldn’t last long, so he wasn’t surprised when Twist returned to his usual jackass mode. “I’d be impressed by how long you held out, but I stood beside you during BUD/S, so I know how fixed you get on a target.”
“Shut up, Twist.”
“What was it, five or six hours between when you saw her and when you banged her?”
“You trying to tell me you slept alone last night?”
They hit the ground floor and stepped into the nearly unbearable brightness of a Florida morning. Twist shoved his fist against his heart and staggered as though stabbed. “Your lack of faith wounds me, Roy. I’m bleeding over here.”
“So long as she isn’t married or here with someone. We might be on enforced leave, but that doesn’t mean we don’t still represent the Navy.”
“You know my policy Queen: no one gets hurt; everyone gets happy.” He tossed Jasper a set of keys as they reached the sedan he’d commandeered the night before. “Compliments of McBain. He’d prefer you not do more damage to his vehicles.”
They climbed in and headed out on the short drive back to the resort moments later, but Jasper’s mind was back in bed with Quinn and the night they’d shared.
He hadn’t gone there to fuck. That’d been a lie. He’d wanted to work her first, get her to trust him with her trouble. Yeah, he’d planned to be back inside her, but not now, not the first night he saw her after so long. First, he had to be sure his head was on straight. He needed to protect himself, not get too deep in her too fast, the way he had in Vegas. This time around, he’d be ready for her desertion, and it would be no more than the end to any other short-term affair, because this time she wouldn’t have his heart.
He’d been on low boil all night, waiting for guests to pair off or head for bed. Waiting for the job to finish for the night, for McBain’s final instructions as the overnight shift came in to relieve them. Waiting for the restaurant to shut down so he could see her again, always fucking waiting for Quinn so that, when he realized she was gone, he lost it. He didn’t like it, but the truth was, he had a hair trigger when it came to Quinn, another remnant of a wild youth he’d long thought overcome. He’d tracked down McBain, and it was a damn lucky thing the man hadn’t terminated him and Twist on the spot, especially after Twist’s antics on the coms. Jasper barely remembered hotwiring the car, everything from when he heard Quinn’s location to when she walked into that bedroom worn off her feet was a total blur.
But the rest of the night, yeah, he’d remember that till he was cold and in the ground.
“You okay?” Twist’s quiet question drifted out from the passenger side to hit Jasper with the force of a fifty-caliber round.
He pulled into the resort’s long driveway with careful, deliberate moves. “No,” he finally grunted through a clenched jaw. “Not by a long shot.”
“Dealing with a lot of shit. Gonna take it out on her?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Would be righteous. She caused it.”
“Doubt that, brother.”
Jasper jerked the car around the back of the main building and down the short drive to the staff lot. “Don’t shrink me, Twist. I’m not in the mood.”
He expected a typically blithe reply, but Twist surprised him by turning in the seat to face Jasper the minute he pulled the car into a slot. “I wanted this job, hell this whole trip, to be a balm for you, man, not add to your burdens. I didn’t know she’d be here. Hell, I didn’t know you were even married!”
“I should’ve told you,” Jasper allowed.
“Why didn’t you?”
Jasper thought about it, about how he’d felt when he first brought Quinn home from Vegas. He’d been stupid in love with her, but that hadn’t squelched the lingering sense of unease. In retrospect, he wondered if he’d always somehow been waiting for her to change her mind. “I wasn’t sure of her,” he admitted, eyes fixed on the road ahead but his mind back in those first months of his marriage. “I kept it—I kept her—a secret so that when she changed her mind, when she threw me back, there’d be less of an impact in my life. I wouldn’t have to explain to you or the service or anyone else who mattered that she didn’t want me either.”
A tense, nasty vibe rolled through the sedan. It took Jasper a minute to realize it was coming from the passenger seat. “Twist?”
“Jesus, but those fucking assholes who called themselves your foster parents did a right number on you,” his friend snarled. He turned in his seat to face Jasper. “Forget those fuckers who don’t deserve to be called human. You are in love with this woman, Roy. No, keep your mouth shut and listen to Doctor Twist. I don’t know what happened between the two of you. Looking back, I can see when it happened, but whatever she did cut deep enough for you to keep it to yourself. Which is not a good policy for a man who leads other men into combat, as you’ll remember, we learned damn quick back then.”
“How much are you charging me for this session?”
“Shut up.” And Jasper did because, for a change, Twist was not fucking around. “If Maverick,” and here Twist had to stop.
“Twist, man,” Jasper said, but his friend held up a hand. Jasper silently stared at the console between them while Twist got it under control.
“If what happened to Mav tells us anything,” Twist continued after a minute, “it’s that we cannot fuck around with what matters.” He jabbed a finger back in the direction from which they came. “That woman matters to you, Jasper. More than anything or anyone in all the years I’ve known you, except for the Team, and I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t want to put our guys up against her for a final answer, because we’d lose, man.” He leaned forward to press his point. “And we should lose. She’s what we’re doing this shit for, Roy. She’s what Maverick didn’t have, didn’t get, and listen to me, Jasper, for fuck’s sake, I do not want to be cleaning your brains off my shirt because you failed to get that!”
“That will not happen,” Jasper vowed. “I swear to you, Twist. You never have to worry about that happening with me.”
“I didn’t worry about Maverick either until it was too late. And look how that ended. This isn’t about me,” he added quickly when he saw Jasper about to speak. “We’re dealing with your shit so that one of us comes out of this ‘vacation’ with something good to hold on to.”
“She left me.”
“I know, brother. But one look at that woman tells me there was more to it than she’s telling you.”
“She’s not telling me jack,” Jasper spat. “I terrified her last night. I didn’t mean to, but she didn’t know it was me in her room, and she freaked the hell out like nothing I’ve seen before. She was gone, man, gone, fighting for her life with all she had and that’s not saying much. Then, after I pinned her, she begged me not to kill her, swore she’d never talk about what she’d seen.”
“Holy fuck,” Twist breathed.
“No shit. Something bad happened, and I can’t protect her from it if she won’t tell me what it is. You think I’m stubborn? When Quinn gets her teeth into something, she redefines the word, and she combines that with a curiosity streak that would be damned disturbing if it wasn’t so fucking cute.” Twist laughed and tension released in Jasper’s gut. “And don’t tell her I said that either, or she’ll tear a strip off of me for calling her cute. Right now, she’s equally set on not telling me what and who’s dogging her and figuring out why we were put on forced leave.”
Twist grinned. “Knew I liked her. Some commanders need to run their home like their unit. You’re the opposite. You need a woman you can’t command.”
Jasper shot him a look. “Don’t give her any ideas. I mean i
t. She doesn’t need your help to wind me up.” But he knew he was screwed when Twist kept grinning that shit-eating grin. “If you two team up, I’ll never have any peace again.”
“Good thing we’re only here temporarily, huh?”
Jasper’s chest jerked in violent denial. Twist burst out laughing. “Look,” he said around his friend’s obnoxiously smug chuckles, “I’m not going to deny there are still feelings there, but I can’t have a relationship with a woman I don’t trust. Pretty sure, there’s nothing Quinn can do to make me believe she won’t leave again. In fact, I can guarantee she will.”
“Maybe if you found out why she left in the first place, you can fix what made her go,” Twist suggested once he caught his breath.
“So now it’s my fault?”
“Isn’t it always? Look, we need to get out of this car and to the briefing before people think I’m proposing in here. And I’d suggest a shower for you if you don’t want the whole hyperaware crew to smell your woman on you.
“I get wanting to bang her out of your system, and brother, based on what I heard this morning, you’ll get no judgment on that from me. Envy, but no judgment.”
Jasper’s eyes narrowed with fury. “You listened to us?”
“Next time, close the window with the blinds, pal. Hey, at least I waited till you were done. Didn’t want you to injure yourself.”
“Not funny.”
“Hafta agree with you there. Especially since it’ll be hours till I get a chance at some myself.”
Jasper traded anger for exasperation. “Stop right there.”
“Here’s my point. You might think you can bang her as your vacation fuck and then leave her behind the way she left you, but I’m here to tell you brother, you do that, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Maybe you won’t wind up like Maverick, and I’ll agree that was an extreme fucking situation, but believe it or not, there are worse things than eating a bullet. I do not want to watch you grow bitter and hard because you refused to hold on to the woman you love.”
“This conversation better not make me sprout female parts.”
Jasper regretted the words when aggravated annoyance made Twist’s face go taut. “You’re the most reliable, responsible man I know, Jasper, but that means you carry weight that’s not yours to bear. Take hold of what makes you happy, man, even if the path to it is thorny. I promise you, I swear, that woman will make it worth it.”
“And what do I do when she doesn’t stick? What do I do when she leaves me half a man again?”
His friend shrugged. “That’s the risk we take when we roll that dice. Come on, man. We risk our lives every time we get on a helo. Hell, even in training, safety is no guarantee. You can risk your heart for a shot at the good stuff.”
With that, Twist got out of the car. “I’ll meet you at the briefing,” he called back to Jasper, and even though he was only seconds behind him, Twist was already halfway back to the employee bungalows where McBain kept his office. “Get cleaned up. I got a debutante to debauch.”
Jasper stood in the open car door and let his mind sift through his friend’s words. Twist spent so much time playing the joker that when he finally hit you with some truth, you’d have to be a fool to disregard it.
Yeah, he was still in love with Quinn. It made no sense to lie to himself about it, especially not after last night. And this morning.
Fuck, that’d been hot, watching her stroke herself as she watched him work. Something new for them and for the life of him, Jasper couldn’t figure why the hell they hadn’t done it before. She’d liked it as much if not more when he’d jacked off while she watched. That was Quinn, always roping him into new depths of her wild.
But it wasn’t only the sex. It never had been. It was the way she held him after, how she shivered when he kissed her neck, the way she teased him about Twist. How she touched him in the aftermath as though he was treasured and special.
The arrow of hurt that shot through her eyes when he refused to tell her his secrets.
Yeah, Twist had the way of it when it came to Quinn, but he was wrong to think Jasper in danger of becoming like Maverick. Whatever he might be feeling, Jasper would never take himself from those who depended on him in so selfish a way. That might not be a popular opinion, and Jasper knew Twist would argue about how suicide was a symptom of depression’s larger disease. He didn’t discount that, especially when PTSD ran rampant through veterans and active-duty soldiers alike. Fuck, what else could’ve brought as accomplished an operator as Maverick so low?
But it was a fucking selfish move and Jasper was not wired to think otherwise. He had to get Twist to stop worrying he’d ever take that way out.
Jasper rubbed his eyes. Goddamn Maverick. His guilt over his man’s death was going to haunt him to his grave. Sleeping curled around Quinn was the first time he’d slept through the night without waking in a cold sweat, pursued even in sleep by the sight of Maverick ending two lives before Jasper’s eyes.
Which was even more reason to stay away from his Quinn. He was already addicted to her pussy and her smile and her laugh. It could only get worse if in her arms was the only place he found peace too.
Jasper shut the car door and sighed, then, rather than head to the room he and Twist had been assigned when they’d arrived, he set off in the direction of the beach. There was time yet to get in a run and work out the lingering charge Quinn had left bubbling in his blood. He wasn’t going to be much good to the job if he spent the time thinking of when next he could get his dick inside his ex-wife.
Or how much he wished the “ex” part of that title would disappear.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Drinking rum before 10 AM makes you a pirate, not an alcoholic.
—Earl Dibbles, Jr.
Quinn leaned back in the cushioned beach chair, stretch her arms back over her head, and indulged in a booty wiggle.
She could get used to this life.
Probably, she should be more “hide in the shadows” than “show off on the seashore” given the next guy down the beach could be the one sent to off her. But she’d had three amazing orgasms in the last ten hours thanks to her gorgeous and talented (if unexpected) lover and the promise of more soon as they could get through the Thornquist craziness. If these were to be her last days on Earth, this was exactly how—and with whom—she wanted to spend them.
Besides, she’d never been one for hiding her bushel.
She’d given up on getting back to sleep after Jasper’s effective wakeup call left her all itchy and scratchy for more. Their sexual chemistry was as off the charts as ever. Already she had plans for what to do to him next time she got him naked. Since making those plans made the whole itchy and scratchy thing even worse, she’d given up trying to get back to sleep and got showered and dressed for the long day ahead. With not enough time to check out the Hibiscus Court laundry room, Quinn carefully washed her tuxedo shirt in the sink, patting out extra moisture between white towels that had seen better days before hanging it on a hanger to air dry for tomorrow’s Sunday brunch.
Tonight, she’d wear the pullover with a low collar thanks to its wide boat neck cut that would highlight her collarbone and dip just shy of too low when she bent for bottles.
Bonus points for driving Jasper out of his mind.
Like her button down, the hem of the pullover cutoff midway down her belly, but its sides extended two inches longer into points tied off with two short strings that were tipped with tiny bells. They would ring softly as she worked. Quinn couldn’t think of a subtler tease for her imaginative lover.
That made it worth wrestling out Hibiscus Court’s iron and ironing board to work out lingering wrinkles with the added help of some wrinkle-free spray she kept in her toiletries. She carefully packed the finished product in her garment bag along with another pair of low riders. Going with her gut, she dug out the black pearled heels she’d last worn that horrible night in Atlantic City and tossed them in the bag.
Jasper would remember those heels. That alone would make the hours of painful work in them worthwhile. She’d keep them on when he fucked her later too. He might be bound and determined to keep their affair a physical thing only, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t pull out all the stops to make it the best he ever had.
Starting with the stilettoes.
That left her with a little more than three hours for the beach. Only her beachwear was nonexistent. Not a lot of cause for bikinis in Atlantic City during October.
Like she needed an excuse to shop.
She headed out, and, after cheerfully sparring with Charity in the Super Min to keep her blood up, Quinn hit Mimosa Key’s quaint shops and spent money she couldn’t afford to lose on a pair of bikinis that would make Jasper’s eyes fall out of his head, if he managed to get away long enough to find her on the beach. She justified the purchase as costing noticeably less than the high-priced options at the resort shops. Plus, it was an investment in enjoying possibly her last days to the fullest.
She’d worry about affording any days that came after another time.
The one pure indulgence she allowed herself was the broad-brimmed straw hat that caught her eye on display in the window of the resort’s lush spa, Eucalyptus. The hat’s brim curved up and down, undulating like a wave, but it was the thick, dark red ribbon around the center that sold it to Quinn. A faint paisley pattern decorated the ribbon, though you had to get up close to see it, a hidden secret in plain sight.
Hat in hand, she ducked into the spa bathroom to change into one of the bikinis and its matching cover up, then sauntered down to the beach as though she belonged there. She wasn’t sure what the policy was for staff intermingling with guests. It was her experience that people at the Thornquist level preferred staff to be as invisible as possible until called for. She didn’t get that vibe from the wedding planners, but since she’d yet to meet the resort owners, Quinn thought it was a safe bet.
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