Before She Was Mine

by Amelia Wilde

  I couldn’t make it. I’m stuck in an appointment at the VA. Catch you next time.

  Dayton

  I gasp, right there at the magazine racks at Duane Reade.

  That asshole.

  The VA hospital is five blocks away.

  *****

  “Do you have an appointment, miss?”

  I don’t know whether to bristle at miss or ignore it, so I go with ignoring it. My pulse is still hammering away in my veins, my heartbeat too loud. I catch a glimpse of myself in the reflective surface behind the reception desk and whoa. I look crazy. I feel crazy. I followed Dayton to the VA hospital to give him a piece of my mind.

  Get it together.

  I put a professional smile on for the woman and take out the papers from my pocket. “I’m meeting Dayton Nash. He should be at an appointment right now.”

  She gives a little half-frown. “What’s your connection to Mr. Nash?” A pointed glance at her computer screen nearly does me in. “For confidentiality reasons, I can’t simply—”

  “Of course, of course.” What am I going to say? I’m buying time by the second, and the longer I stand here looking the way I look, the more expensive those moments are getting. “I just need to—” A flash of a white t-shirt, his coat under his arm. “There he is!”

  “Miss—”

  I brandish the papers like a shield and move past the desk with all the confidence of a former sorority girl turned professional badass. “I’ll deliver these and be out of your way. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “Miss, you can’t—”

  “Dayton.”

  The line of his back stops and he sticks his head back around the corner and into the hallway, his dark eyes lighting up with shock.

  “Sunny? What are you doing—”

  The hall is a line of open doors to exam rooms, doctors in a mix of white coats and uniforms coming in and out. One of them stops dead, looking from his clipboard to Dayton to me. “Do you need something, ma’am?”

  I liked miss better.

  “No,” I tell him, flashing that same confident smile, and pick up the pace. I’m going full speed when I reach him and hook my arm into his. He’s heavy, muscular, but my momentum wheels us both around the corner and down the next hall.

  “Do you mind telling me where we’re going?”

  I don’t slow down. “I hope you’re heading for a room where we can talk in private.” There’s no special smile for him. Not now. Not when he lied from me, when he stood me up, after all this time, after that kiss—

  “I’m in room twenty-eight.”

  I yank him through the door and slip around behind him to slam it shut. Day gets his balance back and stands tall in the center of the room, arms crossed, eyebrows raised.

  “How dare you?” I planned a more eloquent speech on the walk here, but looking into his eyes, I can’t remember a word of it. “How dare you give me a fake address? Me. Me. I’m Summer Sullivan.” I shout my own name. It’s the height of decorum.

  “Exactly,” he says with a slow shake of his head. “What are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here? What are you doing calling me Sunny and asking me what I’m doing here?”

  Dayton raises both his hands. “That was a mistake—”

  My mother always said never to point at anyone, but I jab a finger into his chest. “You showed up for this.” I motion to the room. It doesn’t get more generic doctor’s office than this. “You showed up here but not to an appointment with me?”

  Day lets out a sharp breath. “Some things are more important than others, I guess.”

  “I hope you’re being sarcastic.”

  “What could I possibly I have to be sarcastic about? You followed me here, into a doctor’s appointment, and—”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I did.” My voice is rising and I can’t stop it. “I did follow you here. I wanted to know why you lied to me about where you were living. Unless you live at the IHOP, Day. Is that where you really live?”

  “You sound crazy.”

  “You sound crazy. Why would you lie to me?” The hurt wells in my chest, pressing against my rib cage with the beat of my heart. “I’m only trying to help you, and—”

  He lifts his hands in a silent plea, probably hoping I’ll shut up. “Well, Summer, maybe you should focus on helping people who deserve it.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I missed the damn meeting, okay? There. That’s all the proof you need. I’m not a hero. I’m just a guy trying to get a job, and what are the odds of that?”

  “They’re pretty good, if you must know—” I wave the papers in his face. “You would know if you’d shown up, but you didn’t.”

  “That’s right. I never show up. All I ever do is leave you.”

  “Ding ding ding!” I shout, my throat going tight. “You did leave me, after you kissed me eight years ago, and then you showed up and did it again. You kissed me and then you left me, and humiliated me, as if I wouldn’t figure out it was an address for a fucking pancake shop.”

  “Summer—”

  “You’re despicable.” There’s my finger again, rising, jabbing at him. “You have no idea what you’ve done, how much I’ve thought of you, how much I—”

  He grabs my wrist out of the air, wrapping it in his fingers as easily as if I’m a china doll. Half a breath and I collide with him, against the clean, spicy scent of him, the wall of muscle and pain that is Dayton Nash.

  He kisses me a third time.

  His hand rises to meet my jawbone, tilting my head back so that he can claim my lips for himself. It’s the kiss to end every other kiss. I’ve never tried to straddle a man during a kiss before but I hike up my knee and press against him, need and want centered between my legs. It’s not a soft kiss. It’s hard and fierce and I close my teeth around his bottom lip, pulling it through, biting him like he’s mine, mine, mine.

  He lets out a low growl and his grip on my jaw tightens, his other hand locked on my ass, his mouth possessive on mine. He is all man, all thunder and force, and I am a lightning rain.

  Dayton shifts his weight, rotating us slowly, finding the balance he needs to hold us upright.

  The door to the exam room opens.

  Out of the corner of my eye I see the doctor blink twice, then turn on his heel and get the hell out.

  13

  Dayton

  The click of the door as it shuts behind the doctor is like Wes’s hand on my shoulder eight years ago.

  This time, there’s no Wes to stop us.

  It’s me stopping us, and only because I’m teetering right on the edge with Summer. She tastes like sweetness and hope and I want to hear what it sounds like when I make her come. There’s an exam table in here and I’d fuck her on that, honestly, I would, but that’s not good enough for her. No.

  Her hands are curled into my shirt, two fists wrinkling the fabric, and she sucks in a breath when I pull away.

  “Want to get out of here?”

  Summer’s eyes are open wide, her lips slightly parted, but as my words register she gives me a sly smile. “Not a chance in hell.” She drops her hands away from my shirt. “You’re keeping one appointment today.”

  She flounces to the door, head held high, and while she’s calling the doctor back in I take the opportunity to adjust the unbelievable erection I got from the taste of her. More than that—from that handful of her firm ass, the way her other knee rose and hooked on my hip. How’d she back away from that? Jesus. What a smartass.

  I love that about her.

  It’s not Dr. O’Connors I’m meeting with today, it’s some prosthetic specialist. He’s a short guy, reddish hair, and I can’t say I hate the way he struggles to look me in the eye. I don’t care what he saw. I’m still buzzed from that kiss, that mistake of a kiss, that disaster of a kiss.

  “—fitted for a custom socket.” I surface mid-sentence.

  “Great.”

  He narrows his eyes.
“It is great, Dayton. You’re risking serious nerve damage, using the temporary fitting this way.”

  My instinct is to laugh, to brush it off. Who the hell cares if I have more nerve damage in my residual limb? My fucking foot is gone. But with Summer’s eyes intent on me from the plastic chair tucked next to the handwashing sink, I can’t do it. “I know. I get it. When can I get scheduled in for the fitting?”

  We go back and forth on dates that’ll fit in with Killion. “Or your new job,” Summer cuts in with her professional tone. It almost sets the doctor at ease. Almost.

  He presses an appointment card into my hand and leaves. The sound of my stomach growling overpowers the soft click of the door.

  Summer stands up briskly. “Let’s go.”

  “Back to your office?”

  She shoots me a look. “No. To eat. You’re always an asshole when you get hungry. And clearly—” She nods in my direction.

  “You liked it.”

  “I liked the end.”

  I don’t tell her how an argument with her is better than any day without her.

  *****

  Out on the sidewalk, Summer puts up her hood. “My place or yours?” Then she holds up a hand. “No, I won’t make you take me to your fake place. We’ll go to mine.”

  I want to take her to the nicest restaurant Midtown has to offer, but I can’t afford that. I can’t even afford a shitty place. Not with the money I owed when I got here, and the bills on top of that. Worst of all, Summer knows it. Otherwise she wouldn’t be inviting me to her place. Shame trips its fingers down the back of my neck. “That’s fine.”

  She elbows me through the thick padding of her winter coat. “You owe me one for standing me up in the first place.”

  When she puts it that way...

  Her apartment’s not far, but it’s far enough that my leg aches by the time we reach the lobby of her building. I distract myself by watching the curve of her ass peek out from beneath her coat. There’s not much to be seen until we’re in the elevator and she shrugs it off.

  Inside, she hangs her coat neatly on a hook inside the entryway and holds out her hand for mine. “My roommate’s at work,” she says, as casually as she might say that was a cold walk or I have to be back at one. But she doesn’t say either of those things. She lets her hips sway on the way to the kitchen and I follow her there.

  She flits from the fridge to the microwave, then to the toaster. “You can have a seat, if that’s more comfortable.”

  My missing foot has a cramp, but sitting on the high stools next to her kitchen island at least takes the pressure off the stump. “What are you making?”

  “What am I reheating, is more like it.” The toaster pops and she takes down a salt grinder from a slim cupboard up above. There is buttering involved, and then she adds the salt. Whatever it is smells delicious, but how can the food compete with the view of her body underneath her slim-cut work pants, a pale pink dress shirt on top, the outline of her camisole barely visible beneath?

  “Ta-da,” she says, turning to face me with two plates in her hands.

  It’s spaghetti.

  And not gross-ass, leftover spaghetti. Delicate with red sauce like her mother used to make—that’s why it smelled so familiar. She’s made garlic toast.

  “It was my weekend make-ahead,” she says with a laugh. “It’s a good thing you’re here. I wasn’t going to get through all of it myself.”

  “It’s Monday.”

  “I have a sense for these things.”

  She comes around the island and puts one plate in front of me, then places her own down in front of the next stool.

  “Be careful,” she says automatically. “It’s hot—” As she stands tall again, her breasts brush against my shoulder, the intake of her breath a whisper against my cheek.

  I twine one hand around the back of her neck and pull her to me, claiming her lips for the second time today, and it’s less of a battle than it was in the doctor’s office. She’s there, instantly there, her arms curling around my neck, legs curling around my waist, and she’s panting. Panting.

  I want my hands on every inch of her but I settle for a stroke down her waist and feel her hip rise to meet my palm. Summer throws her head back, giving me access to the soft skin of her neck. “Aren’t you hungry?” she breathes.

  “For you.”

  She shivers under my touch, and my mind wanders back to the locked door of the apartment.

  We’re safe here.

  I can have her.

  I have to have her.

  Energy rushes through me and I stand up, lifting both of us off the stool, then set her on her feet. “Dayton?”

  “I want to see you.” I trail my thumb over her collarbone. “Show me everything.”

  Her eyes sparkle, tiny bursts of want glittering there, and she takes a step back. “Show me everything.” Her voice is a little uncertain and my cock jumps in my pants

  “No.” I step closer, pitching my voice low. “I’ve been waiting years for this.” I bend to speak into her ear. “And I’m not the kind of man who takes orders.”

  Another shiver, a soft gasp, and then Summer’s hands are working at the buttons of her shirt, and then the clasp of her bra.

  She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. The curves of her waist. Her breasts—fuck. I put my calloused hands against her hips and she tilts her head up, her nipples standing up in the cool air, and I take her mouth one more time while I circle one of those nipples with the pad of my thumb.

  The sound she makes is half moan, half whimper, and it might as well be a bomb dropping against the last of my self-control.

  I break the kiss and shove her pants down as far as I can reach—I can’t get on my knees, not when things are moving this fast—and she scrambles to step out of them, scrambles to get back to me, desperate, grasping, and I have all of her in my hands. My sweet Summer spreads her legs and straddles me again, mouth furious against mine, and I balance her with one hand while I dip the other between her legs.

  Her folds are soaked and at my touch the words spring out of her. “Oh, please, please...”

  I am unleashed.

  With a growl I can’t control I turn us both. Three quick steps across the kitchen and her bare back is pressed against the eggshell blue of the wall. I haven’t felt this strong in months. I have spent the last forever off-balance, my shitty prosthetic eating into my sanity, but with her weight in my hands I am grounded, powerful, rooted to the ground. My balance is just fine. She nips my neck and pleasure rockets down my spine and coils at the base. With one hand I undo my pants.

  “Please—”

  “We shouldn’t do this.” That’s as much as I can give it. That’s as much resistance as I have in my entire body.

  Summer gives me a wicked grin and licks my neck. She tilts her hips. She takes me in one stroke.

  The apartment falls away. The world falls away. It’s her heat and wetness and nothing else—nothing but the smooth feel of her skin on mine, her muscles tightening around my cock. Harder. Harder. My hands on her hips, the way she braces as I fuck her.

  As I come, her cries in my ears. Sinful pleasure. Angels singing, here on earth.

  She’s still trembling when we untangle from one another, still clinging to my neck, but she straightens up after a minute. Lifts her chin. Grins at me, her cheeks flushed and pink. “So are you—”

  I bend to press my lips against the curve of her neck. “Satisfied? Never.”

  “I was going to say are you still hungry.”

  “Ravenous,” I whisper into her ear.

  “Let’s eat,” she whispers back.

  14

  Dayton

  Two Years Ago

  “Look at those fuckers run.”

  Wes sneers it out of the side of his mouth, hands loosely steering the wheel of the dust-coated Humvee. He doesn’t give a shit about the little kids running through the Afghani countryside, but he should. They’re the ones who know where
the mines are buried. I’d rather not acknowledge him, but I’m keeping a lookout. The more eyes the better.

  This deployment is stretching out into forever. Endless raids, endless missions. It’s not like the planning process is any less tedious into these hours-long drives into rural villages in the foothills, our line of Humvees rumbling along at an agonizingly slow, agonizingly fucking dreary, pace. We stop a lot to question random bullshit. We take precautions. We mark the waypoints.

  I should be happy—or at least happier. A month ago I got bumped to the action development team, so I get to go to planning meetings. Planning is the only thing that holds my attention, but in reality, it’s as skull-numbing and terrifying as riding in the Humvee. The information we gather in those meetings gets routed up to the battalion level, and then they spend three weeks planning out where we’re going to go, what we’re going to do once we get there.

  Or else they’re just sitting on their hands. I have no idea. This was supposed to be a career for me, but I don’t think I can stand it for that long. Another deployment with Wes might turn us into mortal enemies.

  “What does it look like to you?”

  “Hard to say.”

  Asshole. Of course it’s hard to say.

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “Can’t tell.”

  The sides of the Humvee press in around me. Around us. It’s suffocating. I breathe in a measured pace to keep from choking on the air. Four of us are crammed in here, with all the various shit you have to take if you’re going anywhere off the base in Afghanistan. Us, and the tension. The air is thick with the relentless, unspoken tension between us, as heavy as the dust that hangs into the air and invades my lungs with every breath.

  I’ve been off the fucking base for two weeks. It’s starting to wear on me. Not that remaining on the base is a guarantee of safety. Nothing is guaranteed out here, but at least I know there aren’t IEDs lying around the sleeping quarters.

  If a bomb dropped on those, we’d be in real trouble. I rest easier knowing they’re not buried under my bunk.