Raid

by Kristen Ashley

  Then I couldn’t go down because my back was flat to the wall and Raiden’s front was pressed to me.

  Not this again.

  I couldn’t help it. It freaked me out when he did this so I started panting.

  “You know why we do that shit?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t even know what shit he was referring to, but that wasn’t the only reason I didn’t answer. I didn’t answer because he was scaring the pants off me.

  He didn’t need me to answer.

  He kept going.

  “It’s not for God, babe. And it’s not for country.”

  My chest pressed repeatedly against his with each breath.

  Raiden went on.

  “It’s for pretty girls with tanned legs that go up to her goddamned throat who ride asinine bikes and who’ll drop to their hands and knees, crawl to you and take your cock, moaning against it, making you so fuckin’ crazy you think your dick’s gonna explode in her mouth.”

  Oh God.

  “Raid—”

  “You might think that’s jacked, but it’s not. It’s the goddamned fuckin’ truth. Whether you got that in your bed before you go or hope to find it when you get back, that’s why you do it. You do it for her. You do it to keep her safe. You planted kids inside her, or you hope to; you do it for them. You get home in one piece, she’s your reward.” His body pressed into mine and his face, partly shadowed, came to within an inch of mine. “You’re my reward, Hanna.”

  My reward.

  Oh.

  My.

  God.

  Raiden wasn’t done.

  “I didn’t know it. When I was over there doin’ what I had to do, I didn’t have any fuckin’ clue. I didn’t know until I saw you laughin’ with Paul Moyer. Jumpin’ up and down with Bodhi, all excited about shiny ribbons on your goddamned bike. So into me you could barely talk when you ran into me. Sittin’ outside on your goddamned fuckin’ porch swing of all fuckin’ things, lookin’ right out of a fuckin’ movie. So cute. Christ, no joke, it hurts even to look at you and believe you’re real. So fuckin’ sweet, I remembered there’s a God and He actually likes me. You go over there, far fuckin’ away, you see shit, you do shit, you get through it knowin’ that’s home. That girl in the porch swing, knittin’ a goddamned afghan and drinkin’ wine, carefree because you sweat and bleed so that’s what she can be.”

  Listening to his words, the tears didn’t bite the backs of my eyes.

  They spilled over in streams.

  “Sweetheart—” I whispered brokenly.

  “And you know what gets me?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “What gets me now is the guys who bled out in the sand and they didn’t have that. They died never understanding. They died not gettin’ even a taste of their reward. They thought they were protecting home and country, but they didn’t even know what home was. I feel for the women who lost their men in that sand, Hanna, it guts me. But their men died havin’ that. Knowin’ why they died. Knowin’ exactly what home means and knowin’ it’s worth it. Those guys who didn’t have it, they died without a fuckin’ clue. And every day since I clapped eyes on you, finally understanding, it fuckin’ destroys me.”

  His words destroying me, I wrapped my hands around the sides of his neck and held on. “Raid, sweetheart, please—”

  He talked right over me.

  “So I’m not leavin’, Hanna. I was a dick and I hurt you and I cannot promise it won’t happen again, so I won’t. And you are not wrong. This shit burns in me, what happened, what I saw, what I did. But most of all who I lost. Every one of those guys deserves to have their reward sittin’ in a porch swing or however that shit comes about. When I say those men were good men, there isn’t a word in the fuckin’ dictionary that describes how good those men were. And there are only four of us left who know exactly what that means. They died and I’m here and I found my reward and I’m not letting it go. Because if they were alive and they knew I let something that important slip through my fingers, they’d be pissed at me. And if they can sacrifice everything so you can have your porch swing and I can come home and have everything they lost, you can fuckin’ learn how to take the heat and give it to me.”

  “Okay,” I agreed immediately.

  I agreed so immediately, Raiden’s, “Come again?” was clipped and short with surprise.

  “Okay, honey. I’ll learn how to take the heat.”

  The room went completely still. Everything suspended. It felt like time stopped.

  Then I gasped, as unexpectedly, I wasn’t against the wall anymore.

  Raiden chanting, “Jesus, fuck, Jesus, fuck,” he had an arm around me and I was sailing across the room. I landed on my back on the kitchen table with Raiden bent over me.

  His hands started to move on me, his mouth came to my neck and I wrapped him in my arms, turned my head and invited in his ear, “Take what you need.”

  At my words, his body stilled. Then abruptly he stood up, taking me with him so I was seated on the edge of the table, Raiden standing between my spread legs. With a hand cupping the back of my head, he pressed my cheek to chest, his other arm around me. His body bowed so it formed a hard, strong shield around me, protecting me from nothing, but, Raiden being Raiden, instinctively still protecting me.

  I kept my arms around him, pressed deep and held tight.

  “Jesus, fuck,” he murmured.

  I was silent.

  Raiden fell silent too.

  I gave it time.

  Raid took it.

  Then I asked gently, “You never talked about that with anybody, have you?”

  “No.”

  He only gave that to me.

  I shut my eyes and held on tighter.

  I said no more and gave it more time.

  Raiden took it.

  I opened my eyes and promised him, “Like the rest, that gift is just for me and I’m never going to share it with anybody.”

  “Jesus, fuck,” he whispered.

  I again went silent, but I held him closer.

  It was Raid that broke it this time.

  “That ‘okay’ you gave me, does that mean you’re still with me?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  I heard him draw in a deep breath.

  Then he stated, “Right, then I need you to promise me something.”

  “Okay,” I replied.

  He pulled away, cupped my jaw in both hands and tipped my head back so he could catch my eyes in the dim light.

  “I give you shit, you do not eat it. Like today, you give it back to me. We’ll work it out, Hanna, but we’ll do it like we did it tonight. Not you getting where my head is at and bowin’ to that in hopes you takin’ my shit eventually turns something in me. Today, I stepped far over the line and that is not cool. After I calmed my ass down, I spent the last two hours standing on your porch, thinkin’ if I put a little more strength in that throw you wouldn’t have landed on the bed, and the thoughts of what I could have done to you have been brutalizing me. That, babe, I promise I’ll check. The other shit, if it overwhelms me and I try to force it down your throat, you force it right back.”

  “Agreed,” I replied.

  He dug the pads of his fingers in slightly before they relaxed.

  “Okay,” he murmured.

  I lifted my hands to wrap them around his wrists and took a deep breath.

  Then I cautiously said, “Honey, I hesitate to mention this, but I think today proves you’ve got some issues to work through.”

  Both his hands slid back into my hair. He stuffed my face in chest and burst out laughing.

  I found this reaction both a relief and a little weird, but even so, as usual I wanted to watch him laugh, but couldn’t because it was dark and my face was smushed to his chest. He didn’t stop laughing before he let me go, but bent at the waist, put a shoulder in my belly and hefted me up.

  This action was more than a little weird and a surprise, so much so I straight up girlie shrieked, “Raid!�
��

  He turned and walked out of the kitchen, ordering, “Quiet, babe, I got some issues to work through.”

  Oh boy.

  I knew what that meant.

  “Um… maybe we should find alternate outlets to battle that burn,” I suggested to his back, my hands gripping his tee at his sides.

  I became perplexed when he didn’t head up the stairs, but unlocked and opened the front door and strode out to the porch. He turned right as he swung me around. He was still holding me, but we were front to front and I frantically grabbed hold of his shoulders so I wouldn’t go flying when his hands slid down and yanked my knees up at his sides.

  Then he sat in the porch swing with me astride him and tipped his head back to look at me.

  “Think, my girl fucks me in her porch swing, that’ll beat back the heat.”

  “Raid—”

  “Or at least that heat. She’ll be building a better kind of fire.”

  I needed to get a handle on this situation.

  Therefore, I slid my hands up to his neck and dipped my face closer. “Sweetheart, I like this idea but I’m being serious.”

  “Baby, bein’ seriously serious, you are the only thing in four years that has come close to getting me to a place where I can even begin to think I might be able to bear those flames.”

  Automatically my hands shifted to his face, palms to his cheeks, fingers wrapped around his ears and my forehead dropped to his as my eyes closed.

  “I want to be that for you,” I whispered.

  I was both alarmed and pleased that each one of those seven words was weighted with precisely just how much I wanted what I said.

  “Good, honey, ‘cause you already are.”

  Oh God.

  I loved that.

  I pressed my forehead into his tight before I angled my head and touched my lips to his.

  I moved back slightly, opened my eyes and gave in. “All right, then I suppose I’ll fuck you in my porch swing.”

  I watched him grin. “My own, personal firefighter with pretty blue eyes, fantastic tits and a sweet pussy.”

  His words were sweet (well, most of them) and it was good he was breaking the heavy mood, but I still pulled back a bit and slid my hands down to his neck. “Uh… just to say, I’m not comfortable with you always talking about my sweet, uh… you know.”

  His brows shot up. “You crawl on the floor for me and you don’t like me talkin’ about your pussy?”

  That sounded ridiculous.

  “Well—”

  “Hanna, I love my sister’s cooking so I’m gonna talk about it. Mostly I talk about that to her so she knows what she does is good and people appreciate it. I love Broncos football, so when they’re playin’, I’m gonna watch it. I’ll probably talk about it, though it’s unlikely I’ll talk about it to you. You’re a girl, so even if you like the Broncs, women can’t talk football. And don’t get uppity, that shit is just plain true. And I love my baby’s pussy, so I’m gonna talk about that too. If you want me to share that with my crew and not you, I’ll fill them in on the goodness I got in my bed, but just sayin’, I’d rather talk about it to you.”

  I would rather that too.

  “Fair enough,” I conceded.

  “Now, are you gonna fuck me or spend the next hour talkin’ to me?” he asked.

  “I suppose I’ll fuck you,” I muttered.

  His voice held humor when he returned, “Obliged you’d make that sacrifice for me.”

  I glanced at the swing then at him. “Uh… how do I fuck you?”

  “Babe, you’ve ridden my lap before.”

  This was true.

  I looked to the porch ceiling at the hooks holding up the swing then down to Raiden. “Do you think the swing can withstand this activity?”

  “I don’t know. What I do know is I wanna find out.”

  I bit my lip and looked back at the hooks.

  I then stopped biting my lip and surveying the hooks because I was up, and then I was up, again being hefted on Raiden’s shoulder.

  “Raid!” I shrieked.

  “We’ll break the swing in another time, maybe when you’re drunk,” he muttered, walking to the front door.

  “I was good,” I told his back. “I was just strategizing.”

  “You don’t have to strategize a mattress.”

  This was true.

  We were inside and he’d started up the steps when I informed him, “You can put me down. I can walk.”

  “Waste of time,” he replied. He turned on the landing, kept ascending and asked conversationally, “So, clue me in. When am I Raiden and when am I Raid?”

  I held onto his tee and stared at his back a second before I asked, “Sorry?”

  We entered my room and he made for the bed. Five strides (I counted) and I was on it and he was on me.

  Only then did he explain, “In the beginning all you did was call me Raiden. The first time I seriously tested you and that sweet pussy of yours,” he grinned when I frowned and went on, “you let Raid slip. No one calls me Raiden. Not even my Mom. Now you’re usin’ ‘em both, and I’m tryin’ to sort out where your head is at with which is which.”

  I thought about this and then shared, “I’m not certain there’s rhyme or reason to when I use one or the other.”

  “Is there rhyme or reason to anything you do?”

  For a second I contemplated my eyebrows (which I couldn’t see, but I tried) before I looked back at him. “Not really.”

  He’d been smiling when my eyes came back to him, but after I spoke, his smile faded. He cupped the side of my face with his hand, thumb sweeping my cheek then my lips before he said quietly, “My reward.”

  I let that slide through me as I turned my face and kissed the palm of his hand.

  After I kissed his palm, I said there, “I love it that you think that.”

  “Know it,” he corrected and I looked back at him.

  “Sorry?”

  “Don’t think it, Hanna. Know it.”

  That slid through me, too, and I melted (more) underneath him.

  “One more thing before we tear each other up,” he said.

  “What?” I asked.

  Then, even with all that had happened that day, and especially all that had gone on the last twenty minutes, as usual, Raiden Miller still managed to rock my world.

  He did this by saying straight out, with feeling, “Thank you, baby, for forgiving me.”

  Slowly, I closed my eyes.

  I opened them, planted a foot in the bed, rolled him and straddled him, closed them again and kissed him.

  Raid kissed me back.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Big Dick

  Six weeks later …

  I was carrying Spot out of the vet to my bike, or more like struggling to keep upright under the burden of his weight, when my phone rang. I put him in the basket. He sat on his ample behind, said, “Meow” and faced forward, telling me he was ready to roll.

  You could have colored me stunned when Grams and I (well, mostly me, Grams just sat there offering suggestions) grappled for a half an hour trying to get Spot in his kitty carrier. This didn’t work and ended with Spot desperately shoving his kitty face into the corner of the latched screen door and pushing it open enough to force his fat cat body through it. As I chased after him, he heaved his big body onto a porch chair then the porch railing where he jumped into the basket of my bike, making the bike sway precariously. By a miracle, it held. Spot sat down, turned his head and stared at me.

  We’d already learned the hard way through earlier tussles pre-visit to the vet that, for reasons only known to Spot, he only accepted rides in Grams’s Buick. So even though Grams never drove it anymore, it was Spot’s checkup day. Therefore I rode to Grams’s house and was going to take the Buick and Spot into town.

  Shockingly, Spot seemed absolutely fine in my basket. I tested this theory, rode around in Grams’s driveway awhile, then into town. He rode with me, happy as a clam, kitt
y nose pointed to the wind rushing through his fur. The vet receptionist wasn’t pleased we showed with no carrier, but she was no stranger to Spot and had learned herself prior to kitty claw laser therapy it was best just to let him have his way, so she didn’t say a word.

  Spot behaved himself the entire time.

  Seemed the cat liked bicycles.

  Go figure.

  “Crazy cat,” I muttered, grinning.

  I pulled my phone out of the back pocket of my shorts and saw the display.

  My grin turned into a huge smile, I took the call and put it to my ear.

  “Hey, honey,” I greeted Raid.

  “Baby, where are you?” he replied.

  “In town outside the vet. Spot’s annual checkup.”

  Silence then, “Drop him off and get home. I’m five minutes out of town. I’ll meet you at your place.”

  A happy thrill raced through me followed by an excited one.

  “No. I’m jumping on my bike now and I’ll meet you at yours,” I told him.

  “Hanna—”

  “Raiden,” I cut him off. “I’ll meet you at your place, but you have to promise me you’ll go there but won’t go inside. Wait for me.”

  More silence then, softer, “Hanna.”

  Then nothing but that soft “Hanna” sent another thrill racing through me.

  “I’ll pedal fast and me and Spot will be there in ten minutes,” I said.

  “You and Spot?”

  “He’s in my basket.”

  Another period of silence then, shaking with hilarity, “All right.”

  “No going inside,” I warned.

  “No going inside, baby.”

  I mounted my bike. “Right. See you soon. Missed you, honey.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  Another thrill.

  “‘Bye.”

  “Ten, babe.”

  He hung up.

  I tossed my phone in the basket with Spot.

  He looked down at it, turned his kitty face to me and said, “Meow.”

  “You can share with the phone, buddy,” I told him.

  “Meow.” He didn’t agree.

  “Suck it up,” I ordered.

  He glared at me then turned to face forward.

  I threw back the kickstand, put my feet to the pedals and motored.

  * * * * *