She shoved me away, unbuckling my pants within seconds and pulling the zipper apart so fast I thought she might break it apart. “Take me to bed.”
It was a blur of lost clothing and quiet giggling up the stairs after that. Neither of us wanted to wake the kids. We left a trail of clothes in our wake and fell upon the bed together, skin against skin, heart against heart. She wrapped her legs around me as I slid into her body, but it was happening too quickly. My body trembled with the need to fuck her into oblivion.
“You okay?” Concern laced her voice when I tensed above her.
I nodded, clenching my teeth. “You feel… amazing. So fucking tight. I feel like I’m going to lose it like I did the first time we had sex.”
“In the back of your pickup?” She laughed, which felt like a pleasure vice around my cock. “We were bumbling idiots who had no idea what sex was.”
“We know now.” I grinned at her and pulled out of her. She groaned in disappointment and reached to stop me, but I pinned her arms down. “You stay.”
“What?”
“Me play.”
“What are you, a caveman? Brody—Oh!” As soon as my tongue touched her center, she stopped talking. I wasn’t going to last very long inside her. Two years of abstinence would do that to a guy. I was going to make sure she enjoyed herself first. I slid two fingers inside her, pumping slowly as my tongue played with the little bundle of nerves. Her fingers gripped my hair. She squirmed so much, I wasn’t sure if she was pulling me toward her or pushing me away. I stayed my course until soon she tensed, her fingers digging into my shoulders. I knew the moment she broke, her body contracting so tightly around my fingers and then how it slumped in the aftermath.
I crawled over her, my cock pointed directly toward the apex of her thighs.
“Oh, Brody.” She let out a sated sigh, and moaned when I slid my dick into her. “Fuck me.” Her heels dug into my ass.
“I feel like I’m still that fifteen year old with you,” I told her. “That this is like that night.”
She glanced up at me. “So you want to do it in the back of your pickup again?”
“You were beautiful then. But you’re gorgeous now. So fucking gorgeous.” I kissed her, my hips surging into her.
We moved together, Devyn’s legs hooked behind me. Together we rose again, pleasure and sex scenting the air. Sooner than I’d hoped, lightning struck, and both of us tumbled down, clinging to each other as our climax took us off the edge of the cliff we’d built. I lowered myself so my chest pressed against hers. I kissed her lips, her jaw, her ears, her neck… anywhere I could reach her skin.
“I love you,” she said. “I love everything about you. Secrets or no, I missed you so fucking much.” Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, dripping and disappearing into her hair. I wiped them dry, but more followed, more than I could keep up with.
“Please don’t cry,” I whispered to her. It broke something inside me to see her cry. But that made it worse. A torrential downpour started as soon as I said it. Her body shuddered as sobs wracked her. I flipped us so she laid her head on my chest. I wasn’t sure how long we lay there like that. She buried her face in my chest while I ran my fingers over her spine, over and over. I didn’t have any words for her. I couldn’t make the last two years just a dream. So I just held her.
*
Brody
SEAL Team Thirteen was a classified secret, even more so than SEAL Team Six had been before the Osama Bin Laden mission. Supposedly, I should have felt honored to be part of the team, and I supposed in a way, I did. But since coming home, it was just getting to be a hassle.
I couldn’t tell Devyn anything. It was easier to keep secrets when I hadn’t seen her. And now I went home each day, after reviewing security footage and personnel files on the Giroux operation, and seeing the crap his people did, and had to look my wife in the eyes and lie to her.
The good thing about it was that it didn’t seem like anyone had seen my face after that last mission. Or at least, no one had survived to remember it. We hadn’t been able to identify the men and the woman who had attacked us during the Cadence Long rescue.
“Battles!” I blinked. Chris Hardy tossed a pencil at me, hitting me in the forehead. “Heads up, dumbass.” Around us, the guys laughed, but I wasn’t in the mood for jacking around.
“What the fuck, Hardy?” I growled and threw it back at him. Hardy ducked, grinning like an idiot, and the pencil fell to the floor.
“You’re dreaming over there. What’s up with you?” Hardy’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“Nothing,” I spat, looking away from him. “I’m fine.”
Murphy slipped into the seat next to him. “How’s the wife and kids doing?”
“They’re fine,” I grumbled. I didn’t want to talk about my family. I was irritated enough that I’d made Devyn cry.
“What’s wrong?”
“Your face.”
“Asshole.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Look, usually when I ask about the family, you pull out that fucking phone and start showing all the pictures.” Murphy pointed to the phone sitting on the table. “So, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
I didn’t want him to be, but the jerk was right. I had the Proud Daddy Syndrome, or at least I had it at one time, before I came home. I’d loved showing off the girls. “It’s just an adjustment. That’s all.”
“What, were you expecting newborns or something? Babies grow, man.” Hardy plopped his feet on the conference table.
Dick.
“I know. You guys wouldn’t get it, okay?” That was an unfair generalization, and I knew it. But luckily, neither Murphy nor Hardy was the type to take offense. Murphy shrugged.
“Fiiiine, we’ll butt out.” Hardy rolled his eyes. “You big baby.”
Murphy let out something that was almost a chuckle, if it were anyone but Murphy. I wasn’t sure what it was. Hardy said it was just the way Murphy was, and I supposed he would know, seeing as how they’d been best friends since diaperhood and all.
I’d have liked to think that was how Devyn and I would have been if we’d met when we were much younger. Not that Hardy and Murphy were a couple. They’d have kicked my ass for even thinking it, if they’d known.
“Murph, get a hold of your other half, huh?” I shot at him.
Murphy frowned, but there was a slight remnant of a smile on his face. “He does what he does, Battles. I’m not his keeper”
“Yeah, that’s the problem.” Dylan Urban said as he walked in with a stack of folders. “Always fucking running his mouth.”
“I will beat your ass right here on this table, Urban.” Hardy growled.
“Aww, and here I thought you were the bitch, Hardy.”
“Fuck off!” Hardy snapped, but smiles around the table broke any thought of tension. I grinned. I’d trust any of these guys with my life. And I had. But after spending one night with Devyn in my arms, she was my priority. There was no comparison. And Devyn definitely smelled better than these guys.
“Let’s get some work done, okay?” Murphy interjected before Hardy could speak again. Hardy glared at Urban, but nodded to Murphy and sat back in his chair with the files Dylan Urban passed to each of us.
“I’d rather go shoot something than sit here and read this crap,” Urban grumbled.
“Read this crap so we can go shoot something.” Hardy replied. “Or did you forget how to read?”
“Fuck you.”
“You’re not my type, my man.” Hardy turned his attention to the files in his hand. The guys settled in after that, switching gears to the job. I hated the paperwork too. I preferred to actually do things. But we weren’t exactly like a regular SEAL team. We did things that were outside the purview of the regular military; hell, outside of the regular SEAL job description.
“Okay, children,” Murphy stressed the word. Everyone fell quiet. We joked around and ribbed each other a lot, but when Murphy meant business, we all
fell in line. We weren’t sure why, and we’d never really talked about it. He just commanded that sort of respect and we gave it to him. “Heard from Cadence Long. She’s providing us with the intelligence she gathered before they captured her. It should help with finding the heart of Giroux’s operation, which is now the NSA’s job.”
“What?” Hardy sat up. “This is our operation.” A couple of the guys agreed. I sat quietly and waited.
“We’re the brute squad, Hardy, and you know that. The NSA and CIA have contacts all over the world. They’ll be working with us on this. Joint task force sort of thing.”
“Sure, when we get close, they horn in on our thing.” Hardy grumbled. I couldn’t disagree with him. I didn’t want the NSA getting into our business either.
“They also have a fully-stocked cyber-forensics lab. The files you’re holding? They came from Cadence Long’s office. They’re the files from the computers the secondary team seized during her rescue.”
“I don’t remember having time to grab desktops, Murphy.” Brody frowned. It had been a pretty tight timetable.
“That would be because you were unconscious, Battles.” A couple of the guys chuckled quietly. “We had to rush because we had Long, but the secondary team came in with backup, raided the place and blew it sky-high after we left. They weren’t expecting the second attack so that made it easier.”
“Okay. So what did they find?”
“We’re not done decrypting the personnel files we found, but we have found at least six detailed plans for weapons silos in three different countries. Lieutenant Nelson wants us to start looking at planning raids on their facilities before they’re fully operational.”
“Raids on a weapons silo…” Urban frowned. “How do we know these are accurate?”
“We don’t, yet. At best, this info is six months old now. It may not be worth shit anyway. We’re scrambling some satellites to take some overview pictures.”
“What if they’re underground?” Hardy asked. “From the looks of these, they’re several floors deep, which makes me think they’re going to be underground installations.” He shook his head. “If we go in there, we’re leaving ourselves vulnerable to a counter-offensive.”
I glanced down at the papers in my hands as they talked back and forth. Pages of building plans, lists of files. Nothing much different from what we normally found when we broke into Giroux facilities. Something was missing and that was nagging at me. Maybe it would become clearer once we had the personnel files decrypted. I just knew that I had a bad feeling about this operation suddenly, and I couldn’t quite figure out why.
Chapter Twelve
‡
Devyn
As close as Brody and I had been Friday night, the following week brought more distance. Most of his day was spent at work. Whatever operation they were working on, it was taking up a lot of time. He was gone so much it was almost like he was deployed again, except occasionally, he came home to sleep.
The phone rang again, for the fourth time that day. “Hello?”
“Hi, Devyn!” For the fourth time that day, I had Vera on the phone. “I was hoping to catch Brody for lunch.”
I stifled a groan. One day, this woman would give up, right?
“He’s not coming home for lunch. He had a big meeting at work.” Not that he showed up for lunch at all on a normal basis. I didn’t even know why the woman was calling me.
“Oh, that’s too bad.”
Like I’d tell you he was here anyway, I silently grumbled. Was there some kind of rule that said in-laws had to drive you crazy? I had been willing to let her see her son the first day. I had been willing to sit in the kitchen while they fawned over him. But I was approaching my patience limit now. Brody had been back a week and a half and not one single damn day went by without his mother calling for him, even when she knew he was at work. I could only imagine how many times she was blowing up Brody’s cell phone.
I loved my in-laws. I did. But I liked to love them from afar. It was easier. I liked them better that way.
“I’ll have him call you when he gets home, Vera.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll try him on his cell. Thanks, Devyn!” She hung up without waiting for me to say anything. I sighed. She was calling me before she was even calling Brody now. I guessed maybe Brody was evading her calls. He didn’t say anything about it, but I knew Brody. His patience with his mother was even less than mine.
“Devyn?”
Jane’s voice echoed in the house as she slammed the front door shut. I set my phone down and walked into the living room. “Hey, Jane.”
“I have Chinese.” Jane held up two brown paper bags and wiggled her eyebrows.
I put my palms together like I was praying and bowed to her. “Bless you, my friend.” She laughed and handed me one of the bags. I flopped on the couch. The bag was so warm and smelled of glorious chicken fried rice. “How much do I owe you?”
“Pfft,” Jane waved her hand as she sat next to me. “No worries. I haven’t seen you in like, a week.”
“Not since Brody came home.” At the mention of Brody, Jane’s body tensed, but only for a moment before she fished her own food out of the other bag.
“How’s that going, anyway?”
I shrugged. “Okay. He’s been busy. There’s this big thing going on at work that he’s stressed about.”
“Oh? What thing is that, love?” Jane asked as she sat down on the couch.
“Some big plan they’re working on. He can’t talk about it with me. Security and all that.” I opened the container inside the bag, letting the steam drift up. I took a breath, inhaling the scent of food. I hadn’t had a chance to go grocery shopping yet this week, so food was a little scarce for grownups at the moment. “So good.”
“That bothers you, that he can’t speak on it?”
“Sometimes. I understand why.”
“So, when does the man get home?” Jane asked, digging into her food.
I shrugged again. “Who knows?”
“Sounds like you need a rest,” Jane said. “And look at you. You’re exhausted.”
“I’m fine.”
“I could babysit for you. Give you and the man some time alone.” Jane offered.
“Thanks, but I think we’re good on that front.”
“Please,” Jane snorted. “You’re grumpy. You’re obviously not getting any.”
I blushed.
That wasn’t exactly true. Brody and I had had an amazing night after the zoo… well, minus the crying I did. But she was right in the respect that the rest of the week had been dry in the sex department. Brody was busy, and I got the feeling that he was a little afraid of making me cry again. It wasn’t his fault. The tears had been there all along. He just… that night had set them free.
“Come on now,” Jane said. “I’m not getting any. Somebody should.”
I snorted, though it wasn’t funny for her. “Why don’t you go out on a date instead of babysitting toddlers?”
She hesitated, a sadness ebbing off her before she locked it down. It was less time than a blink, but I saw it.
Jane had a past she didn’t like to talk about. I’d encountered her stubbornness about talking before. She had maybe ten years on me, so maybe she lost someone close to her, like a husband or a child.
Jane shrugged. “The girls are more fun than stupid men. Anyway… You talk to the husband. Decide a day, and I’ll come stay with the babies.”
“I don’t know that this is what we need. Brody needs to spend more time with his family, not me.” I sighed. “Let’s not talk about it, okay?”
“Problems at home, love?”
I looked away from Jane, considering the question. It wasn’t so much that we were having issues as we’d just… forgotten how to be together. We were getting along fine. “Not exactly. It’s just… not… the way it should be. You know? He’s different than he used to be. One minute…” I trailed off. “Never mind. I’m probably imagining it.”
/>
“No, what is it?” Jane twisted her body, lifting one leg so it was bent in front of her like a partial hurdler’s stretch. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s something or you wouldn’t have brought it up. So, come on then.”
“Okay… it’s like he’s two people. One minute, he’s happy and joking around, and he’s the Brody that I married. And the next… he can barely look at me and when he does, it’s so… tortured.” I wasn’t dealing well with the changes either. He’d flip fast, and if I didn’t see it coming, he’d leave the room, go upstairs or go for a walk and I wouldn’t see him for a couple hours.
I wished I knew how to fix it for him. He was miserable. I could see it. There were periods where he was almost happy, but mostly, he was miserable. I hated that, but I couldn’t help him if he wouldn’t even talk about it with me.
“It sounds like a depression.” Jane said, closing the container she was eating from. She set it down on the coffee table.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s having nightmares too. The first night, he woke up scared shitless. He pawed me like he was expecting me to be hurt. The next time, he said he couldn’t sleep. Usually, he’s up and down, and finally decides to pass out on the couch so he wouldn’t bother me anymore.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know. It’s only been a few days. He might level out.” I honestly had not a lot of hope for that. I’d noticed new scars on his body when he’d come home. He’d seen conflict, and I knew that played a part in it. I wondered if this was a sign of how he was going to change. I didn’t want him to. I loved my carefree joker. I didn’t know if I could deal with him being so serious, so haunted.
“He’ll be back to normal in no time.” But her tone didn’t match her words. When I glanced at her, she seemed lost in thought.
“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what if he doesn’t level out? He could end up being a danger to you. To the girls.”
SEALs of Summer: Military Romance Superbundle - Navy SEAL Style Page 72