Reckless: A Bad Boyz Anthology

by Anthology

  The way her voice sounded confirmed she wasn’t just crazy in bed, she was certifiable, and it made apprehension twist in my gut. My heart beat so hard in my chest it hurt. “Yes, baby, I promise.”

  “Just the blindfold,” she replied.

  I could hear and feel her move then whatever she’d secured over my eyes was removed. I stared up at her, willing myself to remain in control because it was clear she wasn’t.

  “I hate men,” she whispered, staring down at her clasped fingers like a vulnerable, wounded animal. “You all lie. You all use women. You take what you want and when you’ve had enough you leave.”

  I wasn’t sure which way to go with this. “You’re right. We’re assholes.”

  She lifted her hand to cover her eyes with her palm and it was then I noted she was crying. “I’m so tired of being alone.”

  My heart twisted from that. It was a sentiment I shared. I didn’t want to be softened by that, but couldn’t shut off my reaction.

  “You’re not alone, Shyla. I’m here. Untie me. I’ll stay. I promise.”

  She sniffed a few times, ran her fingers through her hair then flipped the straggling waves from her face. The screams that filled the room I didn’t recognize as my own.

  Everything took on the surrealness of a nightmare. Over and over again in front of me were long black waves floating back from a face. And the images were shifting, pulling apart, joining, no longer Shyla, but not recognizable. The world around me grew fuzzy and horrifying.

  Over and over again in my head flashed the same picture—black hair floating back from a face—and with each replay I lost a little more of my slipping hold over my mental faculties.

  I was trapped inside a dark movie and I couldn’t distinguish what parts were real life and what parts had already been lived.

  Screaming.

  Black hair.

  Painful blows against my body.

  Darkness.

  Bullets.

  Voices…

  A jolt of adrenaline shot through me, doubling my strength and I began to thrash and fight until I broke the bed along with the ties that held me to it.

  Then there was nothing.

  A giant hole in my memory.

  Breaking the bed, then nothing, until I was at JFK waiting to board the plane with Graham.

  Chapter Three

  Sacramento, the present…

  “DON’T HOLD BACK to spare my feelings, Graham. Go ahead. Gloat and lecture. I’ve fucked up big this time, haven’t I?”

  He shrugged and kept his vision locked on the bags circling the conveyer in the luggage claim area.

  I exhaled a ragged breath and ran my fingers through my hair. “Just tell me what to do to fix this.”

  Fuck, more silence. Graham hadn’t said a word since the end of the 411 about my sexcapade and meltdown with Shyla. That wasn’t good. I was in a worse situation than I thought if he didn’t know what to say.

  “We’ll talk when we get home. I think it’s better I call Zac and we wait for him before we dive into this.”

  Zac? Oh fuck.

  “I’m not talking to a shrink, even if he is your boyfriend.”

  Those piercing gray eyes locked on me. “You want my help we do it my way. There’s a lot to deal with here. This one is beyond my MOS. You’ll talk to Zac if you want me to try to get you out of this clusterfuck and save your job.”

  He said that deliberately in a tone intended to remind me that his way would always be the prevailing way if I wanted to continue working with him. Fucking high-handed, power obsessed, gay whore, ex-Special Forces prick.

  “Fine. A shrink. But can we at least find me a new one, a doctor you’re not fucking?”

  Laughing, he pulled off a bag and dumped it at my feet. “That’s yours, isn’t it?”

  I nodded, and waited while he grabbed his own case.

  As we walked out of the terminal toward the cab line, he said, “I would never have met Zac if not for you, Dillon. Him giving you his professional services free we consider a thank you for a successful love connection.”

  I gaped at him. “You consider you and Zac a success? You suck every cock you can on the road. If it’s a success why aren’t you at least monogamous? You can marry in California now. Make a commitment. Buy a house, get a dog, and all that shit. If you and Zac are a success why don’t you marry him?”

  Graham arched a brow, amused. “Bravo. Some of your provincial Sacramento upbringing just reappeared after a night of BDSM gone awry. And here I thought you’d lost the moral pureness of a simple Nor Cal boy forever. There’s hope for you yet. That sounded like the Dillon Warrick of years ago.”

  “Nonresponsive answer.”

  He gave me an approving look of touché. “Zac and I make our lives work how we have to. And we are fully committed. Within limits. When I’m home the monogamy rule is in effect for the both of us until I ship out again.”

  “That bullshit rationalization wouldn’t fly in any relationship,” I jeered. “There’s not a person on the planet who’d be cool with that if they were emotionally invested.”

  “But I don’t fuck women. I fuck men. A more understanding, tolerant, compatible situation all around. Maybe you should try it, since the way you live definitely is not conducive for a successful relationship with a woman as you define commitment.” His eyes began to twinkle, warning me of what was going to come next. “I have a theory about why you play fuck and run with so many women.”

  “Fuck, not that again. Say it and you’re in a hotel on your own for the next four months.”

  He chuckled and hailed a cab. “For every act there is a motivation, whether we know it or it’s from our subconscious. You, my friend, are afraid to get emotionally involved. Why do you think that is?”

  “You’ve been tapping shrink cock too long. You’re starting to sound like Dr. Phil.” I opened the taxi door as Graham loaded the luggage into the trunk. “Trust me, I’m not gay.” I disappeared into the back of the cab.

  When Graham climbed in and shut the door behind him I saw that those eyes of his had lost their teasing glint. “I never said I thought you were gay. In fact, I’m positive you’re not. That doesn’t mean you don’t have some deep, buried issue we need to fix that’s preventing you from having a normal relationship with a woman.”

  My temper flared. “I have normal relationships.”

  “Name one.”

  I stared for a moment, my jaw clenching and unclenching, told myself not to say it, but I did anyway. “Rachel.”

  He stared at me like I’d grown two heads. “You call that normal?”

  I lapsed into silence. There was no point arguing that retort. Even I wasn’t enough of a prick to think I was being fair with her, and in truth, I told myself more than once to break it off though I never seemed to be able to follow through.

  We had a long history: hot and heavy in high school, a serious couple when I enlisted, and I had been toying with the idea of marrying her before that last deployment. Then, in events I don’t recall in that missing chunk of blurred life history, we must have ended because the next time I hit Sac Town we were just friends, she was standoffish and anxious around me, and it was excruciating to be with her, knowing that everything was different between us and not knowing why. Thank God during my next stopover in Sacramento we started fucking and eventually we were friends again.

  I liked Rachel and she was the only person in my life from the old days I would have hated to lose forever. Now we were fuck-buddies whenever I was home, though why she was agreeable to that defied logic because Rachel was the kind of woman who definitely deserved more. Even though that last mission left me too fucked up internally to dare anything beyond a casual relationship, I wasn’t blind to the fact that she was a keeper.

  Beautiful.

  Educated.

  Genuine.

  And yeah, she was fucking incredible in bed.

  That she’d remained unmarried into her thirties often blew my mind. But ma
ybe it had to do with being a single mother. Guys were such assholes when there was a child involved. Present company included.

  Graham’s voice startled me out of my musings. “Are you going to see Rachel while we’re here?”

  I frowned. “Of course. I see her every time I’m home. Why would you ask that?”

  He lifted his shoulders in a not completely made shrug. “I’m thinking maybe you shouldn’t for a while. Why don’t we hold up until we know Zac’s thoughts on your mental state?”

  My heart stopped beating in my chest. “Why the fuck would you say that?”

  His gaze bore into me, putting me further on edge. “You’ve been losing it a lot lately. Tokyo. Shyla. It’s coming in faster intervals than ever before. I’m not sure what that means and I don’t want you flipping out with Rachel. The girl has been through enough.”

  My brows lowered with my glare. “Fuck you. I’ll see who I want to see.” I angled my body to face him directly. “It wouldn’t matter how fucked up I got in my head, I could never hurt Rachel.”

  His eyes met mine, unwaveringly. “You already have.”

  Every muscle in my body felt an electric zap then tensed. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  He opened his car door and I realized we were parked in front of my building. I paid the driver as Graham collected our bags and then followed him into the lobby toward the elevator.

  “Are you going to explain?” I demanded hotly.

  The way he put his hand on my shoulder told me I wasn’t going to like what he was coming next. “One of us knows what went down in Tokyo, Dillon, and it isn’t you. And that’s all I’m going to say until Zac gets here.”

  *`~`*

  Zac was with a patient when Graham phoned him, but in their brief conversation I was able to glean the doctor would be making a house call—and no doubt a booty call to follow—as soon as he could.

  The minutes waiting were agony and no matter how I prodded, Graham wouldn’t expand on the bombshell he’d dropped before we climbed into the elevator. One of us knows what went down in Tokyo, Dillon, and it isn’t you. And as if that wasn’t alarming enough, the way he said that made my guts start to roil with those old suspicions that he knew in minute detail what was in that tormenting missing block of time that had nearly ruined my life five years ago, what happened and what I did.

  My gaze fixed on him sitting calmly in a chair across the room from me. He’d hotly deny it if I asked him straight up if he was keeping the truth about Afghanistan from me. I still hadn’t worked out in my head how he would know what went down since he hadn’t been on my last deployment. I wondered if the Army had told him since he was the one who signed me out of the hospital and took responsibility for my care when I was still too fucked up to take care of myself. And I worried that the reason he lied to me, pretended he didn’t know, was that the truth was so horrific he thought it would harm me.

  He was a good friend that way. The kind of guy who took the tough missions to protect you, who stayed with you when everyone else in your life walked away.

  Loyalty. Bravery. Duty. Truth. And honor. Those weren’t empty slogans for Graham; those were his life tenets. Even knowing all that, instinct warned me not to believe him if he denied knowing the truth, which was pretty fucking disappointing because until now I never believed he had the ability to lie to me. He was the most honest man I’d ever known.

  But oh, I was starting to believe he’d lie to save me from myself. He had kept his mouth shut about Tokyo, at least until we reached Sacramento or rather close proximity to my shrink.

  My nerves grew tauter as his words rose in my memory. You were never good at staying in a holding pattern even when the holding pattern and timing things right are what wins a battle. A holding pattern? Fuck, what the hell did he think my life had been for the past five years?

  At last there was the sound of a key slipping into the lock. Yep, Zac had a key to my place. It made things easier all around since Graham had one for when he made his flying trips from the road for a cock fix in California, and the good shrink was kind enough to keep tabs on my place when the tour schedule kept me away.

  I suggested once that they both move in here, but Graham killed that notion before I could broach the subject with Zac. My best friend had his own commitment issues. Not that we ever discussed them. And in truth, though I loved him like a brother and had no hang-ups about the gay thing, I didn’t really want to go there with him. But I will say that I don’t think that I’m the only one who’s benefited from Graham taking a steady lover who is a psychiatrist.

  Graham rose and crossed the room to greet his partner, and I tried to be discreet and not watch them kiss.

  There was such a precise, controlled passion between them that made it impossible to figure who the chick was in the deal. The longer they kissed the harder it was not to look, and I definitely shouldn’t have faulted them the extended greeting because it had been a long time for them.

  Out of the corner of my eye I caught a quick glance at two handsome, virile men in the throes of something inescapably enviable. They made exactly the kind of picture I’d expect to see on a gay greeting card, except for the part where Zac is twenty-five years older than his bedmate. Yep, Doc was in his sixties and had the gray hair to prove it, which I found strange since on the road it was all about the twenty-something cock for Graham.

  Graham never made sense to me. Maybe Zac was a Freudian slip of a sexual and nonsexual nature. Not that I’d ever suggest that to Graham. Oh, and to correct an earlier pretense, he was telling the truth; Graham would win if I were stupid enough to let loose a punch.

  Finally, they stepped back from each other and Zac came to me with his hand extended.

  “Dillon, good to see you,” he said.

  I smiled because Zac was OK for a shrink. “It’d be a lot better if you were here so we could all grab some beers, hang out, and catch up instead of digging around in my gray matter.”

  He laughed. “Who says we’re not going to do that?”

  “Eventually,” Graham put in heavily.

  We each sank down in our customary places in my living room—me on a chair by the floor-to-ceiling window, with Graham and Zac side by side on my sofa.

  Zac opened his briefcase and pulled out his notebook. Five years; I wondered how many of those I’d already filled. He clicked on a tape recorder and set it on the coffee table between us.

  “Graham tells me that your issues have become more pronounced and frequent lately?” Zac said in his best benign, not-wanting-to-alarm medical voice.

  I nodded, but inside I was fuming. Oh, he did, did he? It was hard enough going through analysis without having a spy in the ranks reporting on you before you got to unburden your own shit or even got to decide if you wanted to.

  “There was this thing in Manhattan,” I started slowly. “A hookup gone wrong—”

  Zac looked up from his notes and frowned. “I was referring to what happened in Tokyo. I wasn’t aware of a more recent incident.”

  “I only just learned of it at the airport,” Graham stated pointedly.

  I went through the motions of glaring at him though medical confidentiality had from day one been set aside for this strange therapeutic ménage à trois. I resisted at first, but I had to admit that the informality and having the security of Graham going through this with me was probably the only reason I’d been successful thus far, though there were times when the two of them staring at me in unison drove me up a wall. But it did prove that it was true that all couples—even gay couples—in time morphed into each other.

  I shifted my gaze away from their expectant stares since this was the juncture where I was supposed to share shit that I really didn’t want to share. “I don’t remember what went down in Tokyo.”

  Zac pursed his lips, nodding, and started to scribble.

  “Tell me what you do remember.”

  “Picking up a woman at a party. Going back to my hotel room. Then nothin
g.”

  He stared at me over the rim of his glasses. “Do you remember having sex with her?”

  Oh fuck. “Yeah…well, not completely…when we first started going at it. That’s pretty clear. Then blank.”

  Zac made more notes. “Graham, why don’t you fill Dillon in on how you found him? We’ll work the timeline backward from there and see what he can recover.”

  “It was in his hotel room,” Graham started. “He was crouched in a corner, screaming. It took two of us to restrain him. The girl was gone. She must have called for help. Security and a doctor were already there…”

  Graham’s words were soon lost in a rapid series of flashing images. And Jesus fucking Christ, that effortlessly it came flooding back, my missing hours in Japan, and I didn’t want it…

  Chapter Four

  Tokyo, two weeks earlier…

  IT WASN’T HARD to find a target at a party in Alan’s hotel suite. Endless possibilities, variety, and disappointed beauties abounded the room.

  I knew everything worth knowing about Julia the first second I laid eyes on her. She had that chic, young, overly trendy look. Definitely an up-and-coming model trying to get a splash of publicity by making the rounds in the fast lane. Perfect for the fuck-a-thon I needed after the long week of work. I’d just passed seven days without any female recreation, I was finally off duty, and it was time for me to have my own party.

  I took a sip of my drink, alertly watching Julia in action and wondering if she knew Alan was a lost cause for her. By how she clung to him on the sofa, my guess was that she didn’t. I could see, even from across the room, she was turning herself on trying to get Alan to leave with her. And while his arm hadn’t moved from around her and he didn’t openly rebuff her advances, there wasn’t a chance in hell he was ending this night with her.

  Julia’s hopes crashed and burned five minutes ago when that fucking gorgeous blonde entered the room, but somehow she missed Alan, locking, loading and turning trajectory elsewhere.

  I checked my watch. It was after two. Hopefully he’d dump her soon. My dick seconded that motion with a nice little jolt. Fuck, I could barely drag my eyes away from Julia. She was just what the doctor ordered, exactly what I looked for in a casual lay: tall, luscious body, a nice rack, flirty long dark hair, and giant light eyes. Maybe not Alan’s type but, oh, she was perfect for me.