Stricken Rock Series: Complete Box Set

by S. K. Logsdon

  “James! James! Wake up.” I hear somebody order. But they’re not in our bedroom. Where is that sound coming from?

  I stand naked, legs spread, aimed and ready protectively standing in front of my love, with my gun itching to unload on whoever might be here to harm us on the other side of this wooden door.

  “James!” I get tapped on my leg. I look down and Emily hasn’t touched me.

  “Get up!” A slap registers on my cheek and I shoot up out of bed. What the hell? Where am I? I frantically look around my room. This isn’t my bedroom. And then it sinks in, it was a dream! Another one. It was so vivid I could have sworn it was real. I’d hoped it was.

  “You okay?” Gonzales asks, sitting on the edge of my bed holding a glass of OJ for me.

  “Yeah, sorry,” I mutter, taking the tall glass of orange juice and drinking it down in one breath, the bright flavor energizing me just enough to make me completely lucid and bringing me out of my intense dreamscape.

  “Another Emily dream?” She inquires delicately, knowing that I don’t want to talk about this. Especially ones of this magnitude to make my manhood stand at attention. Another morning where I’m going to have to masturbate to clear this strange animalistic need that’s clawing at my insides.

  I nod in response and she gets up and departs the room. Leaving me to cope. I handled PTSD from being tortured better than I’m doing now.

  It’s been three weeks to the day that I’ve been gone from my Mama Bear and my withdrawals are becoming more than intense. They’re seriously affecting my ability to do much of anything coherently. Not only because I miss her. But, that I’m wracked with monumental amounts of guilt and worry. Worried sick; wondering if she’s okay, if the twins are okay, if Dylan’s okay. If she’s made up with Johnathan. Which, according to Davis, the one and only time I’ve been able to contact him, said she’s not doing well at all. Which makes me feel even worse. I had every intention of having him relay a message, but the way he explained all of the crying and stress she was enduring I didn’t want to make the pain worse. I also didn’t ask him if she and Johnathan were making up. I do want to know. But I couldn’t bear to ask. My mental state is enough of a mess as it is. And at the end of our three minute conversation, I was informed that a last minute tour will be starting this coming week. That will be good for her. She loves her job.

  Throwing the duvet off of my legs, I glance down to see what I knew would be tenting in my boxers. Twenty one days I’ve been away from her and fifteen of them I’ve woken up with this monstrosity incessantly throbbing as a third leg. I wonder if this is what she felt like pregnant with the twins. I remember her insatiable hunger like it was yesterday. I almost feels like yesterday in my mind. The good ol’ days where we’d lay in our log bed and talk for hours, even before we became lovers. The times I’d lay in that same bed and listen to her moaning from the bathroom, as she used her toy to bring her to climax. Making me need to come just as badly. But I never did. I enjoyed the throbbing her husky moans brought out in me. All because she was the one who filled me with life and love. Reclaiming a part of me I had long lost and an even bigger part of me I never knew existed, until I woke up that morning in my log bed with her leaning over my shirtless body checking out all of my tattoos. And her fingers grazing the lines my age has created alongside my eyes. A part of me she loves, or did. Never caring I’m old enough to be her father. Just loving me, all of me, for who I am and me doing the same in return. That same love that follows me everywhere I go. Haunting me in my dreams, to wake up alone in a bed that isn’t ours. In a house that isn’t ours. Playing the role of husband to a woman who isn’t her. All of it is wrong. So very wrong.

  Giving in to the hungry soldier standing attention in my shorts, I shuffle them down just far enough that I clear my nut and leave the waistband to rest around my meaty upper thighs. Propping my back against the sleigh bed to get situated, I slide my hand down my abs and across my thin patch of man hair and slowly enclose my rigid shaft into my palm. Giving it just enough pressure that I can imagine it’s Mama Bear tugging on him.

  Tilting my head back against the bed, I close my eyes and drift into my thoughts. As my hand glides up and down my shaft, I stop at the head to capture the dewy drops of my pre-come oozing out. Using my thumb I swirl it around my thick head and let out a soft grunt of pleasure.

  Emily, my lover, the most perfect woman in the world is lying on her stomach between my legs. Her tongue delicately licking the underside of my tortured and scarred sac. Following the raised purple scar, she pecks soft wet kisses to the base of my member and a tiny smirk curves up at the corner of her mouth. I sigh with joy, taking in her beauty. Her red hair framing her face, her green eyes glowing hazily into my brown with such warmth and desire, revealing to me without words that I am the man she wants.

  “Does my friend want to play?” she teases, licking up my shaft just below my head with her tongue and flicking the V underneath in soft pulses. Driving me wilder.

  “Yes, my love,” I nod, kneading our bed sheets in my hands. My chest rising and falling with each uneven breath. My blood sizzling with need for the only woman who completes me.

  “Then I will give him what he wants.” She smiles the biggest, most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen and engulfs my shaft in one gulp. Resting it into the back of her throat. Her hands rubbing over my legs, down to my knees and back up again. Humming in her throat as she fills her mouth with a part of me and I lose myself.

  Oh yes, my love, suck on him. Make him come into your soft mouth. You’re so amazing. I don’t know what I’d do without you.

  I grunt as I edge nearer to my orgasm and she picks up her pace.

  Opening my eyes, I look down to see my solider about ready to explode in my hand. I jerk him up and down in long hard pulls. My other hand cupping my sac, giving it a little tug.

  Whoa, I’m almost there.

  Drawing up to the head, I stop and pump the head of my meat quick and furiously, belting out feral grunts between my clenched teeth. Shit, I’m gonna… Oh… God… Yes… I’m gonna come…

  “Emily!” I moan, spurting my hot jets of semen out of my manhood, landing on my stomach. My body jerking, legs contracting as I ride the wave of climatic satisfaction.

  Sitting up I swipe my hands on my boxers, pull them up, get out of bed and head into the bathroom for a much needed shower. For being such a cookie cutter house it does have a rather nice bathroom setup. A large stand up shower that could fit two of me. Which is saying a lot. And would be able to fit six of Emily. It’s huge, and the shower head is like a well pressured rainfall.

  As the hot water pelts my skin the guilt starts to wrack my brain once again. Unforgivable guilt for masturbating to her, after I’ve done the most horrific thing and left. The old James would have never thought twice about hurting anyone. He had little feelings and zero people skills. Him, and the wild, seemed to have more in common than anything else. And speaking of him in the third person is the only way to perceive him. The man that’s turned into who I am now. An ex-military ops specialist with enough kills under his belt to make anyone cringe. So much has changed.

  Scrubbing the filth from my skin, I stop to relish in the heat. Letting the steam saturate my lungs. It’s time to go to work as a safe link and tonight it’s time to have our new neighbors over for dinner. Gonzales is cooking alongside Dr. D’s wife. This should be an interesting day.

  ***

  Sitting in this white interrogation room with a concrete floor and steel table with two other chairs opposite mine isn’t what I call a pleasant day. Things went smoothly with the extraction. Forty five minutes of code input into a database that uses the codes to do whatever it is they are doing with them. It’s above my pay grade and it’s forbidden to ask questions. Part of the code of conduct—if you will. Two men sat in the room with Gonzales and I, as we rattled off each of our parts. Nothing fancy, just a metal chair sitting in a white room at the Pentagon, just like last month. Apparently, t
his puts us a week ahead of schedule.

  Tapping my hands on the table out of boredom, I wait. Wait to see why I’m in this room. I know an interrogation setup when I see one. Big one-sided ‘mirror’ taking up a rather large portion of one wall. A camera in the upper right hand corner of the room scanning me, observing me. It would take me exactly seven seconds to dismantle that camera and another forty five to crack the seal around the mirror that I know is attached to a room on the opposite side. Probably three men, a computer, and four chairs. So predictable.

  “Would you guys like to tell me why I’m in here?” I call out, I know they’re listening.

  Leaning back and crossing my arms over my chest, I tap my shit kicker clad foot on the floor. I don’t have to look down to know it has been precisely twenty six minutes since I’ve been taken into this cell.

  “You have four minutes gentlemen. Four minutes, until I make this experience slightly less pleasant for you,” I warn, making sure they get the point as my tone turns from normal to menacing. It’s one thing to screw with my life when I was younger, using me as a trained killer. I’m older now and less tolerant to child’s play. They’ll do good to remember that before I show them.

  “Three minutes,” I caution, keeping up the rhythmic tapping of my foot. Leaving it to fill the room with a mild echo.

  As the time runs down, I don’t move. I don’t show any sort of indication what I am going to do. Counting down the seconds. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six…

  The click of the door and a whoosh of fresher air gusts in my face when two people enter the cell. A woman in a white doctor coat with short blonde; almost white hair, and fake tanned skin. Her cohort, a man hitting five-ten, about a buck ninety, close to my age with graying hair and lined eyes, wearing civilian clothes, a plain suit and tie. Both sit down across from me. Clever fella thinks I can’t see the outline of a gun pressed to his left rib or the one I saw around his ankle when he walked in. Silly child’s play.

  Keeping their eyes dismissive as they take in my size and attitude. I’m not in the mood to be messed with. Not after my insides have been hollowed after my sad display of self-control this morning lying in bed.

  “Mr. James, we are here for an evaluation,” the breathy woman states.

  Am I sensing nervousness, excitement, attraction, or perhaps a mixture of the three?

  Watching the carotid in her neck pulsate above normal, a hundred and eight, no, ten beats per minute, and the flush of her cheeks tells me she’s not only nervous but attracted to somebody in this room.

  “Ma’am, I’m not at liberty to discuss anything unless given strict orders from my superiors and I won’t divulge you of any information unless I deem it necessary. No offense, it’s just protocol,” I explain, evenly.

  “We knew you’d say that,” The man with a weak voice pipes in.

  Did they send these two in on purpose so I wouldn’t feel threatened? If that’s the case, they are correct, I feel no sense of threat. Even though the man is carrying two pistols.

  Sliding me over an envelope, I open it and read the seal of—oh you have to be kidding me— Brewer? Seriously? I’m supposed to take orders from my ol’ buddy?

  I chuckle, shaking my head. Of course he’d be the one to relay these orders.

  Following the text, it states I have been displaying too much hostility, aggression, inability to follow orders and broodiness.

  Shaking my head again, I snort a sardonic laugh. Yep, my good ol’ buddy has to add broodiness, which makes no sense and could never be consider a reason for evaluation. Chalk it up to him to make this seem funnier than it already is.

  “Ok, I’ll concede, lay it on me doc,” I tease and give her a slight smile. I know I’m making her nervous. I make most people uncomfortable. She didn’t ask to have me here and I’m not going to be rude. It’s not who I am, unless provoked.

  A deep rouge covers her face and she looks down at her notes, anxiously picking her nails. The artery in her neck pounding.

  “Would it make you more comfortable to ask me through the glass?”

  She looks up and I nod toward the mirror.

  “I promise I don’t bite. I don’t want to scare you,” I reassure her and give her another smile to make sure she realizes I might be scary looking but looks can be deceiving. Well not exactly. But I’m not going to harm her.

  A sigh of relief and a loud gust of air is released and she finally smiles at me. She’s a pretty lady. Definitely not used to dealing with men like me.

  “Ok, sorry, my boss is usually the one who does this and she’s out of the office on maternity leave. You’re my second case this week and the first one wasn’t, well...” she blushes again.

  “Scary?” I finish her sentence.

  “Yeah… I mean no… I mean…oh, I’m so sorry James. I just mean your record isn’t colored with rainbows, it’s soaked in blood and I wasn’t sure what I’d run into.”

  “Is that why rent-a-cop is here with you?” I look to suit man and he crinkles his nose and opens his mouth like he wants to say something, but wisely closes it again and leans back, crossing his puny arms.

  “He’s standard with these types of cases, I guess,” she shrugs, apparently not knowing the actual rules.

  I nod and gesture my hand for her to continue with her job. I have a dinner to attend to and I can’t show up looking like I do now.

  “I’m going to ask you a series of questions and I need you to tell me the first thing that comes to mind.”

  I nod again.

  “Your name is?”

  “Calvin James.”

  “Your occupation?”

  “More than one.”

  She chuckles a little and writes down my answer.

  “Favorite color?”

  “Green or blue.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “In the arms of my woman.” Crap, — did I just say that?

  She smiles wide and writes down my response. If Brewer reads this, I will be mocked for sure.

  “Why are you here?”

  “As in? Figuratively, why are we all here? Or as in why am I in DC?”

  “DC.”

  “To do a government job I signed up for a long time ago.” Vague, yes. But I can’t be completely honest. My ‘job’ is classified.

  “Do you want to do this job?”

  “No,” I blurt.

  “And why don’t you want to do this job, Mr. James?” Her voice becomes harder all of a sudden….Interesting.

  “I have better things to do with my time.” Vague, again. But it’s still giving her what she asks for. An answer.

  “What specifically do you have to do that is more important than providing for your country?”

  “I’ve sacrificed hundreds of times for my country, ma’am. Paying them in lives to keep us safe. Painting my files red with blood, as you just expressed but a moment ago. Now, there are three things in this life that are more important.” I’m getting agitated, I can feel my palms begin to sweat and my jaw lock. Not a good sign. Calm down, Calvin James. This lady isn’t asking for you to blow up at her. She is just doing her job. Calm down man!

  I take in a calming breath and close my eyes for a moment to relax my escalating frustration. What is wrong with me? Maybe I do need to seek professional help.

  “What are those three things?” Her voice is so small and eyes are so big, I look down to realize my hands are gripping the chair frame so tightly my knuckles are pure white. Dang it, I am losing it.

  “Doc I think I might be losing my mind,” I admit, unable to pry my own hands from the chair. I’m ashamed, so ashamed. Dropping my chin to my chest, I brood. Just like Brewer indicated in that silly document.

  “It’s Emily, isn’t it?”

  How did she know about her?

  “Yes, but…”

  “How did I know about her?” She cuts me off before I can finish my question.

  I slowly nod. Feeling like more of a failure by the minute.


  “I read your file. It indicated you were extracted from civilian living conditions in Malibu California three weeks ago. It also stated you were living with your fiancé, name Bronwyn comma Emily. It also explained she birthed a set of twins a few days prior to your extraction.” Leaning in forward, she waves me closer and I comply.

  “It’s okay to be sad, James. You shouldn’t be happy about leaving your family. I think Brewer’s trying to help you out by calling me in. So I can inform them of your mental instability,” she whispers and pulling back, she winks at me and I instantly get it. Ah…. My mental instability. I do have it but not like he’s indicated. Apparently Brewer wants me to get discharged. I get it. Now it all makes sense. It’s nice to have a good friend in high places. Now how do I run with this?

  “Yes, I’m so angry all of the time, Doctor. I can’t think straight, I have vivid dreams. I’m frustrated and I really don’t like the woman I’m forced to live with.”

  Part of its true but I’m trying to play it up. I don’t dislike Gonzales as much anymore. After that drunken try-to-seduce-me night. I think she’s gotten the hint because no more advances or even staring at me has occurred since. I’m certain she is fully comprehended my feelings on the matter. Her plus me equals a death match, not coitus.

  Sitting in this room, trying to fake my disdain for the first time all day, I'm actually feeling rather grateful right now to have a friend willing to go out on a limb to try and get me discharged. Whatever works is fine with me. As long as I can get back to my Mama Bear before she falls for somebody else. And by somebody, I mean a tall guy with tattoos and millions of dollars, a girlfriend on the side and a sadistic nature that makes even me flinch.

  As the long three hour evaluation concludes, I shake both of their hands and wait to be dismissed. Five minutes later, the door is opened and I’m escorted from the building by three big men. Downwind of my ‘anger’ issues must have rippled through the building. I’ve never been escorted from the Pentagon before. Not in this manner, anyhow.