by Aubrey Irons
Whatever scathing retort I’m about to let loose on Peyton freeze in my throat as her words hit me full-force; “Excuse me?”
Peyton’s usually stiff face breaks into a grin, and it’s an expression I actually recognize because it’s the same one pretty much permanently plastered on Logan; “Well, half-brother,” She says with a shrug; “Our mom- well, that part I might let him tell you.”
“I had to find her a few years ago for- I just had to go home for this thing.”
Holy shit.
“Look, I’m sorry for being…” She trails off and looks at the floor.
“A bitch?”
Peyton looks up at me, grinning; “He’s always been protective of me, and so I guess I just get protective right back.” She shrugs, just like her brother; “I kind of figured you probably had the wrong impression,” She says, grinning at me in that wholly Logan way; “He’s a dick for messing with you like that. Sorry, he’s like that sometimes.”
I choke out a laugh; “Tell me about it.”
She squeezes my hand in hers as her face takes on a softer look; “So, how’s the big guy doing, anyways?”
“I- I- He’s-” And right then it’s like all the pent up fear and stress and emotion of the past twelve hours just comes draining out of me at once, and I find myself collapsing into her; Peyton, of all people.
“Hey, hey now,” She’s stroking my hair and helping me to sit before she pulls out her cell phone and looks me in the eye; “Hey, just sit tight, I got this.”
And, she does.
Bryce is there within hours, and if he has any questions about what, at that point is pretty painfully obvious about what’s going on with Logan and I, he doesn’t say a word. But it’s really when Major Lawson arrives soon after and starts mentioning things like “national security” and “State Department” to the concerned-looking State Troopers and hospital staff that the whole thing sort of just gets fixed. Half an hour later, we’re all on a jet headed to New York, and for the first time in what seems like a day, I can finally breath.
Contrary to what I guess either of Logan or I thought would happen, Bryce and Hudson actually ended up taking the news about us pretty well, especially when they heard the story of my spur-of-the-moment heroics back in Florida. Actually, I believe Hudson’s exact words on the entire matter were “You know, the deal was that we protect them, not the other way around, idiot.”
As it turns out, Chelsea ended up being the most pissed about the whole situation, and that was only because I’d spilled the beans to Reagan and not her. But even she got over it pretty quick as soon as she heard about me stabbing someone in the neck.
“Holy shit, Quinn; when did you get so bad-ass?”
I have no idea, but I’d like to think a certain tattooed boxer had at least something to do with it.
“You totally ruined the honeymoon, you know.”
My sister whirls and punches Hudson in the arm, scowling at him as he grins and holds his hands up; “I’m kidding! I’m kidding!” Logan snorts out a laugh from the bed he’s propped up in, and Hudson pats him on the shoulder.
Logan’s penthouse isn’t quite done being renovated, but it’s finished enough that he’s decided to recoup here rather than the hospital. Which, by the way, I’m still furious about, especially since everyone else seems to think this is totally acceptable as well. He did let me bring in a few old colleagues from the hospital to check him out though, which at least puts me halfway to at-ease.
“You’re an idiot, you know.” Bryce frowns, shaking his head at Logan from the foot of his bed.
“Yeah, I know.”
“You should have told us; about Javier and all of it.”
Hudson scowls; “So how long had Javier been holding this over your-”
“It doesn’t matter, it’s over.” Logan says slowly; “Except I don’t know what he’s going to say now.”
“I do.” Major Lawson’s been quiet in the corner of the room until this moment, and as he stands, we all turn to him; “He’s going to say nothing, because his story has no evidence and no proof.” He arches a brow at all of us; “As it turns out, I’ve got an old colleague working in the records department in Blackriver, and as of this morning, you three were never employees. The three men stare at him, their jaws dropped. Bryce starts to say something, but the Major just chuckles and waves him off; “Oh, and Javier’s currently on a plane to a detention facility in Spain.”
Logan’s eyes go wide; “What?”
“Yes, apparently Javier Toro is wanted for just about every law they’ve got back in Spain, and when I realized who he was I took the liberty of alerting my contact at Centro Nacional de Inteligencia in Madrid and letting him know.”
“You- wait-”
The Major raises an eyebrow at a very shocked looking Logan; “William Archer was one of the finest men I knew, son, and I intend to do everything in my power to protect his own.” He winks at me before turning a stern eye on Logan; “Of course, you hurt this one and I’ll send you right back to Cuba, but I think you’ll find the continental breakfast at Guantanamo Bay slightly less accommodating than the one at the Hotel Nacional.”
Logan grins and just squeezes my hand tighter; “The thought never crossed my mind, sir.”
“I want to show you something.”
It’s later, after everyone’s gone and left us to each other, when Logan grimaces as he slides out of his bed. He takes my hand, leading me through the huge expanse of his penthouse; past the paintings on the wall, past the floor-to-ceiling windows with the jaw-dropping views of Manhattan.
He see’s me taking everything in and shakes his head; “This is all meaningless, you know,” He says quietly; “It’s a disguise that your father taught me put on; to hide who we are and to blend in.”
“Logan, you don’t have to tell me anything, you know.”
He shakes his head; “Hang on, this is important.” We’re at the end of a hallway in front of a door, and he fishes a key out of his pocket and slides it into the lock; “You asked me before what your father saved us from,” He opens the door and leads me inside; “I want- I need to show you my life; where I really came from.”
He flicks on the light, and I gasp.
The whole room is full of framed photographs, hanging on the wall; hundreds of them. They’re of dusty, run-down-looking streets running past grimy looking oil derricks, of a young kid who can only be Logan with that grin on his face leaning against a beat-up looking pickup truck. My eyes scan over the walls, seeing pictures of the desert; of tanks and burning buildings. I stop on a snapshot of Logan in full combat gear, older now than the boy with the truck and looking completely shattered.
I gasp, bringing my hand to my mouth as I step into the room and let my eyes just follow the timeline of the life of the man I love. There are villages in Africa, of smiling kids kicking a soccer ball around a grungy looking field; pictures of Hudson and Logan gritting their teeth and grinning as they sit in chairs getting tattoos in some hut of a building, Bryce smiling sadly at the camera, Hudson striking a pose, Logan wearing boxing gloves, looking sweaty and triumphant with Javier of all fucking people standing with his arm around him.
And then there are pictures of my dad.
From there the pictures change. We’re out of the jungle and in a city that can only be New York. There’s Logan grinning and looking completely out of place behind a thick wooden desk with a view of the city behind him. There are shots of him looking bored at lavish looking parties, and standing next to a new sports car, followed by more of both. And then we’re back in what must be Africa, and my dad’s there as well and the two of them are holding shovels and standing next to what looks like a new water pump. We’re in the desert somewhere, Hudson, Bryce, Logan and my father standing alongside others I don’t know in front of a brand new building that I can tell is a school from the playground out front and the boxes of books being unloaded from a truck.
And it’s when I realize that this every
thing I never knew about my father that I start to cry.
“This is our past, Quinn,” Logan says quietly from behind me; “It’s the past that I need to remember.”
He touches my arm and I turn as he takes my hands; “I need to know the past, because it’s the path I took to get right here to you.”
31
Quinn
E P I L O G U E
What’s funny about growing up is watching yourself and those around you change and grow in ways you’d never have imagined. For instance, who would’ve known that my tom-boy of a middle sister who would have just as soon gotten her teeth pulled than wear a “stupid dress’ would’ve been the first one of us to have the romance novel of a happy ending; the one where everyone ends up barefoot and pregnant and getting married? And by the same stroke, if you’d have told a younger, nerdy, never-miss-a-curfew, never-step-outside-the-lines me that I’d end up with the swearing, tattooed, bareknuckle boxer of a bad-boy, I’d have thought you were nuts.
But hey, that’s love; totally nuts.
Logan and I aren’t getting married; not yet anyways. Reagan and Hudson, for all that passion and drama, had their history. Theirs is a story that they started writing five years before they found each other again. But Logan and I are just opening our book up; ours is a story we’re still learning to write, and one I might add that seems to get steamier by the page.
We’re also not pregnant; not yet anyways. For now, we’re too busy helping the frankly staggering amount of kids out there in the world already that don’t have anyone. There are the hospitals we’re finishing up with the Archer humanitarian program in Cuba, Liberia, and Guatemala, but also the schools in Ghana and Afghanistan that Logan and I are just doing on our own on the side. I mean, just the traveling is enough to keep me busy enough that getting knocked up really isn’t an option.
Of course, that’s not to say we aren’t “practicing”, as Logan puts it. And let me tell you, practice makes perfect; especially with that man.
The world is an imperfect place, and sometimes it’s painful, and full of hurt, shadow, and sorrow. But, it can also be full of light and joy; of peace, of healing, and of love. Sometimes you just have to fight for it, because some of those things are worth fighting for.
There are words inked across Logan’s chest that I love to trace my fingers across while I imagine a younger, more lost version of him may have gotten in another time, another life, and with a heart not yet whole.
“Never Back Down”
But I know they mean something new now; something even fiercer than the fighter ceaselessly swinging at the darkness. And they’ve also never been more true.
Because you never back down from love.
Also by Aubrey Irons
Standalone Stepbrother Romance:
Score: A Stepbrother Sports Romance
Secret: A Military Stepbrother Romance
Cockney: A British Stepbrother Romance
Crude: A Stepbrother Romance
Soldiers of Fortune Series:
Heat
Burn
Scorch
Roar
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About the Author
Aubrey Irons enjoys writing about bold, sassy, and intelligent women and the dominant, cocky, and quite typically forbidden alpha males who love and lust for them; gripping stories, happy endings, and enough heat to keep things extra steamy!
In the real world, Aubrey is kept plenty entertained by her own tattooed Marine husband, their precocious and adorable three year old, and one very ill-behaved puppy.
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Part III
Scorch: Soldiers of Fortune Book 3
Copyright © 2015 Aubrey Irons
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organizations, actual events or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademark status of products referred to in this book and acknowledges that trademarks have been used without permission.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations used for review purposes.
This book is intended for mature, adult audiences only. It contains sexually explicit and graphic scenes and language which may be considered offensive by some readers. Please do not continue reading this book of you are under the age of 18 or are offended by content of this nature.
All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older and are in no way blood relations. All acts of a sexual nature are completely consensual.
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1
Javier
“You’ve been a bad, bad boy, Javier.”
The punch to the gut that immediately follows Warden Juan-Carlos Gustavo’s words knocks the wind from my lungs. But, it doesn’t do shit to knock the grin off my face. The real tragedy here is that the irony of Señor Gustavo’s wife saying the same thing to me not thirty minutes before - albeit in slightly different circumstances - is probably going to be lost on him and his men.
Not, of course, that it’s going to stop me from saying it anyways.
“You know, that’s the second- no, wait, the third time I’ve heard that today.”
The Warden’s eyes narrow at me, making him appear even more piggish if that was even possible from an already fat, sweaty, snout-nosed man. But truth be told, despite his appearance, Warden Gustavo is not a man you should fuck with; least of all when you’re a prisoner in his jail. I’ve learned a few things in my nine months here in Venezuela, but that one sticks out.
Yeah, fucking Venezuela. I learned something when that cargo plane those pricks back in the States put me on touched down in Madrid; if you’re a big enough problem, no one wants you. Spain wanted nothing to do with me, even with being a citizen, and even with the shit they probably had on me from my bullshit there years ago. So instead? They called around, found out about the smuggling charges I’d pulled in Venezuela when I was younger, and figured I was someone else’s problem now. See, not many people really want anything to do with me, which suits me just fine because most of the time, I don’t want a fuckin thing to do with them either.
Except let me tell you, South American jails aren’t anything like the jails they’ve got up north in Los Estados Unidos; not by a Goddamn mile. Sure, up north, prison might be cold, and boring, and possibly not the best place to take a shower if you’re in with the wrong people. But shit, they’ve got electricity, and three meals a day, and a roof that doesn’t leak when it rains. Down here in Venezuela? Yeah, down here things are a little different. Down here, we’ve got El Muerto Viviente; The Living Dead.
Yeah, we’ve also got a touch of flare for the dramatics.
But El Muerto is no fucking joke, I’ll say that. A crumbling, shattered shell of a castle from the colonial days, built up on a cliff and slowly melting into the ocean. It’s treacherous, smells like shit, and Warden Gustavo runs it like a Russian Gulag. So yeah, jail fucking sucks down here.
That is, unless you know where to look for the perks. And in this case, “perks” was fucking the cute prison nurse in terrible, terrible ways in the pharmacy supply c
loset twice a week for the last two months. Oh, and if that cute nurse happens to be Mrs. Warden Juan-Carlos Gustavo?
Merde, now we’re cooking with fire, aren’t we.
The good Warden’s fist crashes into my face, jolting me back into the now as I shake my head, blinking at the stars flashing through my vision.
“You’ve fucked up for the last Goddamn time, Toro.” He says. He’s grinning; that’s not a good sign. Angry Gustavo acts like every other angry little fat man in the world; that I can read. But when he grins like that, you know something’s wrong. And something is very wrong.
He winks at his lieutenant, a thin man with a wispy mustache, before he turns back to me; “Listen you little marico maricón, this time, I’ve got a special place for you.”
“Oh I think I’ve already been to you special place, señor.” I barely finish laughing the words out of my mouth before he starts to hit me. They all start to hit me, in fact.
By the way, my hands are cuffed to a pipe above my head, and there are four of them. South American prison; comprende?
I can take a beating. Well, I could take a beating, a long time ago back when I was a fighter and before I sort of let myself go. But nine months of hard time in El Muerto have me back to lean muscle and hungry fire inside. Not that it does a bit of good when you’re cuffed and outnumbered.
I groan and sag against my handcuffs as the men in uniform step away, spitting on the ground around me as they wipe their hands of me. Gustavo is grinning at me again, slowly nodding his head; “Hope you packed your swim-suit, hijo e puta.” He says slowly; “Because you’re going for The Swim.”