Deep down, I feel gnawing, acidic guilt and shame: Marco should have lived. He should be on a ranch in Tennessee, playing with his baby boy and riding horses with his wife. Not in a box six feet under the Tennessee soil. I shouldn’t be here. It should be me in that box, covered in the Stars and Stripes.
That’s the fear. That’s the insecurity. I’m a Navy SEAL. I’m hardcore, I’m tough, I’ve got a lot of skills, I know I’m good looking, I’m good in bed, and I’m loyal as hell to my brothers. But way deep down, there’s that insecurity, the knowledge that it should have been me that died instead of Marco, but it wasn’t and now I’m here, alive, with an amazing, incredible, gorgeous, sweet, sexy, smart woman in my bed, snuggled in my arms, one who understands the invisible scars combat leaves, the survivor’s guilt. She gets it. We don’t have to talk about it to know we both get it.
I don’t fucking deserve her.
The thought finally hits, finally moves through me in so many words. I don’t deserve happiness with a woman like Mara Quinn. I let my best friend die. I let his wife and son suffer. I lived, and he died, and that’s a fucked up amount of unfairness I can’t make right. But how do you make yourself feel worthy? No one would understand if I said anything about this. Not even Mara—she gets combat, she gets the nightmares and flashbacks and all that, but survivor’s guilt? I don’t think she can understand that. I know the term for what I’m going through, but that doesn’t help me fix it, that doesn’t make it easier for me to go through it, and doesn’t give me the tools to address the problem.
Marco should be alive right now, not me; that’s a truth I can’t shake. God, how can I ever be good enough for a woman like Mara when I shouldn’t even be alive? I should be in a box six feet under. My brothers should be the ones with the folded flag stowed away somewhere, not Annalisa Campo.
I don’t know what to do. I’m here, in my bed with Mara in my arms, and I don’t feel good enough. I’m not enough—I wasn’t enough to save Marco, to keep my best friend alive, and I’m not enough now for Mara. But…I can’t let her go.
I don’t deserve her, but I don’t know how to let go.
She stirred in my arms, stretching and groaning, spine arching. And then she froze, breath catching, her hand sliding along my forearm, as if she was disoriented and confused as to where she was and who she was in bed with.
“It’s me, Mara,” I whispered, leaning close, lips to her ear. “You’re in bed with me. You’re safe.”
She stayed tense and frozen for a moment, and then gradually began to relax, muscles softening, breathing resuming. She wiggled back against me, twisted her head sideways. Her hand slid up to cup the back of my head, pulling me toward her.
“I’ve never enjoyed waking up so much before,” she murmured. “Normally, I’d have been disoriented for a lot longer.”
“Waking up with you in my bed…I can’t think of anything better,” I whispered, the guilt and the feelings of inadequacy still powerful inside me, but not enough to erase or minimize the potency of what it feels like to have this woman in my arms.
She pulled me closer, touched her lips to mine, softly, hesitantly, her eyes open and wide and searching mine from centimeters away. “No? You can’t think of even one thing that might better?”
And then Mara pressed up into the kiss. Claimed my mouth as hers. The kiss was gentility personified, tenderness and silk and heat and drowning sweetness and beauty. I groaned as we kissed, my palm grazing up her thigh and under her shirt to explore the warmth and softness of her flesh. She reached down behind herself and tugged at my shorts, helping me kick them off, leaving me naked under the blankets, her ass grinding against my throbbing, aching, hard-as-iron erection.
“Mara…” I breathed, palming her breast.
She just hummed hungrily in response, claimed another kiss, a hotter one, a harder one, a deeper, fiercer kiss. She used one hand to peel her shirt off, and then slipped her hand between our bodies again. She grasped my cock, angled me between her thighs, shifted her hips, and then I was sliding into her silky wet heat, snug and perfect. Bare and beautiful. She whimpered against my lips and rolled her hips, taking me deeper, and her hand clutched at my ass, pulled at me, silently begging me. Whimpered again as I pushed against her, thrusting deeper, and then she was kissing me, and the kiss was something I’ve never experienced before; a delirious, drowning hypnotism.
An expanding, all-consuming, white-hot, heart-throbbing glory.
Enveloped by Mara, subsumed within her.
Surrounded by her warmth and softness and heat, our movements in perfect unison, exchanging breath and driving our kiss higher and hotter.
I felt her hand slip between her thighs to circle at herself wildly, her other hand on my ass, clawing deep into the flesh and muscle, pulling at me, encouraging me to move harder and faster and deeper. Her mouth on mine, her lips moving, her tongue seeking. Her soft breast in my hand, her hair spread out in a tangled golden cascade.
Lost in her.
Buried in her.
Kissing, moving, joining.
I felt her twitch and heard her groan, tasted her whimpers on my lips, felt her clamp down around me as she shattered in my arms, and I let go with her, poured myself into her, kissing her through our mutual concussive luxuriating release. I groaned and writhed and breathed her name and devoured her, sucked her breath into my lungs and reveled in the way she gasped my name a thousand desperate times.
When we finished, we were gasping in synch and sweating together, still joined.
I moved to pull out, and she shook her head, holding me in place. “Just…stay with me. Just like this.”
“Okay.”
And so I do.
We fall back asleep together, joined like that.
And, like Bast said I would…
I just…know.
Chapter 11
Mara
The week passed in a blur. Zane and I spent every waking moment together whenever Zane wasn’t working. Even when he was behind the bar, more often than not, I’d be parked in the booth closest to the service bar, sipping beer and catching up on all the reading I’d been meaning to do. My TBR list had gotten kind of out of control—my Kindle library was filled with books I’d purchased and had meant to read but had never gotten around to. So, for the six or eight hours that Zane worked behind the bar or on the floor, I caught up on reading and let myself get a little tipsy.
Xavier would bring me food, whatever he felt like making, and one of Zane’s other brothers would scoot into the booth with me now and then and chat me up. I met all of his brothers except Bast, who was still on his honeymoon.
Brock was sharp-witted and sweet and a great conversationalist, and possibly the most absurdly beautiful human being I’d ever met— think young Paul Newman—that was Brock, tall and lean and effortlessly smooth, with rich silky brown hair neatly parted and swept to one side, a few strands always in his eyes, a brilliant, dazzling smile and warm brown eyes.
Baxter was the complete opposite, rough around the edges, blunt, hysterical, vulgar, but still sweet, and sexy in his own way—bulky, brawny, heavy with massive muscles, physically intimidating and yet easy and fun to be around; Bax was nearly as tall as Brock, but half as broad and very muscular, with the same dazzling white grin and brown eyes, although Bax’s gaze was always on the move, and glittering with humor. His hair was the same rich brown as Zane’s, but Bax kept his clipped close on the sides and long and messy up top, wavy and tangled in a permanent just-fucked look.
When Bax slipped into the booth the first time, he did so affecting a dramatic limp. I snickered as he grabbed his thigh and pretended to have to haul his leg in after him, as if his entire leg was game.
“Oh, stop,” I said, laughing. “It wasn’t that bad of an injury.”
He faked a shocked expression. “I’m barely able to walk, doc. I may never be the same again.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, please. It was, what, thirty stitches? You’ll be fine.”
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“Thirty-one, actually, and I’ve got orders from the doctor to take it easy for a while.” He lifted his chin at me. “I never got a chance to properly thank you, though. You jumped in and saved the day, and possibly my football career. So…thanks.”
I shrugged. “I was a combat medic. It’s second nature.”
“Still, thank you.”
I smiled at him. “Of course, Bax.” A moment of silence passes between us. “So, for real though, will the injury affect your career?”
He shrugged. “Probably not. I’m staying in Ketchikan for at least the year, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do about football long term, anyway. But physically, I’ll be okay. It’ll take time to heal, but time is one thing I’ve got, I guess.” He stayed to chat with me for a few more minutes and then left, and I was alone in the booth again…at least until the next twins slid in.
The twins were a force of nature. Like all the Badd brothers, they were tall, standing six-three, but the twins were built more like Brock, Xavier, and Lucian, tall and lean rather than tall and built like Greek gods. Canaan had shoulder length hair, the same rich brown as all the brothers. When he was working, Canaan kept his hair in a ponytail, but the rest of the time he left it down and loose, usually hanging in his eyes and half-obscuring his features. Corin was edgy, more hipster-punk-rock star, he wore his hair with buzzed sides and the long, wavy top dyed neon blue at the tips. Canaan wore a beard, which made him look a little older, while Corin was clean-shaven. They both had the same vivid brown Badd eyes, and had a tendency to finish each other’s sentences and speak in unison.
They dressed like rock stars, too, even while working, with tight, low-slung jeans stuffed into half-unlaced combat boots and obscure band concert T-shirts, full sleeve tattoos, lots of heavy silver rings, pierced ears, and Canaan had a ring through the center of his lower lip while Corin had a septum piercing and gauged earlobes.
They never showed up alone, always together, and they were fiercely energetic, voluble, prone to rapid-fire, back-and-forth spats of wildly eclectic conversation. They’d bicker over best 70s-era bassists, and weird indie art movies and then get into an argument over Britney versus Madonna versus Beyoncé, all within the space of fifteen minutes, and you just had to kind of try to keep up.
Lucian was the hardest to read and, for me, the most impossible to understand. Taciturn would be a generous term, and that’s putting it lightly. He spent as much time in my booth that week as the rest of the brothers, but he was silent for the most part, content to sip beer and share cheesy french fries and read his book while I read mine. I once got him to list his five favorite books: The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov—he counted that as a single favorite rather than three books; A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury; A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway; and Jubal Sackett by Louis L’Amour. I’d asked him what his favorite book was, and he’d stared over my shoulder in thought for a solid five minutes, and then listed those books in that order, with no explanation, and then had gone back to reading an Anne Rice novel.
Lucian was like the twins and Xavier, built like a razor blade, tall, lean, hard, and rangy. If Canaan’s hair was long at shoulder-length, Lucian’s was something else entirely, bound low at his nape and dangling past mid-spine in a thick brown queue; Lucian had a habit of wrapping the long ponytail in his fist while he read and yanking on it absently, and I’d never once seen him with it unbound.
And then there was Xavier. Possibly my favorite brother—except for Zane, obviously. Xavier was sweet, quirky, cute, and eclectic in the extreme. He’d set up at the booth across from me, a stack of thick textbooks in front of him, his laptop beside them, and a bin of assorted robotics parts on the seat next to him, each part organized by type in little compartments. He’d read and build his robots, and then take a few minutes to talk to me, usually about whatever he was reading at the time.
Mostly I had no clue what he was going on about, but he was fascinating to listen to, being articulate to the point of eloquence, and given to using archaic turns of phrase. He could wax on easily and at length on just about any subject, literature, physics, philosophy, sociology, history…anything except pop culture, about which he was hopelessly and comically uninformed. He didn’t look the part of a robot building, super-science, math-wizard über-genius, though. He was tall and lean, and he looked the least like the rest of his brothers, with brown hair that was nearly black, and was the only Badd brother with bright green eyes. He had triple-pierced ears and an intricate series of geometric, math symbols tattooed on his forearms. His hair was cut a lot like Corin’s and Bax’s, short on the sides and long and wavy and loose on top. He had an air about him that said he had no idea how sexy or gorgeous he was, and even less of a clue about how endearing his eccentricity and intelligence was.
If I learned one thing over the week, it was that I could definitely understand why the Badd brothers had a reputation in this town, because they were all stupidly, absurdly, incredibly gorgeous men, each with their own unique, vibrant, potent personalities and styles. They were rough and sometimes vulgar, always entertaining, always warm and welcoming, and always sweet toward me.
No wonder the bar was as busy as it was, since at any given time there would be at least two of the delicious Badd brothers at work, one behind the bar and one on the floor, and another one, usually Xavier or Lucian, in the kitchen, with Zane, Brock, the twins, taking turns working the bar and waiting tables, with Bax usually set up in a chair by the entrance acting as a bouncer and ID-checker, since he was supposed to stay off his feet as much as possible.
The clientele was predominantly female, whether young and looking to party, or single women in their thirties on the prowl, or married women just there for the fun, good drinks, and eye-candy. The men in attendance were almost exclusively single men hoping to take advantage of the unending parade of single women—all of this meant the bar was raking in cash hand over fist from open to close.
When Zane wasn’t working, we spent a lot of time hiking the trails outside Ketchikan, an activity I’d had no idea I would enjoy as much as I did. He’d pack a bunch of food in his rucksack, and we’d take the truck the brothers owned up to a trailhead—Zane had convinced his brothers to all chip in on a new Silverado 2500 that they could all share, as they rarely needed to be anywhere they couldn’t walk to.
When we weren’t hiking or at the bar, we were at my room in the B&B, fucking like teenagers who’d just discovered sex. And, except that one time in his bed, we always used protection. I couldn’t bring myself to regret that indiscretion, though, because it was a memory seared deep into my soul. We’d created something, that morning, with each other. Crossed some boundary where union of body became union of soul. Sex after that was always emotionally intense, almost always fierce and wild, sometimes slow and gentle. I discovered that he liked it best when we started out missionary and switched to me riding him for the finish, and that I liked it best when we started out reverse cowgirl and finished doggy style, so he could let go with all the full and furious force of his powerful body. Whatever the position, though, there was always an element of vulnerability, a sense of depth between us.
And we…talked. A lot. About everything. Those day-long hikes were always spent talking to each other, taking selfies, laughing, teasing each other…I think I learned more about Zane in that week than I knew about everyone else in my life combined. And I learned about myself. He had a way of getting me to talk, getting me to open up in ways I’d never thought possible.
And then, all too soon, it was Wednesday night and I was dreading the morning in a way I’d never felt before. My flight for San Francisco left at ten, and I had to check out of the B&B by nine, since the Kingsley’s had a couple arriving who wanted to check in early. I opted to check out Wednesday night, and had Zane bring the truck so I could haul my suitcases to the bar, and leave them stacked just inside the stairwell.
I’d already done an online chec
k-in for my return flight and had the boarding pass loaded into the browser on my cell phone. I also had a change of clothes for the morning folded into my carry-on…
And I was full out panicking.
Zane was working until nine p.m., which only gave us a handful of hours left together. I was sitting in my booth near the service bar, sipping a pint of stout and nibbling on some nachos. The twins were on the floor serving tables and doing their best singing waiter impressions, getting the crowd howling along as they sang bar band favorites like “Sweet Caroline”, “Free Bird”, and “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor”, going back and forth on the verses and singing in harmony for the chorus, all while dancing around the floor with trays full of drinks or punching in orders at the computer.
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