I went back to work, but Silas’ words stayed in the front of my mind.
He just had to be okay.
I’d never worried about anyone this much unless they meant something to me.
And I was afraid to admit it, but the longer it went that he was gone, the more I realized how attached I’d become to him.
***
Three weeks later
I bit my fingernails down to the cuticle.
Again.
Here I was, on a Saturday night, biting my fingernails and eating a gallon of ice cream while I stayed glued to the news.
SEAL Team Eleven believed alive.
An eight member team of some sort is seen here leaving the Saudi Arabian embassy. None of their identities can be confirmed, but it is believed that this is the team that went missing two months ago, after a botched mission gone wrong. Nothing has been proven yet, but Fox News will visit this new development upon the hour.
Was that him?
They looked a lot smaller than what I thought Sterling should look, but if he was in hiding for nine weeks, then that only made sense.
My phone pinged at my side, and before looking at it, I scooped a humongous wedge of ice cream onto my spoon that was made for two mouths instead of one, and pulled it up to my face to read the message.
Kraken: It wasn’t all for show. Come outside.
My brows furrowed.
Kraken?
What the fuck, and who the hell was that?
I’d never programmed a ‘Kraken’ into my phone.
But, like the dumb movie heroine who always gets killed in the scary movies, I walked outside with my large spoon in my hand, still holding my ice cream.
Thinking I was being smart, I unlocked the back door and slowly slipped into the night.
It was raining.
Like it always was here.
It felt like I’d moved to Seattle with all the rain we’d been getting.
Luckily, the house was equipped with a wraparound porch, even if it did need fixing in places.
I knew how to avoid those places, though.
And apparently so did the man that snuck up behind me and pulled me into a warm, hard, extremely hard, body.
A metal clang announced the melting spoon hitting the ground.
“Trying to sneak up on me?” The man asked.
My heart was pounding, but not because I was scared. Not anymore.
Because I was over the fucking moon!
“Sterling!” I cried, wiggling in his arms until I had my arms around his neck.
He let me, of course, but I didn’t notice as I hugged him tight.
“You’re okay!” I cried.
“Mmmmhmm,” he hummed. “A-Okay.”
I leaned back until my hands were pressed on either side of his face, fingers grazing his beard that’d grown exponentially since I’d last seen him.
His hair had as well, from what I could tell by my emergency lights that’d flicked on the moment I’d passed.
I’d ask him later how he’d managed not to set them off.
“You missed our date!” Was the next thing that popped out of my mouth.
He smiled. “Yeah, I did. I’ll have to make that up to you.”
His rumbled reply was felt deep inside of me as I started to take note at how close our bodies were.
His arms circled tightly around me, holding me off the floor with hilarious ease.
One arm was under my ass, and the other was banded across my lower back.
My crotch was pressed to his hard belly, and I could feel the distinct outline of what I guessed to be his cock, or possibly a baton of some sort, which I sincerely doubted, pressing against my thighs.
And yes, I do mean thighs.
It started at the edge of one and traveled across the length of the other, making me swallow hard.
“H-how are you going to make it up to me?” I rasped, licking my lips.
He grinned, and suddenly the security light blinked out, plunging us into darkness once again.
The thunder boomed all around us as rain poured down in thick sheets, surrounding us in a world that consisted of only him and me, our breathing, and my body pressed against his.
He moved quickly, pinning me so that I had my back pressed up against the side of the house.
I gasped, instinctually opening my legs to allow him to move in between them.
He took the invitation, pressing further into me, and proving once and for all that what I’d previously called a baton was indeed a part of him.
A very hard, very warm, yummy part of him.
“What…” I licked my lips and tried again. “What are you doing?”
He pressed more weight onto me, hitching me up higher so I wasn’t against his happy place anymore. “I don’t know.”
His head fell forward until it was resting on my collarbone, and I knew then that he really didn’t know.
And he wasn’t okay.
I placed my hand on both of his shoulders, moving them up over the column of his neck until they came to a rest on his cheeks.
“Sterling?” I asked.
He tilted his head back, and the movement somehow flipped the switch for the motion detected flood light once again.
It turned on, and the light displayed actual pain on Sterling’s face.
“Are you okay?” I whispered.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he grimaced and started to let me go, but I knew if he let me go, he’d leave.
And I really didn’t want him to leave.
I was happy that he’d come.
Happy that I was one of the first places he came once he’d gotten back home.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, sank my mouth down to his, and planted a kiss on his lips.
The move made him still, and then suddenly I was being divested of my pants.
Roughly.
“Sterling,” I gasped, but I didn’t make him stop.
It wasn’t a gasp of disapproval, but a sincere gasp of surprise at the movement.
And in no way, shape, or form was it a denial of what I knew he was about to do.
And I’d never wanted anything more in my life.
His hard cock was suddenly at my entrance, and he slowly sank inside of me, one delicious inch at a time until I could barely gather breath to fill my lungs.
I couldn’t tell you whether it was due to the fact that he was big, or the fact that I was just that rusty at sex, but I felt like he was splitting me in two.
He didn’t even let me complain, only started to fuck me with hard, powerful strokes.
It started out as slightly painful, but the desperation in his thrusts, as well as the need inside me, paired with the overall excitement that he was here, alive, and in my arms made me a slow burn start to build in my core.
I knew he should be wearing a condom.
Which was okay, in a sense.
I was on the pill. We just hadn’t had the discussion about it yet.
But I knew he was healthy as I was.
I also knew that if he’d pulled out right then, that I might have become physically violent.
Lucky for him he didn’t stop, only revved up even more when he felt my pussy start to pulse around him, signaling my impending release.
“Sterling,” I moaned loudly. “Oh, my…fuck…oh, God!”
His mouth went to the exposed column of my throat, and he sucked.
Hard.
I hadn’t ever had a hickey before, but I knew I would this time.
And I didn’t care.
At all.
Sterling shifted his hips, and reached down until both of his arms were holding my legs up.
His hands planted onto the wall behind me, and suddenly the only thing touching me was his hard arms behind my knees, and his cock splitting me.
And as I looked down, the security light only highlighting bits and pieces of our bodies as they move
d as one, I came.
My world shattered with a loud boom that had the very air around us shaking,
Logically I knew it was thunder, but at that moment in time, I couldn’t give less of a fuck.
My mind was so focused on this…on him…that I couldn’t separate the two things.
He watched me come, and my eyes stayed ensnared by his.
“Sterling,” I gasped his name, and he finally let go.
He came hard inside my tightened pussy, shooting himself down so deep inside me that I knew I’d be feeling him there for days.
Both of us panted in the revamped storm, cold rain pounded my bare legs where Sterling held them in place, which meant his ass was surely getting wet since I could now see that his pants were down around his ankles.
A flash of lightening had the world lighting up around us, and I saw the need, as well as the pain, still deep in his eyes.
“You wanna come inside?” I asked him softly.
He nodded, but didn’t say anything, only dropping my knees one by one until I rested on tippy toes.
His cock was still buried deep inside of me, and hadn’t gone down one single bit since he’d come.
In fact, he was still pulsing hard inside of me with the beat of his heart.
The new position, with my legs down, let his hard cock rest deliciously against my clit, and each beat of his heart, pulse of his dick, had me nearly clenching in anticipation.
“I need you again,” he whispered roughly.
I nodded. “Okay.”
This time was slower.
Much slower.
He pulled out and bent me forward on my porch railing.
I had an irrational thought of being excited that we were doing it in such a public place.
But, realistically, I knew that no one could see us.
Not with the way the rain was pouring down.
The wind blew, spraying me with a light mist across my face just as Sterling sank back inside of me.
I moaned and threw my head back, eyes closing again as he started to slowly push into me, before starting the long pull back out.
I clutched onto the wooden railing with tight fists, holding on for dear life as he gave me all he had to give.
I don’t know how long that went on.
Minutes. Hours. Hell, I didn’t know and I didn’t really care.
All I knew right then was that he was with me, and I was with him.
And when I came long minutes later, pulling him with me along the way, I had never felt anything so right.
***
“I heard something disturbing today while Silas and Sawyer were talking. And I wanted to make sure that I spoke with you about it to make sure I wasn’t going to flip any triggers for you. Although I’d intended to talk to you about it before I…you know…you,” Sterling said later that night.
My head was pillowed on his chest, and his fingers were sifting through my hair.
“How long have you been home?” I asked softly.
He answered instantly.
“Last night around eleven P.M.,” he answered. “But nobody’s seen me yet. I only went to Silas’ place to grab my spare key. Mine was…lost. Which was where I heard them talking about the things that happened to you while you were in prison.”
He twirled my hair around his finger, playing with it and making me nearly purr.
I loved having my hair played with.
We’d just finished round three of the best sex I’d ever had in my life, and I was fairly positive that my legs wouldn’t be holding me up any time soon.
“I was never raped, even though Sawyer thinks otherwise,” I told him on a sigh. “Although they thought I had some questionable diseases. I was taken away and made to look like I was raped to scare the other women. I never told anybody any differently. Maybe I should have…but it kept me safe. Kept Sawyer safe.”
I could hear his mind racing, wondering if I actually had any ‘questionable diseases’ or not.
“I don’t have any,” I said instantly. “They checked that almost monthly, and I had my own tests the moment I escaped that place. And I haven’t had sex with anyone in well over ten years.”
“That’s good to know, honey. Although it wasn’t the question on my mind,” he rumbled.
His chest rattled with each word he spoke, and my free hand that wasn’t supporting my head started to run through the hair on his chest, teasing its way down to tangle in the hair surrounding his groin.
“Then what was?” I asked softly.
His penis started to stir when my hands played with the hair, but he didn’t act on it, leaving me to play with him as he spoke.
“The question on my mind was whether they’d even tried. And how many times they tried before you had to make up a god awful lie like that to keep from being raped,” he mumbled.
I winced.
My mind had automatically gone to the worst possible scenario he could be thinking. I should’ve known he’d never think badly about me.
“They tried. The men guards think we’ve been put in the cage for their pleasure…at least with some of them. They tried with Sawyer as well, but the two of us stuck together. Found a way to make it work. I can’t say it was a fun eight years in there, but it was definitely bearable,” I told him. “It could’ve been way worse.”
He didn’t say anything to that.
And I imagined he wasn’t very happy with that admission.
“If they weren’t all in jail, I’d kill them,” he said roughly.
I knew he would, too.
Sterling was the ‘protector.’
He wanted to make sure everyone was taken care of before himself.
Something that I’d witnessed quite a few times since I’d been released from prison.
“They’re in jail…and Silas did kill the one that was the ring leader,” I shuddered.
I’d seen pictures, because I’d asked Silas to show them to me.
I wanted to know that he was dead.
I was tired of living my life scared.
My entire existence was spent wondering.
My whole life was based on a question, even before prison.
Would I be able to eat today?
Would I ever find a home to live in?
Would I graduate college?
Would I be alive when I saw twenty-two?
Would Bender hurt our child?
How would I get away from him if he did hurt us?
Then I’d gone to jail, accused of killing my husband; not for my protection, but for vengeance.
And it’d sucked.
And the questions started anew.
Only they kept getting worse and worse.
Then I got out…and I met Silas…and Sterling.
And I realized that maybe, just maybe, life wasn’t so bad.
Then Sterling disappeared, and I was left thinking about a man that I didn’t have any attachment to, other than a few emotional strings.
Strings that held captive as I waited nine weeks for him to get home…to hear word that he was even alive.
And he was finally here.
“What happened over there?” I asked softly.
He shook his head. “I can’t really talk about it.”
“Can you tell me anything?” I asked.
“A little bit,” he answered, sitting up until his back was against my headboard.
My hand that’d been playing with his belly hair fell free from him, and he pulled the sheet up until it was resting lightly over both legs, covering the goods.
His eyes stared blankly forward as he said, “You know I’m an active member of SEAL Team Eleven, right?”
I nodded. “I assumed.”
“Yeah, the whole country will know about the SEAL team now that we’re home. But we were called to perform a mission that wasn’t well thought out in the least, and we nearly died because of it,” he explained.
He nodded.
“Yeah, not with any help from Uncle Sam, though. We had to do it all on our own, cross into two countries before we were able to get out safely,” he answered.
“Wow,” I whispered. “Did you get hurt?”
I knew he was hurt.
I could tell because he couldn’t quite hide the winces each time I pressed too hard on his right shoulder.
I’d yet to see his back, but I knew he had some type of…something…there.
I felt something on the back of his right shoulder, but the moment I started to turn to look at it, he’d distracted me with round three.
It’d been a rather thorough distraction, too.
Now, though, I wouldn’t be so easily deterred.
“So what now?” I asked softly, sitting up until I was crossed legged in the bed.
He shook his head. “Keep working. One bad mission won’t stop us. The only one that will stop us will be the ones that kill us.”
I tried not to let that sink in too deep.
The thought of him being killed, while on a mission, scared the crap out of me.
Not that I had any right to demand he be careful, it slipped out of my mouth nonetheless.
“You need to be careful, Sterling. You have a lot of people that would miss you if you were gone. Silas didn’t actually express being worried, but he always had the news on every time I saw him,” I whispered, picking at the invisible lint on the sheet.
“What about you?” He asked.
I blinked, looking up at him. “What about me?”
He smiled, his beautiful eyes full of mirth now instead of pain.
“Will you miss me?” He asked.
“Would I miss you? Yes. Will I miss you? No, because you’re not going anywhere,” I answered.
He grinned, and I realized he was happy with that answer.
Really happy.
“So about that date…”
I shook my head. “I need to go to sleep. I have to work in the morning.”
He moved quickly.
One second I was staring at his throat, admiring his jaw and mouth, and the next he was pinning me to the bed, his hard cock pressing into my exposed sex.
Only the sheet was between us, and it wasn’t much of a barrier for the beast he had between his legs.
“Call in sick,” he said, his mouth only a whisper away from my own.
Right To My Wrong (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC Book 8) Page 6