by Mary Calmes
“Good,” he said, pressing his face into the side of my neck, at the same time stroking my cock with a deliberateness that had all my attention. The motion had changed from something he was doing as an afterthought to something he wanted.
“Ian,” I barely got out, unable to stop myself from pushing up into his fist.
“Yes, Miro?” he asked, his breathing rough in my ear as he kissed over my collarbone, grinding against my thigh, his cock having slowly thickened.
I slid my hand over his ass, letting my middle finger press between his asscheeks and then deeper until I heard the hum of satisfaction I was after. As I added a second to his tender opening, a shudder ran through his powerful frame.
“Pass me the lube,” I ordered.
“No, I’m good.”
“Ian, are you sure you—”
“Yes,” he whispered, rolling to his other side.
I followed like I was glued to him, notching between his cheeks, the slide in easy, smooth, the stretch and give almost more than I could bear, needing to thrust deep and hard inside of him but instead willing myself to move slowly until I was buried to the hilt.
“Fuck, you feel good,” I groaned, wrapping one arm under him and around his chest so he could feel me holding him, then sliding my other hand over his hip to take hold of his cock.
He bowed in my arms, pressing back into me, and my body took over, pistoning forward, plunging deep as I used my hand to wring his pleasure from him.
“Don’t let me go,” he cried out before he came over my fingers and wrist, just a few spurts, but enough.
His muscles clamped down on me, and I was done, mindlessly grinding inside of him, my body shuddering, the orgasm annihilating my control as I came for the second time with my man wrapped around me.
We lay there panting, trying to push air through our lungs, neither of us moving.
“Do you think I could ever do that?”
Nothing from him, only his stubbly cheek rubbing against mine.
“Ian?”
“Sometimes when we’re doing our thing, I feel like we’re one person.”
“Me too,” I agreed. The way my skin was plastered to his felt so much better than good. “But you didn’t answer the question.”
“No,” he whispered until his voice leveled out. “I don’t think you’d ever let me go.”
“That’s good because I won’t. You’re stuck with me now, and I don’t ever want to be in bed with anyone but you.”
Deep, contented sigh from him. “Okay, yeah, so turns out I needed to hear that.”
I knew he did. It had been simmering there below the surface since he saw me in the club. His bravado was a defense mechanism, and I knew that. He was everything in my life, but really, truly, I was the same for him. He feared losing me, and he had to stop because I was never going anywhere.
“There’s only you,” I vowed.
“I know,” he rumbled, still not so great at discussing his feelings, better at showing me how much I was loved.
“I should pull out,” I said after several long minutes.
He grunted his agreement.
“I wasn’t gentle with you either time,” I mumbled into his hair. “I’m worried you won’t be able to walk tomorrow.”
“You’ve never—hurt me,” he gasped as I eased free of his still-clenching channel.
His hand was instantly on my ass. “Stay here. Don’t get out of bed.”
“We killed it, and we’ll be cemented here by morning.”
“I don’t care, just—hold tight.”
I wrapped him in my arms, my chest plastered to his back, the front of my thighs wedged to the backs of his, and the curve of his ass settled against my groin. “I don’t want to squash you,” I murmured into his nape. “You need to be able to breathe.”
“Breathing is a secondary consideration.”
I chuckled softly as he tried to push back against me and tightened my arms a bit so there was no more give.
His sigh made me smile. “I love you,” I said because it was as true in that moment as it was over coffee every morning. He was my whole life, and as long as I had him with me, loving me, everything would be all right.
Chapter 6
IAN WALKED into the bathroom and set a mug of coffee down for me as I put product in my hair, raking my hands through it. I looked at him in the mirror and noted the crossed arms and scowl, the lines between his furrowed brows I always found sexy. I was getting the serious face, and so I took a sip of the French roast with the perfect balance of cream and girded myself for whatever he was going to say.
“Okay,” I said with mock seriousness, “release the Kraken.”
“This is not funny.”
I leaned toward him anyway, wanting a kiss, needing it before I started whatever the day was going to be.
“No.”
I froze, mid lean, mid pucker, and grinned. “No, what?”
“That won’t work,” he told me flatly. “You don’t get to be adorable or irresistible or any of the things I normally find you.”
This was news. “You find me irresistible?”
“And sexy and everything else,” he concluded. “But right now that doesn’t matter.”
“Why doesn’t it matter?” I really wanted to know, because him wanting me was always a very good thing, and he didn’t cough up the vault of his heart often.
Ian still, after so long, was not the kind of man who revealed much about his own thoughts and feelings. It simply wasn’t him. I didn’t know if it had to do with his mother and how emotionally closed off she became after his father left, or the military, or whether it was simply him. But I did know things learned and seen when you were a kid didn’t just poof into the ether when you hit puberty. Life lessons were just that: they stayed forever.
“We’re not going off on a tangent,” he explained, his tone, that fast, already irritated. “All kissing, touching, hugging, anything is off the table until we have this out.”
I was crap in the morning before I had lots of caffeine in me, and he knew that. I had no idea why he was trying to—
“Drink more of that,” he commanded, tipping his chin at the tantalizing cup of coffee. “Hurry up.”
I took several sips because it wasn’t scalding—it was drinkable, yet another truth he knew about me. “Okay, now, what are we having out?”
Arms crossed, legs braced, I got the picture. We were picking up where we left off last night in the street. This was us talking about our career paths.
“So we’re going to discuss me not wanting to wear Kevlar.”
He waited, those gorgeous clear eyes of his on me just as they were the night before. But now instead of blown pupils and the struggle to remain open, I had hyperfocus that was really a lot to deal with so early in the morning.
“And I get that this is serious, but why can’t I touch you?”
“Because I can’t concentrate if you do, and I wanna know what the hell is going on with you not wanting to be my partner anymore!”
And I got it, I did. He’d left the Army for him, not me, but still, being my partner, being there when I needed him at work in the capacity of being my backup, was also a big part of why he could give up being in Special Forces. So me telling him the path he wanted to take was not the one I felt was best for me was, to him, a betrayal of trust, hence the yelling. It all made sense; it was just a lot of volume in the space of the bathroom.
I left, taking my coffee with me. He caught up easily—he was not carrying precious liquid—and barred my path.
“Talk to me.”
“Then sit while I find something to wear.”
He grunted but let me pass, and I took several sips before leaving the cup on the nightstand to go rummage through my closet.
“Now,” he insisted, taking a seat on the bed to watch me.
“Kage and I went up to Custodial to speak to—”
“No,” he stopped me. “Go back to you getting hurt and go forward.
”
Ian was a details guy; he liked to know all of them. It was not a surprise that me starting midstory wasn’t going to work for him.
“It all started with seeing Wen Li yesterday,” I began. “She was placed in a home that pimps out little girls.”
He didn’t say anything, so I glanced over my shoulder and saw the stunned expression on his face.
“It’s true,” I sighed, turning to face him. “You should have seen them, both girls with bruises, both of them—” I couldn’t tell him they both had STDs, both jumped at every loud noise, recoiling from every man who came near them except me. When Han saw me walking into her room, she’d hyperventilated with happiness. “It was horrible.”
“And where are they now?”
“With their aunt in San Antonio.”
“Where the hell was the aunt this whole time?”
It was a long story, so I hit the high points for him, running down the connections.
“Well, good,” he sighed, “at least they’re safe now, but what the hell does this have to do with you not working with me?”
“Because what happened to those two girls, no one looking out for them, has been happening to a lot of the kids in Custodial.”
The realization of where I was going with this spread slowly across his face. I saw the dread appear as he furrowed his brows and clenched his jaw, and then, of course, he crossed his arms over his wide, muscular chest.
“Fuck no.”
“Wait.”
He stood up. “No fuckin’ way, Miro.”
“Why?”
“You’ll be taking care of kids.”
“Exactly.”
“Yeah, that’s not gonna work.”
“And why’s that?”
“You know why.”
“Clearly not,” I said indignantly.
“Don’t do that,” he cautioned. “It’s not the right choice for you, period.”
“It’s not for you to say.”
“Oh no?” he said dramatically.
“Just—”
“You can’t do that. It’s not a good place for you.”
“Kage seems to think it is.”
“Well, Mills is the one who—”
“We both know that Kage eats Mills for lunch, and besides, I don’t know how much longer he’s even gonna have a job. I wouldn’t get too cozy with him.”
“I don’t give a shit about Mills,” he snapped, starting to pace. “Or me. I only care about you, and you in Custodial is a very bad idea.”
“What’s your problem with Custodial?”
“That should be obvious.”
“No,” I answered irritably. He’d never doubted my abilities before; I was at a loss to understand why he didn’t think I was up to the challenge of working with minors. “It’s not. Explain what you’re thinking.”
“Can you not see that you’re gonna get hurt?”
“How? I get a paper cut or something?”
“Don’t be an ass,” he hissed, the anger bubbling in his voice.
“I’m not trying to be. I’m really trying to figure out what you’re talking about.”
He took hold of my arms, staring into my face. “You will get hurt because you’ll get invested with the kids like you always do, and when things go wrong—again, because they always do—you’re gonna be devastated.”
I absorbed that, rolled it around in my head a second, him thinking I would be emotionally devastated if something were to happen to one of the kids. And while he was right—yes, it would hurt—that was part of putting yourself out there in any kind of relationship, be it personal or professional. It didn’t in any way change the need to act. “Are you serious?”
The answering growl told me he was.
“For crissakes, Ian,” I sighed, cupping his face in my hands. “Of course I’m gonna get hurt, but that’s part of it, right?”
“No,” he retorted, visibly choked up, easing out of my hands and taking several steps back. “You were a foster kid, Miro. You remember what it was like to have no one and be homeless—how are reminders like that good for you?”
“They’re not,” I agreed. “But they also make me damn empathetic, right?”
He shook his head. “That’s not our deal.”
“Deal? What deal?” I rasped, frustrated because it was like pulling teeth. He was being so closed off.
“You’re my partner.”
“Yeah, and you’re mine,” I reminded him. “I’ll bet you right now that Kage expects you to go with me today to start talking to the kids.”
“Which is fine for today,” he said pointedly. “But that’s it.”
“I’m the interim director.”
His scowl was dark.
“Speak.”
“You have to tell Kage to find someone else.”
“Oh? Just tell Kage?”
“Yeah.”
“Ian, I—”
“No. If you tell him you can’t because of being in foster care yourself, he’ll listen.”
“But that would be a lie.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want you to do it, so whatever you have to do to get out of it is fine with me.”
“And what if it’s not fine with me?”
He shook his head.
“Ian, you—”
“No,” he insisted, and I could hear the hard edge of anger in his voice. “I won’t let you do this to yourself. This is bullshit.”
“You can’t be serious,” I pressed, certain he would snap out of feeling like this at any second because it was so illogical.
“Oh, I’m dead serious,” he countered, and I heard how dug in he was, how he was so sure he was right.
“Ian, come on, this isn’t like you.”
“I have a say now,” he reminded me implacably. “We’re not just partners. We’re married, and my opinion means something.”
“It always meant something!”
“Yeah, but now there’s weight too. If I say no, it’s no.”
I loved him, but he was being ridiculous. “That’s not how marriage works!”
“I think that’s exactly how it works,” he ground out hoarsely, the emotion there in his voice as he swallowed hard, trying to breathe through his anger.
I had to figure out why he was actually mad. What was it he was so scared of? Because this wasn’t about control—Ian didn’t want power over me, but right now, at this moment, he was absolutely terrified. I just had to figure out of what.
“Are you listening to me?”
Ian was a natural protector, and the person he most wanted to keep safe was me.
“Honey, you can’t stand between me and the world for the rest of my life,” I explained, trying to keep my voice level so he’d hear me and not bristle. “And I wouldn’t want you to.”
“Well, clearly I do since you’re not using your head.”
Deep breath because, holy shit, did he want to have a knock-down drag-out or what? He was ready to throw down with me right there. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
His snarl of frustration told me he was far angrier than I originally thought. “Listen, I know you have a natural drive to create families wherever you go.”
“What are you talking about?” I had him; he was it, my whole family. There wasn’t anyone else besides—
“I’m talking about the girls. You made a family there.”
“I didn’t even have one before—”
“Cabot, Drake, and Josue spent Thanksgiving with us last year, and they were right back again at Christmas.”
“Are you kidding?” I asked, surprised the boys were being thrown in my face since from seeing them all together, it seemed he liked them. “What the hell was I supposed to do? They have no one but us and… I… we—”
“Just—”
“I thought you liked having them over here!”
“I did! I do!” he shouted, back to pacing. “They’re all good, but think about it for a second. What’re you gonna do when y
ou realize that you can’t bring home every kid that’s in Custodial to live with us?”
“I already know that.”
“Are you sure?”
“You’re being really fuckin’ snide,” I advised him, feeling my blood start to boil with how condescending his words were.
“I don’t care. The fact of the matter is that every kid that we’ve ever been in charge of, you’ve brought into our home.”
“There’ve been extenuating circumstances.”
“Won’t there always be?”
“A little credit here, please.”
“Don’t gimme that shit. This isn’t about credit or anything else but me knowing that you always think there’s something else you can do.”
“Are you listening to yourself?” He made no sense. “I haven’t even started yet. How can I know shit about what I can or cannot do?”
“Again, this goes back to your desire to create families—which is great, it is—but I don’t want one. I don’t wanna be anyone’s father, I don’t want to adopt, I just… I don’t.”
“Have you lost your mind? I don’t wanna be a father either.”
“That’s a lie,” he retorted.
But it wasn’t.
Even though thinking back on what Aruna had said made me start to wonder about what kind of father I would be, I still wasn’t ready to say I wanted to be a parent. She had faith and she knew me well, so there had to be some truth to her belief I had paternal ability in me somewhere. But that didn’t translate to fatherhood. And did that mean me being a caregiver meant I was there for a child, or was I there for mentoring, for guiding kids who didn’t have someone in their corner? I didn’t have the answer, but certainly I would never push a choice on Ian. I would never presume that because I wanted something, he had to as well. Our marriage was a partnership first, and in it, to me, he was first always, so to hear him think I could want something he didn’t, push him to do something he didn’t want—that hurt.
I was stunned, and the hurt must have shown on my face.
“You know it is,” he said raggedly, reaching for me but stopping himself. “You’re ready to be a father.”