Assignment: Code of Love [Hawt Men In and Out of Uniform 6] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Honor James

  “Naked is fine. I promise you that I won’t attack you in the middle of the night. I won’t do anything that you don’t want to do. Anything we do will be fully consensual.” She tugged at his flak jacket and then pulled it off followed by his shirt. “Now, you stand and divest yourself of the rest of your clothes while I pull back the bed and get myself ready as well okay?”

  “Sounds good,” he said with a nod. Tossing the bottle of water aside, he pushed up to his feet with a groan. He undid his belt, and then pushed down his jeans. Picking them up, he had his back to her while he folded them. It allowed her the opportunity to see both the tattoos on his back and upper left arm, as well as the bullet wounds down his back. One in particular sat way too close to where his heart rested.

  Clara reached out and touched the markings on his back. “Elliott.” She was touching a bullet wound scar and bit her lower lip. “My poor, sweet Elliott.” She pressed a kiss to the wound and then touched the beautiful tattoo. “This is incredible,” she told him with a smile. The tattoo was a massive dragon that was wrapped around a sword and a banner. The banner had her name on it. “This is old,” she whispered. “How long have you had it?” she questioned and pushed him back into the bed so that she, too, could get ready to lie down with him.

  “The tattoo?” he asked. At her nod he shrugged as he wiggled around on the bed. Grabbing his bottle of water he settled back against her headboard. “I started it when I got through basic. The outline took three different sittings of about six hours each. I had the banner filled in on the last sitting and then the rest of the image done over about three years’ time. I could only do it when I had enough leave time to let it heal prior to going back out in the field. Then I got lucky in the third year of working on it and had some additional training on some of the latest toys that let me get it finished up quickly.”

  “That’s very cool,” she said with a smile. Pressing a kiss to the side of his chest, she got naked as well, turning her back to him and walking to the light to turn it off. “You ready for the light to be off?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “Not yet, come here,” he said, leaning forward. He looked a lot more alert all of a sudden, his focus on her back. “Clara, come and sit here with me. Tell me about the scars on your back please.”

  She looked back at him and sighed. Crap, she forgot her scars. She moved back to his side and took a seat on the bed beside him. “It was several years ago. I was walking home from a friend’s house and this guy jumped out of the shadows. He wanted my purse and laptop and I tossed it to him like you taught me.” Elliott had told her that if she was ever mugged she needed to throw the purse, not hand it over. “But he was more focused on me. I turned to run and he caught me with the knife. If I hadn’t turned when I did he would have gotten my kidney.” She sighed. “I picked up the closest thing to me and hit him upside the head with it but it didn’t stop him. He grabbed me and took me. I was held with three other women for weeks.”

  She took a deep breath and continued to tell him her story.

  “There were four of us. He took turns seeing who he could break first. It was horrible. We all were tied to chairs, sitting in darkness when he didn’t have us upstairs playing with us as he did so much. He focused on Olivia though. She had refused to scream, refused to cry, and I think that gave him his own personal mission to break her. He would keep her for hours, if not half days. Never the full days because he had to go to work occasionally, but he would do horrible things to her. Near the end all of us began to bond. We began to talk to each other and whisper our fears and our deepest secrets to each other. I told them about my allergies to roses when Olive told us she was a florist.” She sighed and thought about the things that Olive had bared to them during that hellish time. It had been bad. All of it.

  “We survived however. We got out of there hole and we took that son of a bitch down. We got him off the streets.”

  He was running a finger lightly up and down the scar. “I’m glad you’re all right, and were able to do whatever you needed to do to get him off the streets.” Sliding an arm around her waist he pulled her closer to him and pressed a kiss on her shoulder. “Go turn the light off, sweetheart. Then get your ass back here so I can hold onto you until I get over how mad and scared I am with you for getting hurt. I know, stupid after all this time, but that’s how it is.”

  She moved back to the light and turned it off and then climbed into bed with him. Once they were both shifted and lying down, she had them covered, her body all but draped over his. “This is nice. I could become very used to sleeping with you,” she confessed to him and yawned as she did so. “Rest well, Elliott.”

  His arms squeezed her in closer to him. “Sleep well, sweetheart,” he said softly. Pressing a kiss to her temple he let out a breath, adjusted the blankets, and finally settled down with her. He began to stroke her hair gently, his fingers easing through the strands in a soothing way as she began to drift to sleep.

  Chapter Six

  Two weeks later...

  The last two weeks had been heavenly for Clara. She had spent every single night with either Craig or Elliott but more often than not she had both men with her. They had gone on many dates, all of them getting to know each other well and lots of heavy petting, but sadly nothing more than that, much to Clara’s frustration.

  At least Elliott held her every single night. She had refused to let him go home at night. She hadn’t been kidding when she told him that she could become addicted to sleeping with him. He and she spent many a night just talking about what they hoped to get out of life.

  Today was a day like any other. She was sitting at work opening mail and answering the letters of the lovelorn. “I can’t believe that people still write paper letters. Crazy.” She looked up when there was a knock on the door. Seeing the receptionist with a gift package in her hand she smiled. “Is that for me?” The woman snorted and told her yes before passing it off to her.

  Pulling the card off she smiled. “Elliott.” It simply said, For my love. “You are such a sweetie.” She ripped into the package and stopped dead in her tracks when she saw what was in there. With shaky hands she grabbed her phone and sent Elliott a text message. Did you send me a gift?

  His reply took a while to come through. When it finally did she felt ill. Sorry, sweetheart, but no. I’m more of a face-to-face gift giver, I prefer seeing the reaction to what I’ve sweated over buying. Why? You getting gifts from strange men? Is there someone I need to hunt down and beat-up so the field is clear for me, and Yoshi?

  Clara was now crying. With her hands shaking, a lot, she took a picture of the inside of the box. The dead roses, the dead mouse, and the paper clipping that she didn’t dare touch. No, I seriously doubt that you have to worry about this person being competition for my affection but hunting them down might not be bad? She felt like she was going to puke. She was allergic to roses, but very few people knew that. She was terrified of mice, again very few people knew that as well. The paper clipping could be anything but she was too terrified to reach in and grab it. She added, Please come? I need you.

  Her phone rang in the next moment. “I’m on my way. Lock your door, and don’t let anyone in but me. I’ll be there as soon as I can but it’s still going to be a little while, sweetheart. Go and sit as far from the box as you can, and don’t touch it any more than you have. Do you want me to stay on the phone with you, Clara?” he asked softly. She could hear him moving around.

  “How about if I just come to you?” She was in full tears. Her allergies kicking in, not so much from the dead roses as the heavy scent of roses that was maybe a perfume that had been sprayed in the box. “Yes, stay on the phone with me.” She rose and moved as far from the box as she could. Wrapping her arm around her middle she looked at her door and remembered she needed to lock it.

  Moving to the door she closed it and locked it, pulling the shade on her window into the outer offices. She then paced away from the door and to the window. “I’
m sorry. I should have called the police first shouldn’t I have?” But honestly, all she had thought when she saw the package was to get Elliott and Craig. They would keep her safe.

  “You did good, sweetheart.” The sound of a heavy door slamming came over the line before the roar of an engine reached her. “I’m already on the way. I have Cutter and Markham with me. Yoshi was in a meeting but I sent him a message to let him know, and that I’d update him as this went along. You’re doing just fine, Clara. Keep talking to me, and I’ll be there before you know it.”

  “That’s good because I don’t like gifts like this.” She was pacing again. “Especially since I’m allergic to roses.” She felt as if she were breaking out in hives. She knew she wasn’t and that it was all a mental state of being, but she scratched her arms anyway. “Why would someone send me something so terrible? And how would they know the things that I’m allergic to and afraid of?”

  “It’s someone that knows you, or has studied you,” he said. “The allergy would be easy enough to figure out if you knew who to ask. The fear of mice though is more personal, not something you’d share with people. An observant person would note the allergy, but the fear would be harder to figure out unless you were confronted by such an animal and someone saw. Unless this is someone following you. You told Yoshi about your fears. If someone was close enough to you at the pub they could have overheard most of the conversation.”

  “True.” She was fanning herself and looked to the door again. “Please tell me that you are close? Crap, I need to call down to the guard desk or you won’t get up here.” They had upped security in the last few months. One of the things that they insisted was that everyone go through the guard desk and then through reception. “I need to dial the receptionist as well. Give me a second. Shit, I have to go back to my desk to make the call.” She didn’t want to be anywhere close to that gift on her desk, but needed to. “Let me call you back in like two minutes?” She would use her cell instead.

  “I should be there soon after, make it quick, sweetheart,” he told her. “And Clara, I love you little one. Stay calm, we’re close, and we’ll be with you very soon. Do what needs to be done,” he said before the line went dead.

  She quickly made the phone calls that she needed to make, first calling down to security and then to reception. Once that was finished she dialed Elliott back up again. “You all should be good to go. I told them that they would need to let Craig in when he comes as well.” She was looking up at the ceiling now, anything to keep from thinking about the thing on her desk.

  “I’m just parking now,” he said. She could hear the movement from the other end of the line, the slamming of car doors, and the low tones of the men with him. “Coming up to the door now, I’ll see you momentarily,” he promised. Once again the line went dead but this time she knew he was close, so very close.

  She waited until she was sure that he was there with her before she opened the door. She heard the men on the other side of the door and pulled it open quickly. When Elliott opened his arms, she wrapped herself into his arms and held onto him and let herself begin to cry fully.

  “Shh,” he whispered against her hair. He eased her to the side, putting her back to the wall near her door as he stayed close to her. “I’m here, sweetheart. Right here. Please don’t cry, Clara. You know I get all weird when you cry.”

  “I know and I’m trying, I really am,” she whispered as she tried to stop crying, but couldn’t. “I didn’t think someone hated me as much as they do.” It was very clear that they did with the package she was given. “I just thought that the gift was from you because the card says ‘For my love’ so I thought it was you.”

  Elliott began to rock her gently in his arms, one hand cupping the back of her head, the other low on her spine. “It’s okay, love. But you should know me better than that. Besides, I’m not big on handwriting as you well know. Especially since a certain woman I adore likened my handwriting to that of clearly demented chicken scratches. It hasn’t gotten any better in time, I fear, no matter how I’ve tried to fix it. It works for me, and ensures no one on the planet can read my notes.”

  “As long as you can read it.” She heard the men behind them moving to the desk and once more pressed her face against Elliott’s chest. “I don’t want to see. It’s bad. So bad.” She felt a little sick at her stomach. “Can we walk out of the office, please? Maybe go down to the break room or something?”

  “Let’s go outside,” he suggested. “Get you some air, and well away from what they are doing.” He backed up enough to turn her to the door, and then urged her out of her office. A hand at her back kept her moving past all the gawkers peering over their cubicle walls toward her office.

  They paused at reception and she told Becky, “I’m taking the rest of the day off. Maybe the week. I will call Amy later and tell her what’s happening.” She looked up at Elliott and asked, “Will you send a message to your friends and ask them to bring my jacket, laptop, and purse?” She didn’t want to step back into her office, ever.

  “Of course I will love,” he said. He drew his phone out as they stepped into the elevator. When he was done he pocketed the phone again and wrapped his arms around her from behind. “How are you doing?”

  “Better now that I’m no longer smelling roses. I don’t feel as if I’m breaking out in hives, so that’s a very good thing. Right?” she asked with a smile. “Having you here is a massive help, too. More than you can possibly know.” She didn’t know what she would do if she didn’t have Elliott back in her life.

  Giving her a squeeze, Elliott pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Let’s get out of here. We’ll head outside, get you some air, maybe go up the street to get you a cup of tea as well. Whatever you want,” he said. Letting her loose, he took her hand in his when the elevator doors slid open.

  “Tea, that sounds good. They will find us right? Your friends, that is. My keys for the car are in my purse, so if you wanted we could drive together to wherever we need to go. Should I call the police? Make a report?” She was rambling and knew it. She couldn’t seem to stop the mouth diarrhea from going on and on however.

  “We’re fine, Clara.” He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles as they left the magazine’s building. Elliott tugged her toward the street, and then along the sidewalk toward the coffee shop. “The guys will call the cops if it’s necessary. They’ll be extremely careful with all the evidence in the event they need to call in the cops, but they will also ensure we get all we need from the box to try and figure this out ourselves. Can you think of anyone that would want to send you that package? Anyone at all, sweetheart.”

  “No, no one. I didn’t think anyone hated me that much.” She whispered. “Seriously, no one. The only person that might hate me is locked up in jail. At least I think he’s still in jail,” she added with a frown. “No, he has to be still in jail. He had a fifteen-year sentence and it’s only been eight so yeah, he’s still in jail.”

  “The mugger?” he asked. At her nod he gave her a look, one she couldn’t interpret. “We need to check that out and ensure he is still there. Better to be paranoid and wrong than paranoid and in even more trouble.” Pulling the door open for the coffee shop he ushered her inside, and to the front counter. “Once we get you a tea we’ll sit down, and then do a search to see if he’s still in prison or not. If he isn’t then that would be our first person to track down as he’d have the most reason to fuck with you.”

  “I meant to call a couple of weeks ago when Markham was showing me the self-defense moves but honestly forgot all about it. If you give me your phone I can make a quick call to the prison and find out. I’m on the must notify list of release, so that’s why I think that he’s in jail still.” He had to be. She would have been called, right? As soon as she thought that question she realized that with today’s justice system overload it was more than possible that she wasn’t called.

  “Then you will call them,” he told her. “Order your tea then place the
call. I’ll pay for this and a snack for us both while you await the answer. I hope he’s still there, too, sweetheart but we need to be ready for the possibility he isn’t. No matter what you are going to be glued to my side or Yoshi’s at all time until this is resolved. No way in hell am I letting you out of my sight. I don’t care if this was a prank gone wrong, someone will pay for scaring you as they did.”

  “I’m good with that. I want to be able to have one of you close to me at all times.” Repetition and it was making her teeth ache. She placed her order at the counter and then after accepting the phone from him she dialed up the prison where her mugger and attacker had been imprisoned at.

  After five minutes she passed the phone back to Elliott and felt sick. She was pale. She knew she was because she felt cold all over. “He’s out. Been out for a month.” She gulped. “Before you came back into my life I had thought that I had been followed or someone was outside of the house but I honestly didn’t think about it. Now I’m thinking that this started before today.”

  He handed her the cup of tea. Picking up his own coffee, and the bag of snacks he’d bought, he waved her toward the sofa by the fireplace. Once they’d settled in he hugged her close to his side. “He’s out, we’ll deal with this. No matter what, together we will figure this out,” he told her quietly. Pressing a kiss to her cheek, he stroked a hand up and down her arm. “But for now, you need to calm yourself down. You can’t stay this worked up.”

  “I’m trying.” She took a sip of the tea but couldn’t taste it, not with as upset as she was. “What do we do now? We know that its more than likely him, we have to warn the other women that testified against him as well. I think that there is at least one more that still lives in the area and two or three that moved away. If the courts didn’t notify me, I’m sure that they didn’t notify them either. He didn’t even pop up in alerts for parole.” She was keeping an eye on the man, had been since he had been put into jail but there was nothing about him that popped up.