by Jillian Neal
“No. Why would…?” Back to single syllables. Shit. “Never.” That was marginally better.
“You weren’t supposed to see me until tonight. I wanted to at least be wearing clean clothes.” She pulled that bag of hers that was big enough to pitch for cover, if things in this rainforest got rough, over a light pink splatter on her right thigh. My face did something I wasn’t quite expecting. It smiled. God, she always made me smile.
“Ice cream?” I asked unnecessarily. I knew my girl better than I knew anything else in this whole fucked-up world.
She gave me a sheepish nod. Heat bloomed across her features, the precise shade of the shirt she was wearing. She looked like a tall glass of pink lemonade, and I was the loser in the desert who’d somehow managed to forget his canteen for his two-hundred-mile hike. I was done for. Stick a fork in me. I was going down and I knew it. “Wait. What’s tonight?” Her words slowly filtered through what portions of my brain that were still functional.
“The auction.” Now even she looked at me like I was losing it.
“Right. That. Wait, did T make you come here?” Her eyes closed and her teeth sank into her bottom lip. I lost all ability to breathe. My cock, however, was suddenly alive and well. He damn near saluted her through my jeans. “Hannah?” I needed some answers. I’d do anything in the world for her but I needed my orders. I’d been an army grunt most of my life. Life worked when I followed the plan.
“T didn’t make me come. I got T to make you come. This was all my idea. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”
“Hey. Stop.” I took one step closer. Then another. And one more. She was temptation incarnate. I’d had her in my bed two weeks after I’d first set eyes on her. I was a rat bastard for that and when it came to her I was also a weak-ass motherfucker. The vulnerable skin of her long feminine neck contracted as she swallowed harshly. That was it. Somebody find me a fucking white flag. I eased the bag off of her shoulders, set it on her suitcase, and pulled her into my arms.
“No apologies.” My eyes closed of their own accord. I inhaled her sweet, vanilla cream scent. Her slender form fit against me like two pieces of a puzzle finally locked into place, just like it always had. “So… I was supposed to show up at the auction thing tonight, and you were going to bid on me?” I still wasn’t sure I had this straight. The intoxication of holding her in my arms only furthered my own confusion.
She nodded against me and strengthened her hold around me. I swayed her back and forth in the middle of a rainforest, in the middle of a hotel, in the middle of Sin City. Yeah, my life made absolutely no fucking sense at all.
An ache centered in my rib cage when she lifted her head to stare me down. My chest protested the absence of her heat. “Didn’t really occur to me until I saw you Beret-ing that attendant that I should never have tricked you into coming here. I can’t believe you’re not mad. I just didn’t know what to do. I kept calling you and…”
“I didn’t answer,” I supplied for her. “I was trying to give you and your new guy a chance. Smith told me your dad said you were happy. I have a damned calendar where I x-ed off the days I made it without driving to Denver and taking back what’s mine. It killed me every time I let it go to voicemail. You should be mad at me about that.” Hey, look at that. An actual sentence or two.
“I was the one who told the lie. If I’m going to be mad at anyone, I should be mad at myself.”
“I’m not mad about the auction. I’m actually…relieved.” And I was. Kind of. I still had no idea how she saw this whole thing working. “Wait. How does T-Byrd know about us? Did you tell him? I never…” I couldn’t verbalize the single truth about all of the lies I’d told. The secret I’d kept from my brothers. The chink in the armor. The weakest link. Our ultimate downfall.
“I didn’t tell him…” The rest of a confession hung on her tongue. Didn’t have to have any kind of training to see that.
“Ms. Hagen.” A middle-aged woman rushed up to Hannah. I ground my teeth and reminded myself that other people were allowed to talk to her. It was just that I hadn’t gotten to in what felt like years.
“Oh, Ms. Mallory, uh, this is Sergeant Griff Haywood. He’s an old acquaintance of mine. He served with my brother. He’s in the auction tonight. Griff, this is Megan Mallory. She’s a representative for Homefront Heroes.”
What the actual fuck? Old acquaintance? Served with her brother? Maybe that damned plane had crashed and after my initial greeting by Jizz Stain the YouTuber, and I’d gotten my one-way ticket to some kind of Amazon rainforest in hell. That was the only thing that made any sense at all.
Only, Hannah would never be in hell. Angels don’t get sent there.
“Lovely to meet you. Thank you for your service.” Ms. Mallory’s smile reminded me of a drill sergeant I’d had in Basic. He’d always smile just before he’d order you to sweep all of the sun off the sidewalks or fill sandbags with a spoon. I managed a nod. For some bizarre reason, she looked far too pleased with my appearance. “Hannah, the gift bags I need you to stuff are in the ballroom. Can you meet me down there to start setting up?”
“Uh…” Hannah’s eyes closed for an extended blink. “Maybe. I just need to get checked in and shower. I’ll be down there as soon I can.”
“Sergeant Haywood, I can’t wait to hear more about your service this evening. Hannah, do remember no one is supposed to be fraternizing with the volunteers until the auction.” With a quick nod, she went on her merry way.
Fraternizing with the volunteers?
Hannah glanced around the crowded entrance. The check-in lines were now almost ten people deep. “I’m so sorry about…everything. I promise I’ll tell you every single thing I did to arrange all of this and how T-Byrd knew.” She pulled her phone from her pocket. “I missed my original flight. I really need a shower, and apparently I have to be down at the ballroom to help set up. Palindrome Design in one of the sponsors. If you’re not furious with me, I was hoping to get to spend every moment of the next week with you.”
“What the fuck was all of that about me being an acquaintance of yours and fraternizing?” Okay, maybe I was a little pissed. Not at her. Never at her. But at something I couldn’t quite put my finger on yet.
Hannah’s teeth sank into her bottom lip and my cock immediately came up with all kinds of other things, better things, she could do with her lips. I decided I wasn’t angry just maybe mildly irritated, mostly because I still had no fucking clue how I’d gotten to this rainforest purgatory. Because it couldn’t possibly be hell if she was here and yet if she was trying to get away, this definitely wasn’t heaven.
For one thing, that Ms. Mallory chick was here and then there were the real reasons we could never be together—her father and her brother, also known as my best friend. If I somehow really did get to spend a week with my baby tucked up in that made-for-fucking suite, without Smith finding out, then we’d talk about heaven. Of course, if she was just here and I couldn’t really have her, hell itself couldn’t be worse than that.
She gestured her head slightly to the left. I watched Megan Mallory disappear into a crowd that had spilled out of the casino. Once she was out of sight, Hannah slumped. “Me arranging for you to be here just so I can bid on you goes against the ridiculous policy she set for the auction. She just kept on and on with rules for this. It was weird. It’s the first Homefront fundraiser she’s done and she’s adamant that it go off without a hitch, I guess. It also goes against the contract I signed as a sponsor. We give a lot of money to Homefront Heroes because I believe in the work they do. I don’t want to mess up the relationship. Guess I’m still not so good at following rules when it comes to you.” Heat climbed seductively out of the V-neck of her shirt. It swirled up her neck and settled high in her cheeks. Definitely not hell.
“Neither of us were ever real good with rules.”
She wasn’t shouldering the blame for me.
A glimmer of light shone in her eyes. A sizzle of heat shot down my spine and, onc
e again, my cock reminded me that he didn’t give a rat’s ass about Smith, the general, rules, morals, doing right by anyone, or anything else. He just wanted to be buried deep inside her. Never ever take advice from your cock. He’s basically an idiot. I knew that but damn, the guy was insistent.
“Just let me go wash the ice cream off my crotch and get those stupid gift bags stuffed.” She sighed.
An involuntary groan vibrated up from my gut. Visions of my tongue lapping ice cream off of her crotch, as she’d so eloquently put it, danced in my brain. My cock seemed to believe this was a forgone conclusion. He wanted me to volunteer to be her own personal shower. God knows I can get my baby girl sloppy wet. So fucking weak for her.
Shaking off thoughts of me lathering her up just prior to me drilling into her up against a shower wall, I managed a nod. “Need to return the tool belt anyway.” I gestured to my waist.
“Where did you get that?” Her grin still held a mixture of shame and that adoration she always had when she looked up at me. Adoration I would surely never deserve.
“Did a little Googling. Figured out there was construction on the fifth floor. Dropped by there. Gave some guy a twenty to let me use it for an hour. Had to look like I work for you to get them to call you. Never go into a battle without your uniform and all that shit.”
“Guess you can’t take the Beret out of the man, huh?”
“I’ve tried, but it doesn’t seem to work. They soldered it into my brain.”
“How’d you figure out I was here?” She still wouldn’t meet my eyes. Instinctively, I brushed her delicate chin with my callused fingertips and lifted her face. A slight shiver worked through her. My touch still made her do that. All of the years and all of the fucked-up things I’d done hadn’t tamed our fire at all. The one thing I would always crave was the one thing I couldn’t ever really have. This universe was severely fucked-up.
“The way T kept saying I needed to come and do this. He was so serious about it and he’s never serious. Then they gave me a flyer about…”
Realization rounded those sorrowful eyes that were wreaking havoc with the torn fragments of my soul. “Me redoing the Villa suites. Dammit. How could I have forgotten they were giving everyone those now? I put it in our freaking contract. I also never thought anyone would actually read the flyers.”
I laughed. Jesus, first I smiled then I laughed. Two things I hadn’t done much of since Smith had mentioned that Hannah was getting serious with some shit-scraper. I still had no fucking clue how I was supposed to make this work. Who knew what? What was safe to say? What did she want to happen this week? Despite all of that I was laughing like a fool. Probably, because that’s what I’d always been for her.
“Thanks for not being mad at me.” She stood on her tiptoes and brushed a kiss on my stubbled jawline.
I grunted out my approval. “I’ll meet you in the ballroom at five.”
“Five.” I watched her be waved through the check-in line. Guess doing work for the hotel paid in more ways than one. And then, I watched her disappear down the corridor because that was the way our relationship worked. One of us always had to disappear, and I needed to remember that.
10
Hannah
As long as I lived, I would never forget the parade of emotions I’d just witnessed marching through Griff’s eyes. It still made no sense to me how he’d ever been embedded deep in enemy territory and had managed to fool people into believing he was whatever persona he’d been forced to put on like a mask. His eyes always gave him away. I could read him like a book. Maybe it was only me that could read him with ease, but after what I’d just done to him, I didn’t deserve that honor.
Sealing myself inside my suite, I slumped back and allowed the cool metal door to ease the fiery shame burning through me. My bags and the few remaining fragments of my dignity fell to the Ateliers Pinton rug I’d picked for the suites because the detailed motion in the designs was erotic if you knew what you were looking for.
Joining my bags, I slid down the door until I was seated on the ridiculously expensive rug.
He’d said he wasn’t angry because he refused to allow himself to be angry at me. He’d lied to me and to himself. How had it never occurred to me that maybe he didn’t want to be forced to spend a week with me? Maybe he would’ve liked to have had some say in it. I’d driven up to Lincoln three times in the middle of the night in the last two months but it wasn’t like I could pound on my brother’s front door and demand to see Griff or show up at Tier Seven for a chat. I’d been blinded by my own determination to get my man and not break up The Sevens.
When it all boiled down, love or not, I was using him. I wanted to have all of the things I wanted, and I didn’t want to deal with the consequences, whether real or perceived. I know something happened the night my father caught us all those years ago. Griff couldn’t keep things from me no matter how good he was at lying. I may not know the specifics, but I know something happened, something that kept him from telling me goodbye.
I’d been determined to get it out of him so I could deal with it. My plans had spilled into my fantasies as well. Once we’d dealt with my family, he could play the hero in all of my dirtiest dreams. Lately, they’d come by the dozens, always starring him. Just like he’d taught me all about vanilla sex when I was nineteen, he could teach me all about dirty sex now. I never wanted to experience any of my fantasies with anyone but him. Instead of explaining that to him, I’d just arranged to have him at my disposal.
I owed him better than this. Ms. Mallory was just going to have to find someone else to stuff her bags. I had to talk to Griff.
I hung my head in a silent prayer that I’d be able to make this up to him, and my eyes locked on the ice cream stain on my jeans. “Dammit, Hannah, why do you have to screw everything up?”
Climbing up off of the floor, I marched to the shower, turned it on, flung off my clothes and allowed myself exactly six minutes to shower and re-dress. Then I was going to start at the very top and make all of my confessions to the man I loved.
The steam from the shower fogged my glasses. Okay, six and half minutes. Shower, redress, contacts, then Griff.
11
Griff
“Much obliged, man.” I shook Joe’s hand as soon as he restored the borrowed tool belt to his own waist.
“You want to do my work for me, I’ll let you do that, too,” he teased.
“I’ve done a little construction in my time. Trust me, you don’t want me touching that wall.” I was always better at destruction than restoration, came with my weapons sergeant title. You want the bridge to go up in flames at the touch of a button? I’m your man.
“Hey, you want to see a picture of my little girl? She’s so cute. She’s with her mama right now, but I get to see her next weekend.” Joe retrieved an old cell phone from his back pocket. Clearly my heart still had something left to give after seeing Hannah walk away again because it ached for this hardworking guy who was hanging sheetrock for his little girl. He thrust a picture of a toddler, with her short brown hair pulled up in a bow, in front of my face. She had her father’s deep olive coloring and his grin.
“She looks like you.” I offered Joe a smile, not that it would do anything to solve the fact that he’d made a baby with a woman he couldn’t live with for whatever reason.
“You think?”
“Hell yeah. Got your smile. See.” I pointed to her grin.
“Yeah. She kinda does, doesn’t she? I need to plan something fun to do with her. I want her to like staying with me, too,” Joe explained. “Her stepdad makes lots of money.” He shrugged. The rest of the story was unnecessary.
A confessional was housed somewhere deep in the soul of every man picked for Q training and every man who ultimately completed Robin Sage, the final step to becoming a Green Beret. We sure as hell would never qualify for a cleric’s collar. The beret would have to do. I’d seen it a hundred times with every single one of my brothers. People tell us
things. No rhyme or reason. When we’re around, they talk. Maybe they sense that we can keep our mouths shut when we need to, or that because we’d seen the very worst of humanity, we could offer them something to make things better. Perhaps it was because we carried the weight of the world on our shoulders already, so what’s a few more stories if it helped lighten their own loads.
“Take her to get ice cream with every topping she can think of,” I instructed.
He studied me. “I can do that, but it won’t be as good as Disneyland.”
“You never know. It might be better but you have to remember the most important part.” I buried the memories of how I’d acquired this knowledge. Joe didn’t need to bear the burden of my demons. They were mine to fight. Ultimately, they would be mine to slay.
“What’s that? The toppings?”
“No. Just listen to her the whole time she’s with you. No matter what she wants to talk about, listen to her. And thanks for the belt.” I slapped him on the back and headed to the elevator. My own little ice cream loving girl and I needed to talk but not before I ripped T-Byrd several new shitholes.
To keep from obliterating him on the elevator, I dug deep and forced myself to recall just how I’d met Hannah. Smith’s daddy was all too thrilled to host the newly minted Team Seven to dinner after we were assigned to Fort Carson where he was the head bastard in charge. Didn’t particularly matter that Special Ops didn’t fall under Two Star General Gerald T. Hagen’s command. He ran the fucking Fourth Infantry. Everyone on that base slopped up his shit.
Smith had let everyone know when his father had earned his third and fourth stars just before he retired, but I refused to give the fucker an inch, not after he’d done what he done to his own kid. My own father might hold the record for being the biggest shithole in Idaho, but General Hagen, he had to be a world fucking champ. Who signs their own kid up to get killed just because they’re pissed?