She nods. “For a few months after he first moved there. We didn’t know how long he’d need me and then, after a while, I became a really easy excuse for why he couldn’t bring women home.”
“He said you were his girlfriend?”
“No. His sister.” She grins. “But after the third woman showed up in a trench coat and heels, I moved out.”
We share a laugh, but when I pull into the parking lot of my building, Charlotte grabs my arm before I can jump out.
“I can stay a couple of days, but then I have to go back and take care of another client. My life is in Dallas, Nate.” The turmoil of our uncertain future is clear in her eyes.
“I’ll fly to Dallas for the rest of my leave. We can head up to Chicago and see the parents too.”
“What are we going to tell everyone?”
“Stay there,” I order. I can’t do this sitting in the Jeep. I need to be able to see her straight on.
“This whole situation is emotionally confusing for me,” she says.
I round the front of the Jeep and then haul her out. I hadn’t planned on doing this right now. There were better, more romantic ways, but I can’t wait another minute. The box in my pocket might burn a hole through the cotton. I picked it up right after Charlotte dropped the stationary in my arms and indicated there was a way she’d hear me out.
Ignoring the increasing number of male eyes pinned on the spectacle I am making, I grip her shoulders. “I love you, Charlotte. I want us to be together. I’ll do anything it takes to keep us together. I want you to come to see where I live. I want to see where you live. I want to meet your friends. I want you to meet my friends. I want our families to know we are together. I don’t want Nick to feel that he is in the middle of a bad divorce.”
“So you know it has been a strain on him.” She’s wide-eyed, wondering where I’m going with my crazy rambling.
“Of course I knew. Half the reason he can’t settle down is because I’ve screwed him up so bad. All he sees is his big brother turning his back on something wonderful and how much pain it has cost both of us. He’ll take the hits on the field but doesn’t want to suffer them off of it.” I hadn’t just pushed Charlotte away; I’d placed a wedge between our families, harmed my brother, and made my own life miserable.
I bend down on one knee, in the middle of the parking lot, next to my dirty Jeep, surrounded by salty military men and women.
I take her hand in mine. “Charlotte Randolph, since the moment I held you when you were an infant and I was two, I knew that we were destined to be together. I fought that destiny but no longer. Living without you is merely existing. And it’s impossible. I’ve tried it for so long. I’m only half a person. You are so courageous having fought for your life and then for me. I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve another chance. But you’ve told me you love me, that you always have, that you always will, so I can’t turn away even if I should.
I am here before you, on my knees, to not only beg you to forgive me but to allow me to show you how much I love you for the rest of my life. Will you please marry me?”
Her shocking blue eyes, the blue the color of the pure ocean, of the clearest sky, fill with water that spills silently down her cheeks.
I don’t so much hear her response as feel it inside me. My entire body vibrates with her choked and shaking, “Yes!”
I sweep her up and crush her mouth to mine. Around us are laughter and cheers and people taking pictures that will be the source of mocking for years to come. But I don’t care.
I run up the stairs, still holding her, still kissing her. I somehow manage to fall into my apartment and into the bedroom. We rip at each other’s clothes, our mouths feverishly attacking one another until we are skin to skin. She takes me in her hand and guides me to the hot, wet center that I’ve come to identify as home.
Her eyes are wide, and her body is welcoming. I take a moment to appreciate the vision. Strands of her wheat-colored hair are spread across the navy blue of my sheets. She’s an angel spread for my enjoyment.
I bracelet her two wrists in one hand and pin them above her head, stretching her body to accommodate me in every aspect.
Her head thrashes as she moans my name, “Nathan, please.” She strains against me. Her legs widen and the heels of her feet press hard against my ass. “I never imagined we would be together again.”
“I know, baby. Push your hands here,” I whisper into her skin. I press her palms against the headboard so I free my own hands. One I use to brace myself, and the other I reach under her bowed back. “I can’t go slow, and I can’t go easy.”
She nods. “I want you. Take me hard.”
Digging my knee into the mattress, I thrust between her legs with as much finesses as a juvenile. I have barely any rhythm and almost no conscious thought. I am only blood and nerves. My focus is narrowed down to the pinpoints of sensation that are electrified by each slam into her body.
Forward and retreat.
Forward and retreat.
We are animals, recklessly straining for pleasure. Beneath me, her body jerks with each deep thrust. I’m abusing her, but I can’t stop. The way she’s locked around my body, I don’t believe she’d let me stop.
I kiss the valley between her tits, up the delicate column neck and along her jaw. Her head turns into the wall of my arm. She kisses the muscle, traces a tongue along the tendons and veins that jut out as I brace myself above her trembling body.
“Fucking come with me now,” I roar as the familiar tension starts to coil inside me. Licking my thumb, I press the dampened tip on her sensitive clit. She screams in response, and her cunt grips me like a vise. We wind tighter and tighter together until I feel her release shake her body.
I power forward, hips jerking, and then I’m coming. My hot seed jets inside her, coating her walls because in the heat of the moment I forgot to wrap up and so did she. That’s right, I think, that’s my seed marking my territory inside your sweet body.
After the storm is past, and we lie in a pile of destroyed sheets, abandoned clothes, and sweaty limbs, I press kisses all over her bare skin. There’s the hollow of her throat that I’ve not paid enough attention to, and the valley between her breasts that calls for my touch. I haven’t completely charted the rises and dips in her back or the location of each beauty mark. Even her toes are sexy. I want to suck and lick every part of her again and again.
“You’re going to have to marry me now,” I say.
“Because you didn’t wear a condom?” she says lazily, tracing my back with her fingernails. She seems at peace with this. I hope so because I want us to have a family right away.
I shudder beneath her touch. “No, because Mom will force you to make an honest man out of me. You can’t expect me to keep sleeping with you without the protection of marital vows.” I fall to my back and clasp a hand over my heart.
She pounces on me, her fingers digging into my hard muscled sides. When I don’t laugh from her tickling, she pushes her lower lip out. “I have serious doubts about how this is going to all work out if you aren’t ticklish.”
“I can pretend for you.”
Her face grows sober. “Don’t ever pretend. Let’s always be real with each other.”
“Always.”
37
Nathan
We lie together in silence, reveling in the closeness and the mere act of holding each other. I can’t sleep, but I suspect she dozes off. The thump of her heart under my hand slows, and her breathing evens out. I’m too wired to sleep, too excited that she’s here in my place. There are no parents to worry about. No sickness that will separate us.
I’m content for the first time in a very long while.
She rouses later as dusk sets in. The phone on my nightstand has vibrated several times. I glanced at the screen once or twice to read the onslaught of crude texts and pictures that the assholes think are going to get me out of bed and into Flannery’s. I’ll go if she wants, but I’d be fine lyin
g here all night and for the rest of my leave.
“Should we go?” she asks sleepily, turning onto her back. She stretches her arms above her head, and the sheet drops down to reveal the tops of her breasts. I nudge the navy blue fabric down further to cup her fullness and tweak a quickly hardening nipple. “Again?” she asks, looking amused.
I dip my head and take the other nipple into my mouth so it doesn’t feel ignored. Having a mouth full of tit makes it hard to answer. I just nod.
“My spirit is willing, but my body has to use the bathroom.” She taps my shoulder and, when I don’t immediately release her, thumps me with a closed fist. Regretfully I release my prizes but am gratified to see her buds are tight and dark from my attentions. The sight of them makes me dive toward her, but she eludes me and scampers into the bathroom down the hall.
Tucking my hands behind my head, I wait impatiently for her return. She spends a long time in the bathroom, and then when the door opens, she doesn’t immediately return. The sounds from the living room indicate she is moving around. The remote is picked up and placed back down. The refrigerator door opens, and my empty stomach grumbles in response.
Her footsteps become louder as she approaches.
“Why is your place so soulless?”
I rise to my elbows. She’s wearing a T-shirt that she must have found in the bathroom. I probably discarded it this morning when I was dressing. Her bare legs stick out from underneath and it hides every curve, but I still love seeing her in it.
“Because you aren’t here.”
She snorts. “No really. You have no pictures up. The walls are white. The only decent pieces of furniture are your bed and your big television. I can’t imagine Aunt Grace didn’t want to decorate in here.”
Charlotte trails a hand along the barren wall as she moves around the room.
I squirm uncomfortably on the bed, recalling the fights I had with Mom about this place. “She’s never been here,” I confess.
“What?” Her head whips around.
“When my family comes they stay at a hotel. I go spend time with them. I fly back to Chicago. We stay at the North Shore house.” She continues to look confused. Throwing back the sheet, I push out of bed and in a stride pull her into my arms. “This isn’t my home, Charlotte. It’s just a place I sleep in between missions, training exercises, and when I’m not with my family.”
She shakes her head and laughs softly, although there’s no real humor in the sound. “God, Nate, you’re making me feel sorry for you.”
I try to lighten the mood. “You should feel sorry for me.” I bend down for her to kiss me. “So sorry that you’ll have to kiss me all over to make me feel better.”
She ducks away and avoids my mouth.
“Why did you punish yourself like this?” Her eyes spear mine, and I’m caught off guard.
I start to mouth an immediate denial but then shut up. I haven’t thought of it as punishment, but as she says the word, I can’t deny it. At least in part, I have refused to allow myself to be comfortable and happy. I have only existed. But in another sense, I couldn’t see myself having a future without Charlotte, so it didn’t make sense to do anything with the place where I feed myself and rest my body. Since leaving her, my life has always been off kilter. It was empty, so I put no effort into creating something that would just be a mockery of the real thing I could have but shunned.
“Well you can’t live like this,” she says, wrapping her arms around me.
I press her body into mine with a hard arm wrapped around her shoulders and a firm hand at the small of her back. “When can you move to San Diego? We’ll buy a new place together.”
She stiffens under my grip. “Move to San Diego? My business is in Dallas.” She steps away from my embrace, frowns and pushes her hair out of her face. “How long do you plan to be a SEAL?”
Her question catches me flat footed. I drop to the side of the bed. “I don’t know. I’ve never given it any thought.”
“My business is just starting up. This is my third year. It’s a crucial time for me. I’m expanding my territories, hiring new employees. I fly all over the U.S. I’ve even got athletes overseas interested in my services, along with major teams wanting to hire me to handle this transition work for them.” She thrusts her hand through her hair and begins to pace agitatedly.
“I’d quit the teams,” I hear myself say.
They are words I never thought would come out of my mouth. Quit the teams? SEALs hated quitting. They stayed in until a military disability kicked them out.
But the smile she returns is blinding. “Would you?”
I nod and am met with an armful of Charlotte. I grab her ass and let the momentum carry us to the mattress. My dick is hard by the time I’m horizontal. With a little maneuvering, I’m right at the entrance of her bare pussy. She’s not wearing anything at all under my shirt. I cup the back of her head with one hand and, with more roughness than I’d intended, fuse our mouths together. She kisses me back without reservation. Between her legs I find that she’s ready for me, more than ready. Her thighs are slick, and it takes almost no effort to slide between her legs and arrow my cock inside her body.
“Nothing is more important than being with you. We want to have kids and raise them together, like our parents raised us. We’re a unit.” I grunt each word in her ear as I shove my hips upward. She cries out at the penetration. I’m abrupt because I want to stop talking about the things that could keep us apart and focus on what makes it right for us to be together. She gets the message when I slam my mouth against hers and kiss her with every ounce of need and want in me.
We touch each other feverishly. Our fucking is frenetic, and soon we’re both coming. Exhausted, I lie back. My legs are still dangling over the edge of the bed, and the hair around her forehead is wet from sweat. Maybe hers, maybe mine. My heart is racing like a freight train, and I’m not sure whether it’s fear or passion with its heavy foot on the throttle.
Quietly, I tell her, “There are two SEAL operations, one on the East coast and another on the West coast. I’m stationed here in San Diego. There’s been some sniffing around by the higher ups to see if I want to move to another team.”
“Another SEAL team?”
She shifts, and my dick slips out of her. A stream of cum follows, wetting her pussy, her thighs, and down my leg. I want to cup my hand around her cunt and press all my sperm inside her so she’s pregnant with my kid. If she’s pregnant, she can’t every leave me. These thoughts are sick and wrong, but I’m not going to deny their truth. I’m tying myself to her with everything I’ve got, no matter how wrong it is.
“Like a joint team such as DEVGRU or JSOC. They’re a bunch of badasses from all different branches.”
“How do you get picked for that?”
I laugh lightly because she won’t believe it. I could hardly believe it myself when I was told. “Apparently they put your picture up on a wall and people write on it whether they think you’d be a good candidate.”
“Like some fraternity?” She shakes her head in disbelief. The corners of her eyes crinkle in amusement. “Or SEAL Facebook? Like me a thousand times so I can go to the next level?”
“Yeah, it’s very scientific.”
We both laugh, and I’m relieved as if we’ve conquered our first mountain together.
“And if you did something like that where would you be stationed?”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“But for the sake of argument?”
When I shrug her whole body moves with mine. “Probably Virginia.”
“Not Dallas. Not Chicago.”
“No.”
She’s silent for a long time and doubt begins to creep back in, but when she speaks it’s about another fucking awful subject. “You know whose heart we’re going to break?”
“Nick’s.” Baby brother needs to hear from me what’s going on.
“Yes.” She sighs and gets up. “Ugh, I need to go to the bat
hroom.”
I eye her legs and the streaks of white on the insides of her thighs. “Don’t wash up on my account,” I murmur.
“Seriously, Nate?”
“As a heart attack.” I can’t look away. My cum all over her legs is about the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. I want to take a picture of that, carry it in my sack, and pull it out whenever I need to spank it on a mission . . . except I won’t be going on missions anymore. I push down the anxiety that thought stirs up.
“I’ll call him.”
She taps her mouth in contemplation and then nods. “I’ll make us some dinner.”
“Sure. I have about five ingredients in the refrigerator, and two of them are liquid. Good luck.”
She flips me off as she exits. I pick up the phone, take a deep breath, and dial. Nick picks upon the second ring.
“Big bro. You close the deal?”
“How was practice today?” I ask, avoiding his question.
“I only spent one hour in the cold bath, so that’s a win.”
I frown. “Thought you were doing no touch practice with no pads.”
“Rookie clipped me.”
“Did you cut him?” The health of a starting quarterback is the foundation of every successful football team. Whenever I’ve watched Nick practice, which wasn’t often and sometimes only via videos I could find on his team’s web page, he was wearing a red scrimmage vest that designated him as off limits.
Nick laughs. “No, but he got an ass chewing from everyone from the coach to the kicker. You know it’s bad when the punter chews your ass. He’s feeling a little raw.”
“Harsh, man.” Then without any more preamble, I blurt out, “I asked her to marry me.”
Without skipping a beat, he retorts, “Are you calling me to cry about her saying no?”
“She said yes.”
There’s a long silence on the other end of the phone. Finally he exhales. “You’re going to take her away, right? From Dallas?”
The Charlotte Chronicles Page 25