Just Good Friends (Cheap Thrills Series Book 5)

by Mary B. Moore

  I wasn’t allowed to go out alone—not that I ever did, anyway.

  I wasn’t allowed not to check the feed on the security camera pointed at the door before opening it—something I should be doing anyway.

  I was to be vigilant at all times—I was… now.

  If I got a text saying, ironically, Gremlin, I had to go to the station as quickly as I could to go to the safe room—that I could do.

  I wasn’t allowed to stop on the way to the safe room—who would?

  I wasn’t allowed to pass Go—okay, that was a bit of a dramatic embellishment, but it was fitting.

  I was to follow what Garrett and the men told me to do—I’d been doing that since I moved here. Okay, ish.

  By the end of it, the only things I could do without permission were to eat at home and go to the bathroom, which I did on my own anyway because no woman wanted her man to know she did bathroom stuff. I wasn’t being stupid on that, it was a legit fear of mine. What if I pooped and he went into the bathroom after me? How embarrassing would that be? I couldn’t kick Clyde in the room and blame it on him, I didn’t have any powers that would allow me to freeze time.

  A hand grabbing my wrist snapped me out of my irrational panicking, and I looked up to see Canon squatting in front of me, his thumb on my pulse as he frowned at whatever he was thinking. “You good, Zuri? What’s got you panicking, girl?”

  Like I was going to tell him the truth.

  “The fact that tampons and pads kill dolphins and whales,” I blurted, then immediately regretted it. Unfortunately, at that point, there was no return. “I’m thinking of heading out to Antarctica to join a campaign to stop whaling next year, and when I looked into it, I read up on how they were finding dolphin and whale bodies with tampons and pads inside them. I’m too squeamish to use one of those cup things, so I’m kind of screwed. Does that make me a dolphin and whale murderer? Do you think they’ll ban me from signing up to help them fight the war against whaling?”

  When you start a job, give it everything you’ve got. How deep did this humiliation hole go?

  All of the men stood staring at me, not saying a word.

  Eventually, Bond said slowly, “Anyway, uh, there’s not really a lot of reason to panic about…” he waved his arm around, “stuff. At least not the stuff going on with the crazy dude. What you want to do with your holla-hole is up to you, and I’m sure the dolphins and whales will thank you for caring.”

  Then, throwing his hands up in the air, he stomped over to a free chair and sat down heavily. “I can’t do this. I don’t even know why I tried to be the one to end the silence, but that shit was awkward.” Pulling at the neck of his t-shirt, he stretched his neck from side to side. “I feel like it’s hot in here. Is anyone else feeling hot?”

  With red cheeks, DB rubbed the back of his neck. “I think the main point is that you’re safe, Zuri. The guys here tonight are just the tip of the iceberg, ‘cos Mace, Ellis, and the others are working with us, we just didn’t want to take all of our eyes out of town to come to the meeting. Garrett’s programmed all the numbers you need into your phone, and we’ve all got your number in ours, so we’ve got you covered.”

  Weirdly, I did feel better knowing that. Fighting the war on my own had been terrifying, but battling it with a lot of the town behind me felt a helluva lot more doable.

  “Maybe she should learn to shoot?” Bond suggested, taking a step back when Garrett glared at him. “Maybe not.”

  “Uh, I can already shoot. I’ve got guns everywhere around the house.”

  Every eye focused on me, some looking scared, some intrigued, some shocked.

  It was Garrett’s terrified one that made me laugh and add, “And knives. My dad taught me how to defend myself properly.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Garrett

  It’d been a week since we’d had the meeting with everyone at our house to introduce Naomi’s issues and update Tamsin on hers, and everything had gone silent.

  The men had disappeared as quickly as they came, and it was confusing the shit out of all of us. Had they moved on? Had they been called away for something else?

  And something was eating at Tamsin, and she wasn’t telling me what it was.

  Two days ago, the hospital administrator had called to say that they couldn’t hold her position open any longer. It was understandable but also shitty because there wasn’t much she could do about it.

  I’d had a long talk with her about finances in case she needed help, and come to find out, when she’d moved, her dad had taken a chunk out of a savings account she had with an inheritance from her mom’s parents, who’d died. When they’d sold their property, her parents had put half of it into a savings account as a down payment on one of her own when she was ready.

  She’d carried the money with her on her journey from New York to Piersville and had handed over some of it when she’d opened her account. To avoid any questions, it’d been a small amount, and every month she put more in. She wasn’t hurting for money, but she’d also eat up what she had quickly if she wasn’t careful.

  I wasn’t sure if it was that or if there was something else, so I was going to use everything I could to get her to tell me this morning, which was why, on my day off, I was awake early. I was going to use her seduction technique on her.

  Going to the drawer, I pulled out a pair of her panties and walked quietly over to where she was lying on her side. It was going to be challenging to pull this off with her hand in a cast, but I was up for it.

  Taking the casted hand first, I carefully raised it over her head and tied one side of the panties around it before threading the crotch part behind the wooden slat in the headboard. When it was in place, I lifted the other hand up and did the same on that side, almost running out of material before it was secured.

  She was still partly on her side when I got back into bed, so I pulled the covers over my head and moved under them to my target. It was harder than I’d thought it would be, though, because I couldn’t see jack shit, and I was trying not to wake her up. Making my way between her legs, I froze when my hand skimmed along her thigh, waiting to see if I’d woken her up, but she didn’t even flinch.

  I’d been home late last night after an altercation at Ethan’s club, and Tamsin had been out cold by the time I’d gotten home. Still, I’d done a little bit of sneaky recon this morning and knew she was only wearing my t-shirt, no underwear, so I didn’t have to worry about getting them off her before I could do what I planned to do.

  Parting her legs wide enough for me to fit between, I inched between them until my face was right over her pussy. Placing my weight on my left arm, I used my free right hand to skim my finger through her folds, circling her clit, and then brought it back down to her entrance.

  I wanted just to lean in and taste her, but I had to get her ready first. I needed her out of mind when I started asking her questions, and this would help.

  Dipping my finger just inside her, I groaned when I felt how tightly she closed up around it. She was perfection.

  The more I played with her, the more she began to respond to me, even in her sleep. Her hips were shifting slightly, and she’d rolled onto her back, giving me full access to her.

  Moving my arm down, I slowly widened her thighs to give me enough space for my shoulders as I lowered my mouth to her. This time it was my tongue that swiped between her folds, and as the taste hit me, I dropped my head to rest it on her mons and groaned against her.

  She was different in every way. When I’d left the USAF, I hadn’t expected her, and everything just seemed to be the same old. I had zero expectations, zero clues about what life would be like without the military in my life. It wasn’t daunting, it just felt like I had a hole that I didn’t know if I’d ever fill again. I was looking forward to the future, but I’d been willing to settle for anything to fill the void.

  Meeting her, I realized now that once military, always military, so there wasn’t any reason to search
for something to fill the hole. Just because I wasn’t active in it, it was still a massive part of me. Anything that I might have felt was lacking was fulfilled by P.V.P.D. and my job there, and everything else, every other nook and cranny of my life, was completed by her.

  Sound cheesy? I’d seen so much and buried so much deep inside me during my deployments that I was almost numb.

  Yes, I was lucky that I didn’t suffer from PTSD or a detachment issue, but in a way, I had other problems. The first thing to even spark a fire was my job, but what gave me motivation, a goal, and brought me happiness I don’t think I’d ever felt in my life was her.

  If anyone found that cheesy or cliché, they needed to have been in my shoes and go through the motions like I was toward the end of my career in the military. Then try leaving it all and starting over.

  There wasn’t one thing about her that didn’t do it for me, and her taste was one of them. I felt like a glutton as I licked her again, then lowered my mouth so that I could push my tongue inside her.

  It was when I brought my thumb into the mix and started to skim over the sides of the bundle of nerves that I’d ignored until then that she woke up. The first sign I got that she was coming round was a moan from her—although that could have been from the two fingers I was gently moving inside her at the time. Then she thrust her pelvis up toward me when I backed away from her, only moving my fingers inside her now, as she came fully to.

  “Garrett, you better be—” she gasped as her body jerked. “Why am I tied up with my underwear? I only just got these.”

  With one broad swipe of my tongue up her core, I muttered loud enough for her to hear, “I’ll get you more. Adam said Scarlett was going to visit you with more stuff from the store, so I’ll replace them.”

  “Of course he knows about that,” she grumbled to herself about me, and I could feel her tugging at the restraint, trying to get free while she did it. “He knows everything.”

  Well, not exactly, but I was doing my best to know as much as I could, especially when it came to her.

  Pulling my fingers out, I went back to lazily lapping at her, grinning when she thrust her hips up again, impatiently telling me to get a move on. But I wasn’t going to be hurrying, and she needed to know that.

  Throwing the covers off us, I looked up at her as I licked again. “We’re going to play a game.”

  Lifting her head to look, she asked warily, “And what’s the purpose of this game?”

  Shrugging a shoulder, I fluttered my tongue over her clit and then sucked gently on it. “Well, if you behave, the purpose will be to make you come. If you don’t, then you won’t. Pretty simple, wouldn’t you say?”

  Growling at me, she dropped her head back onto the pillow and didn’t say anything. Her silence lasted a few minutes as I played, licked, sucked, and flicked.

  Finally, she lifted it back up and smiled sweetly at me. “I love you!”

  “I love you, too,” I snickered. “But that’s not the key to this game.”

  Understanding dawned, and she chewed nervously on the corner of her lip. “What exactly is the key that requires me to be tied to the bed while you torment me?”

  Grinning widely at her, I pushed my thumb into her and softly stroked her upper wall. “Well, I’m feeling a bit frustrated that something’s been bugging you, and you haven’t told me what it is.” When she went to say something, I continued, “I know, you’re entitled to have some secrets, but when you become anxious and look scared, it would be helpful for me to know what it is so that I can help you. It would also be helpful because then I don’t worry that the asshole who’s after you is blackmailing you or threatening you if you don’t stay quiet.”

  “Shit,” she groaned. “It’s nothing like that, and I didn’t want to tell you because you’re already dealing with enough. How much more can I dump on you before you crack?”

  “Nothing is ever too much where you’re concerned, pretty girl,” I said firmly, hoping that it would sink in.

  “I get that, I really do. But if I keep piling it on you on top of what you’re already dealing with for me, with work, and life in general, I’m fairly certain you’ll say fuck this and run.”

  Now we were getting somewhere.

  Pulling her clit between my lips, I started sucking on it gently. Then, with pulsing motions, I alternated the ferocity of the sucks as my thumb continued moving inside her.

  When her orgasm started to build inside her, I pulled away again and pressed a soft kiss on top of the sensitive nub.

  “Let me tell you something—the only people I’ve ever told that I love are my family. I don’t say those words lightly, and I never will. It also took a lot for me to say them, and I felt vulnerable as hell afterward, even though you’d told me you loved me, too. When you shared your problem with me, it was an honor to be part of solving it and keeping you safe, but that honor doesn’t just stop there. With me telling you I love you, I’ve taken the responsibility of that honor for the rest of our lives—and that’s where this is headed, baby—”

  “I feel the same,” she whispered, gasping when I began rubbing around her clit again. “I want to be the person who supports you through everything. I want to give you everything.”

  “So why are you holding back on me?”

  “Because it’s a miniscule problem,” she snapped. “Well, in the grand scheme of things, it is.”

  Crawling up her body, I braced my weight on my left arm, and used my right hand to sweep my cock through her folds, circling it over her clit until she started panting. Then I lowered it back down and eased the head inside her, slowly pushing into her until I had a third of my length inside her.

  “Try me,” I rasped. “There’s no miniscule problem that makes someone zone out as much as you have, and that makes it impossible for them to sleep at night.”

  Tugging on the restraint again and growling when it didn’t give, she lifted her head and snapped, “Tabby says there’s a position going at the school that would be perfect for me. It would begin as an admin role mostly because I don’t have a teaching certification, but I can do that while doing the admin work. The principal wants students to have an idea of what psychology is as a way of helping mental health in teenagers, so he’s gotten approval to run a trial class based on it.”

  When she went silent, I pushed all the way into her and then stayed still as I thought about what she was saying. “With social media and the information and videos that kids have at their fingertips nowadays, that’s a wise idea.”

  Sighing, she shifted her head so that it was leaning against my forearm on the pillow. “That’s what it’s about. He wants me to outline the resources available, how to ask for help, things to look for in other students that could indicate an impending problem, and also to help them understand the reality of the internet versus the reality of real life.”

  I could see that she liked the idea, but it didn’t answer what the issue was. “Why is this worrying you, baby?”

  Shrugging a shoulder, she scanned my face, her expression softening when she stopped on my lips. “It’s a lot of responsibility. The information I learned at school is still fresh in my mind, and Tabby says there’s a course running just now at the hospital that I’d be allowed to join where I could get even more knowledge and training until college starts up again. After that, the head of the course, a man who recently retired after being a therapist for forty-seven years—” holy shit, that was a lot of psychology—“will be my go-to for anything that I can’t handle while I go back to college part-time to achieve my master’s in counseling, and also get my school counselor certification. He’ll also come into the school every two weeks until I’m certified to deal with the students' issues. It’s like we split the job until I can take the role over completely.”

  Now I could see why she was worried.

  “That’s a lot of work. So, you’d basically be running a program that taught the kids about pressing psychological problems and triggers while
going to college to become a school counselor?”

  “It’s not the work I’m afraid of. I’d be more dubious if they said I could just become a counselor right now. Can you imagine someone who doesn’t have what’s needed helping kids out without it?”

  No, but the sad thing was, there were probably many schools that had it set up like that purely for the sake of having a guidance counselor for the kids. They were a crucial part of schools, so if you had someone with even a grasp of psychology, you’d be winning.

  “It’s the responsibility of it all. I didn’t study it to become a psychologist or therapist, I did it because I found it interesting.”

  “That’s why a majority of people major in stuff, pretty girl.”

  When she laughed at my reply, I swear my eyes almost rolled into the back of my head as her muscles squeezed around me.

  “I’m scared of getting it wrong, and it having a detrimental effect on one of the students, honey.”

  I could totally see that. “And that’s what will make you such a good choice for it. If you went into something like this cocky and confident that you knew all of it, you’d fuck up. Going in wary and feeling the way you are, means that you’ll double-check answers and not reply without thinking it through. It means you’ll pay extra attention to each thing that comes up, just to make sure what you’re saying is right.”

  At this, she started to smile. “You think?”

  “I know. I can’t do my job with that confident and cocky mentality. I have to take a cautious approach and double-check what’s going on so I don’t miss things, so I can assure you that how you’re feeling is a good thing.”

  Her smile grew into a grin, and her eyes started shining excitedly. “I’ll speak to the people involved and get some more information, then I’ll ask DB to get the background check the principal asked me for. I think I’m going to do it.”