by Selena Kitt
“So what happened?” she asked quietly, sounding like she already knew.
“I don’t know, maybe it was because it was a rush job.” He clenched his jaw, remembering. “It was FUBAR from the beginning. I should have listened to Cricket. He told me to call it off. I think he knew something was going to go wrong...”
His voice trailed off and he could hear her breath, feel the race of her heart.
“They say he probably passed out,” he finally managed to choke out. “Lost consciousness. Couldn’t open his chute.”
“Oh my God.” She closed her eyes against it. He could have told her it was no use. He’d tried. There was no unknowing it, no undoing it.
“I thought we’d be fine. The rest of were fine because we’d been fucking around, drinking all night, so hung over most of my team puked for half the morning.”
But not Cricket. He’d been knocking back water, pretending it was vodka. He’d been at the mess hall when the rest of them were puking and taking the prescribed oxygen-slash-Benadryl cocktails. While Levi—known as Captain Woody to his team—had been shooting off his mouth in the colonel’s office, setting up a series events that would ultimately kill his best friend.
“But it wasn’t your fault…”
“Oh it was.” So arrogant. He’d shot off his cocky mouth and ended up on a HALO they never should have taken. He’d ignored Cricket’s intuition, ignored the clear dangers, and had pushed forward anyway, just to save his own pride.
“We were in full gear—helmets, masks, the whole deal—so we had oxygen for the descent, but we were the last to go, me and Cricket, and he kept arguing with me through the com. Chirp chirp chirp. I pretended I couldn’t hear him—so he pulled his damned mask off to yell at me. Dumbass.”
Levi took a deep, shaky breath. “I shouldn’t have let him go. I should have listened to him.”
Don’t do it, Captain!
But Cricket was trying to save him, pulling his mask off so he could be sure his captain heard him. The wind had increased in just those moments. Chalk had dropped at twenty-seven knots but the two of them were going to jump at thirty-five. All Woody could think about was that damned SEAL team and Mike Fox’s smirk when he found out he hadn’t jumped.
“See, you’re not supposed to stop the oxygen.” He closed his eyes. They were swimming with tears. “You can’t stop. Even one damned breath of regular air can push up the nitrogen in your bloodstream too high. He fucking took his mask off, Linn.”
“But you didn’t do that,” she argued.
“No.” He stopped her cold. “You don’t understand. I could have stopped it. We could have not jumped. He knew—he knew something was going to go wrong. But he was looking out for me. He was sure something was going to happen to me.”
“And he was right.”
“Yeah.” He gave a short bark of laugh. “But that was Cricket for you. Always looking out for the other guy. Too bad some of that didn’t rub off on me, because all I could think about was myself and how it would look if I didn’t jump with the rest of my team.”
“Levi…” She took a deep breath, pushing hair out of her face in a blue cloud as she looked up at him. “Don’t be so hard on yourself…”
“How can I not?” He snorted. “It was my call. My team. I was the Captain. He died because I was an arrogant asshole.”
She sighed deeply, kissing his cheek, and he felt the wetness of her tears. She was crying for the death of a man she never knew.
“You know, he still talks to me.” Levi spoke the words he’d never told anyone—even the V.A. shrink who kept asking question after question about what happened. She was nothing if not persistent.
“Who? Cricket?”
“Yeah.” He smiled through his tears. “Tells me to do the right thing.”
“Do you listen?”
“I’m starting to.”
“Good.” She snuggled up, hooking one of her long legs over his. “Let me know when he tells you to forgive yourself… because that’s the right thing to do.”
She’s right, Captain. It’s time to forgive yourself.
He didn’t say anything but he knew, by now, he should listen to that voice.
“Are you hungry?” He glanced down at the sound of her stomach rumbling, loud in the silence.
“Starving,” she confessed, blushing.
He kissed her, long, slow, feeling a heat sparking in his belly.
“Let’s go get you something to eat.” He sighed when they parted. “Before I decide to just eat you for dinner.”
* * *
“We should have taken my car.” Linney ran her hand over the Boss’s curves, the other hand holding the rest of her Olive Garden meal. “Your father is going to kill you.”
“I’ve taken it out before.” He held up the key, grinning. His father never could figure out how he snuck the Boss out when the keys were locked up downstairs in his workroom. “Do you want to drive her?”
“Her?” Linney held her hand out for the keys. “And are you kidding me? Why do you think I asked to take it out? Give me those!”
“All muscle cars are women,” he informed her, dropping the keys into her waiting hand. “Just look at her ass-end. It’s almost as nice as yours.”
He grabbed a handful, making her squeal and laugh as he nuzzled her neck, drunk on her scent. They stood in the orange halo of a street light, kissing deeply in spite of the garlicky pasta they’d both just consumed. He didn’t care. He wanted to share everything with her.
“Take me for a ride, baby,” he murmured, nibbling his way down her irresistible neck. “Then let’s go home so I can take you for one.”
“Your father won’t be home until tomorrow, right?” She gasped when he grabbed her ass in both hands, lifting and pressing her against the car so she could feel how much he wanted her.
“Right, he’s busy overseeing some construction job two hours away,” he agreed, growling low in his throat when she moved her hips, those delightfully long legs wrapping around his. “Fuck, Linney, knock it off or we’re going to end up in jail for public indecency.”
“You started it,” she teased, holding up the keys and jingling them. “Let’s go.”
He untangled himself reluctantly, going over to the passenger’s side and getting in.
“You should have let me pay for dinner at least.” Linney handed him her Styrofoam box of food as she turned the key in the ignition.
“Nah I’m good.” He balanced the box of food in his lap as he rolled down the window, letting in the cooling night air. It was a gorgeous Florida night, the heat of the day dissipating slowly, in time with the stars coming out above them. “I kicked my heroin habit, remember?”
“Very funny.” She rolled her eyes, putting the car in reverse and backing out.
He grinned. “Besides, Dr. Fields is giving me a deal on my treatment.”
“Damned V.A.” Linney frowned as she took the corner out of the lot so fast he had to hold onto the window ledge to keep from ending up in her lap.
“Hey! The rest of this night isn’t going to be any fun if you kill us on the way home!”
“Let’s see what she can do.” She gave him a sideways, mischievous glance, giving the Boss a whole hell of a lot of gas, the tires squealing on the pavement as the car jumped forward, going from zero to sixty in just seconds. “Hang on!”
Linney took the long way back, not that he blamed her. Getting behind the wheel of the Boss was addictive. His father had only sanctioned one of his trips out with the car when he was a teen—but he’d snuck it out more times than he could count, mostly for pretty girls and trouble. Still did—and the reasons hadn’t changed.
“Pull off here.” He pointed toward the refuge. It was closed at night, gates closed pulled across the entrance of the parking lot, but Linney parked on the side of the road.
“I love this car.” She laughed over at him, breathless, brushing her disheveled blue hair out of her face. In the moonlight it looked silver, his li
ttle she-wolf.
“I love you.” The words were just there, between them. How many times had he said that and not meant it? A hundred, a thousand? Women loved hearing those words and they’d always been easy to say. But this time, they weren’t lies on his lips. Why couldn’t he lie to this woman?
“I love you too, Levi.” Her eyes softened as she leaned over to kiss him.
He displaced the Styrofoam container onto the dash, pulling her over the gearshift and into his lap. She situated herself, making him groan, her lips never leaving his, tongue teasing as they rocked together in the passenger seat.
“Come on,” he gasped when they parted, leaning over to kill the engine and grab the keys, shoving them into his front pocket.
“Where are we going?” She pouted, her nose in his neck. “I thought you were pulling over to fuck me because you just couldn’t wait…”
“Don’t tempt me.” He groaned, shoving the door open.
They walked down the path, up onto a little footbridge spanning an inlet. The water reflected the light of the moon, refracted in moving ripples, like hundreds of diamonds floating on the surface of the water. They stood there taking it all in, hands clasped. He wondered, as Linney rested her cheek against the side of his arm, if he was dreaming. He couldn’t tell the difference anymore. Maybe the past few months had been a dream and he just hadn’t woken up into the nightmare of his life yet.
“I don’t want to mess this up.” He felt the squeeze of her hand at his words. “I mess everything up you know. Everything.”
“You can’t mess this up.” She brushed her cheek against his arm, back and forth, still gazing up at the stars. “There’s nothing you could say or do that would change how I feel about you.”
“What if I lied to you?” He waited for her response, heart in his throat.
“You can’t lie to me.” She smiled up at him, taking his other hand so they were face to face. “I know better.”
“You’re an evil witch. You’ve cast a spell on me.” He leaned in to brush his lips against her cheek.
“Ha! I’m a good witch.” She wrapped her arms around his waist.
“You are,” he agreed, holding her closer under the stars. “My sweet little good fairy. I’m surprised you don’t come with pixie dust.”
“Do I taste like pixie dust?” she giggled, her cheek against his chest, right over the fast beat of his heart.
“You taste like heaven.” He breathed in the scent of her, the shampoo she used sweet and tantalizing. “I want to keep you forever.”
“That could be arranged,” she whispered.
“Why doesn’t that scare me?” He wasn’t asking her—he was asking himself. “Linney, I don’t even know what I’m going to do with myself, for the rest of my life. I have nothing. I don’t even have my own car for God’s sake. I can’t offer you—”
“Shh.” She turned her head up to kiss him silent, then whispered her words. “You are everything I want, right now, right here. I don’t need any more.”
“Linn, I live with my father. I have no job, nothing,” he reminded her. “I can’t even afford to be your roommate right now. And the scariest thing is—I don’t even know if I want to go back.”
“To the Marines?”
He nodded, telling more truth with her than he had in years, even to himself.
“I feel like a puppet. Someone’s always pulling my strings, telling me what to do, where to go.”
“So don’t go back.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Yes it is.” Her arms went around his neck, her eyes silver in the moonlight as she looked at him. “I’m going to ask you a question and I want you to answer me fast—no thinking about it. Say the first thing that comes into your head.”
“Okay.”
“What do you want to be instead of a marine?”
“A lawyer.”
“A lawyer?” She blinked at him in surprise. He’d surprised himself!
“I want to help veterans get what’s coming to them.”
He couldn’t even begin to tell her the hassle he’d been through applying for disability through the V.A. Six times they’d insisted they hadn’t received his paperwork. Six times! And when he was given his measly twenty percent disability, he couldn’t believe it. The lawyer his father had hired was appalled, saying he should be getting at least sixty percent, but the V.A. didn’t like to pay veterans if they didn’t have to. According to the lawyer, most vets gave up. Sick, in pain, looking for a means to escape, a lot of them did what Levi had seriously considered since coming home—they ate the barrel of a gun and let the V.A. off the hook completely.
“I want to get veterans what they really deserve,” he told her, hardly able to get the words out. It had been just a fleeting thought through his pain-and-drug-fuzzed brain since he’d had a lawyer to fight for him, but here it was, and he was as clear-headed as he’d been since coming home. It looked like he still wanted to fight—for his life and the life of men like him.
Now, that’s the Captain I know.
“Well that was easy!” Linney exclaimed. “So you go back to school to become a lawyer.”
“Oh God. I can’t.” He shook his head, glad for the darkness covering the flush of his cheeks. “I’ve already got a B.A. in Engineering. Do you know how much more school there is involved in becoming a lawyer? And then there’s passing the bar. No way. I can’t do it.”
“Yes you can,” she scoffed, dismissing his concerns. “And won’t the military pay for school?”
“Well, yeah, maybe but…” He felt himself searching for excuses to cover the small seed of hope that had just been planted.
Go for it, Captain. You can do it.
“And you’re on disability,” she reminded him. “That gives you nothing but time, right?”
He groaned, unable to defy her logic.
“I’d rather spend that time fucking you.” He lifted her in his arms, right off the ground, swinging her, making her laugh.
“You can do both,” she said as he set her on the ground again. He looked down at her, dizzy with lust, with life, with hope. It was too much to take in.
“Now?”
She pressed her mouth to his ear, her thigh between his. “Let’s start with the fucking.”
He couldn’t get her home fast enough. He didn’t let her drive. He didn’t even take the time to carefully back the car into the garage. The Boss was forgotten—Linney’s food left in the front seat—as they kissed and groped their way into the house. She was desperate for him, clinging, those incredible legs wrapping around his waist as he lifted her and carried her through the darkened house to his bedroom.
Linney flicked the switch as they entered the room and the lamp in the corner sputtered to life. It had one of those low-watt energy efficient bulbs his father insisted on, not that Levi cared—he didn’t like a lot of light. It hurt his head. But it was enough to see by and he smiled as Linney slithered out of his arms, like shimmying down a tree, unbuckling his belt and unzipping his jeans on the way. She had them, and his boxers, at his ankles in moments, his already hard cock slipping between those sweet, pink lips.
He couldn’t help noticing she’d painted her nails, some sort of dark burgundy, the contrast with her pale skin and those long, slender fingers, making his cock swell in her mouth. Her tongue teased and tickled the head, her hand stroking the shaft. The other went to cup his aching balls, her fingernails grazing them slightly. He pulled his t-shirt off, tossing it aside, and saw her eyes light up at the sight of him, her hands reaching up his belly, his cock so far back in her throat it had literally disappeared.
“Come here.” He grabbed and lifted her in his arms. She was light, easy to carry, and wrapped herself around him like a long-limbed monkey, kissing him deeply as he grabbed her hips in his hands and impaled her on his cock.
“Oh fuck!” Linney gasped, her nails digging into his back as he turned and pressed her against the closed door. He wanted her like thi
s, to feel the weight of her on his cock and he thrust up into her, to slam her against the door with such force the whole house shook.
“Oh God, yes, fuck me hard!” she begged him, her breath hot in his ear, her hands roaming all over him like she couldn’t get enough. “Harder! Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, please don’t stop! Make me come!”
Oh hell. His cock jumped at her words, his balls drawing up tight, and he knew it would take all of his willpower not to come if he kept fucking her. But she begged him, harsh, whispered words, please, please, don’t stop, make me come, baby, make me come! He couldn’t stop, even if it meant he finished far more quickly than he wanted to. He wanted to feel her climax, that sweet burst of her pleasure superseding his own by far.