Trap: A Salvation Society Novel

by Jennifer Rebecca

  There’s no going back. We’re too close to the edge of passion, and the steep cliff of commitment.

  My words seem to break the chains he’s carefully holding onto his control with, and he just. Lets. Go.

  Chapter Nine

  Kyle

  The one

  I snap. That’s the best way I can describe it.

  When MacKenzie tells me she’s mine, that she knows I’ll wait for her, and that she can trust me to do so faithfully while she’s gone, it just does something to me. I’ve never been the guy who wanted attachments or entanglements, but now I can’t seem to do anything other than demand them with MacKenzie. I need to have this claim on her and for her to claim me just as well. This possessiveness isn’t usually my thing but she just does something to me. She calls to the beast inside me.

  She makes me crazy, and yet I want nobody else.

  I press my lips to hers and pump into her, moving faster and faster. MacKenzie gasps, and I lick into her mouth, tasting her sweetness.

  She rakes her nails down my back, and the sting only pushes me. It drives me higher. The need to possess her, to take her hard and fast, and make her mine is compelling me as I move over her and within her body. The tension that was riding me hard all week, wondering if I was pushing her too hard, too fast, knowing how skittish she is about relationships and her career, not to mention her family, it all just disappears, dissipating into the ether as she vows to be mine and places her trust in me in the palms of my hands. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t erotic as hell.

  I will do everything in my power to show her that I am worthy of her trust, her body, and eventually her heart, because I now know without a doubt that MacKenzie Black is the one, and I just have to make her feel like she is safe to pick me. I need her to need me, to want me as desperately as I want her, because for the first time in all of my life, I’m the one who wants the relationship, who craves the connection. I need it like I need air to breathe and I’ll keep these memories close to the front of my mind while she’s gone.

  And with every emotion, every feeling so close to the surface, I can do nothing but snap. I lose control, but as always with MacKenzie, she puts her trust, her blind faith that I won’t hurt her, that I will never hurt her, in me, and she follows me over the edge, holding on for dear life while we ride the knife’s edge of our passion together.

  My lips on hers, her sweet breath coming out in pants and moans, and the sounds of our bodies coming together fill the room as I fill her over and over again. I can’t stop. I couldn’t if I wanted to, and thank fuck, MacKenzie doesn’t want that either. She holds tight to me, rocking her hips to mine as I plunge in and out of her harder and faster each time, letting me fuck her like we both need until we can’t breathe, we can’t move. Maybe then we’ll be too tired to fight the feelings that are welling up so fast between us.

  “Kyle,” she says in a gasp as her pussy clamps down around my cock, and she digs her nails into the back of my shoulders. The sting only heightens my arousal and centers my focus on where our bodies are joined.

  “That’s it, baby.” She’s close, and thankfully, so am I. I couldn’t last much longer if I wanted to.

  “Yes,” she pants, and the bed rocks with the force of our movements, scraping softly against the wood floor.

  “That’s it.”

  “Yes.” She arches her back and closes her eyes as she comes.

  I drive into her again and again as the walls of her pussy flutter and grip my cock in their tight heat until I can’t hold out any longer, and I plant myself as deep inside her as I can and follow her over the edge.

  We lie like that in each other’s arms, panting, gasping for air, our hearts beating wildly in our chests. For how long, I don’t know. It could have been minutes, maybe hours. And then I place another kiss to her mouth, hot and wet but also short, and then I slide from her body and leave the bed. I tuck the blankets up around her and then move to the bathroom to toss the condom and wash up before making my way back to the bed. I slide under the blankets and immediately pull her to me. MacKenzie doesn’t disappoint. She rolls into me instantly, wraps her slim arm around my waist, and presses her cheek to my chest.

  I hold her in my arms in the darkening room of the early evening and just listen to her breathe. I smell the scent of her and sex in the air and feel her smooth, soft skin pressed to mine before she finally breaks the silence.

  “Kyle?” she asks tentatively.

  “Yeah, baby.” I knew she was going to want to talk. We need to, but I hate that it’s so soon after the passion we shared. Part of me wants her to just know how I feel by the way I touch her, fuck her, or even just hold her. But I also know MacKenzie has a rational mind, and she wants to check all the boxes before she moves forward. So even though I don’t want her to go there, I also know that she can’t help it and it’s no surprise when she pops the bubble of our passionate interlude with her questions.

  “What are we doing?” she asks softly, her voice is just a hair above a whisper and still, I can hear the thread of nervousness that weaves through it.

  “We’re lying here in bed after I fucked you well,” I answer, and even I can hear the cocky smirk in my voice.

  “You know what I mean.” She laughs as she playfully swats my belly.

  “We’re just going to be,” I answer sort of honestly. MacKenzie needs us to go with the flow and ease her into a long lasting, committed relationship. She just won’t know that I’ll be steering the ship in that direction. So really, it’s less go-with-the-flow than I’m presenting it as while still giving us both what we need. “We’re going to be you and me. I like you. I like being around you, I like being in your bed and in your life, and I think you like it too.”

  “You know I do,” she answers softly as she trails the tip of her finger over my body, tracing the hair on my chest.

  “So we’re going to ride the ride for as long as it lasts,” I say as I gently rub her back, smoothing away the goose bumps that pop up on her skin.

  “I’m going to be gone,” she says.

  “I know that.”

  “Nine months is a long time, Kyle,” she adds, the worry evident in her tone. “What if—”

  “No what ifs for right now,” I interrupt her. Fear and anxiety are liars and if she lets them into her brain they’ll ruin whatever it is we have before it has a chance to really begin. After all, we have to get through her impending deployment before we can really start our lives together. “You gave that worry to me. It’s mine now. I’ll worry about the length of time; you just do your job.”

  “But—” she starts but I don’t let her. She’s wanting to hold onto those negative thoughts, and I’ll do anything I can to keep her worries at bay.

  “I’m beginning to think you lack faith in my ability to be a Marine Corps girlfriend, MacKenzie, and it wounds me,” I joke. My change in direction works because she snorts out her laughter and her eyes twinkle with her merriment.

  “Stop it.” She laughs. “I’m just saying. It’s hard being the one left behind. I’ve never had a relationship work when I was on a deployment rotation.”

  “Neither have I,” I admit. And it’s true. I was close once. There was a woman I had cared for but in the end it wasn’t enough. She didn’t like the mission callouts, the broken plans, and the weeks on end without phone calls without a wedding ring and babies. And in the end, I didn’t want to give her those things, so she left. There were no harsh words or broken hearts, in the end we realized that we weren’t in love and we weren’t it for each other. Good thing too, because now she’s married to a nine to fiver, with half a baseball team of kids. She got what she needed and now I’m finding what I need. But Mack doesn’t need to know that right now. That’ll only add ten more checkmarks in her no column and I need the scales tipped in my favor before she leaves.

  “That doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in me either.”

  “Hey,” I say to grab her attention, and she tips her h
ead back to look me in the eye. “How do you eat an elephant?”

  “I don’t know, Kyle. How do you eat an elephant?” she quips, looking at me like I’ve lost my damn mind and truthfully, I have. I’ve lost both my mind and my heart to her.

  “One bite at a time,” I explain. “Let’s take it one day— one problem at a time. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she agrees. She’s silent for a minute, but then a frown mars her face again. “What about fraternization? We still have to be a secret.”

  “Not exactly,” I hedge. Fuck me running. I think I’ve already screwed up again. Now, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t have made a major life decision without her today. I took a major career change with the intention of furthering our relationship as one of the heavy perks to my decision and I did it all without even telling her there was an offer on the table. She’s going to kill me.

  “What do you mean?” she asks as she leans back so that she can look at my face and see where the truth lies.

  “I’m getting older,” I explain. “I’ve known that my time with the teams is coming to an end. So does Jackson Cole. He offered me a job with Cole Security.”

  “Are you going to take it?” she asks after a moment.

  “Yeah, I think I am.” I watch her face for any sign that that isn’t what she wants. I hold my breath. Fuck, I never thought she might not want what I want. But then I think I see a look of… relief and then it’s gone, she’s buried it in an instant.

  “Is that what you want?” She asks me quietly and I use the tips of my fingers to brush back a lock of hair that’s fallen in her face and trace the soft skin at her temple.

  “Yeah, I think it is.”

  “So, how will that work?”

  “I’ll be stationed with them at the Virginia Beach office,” I explain. “I have a crappy apartment here, but I’ll be looking for something more permanent there. I’ll submit my papers to not re-enlist tomorrow morning, so I’ll be done with the navy by the end of the month.”

  “Right when I leave.” Her spoken words hang heavy in the air between us and I have to steer us back to a safer course.

  “Just about,” I tell her. “I’ll make sure things line up so we can be with each other on those days.”

  “I own this place outright,” she says quietly, surprising me. “You can let your apartment go and stay here when you need to be here.”

  “That would be great,” I reply with a smile. Maybe a little push wasn’t too much for her after all. “See? We got this.”

  “We got this.”

  Chapter Ten

  MacKenzie

  Cute little foldy cap

  It’s showtime.

  Kyle thinks because he wants to be with me that he can handle all of me, but I’m not so sure. So far, he’s liked the girl on the beach and the woman he met in a bar. I know he enjoys the one he talks to on the phone and the one who goes wild for him behind closed doors.

  But he hasn’t met the marine.

  While all of the different facets come together to make… me, that one is by far the one that defines me. It’s all I’ve worked for, all I have ever wanted, that is, until now. I’ve never wanted to be anything other than a pilot. My grandfather flew planes in Vietnam, and my dad flew in Iraq the first time. My brother Ryan, sister Amelia, and I all wanted to become marines just like them. If that was ever taken away from me, I’m not sure I could survive it. I wouldn’t know who I was anymore because at the very core of my being, that is who I am, not just what I do.

  Maybe that’s why I’m still uncomfortable with Kyle ending his enlistment. I can’t rationalize why it’s so easy for him to walk away from the military. And if he’s doing it for me, will he resent me? I can’t be the one to take away his dreams. If he had put his foot down and told me to give up flying, I’d be gone the next second. I would never be able to be with someone who took from me the one thing that was so integral to who I am like that. Sure, he’s moving into the private sector doing almost exactly the same thing, but how will he feel when his team goes away for the first time without him? I can’t gauge him, and it scares the hell out of me.

  I drive up to the gate at the base and roll down my window to hand over my identification card. The sailor at the gate takes it and looks it over before raising his hand in salute, which I mirror.

  “Have a good day, Captain,” he says as he hands me my card back.

  “Thank you. You too,” I reply.

  “Living the dream,” he says before I pull away and ease my way through the streets of the base, down toward the beach where Kyle’s ceremony will be in about thirty minutes.

  I pull into the parking lot and cut the engine. I climb out of my car and tuck my keys and wallet into my pockets. I open my garrison cap and place it on my head before pulling down at the hem of my alpha coat, making sure everything is in its place. And with my slacks perfectly creased and my blonde hair coiled in a neat bun at the base of my neck, there is nothing out of place except for me on this navy base.

  I quietly let out a nervous breath and then make my way to the building with the beach behind it where the ceremony will be held. Kyle said it wasn’t a big deal. That he and his buddy Sean, the lovable giant, were exiting the navy together and were receiving commendations. He said not to expect a huge crowd or fanfare, but nevertheless, he wanted me there.

  I raise my hand and salute those who greet me with a professional nod and continue to make my way down the walkway. There is a small podium set up with about fifty chairs facing it. There are a handful of sailors standing around talking. I notice Kyle right away. He stands out, calls to me like a moth to a flame on a soul crushing level. I’m helpless to stop the pull between us, and I don’t know what to do.

  When he sees me, he pulls away from the crowd and walks toward me with sure steps. Kyle shakes his head ever so slightly and smirks. He sees the distance I’m trying to put between us for what it is, and he’s not having it. He does not stop his forward movement when he’s in a professional level of space. Instead, he pulls me into his arms and tips me backward like the famous VJ Day couple and kisses me passionately. I have to grab onto my garrison cap to keep it from falling into the sand. Kyle just lets his cover fall off his head without a care in the world.

  It’s over quickly, and I can tell he didn’t want to embarrass me, but he’s also staking a claim. He stands me back up, and I’m slightly embarrassed to admit he’s left me more than a little breathless.

  “That is not what we talked about, Kyle,” I say, rolling my eyes. And it’s absolutely not. He knows damn well that I had wanted to keep a level of professionalism at these functions. My reputation, until this moment, was spotless. And I might be mad when my oxygen starved brain cells start functioning again, but until then, I’ll follow Kyle’s lead.

  “I know.” He smiles. “But I couldn’t help myself. You just looked so cute in your little foldy cap.”

  “Aw, that’s adorable. It’s a garrison cap and I was hoping for a dixie cup,” I reply, gesturing to the khaki uniform he’s wearing. “I suppose this will have to do.”

  I lean down and pluck his cover from the sand before dusting it off and turning it around to hand it to him in the correct direction. He smiles broadly at me as I do everything in precise movements for proper performance. I’m learning that Kyle is a by-the-seat-of-his-pants kind of guy.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but you’ve been sleeping with a chief.”

  “I guess I’ll survive,” I tease before gently patting his cheek and pulling away. “You’re going to get us in trouble.”

  “I’m done after today,” he says. “What are they going to do to me? Kick me out?”

  “What about me?” I ask. He might not care anymore, but I do. I still have to follow the rules and, honestly, I wouldn’t want it any other way. I like rules. I need rules, without them we have nothing but total chaos.

  “You’ll be fine,” he says. “Everyone knows who you are. Oh look, you can sit with Easy’s wife
. She’s nicer than the first one.” He shudders. “And Natalie.”

  “You guys are a lot of drama,” I quip.

  “You don’t know the half of it. If I told you the story of how Dreamboat and his wife met, you wouldn’t believe me,” he says with wide eyes.

  “I doubt it. You sailors are nothing but trouble.”

  “And you think the squadron pilots aren’t any worse?”

  “Well….” Like any good sibling rivalry, it’s all right for me to give them shit and admit the men in my squadron can be drama, but it is not all right for someone else to do it.

  “That’s what I thought,” Kyle says. “And cool your jets, pilot. It was an observation not a putdown of your guys. I would never do such a stupid thing.”

  “Damn right,” I grumble.

  “Other stupid things, definitely. But not that one,” he says with a wink. “Now come meet the guys.”

  “Fine,” I reply nervously.

  Kyle takes my hand in his and leads me over to the small group, where he introduces me to several people including a man called Easy and his wife, Kim, who is very pregnant, and another woman named Natalie.

  “Well, the cat’s out of the bag now,” Easy says to Kyle, breaking the tension.

  “Was never a secret to me,” Kyle replies, giving me a heated look, and I wonder when we became more serious to him. I’m still not ready to put labels on it, but I’m okay with being part of an us. I’m still trying to figure out how we went from one bite at a time to PDA and everyone knowing that we’re a thing.

  “Well, we better grab our seats,” Kim says before turning to me. “Want to sit with us?”

  “I’d love to.” I follow them to a row and wait for Easy to help guide her very pregnant frame into a folding chair. “When are you due?” I ask her when she settles with her friend, Natalie on the other side of her.