Protecting Her: A Romance Bundle

by Mia Ford

  I spent eight weeks in basic training, then put in my request to join the SEALS. I was numb back then. I literally felt nothing. No joy, no pain, no fear, no love. Nothing. Not a fucking thing. I wanted to pay for my sins with my flesh, blood, and bones. I wanted to atone for everything I’d done and the things I didn’t do. I wanted to pay for breaking Annabel’s heart, for betraying her trust. I wanted to offer myself as a sacrifice for the death of my little brother. I wanted to make up for all the years of abuse I took from my old man rather than killing him in his sleep when I was old enough to squeeze the trigger on the gun he kept in his nightstand. Dark thoughts, I know. I wanted to pay for just being me. I wanted to put my life on the line every day just so I could feel something. And I knew of no better way to do that than to become a SEAL and volunteer for every dangerous mission that came along. And that’s what I’ve done for the last eleven years.

  Honestly, between you and me, the requirements for getting into the SEALs aren’t that stringent. It’s mostly physical stuff—endurance, perseverance, the willingness and ability to follow orders and put your ass on the line time and time again. Thank God, otherwise I never would have been accepted. Like my buddy Troy said, “Getting in was easy. Staying in and staying alive was hard.”

  From Michigan, I flew back across country to the Naval Amphibious Base Coronado across the bay from San Diego, California. After twenty-one weeks of SEAL training, they herded my team onto a C-17 troop transport plane and it was off to Iraq for my first mission. And like leaving Gulf Breeze, I never looked back. From there, I have bounced around the globe like a fucking pinball with an assault rifle and enough attitude to fill a tanker truck.

  Hoo-fucking-rah, SEALs…

  A day hadn’t gone by when I didn’t wonder what became of Annabel.

  I still thought about her late at night, when I felt alone even with another woman in my bed.

  I wondered if I would ever see her again.

  And if I did, I wondered if she would even speak to me.

  2

  Annabel Lee

  Wendy, my receptionist, stuck her head in the operating room door and waited for me to acknowledge her presence with a quick glance. She knew better than to come inside when I had an animal open on the table. One, it wasn’t sanitary, and two, Wendy puked her guts out at the sight of blood.

  The operating room was nothing fancy and certainly not as sterile as those found in hospitals for humans. It was just a small room in the back of my practice with a tall table covered in sterile plastic and a large light that loomed above my head like some kind of hovering Martian ship. I was stitching up Dolly the eighty-pound Labrador after spaying her. Dolly was sleeping like a baby on the table.

  Without taking my eyes off my work, I barked at Wendy, no pun intended. “Speak, Wendy.”

  “Vernon Gibbs is on the phone. He says Buttercup is about to deliver that fold.”

  “Fuck. So much for taking off early. Okay, tell him I’ll be out as soon as I’m done here. And please tell Juan to come in and get Dolly.” I tied off the last stitch and clipped the suture short so Dolly couldn’t dig or chew it out before it was healed. I’d spayed and neutered thousands of dogs and cats over my six years as Gulf Breeze’s only veterinarian. I could do it with my eyes closed, but I still made sure things were good to go before calling any operation a success.

  Juan came in holding a blue plastic cone that would go around Dolly’s neck to keep her from chewing at the wound on her belly. Juan, a fifty-something Mexican-American who was as round as he was tall, was my lead vet tech and righthand. He was a leftover from old Doc Anderson when I bought the practice and I was glad to have him with me. He pretty much ran the office when I was out in the field. I was a small and large animal vet, which meant that I could be working on a four-pound Chihuahua one minute and a two-thousand pound bull the next. Buttercup was a full-grown mare about to drop her first fold. Horses give birth on their own, but I needed to be there just in case there were complications.

  “Okay, Juan, put the cone on her neck and put her in a kennel to sleep it off,” I said, tugging off the latex gloves. “Check her when she wakes up and if everything looks good tell Mrs. Perkins she can take her home in an hour or two.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Juan said formally, giving me a nod as he easily scooped the large dog off the table and cradled her to his chest like an overgrown baby. Dolly slept peacefully with her long tongue hanging out the side. I gave her head a quick scratch and smiled. I envied her. I would have loved to have been passed out in my bed at home, but I knew it would be hours before I had that pleasure.

  Juan paused before going through the door. “Do you want me to go with you to Mr. Gibbs’ place?”

  “Nah, I can deliver a fold with one hand tied behind my back,” I said with a tired sigh. I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was nearly five o’clock. I’d been at it since 3 A.M. dealing with a horse on the Tremont place that had splintered a leg. Now, I was headed off to deliver a fold thirty miles out of town. I’d be lucky to be home by midnight. I couldn’t complain, though. I knew what I was getting myself into when I bought old Doc Anderson’s practice a year ago. I’d worked under him since graduating vet school three years ago. When you were the only vet in a tiny Texas town where nearly everyone owned at least one dog and one cat, and some people had multiple cows and horses, you didn’t get much down time—and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I loved my work. It kept me busy. It kept my mind off other things, like dwelling on just how shitty my personal life was.

  I was married to Bradley Bates for less than a year. It was ten months and twelve days, to be exact, from the time I walked down the aisle as a blushing bride with his ring on my finger to the time I ran from our house with his handprints on my face.

  Amazing how in ten short months I went from being a happy bride who couldn’t wait to set up house with the man she loved to an abused wife escaping with her life in the middle of the night.

  Bradley would have chased me down and beaten the shit out of me and dragged me back home if I hadn’t made it to my daddy’s house. My daddy never liked Bradley and would have gladly filled his face with buckshot if we hadn’t stopped him. He had his shotgun in hand and was headed to the front porch when me and mama literally jumped on his back and made him stay inside.

  I could not bear the thought of my beloved daddy spending the rest of his life in prison for killing my abusive husband. Plus, Bradley’s daddy was the president of the Gulf Breeze Savings & Loan that held the mortgage on my daddy’s place. He could make things very difficult for the Lees. And I could not let that happen.

  Bradley came back a few times all apologetic and begging me for forgiveness. Honestly, I didn’t understand why he wanted me to come home. With us divorced he could do all the drinking and whoring he wanted to without worrying about me finding out about it. I mean, he had been fucking that whore Juju Wheeler the entire time we were married. Being married to me just got in his way most days. Then it hit me. It wasn’t about Bradley’s freedom. It was about mine. He wanted me under his thumb where he could control me, use and abuse me, do whatever he wanted, and come home drunk to fuck me until I was sore. It was when I realized it was all about control that I decided to take charge of things myself.

  It took some convincing, but Bradley finally agreed to the divorce when I said I’d give him everything: the big house his parents had bought us, my new Lexus and his new truck, all the furniture and fixtures, all the money in the bank we had jointly saved, everything we had ever bought together. I agreed to walk away without a dime. I got to keep my clothes and my practice. Everything else was his with good riddance.

  It was a price I gladly paid. My practice barely netted enough to pay my way, but I’d make due somehow. Hell, I’d rather sleep on the concrete floor of the dog kennels than lie next to Bradley in our five-thousand-dollar bed.

  I was never gonna get rich being the only veterinarian in Gulf Breeze, but I had a roof over my head (I
lived in the small apartment above my practice), food in my belly, and lots of patients that needed my help. I drove my daddy’s old pickup truck and was glad to have it. Life was good. Or as good as it could be. At least I wasn’t covered in bruises. Or having to cover them up with makeup.

  I went out of my way to avoid Bradley on a daily basis. I hated to admit it, but I was still afraid of him. He’d come around drunk several times, beating on my door in the middle of the night, yelling one minute, apologizing the next. He only stopped when I threatened to shoot him with the .38 my daddy made me keep in my bedside table.

  Could I really shoot Bradley, a man I once thought hung the moon? If he was coming at me with his fists out you bet your sweet ass I could. I’d shoot him dead and drink a beer over his carcass until the sheriff arrived. I even dreamt about it some nights. Sad, I know, but that was the life of Annabel Lee.

  3

  Shane

  “Mmm…”

  I had my eyes closed… breathing in deep… blowing it out slowly… listening to Pope humming with her lips wrapped around the head of my cock. She was holding the base steady with one hand and running her lips and tongue around the head like she was licking an ice cream cone. As cocksuckers went, Pope was a fucking artist, a master at her craft. I told her all the time that she could teach a fucking class on the art of cocksucking and she readily agreed. Lord knows I would have given her a glowing review.

  Pope was Corporal April Pope, USMC, hailing from St. Louis by way of Chicago. She was a twenty-three-year-old communications specialist who worked on the base in Kandahar where I was on temporary assignment, cleaning up the details of our last mission for the higher ups. The rest of my team was in Mosul and I’d head back there in a few days.

  Stop thinking about work, you fucking moron.

  Focus on making this blowjob last.

  Fucking Pope…

  Just amazing, what she could do with her mouth…

  “That feel good, Captain?” she asked with the hum in her voice.

  I opened my eyes and glanced down at her. She was smiling at me with my cock resting against her bottom lip. She slathered her tongue around the head and I felt little bolts of lightning shoot from my balls and out my toes.

  “I keep telling you,” I said, huffing out the breath. “You are a bona fide cocksucking savant, Corporal Pope.” I held out my arms and wiggled my fingers at her. “Come on, climb onboard.”

  “With pleasure,” she sighed. She gave the tip of my cock one more good lubing with her tongue, then climbed on top of me, straddling my hips, digging her fingernails into my chest. I reached down between us and guided my cock to her pussy. She lifted herself up, then slowly lowered her cunt onto me, taking in as much of my long cock as she could stand. She began moving her hips back and forth, sliding her tight, juicy pussy along the length of my cock.

  The image of Annabel riding me the first time flashed through my mind. I blinked it away and tried to concentrate on the moment, not the past.

  “Fuck…” she moaned, eyes closed, hips moving in perfect rhythm. “Your cock feels… so fucking good inside me.”

  “You’re so tight…” I said, the words breathing out of me. “So, fucking… tight…”

  I held onto her hips and let her set the pace. I was happy to just lie there and let her do all the work. Pope was a beautiful girl, far too pretty to be in the fucking military in goddamn Kandahar. She should have been stationed in Hawaii or Guam, some place where the beaches weren’t mined and the water didn’t run red with blood. I could picture her in a string bikini, running in slow motion along the shoreline, the warm breeze blowing gently across her face. She had short sandy hair, green eyes, pouty lips, and a fucking body to die for. Big titties, narrow waist, round hips, and a shaved pussy that was tight as a drum. She and I had been fucking for a while now, hooking up whenever we ended up in the same place. This time, I had been in Kandahar for two weeks and inside of Pope for… shit… I forgot to count the hours…

  “Fuck, baby, I’m…. getting… close…” she said, her voice a tense whisper. The motion of her hips sped up. She dug her fingernails into my chest until I thought she was going to draw blood. She started bouncing up and down on my cock, like a Texas oil derrick, rising and falling—slamming down hard then back up again. I curled my toes and hung on for the ride. I was ready to cum anytime she was.

  “Fuck… yes… shit… Vader… yes… now…”

  “I gotcha, baby…” I said, holding on to her hips as she pommeled up and down on my cock. I could feel my orgasm building, my balls getting tight, muscles tense, preparing to blow like hot lava from a volcano.

  “Now… Vader… fucking… cummmmm….” she squealed, tossing her head back and growling at the ceiling like a she-wolf howling at the moon. She was slamming up and down so hard on my cock that I had to slow her down so she didn’t break it.

  “Shit… yes…” Every muscle in my body tensed. I arched my back and lifted my ass and raised her clean off the bed. I could feel the cum shooting through my cock like water through a firehose. As Pope gushed her sweet juices all down the shaft and over my balls, I filled her with a load of hot milky cum that made her sweat. She kept it going for a few more seconds, then looked down at me and smiled and wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

  “Fuck me,” she said with a grin.

  “I think I just did,” I said, bringing my hands up to her melon tits and giving them a hard squeeze. I leaned up and gave her nipples a lick. “I’m gonna miss you when I’m gone.”

  “I’m gonna miss you, too,” she said. “When do you have to leave?”

  “I head back to Mosul on Monday.”

  “Fucking Mosul.” She scrunched up her pretty nose and shook her head like the thought of going to Mosul made her sick. “I hate fucking Mosul.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” I said with a sigh. “But for now, that’s home.”

  She lifted herself off my cock and reached for the towel she had brought to bed with us. That was Pope. Like a good little scout, she was always prepared. She sat between my legs and gently cleaned the cum off my cock and balls, then gave the tip a little kiss and tucked the towel between her legs to soak up the ooze.

  “What about you?” I asked, putting my hands behind my head.

  She shrugged one shoulder. “I’m here for at least the next few months. Then, who knows.”

  “There are worst places to be,” I said with a smile.

  “Yeah, Mosul.”

  My cellphone was on the nightstand. When it buzzed I ignored it, but Pope, like most women I knew, couldn’t just let a phone ring.

  “Let it go,” I said, stretching out my arms, trying to stop her.

  “Just let me see who it is,” she said, picking it up and staring at the screen. She held out the phone so I could see the screen. “You might wanna take this. The caller ID says Uncle Seth.”

  I stared at the screen for a moment. Uncle Seth was my mom’s younger brother, and the only member of my family from either side that I had stayed in touch with over the years. He was like the father I never had, even though my father lived in the same house I did.

  I pushed up onto my elbows and took the phone from Pope. I knew why he was calling. I could feel it in my bones.

  “Uncle Seth?”

  “She’s gone, Shane,” he said, crying into the phone. “Your mama. She’s gone.”

  4

  Annabel

  Buttercup the mare delivered the fold without any issues, although she certainly took her sweet time doing it. It always amazed me how animals just instinctively knew what to do while humans needed a team of doctors and nurses and classes and books to have a baby. More amazing to me is how quickly non-human babies get up and move on their own. Buttercup pushed the fold out of her womb and within minutes the fold was standing up on its spindly, wobbly legs.

  Mr. Gibbs and I watched from outside the stall because unlike human women who wanted their husbands hovering over them du
ring delivery, and every living relative waiting in the hall to tell them how cute their ugly baby was, mares did not appreciate human intervention when they gave birth. It made restless. It was as if they were thinking, “Just leave me alone and let me do this.” So, I waited and watched from afar. I’d only get involved if the mother or fold were in distress.

  Buttercup had been restless for hours, indicating that she was getting ready to give birth. Mr. Gibbs said she would lay down, then stand up and tromp around the stall, then do it all again. When she started sweating and lay down on her side, I knew the fold was about to come. After twenty minutes and one good push, the fold gushed out of her in what looked like a giant condom. Buttercup lay quietly for a few minutes, resting, catching her breath, getting her heart and blood pumping again. Finally, she got to her feet and started licking and cleaning the placenta off the fold. I stepped in to make sure mommy and baby were fine, then stood outside of the stall with Mr. Gibbs to watch them bond.

  “It’s a beautiful thing,” the old man said lovingly, using a long, bent finger to push back the brim of his worn Stetson on his high forehead. He was tall and thin to the point of being gaunt, but his skin was the color and texture of saddle leather after decades of baking in the hot Texas sun. His bushy eyebrows and the stubble that covered his pointy chin and hollow cheeks were as white as the hairs curling out over his ears from beneath the Stetson.