Bears of Burden: THORN

by Candace Ayers

  Soon the mental health clinic loomed before him and he set aside his musings to face this small obstacle. In and out, he reminded himself. No problem. The wait was blessedly brief—a rare occurrence in military health facilities of any kind in his experience—and Connor found himself quickly questioned before he was sent back into the waiting room until the counselor he’d been assigned to see was free.

  “Petty Officer Mitchell?”

  For a split second Connor thought he must still be a tad drunk, or maybe hearing things. The damn shrink sounded just like the woman from last night. She had evidently consumed his thoughts more than he realized. He didn’t catch more than a glimpse as the shrink moved back into her office, confident that he would follow.

  He did, but what he saw once he entered the office left him rooted to the floor. His gaze met that of the woman he’d been fantasizing about all morning. Pure lust shot through his startled system, quickly followed by alarm and a bit of anger.

  He didn’t do emotional entanglements, but here stood the woman he’d been with last night. He would be expected to tell her all the details of the most horrible moments of his life? Just the thought made him feel vulnerable. Nothing brought him to anger faster than vulnerability.

  He tamped down on the emotions. No way would he let her know that she’d unsettled him. He felt the expression drain from his face to be replaced with the cocky grin that she’d found so appealing the night before. Somehow it felt wrong, like a stiff mask. He didn’t let the smile fade though. His arrogant smirk was armor every bit as much as the flak vest and Kevlar he’d worn in enemy territory, and Connor Mitchell didn’t let anyone slip inside his defenses.

  Chapter Four

  Everly felt a pang of sympathy as she read through the file of her first patient in her new clinic. She always hurt right along with the service men and women she counseled. She had many colleagues who distanced themselves. Earlier in her career they’d advised her to do the same, had told her that if she couldn’t turn it off to some degree then she’d never hold up. Their criticism hadn’t made her quit caring, though. It had merely made her more reluctant to admit that she hurt, to varying degrees, right along with all of the service members she treated who’d been diagnosed with PTSD.

  After she’d called in Petty Officer Mitchell, she turned back into her office and had a seat behind her desk. Mentally, she recalled the details of this case. Petty Officer Mitchell had been on multiple deployments as a Navy Seal, all of them covert ops. Because of the nature of his missions, she didn’t have access to a lot of the details. She knew enough of what he’d been through, though, to be quite concerned. Petty Officer Mitchell was a man who had been constantly surrounded by death.

  Deaths had a way of piling up, one upon another, until they formed a burden heavier than any man should have to bear. Really, she felt that this man should have been evaluated more closely years ago. On his last mission, things had been even worse. He’d led his squad on this operation, and the entire squad had been killed. One of the casualties was his own best friend, a man by the name of Jonathan Mills.

  An investigation had been subsequently launched. While she was to provide her opinion on Mitchell’s mental fitness, Petty Officer Mitchell’s commander had been concerned because, according to him, Mitchell didn’t have any family and had very few friends. The CO had been worried about what the loss of the only person on Earth that Mitchell seemed to be close to would do to his mental health.

  Truth be told, Everly was worried too, and she hadn’t even evaluated him yet. Support systems were a crucial part of working through PTSD, even more than most people realized. She glanced up expectantly as the door to her office closed, a polite, professional smile on her face.

  Her smile froze, along with the greeting that had been waiting on the tip of her tongue. There was Connor, looking at her with a maelstrom of expressions sweeping across his face. She watched as lust, hurt, and anger quickly rolled over his eyes before he covered it with a cocky grin. This could not be happening. It just couldn’t. What were the chances that the first one night stand she’d had in years would be with her very first patient? Devil take it, please tell me I’m hallucinating.

  “Oh, you’re not, Beautiful.” She could almost feel his eyes raking up and down her body. She couldn’t help remembering how it had felt last night to have his hands and lips tracing molten trails across her skin. An unwelcome ribbon of desire unfurled low in her belly, quickly followed by a blush that she was certain must be visible even against her dark skin.

  “So, I guess I know your name now, don’t I, Doctor Willis?”

  She took a deep breath. Don’t stare at his mouth when he talks. Be professional. You can do this. She opened her mouth, intent on asking him to keep their encounters professional.

  “Everly, not Doctor Willis.” She cringed at the breathy, flirtatious tone the innocent words had taken on. Hell’s bells…she did not need this man calling her by her first name.

  “Okay, Everly.” Somehow those two words seemed like they were a caress against her skin. Damn, this man was smooth…He was around the desk and standing before her in seconds. To her horror, she couldn’t stop her eyes from trailing across him hungrily as she looked up to meet his gaze.

  It was obvious from his smile, and from the gleam of barely contained lust in his eyes, that he hadn’t missed her perusal. He crouched slowly before her until his lips were a breath away from hers.

  “I thought I wasn’t going to feel any better after this visit, but I think you might be just what the doctor ordered.” He closed the distance between them then, and Everly didn’t stop his soft questioning kiss. She couldn’t begin to fight the passion welling up in her at the memory of last night.

  Her nipples became hardened pebbles at the memory of how his lips had felt against them last night. As if he could read her mind, he gently stroked them, teasing them to harder peaks still before he twisted them gently between his fingers.

  The sound of her own breathless groan, torn from her throat against her will, broke through the haze of lust that clouded her mind. She jumped up abruptly, tearing her mouth from his even as her body cried out at the loss of his touch.

  “Connor…Petty Officer…Oh, just please have a seat!”

  His questioning gaze searched her until he saw something that made him smile tightly and, thank goodness, take a seat in one of the padded leather chairs opposite her desk.

  “Okay, Everly. How about, if you don’t want a repeat of last night—” A pointed look at her hardened nipples, still showing clearly through the fabric of her silk shirt, told her that he knew as well as she did what she really wanted. “Then at least clear me to get back to work.”

  She cleared her throat and willed herself to be the professional she knew she needed to be for him, whether he wanted it or not. Besides, there was no way she was going to blow off—or hand off to another psychologist—her first case. Not. Happening.

  “I can’t do that, Petty Officer. I’m not putting my license on the line to lie and say—”

  “I’m fine.”

  “To say that you are fine, then, when I haven’t evaluated you. I know you’ve been on missions where men were lost before, but this time, from what I understand, you lost a friend. Don’t you want to talk about Jonathan?”

  Raw, naked agony shown in his eyes, but only for a split second. She could see the emotional wall that he’d built to keep the world from witnessing his pain. In a second, he was on his feet. She’d just sat down, but she rose again to meet him.

  “No, Sweetheart. I don’t want to talk about Jonathan. I don’t want to talk at all.”

  His mouth was on hers again, this time in a hard, bruising kiss that she couldn’t help but respond to completely. His hands were on her, everywhere, bringing back all of the sensations from last night. Without alcohol to dull the effect of his touch, she felt him even more. Every caress sent pleasure so intense it bordered on pain shooting through her core.

&nb
sp; By the time he picked her up and sat her on her desk, she was beyond caring about proper. He pushed her skirt up around her full hips and she wiggled to make it easier for him, then gasped as his hand slid between her legs, unashamed of how wet she was for him. It was all she could do when he slid one finger into her not to cry out. Instead, she whimpered and writhed against him.

  He seemed to know what she craved. One finger moved up after he moistened it with her glistening need to lightly circle her tight bundle of nerves, while the other hand traveled up her shirt to massage her breast. It only took his skilled fingers minutes to bring her to a pinnacle, then let her fall apart against him.

  He could have taken her then. She would have let him, would have thrown away her career, her life’s work, if she had been caught. He didn’t press on though. Instead, he held her to him and stroked her hair gently, a bemused smile on his face.

  She melted into him, but only for a moment.

  “Well, doc…is this the initial work-up you give all your crazies?”

  The caring man she’d glimpsed moments ago, was gone. His callous smugness shattered the moment, and with the return of reality, mortification filled her. She quickly jumped off her desk and tugged down her skirt with shaking hands. She couldn’t even bring herself to meet his eyes, instead focusing on the floor while she spoke.

  “I think you need to leave Petty Officer. If you want to be cleared for duty, schedule another appointment.

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Everly.” The tone was mocking, an obvious effort to distance himself after the lapse in his defenses he’d shown her in an unguarded moment.

  “I’m serious. Will Thursday work for our next appointment? I can’t help you unless you want it, Connor.” She finally looked up to meet his eyes so that he could see her sincerity for himself.

  His gaze was pure masculine heat. “Oh, I want it alright, and you can help me any time.”

  Chapter Five

  The following days fell into a predictable pattern, one Connor remembered from his earlier days in the military. He went to the range more often than not after a vigorous morning workout. Then, after the duty day was over, he would work on his Harley. It was the only thing that he truly enjoyed beyond the military. Unfortunately, he couldn’t look at the bike now without thinking about Everly’s luscious form pressed against it in the velvety shadows of the night. Fuck, he deserved as much. With time, the memory would be a good one, but right now it bordered on painful, and filled him with an aching need to be inside her again.

  So his days went…exercise, range, Harley, and sleeping alone, aching for a woman that he couldn’t have. Though the endless training seemed pointless, as his tactical skills were finely honed, he knew that if he let himself, he might begin to get rusty. That couldn’t be allowed. He needed to be sharp. He needed to be prepared when his chain of command was ready for him to deploy again.

  That might happen sooner, he admitted to himself contritely, if he scheduled another appointment with Everly. There was no way he would be cleared without her go-ahead, but their last encounter had left him…unsettled. He’d wanted nothing more than to bring her to orgasm, but once he had, Connor hadn’t been able to seek pleasure for himself. He’d gazed down at her, and while he’d wanted her more than he had anything in his entire life, he hadn’t been able to take her. Not when doing so would risk her getting caught and, more likely than not, fired. He’d held her for a fleeting moment while he’d cursed himself for being the worst kind of asshole to come so close to endangering her career.

  If caught, he might have gotten in a bit of trouble for what they’d done—probably not—but she could have lost her job if someone had walked in on them. And while he’d wanted her, he’d also been acutely aware that he was using her desire for him as a weapon, a way to keep her from seeing him vulnerable. He wasn’t the kind to commit, but he had never been this…calculating, either.

  He would schedule the appointment, and this time he wouldn’t touch her, he promised himself. He sure as fuck wasn’t going to go crying to her about his feelings either. He’d go and get cleared for duty, nothing more and nothing less.

  The following afternoon, Connor was just about to gas up his bike and was taking his helmet off when he spotted Jonathan’s widow, Marsha, across the parking lot. She was trying to put air in the tires of her old suburban with a baby on her hip. Her second youngest had unbuckled and was trying to climb out of the car while her oldest, who was only around five years old, cried her heart out in the back seat. Marsha looked nothing like the young, confident woman he’d known. No, this Martha was haggard and worn, with hard lines about her mouth and eyes that spoke of hard living or grief rather than age. In her case, Connor knew, it was grief.

  Remorse swamped him. Guilt at not bringing his best friend home to his family, at not helping with the children whose father he’d failed to bring home. Connor had promised Marsha at the funeral that he would be by to help out, but every time he had thought of making good on his promise, pain and remorse had choked him. He’d tried to rationalize it with himself, told himself that it would just hurt Marsha to see someone who reminded her of what she’d lost, but he hadn’t believed his own lies.

  He could go over there, talk to her. It would be easy to grab the baby for a moment while she filled the tires with air, or to go sooth her daughter’s tears. He didn’t though. With guilt churning in his gut and the ashy taste of regret on his tongue, Connor refastened his helmet and rode home. He sat alone in the dark that night. He’d given up on a shot glass after a while and was drinking his whiskey straight from the bottle.

  The bitter, burning liquid did nothing to numb his pain. Perhaps, Connor thought, that was because numbness was a relief that he was unworthy of. That didn’t mean he couldn’t try for oblivion though. He swallowed from the bottle again and again until finally he passed out in a hazy, anguish-filled stupor. Even then, Jonathan haunted his dreams, but not the friend he’d known. Dead, lifeless eyes stared at him accusingly as Jonathan asked him with bloodied lips again and again why he’d made Marsha a widow. Nothing would allow Connor to run from his demons, for now, they took the form of nightmares ghosting through his head until the blessed light of dawn could pull him back into the waking nightmare and the guilt that was slowly eating him from the inside out.

  Chapter Six

  Everly found herself going through Connor’s case file again on her lunch break, even though she knew it would be better to use the time to unwind, or to review the files of one of the patients coming for an appointment that afternoon.

  She didn’t know why she bothered pulling the thing, really. She practically had it memorized word for word. Connor Mitchell was a highly decorated Seal with an impeccable record. He’d been on numerous black ops that were outlined. All of them were violent, bloody affairs, but usually the bleeding was done by the enemy. That certainly hadn’t been the case with Connor’s last mission.

  Connor’s sniper team had been in position to take out a lower profile target, a terrorist who was killed as a matter of opportunity rather than for his political or tactical significance. Connor had cautioned them that going that far into the heart of the terrorist compound would be no easy thing, but his chain of command had insisted. After a successful kill, his team had been ambushed.

  They’d fought and held their position on the rooftop they’d been holed up on, but by the time his team had been extracted, only two men were still alive. That in itself wouldn’t have been surprising, considering the odds against them. It was the rest of the story that seemed strange. The reasoning behind the mission didn’t make sense, first of all. Why travel into the heart of enemy territory for a seemingly worthless target? That could be a result of doctored files though, changed to hide sensitive information. The damning evidence was the .556 caliber round that had been found in Jonathan’s skull. It was a different sized round than the AK-47’s their enemies typically preferred.

  That, too, might be written off. Whil
e every effort was made to keep US weapons from falling into enemy hands, it was, from time to time, an unfortunate reality. It was the words of a dead man, though, that had led his commanding officers to question Connor’s stability. Before dying in transit, his team member’s last words had been, “Mitchell took him down.” While most had written off the statement, assuming that he’d been referring to their target, the origin of the round that had ended Jonathan left a nagging question in the minds of some. Had Connor truly been overrun, or had he betrayed them, at the cost of his best friend’s life?

  Because there was no one left to ask what had really happened that day, no formal charges had been filed. Rather than accusing him of anything, the chain of command had decided to honor his previously spotless record by first finding out whether or not he was mentally stable. Everly’s job should be an easy one, but Connor was being so damned uncooperative…and the evidence was pretty damning. Even as Everly mentally shied away from the idea that she might have made love to a killer in a darkened parking lot, she couldn’t help but wonder. Was it possible that Connor might be insane?

  Chapter Seven

  Connor had kept his promise to himself and scheduled another appointment with Everly. He’d seen her a few times now, but every time he had managed to keep conversation away from what had happened on his last tour—away from that and anything else that might make him look vulnerable.

  So it was that he found himself in the waiting room once again, mentally shoring up his defenses before he began another session of ‘the healing’, as he’d come to refer to it in conversation with his supervisors. As long as she didn’t see him upset, he reasoned, she would quickly realize that he was fine. He would answer her questions this time, he promised himself. It was obvious the stubborn beauty wasn’t going to clear him if he didn’t.