Defiance (The Protectors, Book 9)

by Sloane Kennedy

  I swallowed hard. Vincent had let the man into his house armed.

  Even after all the crap that had gone down yesterday when Nash had refused to put his weapons in the trunk.

  “Where is he?” I asked again, hating the twinge of worry that seeped into my voice.

  “I don’t know,” Everett said with a sigh, and then he was turning off the stove and reaching for the coffee pot. “He just said he had some place to be and that if he wasn’t back tonight, to take you back to my house with me. It isn’t like this place,” Everett said as he waved his hand in the air. “But Nash can call in some more agents if needed.”

  The fucking bastard had left me.

  And I knew exactly why.

  All that shit he’d spouted about me being an equal participant…

  Anger went through me and I was half-tempted to chuck the mug Everett slid in my direction against the wall. Right after the fury came the stark fear. What if the guy who’d tried to kill me got the drop on Vincent somehow?

  “Call him,” I said.

  “He won’t answer,” Everett said as he filled his mug with coffee. “I already tried.”

  I didn’t know what that meant, nor did I care. But I could tell Everett wasn’t exactly thrilled with the circumstances.

  “Bastard,” I muttered. “Not you,” I said as I glanced up at Everett.

  Everett smiled and then went to fill my mug. “That he is.”

  I put my hand over the top of the mug before he could pour and Everett immediately pulled back. “You said he won’t answer, right?” I asked.

  Everett shook his head. “When he’s working…”

  I nodded in understanding. I glanced at the watch on my wrist and then quickly took it off. “You might want to go home, Mr. President,” I said as I put the watch on the counter and then reached for the mug.

  “I’m pretty sure I don’t,” he said with a smile, and then he leaned back and put the coffee pot down. He grabbed his own mug and took a sip as I proceeded to use my mug to pound the watch into oblivion. Once both it and the mug were destroyed, I went around the island and got a new mug. “Looks good,” I said as I looked at the food Everett had been cooking.

  Everett chuckled and said, “I think you’ll do fine, Nathan Wilder. I think you’ll do just fine.”

  “Ignore it,” Everett said for the third time to Nash as his phone began ringing. The man had declined to join us for breakfast, though I’d been the one to extend the invitation, not Everett. I had the clear feeling that Everett and his Secret Service agent were at odds, but for whatever reason, Everett hadn’t fired the man after yesterday’s fiasco.

  Nash’s phone went silent and Everett’s began to vibrate again. He’d turned it to silent after the first three times Vincent had called, and he’d resorted to turning it over on the table so he wouldn’t have to read the texts that kept pinging on the phone. After smashing the watch, I’d used a chair to reach the singular security camera in the kitchen and had tossed a dishtowel over the thing. I figured if we didn’t move around, whatever motion detectors Vincent had in the house wouldn’t alert him to our presence. I knew I was courting trouble, but I didn’t give a shit. Vincent might have a lot to say to me when he got back, but he was going to get an earful, too.

  “Did you ever meet my father?” I asked Everett as I pushed my plate away from me. Despite my certainty that I’d done the right thing, knowing I was going to be confronting a very angry Vincent soon had my appetite diminishing.

  “Once,” Everett said. “The White House was hosting this event honoring a young solider who’d been killed saving his unit from an ambush attack. Your father was invited because the young man had been from South Carolina.”

  I nodded. “Private First Class Geoffrey Waters,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Everett said sadly. “We were honoring him posthumously with the Medal of Honor.”

  I felt sick to my stomach because I knew very well what my father had done at that event. After the service had ended, he’d gone to the young man’s family to thank them for their sacrifice and then had proceeded to ask if their son, who’d been rumored to have been gay, had sought absolution before his death so he’d get to sit at his heavenly father’s side in the afterlife. While my father had left the event when he’d politely been asked to do so, he’d used the cameras of the reporters waiting outside to suggest that the young soldier would still be alive if he’d followed the path of God.

  It was the first time I’d questioned my father…and my faith. I just hadn’t had the guts to go against him, and when he’d gotten home that night crowing about his success, Brody and I had both sat on the couch, silent as church mice as we’d listened to our father call it a victory for good Christians. A few months later, Brody had come out to me, and I’d gone running to my father to tell him his own son had been possessed by the lure of the devil.

  “Can I ask you what made you do it, son?” Everett asked.

  I flinched because my first thought was that he was talking about what I’d done to Brody. But then he said, “What made you switch sides?”

  I had the stock answer on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t give voice to it.

  Because it just wasn’t true anymore, no matter how hard I’d worked to convince myself I’d done what I had for Brody and others like him.

  I met Everett’s eyes. “Because I’m gay.”

  It was the last thing he expected me to say. That much was clear.

  I’d expected the words to be harder to get out, but it was surprisingly easy, and the fact that Nash would have been able to hear the admission didn’t bother me in the least. Vincent had most definitely broken something inside of me, but in the best way. He’d broken something that had healed wrong after all those years of pretending I’d done the right thing by Brody when I’d betrayed him.

  Everett studied me for a moment and then held up his coffee cup. I lifted mine and clinked it gently against his. “Bet that felt good,” he said softly.

  I laughed and said, “You have no idea.”

  He watched me sadly for a moment and then said, “Yeah, Nathan, I do.”

  It took me a really long time to get what he was telling me. I shook my head in disbelief. He couldn’t be…

  “How?” was all I could ask, though I wasn’t even sure what I was really asking. “You…you were married! You have a son.”

  Everett smiled patiently and lowered his mug. “A son who won’t talk to me anymore,” he said quietly.

  “Everett, I’m sorry,” I began, but he waved me off.

  “I knew something was wrong when I married Eleanor, but I didn’t know what it was. I was in denial for a really long time. When Reese came along, I put everything that was wrong with the marriage behind me because I needed to make it work for my son. And we managed it for a lot of years – making it look like we were the perfect, happy couple.”

  “What changed?” I asked. I’d seen the president and his wife together hundreds of times in the years Everett had been in the White House, and I’d never seen even a hint that something was off between them.

  “I met someone who made me realize I’d been hiding who I really was. He…he was the worst possible person for me to fall in love with, and it came at one of the most inopportune times in my life, but none of that mattered. I knew as soon as I saw him that he was going to change everything for me. And for once, I didn’t care.”

  The sadness that overtook Everett made my heart hurt. I glanced over my shoulder to see if Nash was still listening, but was surprised to find he’d left the room at some point.

  “It’s okay, Everett,” I said as I reached my hand across the table and covered his. “We don’t have to talk about this.”

  But he continued like I hadn’t spoken. “He was in the army, so he wasn’t free to be with me, either. I still had a few years left in my second term…so we settled for stolen moments whenever we could. My marriage to Eleanor had been over for a while, but we’d agreed to keep pre
tending the marriage was real until my term was finished. We didn’t even tell Reese.”

  “Your son joined the military the year you became president, right?”

  Everett nodded.

  “Reese was how I met…”

  Everett’s voice dropped off briefly. “Reese got hurt in combat. His mother and I flew to Landstuhl to be with him. His commanding officer came to visit him one day…” Everett shook his head. “I couldn’t take my eyes off him…he was just so damn beautiful. And when he shook my hand…”

  I nodded in understanding. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

  “I think it surprised him, too,” Everett continued. “He’d always known he was gay, but he’d been careful not to be open about it. Not after his younger brother was discharged from the military when it came out that he was gay.”

  I stiffened at that and pulled my hand from Everett’s. “No,” I whispered.

  Everett’s gaze shifted to the window, but I knew he wasn’t really seeing anything outside of it. I could see Nash walking back and forth across the driveway, his sharp eyes on his surroundings.

  “Pierce?” I asked. “You…you were in love with Vincent’s brother?”

  “Love,” he whispered. “God, that word doesn’t seem like enough to describe what that man did for me…the things he made me feel.”

  I felt like I was going to be sick because I understood everything he was saying. Jesus, was that what was happening to me? Were the feelings I had for Vincent more than just the emotion that came with finding a piece of myself I’d been denying for so long?

  My thoughts drifted to the story Vincent had told me about his brother. I felt tears sting the backs of my eyes as I realized what it meant. Vincent had lost his brother, but Everett…he’d lost so much more.

  “Everett, I’m sorry,” I croaked.

  His sad eyes returned to me. “All those months I’d worried about losing him in combat,” he murmured. He dashed at his eyes. “He’d decided to leave the army so that once my second term was up, we could be together. I was going to come out once I’d left office. I waited too long.”

  Everett sucked in a breath and tore his eyes from the window. “Pierce and I got to be together a few times, but it was a lot of work to keep our secret. Eleanor suspected what was going on, but Reese had no idea until he walked in on me and Pierce one day in my private office in the residence. Eleanor had been out of town visiting her mother, and I’d dismissed my Secret Service detail so I could have some time with Pierce. Grady was the only agent who knew about us, and he worked really hard to keep my secret and to help me find a few moments here and there for me and Pierce to be together. We didn’t know Reese was stopping by.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “What didn’t?” Everett said softly. “He blamed Pierce, he blamed me…he didn’t care that I loved Pierce or that his mother and I had been over for a long time. He saw it as a betrayal and that was it. I’ve only seen him once since that night…at his mother’s funeral a few years ago. He left the military and I lost track of him for a while.”

  “Do you know where he is now?” I asked.

  Everett nodded. “He refused any kind of Secret Service protection. Which meant he pretty much had a target painted on his back. Lots of agencies and individuals that would love nothing more than to get their hands on the son of a former president. A man I met a couple of years after I lost Pierce reached out to me last year to tell me he had intel that Reese was in danger. I knew Reese wouldn’t accept my help, so I asked the man to do what he could for Reese, but to keep my name out of it.”

  “And did he?” I asked.

  Everett nodded. “Reese is working for him in Seattle. I get regular reports that he’s doing well…seems happy.”

  “That’s good,” I said encouragingly, just because Everett looked so damn broken. Before I could say anything else, I heard the rumble of an engine and the squealing of tires. My insides dropped out and my eyes met Everett’s over the table.

  “Let the games begin,” Everett said with a smile, and then he was standing. “I’ll…” he began as he looked at the dirty dishes. Raised voices came from outside…well, Nash’s raised voice. Probably throwing me under the bus.

  Which was what Everett did when he said, “I’ll just let you take care of this,” as he motioned to the table and then snatched his jacket off the back of his chair.

  I climbed to my feet as Everett hurried past me. He stopped long enough to settle his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be afraid to fight for what you want, son,” he said, and then he was gone. I couldn’t hear what he said a second after the front door slammed open, but the fact that Vincent didn’t respond probably wasn’t a good sign.

  At least not for me.

  A moment of regret went through me when I glanced at the broken watch on the kitchen island, but it didn’t last long because Vincent stepped into the room, his gun hanging loosely by his side, his face twisted into a mask of fury. And just like that the reason he’d left me in the first place came roaring back, along with the terrible fear that I could have lost him.

  Before he could even say a word, I was in his face. “Say the wrong thing to me right now, Vincent, and see what happens,” I warned. “If the next words out of your mouth don’t start with an apology-”

  That was as much as I got out before his lips came crashing down on mine.

  It wasn’t a kiss. No, it was way too brutal for that.

  It was him claiming me…punishing me, even. But that didn’t make me love it any less. Or not return the treatment.

  I was barely aware of him dropping his gun onto the island behind me, and then both his arms wrapped around me in a brutally tight hold. We each fought to control the kiss, but when Vincent won out, I gladly gave him my mouth. My back hit the island behind me and a second later, cool air greeted my skin as my sweats were pushed down.

  Vincent kneaded my ass as he maneuvered me backwards past the island. It wasn’t until I heard the sound of dishware breaking that I realized we’d reached the table and he’d cleared it with one sweep of his arm. The edge of the table bit into my ass as Vincent consumed my mouth. Neither of us had spoken a word, but we didn’t need to.

  I knew what he wanted…it was the same thing I wanted.

  No, needed.

  My cock throbbed as Vincent’s jeans brushed against it. I let out a harsh cry, and then I was frantically trying to get his pants undone. I’d barely gotten the zipper down when he spun me around and forced me face-first down over the table. I grabbed onto the edges of it as Vincent began humping my ass. At some point his pants were gone and his bare cock was pressing against me.

  Hungry.

  Seeking.

  Desperate.

  Vincent’s fingers clawed at my shirt as he pushed it up, and then his nails were raking gently down my back. He kept rocking against me, his dick working its way into my crease. I bucked back against him.

  “Vincent,” I called out, my voice rough and needy. When he suddenly pulled away from me, I cried out in protest and rose enough so I could look over my shoulder.

  But he hadn’t gone far.

  Only the few feet it had taken him to reach the counter next to the stove. He swiped a bottle of olive oil off the countertop and ripped at the top. The cap went sailing and he carelessly dumped some of the oil on his fingers. My eyes fell to his angry, flushed cock as he covered it in the slick substance. The bottle of olive oil hit the floor but didn’t shatter as he closed the distance between us.

  Vincent was back on me within seconds. His mouth covered mine as his fingers pressed between my ass cheeks and then he was pushing an oil-covered digit deep inside of me. I gasped at the burn as he stretched me and moments later, another finger was joining the first. My body began trembling so bad, I had no choice but to drop my chest back down to the table.

  “God, Vincent, fuck me…please!” I cried, not caring at the picture I must have made.

  His finger n
udged my gland and my whole body jerked. But the pleasurable sensation didn’t last because suddenly his fingers were gone and his cock was sliding into me. The pain was intense, but it wasn’t enough. I pushed back against him, trying to take him deeper.

  And luckily, he gave me exactly what I wanted.

  I let out a hoarse shout as he surged into me, bottoming out in one hard thrust. I reached behind me to grab his thigh.

  But not to stop him.

  No, just to hold onto him.

  Because it felt so damn good I was sure I’d float away into nothingness if I didn’t have him to ground me.

  He began fucking me hard. The table rattled beneath me and I desperately clung to it as his body pushed mine forward. His dick was hot and hard inside of me and his fingers were digging into my hips as he held me for his pummeling.

  After just a few strokes, Vincent draped himself over my back and his hands covered my wrists, pinning my arms to the table. “Mine,” he growled into my ear as he ruthlessly fucked me.

  I wanted to tell him yes, but I was too overcome by the pleasure that was scorching up my spine. The orgasm was coming hard and fast, and I both welcomed it and was terrified of it at the same time. I was completely powerless and at his mercy, but I’d never felt safer.

  He kept repeating the word “mine” over and over as he rammed into me. I might have managed to agree with him, but I wasn’t sure. I felt one hand sift through my hair as he tangled his fingers in my locks. He held me that way, one hand pinned to the table, the other holding my head at an angle so he could kiss me, and his entire weight holding me down against the unforgiving table as he ravaged my body in the best way. I managed to use my free hand to reach above me to hold onto his head. It was the only movement he granted me, but it was enough.