Wait: The Brazen Bulls Beginning

by Susan Fanetti

  ~oOo~

  In Oklahoma City, he caught a cab at the airport. It would be an expensive ride, but he didn’t care. This was the last leg of his long, exhausting journey home. When next he stood tall, he’d be truly home.

  ~oOo~

  It was dusk when the cab pulled up before the Quinns’ pretty ranch house. The windows glowed with cozy light, and Brian grinned at the turkeys and pilgrim hats silhouetted on the glass. It was just more than a week before Thanksgiving, and the house was decorated like it always was for every holiday, with paper cutouts in the windows, and, he was sure, festive cloths and centerpieces on the tables.

  Behind a large turkey shape, in the front kitchen window, Brian saw Mo. She was at the sink. Making dinner, no doubt.

  What would his first home-cooked meal in a year be? His stomach rumbled happily.

  “Sorry, soldier, but I got another fare callin’ in,” the cab driver, an older man with a steel grey crewcut that would have fit perfectly on the sunburnt scalp of the crustiest drill sergeant, said. “This is your stop, right?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Sorry.” He handed over enough bills to cover the—damn—fare and a nice tip.

  The cabbie grinned. “Thanks, son. And thank you for your service. I know you’re not hearin’ that like you should. The country’s going to hell in a handbasket over here.”

  Brian nodded his thanks. “Have a good night—and happy Thanksgiving.”

  “To you, too.” The driver tipped his scrub-brush head toward the house. “You’re about to make the holiday for some people, eh?”

  “I hope so. Good night.”

  Brian got out and stood on the sidewalk with his duffel over his shoulder as the cab pulled away.

  Mo was still at the sink. By the movements of her body, he knew what she was doing; he’d seen it many times. She was peeling potatoes, letting the skins fall into a colander standing in the sink.

  God. Tonight he’d sit at a table with his wife and her family and share a meal.

  His wife. They’d been married a year, a year … to the day.

  Jesus Christ, today was their anniversary.

  With the last minute change of his flight, and the crisscrossing of the country, and all the time zone chaos of the whole trip, he’d failed to connect that last dot. He was home. On their first anniversary, he’d made it home.

  Suddenly, what he needed more than anything else in the whole world was for her to feel him standing right here. He wanted her to know he was home. Right now.

  She looked up, out the window. Brian tried to meet eyes he couldn’t see.

  When she froze, he knew she saw him.

  When she spun and ran from the window, her glorious hair flying, he headed toward the door.

  It flew open before he’d gotten off the driveway, and she was running to him, her arms flung wide, her feet bare in the November chill. Brian dropped his duffel where he stood and caught her as she slammed into him.

  She said not a word, made not a sound. She simply coiled her body around him and held on so tightly he wouldn’t have been able to breathe if he’d been trying.

  But he’d stopped breathing when he’d seen her. What was breath when he had this?

  She loved him.

  She loved him.

  And goddamn, he loved her.

  ~oOo~

  They’d planned a family party for the following night, but since he’d surprised them, and he didn’t really want anything fancy anyway, they had an impromptu gathering with meat loaf and mashed potatoes instead. When Brian called Faye to say he was home, she and Lenny raced over with all three kids, without even bothering to check with Bridie and Dave first, and the Quinns’ house was swollen with people who loved Brian and the tears they all shed at the sight of him. Even Dave had gotten teary.

  It had been different when he’d come home in ’67. Still healing from the bullets that nearly killed him, he’d been weak and exhausted when he’d finally made Oklahoma. Faye and Lenny had left the boys with a neighbor to pick him up at the bus station, and they’d had a quietly tearful reunion. Once he’d gotten to their house, he’d slept for most of two days.

  This, on the other hand, was a celebration, and though he was exhausted, he was strong. And happy.

  And he was just different. In his first tours, besides nearly dying, he’d become disillusioned with the war. More than that, he’d been haunted. For years after, until he’d gone back and faced the beast inside him, he’d been haunted by what he’d seen, what he’d done, what he’d felt. The daily battles with no clear goal but themselves, the endless, pointless death, the constant, profound horror, had broken him, and walking away from it hadn’t healed him. He’d left part of himself in the jungle.

  This time, he’d gone back and found it. The war was still wrong, and the death still pointless, the horror still profound, but knowing that up front, he’d found his purpose in the men he stood with. He’d known before that he was good at leading, but this time, he’d believed it, and understood the power of it.

  And he had Mo. Being loved by a woman like her had changed him, too.

  Sitting on the Quinns’ flowered sofa with his wife on his lap, and their family all around them, Brian pulled her closer. He tucked his face against her neck and felt the beat of her pulse on his cheek. She smelled of roses.

  She’d waited for him. Now he felt like a man who deserved that.

  ~oOo~

  Mo closed her bedroom door. Turning to face the room, she leaned back against the beveled wood and considered him. On the other side of the door, the family was still moving around, cleaning up and talking. It wasn’t late; Faye, Lenny and the kids were still there, helping. The buzz of their activity, their obvious proximity, made Mo’s room feel especially small.

  “This is very strange,” Brian said, looking around at this youthful space. A bed built for one, covered in a bedspread festooned with bright, modish flowers. The silly orange bear he’d won for her at the state fair leaning against the pillows. The curtains in the same pattern as the bedspread, tied back in sweeps across the window. Her white desk, stacked with school books and notebooks. Her hi-fi, 45s, and albums on the table under the window. The posters of Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix thumbtacked to the pink walls.

  This was the room of an innocent girl, not of the wife of a man like him.

  He and Mo had been together now for two and a half years, but he could count on his hands the number of times he’d been in this room. Her guardians took that term literally.

  The thought of sleeping here … well, he wished one of them had thought this out a bit and booked a motel or something. Dave and Bridie were just down the hall. Maggie and Robby were even closer.

  But he was home, and Mo was right there, looking beautiful and smelling of roses, like that paper she’d written on, and she was his wife.

  “Brian,” she said and he faced her.

  God, look at her.

  “Happy anniversary, Irish.”

  She put her hands to the placket of her blouse and began undoing the buttons, one at a time. Brian’s throat clicked as he tried to swallow down a sudden boulder. He stood where he was, still dressed in his uniform, everything but the jacket and tie, and watched his wife remove her clothes.

  It wasn’t a striptease. She didn’t sway or gyrate. She simply held his gaze and very slowly, every move deliberate, opened her blouse, pulled it free of her slacks, eased it from her shoulders, slipped her arms free. When it was off, she held it in her hand, let it dangle like a banner, and then let it fall to the floor. She wore a lacy, sky blue bra he’d never seen.

  Next came her slacks. They were wide-legged and high-waisted, with a series of five visible buttons at the fly. With the same sensual care, she opened each button, and a matching pair of lacy, sky blue panties appeared. Jesus. Sliding her thumbs into her slacks, she eased them off her hips and stepped clear.

  Now she stood before him in nothing but lacy underwear and her perfect, perfect crea
my-pale skin. She was the sexiest fucking thing he’d seen in his life.

  He reached for the buttons of his uniform shirt, but she said, “No,” and came to him. “Let me.”

  Brian dropped his hands.

  But Mo didn’t go for his buttons at once. Instead, she lifted her arms and set her hands on his head. She combed her fingers through his short hair and down the back of his head, forward along the close-shorn sides, over his jaw. Brian closed his eyes as her fingertips danced lightly over his cheeks, met at his forehead, swept down his nose to his lips.

  So long, he’d dreamt of her touch, tried to keep all the memories crisp and ripe, used them to get through each long day and eternal night apart from her. Now, with her hands on him again at last, his heart skittered and his knees shook.

  “Mo …” he gasped against her fingertips.

  “I’ve dreamt this face every night,” she whispered, putting his thoughts into the air. “I can’t believe I can touch you again. I can’t believe you’re here.”

  “I’m here, Irish. I’m here.” He cupped her face. “I’m not leavin’ you again. I promise.”

  She smiled, and he kissed her.

  It wasn’t the first time his lips had touched hers since he’d come home, but it was the first when they were alone, the first that was the start of something they both desperately needed. Mo whimpered; the vibrations of the soft sound danced over his lips as she opened her mouth. So soft, and fuck, the taste of her.

  When he skimmed his hands down over her bare arms, feeling gooseflesh against his palms, and sought to fold her to him, she closed her mouth and tipped her head away. “No, not yet.”

  Taking a step back, putting inches between them, more distance than he could stand, she set her hands on his chest and began to work his buttons. She moved with the same slow, sensual purpose she’d used on her own clothes, but now Brian thought the waiting would kill him.

  He didn’t care anymore that her family carried on their usual evening just beyond the door. He had his hands on his wife, and he needed her in bed—any bed, even her childhood bed, narrow and innocent.

  “Mo, fuck.”

  She grinned and gave him a sly look. “We will, big lad, we will. I waited for you, now you wait for me.”

  At last, she finished his buttons, eased the shirt from his pants, pushed it from his shoulders, and cast it aside. While she was engaged in that momentary distraction, before she could stop him, he grabbed his undershirt and yanked it off.

  His dog tags jangled against his chest. Mo focused on them, her smile fading away. Brian snatched hold of the chain and yanked them off as well.

  The lack of them felt alien and disorienting. But when he dropped them away, letting them fall where they would on the floor among all the things that had been in their way tonight, he felt that lack as a lightening of a load, not as a phantom pain.

  Mo lifted her eyes to his. “Thank you.”

  Damn, in the past year, he’d lost the sense of how fucking blue her eyes were, like the the greater part of an iceberg, the part underwater—that deep-sea, icy blue of an ocean where only the intrepid could swim.

  That was his Irish—so much deeper than she let anyone see. So significant.

  “I don’t need ‘em anymore, sweetheart. I only need you.”

  “I only need you.” She leaned in and put her sweet lips to his chest.

  “I can’t wait anymore,” Brian groaned and clutched her hips. “You’re standin’ here in nothing but this pretty lace, and I’ve been thinking of being inside you for a damn year. Let’s get in bed.”

  “I want to use a condom,” she said. The last word fluttered oddly, with the force of a memory crashing into it. “I don’t … I’m not ready to—”

  “Hey, it’s okay. I’m home now. We can wait as long as we want. We can try again whenever we want. It’s up to us.” He remembered a potential crisis-level problem. “But I don’t have any.”

  Her smile came back in full. “I do. I bought some so we’d be ready.” Stepping from his hold, she went to her desk, opened a drawer—he saw it was stuffed with Air Mail envelopes addressed by his own hand—and reached in deep, to the back. She pulled out a new box of rubbers.

  “Good thinking,” he chuckled as she opened the box and pulled out a packet. “You might want to bring the whole box over. I don’t think one is gonna do it tonight.”

  With the sweetest giggle he’d ever heard, she set the rubbers on the nightstand and switched on the small lamp there, then folded down her bedding. As she went back to the door to turn the lock and switch off the overhead light, Brian opened his belt and dispensed with the rest of his clothes, including his boxers. Now he stood naked, his cock at full attention, while his wife strolled seductively to him.

  As he reached for her, she ducked from his grasp and dropped to her knees before him. She wrapped her hands around him and looked up, her eyes full of love, and a smile full of feral hunger sliding greedily up her cheek. Then she took him into her mouth.

  “Aw, fuck, Irish. Aw, holy fuck.”

  With her hands and mouth around him, he was fully encompassed—after dreaming of her nightly for a year, nothing but his hand to ease the need. As she squeezed and sucked and licked, Brian knew he was going to go off like a damn bottle rocket on the 4th of July, and quick.

  He put his hands on her head, twisted his fingers in her lush hair, and tried to hold on for the ride, but he couldn’t keep still, was flexing against her rhythm, harder and harder no matter how he tried to restrain his need, and already the climax was cramping through his gut. It thundered through him, ripped him apart, slammed him back together.

  “Mo!” he shouted and went off.

  She stayed on him, swallowed down what he gave her, eased her hold and her suck slowly, until the spasms of that long-awaited release settled.

  Then, with a shattering little kiss to his tip, she unfolded gracefully and stood before him. “You like?”

  He laughed. “I love. You’ve never swallowed before.”

  “Well, it’s a special occasion. But it wasn’t bad, so, play your cards right, and that might happen more. Perhaps not here where Uncle Dave can hear you—you shout like that again, and you’re like to give the man a heart attack.”

  “I will play my cards any way and anywhere you deal them, sweetheart. But I’ll try to be quieter about it when I win.” He caught the waistband of her panties and tugged them down. Ah hell, look at that beautiful dark triangle of heaven, right there. “And I see what you did—now I can be patient and lavish all my attention on you for a while.”

  She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “I’ve no notion what you mean.”

  With one hand, he unhooked her bra. As he pulled it from her shoulders, he growled, “Get in bed, and I’ll show you.”

  Mo slipped her gorgeous body between the sheets, and Brian followed after her, settling himself at once above her. He meant to take his time, to taste her everywhere, and have her singing arias that would render her uncle a vegetable.

  She wrapped her arms around him as he came down to claim her mouth, and her hands skimmed over his back. Brushing the scar he’d forgotten about, she flinched and pushed herself deeper into the pillow, away from his seeking mouth. “What’s this?”

  “Nothing.” He dipped down again, but wasn’t the least bit surprised when she held him off. There’d been no chance she’d let it go.

  Hardly. Instead, she pushed again, made him roll to the side in her skinny bed, and sat up. “Let me see.” She yanked on his shoulder and peered around it.

  “It’s nothing, Mo. I promise.”

  “Your promises are cheap indeed, love. Look at this. You were shot again, were you not?”

  “Not really.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “It was a flesh wound. A bullet bounced off a guy’s helmet and skidded over my back. He got a headache, I took a few stitches, and we were both back on duty the next morning. Nothing.”

 
; Mo sat back against the tufted velvet headboard of her little-girl’s bed and let her narrowed eyes slice blue beams at him. “You were shot. A bullet went into your body.”

  “I was at war, Maureen. We weren’t throwing tiddlywinks at each other.” He tapped the scar on his chest. “This was something. This almost killed me. The cut on my back was nothing. I hardly noticed it. Getting it stitched up hurt worse. It was nothing. Period.”

  “But you didn’t say. You never told me anything of what it was like there.”

  If she had brought this up at another time, maybe any other time, Brian might very well have rejoined with a reminder that, while she had that deep drawer stuffed with his letters, a year’s worth of her letters to him fit in one manila envelope. If they were going to have a talk about communication.

  But this was his homecoming, and their first anniversary. So instead, he picked up her hand and put it over his heart. “It’s war, Mo. I didn’t want to send it home to poison what we have here. There’s nothing, there’s nobody, there that matters here. I wrote to stay close to you, not to fill those envelopes with ugliness. If I’d been hurt bad, you would’ve known. Okay?”

  She searched his eyes and finally nodded.

  He tugged on her hand. “Now, can we get back to the reunion party?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Mo let Brian pull her back down to lie on the bed, under his looming, hot body, but that scar on his back had her shaken. He’d been shot, and she hadn’t known.

  When she’d lost the baby, the distance between them had seemed too wide to cross; she’d felt utterly alone, abandoned. Angry and lost and afraid. But she’d abandoned him, too. He was the one who’d left, yes, and the circumstances of that leaving would always be something needful of forgiveness. He had left her, of his own choice. That he’d left her for a war, that war, compounded the betrayal.