Wait: The Brazen Bulls Beginning

by Susan Fanetti

  His words stopped dead in his mouth. His legs stopped dead in the airport.

  A sea of servicemen surged around him, crashing together with their loved ones, or heading down the concourse toward other destinations, but all the motion, all the noise, meant nothing.

  She was right there.

  Standing all alone, dressed in a pretty flowered dress and a navy wool coat, her long, thick, lush dark hair loose, the way he liked it best, Mo stood right there. Her shoulders straight, her hands at her sides, she stood perfectly still. Her eyes were on him.

  God, she was perfect. Everything about her was perfect.

  He took a step.

  She took a step.

  They froze again. He couldn’t get his legs moving right. Need had paralyzed him.

  And then she ran right at him.

  He caught her.

  They didn’t kiss. She clamped her body around his, tucked her head in the crook of his shoulder and held on.

  “You’re home, you’re home, you’re home,” she chanted desperately against his neck.

  “I’m home, sweetheart. And I’m not leavin’. Never again.”

  Through the strawberry-scented veil of her wonderful hair, Brian saw Dane with his father. As the pair headed toward the concourse, Dane turned and looked Brian’s way. He waved.

  Brian spared a second’s contact with Mo to lift his hand and return the wave. Then he forgot about Dane Nielsen. He had everything he cared about in his arms.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Mo had meant to surprise Brian at the airport and then give him the keys to her Bel Air and let him drive straight home, but she saw the flaw in that plan before they made it to the car.

  When he’d come home from war before, they’d waited hours before they’d gotten each other’s clothes off. But that time, he’d surprised them and shown up at the house, which had immediately filled with all their family.

  This time, it was just Mo and Brian, more than a hundred miles from anyone else they knew. Brian couldn’t keep his hands off her.

  He pulled her into every nook or cranny they came upon between his plane’s gate, the baggage claim, and the airport entrance. By the time they stepped into a brisk Oklahoma afternoon in late February, Mo’s underwear was askew, and his uniform was not at regulation sharpness.

  In the car, he yanked her right up against him and held her close, kissing her again and again, without much concern for the fact that he was driving seventy miles an hour on the highway.

  With his tongue down her throat yet again, he drifted onto the rough shoulder, and Mo pushed him off. “You need to pay attention, love.”

  “I need to get you naked, is what I need. Will we disappoint people if we don’t get straight home?”

  “I need to call, but there’s no party planned, if that’s what you mean. We don’t have to rush home. No one’s been in a social mood of late.”

  He gave her a somber look. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

  Mo didn’t want to think about Uncle Dave just now, or any of the troubles that had arisen now that he was gone. She had her man home, and the war really was over for them, and for most of the troops. They were coming home. She’d come to Tulsa to surprise Brian, and to have their reunion in a happy space, free of their losses and sorrows.

  “Let’s not speak of it today. I just want you. I only want to think of you.”

  “You’re all I want.”

  He pulled off at the first motel they saw: The Osage Motor Inn. A banner across the office door announced its Grand Opening, and the place looked brand new—its paint bright and shiny and its sign twinkling in invitation. Brian ran in and booked them a room for the night.

  Key in hand, he drove down toward the end of the building and parked in front of Room 105. He ran around the car to get her door, and then shoved her against the fender to kiss her again.

  Before he bothered with the key, Brian pushed her against the closed door and put his hands on either side of her head. It was late afternoon, and the sun slanted in ruby-gold streaks between them. At this rate, they wouldn’t get into the room before dark.

  “I thought you wanted to get me naked,” she teased.

  “I just want to look at you in the Oklahoma sun before we go in. Goddamn, you’re beautiful, Irish. I think I’ve got you memorized, I call up the sight of you every day I’m away. And the smell and taste and sound and touch—every fucking sense of you—I think I remember it all. I relive you, and it keeps me goin’. But then I’m with you again and you’re ten times what I remembered. Goddamn.”

  Mo smiled and cupped her hands over his cheeks. Oh, how she loved the look of him. Clean-shaven or bearded, hair long or clipped, grinning or even glowering, he was beautiful to her. Every part of him showed his love for her, his need for her. Love carved furrows in his brow. It sparkled his eyes. It heaved his breath.

  “You’re my perfect man.”

  “Not perfect. Not by a long shot.”

  “Perfect for me. Now stay. Stay with me.”

  “I will. I promise. You’re gonna get sick of havin’ me underfoot.”

  “Good. But right now, I want to be under you.”

  With a grin, still leaning on the door, against her, he put the key in the lock. He pulled her to him as he opened the door. “Milady.”

  Holding his hand, Mo went into the room. It still smelled of fresh paint and new carpet. The décor wasn’t too bad for a motel—they’d chosen a trendy Spanish theme, with dark, ornately trimmed furniture, gold flecked wallpaper, a mottled sculptured carpet in the burnt-sienna color that was showing up everywhere lately, and lights on swagged chains, with red and gold bubble-glass globes around clear flame-shaped bulbs. The bedspread and drapes were of a matched busy pattern in gold, brown, and red.

  “I didn’t expect a roadside motel to be this nice,” she said as she set her handbag on the dresser top.

  “You like this?” Brian put his duffel in the armchair.

  “Well, it’s not my taste, but I can appreciate they took some time with it.”

  He glanced around the room and made a face. “I guess. Gaudy to me. But right now, all I care about is clean sheets and a lock on the door.”

  With a laugh, Mo turned down the bedspread. “Clean sheets. Lock the door.”

  “There’s a drugstore about a half mile back. Should I run and get some rubbers, or do you want to go without? You ready to try again?”

  Mo kicked off her shoes. “I got on the Pill.”

  “What?” Brian had gone back to the door. Now he dropped his hand from the knob and frowned at her—with curiosity, not censure.

  “When you wrote and said you’d got your orders to come home, I went to the doctor and got on the Pill. I don’t … “ Her voice surprised her and broke as she neared that tumultuous territory. She stopped, took a breath, pulled herself together, and tried again. “I can’t reckon with any more losses, Brian. Not right now. I don’t want to use condoms, but I don’t want to be pregnant again yet. If it happened a third time …”Again, the grief she’d tried to push aside broke her voice. “I just can’t. I’m not ready to risk it.”

  He was at her side suddenly, and curled his arm around her. His other hand held her face in a tender, sandpaper caress. “Hey, okay. I follow your lead on this. What you want.” He smiled sweetly. “I’m glad I don’t need to run to the store.”

  His gentle humor eased her again, and she chuckled. “I’d like to stop talking now. I want to forget about everything but us.”

  “What else is there?” With that, he leaned in and kissed her.

  From the moment she’d run to him as he’d come off the jetway, Brian had been at her—kissing, touching, holding, almost nonstop. Several times, he’d virtually ravished her against airport walls. But this kiss was different. Now they were alone, and safe, and had an uninterrupted evening, night, and morning rolling out smoothly before them. Now, for the first time in nearly a year, they were together.

  This kiss was their tru
e reunion.

  That understanding rose up and filled Mo’s sinews, and she moaned. Brian reacted to the sound as if it had weight, flinching at the impact, and the moment of clarity and relief, the realization of their togetherness, broke into a frenzy of need. They tore at each other’s clothes and at their own, casting aside whatever they worked free, tearing their mouths from each other only long enough to pull a garment out of the way before crashing together again.

  Mo had worn a pretty underwear set—matching pink lace brassiere, panties, garter belt and slip—but she was down to only her panties, belt, and stockings before Brian registered what his hands were on.

  Finally, he noticed, and so did she. He slowed, panting, and looked down. His hands were on her hips. “What’re you—damn, Irish. For me?”

  “Who else?”

  His fingers eased over the lace, across her belly. “It’s beautiful. But I feel like I missed something.”

  “You did. The bra and slip matched. But it’s all just the wrapping paper. Not the gift.”

  His eyes lifted to her bare breasts, and his hands followed and covered them both. “You got that right.”

  At the sharp shock of pleasure his touch sparked through her, Mo gasped and let her head fall back. Something had caught her eye, though, in this moment of comparative quiet. She lifted her head and looked at his bare chest. His dog tags were gone; he must have pulled them off with his undershirt and cast them away with the same nonchalance. Good.

  “What’s this?” Talking while his thumbs excited her nipples took an effort of will, but what she’d seen served as sufficient distraction to get it done. She put her hands on his chest, just above his heart. “What did you do?”

  He dropped his hands from her chest and looked down to study her hand on his. “I just wanted to carry you with me wherever I went.”

  He’d gotten a tattoo, all in black and grey. A Celtic knot, with her name in stylized Celtic letters through the center. Arcing over the top of the knot were the words, in the same font, mo chuisle.

  She brushed those letters. “Do you remember what it means?”

  “Mo chuisle,” he said, pronouncing the words well. “My pulse. Right on my heart.”

  “A chuisle mo chroí,” she whispered. “Pulse of my heart.”

  “That’s you, alright.”

  She set her hand flat over that tattoo and felt his heart beating beneath it. Then, with his warm, strong body there for her touch, she skimmed both hands over his chest, down to his belly and back up, around his shoulders, down his arms. She lingered over his other tattoo, from halfway down his upper arm, over his elbow joint and onto his forearm, of a parachuting man, also in black and grey. That, he’d had as long as she’d known him, but there was more on it now. He’d added writing to the parachute: the alphanumeric designation of his brigade, regiment, and battalion.

  “Had more free time on this tour, and I was in Saigon without much to do,” he explained with a smile in his voice. “You’re lucky there’s not more. I know a guy who got his whole back done with some kind of dragon. Full color. Craziest thing you ever saw. Took him three day-long sittings to get it all done.”

  “I like these.” She did. He’d written the most important things in his life onto his skin, and she had the place of his heart. It made sense to her—his love on his heart, and his fight on his arm. Meeting his eyes again, she grinned. “You’re so sexy.”

  He laughed. “I’m glad you think so. I know you’re sexy, sweetheart, and I’m about to wear a blister on my dick, it’s pushing at my pants so hard, so can we get in bed?”

  “Have you any other marks I don’t know about? Any new scars you failed to warn me about?”

  “No, ma’am. Nobody took a shot at me this whole tour.” He lifted his hand and gave her a wry smile. “I got this callus, though, on my finger, from pushing pencils. Should I have mentioned?”

  “Oh, you poor lad. I’ll kiss it and make it better.”

  She took his hand and made a show of studying his fingers. They’d always been callused, and she didn’t see anything new. But she kissed each fingertip anyway. When he sucked in a breath and let it out with a shaky little sigh, she smiled and sucked his index finger into her mouth. She swirled her tongue around it, and he grunted earthily.

  “Fuck, Irish. That’s enough.” He pulled his hand from her hold, clamped his arms around her, slammed his mouth over hers, and walked her backward until they hit the bed. Then he lifted her from the floor and took her down beneath him.

  His weight hit her almost fully, and she gasped—but it was exactly what she wanted. The full weight of him, all of his body, on hers, pressing down on her, holding her close, holding her together.

  “Sorry,” he grunted and began to lift his weight from her.

  “No!” she cried and held on.

  He’d been ripped from her while she was still reeling from the loss of her baby, the baby she’d held, had seen, had lost. She’d been already so racked with grief, already so shaky in her journey back from that pain, that the crisis of losing him to war yet again hadn’t fully hit her until he was already across the ocean.

  And then Uncle Dave, her second father, had slipped from her in the night. And everything she’d known about the life she’d lived in Oklahoma had begun to shake at its foundations.

  Feeling Brian now, so heavy, so real, so right here with her, was precisely what she needed. She needed his ferocious kiss, his rough hands, his powerful arms and legs, the harsh gasp and growl of his breath. She needed the way his hands grasped at what was left of her clothes, pawing at her panties, yanking them with such force her hips rocked, yanking until his fingers tore through the lace, until the seams gave and he yanked the ruined scraps away.

  He was still in his uniform trousers, his belt was still done, and he rose up from her and began to paw at his own clothes, but Mo needed his body on hers, and she fought with him, trying to pull him back down, forcing him to hurry until all he did was open his pants, and then he fell on top of her again, pushing her legs open, grabbing hold of himself and shoving into her.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he muttered as he sank deep and settled on her. He buried his head at her shoulder. “Fuck. Oh fuck, Irish.”

  They lay like that, joined at last, fused together, and didn’t move. Mo’s arms and legs held him like a vise. His heaving, hot, heavy body covered her. His powerful cock filled her. His desperate breath scalded her.

  It was absolutely perfect.

  “I don’t ever want to move. Not ever,” she murmured.

  He chuckled lightly. “Sweetheart, I know what you mean, but in a minute, not moving is gonna kill me. Damn, I missed you.”

  His shoulders shifted, pushing against her hold. She tried to keep him close, but he lifted off and bolstered himself on his elbows.

  Now she could see his eyes. Keen and blue, so intense. His resting expression teetered at the edge of anger, and he was often angry. Brian saw the world through a shadowy lens of cynicism and suspicion. But he looked on the people he loved with openness and warmth. And when he looked at her—oh God, when he looked at her, she felt like the only thing in the whole world there was to see.

  Looking at her like that, his beautiful, fierce eyes locked with hers, he flexed his hips. She gasped at the brilliant sparks of burgeoning ecstasy in the slide of their joined bodies, and he let out a deep groan in answer.

  “God Irish, I love you.” He flexed again, and their moans made a chorus.

  “Stay,” she said. It was the only word she could think. “Stay, stay, stay.”

  “I will.” He flexed again, and his head dropped. “Jesus, you feel … I don’t know how”—another flex—“ah, Mo, I need—”

  His whole body shook as he tried to hold himself together for her, and that, more than the torrent of fire each flex shot through her, more even than the answered-prayer perfection of his body on hers, had her trembling at her own peak.

  But she knew how deep his need was, how diffic
ult this restraint was. She could wait. She could always wait for him.

  “Don’t try to wait for me,” she whispered with her mouth in his hair. “Let go, love.”

  He did. He freed his hips to chase what was so close, he pounded into her wildly a few times, driving her pleasure even higher, and then he came, groaning as if he were breaking in two, his tendons rising like bands of steel through his rigid, reddening body.

  As soon as his finish released him, as Mo was trying to breathe through the climax she’d not quite reached, he pulled quickly out of her and pushed his body down hers, with such frantic force the mattress rocked. He hooked her legs over his shoulders and dived in between her legs, covering her mound with his mouth, sucking her clit, licking through her folds. She was wet with her need and his finish, her climax still quivered at its breaking point, and Mo cried out at the fire of his mouth on her just now. He was feeding on her, moaning as if he’d never had a better meal.

  His hands slid from her hips, over her belly, higher, and found her breasts. His fingers closed on her nipples, gently at first, and then with increasing pressure, and Mo finally tipped over.

  She came so hard she lost her mind. She flailed on the bed, crying out pleas, for what, she could not say—rougher, softer, more, less, everything. Brian stayed on her, following her tempest, until Mo could only curl up, grab him, and hold on.

  He eased off then and crept back up her body, unwinding her coil with his embrace. He kissed her, and she could taste them both on his mouth. “I love you,” he gasped against her lips. “For all my life.”

  The door shook as someone outside pounded angrily on it. “HEY! QUIET IN THERE! WE’RE NOT THAT KIND OF PLACE!”

  They both burst into laughter. “Sorry, mister!” Brian yelled through his chuckles.

  “I’m not! He’s a bloody marvelous lay!” Mo yelled, and they collapsed into hilarity.

  The motel manager—apparently—hit the door once more and then left them alone.

  ~oOo~

  Mo couldn’t sleep.

  After that first magnificent go at each other, she’d called home to let the family know they were staying the night. They’d spent a lovely evening in bed, cuddling and making love, and then they’d showered together—making love again—and gone to a little diner called Hal’s for a bite to eat. On the way back, they’d run into the Rexall—not for condoms, but for a few things for Mo. She hadn’t expected to spend the night away from home, so she needed a toothbrush.