by Cindy Dees
A new, more mature dusting of blond chest hairs matched his headful of still unruly golden curls. And his eyes were still that light gray-green that made Gunner think of early spring and more innocent times.
Gulp.
“Lose your shirt somewhere?” he asked past his parchment-dry mouth. He swallowed convulsively.
“Washed it out. Letting it dry.”
“What about the munchkin? Are you sure we shouldn’t wash her off?”
“Let her be. She’s had a hell of a night.”
“I know the feeling,” Gunner muttered.
Chas’s eyes went nearly black, his pupils were dilated so hard. The guy was as aware of him as he was aware of Chas. Every hair on Gunner’s body stood up, as if an electric charge raced through him in fruitless search for an outlet to ground itself.
“She asleep yet?” Chas asked quietly, moving over to the bed to check the kid.
“Out cold. She crashed the second you gave her that washcloth to suck.”
Gunner eyed the one remaining bed. It was queen-sized but suddenly seemed far too small for both of them to share. “I’ll sleep on the floor,” he volunteered gruffly.
“Dude. You look hurt. You take the bed. I’ll take the floor,” Chas argued.
“Share?” Gunner offered. Chagrin roared through him the second the word slipped out of his mouth. He didn’t want to share. Not with Chas. Not like this.
“Uhh, sure?”
Don’t be an ass. Don’t make a big deal out of this. It wasn’t like they hadn’t shared a bed a thousand times as kids. They used to have sleepovers at one of their houses almost every weekend. Chas sounded as freaked-out by doing it now, though, as Gunner felt.
Why this guy? Why did the one and only boy he’d ever been attracted to have to come back into his life like this, bringing all that emotional baggage with him? Gunner felt about seventeen again. That had been how old he’d been the first time Chas showed him he might be into guys.
His mom wouldn’t let him go upstairs to his bedroom with a girl, but she had no problem letting him go up there alone with Chas. To study, of course. She’d had no idea what kind of education he’d gotten—
“You okay?” Chas was asking.
“Yeah. Fine.”
“You checked out on me, there, for a sec.”
“I was thinking.”
“About what?”
“Were you always this nosy? Oh wait. I remember. Yes, you were.”
Chas grinned, and for an instant, he was that cheeky teen who’d seduced Gunner and shown him a side of himself he’d had no idea existed. “Any word from your contacts about who she is?” Chas jerked his head in the child’s direction.
“Not yet. They’re working on it.”
“So, we… what? Cool our jets here until they get back to us?”
Gunner considered the options. “Let’s catch some sleep now, before anyone’s chasing us. Spec Ops 101: sleep whenever you can. You never know when you’ll get another chance.”
“Ugh. I love me my sleep,” Chas declared. “I would make the world’s worst special operator.”
Gunner’s lips twitched. That was no lie. For more reasons than he could count.
Chas grinned. “I need my eight hours or I’m a total bastard when I wake up.”
Gunner shook his head. “Longest I ever went without sleep was six days.”
“Six—” Chas started to squawk. He lowered his voice quickly with a glance at the baby, who stirred slightly. “Six days?” he murmured. “How did you manage that?”
“Stim pills. Fuckers are straight amphetamines. Jack you up like nobody’s business. The most you’re supposed to use them is five days. But we were in a world of hurt and ran on ’em for six.”
“Then what happened?” Chas asked quickly.
Oh. Right. Sometimes he forgot that outsiders saw his world as glamorous, exciting—romantic, even. “Then we made it to our egress point. A helicopter was waiting for us, and every last one of us spent the next week in a hospital sleeping it off and recovering.”
“Yikes. Intense.”
He shrugged. “All in a day’s work.” Cripes. Chas was looking at him as if he was some kind of superhero. He didn’t care when women in bars looked at him like that. They were just looking for bragging rights at having slept with a SEAL. But Chas—he was different. They had a history together.
Which didn’t make being alone in a motel room with the guy any easier. His sweatshirt started to feel uncomfortably hot and tight around his neck, in fact.
Dammit, if Chas could go topless, so could he. Gunner stripped off his hooded sweatshirt and T-shirt and stopped short when Chas gasped.
“My God. How are you standing upright?”
Gunner glanced down at his chest and stared. His entire torso was one giant mass of purple bruises. No wonder he’d been hurting like hell ever since he woke up. He was lucky crashing through that tree hadn’t done more damage than crack a few ribs. Punctured lungs could be dangerous if not treated quickly and properly.
He couldn’t believe McCarthy had already signed off on his transfer out of the SEALs. Why hadn’t the guy at least given him a chance to come back from this? Bastard didn’t know anything about the determination of SEALs to recover from injuries, obviously. This admiral was an interim guy until a permanent replacement could be found for Jerome Klausen. Gunner hoped that replacement was found soon. The SEALs were going to chew McCarthy up and spit him out.
“What happened to you?” Chas asked lowly, concern vibrating in his voice. He moved swiftly to Gunner’s side and laid his hands lightly on the worst of Gunner’s bruises.
Gunner couldn’t help it. He flinched away from Chas’s touch.
Chas flinched in turn, almost as if he’d been slapped.
“It’s nothing personal,” Gunner mumbled at Chas’s back as his old friend turned away, a hurt expression plain on his face. Dammit, he was so bad at this relationship stuff. Not that they still had a relationship, of course. Or did they? Hell if he knew. He was confused as all get-out, though.
Silently, Chas turned back the covers on the far side of the bed and crawled in, turning his back to Gunner.
With a heavy sigh, Gunner sat on his side of the bed and, rather more painfully than he let on, lifted his legs onto the mattress and stretched out. God, he hurt from head to foot. A pinch of pain in his spine warned him of the agony to come when the epidural painkillers wore off in a week or two.
Chas reached out and turned off the lamp beside the bed. Darkness embraced them, and Gunner sighed in relief. He was most at ease in the night. He loved its concealment and silence.
“I had a bad parachute jump,” Gunner said into the darkness.
Chas made a soft sound of distress that went straight to his heart. Gunner wasn’t used to anyone caring about him like that. Not in a personal, intimate way that wasn’t backslapping dude affection. “What constitutes a bad jump?”
“Too windy. I got blown into some trees.”
Without warning, Chas asked, “Do the SEALs know you’re gay?”
The words hung in the air, heavy and loaded, hovering over him in a smothering blanket. “I’m not even sure I’m gay.”
Chas grunted. “Huh.”
At great personal sacrifice, Gunner turned on his side, facing away from Chas. Two could play that game. Except in order for his knees to rest on the mattress, his back ended up pressing against Chas’s warm, muscular one. For the moment, his spine wasn’t complaining. In fact, Chas’s body heat felt good on it, although the longer they lay like this, the more the back-to-back contact felt as if it had completed a massive electrical circuit, the way attraction zinged through him and tingled all the way to his fingertips.
He lay perfectly still, as if he was in a hide with an enemy passing by only a few feet away. He drew in his presence, his personal aura, as close to himself as he could, shutting down completely. It was a SEAL trick that had saved his life more than once.
Gunne
r had no idea how long he lay there before he felt Chas’s body relax and lean back more fully against his, that lithe rib cage rising and falling lightly in sleep. Only then was he able to let go of the tension in his body, releasing each muscle group one by one until he could sleep, himself.
He was lying on his back, sprawled lazily, and Chas rolled over beside him, draping a leg across his thighs, reaching down to cup Gunner’s junk. Chas ran his fingers around his ball sac, lightly squeezing the family jewels before sliding up to make a fist around the base of Gunner’s rigid and ready rod. It felt so good having that fist stroke up and down, up and down, over and over until his entire being narrowed down to the pleasure pounding through him, the orgasm building toward a gigantic release—
Gunner woke up breathing hard. No surprise, he had the mother of all hard-ons. He still lay on his side, which was the only reason he wasn’t making a circus-sized tent of the bedsheets with his dick as the center post.
It was a long, long time before his erection subsided enough for him to think about sleeping again. He repeated his own instructions to himself. He might not get another chance to sleep again for a while. He’d better take this opportunity now. Too bad he couldn’t brute force his brain into forgetting who he was plastered up against from neck to buttcrack.
He’d had so many fantasies over the years. So many regrets. And here Chas was again, showing up in Gunner’s life in the split second it took for a phone call to connect them. Had Chas always been so close and he just hadn’t known it? What an idiot he was.
Sleep, dumbsquat.
Right.
It took doing every relaxation exercise in the SEAL training manual to finally drift off, but eventually he slept once more.
CHAS WOKE up as the first rays of morning sun slipped between the drapes. He rose on one elbow to check the baby. She was still out like a light. Poor kid. He relaxed back onto the bed, and as he did so, Gunner shifted beside him, turning onto his side to face Chas.
Gunner’s big body curved into his, his nose burrowing against Chas’s shoulder, his forearms and knees pressing against Chas’s ribs and thighs. It was weird feeling Gunner relaxed in sleep. He was softer. More approachable. The hard shell was temporarily set aside, and he felt like nothing so much as a child in need of love.
Which wasn’t, in fact, far wrong. Gunner’s dad had been a hard man, demanding of his only son and determined to turn him into a man’s man. His mother had been the sort of person Chas didn’t notice when he entered a room. She just faded into the background. It wasn’t that she was fearful. She was just… bland. Emotionally absent.
She’d been so unlike his own mother, who’d been a fierce warrior on his behalf. She claimed to have known he was gay since he was about four years old, and she’d ferociously defended his right to be exactly who he wanted to be for as long as he could remember. He’d been out and proud in high school. Gunner, not so much. Heck, it didn’t sound like the guy was out yet. Not even to himself.
They would both turn thirty next summer. Chas couldn’t imagine having lived his twenties in the closet. He’d had a ton of fun in college and enjoyed being young and carefree to the fullest. But Gunner had apparently spent his twenties learning how to kill people. It was hard to square the funny, smart, generous kid he’d grown up with becoming a coldhearted, serious, grim SEAL. And now here he was, curled up against Chas’s side like a needy kid. It was enough to give a guy mental whiplash.
The baby stirred, flinging her limbs wide and letting out a wail. The sound cut off abruptly, though. She was still scared, obviously.
Chas rolled away from Gunner’s warmth and moved over to the little girl, scooped her up into his arms, and murmured, “It’s okay, baby girl. Cry all you want.”
He carried her into the bathroom and ran a warm bath. While the tub filled, he stripped her down and tossed her makeshift towel-diaper in the trash. They would have to see about getting her real diapers and some food pretty soon, but right now he wanted to get all that blood off her.
She relaxed in the bath, lying back and letting him support her head. She even closed her eyes and let her limbs float in the water as he gently washed her off and shampooed her hair. Poor tyke needed the relaxation something fierce.
After he’d rinsed the soap off, she sat up, waist-deep in the water. He coaxed her to play, and she hesitantly slapped the water a few times with her little hands.
He smiled and nodded encouragingly, and she slapped harder. A splash of water drenched his chest, and he laughed in delight. Her rosebud mouth curved into a tentative smile. Thank God. She wasn’t so traumatized that she could feel no joy at all.
They played the splashing game for several minutes, until the little girl really got into it, sending waves of water up and out of the tub onto him.
A movement in the doorway startled him, and he looked up to see Gunner leaning a shoulder against the doorjamb, his arms crossed against his chest.
“You’re really good with her.”
Chas shrugged. “It’s all about getting in touch with your own inner child. You have to relate to kids at their level. See the world through their eyes.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. Pass me a towel, will you?”
He drained the tub and wrapped her in the big white towel Gunner handed him. He was gratified when she trustingly laid her head on his shoulder.
He used a hand towel to dry her hair, and made a makeshift diaper out of another hand towel. He moved into the bedroom. “Here. Take her.”
Gunner took a step back in alarm.
“She won’t bite you. Well, she might, but she’s just a baby. It won’t hurt much.”
“I don’t do babies,” Gunner bit out.
“You do now. I need to dry off and put my shirt on, and I can’t do that while I’m holding her.” He thrust the baby into Gunner’s arms, not caring whether the big bad commando liked it or not.
Dried and dressed, he emerged from the bathroom to see Gunner staring down at the little girl, who looked up at him solemnly, as if she was deciding whether to scream her head off or accept this stranger.
“We’ll need to get her food and diapers pretty soon.”
Gunner lurched. “She could pee on me?”
“There are worse things in life, dude. It washes off. I’m going to rinse out her clothes and use the blow dryer on them, so you’re going to have to hold the small alien being a bit longer. We’ll probably need to get her new clothes too, but in the meantime, she needs something to wear. Hence the impromptu laundry. Unless you’re willing to stay here with her alone and let me run out to shop for her real fast.”
“Uhh, no. You stay with her. I’ll shop.”
“Do you know what size clothes she wears? Or what size diapers? And while we’re at it, what do eighteen-month-olds eat?”
Gunner scowled. “Fine. Wash her clothes and then we’ll go out together. I don’t want to let either of you out of my sight.”
Chas looked up quickly. “Do you think we’re in danger here? We’re nowhere close to Misty Falls.”
Gunner shrugged. “The baby was last seen in the arms of a woman who died on your porch. If this kid is, in fact, the reason the shooters went on their rampage, they’ll know by now that you’re the guy who owns that porch. They’ll have to assume you took the kid and ran. You said they came back and shot up your house, right?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Then they’re after you. No, they won’t know where to start looking, but there are ways to find people. They can hack credit card systems and closed-circuit TV cameras. Use facial recognition programs… hell, even pay informants.”
“I get the idea.”
“Thus, I stick to you two like glue until we figure out what’s going on.”
Chas gulped. “Who are they? Who would shoot up a town over a little kid?”
“Depends on who the kid is, I suppose. Her diaper wasn’t full of diamonds or anything, was it?”
“No. Just
pee and a little poop.”
“TMI, man. TMI.”
“Oh, you think you’re dodging changing diapers, do you, big guy? You can let go of that idea right now. If we’re babysitting this kid for any length of time, you get to pull your fair share of daddy duty.”
For the first time since Gunner had walked into that office last night, Chas saw fear—stark, cold terror, actually—pass across Gunner’s face. The chiseled jaw tensed, and the laugh wrinkles around Gunner’s eyes tightened in stress.
Chas took pity and held out his arms. “I’ll take the baby so you can put on your shirt. You know, we need a name for her. We can’t just keep calling her ‘the kid.’”
Gunner’s face emerged from his shirt, and the blank look on his face made Chas grin and tease, “Feeling a little out of your depth when it comes to baby names?”
“Fuck off, Reed.”
Chas grinned.
“You teach kindergarten, right? You know all the kid names. You pick one.”
Chas considered. “Her shirt has a big red flower on it, kind of like a poppy. How about we call her Poppy?”
“I like it.”
“You actually have an opinion about it? Huh. Maybe your soul isn’t totally cold and dead after all.”
“I repeat: fuck off.”
“Don’t swear in front of a child. They learn words like lightning at this age.”
“She doesn’t talk, does she?” Gunner blurted in alarm.
“If we’re right about her age, she’s starting to.”
“I’ve barely heard a peep out of her since I picked you two up.”
Chas looked down at the little girl, who was currently tugging at the collar of his shirt. “She’s been scared silly ever since I plucked her out of Leah’s arms. I think that’s probably why she’s been so quiet.”
