The camera man pointed at Danika, circling his finger. She nodded, and turned around, pushing out her beautiful thong-covered ass. Good God, his wife was hot. Just having had her sixth baby or not, she was curvy, full-breasted and on fucking God damned display for some jerk-off cameraman who was no doubt loving every minute of his job right now.
Danika let go of the scarf and put her hand over her eyes to watch it float out to the water. The cameraman crept forward to follow her every move as she arched, twisted and swung her full hips and ass. The bastard. Jacob gripped the glasses so hard he was amazed they didn’t break.
“That your wife, Sanders?”
Jacob grit his teeth at the question but he didn’t move his eyes from watching Danika. “What are you doing here, Thomas?” He’d seen the Navy issue vehicle pull up a few seconds ago from the corner of his eye, and whatever the Navy wanted would have to friggin’ wait. He watched the cameraman point to the rocks beside the pier, and Danika move to where he pointed. She lay back on the rocks and smiled toward the camera.
“Fuck me.” He’d fucked her on those rocks one night after they’d walked along the pier. It had been hot and wild, starting with her pushing him up against the pier standard and taking her until she came hard around his hard cock, and ended with her spread out on her stomach with him riding her hard from behind, coming deep inside of her as he rubbed her clit. He wanted her to climax again and take his seed deep into her womb with every pulse and pull of their intimate muscles.
“Uh, no thanks.” Thomas held up his hands.
Zachary had been the result.
Jacob studied Danika’s face for even the slightest hint that she remembered that night the way he did. Take my cum, baby. Take it all in. Take my hot seed and make me another baby. Give me another son. Fuck she had to remember the way she shook and convulsed beneath him that night at his words, how hard he came, how tight he held her, how much he worshipped her after she grew round again with his baby. He fucked her hard during every pregnancy. From behind, on the side, his hands on her hips, his palms running over her stomach. He couldn’t stay away from her. She was his wife and she was beautiful carrying his child.
He fucking loved her so damn much. He could not lose her. He wouldn’t.
Thomas’s voice cracked at him again. “Went to your house. Then to your other house. Didn’t know you moved.
“I didn’t.”
Thomas leaned against Jacob’s truck grill. “Damn. She’s hot.” His voice was full of male approval.
Jacob lowered his glasses and glared at Thomas.
The other man put his hands up in surrender. “Sorry, man. Been at sea a while.”
Jacob looked Thomas up and down then put the glasses back to his eyes and watched as Danika got up from the rocks and accepted a bright orange cover up from one of the other women. He let out a breath he didn’t even realize he’d been holding when she tied the robe
“Anyway.” Thomas twirled his keys and pushed off the truck. “They want you in for another debrief five minutes ago.”
Jacob watched Danika drink from a water bottle while the woman held up several more bathing suits. If those strings and miniature patches of material could be called bathing suits. No woman could swim in those things. The slightest pull of current would rip them off.
Jacob’s dick jerked in his pants. He glared at Thomas. “I’m on leave.”
“Hey, don’t kill the messenger.” Thomas kept his hands up as he walked back to his vehicle and got in.
Jacob got into his truck and opened his tablet. He thumbed and clicked his way to the swim-suit-slash-lingerie shop’s web page. Sure enough, a large glossy photo of his wife, smiling and dressed in satin and lace lingerie, smiled back at him.
“Fuck me,” he whispered again. Each photo of her was professionally done, focused on the lingerie and not her. She was modelling the clothes, not her body. Not that his dick cared. It had raged to attention and demanded relief. There was no way he could walk into an operation meeting like this. He sat back and unzipped his pants, taking himself in hand, like he’d done so many times over the past year.
He fucking missed his wife. He fucking needed his wife. He closed his eyes and mentally fucked her until he jerked every drop of his built-up cum onto the floor mat. No matter what happened between them, how far they’d grown apart, legally separated or not, he never relieved himself with any other woman. No matter how bad things got, it was his wife or nothing. Danika or his hand. Jacob zipped up his jeans and started the engine.
*****
Danika frowned into the rear-view mirror. “Boys, really?” Zachary and Boy kicked the soccer ball to each other across the back seat, while Sid tried to head butt it as it passed by. Like this minivan was big enough for that nonsense. “Keep it under wraps, we’re almost there.” She did a shoulder check to pull into the lane that led to the field, then did a double take. Was that Jacob behind her? She studied the line of cars in the other lane before a horn forced her to look back at the road ahead.
A guilty conscience bears no accuser. Her grandmother’s favourite saying came to mind.
She had successfully avoided Jacob all day, but the time of reckoning was coming. She was going to have to face him, ante up so they could talk this out. He was never going to agree to a divorce and she was never going to agree to stay in their marriage the way it was. Their separation was a train wreck, and though it seemed to be the best idea at the time, and the children had adjusted to things fine, Daniella’s dangerous premature arrival had forced her to pull her head out of her ass and herself from the brink of an all-consuming depression. She was not going back to that dark place she’d been in. Too stressed to move. Too depressed to think ahead. Every thought about her future dragging her beneath the covers until all she wanted to do was sleep to make it all go away.
How long had she gone on like that? Weeks? Months? She barely remembered taking care of the boys let alone herself. Had she cooked for them? Done their laundry? Gotten them off to school? All she clearly remembered was constantly mumbling for the twins to “go play.”
She remembered Mary Jane coming by, back while she was still living in Jacob’s family home, and leaving shell-shocked at the condition she found both Danika and the house in. Military wives did not let their houses go to shit. Ever. But Danika had. After that, she pushed her old friends further away than ever
“Are we there yet!?” Sid’s shrill question pulled Danika back to the present. She rolled her eyes and turned down the tree-lined lane that led to both the boys’ school and the soccer field. Her cell phone rang but she had to ignore it. At least until she got this bunch out and onto the field for practice. It was probably Max back home with the twins and the baby. Being as efficient as he was, he probably had the twins fed and ready for swim class. She glanced at the dashboard clock as she pulled into an empty space. “Okay, boys, pile out. Zachary, grab me the box of popsicles beneath your seat.”
“There were popsicles under there this whole time! No fair!” He jumped out of his seat belt and dropped to the floor. “Yes!” He held the box above his head. Danika immediately leaned over and plucked them from his hands.
“Not until after practice.”
“Aw. No fair,” he declared as loudly as possible as he climbed out of the van and ran toward the field. “I want a blue one!” He threw his hand in the air and pointed to the sky as he ran.
That was her wild child. Conceived on the beach in a fit of lust, he had been the epitome of exploding energy since. She scanned the busy field and found Boy, already with his team and pushing Sid toward his own soccer team’s area. Her eldest was his father’s son. A calm single-minded thinker who was orderly and responsible, and bossy. Conceived on their wedding night, the result of Jacob’s domination over her virginity, her eldest was way too old for his eight years. The first item on her list for the coming summer was to make sure he enjoyed the rest of his childhood with carefree abandon. She was sending him away, as requested, f
or two weeks of overnight Scout Camp. Typical of his introverted side, he’d left the flyer and registration forms tucked under her van’s windshield wiper blade two weeks ago. In turn, she had left the completed forms on his breakfast plate a few days later.
“Just me, not them?” he’d asked her.
She’d bent and kissed his forehead and he’d actually let her. “Yes. Just you alone for two whole weeks.”
The kid smiled for days.
“Dani!” Danika looked over to the group of mothers standing on the sidelines. “You staying?” Alicia, Ben’s mom, asked.
Danika looked at the time on her phone. “Can’t. Swimming tonight.” She waved the cell to indicate she was in a time crunch.
The woman gave her a thumb’s up. “I can bring them home tonight.”
God bless her. Danika mouthed the words, thank you, before jogging back to her van. Man, she loved those women. Never any pressure. Never judgmental. They were just what she needed after coming out on the other side of her depression fog. SEAL wives were great. They were supportive and knew the life, but inadvertently put on another type of pressure. With these women, she started fresh. She was just Dani. Not Mrs. Jacob Sanders, SEAL wife, or Danika Washington, Professor Edmund Washington and Sherice Dunn’s only daughter. Not even, Nika, Jacob’s pampered wife who should enjoy being on his shelf, princess with no real purpose other than cranking out his babies. She was Dani who took back control of her life. Part-time plus model, and the Sanders boys’ mother with a regular rotation in the car pool and snack roster. It was what she wanted, and where she wanted to be right now.
She smiled as she climbed back into the minivan, her eyes going right to the clock. She had just enough time to fight traffic back to the house, get the twins, and onto swimming before dinner.
***
Jacob watched Danika herd the boys onto the soccer field before she spoke briefly with the group of women standing on the sidelines. He didn’t recognize any of them. His wife was an avid member of the officer-wives club, both a written and unwritten section of the Navy, and those women lived and breathed to support each other, not unlike any other SEAL team. SEAL brothers were always there for each other; so were their wives. He knew his brothers’ wives well. They knew Danika equally as much. He’d heard something a while back about her not being around much, but he had not paid attention. He had taken his eyes off the ball. Now the ball had slammed into his head.
Jacob studied the women on the soccer practice sidelines. He did not recognize a single one of them and they were not military wives. He set down his field glasses and stared as Danika drove out of the lot. He started his truck and followed her, staying at least five cars behind. Her driving routes made absolutely no sense. Though he shouldn’t be surprised. So far everything he’d seen Danika do today, after he finished his meeting at base, was completely unfamiliar, sometimes downright foreign to him, starting with that photoshoot that had him semi hard all fucking day, his hand job had done nothing but take off the edge. Every time he thought about her wiggling and swaying around in that damned bikini, his dick jumped to life, wanted immediate attention. He felt like a horny thirteen-year-old all fucking day.
He turned onto Danika’s street and parked behind another truck. He watched her pull up to the townhouse and get out. Minutes later, he smiled when his twins came flying out of the door and jumped into the van. Danika soon followed with Daniella in a car seat carrier in one hand, and a knapsack in the other. Max strolled out behind them all with matching knapsacks in each hand. He tossed the bags into the van and pulled the sliding door closed as a white sports car pulled up to the house. Danika waved out the window at the driver and pulled away.
Jacob waited as the sports car driver got out. It was another young guy, tall and lanky, with jeans that held onto his narrow hips like someone clinging to a bridge before falling. Jacob winced when the men held each other’s hips and kissed before getting into the car.
Guess he was telling the truth. Jacob shook his head and pulled out from his spot to pursue Danika down the street. There were only a few ways out of this neighbourhood, so picking up her tail wasn’t hard. He caught up to her as she pulled into the Tall Pines Country Club and got out. He scanned the familiar private members’ establishment and grounds. He knew the layout well. Not only had the club been around for the last hundred years, but his family had a lifetime membership as one of the founding members. He studied the people and staff milling around the outdoor Olympic size pool and surrounding deck.
He didn’t need his field glasses to see Danika emerge — thank fuck now dressed in a modest one-piece swimsuit — with the boys from the dressing cabanas to the crowded deck. Daniella wriggled in her arms, his daughter completely adorable in her matching swim suit to her mama’s. Jacob tracked a buff Baywatch type of teenager gather up Dexter and Daniel along with five other three year olds and get into the water. Danika leaned over the side and spoke to the boys before she went with Daniella to the other side of the pool and joined a group of parents with babies in the water.
Jacob sat back in his seat. Eight hours of recon on Danika and he was exhausted. Following her life, trying to figure out what was going on, what had maybe happened, had been an eye opener to what she did in a day. He thought the military ran people ragged. Danika hadn’t stopped the entire time he’d been watching. Grocery store, lunch drop-off to the boys’ school, back home to get Daniella, then back out again. She’d gone to the library, the pet store and back to the beach before going home and coming back out with the twins. She took them to a shoe store, then for some bizarre reason, ran into the organic food depot before going back home.
She came out of the house a half hour later, no kids, and headed north out of the city. When she stopped at an outdoor coffee shop and sat down with her tablet, he breathed an exhausted sigh for her. At least until he tracked some man go up to her table, take her coffee and dump the contents in the sand. He was in the middle of pushing open his truck door, but halted when Danika bolted up from the table and ran down the beach, the guy running behind her barking out orders like a Navy drill sergeant. That was when Jacob noticed the running gear the man wore, the whistle around his neck and the clipboard tucked under his arm. Danika’s ipad squished up there, too.
Jacob watched his wife and her trainer jog on the beach for fifteen minutes before they moved to the grass to do a series of muscle-strengthening exercises. Jacob couldn’t help smiling when the man yelled, five more for that coffee and his wife glared at him sideways in silent response.
Jacob closed his eyes, but visions of his wife shaking and swaying her ass in that bikini made him open them again. This was not the time to get rock hard and wanting again. He sat up and stared at the country club grounds, forcing his mind to combat, his grandmother’s underwear, anything to keep his thoughts from his wife brazenly strutting around the beach half naked in front of some man with a camera. She’d never even worn a bikini for him, let alone strutted around like that. Images of her doing a get-naked striptease for him bombarded his mind.
His wife had changed, or more like evolved … without him, away from him and the Navy. She wasn’t doing anything she used to, not that he really knew what she used to do all day, but it never felt like this. She was a stay-at-home mother and military wife so he supposed she did … mother military wife stuff, right? He watched the swimming lessons come to an end. He was going to have to find a way to resolve all this, pull all these pieces together so they still fit together as a family. Jacob grit his teeth and started the truck, trailing after his wife as she hopefully headed back home.
*****
Danika inhaled and stretched toward the wonderfully tingly heavy feeling in her lower belly. She didn’t dare open her eyes. That would mean waking up and it was only so often that she was granted a vivid night time dream about Jacob. Usually when she was exhausted, too exhausted to think herself out of the vulnerability. So, on nights like tonight, after she’d fallen into bed totally body e
xhausted, she knew better than to think too much about her dreams, just delight and feel. Indulge. Thinking always work her up, pulled her out of the dream, faded the delicious pulls and tugs that slid below her navel, moved over her awful C-section scar, and spread heat down to her apex. She loved that she didn’t need to hide, be embarrassed, or feel any shame. Just enjoy the blissful moments where she knew she dreamed, just dreamed and could suspend reality and revel in the raw sensuality still in her body.
This was not the touch of her dildo. The plastic manufactured sensations that normally vibrated and shook her body. This was soft, heavy and smooth. Ripples. Crests. Lines of pleasure that dragged warm washes of waves to her core. Over her clit. Tingled her flesh. Surrounded and lifted her nub with raised sensations.
Jacob. She knew his touch, even in her dreams, and could sigh his name, whisper her need, admit and confess to whatever she wanted. She wanted him. Needed him. Yearned for him. It was her dream. Her moment. Her time to luxuriate in whatever she wanted. Whatever her dreams gave her. She inhaled and stretched her back, lifted her hips and moved with the waves of pleasure rolling through her body.
Jacob. She could feel him. Scent him. Hear his low growls. His stubbled cheek on her naked tummy. His calloused palm on her hip. His warm breath on her skin … on her scar … she flinched and opened her eyes.
“No. Don’t move.” His strong fingers contracted on her hip, forcing her to be still.
She looked down to find him just as she imagined, exactly as she dreamed. His head on her lower belly, his cheek near her scar, his big hand on her hip. Her nightgown was raised to reveal her naked sex, her thighs slightly parted, her husband leaning over and kissing her lower tummy, running his tongue along her scar, his hard lips gentle on her skin.
“I’m not done enjoying you.”
She tightened all over. He had seen her scar. That horrible mark on her. She moved her hand to cover it but he snared her wrist and pressed it against her side.
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