by Diana Hunter
Services Rendered
Diana Hunter
This book is loosely tied to characters from Secret Submission and Submission Revealed.
Recently back from Iraq, Lauren Carr is still trying to put her life together. Her best friend sets her up on a date with an incredibly sexy man who promises to tie her down and make love to her all night long. His offer intrigues her, piques her interest in the submissive lifestyle she’s so curious about. This strong, dominant man might be just what she needs.
John McAllen is an ex-Marine who has put his demons to rest. He has a successful career and friends who share his kink. The beautiful Lauren, who was so capable in a crisis, turns out to have PTSD. In spite of his desire, he isn’t sure he wants to deal with her damaged psyche. He needs a woman who can submit to his control, to his passion for ropes and chains and floggers. To his every sexual demand.
Ellora’s Cave Publishing
www.ellorascave.com
Services Rendered
ISBN 9781419934773
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Services Rendered Copyright © 2011 Diana Hunter
Edited by Pamela Campbell
Cover art by Syneca
Electronic book publication August 2011
The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
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Services Rendered
Diana Hunter
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the men and women of the Armed Forces of the United States. Thank you for your service.
Acknowledgements
I need to give a special “thank you” to Averill Bauder for sharing his expertise in the firing of Civil War cannons. His knowledge brought life to the Civil War reenactment scenes.
And another special thanks to Tara Nina, who told me a story one time…
Author Note
In the world of fantasy anything goes, but in reality, remember to always practice safe sex.
Prologue
The dusty street, hot in the mid-afternoon sun, lay bare and empty. From some corner of hell, a hot breeze blew sand in small devils along the few spaces between the crowded buildings. Nothing else stirred. Not even the dozen men standing alert in their hiding places, their khaki camouflage sticking to their sweaty bodies, their hands slippery on their gunstocks. An errant fly buzzed each in turn, yet not one of them moved.
The low murmur of voices drifted on the breeze from inside the least squalid hut that squeezed itself onto the street. And still the twelve waited, breathing in sand and heat, the strange cinnamon scent of the desert barely noticed.
The voices in the hut rose as if in anger and one of the twelve nodded just once to a soldier on the other side of the street. Slowly lifting his hand, he held out three fingers, then two, then one and pointed toward the door.
The first two soldiers slid through the curtained doorway, knowing, from previous visits by spies, the layout of the narrow hut. A hall led directly from the door to the open courtyard behind. A room immediately to their right, another behind it. At this time of day, their quarry would be in the second room.
The second pair followed closely, peeling off to take position in the first room. They would wait and make sure none escaped into the street. Two others would remain outside for the same reason while the remaining six guarded the entrances to the street.
The first two paused at the curtain that closed off the second room. The men in the room argued loudly now, the Arabic words sounding like so much gibberish to all but one of the twelve. The other soldiers spoke only English with smatterings of high school Spanish and French. Only the leader had studied the language of the people whose land he’d be helping to rebuild. Only the leader understood the terrible action the men discussed so heatedly.
And for that, he gave thanks. He knew his men. If they understood the depth of the plot they were about to foil, there would be blood spilled. That, however, was not their job. They were simply to arrest these men, not to act as judge and jury. There had been enough of that in this desert land already.
His men in place, he nodded once more. They knew the plan. He and another would enter the room, the two behind him would go through to secure the courtyard and the two just outside would enter only as backup if needed.
Their attack, swift and silent, took the inhabitants by surprise. “We are Americans,” he shouted in Arabic over their noise. “You are under arrest. Put your hands in the air.”
In an ideal world, the men who plotted murder would have done as he told them. They would’ve risen from the pillows on which they sat and gone along peacefully, accepting that they’d been caught.
Except no ideal world existed in Iraq. On the far side of the room, a man raised a machine gun. Without hesitation, the leader fired, killing the Iraqi. One of the men sitting on the floor leapt up, pushing his gun up and out of the way with one hand and pulling a knife with the other.
Twisting away, the leader brought his gun barrel down on the man’s head, sending him spinning away. More shots filled the air as the men on both sides shouted their anger. Gunfire erupted outside the room too. Damn the intelligence. There were only supposed to be three men inside, instead there were nearly a dozen. And there were obviously men in the courtyard, all armed better than the military had been led to believe. He’d led his men into a trap.
Chapter One
John McAllen lay face up in the field, his open eyes staring at the cloudless blue above, trying to remember just why he had decided to die so early. The sun beat down, turning his wool uniform into an oven that slowly baked him all the way through to his spine. Ants had found his shirtsleeve and even now paraded along his arm, enjoying the shade and tickling his skin with their tiny legs.
But he wouldn’t move. That was part of the deal. Once you were dead, you didn’t get to move. Shots came from his right, yet he resisted the urge to look. Didn’t matter who was winning the battle. Didn’t matter who fell or who managed to walk away at the end of the hour. The enemy had found its mark in him and all he could do now was lie in the sun and cook.
A welcome shadow fell over him, ostensibly checking for a pulse. Will Bondman, his brother-in-arms in more ways than one. John said nothing, per the rules of the dead, as Will whispered to him, “You should’ve fallen facedown. You’re gonna get sunburned.”
John glared at him and remained still.
“I can roll you over, if you want.”
“Don’t you have a battle to fight?” John risked the words between barely moving lips.
“Action’s moved into the woods. Thought I’d check on a newbie reenactor first. But if you don’t want my help…”
“Turn me over.”
Hiding a grin, Will turned over John’s blue-clad “dead” body then hefted his heavy, antique Springfield rifle as he stood.
“You’ll learn,” was all he said before John heard him drift away, heading toward the trees and the action.
* * * * *
Lauren Carr watched the “battle” below with a mixture of boredom and disgust. These play soldiers cavorted around beautiful fields belonging to the Genesee Country Museum, pretending they were teaching history to the tourists who paused in their trek around the re-created Victorian town, when in reality they just made a mockery of what real soldiers lived and died doing every day. War was too real for her to stand and watch it played at. She’d been home only two months and that wasn’t enough time for her to forget what she’d seen. Hell, two years wouldn’t be enough.
“Aunt Lauren, look at that dead man. One guy rolled him over, but he didn’t move hardly at all. Do you think he’s really dead?”
Lauren looked down at her eight-year-old nephew and fervently hoped he would never have a need to enlist in any branch of the military. She’d seen enough action for both of them. The boy’s dark hair, tousled by a breeze that popped up from nowhere, framed eyes wide with concern. Lauren smiled and put her arm around his shoulders.
“No, Ian, he’s not really dead. It’s just for show.” She looked out at the man her nephew indicated. True, he looked more realistically dead than several others who lay scattered like beached blue whales. At the irreverent thought, she hid her grin, lest Ian think she made fun of the action he watched so intently.
Maybe it is a good thing he takes it seriously, she thought as the soldiers in blue moved back into the field, obviously in retreat. This action supposedly represented the battle of Antietam, but from what she could tell, the flat field with the gazebo in the middle and a tree line at the far end that barely hid the museum’s town buildings on the other side didn’t look anything like the real fields in West Virginia where so many men had lost their lives. If Ian understood that people really died in war, and that their deaths were not pretty in any way, then standing on this hill overlooking the re-creation and watching this absurdity might just be worth it.
A trumpet sounded some unfamiliar notes and the soldiers on both sides dropped their weapons to their sides. A man with a microphone stood up in the gazebo and explained to the audience that the battle had ended and any weapons with gunpowder still in them would be discharged. This was followed by several pops and puffs of smoke as rifles were fired into the air. The sound had a higher pitch than the rifles she was used to. And quieter. Battles in the past had definitely been quieter.
But then the cannon let loose and she reacted instinctively, falling into a crouching position and dragging Ian down with her. Out on the field a white ring of smoke wavered its lazy way across the open area and the dead rose from their positions.
“Aunt Lauren?”
“Lauren?”
With an effort, Lauren refocused on the present. Her nephew looked up at her with eyes wide with confusion while Beth, her best friend, looked on with concern. “It’s okay, Ian. Took me by surprise, that’s all.” She straightened, ignoring the stares of the people nearby. Out on the field the dead men rose to rejoin their companies and once again Lauren wondered just what lesson Ian would take from this. Would he think war was just a game and you went home after it was all done? Or would he remember his concern when the one soldier didn’t move for such a long time? She prayed he would never feel the panic for those long seconds when you didn’t know for sure, or feel the struggle to breathe when death still hovered in the room and you had to close your eyes against the living.
“There’s a man selling ice cream. Can we get one, Aunt Lauren? C’mon, can we?”
Lauren gave herself a mental shake and grinned at her nephew. “I don’t know, what do you think, Beth? Think it’ll spoil his dinner?”
Beth laughed and pushed a stroller toward her. Inside nestled the cutest little baby girl Lauren had ever seen, not that she had much in the way of experience. Beth had given birth two weeks after Lauren’s discharge from the Army and homecoming. In fact, Lauren had been with Beth when she’d gone into labor. Paul had met them at the hospital and Lauren had graciously moved to the side to let others take center stage, a place she relinquished willingly. Now the baby squealed and Lauren laughed.
“Apparently Emily wants ice cream too.”
Beth shook her head. “Emily wants something considerably warmer than ice cream. Come on, let’s find some shade to sit in and I’ll feed the little bugger.”
Several soldiers swarmed around the cart at the top of the hill, getting drinks to cool themselves down after the thirsty work of battle. Lauren knew their presence pulled Ian in that direction just as much as the thought of an ice-cream cone. She smiled—she wouldn’t say no to mint chocolate chip right about now. A large oak provided plenty of shade and several families had already found comfortable spots underneath it.
The mingling of the past and present made her thoughtful. Weekend warriors of a bygone era mingled freely with kids in shorts and T-shirts. A teenage girl, obviously in her rebellious phase, sat with her back to her family, earbuds firmly in place even as she licked a chocolate ice-cream cone and watched a handsome boy in a too-large gray uniform saunter past her for the third time. The sight made Lauren smile. Some things never changed.
Down on the field below several soldiers stood in a group, looking as if they were having an argument. Ian fidgeted and pulled on Lauren’s hand.
“How much longer, Aunt Lauren?”
“A few minutes,” she told him, looking at the long line. Her gaze returned to the group of men in the field, who started walking away from the hill where she stood, the group still engaged in heated debate. What could they be so passionate about? Not the outcome of the battle—that had been written in blood over a century ago.
The sight of the man going down caught her attention before she heard his pained cry. Twisted ankle? Out of habit, she glanced around, taking stock, alert and ready should he need medical assistance. The knot in her belly released as soon as she remembered there were no enemy hiding behind the bushes here. She could get to him without coming under fire. The loud sounds of real pain came across the field and Lauren made a quick decision. She called her instructions over her shoulder to Beth even as she moved away from the ice-cream line.
“Take Ian. I’m on this.”
Lauren sprinted down the hill, hoping these play soldiers had the sense to have a good med kit nearby. No one else moved with her, although the tourists at the top of the hill quieted, their attention caught by the real-life drama apparently unfolding. The men who’d been walking together across the field had formed a circle around the injured man and Lauren pushed her way through them.
A soldier in blue lay clutching his knee, giving vent to his pain in grunts and groans rather than words. The pants leg had already been ripped aside and the sun glinted on the white bone that never should have seen daylight. Blood pumped out of the hole around it in a regular rhythm and Lauren knew from experience that there wasn’t much time.
“Put the pressure on, stop that blood now.”
No one could mistake the commanding tone in that voice. Lauren realized the order came from the soldier whose fingers explored the rest of the leg, checking for other breaks in the bones. His hands were skillful and knowledgeable as he felt along the leg and moved down to the injured man’s foot.
The same couldn’t be said for the man who tried to stop the bleeding. His fingers grew slick with blood as he tried to wrap his hands around the man’s thigh.
“Dammit, find the femoral artery and choke it off.”
Lauren shook her head. Obviously the man had no idea where that was. There wasn’t any time. If she didn’t act soon, the man would bleed to death. Already his grunts were turning to soft moans. She knelt and batted the man’s hands away then ripped the fabric all the way up to the groin. Using her fingers to find the right spot, she pressed down hard with her thumbs while keeping an eye on the blood flow. Immediately it slowed and, after a moment, stopped.
She didn’t think the soldier giving commands even looked up to notice her. The brim of his kepi hat shielded his face so she couldn’t get a good look at him yet she thought this was the same soldier who had “died” and upset Ian so much. Dead or not, she couldn’t deny the sureness of his hands as he gently pulled the tissue and muscle back to peer inside the leg.
“Paramedics that were here had to go out on another call. Won’t get back for half an hour.”
“Shit, we don’t have a half hour. We need a chopper. Now.” The kepi-hat soldier barked the order without looking up.
Another voice called out. “I got 9-1-1, I’ll tell ’em.”
Lauren didn’t look up. Half an hour? This guy wasn’t going to last half that time if they didn’t get him stabilized. She held on to the clamped artery with her hands, worried about lasting until the EMTs arrived.
Blood puddled in the joint where she kept the pressure steady and threatened to make things slippery. While her hands weren’t cramping yet, they certainly would be soon. Besides which, the longer they kept the blood supply cut off, the greater the chance the man would lose his leg. And all because of one careless misstep into the gopher hole that gaped beside her, the long grass that covered it now matted with blood.
