by Cari Quinn
My spine locked, the pressure in my balls becoming so intense that I nearly lost it. Sweat blurred my vision, but I struggled to hold eye contact with her, needing to watch her as she tumbled over one more time. She contracted around me, a satiny fist, and I threw back my head, so close to implosion that her name turned into a litany on my lips. “Abs, sweetheart, come on.”
She clamped around me, pulsing wildly as she reached her climax. “Liam,” she breathed, her gaze colliding with mine as her tits bounced and her hips rolled over the mattress. “God, Liam. Yes.”
Groaning, I dug my fingers into her soft flesh as I finally gave in, riding the relentless pounding waves that crashed through her system and into mine. She vised around me, magnifying the throb in my cock until I drained myself fully inside her. And it still wasn’t enough. My hips continued to propel me into her warm depths, almost as if I’d gone into autopilot. Or, more accurately, as if I was afraid for this to end.
I rolled onto the bed at her side, panting through the aftermath. The slide of her arm over my stomach as I aimed unseeing eyes—for a good reason this time—at the ceiling was pure heaven.
“Abs,” I murmured, linking my fingers with hers. “God, baby, are you really moving to Yonkers?”
She laughed and cuddled against me, as well as she could until the handcuff brought her up short. “Dammit.”
“Here. Let me take care of that.” I fumbled for my jeans and withdrew the key then fitted it into the lock and freed her. After setting aside the cuffs, I grabbed her wrist and rubbed the circulation back into it before placing a kiss on her reddened skin. “There. Better?”
“For my wrist, yeah. For the rest of me, no.” She straddled my thighs and braced her hands on my chest, her mouth twitching with barely suppressed amusement. “Fucking you while I’m cuffed was beyond arousing. I’m still—” She stopped abruptly and bit her lip.
“What?” I palmed her ass and gave it a teasing slap. “You holding back on me?”
Wordlessly, she reached down and stroked my still-wet dick then brought her damp palm to her lips. She took a long, slow lick, making a noise of decadent pleasure in her throat. “Mmm.” She sucked on the tip of her finger, her smoky gaze traveling eagerly over my body. “All those tattoos make me so frigging hot. I want to kiss my way down to your c—”
“Don’t stop there.”
Ignoring me, she leaned forward to scrape her fingernail along the dates beside the skull tattoo that made up a large part of my partial sleeve. Trying not to tense was pointless, so I didn’t even try.
“What are these dates?” Her gaze flew to mine. “Oh God, are those the dates your parents—”
“Yeah. The two crosses are for them, too.” I cleared my throat. “It feels important to commemorate the date they passed. Someday, I’ll get their birthdates put on me, along with Jen’s and Slater’s.”
I blinked until her features swam into clearer focus. As clear as I could hope for anyway. “And yours.”
She closed her eyes and cupped her hand over her mouth.
“Abs?” I sat up and wrapped my arms around her. She struggled to remain upright as my movement jostled her, but she refused to look at me. “What is it?”
Dammit, had she noticed my eyes? When I was tired, it was easier for others to notice my “crazy eyes,” as I called them. I was definitely tired now, my fatigue bordering on exhaustion. It had been a long, difficult day. I wanted nothing more than to curl up with her in my arms and sleep a solid eight. Whatever we had to talk about could wait until tomorrow.
Except this, apparently.
“You broke up with me because I stopped talking to you.” Her voice scarcely reached a whisper. And still her eyes never opened. “I pulled away and became distant.”
I sucked in a breath and squinted, doing my damnedest to keep my focus steady. “Yeah, well, I was in a weird place, too. I was on the verge of leaving again, and things had happened so quickly with us.”
“Too quickly?”
Damn, I hated putting that hint of nerves in her question. “No. Perfect timing. You came into my life exactly when I needed you most.” I stroked her side, rubbing my thumb over her tattoo. “I want you back, baby. Nothing makes sense in my life without you—”
“I got pregnant, Liam.”
The words sliced through the post-sex fog in my head, clearing it away as if it had never existed. “What?”
“You wondered why I closed down on you. I was carrying your baby, and I didn’t have a clue how to tell you.” When I didn’t speak—hell, I barely breathed—she rushed ahead. “It was the worst timing. You were leaving again, and I didn’t want to distract you with something you probably weren’t ready to handle.” She let out a broken laugh and opened her eyes. “Maybe you didn’t even want to handle it at all. We never discussed kids. I always just assumed you wanted them because I did. But that’s stupid.”
Thoughts were bouncing around in my brain like scattershot, too fast for me to keep up. It took everything I possessed to keep my tone steady. “Did you get pregnant on purpose?”
“What? No, of course not. I think the condom ripped. I don’t know for sure.” She fisted her hands. “It just happened. An incredible mistake that wasn’t meant to be.”
I clenched my jaw and deliberately let go of her hip in case my grip hurt her. I had to be careful about everything I did right now because I couldn’t think straight enough to be sure I wasn’t screwing up.
“What happened to the baby, Abby?”
She climbed off me and picked up her panties from the floor. Turning her back to me, she pulled them on, and then she walked across the room to her piano. Head bent, she pressed her palms flat to the wood and whispered, “I miscarried at nine weeks. The day after we broke up. It wasn’t because of that,” she hastened to add. “My doctor said it was just one of those things. A lot of babies don’t make it past the first trimester.”
Guilt slammed into me so hard that I would’ve staggered under its weight if I hadn’t been sitting down. I still rocked back with it, my breath leaving me on a sound that wasn’t entirely human.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Which part? Why didn’t I tell you about the baby when I found out or when I lost it?”
“Both. Dammit, how could you let me go through life thinking I had no one, that I was all alone—”
“Why would you think that? You know I loved you.” She spun to face me, her face alive with grief that even I could make out in startling detail. “I would’ve crossed the world to find you if I’d thought you still needed or wanted me. But you pushed me away.”
“Because I thought you were like him. You shut down on me because you saw my leaving as a betrayal. That I’d picked someone—something—else over you.”
Abby shook her head, silent tears tracking down her cheeks. “That wasn’t it at all. I was so scared about the baby, but I was happy, Liam. We were happy, weren’t we, before it all fell apart?”
I stayed stonily silent. Nodding felt like a concession I couldn’t afford to make when even my bones had gone brittle with pain.
“You think you understand Slater, too, but you never bothered to talk to him about how he felt. You blustered, and you commanded, and then you went back to your post, which is a noble thing, baby, and we all loved and admired you for it. But you left behind people who adored you. We couldn’t figure out how to get by without you here.”
“Oh, right.” I couldn’t keep the sneer off my face as I rose to pull on my clothes. “You were both so damn broken up by my absence that, what, you had no choice except to turn to each other? A little love in the afternoon makes things better?” I pounded my fist into her pillow, helpless to stifle the urge. “I didn’t even know you played piano. Why didn’t you ever share that with me? It’s like you became a whole new person after I left.”
I hissed out a breath and glared in the direction of the ceiling. Right now my injury just seemed like one more blow. “Maybe this is the person you were meant
to be, Abs. Did you ever think of that? I might’ve been holding you back.”
“This is the person I’m meant to be, you’re damn right. But not because you didn’t allow me to become who I was. I closed down long before you came along. Losing you and the baby just sent me right back into the same hole I spiraled into after my dad’s death.”
I closed my eyes and sat back down on the bed, willing myself to stay calm. I thought I’d burned through most of my frustration and anger at the gym earlier with Fox, but evidently not.
“How did you and Slater get together?”
She ran through the story as concisely as a reporter. She’d met him on the beach where we’d once spent so much time, a place she’d visited often due to her memories of us. Without even realizing he was my brother at first, she’d become attracted to him, partially because of our overwhelming resemblance to each other.
“Can you blame me? Honestly?”
No, I couldn’t. I blamed myself for so much of this bullshit. I’d been the one who assumed the worst and performed triage without accurately assessing the wounds.
Now I was doing the same thing. Taking on the role of the injured party without considering how she must’ve felt. She’d lost a baby, for God’s sake. Our baby, yes, but one she’d carried in her womb. I would forever regret that I hadn’t known, and, despite what she’d said about our breakup not playing a role, I would always wonder. One more thing I could heap upon my shoulders.
“We didn’t sleep together,” she said after a few moments. “We came close a couple of times, but, as soon as I figured out that he wasn’t just a new tenant of your parents’ beach house, our relationship changed. We’ve been platonic ever since.”
“You moved across the country to be with him.” Steel lined my statement. Now if I could only surround my entire freaking chest in it, I might have a chance of getting through this.
God, I couldn’t lose her again. Her distance, emotional and physical, was making me wonder if I already had.
“No, I moved across the country to be with me. To figure out who I was away from you. Slater just happened to come along at the right time I needed a friend. Two years after we’d broken up, I was still haunting that beach, hoping like hell that I’d look up at the beach house one day and you’d be standing on the deck like you always did, drinking a cup of hazelnut coffee.” I heard the smile in her tone before she sighed. “I couldn’t let you go no matter how I tried.”
“Do you think I was any better off?”
“I don’t know,” she countered quietly. “I still haven’t heard much about your life since we broke up. I see the tattoos, and I can tell something happened, but I don’t know what. And I don’t intend to guess. If you won’t tell me, then I guess we really are finished for good this time. Because I refuse to hold back any part of myself again—and I won’t allow you to, either. It’s everything…or nothing.”
I laced my fingers behind my neck and faced the wall, the hairs on my arms rising as she took a step toward the door. I sensed the finality in her movements. She wasn’t going to give me another chance. If I messed up this time, I’d be living with the casualties of the war we’d put each other through for the rest of my life.
Though it cost me, I turned to face her.
“I’m medically retired,” I said for the second time that day. Telling the story didn’t get any easier the second time around, though I added some details for Abby I hadn’t for Jenna. The weeks I’d spent healing from my cracked ribs and other injuries, the surgery I’d had to close the hole that had opened up in the macula of my eye as a result of the shrapnel.
How it felt to see your buddies get hurt and to feel like you’d failed them.
Throughout it, she watched me with dry eyes, her distance—both actual and metaphorical—still very real. When I finally reached the part about putting my stuff in storage and flying to New York to reconnect with Slater, she crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. Not touching me, but closer.
“I didn’t look for you because I thought we were done. I figured you were married with your allotted two-point-five kids by now,” I muttered, only half joking.
“Quick work.”
“Yeah, well, we were quick, right? When it’s meant to be, time doesn’t mean jack shit.”
She was quiet for so long I began to think she was trying to find a graceful way to make her exit. I’d just offloaded a dump truck of crap at her door. Who wanted a man who wasn’t the same as he’d been when you’d fallen in love? Most of me was still in good shape, but not all. I wasn’t anyone’s bargain now, if I’d ever been.
And that wasn’t saying a thing about what was on the inside.
“Were you telling the truth?” she asked. “About going without for two years?”
“I don’t think I said that, exactly.”
“Pretty close.”
Nodding, I fisted a handful of the tangled sheets. “Yeah. There was one woman a few months after we ended things. I got drunk and played the hero card to get in her pants. Not that she minded.” I exhaled. “I couldn’t even come. Can you believe that? There I was, risking my life, and I couldn’t even have a damn orgasm for my trouble.” I turned my head and fixed my gaze on her, noting her small, very smug smile. “Your fault.”
“Is it wrong of me to say I’m glad?”
“Yes. It’s also disturbing and shameful.” I cocked my head. “How about me being happy you never did the deed with my brother?”
“That is truly heinous.”
I didn’t smile all the way, but my lips twitched. “So…Yonkers.”
“Are you back on that again?”
“Yeah. Because I’m not going back to Virginia Beach. Or Malibu. Or anyplace where my family isn’t.”
She tugged on a loose thread on her jersey. “I’m not your family.”
“You think not? Try to walk away from me and see.” I leaned across the bed to the nightstand and picked up the cuffs, dangling them in the air. “Remember these?”
“You wouldn’t handcuff me to my own bed twice.”
I stared at her for a long moment before giving her a short nod and sliding back on the mattress. “You know what? You’re right.” I snapped the cuffs in place around the post as I’d done with her. “I’m the one who’s not going anywhere this time. So looks like you’ll have to get a new bed, honey.”
It was her turn for her lips to twitch. “So what, you’ll just stay here forever and live with Slater while I’m living in Yonkers and teaching—”
“Teaching what? Where?”
“Piano at a music school in the city. I do group and individual lessons.”
“Huh. So what would you say if I became a teacher, too, for a while?” I rolled my shoulder, surprised it was already stiffening up from the awkward position of the cuff. Next time I cuffed Abby—God, I hoped there’d be a next time—I’d have to make sure I was careful as far as positioning. “I’m probably going to teach some SEAL training classes at some point, but that’s a while in the future. Right now I’m thinking of checking out a few classes at NYU. I might even consider teaching at a MMA gym here in Brooklyn.”
One of her brows winged up. “MMA? Isn’t that the illegal sport you kept questioning your brother about?”
Part of my reintegration in civilian life involved learning to tolerate gray areas. Not everything was black or white, right or wrong. I liked Fox. I’d enjoyed sparring with him. Being at the gym surrounded by fighters of all kinds felt good to me. Natural. If that made me a hypocrite, then I’d wear the label.
“Teaching at a MMA gym is not the same as condoning illegal practices,” I said gruffly, already expecting her rebuke. Just because I probably deserved it didn’t make the idea go down any better.
She smiled, full on and beautiful. “Once a SEAL, always a SEAL.”
That I couldn’t deny. Nor did I want to. “Yes.”
Swallowing hard, she crawled up the bed until she knelt between my splayed legs. “You’ve
done so much to be proud of. Your sister hero-worships you. She has this scrapbook about you with a bunch of different articles she got online and anything she could get her hands on that was Lime-related. How’d you get that name, anyway?”
The memory made me smile. “Because my brother said I was sour just like a lime when we were kids. And it stuck.” I jerked a shoulder. “Guess he thought I could be grumpy. Can you imagine?”
Slater pushed the door open and cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah, and he also thought your hair was naturally green after you fucked around with that Sunny Days hair crap and tried to make yourself blonder.” He walked into the room and crossed his arms when we both gave him the eye. Abby’s was probably a bit more accurate tracking-wise than mine. “Yes, I was listening at the door. So sue me.”
“You eavesdropped on a private conversation?” Abby’s shock made me laugh, hard.
“You’re an only child, baby, so that’s why you don’t know what happens when you have siblings. It’s basically a cardinal rule that you must hear everything the other says in case it could be about you or useful for blackmail purposes later.”
“But you’re both grown men.”
Slater shook his head, his affable grin sliding across his face. God, I’d missed that bastard’s grin. “Grown and men should never go together in the same sentence, Abalicious.”
She held a hand to her head. “God, I need some sleep. This has been too much of a day for me.”
“Go ahead and get some. I imagine this lug needs some, too, since he’s been consorting with the enemy. Also known as my best friend.” Slater turned his cocky grin my way. “Guess he’s not so bad anymore now that he’s hooking you up with a job at The Cage, huh?”
“Possible job. I’m not sure. I have to see if my combat training is something they can make work for their program.” I flashed him a grin in return. “And if they intend to pay me enough to make it worth my while.”
“So you’re sticking in town then,” Slater said, going for a nonchalance he didn’t come close to pulling off.
“Thought you were listening at the door.”
“Just say it, you fucker.”
