Fredo's Secret, A SEAL Brotherhood Novella: A SEAL Brotherhood Novella

by Sharon Hamilton

  She was hard to lie to. She was hard to do anything but love as often as he was allowed to love her, any way he could love her. She was hard not to do any little thing for. Even taking out the trash was an homage to this beautiful woman who owned him more than he ever thought possible. But today, he would lie.

  “It makes me ache to see you so worried, Mia, my love.” Then he thought of something he could say that would be plausible. “Did they get my gun?”

  “No.” She arched back, the top of her cotton vee-neck shirt revealing her soft breasts. Her forearms were on his torso. It was his favorite way to watch her, when she was naked, resting her body against his, her legs between his, feet and sheets entangled. This was coming close. “Your gun was still on you when the paramedics arrived. They got there in just a minute. Happened to be nearby. Otherwise, Fredo,” her lower lip began to quiver again, “you would have died. And I would have died alongside you.”

  That made him laugh. Always so high strung and over-the-top dramatic, Mia was like the ancient Mayan women who used to throw themselves on their dead husband’s funeral pyre. His laughing made him begin coughing.

  Mia was off him, dashing out the door. Fredo still smelled her beautiful body and felt the moistness and warmth of her even after she was gone. He was left aching.

  A very homely nurse with a reddish horse face was the next person he saw. She had a wide nose, nearly Fredo’s width. No unibrow, but her eyes were small, and her jaw was prominent, like a man’s. Seeing her made him inhale, and he stopped coughing.

  “Glad to see you’re awake, Mr. Chavez. How do you feel?” Mia stood behind her.

  He wanted to say something like, ‘Can she stay with me tonight?’ but he knew that wouldn’t fly.

  “Hurts when I cough.”

  “Yes, well, you’ve got a tube in there, for drainage, and to keep your lung inflated. They’ll probably take it out tomorrow, if everything goes well. You were in surgery for nearly three hours. You’ll be sore for a while, but you were lucky it was a small caliber bullet.”

  “I want to go home.”

  “No, I’m sorry. You’re spending Thanksgiving here in the hospital, I’m afraid. You’re not cleared to discharge until the Navy doctor gives the okay.”

  “Can he have food? My mother will be so disappointed—” Mia was chirping like a little bird at the woman’s side, her hands flying everywhere.

  “Nope, I’m sorry. You’re going to be on clear liquids for twenty-four hours. Closest thing I can get you is perhaps some turkey or chicken broth. That’s it, I’m afraid.” She checked his IVs and made some notes to his chart with a computer at the side of his bed. “I’ve alerted the doctor that you’re awake. Not sure what his plans are, but I think he’ll be in to see you later. Are you in any pain?”

  “Just when I cough.”

  “Let’s see what he says first. Be thankful you don’t need a ventilator. Welcome back. We’re all glad you made it alive, Mr. Chavez.”

  Fredo realized that, for all the times he’d been overseas, he’d never been shot before. He’d been stabbed, butted with a rifle, partially blown up, thrown from a second-story roof that collapsed under him, pushed off a third-story balcony, and nearly poisoned by one of Coop’s health drinks, but never shot.

  Kyle, Cooper, and T.J. stopped by late that evening.

  “You get a good look at who shot you?” Kyle asked.

  “Nah. I was coming out of the market, and these three thugs were there. But they all left before I got shot. Then I saw one of them before I lost consciousness, but not shooting me. No. I got shot through the windshield, which was the opposite direction they’d run off to.”

  “What did they want? Did they say anything?” Kyle asked.

  “Looking for someone to buy them beer or something.” He hesitated, but decided he needed to tell Kyle about the blue-eyed kid. “I said no.”

  “That was smart, doing that in this neighborhood,” added Coop.

  Fredo considered his comment carefully. Something about the timing seemed off to him. “There was this one kid I recognized. I’ve seen him before, I think hanging around. But they were never violent looking, you know?”

  “You’re gonna have to talk to the police now that they know you’re awake,” T.J. said. “You think they did it, though?”

  “I don’t think so, but that’s just a gut reaction.”

  “Maybe he’s the one who did the first aid,” added Coop.

  “First aid?”

  “Yeah, someone stopped the bleeding. Found a rag and duct taped it to your chest at the entrance wound. I think it saved your life.” Coop began examining his IV drip and the monitor on the computer screen at Fredo’s bedside.

  “You’re kidding. So that’s what hurts like a son of a gun.” Fredo scratched his chest, moving aside his gown and finding a large band of hairless skin cutting him in half at the level of the bandage and drain. “Holy shit, I’ve been waxed.”

  Kyle, Cooper, and T.J. chuckled.

  “Thank God you always carry that shit around everywhere.”

  “Duct tape is the bomb.” Fredo didn’t try to hide the reverence he felt for the stuff in his voice. He worshiped it.

  “Too bad they didn’t put a piece between your eyes. You’d have gotten your unibrow fixed finally.” T.J. could hardly get the words out.

  The SEALs laughed again, and Fredo delivered T.J. the finger.

  Even Mia had begged him to have his eyebrows tweezed, but he’d always told everyone it was unmanly to alter his physical appearance, even if it wasn’t a handsome one. “I’d rather get cut.”

  What he’d meant to imply was that he’d get his manhood cut, a vasectomy, but that had already been done for him without the surgery. The pain of his doctor visit came back. He glanced up at Cooper, who, thank God, didn’t say a word. Instead, Cooper grabbed his hand, and they clasped. He hoped Coop hadn’t told anyone, and the handshake was acknowledgement of that, Fredo thought.

  “Okay, well, you look like you’ll pull through. But you were damn lucky, Fredo. You don’t try to go do anything heroic, you hear? Just stay in bed, try to watch some T.V., and get yourself right. We need you back.” Kyle squeezed his shoulder, and then gave him a swat to the side of his face. “Won’t be by tomorrow, with Thanksgiving and all. I have to help Christy mind the hellions so she can do her cooking thing. But Mia will take good care of you.”

  “Thanks,” Fredo said. He said goodbye to the three SEALs and as he watched their backs exit the doorway of the hospital room, knew they were going home to wives and the sounds of babies and toddlers at home.

  It was something he wouldn’t be hearing much longer in his own household. He never knew he missed it until the possibility was taken from him.

  Chapter 3

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  Something about the boy’s blue eyes kept haunting Fredo. He tried to push it out of his head when Mia came by late the next morning to hand feed him turkey soup that Felicia Guzman had made special for him. She’d gotten approval from the nurse’s station. The way his wife’s delicate and smooth arm rose and fell with each spoonful, her mouth opening and closing with her tongue licking her lips, was giving him a hard-on. He’d sit there forever if he had to. If she’d just keep feeding him, fussing over him, he could stay there for the rest of his life.

  Her small talk, the way her deep brown eyes sparked up at him, sometimes hiding behind her shiny black hair charmed him today just like every time she did it. The, woman would be beautiful at eighty, he just knew it. She’d cause accidents everywhere she went. She’d cause a riot in any nursing home she’d wind up in.

  But he kept seeing the boy’s blue eyes, which triggered something deep and painful. And then again, he’d remember the secret he could not tell her. He did not want to tell her he was less of a man. He didn’t want to admit sometimes he felt like nothing without her. Was it wise to love someone so much that you were so afraid her life would be snuffed out and you’d not be able to survive? The worl
d was a dangerous place. He couldn’t be everywhere to protect her or little Ricardo, whom she doted on even more than she did Fredo. She was the best mother he’d ever seen.

  “So, mi amore, you are feeling better now?” Her warm smile bathed him in the glow he felt all the way to his toes.

  “Yes, mi amore. I feel much better now that you have revived me, as no other woman ever could.” He puckered his lips. It hurt to lean forward, yet he tried.

  She answered him by mating her lips with his, carefully, so as not to cause him pain. His finger found the vee of her opening in front, so he could stroke the top of her left breast there. His tongue slipped past hers as he drew her deeper into his mouth. He felt her little giggle, the gentle way she told him she liked him touching her there, liked that he was needing her.

  “If they’d let me stay over, I’d probably get you in trouble, mi amore,” she said, as she let his hand slip under her skirt, over her pantyhose.

  “I’d like that very much. Sneak in. I won’t tell a soul, Mia.”

  “You’re so cute, Fredo, my love.” She pulled away. He was mesmerized by the flowery scent of her, mixed with what he knew to be her natural pheromones. Her eyes sparkled as his hand was prevented from finding flesh under her skirt because of the pantyhose.

  “Ah, these things. I don’t like these things. This guy who invented them never knew how smooth and beautiful your legs are without them.”

  She arched back, looking at him with half-lidded eyes. “I am swelling inside for you, mi amore. I am needing release. Would we be able to do this before your next nurse examination?”

  “My God, Mia. Lock the door. Be quick about it.”

  She ran to the hallway, searched both directions, and then closed the door, locking it behind her, leaning against it, and showing him she’d placed her hand under her skirt. She removed her pantyhose in one quick, sexy peel. Fredo was instantly so hard he forgot he was in the hospital and nearly tried to climb out of bed.

  She left her dress on, but hopped up on the hospital bed, turned around, and presented her rear end to him.

  “God, it is such a sacrilege what you do to me. Jesus himself would have never been able to resist the temptation of your beautiful body,” he whispered. His hands pushed her skirt up over her tanned smooth ass, and although it hurt like a son of a gun, he leaned forward, tongue out for a drop of her golden juices.

  Mia looked at him around the side, her hair covering half her face, and widened her knees at the sides of Fredo’s prone frame covered in tape, tubing, and blankets. The bottles hanging at the sides of his bed began to rattle as she inched her pussy closer and closer to his mouth. She was nearly an inch away, and taking her time, when Fredo reached forward, grabbed her around the waist, and smashed her warm lips to his face, where he drank, making no effort to stop while loud slurping noises bounced off the walls.

  “Mia, you make me want you more each day. This is so unfair, being here. I want to fuck you all night long.”

  “Let’s do it. How long before you think they’ll call security? I’m so hot; I might come twice before they break the door down. Satisfy me, mi amore. I am in need of your brand of satisfaction. I ache…”

  The green light she gave him as he sucked and lapped had him confused. Once again, he forgot he was in the hospital and tried to get to his knees so he could properly mount her, but he was held back by IVs he was close to tearing out of his arm.

  She pulled the blankets back over his engorged dick, as it bobbed and glistened with precum. She spread her butt cheeks wide as she angled herself so her opening covered the crown of his shaft. She sucked in her belly, tightening her muscles and drawing him inside her. Fredo felt like she could pull his whole body inside her.

  “Fuck, Mia. I cannot fuck you proper.”

  “Oh, Fredo, you are doing it; my love, you know I like you deep.” She clutched and spread her butt cheeks farther apart, grinding herself down on him and pressing him hard against her cervix; then she moaned with the contact. “More, mi amore.”

  He tried, but he was limited.

  “Fuck it.” At last he decided he’d had enough. He pulled the IVs out, removed the heart monitor that instantly started sending off little alarm signals. He got himself up on his knees, and covered her from behind, ramming himself inside, lifting her body with his thighs, and the thrusting of his cock. He held her chest down into the bed, one hand at the back of her neck, with her rear in the air as he pumped her. The bed shook, the equipment over the bed started to fall down, tubing began to slap against the sides, and then the IV fell over with a loud crash. The plastic bottle bounced on the floor several times before landing at a stop. Again, a big thrust in as they both heard pounding on the door. Someone was shouting, but Fredo needed to spill inside her as if it was the last act of his young life.

  Mia was trying to thrash, grabbing the sides of the bed as he kept thrusting and lifting her. He pulled her back against him, one arm under her waist. Finally, after several long strokes, he began to come. He felt her begin to shudder. He let loose of her neck as she rose up, squeezing her own breasts through the cotton fabric of the dress.

  The pounding on the door got louder and louder until he heard some keys clanging.

  “They’re coming,” Mia said.

  “Oh My God! So am I, Mia. So am I.”

  Chapter 4

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  The boy’s blue eyes came to Fredo in the dream he was having. For some reason, he kept seeing the boy in an ill-fitting suit, the top being black and the pants a dark brown. He saw blue clouds in the sky, and a couple of sea birds flew above them. There was the sound of something else, cadence calls. Someone was softly crying. The boy in blue stared him down, his eyes scarred with anger, looking so out of place on a young boy. Behind him, a diminutive gray-haired woman was accepting a folded flag.

  Fredo was jolted to attention and nearly fell out of the hospital bed as the sounds of a gun salute cracked the easy afternoon in San Diego and made the sea birds scream for cover and disappear. The boy didn’t flinch, but Fredo could feel the sweat dripping down his own spine right now as he sat staring at the black screen of the sleeping TV that was mounted on the wall in front of him.

  He oriented himself. He was still in the hospital, and it was late morning. He’d had a difficult night, not due to the pain, but his lack of being able to take a deep breath. Mia would be here soon. With any luck, the nurses would let him take a shower. He’d like it if they’d let her do it. Maybe they’d even let him go home. That would be an unimaginably wondrous gift.

  He’d seen those eyes at a funeral. For whom? He pushed the grit of confusion from his brain, rubbed his eyes, and shook his head, but it did no good. He’d been there. He’d been to that funeral. This kid was there, too, and hated him. Maybe it was because Fredo lived and someone this boy cared about didn’t.

  The nurse came in, busying herself with details that didn’t require they speak, and Fredo was grateful for this. Her lips made a sneer as if she had smelled something unpleasant. He watched the ever-blue sky outside and just waited until he was alone again to think. He really wanted to remember more.

  “Can I go home today?”

  “Not sure, Mr. Chavez. Maybe another day or two. You just sit back and be comfortable; relax a bit.”

  Did she know how fuckin’ stupid she sounded? Sit back and relax? What the fuck was up with that?

  “How about a shower? I need one,” he scowled, crossing his arms over his waist, giving her a squint. “My wife can help me.”

  That cracked her veneer. Her lips arced up, and she winked at him. Her gruff demeanor melted enough for him to see a kinky side to the greying woman with the man’s voice. “I can only imagine.”

  She scurried around the bed to the window.

  “I’m not on any real pain meds.”

  “You want these drapes pulled a bit? Sun will be coming in here in about an hour.”

  “I like the sun. I come from a place where it never s
ets.” His chin jutted out in defiance. He scratched his arms.

  “That so?” She raised her painted eyebrows up, her forehead skin making accordion folds above her considerable unibrow. At the sight of it, he swore to himself and tossed his torso back into the bed.

  “I know it’s hard on you guys. You like to be up doing things. No fun lying here in bed, watching the world to go by. Of course, that doesn’t stop all of you from being…creative.”

  She gave him a fat-lipped smirk and wiggled her eyebrows up and down, telling him she’d known what he and Mia had done the day before. No doubt, they were the talk of the floor from the looks on everyone’s faces.

  Detective Clark Riverton had come by the previous day, on Thanksgiving, which told Fredo the man’s love life hadn’t improved. He’d arrived while the door was locked, and with the flurry of activity going on around him as the staff worked to get Fredo reconnected to all the monitors, Riverton had given up and made the date to come back.

  Clark Riverton was one of the good guys. But his lifestyle dictated that he live somewhat in the shadows. Never married, his luck when it came to women was better with professionals; that he could pay to be silent. He made a point to tell Fredo on one occasion that he didn’t pay for sex. He paid for discretion.

  Riverton had been known to date an old girlfriend of Coop’s, Daisy, the tattoo artist all the SEALs on Kyle’s team went to. Although she didn’t look the part, she was extremely selective, so that gave Riverton an added dose of respect.

  Fredo didn’t think he had many regrets. He wasn’t the kind to stay at home, retired, raising someone else’s kids, either. Fredo wondered if that would be his fate. One big difference between them was that Clark never seemed to covet a family lifestyle; Fredo did.

  When Riverton entered the room, he tossed Fredo a chocolate foil-wrapped turkey from one of the famous candy stores.

  “Someone dropped a whole basket of these off at the office, so don’t think I went out of my way to shop for you, Fredo.” Riverton rarely smiled. His eyes drew down smaller as he took quick furtive glances at the tubing and equipment, now thankfully at rest.