Reckless: A Bad Boyz Anthology

by Anthology

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said from beneath her wild cloud of hair. “I thought we’d just be a fast hookup, great sex and something to break the boredom of the road, but it’s been really wonderful being here with you, Dillon.”

  I clicked off her phone and set it on the bed, fighting not to reveal I was a little rattled by that. Her speech had the strange power to tap into my own confusion over what was happening between us with a clarity less escapable than my internally contained feelings.

  My heart started to accelerate with a rapidly growing discomfort claiming me. I felt it again. A blend of rightness and wrongness, the desire to be with her and a shouting voice telling me I shouldn’t.

  “You don’t expect much from a man. Fast. Great sex. Not boring,” I teased hoping to lift my plummeting mood. “That makes you damn near the perfect girl.”

  She tossed her brush and flipped back her hair. “Am I perfect now?”

  I suddenly felt as if I was sucked out of my own body and transported to another place and time. Everything around converted into rapid-fire flashes of moments I’d lived and submerged far away from my consciousness.

  Dark.

  Shadowy.

  Without meaning and terrifying.

  The screams in the room were my own.

  I couldn’t stop them even as I saw Julia run hell-bent for the door.

  Chapter Five

  Sacramento, the present…

  A HEAVY SILENCE settled over the room.

  “What triggered the flashback, Dillon?” Zac asked. “Close your eyes. Visualize yourself there in the room in Tokyo. What do you see?”

  I shut my lids, my breaths coming in shallow, rapid spurts. Each image that came I tried to bring into focus. Nothing. They spun away too quickly. Then—

  I sat up and opened my eyes. “Julia’s face, only it wasn’t her face. Another woman, but I can’t make out the image clearly. Another woman’s face with Julia’s hair. Long, black hair. Flying through the air with another woman’s face.”

  I broke off since this sounded far-fetched. It wasn’t possible that some mystery woman’s face superimposed with Julia’s hair sent me into a full PTSD storm. It didn’t make sense. Then the memory of my meltdown at Shyla’s claimed my thoughts, the panic-filled moments of being tied up then abruptly blank. The ropes and the blindfold hadn’t made me freak out. I’d held it together until her hair. But that couldn’t be right. There had to be more, something else. Maybe my memory was playing me false again.

  Zac nodded, scribbled, and looked back up. “Do you know what you were screaming when Graham found you?”

  It was like going down a tunnel from darkness to light. Seeing Graham. Then I felt the firm clutch of his hands on my shoulders. Coming out of a fog, but still in my state of raw terror.

  My heart stilled. The words rang sharply in my memory, but they made no sense. “Don’t hurt her. Don’t hurt her.” My emotional disarray sent me from the chair. “There were no women in our unit. Why would I scream that?”

  I whirled and Zac studied me with a face of expert impassivity. “Dig deeper, Dillon. You’re ready for the answer. Find it.”

  Frustrated, I raked a hand through my hair, my agitation making me pace the room like a caged animal. Find it. If I could fucking find the lost hours of my life, wouldn’t I have already?

  I halted. “Nothing. There’s nothing. Just the same old images and the new ones from today, but not enough so I can piece this together.”

  Zac closed his notebook and tucked it back into his case. “I think we’ve done enough. How do you feel, Dillon?”

  I dropped back down on my chair. “I’m all right. Frustrated. Angry. But I’m not going to flip out or anything, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  Zac nodded. “Good.”

  “What the fuck does ‘good’ mean?” I asked, annoyed.

  Zac smiled. “Good means good, Dillon. No hidden meaning. You’ve had a breakthrough. You’re getting closer. It’s good.”

  *`~`*

  After having dinner with Graham and Zac, I politely disappeared and went to my room. I’d intruded on their reunion long enough. They didn’t need my sorry ass hanging around and being a mood kill.

  I lay back onto my bed, drained by my latest session with Doc. Exhaling loudly, I wasn’t sure what to do next. It was only 10:30 p.m., too early for bed, but I didn’t feel like trying to get anything going tonight.

  The quiet of the bedroom made me restless. I debated shooting off an apology text to Julia for what went down our last morning together but killed that idea. It had been more than a week and she hadn’t contacted me, a clear indication I’d blown any possibility of seeing her again.

  Snorting, I reminded myself I wouldn’t want to see me again either. I’d only known one woman able to endure long-term my complicated array of bullshit, flashbacks, and trauma: Rachel. The thought of her made me feel better, calmer, inside.

  I toyed with the idea of trying to hook up tonight with Rachel, but she wasn’t a late-night booty call kind of girl, not even to me, and I never wanted her to think I thought that.

  Don’t get me wrong, I loved her pussy. The taste of it on my tongue, her scent, and the spasms of her orgasms were all uniquely her own unlike any other woman I’d ever been with. If I could figure out a way to box her cunt and take it on the road with me I would have done it. I loved fucking her, pounding into her as she wrapped her soft arms and legs around me and screamed my name. The sound of her voice. Sleeping beside her. Waking up with her…

  My dick started to thicken from thinking about Rachel. I quickly stripped down, grabbed hold of myself, and teased my cock first with my foreskin and squeezing the staff before running my hand up and down my length.

  Vivid snapshots from the mental scrapbook I kept of Rachel filled my head, pausing at our final night together before I’d left the last time for the road.

  Every woman had their own way of riding a man, and the motions of her cunt put every other female to shame. I couldn’t stand chicks who used my weapon like a dildo to masturbate as they straddled me, the ones who thought watching them get off was all it took to make it good for a man. But Rachel knew how to glide herself up and down on my cock like she owned it, stroking her inner hot-buttons with my flesh in a way that shot sensation through me. She knew my sexual wants without me telling her. When to stroke my body, cup my balls, when to kiss, how to tease me with her dangling breasts in my face, and how to arch into me as I greedily worked her nipples to barrel her toward her release.

  She could change positions with the grace and agility of a cat—turn to ride me backward or to hover her clit over my face—and she could read the signs of my body. When I wanted to come in her mouth or vice versa, and when I wanted to sink myself in deep and let go. Silent communication in perfect sexual harmony.

  Just the memory of us turned me rock hard, and my hand was pumping full speed, hardly able to keep up with my mounting arousal.

  The closer I got to release, the closer Rachel got to orgasm in my memory. Oh God, that feels so good, she moaned in her husky voice. You know exactly how I like to be fucked, Dillon—

  My sheets and hand were now sticky with cum, but my cock was still standing at attention, taunting me to pick up the phone so both of us could have the real thing.

  Groaning, I rolled over and reached for some tissue instead of my cell. Slapping one hadn’t even taken off the edge. He wanted to keep going.

  I glanced at the clock and debated again if I should call her. Rachel knew I was coming into town today and we always hooked up my first night here.

  Then another memory chided me to play this visit home cool: the argument we’d had in her bedroom before I’d taken off on the road again. Definitely less pleasant than the fucking had been.

  The last thing I wanted was to be such a prick that she cut me loose for good. I’d already overstepped my bounds and been a first-class jerk during that heated scene that went down at her place, and I
’m still not sure what had set me off and bothered me so much about it.

  We’d been lying in bed after a long night of scorching sex. Any man who got to wake up with her was one lucky bastard. In the morning she could be soft and loving, wrapping her long limbs around my body in just the right way to make me feel cherished. There weren’t words to describe how her curves and breasts felt pressed against my flesh. And even before she ever saw a comb or washcloth, her delicately featured face and sparkly eyes were breathtakingly stunning. Even with that little chin-length cut—and I was a guy who preferred long hair on a woman—she was sexy as all hell.

  We were passing a morning of quiet and touching in that sex-drained way long-term lovers share. It had been the perfect send-off for the long months on the road without her, right up to the point when her son, Cody, interrupted us and I shot off my big mouth at her.

  Neither of us was ready to move when we heard the knock on her bedroom door. “Mommy, can I come in?”

  Rachel groaned, pulled out of my arms, and sat up. “No. You can’t come in. I’ll be out in five minutes. Go wait in the kitchen for me.” She grabbed her phone and hit the button so it would light up. “Crap, it’s 6 a.m.”

  I smiled. “So?”

  Her brows rose up. “I’ve got to get Cody to preschool by eight.”

  I made a disappointed pout. “I guess that means we’re not showering together this morning.”

  Her cheeks flushed prettily as she rolled her eyes at me. “Not if I want to be on time today. Which I do. I don’t want to be one of those moms who screws up her kid’s attendance record. It could scar him for life.”

  Rachel was only teasing. She was a great mother and there were times I envied the little dude for getting to be the number one man in her life.

  “Sure you don’t want to reconsider? I’ll be gone fourteen months this time.”

  She dropped a sweet kiss on my mouth. “Nothing to reconsider. I’d do it in a heartbeat if I could. But I can’t. So we better both get moving.”

  I sighed. “Fine. You win. It’s time for me to hit the road anyway. I’ve got junk I have to do before I go to the airport. I shouldn’t have even stayed the night. Not with your kid here.”

  Every muscle in her body tensed at once, though I didn’t pick up on her reaction to my comments until later. “You always stay the night when I let you.”

  I laughed. It was kind of cute—and the truth—how she said let you. I reached out to lightly caress her cheek then climbed from the bed.

  “I’ve been thinking that’s something we should reconsider, my spending the night here. Cody is four. He’s old enough to start piecing together what you do in here on the nights you have sleepovers. That can’t be good for a little boy. You should probably rethink the overnight guest thing and I’d definitely feel better leaving before morning.”

  I grabbed my pants off the floor and had them pulled on before I realized she was like a frozen statue staring at me from the bed.

  When my gaze met hers, inside my head I heard oh shit even before she answered.

  Her eyes went wide, wounded and angry. “I can’t believe you just said that to me. Overnight guests? Sleepovers? Are those your polite euphemisms for saying you think I hook up too much and I’m not taking care of my son?”

  I kicked myself for opening my mouth. “I don’t think that at all.” It was the truth and it added emphasis to my words.

  Her jaw tightened. “Then what, then?”

  I ran a hand through my hair and sank down on the bed. “I care about Cody. That’s all. Don’t pretend you think this is an OK thing for him that I’m here this morning.”

  I could hear that one came out wrong the second I said it. Good one, Dillon. Who are you to be critical of anything Rachel does?

  “Are you implying I don’t care about him? That I’m screwing up my son by trying to have a tiny bit of a relationship with you?”

  “Don’t rationalize what we are or what you’re doing with any of the guys you sleep with,” I snapped before I could stop. “You don’t have relationships, Rachel. If you did I wouldn’t be let through the door whenever I blow through town. We both know that. Don’t make me the bad guy for caring about both you and Cody.”

  She sprang from the bed then whirled to face me with her hands on her hips. “Then let me clear up one misconception you have, Dillon. As far as Cody is concerned, you are the only man who’s ever been in my life.”

  That set me back on my heels. “What do you mean only man?”

  “I mean I don’t see anyone else. Date anyone else. You’re the man in my life.”

  My heart shot into triple time and the walls closed in, practically suffocating me. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? I thought we had an understanding. Jesus Christ, Rachel, I sleep with other women. Lots of women. Why would you—”

  “I don’t want anyone but you, Dillon. I never have.”

  That was the last thing I was prepared to hear that morning. “I can’t be anything more to you than I am.”

  “I’m not asking you to be,” she countered, but I could tell she was struggling not to cry in front of me.

  “This isn’t right. Not by a long shot.”

  “Would it be better if I slept with other men?”

  That question hit me like an IED. “No!” Just the thought of another man with Rachel made me want to punch the wall.

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I was making more of a mess and I wasn’t even sure why I’d started this. But knowing that little guy was out there waiting by the door, wanting his mom, while I was lying butt naked wanting to fuck her had hit me as really wrong. And that last bombshell—that I was the only man in Rachel’s life—as much as my male ego got off on it, the wrongness of that hit me like a ton of bricks.

  “I’ve always loved you, Dillon,” she whispered cautiously. “You know that.”

  Another knock on the door interrupted us and heightened my aggravation. I snatched up my shirt from the carpet. “Let’s just drop it, OK? I don’t want to fight and you don’t have time to.”

  I was at the bedroom door before the heavy pressure of her eyes stopped me. I looked back at her. “I love you, too, Rachel. I always have. But that’s not enough to make this anything more than it is for either of us. Some things can’t be fixed. Maybe I’m one of them.”

  “Love can fix anything,” she said with her ever-patient, unflinching optimism.

  The way she looked at me ripped at my heart. In that moment I would have given anything to know what happened between us, to get back those tortuous years that were lost and stood between us, and for her sake to try to put us back together.

  Before that morning it never occurred to me to wonder why she hung in there so long with me. Was she sticking it out in hopes I would eventually remember those missing parts of my life so I could find my way back to the Dillon I was before that last deployment?

  I didn’t want to walk out on her, but I was a realist. It had been years. No matter what flash impulse rose inside me, I had to make things clear to her and leave. Pretending we could be something other than we were after what I’d been through wouldn’t have been fair to her.

  “Rachel, it’s been five years. Things aren’t going to change. Maybe it would be better for us both if you did start seeing other men.”

  Chapter Six

  I WASN’T ABOUT to sit around for another night listening to the fuck-a-thon in my guest bedroom. The open-spaced loft with the clear sightlines—every room visible to me from anywhere in the condo—had been necessary when I’d bought the place five years ago. Tight closed spaces, areas I couldn’t see, and normal sounds without visual recognition were liable to trigger my PTSD panic.

  If I was going to keep it together during the brief spans I lived alone, I needed sightlines and that’s what I’d purchased. I wasn’t afraid of what I could see.

  But I’d never bargained on five years later being here with Graham, m
ore often than not, or that the walls that cordoned off the area into only four rooms would be so thin that every minute in my bed from dust until dawn was accompanied by the lusty mating symphony of my gay friends.

  I also didn’t count on it being arousing. Don’t believe any man who tells you he’s not turned on by every type of grunt and groan accompanying fucking—even gay—because the soundtrack from the guest bedroom stiffened me up as quickly as a porno flick and I had the calluses to prove it.

  Fuck, I was getting hard again just listening to them, and the music I’d turned on—low so as not to piss off Graham—and the closed door hadn’t helped even a bit.

  Nope, I wasn’t staying in another night even though Graham advised me against seeing Rachel. Doc said to follow my gut—he was the medical professional so his advice was the one I settled on—but to be more accurate, it was my cock I was following when I finally broke down to call her.

  I grabbed my phone, considered abruptly changing course to text, told myself it was a cowardly way to hook up with a woman, and—grinning—reminded myself that hearing her voice before seeing her was a bonus.

  Rachel’s husky timbre could make a dead man rise. It was that fucking sexy. And yes, before you ask, when I’m traveling I make the most of a late-night phone call with her. I’ve rubbed one off, eyes closed, submerged in the sound of her, more times than I can count. It didn’t matter how much pussy I had, even via phone she could get me hotter than any woman on the planet, and I wasn’t going to pass on any pleasure I could share with her.

  Just the thought of her made the thickening turn into an ache. I was locked and loaded and looking for somewhere to shoot.

  My impatience grew as I listened to the rings, and I was just about to start kicking myself for not calling her first thing when I landed then I heard, “Dillon. Where are you?”

  I closed my eyes, feeling suddenly dragged somewhere between relieved and elated. Her voice said it all. She was glad I called. “Sacramento. Since yesterday.”