Rough

by Sybil Bartel

  I slid behind the wheel and had started the engine when she surprised me with a hand on my junk.

  I chuckled. “You just going for it, Red?”

  “Yes.” She licked her lips.

  Damn. “Taking advantage of the tinted windows?”

  “Maybe.” She pulled my zipper down and her small hands took my already hard cock out of my jeans.

  I didn’t get another word out. Her lips closed around my shaft and she sucked exactly how I’d taught her.

  Fuck me.

  I couldn’t drive home fast enough. She worked me and I kept us on the road. Pulling into my garage, I reluctantly stopped her, because as much as I wanted to fill her sweet mouth, this wasn’t going to happen in my fucking parking garage.

  “Come on, baby.” I pulled my cock out of her mouth and barely got my jeans fastened over my hard-on. “We’re taking this upstairs.”

  “Okay.” She didn’t even wait for me to come get her. She opened her door when I opened mine.

  I fucking smiled at her eagerness, but she had no idea what I had in store for her. I ushered her into the elevator and backed her against the wall. My hands on either side of her face, I purposely didn’t touch her anywhere. “Do you know what I’m going to do to you?”

  “No,” she breathed.

  I dragged my nose up the side of her neck without actually touching her skin. “I’m going to take every inch of your body and make it mine.”

  She shivered. “I’m already yours.”

  Not yet she wasn’t. But she would be. “Almost, baby.”

  The elevator doors slid open, and I let us into the condo. But the second I closed the door behind me, she dropped to her knees.

  Fuck.

  Submissive as hell, she was the sexiest woman I’d ever laid eyes on, and my dominant side came out with a vengeance. “Unzip my jeans.”

  She unzipped them.

  “Take my cock out.”

  She licked her lips and did exactly as I said.

  “Stroke me then put your lips on me and suck like I taught you.”

  It was the last fucking coherent thing I said, because she didn’t just wrap her sexy lips around me, she took me all the way down her throat. Stroking my balls, she worked me hard.

  Gripping handfuls of her hair, my dick a fucking rocket, my balls drew tight. I didn’t want to hold back. I wanted to come in her sweet mouth where no man had ever come before. The thought, her mouth, her sexy ass on her knees, I fucking lost it.

  Growling, I shot stream after stream into her mouth.

  And she swallowed every drop.

  “Goddamn.” When I could fucking move again, I slowly rocked in and out, not wanting to leave her mouth, but at the same time, wanting to bury my dick in her tight pussy, which I knew would be wet as fuck. “That was fucking amazing, Red.” I stroked her cheek and pulled out.

  She fingered an escaped drop of my release on her lip and licked it. “I liked that.”

  Thank fuck. I held my cock and dragged the head across her lips. “I fucking loved it.”

  She kissed my shaft. “How long before we can do that again?”

  About thirty fucking seconds, she had me so fucking turned on. “Anytime you want.”

  She kissed me again and started to get up. “You’re insatiable.”

  “Only with you.” I couldn’t get enough of her. I helped her up and unbuttoned her blouse.

  “Can I ask you something without you taking offense?” she blurted.

  Christ. “Is this your second question?” Because she’d never asked me a second one. I slid her blouse off her shoulders and let it drop to the floor.

  “No.”

  Her lace bra was so damn sexy. “Did you suck me off to set me up for this?” Only half joking, I stroked one of her nipples through the lace.

  She innocently blinked. “No.”

  “Fine.” I reached for the hook on the back of her bra.

  “Did you do well in school?”

  My brain scrambled and I looked at her. “Why?”

  She shrugged and her bra strap fell down her shoulder. “Just curious.”

  She was up to something. “No.”

  “No, you won’t tell me, or no, you didn’t do well in school?”

  “I was shit for paying attention.” It wasn’t until I was in the Marines and directions were fucking yelled at me that I excelled.

  “Mm-hm.” She gripped my biceps like she needed me for support. “And was there a subject that was harder than the others?”

  I forgot about getting her bra off. All the subjects were fucking hard. “I was an equal opportunity slacker.”

  “You were slacking or were you trying and still failing?”

  Inhaling, I counted to ten, but it didn’t help. I was getting pissed. “I told you who I was. I haven’t changed in the month you’ve been fucking me.”

  Her back stiffened and church manners surfaced. “I apologize. I wasn’t trying to offend you. I was merely trying to find out if you had trouble in school before you joined the Marines.”

  “Why?” I crossed my arms. “I did fucking fine in the Marines. I lived to tell about it, didn’t I?”

  She inhaled and looked at me like she was steeling herself. “I think you have dyslexia. I think you had it before you enlisted, and I think it got worse after you got injured because you have PTSD.”

  Anger, explosive and misdirected and fucking consuming, detonated. “I am fucking fine,” I ground out.

  Clueless to what she’d fucking unleashed, she started talking. “I know you’re fine. You’re more than fine. You’re a survivor. You’re strong and adaptable, and you’ve managed to excel despite all of it. But I really think that with some targeted training or specially focused learning, you can have better tools to help you read and write. Not that you need it. I know you’re fine, but it might make things easier on you. A lot of people live with dyslexia and do really well.”

  I zipped my fucking jeans. Gripping her upper arms, I set her a foot to my left and aimed for escape.

  “Jared? Where are you—”

  I yanked open the front door then slammed it shut behind me.

  Seventeen flights later, I was gunning the Mustang and peeling out of my garage. Pressing the home button on my cell, I barked out a command. “Siri, call Dane.”

  Two rings came through the speakers in the car, and he answered but he didn’t say shit.

  “You home?”

  No intonation in his voice, he replied. “Yes.”

  “I need to shoot.”

  “Long range or target?”

  I wanted to fucking unload M16 clips into every goddamn asshole who’d ever made an IED. “I don’t fucking care. I’m on my way.” I hung up and floored it.

  She started calling a few seconds later.

  I ignored it.

  Fuck her. Fuck her and her fucking PTSD and dyslexia. Who the fuck did she think I was? I was a fucking marine. I wasn’t a goddamn pussy. She could go fucking fuck herself and her goddamn Google shrink diagnosis. She didn’t know shit.

  I was fucking irate when I turned down the dirt road that led to Dane’s. A quarter mile in, the fucking forest cleared and I saw Dane standing next to an off-road Jeep parked in front of his house.

  I threw the Mustang in park and got out.

  He didn’t even say hi, he just fucking nodded and got behind the wheel of the Jeep.

  I got in the passenger seat and glanced at the small fucking armory in the back seat. Next to a shit ton of clips and boxes of ammo, there was also a bottle of Jack.

  He started the engine and drove across his lawn straight toward the tree line. The sun beat down on my shoulders, reminding me of Afghanistan, and I got even more pissed. But the second he cleared his yard, the Jeep was throwing me around in my seat. I buckled in and held the fucking roll bar as Dane drove like the crazy fuck he was.

  Not even bothering to bypass small limbs or palmettos, the fucker drove through the scrub like he’d done th
is a thousand times, which he probably had.

  “Where are we going?” Branches hit the windshield and scratched the fuck out of my arm and the paint job on the Jeep.

  “Out.”

  We usually shot behind his garage at the targets he’d set up on the tree line. He had more acres than I could fucking count, and I hated indoor ranges so I always came here when I needed to offload.

  I didn’t ask what out meant. I didn’t fucking care. Fifteen minutes later, we were in the middle of nowhere and the Jeep couldn’t fucking pass any deeper into the woods.

  Dane cut the engine, got out and tossed me a tactical vest.

  “You gonna fucking shoot at me?” I wouldn’t put it past the crazy fuck.

  “Holds the clips. Pick which weapons you want.”

  I strapped the vest on, grabbed the retrofitted AR-15 and loaded as many clips as I could hold while my boots sank into swamp mud.

  Dane checked his weapon. “There’re 238 targets over forty-six kilometers.”

  Jesus fuck. I looked around, but I couldn’t see a fucking thing except trees, palmettos, vining shit and moss. “You did this?”

  He gave me a clipped nod. “Approximately five targets every klick. Start east, follow the footpath.” He grabbed a sniper rifle and two 9mms.

  I headed east.

  Three hours later, I was drenched in sweat. Bitten to hell by mosquitoes, I’d only managed to hit eighty-seven targets. Dane, that fucker, had hit double that.

  “Where the hell are you?” I called out. “I’m almost out of ammo.”

  He stepped onto the path five yards behind me. “Your aim is off. You’re pulling left every shot.”

  “Maybe it’s your fucking homemade riffle.” He’d illegally rigged it to shoot automatic, and I’d burned through my ammo.

  “There’s nothing wrong with the weapon.” He passed me.

  “We going back?”

  “You have no more ammo,” he countered.

  “I said almost.”

  “Three rounds.”

  Damn. “You fucking counted?”

  “Yes.”

  Crazy fuck. “You should’ve warned me about the targets.” Some were full-sized, wooden cutouts in human form, some were no more than two cut branches twined in the middle to form an X. There was shit high up in the trees and half forms lying on the ground. Ninety percent of the way, his footpath was no more than a fucking lack of scrub brush. Half the time I didn’t know where the fuck I was going.

  “Who pissed you off?” he asked.

  I shot the last three rounds at a pile of logs I’d already hit, then threw the weapon strap over my shoulder. “I met someone.”

  “The redhead.”

  It wasn’t a question. “How did you know?”

  “Your name was all over the news.”

  Fuck. “I thought I could go straight.”

  He didn’t comment.

  I swatted a mosquito on my neck. “She fucking brought up PTSD.”

  He still didn’t comment.

  “I hated those fucking doctors at the VA.” Telling me I needed to address my issues, telling me I had to take fucking drugs. “I didn’t need the shit they pushed on me then and I don’t need it now.”

  “Narcotics dull your reflexes.”

  “No fucking shit.” We walked a few more kilometers, and I opened my mouth again like a fucking pussy. “She says I have dyslexia.”

  “You do.”

  I stopped and said the only thing that made sense. “Fuck you.”

  He turned to face me. “You went west when I said to go east, you could never read a map downrange, and every time you text me, you reverse letters in your spelling in a systematic way that never varies.”

  I stared at him. “It was the blast wave. It fucked my head up.”

  “Your head is fine. You couldn’t read maps before the IED.”

  “You fucking asshole.”

  He stared me down. “She’s right.”

  “Fuck you. Again.”

  He turned back and started moving.

  I followed. “Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do about it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “She said I need to learn better tools to deal.” Or some shit like that. I’d stop listening after her Google diagnosis.

  “You’re not fucking her hard enough.” He moved through the woods like a fucking panther.

  “You’re an expert on relationships now?” Fucking dick. “When was the last time you spent more than sixty minutes with the same woman?”

  He avoided branches as if he’d choreographed that shit. “Last night.”

  I grunted in response and swung at a low-hanging branch. “I need a fucking machete to get through this shit. How often you come out here?”

  “Enough. Go home and listen to what she has to say.”

  “You’re a fucking pussy.”

  “You’re a dyslexic dick.”

  Feeling like a dick for walking out on Red, I pulled into the underground parking at the condo. Wondering what the hell I was going to say to her, I didn’t see him until I was out of the Mustang.

  In a fucking hoodie and board shorts, the asshole quarterback stepped in front of my car. “I want to talk to Sie.”

  “Go fuck yourself.” A fucking hoodie? Seriously?

  He stepped forward. “Let her answer her fucking phone,” he demanded.

  I calculated all the ways I could take him down. Throat, neck, head, chest, balls, the possibilities were making my hands twitch. “Want to know why you’re still standing?”

  His hands fisted like he was a fucking fifteen-year-old in the school yard waiting to get hit. “You won’t touch me because you know it’ll piss off Sie.”

  I laughed. “Try again.”

  “I want to talk to her,” he yelled.

  “You know Florida law on trespassing, Oklahoma?” I was going to fucking crucify Tyler for letting him get in the garage. “I can kill you in self-defense and walk away.” Please, please fucking make the first move. I was itching to pound his fucking face in.

  Veins popped on his neck. “You’re letting her give away the team!”

  He was so fucking stupid, he almost didn’t deserve a response. Almost. I smiled. “Paperwork’s already signed. I got hard just thinking about your one fucking shot at team ownership going down in flames.”

  He lunged. Zero combat training, he grabbed the front of my shirt with both hands and I let him. Strategically turning toward the security camera, I made sure the feed got a decent shot of his hands on me then I moved. My elbow slammed into the side of his head and I kneed him in the balls. He went down like a fucking pussy and my knife strike to his neck finished him off. It was so fucking easy, it wasn’t even satisfying.

  I fished my cell out of my pocket and told Siri to call Tyler.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “There a reason Ahlstrom’s in my fucking garage?”

  An engine turned over. “Shit, sir. Sorry, sir! Do I need to call for backup? I’m across the street. I’m pulling into the garage now. What’s your location?”

  Motherfucking rookie. “Why the hell were you across the street?”

  “Vantage point, sir.” The Luna and Associates SUV barreled into the garage and pulled up next to me.

  I hung up.

  Tyler jumped out, his hand on his weapon. “Where is—” He saw Ahlstrom at my feet and froze. “Shit. Is he dead?”

  Jesus Christ. “He’s unconscious. Pull the security footage, call the cops and I’ll give a statement tomorrow.” I needed to see Red. “He was trespassing and violating a restraining order.” Let him dig himself out of that hole.

  “Copy that.” Tyler pulled his cell out and dialed.

  “Handle this,” I warned. “I don’t want to be disturbed the rest of the day.”

  Nodding once, he spoke into his cell. “I have an intruder.” He rattled off my address and I headed for the elevator.

  I walked into the condo a filthy fucking mess an
d threw my keys on the counter.

  “Oh my God.” Red rose off the couch. “What happened to you?”

  “I went shooting with Dane.” I stepped out of my ruined boots. “I’m going to shower. Then we’ll talk, but you need a new phone number.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Ahlstrom was in the garage, he’s been trying to call you. I don’t want him to have a way to contact you.”

  Her mouth opened then closed then she nodded. “Okay.”

  I saw the unasked question in her worried expression. “I didn’t hurt him.” Much. “But he’ll be arrested for trespassing and violating a restraining order. The team will have to deal with him.” She was done with that asshole, once and for all.

  She didn’t say anything as I strode toward the bathroom. Five minutes later, dirt was still running off my body, and I didn’t know what the fuck I wanted to say to her. I soaped up one more time, rinsed and shut off the water. Hastily toweling off, I threw on fresh jeans and a T-shirt then I hesitated in front of my dresser. Inhaling, I grabbed what I needed, shoved it in my pocket and went looking for her.

  She sat perched on the edge of the couch, her back straight and her expression locked. I didn’t have to think what to say because she started talking.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I overstepped, I know.”

  Fuck. I sat down next to her and pulled her into my arms. “I’m sorry I walked out.”

  Her voice went small and quiet. “I didn’t know if you were coming back.”

  Goddamn it. I pushed her back and took her face. “Red, no matter how mad I get, I’ll never fucking walk out on you. I love you. You know that.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “I love you too.”

  My heart fucking soared every time she told me, but her tears gutted me. “Don’t cry, baby.”

  She sucked in a breath. “I can’t be in a relationship where you walk out every time you get mad without saying a word. I need more than that.”

  I fucking got it. She was throwing down a limit. But I was who the fuck I was, and sticking around when I was pissed wouldn’t do either of us any good. “I’m sorry. Next time I’ll tell you where I’m going. But I need you to understand that sometimes I’ll need a little time to myself to cool off.”