Chief

by Lesli Richardson

  This trip, however, forced me to lie to Owen and Susa, and that…

  That enrages me.

  The promise I’m forced to break—to not lie to them. I realize it’s a lie for the greater good, and to protect them, but it doesn’t matter.

  Because of that fucking bitch, her actions, it’s indirectly impacting my pets. She’s fucked up enough of my soul and my life, forced enough lies out of me by her actions—forced me to break too many promises already.

  Took my dreams.

  I will show her zero mercy when I finally find her. I could have, at any time, burned her with her job, or ruined others’ careers, and I didn’t. I walked away from her, and yet, because of her and her actions, Eddie and I nearly died.

  I had to break a promise to someone who deserved better from me.

  And now, this.

  My past was meant to stay in my past. I took careful steps, even back then, to ensure something like this would not happen.

  Ever. Burner phones and anonymous chat apps. Taking every precaution.

  Mostly because I was afraid of word getting back to my father or any of my brothers.

  That’s no longer my fear, because I’m no longer a nineteen-year-old kid, yet any of this information coming to light at this juncture would cause problems for those I love most.

  So now, here I am.

  After my flight lands, I’ve made several errands before arriving at Eddie’s. He’s home when I knock on the door of his flat a little before three p.m. local time. He lets me in with a grim smile, shaking hands with me before closing the door behind me. Part of me is glad he didn’t go for a hug.

  Part of me is…not.

  I follow him inside, glancing around as we walk. Not the largest or ritziest place, but I’m used to American excess. He still has a limp, even this many years later.

  Then again, on my bad pain days, so do I.

  We’ve stayed in touch over the years, yet there remains a distance between us that I know rests on a foundation of secrets and memories. I once loved the man like a brother—more, even—and still do, I suppose.

  It was…complicated.

  It still is complicated.

  Then again, I wasn’t on the receiving end of a lot of the worst shit, and he was.

  The man I am now regrets I allowed myself to be used by her back then. I still harbor a hidden, simmering rage at her for what she did to us, put us through, used us and especially Eddie for. Not only the sadistic giggles for herself, but how she weaponized me against Eddie.

  Fortunately, Eddie blames her totally.

  I know at least some of the blame lays on me.

  Because I didn’t say no.

  Because I left him behind instead of begging him to leave with me.

  Because I didn’t have the guts to stand up for us, for him, and to blow the whistle on everything.

  This whole flat is maybe the size of our master suite at the Brandon house, and it’s downright spacious by average German standards. But from the high-dollar electronics in his living room entertainment center, and the posh leather couch, I know he’s doing okay for himself.

  We sit down with two fingers each of Macallan, neat. “Do I get the story now, sir?” he asks, the last word snarky by design and coaxing a smile out of me. I remember that snark, his deliberate goading in formation or around others, which would make me take it out on him later in return when we could sneak away in private.

  At the time, a game I didn’t mind, and downright reveled in.

  So did he.

  I shove aside dusty old memories and tell him the story of why I’m there. He’s one of the few people I’d trust with this intel, and only because he knows her.

  Actually, he’s the only person I’d trust with this, because I’d prefer to go to my grave without confessing any of it to Susa, or especially Owen.

  He slowly nods after I sum up what I know. “So what do you think that bitch wants with you after all these years? What’s her end game? Money? Or something else?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. The way we parted company, I assumed I’d never hear anything from her again. She dumped me.”

  “Yeah, I remember.” He should, because he was there. Then she dumped him.

  And then we really got fucked over. I think, at the time, losing her tore him up a lot more than it did me. I was far stronger in some ways.

  Which is why he ended up belonging to me.

  He studies me. “You haven’t talked to her?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Did he reply to her e-mail?”

  “No. It’s been less than forty-eight hours since he received it. He’s not replying, unless I can’t handle this now.”

  “What’s your excuse for flitting to Germany on short notice, should anyone ask me?”

  I smile. “I have an old buddy from when I was in the Army who needed me.”

  He snorts as he tips his glass for another sip. “You’re not wrong.”

  I know he means it differently than I do, and pain arcs through my soul that I can’t be who he needs now. “Oh.” I reach into my pocket and hand him the key for the safe deposit box that I took out at the bank before making my way to his place, along with a business card with the bank’s name and address. On the back I’ve written the box number.

  He turns the key over in his hand. “Did I ever say thank you?” he quietly asks.

  He doesn’t need to clarify. He’s one of the three.

  At least, in that one way, I was able to balance my karmic scales with him a little. It doesn’t make up for the years lost between us, or what might have been, or what I didn’t do, but he is alive, and the world is still a better place with him in it.

  For that, I will never regret what I did.

  I don’t regret that I saved the other two men in the process, but they weren’t the main reason I threw myself over the three of them that day.

  Eddie had been hit and was down, along with Dray’s brother, and Trent.

  When we’d dragged them behind cover so the medic could triage them, Eddie had ended up in the middle.

  I would have done it again, too. In a heartbeat. They were my guys, and I still lost Gohber and Kenney that day. I’d have thrown myself over them, too, if it would have saved them. I was in command.

  They were my guys. Them and Reynolds, the third man who died that day.

  I nod. “Before I was shipped back to the States. You were so out of it, though, you had no clue what you were saying.” I grin. “Fortunately, that’s the excuse I used to explain your rambling to the nurses. Even more fortunately, they believed my ass, or we both would have ended up in the stockade, or with dishonorable discharges.”

  The ghost of a smile curls his lips as nods again, his eyes on the key. “Sorry, Sarge.”

  My damned cock still wants to twitch remembering what he used to look like on his knees in front of me with his lips wrapped around my cock and tears streaming from his eyes as I face-fucked him. And that’s been, what, over thirty years in the past?

  A past known only to myself, this man here, and the bitch I’m about to pay a visit to.

  Maybe in a different world, a different time, Eddie and I would have ended up together. But we were too much of a reminder to each other of dark and evil times we really didn’t want to remember. It might have poisoned us, eventually, if we literally hadn’t killed each other first with our dark version of “play.”

  Plus it doesn’t help that most of my nightmares that aren’t about the desert feature Eddie, in some way.

  Over our years in the desert, I discovered I liked hurting him too much, and he hated how much he liked me to hurt him…and how much he needed me to do it and keep doing it, even after we were free of her.

  Especially then.

  Except it would have hurt both of us too damned much to completely sever all ties to each other. There was too much love there, even if we couldn’t admit it.

  “This won’t come back on me, right?” he asks. “I�
�m semi-retired and live a quiet life. I’ve stayed under the radar all these years. I don’t need to wind up on it. That’s mainly why I stayed over here in the first place after I got out. The…job opportunities. Lot of clients in Eastern Europe. I never did local work, but I don’t want to risk going back to the States, if I can help it.”

  The kind of contract work Eddie did after leaving the military perhaps fuels his own bad dreams. Or, maybe not. The bell curve of Eddie’s morals arced in different directions than mine, and always has. He once joked that if we were playing Dungeons and Dragons, he’d be a chaotic neutral alignment with a decided bent toward neutral evil, and I’d be classified as lawful evil.

  I can’t exactly say he’s wrong. Eddie has always followed the money, ever since what we went through and I told him what I’d found out. He’d honestly had no clue, and she’d never given him a penny, either.

  Then there’s the fact that I am a bastard, thanks to what we went through with her.

  “I was never here,” I say. “Unless I need to be here. If so, we stayed in, did a lot of talking, and did some drinking. You sounded distraught on the phone when we talked yesterday, and I was worried about you. I currently have the resources to help out an old friend.” I shrug. “PTSD is a real bitch.”

  “Again, you ain’t wrong.” He settles back on the couch, his gaze no longer meeting mine. Neither of us break the silence for several minutes after he pours us refills and we sit there, sipping and remembering.

  “What’s your timeline today, sir?” he asks a little too quietly, and this time with no snarky emphasis on the last word.

  My heart squeezes, old memories slamming against my mental bulwarks, ancient and barely tamed demons howling to be unleashed, the bastard extraordinaire sooooo fucking tempted.

  So tempted.

  The smell of gun oil and sweat and dusty damned desert comes to mind. The sound of his knees rubbing in the dirt as I quickly fuck his throat, tears streaming from his eyes before I paint his face with my cum and then smear it all over with my hand. His strained gasp as I let him jerk off while I do it and make him lick up any he got on me in the process after he sucks my hand clean.

  I actually have to take a breath, because those memories have my cock aching so damn hard it’s literally painful now. I hadn’t forgotten what this feels like, but I have to remind myself that most of the fucking nightmares I’ve had in my life were created by what that bitch did to me and Eddie both.

  Owen’s made me a better man, because loving him forced me to learn how to be…gentle. Tender.

  How to use my evil side for good instead of…well, the obvious.

  “I’m sorry,” I gently say. “I can’t. I have to go back to my hotel. I told the boys I’d video chat with them before they go to bed.” It’s a lie I know he’ll believe and understand. It’s also far less cruel than the truth, which is that I made promises to others that I’ll absolutely keep, and yet not the one I made to him.

  I left him behind.

  He slowly nods. “Yeah. It’s okay. I get it. Just…putting it out there.” I watch the rise and fall of his chest. His gaze is still fixed on the inside of his glass, and the better bastard that I am wishes I could at least let myself offer to hug him.

  I can’t, because I won’t be able stop there if I do, and I damn well know it.

  So does he.

  I never could stop myself with him once we got started.

  Ever.

  He didn’t want me to, either.

  Which led to a lot of close-calls, but made being stuck in the desert a little more tolerable, at times.

  “IVF?” he finally asks.

  I’m watching him as I nod. “Owen. He’s my best friend.” From our conversations over the years, Eddie knows a little about Owen, barely more than the public does.

  Eddie will believe this, though, and it won’t hurt him and therefore add more guilt to my already overflowing plate in the process. Because, contrary to what you might think, I can and do feel guilt about some things.

  Feeling it, and not letting it stop me, are two different beasts entirely.

  With Eddie, I don’t want to add to my guilt. I already carry enough where he’s concerned.

  “What’d you tell them?” he asks. “Your wife and your friend?”

  I know what he means. “The truth, basically. That I stupidly got a vasectomy for a woman I was in love with, and it didn’t work out.”

  He softly snorts and drains his glass before setting it on the coffee table. Then he pockets the key and the business card and stands, heads for what I assume is the bedroom.

  When he returns a moment later he’s wearing latex gloves. He’s carrying a nine millimeter with a magazine in it and an extra magazine, both fully loaded. He sets them on the coffee table in front of me, as well as a cheap-ass, battered switchblade that’s seen better days, and an unlabeled bottle of oxy tablets. Probably fifty in the bottle.

  He’s done damn good with only a day’s notice.

  Then again, this kind of request, to someone like Eddie and the work he’s done over the years, is probably akin to asking the average person to grab a quart of milk and a loaf of bread from the store on their way home.

  “Gun’s untraceable,” he says as he strips off the gloves. “I cleaned and wiped down the gun and all the rounds myself, and both mags, before I loaded them. I wore gloves the whole time. When you’re finished with it, break it down, if you can, then drop it. The knife, too.”

  “I’m hoping I don’t need either of them,” I lie as I stare at the bottle of pills.

  “Well, just in case. You don’t know what you’re going to be walking into with her.” He points to the pills. “I wiped the outside of the bottle, and the cap. Don’t be stupid.”

  “I won’t.”

  He sits back in his chair. “When you see Elsa, give that cunt an extra little ‘fuck you’ from me, too, huh? Remind her I told her karma’s a bitch.”

  “I will,” I swear.

  And I will.

  His smirk holds no humor and a lot of really old pain.

  That’s how I know I can trust him—he hates her even more than I do, but for different reasons.

  Related reasons, but different ones.

  Which is why I can never admit to him how much I enjoyed a majority of the things I had to do to and with him during our time with her, before I realized the truth of what was going on.

  It’s also why I definitely can’t reveal to him the deeper truths about me and Owen.

  And it’s why I know that while Eddie would still absolutely comply—and enjoy it—if I grabbed him by the throat, slammed him against the wall, kissed him, and ordered him to his knees, I won’t.

  I can’t.

  Not just because of the two pets I love awaiting my return, and the promises I’ve made them, but because Eddie would comply and play with me and…I’d enjoy it too damn much. There’s a dark side of me I will never let Susa or Owen see, no matter how well Susa mistakenly thinks she knows it.

  A side of me that Eddie knows well.

  Better than Susa does.

  I’m am absolutely a bastard, but the older, wiser bastard knows some secrets are best left lost to time, and that darkest side of me needs to be one of them. I can never again allow it to see daylight. Which is why I went so far as to rename the positions.

  One less tie to that darkness.

  All Eddie knows is I’m protecting my wife, our two sons.

  Susa’s fledgling political career.

  My best friend and his career.

  My own career.

  My family.

  The one thing Eddie knows I always wanted, and yet also knows she took from me.

  As far as Eddie knows, my reaction to the e-mail Benchley received is logical when weighed against what Eddie thinks he knows about me and what we mutually survived, back then.

  Not meaning the day in the desert—meaning her.

  “You think she just wants money?” he asks. “Or
someone using her for a bigger score?”

  That possibility had crossed my mind, too. “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out shortly.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Then

  Two months into whatever this is with Elsa, and I’m over at her place any time I have a few spare hours. I text her my schedule at the beginning of every week. Then, on a daily basis, once I know when I’m free, I text her and wait to see if I’m summoned.

  When I’m not summoned, I find myself aimlessly surfing porn or going for a late run. Otherwise, I sit there wondering what was wrong with me that she didn’t want me that night.

  But when I am summoned, it feels like I’m in heaven. She quickly trains me for what she wants me to do, stepping things up every few times together, until I’m her perfect, willing pet. It’s a mix of pleasure and pain, and using pleasure as positive reinforcement to take more pain or…other things.

  She even takes me to a few events where she knows we won’t run into anyone from the base, vanilla events like concerts or soccer games.

  I’m made to feel special when I’m with her. I lavish her with devotion, despite her reminders to me not to fall in love with her, that I’m her pet and she’s my Owner.

  I don’t even care. I’m happy for whatever I can get from her.

  I know that she goes to the nightclub on a regular basis, because she makes no secret about that. But because of my schedule, I don’t feel I have a right to ask her not to. Not that I think that would go over well, anyway. There’s no claim on her from me—that was declared by her in the beginning. Besides, I’m not always free to go to her, and I belong to her.

  Continuing our relationship is my agreement to her terms. She is the one who gets to set the terms, not me.

  We use condoms, and her orders are that I’m not allowed to date or sleep with anyone. If I have that kind of time, it’s reserved for her. Because I belong to her.

  I’m a pet.

  I’m her favorite pet, according to her, but I’m still a pet. As such, that means I don’t get certain rights.

  She’s trained me to love being fucked with a strap-on, because she’s a tricky damn bitch. I’m nineteen—I can get it up in a stiff wind. She uses alternative ways of making me come so that when she allows me to fuck her, I can last for a while. She feeds me my own cum, makes me amuse her by sucking it off a realistic dildo and giving me lessons on sucking a cock that way.