In those words, and from those lips, it sounded downright reasonable. He’d been weaned on hate since he could remember. How could I measure so quick against all that. “I really rattled you loose so quick huh?”
He suddenly looked embarrassed. He scratched the back of his head. “Quicker. I’ve been feeling like this since the first night together.”
The memory of that roiled in my head. The two of us winding and moaning, flesh on flesh. My whole body seared with him now. All that held us apart was a few inches and a couple layers of clothing.
Vaughn took in the sight of me right back, but didn’t so much as tremble closer. “I can’t promise you a future to this,” he said. “But I know what I want. I want to try you on and see if we fit.”
The wisp of his breath hung between us. We had barely scratched the surface of our differences. There were so many reasons to shut the door. He was still a hard edged biker. He was likely a criminal. He was no good for me.
But I wanted him more than the air in my lungs.
I grabbed him by the hard edges of his cheeks and pulled him to me. His lips pressed into mine, still motionless. Maybe he didn’t believe in my forgiveness. But that’s not what I was offering. It was just a stay of execution. An acquittal? That wasn’t likely, but it didn’t matter tonight. Tonight, I was his.
I tugged him tighter and pulled him in out of the cold. His mouth came to life, soft and firm against me. His lips sucked mine in and he rumbled as he chewed on his first bit of me. He clicked the door shut behind us, then landed his hands deep into my plush butt. His mouth opened mine and he worked my rear, easing my legs further and further apart.
He pressed me up against the stair railings and slid me up off the ground. I was eye to eye with him now, free to be kissed ever stronger. His tongue pressed against mine, not rough and unstoppable as it used to be, but slow and probing, like it was returning to a place thought lost forever. The whiskey washed away, and then I was tasting his mouth, inhaling his rich oil and leather scent.
Vaughn hugged me to him and carried me up the stairs. I nibbled on his neck, nudging his jacket down his shoulder and tasting the familiar bands of muscle. Even in my room, he didn’t let me go. He sat us down on the edge of the bed and sank into me, as I had on him. I whimpered as his teeth dug deep into my neck and his breath poured down my shirt.
I shoved his jacket off his arms and then both of us were fighting to get the other’s shirt off. He had mine over my head, but I was tugging at his, and I fell off onto the sheets in some inane giggle. Vaughn laid me bare and whirled onto me, sucking at my breast. My spine cracked with pleasure and I arched into him. He accepted my offering eagerly, digging down with a snuffling hungry noise. It drove me almost as crazy as the feel of his hard tongue at my nipples. I clung to his head like it was a raft. Lord knows the juices must be flooding my pants.
Somewhere in my ecstasy, I noticed that my bottom was bare too, not even panties. Vaughn kissed his way down my stomach and as his mouth approached my center, longing consumed me. I tried to push his head to occupy the space that had opened up, but he dashed away, kissing and nipping at my thighs, working closer, then away, switching sides. A dark pit of exquisite agony consumed me.
“Oh god Vaughn,” I cried. “Why won’t you just fuck me?”
His mouth rose off and dropped directly on my center. I squealed out to the ceilings. His tongue barely flicked over my nub twice before my body exploded with pleasure. I writhed against him, but his mouth held firm and lapped harder. Inside of a minute, I came again.
I lay gasping for air. Vaughn came back up, finally shirtless. His tan arms pinned mine away from my head, freeing his wet face to lavish mine with kisses. As if I was going to resist. As if I even had the power to resist.
God, what would this boy have to do for me to drive him away? I hoped he never made me find out.
His hard body pressed against mine and after some time, he entered me. The ache had been blown out by his tongue, but he slowly built it back up, with long shifts in and out of me. My body heated up and lit up and I started to keen. He sank onto his knees and rode me harder, until my bed was squeaking right along with me. I prayed to god Tara wouldn’t give me hell about this tomorrow, but mostly I prayed to Vaughn to give me what I wanted.
I came again long and intense – a full moon tide drowning me in soft joy. Vaughn pulled out and spurted hot jets on my stomach. His lust bathed me in warmth, and then he collapsed at my side.
I wiped myself down with my shirt and threw it off the bed. Vaughn watched me with dim blue eyes, and I studied him back, trying to get a fix on what I’d just signed up for.
“So,” he said, after a while.
“Yeah?”
“So the reason I came here was to find out if you might consider seeing me again.”
“That’s all you wanted tonight?”
“That’s it.”
I smacked him with a pillow. “Bullshit.”
He chuckled and pulled me in tight. “That’s fair. I just got tired of all that truth. No fun in that right?”
He might have a point there.
*****
I rose to the buzz of a phone.
Vaughn’s pale body lay next to mine. His eyes popped open and his face spread with a smile as he saw me. The phone buzzed again.
“That mine?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He rolled over for it and looked at the screen. “It’s the Soldiers,” he said. “They need me.”
I didn’t know why he was telling me. “Ok,” was all I could say.
“I just wanted you to know.” He showed me the screen. “I want to be open with you.”
“Uh-huh.”
He set the phone aside, then curled back into me with a content sigh.
“That’s all?” I asked.
“Do you want me to go?”
My sleepy brain finally got his meaning. I turned into him and shook my head.
“No, you stay with me.”
CHAPTER SIX
Vaughn
Meagan lay unfurled on the bed in the dim morning light, her dark slender limbs all over the place like I’d blown her apart. Her hands were flung up over her head and raking through the blankets. Her legs dangled over my shoulders. Her nice plump ass held back the weight of my mid as I moved myself into her over and over.
“Oh Jesus,” she said, her face holy with lust as I lunged her again into the mattress. “Fucking, God.”
Damn, did I love it when I got her to trip up and swear. Hearing those rough words come out of such sweet lips made me thicken almost as much as having her mouth was firmly around me.
I groaned and slid deep as her tight little body would allow. Each stroke was agony, even with a wrapper holding us apart. She hadn’t asked one of me in the half week since we’d been back together, but I loved the way it felt when we came as one. It had happened twice, and now I could feel it riding up on us again.
I dropped my weathered white body onto her lush dark one. I couldn’t get in as far, but the feel of her rich skin against mine more than made up for it. I kissed her soft little shoulder, working my way towards her neck and ear, savoring the full length of these last thrusts. Her sharps nails found my back, made holds in my flesh.
She moaned in my ear, and I couldn’t take it. I sped up, tight like a vise around her. She bound me back to her, and I roared like an engine as I came. She squealed and started to wiggle around me, but I held her down and kept fucking until her pressure went off like a bomb. We rattled together a bit, and then her arms fell off me. I kissed her forehead and peeled off.
She tipped her head at me with a drunken smile. Her brain looked scrambled, which made me grin. For a few short moments I’d be just as smart as her. Her eyes moved past me though, narrowed, then widened in shock.
“It’s eleven?” She bolted up, her breasts jiggling in shock. “Ahhh, I lost the whole morning.”
I checked the clock behind me and yawned. “Ten fi
fty. Plenty of time till work.”
“I got more in my life than work, ya know,” she said. “Papers don’t write themselves.”
“Well, at least you’re all nice and loose to think now.”
“I’d rather be done with four pages and tight.”
“Oh you’re tight in plenty of places, honey.”
She smacked me with a pillow and heaved off the bed before I could retaliate. I tossed the cushion at her as she ran for the door but she dodged it and bolted into the shower. Water started pounding out dully through the walls, but I didn’t hear the door lock.
My every instinct beckoned me to follow her in, but I knew her enough now to say that this was likely just her in a rush. The girl was keen on her grades. It made me feel dirty now to admit that I wouldn’t have guessed how sharp a brain she had the first time I saw her. Thank god she’d kept my dumb mouth too occupied to dig me into a hole.
I cleaned up my mess and got dressed. My phone read no messages. Tomorrow, we had another drop in the quarry and I’d parlayed that into getting the day off. Even Thurge had gotten the hint that I was incommunicado. Maybe he attributed that to another bout of depression on my part, but most likely he knew I was back sniffing around trouble. I hoped he wasn’t too pissed at the brain cells he had killed in sympathy with me the last weekend.
That first morning Meagan and I had gotten back together, we’d waited till that Tara girl was off to work, then cuddled in front of the TV. The room was small and a cozy grey, with the shades pulled down over the large windows. We’d fooled around a little, then stared at the blank screen. That’s when I’d noticed the stack of war movies racked up next to it: Apocalypse Now, Band of Brothers, Operation Kill – all the good stuff. They sat shelved between the usual chick crap, but damn was it a fine sight.
The finding was followed by finer words when Meagan said. “Oh yeah, those are all mine.” Turned out she loved war history as much as I did, even if it was from another angle.
I grabbed an apple from the kitchen and went back to that rack now. After a quick look through, I shuffled a TV show out, and slid the first Blu-ray in to the player. I lay on the couch and ran through a couple special features as the water continued to dribble through the drains above. Even after the shower stopped, it took another couple Special Effects videos before Meagan showed up at the door. She had on loose sweats and one of her waitress t-shirts and her hair was tied back. The girl made everything look good. Good thing I couldn’t indulge my urge to rip it all off her. It meant I could keep taking her in.
“Shove over,” she said, already assisting with the task. She plopped down by my feet with her shiny laptop.
I swiveled my feet out onto the coffee table instead and nudged the show’s case over to her. “I put in the first disc.”
She glanced at the TV then went back to her computer screen. “I just watched that with my brother a few weeks ago.”
Her brother. I still had only the one sighting of him, and that had gone about as shitty as possible. The thought of him still brought to rise all the reflexes Pop and Calix had built into me: anger and loathing. Megan’s image followed like a salve though, and bit by bit she was dulling the impulses.
“Name something else you wanna watch,” I said.
“I’ve gotta write, you put on what you like.”
I nudged up next to her, peered at what her tapping fingers were producing: Media, Vietnam.
“Got a better idea.” I went back to the player and switched out the miniseries disc for Full Metal Jacket, then sat back.
She looked up as the buzzer flipped on in the opening scene, gave a “hmph!” and went back to a flurry on the keyboard. I watched the men go through their preparations and boot camp - real soldiers headed for a real war. Calix had wanted to take over the image. He’d been the one to shave my head when I first joined up. Field discipline, he called it.
Well, next to Vietnam, Atlanta wasn’t much of a field.
I laid an arm around Meagan and watch the movie for a bit. Meagan glanced up once in a while, but she never stayed glued. I’d seen the movie twice, so I started glancing at her screen too. She was banging out some sort of outline, flipping between a half dozen different screens. Her face was all scrunched up cute as she pursed the pages, but even a rough like me could she wasn’t getting anywhere fast.
“You need some help?” I asked.
“Not now, Vaughn. I really gotta map this out, at least, then maybe we can head back upstairs.”
I chuckled. Couldn’t fault her for thinking I was talking about what I usually talked about. “I’m talking about your paper or map or whatever.”
She cast a doubtful eye at me. I kept my easy smile, but inside I knew I deserved it. The girl had gone to Emory - for a bit, at least. I hadn’t cracked a textbook since I left high school.
“That’s sweet, but it’s ok. You keep watching. I like working nestled into you.”
The sympathy ate at me more than her sarcasm ever could. I looked past her to the web page she had open: ‘The Tet the media lost the war.’
Shit, I actually did know about this. I thought back to the title. Media post-Vietnam.
“So you’re writing about the Tet Offensive?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” she mumbled, intent on the screen.
“Media and war, right? Tet’s your angle, darling. It’s the day the ‘nam went south.”
Her eyes tipped my way, suspicious and curious at once.
“See in the US, every single major station painted it as a failure. They called it a massive surprise attack on the holiest of Viet holidays. They played videos of soldier after soldier streaming out of the jungle at our positions - all perfectly coordinated across the front armed with everything the Commies had. They showed that, but they didn’t show what came after.”
Meagan twisted in my grip to look me full on. All expression had left her face – she was simply a receptacle for my words. I smiled and went on.
“Truth was, we took out ten Cong for every one American that fell. They threw everything they had at us and we were still standing. The Cong leadership nearly slit their own wrists. They completely underestimated our boys. But once they caught wind of how the networks here twisted it into a defeat, they started playing up the propaganda. We might have been able to win the war, but not after our victory was turned to shit.”
Meagan sat in stunned silence a bit, then frowned. “How do you know that? That’s not really high school stuff.”
“You think I just sit around watching movies and call myself a professor? War history’s kind of my thing.”
“Vietnam?”
“I don’t have favorites. They’ve all got interesting bits.”
She flicked open her monitor and typed some stuff down for a bit. Notes that had come out of my brain. It was a damn good feeling watching that. Not quite as good as being inside her, but a close fucking second.
“You take any war history classes?” she asked, looking back up.
“Nothing since high school,” I said. “I just read some stuff we got hanging around at the house and every once in a while, I’ll pick up some literature on cheap at some pawn shop.”
“Well, I don’t know how much you actually know, but you sound really convincing,” she said. “Did you even look into college?”
“Pop had a thing against the biases colleges taught you,” I said, seeing how flimsy the answer was, even as it rolled off my tongue. “My brother went straight to the Soldiers after dropping out, and it just seemed right to follow.”
“You never graduated high school?”
“Na, I finished. I did pretty alright too. Just joined the Soldiers after that.”
She had that nurse look to her again. I knew the choices I made. History was a past-time, not an occupation. I got no purpose out of it.
Then again, the purpose I’d gotten from the Soldiers wasn’t holding strong either.
This wasn’t supposed to be a pity party. I straightened i
n my seat, and turned it on her. “What are you doing in community college anyway? I see all the Emory gear you got.”
Her eyes blurred with memory. “I failed out.”
“Oh, sorry.” I felt shitty, but tried to push through. “You’re damn smart though.”
She smiled and squeezed into me. “I am. But that wasn’t the problem. Just hung around the wrong people.”
That struck deeper than it should have. I did my best not to follow. “Well, whatever the case, you’ll bounce back. I’m sure this essay is cake.”
“It is, but thanks.”
It wasn’t exactly comfortable what we’d said, but it felt real. I felt even more at ease with her in my arm, watching the movie.
It didn’t last. The lead started shouting slurs at their black squad mate, and I remembered why my brother had gotten me to watch this movie until I fell in love with it. Meagan’s eyes fixed firmly on screen through the first brutal exchange.
“Vietnam was the first fully integrated war,” she said. “Maybe that was part of the bad press.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“But I guess the white deaths mattered more anyway to the press.”
The whole topic was headed way towards a place I couldn’t be. I found another bit of me to share. “Shouldn’t have been any caskets to begin with.”
“You just said we could have won if not for the media,” she said.
“Doesn’t mean we should have fought. It was just people fighting for their homeland. We’re the invaders.”
“That’s…awfully enlightened.”
I shrugged. “That’s white nationalism’s position too – self-determination for every ethnicity.”
She snorted. “Yeah right.”
“It’s true,” I said, feeling a sudden burst of passion. Maybe there was something positive about the Soldiers to bring to our relationship. “Our position is that slavery was a shitty thing to do.”
“But that it’s not too late to send everyone back and fix it.”
“Well, not exactly. I guess.”
She waited, lips firm, but I had nothing good to add. Should have kept my lips shut.
Grey (Storm's Soldiers MC Book 2) Page 4
