The Navigator (Mountains Series Book 5)

by Phoebe Alexander

  “You’re probably so tired because you haven’t been eating right,” he chided her.

  Outside, the sun was slipping below the mountain in the distance, and the horizon glowed crimson, while across the sky heather purple flirted with the impending dusk. “Do you feel better having found him?” she asked, even though his relief was evident all over his face.

  “Yes, definitely.” He smiled around his next forkful of food. “Did you hear Lilly squeal?”

  “You should text Chase and let him know,” Anjuli reminded him. “He was really concerned about you.”

  “Yeah, yeah I’ll do that after dinner. Will you please eat something, already? Geez.”

  “Okay, okay,” she answered, laughing. “I’m trying, alright?” She started to think about how he wouldn’t share the details of his past with her. She knew something had happened to him growing up, but he would never explain what.

  Yet he doesn’t know about Mishti. The most important person in my life just announced she’s pregnant and getting married, and I haven’t told him.

  But, of course, his stuff was more pressing. He needed me to be a rock for him, help him get through this.

  She felt like they weren’t out of the woods yet. The Fosters had invited them to come back for lunch the next day, right before they’d need to head to the airport to fly home. And then they had the rest of the show to worry about. Two more weekends of performances. Yeah, she’d tell him at some point. Maybe when the show was over.

  Funny how we bury these secrets inside and carry them with us. We mire ourselves in the graves of our pasts, and we don’t bare those parts to anyone unless they are part of the deep, inner sanctum.

  I must be PMS’ing, she mused as she saw her phone buzz with a text from Scott wanting an update. Did maintenance guy find his brother? he asked. Or was it just Martin Foster?

  She rolled her eyes. Of course Scott had known the situation when he called over the weekend. Not much got past him, and he must have finally found someone at DoD who was willing to talk. There had to be other people besides James McAllister who knew what was going on, but no one had been talking. And who knew if the Army was going to change the paperwork. She sure hoped Jackson/Martin/Whatever-His-Name-Was was still getting compensation from the military. He was disabled now, no matter what his name was.

  “Is that your work buddy?” Garrett asked. He had just about cleaned his plate and was finishing off his soda, slurping it up like a kid.

  She had to laugh at how he could go from looking like a man to a boy and back again in the flash of an eye. “Yep, he’s checking in on you. You know, he helped me track down Jackson, too. He has a lot more connections than I do.”

  “Yeah, but it was really James McAllister who gets the credit,” Garrett insisted. “He somehow got the CO to spill the beans.”

  “You know, you never really did say what your relationship was with that woman,” she pointed out. The curiosity had been niggling at her for so long, she’d never quite been able to eradicate it.

  He chuckled as he set his empty glass of soda aside, then grabbed an ice cube and chomped down. She heard it crunch between his teeth as he bought himself time to answer.

  “Sarah was a woman I dated a few years ago,” he answered, “and actually, she reminds me of you in a lot of ways.”

  “Oh yeah? How so?”

  “Well, for starters, she was incredibly beautiful and sexy, just like you,” Garrett explained, giving Anjuli a ravishing smile.

  “Uh huh,” she fired back, but was still flattered he used those adjectives in reference to her. “What else?”

  “She has a PhD, like you, only she’s a sociology professor,” he said. “And she’s a devoted mother, like you.”

  “Nice. Sounds like she and I could be friends,” Anjuli joked.

  “And she’s also a little older than me, probably about your age.”

  Her heart started to flutter in her chest. “Is that why it didn’t work out?”

  He shook his head. “Not at all. I love older women. And actually, James isn’t much older than me, so she clearly likes younger men.”

  She wished she didn’t feel such a sense of relief at discovering his love for older women, but it was there, nonetheless. “Then what happened?”

  He smoothed his beard out with his fingers as he contemplated his answer. “Oh, she was an actress too,” he shared. “I met her in a show.”

  “Nice. She does sound suspiciously like me...not Indian, though, right?” She really wanted him to reveal the demise of their relationship. Maybe it would help her see their future?

  But we don’t have a relationship, she reminded herself. I made sure of that. I said no strings.

  “She’s white,” he answered. “But she does have dark hair and dark eyes. My favorite combo.”

  “It is?” But he still hadn’t answered her question. “So are you going to tell me why you broke up or what?”

  “Long story,” Garrett replied. “Basically I was stupid and didn’t keep a promise to her. I let her down. And for a long while, I blamed her for that—making excuses for myself. But I have since learned that I have to take responsibility for my own actions.”

  She couldn’t help but smile. It always took a big person to admit they were at fault. Now, why did Nigel think Garrett was such a bad guy? Bad guys usually wouldn’t take the blame.

  “I see...”

  “Yeah, you know, if I’d just held up my end of the bargain, maybe she would have married me instead of James,” he said, but his eyes were distant like he was saying it more to himself than to her.

  “Really? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use the ‘M’ word,” Anjuli mused. “It sounds weird coming from Mr. Open Relationship.” She chuckled, trying to make sure he knew she was just teasing him.

  “Marriages and open relationships aren’t mutually exclusive,” he answered. “And besides, Sarah is polyamorous.”

  “Oh.” She had heard that term before, though she didn’t know much about it, and she’d never met anyone to her knowledge who practiced that lifestyle. “And are you...polyamorous?”

  He stiffened his shoulders and looked right at her. “I don’t think so. Sometimes I’m not even sure I’m mono-amorous.”

  “So you didn’t love her?” She didn’t like the way her heart was wildly beating. Did he just admit he’s not capable of love? And if so, why did that feel like a stab?

  He glanced to the side for a moment, then scratched his beard with his index finger. “I think I did love her in some way. But not enough to be honest with her. And I can’t help but think when I’m really madly, wildly in love with someone, I’ll want to be honest with them no matter what.”

  “Gotcha,” she choked out, not really sure how to respond beyond that singular word. But she did know one thing: he hadn’t been honest with her, not about his past. He refused to let her tear down those walls. So it didn’t seem likely he’d ever consider himself to be in love with her.

  If she didn’t want any strings, why did that realization bother her so much?

  Back at the hotel, she felt the fatigue she’d been fighting the past couple of weeks return. Garrett was right that her lack of calories was probably exacerbating the exhaustion she felt from performing, traveling, and processing the bombshells Mishti had dropped on her, but every time she thought about forcing herself to eat, she felt even queasier. She laid down on the king-sized bed as her uterus began to cramp up. She reached down to clutch her midsection, a wince rocketing out of her mouth.

  “What’s wrong?” Garrett was by her side in a flash.

  “Fuck.” She curled up into a fetal position as the strong contractions ravaged her body.

  He stretched out alongside her, pulling her into his arms. “Show me where it hurts.” Unable to speak through the pain, she pointed to the area below her navel. He reached down her body and pressed his palm into her skin, massaging gently. “Does this help?”

  She whimpered a yes as she co
ntinued to curl into him. She hadn’t had cramps this bad since...the summer, she thought. Her cycle was always erratic, so she wasn’t even sure when she was due. Have I had a period since I’ve known Garrett? she wondered. She’d been so busy with the show and work, she couldn’t even remember.

  “I know a trick for relieving menstrual cramps,” he whispered into her ear. She jolted at the sensation of his hot breath on her skin. Hearing a man say “menstrual cramps” was strange, but considering she was writhing in pain, she was open to any suggestions.

  The pain lightened just enough for her to ask “What?” before sinking its claws into her again.

  “An orgasm,” he answered matter-of-factly. “It’s worked on every girlfriend I’ve ever had.”

  She wanted to roll her eyes, still not having a good grasp of how many women that might be. But at the moment, she supposed she shouldn’t care. “I don’t know if I can,” she managed.

  “Let me see about that,” he grinned as if he was taking on a personal challenge. He slid her skirt down her thighs, followed by her panties. Then he carefully lifted her shirt over her head. “Your breasts are going to need some attention,” he noted.

  She forced herself to lie back, even though her body wanted to twist in half, doubling over in pain. He lifted her arms and placed them behind her head, presumably to keep her from grabbing herself. It had been so long since he had touched her like this, since she’d been fully nude with him. Her body jumped to attention under his touch as though she was an instrument, and he was a musician fine-tuning strings, getting her ready to sing out a melody buried deep inside.

  His fingers trailed down her collarbone, so gently, so reverently she felt like a priceless artifact. He followed the same path with his mouth, stamping her with the most delicate kisses she’d ever received. He breathed in, filling his lungs with her scent as he made his way down her body. He lingered around her nipples, licking, biting ever so lightly, sucking in and swirling the hard flesh between his teeth.

  Her body, claimed by a restless demon deep in her womb, began to uncoil, to respond to his reverent ministrations. She had never known him to be this gentle with her, like he was handling something truly precious. “Your body is so beautiful,” he said, lifting his mouth from her just enough to speak. “You do crazy things to me, Anjuli.”

  Her name vibrating in his throat caused a surge of desire to bolt through her. He moved so she could feel his erection pressing through his pants and into her leg. He unbuckled his belt, planting himself in her line of vision so she could watch him slide his trousers down his legs. “You see what you do to me? I haven’t had you for a while, and I’m craving you something fierce.”

  She gasped at the sight of his cock, even thicker, harder, more glorious than she remembered. “But tonight, this is a tool for your pleasure,” he announced, taking hold of his swollen shaft. “I want to alleviate your pain, Angel. For all the times you have alleviated mine, I want to return the favor.”

  Her eyes burned with tears as his sweet words filled her mind. She didn’t know he had it in him to be this nurturing, this compassionate. His tenderness was on a level she never imagined a man being able to possess. The men she’d known were takers, greedy. She had thought Garrett was cut from the same cloth.

  “I want you to tell me how to touch you, how to pleasure you,” he went on as he climbed back onto the bed. “I want everything I do to bring you a little closer to a climax. So you tell me—more pressure or less, faster or slower, up, down, right, left—whenever and wherever you need me. You tell me how to take care of you.”

  The emotions of earlier, the strain of the performances, the worries about her daughter all had a grip on her, and now the cramps. They were the overlord, trying to finish her off for good when the other pressures had only chipped away at her. Now Garrett was here to slay her demons. Who would have thought he’d be the one to rescue her?

  “I want your cock inside me,” she uttered, her voice nothing more than a scrap of sound carried on a whimper. She needed to feel him inside her, filling her up, applying pressure against the raging beast from the inside out.

  He didn’t miss a beat, lining his bare cock up with her hole and sinking himself into her warm, wet depths. His eyes rolled back as he buried himself to the hilt, holding himself there as she had a chance to adjust to the invasion. She rolled her hips against him. “Please, just fuck me slowly,” she directed. “And keep playing with my nipples...please.”

  “As you wish,” he breathed out as he began to move inside her. She opened her eyes long enough to see his jaw set in firm resolution, as if it was physically hurting him to keep such a slow pace, but he was dedicated to doing it—for her sake. He lowered his mouth again to her nipples, taking the right one inside his mouth to nibble and suck on it. She arched her back as the pleasure shot through her body and straight into her clit.

  “Bite them a little harder,” she groaned.

  Fuck. She could nearly come just from him lavishing her breasts with attention, but it would be so much more satisfying for her pussy to clench around his cock when the time came.

  A few moments ago, she would have maintained it wasn’t possible for her to orgasm with this horrific pain shooting through her body, but he seemed to be stamping it out, grinding it away with his impossibly hard cock.

  He was struggling to go slow, jaw clenched as he thrust in so deep she cried out, then back again. He moved to the other nipple, and during his trip she felt his jagged breaths falling on her skin. He groaned as she wrapped her arms around him, pressing into the firm flesh of his hips as she attempted to drive him deeper. Her directions came only from body language now. She moved her hips against him, her clit making contact with the hard mound of his muscular flesh above his cock.

  Concentrating on teasing her nipple into a stiff peak seemed to help distract him from his need to release, though she noted his strokes were becoming a little shallower just when she needed them to be deeper, harder. She bucked against him and dug into his sides more insistently, fucking him just as fervently as he was fucking her.

  “Fuck, Anjuli, you’re killing me,” he rasped out between labored breaths. She could see the vein in his neck throbbing as he tried desperately to hold himself back. She had no idea if he’d had a release since the last time they’d been together, which was some time ago.

  “Let’s come together,” she suggested. “I’m close.”

  “Fuck, I’ve been on the edge this whole fucking time,” he admitted, speeding up a little faster with each word.

  “Yes, that’s it!” she shouted, not giving one fuck about whether or not the entire hotel could hear her. She never thought she’d be in some random hotel in Alabama, writhing for dear life underneath a sexy hunk of a bearded redhead who was ten years her junior. If anyone had predicted that fate even a year ago, she would have had them committed.

  He sped up, slamming into her with more force; once he lifted the restraints, there was no stopping him. His cock grew impossibly hard just as her climax finally broke free, shooting her into space and back again like a rocket. As soon as her pussy began to clamp down on him, he was done for. A wild, primal shout hurtled out of his mouth as fast as the cum spurting from his dick. Then he just said her name on repeat, over and over again, “Anjuli...Anjuli...Anjuli...” as he floated back to earth.

  Then what happened to her a few weeks before came back full-force: an emotional hurricane ripping through her body, springing tears to her eyes with a wave of intense joy and despair all wrapped up into one crazy torrent, trying to drown her in its powerful force. She couldn’t speak; she couldn’t explain. All she could do was be consumed by the emotions as she soaked Garrett with her tears and he held her close to his quaking body, cradling her against his heaving chest.

  She was shattered, emotionally and physically, with nothing left but tears. She sobbed uncontrollably into his chest as his cum dripped out of her pussy and onto the sheet. She felt like she was drowning in liqui
d, hers and his, and all the highs and lows of life spinning her into oblivion.

  “Is it better; are they gone?” Garrett whispered in her ear as he continued to hold her body tightly against his.

  She blubbered a “yes,” but then let out a long wail as everything else inside coalesced into a giant mountain that loomed in front of her. “There’s just so much. I don’t know if I can do it,” she admitted, trembling in his powerful arms.

  She’d always been so strong. She never asked for help. But right now she didn’t know if she could keep going.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” he pressed, then moved his lips against her neck where he nuzzled her gently. “Tell me, please?”

  I think I’m falling for you, she wanted to say. The words were on the tip of her tongue. There were so many other things she had to be scared of, to worry about. But that one problem seemed to be looming larger than anything else.

  “It’s Mishti,” she finally breathed out. “She’s pregnant.”

  “Your daughter?” he confirmed. “You’re going to be a grandmother?”

  That word coming from his mouth sounded so wrong, so very, deeply wrong on so many levels. If their ten-year age difference was no big deal a few minutes ago, now it was a single man, never married versus a grandmother!

  She shattered again, succumbing to a fit of more sobs and desperate wails as she tried to wrap her mind around this cognitive dissonance. How could she, a woman about to become a grandmother, fall in love with a man in his early thirties who didn’t know the first thing about parenthood, let alone grandparenthood—not to mention the fact he had just said earlier he didn’t think he could fall in love.

  How could I let this happen?

  “Angel, please, it’s okay,” he assured her, rocking her back against his chest and squeezing his arms around her. “It’s going to be fine. It’s amazing. You’re going to be a grandmother. That’s fucking awesome.”