I woke to kisses along my shoulder and large, calloused hands holding my breasts and stroking along the side of my body. Shivers broke out across my skin as I nestled my ass back into his hard cock. The heat emanating from the satin skin encasing his beautiful appendage seemed to ignite a fire between my legs, and I arched my back, trying to create a better angle in hopes he would enter me.
Jesus, what a way to wake up.
The kisses became love bites and licks, causing me to moan at the sheer ecstasy of the sensations he ignited. His hands stroked along my skin, leaving chills in their wake. That silky-smooth skin slid back and forth across my ass and slipped briefly between my thighs. It was like being on sensory overload. Finally, his cock settled in my folds, which his fingers had deftly lubricated and separated. He tortured me with a slow and teasing pace until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I pulled away to climb on him, straddling his hips.
With a grin, I slid my wetness up and down the length of his engorged cock. I leaned over, crushing my breasts against his chest. My lips were magnetically drawn to his, and I had to kiss him. Then after biting and licking his neck briefly, I sat up smiling.
“So, you call Colton ‘Reaper,’ and they call you Hollywood. That’s your nickname?” I continued to tease his cock while I nibbled and sucked on his fingers that had reached up to touch my face. Growling, he flipped me to my back. I laughed and wrapped my hand around his cock, guiding it back to the center of my wet heat.
“It’s called a road name, and, yes, it’s Hollywood,” he said, sounding barely contained as he thrust in me with a guttural moan followed by a mischievous grin.
“Mmm, Hollywood. Why? Because you’re a porn star in bed?” I giggled as he continued to stroke in and out of me in that slow, teasing stride. At my last question, he raised an eyebrow and slammed deep into me.
Ohhh, yessssss.
The man was freaking incredible in bed. Where had he been all my life?
His cock jumped in me as he laughed. “No, it’s because they say I’m a pretty boy and I’m more suited to Hollywood than a motorcycle club.” He never missed a beat as he smiled, kissed me gently, and nibbled on my jaw and neck. He then whispered in my ear, “I know this is going to sound insane, but… come back to Grantsville with me. I’m not ready to let you go. We have something… I don’t know… I don’t make a habit of asking this, so bear with me… Come back and see where whatever this is between us goes.” My heart hammered in my chest, and I pushed him up and looked at him in question and surprise. His face flushed, and he gave me a puppy dog look in an attempt to make light of the situation.
Mmmm, the badass boy has a soft side…
“Hollywood, it’s not that easy. I have a job. Family.”
When my phone went off, I groaned at the poor timing. Dammit! I stretched over to the nightstand to grab my phone and answered it without looking at the caller ID. I knew it was Steph calling to make sure I was up. We were supposed to go get our hair done before lunch, and the wedding was this afternoon.
“Yessssssssss?” I drew out the greeting as I smiled at Hollywood.
“Tell them you’re fucking busy and you’ll call back in an hour or two.” Hollywood continued his slow, steady assault on my body as he grinned at my attempt to remain “normal” on the phone. My eyes rolled back in my head at how good he felt. When he leaned down and nipped my nipple, I couldn’t help but shake my head and smile at him, though. I smothered a groan as he thrust deep and hard before picking up the slow and steady rhythm again.
“Who the hell is that and what is he doing in your room at seven thirty in the morning?” Stunned, I sat up, dumping an unprepared and dumbfounded Hollywood off me when I realized who was on the phone. Trevor. Shit.
What.
The.
Hell.
Dammit! I looked at Hollywood and the shock on my face along with my dislodging him had him frowning in consternation. “The fuck? Is everything okay? Who is it?” Hollywood questioned.
Oh shit, shit, shit. Damn, Trevor had piss-poor timing. And why was the asshole calling me anyway? I waved at Hollywood to be quiet. I would have to explain to him after I hung up, but first I needed to get rid of Trevor. Damn, I should’ve stuck to my guns with him. I really wasn’t ready to deal with him this morning.
“It’s one of the groomsmen. He came to get me to take us all to breakfast. So, I need to get going.” Dammit. I didn’t want to get into all this with him in front of Hollywood. Of course, this caused Hollywood’s frown to deepen as he sat up in the bed, resting his arms on his raised knees. He was so comfortable in his nudity. It was sexy as hell. The sight of his erection, still wet from me, had my core clenching in lust, and I cursed Trevor for being an ass and having terrible timing.
Trevor didn’t sound overly convinced, but he told me he was just checking on me to make sure I was okay and to see if we had a good time last night. Oh, Trevor you have no idea. I felt my cheeks flush at the thought of last night’s entertainment—and I didn’t mean the strippers.
“Look, Trevor, everything is fine. I need to go. I’ll talk to you when I get home, like I promised. Okay?” I just wanted him to hang up the damn phone so I could get back to my morning wake-up call. Unfortunately, the object of my desire had gotten up and appeared to be in the process of gathering his things. Ending the call, I looked at Hollywood in question as he dressed in his clothes from last night.
“What are you doing? I was hoping we could finish what we started. Do you have to go?” I gave him a teasingly sultry look.
“Evidently, there are a few things you forgot to mention. If you had, I would have told you I don’t fuck around with married or committed women. The fact that you could fuck me like you did, when you have a relationship back ‘home’? Jesus H. Christ. People like you disgust me. You have no morals or concept of commitment. You are exactly the reason I will never settle down with one woman. You’re all the same. To think I thought you were something special and there was a chance… You know what? Never mind.” I watched, speechless, as he pulled on his shirt and ran his hand through his dark blond hair, causing it to stick up on end in a sexy-as-hell way. He looked at me with such contempt, it had me reaching down to grab the sheet in an effort to cover and shield myself from the hatred pouring from his eyes.
My mouth wouldn’t close, let alone form coherent words. My heart felt as if someone had ripped it out, still beating, and thrown it to the ground to stomp on it. There was such an ache in my chest I could hardly breathe. He had totally misunderstood the phone call because he didn’t know the situation. Even though he read everything all wrong, I couldn’t seem to comprehend exactly what had set him off to such an extent.
“I hope you have a nice fucking life, Becca.” My name came out sounding like a curse or a bad taste he was trying to expel from his mouth, and without another look in my direction, he stormed out the door, slamming it closed. I felt like this had to be a bad dream. I physically hurt, and my eyes burned with the tears threatening to fall. What the hell had just happened?
EVEN THOUGH I HADN’T known at the time, I could not fucking believe I had been “the other guy.” Never had I cheated on a woman, nor had I been one to pull someone from a relationship.
Relationship. The word itself damn near gave me hives. Because I just didn’t do relationships ever since I found out my high school sweetheart had cheated on me with my best friend as soon as I left for basic training. When Lorie had been caught with Johnny, his sister had been the one to tell me after I called his house to talk to him because he hadn’t answered his cell. She meant well, but to hear about that over the phone when you knew there was nothing you could do about it? That had devastated me. My trust in women had gone straight to shit.
After I came home, it burned a little every time I saw them. It was hard for them to deny they had been together since he knocked her up almost right away. They were surprisingly still together, and now, years later, I couldn’t give a shit less. I wish them well.
<
br /> What I had done was made sure every girl I had been with since then knew up front what the deal was. The thing was, I had made a promise to my sister, too. Never fuck with someone who was committed. After her husband had cheated on her with a woman who knew he was married, I swore to her. I fucking swore! Dammit!
To make it worse, I still wanted to bury my dick in Becca. It was like she had woven a spell around me, and I was addicted to her after a single night. Fucking bitch! While she was there sucking on my dick and fucking me senseless, she had a damn husband or boyfriend back home.
The real kicker? Despite how sick it made me, I still craved her body. I could still smell her on my skin. It was intoxicating. God, I needed a shower. Sitting on the closed toilet lid, I held my head in my hands. I felt like such a piece of shit.
Hacker started banging on the door. “Hurry up, man. I have to piss!” Standing, I opened the door and told him to go. I would shower after he was done.
“Damn. What the fuck happened to you? You don’t look like a guy who enjoyed himself last night. I figured, when you didn’t come back to the room last night, that you were off somewhere making some hot piece scream your name. Instead, you look like someone just kicked your fucking puppy. Shit, bro. You okay?” I shook my head and waved him toward the bathroom. Hacker looked at me in confusion before closing the bathroom door.
I flopped on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t clear my mind of the images of her body and the way she moaned as I slid deep inside her heat.
Fuck! Stop it!
I turned over, punching the pillow several times in frustration. Shit, the wedding was today, and I would have to walk down the fucking aisle with her and stand across from her as Reaper and Steph said their vows—vows that obviously wouldn’t mean shit to someone like Becca.
Hacker came out of the bathroom, and I grabbed my clean clothes and headed in. Turning on the water as hot as it would go, I stood there staring at my reflection in the mirror as steam filled the bathroom, finally obliterating my image.
The shower curtain rings screeched as I slid the curtain open and then closed after climbing in and standing under the hot spray. Both palms splayed on the wall as I hung my head, allowing the water to wash over me. It streamed down my face, forming a thick torrent that gathered my tears and washed them away to the shower floor and swirled down the drain. What the ever-loving fuck? Jesus, I felt like a pussy. Here I was a grown man sitting here crying over a woman I had just met and screwed. But, shit, I actually felt like we clicked, like maybe there could possibly be more with her—not that I would go so far as to say the “R” word, but hell, maybe… Like I said, that hadn’t happened to me since Lorie and Johnny burned me. Except instead of being something special, I find out she duped me into being the one thing I never wanted to be.
How did she get to me so fast? Before last night, I barely knew she existed. Damn, I could still see her face flushed in embarrassment when she knew she had been caught with the phone call this morning. What I couldn’t believe was she thought we would pick up where we left off after she ended her call with him. Damn, she was a piece of work. A sexy, beautiful, wild, quirky piece of work. I couldn’t believe I had asked her to come home with me. I couldn’t believe I thought we might actually have something. What the hell had I been thinking? Fuck! That just wasn’t like me—I knew better. She just reiterated my stance on relationships and women in general.
After finishing with my shower, I dried quickly and dressed in a black tee and a pair of broken-in jeans that had seen better days, but who the hell cared? I needed to get out of here for a while. Feeling the wind on my face and the rumble of my bike flying down the highway were what the doctor ordered to clear my head. I still had plenty of time to make it back to get ready for the wedding, and I wasn’t going to worry about being early. Besides, if I was a little late, I wouldn’t have to be around her any longer than I had to. Man, I didn’t understand how someone as sweet as Steph could be friends with someone like her. Steph was one of the rare ones. Shit, Steph probably didn’t even really know her “friend” anymore.
Stepping out of the bathroom, I padded barefoot to sit on the bed then stretch on my socks and put my boots on. Hacker was lying in his bed propped against the headboard with his arms behind his head. I felt his eyes on me as I tightened the laces of my last boot.
“You want company?”
“Hey, it’s a free road. You can do as you like. You’re welcome to join me, or you can stay here.” Hacker was a smart guy, and I knew he could tell I was pissed, but I didn’t want to talk right then. What I needed was to get out and away from the walls that felt like they were closing in on me.
There was absolutely nothing like riding my bike to calm my emotions and soothe my mood. It was as if the wind rushing past grabbed all of the negativity and self-depreciating feelings clinging to me and ripped them off until the last grasping tentacle of despair and anger left me. My bike had been one of my saving graces after I was discharged from the Army. The shit Reaper and I had been through during our many deployments together were things that no one should have to experience. Just because we were good at our jobs and able to compartmentalize it while we were active didn’t mean it didn’t weigh heavy on us. There were so many times I was afraid we weren’t coming home, I couldn’t begin to count them. I tried not to let all that stuff eat me alive, but it was hard.
PTSD was a bitch, and there were times I did better than others. Thankfully, I never found myself scraping bottom to the extent Reaper did, and shit, it tore my fucking heart out when I found him in that shithole in San Antonio after he was discharged. People talk about how the VA is there for soldiers after they get out, but mostly it’s total bullshit. It’s so damn easy to slip through the cracks. Reaper was living proof of that—almost not living proof. I can’t even let myself go down the what-if-I-hadn’t-found-him-when-I-did path. It tears me up inside some days.
Honestly, I was lucky. After the IED explosion in Afghanistan that claimed the lives of our interpreter and a young specialist, it took months of recovery for us. Physically that is… Mentally, I think we’re still recovering. Sometimes that day runs through my head on repeat.
The Humvee we traveled in rocked and jolted along the crappy dirt trail they called a road in this godforsaken hellhole named Afghanistan. We were in a small convoy headed to a rendezvous point where we would meet up with a trusted informant and then break off and get into position to take out a key member of the fucking piece of shit Taliban. Reaper, he was SSG Alcott to me then, and I always said it was a hopeless cause, because it just seemed you kill one and another sprouted up to take his place, but it was our mission, and we were damn good soldiers. There hadn’t been anyone on the road as we traveled, and it gave an eerie, unnatural feel to the land. We were all on edge and alert, watching for anything that seemed out of place or suspicious.
We were about fifteen clicks out from the rendezvous point when we hit a large rock, causing us to swerve and nearly go off the road. It scared the shit out of me. Suddenly, there was a loud explosion, and none of us heard anything for a few minutes, but we flew through the air, tumbling over and over. Debris in the Humvee flew around inside like missiles, hitting us repeatedly before working its way out a window as we tumbled. We thought a camelback or canteen had busted open, mixing with all the dirt and dust because it splattered all over us inside the Humvee.
My hearing slowly returned, along with a constant ringing sound, as we came to a stop at an angle against a bunch of boulders and rocks. The driver’s side of the vehicle was caved in and mangled. I heard screaming coming from up front, and I realized it was Reaper. My legs were numb, and when I looked down, they rested at unnatural angles, and my ACU bottoms were charred and bloody. The smell around us was revolting. Burning flesh was a smell you never hoped to experience, and if you did, it was not one you were likely to forget.
The driver was covered in blood, and he looked at Reaper. H
e mumbled something, but I still couldn’t hear well, and then I saw him cough and gurgle before blood ran out of his nose and mouth, dripping down on Reaper. Through my muffled ears, I heard Reaper yelling, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” I tried to get out of the Humvee, but my legs were jacked up. When I looked next to me, the interpreter was staring sightless at the roof of the Humvee with one remaining eye. The left side of his head and where his arm and shoulder should be was just… gone. Gaping, mangled flesh edged the area. My hands ripped at the straps holding me in, and I started screaming before Reaper yelled for me to hold on and asking if I was okay. My eyes looked back to my legs, trying to see if I had hallucinated and maybe they were gone, too. Why wouldn’t they work? It felt like I was suffocating. Part of my brain knew I was hyperventilating; the other part felt I was coming apart at my seams.
Voices shouted and gunshots exploded around us as bullets pinged off the rocks. I had no idea who was shooting or what the condition of the rest of the convoy was. I was trapped, and my crazed eyes looked around me as my head twisted in a wild scan to see where things were happening. The gunshots tapered off before they finally stopped. We heard yelling and boots running in various directions. No matter how hard I tried to see outside the Humvee, it was hopeless. We were lying on my side of the vehicle, and all I could see was the rock out of my door. “SSG Alcott! SGT Lange! SPC Thompkins! Is anyone still in there?” That was when the adrenaline started to fade and the pain started to set in. I remembered excruciating pain, moaning, and then blackness. That was the beginning of the next few months of hell…
We had med-evac’ed into Germany first. After that, they shipped us to BAMC, Brook Army Medical Center, down in San Antonio, Texas. I sat by Reaper and talked to him every fucking day. They had him in a medically induced coma for what felt like forever because of his severe TBI and the injuries he suffered. Sometimes I thought he heard me; other times I just prayed he did. He was wrapped up and wired up to so many machines it scared the shit out of me. There were countless times I would sit by his bedside in a wheelchair and doze. After he finally came around, he gave me shit about both my lower legs being casted and how would I chase girls with them. Those were the few moments that he seemed like the old Colton I knew. Most of the time, he just lay there staring out the window.
Mason's Resolution Page 4
