by Jillian Neal
“I see.” He whipped the baseball cap off of his head and pulled it down to shield my eyes from the sun. He ran his fingers through my hair as he eased my ponytail through the back. “That better?”
“Yep. Now I will totally be able to do that all fifteen in one hole thing.” I explained in a breathless pant. His hands in my hair always undid me.
“Then get to it, baby.”
I considered. “What do I win if I outshoot you this round?”
He chuckled. That was at least ten times he’d laughed today. I made another thank you glance toward heaven. “Guess that depends on what you’re wanting.”
“Can I have anything I want?” I waggled my eyebrows.
“Do I look stupid?” he teased. Fine, he probably knew I’d want to know why he was so dead set on not telling Smith about us, and what it was my father had said to him just before they’d been sent to Eritrea.
“Okay, how about this…” My heart thundered in my chest. I didn’t want this nearly as bad as I wanted to know what my father had done, but I did want it very, very much. “If I outshoot you this round, then tonight, after dinner, we go to bed and you really show me everything you would do if you had no doubts that I was willing.” If I could make him understand that I loved all of him, that no part of him frightened me, I could convince him that I was tough enough to handle whatever it was he refused to tell me.
My eyes locked on his Adam’s apple as it bobbed from his harsh swallow. Consideration darkened his eyes turning them more gunmetal than brown in the glaring sun. Wasn’t that fitting? “That’s really what you want? You’re serious?” Disbelief clawed at the hope evident in his tone.
“I’m serious, Griff.”
His eyes shifted to the sky and then to his boots. “And if you hate it and then hate me for it?”
The words were almost whipped out into the canyon by the wind.
“I won’t hate it, and I would never hate you. Please.”
“Maybe.” The armor was slipping. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that sex could somehow heal any portion of what he’d been through, but I did firmly believe my acceptance would suture a few of the wounds.
“It’s not like I’ll outshoot you anyway, right?” He thought he needed a way out so I provided one. It would all be up to him.
“Come on.” He wrapped his arm around me as we headed back to the line. “You shoot first.”
I tried to do the measured breaths and lower heart rate thing but nervous tension zinged up and down my spine. I was going to end up psyching myself out. Shaking it off, I made a wish even though there were no stars currently available to wish upon. I took aim and tried to remember every single thing he’d taught me so long ago. We used to drive a couple of hours, all the way to the other side of Denver, so no one from Ft. Carson would see us.
He’d stand behind me and wrap his arms over mine. Since all I’d wanted was to be enveloped in him, paying attention to instructions had been difficult. I’d made do. I’d even impressed him which was its own special brand of bliss. If I concentrated, I could still feel his hot breaths as they whispered in my ear and feel his cock harden from being near my ass.
I lined up my shot and pulled. Somehow, my second and third shots actually went in the same hole. “Yay!” I broke my concentration, and he chuckled. Realigning, the fourth and fifth enlarged the hole but were still close. The sixth was off, not even in the same ring. I slumped in defeat.
But then he was there. Right behind me. His hot breath over my ear. His arms over mine. His chest a solid foundation behind me and his cock, oh yeah, right there, too. I closed my eyes and let the scent of explosive gunpowder and of him absorb me. His love absolved me. I was completely surrounded by the man I was put on this earth to love, and there was nowhere else I ever wanted to be.
He eased my arms a few centimeters to the left. “Deep breath and let it all the way out, baby. You can do this,” rumbled in my ear. “Listen to your heart. Let your pulse guide the shot. Remember what I taught you. Look at the clear front sight. Put it right in the center of the blurry target. Slow. Steady. Let the shot surprise you.”
“Pull,” he urged. And I did. It centered my original mark. “Again,” he commanded. And again it went right where I needed it to go. By the fifteenth bullet, other than my own mistakes, I had a perfect round. “Good girl,” he murmured in my ear as he tapped my ass with his hand twice. Those two words robbed me of breath and flooded pure lust and adrenaline through my bloodstream. What I wouldn’t give to hear that while we were in bed that night. “Not sure that’s fair,” I managed.
“You pulled the trigger, sweetheart. I was just trying to distract you.”
I shook my head at him and stepped back to watch him shoot. The first ten shots were perfect. I had no idea what he planned to do with the last five. Shot eleven also centered the hole he’d made in the bullseye. But with the last four shots, his shoulders eased ever so slightly. If I hadn’t been studying him so intently, I would never have noticed. What was he doing?
He pulled and holy fuck it hit the ring three away from the hole. “Damn.” He feigned irritation. But then the thirteenth and fourteenth were equal distance due north and due south from the original bullseye mark. I couldn’t breathe. He was really doing this. He lined up the last shot and pulled. It was exactly equal distance from the center hole as the others but on the other side of the target. There was a perfect diamond around the bullseye. He was making a point. He turned back and jerked his sunglasses off of his face. “You won, baby doll. You still sure about that prize you picked?”
“Very, very sure.”
“Do me a favor and remember you said that tomorrow morning.”
31
Griff
I’d spent the entire time we’d been on a bus and then in line to ride that Ferris wheel trying to come up with a way to explain to her that she was the only thing I ever really wanted. She kept saying she wanted me to indulge my warrior side, which basically turned me into a fucking dog in heat. I couldn’t give her that house she’d been designing or even a real relationship so I fucking owed her this. And it sure as hell wasn’t a sacrifice. If she wanted me to indulge her wilder side, even more than we already had, I was all in. It’d taken everything I had in me not to dry hump her leg on The Strip.
The craziest thing of all was that Chris and the team hadn’t crossed my mind too often that day. They were there. They would always be there. I wouldn’t have it any other way. But when she was beside me it took more effort to access the well of pain I couldn’t seem to escape when I was alone.
After our ride, we made our way back to The Obelisk. She wanted to shower before we committed a few crimes, namely breaking and entering, and then had dinner with the wicked powerpuff grannies.
The oppressive sunlight beat down on us from above and reflected off of the black cement effectively placing the throngs of people crowding The Strip into an oven. Sweat dewed at the nape of her neck, producing curls in a few stray strands of hair that had escaped that ponytail that had driven me to distraction all damn day. My mouth watered.
If she wanted my dirtiest side, I would provide. Fucking her sweaty, inhaling that musky scent of her unwashed, was just the beginning of the things I wanted to indulge myself in. The thought alone made me have to make a quick adjustment of my cock.
Cars sped by and every resort had their own set of outdoor speakers assaulting the desert air with Sinatra and Martin. It all blended into a relatively soothing form of background noise. The pulse of the city kept me from thinking too deeply, and that was just fine by me.
Hannah’s fingers were laced in mine and her head was on my bicep as we walked. Yep, could definitely get used to that, too. Only I couldn’t and I needed to remember that. “One night while we’re here we have to go see the Bellagio fountains. I’ve been wanting to see it since I started working out here.”
“Anything you want, baby, I’m game.” I planted a kiss on top of her head. “Thanks for plann
ing all of this, by the way. I needed it.”
She lifted her head. “We needed it. And thanks for throwing our last round. That was really sweet.”
Okay, so, I might’ve thrown it a little. Never seemed to matter how much training I’d had or how much weight I could bench. I didn’t have the strength to tell her no. I had no ability to deny her anything she ever wanted, and that, right there, scared the piss out of me. She’d been more than forthcoming with her intentions for this trip, and the longer I spent with her the harder it was to really remember why I was going to have to say no to us ever being a permanent thing. I just wasn’t certain I’d ever possess the strength necessary to stay away from my own personal sun. I’d spent too many frigid nights alone being eaten alive by the darkness. “Who says I threw it?” Lying to her had never been an option either, so I went on with the smirk forming on my face.
“Well, there was a perfect diamond around the bullseye.” She laughed at me outright.
“Couldn’t let Gun-range Rick the ass-beagle think I’d lost my edge.”
I was indulged with a round of her adorable giggles. I swear if they’d bottle that sound, I’d shoot up with it every fucking day with no remorse. “Ass-beagle? That’s a new one.”
“Yeah, I’m working on some new material. Just taking it out for a test drive. Not sure I’ll stick with that one.”
“I like it. And he was definitely an ass.”
“Sorry you had to endure that, sweetness. I should’ve offered to shoot him for you.”
She shook her head as we neared the Walgreens across from the hotel. “You going to jail for shooting the teeny tiny balls off of a chauvinist is not how I saw this week going.”
“I’m just saying the offer is always on the table.”
She stopped walking long enough to stand on her tiptoes and brush a kiss on my jaw. I turned and cradled her face in my hands. “Lips, baby. I need to taste your sweet kisses.” I indulged myself in another hit of those lips as she angled her head and offered herself to me. Yep, I was a junkie, and I never wanted reprieve. I’d intended it to be a quick kiss, just long enough for me to taste the future I couldn’t have, but she parted for my tongue as urgency streamed through me. Her hands traced up my pecs and wrapped around my neck. I gripped her ass and proceeded to rub her up and down my cock in broad daylight in front of The Obelisk and a few thousand people. I didn’t give a damn. One of the best things about Vegas is that no one else cared either. We even received a few encouraging wolf-whistles and a, “Get it, man,” from a passerby.
That turned our kiss into me trying to suck on her tongue while she laughed which might’ve been even better than where we started. Suffice it to say that was the best July 11 I’d had in four long, impossible years. I wrapped my arm over her shoulders and dragged her toward the hotel. We’d put on enough of a show for one day, and I still had to figure out which hotel room I was breaking into. After that, we’d eat, and then… My heart damn near beat its way out of my ribcage. After that, I’d drown myself in her in every conceivable way I could come up with. The likelihood that I was going to be able to summon enough patience and concentration to find evidence sufficient enough to convict the grannies gone wild gang grew more and more doubtful with every passing moment.
As we rounded the massive waterfall, one of those ever-present photographers stopped us. “Get a picture for a souvenir.”
Hannah grinned at him, but I saw the disappointment she was trying to conceal. “We can’t. Thanks though.”
In that moment, I’d fucking had enough. It was one thing for me to tear myself in two trying to live in her world and exist in mine. I wouldn’t do it to her. I owed her too much. “It’s fine. Take a pic,” I ordered as I adjusted my sunglasses to fully conceal my eyes. To keep most of my face covered, I turned and brushed a kiss on her cheek while he snapped the picture.
“You can pick it up in the lobby by the bar,” the photographer explained.
“Perfect. Thank you.” Hannah beamed. If the guy had managed to capture her exuberance on film I was buying fifty copies, I didn’t give a damn how much they were charging. “Let’s go see it.” Still gripping my hand, she dragged me through the lobby. We joined a line of people all waiting to purchase the pictures popping up on screens behind the attendants.
Making quick work of coming down the few steps from the lobby bar, a guy whose hair was a little too perfect, and who was sporting a collared shirt that was entirely too neat, and who stood far too close to Hannah studied her. “Hey, is your name Hannah Hagen?” He glanced at his phone again and then looked back up at her.
I narrowed my eyes. “No, that isn’t her name, but just so I have a name to give the cops when they come for your body who the fuck are you?”
Hannah shook her head at me. There was a distinctive snarl to my voice not that I gave a shit.
“Uh…” The guy sized me up and then took two steps backward. Not far enough but it was a start. “I’m Second Lieutenant Ryan Winch, Air Force Academy class of 2017.”
Hannah and I both rolled our eyes.
“It’s just you kinda look like this picture my dad gave me.” He showed us the phone that did indeed hold a picture of my baby.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Hannah huffed under her breath. “Yeah, I’m Hannah. Your father is friends with my father, right?”
“Yeah. He said to meet you here. Hey, did you know you have something on your shorts?” He pointed his fingers far too close to her crotch and scowled at the syrup stain.
The growl that had been churning in my gut sprang free. “Hey, did you know she has eyes?” I menaced.
“I just thought you might want to change before we go out,” Ryan explained. “Plus, I was thinking we’d go to the buffet here since you have a room, but you need to dress up a little. You’d be prettier in a dress anyway.”
I ground my teeth. So, the Academy grad figured he’d use her room to take her out for free and wanted her to dress up for him. Seriously, why was I never armed when I needed to be?
Hannah laughed in his face. “Sorry, Ryan, we’re not going out. My father really needs to learn to keep his nose out of my business. I’m here with my boyfriend.”
“So…you’re the boyfriend?” He stared up at me.
“You’re quick, man. That Academy education really took.”
“Are you in the Air Force?” Confusion furrowed his brow.
“Does that matter?” This guy was likely to go home and tell Daddy that Hannah was here with someone else. I needed him to have as little information about me as I could get away with.”
“He’s a Green Beret. Now leave,” Hannah fumed. Well, there went that idea.
“Oh, that’s like the SEALs, right, only for the army?”
Fuck it. I was tired of pretending to be anything other than what I was. “Yeah, kind of like that. They just don’t make movies about us.”
Hannah stepped up to the counter when the couple ahead of us left with their photo. “I want ten copies of that,” I called as I positioned myself between Hannah and Ryan.
“What am I supposed to do tonight then?” Ryan pouted. Seriously, was there some kind of prick convention in Vegas that week I was unaware of? Their publicists needed to do better promo.
“I literally have a negative number of fucks to give you on that front, man. All I really care about is that you get away from my baby and that you stay away from her. Why don’t you go fly something?”
“I’m not a pilot yet.”
“Do I get extra points if I pretend that I care because I still don’t?”
“So, you two are like together, together. You’re hitting that on the regular?”
I stomped closer and towered over Ryan. “Patience is something I only possess when there are witnesses. Keep that in mind.”
“Geez, bro. Hostile much? I just wanted to know if she was putting out.” He scurried backward yet again.
Hannah spun back around beaming at the pictures. I watched her head lift
and then her eyes narrow. “Why are you still here? Go away.” She shooed him like a gnat.
“Well, what am I supposed to tell my father?”
“I couldn’t care less,” she informed him.
“Yeah, see, between the two of us we still have no fucks to give,” I huffed. “We tried. We really did but we couldn’t even come up with one between us.”
“Is he always this protective of you, honey?” Ryan decided to get belligerent.
“Call her honey one more time and you can see for yourself.”
“When I said the words Green Beret what did you think that meant?” Hannah taunted.
“Fine. Whatever. Guess I’ll see if I can get into the buffet alone.” He slithered away.
“Un-freaking-believable.” Hannah shook her head. “If anyone on the jury actually had to live with my father, I don’t think they’d convict me for taking a roll of wallpaper to his head.”
I grunted because talking about her old man wasn’t happening. Everything regarding him and us was just too close to the surface that day. Somehow, it had replaced the horrific memories of the past, because it was standing in the way of the future I wanted more than my next breath.
32
Hannah
There was this constant spiked edge of need that resided in my chest. Annoyance resided there as well. My stupid father running interference and then having to play detective that night with Griff were not anywhere on the list of things we needed to do, and yet they were getting top billing.
“The dumbfuckery is at an all-time high today in the Mojave, clearly,” Griff grumbled as he wrapped his arm protectively back over my shoulder.
“Sorry about that.” I sighed.
“I see your father still has very distinct ideas about what your life should look like.” Offense rifled his tone. The wounds I’d spent most of the day trying to help him grapple with returned to his eyes. Now was not the time to discuss my father no matter how badly we needed to. For once this week, I was actually going to stick to my plan.
