She practically ran out of the kitchen and upstairs. I shook my head and was just about to make a call, when I decided instead to settle things once and for all with Cal.
“When this job is over, I’m putting you back on your team with John.”
He shook his head in disgust. “When are you going to stop and just let me go? I don’t belong on your team anymore. I screwed over my team. Why the fuck haven’t you pulled out your gun and put a bullet in my head?”
“I hate what you did, but I get why you did it. I know you never wanted to betray your team. The guys get it. Now you have to get over it and start rebuilding trust with your team.”
“The guys get it? Are you sure about that? Does Hunter agree after spending months in rehab for getting his skull bashed in? What about Lola? Has she recovered from all the nightmares that plague her from almost being scalped?” He let out a caustic laugh. “I don’t deserve a second chance. I don’t deserve to be back on the team and I sure as hell don’t deserve forgiveness.”
“Cal. We all know you. Some of us served with you. None of us could ever believe you would have done that if you were in your right mind. You’ve already lost your family. Isn’t that punishment enough?”
“It’ll never be enough. There’s no way you could convince me that I belong anywhere near any of you.”
“Then why are you here? You’ve proven to me every day you’ve been with me that you belong here, so if you’re so sure, why don’t you walk away?”
Cal’s head dropped as he shook it back and forth. “I owe you this. So as long as you need me, I’m here, but let’s not pretend that I’ve earned the right to be here.”
Cal walked out of the room before I could say any more. I was going to have to let him go. Not because I wanted to, but because it was obvious to me now that he didn’t want to work with us anymore, and I wasn’t sure what else to say or do to change his mind. He didn’t feel worthy. I wasn’t one to abandon a brother when they were down and out, but this was a wholly different situation. He didn’t feel that there were any redeeming qualities left in him and he would never feel like he belonged with us. I could understand where he was coming from because I would feel the same way if our situations were reversed.
✯✯✯✯✯
After I placed a call to Becky and checked in on their progress, I slowly made my way upstairs, refusing to give in to the pain in my leg. When I got to the top of the stairs, I saw my leg had started bleeding again from where Cal had patched me up earlier. He wasn’t a medic, so he did the best he could. We used glue to close the wound, but apparently it had opened back up.
When I got to the bedroom, I stopped in the doorway when I saw Maggie spread out on the bed going over all her notes and typing on the laptop I gave her. She looked so sexy with her hair pulled up high on her head, all messy with small pieces coming loose. She was chewing on a pencil as she clacked away on her keyboard, her eyes squinted in concentration.
She looked up when I started making my way into the bedroom and then ran over to me to help me to the bed. I was doing okay and didn’t really need the help, but when her sexy, little body sidled up to mine, I gave in to the heat that coursed through me.
When I sat down on the edge of the bed, she quickly gathered all her paperwork and stacked it on top of the dresser along with the laptop.
“Looks like you need your leg patched up again. Why don’t you take off your pants and I’ll get you cleaned up?”
I groaned as images of her on her knees in front of me assaulted my brain. She quirked an eyebrow at me, so I stood and undid my pants, pushing them down my legs. I watched her reaction and saw her breath catch when she realized I was already at half mast for her. She quickly turned and walked into the bathroom, coming out moments later with a wet washrag.
“What supplies do I need from Cal? Or should I just have him come up here?”
There was no way I was allowing Cal up here this close to me in this state. “No, just ask him for new gauze pads, tape, and glue.”
She walked out of the room and I did my best to calm my ever-growing erection. No such luck. When she sauntered back in a few minutes later, I was rock hard for her. She stared at my groin for a minute before she came over to me.
“I think it would be best if we removed your boxers. You know, so we can properly dress the area.”
“Whatever the nurse says.” I laid back on the bed and put my hands behind my head, leaving her to do all the work. Her warm fingers brushed under the waistband of my boxers and ran along the top of them before she gripped the sides and slowly started pulling them down. My body burned as she slipped the material over my erection, causing it to bounce back in the air. Her hands stopped moving as she watched it moving, licking her lips and swallowing hard. The desire in her eyes had me lifting my hips toward her mouth.
I expected her to take me in that delectable mouth, but instead, she pulled my boxers down the rest of the way. I was disappointed, but tried not to let it show. She got to work cleaning the wound and gluing it shut. When she was done, I had fresh gauze taped to my leg and a screaming erection. Several times, tendrils of her hair had brushed against my cock, causing it to jump in anticipation.
She threw away the garbage and then came back to sit next to me on the bed.
“I think we need to check your temperature and make sure you aren’t getting a fever. That would be a sign of infection.”
“Whatever you say, nurse,” I smirked and waited for her to go get the thermometer, but instead she got down on her knees and took my cock in her mouth. The tortured groan that escaped my lips made her pull back.
“If you don’t sit still, I can’t get an accurate temperature.”
Saucy. This woman was going to drive me crazy. She put my cock back in her mouth and slowly ran her lips up and down my length. Her tongue caressed the underside of my shaft before sliding over my slit. It took all I had not to come in her wicked mouth as she licked and sucked me over and over again. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I pulled her up on top of me so she was straddling my hips.
“I need to be inside you, Freckles.”
She climbed off me and did a sexy strip tease, slowly peeling her jeans down her legs and pulling her shirt overhead. Her bra and panties were next, but honestly, I wasn’t paying attention anymore because the prize underneath was being revealed. She walked back over to me and straddled me once again.
“All aboard that’s..coming..aboard,” she said with a sexy wink. Then she bit her plump lip making my cock jump against her wet pussy.
“Oh, you’ll definitely be coming on this ride.”
I rolled her over and thrust inside her, reveling in her warmth. God, she was going to be my undoing. There was no way I would survive this woman. If I had to leave her when this was over, it would kill me. With every thrust, I imagined what it would be like to have this every night. Fuck her when I wanted, wake up with her every morning, and see her come undone in my arms.
My hands roamed over her body, teasing her nipples and then trailing down to her clit. I had to slow down when my leg started to weaken, but I made my strokes deeper and harder. When I felt her tighten around me, I couldn’t hold back anymore. I came so hard and fast that I barely had time to pull out before my cum was splashing over the soft curls on her mound.
“Fuck, we need to get some condoms. I almost didn’t pull out in time.”
My breaths were harsh as I recovered from fucking her while partially standing on my bad leg. I pulled myself across the bed and laid down, deciding that I needed to rest if I was going to go out tonight. I held out my arm, waiting for Maggie to come join me and was pleased when she didn’t wait very long before sliding into my arms.
“What are we doing, Sebastian?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not going to be able to let you go when this is done.”
She looked up at me with hope in her eyes. “What does that mean?”
I blew out a long breath. “It means we�
��re going to have some decisions to make when this story is over. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want this to be over. Not just because you’re a good fuck, either. I really like you and I want to see if this goes somewhere.”
“How would it work, though? You live an hour from here. You’ve got a company to run and I’m always working on stories. When would we have time for each other?”
“We’ll work it out. Let’s just get through this and then we’ll figure the rest out afterwards.”
I didn’t really want to wait to figure it out, but part of me wondered if when this was over, she would move on to her next story and forget about me. I’d already had all the excitement I could ever need. I’d been to war and now ran a security firm. There would always be excitement to a degree, but now I was ready for something real.
“How old are you anyway?”
“Twenty-seven. You?”
“Thirty-six.”
“Is that too big of an age gap?”
“Not to me. Is it a problem for you?”
“No. I like older men. You know what you’re doing both in and out of the bedroom.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “So, older men is a regular thing with you? Exactly how old are we talking?”
She smacked my chest. “No, it’s not a regular thing with me and you’re the oldest man I’ve dated. Well, if you can call this dating.”
“I wouldn’t say this classifies as dating, but I wouldn’t mind taking you out when this is all over.”
“Have you..been with many women?”
“I’ve had my fair share. When you’re in the military, it’s not like relationships are easy, so when I came home on leave, most women were passing amusements. Then I was discharged and took some time to heal and got right into starting this business. It hasn’t left much time for dating.”
“So, what made you want to start this business?”
“Well, when you’re in the military, you have a certain skill set. Then you come back here and it feels totally useless. I couldn’t imagine having a nine to five job and I wanted to do something that I understood. Plus, you get used to the excitement. Maybe that’s not a good word to use. The danger? The feeling of always being on edge. Then you come home and you feel ridiculous for always watching your back. In this job, it’s still a skill you have and use regularly. I guess I just wasn’t ready to let it all go.”
“Well, I’m definitely glad for all the skills you possess.”
“Freckles, are you coming on to me?”
“Maybe. I think I might need to put my skills to use and investigate your abilities a little further.”
She climbed on top of me and soon we were burning up the sheets again. It was another forty-five minutes before we finally laid down and went to sleep.
CHAPTER TEN
Maggie
IT WAS CLOSE to dinner time and I was starving. Sebastian was still sleeping upstairs because I forced him to take some pain pills after we had sex because I accidentally landed on his wound. We weren’t leaving the house until around ten, so he had plenty of time to sleep off the effects of the pills.
I wandered down to the kitchen and started digging through the fridge for some food when Cal walked into the room.
“So, have you decided which location we’re checking out tonight?”
I grabbed my notes that I brought down with me and started scanning the properties.
“There’s a property in Beltzhoover that we can check out. From what I can tell, it’s just an old warehouse. I can’t imagine why he would have wanted the property. It’s in an area with a really high crime rate and has been that way for years. They’ve been trying to revitalize the area, but so far they haven’t had much luck. I just don’t get it.”
“Well, hopefully we’ll find something tonight. The SUV’s already packed, so we can leave as soon as Sebastian’s ready.”
“Yeah, he’s going to be sleeping off the pills for a while.”
“Is his leg bothering him?” A look of concern crossed his face and I blushed as I remembered how I hurt him.
“Um..”
“Say no more. I don’t need to know whatever you were just thinking.”
I went back to the fridge and pulled out ingredients to make chicken and potatoes. While it cooked, I thought about what it must be like for Cal to sit here with Sebastian and I as we played kissy face.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“If you knew Sebastian could help, why didn’t you go to him?”
He was quiet for a minute and I was afraid I had overstepped. He stared at the table, his eyes distant, but then he answered me. “That psycho had my family and I had no clue how he knew about them. It’s like he knew the minute that Reed Security stepped in and took over. We had been involved from early on, but strictly with setting up security. All the sudden, I get a text from him with pictures of my wife and kids.”
He shook his head as grief took over. “He had them for a couple weeks before he killed them. It turned out that he was working with a detective and the detective pulled up all the information about Reed Security employees. I was one of the few with family that could be used against me.
“When he took them, my initial reaction was to go to Sebastian, but then I kept seeing the pictures of them and I just knew I couldn’t take the chance. If they were killed because I went for help, I would have never forgiven myself. Turns out that I might have had a better chance with my team. I just couldn’t see it at the time. I was so torn up.”
“What were they like?”
“My wife, Jenna, was..my everything. She was my best friend and my biggest supporter with anything I wanted to do. She gave me two beautiful girls that were my whole world. Callie was seven and Jenna named her for me when I was overseas. Jessica was five. Jenna had them both when I was serving and she never once complained that I wasn’t there. When I came home, she just swarmed me with love and affection, made sure that being home was a happy time and not so much of an adjustment. My girls were always so happy and told all their friends that I was their hero.”
He was trying so hard to hold it together and I wondered if he had allowed himself to grieve for his family yet, or if he was still too busy beating himself up.
“I was trying to buy time. I thought if I could give him just a little of what he wanted, I could find where he was hiding them. I tried so hard to track them down, but that psycho never let on to where he was hiding them. The first thing he wanted was access into our security system. I gave it to him, hoping that I could find him in our system and trace it back to where he was staying. I didn’t know enough about computers to trace it, but I didn’t have to wait long before Sebastian had Becky start looking for the hole in our systems.
“It took longer than expected because this guy was really good at covering his tracks. After a few days, he got tired of me stalling on more information. I was about to tell Sebastian everything when he sent me a picture of my wife with a bomb strapped to her chest. He said that if I didn’t tell him where Cole and Alex were and where they would go next, he was going to blow it. He gave me thirty seconds to answer.”
Cal had already told me what happened, but this was even worse hearing with all the details. I tried to put myself in his shoes and I couldn’t imagine being under all that pressure and needing to make split second decisions.
Cal rubbed a hand down his face as if scrubbing away the disgust of what he’d done. “Damn. Every decision I made was so wrong. Every time I thought I was making the right choice, it came back to bite me in the ass.” He blew out a long breath before continuing. “By the time we found the cabin, we only had a minute inside before a police officer found the bombs under the house. I tried to get to the basement door, but John started pulling me out of the house.
“I lost it. I was struggling to get away from him and yelling about needing to get to my family. John caught on and told me that we would get them back. We just had to dismantle the
bombs first. Julius and Chris came over and helped him drag me out the door. We were only a short distance from the house when it blew.
“Afterward, Sebastian grilled me about what was going on, but it was too late. I had already given the secondary safe house location. By the time word got to Derek, it was too late. Communications were cut off and we couldn’t get there fast enough. Hunter ended up in a medically induced coma to allow the pressure on his brain to go down. Lola still has nightmares about what that man did to her. I don’t know how she’s still functioning on the team.”
He slammed his hand down on the table, causing me to jump. “If I had gone down there, I would be with them now. I let them down. I wasn’t the hero they needed me to be. They died alone in a dingy basement, waiting for me to come rescue them.”
I reached out and touched his hand and he startled at the gesture. He didn’t look like he’d had anyone show him any sympathy this whole time and it broke my heart. I couldn’t keep my distance anymore. I moved toward him and wrapped my arms around him. I felt his body shake, so I held him tighter, offering him everything I could. After a few minutes, he pulled himself together and I felt him stiffen slightly. I sat back in my seat as I looked at the broken man in front of me.
“How long have they been gone?”
“It’s been a year.”
“Do you have family close by?”
“None that care to see me. When they died, her parents blamed me for their deaths. Not because of what I did, but because my job was dangerous. They never liked that she chose me. They figured I would get killed and leave her all alone. So when the three of them died, they had a memorial for them and didn’t even tell me. There was nothing left of them to bury, so I didn’t really get the chance to say goodbye.”
“That’s so terrible. How could anyone be so spiteful?”
“They were grieving. I didn’t blame them for how they felt.”
“Still, you were their son-in-law. That should have counted for something.”
Sebastian Page 14
