When Melissa scraped her fingernails over his scalp, digging into his back , the moment came when they could no longer refuse the impulse to mate. To growl at each other in soaring passion. To bear witness with muffled cries that declared they’d climbed to the highest stars, that they’d exploded into each other in blinding bursts of what could only be two souls joining together. The fireworks ended too fast. Too soon. They fell back to Earth in each other’s arms.
Tucker let out a shuddering sigh as Melissa quivered beneath him. He loved the word coming. It held so much promise with her. So much—everything.
Stiffening his spine, he gave her the depth she needed, every last inch, going in deep and inducing aftershocks that rippled through her core. The sublime comfort of the act took his breath. He’d never felt so much for any woman in his life. So much tenderness. Devotion.
The moment robbed him of his arrogance, of the desperate loneliness haunting him. It was very much as if he’d died in her arms and risen anew. As if joining with her sweet spirit had finally chased every last ghost away, the grim reaper, too. He couldn’t speak, the love welling up in his heart too reverent. So damned sacred.
Melissa snuggled into his neck, rubbing her cheek against him like a cat. “I really needed that,” she purred, her body stretched languidly beneath his, her fingernails tracing lines up the back of his head, then down his neck to land on his ass. “Tucker? Are you okay?”
He nodded, fighting for composure. Damn it, real men didn’t cry. She’d proven herself ready, willing, and certainly able to take him on, so why the intense emotion sweeping up from the lowest levels of his heart? Why couldn’t he get a grip already?
Because this time wasn’t just about good sex. It was that elusive more he’d been searching for, finally found. It was Melissa and the light she’d filled his life with just by showing up. It was Deuce. Isaiah. America. God, it was—everything.
Soft kisses landed on his ear as her fingers raked over his head, gentling him. Settling the broken, ragged pieces of his heart back into place. Healing every rough edge. Vanquishing his demons. The anger of years lifted out of him like an ugly wraith that had attached itself to his soul for too long. It hurt losing the tentacles that had dug themselves in deep around the cords of his solitary heart—in a really good way.
He, Tucker Chase, was no loser. He wasn’t his old man and he wasn’t a killing machine. Better than that, he wasn’t just a good SEAL. He was a good man and a good father again. Deuce was safe and would live a long and prosperous life, if Tucker had anything to say about it. Melissa would get fat and pregnant with however many kids she wanted, and they’d all know they had the best mom and a good dad. He’d never spank her ass again, but if he did, it would only be in play. In bed. Maybe...
He swallowed hard. God, he’d been fighting the world all of his adult life and most of his childhood. To finally be free of that desperate need to control the spread of evil in the world, vanquished the last of his ego. How pretentious had he been? Eliminating evil was never his job or his mission. There wasn’t a man on Earth who could do it. But living for Melissa and Deuce?
Yeah. He could do that.
Shuddering, he breathed in a deep cleansing breath, and it was her sweet scent he inhaled. It filled his entire being. He drew in another breath as a man reborn and ready to try again.
Her delicate fingers cupped the back of his head, holding him to her. She pressed her lips to his ear. “I want a tattoo.”
He couldn’t help it. The notion of this prim, bossy woman with an anchor tattooed on her bicep made him laugh. Melissa was one outrageous surprise after another. “A tattoo?” he asked, finally lifting up from the warm recess of her neck, but still joined together as man and wife. As soul mates. “What kind of tattoo, babe? And where would you like it? On your ass?”
Melissa giggled, still buzzed. “Believe it or not, not everything has to do with my backside.”
He nuzzled in deep, scraping his whiskered chin over her jaw while he landed a moist kiss in her ear, loving it when she wiggled against him. “Bet me.”
“I get that. You’re a man, but...” She tilted her head, granting him more access, sparking another flame in his groin. “But I want a heart with our initials right here. Over my heart.”
He lifted his torso up from her, thrusting his hips forward, needing to see. “Where?”
“Here,” she whispered, her blue eyes gone dark with lust at the hardening of his body, her womanly curves molding to his thighs. She traced a circle between her breasts, but her breath hitched. Her body clenched, pulling him in for more.
“You can have whatever you want, babe, but if you do, I’m getting the same one. Same place as yours.” He ended that dare with another thrust of good intentions.
She nodded, clenching him, an obedient little wench with a gleam in her sexy blue eyes. Her lashes fluttered. “Hmmm. Maybe I will put it on my ass then.”
Tucker couldn’t help it. He laughed out loud. She might not remember this crazy conversation when she sobered up, and she might change her mind, but one thing was sure. He’d met his match and he knew it.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Vietnamese funerals were different. Strange to American ways. Still sad.
Tucker refused the painkillers Dr. Giang offered for his still healing lungs. He wouldn’t take them, not when his son was hurting so badly he could barely speak, just cry, unashamed of his tender feelings for his lost friend. Melissa hadn’t left Deuce’s side since this hard day began, her hand firmly in his as if she were his real mother. As if she had always been there.
Tucker had stood proud at Deuce’s right when Luke’s body was brought to the Giangs’ junk for final preparation, his arm tight around the boy whose mental anguish he could now hear loud and clear. The utter grief. The immeasurable pain in an innocent young man’s broken heart. It was almost more than a father could bear.
Nicole couldn’t make it. The bitch was finally where she belonged, in the bowels of the same jail where Tucker had been harshly detained. Tucker only hoped she’d get the same treatment he had, but knowing her conniving ways like he did, he doubted it. Hell, she’d probably rule the roost before nightfall. Mr. Big Stuff might even be suffering along with all the other guards with the drama from their latest inmate. Who cared?
When a person passed away in Vietnam, the surviving family held a five-day vigil, a wake of sorts filled up with friends’ and neighbors’ visits, condolences, lights, and prayers. Often, a funeral took every last bit of the family’s hard-earned money. Since Luke had no one to claim his body, Tucker had stepped in to assume the costs and responsibility of a father.
With Jacob and Noah’s assistance, he’d performed the preparation ritual the night before. He’d washed Luke’s fragile body, the one Vinnie’s thugs had pummeled into bruises before Nicole shot him. The poor kid never stood a chance in this world. With every gentle swipe, the message struck home again and again. This could have been Deuce.
Tucker had gritted his teeth, bit back his tears, and carried on. After Luke had been carefully clothed in the new suit Melissa had bought for him, Tucker had laid a clean white chopstick between Luke’s teeth per Uncle Noah’s instructions. In Vietnamese tradition, it ensured Luke’s mouth remained open for the grains of rice and coins his friends or visitors might insert before his burial. After all, the motherless child might get hungry on his way to eternity.
Jacob’s uncle said a quiet prayer then, which Jacob translated, but he addressed Deuce when he said the gentle words, “Being born from the earth, one must return to the earth. It is the way of all things.”
Deuce had nodded as if he’d understood, but Tucker knew his boy didn’t have a clue. Death was beyond understanding for most kids. It was one of those harsh, bigger-than-life realities a guy never really comprehended, no matter how old he was. Maybe women were better at handling grief. Maybe not. Tucker only knew he was carrying a boatload of sorrow for his lost buddies and friends in his own hea
rt. The pain never went away. It just got shifted around to make room for another.
Now Deuce would be carrying his own pain, maybe two if losing his birth mother counted. Tucker honestly didn’t know. He hadn’t talked with Deuce about what had happened with Nicole yet. He’d let his son pick the time and place for that discussion. If ever...
At the end of the ceremony, Jacob and his uncle had helped Tucker swaddle Luke’s body into a clean white funeral cloth, careful to keep the chopstick in place. Then came the hard part, putting Luke down inside the four walls of that wooden box. Of letting this homeless and unloved child go.
Tucker could barely let Luke go. He’d held onto his body a little longer, his heart shredded while he’d fought for composure in the face of such awful tragedy. That poor little guy. This lost soul. Tucker had curled Luke into his chest and cradled him, his head bowed to Luke’s forehead, wishing to hell that God’s plan hadn’t been so harsh.
There were no words to bring Luke back from the grave. No words to bridge the gap between life and death. No words to reason away man’s inhumanity to man, to explain it so a boy could understand what Tucker still couldn’t grasp.
He’d offered what he could. “Sleep tight, son,” he’d whispered gruffly into Luke’s ear. “You are hereby relieved from duty. May you forever know fair winds and following seas.”
At last, he’d laid Luke down and let him go, and the casket, the best money could buy, was closed.
But today was harder.
Tucker walked with Deuce at one side, Melissa at the other. They followed the somber procession to the place of burial, a cemetery farther along the Saigon River to the south. Noah had chosen the site for Luke’s final resting place.
In the tradition of the land, geomancy, the location and position of the grave, determined a person’s fortune in the afterlife. Luke’s gravesite rested beneath the long tendrils of a weeping willow facing the river. Jacob had previously lined the trail with lighted votive candles. So many lights along the way. How appropriate. How sad.
Much of this culture’s tradition had to do with ancestors, the spirits who were supposedly able to reach back through time and space to help their living descendants. Tucker grunted at that stupid belief. No ancestors had shown up to help Luke when he’d needed them most. No one had come to his rescue except another lost kid who’d gotten his butt kicked for trying.
After a lot of chanting and more praying, Luke was finally laid to rest. Jacob explained how it was tradition to leave rice at the grave for the deceased. How after forty-nine days, the family would stop bringing rice. How after one hundred days, Luke’s family and friends would gather back at his grave to celebrate something called tot khoc—the end of tears.
Tucker knew better. Tears never ended. They just went underground and turned into hidden wellsprings in a guy’s heart that might pop a geyser of remorse and sorrow up to the surface at the most inopportune time. Look at Deuce, brave but fighting for composure every step of the way. Look at Melissa, her pretty blue eyes puffy and red-rimmed, as they’d been most days since Luke had died in her arms. Not fair.
Even Isaiah had grown more somber. He’d taken a long walk by himself last night, and Tucker knew he needed to chat with the kid. Isaiah had voluntarily assumed responsibility for dealing with the authorities, but something had been bothering him since that showdown at Vinnie’s. Isaiah’s gloom seemed to have faded during Tucker’s wedding, but today, it had returned with far-off stares and brooding stretches of silence. Tucker couldn’t even reach Isaiah mentally.
Tucker cussed himself. He should’ve shot Nicole sooner. Faster. In the head. Before she’d taken this little guy’s life. But he hadn’t, and he couldn’t understand why not. He wouldn’t have hesitated if it had been anyone else gunning them down, so why had he with Nicole? He didn’t love her. That wasn’t the reason. She’d killed those feelings long ago. The only thing that made sense was what Melisa had said. A father shouldn’t kill his son’s mother.
He shouldn’t have had to.
At last, Deuce dropped to one knee at his friend’s graveside. He’d been carrying a bulky duffle bag the entire walk. Tucker couldn’t help but smile when he saw what was in it. The poor kid removed a small bag full of rice from his bag and tucked it inside the coffin alongside Luke. He transferred a black nylon wallet full of Vietnamese paper dollars into Luke’s hand.
“I know he’s not really gonna need this stuff, Dad, but I wanna make sure he’s got enough,” Deuce ground out, his voice cracking, “just in case. Is that okay? Do you think I’m being stupid?”
Tucker blinked hard. “No, son. I think you’re the bravest man I’ve ever met.”
The son Tucker loved to the depths of his battered warrior’s soul broke his father’s heart all over again. Deuce pulled his violin case out of that duffle bag and something else—his Little League baseball cap and the ball Tucker had given him the fateful day he’d lost him. Vinnie had the grace to let the boy take whatever he’d wanted when Tucker had driven him to the estate for the last time.
With tears dripping down his face, Deuce laid his violin across Luke’s chest. He choked as he secured the cap to Luke’s head, nice and tight, the brim backward like Tucker had taught him. Very carefully, Deuce lifted his friend’s hand from the shroud and wrapped that baseball inside his stiff fingers, his shoulders heaving when he said, “I can’t go with you this time, buddy, so you need to practice real good so we can play together when we meet again, okay? ’Cause I’m gonna find you in heaven, Luke. I mean it. I promise. You’ll never be alone again.” Deuce scrubbed a hand over his face and climbed to his feet, and in the way of all little boys falling apart, he turned into Melissa’s arms instead of Tucker’s, sobbing. “I m-m-miss him. He shared noodles with me when I was hungry. He was my friend.”
Melissa’s teary gaze met Tucker’s over the top of Deuce’s head. ‘I love you,’ she mouthed, but Tucker turned away, his heart raw at the injustice of life. It wasn’t that Deuce had chosen the comfort of her arms over his, it was the whole jacked-up mess of it all.
What was God thinking to make life so damned hard for little kids and animals and old people, huh? Why did Luke have to die? Him? A little boy who’d never had a break in his short, pitiful life? What was so important in Heaven that God couldn’t let the kid live a little longer? Shit! Tucker’s angst boiled over. Why didn’t people understand how little it took to be kind to each other?
He pressed a fist to his forehead, as angry as he’d ever been. He might blame God for a lot of things, but this time it was his fault, every last bit of it. Not God’s.
“No, it’s not,” his faithful conscience whispered. Isaiah. The kid should’ve been named Jiminy Cricket the way he kept chirping up at all the wrong moments. Like now.
“What do you know?” Tucker shot back at him as he ran a quick hand over his face, shoving his grief back down in his gut where it belonged, ashamed he’d let it get away from him. The guy might not be within sight, but Isaiah was always there. Always at the back of Tucker’s mind. And now inside his breaking heart.
Isaiah sent back a drawn-out mental sigh that spoke volumes. “I know, believe me. I was the guy the Bicks forced to do a lot of crap while I was under their, umm, care, remember? I hurt you and Eden and my dad—a lot of other people, too. You have to let this go, Tuck. Bad things happen, and sometimes we’re just there when they do. Sometimes we can help. Sometimes we can’t. Sometimes we’re God’s avenging angels, but most of the time, we’re helpless bystanders, and all we can do is stand and watch and bear testimony against the evil in the world. We can’t carry the blame for everything that goes wrong. We just can’t. It will eat us up.”
Tucker exhaled a deep breath, wishing it were that simple.
“You saved your wife and your son, Tuck. Some helpless little girls, too. You would’ve saved Tristan if he’d let you. You’re one of the good guys. Stop beating yourself up.”
“Yeah, well...” The good advice was easi
er said than done. Tucker stared out at the busy river life with all those junks and sampans and little rickety motorboats. All those houses on stilts along the riverbank. There it was, happening again. Life. It never stopped or slowed down, and maybe that was a good thing after all.
He let his gaze scroll over the cemetery, searching for Isaiah but not seeing him. “So what’s wrong, kid? You’re quiet lately. Do you need to talk something out?”
Isaiah’s breath caught. “I’ll tell you about it someday.”
Tucker knew instantly. Go figure. Maybe he was a mind reader. “Your mother?”
“Yes,” Isaiah came back wistfully. “I miss her on days like this.”
Tucker never had a mother he could remember, only his mean old man. He clenched his jaw so hard that his back teeth creaked at the pressure.
“Deuce is crying, and he’s not ashamed to do it,” Isaiah whispered on the breeze. “You should be proud, Tucker. Your son’s a better man than either of us will ever be.”
“You’ve got that right.” Tucker bowed his head, so damned tired of fighting the world. Just when he thought he’d found safe haven, it reared its ugly head again. He needed back in Melissa’s arms where things made sense. Where comfort lived. “You’re a good man, Isaiah. I hope you know that. If there’s anything I can do—”
“Dad?”
Tucker froze. Shit. Just shit.
Deuce stood behind him. Needing him. Expecting him to turn around and be tough and all that heroic crap that heroes never really were. Didn’t anyone get it? They were just the guys who showed up and tried not to get killed while they did their job. That was all.
“Yeah, son?” he ground out, still facing away, his fists clenched. Any second now the dam would break, and he’d cry like a baby, make a fool of himself, and—
King of Hearts (Deuces Wild Book 1) Page 31
