Mine to Save

by Diana Gardin

  “It took about four months to get in, complete the mission, and get out. By the time I was stateside again, I decided that instead of calling to let my wife know that I was coming, I’d surprise her. All I wanted was to wrap myself up in her again, forget about the shit show I’d just experienced. She was the thing that kept me whole, kept me together after a tough deployment. And they were all tough, Sayward.

  “I walked into our town house around nine p.m. I was tired, hungry, and horny, and that wasn’t a good combination. As soon as I closed the front door behind me, our dog lifted his head from where he was lying on the floor. This is gonna sound so weird, but as soon as I looked at that damn dog I knew something was off. He walked over to me, hanging his head like he was ashamed, and usually the second I walked in the door he was all over me. Jumping up and trying to lick my face and barking and shit. Not that night.”

  Pausing midpace, I brace my hands against the wall and lean my forehead against cool plaster. I squeeze my eyes shut. and my fingers curl into fists. I want to beat my head against the wall, beat back the memories and the feelings and the anger, but it’s like a snowball rolling down a hill now. Can’t stop it. It’s all gonna come rushing out.

  “The house was dark, which was unusual for her. She never liked being home alone at night, and she usually left every single light blazing and stayed up late. Each step I took up those stairs, Sayward, felt like one step closer to something I knew I wouldn’t be able to just walk away from. I should have turned around, should have sensed the total chaos that was coming, but I didn’t. I just kept going, even though something told me not to. When I opened the door to our bedroom, they were there. My wife, in our bed with some motherfucker I didn’t even know. Sayward…that’s when shit went sideways. I was filled with this sense of overwhelming betrayal. That betrayal is what set me off. It’s something I learned later in counseling, but it was a trigger for me. Something inside me, probably the thing that had been tied together with nothing but a thread since I lost two of my brothers back in that hellhole, snapped. I was shredded. And the only thing I remember afterward is the way it felt each time my fist pummeled his flesh, each time he grunted or cried out, and even though it was making me sick I couldn’t control it.

  “I blacked out. And when I woke up again I was behind bars. I pled guilty to aggravated assault as soon as I found out the dude was in the hospital. I’d beaten him to within an inch of his life. I had an attorney, he tried to make me fight the charge. He said I could claim that PTSD made me do it, and hell, part of that could be the truth. But I’ve never been the kind of guy who runs away from the shit I do. I own up to it, and that’s what I did. I was sentenced, I served my time, and I got out. First thing I did was move to another state, next to an ocean. Oceans have always made me feel calm—more steady. And then the old man, Mickey Oakes, gave me a job and here I am.”

  My words are muffled as they get lost against the wall my head still rests on, but I know Sayward heard me. A heavy silence blankets the room, but it’s not like the kind of silence where you can feel a person judging you, blaming you, hating you. No, it’s oppressive, but there’s something in it that makes me believe she might get it.

  Like she might get me.

  Those suspicions are confirmed when I feel her small hand press against my back, her fingers kneading the tight, tense muscle at the base of my spine. Then her arms go around me, and I can feel her face pressing into my shirt. My eyes fly open, and my whole body is tight, but then I take a deep breath and relax against her.

  I suck in a shuddering breath. “Remember how I said I learned something later, in counseling? Even an emotion can trigger PTSD. For me, it was feeling betrayed. On my last mission, we had an informant that we’d been working with for months. This person gave us some bad intel to save his own ass, and we didn’t find out until after I’d set the explosion that was supposed to…kill a known terrorist leader.” Getting into the specifics of this story is dicey. There’s a lot she doesn’t know, and will never need to know. But I need her to understand what happened to me that night, so she knows it’s never going to happen again.

  “Just before the building went up in flames, our sniper saw movement in one of the windows. It wasn’t the terrorist, who we were told was going to be inside by himself. It was…” My throat closes up, with the memory. I talked about it when I was in counseling as soon as I got out of prison, but I’ve never shared it with anyone outside my unit. “There was a woman inside with a little boy.”

  My breathing is coming fast now, my chest heaving with the effort it takes to relive it, to remember what happened back in the desert that day. It changed me forever.

  Her voice is barely a whisper. And it’s full of emotion I’ve never heard from her before. Usually when Sayward speaks, it’s matter-of-fact and informative. But this? This is something else.

  Something more.

  “Bennett. I’m so, so sorry. For what happened both times. On your mission…you were doing what you thought was right. You followed orders, and you didn’t know that someone you’d built trust with was going to do something like that.” Her voice softens, gentles even more. “You couldn’t have known about that mother and child, and I understand that you carry a certain amount of guilt for it. But it wasn’t your fault.”

  Warmth, pure and sweet and more welcome than I could have thought possible, spreads through my chest, starting in my heart. My breathing slows, the lump lodged in my throat shrinks.

  “And the night you came home? You were betrayed. You were hurting, you were angry, and you had been traumatized. God, Bennett…anyone could have, would have reacted the way you did. You made a mistake…obviously putting your hands on someone is never the answer. But you owned it. You took the punishment. Do you understand how brave that was? How many men wouldn’t have?”

  I don’t even realize I’m shaking until she squeezes me tighter. My whole fucking body quakes, lost in the collision of the memories and the way Sayward makes me feel. I haven’t connected emotionally with a woman since my ex-wife, not once.

  I thought I wouldn’t connect with any other woman ever. My heart was torn out that day, and I swear I thought it’d never beat like this again.

  But here I am, with Sayward’s arms around me, and she’s opening up and coming out of her shell, and damn if I don’t feel her.

  Turning around in her arms, I cup her face in my hands, staring down at her. She looks at me for only a split second before her lids flutter shut. Her bottom lip disappears into her mouth and something carnal inside me growls with need.

  “Look at me, beautiful.”

  She doesn’t move but squeezes her eyes shut tighter. Her arms are still wrapped around me, but her body is stiff and unmoving.

  “Are you still scared?” I ask, my voice going lower and gruffer, but softer at the same time.

  She shakes her head, the action small but determined as hell. Her voice breaks something inside me, but then it puts it back together again. From one breath to the next, this woman’s changing me. “No, Bennett. I’m not afraid of you…not in the way that you think.”

  My thumbs caress her cheekbones, and I breathe her in. Sayward doesn’t wear perfume, but she always smells so fucking sweet. It’s the fruit in her shampoo, mixed with the addictive scent of her innocence.

  “Then what are you scared of?”

  She opens her eyes then, and I’m shot through the heart with the stark truth in her pure hazel gaze. “I’m afraid that I’ll fall. And when I fall, I’ll break, Bennett. I don’t know if I can put myself together again.”

  That’s when I know that no matter how hard I’ve tried to make my life better, how hard I’ve tried to leave the past mistakes behind and be a better man for them, I’m still a dirty motherfucking bastard.

  Because at those words, I should turn the fuck around and walk away. I should leave her alone, I should protect her like my job description describes and leave her untouched. Just the way I found her.

&
nbsp; But I don’t. Instead, I bring her face to mine and I take possession of her lips. I take, and I plunder, and I pillage. I own her mouth the same way I want to own her body. There’s a fire raging inside me that I couldn’t put out now even if I tried. I’m not sure what it is about this woman that has me so twisted up in goddamn knots, but there’s this desperate feeling when I’m with her. I feel like the only way to untangle myself is to dig in deeper.

  Farther.

  Faster.

  She moans against my mouth, and my cock is so fucking hard it hurts. Her hands go up, so tentative and gentle, tangling in my hair as she pulls me closer. She fuses her mouth to mine, and the heat between us threatens to burn us both alive.

  But if I’m going down? Fuck…I want to go down in flames with this woman.

  I lift her, feeling her legs wrap around me and I’m walking to her room before I can wise up and stop myself. This time, I lay her so fucking gently down on her bed there’s no way she can mistake it for violence, and she stares up at me with an expression in her eyes bordering on thankful. Placing a knee on the mattress between her legs, I lean over her and brush my lips with hers.

  So fucking gentle. The only thing she deserves, even though I’m nothing that she needs.

  “This okay?” I ask against her mouth.

  She nods, a small smile touching her lips. Her voice trembles. “Just sex, right?”

  My body recoils, but then I hold myself still. Is she fucking kidding me? After everything I just shared with her? How can she think this will be just sex?

  At this point, I know it’s gonna be so much more.

  But then I remember that I’m dealing with Sayward, and she doesn’t process social situations the same way I do. Maybe her defense against everything that’s happening between us, everything that scares her, is to deny it’s even happening.

  I nod without saying a word. If she wants to lie to herself, I’m not going to stop her. Not now.

  But we both know damn well this isn’t just sex.

  This is more.

  “Sayward…is this your first time?” I hold her gaze, needing to hear her confirm what I suspect. No matter how quickly she was willing to suck my dick, everything in me tells me she’s never been fucked.

  Under me, she pushes to sit up, and I pull back just enough to let her. With fire and determination and just a hint of defiance in her eyes, she confirms my suspicions with a nod, yanks at the hem of my shirt, and I grab the fabric at the back of my neck, helping her to pull it over my head. She lets her eyes travel down my chest, over my arms, around my abs, and the lust there almost glows.

  She’ll kill me, staring at me like that.

  “Then fuck me, Bennett. Fuck me now.”

  Oh, you think it’s gonna be that easy, beautiful girl? You think I’m just gonna stick my dick in you and walk away?

  It takes less time than it should for me to remove her shirt and shorts, and then I’m staring down at miles of tawny, smooth skin, her hair lying in a thick crown all around her head. Her knees are bent, her hands fisted in the sheets, an incredibly vulnerable expression in her eyes that makes me ache to be worthy of it.

  “Oh, I’m gonna do so much more than fuck you,” I promise.

  I bend down and press my lips to the slender curve of her throat as my fingers trail a gentle caress over her panties. She shudders at the same time she tenses up, and I’m learning that every time I touch her, at least at first, she’s going to rebel against it.

  “First with my fingers.” I rub the wetness, the heat that I can feel through the soft cotton fabric between her legs, and my dick twitches in response as it revolts against my jeans.

  Reaching behind her, I unclasp her bra and pull it off her body. Tossing it to the floor, I place my mouth over one tight nipple and suck. When she gasps, I release her only to lick a slow circle around the pebbled skin with my tongue. God, she tastes even sweeter than I thought she would. Teasing her is going to be so much harder than I thought.

  But she needs to learn a lesson tonight, and this is the only way to teach her.

  This will never be just sex.

  At her gasp, I look up at her with a small smirk and lust-filled eyes. “And I’m gonna fuck you with my tongue.”

  Hooking my fingers into the simple, black cotton, I pull the panties down her legs and throw them aside. I palm one breast while using my tongue on the other, alternating licking and sucking and tasting until she’s writhing underneath me with needy little moans floating up from her perfect mouth. I could stay right here for the rest of the night, knowing there’s never been another pair of tits as perfect as these. Every kiss, every taste, I’m becoming more addicted to all things Sayward. Every part of her body I touch becomes my new favorite.

  Trailing my hand back up her thigh, I drag my fingers through the shining wetness of her folds and can’t hold back my own groan.

  “So wet for me, baby.”

  There’s a rough need growing more intense inside me by the second, something I never even felt with my wife. I’ve been turned on, I’ve had sex, hell I’ve fucked more than a handful of women since I got out of prison.

  But this? Jesus, this feels like it’ll kill me if I don’t get inside her right the fuck now.

  It’s taking every ounce of control I have not to let this beast loose, because I’ve been given an opportunity, a privilege here, that I refuse to squander.

  But damn she makes me want her. Need her.

  She bucks when I dip a finger inside her, and then another, before drawing them out and swirling all that heat around her clit.

  “Bennett,” she moans. “Oh, God…”

  The fact that I get to see her like this, knowing that no other man has, it’s making me feel like I could fucking fly if I tried.

  My voice is thick, ragged. “And I’m going to fuck you with my dick, Sayward. I promise you all three.”

  Scooting down the bed, I take my first real taste of her and holy fuck I suddenly realize what an epic fucking mistake I’ve made.

  I’ve never been addicted to anything in my life, but Sayward Diaz has just become my goddamn drug.

  12

  Sayward

  OH, my God.

  I tremble. I shake. I writhe in what feels like pleasurable agony. Painful ecstasy. Perfect torture. It’s his words. It’s his hands. It’s the way he looks at me, the way it feels when he touches me. Like he knows every deep, dark fantasy I’ve ever had. Even the ones I never knew I was having.

  And right this very second, it’s his tongue.

  This man could teach a college course on how to use your tongue to drive a woman completely insane.

  He strokes me as he pushes two fingers inside and curves them, finding a place inside me that no one has ever touched. I want to jump out of my own body at the same time I’m forcing myself to stay, because it feels too damn good.

  Touch has never felt good to me, not ever.

  And this is touch on steroids.

  “Oh, God…yes.”

  Wait. Yes? Yes?

  I’m shocking the hell out of myself, but the words rolling out of my mouth aren’t even a choice anymore. Just like letting this man in, letting him feel every part of me, allowing him to own a piece of me, isn’t a choice anymore either.

  My body has taken over, and it’s shutting my mind and my good sense down completely. All I want is more of this.

  He tastes me slowly, leisurely, but with expert dexterity that lets me know he’s treating me with kid gloves. I’m like a scared rabbit to him, someone that will bolt at the first chance I get.

  I have to change that.

  “Bennett,” I gasp, using all my energy to push up onto my elbows. My hair falls around my shoulders as I focus on him and he looks up at me with hooded lids while his tongue laps at my dripping folds like a man dying of thirst.

  But it’s still, oh-so-gentle. He’s still holding back.

  Maybe you should let him be gentle. Maybe that’s what you need right no
w…someone who cares enough to take their time.

  I flop back down on the bed as an orgasm begins to build slowly inside of me, causing my legs to tremble and my heart to shake. “I can’t…I’m going to…”

  I grab two fistfuls of his hair, and he hums against me. “Yeah, beautiful. Come apart for me. I’ve got you.”

  And now my eyes do roll back in my head as I climb so high I can barely breathe, and his unrelenting tongue takes me to a place I thought I’d never reach.

  I fall, hoping to God he’ll catch me, and the explosion rocks me to my core.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, riding the wave of my own pleasure as his lips kiss me over and over again. My clit, my folds.

  When I open my eyes again, Bennett is gone, but then I glance to the side and he’s standing next to the bed shedding his jeans. He pushes his boxers down with them, and rolls a condom onto his erect cock. I pull in a breath because the size of him is so intimidating.

  I eye him warily. But at the same time that my mind riots, my body urges me on. I want this, want him.

  More than I’ve ever wanted anything.

  His eyes are dark with lust and brimming with something I can’t place, and he climbs back over me once the condom is situated. Cautiously, I reach down and take him in my fist.

  His long lashes flutter as his jaw tightens. “Jesus, Sayward.”

  Guiding him toward me, I watch with fascination as his desire plays out across his face. He’s so damn beautiful, even in the dark, and my hips reach out to meet him. He presses into me, just the tip, and we both gasp.

  “Holy shit,” I whisper just as he groans.

  He goes completely still, his breathing erratic and thin, his eyelids slamming shut.

  “This…is gonna hurt, okay, beautiful? Just for a second…because it’s your first time.”

  Fear prickles the hairs on my arms, raising them. It trickles along my spine and I stare up at Bennett with caution.

  He catches my chin. “Trust me?”

  Trust. Something that’s so hard for me to do. But Bennett just shared the most painful story in his life with me. Something changed between us tonight, and even though I’m not sure exactly what that is, I know it’s something big.