by S. K. Lessly
“And Josh?” my father asked, his voice so low I almost missed it.
“We are getting ready to move out. Don’t worry, I’ll bring him home and in one piece. Nothing is going to happen to him, you got me?”
There was a long pause before my father spoke and hearing the despair in his voice almost brought me to my knees.
“Yeah, I got you. But I need you all to come back in one piece. You got me?”
I gave my father a small smile that he couldn’t see but I made sure he heard it in my voice.
“Yeah, Pops, I got you.”
“I love you, son.” Again, my father’s voice cracked and I needed to end this call before I lost it.
“I love you too.”
I said my goodbye and hung up quickly. I had to. I could feel my throat closing with emotions threatening to consume me.
I put my phone back in my pocket and started pacing the room. The rage rolling through my veins were starting to run over. Counting to ten wasn’t working. Pacing back and forth and focusing on breathing, on this mission and the teams I had counting on me, that shit wasn’t working either.
I stopped abruptly, closed my eyes and all I saw was red.
“Got dammit,” I roared, headed straight for the gray metal desk in the room and slammed my fist onto the surprisingly clean surface.
I hit the desk again and again, denting it every time I struck the flimsy surface, hoping to release the ache in my chest. I was just about to pick the fucking thing up and hurl it across the room when the door to the office opened behind me.
I whirled around, ready to light into whomever had the balls to step foot inside my own hell uninvited. I paused however when my eyes fell on the person with the balls.
Misty.
She stood in the doorway, staring at me. I fully turned to face her, my eyes darkening at the sight of her.
“Get out,” I ordered bitterly, my body coiled, hands in tight fists at my side. I was tense and ready to strike.
Misty, in her usual fashion, ignored my order. She stepped inside the room, closed and relocked the door, the heavy click of the lock engaging loud inside the sparse room.
She stepped further into the room, her blue eyes penetrating me. I was about to tell her to get out again, to throw a litany of cuss words, orders and anything else I could think of at her, but the words fell from my lips the moment she pulled her shirt up and over her head.
Shit…
My eyes immediately went to her generous breasts covered by a barely there black lace bra. My body temperature started to rise, but this time it was for different reasons. My dick instantly hardened, approving the sight before him and wanting more. However, Misty didn’t move. It was as if she was waiting for me to make the next move.
She had to know I wasn’t going to reject her. Why would she think that? I immediately asked myself knowing I hadn’t given her a reason to think otherwise.
As we stood there facing each other, both waiting for the other to make the next move, I felt my body start to relax, the tightness in my chest lifting. I inhaled and her beautiful sensual scent rushed through me like a raging bull.
I breathed out a heavy sigh, knowing what was about to happen next. Neither one of us would stop it. In fact, we both understood that it needed to happen. Yet, it would change nothing between us and I needed her to understand that.
“Nothing’s going to change between us after this. You do understand that, right?”
She narrowed her eyes on me and if I wasn’t in such a foul mood, it would’ve been funny. Instead of reacting to her silence, I kept my face neutral, impassive.
When she didn’t answer me, I asked again, “Do you understand me? This is just going to be a hard and quick fuck. No kissing, no foreplay, noth—”
“I get it,” she replied harshly, speaking over me. “Now, drop your fucking pants, pull out your dick, and fuck me up against that dirty-ass desk.”
I didn’t stop the smirk this time. It pulled on the side of my face and I welcomed it.
Misty kicked off her already loosened boots, brought her hands to her pants and unbuttoned them. Her fingers slid along the seam of her jeans, gripped them and pulled the material past her sexy as fuck thighs. All humor left my body, replaced by a carnal need only she could produce.
When she righted herself, I drank her in long and slow. She was so fucking sexy, beautiful, got damn stunning in her black bra and matching silk panties. She was built just the way I loved, curvy and soft in all the right places. Her chocolate skin called for my tongue, for my hands to touch, fondle, worship her sculpted body, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have the time for one and for two, this was just meaningless sex between two people with pent up aggression. Nothing more.
Fuck, there couldn’t be anything more.
Wasting no more time, I pulled my polo shirt over my head, dropped it on the desk and stalked toward her. My hands made quick work of my belt buckle and the button of my jeans as I walked. By the time I got to her, which only took a few steps, my body was screaming for hers. I grabbed her by her waist and hoisted her up, so her legs could wrap around me. I continued moving until her back slammed into the door she entered.
We were eye level. Her pants of desire, need, and hunger mingled with mine. I looked deeply into her eyes and fuck if I didn’t see the longing that she had for me, the pure, unconditional…
Oh the hell with it!
I threaded my fingers in her hair and… yeah, okay, I crashed my lips to hers.
I was fooling myself, anyway. I knew damn well I wouldn’t be able to resist her. No fucking way.
Misty opened her mouth to me instantly and I deepened the kiss and boy what a kiss it was. It was feral and demanding and hungry and violent. We bit, fought, caressed and consumed each other with just a kiss. Her breaths became mine and mine became hers.
My dick demanded entrance into her slick wet core and I didn’t disappoint either of us. I leaned her against the door so I could fumble with my pants. I got them down enough to let the beast free. Unable to wait any longer, I pushed her panties to the side, lined my dick at her entrance and pushed in hard and fast.
Misty tore her lips from mine and cried out in ecstasy. Shit, so did I.
She felt like… damn like home.
“Fuck, baby,” I murmured and rested my forehead against her shoulder. I gripped her hips, while I gathered myself before I lost it and this shit ended before it even began.
I knew we didn’t have a lot of time, but I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. I missed being inside her. Her pussy was warm and tight and felt like heaven. Honestly, I just missed her.
I felt Misty shift and I groaned, gripped her hips tighter, halting her movements.
I kissed her shoulder. “Be still,” I ordered against her goose-pimpled skin.
“Shane,” she responded with a pained cry and it was music to my soul.
Just having her in my arms, balls deep, had my heart calming. All the pain and loss I felt for my brothers eating away at me had been dimmed and it was all because of her. She knew exactly what it took to shift my focus, to climb outside of my head and I loved her for it.
“Damn, baby,” I groaned as that thought settled in my heart. “This isn’t going to last, especially if you don’t stop moving. Give me a second. It’s been awhile.”
She leaned back from me, forcing me to meet her eyes. She placed her palms on the side of my bearded cheeks and the seriousness in her eyes almost had my knees buckling.
“Take what you need from me, Shane. If it’s hard and fast, I don’t care. Just use me,” she professed and I couldn’t breathe for almost a full minute.
When I finally gathered myself, I took her advice. I fucked her hard and unrelenting, pounding into her sweet core. Taking. Taking. Taking. It was the roughest I had ever been with her. I had her hair in a tight grip, her head pulled back, as my hips demanded her pussy’s surrender. I sucked on her neck, licked, bit and claimed her. I fucked without thinking about anything or anyo
ne but getting my fill.
I heard her cry out, felt her walls tighten around me, and it only fueled me to go harder, faster, but I couldn’t get deep with her up against the wall. I needed to get deeper, to feel her soul wrap around me.
I stopped moving my hips, turned and stalked to the desk. I placed her on her feet, turned her around and pushed her down on the desk. I pulled her panties down to her ankles. She stepped out of them and opened her legs wide for me. I slid home and groaned out my pleasure.
Yeah, that’s better. Fuck.
I let my head fall back and savored the feel of my woman, because fuck she was mine.
I began pounding into her then, punishing her for walking out, for putting us both through unnecessary bullshit. I relished in her soft, muffled cries and whimpers. It only pushed me to grip tighter, sink deeper, and fuck harder.
My balls suddenly started to get heavy, my release revving up to take us both under and I welcomed the feeling.
“Shane, baby. Come,” she ordered on a pained whisper. “Oh, please, baby come.”
I did as she asked and released with a roar, all of my anger, frustration, doubt and fear, out of me in a rush.
Fuck, that was what I needed and she gave it to me without question.
That’s what I remembered as I watched her stare out of the chopper. I wasn’t sure how she knew I had needed her. Maybe she felt my despair on the plane ride and knew I needed a release. It didn’t matter, if I was being honest. The point was she was there. She ignored the fact that we hadn’t spoken much over the last three days, and still gave herself to me. Willingly.
I ran my hand down my face and blew out a breath. I was thankful for her in more ways than one. The release we both experienced was definitely needed. We were overloaded with aggression—which, for people like us, wasn’t a good thing.
You would think it would be, the need to seek revenge driving us forward and all that. However, too much aggression could lead to mistakes. We couldn’t afford any tonight.
Someone told me once, a shrink I think, that taking a life damaged your soul in some way. It marked you. I believed that. Did it stop me from doing my job? No. Has it stopped Misty or men and women like us from doing what was needed to keep our country safe, to keep each other safe? Fuck no.
This world needed good people that had no problem with being just as bad and as ruthless as the criminals. Fighting evil was a war best fought on equal ground. As Misty loved to say, crazy recognized crazy. The risk of losing our sanity was great but it was a risk we all were willing to take.
Misty, probably feeling my eyes on her, lifted her eyes to me. We held each other’s gaze without words but the need for each other, we tried to hide, was there.
Fuck, I wanted her again, however, deep down I knew that was easier said than done.
The day she walked out on me, brought clarity to my clouded brain. I blamed myself for her walking out. At first, I thought that maybe I perused her too aggressively. Mistakes were very rare for me; I just didn’t make them. I was too calculated and thorough. But I was humble enough to admit that, with Misty, I had fucked up. I should have waited for her to come to me. I had allowed my deep need for her to overshadow reality; she didn’t feel the same for me as I did for her.
Misty wasn’t a shy person. She went after what she wanted with the same amount of enthusiasm as she killed. She wanted to be a Marine; she did it. She wanted to train to be a sniper; she became the best the military spawned. She wanted to learn a language, she made that shit happen and now she spoke various languages fluently as if she was a native. The woman was ambitious, headstrong, a force to be reckoned with. If she wanted a man, she’d go after him. However, she didn’t go after me and I didn’t know how I felt about that.
Nevertheless, I wasn’t blind. I knew what I saw in her eyes, what I felt in her touch. That shit was also evident when she gave herself to me inside the hanger. She was in love with me, which was why her hesitation didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t understand that shit at all. It was why I let her go when she walked out on me. It was also why I was giving her a blank look now, emotionless and empty, then looked away. Maybe it was cruel considering what we shared a little bit ago. Yet, it was our current reality. Even when we finally parted ways outside the hanger’s office, we didn’t speak or look at each other once we joined our team. It was business as usual, which was what the both of us needed.
For me, I needed to focus on the mission at hand. I couldn’t dwell on my fucked up personal life. My unit needed a strong leader, not some lovesick fool. My brother needed me at my best. His life was at stake and I wasn’t going to fuck that up.
My brother’s words suddenly surfaced in my brain.
I’m the one she calls when she’s lost. Not Malcolm and especially not you. You don’t know shit about her and her struggles. You don’t know shit about her dreams, her heart, or her soul. You’re too busy playing games with good women to see past your shit. No. You don’t deserve. You’re not good enough.
Hearing that shit fucked with me the entire ride home. Was he right? I claimed that I knew everything there was to know about her. But that wasn’t true. She was tormented by fear. Fear that ran so deep it was hard to see sometimes, however it existed. It was why she ran. I knew that. She was afraid of her feelings for me, afraid to let go and truly let someone in. She had been hurt in the past and for women like her, she wasn’t going to let that happen a second time.
But I showed her that it wouldn’t. I did everything I could to prove to her that I was all in, no matter what, and still she ran. But as I thought about it more, I had to understand why she ran. It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t that she didn’t care. It was that she did but had no clue how to express it. What we have was overwhelming, all-consuming and deep as fuck. The obsession she and I both felt for each other ran so thick, so heavy if we weren’t careful it would suffocate us both.
You don’t deserve her, you’re not good enough. That was bullshit. I did deserve her and she deserved me. I just hoped she realized that shit sooner rather than later. Our love was something so rare, so unique and pure that it would be a crime if we didn’t get our shit together and figure this out. We had to, or fuck I wasn’t sure what would happen to us both.
“Ten minutes, major,” the pilot called out over his shoulder as well as in my earpiece. I nodded, clasped his shoulder and squeezed.
I addressed my teams on each helicopter over the communication unit in my ear.
“Listen up everyone, we’re landing in ten minutes. Get weapons hot. Call signs from this point on.”
In the field, we used call signs instead of real names over open channels. Even though you’ve taken precautions with keeping your comms secure, you never knew the level of technology someone had at their disposal. Call signs were considered nicknames for operators. There was meaning behind each and every name. You were typically nicknamed by someone in your unit if you were military. A lot of my team were ex-military or still actively serving, which worked out. They just used their current call signs.
One thing though, you never asked why the nickname was given. Most of the time it had something to do with combat experiences. If someone wanted to share, they did. If not, you respected it and moved on.
Misty was called ‘Black Widow’. I never asked her about her call sign, I didn’t need to. Based on what she did for a living, it was self-explanatory.
Curtis’ name was ‘Night King’; Jesse ‘Dizzy’, I had no idea why and I didn’t ask. Ivan had been given the name ‘Merlin’ by Malcolm when they served together, and Ivan called Malcolm ‘Arthur’. Those two were fucking weird.
Stan and Josh didn’t serve in the military, so we created names for them. Stan was named ‘Sunshine’, from the movie Remember the Titans with Denzel Washington. In the movie, there was a quarterback, originally from California, with blonde hair, blue eyes that looked like he should be surfing somewhere rather than playing football. The kid was tough and could play his ass
off.
Stan was one of those that didn’t look as if he should be killing bad guys or working for some secret government agency. He should be a stockbroker or skate boarder with three rugrats and a hot stay at home wife. The man was far from it. A beast in his own right, sharp, smart and could shoot anything given to him. Of course, he hated the name at first, but it grew on him.
Now Josh… well that fucker lived up to his name ten times over. His call sign was ‘Hulk’ and he fucking hated it. Too bad. He shouldn’t have such a hair trigger temper.
My name suited me also, sort of anyway. My unit called me ‘Cap’ for Captain America. The moment I entered my unit in the Army, I was running shit. I didn’t wait for someone to appoint me leader. I took the title. Few hated it, hated me. They even tried me, but I backed up the shit that came out of my mouth and quickly gained the respect from my peers and superiors. So, the name stuck when I was in battle and sometimes when I wasn’t.
Anyway, back to the brief.
Perchenko and his band of villains didn’t know we were currently en route, however, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be ready for our arrival.
I continued to address my team.
“Junior has assured me, as of five minutes ago, that the coast was clear. There were no motion detecting explosives or mines or any other fun devices around the property for us to discover. He also assured me that any cameras around the building would conveniently go down once we arrive so stay sharp. Everyone has their orders. We follow them to the tee unless something comes up. The moment we land, split up and get to work. Stay alert and frosty. We leave this place with one more than what we arrived with, not less, understand?”
I received ‘hell yeah’ and ‘Hoorahs’ in my ear.
I looked at the bodies in front of me but addressed everyone, my eyes hard, dark and deadly. “Let’s bring our brother home and kill everyone in our way. Hoorah?”
“Hoorah!” was the resounding response echoing in my ear.
The choppers touched down a few minutes later and we all filed out, crouched low, our weapons up, NVGs activated, eyes surveying the area. We cleared the rotors and waited until the Black Hawks lifted before we advanced into the silent forest.
