by Liz Crowe
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to rub in the thing about Ca—”
“Stop,” Kieran said, his large hand raised between them. “Don’t say her name right now, all right? So, when are you telling Mama you’re leaving? And who hired you anyway?”
“I’ve had three Skype interviews with this outfit in Virginia. Something called GAPS. Stands for Guardian Angel Protective Service.” He shrugged, unwilling to admit how much this major move had him rattled.
“Guardian angel, huh,” Kieran said, his smile genuine.
“Yeah, it’s a bunch of SEALs, retired or resigned, who started it. They got tired of jumping through military hoops in order to actually do some damn good. I can get behind that.” Owen stared down at his hands, watching them clench into fists, then unclench, then clench again. “They needed an IT guy. Who is, apparently, about to be yours truly. Pay’s pretty good. They’ve only been in business eighteen months and already have several big corporate clients. Plus the military.”
“Hmmm … Halliburton, much?”
“Oh, spare me, you fucking bleeding heart. Who do you think actually gets shit done, anyway? The actual military? Hardly.”
“Well, I know Mama and Daddy will use it as an excuse to throw a goodbye party, so be ready for the parade of small town memories. They’ll invite God ’n everybody you know.”
Owen grunted and put his hand on the door handle. “We goin’ in there or what?” He nodded at the expanse of glass behind which he could see the redheaded Cara Cooper, pert and perky and cute as ever, putting some poor old lady through her hip-replacement paces. Kieran took a long, deep breath, opened and closed his eyes, then nodded.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
Owen clapped Kieran on the shoulder as they headed into the overly cool space. “I’m sorry. About her, I mean.” He jerked his chin to where Cara was holding onto a belt wrapped around the woman’s scrawny waist as the biddy limped around the room. Kieran’s eyes narrowed as he watched his former girlfriend.
“Yeah. Me too,” he muttered as the receptionist smiled a greeting at the two of them.
The party was, as promised, chock full of memories—mostly in the form of his old friends from high school and their parents. All of whom patted his shoulder or arm as if he were some kind of invalid. Sick of all the sympathy, he finally got up, jogged over to Dominic, and grabbed the football the guy had been tossing from hand to hand.
“Throw a few?”
Dom looked up him, one blond eyebrow raised. “Sure. I could use a break from the old girlfriend parade.”
Owen grinned at him and headed to the stretch of grass above the pool patio at the Love’s modest, quad-level house. They heaved the pigskin back and forth in comfortable silence for about ten minutes, which went a long way towards soothing Owen’s nerves.
Dom was the Love family black sheep. He had long blond hair tied back with a strip of leather, was tatted out on skin that had enough of his father’s family’s olive tone to appear a burnished bronze in the sun, and pierced in God knows how many places. He was an amazing brewer, too. He and his father worked together daily at the Love Brothers Brewing Company, and had knockdown fights almost as often.
“You ever get to that head shrinker?” Dom asked after a while, cradling the ball in his arms as he caught it.
“Nah,” Owen admitted, holding up his hands to receive it. “I don’t need that shit.”
“I wouldn’t be so hasty on that count,” Dom said, turning it around for a perfect spiraling pass.
“Yeah, well, I’d guess you know from crazy,” Owen said, frowning when he heard Jeff’s voice hollering for Antony to come and swim with him.
“Yep. I sure as hell would.”
The ball tossing continued a while, sans conversation. Dominic Love was a barely medically managed manic-depressive. Something he’d lived with his whole life. But a condition he’d only been treated for since a terrifying few weeks after high school graduation when he’d literally disappeared from town. Owen knew damn good and well that Dom hated the meds. They blunted his highs, he claimed. He was constantly going on and off the pills, something that drove his entire family nuts.
But like all the Love siblings, he was fiercely protected by, and protective of, his family. They had each other’s backs all the time. Owen had been jealous of that, even with his honorary membership in their tight-knit, volatile, Italian/Irish tribe. Even the littlest brother Aiden, currently at some writer’s school out west, and the single sister, Angelique, knew they could always fall back on each other, despite their proclivity towards in-fighting—which at times drew actual blood.
“You should go to the therapist at the VA in Virginia,” Dom said mildly. “You need to talk about what happened, and you probably need some kind of PTSD medication.”
“Whatever you say, Doctor Love.” Owen grinned. It was something Dominic used to like to call himself—Doctor Love. Always on the prowl for chicks to ‘examine.’
“Oh, boy,” Dom said, jerking his chin at something over Owen’s left shoulder. “Incoming. I’m outta here.” Owen tossed the ball one last time. Dom grabbed it and started running for the pool, hollering for everyone to move before he cannonballed right in the middle, sending up a spray of water that splattered the crowd.
Owen shook his head and chuckled. The smile froze on his lips when he turned and saw the reason for Dom’s hasty departure.
“Hey, Owen. Where ya been hiding yourself?”
He took a step back, catching his prosthetic in a dip in the grass, which sent him down to his hands and knees like a total dork. The woman stepped up to him and held out her hands to help him up. “You all right?” She looked him up and down, and then actually licked her lips. Owen felt himself responding, slowly at first, to the sight of one of his girlfriends from high school, now all grown up, filled out and looking good enough to devour.
“I’m just fine. You?” He smiled down at her familiar face, the big brown eyes, and the full, pouty lips.
She looked down, then back up at him. “I thought you were avoiding me.”
“I was,” he said, putting only slightly shaking hands on her bare arms and giving in to the glorious sensation of warm, female flesh under his palms. “But maybe I shouldn’t have?” He raised an eyebrow, cursing the fact of the stupid, fake leg but unable to repress the erection tenting his swim trunks. “It’s good to see you again, Hannah.”
She smiled, went up on her tiptoes, wrapped her arms around his neck, and whispered, “Show me how good it is, Owen. I’ve missed you.”
He hesitated for a split second, aware of the vacuum suction of the prosthetic sucking against his stump of flesh all of a sudden. When her lips met his, he let her lead, let her probe and tease with the tip of her tongue. With a low moan, he met her halfway, grabbing her ass and grinding his aching dick into her stomach, relishing the press of her bikini-clad tits against his chest.
He broke the kiss abruptly and glared down at her. “I’m not about to be your mercy fuck.”
“Oh, honey, there is nothing about this that involves mercy, unless it’s for me.” She took his hand and glanced down at the partiers still poolside. They’d eaten massive quantities of burgers, dogs, potato salad, baked beans, chips, and Mrs. Love’s homemade brownies. Several people had already left. Antony was helping his father light the tiki torches against the oncoming twilight mosquito assault.
He threaded his fingers in hers, unable to stop staring at her exposed belly button, which had a small hoop pierced through it. His dick was so hard it actually hurt—which was reassuring. He’d not been convinced he’d ever be able to get it up again after the crushing pain he’d endured the past few months.
“Bottom basement,” she whispered, letting her left breast brush against his arm. He nodded. She was talking about the lowest of the Love’s quad level home where the siblings had at first a playroom, then a ‘play room’ disguised as a rec room, which had been the site of more sex than Owen cared to contemplate at
the moment.
She started tugging him, and Owen followed her, his tongue tied, his pulse racing, his entire body an erogenous zone. He had to focus, or he’d blow before he got his damn shorts off.
They ducked inside once they’d determined that both Lindsay and Anton were still at the pool, sipping beer and chatting with their friends. A few steps down to the left and Owen was plunged back into his childhood and his adolescence in an instant. The room had hardly changed, with its butt-sprung couch, a giant box of a TV with DVD/VCR and other random outmoded video game paraphernalia surrounding it. It even smelled the same—dryer sheets, bleach, and starch mixed with old beer spills on the rug, and pot smoke embedded in the couch fabric.
“You’re okay to do this, right?” Hannah hesitated in the middle of the room, looking as much like an ingénue as a near thirty-year-old woman could. “I mean, I’m not gonna hurt …” She trailed off and looked right at the metal contraption that passed for his left lower leg.
Shoving down the urge to cuss her out and walk away, he reached in between the rolled up sleeping bags on a high shelf, grinning when his fingers closed around a box. When he pulled the condoms out, he squinted at the expiration date. “Shit,” he said, shoving the box back. Damn things were over six years old—which would make sense, he supposed, since that matched up with the time Angelique Love had been down here getting her rocks off with various boyfriends.
“No worries,” Hannah said, untying her bikini top and letting it slip to the rug, along with the skirt wrap thing she’d been wearing around her hips. “I’m clean, and I’m on the pill.”
Owen put his hands on his hips and had a brief discussion with himself. On the one hand, he was so horny he thought he might explode from it right here in the Love’s basement. On the other, Hannah had given him a pregnancy scare once in high school when she’d supposedly “been on the pill” too.
A soft, feminine hand lifted his shirt and slid up his sweaty torso while her other hand gave the string holding up his shorts a quick jerk. “You don’t believe me,” she said in a whisper, her firm nipples now pressed against his bare skin. Owen remained speechless, stupefied by the roaring in his ears and the raw, primal urge to toss the woman down on the couch and plow into her like a rutting bull. “I just want to know—you’re okay with this, right?”
“Hannah,” he whispered as he cupped her breasts and flicked his thumbs over her nipples. She sighed and went up on her tiptoes to kiss him. “It’s just my leg. My cock is fine and dandy and ready for action.” He sighed. “Hannah,” he repeated, pulling her to the couch, dropping onto his butt, and then pressing his lips to the cool metal hoop in her navel.
She straddled his lap, taking him inside her with a quick, definitive shift of her hips. He groaned so loud, she slapped a hand over his mouth and suppressed her own giggle.
“I’ve missed you, Owen,” she said, in a familiar, singsong way as she rolled her hips and clenched his dick with her inner muscles. He cupped her breasts and sucked her nipples one by one, until she moved faster, giving him the friction he needed.
“Fuck. Shit. Hell.” He grunted and dropped his head back as she ground down on him, rose up, then down again, slowly at first. Then faster. And still faster until her tits were bouncing in front of his eyes and he could smell her onrushing orgasm, even taste it on the back of his tongue.
She shivered and cried out, and he buried his face in her breasts to muffle his own, loud groan at release. He came and kept coming, as his vision went pitch black, then stark white, and his entire body was engulfed in shudders that made his teeth rattle.
“Mmmm,” Hannah said as she propped her hands on the couch back behind him and pressed her lips to his. “Nice.”
“Uh,” Owen managed as she lifted up and off, and stood naked in front of him.
“Hannah?” A female voice from the top of the steps made them both flinch.
“Yeah, Tricia, hang on a sec.”
He watched, frozen, mired in emotional and mental mud as she fumbled herself back into her bikini top and the wrap, under which, he noted now, she was completely bare.
“You came here to fuck me,” he said, his voice soft and non-accusing. Merely factual.
Her teeth glowed in the darkness when she smiled and came over to put her hand around his still exposed, still hard dick. “Sure did, hon.” She kissed him again, flicking his tongue with hers, then withdrew. “Wanted to see if you could still manage it. I’ve never fucked a gimp before.”
He blinked fast, processing this, and then decided that shoving her through the wall for simply being the ignorant bitch she was would be a waste of his energy. Instead, he smiled up at her and tucked his dick inside his shorts. “Mission accomplished. See ya on the flip side, Hannah.”
She hesitated as if she’d hoped to get a rise out of him with her flippant comment.
“What? Go on. You proved your theory. Beat it. I’m gettin’ on with my life, starting tomorrow. But that was a lovely pressure release. You always were good for that, if nothing else.”
She bit her lower lip. “Owen, I’m sorr—”
“No, you’re not,” he said, getting to his feet and towering over her, even as the vacuum suction pump that connected the prosthesis to what remained of his left leg made him wince. “Go on. We’re done here. Jesus.” He sidestepped her when she tried to reach for him. She always had been just this side of bitchy, hiding it under a layer of saccharine sweetness. But she’d always been game for a quick and dirty, here or in her basement. And she’d given him his first blowjob. That had to be worth something.
“Hannah!” the voice called down the steps again. “I’m leaving. If you’re coming with me, get your ass up here.”
Owen crossed his arms, pleased to note that his woody had softened in the face of Hannah’s bitchiness. He did feel better, less fraught, thanks to the monster orgasm.
“Go on,” he said again, jerking his chin at the steps behind her.
“I really am sorry,” she said, reaching out to touch his face. He grabbed her wrist, a little too hard, he’d admit, before he loosened his grip.
“You got your jollies, you lame bitch. Now get the fuck out of my life and stay that way.”
He let go of her. She glared at him a half second, then turned and ran up the steps. Owen flopped onto the couch, smelling his own spunk, hating his life so much at that moment he wished he had a bottle of his old pain pills and a handy fifth of bourbon.
“Owen,” Antony called down the steps. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” he said, swiping a hand down his face, then standing, forgetting about how he had to overcompensate on his right side and nearly pitching himself face first onto the rug. “I’m good, thanks.”
“Okay. I, um, I want to talk to you before we go. We need to clear up a few things.”
“No, Antony, we don’t.” Owen leaned against one of the metal poles. “I’m sorry. I’m being a judgmental asshole, and you don’t deserve it. Neither does Rosie.”
“Get your ass up here. I don’t feel like having this conversation down the fucking steps.”
Owen dragged himself to the stairs and went up slowly, cursing his life, his fake leg, and his fate for the millionth time.
After some bourbon, and a lecture from Lindsay about getting to the VA psych department in Virginia, and then a heart-to-heart with Antony—during which he revealed that, although it might appear otherwise, he and Rosie had never had sex and theirs was a comfortable, step-up, always-available friendship more than anything—Owen fell face-first down on the bed he’d been occupying for the past month.
Sleep descended fast and, thankfully, sans a single remembered dream. His last thought was one of a fresh start with a crowd of people who knew nothing about him other than his rep as the ‘rogue Marine’ who could hack his way into and out of just about any computer system.
Chapter Five
Lainey crossed her arms and surveyed the office with more than a smidgeon of satisfaction.
She’d been an employee of GAPS for thirty-some days, but she’d devoted nearly her every waking hour to imposing order on the abject chaos that had represented the company’s so-called structure. Her natural tendencies toward organization had gotten her the job, she knew, even though she’d never run an actual office before. Plus the fact that she’d managed a huge restaurant for five years in Orlando.
Plus the other fact that she was a knock-out, a bombshell, the proverbial brick shithouse, and the people who’d hired her were straight-up, textbook-style, Alpha males.
She’d been fully aware of her own effect on the two guys who’d done the interview. Both Jon and Zane were in committed relationships. But they were healthy, ex-military men. Both were unable to stop staring at her for a few seconds until Jon dragged his gaze away from her cleavage, elbowed Zane, who was just this side of drooling, and they’d both apologized.
She’d shrugged. She was used to it, and at this point, she’d been more than willing to use her looks to her advantage. She needed the job. No, more like she was desperate for the job. She had to make some money, real money, if she wanted to pay the attorneys. The GAPS guys had hired her after a forty-minute interview, a quick tour of their strip mall, storefront space, and introductions to some of the men working in the office.
She frowned and refastened her hair back in a messy ponytail, not willing to recall that bit of the day. She’d met five men, a couple of them in the workout room, and two sitting in Jon’s office poring over files. But one, in particular, had stuck in her head. He’d been in a spare, small office—more like a closet but with less character—in front of a wall covered with different computer monitors set up on a wobbly, cheap-looking table. Like the kind you’d rent for a party and cover with a nice tablecloth.
He’d barely grunted out an acknowledgment of her presence and hadn’t turned to look at her at all—which was too bad because he was quite the specimen. He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, his dark tanned and tatted biceps covered in a sheen of sweat. She remained in the doorway while Jon and Zane consulted with him about some case or another, taking the opportunity to study his leg—or what passed for it now.
