Muscle

by Lexi Whitlow

  I feel him pull away and I look behind me to see him lowering the shorts he wore for the photoshoot to reveal a magnificent cock, throbbing and veiny and clearly very, very ready for me. He strokes himself even though it’s clear he’s already impossibly hard, and he groans like he’s savoring the taste of me, like my simple orgasm him brought him to this gravity-defying level of hardness.

  Gates catches my eye and grins.

  “You ready?” I moan and nod my head softly. Gates takes me by the hips, his hands grasping me tight. He pauses with the large head of his cock resting gently against my clit, and he grinds into me softly, moaning ever so gently. “Winter, you’re so fucking beautiful.”

  Without further preamble, he presses the head of his cock into my waiting, eager pussy. I gasp at the long forgotten sensation of being stretched open. I brace myself for his full length, but instead, he holds himself there, gently groaning and letting his hands roam over the curved planes of my ass.

  Eager, I push back into him. He smacks my ass and doesn’t let me fulfill my pleasure—not yet. He takes his time, fucking me gently with just the head of his cock. My pussy grows even slicker, the wetness surrounding him. Gates grunts and finally slams deep into me, filling me with one deft thrust. Hands holding my hips steady, he crashes into me again and again, his balls hitting against my clit.

  Impossibly, I feel the spark within me begin again, building and building until I need that release.

  As if he senses my impending orgasm, Gates picks up his pace, fucking me in earnest and filling me to the hilt with each swift movement.

  “I want to—” He pauses his words and groans, still slamming his cock into me as if he couldn’t possibly make himself slow down. “I want to come inside of you,” he growls.

  I whimper. I know I shouldn’t. It’s stupid, even if I am on the pill.

  “Please,” I beg. “Please come inside of me.”

  He speeds up more, gripping me so that I know I’ll have bruises tomorrow. The pain mixes with the driving pleasure of it, and my mind goes blank for an instant. I see flashes of color instead of blackness when I close my eyes, the synapses in my brain firing in overdrive. The climax builds within me, my body quivering and quaking. A sound comes from deep within me. It’s dark and deep and something I don’t quite recognize.

  And I come, again—long and hard and powerful. I feel Gates bucking against me, his rhythm finally broken. The warmth of his cum fills me, shooting inside of me.

  I like the feeling of it. The walls of my pussy tighten around him as my pleasure crests and falls again.

  “Oh God,” I whine. “God, that’s so good.”

  He thrusts into me a final time, his hands still tight on my hips. We fall to the floor together and lie together for some time.

  I roll over to face him and look deep into his eyes.

  It’s been so long since I’ve been this close to someone, and I’m not sure quite what to do.

  All I know is that I’m glad he’s leaving in a few days time.

  Or I would certainly be in trouble.

  Chapter 2

  Gates

  Winter is incredibly beautiful, lying in her hotel room, red hair spread in a fiery splash across the pillow. We were up all night, exploring each other’s bodies.

  It’s been a long time I took a chance like this. I guess the impending mortal doom thing factored in this time.

  It might have also been Winter.

  I kiss her to waking. Her lips are deep peach in color, and there’s a spray of freckles across each cheek. I want to kiss her there. To feel her skin against my lips.

  “Muscle,” she says, stretching her arms up. Her eyes aren’t open yet. I can see the white tips of her eyelashes, a few red hairs falling in her face. The view from here is absolute perfection.

  “Gates,” I say, kissing her again. She opens her eyes, almost startled after her luxurious stretch.

  “Shit,” she mumbles. “I’m naked.”

  “I’d like you to stay that way today. And tomorrow. So I can remember exactly what you looked like this weekend.”

  Instead of responding the way she did last night, she quickly pulls the white hotel sheet around her, and her complexion turns ghostly pale. “Gates, you don’t understand. If my father finds out—”

  “He won’t find out. Plus, you’re a grown ass woman. Who cares what he thinks?”

  “You don’t know my dad,” she says, groaning, and lying back on the pillow. “I need to get out of here and back on my normal Saturday schedule before he knows anything is different.”

  I get a tight, clenching feeling in my gut. Any man who intimidates his daughter to this point sounds like a piece of human garbage. I want to say something, but I hold my tongue. I’m not in the business of doling out advice to women I barely know, especially when it comes to family. I probably won’t even see this girl again. That thought makes my gut clench even tighter, but I push aside the feeling.

  I’m a SEAL. I don’t even have my own home address.

  I have student loan debt, my mother’s credit card debt. All kinds of shit that needs to be signed, sealed, and delivered before I can even consider being with someone.

  This is just fun. I should let her go.

  “Stay,” I say. “Let me show you a good time today.”

  “You have a way with words, Navy SEAL. Simple words, but your eyes are very convincing.” She laughs a little nervously. “That’s why the camera loves you. If you ever wanted a career in acting, you could probably go for it.”

  “Nah,” I say. I push a lock of red hair behind her ear, letting my fingers roam down her neck. Gently, I pull away the sheet covering her. “I’m only good at fighting bad guys.”

  “Sure thing,” she says. “Be self-deprecating. But I know a star when I see one.”

  I shrug, glad to see the color returning to her cheeks. Her deep, sparkling eyes are focused on mine. I let my fingers move to one of her ripe, firm breasts and then the other.

  She moans softly, almost musically. I love the sound of it. I brush my thumb over one nipple, and it stiffens beneath my touch. My cock is already at half mast and growing harder the more I touch Winter. Shuddering beneath my touch, she leans in and kisses me, hand on my thigh.

  “I’m not this type of girl,” she whispers.

  “I didn’t think you were.”

  “I don’t normally do things like this.”

  “I believe it,” I respond. I lean in and kiss the nape of her neck.

  She pulls herself onto my lap and kisses me hard, and I’m lost in the sound and the scent and the feeling of her. She takes my cock in her hand and climbs onto my lap, whimpering slightly. The need in her voice is apparent, and it stirs something in me that I haven’t felt in a long time, maybe years. Impossibly, my cock gets even harder as she brings it to the dripping wet lips of her pussy. She moans and gently lowers herself down on my cock, slowly at first.

  “Gates,” she sighs. Her eyes meet mine, and she looks almost sad for an instant. Then she closes them again and takes me to the hilt, filling me with the insatiable, aching need she instilled in me earlier this week—from the very first time I saw her.

  “That’s so good,” I groan, leaning back and letting her work my cock with her impossibly tight, hot pussy. I feel ready to explode, but I hold myself back, waiting. Winter increases her rhythm, bouncing up and down on my cock, taking me completely each time.

  She might not be the type of girl who does this, but she’s damn good at it. I groan, long and loud. She responds, picking up her pace, grinding her clit against me. Her eyes pop open again, and she gives me a piercing, desperate look.

  “I’m going to come,” she moans. “I want you to come inside me again.”

  I don’t wait for any more prompting. Instead, I lean back and let the feeling take me over. My balls tighten, and the insane, lingering need deep in my core reaches a tipping point, and I pass over the edge. My mind goes blank, and I fill her up as she rides me
, moaning and panting.

  Winter’s body shakes and quivers, her arms wrapped tight around my neck. “Holy shit,” she mutters, her body still rocking against mine, her body pressed close into me. “Shit, that was good.”

  “Yeah, we do pretty well together. Especially for two people who don’t do this kind of thing.”

  She laughs, and rolls away from me. We’ll go out to lunch. I can give you that.

  “Okay,” I say. “We can shower and then go.” I grab a towel and head towards the hotel bathroom. It looks like there’s room for two inside.

  “Oh, I need to call Ella and get some stuff worked out for Monday. You go ahead.”

  I nod and go into the bathroom alone, but I get a strange feeling somewhere between turning the water on and shampooing my hair. I let the feeling slide by. I don’t want to go back to the hotel room, naked and dripping wet, calling Winter’s name.

  She already seems gun-shy, and that behavior might make her go from gun-shy to totally freaked out by an insane man. I take my time, washing my hair, thinking of the new ramen place I might take Winter. I could convince her to stay until I absolutely have to leave, and we could enjoy each other. I could get her number—maybe—for when I come home.

  When I step out of the shower and go to shave, the room seems quiet, eerily so.

  I dab a bit of shaving cream on my face, but I still feel it. I don’t hear Winter, don’t feel her presence.

  I shouldn’t go in there. I should shave. But I can’t bear it any longer.

  I sling a towel around my hips and walk back into the hotel room, glancing from one side to the other.

  “Fuck,” I groan. The room is as empty as it was when I checked in. “She fucking ghosted.”

  Beside the nightstand lamp there’s a handwritten note and a hotel key. The script is small, tight, neat. It reads,

  “Had to catch an early flight for my next job. Sorry I had to leave. Ella told me I needed to go ASAP. Turn in the key at the desk. Good luck on your deployment. Stay safe.

  —W.”

  No last name. No number or email address. Nothing. Just a one-night stand with no forwarding information.

  I get that tight, clenching feeling in my chest. I feel instinctively that she wouldn’t have left if she wasn’t deathly afraid of her father. And that girl was terrified.

  I hope I never get tangled up with that man, because I’d find a very creative way to end him.

  “Fucking hell,” I groan. “I don’t even know her last name.”

  She’s a memory now.

  And with any luck, I might meet her again.

  Chapter 3

  Gates

  One Month Later

  “SEAL Team Two is hemmed in, under fire, surrounded, multiple casualties,” a voice from Command crackles over the radio. “We need to extract and eliminate the threat. Copy SEAL Team Six. Are you ready?”

  “Ready,” Lieutenant Pegram replies as our chopper lifts off the ship’s deck. It pitches low, accelerating fast over open water.

  There are twenty of us in two Blackhawks, locked and loaded, heading into an unknown situation with the solitary goal of extracting eight members of SEAL Team Two from a mission gone horribly wrong. Their intel was bad; they walked into a trap.

  Now, two of the eight-man team are holding off an unknown number of enemy, with four guys injured and two more missing. It’s a bad situation.

  It’s worse for me because Ransom was on that mission. My best friend in the world is out there somewhere in deep trouble. Maybe hurt. Maybe killed. Certainly, a long way from home, surrounded by unfriendlies who would be happy to see his head on a pike.

  Every SEAL wears a GPS broadcast beacon attached to his vest, so even if we get killed, we can be found and recovered. I’m looking at a small, blinking dot representing Drew Ransom. It’s superimposed on a satellite image of a residential compound in a neighborhood on the western outskirts of Aleppo. The dot is not moving. Then again, neither are the seven other dots on my screen, and I know at least two of them are alive, if under duress.

  All eight guys are stationary, pinned down, taking fire from every direction.

  “We’re five minutes out,” Pegram announces. “Go through your checklist. Everybody knows the drill.”

  I check all my gear one last time. My weapon is hot, and my adrenaline pumping. I swallow two big gulps of water because I know in about three minutes and twenty seconds, I’m going to have a serious case of cotton mouth.

  Two minutes later we can see the compound we’re headed toward. It looks just like everything else in this god-forsaken country: a bombed-out ruin of brown mud brick and broken stones.

  “In and out like Flynn,” Pegram reminds us. “We’re not staying for supper.”

  From the helicopter pilots to the radio guys, we train for shit like this every day of the week, so it becomes like muscle memory, so we can do it in our sleep if need be.

  The Blackhawks don’t land. They drop in, hovering thirty feet above our target, while we rappel out the open door on a rope, hitting the ground hard, running fast, guns slung tight to our chests.

  Before I make it ten paces from my drop, I’m already taking fire. Bullets pop the ground near my booted feet, kicking up little piles of dirt where they strike. Turner is on point, clearing a path for us while Markham and Baxter man the fifty-cals on-board the Blackhawks. He lays down a shroud of suppression fire to cover us while we break into teams to find our guys.

  Donaldson and I go for Ransom, whose GPS beacon is pinging a hundred feet to the northwest, placing him inside a building that looks like some kind of shed or animal shelter. It’s just a wooden structure with a low, lean-to roof.

  Half-way there I see a guy pop up from behind a pillar on the wall above the shed. He’s got an armed RPG launcher on his shoulder and lifts it up to aim toward the helicopters—my ride home.

  I shoot, taking him down before he can settle his aim. He pulls the trigger anyway, sending the RPG flying. It cuts a wide, fiery path between our guys on the ground. The missile explodes with a dusty bang against a mud-brick wall three hundred feet behind us.

  Donaldson swears into his mic; this is his first tour. He’s fresh out of BUD/S and still green, very jumpy. A couple of the guys laugh at him.

  “It’s okay Donaldson,” Turner says over our coms, his voice soothing. “If you shit yourself, the Navy picks up your laundry tab. Nobody’ll even have to know if you don’t tell.”

  “Asshole,” Donaldson spits back.

  More guys laugh.

  It’s all fun and games until another RPG goes off, headed toward the choppers. The pilots both pull up hard at the same time, then one comes on coms saying, “We’re pulling up to six hundred meters. Try to take out the guys with missiles, would you? It’s a fresh paint job on the bird and I’d like to keep it shiny for a few more days.”

  Donaldson and I make it to the shed. He goes in first, while I cover. The place is dark. It’s a stable, lined with closed stalls; a warren of rooms and halls where bad guys could be lurking. Ransom’s beacon places him twenty feet straight ahead, just behind a closed door at the end of the hallway.

  We take it methodically, alternating and clearing each animal stall as we make our way down the center aisle toward the door. A couple of the teams have already located their guys and are extracting back to the pick-up. Lt. Pegram comes on coms, telling us all to hurry up.

  “Three minutes SEALs,” he barks. “Three minutes ‘til the Army gets here and blows this place to kingdom come. Haul your asses.”

  Donaldson is in the door first, with me on his heels.

  What I see in front of me takes my breath away.

  Drew Ransom is on the floor, face down in a pool of blood. There are five other bodies on the ground around him, all of them cut to pieces by close-range gunfire. There’s a child, maybe ten-years-old, dressed in a white gown that’s spattered with blood and gore. He’s standing by a table piled with tools, wires, and stacks of C4 explosive.
The boy has something in his hand.

  His frightened eyes lock on mine. He’s trembling.

  The thing in his hand is a plunger-type detonator wired to what looks like a bomb, sitting on the table. This whole room is filled with bomb-making equipment and explosives. There’s a rack in the corner hung with ready-made suicide vests, pre-loaded with C4 and shrapnel.

  We’re standing in a bomb factory, with a terrified kid holding the detonator.