Beyond His Control

by Stephanie Tyler

  One hand was on the soap dish to steady herself, the other on Justin’s head to keep him where he was until blasts of pleasure tightened her belly and made her cries echo in the small bathroom.

  THEY MADE IT to the bed after the water ran cool. Still wrapped in towels, she lay on top of the quilt next to Justin, feeling satiated. Her fingers traced the ridge of his bicep and for a few minutes more she was determined to pretend that everything was normal.

  “You all right?” he asked. He’d been playing with her hair, running his fingers through the strands as it dried.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you get that out of your system?” he asked.

  “It was definitely more fun being with you in the shower than just watching,” she said.

  “More fun for me, too.”

  “Did you ever spy on me?”

  “Never in the shower. You always locked the door. But one thing does stick out…you in the backyard in that rainbow-striped bikini during your senior year. Right before you stole my bike. Again.”

  She smiled at the memory. “You had the police pick me up.”

  “Well, yeah. It was the only way to teach you a lesson.”

  “Do you still have that bike?”

  “Yes. Do you still have that bikini?”

  “No.”

  “I guess naked will have to do.”

  “That’s good, because we’re running out of clothes,” she murmured against the damp hair of his neck.

  “We don’t usually come up here to do laundry.”

  “I expect not. I’ll wash them out.”

  “You don’t have to take care of me like that.”

  “Maybe I want to. Maybe I like the idea of taking care of you for once.”

  “You used to take care of me all the time.”

  She lifted her head and brushed her hair out of his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  “When I used to sneak through your window.”

  “I thought that was because you told your parents you were staying with my brother.”

  “I didn’t want to go home,” he said. “Did you ever wonder why I’d stay on your floor instead of your brother’s? Or the couch?”

  Time after time, Justin would come in through her window. Sometimes it was early evening, sometimes well after midnight. Sometimes they talked until morning and sometimes they didn’t talk at all.

  “No. I guess I just liked having you close too much to question it.” Her voice went soft with the memory of it. “In the morning, the pillow would smell like you.”

  She’d said that last part without thinking, but Justin didn’t seem to mind. If anything, he tightened his grip around her a bit.

  She hadn’t really thought, after all this time, that they’d still have much in common. That they’d still be the same people they once were, that time, new jobs and life’s hardships would have made them unrecognizable to one another.

  She’d never expected that same, instant connection. That same longing.

  He was different, but his core hadn’t changed. He was still loyal, honest, a good man.

  And yet she hadn’t told him everything. “Where do we go from here, Justin?” she whispered. She’d thought he’d drifted off to sleep, hadn’t expected his low, rough drawl.

  “We go forward, Ava.”

  As if it was that simple. We go forward…

  When she knew she couldn’t stop herself from looking back.

  12

  A SHORT WHILE LATER, Justin woke up with a start and cursed himself for sleeping so soundly. He’d alarmed the place to within an inch of his life but still, this wasn’t the time for snoozing. It probably wasn’t the time to be making love to Ava either, but he was done with regrets in that area of his life.He had a feeling, however, that Ava wasn’t. Mainly because she’d managed to sneak away from under his arm and leave the bedroom. He threw on clothes as he walked through the cabin, found her in the kitchen soaking the burnt soup pan and searching the cabinets, looking as if she’d just woken up as well.

  She pulled out more soup and some bread and busied herself while he sat at the table and watched her. Only asking if he was as hungry as she was and yeah, she wasn’t ready to talk about what happened now that the first blush had worn off.

  That was all right. It’s not as if this was a relaxing situation. This entire situation was fraught with stress.

  Sex was so much easier than talking. He debated the merits of seducing her again, right on the kitchen table, making everything right for a few more minutes…

  “You’re muttering to yourself,” Ava told him as she put the plates down and sat across from him at the small table.

  “Sorry. Nothing important.” He was starving. And for a few minutes they bonded in the silence as they filled their stomachs.

  “Leo told me that you made lieutenant,” she said after she pushed her plate away. Her hands played along the soda can as she curled her legs underneath her and leaned back in her chair.

  “Lieutenant Junior Grade.”

  “That means you finished college, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “That must’ve been hard. All that school in between all those missions,” she said.

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  Her father’s stories about his time in Baby-D, or Delta Force, were cool, definitely stirred Justin more toward the military than anything else. But Justin had grown up by the water, loved swimming, so the navy seemed like a much more natural choice.

  He and Cash, his best friend on the team, had come up the ranks together. Cash had always been much more focused on school than Justin was as his mentor was an admiral, probably slated to be head of JAG one day. And Cash had insisted Justin keep pace with him on the classes.

  Cash was a lieutenant who’d just made XO as Justin reached Lieutenant Junior Grade. In about two months’ time, he’d earn his lieutenant stripes.

  Turk kept telling him that he needed to come on over and work for the DEA—better perks, his friend would say. And Justin could just imagine what some of those perks were. But right now, Justin was pretty content in all aspects of his job.

  Personal life—not nearly as content.

  “You’ve got a lot of people worried about you, I’m sure. A lot of friends,” she said, her voice wistful.

  “So do you.”

  She shook her head. “No, not really. Besides Callie, what I’ve got for the most part are colleagues. Acquaintances.”

  “Your fiancé?”

  “Oh. Forgot about him. I guess that break’s pretty permanent now.” She gave a soft laugh but he didn’t join in.

  “I know you were always more of a loner, more independent, but why did you shut yourself off?” he asked.

  “It was easier that way. Helped with my focus. I knew what I wanted and I went after it. Not getting close with many people kept my path clear.”

  Coming from anyone else, that might’ve sounded ruthless. Coming from Ava, it was the opposite—her single-mindedness had always been her strongest trait, and it looked as if it was also potentially her biggest downfall.

  She’d inherited that from her father.

  “Tell me about your friends,” she urged. “All SEALs?”

  “A lot of them are. You spend so much time with your team, you tend to get pretty close.”

  “Leo’s mentioned a few of them he’s met. Hunt, I think—and Etienne…”

  “Yeah, Hunt’s great. He got married late last year—the wedding was on the beach—really cool. And Etienne’s nicknamed Rev. Leo probably told you about the time we rode down to Daytona for Bike Week last year.” Rev didn’t have any interest in learning to ride a motorcycle, and Cash only wanted to go if he could surf. He and Rev rode down together in Rev’s old pickup truck. Which, of course, broke down somewhere in Georgia.

  “And Cash—he’s your best friend next to Leo.”

  “He is. Manages to get into all sorts of trouble. Less now that he’s practically engaged.” He lean
ed back in his chair. “They’re my family now. Sometimes I’ll go to Rev’s family’s house in Louisiana for the holidays. Carly—Hunt’s wife—had Thanksgiving this year. That was nice. Hunt’s brother was really sick for a while, but it looks like he’s going to be all right. That made it even more special, you know?”

  “You really haven’t spoken to your family at all?”

  He’d been born and raised in Virginia—his family was from old money on both sides, powerfully connected in both business and social circles.

  From the start, he hadn’t been interested in his family’s breeding and selling race and show horses. Their operation was set in the Shenandoah Valley and had been for several generations. His mother preferred to stay in the bigger cities where she’d been brought up and his father traveled back and forth. Meanwhile, Justin had concentrated on raising hell any way he could.

  “There’s nothing left to say to them.” He shook his head as if that would clear out the strangely distant memories. It was as though someone else had lived his life for eighteen years, and he’d picked up at nineteen, after the year in limbo with Gina.

  “Maybe they’ve changed.”

  He frowned. “They haven’t. And that’s all right. It’s not about me.”

  “Suppose they’ve tried getting in touch with you? Leo told me that you’re sort of not listed anymore. Anywhere, really, because of what you do,” she persisted. “Maybe they’d be proud of you.”

  “I’m proud of me. That’s all that counts.”

  “Were things that bad at home?” she asked.

  He sighed. “Things were just…different at my house. Sterile. Cold. My brother and I never got along. We disagreed on everything from politics to his treatment of women. He took after my father in that way.”

  “In what way?”

  “He slept with as many of them as he could. Lied to them to get them into bed and threw them away as soon as he was done.” He paused, then released a long breath. “I tried to warn them, some of them, but they didn’t want to listen. James felt as entitled as my father did.”

  “Your father had affairs?”

  “Lots of them.” Justin had been ten the first time he’d caught his father with one of the maids. At that point, he’d known his family wasn’t perfect, but he’d been away at school for most of his young life and kept the vision of a good strong family to get him past the loneliness.

  He’d been home over Christmas break and came back to the house earlier than expected from the park around the corner. He hadn’t felt well, had gone looking for his mother or father and heard the noises coming from the master bedroom.

  He knew more about sex at that point than he should’ve, knew exactly what was going on in that room. He’d stood outside the door for a minute, recognizing the voices before going to his room, shutting the door and forcing himself to fall asleep.

  God, he wanted to put it all to rest. Immediately, and forever. But the present had him more confused than ever.

  He’d grown up with very few models of a good marriage. His old commander, Mac, and his wife were one. So were Rev’s parents. They’d never officially married but they’d been together for almost twenty-eight years. Justin thought about the way they’d danced around the crowded kitchen, right in the middle of cooking dinner.

  A totally different experience from the impersonal environment he’d grown up in, where the kitchen was off limits and his parents only showed affection in public, and even then, minimally so.

  He wanted what Rev’s parents had—his whole team did, on some level, but the secrecy and dangerousness of their jobs precluded some of that.

  Some, not all. Hunt had found happiness, so had Cash. It just took the right woman. And he still didn’t have a gauge if Ava would nix the rest.

  “You really love what you do,” she said.

  “Yes.” He had to make that clear—crystal. It wasn’t something he was ready to give up yet. Maybe never. But Ava would never ask him to choose. He knew she’d just make her own choice, and he didn’t want to think about what that would be. “You can understand that, can’t you?”

  “All too well.”

  IT WAS THE CONVERSATION Ava had been hoping to avoid. Justin seemed to realize that, veered off it quickly, as if he, too didn’t want to deal with the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the middle of the room.

  “From what your brother’s told me, work’s going well for you,” he said instead.

  “You mean, except for the fact that people are trying to kill me?”

  He shrugged. “Someone’s always trying to kill me when I’m at work, but that doesn’t mean things aren’t going well.”

  He was completely serious. So serious that she nearly spit her soda out at him. Instead, she choked it down and looked up to find him staring at her.

  “What? You’ve never heard the expression ‘If you’re not pissing someone off, you’re not doing something right’?”

  “Then I guess I’m definitely doing something right.”

  “You are. I can’t tell you how many times Leo won’t stop bragging about you.” He paused. “What do you think about more—the losses or the wins?”

  “The losses, of course. Doesn’t everybody?” she asked. The losses were what kept her up nights, pacing around, eating ice cream right out of the carton.

  “No.”

  “Don’t be a jerk.”

  “I’m telling the truth. I thought that’s what you wanted,” he said, throwing his hands up in the air. “If you don’t stop worrying about what you didn’t accomplish, you’ll never get anything done.”

  “Oh good, boot-camp euphemisms.”

  “I can’t do this every time we try to have a conversation,” he said quietly. “I know you’re still pissed at me for deserting you. You’re pissed at your dad for dying, and probably the most pissed at Leo.”

  She hated it when he was right. She was more than upset about Justin’s entry into the military, and when Leo had announced his intention to try for the DEA, it was one of the worst betrayals, next to Justin’s.

  “I thought you’d reconsider. You and Leo both. Instead, it’s like you two are headed off on some mission to save the world.”

  “Not the entire world. Just a small section of it,” he tried to joke, but her eyes blurred with tears and her throat tightened and she was suddenly so angry, more than she’d been when her mother left, more than when she’d gotten that phone call about her father.

  They’d all left her. That’s what people you loved did—they left for higher ground. So she ran out on them first.

  She was still running. And helping other women to run, too. Except they were running to something, to safety. She was running with no end in sight.

  “I know I don’t have the kind of life you want, Ava. You’ve always said that you didn’t want to be a military wife, didn’t want what your mom had. If we’d gotten together, then you might not have done everything you’ve done and want to do.”

  “And I might have. I should’ve been allowed to make that decision. But that’s all a moot point, right?”

  Still, when she’d been in his arms, none of the stuff they butted heads about—not his job or hers—mattered.

  He wasn’t saying anything, only sat calmly in his chair. Waiting.

  “I’ve always depended on myself,” she said finally. “I could turn to my dad and Leo when they were around. But it was easier—safer—to just depend on me. Especially after…”

  “After I left,” he finished. “You could always depend on me when I was there. But you kept testing and testing…” He paused, as if the lightbulb finally went on. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you? You were just hoping I’d fail so you could prove yourself right.”

  “You left, Justin. You laid this bombshell on me, and then you left.”

  “What I did had nothing to do with you.”

  “It had everything to do with me.”

  “I was trying to do the right thing. To save my future. A frien
d would’ve understood.”

  She wanted to shake him, to tell him that she was so much more than a friend, but realized for the first time that Justin was fragile inside. That thought made her want to walk over and hug him, protect him from the world.

  “I wished your dad was around during that time,” he said. “He would’ve known what to do.”

  “My dad?”

  “Your dad was awesome.”

  “When he was there,” she said. She’d been so lonely, had grown up so lonely that she hadn’t recognized the aching feeling in her gut as unusual. In her family being alone and self-sufficient was considered normal. She’d carried that with her into adulthood.

  “He loved you a lot. You knew that, right?”

  “I knew that. I just wish he’d been happier.”

  “He’d have been really proud of you now. He always was. I mean, you knew what you wanted to do and you went out and did it.”

  “I guess so,” she said. “I guess we’re both a lot like him.”

  “Maybe we’re not meant to do anything beyond work and a little play,” he admitted.

  She didn’t disagree, but she didn’t agree either. Instead, she changed the topic.

  “So how do you turn the bad stuff off? Stay positive?” She balanced her chin in her hand, her elbow on the table.

  “Sometimes I try not to think about it at all,” he explained. “Other times, I think about something special, something really important to me. Something I’d hate to lose.”

  “And that’s what gets you through?”

  “That’s what gets me through.”

  “What’s the worst mission you’ve ever been on?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” he said. “Some are more successful than others, but every time I step off the helo on my own steam means it was a success.”

  She nodded. Earlier, she’d taken the time to trace her finger over a few circular scars that ran along his back in an almost up-and-down pattern. Four of them. Flesh wounds, he’d joked, but his dark eyes had gotten darker and he’d pulled her in for another kiss so she wouldn’t ask any more questions.