Her Loving Hero

by Caitlyn O'Leary

  “Ouch.”

  “I want my other kisses,” she panted.

  Her flushed face only showed dazed passion, curiosity that mirrored a little bit of his frustration.

  “Emily-” he started.

  “Action. I need touches and kisses on my breasts. Less talk.”

  At last.

  He cupped one tender breast in his hand and she shuddered. But he was watching her and saw nothing but pleasure, nothing but satisfaction. Wyatt, traced the pale pink bud with his thumb and watched it pebble to a dusky rose color. Her delicate hand clapped over his.

  “Em?”

  “Harder?” Then her breath stuttered out. “Was that okay to ask?”

  “However you feel. Whatever you want, is perfect.” He molded her taut flesh more boldly and was rewarded with Emily’s moan of pleasure.

  “I like that.”

  He smiled, his teeth gritted. “Then you’re going to love this.”

  He plumped her breast even more and bent to brush the satin tip with his tongue.

  “Wyatt,” she screeched and tried to snatch him bald. He held her in place and continued to torture her. He loved the sound of his name called over and over as she undulated on the couch and he found out just what a passionate woman she was. He moved to her other breast and gave it the same sort of attention.

  Wyatt saw her sawing her legs open and closed. She was so close. He moved one hand down and caressed the top of her thigh. She mewled, she was clenching her thighs together, Wyatt tried to bring his hand closer to the apex of her thighs. At the same time, Wyatt gloried in the feel of her silky flesh against his tongue, and the sounds of his name being chanted in his ear.

  She moved her head and cried out. “More.”

  He carefully cupped her through her jeans, and Emily clamped her thighs around his hands. He moved his thumb against the seam. Pressed. Circled.

  Emily shouted out his name as Wyatt watched her eyes alight with ecstasy.

  14

  They were on stand-by orders. Wyatt knew he was due to go wheels up within the next seventy-two hours, if not sooner, and he needed to get Ben situated in his townhome, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to have Emily leave.

  “This is stupid. Why are you dismantling the Batcave? Give Ben the guest room I’m sleeping in. The apartment complex I’m in is pretty sure that there will soon be a furnished unit available that will be big enough for the three of us, this weekend. If not, we’ll go to a hotel.” Emily watched him detach the third flat screen from the wall. Of course being the anal son-of-a-bitch that he was, he still had all the packing boxes that these came from in the storage unit that was connected with the townhome, so he was putting them back into the box so he could put them into storage.

  “You girls are staying here. I’m going to be gone soon, so this place will be big enough for the four of you.”

  “Hand me that screwdriver, will you?” Wyatt pointed to the Hex screwdriver that he didn’t need. Anything to stop this argument that they’ve been having for the last twenty minutes.

  “Are you going to Oman?” Emily asked as she handed him the screwdriver.

  He didn’t answer. He just pressed it against the already loosened screw and handed it back to her.

  “Darn it, I’m sorry, I’m not supposed to ask, am I?” She was flustered and contrite.

  “You never have in the past, and the only reason you did this time, is because of what happened with Carly and her friends. It’s to be expected. But in answer to your question, I can’t tell you anything.”

  “I knew that,” she said with a frown. “Please know I wasn’t trying to pry.”

  Wyatt pulled the screen off the wall and carefully set it on the floor, then he took her face in his palms. “Shit Emily, you don’t have to worry if you ask something, that’s not a problem. Now if you pester me about stuff, then yeah that’s an issue. But asking innocent questions, that’s never a problem.”

  She gave him a relieved smile.

  “So, it’s decided then. You’ll stop with the dismantling and let the girls and I get a hotel until we move into one of those apartments.”

  He bent and gave her a lingering kiss. “Yeah, okay. Can you help me with something else then? I’m going to need to get someone to come in and provide some occasional in-home care to Ben while I’m gone.”

  Emily gave him a long look. “Sure Wyatt. I should be able to do that. I think I’ll talk to Kenna, she should have some ideas.”

  Wyatt looked at her in shock.

  She cocked her head. “You should close your mouth, otherwise you might catch flies.”

  He snapped his mouth shut and bent down to open up the box to put the screen in it.

  “It’s too bad you and your sisters couldn’t stay here,” he let his voice drift off.

  Emily helped him close up the box, then they stood staring at one another.

  “Have I ever told you how impressed I am with you interacting with the teens at the youth center?”

  “Yeah,” Wyatt said slowly. He picked up the tape gun. He didn’t know where this was going, but he knew he was about to get his ass handed to him.

  “Well, one of the things that I was most impressed with is how you were able to coax them into doing things for their own good, often times without them even realizing you had a hand in it.”

  Shit.

  “You needed a house sitter like Kristi needs to dye her hair black. Tell me, while you were telling me that I was going to keep an eye out for Ben, were you telling Ben that he was going to watch out for me and my sisters?”

  “You went over to Kenna’s house and hung out with Aurora and Riya too, didn’t you?”

  Emily thrust her hands on her hips, her blue eyes shot sparks at him. “Are you insinuating that I don’t have the brainpower to figure out your manipulative tricks all on my own.”

  Double shit.

  Lust hit him like a freight train. “Emily, I think you’re smart as hell. The only, and I say only reason, I might have thought that Kenna might have pointed out I was playing you was that she has an eighteen-year-old son and is married to Dex. She’s kind of got a PhD in this.”

  “I might like my kissing lessons, but last I checked you were getting something out of it too, Buster. So, don’t think you have me so hormoned up I can’t see when I’m being played.”

  Wyatt set down the tape gun on the desk and sat down in his office chair. “How hormoned up do you have to be, before I can have you?” His voice didn’t even sound like his own.

  “Wyatt don’t try your sexy, schmexy Jedi mind tricks on me. We’re talking about the fact that you’re trying to get me and my sisters to stay at your place while you’re gone because you’re a control freak.”

  He noticed that she allowed him to pull her forward and sat down on his lap. He loved the fact that she could snuggle up to him now and feel safe. Sometimes too safe. His Emily was getting more and more curious, and he was having a tough damn time adhering to the rules he’d set forth.

  “One kiss, and I’ll admit to whatever you want,” he promised.

  “Nope, no kisses. Instead you’re going to come clean like a good boy. Did you have to tell Ben that he would be watching out for us before he agreed to stay here?”

  “No. He was up for staying here. But knowing he could help out was definitely an incentive,” Wyatt admitted.

  “Is this going to be a problem for going into his Navy Training in Point Loma?”

  “Yeah, he was going for GCCS.” At her confused look he clarified. “Global Command and Control Systems. They’ve been informed, but I have a friend over in that Anti-Submarine Warfare Training Center, and I let her know that Ben was my brother and he would be staying with me until he could report for duty. Right now, the hospital wants to ensure he doesn’t have any seizures for the next month. After that, they feel more comfortable releasing him into the wild.”

  “How likely are seizures?”

  Now that was the sixty-four-million-d
ollar question. “They say his prognosis is good, but that it’s really a crap-shoot. But he has good genes. Look how well I pulled through after the gunshot wound that shattered my femur. I’m beating the old men’s’ asses on the obstacle course.”

  Emily tried to hop off his lap.

  “Wyatt let me off. I shouldn’t be sitting on your leg. It must hurt?”

  He burst out laughing. “You’re kidding, right? Do you know what I do for training? What I do for a living? Seriously, if you are sitting on my lap was in any way of a problem, I’d have to hang up my boots.”

  He tugged until she was settled back down across his knees. “Weren’t we going to explore your hormones?” he asked.

  She sucked in a deep breath, and he thought he had her. “Seriously, to have five of us in this townhome is nuts.”

  He stroked a hand down her back and looked at her seriously. “Am I worried about the three of you Hoag girls? Kind of. But, Em, I know you, you’ll keep things tight. But it will screw up your job with the book shop, won’t it?”

  She nodded.

  “Thought so,” he said. “But the truth is, traumatic brain injuries are tricky. If you don’t stay here, I’m going to have to come up with some way to convince Ben to stay at one of my team member’s houses so that their wives can look after him.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Yep.” He nuzzled the side of her jaw, gratified with how easily she slipped her arm around his neck. “The worst thing is that Kenna is the logical choice, and she just had Cora.”

  “You can’t do that,” she protested.

  Wyatt knew that by the way she was responding to his kisses, she was referring to Ben’s placement with the Evan’s family, and not his touches.

  “So, cards on the table. Yes, I apologize for trying to coax, cajole, manipulate-”

  “Manipulate would be the correct term.” Her words came out a husky sigh and she was now licking the shell of his ear.

  “Fine, call me a manipulator. But I really do want Ben to have people around him while he’s recovering. And, call me a chauvinistic asshole if you want, but I would really like to know that Ben is around and you’re in a better neighborhood. In my book this is a win, win, win.”

  “If I let you win on this, what do I win?” Emily’s breath was hot in his ear.

  “You get dinner out, that’s what you win.”

  She pushed back from him and pouted. “That’s not what I was talking about, and you know it.”

  Wyatt’s hand cupped one side of her head. He kissed her temple. “We have all the time in the world, Miss Hoag.”

  “I’m sick of waiting.”

  That may be true, but she still gave away some key hesitations, but they were making progress. She now flowed into his embraces like honey and would sometimes pull his head down and demand to be kissed. But anytime she felt the slightest bit hemmed in, she jolted, and he saw that infinitesimal flinch the two times he had told her she was perfect. She was perfect, but she still didn’t believe it.

  “Are you really, Em?”

  Her eyes flicked sideways, then she faced him head on. “Yes, I’m sick of waiting. I want to be normal. I’m sick of being scared, and I want to get it over with. Once we do it, things can move forward as a real couple.”

  “Emily Lynn, as stimulating as it sounds to ‘get it over with you’, I had something a tiny little bit more romantic in mind.”

  “But then I’ll screw it up,” she wailed.

  “You can’t fail at this, that’s the whole point. This is about love, about expressing our love for one another. You love me, don’t you Emily?”

  Her eyes welled up with tears. “I love you so much more than I ever thought was going to be possible. I didn’t even want to like you when I first met you, because you were a Navy SEAL. But you’re like the shore, and I’m the sea. I find myself coming back to you time after time.”

  He took her hand and kissed her palm before placing it on his chest. “I love you too. I know deep in my heart we were meant for one another, and when we finally make love, it will be beautiful.”

  Her smile dazzled. “You’re right. You’ve got this,” she said.

  “No, Honey. We’ve got this.”

  She should have insisted on sex.

  Sex now.

  Immediately.

  Urgently.

  But no, she’d practically fallen into a puddle of love goo in Wyatt’s lap thinking about candlelight and rose petals, and they’d been running fast and furious ever since. The phone had rung, and typical Family Hoag style, she finds out her sisters are already on their way to Los Angeles, and Wyatt was called to the base for an emergency meeting.

  The fun didn’t stop coming, because when Ben can’t get ahold of Wyatt, he calls her to say that his dad had called him in the hospital. The man had been drunk and unintelligible, and now Ben couldn’t get ahold of either of his younger brothers.

  She’d been due to visit Ben anyway to go over tomorrow’s discharge, so she hot footed it to the Loma Linda Hospital and found a young man who was clearly agitated.

  “Can you get Wyatt on the phone?” were the first words out of Ben’s mouth.

  “He’s in a briefing, so all phones are off. As soon as he gets out, he’ll call either you or me,” she assured him. “In the meantime, let’s get you checked out.”

  Ben nodded, then winced. “I think I should stop with the nodding and shaking of the head. Is that in the booklet they gave you?” he asked Emily.

  “Uh, no, it wasn’t. If they thought they needed to tell you that, they probably wouldn’t have let you leave,” she grinned at him. Boy, he looked so much better than he had when she’d first seen him in the hospital bed.

  “I can see why Wyatt likes you, wise-ass flavored women are hot.”

  “Quit flirting and sit your butt down in the wheelchair.” When he opened his mouth to protest, she held up her hand. “They’re not going to let you walk out of here on your own steam, so suck it up.”

  Ben moved from the bedside where he began to sit into the wheelchair. He was a little shaky. Emily needed to get him home and to bed as quickly as possible.

  He pointed to his phone on the nightstand. “Can you hand me that?”

  She handed it over and he checked it. “Still nothing from either Luke or Kyle.”

  “How often have you been talking to them since you got here?”

  “Every other day. Luke and Kyle are both done with school for the day and neither of them picked up when I called after Dad called me. Luke normally works at the auto supply store on Tuesdays. I called over there, they said he hadn’t shown up. There’s no answer at the landline.”

  “If you call the police isn’t there something they can do?” Emily asked.

  “Yeah, in most cases they can do welfare checks, but they won’t because it’s Leonard Mazur’s residence. They won’t want to cause problems for a former corrections officer.”

  “Even if a child’s welfare is at stake?” Emily bent down and adjusted the foot rests on the wheelchair for Ben.

  “They’ve ignored it in the past,” Ben said bitterly.

  She was about to ask more when the nurse walked in with some paperwork.

  You could have heard a pin drop after Captain Hale got done speaking. Lieutenant Commander Liam McAllister stood a step to the right and behind the Captain and he was watching all of the Black Dawn and Midnight Delta SEAL team members for their reactions.

  “Any questions?” Hale asked.

  Not even the smart-ass Drake Avery was willing to say something to lighten the mood. The Captain nodded. “I’ll leave you to it then.” He slapped shut his binder and handed it to Liam as he left the room.

  “Now do you have any questions?” Liam asked.

  Drake raised his hand. Liam ignored him. “I meant serious questions.”

  “The Captain laid out the proof that those two al-Qaeda bastards are planning on making Oman look like they are taking sides agai
nst the other Arab countries. But how soon before they will have the targets narrowed down from seven?” Gray asked.

  “Hopefully they’ll have it cut down to two or three by the time we land,” Liam answered. “Dex and Clint, you’re going to be coordinating with Kane on this all the way over to Muscat.”

  “Wyatt, you were just over there,” Mason turned to him. “Which country do you think these guys want to target? Saudi? UAE? Iraq?”

  “It wouldn’t matter,” Wyatt answered the Lieutenant of the Midnight Delta SEAL team. “Anything that got everybody thinking that Oman was in bed with Yemen would destroy the balance of power over there.”

  “And if the incident is bad enough, the U.N. and the U.S. will be brought in, and it will be Iraq all over again.”

  “So, when do we go wheels up?” Aiden asked.

  “You’ve got five hours.”

  Dex and Gray cornered Wyatt in the parking lot. “Ben’s coming home today, right?” Gray asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Is everything settled here? Will your head be in the game?” Gray asked seriously. “Because with your brother being here, it’s a game changer. You can take some leave and sit this one out.”

  “I’m good.” He appreciated the man asking. “Kenna’s going to be providing some telephone hand-holding for Emily in case she has any concerns.”

  They were all standing around Wyatt’s truck when Dex asked him how Emily was going to handle everything with her volunteering, her sisters coming to town and Ben.

  “She told me that the YMCA had always kind of been filling a little of the void she been having since leaving her sisters behind. What she’s worried about, is keeping up with her job at the bookstore.”

  Dex’s phone rang. “It’s Kenna, gotta take it.”

  He answered his phone, he smothered it in his chest. “Make sure Emily knows that she can reach out to Kenna for anything.”

  Wyatt nodded as he watched Dex hustle across the parking lot.

  “And, since, Emily will not want to be interrupting the new mother, here’s all of Riya’s contacts. Make sure she feels comfortable calling her.” Gray handed him the card he’d been scribbling on.