Chapter 1

Pacey

 

 

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered, wishing that I could throw myself into the sparkling blue swimming pool tempting me from my right. I couldn’t, of course. People tended to prefer their landscapers remain clothed and out of their pools.

Oh, how times have changed. I should’ve been on a mission on the other side of the planet right now, or discussing strategy with my C.O. Hell, maybe I would’ve even been the C.O. if I’d stayed. Who the fuck knows? Who knew anything anymore?

I sure as hell didn’t.

The sun was beating down on my back from the cloudless blue sky, seeming hell-bent on roasting me alive. Sweat was pooling at my nape, collecting underneath the baseball cap I wore backwards trying to avoid serious burns on my neck.

It was a scorcher of a day. They all were. A different kind of scorcher than what we used to have when we were downrange with bullets whizzing past our heads, the smell of war heavy in the air. But a scorcher all the same.

The smell of freshly cut grass was what permeated the early afternoon air, the lawnmower I was pushing kicking up small mounds behind me. Another day, another job.

Never did I think that my job would bore me; it used to be all action and pumping blood. But that life wasn’t for me anymore.

Being a Navy SEAL meant everything to me back then. ‘Sea, Air, and Land’—that was where we operated, hence the name. The thrill of the chase, living for the moment when I hurled myself out of a plane or up the bow of a ship in the early morning hours. 

No two days on the job were ever the same, even before my BUD/S work began—Basic Underwater Demolition. The physical training was a bitch, and the exam preparation was worse. Once I got into the BUD/S, the only thing that was exactly the same every day was the rigid routine and the fact that every second was spent training to become the best fucking SEAL that I could be.

And honestly, after my first deployment, it felt like my life had really started. I finally had family, a place where I belonged and a sense of purpose. Nowadays, however, the days seemed to run together in an endless stream of green lawns and meaningless fucks.

Bag ‘em and tag ‘em. That was the motto I lived by now. I used to hate the kind of man who did that; sex used to mean at least a little something to me. Not much, but at least it made me feel something, anyway. 

The only thing that really made my blood pump faster was the thought of being a SEAL. There was a huge spike of adrenaline associated with that kind of risk, with that kind of sense of duty and honor.

That spike of adrenaline was what I used to thrive on, it let me know that I was alive as surely as if someone injected a vial of pure fucking sunshine right into my heart, yeah. But now, I couldn’t even remember the last time I felt that way.

Couldn’t remember the last time I actually, really felt alive. It probably hadn’t been since—

No. Not fucking going there. Not right now. I spent enough time obsessing over it when I was alone, which was why I tried my best to avoid it—being alone, that is.

For a night, anyway. Feeling a tight pussy clenching at my cock, one that didn’t and couldn’t ever belong to me: that was the only thing that got my engine going even a little now.

Reaching to lift my cap and wipe my sweaty brow, I caught a glimpse of my pretty client: a married woman who was giving me a look from inside her kitchen window. I knew that look. It was a look that screamed come inside and fuck me.

I loved that look, especially when it was on the face of a taken woman. It meant that she was ready to ‘hit it and quit it’ as much as I was. Perfect.

As a general rule, my skin felt like it was on too tight these days. My heart had become a dead, cold lump and I always felt like there was a vise grip around my lungs, squeezing the air that I desperately tried to breathe right back out of them.

It seemed like the only body part that still worked right was my dick. And thank fuck for that. For just a few hours while I was bagging some easy lay, I could breathe—if only because I fucking had to.

A dry rag came flying at me, and my right hand went up to catch it automatically. “What was that for?”

Thomas Johnson, a.k.a Tugger, my best friend, business partner, and brother-in-arms, glanced towards the kitchen window, his dark eyes resigned. “We’re almost done here. What’re your plans for tonight?”

I shrugged. “Same shit, different day. Probably.”

Tugger pinched the bridge of his nose, the hedge clippers he was carrying dangling from one hand. He dragged a hand through his black hair and fixed me with a frustrated gaze. “You mean heading to the sports bar and hitting up any warm body you can find to stick your cock in for a couple of hours to avoid that big, empty bed of yours?”

Fucker knew me too well. Guess that was bound to happen after you survived indoc, hell week, and two other two phases of BUD/S together, then barreled into seven deployments together without ever looking back.

We each used to consider ‘professional badass’ to be our identity. When we got home, we started running a landscaping business. We did pretty damn well, but the gaping hole in my soul wasn’t plugged by cash or blue skies, or having green grass beneath my feet instead of the dust and sand of the hellhole we’d called our second home for too damned many years.

In dust we trust, after all.

“Probably. It is a pretty empty fucking bed,” I told him. And it had been for five long years, since the last time May had left it. 

May Engles was a firecracker of a girl. My girl, and perfect for me in every way. She was small and compact, yet packed a bigger punch than most of the guys in our unit.

One of the precious few women who made it into the SEALS, she was something else. She outgunned, outsmarted and outwitted the best of them. When she drank or smoked or trained, she kept up with the guys.

Until she didn’t. Until one misstep—because she’d been laughing at an inside joke I shouldn’t have made—let a bad guy with an AK mow her down and snuff out her light like it had never fucking existed in the first place.

The thing was that the shot that flew through her brain and ripped the best girl I’d ever known away from me had flown through my soul at the same time, fragmenting it so badly that even my dream job didn’t feel right anymore.

I had lived to be a SEAL before May died, with never a thought about quitting. Then my skin started tightening, and I started losing focus, and I realized I was doing nothing but putting people who had become family to me in harm’s way. So I packed it up, came home, started my business and tried to put it all behind me.

Move on, people said. It’ll get easier, they promised. It didn’t. Not even a little bit. If anything, being home drove me out of my damn mind those first few months. It was like people had forgotten we were fighting a war. Like my brothers and the woman I loved had died for nothing and others were still out there at risk, and nobody even seemed to be aware.

It didn’t really matter whether people cared; we had all enlisted for different reasons. But it goddamned mattered that no one truly cared whether we lived or died anymore. May’s death barely made for a short, tiny obituary in her local paper.

The kind of woman that she was? The fights that she’d waged and survived? She was a bona fide hero and deserved an annual parade and a day named after her.

Tugger did one more tour after I was done, then came to join me in the business after that. He’d always planned on going back to civilian life, while me, I’d figured on being a lifer. I wanted to be.

But life was what happened while I was making other plans. So there I was, back stateside—if not back home—having placed a folded flag into the bereaved hands of my girlfriend’s mother, and then I went to work trying to forget the life that we had wanted to spend together.

Tugger might not have agreed with the choices I made, coping with losing May, but he was my brother from another mother. Our bond had been forged in the fires of hell, or, more realistically, in the dustbowl that was Iraq, and over the months of training that led up to it.

In our line of work, the only easy day was yesterday—as the saying went. Tugger was convinced and determined that one day, my yesterday would come. He’d stick his dick into an open flame before admitting it, but he really wanted me to be okay. For the day to come when I would actually fit into my own damn skin again.

He fixed me with serious eyes, staring at me earnestly while his shoulders dropped. “How about we shake it up tonight? A regular boys’ night. I’m pretty sure I could pull a poker game together. Pizza, beer, and catch up with the guys over cards. What do you say?”

I would’ve said that I’d tried it already, and that boys’ nights did fuck all to numb the pain, but I didn’t have to. Tug already knew, but he kept trying anyway. He probably would until his dying day. He’d met and married the love of his life before he enlisted, and was one of the few of us who managed to be committed to only one pussy for the rest of his life.

Most of the guys ribbed him for it, but I understood, though. Kinda, anyway. What May and I had wasn’t at all what he had with his wife, Jessie. But I thought it might have come pretty damn close.

When I turned to measure up how close we really were to being done, I saw that our client, Mrs. Brooks, had moved to the screen door, still shooting me that come-hither look I’d been catching in my peripheral vision all day.

Promises, promises. I turned to Tugger, “Maybe next time.”

Tugger sighed as he followed my gaze and replied dryly, “Yeah, I’m sure.”

I fished the keys to the company’s cherry red truck from my pocket. “You are right though; we’re done. Let’s start loading her up.”

Tugger and I were so in sync when it came to working together that we had the truck loaded in no more than a few minutes. My skin prickled with awareness of the hot gaze Mrs. Brooks had on me the whole damn time.

She was a hot young thing, with jet black hair and wide blue eyes. Her husband was at least 20 years her senior, but that was her problem. He kept her in her white, sprawling manor house with its expansive yard and sparkling pool.

She kept shooting me those damned heated looks, and even though I knew I was going to hate myself for it later, I was seriously considering taking her up on her unspoken offer. 

Fuck that, I decided. I deserved a little fun. I fisted my shirt at the neck and pulled it off nice and slow, putting on a show that I knew from experience would get me the invite inside.

It was a cocky and arrogant way of thinking, and I knew it, but that didn’t make it any less true. I kept Mrs. Brooks in the corner of my eye and noticed that she licked her lips as soon as the shirt was off. I smiled.

Tugger leaned over with his elbows on the bed of the truck, disapproval clear as a bell in his dark eyes. “Suit yourself.”

I grinned at him, shrugging like I didn’t have a care in the damn world and tossing him the keys to the truck. “Keep her safe. I’ll pick it up later.”

He shook his head at me but caught the keys in one hand anyway. He knew better than to try and stop me. Besides, I was already halfway to the door and the married woman behind it.