Chapter 8

Be patriotic. Show your boobies to a veteran.

-T-shirt

Ruthie

I walked out on my front porch the next morning, hoping beyond hope that my newspaper was there, and was startled to see a man on my porch reading it.

“Thanks for getting it,” I said, yanking the offending paper out of his hand and going back inside.

My paper was stolen from my front lawn four out of seven days a week, and I was just happy that it was there.

What I wasn’t happy with was Sterling being on my front porch.

I’d had time to reconnect with my anger after I’d called him three times this morning.

I would’ve slammed the door, but Sterling’s body was just suddenly there.

“Get out,” I said as I continued walking, smoothing the paper back in its original folded position before laying it on the kitchen table next to my coffee.

I sat down and arranged myself, picking up my Pop-Tart and taking a bite as I started to scan the first page.

I loved reading the paper.

It was so nice to know what was going on around me.

Something I’d become used to in the months since I’d been released from prison.

“I forgot my phone at home, and you weren’t answering your door. Where were you?” He asked me.

I looked up from my paper with half my Pop-Tart remaining.

“I was out in the backyard tending my garden,” I informed him.

He nodded. “I’ve been sitting on the porch for two hours now. Wish I would’ve known you were out back the whole time.”

I sighed.

“I was trying to be mad at you,” I told him.

His brows rose.

“Why?” He asked, genuinely confused.

“Because of that girl, Audie, hanging over you all night last night,” I said.

His head tilted sideways.

“I don’t remember anybody named Audie,” he finally answered.

I raised a brow. “Yeah, that makes sense. You were drunk off your ass, though.”

He shrugged.

“You’re not even going to tell me what had you so upset last night?” I continued.

He tilted his head, first one way and then the other, cracking it loudly before starting on his fingers.

The movement made the muscles in his forearm jump and release, drawing my attention to the way his shirt fit him.

There was no gap whatsoever in the entire t-shirt.

His jeans fit him well, too.

Too well.

Because then I started thinking about the things I wanted to do to him instead of the things he’d done yesterday to upset me.

He began, going straight to the problem at hand.

“A couple of years ago, when I first got into The Dixie Wardens,” Sterling said, sucking back half a glass of water before he turned to me, pinning me to the spot. “I asked Silas to look for someone.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I got from what I overheard.”

He didn’t look surprised that I knew something about what he was trying to tell me, only resigned.

“I stopped looking for her when I realized that she was under someone’s protection, and that someone’s protection was good. Good enough that I couldn’t crack it without being put on radar, and having her put on radar as well,” he informed me. “Silas was the one doing the looking, and he’d told me what he’d found out within a week of me asking it of him. But not wanting to disturb it any more than I’d already done, I told him to back off. Except he’s been keeping tabs on my mom all these years.”

“Okay,” I said. “So what did Silas have to say that upset you so much?”

“Told me that she got here in Louisiana a little over a day ago, and that her new husband was with her,” he rumbled, staring down at his toes.

Or his cock.

I really couldn’t tell which.

They were both in the same direction he was looking.

“So what’s the big deal with that?” I asked.

He sighed.

“Not a ‘big deal’ per se, but more of an inconvenience,” he admitted, pulling his hands up until they rested on top of his head, fingers interlaced on top.

“I’m not seeing the problem,” I finally said.

He sighed.

And I was really confused.

What was the big deal with his mom being here? Hell, I could see why it’d be a big deal why my mom was here, but hadn’t he grown up with his?

“My mom gave me up when I was a kid,” he said finally.

My mouth about hit the floor.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” I said.

He shook his head. “No.”

“You’re telling me that we have foster care in common and you never said a word?” I practically yelled.

He shrugged, and suddenly I was extremely pissed off.

I’d told him multiple times about how I’d been given up when I was a young girl. How hard it’d been, and how I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone. Knowing that you once belonged to someone, then having them decide that they no longer wanted you, was a killer on a person’s heart.

I always felt so alienated about it.

Yet, low and behold, the same fucking thing had happened to him!

Wouldn’t that be something you’d share?

I mean, where was the fucking camaraderie?

Weren’t fucked up kids supposed to commiserate with other fucked up kids just like them?

And didn’t the same go for adults?

Apparently, it didn’t work like that for Sterling.

And I found myself mostly disappointed.

I always felt so alone.

It was a terrible thing to have your mother tell you when you were ten years old that ‘you’re not worth the trouble.’

I never knew my dad well.

And from what I’d been able to gather when I was younger, my father never even knew I was his kid.

My mom had hid it from him.

Why, I couldn’t tell you.

My dad had been rather wealthy from what I understood, and my mom hadn’t been.

Personally, I would’ve put my own happiness aside and made sure that my child had a chance to know his or her father.

Hell, I did do that very thing.

“I don’t like talking about it,” he finally said, jarring me out of my own personal hell.

That road never led to the correct path.

It always led to despair and sorrow.

And I was tired of being on that road.

“You’re either going to have to stop acting like it’s a big deal, or talk to me. Because all you’re doing right now with the bad attitude is pissing me off and making me even more curious,” I told him.

I could hear his teeth grind, then he growled in frustration.

“I’m still pissed off about it, alright? It pisses me off that she’s fucking happy, while I’ve spent nearly my entire life fucked over. Shouldn’t she be fucking miserable because I had to be?” He all but yelled.

I blinked.

“No. She is your mother. Everyone deserves to be happy. Does that make our anger rational, though? Hell no. It doesn’t. That’s what a human being does. Our emotions control us. Which was why I killed my husband for killing my daughter, then had to spend nearly nine years in prison,” I told him.

He didn’t laugh like I’d intended.

“You’re husband deserved to die,” he informed me. “I still can’t believe you had to serve any time at all.”

I shrugged. “It was worth it.”

Did that make me a bad person, wanting my husband dead for what he did to me? To our unborn baby?

Because if it did, I didn’t really care.

I could still feel a hole in my heart.

Still feel how much it hurt to see other people having babies left and right.

“I’ve been looking for my father for a long time myself, but I don’t have resources like you do,” I told him.

He blinked. “Why are you looking for your father?”

I fiddled with the crust of my Pop-Tart, breaking it off as I said, “I don’t think my father knew who I was. He was always so nice to me when he saw my mom, but he never knew who I was to him. I don’t know if he’d even care to know me now…after what I did. Which is why I haven’t gone further than just doing my own searches on the internet.”

“I don’t know why you think you did something wrong. Do you know how many times I thought about killing the people who beat on my mom? Or even my foster parents? It was the worst existence anybody could think of for a kid. I daydreamed about ways to kill them and make it look like an accident,” he told me, crossing his arms over his chest.

“You were a kid,” I told him.

He shrugged. “So fucking what? I was eighteen when I left that place, and I still wished they’d be hit by a car and killed on their way home to drop me off at the airport.”

I smothered a laugh.

“One day you’ll have to give me more information on what they did to you. But right now we need to discuss what the big deal about your mom being in the same city as you,” I told him. “What’s it matter if she does know? Don’t you think she’ll want to see you?”

He said something so softly, that I had to move closer and ask him to repeat himself.

“I said I don’t want her to be disappointed in me. How I’ve lived my life,” he answered roughly.

I glanced at the ceiling to make sure the roof wasn’t caving in. Had I hear him right?

“Sterling…” I started. “You’re in the Navy. You’re a freakin’ SEAL. You’re a mother lovin’ hero. Why wouldn’t she be proud of you?”

He shrugged, and I finally saw the vulnerability in his actions.

His words.

“Honey, she’ll love you,” I told him.

And if she didn’t, I’d kill her.

What was another ten years?

Okay, maybe it wouldn’t be just ten years this time. Second offenses usually weren’t looked upon too openly.

Maybe I’d just beat her up.

Kick her ass some, and let her know what she’d lost by acting like an ass and not loving her son like he deserved.

Then again, I kind of felt that way about her already.

I would’ve gone through hell to keep my child.

Which, in essence, might have been what she’d done to keep him safe.

Shit, now I couldn’t be mad at her.

“What’s that look on your face for?” Sterling asked suspiciously.

I shrugged, moving from my seat and walking to him.

He opened his arms, and I face planted into his muscular chest, rubbing my face between his pectorals.

“That’s kind of like motorboating…” he observed.

I laughed and lifted my hands to place both of my hands on his pecs.

They were so well defined that I could practically bounce a quarter off them.

And don’t even get me started on his freakin’ abs.

Those were just ungodly perfect.

“What are you thinking about?” Sterling asked, his hand moving up until it wrapped around my throat.

His fingers came to a stop at the frantic pounding of my pulse at the base of my jaw, and I closed my eyes as Sterling realized what he was doing to me.

“You have a way that really calls to every primal level of me,” he said, backing me up until my ass met the kitchen table.

I could do nothing but lay back on it as he continued to push me forward until my back bowed over the table.

His hand was still at my neck, and my eyes fluttered closed as I felt the raw power of everything that was Sterling.

His hand tightened slightly as his fingers started to trail along the hem of my tiny shorts that I’d thrown on this morning.

His fingers dipped underneath them, and he realized rather quickly that I wasn’t wearing anything underneath since he met skin and slickness.

I shaved everything that I could from my shoulders down.

It sucked major ass not to shave whenever I wanted to, and the moment I was able to, I shaved absolutely everything, and kept it cleaned so I didn’t have a single prickly spot on my body.

It’s pure torture to be dictated on what you can and can’t do grooming wise.

But what was more torturous was the way Sterling’s tongue licked along the seam of my lips, making them part to his tongue like the wanton slut I was.

Our hands became tangled as we started to remove the other’s clothes.

He started with my shirt, pleasantly surprised to see my breasts exposed the moment my shirt was free of my shoulders.

The next thing to go was Sterling’s belt.

His gun that was at the small of his back was placed on the table, caught before it could tumble to the floor in my exuberance.

The next thing to go was his skintight black t-shirt, followed shortly by my shorts.

I hissed when my overheated pussy met the cool laminate of my breakfast table, and I made a mental note to get some bleach spray and wipe it down later.

But that thought got lost in the bombard of pure perfection when Sterling leaned forward and pulled my nipple into his hungry mouth.

He sucked hard, pulling so ravenously at my nipple that I cried out in a little bit of pain and a lot of excitement.

Pleasure started to rocket through my system as I shook with each hard pull of his mouth.

My hands found his hair as I fell backwards, and he came with me, staying connected with me all the way down.

Once my back hit the cool table, he let go of my nipple with a pop, and placed small, wet kisses all the way down to my eager pussy.

Once he reached the top of my slit, he turned his eyes up to me, placed both hands firmly on my hips, and slowly started to lap at my clit.

My eyes rolled back in my head as his talented tongue showed me everything he could do.

My knees came up on their own volition, coming to a rest on the very edge of the table as my hands went back down to his hair, holding on for dear life.

Each lash of his tongue had my hips jolting upwards, but Sterling’s strong grip on my hips had me holding steady even when I didn’t want to.

“Fuck,” I said, somewhat breathily.

Okay, a whole lot breathily.

I sounded like a fucking freight train billowing steam as my orgasm started to rush at me like a freakin’ wrecking ball bursting through a flimsy falling down building.

And the moment he thrust two strong, thick fingers into my wet heat, I detonated, exploding into a million tiny pieces and screaming his name at the top of my lungs.

“Sterling!” I shrieked.

He chuckled darkly against the lips of my sex, and before I could even blink, he was there.

Pulling his pants down in jerky yanks, shoving his underwear down far enough that his cock and balls fell free, and lined himself up with my entrance.

I pulled my knees back, giving him an unhindered view of what he was about to have, and he growled. An evil smirk tilted up the corner of his mouth just before he slammed inside of me.

My eyes fell shut and I lost the grip on my thighs as my hands came down to the lip of the table while I held on for dear life.

I’d realized in the time that Sterling had spent with me in this capacity that he was not a ‘gentle’ kind of man.

He was a fuck hard kind of man.

And I liked it.

I liked how he held nothing back and gave me everything he had.

It was freeing to know he trusted me that much to give me his all.

And give me all he did, and then some.

“I like how your breasts jump each time I shove my cock into you,” he groaned, eyes dancing from my breasts to where we were connected.

The roughness of his thrusts had my kitchen table moving, and before long we’d moved it from where it’d been, in the middle of the floor, until it was butted up against the counter.

I would’ve laughed had I not been too busy trying to catch my breath.

But then he suddenly just stopped, pulling out and smacking the outside of my thigh.

“Turn over, feet on the floor and hips against the edge of the table,” he ordered roughly.

I did as he asked, prying my fingers loose from the table edge and rolling, knocking off my nearly empty glass of milk in the process.

I barely even noticed the spill, seeing as Sterling wasted no time filling me back up.

I groaned and pressed my forehead against the table, hands going up to press against the sides of the counter trying to counteract his hard thrusts.

My hips felt slightly uncomfortable, but the pleasure starting to bloom deep in my belly counteracted any and all pain until everything I felt was nothing but ecstasy.

Stroke after stroke of his cock plowing into me, the smack-smack of his hips hitting my ass, as well as the wet sound of our joining as his cock slid in and out of my needy hole had my orgasm all of a sudden there.

Not to mention his balls kept swinging to hit my clit just perfectly.

“Oh, fuck,” I breathed into the tabletop.

His dark, amused chuckle had me seeing stars when he changed the angle of his strokes, making my previously amazing orgasm vault out of orbit into the extremes that I’d never felt before.

The breath left my lungs in a choked gasp, and his hand came up to hold onto the top of my shoulder, squeezing tightly, as his orgasm overtook him.

I could feel the hot pulses of his come pouring into me, splashing against the back of my womb, and I screamed.

It was muffled by the tabletop, but I couldn’t find it in myself to care whether I disturbed the neighbors or not.

I couldn’t even remember my own name by that point.

“Goddamn,” Sterling said as he collapsed against my back.

What little breath I’d been able to catch left my lungs in a whoosh when his body met mine, and he laughed at the small squeak that came out of me in the process.

“Sorry,” he said, lifting until his elbows held him up.

I grunted in answer, turning my head to the side and allowing my body to catch the breath it needed after that spectacular show.

“Your cock is welcome in me anytime,” I told him jokingly.

The cock in question jerked at my announcement, and he pressed his bushy beard against my neck as he ran his lips along my shoulder blades.

“Good to know,” he said, reaching forward and grabbing something off the counter in front of me.

My eyes followed the movement as he unceremoniously shoved the towel underneath my pubic bone where it rested on the table.

Then he pulled out, and a rush of his release started to instantly flow out.

“Convenient that you fucked me over here,” I said, placing the dishtowel to my opening and catching what I could before it ended up all over the floor and my thighs.

“I’m a multitasker,” he said, a grin playing along his lips. “What are you doing today?”

I tried not to be embarrassed by the fact that I was completely naked on my kitchen table and he was acting like I wasn’t.

“I have to go to lunch with Sawyer today,” I answered. “And tonight I have to start getting ready…”

My next comment was interrupted by a no-nonsense knock at the door, and I knew exactly who was out there.

I’d been getting visits from the police nearly every three days since Sterling had left.

And that sounded like Officer Ryan’s knock.

He wasn’t the nicest cop, but he also wasn’t harsh like some of them could be.

He was honest, which sadly equaled into me getting a ticket if I’d done something he deemed as wrong.

“Shit,” I said, hopping down and waddling to the door. “Can you get that? Might want to do your pants up first, though. Tell him I’ll be out in a minute.”

His eyes narrowed, but he pulled up his jeans, fixed his belt and holster, and walked to the front door shirtless just as I closed the door behind me.