***
“I heard something disturbing today while Silas and Sawyer were talking. And I wanted to make sure that I spoke with you about it to make sure I wasn’t going to flip any triggers for you. Although I’d intended to talk to you about it before I…you know…you,” Sterling said later that night.
My head was pillowed on his chest, and his fingers were sifting through my hair.
“How long have you been home?” I asked softly.
He answered instantly.
“Last night around eleven P.M.,” he answered. “But nobody’s seen me yet. I only went to Silas’ place to grab my spare key. Mine was…lost. Which was where I heard them talking about the things that happened to you while you were in prison.”
He twirled my hair around his finger, playing with it and making me nearly purr.
I loved having my hair played with.
We’d just finished round three of the best sex I’d ever had in my life, and I was fairly positive that my legs wouldn’t be holding me up any time soon.
“I was never raped, even though Sawyer thinks otherwise,” I told him on a sigh. “Although they thought I had some questionable diseases. I was taken away and made to look like I was raped to scare the other women. I never told anybody any differently. Maybe I should have…but it kept me safe. Kept Sawyer safe.”
I could hear his mind racing, wondering if I actually had any ‘questionable diseases’ or not.
“I don’t have any,” I said instantly. “They checked that almost monthly, and I had my own tests the moment I escaped that place. And I haven’t had sex with anyone in well over ten years.”
“That’s good to know, honey. Although it wasn’t the question on my mind,” he rumbled.
His chest rattled with each word he spoke, and my free hand that wasn’t supporting my head started to run through the hair on his chest, teasing its way down to tangle in the hair surrounding his groin.
“Then what was?” I asked softly.
His penis started to stir when my hands played with the hair, but he didn’t act on it, leaving me to play with him as he spoke.
“The question on my mind was whether they’d even tried. And how many times they tried before you had to make up a god awful lie like that to keep from being raped,” he mumbled.
I winced.
My mind had automatically gone to the worst possible scenario he could be thinking. I should’ve known he’d never think badly about me.
“They tried. The men guards think we’ve been put in the cage for their pleasure…at least with some of them. They tried with Sawyer as well, but the two of us stuck together. Found a way to make it work. I can’t say it was a fun eight years in there, but it was definitely bearable,” I told him. “It could’ve been way worse.”
He didn’t say anything to that.
And I imagined he wasn’t very happy with that admission.
“If they weren’t all in jail, I’d kill them,” he said roughly.
I knew he would, too.
Sterling was the ‘protector.’
He wanted to make sure everyone was taken care of before himself.
Something that I’d witnessed quite a few times since I’d been released from prison.
“They’re in jail…and Silas did kill the one that was the ring leader,” I shuddered.
I’d seen pictures, because I’d asked Silas to show them to me.
I wanted to know that he was dead.
I was tired of living my life scared.
My entire existence was spent wondering.
My whole life was based on a question, even before prison.
Would I be able to eat today?
Would I ever find a home to live in?
Would I graduate college?
Would I be alive when I saw twenty-two?
Would Bender hurt our child?
How would I get away from him if he did hurt us?
Then I’d gone to jail, accused of killing my husband; not for my protection, but for vengeance.
And it’d sucked.
And the questions started anew.
Only they kept getting worse and worse.
Then I got out…and I met Silas…and Sterling.
And I realized that maybe, just maybe, life wasn’t so bad.
Then Sterling disappeared, and I was left thinking about a man that I didn’t have any attachment to, other than a few emotional strings.
Strings that held captive as I waited nine weeks for him to get home…to hear word that he was even alive.
And he was finally here.
“What happened over there?” I asked softly.
He shook his head. “I can’t really talk about it.”
“Can you tell me anything?” I asked.
“A little bit,” he answered, sitting up until his back was against my headboard.
My hand that’d been playing with his belly hair fell free from him, and he pulled the sheet up until it was resting lightly over both legs, covering the goods.
His eyes stared blankly forward as he said, “You know I’m an active member of SEAL Team Eleven, right?”
I nodded. “I assumed.”
“Yeah, the whole country will know about the SEAL team now that we’re home. But we were called to perform a mission that wasn’t well thought out in the least, and we nearly died because of it,” he explained.
“Did your whole team survive?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Yeah, not with any help from Uncle Sam, though. We had to do it all on our own, cross into two countries before we were able to get out safely,” he answered.
“Wow,” I whispered. “Did you get hurt?”
I knew he was hurt.
I could tell because he couldn’t quite hide the winces each time I pressed too hard on his right shoulder.
I’d yet to see his back, but I knew he had some type of…something…there.
I felt something on the back of his right shoulder, but the moment I started to turn to look at it, he’d distracted me with round three.
It’d been a rather thorough distraction, too.
Now, though, I wouldn’t be so easily deterred.
“So what now?” I asked softly, sitting up until I was crossed legged in the bed.
He shook his head. “Keep working. One bad mission won’t stop us. The only one that will stop us will be the ones that kill us.”
I tried not to let that sink in too deep.
The thought of him being killed, while on a mission, scared the crap out of me.
Not that I had any right to demand he be careful, it slipped out of my mouth nonetheless.
“You need to be careful, Sterling. You have a lot of people that would miss you if you were gone. Silas didn’t actually express being worried, but he always had the news on every time I saw him,” I whispered, picking at the invisible lint on the sheet.
“What about you?” He asked.
I blinked, looking up at him. “What about me?”
He smiled, his beautiful eyes full of mirth now instead of pain.
“Will you miss me?” He asked.
“Would I miss you? Yes. Will I miss you? No, because you’re not going anywhere,” I answered.
He grinned, and I realized he was happy with that answer.
Really happy.
“So about that date…”
I shook my head. “I need to go to sleep. I have to work in the morning.”
He moved quickly.
One second I was staring at his throat, admiring his jaw and mouth, and the next he was pinning me to the bed, his hard cock pressing into my exposed sex.
Only the sheet was between us, and it wasn’t much of a barrier for the beast he had between his legs.
“Call in sick,” he said, his mouth only a whisper away from my own.
I shook my head. “I can’t. I’m opening tomorrow.”
He looked at the clock at my bedside, and then back to me.
“What time do you have to be there?” He countered.
I looked at the clock myself and winced.
“In about two hours,” I answered.
His brows rose.
“And what exactly do you do when you get there that early?” He asked.
“I open…” I trailed off.
He tickled me and I squealed.
“Stop! Ack!” I screamed and laughed.
“What I meant,” he said, removing his fingers. “Was what do you do once you get there? Are you busy?”
I shook my head. “No. Why?”
“You up for some company?” He wondered.
I nodded. “Yeah, I could do some company.”
He laughed. “You already ‘did’ the company. More than once.”
I reached forward and grasped his nipple between two fingers and twisted slightly.
He shot off me like a rocket, laughing the whole way.
“Let’s go get breakfast. And have that date,” he answered, pulling up his pants that I hadn’t seen him step into.
I blinked.
“Me going to work doesn’t count as a date,” I told him.
He smiled.
“Yeah, but I just gotta make sure you don’t get lost when our date finally does happen. So, I’ll be sticking close,” he informed me, picking up my pants I’d had on outside when he’d texted me.
Which reminded me.
“Why are you programmed as Kraken in my phone?” I asked.
He grinned. “I came in last night for my key and snuck your phone from behind the bar. Reprogrammed myself. That’s my club name.”
I blinked.
“How did you do that with nobody seeing you?” I asked incredulously.
He pointed at himself, declaring, “SEAL baby. It means I can do things most normal people can’t.”
“Full of yourself much?” I asked, dropping the pants in favor of a pair of blue jeans at the foot of my bed.
“The only one who’s ‘full of me’ is going to be you if you don’t get dressed in the next fifteen seconds,” he shot back.
I hastily pulled on my jeans, smiling at him over my shoulder.
“Got it.”