My heart fucking breaks. I want to tell her. I want to tell her everything. Always have, always will. But more than that, I want to protect her. To keep her safe from the world. My world, if necessary.
My nights are spent in visions of the waking nightmare that has been my life. Sleep comes in minutes, not hours, and only helps to make the flashbacks more vivid. The smell of singed flesh stronger, the cries of the guys in my group louder. Last breaths. Tears in the fucking dirt and sand.
Tell my mother…
Tell my wife…
Nothing trains you for that shit. It’s only your own will that powers you through the sight of your own bullet blast through the skull of your first kill. Sitting on top of a building for hours, waiting, your only companion steel and iron, pressed against your eye, waiting for your target to come between the cross hairs.
Then time stops. Life stops. The world stops. The laser locks on and your index finger squeezes.Boom.
That shit fucked meup.I’m not the only one—so few guys come out the other side, so few guys are capable of rebuilding something, anything, that resembles a life.
I knew when I boarded that cargo plane that Kat was my next target. She had been in my cross hairs for way too many fucking years. The forbidden fruit that haunted my dreams. That filled my fantasies. I decided on that flight home, watching the gauze bandages fill with blood, that somehow, someway, I was going to fucking have her.
Sister, step-sister, whatever, there was nobody else for me but her. Time is not promised, another heavy, brutal lesson burned into me while I was away.
Now, here she is, her hands bandaging my physical wounds, but healing me in so many other ways.
Her body brushes against mine. And each time it does, I feel some broken shards inside me come back together again.
But if only she knew that every fucking time I glance at her, every time she smiles, every time I see her dimple, my cock jerks in my pants.
Every second now, my mind is flooded with the memory of her on my tongue. The sweet, silky softness of her folds. The peak of her hard clit under my tongue.
Dreams are made of her.
Her breath, her movement, her scent. Her warmth. And last night, for the first time in as long as I can remember, everything was okay.Iwas okay. And if she stays with me, which she fucking will, I’ll always be okay.
But I’m not handing her this fucking baggage. Never.
“Kitty Kat. I can’t.” I keep my voice low and commanding so she knows I’m not fucking around.
“Okay,” she says. “Okay.”
The quiver in her voice, it reminds me so much of how she sounded in bed last night. I’m barely able to think, being so close to her now. I glance at her ass in the mirror and suppress a groan. The softness of her skin, the roundness of her ass, the way it rippled when I spanked it.
Jesus. My dick is pulsing already, just thinking about fucking her again.
And if she knew that, she’d fucking run. Because I might just fuck her to death if she isn’t careful.
Time for a subject change; much more of this and I’ll be fucking her against the bathroom sink until she cries. “Movers are coming soon to unpack your stuff. Just tell them where you want it. I’ll be back after I meet with the estate attorney.”
Her expression hardens, petulant like she was when she was a kid. “So wait. You just assume I’m moving in here?” She rips a piece of tape off the roll angrily.
Nothing pisses her off like someone making decisions for her. I know that. But fuck it. That’s just the way it’s going to be. “You want to fight me on this? You won’t win.”
Her hands move deliberately, placing the new white gauze over the evidence of my life for the last two years. Her fingers shake a little, and I can tell she’s wound up tight. All full of questions and worry. “Is this even… is this even a good idea? You and me? Here?”
“Like I give a fuck aboutgood ideaswhen it comes to you.”
Her eyes flash, and I see a little smile. But only for a millisecond. “Trent. I’m serious.”
“And you think I’m not? We’ve lived together since we were kids. And we’re going to keep living together.Especiallyafter last night. You hear me?”
She hears me, but that doesn’t mean she likes it. “I don’t need you to take care of me, okay? Maybe I don’t want to live here. Ever think of that?”
You little stubborn brat.I spin around to face her, leaving her hands spread in the air with medical tape dangling from her fingers.