Taken by Two(20)

The tough man inside fought the mist of tears that threatened to break his cold exterior. I pulled him closer to me, my arms clawing at him until he pulled us both into his bed. I couldn’t get close enough to him. I looked around his room—I’d never been in there before, we all usually slept in Nate’s room. The décor was almost identical to his office—deep brown leathers, dark mahogany woods, and survival equipment lining the walls. His bed was simple—comfortable linens in ivory and chocolate colors.

“The thought of losing you wrecks me, baby.” His lips found mine, the kiss so soft, so loving, it barely seemed the Rex I’d come to know. Gentle touches pulled down the silk straps of the silky gown, his warm lips delicately toying with a breast before moving down. For the first time, he made love to me—his eyes on mine, his caresses gentle, and his thrusts slow and lingering. We were together like that for hours—the cervix-bruising man who left my lips swollen, my nipples throbbing, and my pussy aching was temporarily replaced by the Rex who wanted to show me how much he cared for me, despite not being able to say the words.

Still inside of me, his heavy body on top of mine as I dozed off to an exhausted sleep, he said the words I didn’t expect to ever hear from him: I love you.

I woke up sometime later, his naked body lifting mine in his powerful arms. “What’s wrong?” I yawned. “Nothing, Princess, everything is right.” He carried me half-asleep across the house to Nate’s room, pushing the door open with his foot. Nate was awake—sitting in a chair with his head in his hands. When he saw us, the veil of confusion clouded his sad expression. “Something was missing,” Rex said to him, laying me down gently in the middle of Nate’s sprawling bed. “Someone was missing, come to bed,” Rex said, reaching a hand out to Nate.

The terror of what could have been faded that night as we embraced what was—the breathtaking splendor of three people finding each other in the blackness of the universe. I faded to sleep nestled between the two men who meant the world to me—the two men I loved more than anything.

The next morning, we were a tangle of limbs who’d spent the night fighting for Nate’s covers. Rex and Nate were fast asleep, but I had to pee. Rex’s heavy leg, one of the few places on his body that wasn’t tattooed, rested across mine. The sleeping Nate’s leg was across me from the other side, butted up against Rex’s in peaceful cohabitation. If I had a camera, I would have taken a picture of the three of us intertwined physically and emotionally—it was a beautiful thing.





Chapter Seven





“Well, Princess, how do you feel about sucking chest wounds?” Rex asked over breakfast, his eyes never leaving his morning paper.

“Um, excuse me?” I blurted out, the mouthful of eggs I was chewing suddenly not so appealing.

“Oh,” he glanced up, reaching for his mug of strong, black coffee. “I meant some medical training—simple stuff, first aid type of thing. Out here, you’re often not close to a good doctor. It’s part of teaching you to thrive here with us.”

“Personally, I try to stay very close to a good doctor…” Nate piped in from his perch on the leather stool next to me, his lopsided grin fading as Rex glared at him.

“Good? I’m fucking great. But seriously, Penny, we need to give you the tools to really take care of yourself. No more floating through life on auto-pilot.”

“Got it, but can we talk about sucking wounds after breakfast?”

Nate’s grin returned, as he quipped, “I wouldn’t mind some sucking after breakfast.” Maria shot him a sharp glare and cleared her throat. “Sorry,” Nate apologized. “You Catholics are so uptight…”

“I’m not Catholic,” I answered.

“King Rex is.”

I thought back to his tattoos—the Virgin Mary, the cross at the very center of his chest, over his heart… “Can we give this topic a rest?” Rex’s deep voice scolded from behind his newspaper.



Before I’d even had time to digest my eggs, my diligent men had me outside the compound, near where we usually did target practice. “Why out here?” I whined, “It’s so sticky and hot—I can learn first aid in the air conditioning!”

Rex sighed as Nate rolled his eyes at me. I was prone to complaining, but after I got a whine or two out of my system, I did usually focus on the lesson they were trying to teach me. “Outside is most likely where you’ll find yourself, or someone else, injured with no access to medical care. Now, I don’t have dummies or anything to practice on, so I brought out this dummy.” Laughing at his own joke, he pointed to Nate. Rex rarely tried to be funny, but occasionally when he did he found himself far more humorous than anyone else.

“Okay,” he continued, irritated that no one laughed at his dummy joke but him, “with a bullet wound, you want to do three things quickly—stop the bleeding, treat any symptoms of shock, and keep the patient breathing.”

He pointed to the ground, indicating where he wanted Nate to pretend to be shot.

“Always, always, have your first aid kit with you. Never leave this compound without the backpack we put together the other day.”

“Yes, sir,” I agreed.

“So, the first order of business is stopping the bleeding as quickly as possible. Most gunshot victims die from bleeding out. The best way is with pressure and a clotting agent. In your bag, you have both Celox and a Quick Clot pack. For a big wound,” he knelt down next to Nate, who was playing dead, and reached to unbutton his shirt. Nate, always a clown, emitted a long, erotic moan. Rex ignored him, and pulled open his shirt, marking a large circle on Nate’s perfectly toned chest with a Sharpie. “What the fuck Chuck!” Nate sat up, looking down at his chest. “That’s the bullet wound, unless you’d rather I give you a real one for her to learn on?”

“You couldn’t use something washable? I work hard on these washboard abs!” Nate was rubbing at the impervious marker imprint.

“You could use some ink on that virgin, pasty chest. Washboard abs?” Rex lifted his black t-shirt and pointed at his own ripped torso. “These are fucking washboard abs and, at my age, I have to work twice as hard to get them!”

“Can we finish this please? I’m sweating.” I’d had enough of the male pissing contests that always seemed to erupt.

Nate flopped back into the thick grass in a pout as Rex continued drawing the imaginary bullet wound on his skin.

“First thing, stuff that bleeding mother fucker with the clotting pad, then do antibiotic gel where you can, like this,” he demonstrated on the imaginary wound, “followed by pressure. I mean hard pressure.”

I knelt on the spongy grass next to Rex, making mental note of the order of steps.

“After the blood is stopped, you apply the pressure bandage. You don’t want to just bandage up a gushing wound—the patient can bleed out and you won’t notice because of the bandage. And don’t go fishing around for the bullet like in the movies—stop the blood, get it sanitary, and wrap that sucker up.”

I nodded. With Nate playing dead on the ground, the lesson seemed too real—my joking turned to serious attentiveness.

“Pressure bandage,” he pulled one out of my backpack, “will aid in stopping the bleeding only if it’s applied tight enough. It’s key that the pressure be strong enough to fully stop the bleeding while the clot pack does its job. Make sense?”

I nodded, unwrapping the bandage.

“While getting the bandage on, you’ll need to apply strong pressure with your hands and maybe tape if you have it. It’s important, Penny—no time to be delicate, which is why we aren’t going to practice the pressure on Nate—too easy to break a rib. But, when it’s the real thing, give that fucking wound everything you’ve got. Apply as much pressure as it takes to stop the bleeding.”

“There’s tape in my emergency kit,” I confirmed, riffling through it.

“Always, duct tape is useful everywhere. You also have Super Glue for smaller cuts.”

“What if the wound is too big for the Quick Clot pad? Like in Tarantino movies where they get blown away with a shotgun and the wound is spewing?”

“Ah,” Rex nodded, delighted that I’d been paying enough attention to ask a relevant question. “In that case, you’d try a tourniquet—we’ll cover that tomorrow. I think that’s enough for today. I need to hit the Crossfit hard this afternoon—got to work on my washboard abs.” He reached down and pinched at Nate’s tummy, causing Nate to writhe in ticklish laughter.

“I think the patient will live,” he teased, continuing to tickle Nate.



After dinner that evening, we had drinks on the large balcony attached to my room. Nate and I shared a bottle of wine, while Rex sipped his standard tumbler of bourbon. “This room…it’s the same as when…” I took another gulp of wine for courage. “It’s the same as when she…”

“She left, Penny, you can say it. And, you can say her name. I’m good with it, honestly. The past is fading into the past. That Evelyn, the one I knew, is long since dead. Her grief and addiction has taken her over—she’s someone else now.”