Unraveled(75)

“Don’t challenge me, baby, or you’ll be too sore to walk for a week.”

“Can’t wait,” she whispered and then bit my ear.



LATER I GOT A TEXT TO go over to Bo’s place.

“You want to go?”

“No, I’m too tired.” She moved her legs experimentally and then groaned. “And sore.”

I tried not to look too pleased about that. We’d used all three condoms and then I wished we had another one but since we didn’t, we pleasured each other orally. Best sixty-nine ever. I took a lot of mental pictures of her ass in my face as I ate her out and fingered her to a couple of orgasms. I’d be pulling those out regular when I was away from her. I wondered what I’d be able to convince her to show me on Skype. God, the dirty stuff we could do was getting me worked up again.

“No, no, no.” She held off a warding hand as I found myself leaning down toward her. “I’m done in for at least another twelve hours. Let my girl parts revive.”

“All right,” I said reluctantly. “I haven’t seen the boys in a couple of days so I’ll go have some beers while you recover.”

“Fine.”

I tucked her under the covers and gave her a deep kiss before heading off to The Woodlands.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN





THE FARTHER AWAY FROM SAM I got, the easier it was for second thoughts to creep in. Years of having sex with women I didn't care about had left me unprepared for the emotional wave of fulfillment, the complete sense of belonging. The rightness of it all. Oh and the motherfucking fear of loss. This time my heart was pounding, not out of excitement, but of fucking fear. Just what had I agreed to back there in Sam’s condo?

I was totally not in the mood to see one Ethan Drake at Bo’s place.

“What the hell is Drake doing here?” I muttered to Bo as I stomped in the house.

He rolled his eyes. “Chasing down Noah, I guess.”

Ethan Drake barely made it through boot and got kicked out in his third year, dishonorably discharged because he was snorting his measly enlisted paycheck up his nose.

Worse, Drake was a dog. He fucked anything in his path and didn’t hesitate to offer a shoulder to a deployed Marine’s girlfriend. But women seemed to be blind to his smarmy ways. I’d once seen him come out of a bar’s bathroom with a girl he’d obviously just screwed. She actually fucking giggled when he said he was just doing his patriotic duty by seeing to her needs. I almost tossed my cookies right there, and the fact that she didn’t made me wonder about whether she’d been snorting coke along with him.

But as Noah, Bo, and I stood with our arms crossed, glaring at his head, the girls nearly fought each other about who was going to bring his next beer.

“All the way from California, you drove?” Grace asked in wonder.

“Yes, ma’am. Couldn’t wait to see Jackson again.”

“That’s so sweet, isn’t it, honey?” She glanced toward Noah but didn’t really see him because if she had, she would have seen her man looking like he was going to either barf or hit Drake, possibly both.

“I can’t watch this shit,” I muttered to Bo. Grabbing a few beers from the refrigerator, I headed to the patio. About ten minutes later, Bo came out with a bottle of whisky and two glasses.

"Why're you drinking alone in the dark?" he asked. I contemplated the bottom of my nearly empty bottle, debating whether I should say anything. What the hell, though, if you couldn't talk to your brothers, who could you talk to?

"Sam almost died today?"

"Out of fear from her first jump?" He cackled.

"I wish. Her chute wouldn't open."

"What the fuck? Over at SkyHopper?" Bo sobered up quick and looked properly outraged.

I nodded and took one of the glasses. “Fill her up." Bo poured me three fingers. "Don't be stingy."

He filled me up.

"I've jumped there before. What happened?"

"Faulty equipment. I pulled the chute cord when we landed and it didn't open. Pulled the emergency cord, and it came off in my hand." I clenched my hand again, wishing I'd decked the SkyHopper guy.

"Mother fucker," Bo cursed.

"That's putting it mildly."

"You fix that?"

"One of the other folks there was a state trooper. He filed a complaint and said it’d be shut down within the hour."

"So that why you're drinking in the dark by your lonesome?"

I wish. "I was terrified today. Actually terrified. Like if I was the type to shit in my pants, I would've been soiled by the time I hit the ground." I leaned my elbows on my knees and stared out at the dark water of the pool, now almost black without the underground lights turned on. I was afraid to close my eyes because I feared I'd see Sam sprawled on the ground with her head split open like a melon. "I don't think I've come so close to touching mortality. Even over in the desert, I figured we could all take care of ourselves. But this time..." I trailed off. I remembered that first night I saw Sam and how my heart had stopped beating for a moment. This time my heart had stopped for enough counts for me to be pronounced dead.