Deploy (8 page)

Her hips bucked up but his grip held her in place as he kissed her, once, twice more. Justice couldn’t describe what her body was going through, all she knew was everything inside felt like it was building toward one point and she didn’t know what it was, all she could do was whisper his name, begging him to stop, and to never stop at the same time.

When his kiss moved to her navel the rush didn’t stop building—if anything the ravenous hunger deep inside her grew. Right as his kiss landed at the base of her ribs, then slid up and all but inhaled her taut nipple, his fingertips slipped between her folds, gliding up and down and provoking any edge of control she could dare to have. Then the rush came, and saying his name was all she could manage to do for a few precious seconds as her body trembled with ecstasy.

All at once she was alight with even more hunger. Her hands rushed over him as she leaned up so she could reach him. Right when she grasped the hard length of him she felt the cold slick plastic of his condom and her heart skipped a beat when she realized how real this was.

“Careful,” he whispered, moving her hand then spreading her knees even further apart.

Justice drew in a deep breath when she felt the crown of him at her entrance. In the next beat she was certain he had sliced her body in half. His thrust was sharp, quick, and
deep
.

Against her neck he let out a growl across a sharp breath. “What the hell, Justice?” he said in a strained breath.

“One second,” she panted as she blocked out the pain and her brain strained to pull her back into reality. He was inside. They were one. He was now
immortalized
in her memory.

It was killing him to stay still, but he lifted his head then his fingertips moved across the side her face. In the darkness his gaze was searching wildly over her, trying to understand how this girl was untouched before this moment. It didn’t calculate, especially with the way she moved under his touch, how vocal she had been—how claiming her touch was.

“Why didn’t you tell me,” he asked, on a breath, having no choice but to move. Under the tips of his fingers he felt her wince, and because she did it was killing him. His mind could not deal with hurting her in any way.

“What?” she panted.

“I’m your first,” he bit out.

“You’re all my firsts,” she said, growing brave and moving her hands down his back as she lifted her hips. Her lips stole a kiss before she spoke more. “You’d be the only one I’d never regret.”

Slowly he rocked into her. Her words made him tremble and he had no idea why. His hand moved down her side, then up again and across her chest. When she started to move against him it was all he could do to stay tender. In an effort to do so, he pulled her against him then rolled to his back, only managing to barely slip out.

His hands gripped her hips and slid her down on him. They both cried out across a panting breath, but in a beat she was moving again with him and the feel of her hips in his hands, the wave of her body was more than enough for him to find his release. He eased upright as he felt it coming and claimed her kiss. Feeling her hunger, tasting her sweetness, moving his lips with hers like they were made only for each other caused his heart to thunder and dizzying sensation that seemed to sweep him into another world with her.

Seconds later, he lifted her from him but he never let her go. He pulled her against him, and skin-to-skin, as the wind whistled through the vents and the thunder roared—and the pressure in the air built—he swayed her, holding her as tightly as if they were in the eye of the storm. For all he knew, they were.

It was the same for him...she’d be he only girl he’d
never
regret holding. The only one who knew this side of him.

T
he power was never coming back on, not that Declan cared one way or the other. He held Justice tighter as it sounding like the earth was crumbling all around them, not because of the storm outside, but the one inside. He didn’t know how to feel, really feel, so when he did he certainly didn’t know how to react to it.

Declan knew what she gave him was precious and could never be undone. The knowledge just made everything else all the heavier. Even if he weren’t leaving, the two of them together would be hard.

He didn’t want her to leave his sight, but she insisted. She took a flashlight and her clothes and vanished up the hall, toward the showers. Declan had dressed, packed the bag up again, thrown away a few towels, and threw the others in the pile to be washed. And now he was pacing in the hall under the red glow of the emergency lights, only halfway listening to the radio, the damage that was being reported, the waning warnings.

He’d propped the double doors to the hall open and watched like a predator in the darkness. He’d heard the water cut off forever ago, but still stayed away. His mind was cruel. Declan imagined her breathlessly crying, regretting every second with him. And then he told himself it that was true—it was best.

Then there she was, her silhouette emerged hauntingly in the threshold. She paused then moved toward him. He wished he could see more of her, more beyond what the dark red glow the hall offered. From what he could see, he knew if she had been crying she’d hidden the evidence.

Rushing to her, pulling her in his arms, kissing her was what he wanted to do. But he didn’t. He stayed leaning in the doorway, his arms crossed, waiting for her to approach. Bravely she did, stopping just before him. But her gaze never met his.

“Is it over?” she asked in a quiet tone.

He didn’t want it to be—the storm or them—but he solemnly nodded once.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said when the silence became uncomfortable, when he felt the distance far sooner than he was ready to.

“It’s all good, Declan. I promise.”

He couldn’t handle it any more. He unfolded his arms and pulled her to his chest. Her arms slid around him and up, hooking around his shoulders as she rose to her tiptoes and nestled her face against his neck, breathing in his scent.

She didn’t regret anything, but that didn’t make this any easier, it didn’t settle the sick, trembling feeling taking over her body. Feeling how his hold on her was tight, yet still avoiding every mark on her, the warmth of his lips against her temple made it all worse. She had no idea how many people had seen this side of him, but she knew they were privileged. Feeling as safe as she did with him was a gift.

Declan was so immersed in the moment with her that he assumed the rustling sound he’d heard was the debris above that had been shuffling around in the wind, it wasn’t until he heard his father’s voice say his name at a distance and a flash of light came over his face that reality hit him.

Both Declan and Justice broke away a bit too quickly to have any hope of maintaining an innocent outlook.

Chasen Rawlings wasn’t alone. Nolan was with him and so was Atticus.

At forty-one, Chasen carried a persona that stated he was in his prime, not that he’d lived a thousand lives already.

You’d never know at a glance, in dim light, that the tall, fit man had given fourteen years to the Corps and had come home to take over his uncle’s bar and raise five boys on his own. Granted his parents were there, always helping him when it all seemed to be too much. Now the hard part was over. His baby was sixteen. He had men now and a business that had managed to meet ends for the last two quarters. In a way, he was ready to take a breath for the first time in a long time.

There was a part of Chasen in every one of his sons. Declan was the all out warrior, hard-core. The one who never really managed to get worked up over anything. So when Chasen saw how flighty his son’s eyes were, how Declan’s jaw clenched and he all but put himself between Justice and them, he knew something had happened. Something had broken his boy.

If this was any other time Chasen might be good with the notion, but not now, not six days before Declan was about to go through the hardest phase of his life. When Chasen had left for boot camp twenty-three years before, he’d been eighteen with a wife who was barely seventeen, carrying his first child. His head was never right when he was there. Not when he heard over and over “Jody’s got your girl,” as a taunt to bring out his aggression—that was one of the reasons anyway.

“Jody” was a term that stood for any and every guy at home, and he was with your girl while you were going through hell.

Tobias had gone into the Corps with only the worry of his baby brothers, and did just fine. Chasen was sure Declan would be even better. He had no reason whatsoever to think of home and he had the gumption to make his mark. To go and do anything he wanted.

Any girl at this point would be an upset. This girl, one Chasen had caught his son gawking at since he was boy, a girl who had enough of her own issues, made it even more so.

Atticus, who looked the most like his father with his striking dark hair and baby blues, along with a stubborn chin and critical eye, stood speechless at his father’s side as the ever-fun one, Nolan, spoke up. “You look whole,” Nolan said as he stepped forward and looked into the massive closet Declan and Justice had hid in. He glanced down to the bag, then to Justice. “Good thing I packed a survival bag, eh?”

Declan’s glare was homicidal, enough so that Chasen stepped up, smiling calmly at Justice as he pulled Nolan back a bit. Chasen could read Declan and knew he was seconds from snapping—on who it didn’t matter. He just needed a place to put his frustration with life as a whole.

Before anyone could say anything else the doors at the other end of the hall opened and through them, with flashlights in hand, came the Sheriff and Murdock.

Justice clenched her fist and did her best to seem calm. She had already assumed at this point, one way or another, her father was going to figure out she had been with Declan, but she thought she still had a hope of playing it down, at least she thought she’d have time to recover a bit from this emotionally strung out night before she had to deal with it.

“What’s going on here?” the Sheriff asked as his flashlight hit everyone’s face at least once. The only one who bothered to flinch was Justice, the others stared him down.

Chasen Rawlings nodded his head toward the Sheriff. “What’s up, Hoss,” he said, calling Monty Souter by the same he had called him since they were boys and Monty struggled to keep up on the ball field.  “We found your girl down here, forget somebody?” he asked as his sharp gaze flipped to Murdock whose entire body was taut as he glared down Declan.

“You found her?” the Sheriff asked in an incredulous tone. “Why are you here?”

“Heard about the damage,” Chasen said, calm as ever, as he held on a little tighter to Nolan. He could feel him tensing, wanting another piece of Murdock just because he could take it.

“You heard an entire wing of the high school was gone, and you decided to come and gawk?”

“No,” Chasen ticked his toward Nolan. “He left his truck here. We came to see if it was here or in a tree somewhere. We needed the keys to his toolbox to get the tools to free the truck bed—they were in his locker down here, which is where we found your girl.”

When the Sheriff glanced to Justice as if to confirm their story, Chasen spoke up again. “You need us to take your boy and her home? I’m sure you have your hands full.”

The Sheriff smirked at the audacity of the question. It didn’t matter that they were in the middle of a disaster, there was bad blood between the families and Sheriff Monty Souter would be damned if he’d hand his son over, much less Dawn Everly’s daughter, a woman he regretted not making his, to a Rawlings.

“Best be moving on now, boys,” the Sheriff said as he reached for Justice’s arm. “They’re declaring the building unstable.”

“Right,” Chasen said, urging Nolan behind him before reaching down and grabbing the bag on the floor and then having to use his body to move Declan back. Declan was steadfastly focused on Justice, and she was much the same as she looked over her shoulder at him while being pulled the other way.

“Six days, son,” Chasen said, urging Declan forward.

Outside looked like a warzone in the truest of senses. Emergency personal could be heard in every direction. The fences around the fields were no more, and yes one wing of the school was gone, so was just about every window.

“I was worried about you,” Chasen said to Declan when he nodded for the other boys to walk on. Nolan did walk on, but only a few steps. He was determined to hear what went down. To hear what their daddy’s take on the matter was.

“It didn’t sound like this down there,” Declan said as he watched the Sheriff’s cruiser leave.

“I bet not.”

Declan didn’t bother to respond.

“That girl is seventeen, Declan. Barely that.”

“Yeah.”

“And you have a plan,” Chasen said.

“I do.”

“So you and I are clear right now.”

“Do as I say not as I do,” Declan said sharply. Their father always said that, so much so that Tobias had claimed the saying as well.

Chasen flinched a grin. Hard roads are difficult to regret when you know if you never walked down them, the people you love the most wouldn’t exist. “When I was caught with an underage girl her parents forced us to get married. Justice’s daddy won’t do that, not in this day and time. No, son. He’d put you behind bars for statutory rape. He’ll be in your recruitment officer’s face and if he doesn’t get anywhere then he’ll march up to your drill sergeant. I don’t need to tell you how much you don’t need this.”

“I’m aware.”

“Are you? You get that’s the right girl but the wrong time?”

Declan’s stare shot to his father’s. Chasen was a man’s man and was quick to tell his boys they didn’t need a woman, not beyond their grandmother Missy who knew how to keep them in line. To hear him say
any
girl was right for any one of his boys was a kick to the gut, and Declan wasn’t sure why. He couldn’t think about anything beyond the fact that Murdock was hip to hip with Justice just then and he was taking her to her father who liked to throw her around like a rag doll.