SEALs of Summer 2: A Military Romance Superbundle (34 page)

The shard of sunlight from the partially closed drapes, hit him right between the eyes. He could see the dark outline of a figure standing there, then shrinking and fading. He’d worked to keep his breathing steady, but his adrenaline was pumping as he grabbed the imaginary knife of his People in case the image wasn’t benign. Maybe that action forced the image to dissipate because it disappeared. A cloud moved to block the ray of light, which softened the harshness, and his ears stopped buzzing.

Where Luci had draped her arm over his chest, the skin was wet with the sweet smell of her sweat. He moved his knee between her thighs, feeling the moist warmth of her private place, and she awoke. When the sun hit her in the face, she covered it with the back of her hand and wrinkled her brow.

“God, that’s bright.”

“I’ll go fix it.” Ambling out of bed, he pulled together the inch-wide gap between the two curtains. As he turned to face her, he saw her notice the erection he’d really never lost last night in all their lovemaking. She didn’t look like she minded a bit; nor that she minded him knowing it pleased her.

He’d used up all the protection packed in his suitcase, as he kicked the empty cardboard box to the side. Instead of climbing under the sheets, as she apparently expected, he sat and patted her left thigh on top of the sheets. “Honey, I’m all out of condoms.”

She bit her lower lip as her brain wrapped around the problem they faced.

He continued with the bigger problem. “I should go. My grandfather has probably passed. I should be with the family.”

“Of course.” She rolled onto her tummy, as she hugged the pillow beneath her and sighed. The sheet had parted, revealing one glorious ass cheek.

Fuck it.
He almost said it out loud. As if to check to make sure the vision before him wasn’t an apparition, he smoothed his palm over her flesh, allowing his fingers to feather into the dark cleft between her buttocks as he smoothed up and then down, barely touching her silky skin. He reached the entryway to her channel from behind as she tilted her ass up, slightly bracing on her knees, exposing her wetness and her swollen lips from their joining all night long. When he inserted his forefinger, her moan made him go rock hard.

Under the sheets, her right leg nearly forced him to move off the bed. Her head turned from where it was buried in the pillow, she peered back at him over her raised shoulder.

There was no mistaking the fact that she’d given him the permission he needed to continue. Danny tore the sheets back, exposing the length of her body to him as he mounted her from behind, holding her hips as he forced her back against him. He could feel her spasms and the warm slickness of her sex clamping down around his cock, and the smooth friction as he undulated back and forth into her, her juices coating him, turning him into granite.

From behind, he was so much deeper. He watched the droplets of sweat form in the ridges of her arched spine, heard the slapping of his thighs against the backs of hers. His hands were full of her breasts, which bounced on his palm between thrusts. He reached to her front and pressed his thumb against her nub and felt her jump. She forced herself against it as she pulled him still deeper inside her.

He would have liked to fuck her all morning long, fuck her until he got that fated phone call, and then fuck her again, but as he held her hips tight against him, spilling his seed deep, he mourned that this would perhaps be the last time. Time stood still as he finished into her quivering sex, as she gasped and moaned in harmony with her internal muscles holding and milking him dry. He leaned forward, ran his teeth along the slender angle of her long neck, eliciting a sultry hiss from her pleasure. He kissed her into submission as he pressed the full force of his weight into and on top of her, collapsing them onto the bed.

His breathing was long and in tandem with hers. Her fingers clutched and wrapped around his hand as it rested on the pillow beside her head. She brought his hand to her chest, laid her right breast into his palm and pressed.

In the soft perfumed hairs at the back of her head, he lay his head down, and fell asleep with his cock buried deep inside her still.

‡

C
hester Begay’s funeral
was held the day after his death. The Protestant church of Danny’s childhood looked smaller than he’d remembered. The same organist had played for over thirty years, but they were in-between ministers so one of the ordained cousins from New Mexico officiated. It was Chester’s wish that the service be held there, even though he rarely graced its doorway.

He wanted those gathered to be comfortable, and the pews in the little church were much more comfortable than the folding chairs out at the gravesite. Besides, that was where the private family celebration would be held, where the singers would come. At the last minute, a contingent from Washington arrived in two black Suburbans, accompanied by several Secret Services members. The entourage included Arizona’s colorful Senator Lopez, bearing condolences from the President of the United States himself.

A color guard paid their respects, and a flag was given to Danny’s mother and his aunt. Red, white, and blue flowers adorned the casket. In keeping with their family tradition, Chester’s face would not be viewed. Instead, his medals were displayed along the casket top. Danny hadn’t realized just how many he’d had. His mother had whispered to him that these were to be given to Wilson, since he was carrying on the tradition of serving in the military. Danny tried to tell himself he wasn’t envious as he now looked at the ribbons and chunks of metal arranged like the necklace of some ancient war chief, nearly covering half the casket top.

The family gathered afterward at Wilson’s mother’s house, which was on the res nearby. It was hard not to feel the eyes of his relatives on him, just as it was hard not to notice the pats on the back Wilson received. Lopez had been well coached and sought Wilson out to thank him for his service. Danny wanted to leave and told his mother so barely two hours into the get-together. He’d greeted politely all the relatives he recognized, and those who didn’t come up to him he figured didn’t want to be reacquainted. Not like Wilson.

As a youth, just hanging with Wilson would have normally been enough to make the afternoon interesting, but today with the frostiness between the two cousins, it was forcing him into a dangerous place even the sweet recollection of the night with Luci couldn’t heal. Making matters worse, Wilson had made an off-color remark about Danny’s activities last night that irritated Danny further.

The two ignored one another until somehow they wound up waiting to use the only restroom in the house.

“Your mom says you’re ready to go home,” Wilson said to his cowboy boots.

“That’s right.”

“I honestly don’t know why you came in the first place, Danny.”

Danny’s right eye squinted a little. “We never liked these things, Wilson.
You
know that.”

“You’ve been gone, what, eight years or more?”

“Twelve.”

“Okay, then. Twelve. And you can’t spend an afternoon giving these people the time of day?”

“I don’t belong here, Wilson.”

Wilson nodded his head. “Oh yeah. Forgot. You’re the one that got away. You trying to rub my nose in it, huh?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So what
are
you saying?”

“I’m saying I don’t want to be here. I’ve done my farewells, and now it’s time for me to adios.”

“You might consider the feelings of your mother.”

Danny drilled him with a return look that probably picked a scab, inflaming Wilson further. “You hear the voices? Does the chanting get to you, Wilson?”

He could see his cousin was thinking about this carefully. It surprised him that Wilson didn’t give a quick answer no, which meant only one thing.

“Holy fucking shit, Wilson. You hear them, too. Just like I do.”

Emma Barnowl, one of his grandfather’s friends, opened the bathroom door and their nostrils were hit with room deodorizer, which did a poor job of masking the smell she’d left behind.

“Fuck me,” Wilson said under his breath. “I’m going out back.”

Danny followed his cousin, and within thirty seconds, was standing next to him, pissing on his aunt’s tomato plants just like they used to do when they were boys of five. To this day Danny hated tomatoes, especially home grown ones.

After they were done, they sat in metal lawn chairs. Wilson offered Danny a cigarette.

“I don’t smoke, and neither do you, or you didn’t,” Danny corrected himself.

“That’s funny,” Wilson said as he casually lit up and put his lighter and cigarettes back in his rear pocket.

“How come you didn’t wear your uniform?”

“It’s my choice. I didn’t think he’d like it.” Wilson took a long drag on his cigarette and blew it right at Danny’s face, but the wind carried it away.

“Thought you were proud of being a Navy boat guy.”

“I am. Got nothing to do with it. Kind of felt like it would be bragging or something, you know?”

Danny wondered about Luci, halfway expecting she’d drop by the gathering. Was he disappointed she’d stayed away? He couldn’t get the memory of her warm body against his out of his mind. It might be a reason to stay an extra day or two, but that would be a dangerous road, full of emotional potholes and entanglements. None of his liaisons ever lasted, so he figured it was better to remember her the way he’d left her. He remembered seeing her proud straight shoulders and those tight jeans encase thighs and a world-class ass as she walked toward her car and didn’t look back once. He knew the only good ones were the ones who didn’t look back.

Wilson’s voice snapped him back to reality.

“Look, Danny, I’m going to say this once, and then let you go. I’m sorry we got off to a bad start after so many years.”

“I was surprised you were around. Didn’t expect it.”

“So I was right, you’re not happy to see even me.”

“Again, putting words in my mouth.”

Wilson looked down, eyes landing on the scuffed cowboy boots, which were a mismatch to the clean suit pants and white shirt he wore. “I left this place with a lot of demons. I think I got just as many, maybe more than you, Cuz.” Wilson took a final drag, stomped it out on the patio, and then threw the pieces into his mother’s vegetable garden.

A slight breeze shivered its way down Danny’s spine. A little group laughed from inside the house. He heard the tinkling of glasses and silverware, the sounds of cars arriving on the crushed rock roadway in front of his Aunt’s house, a doorbell ring, and the buzzing of a small plane overhead. The place looked and smelled and felt dangerously normal.

“I learned to tame those demons in the Navy, Danny. I’m not going to lie to you, but serving in the armed forces is giving me skills I can take out there in the real world.”

Danny found himself chuckling in spite of the fact that it was going to piss Wilson off. “Yeah, don’t see many rubber boats around the res, Cuz. You training to be a white water rafting guide in the Canyon? Shit, you coulda done that in high school.”

“Except I was getting stoned in high school, Danny. So were you. I heard you were a real mess.”

“Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. I look like a mess to you?”

Wilson abruptly stood. “No, Danny, you look like a fuckin’ hero just like your grandfather.”

His cousin left and joined the gathering inside the house.

Jonas, the sixteen-year-old
cousin of the Yellowhorse clan, drove Danny to the dusty bus stop to Phoenix just outside the res. Danny made the rest of the trip to the Phoenix bus terminal alone. He had an hour before the shuttle to the airport, so decided to walk downtown just to get a flavor of how it had changed.

A large two-story Indian Tribal Council building took up nearly a whole city block, which impressed him. Apparently Indian business was
good
business, judging from the quality and the architecture of the beautiful building. A philanthropic foundation had built a Native American Museum, which was advertised everywhere, and he wished he’d had more time, but decided he’d make a point to visit next chance he got. He walked past a joint forces recruitment office, a tattoo parlor, and another coffee shop before he stopped.

He backed up and walked through the recruitment doors into the stuffy office filled with cigarette smoke.

The Army recruiter greeted him first.

“Son, what can I do you for?”

“Not sure.” Danny suddenly found himself wondering what made him walk inside the little snake pit, where he was eyed like a piece of bait. He knew his large frame would impress recruiters, but he hadn’t expected all five of the guys in uniform there to stand to attention and form a circle around him. He sensed a bit of rivalry over him. It made him feel uncomfortable.

“Look, fellas, I’m just here exploring things a bit. At ease, as I guess they say. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here, to be honest.” He was going to apologize for the swearing, but decided against it.

“Son, you just passed the first test required to become a proud Army-strong recruit. Come on over to my desk and let me tell you about the destiny that awaits you.”