The Cornerstone (19 page)

Patrick:
I saw a documentary about people who “rescue” alligators when they get into yards and pools. These guys basically lasso the alligator but it always fights and does this death roll thing. These meetings are a lot like that.

Shannon:
Does that make us the alligator? Or are we the fools trying to catch the alligator?

Patrick:
I haven’t figured that part out yet

WILL

Twelve months ago

T
his month was
the kind of clusterfuck only the military could manage.

First, I was pulled off a stateside training op to lead a last-minute overseas mission. I was fast-roping from an Apache helicopter when I was supposed to be meeting Shannon in Chicago for another weekend away.

She was already airborne when the orders came through, and spent two days alone in the city. A text with a picture of her middle finger positioned over her lace-clad breasts summed up her feelings about the change of plans. I shared those feelings.

When I was back on base and the mission was fully debriefed, I got her on the phone. She yelled at me about fucking with her meticulous schedule after everything she went through to get away that weekend. She was reasonably pissed and lonely, but I persuaded her to let me listen while she fingered herself. I hated this war, the military, and every inch of earth separating me from Shannon when she started panting and humming into my ear.

I capitalized on her post-orgasmic bliss to convince her that she wanted to spend Thanksgiving with me in New Mexico. There was a long pause punctuated only by her shuddering breath, and I imagined the rosy flush of her skin and the tiny beads of sweat drying on her chest. She put up her usual quantities of sass and swearing, and threatened to ditch me if I was even five minutes late.

Then, during a close-quarters hostage recovery simulation at an unmarked black ops facility, one of my guys blew a mannequin’s head off. If there was a good time to make his accuracy issues known, it was definitely before the dummies were replaced with live team members, but it sure as shit fucked up my day.

Any time a drill involving live rounds went off book, everything stopped. We walked the whole damn thing back, replaying every step, every move, and every decision until we isolated the error. Once that protocol was finished, I tasked my men with disassembling and cleaning every firearm in the building.

Twice.

No one was enjoying a holiday weekend—myself included—until the lesson was clear: know where your shot is going to land before you shoot it.

By the time I hit the road, I was five
hours
late. Five fucking hours, and if Shannon wasn’t already on a flight back to Boston, she was going to bitch up a storm until I put her mouth to work. The girl got off on tearing assholes and busting balls, but I didn’t allow myself the time to consider how much I enjoyed that.

The hotel she selected near the outskirts of Taos, in Ojo Caliente, was nestled against an ancient hot spring. The interior was all cowhide and antlers, all day. I suffered through an extensive explanation of the on-site spa services and farm-to-table dining options before the front desk attendant handed over my room key. If I’d known where Shannon was, I would have saved myself this annoyance and worked some magic on the lock.

“Just tell me which room,” I said. I was too fucking impatient for this. Once I had the key, I took off in the direction the attendant pointed.

And now, five hours late to our rescheduled weekend, she was nowhere to be found.

Her designer luggage was parked in our room’s closet, and her phone charger was plugged in beside the bed, but she was gone. I stood in the center of the room, staring at the untouched bed while I ran through the possibilities. She didn’t go into town; too sleepy and deserted at this hour. She didn’t go to the gym; she was an early bird.

That left the restaurant, and it didn’t take more than a quick glance to spot her hair when I burst through the doors.

She was seated at a rustic bar overlooking the hot springs with her back to me, her laptop to her left, and a margarita glass to her right.

And two guys standing beside her, laughing and gesturing as if they were old college pals.

Fuckers.

I stood in the doorway, watching from a distance. Her hair was tucked behind her ear, smooth and styled into precise waves, and I wanted to mess it all up. The dark purple v-neck sweater and long gold chain studded with small stones—my guess was diamonds—showed off her creamy skin. I wanted to touch her and haul her back to the room, but I also wanted to admire the way she handled those guys.

Shannon was intelligent and gorgeous and really fucking intimidating, and every fool with a pick-up line was drawn to her. They didn’t notice her patronizing nods or bright, fake smiles. They didn’t hear the poison-laced honey when she said “Oh, that sounds
fascinating
” or “That’s an
amazing
little story.”

She could handle them, of that there was no doubt. She could handle everything.

But that didn’t mean she had to, and when the fucker leaning against the bar placed his hand on her knee while he laughed at the other fucker’s comment, nothing could have stopped me from intervening.

“And this guy damn near falls off the boat trying to reel in his marlin,” The One I’d Kill First said, gesturing to The One I’d Kill Second. “And it was a small one, just a pup—”

“Excuse me, boys.” I stepped between those assholes, took Shannon’s face in my hands, and whispered, “I am so sorry I’m late, peanut.”

There was a fiery glint in her eyes before my lips met hers, a blend of anger and amusement. Her teeth sank into my tongue when it pushed past her lips.

Okay, mostly anger.

In a move only a few steps above licking her neck or pissing on her leg, I locked my eyes on Shannon, snatched her glass and drained the sweet liquid. It was clear signal for the fuckers to peddle their marlin stories elsewhere.

“If I could have gotten a flight back to Boston tonight,” she said, a whisper so soft I almost missed it. Her shoulders were stiff, and her hands still folded in her lap. “Believe me when I say I would have.”

“Did Air Traffic Control not take your call?” I asked, rubbing my knuckles down her spine. “Those bastards.”

She looked good, better than I remembered. Deployment had a strange way of eroding memories, turning some unrealistically perfect or morphing others into dim, faded artifacts. Somewhere in the last ten weeks—seventy-one days, if anyone was counting—I lost the sharp force of her. Maybe it was my mind’s way of tricking me into believing this girl wasn’t creeping her way into my everything.

“Come,” I said, holding out my hand to her.

She didn’t take my hand. Of course not. She took her precious time wishing the marlin idiots a happy holiday, signing the check, closing her laptop and placing it in her bag, and then wrapping her scarf around her neck before scooting off the chair. She didn’t reach for me once, and it was obvious she was making me work for the right to touch her.

She wasn’t high maintenance; she was complicated. It was probably a good thing. Shannon was too smart, too fearless, too much fire to let just anyone in her company. She needed to be
won
, and that was no easy feat.

I pointed up at the night sky. “A lot of stars out here,” I said.

“Suck my dick,” she murmured.

“Does that mean you’ll stop, breathe, and notice the stars while I’m sucking your dick? Or do I have to suck your dick first, and then you’ll be ready for stars?”

The walk to our room was silent and separate. She was working hard at staying angry, and as much as I enjoyed the game, I couldn’t relax until she did, and I wanted to fast-forward to the point where we could just
be
. Instead of kissing me back, she bit me. Instead of accepting my hand, she demanded I blow her. Instead of letting me hold her, she was going to shy away from me and throw a tantrum until I tied her up and fucked the fury right out of her.

And she wasn’t even furious. No, she just didn’t know how to let herself unwind.

“Stop thinking so hard,” I said as I held the door open for her.

“I realize it’s difficult for you to understand, but someone has to think around here,” she snapped. She tossed her scarf to the chair and kicked off her heels.

She liked to think of herself as grounded. She thought she had her hands wrapped around everything, but she was five hundred miles ahead and flying in her own stratosphere.

“And what would you like me to think about?” I asked. She paced the length of the room. “I know what
I’d
like to think about, and it involves fucking you with your pretty wrists tied behind your back.”

“Do you have any clue what I had to do to get here, Will? And for what? So you can stand there and tell me how you’re going to fuck me?”

“You love it when I tell you how I’m going to fuck you,” I said. She really did.

“My assistant knows. He totally knows. And your sister, fucking hell, nothing gets past that girl. They all know, and you’re just staring at me like you don’t care.”

I knew I wasn’t Shannon’s usual, but I couldn’t comprehend why her assistant—or my sister, for that matter—got a say in who she fucked.

“That’s probably because I
don’t
care,” I said. I cleared my throat. This wasn’t the night to unravel her bizarre family dynamics. “There is zero reason to worry about any of that right now. You know, you don’t have to be so tough all the time. It’s okay to not have all the answers.”

“I could say the same thing to you.” Shannon lifted her chin, her quiet little “
fuck you
”, and stared at me. “I’m missing important family events, you know. And I’ve been sitting here, thinking you were blowing me off because apparently that’s your thing. You know what? That’s not how this will end.”

“Ignoring the fact I did not blow you off, peanut, and you’re being an overdramatic pain in the ass, tell me how this will end.”

“I’ll blow you off,” she said, her shoulder jerking hard to punctuate her statement.

“I think you’re waiting for me to force you to drop that act.” My fingers curled around her waistband and I pulled her toward me. “Enough bullshit out of you. Get naked.”

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do,” she said. “How about ‘Thank you for flying during the busiest travel week of the year’ or ‘Thank you for coming all the way to freaking New Mexico’ or better yet, ‘Let’s get some something to eat and talk like normal people because I haven’t seen you in three months’?”

“Yeah, no,” I said. I had her hands pinned behind her back and her cheek flush against the wall in an instant, and her trousers shoved down to her knees. “Eat later. Talk later. I haven’t seen you in three months and I need to be inside you right now.”

I hiked her knee up, kicked her pants off, and took my cock in hand. Putting everything else out of my mind, I surged into her hard, drowning in the hot perfection of Shannon.

“Is that the best you can do?” she taunted.

I anchored my hand low on her abdomen, pressing my palm to the narrow space below her belly button. Her muscles flexed and squeezed under my fingertips, and she was strung tight enough to bounce quarters. “You feel how tense you are?” I asked, my hand pushing down. “Relax, baby. Just relax. Loosen up for me, right here.”

“Enough with the coaching,” she snapped. “Shut up and fuck me.”

“No,” I murmured against her neck. “No. You’re not giving me another one of those wimpy little orgasms. You’re going to come for me until you can’t stand, then I’m carrying you to the bed and doing it again, but not”—I thrust into her, slamming us hard against the door—“until”—Again—“you stop”—And again—“fighting me.”

Her fingers twined around mine as she moaned, the sound bouncing off the door and around us.

“Let me do good things to you,” I sighed as her body sagged against mine. “My cock wants to take care of you.”

“And what do you want?” she said.

My fingers slid down her tummy until they brushed her clit. “Same.”

*

It was almost
a shame to wake her. Sunlight glinted off the red rocks outside, bathing her skin in a pinkish glow. But if I didn’t get her out of this bed now, we wouldn’t leave it for the next four days.

It seemed counterintuitive that, after these months since Montauk, I’d want anything more than her body in my arms, but I was struggling with this arrangement. Shannon wasn’t one of those women who blindly chased any guy with a frogman tattoo and some dog tags. They deserved the same level of respect, yeah, but it was also fair to classify them as a different breed than Ms. Walsh.

To say I wanted to see her only for sex was a shallow representation of reality. I didn’t like her thinking that, and I didn’t like operating that way. And admitting that didn’t mean I had to turn in my man card, either.

I enjoyed her company but we weren’t carrying on meaningful conversations while we were naked. No, that was limited to swearing, insults, and demands. There was plenty of that while we were clothed, too, but it wouldn’t be any fun if there was no foreplay.