The Cornerstone (44 page)

Will’s tongue matched that pace, and all of this—the naughty position, the filthy sounds, the hand holding me down, the lingering evidence of his last orgasm—had us careening toward the finish in minutes. My orgasm blasted through me, heating everything from my toes to my scalp, and leaving me breathless and quivering. He managed a few guttural noises that bore no resemblance to words before closing his teeth around my inner thigh and coming on the blue and white striped bath mat, and watching from my spread-legged vantage point was a new level of dirty.

“Shannon…” he sighed, his head resting on my thighs. “I want you. For a long time. A long fucking time. If you don’t, I need you to lie to me, because there’s a real possibility that I’ll cry right now if you say no.”

“Can we talk about this when your face isn’t between my legs?” I raked my hands through his hair. “And since when is crying a commando tactic? I didn’t think you even had tear ducts.”

“We can grow them on demand, and I can’t imagine a better way to have a conversation with you. You’re amenable to most things when I’m licking your pussy.”

“William,” I said, my tone firm. “You’re kneeling in a puddle of jizz, and I’m pretty sure I have a perfect impression of your teeth an inch from my clit. I promise you we’ll talk about all the things you said, but not now.”

He sighed, and I was certain he was pouting. “I didn’t mean to bite you that hard.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I kind of liked it.”

“You’re the toughest little peanut I’ve ever met. You’re barely five feet tall, you weigh nothing, and you’re small, but fuck, you are scrappy,” he murmured as he pulled my clothes into place and carefully folded the bath mat. “I’m gonna wait for you outside. I might maul you if I stay in here much longer.”

I required a few minutes to recover, and a few more to finish getting ready. By the time I met Will on the sidewalk, it was dark, and a heavy covering of marine layer was drifting in. It was a brief walk through Coronado Village to the tavern, and Will devoured the distance with rapid-fire stories about his teammates.

“Should I expect to see knife throwing, or kung fu and arm wrestling tonight?” I asked.

He paused at the tavern door. “Probably not,” he said with some reluctance, “but it isn’t impossible. There’re always a lot of team guys here. Some I might let you meet.”

“
Let me
,” I repeated. “It’s funny because you think you’re in charge here.”

He squeezed my fingers as we approached a group clustered near the bar. “Oh, I like this,” Will said, rubbing his hand over a man’s head. “Keeping it high and tight for the big day?”

“Halsted,” he roared, swallowing Will into a back-slapping bear hug. “Always good to see your ugly mug.” A slow smile broke across his face when he spotted me behind Will. When Will noticed, he stepped away and tucked his hand into my back pocket. “Gus Granovsky. The pleasure is all mine.”

“Shannon Walsh,” I said, meeting his outstretched palm.

Gus glanced to Will, his hand still clasping mine. “Are you blackmailing her? There’s no reason why a nice lady like this would have any use for a frogman,” he said. “What’s he got on you, honey?”

“A little bit of everything,” I said, laughing as Will placed his free hand on Gus’s chest and pushed him away. “He’s always catching me in weak moments.”

At that, Will gazed down at me, smiling, and mouthed, “Showerhead.”

“Don’t go there,” I laughed.

“Where’s Viv?” Will asked. He craned his neck around, and it was then that I noticed the bar was packed with men just like him: big, chiseled, and with little more than posture and gaze, quietly broadcasting that they were the baddest of the badass motherfuckers.

“With her sister. You know, doing chick shit because you’re not supposed to see the bride the night before the wedding,” Gus said. He pointed at me. “Can I get you something to drink, Miss Walsh? Halsted has the manners of a dumb goat, and I hear he fucks like one, too, but
I
am a gentleman.”

“Is that what your mother said about me?” Will asked. He brushed his hand down my back with an eye roll. “What’ll it be, peanut?”

“I’ll go,” I said, nodding toward the bar. “You play with your friends.”

The bar was a true SEAL haven. Black and white photos lined the walls, all featuring sailors engaged in beach drills or standing in formation, and there were cartoonish murals with frogs holding machine guns. A handful of men were gathered around a dartboard where they were talking an exceptional amount of trash, and the others were standing together, offering Will the same hearty greeting he received from Gus.

There were plenty of women, too. Some were in the wife or girlfriend category, and they were easily identifiable as they usually had one of those huge motherfuckers pawing at them. The rest were what Will liked to call tag chasers, and the decidedly predatory look in their eyes—plus their tiny scraps of clothing in spite of the damp chill rolling off the ocean tonight—made them equally easy to spot.

Also: three of them were leering at Will like they hadn’t seen fresh meat in months.

“So you’re Will’s Shannon? I’ve heard a lot about you.”

I turned, narrowing my eyes at the man seated two stools down. “Is that so?”

He wore a baseball cap pulled low and offered a lopsided smile. “Yes, ma’am. Lucas Quadros, but you can call me Quad.”

I looked back at Will. He was deep in conversation with two men while his fan club engaged in all manner of hair twirling and come-hither glancing. He didn’t seem to notice. “And what have you heard, Quad? Anything good?”

He nodded to the empty stool beside him, and I sat. “I heard about you for three days straight. If Halsted hadn’t been talking my ear off, I probably wouldn’t have made it out of that godforsaken desert.”

My smile flattened. “I don’t know that I follow you.”

He pivoted, extending his leg out in front of him. A quick yank pulled the leg of his jeans up, exposing a thin metal pole where a skin and bone should have been.

“Lost my leg in our last go-round. Helicopter went down.”

I didn’t know what to say, and what
could
I say?

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, and it was possible that words had never been as inadequate as they were right now.

“We lost nine guys in that crash. Halsted got us out. The hostage and me. He ripped nine inches of shrapnel out of his shoulder with a pair of pliers, rubbed some dirt in the wound like a beast, and then dragged us through the desert for three days. Bitched and moaned about my lacking survival skills, and how he’d kick my ass out of the teams if I died.” He laughed—that was some gallows humor right there—and I could only respond with a nod. “He was due home after that mission, and he made sure I knew it.”

I leaned forward, my arms folded on the bar, and studied him. He was young, probably no older than Riley was, and blessed with a soft baby face. He saw it as a curse, I was sure, and was growing a thick, dark beard to prove that plenty of testosterone flowed through his veins.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. I didn’t want to seem flippant or disinterested, but I didn’t know how to handle this information.

“Halsted and I made a deal in that desert. I wasn’t going to bleed out, and he was going to introduce me to the woman he wouldn’t stop talking about.”

I scanned the room for Will, and when I found him leaning against a booth, his eyes flickered to me, steady and unsmiling.

Why didn’t you tell me?

“It was an ambitious mission by all standards,” Quadros continued, his fingertips running through his beard as he spoke. “He should have been commanding the op from base, but one of our guys rolled his ankle and Halsted refused to send in the rookie. The mission was high-value hostage recovery, and it had been scrubbed and rescheduled more times than I could track before the green light came in October. We had to act fast; all the intel pointed to the captors pulling the hostage’s card any day.”

He paused to sip his beer and I turned back to Will, my brows pinched in confusion.

Why didn’t you tell me?

“It started with a long-range infil, which is a nice way of saying they dropped us on the far end of West Nowhere, and we had to get our asses to the east side without anyone noticing. We launched an attack on the hostage’s location, got him out, and made it to the exfil site to meet the helicopter without as much as a sneeze. We weren’t in the air more than a minute before the RPG blew us right out of the sky. Not my first helicopter crash, but…” He nodded toward the prosthesis. “But probably my last.”

I glanced back at Will while this story unfolded, and we stared at each other across the room. Something passed between us…acceptance, forgiveness, understanding…something.

“He talked the whole fucking time. Said you’re a damn smart lawyer and ass-kicking business lady. That you’d probably kick his ass for not getting home on time, and he’d probably like it, too. That me bleeding out in the middle of the desert would mean he was stuck carrying dead weight, and that would just take him longer so I wasn’t allowed to die. Not on his watch.”

You should have told me yourself.

“He should’ve left me there,” Quadros continued. “He should’ve tied off my wound and gotten the hostage to safety, but he knew the insurgents would swarm the helicopter. He knew I’d be dead and he didn’t give it a second thought when he tossed me on his back and got us the fuck outta there. It screwed up his shoulder and for that alone, he probably won’t see combat again.”

Those scars.

“I understand why he’s retiring. I know it’s not public knowledge yet, but…I’ve heard and I understand. This life…it takes a lot out of you. And he’s given a lot. I don’t know any more dedicated, hard-driving sailor than Halsted. He just gets shit done, time after time, and when it isn’t getting done, he’s there fixing it himself until it’s right.”

For the second time in a matter of weeks, I wanted to hold him close, and then I wanted to slap the shit out of him.

“If you’ll excuse me…”

WILL

S
hannon walked across
the room, her eyes trained on mine, until she was right in front of me. She pressed a beer bottle into my hand and tilted her head, staring at my dick like it had insulted her country and faith.

“This thing you do,” she said, gesturing to my crotch. “Where you tuck in a portion of your shirt right at the belt buckle? I know why you’re doing it. You want everyone to notice your abs.”

I glanced to Quad, and then back to Shannon. It was good to see him in town for Gus’s wedding after everything he’d been through. All I’d lost was feeling in my fingers, and I couldn’t make sense of life. This kid lost everything below the knee, and was already back to work. It was a desk job, but he was back at it.

“And here I thought they’d notice my cock,” I said.

“That presumes there’s something worth noticing,” she said.

“That’s not what you said last night,” I said. “Or this morning. Or a couple of hours ago, in the shower. Would you like me to continue?”

She plucked the beer from my hands and took a long sip. “Look, William. Your ego is very fragile. I can’t go around crushing your self-esteem now, can I?”

“What did Quad say to you?” I asked.

“Why have you been parked in my apartment for the past month?”

“Because I wanted to see you for more than a weekend. I wanted to wake up in the same place for an entire month, and I wanted you there with me,” I said, and that was the most honest approximation I could find. “And I have to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.”

Her lips flattened as her eyes closed, her frustration with me as clear as day. “Why didn’t
you
just tell me that?”

“I was going to.” Shrugging, I snatched the bottle out of her hand. “Eventually. But, as you might recall, you weren’t too interested in talking to me. You banished me to the guest room and threw fruit at me, and while you’re at it, remind yourself there was a Douchelord in your apartment a few
weeks
ago. You’re mine, and when I went to you, you were
with
that genital wart.”

“We broke up,” she said, her eyes flashing with anger.

“You’re
mine
,” I repeated. “Trust me; I was wise to your game. That little distraction to get you through? Did it help?”

Shaking her head, she stared at the ground. “No,” she admitted. “Nothing helped, and when you didn’t come back in September, that’s when I knew it was really over.”

Fuck.
There was nothing I’d wanted more than to get a message to Shannon, to explain that I had to see the mission through, that I’d come for her when I was done. I could have called her when I was at the base hospital in Germany, but I was afraid she’d only take me back because I was injured, and I didn’t want the pity-love she reserved for Sam.

“You know, Will,” she started, her expression turning serious, “I let myself believe you were finished. That you realized I was too complicated and I’d pushed you too far, and you were done.”

I held up a hand. “No, peanut, I—”

“I’m not finished,” she interrupted. “You’re mine, too. That never stopped. You’re still mine, and I’m fucking furious that I had to hear about your injury—and everything else—from Private Ryan over there.” Her eyes dropped to my shoulder, and her tongue swept over her top lip. “How is it? Are you all right?”

I shrugged, and right on cue, a bolt of pain zapped down to my fingers. “It’s fine.”

“It’s nice how you’re lying to me,” she said. “Maybe you can tuck your balls back for a little while and stop being such a man.”

I spread my arms wide, welcoming the onslaught. “Would it make you happy to hear that I can’t feel these fingers” —I held up the last three— “and the nerve pain is an evil bitch?”

“Of course not,” she cried, “but the talking goes both ways, Will. If you want everything from me, I want the same from you.”

I reached for Shannon, but she slapped my hand away. She hit me with her most vicious scowl, but she couldn’t hold it long. Her lips twitched, and she flew into my arms. “You have it,” I whispered, holding her head to my chest. “You’ve always had it.”