Fixed Asset (Downrange), page 15
“Baby, I’m gonna make you see stars.”
Then I set about doing just that. This was not fucking. It wasn’t lovemaking. It was primal instinct. There was no rhythm to my thrusts as I drove into her. Pure madness. Raw, savage need to rut. To make her feel the pleasure she was giving me. To pull the sweet mews from her lips. I didn’t want to claim, I wanted her to surrender—to relinquish herself to me.
“Do you love me?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me,” I demanded.
“I love you, Jack.”
I unfolded, came up on my knees, grabbed her hip with one hand while the other one snaked around her belly, down, and found her clit.
“Again.”
“Oh my God,” she moaned and bucked her hips.
“Tell. Me,” I commanded.
Her pussy quivered and clutched, bringing me closer to blowing. My finger on her clit pressed harder. Relentless in my pursuit to get what I wanted.
“Now, Catarina. Tell me.”
“I love you.”
On a long groan she flew apart, bucking so hard my hand slid from her hip to her back to hold her down.
“Yeah, baby, you love me. Don’t ever forget it.”
“I . . . God . . . I won’t, Jack.”
My gaze fell to her red ass. All mine. It dropped lower. I watched our connection, my cock tunneling into her, coming out wet with her excitement, driving back in until it became too much, and I exploded with a violent shudder.
I slammed in, stayed planted, and let her pussy drain me dry.
“I love you so much it scares me, baby,” I groaned through my climax.
The tension waned, my muscles relaxed, and I slowly glided in and out, watching myself take her gentle after I’d fucked her rough.
My hand slid over the pink mark on her ass. “This okay?”
“Oh yeah.”
“You sure I didn’t hurt you?”
“Only in the best of ways. That was . . .” She trailed off.
When she didn’t finish, I glanced up at her face. Her pretty face flushed with sex, her eyes clear and soft.
“Animalistic,” she finished.
She wasn’t wrong. The woman turned me into a straight-up animal.
I pulled out. Kissed the mark on her ass, rolled to my side, pulled her with me, and fitted my chest to her back. Catarina snuggled back and tangled our legs together.
“Do we have time to snooze?” she said as she yawned.
“Yeah, baby. We’re not meeting the team for another few hours.”
It didn’t take long for Cat’s breaths to even out and her body to go lax.
I wasn’t the type to lie in bed and cuddle. When I was awake, I was up. I had better things to do than laze around. But I couldn’t get myself to let her go.
This was not the first morning I’d woken up to Catarina wrapped around me. But it was the first we’d woken up together in our bed, with no bad guys lurking. No immediate threat of danger.
Yet, there would be soon.
We’d be leaving for Mexico, on a favor for a shady CIA officer who I didn’t trust. Catarina would be back in the field, in the line of fire.
That scared the fuck out of me.
I thought back to our conversation on the drive home from the airport. We were talking about having babies. Then I went to the conversation in the bathroom before our shower—long term, our future. I wanted that—all of it. Marriage, children, the whole thing. I just needed her to be with me to have it.
I blew out a breath.
Catarina was well trained, skilled, smart. But that didn’t mean that reckless streak had dissolved.
Fuck.
I kissed the back of Cat’s head and rolled out of bed.
I needed a workout and to make a call, not in that order. I grabbed a clean pair of sweats out of my dresser, went into the bathroom, cleaned up, tagged my phone off the nightstand, and made my way downstairs, scrolling through my contacts until I found the one I needed.
“It’s early,” Lincoln Parker answered.
I couldn’t call the man a close friend, but he was a friend. He also had married a woman who was arguably more badass than Catarina, and that argument would be flimsy. Both women were insanely tough.
“If you’re not busy, I need some advice.”
“Whatcha got.”
“It’s personal,” I warned.
I heard him chuckle.
“A woman’s got you tied in knots,” he rightly surmised.
“Catarina Keys.”
Linc whistled before he said, “Damn, brother. Jasmin met with her a few months back, tried to get her to come work with us at Z Corps. Cat turned my wife down. To say she was bummed would be an understatement. She’s wanted Catarina Keys on our team for a long time. Jasmin’s of the mind they’re twins born a few years apart by different mothers.”
I knew Jasmin had approached Cat after our mission in Las Vegas. It had been an excruciating debriefing with Wilson McCray as we wrapped up our final report on the mission. At the time, I was doing everything I could to stop myself from calling Cat. Unfortunately, it was a battle I’d won, and I lost time with her.
“How do you do it?” I cut to it.
“Do what?”
“Not lose your mind every time Jasmin goes out on a mission?”
“Who the hell says I don’t? Brother, you think watching her strap a vest on is easy? That I haven’t had to stop myself from ripping the damn thing off her body and cuffing her to the desk to keep her ass in the office? Every. Damn. Time.”
They’d been together years, had twin boys, and by the sound of it, he still struggled.
“So you’re telling me it doesn’t get any better?”
“Oh, it gets better. As the months slip into years and I get to wake up every morning with my wife at my side and my boys causing mayhem and chaos, it keeps getting better. But does seeing my wife put herself in danger get easier? Fuck no.”
I opened the cupboard to pull out the coffee canister and noted, “This isn’t making me feel any better.”
“Well, shit, Jack, I didn’t know you wanted me to lie.”
I stared at the counter, feeling the burn in my chest getting hotter.
“I can’t fuck this up,” I mumbled.
“Then don’t.”
Easier said than done when I had an anvil sitting in my gut and we were close to going back out.
“It goes against the grain,” he started. “We’re the protectors. We provide the shield. It’s hard for men like us to fathom it any other way. But, Jack, you hooked up with a woman who is exactly like you. She’s the protector. She’s the shield. Now ask yourself: The man you are, would you have it any other way?”
I didn’t need to search my feelings. I didn’t need to think about my response. Unreservedly, the answer was no. I’d always known I’d need a strong woman at my side. I’d need someone to push back and keep me in check. I needed a partner.
“It’s a double-edged sword, Jack,” he went on. “Both edges slice—yours and hers. Dulling her side doesn’t make yours sharper, it weakens the sword. She will be your greatest asset and your greatest weakness in battle. It doesn’t get easier, but none of it is. The things we see, the things we do, none of that is easy.”
He wasn’t wrong. Nothing about the jobs we did was easy. Each time we went out, we came home with new marks on our souls.
“But I can tell you this, watching my woman do her thing—kick ass, be that shield, rescue hostages, protect those who need her protection, whatever the mission calls for—the one thing I always feel is pride. Here’s this badass, tough warrior princess, and she chose me. She doesn’t need me to keep her safe. She’s saved my ass many times, she’s been my shield more times than I can count.
“Here’s the trick, Jack. What you need to remember is, you’re strong with her at your back. Together, you make the sword. Two shields cover front and back. Learn to use her strength in battle and the two of you become unstoppable.”
Fuck.
There it was.
What I needed.
“Thanks, brother.”
“You get what you needed?”
I leaned my hip against the counter and looked out the window. The morning sun shone over the ocean. And not for the first time, it hit me. I indeed had everything I needed, only now I was armed with Lincoln’s wisdom.
“Yeah, brother, I appreciate you taking the time to give that to me.”
“Anytime.”
The topic changed to his boys and their antics, what was going on in Maryland, and the new case they were working on. Linc’s brother Zane wasn’t fond of the CIA; he worked with them when it suited him and benefited his company. But if the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze, he told them to kick rocks.
“You ever heard of CIA Officer Tom Washington?”
“No, but I can ask around about him.”
“We’ve got Shep on it, but if you wouldn’t mind asking your team, it wouldn’t go unappreciated.”
“Something in particular you’re after?”
I filled him in on our last mission—Catarina being tagged and her phones being tracked—and Tom’s excuse for plausible deniability and Calista being wanted for murder.
“I have heard about Calista Ventura,” he informed me. “She’s wanted for questioning in the deaths of three men. One of them is Victor Stone.”
“Do you know anything about that?”
“Victor was a congressional aide. The other two were lawyers, lived in Virginia, worked in DC, and they were found dead in the home of a White House staffer. Haven’t heard anything on motive. Though Stone’s got a reputation of being a monumental asshole.”
“What kind of asshole?”
“The kind who thinks buying a woman dinner means he’s owed something in return. No formal complaints had been filed, but word was he didn’t like being denied what he thought he paid for.”
Monumental asshole didn’t begin to cover the special kind of fuckwad Stone was.
Hopefully, Shep would have more for us by the time we got up the mountain.
“Something feels off,” I told Linc.
“Something’s always off with the CIA.”
No truer words.
“Part of me gets why Tom would want to meet off US soil. I also get why he’d tag and track his asset. But the timing of it with the president’s wife and kids being part of the target package is the coincidence I’m struggling with.”
“You said Tom’s helped Berta in the past; could be that he really did want the use of her network to help Calista? Though, it’d be a win-win for him to have the whereabouts of the president’s family in his back pocket, should he need it in the future. But if Berta’s smart, and I know her reputation so I know she is, the wife and kids will be shuffled around until they’re lost, never to be found.”
I hoped that was the case.
“But,” Linc continued, “I’ve been dealing with the CIA for a long time, and I’ve never known one who wasn’t an opportunist, and that includes the former case officers who work for us.” There was humor in his tone. “Thankfully, they’re now on our side, and we get the benefit of their manipulation.”
“Good to know those skills didn’t go to waste.”
I heard footfalls padding through the living room.
I turned, and my breath arrested.
She’d pulled on the T-shirt I’d tossed on the floor last night when I got home.
“Cat’s up, gotta go.”
“I bet you do.”
I watched her walk into the dining area and stop by the floor-to-ceiling windows.
“Thanks again.”
“Anytime. I’ll hit you back when I know something.”
Linc disconnected. I tossed my phone on the counter and made my way to Cat.
“You were right about this deck. The view is amazing.”
She wasn’t wrong about the view, but I wasn’t looking at the beach.
Pride hit fast and furious.
Catarina had chosen me.
I could lie to myself and say I claimed her, but the truth was, Catarina did the claiming. She was a high-value woman, and there was no way she’d settle for anything less than what she thought was the best. She’d claim her mate, the strongest of the pack, her partner.
Lincoln Parker was one smart son of a bitch.
Chapter Twenty
I glanced around the Dirty Plank, leaned closer to Jack, and whispered, “Don’t tell the guys, but In-N-Out is better.”
He busted out laughing.
It was lunchtime. The place was hopping. Jack hadn’t told me anything about the place so I hadn’t known what to expect, but even if he had, I still wouldn’t have envisioned an upscale tiki bar right on Seacoast Drive. There was outside seating with a view of the Portwood Pier Plaza and the Imperial Beach Pier. Rent on this place had to be wack. Though with all the tables full and every stool taken at the bar, I’d bet they turned a mighty profit.
“My lips are sealed.”
God, I hoped not; he made magic with those lips and tongue.
“Can I get you two anything else?” our server, Chloe, asked.
I shook my head.
“No thanks, Chloe.”
“I’ll put it on your tab. Have a good day.”
I glanced from the very beautiful woman to Jack. “Tab?”
“What she means is trash,” Jack explained. “When I first started coming here, I tried paying. None of the guys would let me. I got sick of arguing so I just leave a big tip. The guys don’t say shit about that because they like their people being taken care of.”
That was cool of the guys.
“Pete said someone always rotates out and stays back at the bar. Does that include you?”
“Yeah. A month after I got here, the guys went out for a few days. I stayed behind. They’ll probably ask you to pitch in too.”
I took another look around the room. There were no cheesy palm thatch decorations like in a traditional tiki bar. Instead, it was a mix of surfer and Team Guy. The guys had played off the old Navy tradition of original crew members being Plank Owners. There was a huge slice of live-edge wood hanging behind the bar. A Trident was burned into the far right side; on the left, Big Navy’s anchor insignia. Between the symbols, a rusty rectangle of metal was screwed into the wood with the words Here I Am. Send Me. engraved on it.
Isaiah 6:8.
The monstrosity was out of place, yet it fit perfectly.
Those five words embodied the men who owned the bar. Rotating out, leaving one behind, but all of them wanting to be the one to charge into battle.
The walls were cluttered with surfboards, wood skimboards, beer brand plaques, stickers of all kinds. There were a few framed black-and-white pictures of the guys together in various places around the room, all in uniform. It was cool and hip.
Right now the patrons were fifty-fifty male, female. Couples, women having lunch together, men sitting at the bar. The vibe was chill and relaxed. I’d guess the evening crowd would be the same ratio of men and women, but no doubt the vibe would be different. Women would be on the prowl.
“How rowdy does this place get at night?” I asked.
Jack’s lips twitched, and his brow raised.
“Frog Hog heaven?” I guessed.
“Nailed it,” he told me.
I got it, men in uniform were hot. In the Army, there were plenty of Barrack Bunnies sniffing around, looking for a soldier to spend the night with, but they weren’t all that picky. Sure, you had the ones who could spot a Ranger or Spec Ops guy, but for the most part they were after any hot guy in a uniform.
But the women who sought out Frogmen were a whole different breed. They could spot a color or a number from a mile away. Though West Coast Frog Hogs didn’t need that added sixth sense, seeing as Group One only had numbered teams. The East Coast women were like heat-seeking missiles with the accuracy of their hunt. There was Group Two, whose teams were numbered, then there was Devgru—the holy grail for a Frog Hog—and they were grouped into colors. If a woman could sniff out a Red Team guy and get him to take her home, that would be akin to winning a gold medal.
No joke.
They took the hunt to an extreme.
My eyes skated back to Jack, my head tipped, then I asked the stupidest question a woman could ask her man. “How many women have you—”
“None.”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“Don’t need to. I’ve never taken a woman home from this bar.”
I didn’t need to probe or prod, I believed him.
But he’d said “this bar.”
“Will I be running into your women from other bars—”
“There were no other women. Not in Idaho and not here, not since I met you. There was only my hand and you in my mind.”
Nine months.
He’d gone nine months with no woman. And I didn’t think it was because he was waiting for me, when he said himself he never thought he’d see me again.
“What about you?”
I didn’t miss his hands on the table curling into fists, bracing for my answer. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t send happy tingles up my arms.
“No one.” His relief was palpable, but there was a small detail I needed to be honest about. “I did go out on a date.” His gaze journeyed to mine, and his eyes narrowed. “Before I moved to Arizona. A friend asked me to go with her on a double date. I went, mainly because I was bored, but I also wanted to test the waters, see if I could get over you. He was a cool guy. Interesting, high-speed job, driven, ambitious. But five minutes into talking to him, there was nothing. Then I spent the rest of the dinner pissed off and missing you. We said goodbye at the restaurant with a handshake.”
“High-speed job?”
“He flew Hornets out of Oceana.”
“An F-18 pilot.”
I didn’t answer because there was no need. Jack obviously knew what a Hornet was.
A slow smile pulled at his lips. “Good to know I beat out the sky jockey.”
I rolled my eyes.
“You ready to get out of here? Pete’s place in Jamul is about forty-five minutes away.”
