Page 88 of Stone

We showered, and after John ate me out (as promised), I lay in bed, splayed across his muscular chest, studying his beautiful face as he played lazily with my hair.

“It’s gettin’ harder each time to say goodbye,” he croaked.

Tears flooded my eyes. “I know.”

“I’m sorry for putting us through this.” He cupped my face and gently swiped my tears away with his thumb.

“It’s okay,” I breathed. “Please, just come back to me.”

“I’ll always come back to you, Duchess. The Devil himself couldn’t keep me away. I promise one day, we’ll do everything we said: build the club, a home, and a family. No power exists on this earth that can keep me away from you.”

He leaned forward and gently kissed me. Then he put his hands under my pits and dragged me up, arranging me so we were joined from chest to hip.

“I want you one more time, baby.” His hands framed my face. “I don’t wanna sleep, just wanna make the most of the time we’ve got.” He leaned down and gently kissed my lips.

I smiled against his mouth, reaching for my man.

And again, it was glorious.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Stone

Within days of Elise going home, Iraq bombed Kuwait City and thus began a war.

Immediately, we were put on high alert. Maneuvers started in earnest, and training was stepped up. Overnight, the assault courses and gyms on base were filled, and the shooting range became a hubbub of activity as Marines were put through their paces.

The news channels had a field day. All we heard were summaries of peace talks and veiled threats. Journalists and politicians analyzed who owed whom what, and why, nonstop and debated it all to death.

But I knew it all came down to oil and dollars—the two things that kept the country ticking over—along with our Second Amendment rights. But who could blame the population for becoming nervous in the face of adversity? War was expensive, but it was also big business, and the gun lobbyists were in their element.

Spence and I suddenly became busy at work. We attended meetings and briefings, then flew to various countries and carried out a job before flying back for debriefings.

The U.S.A. professed neutrality—except they had a vested interest in Kuwait not falling into Saddam Hussein’s hands. Therefore, an operation to move troops and warships to strategic areas began. My battalion was put on standby, but inmy world, players for specific organizations became targets, or to Spence and me, jobs.

See, whenever I peered down a long-range scope, I didn’t consider my target a living, breathing human; I saw a job. Being a Marine wasn’t like other occupations. We weren’t paid to think; we were paid to carry out orders. Our training—even as far back as boot camp—was specially designed to knock our powers of deduction right out of our heads. Curiously, I didn’t see it as right or wrong; it was just the Marine Corps’ way.

Weird for a man who’d been thinking on his feet since he was five years old.

One morning, me and Spence were lifting weights in the gym when the call came over the loudspeaker, calling for my battalion to report to headquarters.

My buddy and I stared at each other for a beat, before getting to our feet to change into uniform and report as ordered.

“Fuck!” Spence exclaimed.

I scrubbed a hand down my face and looked to the heavens for divine intervention, but the ground didn’t rumble, and the sky stayed exactly where it was supposed to be.

It looked like we were about to be deployed.

The heat of Saudi Arabia was unlike anything I’d ever known. It was throat-gripping, chest-burning shit, and I hated it on arrival.

As I walked off the plane, my eyes caught a wide plume of sand in the distance, billowing from the dunes that, from where I stood, looked a hundred feet high. The whirr of aircraft was deafening, and the shouts of soldiers milling around the place, hard at work, just added to the overall feeling of confusion in my chest.

My brethren appeared as perturbed as I felt. Most of us were already beginning to sweat through our fatigues, though it didn’t help that we were loaded down with rifles and weapons and had gas masks attached to our hips.

I’d been here on three occasions, all top secret and under the cover of darkness. We’d been spirited in to do a job, then spirited out when it was over.

This was entirely different. In fact, the whole setup jarred me to the core.

---