Today was a dumpster fire day. Or it would be when I got home.
He tried to hide how much the military way of life irked him. He thought I hadn’t caught on to his fuming, especially when we’d be talking, I’d have to stop to salute someone who outranked me. So, even though he’d been trying to keep it from me, I knew tonight wouldn’t be fun.
When I pulled into the driveway at the house, Declan’s truck wasn’t there. When I left this morning, he’d been sprawled out on his stomach with a knee pulled up to his chest, hugging my pillow. I could just make out the puckered flesh of his hole and stood mesmerized, watching it like a sniper watches a target while I dressed. My gaze never wavered. I just stood at the foot of the bed, letting his spectacular ass remind me of the things we’d done the night before, and I planned all the things I wanted to do to him when I got home tonight. Then his hole winked at me, and I nearly failed to ignore the need to take him right fucking then.
I remember him making a noise and saying something, but my brain was still buried in the gutter, so I might have forgotten if he’d mentioned leaving the house before I kissed him goodbye. I didn’t think I missed anything, and he hadn’t said anything earlier in the week about a detail. He’d only bitched about the paperwork, and then there was some profiling shit he did for the PMC he was excited about, but that was it. Paperwork and profiling. Nothing about a detail. But, then again, stuff came up unexpectedly sometimes.
Case in point: my deployment date was being moved up. We were T-minus two days before the ship got underway for a six-month deployment, a week fucking early. Hence the worry about his reaction. Before getting out of the car, I checked my phone.
No missed calls.
No missed texts.
Not even anything on the photo app he liked to use to tease me with slutty photos throughout the day.
I grabbed my gear from the passenger seat and headed into the house. The door closed behind me. I dropped my ruck on the floor next to the door.
“Declan?”
I glanced through the downstairs. His computer wasn’t sitting on the table or the end table next to the recliner. I took the stairs two at a time, but he wasn’t in the bedroom, gym, or bathroom.
“Where the fuck are you, vato?”
I jogged downstairs to check the fridge, only to come up empty. There wasn’t even a note on the fridge. I pulled my phone out of my pocket to message him, and it rang in my hand before it even cleared my pocket. The screen lit up with a cheesy selfie of our faces.
“There’s no note,” I said, foregoing niceties. He knew the rules. I didn’t have many.Wedidn’t have many.
No clothes in bed, and texts letting each other know we were safe at work, on the way home, or up for the day, but the biggest one was him letting me know if his schedule changed during the day. That required a text and/or, preferably, a note left on the fridge. I didn’t always get texts if I was out of service or whatever. And because he was pissy about it being one-sided, I texted him, letting him know if things changed for me during the day whenever I could. Sometimes it was just a quick, “shit hit the fan, may be late text,” but I tried.
“Shit. Sorry. Things have gone to shit real quick.”
“Where are you?”
“The beach house.”
Mansion.
“What’s wrong?”
“That nightmare client we had? The one I mentioned the night we met at the nightclub?”
“The one I should thank profusely? That one?”
“If you try, I’ll whip your ass. She’s a fucking cunt.”
“Duly noted. And it’s comical you think you can whip my ass, but go on.”
He grumbled under his breath before saying, “Well, Veruca Salt and her whipped-as-fuck daddy, and no, not that kind, the biological kind, are causing a shitstorm and calling in favors. So, Walker, Linc, Heidi, and I have been working to put out the fires they’ve caused with other clients.”
“Fuck. Will things be okay?”
I didn’t know anything about the business side of what they did. I’d met some private military contractors, and even worked with a few outside the wire, but I knew fuck all about private security. From what I’d gathered, they operated like mini Secret Service units.
“Yeah, but now Uncle Matthew, Foster, and Celeste are on their way here, so we can work out a game plan on how to deal with them.”
“That sucks. Any clue when you’ll be free.”
“Not really. Sometime tonight. I hope. Depending on how long it takes to right the wheel, I may end up staying here so we can get everything figured out. I just hope like hell we can get out of placating the twin terrors.”
