“I’VE BEEN DOING SOME digging on Brant and JW,” Hunter said a while later while he kneaded my shoulders into a relaxing pulp. “It’s dicey, I can’t do too much without setting off some alarm bells, but from what I can tell, JW and Brant connected while Brant was still in college. JW offered Brant a job at InteliCorp for enough money to convince Brant to quit school and cash in on the paychecks. JW knows money talks.”
My thoughts swirled like the fragile bubbles floating around us. I was confused and needed answers. “I remember when Brant was offered the job. We’d been married for a year and living in a tiny apartment. We talked about whether or not he should take it for days, but I could tell Brant already had his mind made up. I kept telling him to get his degree first, but he was so adamant. It was the first big fight we had.” I thought of Brant wrapping his fingers around my neck that night four years ago, insisting I shut up and support him. One of the other shameful secrets of my marriage, something I could hardly bring to admit to myself. Brant had been physical on more than one occasion. Never enough to leave marks or bruises, but enough to scare me into staying.
I shook my head and asked, “It doesn’t make sense. Why would he want Brant? There has to be more to it.” I recalled wondering at the time why they were willing to pay a college student, not even a graduate, such a high starting salary. Brant had never been top of the class by any means. In fact, just the semester before, he’d failed an advanced statistics class that had sent him raving.
‘You’re right. I was away on deployment then, but I remember a few of the guys talking about JW bringing someone new in. It’s a little off kilter for JW because he doesn’t bring new people in. It’s more like you’re born into it. And even then, you have to prove yourself. He knows you—he expects loyalty. Fuck it up?’ Hunter’s eyes darted to mine. ‘It’s not gonna be good,’ he finished ominously.
‘How long do you think Brant’s been stealing from the company?’ I whispered.
“Brant hid his trail well, but I put a few things together and managed to find a few offshore accounts that he thinks are invisible. Based on the dollar amounts, he probably started funneling funds from the beginning.” His face quirked in a sardonic grin. It made my bones chill. Hunter had that in him, the war hero that could flip from target to killer in an instant in the name of survival. I’d seen that as clear as day in his scars, and it haunted me. “So I searched Brant’s records, dug deep, but I couldn’t find a fucking thing connecting him to JW before college.’ He ran a hand through his short hair. “It’s a mystery how they met, but I’ll keep looking.”
‘It sounds like you’re playing a dangerous game with him, Hunter. You said yourself it can’t end well for anyone who crosses him.’ I pressed closer to him. ‘The more you’re involved with him, the worse it gets.’
‘That’s not entirely true.’ Hunter nudged me deeper into his heavy biceps. ‘I’m a special case. I grew up with him. He trusts me, and I trusted him for a long time. He just needs to think I still do. I want out, Erin, and I’ll do whatever it takes. That life isn’t for me. I lived on the streets, ruled by fists and firearms, relying on vices to forget. I had to get out even if I had to crawl out one fucking step at a time.
“JW didn’t want me to join the Army, but when he saw he couldn’t stop me, he respected it. Besides, he realized it could teach me a skill or two that he could put to good use when I got home.” Hunter huffed and I felt his tautly inked muscles tighten beneath me. “I came back and he’s tried to swallow me, but he knows this isn’t my gig. I do some personal surveillance on the side, but I’m done with the underground shit. I made it clear that this is the last job I’m doing with him.”
‘Why did you come back to Chicago after Afghanistan, then?’ I asked.
His gaze turned to mine, eyebrows arched as if it had never occurred to him not to come back. ‘I don’t give up,’ he answered in a stately manner. For some reason it turned my stomach. His bold self-reliant determination was the greatest turn on and in some ways a foreboding weight to carry.
“How do you know he won’t kill you?’
‘I don’t. I just have to beat him at his own game.’
‘But what the fuck is the game? I swear it’s like you talk in riddles sometimes!’ I pushed a hand through my hair.
‘Only JW knows the rules. He wanted Brant to launder money, Brant agreed, then fucked the hand that fed him. Now he’ll have to pay. That’s all I know.”
I sighed, feeling utterly drained and blindsided by the revelations not just about my husband, but about Hunter himself. “I just wanted you,” I uttered before I wrapped my arms around the tight muscles of his back, looking for any sense of comfort I could get.
“I know, baby.” Hunter ran fingers through my damp hair. I adjusted in his lap, feeling his solid length between my legs. I rocked against him, searching for physical comfort to numb my emotions. I snaked my arms around his neck and held tightly as I lifted my hips and felt the gentle nudge of his dick pushing at my entrance. My fingertips slid across the wet skin of his shoulders, trailing over the raised flesh at his biceps, as his hips matched my motions and I finally felt the slow burn of his cock invading me. I started a slow, circling rhythm to my own tune of passion, of desperation, of fear, I wasn’t sure. Maybe it was all of it.
But he was here, buried inside me, and I couldn’t think about anything else in those quiet moments when only the sound of lapping water, quiet sighs, and soft moans interrupted the silence.
Hunter’s heavy pants in my neck urged every sensation on, rattling my emotions as water sloshed over the porcelain rim.
“God, Hunter…”
“You can’t leave. I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” he muttered before his teeth nipped at the crevice in my neck and his hands dug into my soft hips. His fingertips scalded, leaving bruises and breaking capillaries under his punishing force. He thrust harder, more feral, his grunts unsteady, before I was suddenly yanked off his cock and turned and bent over the opposite edge of the tub. My hands fisted at the cold porcelain while soapy wet hands pressed at the flesh of my backside, making me squirm and groan.
“Fuck me, Hunter.” I turned and tried to catch his eye, but I’d hardly had a glance up the defined slope of his biceps and elegantly bunched muscles at his shoulders when his heavy palm fisted in my hair and pushed my head back to face forward.
“Stay still,” he ground, and I felt a gentle caress at my back entrance. “Anyone ever had you here, Princess?” He pressed his thumb at my ass causing me to shudder and quake, arousal running hot in my veins in a direct route to my clit. I shook my head, the words unwilling to form on my lips, the lump of desire blazing an inferno in my throat as my thighs shifted and his thumb massaged in slow circuits.
“You want my cock in your pretty ass?” His words shot fire straight to my pussy.. I needed to feel him anywhere, everywhere. My eyes fell closed and I rested my cheek on the cool tub, hands gripping as he continued to run delicate circles and loosen the tight muscle of my backside with his thumb.
“Answer me.” His thumb stilled and I immediately missed the torturous rhythm. I was surprised to find I liked the sensation of his fingers touching me where no one else ever had.
“Never,” I choked, my eyes clenched tight.
“Good. I’ll be the first then.” His thumb dipped between my legs and he swiped at the arousal that soaked my slit before swiping the moisture to the tight muscle at my ass. His other hand fisted his cock as he lined up with the entrance to my pussy before easing his cock in. His thumb pushed into my ass while he thrust with a persistent rhythm, a slow delicious shudder overtaking my lower body, heightening nerves and sensitizing synapses until they caught fire and spread throughout. “It’ll hurt when I finally do, but you’ll forget all about it when I make you cum.” He nipped at my earlobe savagely before his thick cock and deft thumb had me shrieking and arching. His rough hand held me in place, and I felt captured by him, the heady mix of intense pleasure melting into a slow delicious tingle that was unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
“I can’t wait to feel you in my ass,” I murmured, unbelieving of the words coming out of my own mouth. I was a slave to him, his cock, his words, his intoxicating blend of creative military man.
“Good girl.” His tongue laved at my neck, nipping and flicking and driving me wild as he refused to move inside me. His palm worked its way down my torso, sliding past my nipples and giving them quick little tugs before he wound his way to my clit. His heavy fingers rubbed slowly at first before he quickened and had my pussy pulsing with dampness.
“Fuck my dick, Princess,” he hummed, and as if every nerve in my brain ceased to exist, I did as I was ordered. I slammed my ass against his pelvis and felt him sink into me, filling and stretching, leaving me in ecstasy. So tight and full, with his fingers running faster and massaging my back opening, his cock pummeled into my cunt, I lost myself in him. I was at his mercy, without thought of what he’d done, or why we were here. We were all raw feeling, a savage place where it felt like no one else had ever been.
“You ready, baby?” His other hand wrapped around my waist and fingered at the bud of my clit until the feelings became too much and I lost control, shooting straight out of this world and into another one.
I slumped against the tub as nerves fired through my body, and I lay sated and brain foggy with the most intense sense of pleasure I’d ever been given. Breathing hard and remarkably spent, my mind slowly came back to focus on Hunter’s strong hands at my waist and his low voice, the one reserved for primal sex only, murmuring something soft and low as he fucked me. I marveled at this beautiful man as his breaths grew shallow and his thrusts deeper.
“Love feeling my fat cock in your pretty pussy.” Hunter grasped my hair and pulled me against his taut torso. “My thumb in your ass, owning you. I can’t wait to get my dick in there,” he growled in my ear as his dirty words grew hurried, his thrusts becoming brutal before Hunter let out a long groan that vibrated from him straight into me. And I finally understood what he’d been saying when he was losing himself in me. “You’ll never leave.”
I fell back into Hunter’s arms, feeling raw and deliciously tingly, and burrowed into his hard body. My golden boy. Except he so wasn’t. That was the very last thing he was. At first glance he’d seemed so, the attraction undeniable with the straight cut suit and bubbling creativity, but I couldn’t have seen what lay beneath. The tattoos, the scars, the darkness. He didn’t make sense. He was a walking enigma, but now I had some of the answers. And the answers were more terrifying than even the questions had been.
Hunter’s rough palms smoothed up my arms and circled soapy fingers at my shoulders in a slow massage.
“I have one question,” I asked, afraid of the answer, but knowing I needed it. I sucked in a deep breath and closed my eyes, turning away from his grip at my chin.
“Shoot,” he said matter-of-factly, but I could feel the tension in his shoulders. This was deep. This was scary. I would be crazy not to prefer the safely ensconced reality of my suburban life before Hunter had existed.
“Who should I be afraid of more? Him,” I turned to Hunter, “Or you?”
Slow moments passed until Hunter’s beautifully sculpted lips pressed together and his eyes held mine, unwavering. “That depends who wins the war.”
