Authors: Cynthia Dixon
Still panting, he pulled her into his arms, his mouth sucking at her neck; her collarbone; her small, pert breasts; her stomach. He then ripped her out of her panties and dove his face in between her legs, his thick tongue lapping at her engorged clit. She felt her body swelling with each deft movement of his tongue and mouth and, within minutes, he brought her to climax. At the peak of her orgasm, he put her legs on his shoulders and pushed his still-throbbing erection inside of her up to the hilt. The swift movement took her breath away for a moment, the pleasure of her orgasm doubling as he swiftly pushed in and out of her with all of his weight resting on top of her. Her body hummed with pleasure as she came again and again over the next forty-five minutes, until he finally exploded inside her and their bodies finally came to rest.
***
Something wasn't right.
Sam didn't quite know what it was, but from the minute they’d stumbled into Diana's tiny rental house, he felt as if something was off. It wasn't the sex—no, that was far from off. In fact, it was downright perfect. It was amazing how Diana made him feel.
It was something about the house. It felt like someone was watching them, but he knew that the blinds were drawn and the doors were locked tight. He supposed it could just be that his paranoia was working overtime. He had ditched out on a staff meeting, and he was feeling guilty about it. But this feeling seemed like something far more sinister. He knew it was probably nothing, but he knew he wasn't going to be able to shake the feeling until he checked out the house. After that, he would climb back into bed and sleep until hunger and restlessness got them up and moving.
He climbed out of bed—they'd managed to stumble into the bedroom after he'd finished up so they could be more comfortable—pulled on his boxer shorts, rubbing sleep from his eyes as he shuffled out of the bedroom and into the hallway and came face-to-face with the cause of his paranoid feelings. His eyes went wide and took in a young, well-dressed Mexican man. He had a shaved head, three tear drop tattoos under his left eye, and wore an expensive-looking suit. He looked just as surprised to see Sam as Sam was to see him. They stared at one another as if they were mirror images, and then the young man suddenly snapped to his senses and tried to draw something from inside his suit coat.
Sam must have really been out of it, because he had failed to notice the bulge just underneath the young man's jacket until that moment. But he had enough of his wits to realize that if he didn't move, he was a dead man. As the young man was pulling his firearm from its shoulder holster, Sam lashed out, punching the kid square in the throat and momentarily cutting off his oxygen supply.
As the young man clutched at his throat, Sam threw his full body weight against him, slamming him into the wall. The blow had the opposite of the effect that Sam wanted, and it seemed to refocus the kid. The young man threw a lightning fast elbow, crushing Sam's nose and making him see stars, which gave him enough time to pull his piece: a silencer-fitted .45 Browning semi-automatic. He drew it on Sam, but just before he fired Sam managed to grab the young killer's wrist and twist his arm around, and the bullet that was originally intended for Sam blasted through the killer's eye.
Sam let the killer's body flop to the hallway floor and took a second to catch his breath. He had no idea who he had pissed off to warrant a hit man being sent after him. All he knew was that whoever sent the first one was more than likely to send a second one, and then a third one. And whoever could afford this kind of hired muscle most likely wouldn't stop until Sam and everyone he loved in Mount Lemon was dead. They weren't safe, and they needed to get to someplace safe and fast.
Sam rushed into the bedroom and shook Diana awake as he began to get dressed. She sleepily stared up at him, the ghost of a smile crossing her lips, but then suddenly her eyes went wide with horror.
"Sam—!"
"Diana, you've gotta get up and get dressed."
“Sam!" She yelled. "Are you bleeding?”
He wiped at his face and his hand came away bloody. No, it wasn't his blood, it was blowback from what was left of the killer's head.
"I'm fine, Diana. I'm fine, but you need to get dressed
now
."
They both quickly pulled on their clothing in silence and Sam led Diana from the bedroom, attempting to shield her from seeing the body slumped on the floor, but there really was no way she could avoid seeing it. She was surprisingly calm, and only let out the tiniest gasp as they stepped over the lifeless mass.
He ushered her out to his truck, keeping a sharp eye out just in case there was someone watching them. As he turned over the truck’s engine and pulled away from Diana's small house his mind was racing, trying to think of somewhere he could take them where he knew they would be safe and he could figure out his next move. Unsurprisingly, the one place he thought of as truly safe was home, back on the ranch.
Chapter 5:
Henry, Apache Junction, Arizona
The dream always starts out the same.
Me and my spotter Chuck are moving across a high desert ridge across a rough, crumbling trail. Our destination is a small brush-covered plateau. We both know that we shouldn’t be moving during the day, but orders are orders. We’ve been told our target is on the move and we need to be in place. Mind you, we haven’t been told what or who our target is. That key piece of information is on a need-to-know basis, and at the moment neither me or Chuck need to know jack and shit. We just need to be in place and ready for our next set of orders.
The sun is beating down on us hard. It’s easily 115º out and we’re both turning into puddles. I’m used to the heat—I grew up under this kind of sun, in this kind of territory. But Chuck, Chuck’s from Portland, Oregon, born and breed, and even though we’ve been in-country for a month, his body has never gotten used to it. In the dream, he’s bitching up a storm. He’s going off about the heat, about Command, about the assignment, about how much he hates bananas. Some of it is garbled altogether or his voice sounds like the adults in the old Peanuts cartoons, an off-kilter horn noise. But he’s making me smile, he’s making me laugh. Chuck’s my best friend; we’ve been hanging since basic. The only people I’m closer to are my brothers, except he’s a hell of a lot funnier than Scott and Paul.
The more we walk, the farther and farther away the plateau seems, but neither of us notices because we’re laughing like hyenas at something, and that’s when the wind kicks up. That’s when the sound of rotor blades fill my ears. I’m looking around, trying to find where the noise is coming from. I keep thinking, maybe they’ve decided to call the mission off. Maybe they decided to send a bird to take us back home. Chuck doesn’t seem to notice the sound; his mouth’s still moving a mile a minute. Finally, I spot the bird. It ain’t one of the big Black Hawks we’ve got in-country. The thing coming towards us is old, like the helicopter that TC on
Magnum PI
flew. Except this one has got a couple of M-134 machine guns mounted on it, and they’re spitting fire.
I’m stunned at first. I never saw the Taliban in a chopper before, and seeing it’s almost comical. In fact, I start laughing a bit, at least until the bullets start tearing Chuck to bits. His body is dancing and jerking around like he’s a marionette, his arms and hands flopping around as blood blooms and blisters his body, and then all of a sudden, he just drops, a heap of bones, and then the guns train on me and begin to fire. They rain down in slow motion and just as the first one tears into my chest—
I’m awake, my hand covering the puckered scar in the middle of my chest, and I feel my heart hammering against my hand. The sheets are tangled around me, soaking wet and clinging to me. I glance over at the digital alarm clock on my nightstand and see that it is once again 2:39 in the morning, the same time this same exact dream has rocked me out of bed since I’ve been home. The one upside of spending nearly two years in rehab relearning how to walk—hell, relearning how to do everything—is that at least in rehab, they pumped me full of enough drugs that I would sleep through the entire night without dreams. I sure as shit miss that dope, because at least then I got more than four hours of sleep a night.
Since I know that there ain’t a chance in hell I’m getting back to sleep tonight, I flip on the lamp knowing that the light won’t wake Inez up, open my detective novel, and read until it’s time to go and deal with the first troubles of the day.
***
When I told the old man that I was enlisting, he squinted at me like I’d grown a second head.
“What the hell kind of dumb shit reason did you do that for?” he asked, and then went right back to bailing hay.
The old man had been drafted during Vietnam, and being young, dumb, and full of cum, he’d rejected Grandpa’s offer to pay his way out of it.
“Worst fuckin’ mistake of my life,” he’d tell us over and over while me and my brothers were growing up. “I should’ve let your Granddad just have his way.”
He ended up being in the jungle for two years before he took some landmine shrapnel in the chest. The funny thing is, the injury that got him out of the jungle was almost identical to the one that got me shipped home, too. Of course, my legs and arms were shot to shit on top of that. But the chest wound and my punctured lung were what almost killed me. All the other holes were what made me have to relearn everything.
After coming home to the ranch, I completely understood why the old man hated his time in the military, and the government in general. The damnable thing is that the citizens of the United States aren't the ones who forget the people who fought for them and their "freedom" (by the way, the U.S hasn't fought for anyone's freedom since World War II. The half-dozen some odd conflicts since then have all been rich men's wars, particularly the last three), it's the government. The minute one of the wounded steps off the transport and sets foot (or wheels, or metal appendages) on the ground, the Feds turn their backs and run. They forget all the promises they made to you when they were trying to get you to sign on the dotted line. You become a ghost; a living, breathing ghost.
I was lucky when I came back. I still had my limbs. Outside of the nightmares, my head was intact. The nightmares were easy to deal with. I could handle a little lost sleep, even if it lasted for the rest of my life. I knew they wouldn't truly effect who I was as a person. I knew they wouldn't cause me to lose my job (not that I needed one), or a spouse (Inez knew about my time in the Army, and the first time I startled her awake with the dreams it scared her bit, but ever since then, she knew to just keep her distance until I calmed myself down. She's not even disturbed by them anymore and hardly ever wakes up), or more important things like my sanity. But there are buddies of mine who came back missing arms and legs; with broken backs and minds, and their lives are a constant battle.
Not only do they have to try and adapt to the world again, but also they have to fight their former employers every single inch of the way in order to get what they need to become productive private citizens—things that were promised to them and then weren't delivered. Compared to most of these men and women, I've got it easy. I might be living with the ghost of my best friend waking me up at 2:30 in the morning every night, but at least I'm not itching at a ghost limb, or living on the street because paying for my treatments and medicine has drained me dry. I count my blessings every day because of this, and vow to do whatever I can for those who can't help themselves.
Chapter 6:
Henry, Apache Junction, AZ
I'll be the first to admit that I've never understood what women get out of planning weddings. I mean, I get it, what woman doesn't want to be treated like a princess at least once in her life? But I never in a million years thought Inez would be the type of woman who would be into that type of thing. I figured when I asked her to marry me a few months back that all she would want to do was go down to the courthouse, buy a marriage license, and go and stand in front of the judge. And I'm sure that would've been exactly her reaction if I hadn't opened my big dumb mouth and told her she could do whatever she wanted for the wedding. Yeah, no one's ever accused me of being a genius.
But, you know, all the planning and preparation makes her happy, and that's all I really care about. I'll admit, though, that I can't say I've been exactly all that happy with it. It's not that I hate it or anything, but it's just not in my nature to care about things like decorations, menus, and whatnot. But I've been participating—which mainly consists of me nodding and smiling whenever Inez and the wedding coordinator stick something under my nose—because I know that it's important to Inez. There are certain things that drive me a little battier than others, though. Like looking at napkin and tablecloth colors for nearly three hours, now that will drive any man to drink. And it’s also exactly what we did today.