When her hand had fallen on his cock, the touch had jolted a measure of awareness into his brain. He hadn’t been kidding about what he wanted to do to her. Even now, the mental image of her hanging onto the heavy bag while he took her kept him hard and aching.
But there were too many reasons to shut that shit down before things went balls to the wall, not the least of which was the fact that her father had torn apart his life, killed six of his closest friends, and turned him into a man he barely recognized anymore. A jagged hole of guilt and loss opened up in the center of his chest. Why hadn’t he seen Merritt’s lies sooner? Seen them for what they were? He shook his head and rubbed against the squeezing ache under his sternum. Given who she was, he should stay away from anything physical. Besides, with all the ways he’d failed—himself and his men—he didn’t deserve the comfort of her warmth and light anyway.
Not to mention the fact that after what had been done to the team, he hated lies. And the NDA meant he couldn’t tell Becca the truth. Another good reason to keep his dick in line. He scrubbed his hands roughly over his face.
With a last look around the gym he’d slowly but surely assembled since his return to the real world, Rixey killed the lights, crossed to his place, and made his way to the back of the quiet, still loft to his office. No sense going through the fa?ade of lying down to sleep. The land of nod wasn’t on his current radar, not with how cranked his body was.
He fell heavily into his desk chair and pulled his drawing into his lap. Following from Jeremy’s rough sketch, the half fireman, half soldier tattoo was nearly done, though that didn’t mean he understood why he kept letting his brother talk him into doing this. Part of it was that art had always been the one thing he and Jer had in common. Well, that and video games. That was about where it ended. Only a year separated them, but Rixey had been sports, and his brother had been books. Rixey had been parties and drinking and hell-raising of the usual teenage variety, and Jeremy had been quiet around everyone but his small circle of Goth and punk friends.
But there was more to it, and Rixey knew it. He continued to do these tats and apprentice toward a license he didn’t really want and had no intention of using in the long term because he was fucking floating through life. No purpose. No plan. No mission.
For a dozen years, all he’d worried about was completing the mission and getting everyone home safe. In Afghanistan, his team had done counterinsurgency work, counternarcotics work, which had often been the same thing, and local police force training. It had been challenging, dangerous, and sometimes frustratingly thankless work, but it had given him the sense of purpose in life he’d been lacking as a younger man.
Now? Wish in one hand, shit in the other. See which one fills up the fastest. He chucked the pad to the desk.
The Army had given him more than just a purpose. It had made him part of something much bigger than himself, placed him in the middle of a brotherhood who understood him implicitly. Nearly a year later, he still mourned the loss of the six good men gunned down in the ambush. Eric Zane, Carlos Escobal, Jake Harlow, Walker Axton, Marcus Rimes, Colin Kemmerer. Their memory was a weight on his shoulders he was privileged to carry. But in not doing more with his life, he wasn’t doing enough to honor their memory. His survival should’ve meant something, shouldn’t it?
You do have a mission, shithead. Keep Becca safe. Find her brother. Get whoever is harassing them to back the fuck off. Maybe that’s why you’re still here.
Fair enough. It was a worthy mission. And if it filled the void for a few days, all the better.
A kind of peace settled over his shoulders—well, as close as he freaking got to anything in the same zip code as peace. And it was enough. Really, it had to be, didn’t it? With a last glance at his soldier-fireman, Rixey pushed up from the chair and made for his bed.
What was on the other side of his soldier identity? Someday soon, he’d have to figure out the fubar of his career and find his own next mission. Wasn’t anybody going to drop that shit in his lap. But, damn, oh stupid thirty in the mothereffing morning was too early to put his brain cells to work on that particular conundrum.
Not even bothering to shed his jeans, Rixey sprawled facedown on the bed, wincing as his jacked-up back reminded him it no longer appreciated that position. He flopped to his side, tugged the sheet up over his hips, and punched the pillow.
Jesus, he was tired.
Knock, knock, knock.
He whipped his head up, alertness crashing through the haze of sleep. Light shone into the room. No way was it morning already. No. Fucking. Way. Felt like he’d fallen asleep about thirty-six seconds ago.
“Building better be on fire,” he groused.
Jeremy leaned into the room, looking a helluva lot more awake and together than Rixey felt. “Becca needs to be to work in forty-five minutes. Her car’s not here?”
Shit. No, it wasn’t. He’d wanted to clear it for any kind of tracking devices before she drove it again. “Okay. Gimme ten.”