Operation Endurance

CHAPTER 31

As they taxied the airplane into the hanger, Chris turned to Colton. “I’ll finish up here and you can go over to Julie’s to pick up Penelope. It’s late and I know Pen needs to get to bed. They say these first few months of pregnancy are exhausting.”

Colton smirked at him. “Since when are you an expert on pregnancy?”

“I didn’t sleep much last night so I ended up messing around on the Internet for a few hours. I figured knowing what to expect the first few months during Pen’s pregnancy might be helpful.” He shrugged negligently.

“So, why weren’t you sleeping?”

“Normal stuff, nightmares.” And an amazingly sexy woman who’d visited his bed, driving him crazy. Chris pressed his thumbs into his tired eyes. He hadn’t gotten any more sleep after Julie had left the room and he was paying for it now. He didn’t understand what had brought on the change in her. Last night he saw glimpses of the Julie he’d known before, but the thought that she was in his bed simply because she felt sorry for him made him want to howl in rage and pain. He wanted her there because she wanted to be there. And, God, he really wanted her there.

The nightmare had still been too fresh to have a physical reaction to her while she was there, but flashes of her pressed against him tortured him in the most delicious of ways throughout the rest of the night. Getting a hard-on, he could still be thankful for the miracle of it, even if he had to deal with the blue-balls today. The one highlight of a perfectly miserable night.

Colton unbuckled from his seat and cupped Chris’s shoulder as he stood. “If you’ve got this, I’ll let Mick and you handle it and I’ll go pick up Penelope.”

“We got it. Thanks, Colton. It was a good flight.”

“It was. It will be even more enjoyable to do this though if you start getting some sleep. Flying tired sucks and it’s dangerous, too.”

Chris just gave a sharp nod, knowing he was right. “G’night.”

An hour later, Mick and Chris had finished with the plane. “Mick, I’m gonna go do some paperwork in the office. I’ll lock up everything when I leave.”

“Okay, Chris, g’night.”

Chris needed to wrap things up so that he could get home to Julie, but he just wasn’t quite ready to face her yet. Maybe if he wasted a bit more time here, she’d already be asleep when he got home. It was the coward’s way of dealing with her, but it was the best he’d come up with so far.

The problem was he wasn’t sure he could be strong enough to turn her away again. He knew for a fact he didn’t want to. He’d already decided that he wanted to explore this thing between them, but the last thing he wanted was for her to be there out of pity. Anything but that.

The draw between them was huge. If they gave into it, would it finally burn out? He knew he couldn’t have her long-term. That wasn’t fair to her. She deserved a life with a guy who could give her a family.

Last night she’d said they weren’t through. He wanted that to be the case, but worse than never having her, would be only having her because she felt sorry for him. That, he couldn’t deal with.

Finally, he’d done all he could do to waste time in the office. It was time to man-up and go home.

He shut off all the lights in the building, double-checking the locks on the various doors. As he stepped outside the hangar, he was surprised that the exterior light was out. He’d have to fix that tomorrow. He could see the faint trace of moonlight reflecting off the black of his truck and headed toward it.

Suddenly the skin on the back of his neck prickled and he turned around, searching the darkened shadows around the building. A lighter flared to life and he spotted five guys ambling casually toward him. This wasn’t good. Chris searched the empty parking lot, but his was the only car left.

The guys ranged in height, but all of them moved like they spent time with weights regularly. He’d grown up with Colton and Jake, so he knew how to fight, but these odds didn’t look good for him. He tried to look casual and easy-going. Maybe they weren’t here to cause any problems. Yeah right, and he was about to turn into the Easter Bunny. From the looks of it, a bruised and battered one.

“Hey boys,” he gave them a friendly smile, “it’s a little late to be hanging out at the airfield isn’t it?”

The guys exchanged smirks as they eyed him. They approached steadily toward him and now only stood about six feet away as they quickly surrounded him.

The guy in the center shot him an evil grin. “Man, you have f*cked up somewhere. Someone wants you out of the way and the job has fallen to me and my boys.” He spread his hands out to encompass his friends.

“Really? I can’t imagine someone having a problem with me. I’m a really nice guy. You must have gotten the wrong person. Who are you after?”

“That would be you, Chris Roberston.”

Damn, it would have been so nice if it had just been a matter of mistaken identity, but he couldn’t be that lucky, could he? Guess he should have taken the attacks before now more seriously. Stupid, and now he would pay for it. He shook his head. “Honestly, I have no idea what I’ve done to tick someone off. Maybe you could share with the class who your boss is. Then I could work on fixing whatever I did to hurt his feelings.”

“Now friend, you don’t seem to understand. You don’t have to fix your ways. We’re here to fix them for you.”

“Aw, I see, y’all are giving that way aren’t you?” Maybe if he could keep them talking, he could figure a way out of this mess. He fingered his cell phone in his pocket, but dammit, he’d let the battery die while on their flight and hadn’t charged it when he got back to the office.

“Unfortunately for you, we’re not that giving.” The leader instructed, “Get him.”

Chris started swinging as soon as they began to rush him. He managed a couple of good punches, with gratifying accompanying grunts from his targets before the sheer number of them overtook him. Fists seemed to land everywhere on him and the pain was immediate under the sheer force of the blows. So far, he’d managed to stay on his feet, but when he heard a growled, “Take out his knee,” he knew that wasn’t going to last long.

He heard a crack and howled as he went crashing to the ground. Blinding spasms of pain ricocheted up from his knee to his thigh and groin as the brutal kick of the steel-toed boots hit their mark on his poor battered knee.

“Finish him,” the dark voice instructed and a flash of silver gleamed in the moonlight. Aw, damn, these guys weren’t playing around. They honestly planned to kill him here.

As the throbbing pulsed through him, he suddenly wondered why he’d been so picky about why Julie wanted to sleep with him. At least then, he could have died with final thoughts of her loving his body. He tensed for one final desperate fight as the guy came at him with the blade, when a flash of light made him wonder if he’d begun hallucinating.

But suddenly the pack stood up and backed up from him, squinting into the oncoming light. They took off running and Chris tried to figure out what was happening when a motorcycle came to a sliding stop beside him.

Colton jumped off his motorcycle, ripping off his helmet as he ran to Chris’s side.

Chris lay there panting, thanking God that once again he’d cheated death.

“Chris, are you okay? F*ck, what the hell happened?” Chris could see the blurry outline of Colton’s worried face, but his eyes weren’t able to focus well enough to tell more than that.

He groaned. “I think I ticked someone off,” came out with a cough as his battered ribs objected to the harsh treatment they’d just received.

Colton ran his hands up and down Chris’s arms and torso. “Does it feel like anything’s broken?”

Chris took a breath and tried to focus on the individual pains rather than on the whole, ‘oh f*ck, everything hurts.’

He levered himself up so he was sitting with Colton’s assistance. He wiped the blood dripping into his right eye. “Damn, I’m really glad to see you,” he rasped out.

“You’re lucky I came back.” Colton glanced warily around the now empty parking lot. “Let’s get you inside and call the cops. Do you think you can move?”

“I think so, but they took a pretty good kick at the knee so let’s see how good all those bionic parts really are.”

As Colton pulled Chris up, he couldn’t stifle the groan. Damn, this was going to hurt tomorrow. F*ck, it actually really hurt right now. With Colton’s aid, he managed to hobble to the door of the hangar. The offices were along the side of the building, but it was too far of a walk for him right now. He sank to the floor with a wave to Colton. “I’ll just wait here for you, if that’s okay?”

Colton ran a jerky hand through his hair while he dialed on his cell phone. Chris closed his eyes. Who had he ticked off enough lately that they’d order a hit on him? He took a shallow breath and felt along his ribs to make sure none were cracked. One thing about his days of torture, he could self-diagnose with the best of them. It seemed like his stitches had held, too.

The sound of metal on the concrete floor startled him out of his internal wound exploration. He cracked his eyes open to see that Colton had set a chair down in front of him.

“It will feel better than the cold, hard floor.”

Chris was sure that was true, but wasn’t quite sure that his legs would cooperate with getting him there yet.

He really didn’t want to move his battered body, but he probably didn’t want Colton to know how much pain he was in or else he’d be insisting on a trip to the ER tonight. Chris wasn’t going to agree to that. He needed to get home to Julie and he couldn’t watch over her from the hospital.

Accepting Colton’s assistance, he managed to get seated into the chair without too much additional pain. Now if the black spots would stop flashing in his vision, things would be great. He closed his eyes, hoping that would help, but all that did was give him a good case of vertigo. As he tilted to the side, Colton steadied him.

“Chris, what happened?”

“Um, I was jumped.”

“Yeah,” Colton said dryly. “I saw that much. Who were they and why did they jump you?”

“Who? I have no idea. Why? Someone hired them.”

“You specifically?”

“Yep, that’s what they said.”

“But they didn’t say why?”

“Nope.” Chris rubbed at his temples, trying to straighten out his vision. He probably should come clean with the other two events. Colton wasn’t going to be happy he hadn’t mentioned it before now.

“Okay, well, Brian’s on his way. Maybe he can figure it out.”

“We can hope. Hey, what are you doing back here? Not that I’m complaining, but I honestly thought I was a dead man.”

Colton shrugged, but wouldn’t meet Chris’s eyes. “Penelope went right to bed and I figured I would come by and check to make sure that everything was okay on the flight logs.”

Chris squinted at him. “Honestly? You were coming by to check up on my work?”

“Yeah, sorry, but you were really tired. I just wanted to make sure everything was filed correctly before morning.”

Chris shook his head. He should be angry with Colton except that his controlling issues had probably saved Chris’s life tonight. “S’okay. I’m just really glad you came back when you did.”

Colton’s forehead wrinkled. “You’re a mess and in more pain than I thought if you’re not going to give me hell for checking up on your work. I’m gonna go find some wet rags to see if we can clean some of that blood up and see how serious those gashes are. Then we’ll decide if we need to take a side trip to the ER. The way you keep blinking, I’m guessing at the bare minimum, you’ve had your bell rung and have a concussion. How’s the knee?” He looked down at it, but it was covered by Chris’s jeans.

Chris could tell by the way that it felt that he was probably lucky Colton couldn’t see it. He had a feeling it was looking pretty rough and swelling rapidly. He’d make an appointment with his orthopedic doctor tomorrow to have it checked over to make sure that none of the components of it had been damaged.

“It’s okay.” Chris flexed it to show his big brother that it was still working. He really didn’t want to go to the hospital tonight. “Can I borrow your cell phone? Mine is dead and I need to text Julie that I’m going to be late, just in case she’s still awake and worried.” They still had to do the police report with Brian. It was liable to be a few hours before he got to head home. Weariness pulled on him at the thought.



* * *



Two and a half hours later and Chris finally managed to drag his sore body inside the door of Julie’s house and dragging was the only word for it. He was bone-tired exhausted, even his fingernails hurt.

Julie had obviously been waiting up for him because when he opened the door, she popped off the couch with a gasp and rushed to his side. She was dressed for bed in a small t-shirt and sleep shorts, although he couldn’t see any signs that she’d slept at all yet.

“Oh my God. Are you okay?” she asked him but looked to Colton, who walked closely beside him so that he didn’t do something girly like faint to the ground. Not that that would happen. Probably.

“I’m fine. I’m sure it looks much worse than it feels.” Lie. It felt like hell spawn had beat on him tonight, but he didn’t want her to worry. As it was, he felt bad enough that she was still awake. She was recovering from a serious illness. He was supposed to be taking care of her, not the other way around.

Colton pushed him toward the couch, but addressed Julie. “He refuses to go to the ER. I think he’s okay. Maybe a mild concussion and he took a pretty good kick to the knee. I figure you’re as qualified as anyone to know when that needs attention.” Colton waved his hand toward Chris’s knee.

She nodded and frowned, her eyes widening when she looked down. His battered knee pressed against his jeans where it swelled.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Yeah, it looks like it probably needs some attention. Thanks Colton. I’ll take care of him. Get home to Penelope.”

“Okay, call me if you need anything,” he told Chris. “I have your truck since we left my motorcycle inside the hangar, not that you’ll need it tomorrow. You officially have the day off.”

“Thanks Colton.” Chris leaned his head back against the soft couch cushions and shut his eyes as the door clicked shut.

Suddenly he became aware of tugging at his feet. Cracking his eyes open, he looked down at Julie. “What are you doing?”

“Taking off your boots.” She finished tugging, taking extra care with the removal of the left one. She rested her warm hand on his right thigh and immediately a spasm of arousal shot directly to his groin. “Okay, now off with the jeans.”

“I don’t think—”

She plucked at the fabric tightening around his knee and he hissed in response. “Yep, that’s what I thought. In about another five minutes, we’re going to have to cut these off of you, so either take them off now, or I will be cutting them off of you then.”

He frowned at her. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re bossy?”

“Yep, and stubborn, so you might as well give in now.”

He shook his head at her. She wouldn’t be so cocky when she caught sight of his erection, although when he thought about how painful just removing his jeans was going to be, it flagged quite a bit. Damn, this wasn’t going to be fun.

He took a deep breath—well as deep as he could after having his ribs pounded on for a while—and pushed himself up off the couch, putting most of his weight on his right leg. As he unbuttoned his jeans, he watched Julie.

Her pupils dilated and she subconsciously licked her lip.

Immediately his arousal came slamming back. This was going to be bad. “Um, maybe you should turn around?”

Her narrowed eyes flew to his. “Seriously? I’m a professional.”

“Well, you’re not looking at me like a professional.”

Blood suffused her face and he spun his hand in the air in a turn around gesture. She huffed out a frustrated sigh, but complied.

As he eased his jeans down the swollen knee, he gritted his teeth. He avoided looking at it, knowing it wasn’t going to be pretty. He sat back down on the couch and pulled the jeans off his feet, then resettled back against the cushions with a pillow drawn over his pulsing cock. Even with all this pain, the knowledge that Julie was about to touch him had his member throbbing and engorged. Who would have guessed a week ago that he’d be wishing he could get rid of an erection?

“Okay, you can turn back around.” He laid back on the couch so he could rest both legs across the cushions.

When she turned around her gaze immediately flew to the pillow and she smirked at him, but her demeanor turned professional as she inspected lower. She gasped as she caught her first glance at his knee and he couldn’t resist the impulse to look, too.

He knew better. The knee was the size of a softball, heading toward a basketball. Already, shades of purple, black, and blue radiated out from where the boot had hit. His stomach roiled. You would think by now he would be used to seeing his body, in particular this knee battered and bruised. But knowing how close he’d come to losing that knee entirely, the nausea surged with the possibility of going through that whole ordeal again.

A delicate finger lifted his chin and he looked into Julie’s concerned hazel eyes.

“Hey, it’s okay. I know it looks bad, but I watched you move. It’s not as bad as it looks. Don’t panic,” she said softly, trying to get him to relax.

He hadn’t realized that his breath was sawing in and out like he’d just run a marathon. Damn, he was hyperventilating.

She lowered her head closer to his and focused on his lips. “Chris, it’s okay. Just breathe in and out.” She brushed a feathery kiss across his lips and all thoughts of his knee fled.

Pear and jasmine invaded his senses. He threaded his hand through the hair at her nape and pulled her closer to deepen the kiss. The adrenaline of the evening after the frustration of last night was just too much. He wanted her closer.

She obviously agreed, pressing her hands into the folds of his t-shirt to explore his chest as his tongue ravished hers. She lowered onto his lap so she straddled him. The pressure of her heat against his erection was bliss and torture at the same time. It had been so long. His hips surged up of their own accord, seeking satisfaction against her. He hurt everywhere, but need overtook that pain quickly.

Julie writhed frantically on top of him, her hands massaging and rubbing whatever skin she could find. Impatient, she ripped his t-shirt over his head and immediately rained kisses along his chest.

Eyes shut, he dropped his head back, enjoying the feel of Julie on him. Oh God, he’d thought he’d never feel this ever again. Needing more, he slid his hand under the edge of the leg of her shorts and discovered she wore no panties. Groaning, he began the trek across her skin to find that place of heaven. Arousal saturated her silky folds and he couldn’t resist the need to sink his finger into them. As he did, she arched her back, making a perfect present of her breasts heaving toward his mouth. Lowering his head, he kissed her nipple through the thin fabric of the t-shirt. He suckled and stroked the hard nub with his tongue as he dipped a second finger into her core. The muscles of her vagina clenched around his fingers and a drop of moisture leaked from the tip of his cock.

Damn, he needed to slow down or he wasn’t going to make it to the finish line. He switched to work her other breast, but needed more, so he tugged at her shirt. “Take it off,” he growled. Her hands fumbled to comply and he looked up into her desire-laced eyes as she removed it. When her eyes met his, he knew he’d made a mistake. She’d seen the bruises on his face.

“Oh God, how could I forget? You’re hurt. We can’t do this.” She began to rise off him, but he grasped her hips to hold her down, knowing she could feel his hard as steel arousal against her.

“I’m fine,” he whispered harshly. “Please don’t stop for me. I want you so much.” His fingers still thrust inside her and he curled them to work her folds. The sensation appeared to rock her concentration on his wounds and she moaned deep. Her eyes lost focus and her breathing gasped. Her hips surged again and again. He ran the pad of his thumb over her * and she shattered around his fingers, moisture flooding over them. She screamed his name and continued to clench over and over leaving a trail of scratches down his chest.

He couldn’t hold off any longer. He needed to be inside her. He tugged at his boxer briefs so that his cock was free. She’d scrambled to shed her clothing. Before climbing back on top of him, she took his shaft in hand, rubbing up and down his long length several times, before throwing her bare, long leg over him. He hissed as she lowered over him so he was just touching the edge of her delicate folds.

She held still there for a moment, their harsh, heavy breathing reverberating throughout the room. Then she looked at him with so much emotion in her eyes it left him feeling stunned. But as she sank down the length of his cock, he forgot how to feel anything but the pure ecstasy of being a part of her.

Her warmth pulsed around him and the tingling at his spine warned him he was too close. He grabbed hold of her hips and held her still while he laved kisses over her breasts, trying to gain some semblance of control. She wouldn’t be held down, though, and continued to slide down him and flex her hips as she rained kisses and bites across his neck and chest.

It had been too long and his control was nonexistent. His orgasm barreled down as her inner walls convulsed around him. He slid the pad of his finger across the nub of her * as he latched on once again to the nipple of her breast. She tensed and cried out his name as he exploded, sending wave after wave of bursts of hot cum into her core.

When the spasms along her inner walls ended, she collapsed against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and simply held her, reveling in the feel of her breath fluttering across his chest hairs. Her rapid pulse pounded against his chest and the hard nubs of her nipples teased at the planes of his stomach. These were the little things that he swore he would never take for granted again.

This, this closeness, this being a part of another person, Julie, was the best feeling in the entire world and he never wanted to go without it again. Selfish? Yeah, but he wanted to keep her in his life, and not just as friends.

Her head still lay against his chest, her hair resting just below his chin. Her fingers played with the hair that trailed up his stomach and she whispered, “We didn’t use a condom.”

He closed his eyes. He didn’t think he could get her pregnant. That probably wasn’t possible for him anymore. “I’m sorry, Julie. I didn’t even think about it, but I can promise you I’m clean. I haven’t been with anyone since you.”

Her head lifted off his chest and she watched him with wide eyes.

“I’ve been through a continual battery of medical tests since then. I know I’m clean.”

“I haven’t been with anyone since then either.”

Wait. What? Her eyes filled with tears and her voice was so low he wasn’t sure he heard her right. That couldn’t be right, could it?

“How is that possible? What about Aaron?”

She shook her head and the tears spilled onto her cheeks. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t sleep with him. I’d promised to wait for you and I just couldn’t break that promise. I tried, because you were dead, but I couldn’t.”

Shock sizzled through his system as he thought back to those months before Aaron died, and the torture of watching them together. There’d always been a slight tension between them that he hadn’t recognized at the time. This must have been the source for it.

“I don’t understand. If that was the case, then why did you stay with him once I was back?”

“He was a good man and he loved me. You made it obvious you didn’t want me, and I didn’t want to hurt him.”

“But,” he sputtered. He had wanted her, desperately. But he had been dealing with so many debilitating physical and mental problems. He remembered back over those days in the hospital, when he was zoned out with extremely high fever and excruciating pain. At that point in time, no one but family was allowed to see him. Cassie had sat by his bedside for hours, telling him stories about everything that had happened in the six months while he’d been held captive. Within those stories he learned about Julie and her new gorgeous doctor boyfriend.

But Cassie had never known his history with Julie. They’d chosen not to share it with her or any of their friends so she had no way of knowing how destructive those stories were to his heart. When he’d finally gotten to see Julie, he’d acted like he didn’t care purely as a self-defense mechanism. He was already hurting too much to be able to deal with her outright rejection, too.

He swallowed against the lump in his throat. “Butterfly, I never stopped wanting you. It was thoughts of you and that perfect day at Cassie’s house that kept me alive all those months.”

Tears flowed freely down her face, as she brushed her fingertips across the bruise on his cheek. As he winced, her eyes widened. “Oh no, I forgot about your knee.” She scrambled off him, throwing on clothes as she ran to the kitchen.

He slumped back, once again feeling all his aches and pains. His knee pulsed in time to his heart, his head pounded, and his ribs shuddered with every breath he drew into his lungs. Between the adrenaline, the orgasm, and the fact he hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours, he was losing in his battle against exhaustion. He was aware of Julie propping his knee up with a pillow and placing an ice pack around it, but he was too far-gone into sleep to respond to it.



* * *



Julie watched over Chris as he slept. Every minute, it seemed as if the bruises on his torso and face became more intense. There were some stitches along his side that she was curious about. The wound didn’t look fresh, but she didn’t know how he’d hurt himself before this attack. She was jittery and having a hard time settling down. She paced around the room, glancing worriedly at him every time she rounded the corner.

They’d made love and it had been amazing. Her knees quivered just thinking about it. She studied him, taking a moment to lean down to examine the bruise blossoming over his temple. Tears welled in her eyes. She couldn’t stand that he was hurt, again. She could have lost him tonight. She took a deep breath and resumed pacing, mentally listing, alphabetically, the spices in her cabinet. She made it to marjoram before she had control of her emotions again.

He said he never stopped wanting her, but right now she wasn’t deserving of that love. She wrapped her arms around her waist and crouched down to the floor, rocking slightly. She had to deal with this. They needed full honesty if they were going to move forward. He needed to know about Nalia and that she was almost positively sterile after losing the baby. She had to face this if she wanted a future with him. It was time to stop running from the memories if she wanted to be able to make it work between them.

Resolved, she made a final switch on Chris’s knee removing the ice pack and was gratified to see the swelling had gone down a lot. She drew the blanket back up his naked form, brushing a lock of hair off his forehead, and then grabbed her cell phone off the counter.

It was just after 5:00 in the morning so she knew Rachel would be up already. She slid in between the covers of her bed and dialed her big sister’s phone number.

“Hello?”

“Rachel, it’s Julie. I need help.”

“Finally…”