Toward the Sound of Chaos (16 page)

God,
do I hope that she’s right
.

I
grab the nape of her neck and lean in, smashing my mouth down on hers. She lets
out a surprised whimper. I know I should be gentle with her—she’s so small, so
fragile, and yet she holds all the power here.

“Make
love to me, please?” she whispers, trailing kisses down my neck and torso while
her fingers tug at the drawstring on my pants. She yanks them down, exposing my
cock, and a beat passes where I close my eyes so I won’t see the horror in her
gaze. They didn’t leave any part of me unscarred. My thighs are crisscrossed
with cane marks, and nestled into my pubic hair is a series of long scars that
run across my lower abdomen where Bashir threatened to cut off my dick more
than once, but settled instead for scoring my flesh.

I
open my eyes and peer down at Elle. Her eyes glisten with unshed tears, but she
doesn’t say a thing. She reaches out and tentatively takes my uncut cock in her
hands, gently sliding my foreskin back and forth over the head. I groan, and
when she puts her mouth on me I’m so close to losing my shit it isn’t funny. I
thread my fingers in her hair and pull her away before I wind up coming down
her throat so hard she gags on it. I kiss her lips and push her back on the
bed, engulfing her body with mine.

Her
breaths are heavy and labored as I kiss her, thrusting my tongue into her mouth,
forcing her to open to me, to give it up to me. I grab hold of my dick and
stroke the head through her wetness, teasing us both by pushing the very tip in
and pulling out just as fast. She wraps her legs around my back, and angling
her hips toward me, she digs her heels into my ass, shoving me closer. I sink
in all the way and almost come undone.

Fuck,
she’s tight
.

“So
damn perfect,” I groan and move inside her. My first taste of a woman in too
many years, and I can’t pretend I don’t feel some base need to thrust and spill
my seed inside her, but she deserves better. So I give her that. I do right by
her because someone else didn’t.

***

She
lies her head on my chest and I toy with her hair, wrapping those long locks
around my finger. I wonder what it’d feel like having them trail across my
stomach with her mouth around my cock. My dick twitches, but I kiss her hair
and breathe in the lavender scent of her shampoo, wishing we never had to move
from this spot.

“Why
didn’t you run from me?”

Elle
leans up on her elbow to see my face. “Because you don’t scare me, Jake
Tucker.” She peppers my ruined skin with kisses. “Besides, my daddy never
taught me how to run from boys; he taught me how to fire a gun. Now, come on.
I’m starving, and I only have a few hours left before I have to get home.”

I
smile as she bounds out of bed and walks over to the dresser, pulling out
drawers until she finds what she wants. “Can I borrow a shirt?”

“Do
you have to?” I ask, grinnin’.

“I’m
not cooking naked,” she says with a stern look. “So yes, I have to.”

“You’re
cookin’?”

“Yes,
I’m cookin’. I just told you I’m starved.” She freezes and then lifts my gun
from the drawer.

I’m
across the room before she can blink. I take it from her and unclip the
magazine. I should have put it away properly.

“You
keep a gun in your T-shirt drawer?”

“It’s
just a precaution,” I say. A muscle in my cheek twitches, and I clamp my teeth
together as I place the gun and the clip in the drawer on my nightstand and
lock it with the key.

“It
was loaded.” Ellie snatches up a T-shirt and pulls it on over her head. It
dwarfs her. She looks good in my shirt.

“Well,
won’t do no good to have a gun without bullets when trouble comes knockin’.” I
give her a tight grin. Her brows knit and she frowns, I’m sure there’s questions
on the tip of her tongue, but I’d just as soon not answer them so I shrug and
pull another shirt from the neatly folded pile. She reaches out a hand to stop
me.

“Don’t
cover yourself on my account.”

I
furrow my brow and wrestle with the fabric in my hands. Everything inside tells
me to put it on, to cover my scars from her even though she just spent the last
hour exploring them, but her eyes beg me not to.

“Please?”

I
let out a deep sigh and throw it back in the drawer, walking out of the room
before I can change my mind. Downstairs, I stalk into the kitchen and lean
against the countertop. Ellie’s feet pad on the floorboards and her soft arms
wrap around me from behind. I can’t breathe. I don’t know what else to do, so I
clutch her forearms tightly and hope to God she don’t let go.

Jake

I
drown my pancakes in syrup and load my plate up with bacon, heading toward the
dining table, but Ellie keeps walking through to the living room and sits on
the rug in the middle of the floor. Like the rest of the contents of this
house, it’s old, worn and comfortable. She pats the carpet beside her and Nuke,
ever a fan of bacon and pretty women, takes the seat she offers. Ellie laughs
and pets his head. “Wrong Tucker, but I suppose you’ll do.”

“Nuke,
on your bed,” I command. He obeys with a whine and climbs up on the bed in the
corner of the room, giving us his back.

I
sit beside Elle and spear my food with my fork, woofing down huge mouthfuls.
It’s good. Buttermilk, thick and fluffy, and the bacon is done extra crispy.
“These are good.”

“It’s
my memaw’s recipe. She taught me to cook.”

“Not
your mamma?”

She
laughs. “Are you kiddin’? Portia Mason? No, my mamma never set foot in the
kitchen a day in her life. We had a maid to do all that for us. My grandmamma
taught me how to cook. She taught me everything I know worth any value, that
woman.”

I
knew Ellie had come from old money; it was one of the things I’d guessed about
her the second she opened her mouth. She might have fallen on harder times
lately, but no amount of pinching purse strings could eradicate years of proper
southern deportment. It was in the way she walked, the way she held herself,
and in her ability to completely own any man who decided to take her on. “And
where is she now?”

“Dead.
God rest her soul. She took me in when I had no one else. When my parents found
out about Spence, all hell broke loose. Mamma threatened to run me to the
clinic to have him
removed
, as she put it. Daddy was upset, too, but he
was runnin’ for governor, and I think he was more concerned about how it would
affect his campaign than anything.” She stabs the food on her plate a little
too forcefully. “I think my daddy gave up on me being his little princess long
before that. I had a wild streak back in the day.”

I
laugh. “I can see that about you.”

She
flashes a wry smile. “Anyway, I put my parents through hell when I first met
Jimmy, and then when they found out I was pregnant and about to throw my life
away on some penniless, redneck hick—as my mamma put it—they told me I had to
give up my baby and that under no circumstances was I to marry him, so I did. I
did everything they told me not to.” She bumps her shoulder with mine. “And
look where it got me. A beautiful son who is the honest-to-God love of my life
and a hot pancake date in the middle of the night.” She winks.

I
grin, but I ain’t done listenin’ to her opening up just yet. “Tell me about
Spencer’s birth.”

“What
do you want to know?”

“I
don’t know, all of it.” I shrug. “You were only twenty, right?”

“Twenty-two,”
she corrects me, shaking her head. “Scariest year of my life. Jimmy wasn’t
there when Spencer was born. He wasn’t dealing too well with the pregnancy side
of things, so when the time came he dropped me off and went to look for a park.
He found a bar instead.”

God,
I’d been such an ass, drinkin’ in front of her, sayin’ all those things I never
should have said, about how she was entitled, and all along she’d been runnin’
from her past and raising a boy on her own.

“We
spent half the next day waiting at the hospital for him to come pick us up, and
when he did he reeked of whiskey. Almost ran us right off the road, too. I got
out, used a muslin wrap to protect that little baby from the sun, and even
though my arms were breaking and I hurt all over, I walked the rest of the way
home. Eighteen hours after giving birth.”

I
clench my jaw so hard I swear I hear my teeth creak; Ellie places her hand over
mine, probably tryin’ to keep me from murdering the pancake on my plate. I set
the fork down and stretch out my aching hands. “I’m sorry you had to go through
that.”

She
gives me a sad smile. “I had a lot to learn about men like Jimmy. I never
should have gotten in that car with him in the first place. When I got back to
the rundown apartment we shared, I packed up our things and called Memaw to
come get me and Spence.”

“Not
your parents?”

“Nope.
They made it clear when I left that I was no longer welcome in their home.”
Ellie smiles to herself. “Memaw, though? She loved that boy; she’d have done
anything to protect me and Spence.”

“How
did she die?”

“Broken
heart. Doctors said it was a congenital thing, but that woman was fitter than
an ox. Jimmy had showed up at Memaw’s a week after Spence was born, beggin’ me
to take him back, and I did. I thought I could change him, you know?”

I
take her hand and kiss it. “That wasn’t your fault.”

“Stupid
was what that was.” She exhales loudly. “It took me two years to work up the
courage to leave him, and then he found me and dragged me back. Memaw begged me
to leave him, a number of times; she even sold her house so we could leave,
just the three of us. I was terrified of him finding us, of her being hurt in
the process, so I stayed.” She smiles sadly. “The drinkin’ got worse, the
beatings got worse, and when I did finally up and leave in the middle of the
night, I disappeared into thin air and she died a week later. I couldn’t even
attend the funeral of the second-most important person in my life because I was
afraid Jimmy would look for me there.”

A
tear glances off her cheekbone and I move closer, cupping her face in my sticky
hands and kissing her lips. “He can’t ever hurt you again.”

“I
know.” She waves it off as if it’s no big deal, but it’s a really big deal. She
married a monster, one that was shot dead only twenty-four hours ago. She’s
barely had time to process any of this, and here she is, half-naked and eating
pancakes on my living room floor. Maybe I should have turned her away, given
her time to grieve, held her and not taken advantage of this situation.

God,
I’m an asshole.

“Anyway,
enough sad talk,” she says, staring down at my plate. Her brow furrows and she
gives me a strange look. “You get enough syrup, or you need me to bring in the
truck?”

I
shrug. “I like syrup”

“I
see that.”

“What?
You don’t like sweet?”

“Oh
no, I like sweet. In fact, I’m all about sweet,” Ellie says with a mischievous
smile. She takes the plate from me. I quickly swallow a mouthful of food as she
climbs into my lap and brings her lips to mine. Her tongue darts out along my
bottom lip, licking away syrup.

“Angel,
maybe we should—”

“Shut
up and kiss me, Jake.”

How
can I say no to that?

I
lean in and kiss her, gently, sweetly. Her tongue slides between my lips and I
snake my sticky hands beneath the oversized T-shirt and along her body. I cup
her breasts as our kisses deepen. She writhes against the hard-on pushing at my
sweats, and I rock my hips in time with Elle’s, her moans driving me fucking
crazy. I grab the hem of her T-shirt and pull it up over her head, exposing her
full, beautiful tits to me, and I pepper her neck with kisses, wanting to taste
every inch of her. I palm her breasts and suck one nipple into my mouth. Elle
threads her fingers in my hair and throws her head back, a moan escapes those
perfect lush lips. I can’t stand not being inside her any longer, so I free my
cock and watch as she lowers herself down on me, taking every inch.

“Jesus
fucking Christ,” I groan, as she rocks gently back and forth. I can’t keep my
hands off of her. My fingers grip the nape of her neck while my other hand
strokes her breasts, ass, and finally her clit. Her breath hitches and her body
starts to shake when I circle the small nub.

She
pants. “I like sweet . . . a lot.”

So
I give it to her. I fuck her slow and bring her to the brink several times. I
tease her until she begs for release and then I kiss her as she comes, and
swallow the sweetness of her sighs. A beat later, I come inside her, and on my
living room floor as we lie in a tangle of sticky limbs and beating hearts, I
realize I’m real fond of sweet.

Jake

I
n
the morning I head out for my jog, but I don’t make it past the porch because
there’s a marked car in my driveway. Nuke barks at the officers comin’ up the
walk.

“Mornin’
Sergeant,” I say, looking beyond to the two uniformed officers behind him.
“Officers.”

“Mornin’,
Jake.”

“Nuke
and I were just stepping out for a run, but what can I do you for?”

“Well,
we just have a few questions for you. Won’t take up much of your time.”
Sergeant Murphy tucks his thumbs into his gun belt and rolls his ample weight
back on his heels. “Would you mind coming down to the station so we can have a
proper chat?”

I
fold my arms across my chest. “Am I in some kind of trouble?”

“Nope,
no trouble.” Murphy holds out his hands in a placating gesture. “Just lookin’
for some answers is all.”

I
knew this was comin’—in fact, I’m a little surprised it took ’em this long to
darken my doorstep, but that don’t mean I’m happy about it. “Answers to what?”

Panic
roils in my gut, but I tamp it down and focus on each of the officers. I know
the two officers standing behind Murphy; I went to school with them both. I
played football with Brooks McGinty, until coach switched out our positions and
I took the field as the quarterback and McGinty sat out half the season on the
bench because he was bitter about being made tight end.

The
woman beside him is Georgina Squires. She’d been quiet in high school. One of
those sweet, mousy types that teenage boys never appreciated enough—myself
included. Growin’ up, she’d been tall and slender as a bean pole. Not much has
changed. With the exception of her joining the police force, that is.

All
three officers carry standard-issue batons fastened to their belts, and they’re
kitted out with cuffs, mace and Glock 22s. In my head I make a list, this one
detailing all the ways I could incapacitate all three officers in five seconds
flat.

“I
think we’d be better discussing it at the station,” Murphy says, sucking in his
big rotund belly and puffing out his chest.”

I
scrub my hand over my beard. It ain’t like I have much of a choice, but that
don’t mean I have to like it. “Just let me grab my keys and I’ll follow you to
the station.”

“Actually,
we’d prefer you rode with us,” Sergeant Murphy says.

I
stare at him a beat. “And if I refuse?”

“It’d
be best for everyone if you didn’t, son.”

“Best
for everyone, or best for you?” I challenge. It’s kind of a dick move, but I
don’t take kindly to bein’ cornered.

“Come
on now, Tucker, don’t make us use force.” McGinty takes a step forward.

I
laugh. “I bet you’d just hate that, wouldn’t you?”

A
muscle in his cheek twitches, and he reaches out and grabs my elbow. Nuke steps
forward with a growl. I act on autopilot. Wrenching my arm from his grasp, I
slam my elbow up into his nose with an ungodly crack and he drops like a sack
of shit. Within seconds two guns are trained on me, but even the click of the
safety doesn’t stop instinct from taking over.

I
head-butt Sergeant Murphy. The man reels back from the blow and winds up flat
on my front porch, out cold. Officer Squires aims her gun at my forehead. She
looks like a scared rabbit. I don’t make it a habit of hitting women, and I’d
sure like to avoid it now. Georgina is just doing her job. Hell, they are all
just doin’ their jobs, but I can’t have nobody touchin’ me. Not when they’re
trying to lock me up in a room somewhere.

“Get
down on the ground,” she yells. I hold her gaze as I move. I slam my right hand
into her wrist, grabbing the barrel at the same time, and transfer the gun to
my grip.

Despite
probably having learned all this in her training, Georgina’s eyes are wide with
disbelief, she whispers, “What are you going to do, Jake?”

I
empty the clip and shove it in my back pocket, then I pull back on the slide
and let the loaded round come out. I hand her back the unloaded gun. Nuke barks
at her and I command him to be still and to go back inside. I have to say it
several times before he actually cooperates with a whine.

Dropping
to my knees, I hold my hands out in front of me and wait to be cuffed.

“Behind
your back,” Georgina says.

I
shake my head. “I’ll come willingly. They’ll wake up in a minute, and I’d like
to be in the car before then so no one has to touch me.”

She
frowns and doesn’t look as if she’s happy with that, but concedes anyway. “I
have to put the cuffs on you, Jake.”

I
clench my teeth. “I know. But not from behind.”

She
lets out an irritated sigh. “Oh hell, you’re going to get me fired.”

“I
won’t hurt you,” I assure her. “I saw a threat to my safety, and I snapped. If
you can promise me no one else will touch me, I can promise it won’t happen
again.”

I
turn and issue a single command to Nuke to stay, and I reach for the door but
Georgina lets out a startled cry. I hold my hands up in surrender. “I’m just
closing the door; I can’t have him running after us. If he gets out, he will
find me, and I can’t risk him being carted off to the pound.”

She
nods and I reach out and grab the knob again. Nuke jumps up at me but I tell
him to stay, and then I close the door and turn to face Georgina. I hold my hands
out again to be cuffed.

She
pauses a beat as she stares down at the scars on my forearms. She lost an older
brother in the air force the year I enlisted in the Marines, and I’m betting
that’s the only reason I’m getting special treatment from her right now. She
tilts her head toward the car. Her baton is poised and ready to strike if need
be, but I don’t give her any trouble. I’m already waist-deep in it.

I
walk to the car like a man walking death row. In a lot of ways, it feels like
that. Sweat breaks out on my forehead, and my body starts to tremble. I don’t
wanna be locked up again.

I
let her open the car door. Old habits must die hard, because she reaches out a
hand to place over my head so I won’t bang it on the roof, and I hiss.

“Sorry,”
Georgina says.

I
duck my head and slide in as best I can with my hands clasped in front of me.
She shuts me in and I sit with my head bowed, staring down at my hands and the
metal cuffs that cinch too tightly around my wrists, and I wait.

Before
long, she walks back to the car with the Sergeant and McGinty, whose nose I
just broke. I thank God that Georgina is the one to sit beside me in the back,
though the others protest it at first.

I’m
driven to the station and ushered out of the car by McGinty. He touches me
again, and my hackles go up. I’m workin’ out the best way to break his cheek
bone when Georgina steps in and Murphy tells him to go see medical. He strides
off in a fit worthy of a small child.

I’m
taken inside and shown to an interrogation room with white walls, linoleum
floors, and a two-way mirrored glass window. A table and two metal chairs
occupy it. Sergeant Murphy paces while I’m instructed to sit down. Officer
Squires bolts my cuffs to a small steel loop on the table.

“You
wanna tell me what the hell that was all about, son?” Murphy says.

“I
felt threatened, sir,” I say, meeting his angry gaze head on. “It wasn’t
intentional, just instinct.”

“And
what about what happened to Jimmy Boem? That instinct, too?”

“Well,
I guess you’d have to ask whoever murdered him that.”

He
don’t miss a beat. He pulls up a chair and glares at me across the table. “I
know you and the victim’s wife, Miss Mason, are well acquainted—”.”

 “I
didn’t kill Jimmy Boem, sir.”

“And
you’d remember if you did? Word is those scars aren’t the only stripes you
earned in Afghanistan. I hear that head of yours took a pretty big hit too, and
after seeing what you’re capable of, I’m inclined to believe it.” He stands and
paces the room. It makes me edgy, especially when he starts to circle me like a
shark with prey in its sights. “Course, it don’t look good you having one of
those little episodes of yours right where the murder took place.”

I
frown, trying to piece together the fragmented memories. No one was there.
Were
they?
“I didn’t do this.”

“We’ll
see about that. You certainly have the motive, and I’ve got plenty of witnesses
who saw you beating the shit outta him in broad daylight only a few days
earlier—”

“I
want my lawyer. Jacqueline Jenkins.”

Murphy
scoffs. “Course you do.”

“I’m
entitled to a lawyer.”

“I
tell you what, you sit tight in here and I’ll get right on top of that.” He
walks slowly across the room, opens the door, and wanders through it.

Panic
seizes my gut. The soft snick of the door closing fills me with dread, and I
can’t breathe. I survey the room like a wild animal looking for escape. I do
not like enclosed spaces. My legs shake, and I yank at my cuffs. It don’t do no
good, so I bury my head in against my outstretched arms and try the deep
breathing techniques my shrink taught me.

I
can’t be locked up again. I can’t. Even if I’m guilty I’ll take my gun to my
head before I’m locked in a prison cell again in this lifetime.

Hours
later, I’m sweating and nauseous, and all the demons of my past have come back
one by one to visit me: Bashir, the boys in the courtyard, and the men I failed
to bring home.

The
door opens and Murphy walks in, followed by my lawyer. She’s pint-sized, but
she is mighty. “Oh hon, you don’t look so good. Are you okay?”

I
shake my head. She doesn’t touch me—she knows better than that—but she does
crouch down in her heels and skirt on the floor beside my chair.

“What
the hell were you thinking, Murphy? You lock a POW in a room and leave him
there? And where the hell is his service dog? You’ll be lucky you don’t hang
for this.”

“You
got some other suggestion of where we should keep him? He broke Officer
McGinty’s nose and knocked me out cold. Last time I checked it was illegal to
assault an officer of the law. Even for a war hero.”

“You
touched him.”

Murphy
throws his hands up. “How the hell else am I supposed to arrest him?”

“What
are you arresting him for in the first place?” Jacqueline shouts back. “You got
nothing on my client but some grainy footage of him having a PTSD-related
episode at the scene of the crime from the Pier camera, a camera which would
have recorded the shooting since it runs night and day. If Jake Tucker was
guilty of murdering that man, wouldn’t you have seen him on it at the time of
the incident?”

“Mr.
Boem was shot long-range with an assault rifle, as best we can understand.
We’ll know more about the bullets once an autopsy is carried out, but even you
have to admit, Jacqueline, him losing his head at the scene of the crime looks
suspicious.”

“Oh,
come on now. He’s a prisoner of war who suffered the kind of psychological
stress you can’t even fathom in your job pushing parking tickets and shoveling
Krispy Kremes in your mouth.”

Murphy’s
double chin wobbles as he shakes his head incredulously. “Now, you hold on a
minute.”

“Unless
you’re charging him with assault, you will release him from those cuffs right
now, and don’t think we won’t hesitate to sue all y’all for the treatment he’s
received here. That’s the thanks he gets for serving his country? You should be
ashamed of yourself Sergeant.”

Murphy
unfastens the cuffs, and I pull away as if he’d been holdin’ a knife in place
of a tiny set of keys. My stomach roils, and Jacqueline makes a tsking sound
before turnin’ back to me. “Come on, darlin’, let’s get you on your feet.”

I
don’t budge, as much as I want out of this room. I can’t trust my legs to carry
me right now. “Make yourself useful, Murphy, and get the poor man a glass of
water. Good Lord, what kind of establishment are you running here?”

“We’ll
it ain’t a Best Western
,
” he mutters to himself as he leaves
the room. “Goddamn left-wing liberals.”

“Okay
sugar, here’s the deal,” Jacqueline says once he’s out of earshot. “I won’t
touch you if you can hop to your feet so that we can get the hell outta here.
Otherwise, Murphy won’t be locking you in a prison cell—he’ll be hauling you
into the psych ward. Okay? Can you do that, Mr. Tucker?”

My
breath comes in sharp, shallow pants, but I nod.

“Now
you want my hand or not?” She stands and holds her palm out to me. I don’t take
it. Instead, I use the wall to push myself up to a standing position. My head
swims, and I take a deep breath and press my forehead to the cool cement.

Sergeant
Murphy comes back with a bottled water and hands it to me. I can’t even
unclench my fists to take it from him. Jacqueline snatches the bottle off of
him and ushers me towards the door. I place one trembling foot in front of the
other. My head spins from the noise inside the station.