21 Marine Salute: 21 Always a Marine Tales (84 page)

Eli let out a harsh breath. The muscles on his neck flexed and his shoulders shook from the force of his own strokes. When Rick could slide in a third finger, he pulled his hand away and lined his cock up.

The first push earned a gasp from both of them. Eli’s hand slowed and they worked together to seat Rick’s cock deep. Leaning his head back, Rick grasped Eli’s hips. “Are you close?”

“Yeah.” The word rode on a harsh exhale and Rick grimaced at the need bunching up his balls. He rocked back and then slid in again and they both hissed at the pleasure of it. Finding his tempo, he began a slow, rhythmic thrust that Eli met. Biting his shoulder, he found Eli’s cock and teased it with a few strokes and then reached down further, teasing the soft skin of his balls.

“You can come now….” He’d barely finished the last word and Eli went at his own cock hard, pumping it with long strokes as Rick encouraged him. He came with a hard shout, his ass clenching hard, and Rick let out a shout as his own orgasm crashed down on him.

They shuddered together, rocking through their release until they could only lean against the shower wall. Thankfully, the hot water made clean up a simple process. Rick waited until they were dressed before bringing up the subject again.

“Now that our pants are on, I really do want to talk about this….”

He didn’t get much further because Eli stared at him and shook his head. “Let it go, man, or I’m out of here.”

“You cannot shut me out like that and expect that I’m just going to be your bitch and say okay.” Anger bubbled up to the surface. “We’ve waited. You’ve blown me off—hell you just wanted to fuck in the shower to shut me up. I get that and I let you do it. But Eli—we need to talk about this.”

“No. We don’t. Let it go, Rick, let it go and let’s go hike and fuck and have fun, or I’m out.” Mutiny tightened Eli’s expression, but Rick couldn’t let it go. He wouldn’t. They were both stubborn, they were both hardheaded, he had to stay in the game and at least have a real discussion about it.

“No. I think we owe it to ourselves—”

Five minutes later, Eli had thrown his stuff into his rucksack and stalked out of the cabin. Rick thought he might have just needed to cool off, but Eli climbed in his truck and drove away.

He never answered his cell.

He didn’t call back.

Instead, he returned to base and deployed three weeks later. Rick could forgive his absence. He could even forgive the way he walked off. His lover had a temper.

What he couldn’t forgive was the fact that after everything they’d been through, he wouldn’t let Rick in.

No more.
You’re home this time, buddy, and we’re going to resolve this—you don’t get a clean extraction from my life.

I won’t allow it
.

Eli barely closed the truck door before being assaulted by three squealing girls. Falling to his knees, he wrapped his arms around the little blonde bombshells vying for his attention. Emily, Kate, and Lucy—ages seven, six and four—were the lights of his life.

“I lost a tooth.”

“Daddy took the training wheels off my bike.”

“I can spell my name—L-U-C-Y.”

“Can you fix the doll house?”

“I want to go get ice cream.”

“Are we building the tree house today? Daddy said if you got here early enough, you could help with the
flatform
.”

“Piggyback!”

“Want to play Uno?’

Their chatter surrounded him with love. The scents of lemon, lavender, and way too much talc and Chanel No. 5 said they’d been playing in their mother’s bathroom.

Hooking Emily onto his back, he scooped Kate and Lucy up, one under each arm and strode toward the house. His brother-in-law grinned at him and rescued Lucy so they could shake hands. “Welcome home, Eli.”

“Hey, Phil. How’s it going?”

“Good, man. How was Africa?” Phillip Crosswell made a good husband for his sister. Rock steady, the man worked hard nine-to-five every single day and came home to his family.

“Hot. How’s my sister?” He juggled his nieces and followed Phil into the split-level, model suburban. Toys lay scattered across the floor, a basket with freshly laundered towels and blankets partially blocking the front door. His sister’s cat sat on the back of the sofa surveying the chaos and gave him a bored look.

“Exhausted. Happy. You know how she is with a baby.” Phil chuckled. Eli knew exactly how Christina felt about babies—she loved being a mother. When they were kids, she told them stories about how many children she planned to have. At number four, she was halfway to her goal. “Come on, girls, let Uncle Eli go see Mommy and I’m sure he’ll play with you before he has to go.”

Setting his nieces down, Eli held up his keys. “Before I do that—who here has been a good girl?”

“Me!”

“Me!”

“No, pick me! Me!”

Chuckling, he handed the keys to Emily. “If you look in the back seat of the truck, you might find something Santa delivered to me overseas by mistake.”

They charged out shrieking, their father in close attendance. Eli waited until he heard the next set of squeals when they discovered all the wrapped presents in the backseat before climbing the stairs. He knocked gently on the master bedroom door.

“Come in.”

Opening the door slowly, he peeked inside. “Are you decent?”

“Never.” Christina sat up in the bed, a swaddled bundle of blue in her arms. She’d trimmed her hair since the last time he’d seen her. She liked to get a haircut before a baby came, declaring it made those first exhausting weeks with the infant easier. Pixie-short, her auburn hair curled against her forehead.

“Good to know.” He walked over and dropped a kiss on her forehead before sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Give me my nephew.”

Her lips curved into a beaming smile. “Uncle Eli, please let me introduce you to Mitchell.”

Mitch
.

The name punched him in the gut. His smile wavered and he accepted the baby carefully. The ruddy, scrunched up face was still wrinkly, but a thatch of auburn hair crowned his head. “You named him after….”

“Yeah.” Christina put a hand on his leg and squeezed. “I talked to Phil about it and he agreed with me.”

Their baby brother—eleven months younger than Christina—nearly three years younger than Eli. He hadn’t lived to see his nineteenth birthday.

“Hello, Mitchell.” He looked down at the baby, memorizing his features. He didn’t always get to hold them this young—the last had been Emily. He’d only met Lucy and Kate after they were nine and eighteen months respectively. “He’s tiny.”

“Hmm, he didn’t feel that tiny when I pushed him out.” His sister leaned back against the pillows. “You okay with the name?”

“Of course.” He frowned at her. Traces of exhaustion lined her eyes, dark smudges of tiredness—but also worry and anxiety. “Mitch would have loved it.”

“We don’t talk about him that often. Mom cried.” Of course she did. Mitch had been the golden child—the baby—the one everyone looked after. He showered the world in sunshine and disguised all the cracks underneath until it was too late.

“Yeah, but Mom cries when they show baby birds on television.” He fixed his sister with a stern look. “Kind of like you.”

Christina laughed. “Yeah, so I’m a sap.”

“You could have told me over the phone, you know. I wouldn’t have minded.”

“Yeah, but you always get a little funny when we talk about him. I didn’t want to distract you on your assignment. Speaking of which, are you going to be home longer than five minutes this time?”

“Haven’t gotten my orders yet, but I report to the Marine Barracks in a few days so we’ll see.” He studied the baby in his arms. “And, sweetie, you can talk to me about Mitch anytime you want. I miss our baby brother, too.” Ignoring the fist around his heart proved more difficult, but he maintained his steadiness. She needed him to be strong. It seemed coming home tested his strength. Like stubborn ex-lovers showing up at the airport. Rick had slept on the couch the night before and Eli drove him back to the airport to get his car before heading to his sister’s house.

He hadn’t expected the man to stay, but he liked that he had. Clearing his throat, he found Christina staring at him. “What?”

“Nothing. It just blows me away sometimes how sweet you are.”

He frowned. “Shh, I’m not sweet. I’m a badass. We’ve had this discussion.”

“Of course you are—and you look adorable with a baby in your arms. What do you think about coming to dinner this Friday and meeting Cindy, she’s….”

Eli sighed. They’d made it a whole quarter of an hour. “The only girls I plan to see this leave are downstairs enjoying their presents. You keep it up and I’ll dump you for them, too. I don’t want to be fixed up, hooked up, introduced, or otherwise pimped out.” If he didn’t cut her off now, he’d be inundated with
potential
girlfriends.

“Eli, you’re thirty-five. You have what? Another ten? Maybe fifteen years and they’ll make you retire. You should have a wife and kids and someone waiting for you at home. Someone to come home to.”

“I have plenty of someones to come home to. Don’t I, Mitchell?” He glanced at his nephew again. “Someone to teach real ball toss to. No offense to your dad Mitch—but Phil can’t throw worth a damn. I’ll make sure you know what you need to make the teams.”

His sister made a rude noise and he ignored her. She blustered on, but he tuned it out. They went through the same argument on every trip and if he let her carry on, she’d get over it. He had plenty of people to come home to and only one man he really ever needed.

He’d had a year to learn how
not
to need him.

Pity that it hadn’t taken.

“Commander?” A corpsman stood in the doorway and Rick glanced up from the chart he updated.

“Yes?”

“General Stanley is coming in for one of his post-op checkups and he asked if you would….”

“Of course.” Rick flipped the chart shut and rose. They’d removed a section of the retired general’s lungs several weeks before and it was his third post-op check up. “Finish up the pre-op on Lieutenant Jamison and meet in OR three in an hour.” Jamison had survived a detonated IED with all his limbs intact, but shrapnel shifting inside his body needed to be removed and they were finally ready to take out a piece that continued to travel too close to his liver.

“Yes, sir.”

Rick had received an assignment to Walter Reed four years earlier and moved with the merger to the Naval Hospital at Bethesda two years later. His position as a Navy surgeon meant most of his patients were retired, but he also had his fair share of active duty transferred from Ramstein in Germany—like the lieutenant.

Smothering a yawn. Rick shook off the fog of exhaustion. He needed to work. Eli’s sofa didn’t make for a comfortable bed and the semi-erection Rick sported most of the night made rest damn near impossible, but seeing Eli sleep-rumpled first thing in the morning over coffee made it worth it. He’d slept in worse places—from field tents to on call rooms.

The general waited in the exam room, and Rick saluted him as a matter of course. “Good morning, General.”

“Commander.” The man returned the salute. After forty years of impeccable service in several different theaters of combat, the general deserved acknowledgement, retired or not. “Sorry to bother you, son.”

“Not a bother at all, General. How are you feeling?” The man’s color had definitely improved. Checking the chart, Rick reviewed his vitals. Pulse, oxygenation, and blood pressure were all in the excellent range.

“Steady. The diet I could live without. The wife is denying me red meat all the time now. You need to let her know I’m cleared to eat it.” The general may intimidate, but his wife was a force to be reckoned with.

“I think that’s a matter best left between you and your wife, but why don’t I order some blood work. We can double check your cholesterol and see if we can get you clearance for once or twice a month.” Setting the chart aside, he nodded to the general’s chest. “May I take a look at the surgical scars?”

“Of course.” He unbuttoned his shirt and Rick checked the incision points. Fresh pink skin appeared healthy, without signs of inflammation.

“How are the grandkids?”

“Zane was accepted at Annapolis.” The general beamed. Rick listened to the detailed report on the others, including the granddaughter who pierced her eyebrow. While the surgery limited the general’s lung function, he seemed to be bouncing back fully.

Wrapping his stethoscope around his neck, Rick reclaimed the chart and added some notations. “All right, I’m going to have a corpsman take some blood and we’ll do the CBC. Here’s a note for your wife.” He added orders about the blood work results. “And I’ll see you in six months.”

“Thank you, Commander.” His patient’s near gleeful cackle at the permission slip for a steak once the blood test results were in made it worth it.

“General.”

“Dismissed son.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He checked his surgery schedule. Two minor procedures were back-to-back after the lieutenant’s, but if all went well, he could be on the road by seven. He sent a text message to Eli about dinner reservations and his surgery schedule then shut off his phone.

It was a gamble. But if the man couldn’t deliver the no, he might just show up to tell him no in person.

And then he would be there and they could argue over dinner.

Rick whistled all the way to the OR.

Eli’s second shower of the day was considerably cooler than his first. He’d spent most of the day at his sister’s house, spoiling the nieces and helping Phil get the tree house built. The presents he brought were huge hits—particularly the video game system. Christina scolded him for spending so much on the girls, but hell—who else would he spend it on? That it would also provide a reward system for the girls while his sister bounced back from giving birth and baby Mitchell taking up so much time, mollified her some—until she caught sight of Phil playing on the system.

Chuckling, Eli made his escape quick. Back at his apartment, he couldn’t ignore the text message from Rick any longer. The lukewarm shower cooled him down and he soaped off the sweat then changed into a fresh pair of jeans and a clean T-shirt. In his kitchen, he thumbed to the text message and read it—for the third time.