Mighty Men with Weapons (9 page)

There was only one way to find out.

* * * *

Donovan kissed him with passion, and he regretted the kiss almost instantly. Nate would see his quick advantage. Was Nate using him?

No doubt. Sure, he was. Sex would make him an easier kill regardless of the lust running wild between them.

Nate took his hand and led him through a short hallway. He nudged the door open with his foot.

Donovan sat down, and Nate dropped to the floor. Surprised, Donovan gasped when Nate took his cock in between his hands and gave him quite possibly the most erotic hand job of his lifetime.

Donovan leaned on the bed, arching his back and stretching his neck in order to watch. Nate dropped his lips and covered Donovan's swollen head, licking the tip, the spongy texture of his tongue drawing out the pre-cum in a sticky wash of excitement.

“Let me,” Donovan pleaded, leaning his head back and clutching the condom Nate more or less gave him as a cookie, a sweet temptation of things within his reach. “God, please, Nate. Let me.”

Nate stood then, using his knees to part Donovan's legs and stand between them. Donovan sat up, and Nate turned around.

Donovan swallowed hard when realization struck. Of course he would let him. Donovan quickly rolled the condom over his heavily veined erection and pulled Nate toward him. His chest pressed to Nate’s back allowing body-to-body access, and he nipped at his flesh.

The excitement continued building and building.

Nate eased all the way down over Donovan’s prick. He did the guiding. He took the easy lead.

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Donovan sank into his ass and sighed. “Ah, yeah, buddy. That’s what I’m talking about.”

Nate didn’t move. He seemed lifeless at the first point of entry.

Then Donovan started to thrust. Soon he hammered in between the firm, tight globes of one very masculine, fresh, virgin ass.

* * * *

Nate didn’t mind taking cock like he once feared. In fact, he enjoyed the connection. His bottom felt tight, and with every layer of skin Donovan pressed beyond, Nate felt more and more stimulated.

His nerve endings on fire, he blazed hot from the inside out and needed to come worse than he ever remembered.

“Hurry,” he urged. Hell, yeah, he wanted him to hurry. Once he was done, he planned to fuck Donovan’s lights out.

Donovan shifted, rolling over him. Nate’s face soon pressed into a pillow Donovan had thrown down before he pushed him forward.

Dragging Nate’s hips upward, Donovan clobbered him with good loving. “Feels good?”

God, yeah. “Finish,” Nate growled.

In and out, he stroked. Harder and harder, he pounded between Nate's cheeks until all of a sudden, he screamed out his release. Nate bucked violently against him, determined to help him find his pleasure.

When Donovan collapsed on his back, Nate rolled over. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, Nate framed his face and kissed him. Donovan’s tongue tasted like a volatile lifeline, one he feared might snap at any moment.

Nate didn’t waste time analyzing why. Instead, he looked into Donovan's eyes, fisted his cock, spread his partner’s legs with his own, and pushed his cock deep inside his tight ass. Then, he fucked him rough and wild, refusing to break free of the entrancing gaze they held the entire time.

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Addison Avery

* * * *

Darby Winslow paced the floor of his small quarters in the psychiatric unit. His father wanted to see him. He planned to stop by the facility around one o’clock, and the timekeeper he kept bedside continued to remind of the hour.

“Darby?” A nurse appeared in his doorway. “Your father is here.”

He nodded, and she stepped aside. Admiral Thomas Shoemaker used his clout and appointments to enjoy private visits with his son.

Most guests were restricted, and very few family members paid visits to the rooms of resident patients.

“Dad,” Darby said, raising his gaze to meet his father’s.

“Darby,” he began. “How are you today?”

They always started their visits the same way. Darby anticipated his father’s arrival with pure dread. Then, he’d come in and quickly assess his room conditions and inquire about how he felt as if he checked on him every other day.

Darby couldn’t remember the last time he saw his father. He spoke to him on the phone a few weeks back and had been distraught ever since.

“Dad, I need to see Donovan.”

His father winced at the request and refused to acknowledge his son’s plea. The visible distress tightened his cheeks, and his jaw tensed in mere tolerance.

Looking around, he said, “I like what they’ve done to your room. I spoke to your mother last week and told her they recently painted this wing. The pastels brighten the place up, don’t you think?”

Darby glared at him. “I don’t care about colors.”

“Or your mother? You haven’t asked about her since you’ve been here.”

No, and he wouldn’t. If his mother had remained quiet, then he wouldn’t have known the sheer hell of having a father like the great Ebook piracy is stealing. It is a federal offense.

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Admiral Shoemaker. He wouldn’t spend his time in a locked down psychiatric facility because of what his father called “his despicable gay orientation.” He wouldn’t have to take meds at nine, noon, and three. He would be completely free.

“Tell me about Donovan,” he urged, grasping his father’s forearm.

His father shook him off and then walked over to the dresser.

Glaring at the photograph of Donovan and Darby, he said, “I told the nurses you could keep one picture of you and Donovan Collier. I’ve decided it’s not healthy. I’ll take this one with me when I leave.” He picked the frame up and then set it down again.

Darby glared through the haze of a drug-induced state of confusion. Why did his father hate him so much? He shook his head and then sat on the edge of the only chair in the room.

“I know you think you’re going to spend the rest of your life in here, Darby. You have shown signs of improvement. I can’t help but feel relief and even some measure of pride.”

Darby swallowed. Relief and pride? Darby knew better. Oddly, in the ten years his father had known about him, he never mentioned pride. He never said anything before because the shame overshadowed other emotions he might have allowed himself to experience.

“I love him. If you still believe love is a sickness, then I pity you, Dad.”

His father stormed forward and bellowed out, “What the hell do you know about love, son? That,” he pointed to the photograph, “is...

not... love!”

Darby looked away, the medication stumping his intellectual abilities. His fight soon disappeared. “It’s the only love I want,” he told him quietly. “The only one I’ll ever need.”

“And I want more for you. I don’t want you to wither away, shunned, because your life is lived under stigmas and pretenses.

When I reintroduce you to the world, you won’t know what it feels like to see your friends turn their backs while you overhear the cruelty Ebook piracy is stealing. It is a federal offense.

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of snickers and whispers. You’ll stand proud and tall, an admiral’s son.”

“An admiral’s son?” Darby said on a sudden thought, though most definitely aloud.

“Yes,” he said confidently. “You’ll make us both proud when you can stand with me.”

“And what about Donovan?” Darby whispered. His eyelids grew heavy, and he stumbled forward, searching for the bed.

The admiral didn’t offer a reply. His father’s large form towered over him while sleep tugged him into a familiar blackness, one he visited regularly throughout the course of his days. The medication he’d been given hours earlier snuffed out the daylight and any resemblance of the pain he often found in consciousness.

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Nate and Donovan walked into the hut together. Colby looked at them and saw an instant replay of their morning scribbled across their foreheads, etched in their faces.

He wasn’t jealous like he once feared he might have been. Instead, a strange sensation consumed him, a load off his mind. After all, since Donovan and Nate arrived, the sexual tension existed everywhere.

Nate possessed a secret weapon and needed to take full advantage of his personal arsenal. Nate and Colby needed to know where they stood with Donovan. If discovery meant fucking the truth out of Donovan, then Colby could turn his head and look the other way.

Unless, of course, they asked him to join them.

Nate avoided eye contact even after Donovan headed for the shower. Reaching into the mini-fridge for a bottle of water, he said,

“Where’s Karen?”

“Don’t know,” Colby said, smiling. “I thought she might have been with the two of you.”

Nate quickly looked up and said, “No. We were alone.”

Colby finally experienced the first pinch from the green eyed monster. “All alone?”

“Yes,” he said. “We’re moving to the last bungalow on the beach.

It’s larger and has more room. Plus, it’s not safe for us to play by Shoemaker’s rules anymore.”

He took a swig of water and studied the sofa. Suddenly, a convertible daybed held a lot of peculiarity and captured his complete interest.

“Nate?”

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“Yeah?”

“You fucked him. So what,” Colby said. “We need to know where he stands. At this point, we should use everything we have at our disposal, including ourselves.”

“Yeah, but there may have been a better way,” Nate said. “I wouldn’t want you fucking him without me there.”

Nate wouldn’t want him to risk vulnerability. Colby recognized more than anyone the defenseless position an ISO took when he or she slept with the enemy. Assuming Donovan Collier remained true to his inner assassin, Nate placed himself in the line of fire, too, when he jumped into Donovan’s bed. ISOs were taught how to manipulate any and all situations, including those in the bedroom.

Colby wanted to make things easier for Nate, so he said, “I don’t care what happened with you and Donovan. You knew I wouldn’t. I don’t think you would’ve spent the morning all alone with him if you thought...” When Nate’s lips thinned and he acted uncomfortable with the way the conversation was headed, Colby changed directions and blurted out, “We needed to know—”

“Damn, Colby,” Nate started to walk outside. “There’s more to this mission than what happened this morning.”

“You don’t say? Would you like for me to spell it out so we’re all on the same page? I’ve been right here, Nate. I’ve thought of all the outs we have, but you and I know what happens when a hit is placed.

If this one isn’t carried out, other ISOs will come. Eventually someone will pull the trigger. The little red lights on our foreheads will glow until we’re ten feet under.

“Maybe Donovan won’t do the job. Then again, maybe he’s arrogant enough and green enough to believe if he takes us out then it will end this thing. Either way, we’re marked. Either way, we have a world of troubles. I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this.

What I do know is the only one I trust on God’s earth right now is you.”

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Nate snapped over his shoulder, “You have no idea how dangerous it is for you to have faith in anyone right now...even me.”

Colby reached for him, and Nate allowed contact for a split second. The men locked in a knowing gaze, and Colby said, “If I can’t trust you, then I’ll die without putting up a fight.”

Nate took a deep breath. His nostrils flared and he said, “You trust me, Colby, because I was once sent in to save you. You were a job, and you don’t need to forget how we met. You were only an assignment.”

Colby released him. He saw the lie in Nate’s eyes. He allowed meaningless words to spill from his lips, and Colby wasn’t sure why.

Rage, stark anger churned through his veins. Colby retaliated.

“Bullshit! I was more than a job, and you damn well know it! You’re running scared Nate, and damn you, I won’t let you push me away in order to save me. It’s not going to happen this time. My family isn’t here pulling political strings. Your ISO commander turned on you, and by God, you are all I have. I’m all you’ve got, too, soldier. That’s better than what either of us had when we first arrived in these islands.”

Nate flinched. The deafening silence consumed them then, and Nate looked thoughtful. Colby didn’t want them to doubt one another.

They had too much to lose if they started to look at each other with skepticism.

Nate gripped Colby’s shoulders and stared into his eyes. “Colby, listen to me. There are too many puzzles to solve, too many elements we need exposed. I’m dizzy trying to keep up. We have so many complications and no clue where to start in order to dig ourselves out of shallow graves.”

Colby lowered his voice and said, “We have to get rid of Karen, Nate. We need her out of here. Her loyalties aren’t with us and—”

“And you think his are?” Nate turned around suddenly and tilted his chin toward the bathroom, chugging another swig of water, then wiping his mouth on his short sleeve.

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