Operation: Endurance (When the Mission Ends) (2 page)

Rachel interrupted her mental lists. “Okay, I’ll agree to this, but you have to agree to help me convince mom that we need self-defense classes.” She gestured toward Julie’s chest. “Looking the way you do, this isn’t the last time you’re gonna have a guy trying to push you to do something you don’t want to do. You need to know how to protect yourself.”

18 years later

The man grabbed her in a chokehold from behind and Julie fought off the panic as her breathing became compromised. She reached up and grasped at the hand wrapped around her neck and yanked, twisting her torso and head as she moved. Never letting go of the arm, she immediately turned and kicked at his vulnerable groin with explosive aim. As he crouched in pain, she attacked again at his throat and eyes, focusing on his weak spots.

When she finished, Officer Pete Larson lay moaning in fake pain on the mats. She turned to grin at the class. “Any questions?”

“I think I need another instructor.” Of course it was Toni who piped up first. The attractive brunette was full of sass and she wasn’t afraid to show it. This was the girl’s second week in the self-defense class and they’d already learned she held nothing back. Her turquoise eyes sparkled.

Oh, this should be good. “And exactly why would that be, Toni?”

“I need some big ugly dude to beat up.” She gestured to Pete slowly levering himself up off the floor. “If he’s going to be the one attacking me,” she gave him a full-body perusal, “then damn, I’m going to let him.” The entire class giggled, obviously in agreement. Toni definitely kept the class entertained.

Pete flushed red and Julie worked to hide her smile as she glanced back over at him. The guy was a sweetheart and with that hot body and those dimples, he definitely kept their Krav Maga self-defense classes swooning.

“Yes, he’s pretty, but keep in mind that seventy-three percent of rapes are perpetrated by men the victims already knew. Pretty or not, they are physically stronger than you and you need to know how to even the odds against them. That’s why you’re here. So now it’s time to beat him up for a while, and luckily for us, he brought a few of his fellow friends from the police force. And, yes, they’re pretty too.”

She gestured to the back of the room where two more of Lubbock’s Police Department’s finest were leaning up against the wall, waiting to become targets.

Pete mumbled under his breath, “I really hate this part of the class.”

An hour and a half later and Julie walked out of the training room with Pete, Lyle, and Stephen. “Thanks, guys. We couldn’t do this without you.”

Lyle asked, “So does that mean we can talk you into going out for a beer with us?”

“Thanks, but not this week. I need to get home.”

Pete looked at her with concern in his eyes before he pulled her to a stop. “Guys, go on. I’ll catch up with you in a moment.”

She glanced at him curiously as the guys walked on. “What’s up?”

“I hoped to get here early tonight to talk to you. You still aren’t sleeping, are you?”

Her stomach sank as she shook her head in denial. She didn’t want to have this conversation. “I’m fine, Pete.”

“No, you aren’t. Anyone who knows you can see that. You look awful.”

“Aw, thanks. You know just how to make a girl feel all mushy inside.”

He rolled his eyes at her. “I’m worried about you. You’re
gonna make yourself sick. It’s been a month since Aaron died and I know his murder was a shock, but Julie, you need to take better care of yourself.”

She felt like he’d hit her. Hardly anyone mentioned her boyfriend’s sudden death to her anymore. They simply pretended it didn’t exist and that plan suited her just fine. She didn’t want to talk about the gaping hole in her heart. It was better to just work around it and pretend like it didn’t exist.

She tried to change the subject. “I did some research online last night and I think we could improve our classes.” She started searching through her purse. “I made a list…”

Pete grabbed hold of her arm. “Julie, stop.” He pulled a card out of his wallet. “I think you need to talk to someone. This is a therapist that the department uses. He’s really good.”

“You think I’m crazy?” Why was this so shocking? She knew she wasn’t functioning well, but she thought she’d been hiding the fact from those around her.

“No, but you aren’t working through your grief over Aaron’s murder. I think you need some grief counseling.”

The lump built in her throat. She had to escape from the concerned look in Pete’s eyes before she lost it completely. She grabbed the card out of his hand and crammed it into her purse with a quickly mumbled, “Thanks.” Running down the corridor of the hospital, she prayed she wouldn’t run into anyone she knew.

By the time she made it to her car, the tears were flowing, she was gasping for breath, and she was on the eighth thing to add to her grocery list: olive oil, skittles, baked beans, tuna, toilet paper, corn starch, bacon, oregano.

Slowly the calm settled back over her and her breath steadied.

She was fine and in control.

She was fine and in control.

She was fine and in control.

If she said it to herself enough times, maybe she and everyone else around her would believe it. She fingered the card she’d shoved in her purse. Did she need to talk to someone? No, she’d learned a long time ago that she could deal with these things all on her own. She was strong. She had coping mechanisms. She was in control of her life. She could do this. 

Chris Robertson looked down into Julie’s upturned face and a shudder of desire travelled down his spine. He was the luckiest bastard alive to have her here with him. She smiled at him with a look that could be described as nothing short of pure mischief. God, he loved to see her with that look. To finally see her without the ever-present grief shadowing her eyes was enough to make his cock twitch and swell with interest. She was so damn beautiful. How did he get so lucky to have her kneeling before him now?

The white lace corset with black ribbons crisscrossing up the sides showed off the perfect amount of her mounding breasts. She knelt in front of his standing position and he could see the full length of her, from those fuck-me high heels to her matching lace thong with a bow at the top of her incredible ass. He reached for her, but she shook her head at him and warned, her voice laced with arousal and desire, “No hands or else I won’t take care of that for you.”

They both looked to where his naked cock stood at full attention against his abdomen. The moist heat of her breath raced across his most sensitive skin. She was so close. He wanted to arch his hips, but knew that would just give her an excuse to prolong her torture of him.

Instead he begged, “Please, Butterfly.”

She looked up at him with a single eyebrow raised as if to question his desperation.

“I need you to….” His lowered voice stuttered to a halt as her soft, warm lips engulfed him. He moaned at the ecstasy of the wet heat of her mouth. It had been so long since a woman touched him and to know this time that it was Julie. This was pure heaven.

A voice straight out of his nightmares spoke, filled with hatred and menace, “I can make sure you never fuck again.”

Chris’s eyes flew open and straight into the black evil eyes of the man who’d tortured him for months. He scrambled back to get away from the molten hot poker, but couldn’t move. Suddenly he was chained down to that chair, naked in that god-awful hovel in Colombia. He
tensed waiting for the blinding heat and pain he knew was coming next. Not again. Please not again.

Instead he awoke, tangled in his sheets, drenched in sweat and gasping for air.

Fuck.

He sat up and looked over at the clock while he rubbed his left knee.

3:48 AM.

He’d gotten more sleep than normal. This time he slept for a solid 2 ½ hours before the nightmares woke him.

He ran his hands through his hair and propped his elbows on his knees as he looked down at his flaccid cock. The dreams always seemed so real, both the ecstasy and the agony of them. Unfortunately, agony always followed the ecstasy so he never knew if the phantom pleasure was real or not. From all the physical signs, he really wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to that.

But focusing on his damaged cock wasn’t going to change anything. He got up and threw on some running shorts and an old ragged t-shirt. He’d come off the crutches a couple of weeks before and was working his damnedest to get back in shape for Mad Rob, the government contracting flight company and jump school he started with his brother, Colton, and their friend, Jake. He still felt the lingering repercussions of the months of torture on his body, but he was getting better. Every day he was physically stronger.

After one too many sleepless nights, he learned that it helped to exorcise his nightly demons by exercising. He was tying his shoes when he heard the whisper of Cassie’s movement down the hall.

As his twin, she always knew when the nightmares hit him. He knew she’d seen visions of him while he’d been imprisoned. He only hoped that she was just getting impressions of his nightmares now and not actually sharing the full reality of them. Honestly, he’d been too afraid to ask, not sure if he really wanted to know the truth of how much she was seeing into his completely fucked-up psyche.

She just looked at him as they met quietly at the front door. He could see the concern in her eyes, but he didn’t want to talk about it. She joined him as he took off jogging down the sidewalk. Cassie ran an average of eight to ten miles every day, but he wasn’t up for that kind of pace yet. As it was, he could already feel the tendrils of pain ricocheting up and down his leg. She loped in beside him, simply giving him company and the comfort of her presence as he decompressed from the images in his nightmares.

As they ran, he grimaced at the sound of his lungs already sucking in wind. It was going to take forever for him to get to his pre-captivity level of health. Back then, it would take five miles before his heart rate even started to rise.

He looked over at Cassie in the glow of the streetlights. They hadn’t said a word to one another yet and she still looked half asleep.

“Jake is going to be happy when I move out so you’ll stay in bed until a decent hour again,” he gasped out. Jake was her fiancé and his best friend. Their wedding was in two weeks.

Cassie, damn her, wasn’t even breathing hard as she laughed. “Jake likes it when I leave early. You should see him roll over and immediately cover the whole bed. It’s enough to make a girl feel really unwelcome.”

He smiled at the thought. “I don’t think you have an issue there. I can’t imagine Jake ever not wanting you in his bed. You have the guy completely wrapped around your little finger.”

She smiled softly. “That goes both ways.”

His heart wrenched. He was happy for them. He really was. How many guys were lucky enough to have their best friend marry their sister, but it left him feeling like a third wheel.

And it looked less and less likely that he’d ever find the same thing. A part of him mourned the loss of his own future family he’d once dreamed about…but that was before being held captive by a madman for six months. He’d just have to be the best uncle ever to both his siblings’ future kids.

Cassie interrupted his depressing mental reverie. “Are you sure you want to move out? You won’t have a running partner anymore starting tomorrow.”

“You mean I can’t come over and drag you out of bed at oh-dark-thirty again tomorrow?”

“Actually I wish you would, just so I’m sure I’ll fit in my wedding dress. But I don’t think you will, will you?”

“Cass, it’s time for me to stand on my own two feet and deal with this shit by myself. You’re already too caught up in it as it is. There are times I hate how in tune we are and that you get all that garbage in your head, too.”

She grabbed his arm and yanked him to a stop so she could face him. He bent over gasping for air while she looked like they’d just been for a stroll.

“I’m not. My connection to you is one of the best things about my life. I don’t want to hear you talk crap about it. Yes, right now there’s some not so fun stuff happening in your head, but it’s happening mainly to you. I just barely get a taste of the god-awful things going on in there.”

Her forehead creased with concern and the compassion showing through her eyes shattered him.

“I hate that. I hate that it’s happened and continues to torture you. I hate that I can’t make it stop. I hate that I can’t take the pain away. But I love you and I want to be here for you. If our connection makes it easier to understand what you’re going through then, hell yes, I’m thankful for it.”

She trembled with the force of her emotion.

He pulled her in for a quick hug, thankful she was in his corner. “Okay, calm down, Rambo. I didn’t mean to get you so worked up. I’m fine. Come on let’s finish our run. I still have a few more boxes to pack.”

* * *

Julie washed her hands and looked down at the flour-covered piece of marble. Her sight blurred as tears filled her eyes. Only 4:46 AM and already crying again. She blew out a frustrated sigh, getting angry with herself. She needed to suck it up.