With red cheeks, DB rubbed the back of his neck. “I think the main point is that you’re safe, Zuri. The guys here tonight are just the tip of the iceberg, ‘cos Mace, Ellis, and the others are working with us, we just didn’t want to take all of our eyes out of town to come to the meeting. Garrett’s programmed all the numbers you need into your phone, and we’ve all got your number in ours, so we’ve got you covered.”
Weirdly, I did feel better knowing that. Fighting the war on my own had been terrifying, but battling it with a lot of the town behind me felt a helluva lot more doable.
“Maybe she should learn to shoot?” Bond suggested, taking a step back when Garrett glared at him. “Maybe not.”
“Uh, I can already shoot. I’ve got guns everywhere around the house.”
Every eye focused on me, some looking scared, some intrigued, some shocked.
It was Garrett’s terrified one that made me laugh and add, “And knives. My dad taught me how to defend myself properly.”
Chapter Thirteen
Garrett
It’d been a week since we’d had the meeting with everyone at our house to introduce Naomi’s issues and update Tamsin on hers, and everything had gone silent.
The men had disappeared as quickly as they came, and it was confusing the shit out of all of us. Had they moved on? Had they been called away for something else?
And something was eating at Tamsin, and she wasn’t telling me what it was.
Two days ago, the hospital administrator had called to say that they couldn’t hold her position open any longer. It was understandable but also shitty because there wasn’t much she could do about it.
I’d had a long talk with her about finances in case she needed help, and come to find out, when she’d moved, her dad had taken a chunk out of a savings account she had with an inheritance from her mom’s parents, who’d died. When they’d sold their property, her parents had put half of it into a savings account as a down payment on one of her own when she was ready.
She’d carried the money with her on her journey from New York to Piersville and had handed over some of it when she’d opened her account. To avoid any questions, it’d been a small amount, and every month she put more in. She wasn’t hurting for money, but she’d also eat up what she had quickly if she wasn’t careful.
I wasn’t sure if it was that or if there was something else, so I was going to use everything I could to get her to tell me this morning, which was why, on my day off, I was awake early. I was going to use her seduction technique on her.
Going to the drawer, I pulled out a pair of her panties and walked quietly over to where she was lying on her side. It was going to be challenging to pull this off with her hand in a cast, but I was up for it.
Taking the casted hand first, I carefully raised it over her head and tied one side of the panties around it before threading the crotch part behind the wooden slat in the headboard. When it was in place, I lifted the other hand up and did the same on that side, almost running out of material before it was secured.
She was still partly on her side when I got back into bed, so I pulled the covers over my head and moved under them to my target. It was harder than I’d thought it would be, though, because I couldn’t see jack shit, and I was trying not to wake her up. Making my way between her legs, I froze when my hand skimmed along her thigh, waiting to see if I’d woken her up, but she didn’t even flinch.
I’d been home late last night after an altercation at Ethan’s club, and Tamsin had been out cold by the time I’d gotten home. Still, I’d done a little bit of sneaky recon this morning and knew she was only wearing my t-shirt, no underwear, so I didn’t have to worry about getting them off her before I could do what I planned to do.
Parting her legs wide enough for me to fit between, I inched between them until my face was right over her pussy. Placing my weight on my left arm, I used my free right hand to skim my finger through her folds, circling her clit, and then brought it back down to her entrance.
I wanted just to lean in and taste her, but I had to get her ready first. I needed her out of mind when I started asking her questions, and this would help.
Dipping my finger just inside her, I groaned when I felt how tightly she closed up around it. She was perfection.
The more I played with her, the more she began to respond to me, even in her sleep. Her hips were shifting slightly, and she’d rolled onto her back, giving me full access to her.
Moving my arm down, I slowly widened her thighs to give me enough space for my shoulders as I lowered my mouth to her. This time it was my tongue that swiped between her folds, and as the taste hit me, I dropped my head to rest it on her mons and groaned against her.
She was different in every way. When I’d left the USAF, I hadn’t expected her, and everything just seemed to be the same old. I had zero expectations, zero clues about what life would be like without the military in my life. It wasn’t daunting, it just felt like I had a hole that I didn’t know if I’d ever fill again. I was looking forward to the future, but I’d been willing to settle for anything to fill the void.
Meeting her, I realized now that once military, always military, so there wasn’t any reason to search for something to fill the hole. Just because I wasn’t active in it, it was still a massive part of me. Anything that I might have felt was lacking was fulfilled by P.V.P.D. and my job there, and everything else, every other nook and cranny of my life, was completed by her.
Sound cheesy? I’d seen so much and buried so much deep inside me during my deployments that I was almost numb.
Yes, I was lucky that I didn’t suffer from PTSD or a detachment issue, but in a way, I had other problems. The first thing to even spark a fire was my job, but what gave me motivation, a goal, and brought me happiness I don’t think I’d ever felt in my life was her.
If anyone found that cheesy or cliché, they needed to have been in my shoes and go through the motions like I was toward the end of my career in the military. Then try leaving it all and starting over.
There wasn’t one thing about her that didn’t do it for me, and her taste was one of them. I felt like a glutton as I licked her again, then lowered my mouth so that I could push my tongue inside her.
It was when I brought my thumb into the mix and started to skim over the sides of the bundle of nerves that I’d ignored until then that she woke up. The first sign I got that she was coming round was a moan from her—although that could have been from the two fingers I was gently moving inside her at the time. Then she thrust her pelvis up toward me when I backed away from her, only moving my fingers inside her now, as she came fully to.
“Garrett, you better be—” she gasped as her body jerked. “Why am I tied up with my underwear? I only just got these.”
With one broad swipe of my tongue up her core, I muttered loud enough for her to hear, “I’ll get you more. Adam said Scarlett was going to visit you with more stuff from the store, so I’ll replace them.”
“Of course he knows about that,” she grumbled to herself about me, and I could feel her tugging at the restraint, trying to get free while she did it. “He knows everything.”