“What happened to you?” Chas asked lowly, concern vibrating in his voice. He moved swiftly to Gunner’s side and laid his hands lightly on the worst of Gunner’s bruises.
Gunner couldn’t help it. He flinched away from Chas’s touch.
Chas flinched in turn, almost as if he’d been slapped.
“It’s nothing personal,” Gunner mumbled at Chas’s back as his old friend turned away, a hurt expression plain on his face. Dammit, he was so bad at this relationship stuff. Not that they still had a relationship, of course. Or did they? Hell if he knew. He was confused as all get-out, though.
Silently, Chas turned back the covers on the far side of the bed and crawled in, turning his back to Gunner.
With a heavy sigh, Gunner sat on his side of the bed and, rather more painfully than he let on, lifted his legs onto the mattress and stretched out. God, he hurt from head to foot. A pinch of pain in his spine warned him of the agony to come when the epidural painkillers wore off in a week or two.
Chas reached out and turned off the lamp beside the bed. Darkness embraced them, and Gunner sighed in relief. He was most at ease in the night. He loved its concealment and silence.
“I had a bad parachute jump,” Gunner said into the darkness.
Chas made a soft sound of distress that went straight to his heart. Gunner wasn’t used to anyone caring about him like that. Not in a personal, intimate way that wasn’t backslapping dude affection. “What constitutes a bad jump?”
“Too windy. I got blown into some trees.”
Without warning, Chas asked, “Do the SEALs know you’re gay?”
The words hung in the air, heavy and loaded, hovering over him in a smothering blanket. “I’m not even sure I’m gay.”
Chas grunted. “Huh.”
At great personal sacrifice, Gunner turned on his side, facing away from Chas. Two could play that game. Except in order for his knees to rest on the mattress, his back ended up pressing against Chas’s warm, muscular one. For the moment, his spine wasn’t complaining. In fact, Chas’s body heat felt good on it, although the longer they lay like this, the more the back-to-back contact felt as if it had completed a massive electrical circuit, the way attraction zinged through him and tingled all the way to his fingertips.
He lay perfectly still, as if he was in a hide with an enemy passing by only a few feet away. He drew in his presence, his personal aura, as close to himself as he could, shutting down completely. It was a SEAL trick that had saved his life more than once.
Gunner had no idea how long he lay there before he felt Chas’s body relax and lean back more fully against his, that lithe rib cage rising and falling lightly in sleep. Only then was he able to let go of the tension in his body, releasing each muscle group one by one until he could sleep, himself.
He was lying on his back, sprawled lazily, and Chas rolled over beside him, draping a leg across his thighs, reaching down to cup Gunner’s junk. Chas ran his fingers around his ball sac, lightly squeezing the family jewels before sliding up to make a fist around the base of Gunner’s rigid and ready rod. It felt so good having that fist stroke up and down, up and down, over and over until his entire being narrowed down to the pleasure pounding through him, the orgasm building toward a gigantic release—
Gunner woke up breathing hard. No surprise, he had the mother of all hard-ons. He still lay on his side, which was the only reason he wasn’t making a circus-sized tent of the bedsheets with his dick as the center post.
It was a long, long time before his erection subsided enough for him to think about sleeping again. He repeated his own instructions to himself. He might not get another chance to sleep again for a while. He’d better take this opportunity now. Too bad he couldn’t brute force his brain into forgetting who he was plastered up against from neck to buttcrack.
He’d had so many fantasies over the years. So many regrets. And here Chas was again, showing up in Gunner’s life in the split second it took for a phone call to connect them. Had Chas always been so close and he just hadn’t known it? What an idiot he was.
Sleep, dumbsquat.
Right.
It took doing every relaxation exercise in the SEAL training manual to finally drift off, but eventually he slept once more.
CHAS WOKE up as the first rays of morning sun slipped between the drapes. He rose on one elbow to check the baby. She was still out like a light. Poor kid. He relaxed back onto the bed, and as he did so, Gunner shifted beside him, turning onto his side to face Chas.
Gunner’s big body curved into his, his nose burrowing against Chas’s shoulder, his forearms and knees pressing against Chas’s ribs and thighs. It was weird feeling Gunner relaxed in sleep. He was softer. More approachable. The hard shell was temporarily set aside, and he felt like nothing so much as a child in need of love.
Which wasn’t, in fact, far wrong. Gunner’s dad had been a hard man, demanding of his only son and determined to turn him into a man’s man. His mother had been the sort of person Chas didn’t notice when he entered a room. She just faded into the background. It wasn’t that she was fearful. She was just… bland. Emotionally absent.
She’d been so unlike his own mother, who’d been a fierce warrior on his behalf. She claimed to have known he was gay since he was about four years old, and she’d ferociously defended his right to be exactly who he wanted to be for as long as he could remember. He’d been out and proud in high school. Gunner, not so much. Heck, it didn’t sound like the guy was out yet. Not even to himself.
They would both turn thirty next summer. Chas couldn’t imagine having lived his twenties in the closet. He’d had a ton of fun in college and enjoyed being young and carefree to the fullest. But Gunner had apparently spent his twenties learning how to kill people. It was hard to square the funny, smart, generous kid he’d grown up with becoming a coldhearted, serious, grim SEAL. And now here he was, curled up against Chas’s side like a needy kid. It was enough to give a guy mental whiplash.
The baby stirred, flinging her limbs wide and letting out a wail. The sound cut off abruptly, though. She was still scared, obviously.
Chas rolled away from Gunner’s warmth and moved over to the little girl, scooped her up into his arms, and murmured, “It’s okay, baby girl. Cry all you want.”
He carried her into the bathroom and ran a warm bath. While the tub filled, he stripped her down and tossed her makeshift towel-diaper in the trash. They would have to see about getting her real diapers and some food pretty soon, but right now he wanted to get all that blood off her.
She relaxed in the bath, lying back and letting him support her head. She even closed her eyes and let her limbs float in the water as he gently washed her off and shampooed her hair. Poor tyke needed the relaxation something fierce.
After he’d rinsed the soap off, she sat up, waist-deep in the water. He coaxed her to play, and she hesitantly slapped the water a few times with her little hands.
He smiled and nodded encouragingly, and she slapped harder. A splash of water drenched his chest, and he laughed in delight. Her rosebud mouth curved into a tentative smile. Thank God. She wasn’t so traumatized that she could feel no joy at all.
They played the splashing game for several minutes, until the little girl really got into it, sending waves of water up and out of the tub onto him.