I couldn’t help a chuckle. “Yeah, I hear that.” And thus we spent the next few hours, Lucian and I, sitting at the table and sipping beers, neither of us real big into hard drinking. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m inclined to get black-out drunk from time to time, I just do it in private. Not sure about Lucian, but I suspected he rarely let himself get so far gone he lost control.
Brock and Bax, however, had no such inhibitions. A party was a party, especially for Bax. He was well on his way to getting wasted, and unless things had changed while he was in Canada playing for the Calgary Stampeders in the CFL, Bax always provided an interesting time when he had too much to drink.
Case in point. I just looked up and, yep, here we go. Bax was standing with one foot on his chair, one up on the table, a bottle of Jameson upended, chugging straight from the bottle. The crowd was chanting “CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!” and Bax, being Bax, looked like he was gonna try to polish off the whole bottle in one fuckin’ go…and goddammit, that would NOT end well. At all. For anyone.
So I hopped up, snagged the bottle from him and said, “Bax, don’t be a dumbass.”
He peered at me blearily, angrily. “Hey, fucker. I was about to win a bet.” He winked, a little unevenly, at a couple of girls, who tittered and giggled coyly. “I kill a whole bottle of Jameson at once, they’ll take me back to their hotel with them.”
I chuckled, despite my irritation. “Bax, buddy. Listen. You slam this bottle of whisky, won’t be nothin’ happening with either of ’em, or both of ’em, even as fine as they are, since you’ll have a wicked case of whisky dick. So, this is me doing you a big-bro solid. Be smart, yeah?”
Bax reached out faster than I’d have expected him to be capable of given his state of intoxication, and snagged the bottle from me. “I…don’t…get whisky dick…bro.” He shot me a dirty look, stuck out his tongue, and polished off the bottle in half a dozen long swallows. “I mighta shared this, but now I ain’t.”
He was still standing in his Captain Morgan pose, one knee up, one foot on the table, so I shoved him, half as a knee-jerk reaction to him being a dumbass, and half because I was pissed at him. He toppled backward, arms wind milling, bottle flailing, and then just before he went down, he got a grip on my shirt and hauled me down with him. He hit hard, and I slammed down on top of him, and I heard the sound of glass breaking. Bax rolled over, throwing me off, and I felt something sharp gash my ribs, and then I was on my back, the wind knocked out of me, ribs screaming fire and pain, and people were shouting, and Bax was cursing.
I sat up, pressed my hand to my ribs and it came away red. Lifted up my shirt, checked the cut; not too deep, might need stitches, but not sure. Nothing too terrible. I grabbed a handful of napkins and pressed them against the cut, clamped them there as hard as I could, and then turned to check on Bax.
Fuck.
FUCK.
He was in a bad way, a jagged piece of the smashed bottle deep into the meat of his upper thigh. An inch in, if not more. I knew basic battlefield triage, which meant I knew to put pressure on a wound, how to improvise something to keep the pressure on, and I knew to not attempt to remove something impaled into the body.
“Don’t move, Bax,” I said, working to keep my voice calm. “We need to leave it in there for a hot minute, okay, bro? I know it hurts, but we gotta leave it in.”
“Why?” He spoke through gritted teeth, glaring at me. “Fuckin’ hurts. Get it out.”
“Can’t, not yet,” I said. “Might cause worse damage if we take it out. And it’s high up enough, it might be near your artery. We pull it, it could sever that artery, and you’ll bleed out before we can do shit.”
He was lying down on his back, struggling now and then to sit up and look at it, hands hovering around his thigh as if fighting the urge to just yank the shard out.
“Fuck, man.”
“I’m sorry, Bax. I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
“No shit, asshole.”
The blood, the pain in his eyes, the tension, the guilt…it put me back. “MEDIC!” I shouted forgetting, momentarily, that I was in Alaska, and not on a mission.
I heard commotion around me and looked up to see someone shoving their way through the crowd. “Lemme through. I’m a medic.” I heard a woman’s voice, with that brusque snap of someone used to being listened to. “Move the FUCK out of the way, assholes!”
People were shoved aside, and a woman stepped through the gap she’d created, kneeling beside Bax. I shifted aside to give her room, and she quickly took stock.
“Ah, not too bad. Not pretty, but you’ll be fine. Just hold still, okay?”
“I am holding still!” Bax whined. “You’re the one who’s wiggling.”
She glanced at me. “Pin his leg down for me.”
“Yes ma’am,” I said, because she had that voice of authority, and I’m a soldier trained to listen to that. I grabbed Bax’s thigh up near his groin and his knee and pinned him down. “Now what?”
“Now I yank it out, and hope he hits you instead of me.” She said this with a lopsided grin that knocked the air out of my lungs.
Fuck, damn, and holy shit, this girl was gorgeous. On the shorter side, but curvy as fuck. Blond hair braided tight against her head, the tail hanging over one shoulder, bright green eyes the color of grass with the summer sun shining on it, and that grin, fuck, that grin. Lopsided, cute, confident, sexy, a hint of white teeth, her lips expressive and done in bright red lipstick. That grin knocked me the fuck out.
And she was handling this with the calm ease of someone who’d seen much, much worse.
“Won’t it hurt him worse if you take it out?”
She shook her head, the braid swinging against her shoulder. “Nah. Not where it is. No danger of nicking his femoral. Just muscle and blood in there. He’ll be fine. It’ll hurt him worse when I take it out, but it won’t damage him worse. Key difference there.” She glanced at Bax. “You need a belt to bite down on, big boy? Or can you take the pain?” She was baiting him, I realized.
“I can fuckin’ take it, okay? Just get it the fuck out of me,” Bax growled.
“Grab onto me, Bax,” I said. “Break something if you have to.”
“Oh I’ll be breaking something,” Bax snarled at me. “Just you fuckin’ wait.”
“I need you to keep his leg pinned down,” the sexy medic said. “So he doesn’t thrash and make things worse.”
“Gotcha,” I replied. I heard sirens in the distance, which meant someone had called 911. Keeping a firm grip on Bax’s leg, I braced for the moment she’d pull out the jagged shard of the bottle. Bax was braced too, teeth gritted, both of his hands clamped down on my shoulder, his grip brutally powerful. I deserved it, so I allowed it. But it fuckin’ hurt, and along with the cut on my ribs, which was still bleeding, I was in a world of hurt.
But Bax had to be hurting worse, so I pushed the pain aside and focused.
The medic shot me a look. “On three, all right? Ready? One… two…,” and then she yanked it out in a quick jerk of her hand, lightning fast. “Three.”
“Ha ha,” Bax grunted, sounding distinctly faint and unamused. “Very fuckin’ original. Oh fuck…fuck, it hurts.”
The medic glanced up at Brock, who was hovering over us. “You. Need your shirt and belt.”
Brock complied immediately, shrugging off his coat, ripping off the tie, and unbuttoning the shirt. In less than thirty seconds he gave her his shirt and belt. The medic wrapped the shirt around Bax’s thigh, keeping a thick wad of fabric bunched over the site of the wound, and then wrapped the belt around it and cinched it tight. The ambulance arrived and the EMS crew took over, the sexy medic filling them in, and then Brock was climbing into the ambulance after Bax who was on the stretcher. And then they were gone and I was left standing there, hand pressed to my side, with the medic next to me, her hands bloody.
She eyed me. “Military?”
I nodded. “Navy SEAL. Well…ex, now, I guess.” I returned her gaze, found m
yself lost in that green. “Combat medic?”
“Army. Three tours, one in Iraq and two in Afghanistan.”
“Thanks.” I held out my hand, the one not pressed to my ribs. “Zane Badd.”
She held out her hand to take mine, but then hesitated. “I’d shake, but my hands are messy.”
“Not the first time either of us has had blood on our hands.” I closed the space, took her hand in mine. “What’s your name, darlin’?”
She shook my hand with a firm, strong grip. “Mara Quinn.” Both of our hands were slick and sticky with blood, hers with Bax’s, and mine with his and mine both.
I’m not a talker, like some of my brothers, and I’m also not quite as taciturn or grunty as Lucian or Sebastian, but I’ve never had any problems talking to women. Mainly, I’d guess, because my looks typically speak for themselves, and the fact that there’s not usually much talking necessary after I say, “I’m a Navy SEAL.” But, for some reason, Mara Quinn left me tongue-tied.
“So.” I felt like my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth, words lodged in my throat.
“Small talk sucks, and I need a drink.” She gave me that lopsided grin again, and something fluttered inside me, as if there were a colony of bats inside my chest. “Happen to know somewhere…quiet…where we could get one?”
I grinned back at her. “I might. There happens to be this bar named after me…”
“The bar’s named after you, or you after the bar?”
“Same difference. It was our dad’s, and now it’s ours,” I said, gesturing ahead of me for her to go into Badd’s.
“When you say ‘ours,’ who is that, exactly?” Mara asked.
“Me and my seven brothers,” I said. “Sebastian, the one getting married, is the oldest. Then me, then Brock, whose shirt you put around Bax’s leg. Bax is next, then Canaan and Corin, then Lucian, then Xavier.”
Mara’s eyebrows lifted. “Damn, that’s a lot of brothers.”
I nodded. “Sure is. But that just means it’s never boring around here.”
We took two stools at the bar, and the temp bartender came over immediately. “What can I get you, Mr. Badd?”
I frowned at him. “Name’s Zane. Mr. Badd was my dad and he’s gone. Bourbon on the rocks for me.” I glanced at Mara. “For you?”
“Same as him.”
“Any particular bourbon you’d like, sir?”
“Maker’s Mark is fine,” I said.
“Good choice,” Mara said, smiling. “Although I’m usually more of a Blanton’s neat sort of girl, but not everyone has Blanton’s.”
When we had our Maker’s, we sipped in an oddly companionable silence for a couple of minutes, and then Mara swiveled on her chair to face me.
“So, um…” she looked at me over the top of her rocks glass, a small, sly grin on her lips, “when I said somewhere quieter, this isn’t exactly what I meant.”
The way she was inching closer to me, letting her knees brush mine, told me what she likely meant, but I’m not one to play games or mince words. I like to know exactly what I’m getting into, and I like the girl to be clear about what she wants from me. I’ve brushed too close to Death too many times, seen too many buddies’ lives cut short to bother fucking around playing mind games.
“Oh. Well…what did you mean, then, Mara?” I slid closer to her, half standing now, framing her knees with mine, and I slid a palm up her thigh. She slugged the last of her drink in one go and then stood up, pushing closer to me. No hesitation, no games.
“You, me, and somewhere private with a bed,” she said. “Or a couch. Or a counter.”
“I have all three of those at my disposal, and everyone else will be down here for the foreseeable future.”
“Lead the way, then,” Mara said, slipping her hand into mine. I led her upstairs to the apartment and showed her into my room. As soon as I had the door closed behind her, Mara jumped at me. Literally, she leapt into the air and crashed against my chest, letting me take all of her weight, her mouth slamming against mine, her tongue seeking mine.
For a long, breathless moment, then, we kissed. I had both hands on the plump, juicy peach of her denim-clad ass, squeezing it, holding her aloft with that grip. I shifted her higher, and she wrapped her short, powerful legs around mine.
I held her there, backed away from the kiss enough to whisper against her lips. “Damn, girl. You don’t waste time, do you?”
She shook her head. “Fuck no. You’ve seen the same shit I have, Zane…you feel like wasting time when we both know what we want?”
“Fuck no,” I echoed her words back to her.
“But, to be clear,” she murmured, that sweet, sexy, mischievous, lopsided grin gracing her lovely mouth, “just because I don’t want to waste time with stupid games doesn’t mean I want to skip any of the good stuff.”
“I’d never skip any of the good stuff,” I said.
“Good, because foreplay is half the fun.”
“At least half,” I agreed.
“Glad we’re on the same page, then.”
“Me too.”
She slid down to her feet, pushed my shirt up and let me rip it off, then she tossed it aside. As she reached for the fly of my tuxedo pants she stopped, seeing the cut on my ribs. “The fuck is this, Zane?”
I glanced down at it, having forgotten about it. “Oh, that? It’s nothing.”
She pulled at the paper napkins, which were sodden through with blood and sticking to my skin. “It’s not nothing. Jesus, why didn’t you say anything?”
“Bax was hurt worse, and then I just sort of…forgot.”
She shot me a baffled look. “How can you forget about a six-inch cut across your fucking ribs?”
I shrugged. “I mean, it doesn’t exactly tickle, but you sort of…distracted me.” I grinned, knocking her hands away, reaching for her shirt. “I’m fine. We can deal with it later.”
She ignored my attempts to put her off, and continued to gently peel the blood-wet wad of napkins away, then examined the cut. “You might get away without stitches. It’s not all that deep, just long. And it’s already congealing.” She glanced up at me. “Got any super glue?”
“Super glue?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Works great for things like this. Medical glue would be better, but plain old super glue works in a pinch.”
“There’s some in the junk drawer in the kitchen.”
“Well, show me the way. I can’t just ignore this, you know. Not in my nature. So the faster you show me the glue, the faster we can get back to the fun stuff.”
I led her out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, found the glue and the first aid kit with the bandages and tape. She ripped off a giant wad of paper towels, filled a cup with water, and poured the water across the cut to clean it, and then when she was satisfied it was clean she dabbed it dry and carefully applied a thick strip of super glue along the cut, then knelt and blew on my skin to dry the glue faster. Within a minute, the glue was dry and I was as good as new.
Well, mostly.
She stood up, washed her hands, and then leaned a hip against the counter, standing facing me. “Your pants are wet. Oops.” She said this with a grin that told me everything I needed to know.
“Guess they’ll have to come off,” I said, and led her down the hallway to my room, closed and locked the door behind us.
“Guess they will.” She unbuttoned the fly, unhooked the clasp, and lowered the zipper. “Is this where we were? I’m having trouble remembering.”
I felt my gut flipping, my cock hardening, my head hammering. “I think we’re on the same page, about how foreplay is at least half the fun of sex.”
“Oh, yeah,” she murmured, tugging my tuxedo pants down. “That page.”
“That page.” I toed off my shoes, stepped out of my pants, and stood in front of a fully clothed Mara in nothing but a pair of tight black briefs.
“God, you’re fucking gorgeous, Zane, you know that?” Mara’s voice was low,
a hum of sincere appreciation. “But you’re still wearing too many clothes.”
I let her tug my underwear off, and then I was naked, and she still had every last article of clothing on, a situation I intended to rectify ASAP. She stood in front of me, her gaze raking blatantly up and down my body. I let her look, because I worked my ass off to look this way. “Mara, honey, you’re plenty gorgeous too, but I think I need to see more of you. Just…you know…just to make sure we’re on the same page.”
She grabbed the hem of her shirt in preparation to peel it off, but I caught her wrists in my hands.
“Ah-ah-ah,” I said, “that’s for me to do.”
Mara let me peel her shirt off, toed off her shoes like I had, let me work those tight jeans off. And then she was, gloriously, in nothing but her bra and underwear, a matching set of green lace and silk that covered just enough to be, you know, functional, but still left little to the imagination. I took a moment to take in her beauty; she was, as I already knew, fucking incredible. Five foot five at most. Muscular arms and legs, toned abs, a taut round ass that told me she did a shit load of squats at the gym, and tits that would be just slightly more than a handful. She wasn’t what I would call ripped, but she was clearly no stranger to the gym and clean eating, yet she still had hints of softness and flesh where I liked to see it on a woman. Fucking perfect is what she was.
I popped her bra clasps with a pinch of one hand, tossed the garment aside, and then knelt in front of her, running my nose across her belly to one hip, then across again, a little lower, giving her plenty of warning as to my intent in the next few moments. She didn’t demur, and I didn’t expect her to. She let me shimmy her panties off and, sweet goddamn, her pussy was waxed bare except for a thin, closely trimmed landing strip. Plump, thick pussy lips, damp, glistening.
“Fuck, Mara. You’re perfect,” I growled.
I slid my hands up the backs of her thighs, cupped that firm but juicy ass, bare for my hands now, and as soft as the silk I’d just stripped off her. I brought my hands around, traced a finger up the slit of her pussy, getting a low moan from her.