Renegade (Trackers #2)

Chapter Four

RAVEN

“This was delicious,” I said, setting my spoon down on the table next to my empty bowl. “Did you like your soup?”

Miguel smiled, glancing up from the bowl. He’d been distracted ever since seeing the man he’d called John back at the Sagebrush. Burning the garlic toast he’d popped in the oven had been as telltale a sign as any, as if the way he’d been acting ever since our afternoon meeting hadn’t been enough. I’d never seen him like this before. I reached for his hand, and he briefly squeezed my fingers before letting go. “Come on. Let’s save the dishes for after.”

I frowned slightly. “After what?” I looked up at him as he stood and reached for my bowl, sliding it into his.

“Just come with me, Raven. I need to show you something.”

I was anxious to see whatever it was he wanted to show me, but I could tell Miguel wasn’t exactly certain about sharing it with me. I had a feeling that the man we’d chased had been important to him…either that, or there was bad blood between them, maybe both. I couldn’t help but feel the sting of jealousy in my heart, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. There was just something in the way Miguel was behaving that made me feel like I was standing on rapidly shifting sand.

I followed him to the kitchen as he put our bowls and spoons in the sink, then he took my hand to lead me out to the garage. As the florescent lights blinked on, I followed him directly to his footlocker and watched as he pulled a key from his pocket. He bent and unlocked the padlock, before looking up at me.

“The man we chased at the Sagebrush Cantina today is John Sutter. He was my best friend in the Corps. He was our team leader.” He dragged his gaze away from me and lifted the lid. On the very top of the footlocker lay an American flag folded in a triangle and preserved under glass.

I nervously wrapped my arms around my middle and stared down at it as Miguel reached in and gently lifted it out of the box.

He held it out to me, straightening as he stood up. “This was John’s.”

“John’s?” I stared down at the flag, absently watching my own hands as I reached out and took the frame from him. I looked at it for a second and then glanced up at his frown. “But I thought they only gave out these flags when someone died. If you recognized the man at the Sagebrush Cantina as John, then that means—”

Miguel slowly nodded. “He’s not dead after all.” He traced his finger on the glass before looking up at me. His expression was stoic. “Sutter didn’t have any family, so, as his second-in-command and his best friend, I was given the flag at his funeral.”

My mouth dropped open as I clutched the frame. “They had a funeral for him? But that means they had his remains if they brought him home and buried him.”

Miguel shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong. There’s a coffin buried at Arlington. Obviously, John Sutter isn’t in it. We chased him today.”

“You’re sure…I mean, you’re absolutely certain the man we saw in Calabasas today was John Sutter?” I felt my hands trembling as I held this sacred memento to a warrior’s service.

He nodded, holding my gaze with a frighteningly intense stare. He finally blew out a long breath and turned away, bending again to pull out a khaki, beige do-rag. I watched as he unwrapped it, revealing a stack of photos. I couldn’t get a good look at them in the funky florescent lighting, and he must have realized that. When he reached out, I handed him the frame and he bent to lay it gently into the footlocker, still holding the pictures. “Come on, Sunshine. Let’s go back inside with these.”

I nodded before he circled my waist and with a gentle squeeze, led me back inside. He didn’t stop in the dining room but instead, headed for our bedroom. I flicked on the lights as he sat on the bed with the photos in hand. I sat down close to him, and he handed me the first one. The colored photo showed a group of six Marines dressed in sand-colored camouflage fatigues. All of them held automatic rifles as they looked at the camera. I recognized Vonne immediately. He was the shortest man of the bunch and the only black man. His wide, white grin was familiar, and I couldn’t help but smile as I brushed my finger over the younger version of the man who’d taken care of my gunshot wound. In the middle of the group stood two tall men, one of whom I also recognized. Miguel was absolutely breathtaking in his Marine Corps uniform. He was younger in the photo, as striking a man as I’d ever seen.

I glanced up at Miguel who watched me with dark eyes. “This is your Recon unit?”

He nodded, pointing to the photo. “My brothers. You know Vonne,” he said, pointing him out. His finger moved to another man with sandy brown hair. He wore a thin-lipped expression as if he was refusing to smile at whomever was taking the picture. He looked tough which was probably planned on his part. “This is Cliff Mayhew,” Miguel said. He pointed to another man. “This is Alex Grant.” Grant also wore a serious expression but there was a hint of a sly smile on his lips. He tapped the photo, and I looked up.

“Grant and Mayhew were like twins. They always did everything together.” I nodded as he concentrated on the picture I held. “That’s Pete Morrison,” he said, pointing to the tall, blond man standing beside him in the middle of the group. “We called him Peety. He’s an Iowa farm boy.” I looked up and caught the smile he wore, hearing the fondness in his voice. “He was the clown of the group…always making us laugh with a stupid joke, even in the worst of circumstances.”

I nodded and focused on the only man he’d yet to identify. He stood on the opposite side of Miguel. I brought the picture closer to my face, looking at the features of the man, trying to make them out under the shade cast by the floppy, khaki hat he was wearing in the photo. Sure enough, Miguel had been right. I’d barely caught a glimpse of this man’s face, but he was definitely the man we’d chased. “And that’s John Sutter, our team leader.”

But he was more than a team leader to Miguel. Instinctively, I’d known what he’d meant to the man I loved, but until he said his name as he identified all his brothers, I wasn’t sure. Now I was.

“You loved him.”

When Miguel said nothing, I looked up at him. His face was expressionless as he finally nodded. “I loved him, Raven.” His voice broke and he cleared his throat, frowning. “We lost him one day.”

I sucked in a breath, holding it as he continued.

“We had orders which required a convoy of several vehicles to move from our base camp to another location. It was critical that they got where they were going within forty-eight hours. Our Recon unit was tasked to find an alternate route through the desert since sandstorms in the area were constantly knocking out our communications and even with satellite coverage, we were having a problem on the ground. There’s not much more I can say about that except the route we mapped out was way off the beaten path.” Miguel sighed as he went on. “Even so, we ended up being caught in one…a big one.”

“A sandstorm?”

He nodded. “It raged around our Humvee for more than twenty minutes. By the time there was a break in the wind and pummeling we were taking, John—like always—was the first man out of our Humvee. He ordered us to stay inside while he checked the vehicle. Sand had partially buried us, and he wanted to make sure we could drive out of it. Plus, the area where we were stranded, was extremely hostile, so sitting still, even for a sandstorm, would have been dangerous.” Miguel swallowed hard. “I think he thought if he could dig some of the sand away from our tires, we could make our way back to camp. Then, without warning the wind suddenly started up again.”

“And John was outside,” I said.

Miguel’s expression looked haunted as he gave a slow nod. “The sand blinded us and we assume it blinded him too. We tried to get outside to find him, but none of us had been prepared for something that bad. We’d miscalculated. None of us had seen anything like it before. As Sutter’s second-in-command, I ordered my men to stay inside the vehicle, waiting for it to die down. We all figured John had taken shelter underneath the Humvee, so we waited it out, praying we were right. The five of us were trapped inside for almost fifteen minutes…the longest fifteen minutes of our lives.”

He sounded devastated as he replayed the scene in his head and I took his hand, holding it as he threaded our fingers together. “What happened?” I asked quietly.

“By the time we were finally able to get out of the Humvee to look for Sutter, there was no trace of him.” He sighed. “We just couldn’t believe it. We dug away the sand heaped around the undercarriage, but it was just sand. When we realized he wasn’t there, we frantically searched the desert surroundings for more than an hour until our base commander finally ordered us to go back to camp.”

“Oh, Miguel,” I said, trying to envision the sight of the empty desert and the man who’d somehow lost his bearings in the storm, blinded by sand and wind, unable to find his way back to his brothers in the sandstorm even though they’d been so close. “You all thought he’d died.”

Miguel shook his head. “None of us could believe it. Our base commander wouldn’t let us return until the convoy had been escorted to its destination. By the time we were finally allowed to go back to the area John had been lost, four days had passed and we knew Sutter was most likely dead. He’d gone without water in the desert heat all that time.

“Initially, he’d been declared missing in action but that was quickly downgraded to killed in action after an exhaustive two-day search of the area proved futile. None of us could accept that John was dead. Sutter was just too tough of a Marine to let a little sandstorm separate him from us. We didn’t find a body, so his capture was always a possibility, but as you can guess, that idea made us dread the situation all the more. Above all, though, we knew he’d make his way back to base if he was alive, if just to kick our asses for leaving him.”

“It must have been horrible, Miguel,” I said.

He absently nodded, picking up the pile of pictures he’d set down on the bed. He handed them to me, and I slowly leafed through them, looking at each one. They were all of his friends, the men he’d called brothers. Some were of the whole group, but most were of John. Close up, I could make out the features of the man. He was handsome with a white scar marring one perfect eyebrow. He had freckles over his nose and his skin was tanned. At his forehead, a strip of skin from left to right, was pale, as if he’d worn a hat while out in the sun.

I couldn’t imagine how hot it must have been out there in the desert landscape of what I assumed to be Afghanistan. It could have been Iraq, but the U.S. began drawing down troops in 2007, completing withdrawal in 2011 if memory served, while Afghanistan went on for another ten years. Doing the math in my head and knowing Miguel was thirty-six, made me think I was right about that. I didn’t picture Afghanistan with rolling dunes of sand like I’d seen in Lawrence of Arabia , one of my favorite movies. Instead, I imagined it had scrub dotting the sandy ground as I’d seen in news reports from reporters on the ground while the war raged, but I supposed even Afghanistan could have freak sandstorms like the one Miguel described.

I thought about the differences between the Miguel I knew now and the man he must have been then. I was acutely aware of what I’d been doing while Miguel had been on the ground, fighting the enemy…killing them in service to our country. I’d been a young, gay man, making the rounds of the clubs, playing around, dancing…fucking. All the while, the brave man sitting beside me had lost a man he loved while fighting for our country. I handed the photos back to Miguel with John’s smiling face on the top.

“You fell in love with John,” I stated what he’d already confirmed.

He gazed at me with sad eyes. “It wasn’t what we have, Raven. You gotta understand. He was my superior and, though, we always had an attraction to each other, we never…” He paused before going on. “It took a long time—almost seven years on the same team—to acknowledge that attraction. We kissed a bit. We both wanted to go further but out there…well, there isn’t much privacy, and he didn’t want to risk my career if we were caught. He’d be demoted if he was found out, but I’d likely be transferred. We both could have been court martialed, but they probably would have kept him in place because he was the team leader. Keeping a Recon unit together was important. If it hadn’t been wartime, we both would have gotten in hot water.”

I nodded to show I was listening and understood.

“John wouldn’t risk breaking up the team. We worked together like cogs in a wheel and if one of us left, it woulda taken a long time to find another guy to fill my place. Ironically, when Sutter was lost, that’s exactly what happened. As second-in-command, I became team leader, and they brought in a new guy…Carlos Jimenez.” He smiled. “He was a cocky son-of-a-bitch who tried to fit in, but he was acutely aware of the fact that he was filling the spot of a dead man. We accepted him as best we could, but the team was never the same. He was shot dead on patrol one night. He was killed a month or so before my tour was due to be up, so instead of replacing him, they brought us home.”

It was nice to get the background and all, but I selfishly wanted to get back to the subject at hand. “So…you and John…you just fooled around a little?” I asked, knowing I had no right to pry.

He smiled at me, and I felt my heart speed up as he nodded. “That’s it. A few kisses, a quick fumble in the dark, a few mutual hand jobs…that’s it. We wanted to do more because by that time we’d worked our way up to this. We were seven years into our tour by the time either of us acted on our feelings and that was only weeks before we lost him.” He looked down at the picture. “Literally, lost him in the desert.”

I put an arm around his shoulder, and he looked at me. “You’re still in love with him, Miguel.” I felt my Adam’s apple bob up and down in my suddenly parched throat.

He frowned, setting the pictures on the bed table, and turning to me. “No, Sunshine. That was a long time ago.” He pushed me back on the bed and pulled me into his arms. I turned into his embrace as he lowered his mouth and began kissing me. My heart pounded wildly in my chest. I loved Miguel so deeply, the very thought of being separated by the ghost of John Sutter nearly killed me.

And now, he’d come back.

MIGUEL

I kissed Raven passionately, pouring my love into him, needing him to know that he was the most precious man I’d ever met. I didn’t want John between us. Seeing him at the cantina today had triggered memories but none of them had been the romantic fantasies of the twenty-five-year-old man I’d been when he’d been swallowed up by a freak sandstorm in Afghanistan. They’d been the sorrowful memories of the way our unit had searched for him, going out under the cover of darkness time and time again, defying our commander when we’d been ordered to give up the search. I needed Raven to believe what we had now was different than what I’d felt for John.

I reached between us to drag his t-shirt up, pulling it high enough to get it off him, before returning to his mouth and going to work on his pants. I undid the cord on his sweats and worked him out of them, tossing them on a chair while he did the same for me. When we were down to underwear, we fell back on the bed together, kissing deeply, eager for each other. I had a deep desire to feel him wrapped around my cock as I buried myself in his body. No man had ever made me feel this way, as complete as Raven did, and I needed him to know that.

I needed to wipe away any concerns he had over my short-lived physical relationship with John, and the relationship I had with Raven now. There was no comparison between the two in my mind and the last thing I wanted to do was make the man I loved believe John was between us in bed.

“I love you, Raven,” I said, kissing the corner of his mouth. “You are the most precious thing to me in the world. You saved me the day I tackled you to the grass outside the Capitol Records building, whether you believe it or not.” I gazed into his eyes, reaching up and brushing away the hair that had fallen over his forehead. He smiled and lit up the room like sunshine…my Sunshine.

“I love you too, Miguel. I love you so much.”

Our mouths crashed together again, tongues twisting, seeking, needing. He wiggled until he was under me, head on his pillow, legs open, bodies grinding against one another through our boxer briefs. I was stiff as a post, leaking precome. He was equally as hard, clutching at my shoulders as I rose up over him, delighting in the way we moved together. I reached between us, taking both of his nipples in hand, to begin squeezing. I’d found that under Raven’s touch, I liked a bit of nipple torture myself. I suspected they were as much of an erogenous zone as his were.

I missed his piercings. He left them in a box at home most days along with some interesting hoops with tiny balls threaded on. He’d claimed that the single most embarrassing moment of his life had been when he’d caught Judy staring at them through a particularly tight T-shirt, he’d worn to the office one day. I hadn’t brought up the absence of them, hoping they’d make a return eventually, but I wasn’t sure when. Maybe my Sunshine was getting a little stuffy. I hoped not. Perhaps the trip to Arizona would allow us to kick up our heels a little while his grandmother was getting healed , whatever that entailed, once this case was done.

Raven yelped slightly as I pinched a little too hard, but I touched him the way I liked to be touched. I kissed him deeper as I reached down and slid my hand into the waistband of his briefs, taking his weeping dick in hand. Raven was nearly equal to me in size and cut—beautiful. I loved the way his cock leaked, sliding pleasantly through my fingers. I squeezed, dragging more filthy sounds out of him. Every moan…every groan, made me harder, taking me closer to the edge. I drank them down, only separating our lips when I felt myself moving into dangerous territory. I wanted to be inside him before getting to the point when I couldn’t hold off my climax.

I rolled off him, quickly shedding my boxer briefs as he did the same, getting a nice view of his tight ass as he rolled to open his bedside table drawer to remove a bottle of lube and toss a condom between us. He rolled back to me as I picked up the condom and eyed it up. When I glanced up with a question in my eyes, he smiled back. “Do we—?” I stopped the unspoken “ need these anymore ” from leaving my mouth before lifting the gold package to my teeth, looking back at him when he grabbed my hand. He closed his fist around it.

“Let’s…talk about this for a second,” he said.

I frowned. “You don’t think we need them anymore?”

He shrugged. “If you…think so,” he said, furrowing his brows.

I sighed, leaning over to kiss his lips. When I pulled away, he was watching me intensely.

“Raven, we’ve been together for months and I promise, there hasn’t been anyone else. I’ve been tested three times since then and prior to that, it’d been nearly a year with many other tests in between. I’m clean but you need to be certain. I wouldn’t think any less of you if you told me you wanted to wait. It’s fine, really, but I hope you trust me enough to know I’d never put you at risk. I don’t want to be with anyone else, but you have to be sure.” I hesitated for a second as I shook my head. “Listen, Raven, my history with men has never progressed to the relationship level before, so I’m not sure when the time is right to ask. But I want you to know I’ve never even considered going without them until meeting you.”

“You were tested three times since we’ve been together?” he asked.

I nodded. “I get tested monthly…ever since I was sexually active.”

He smiled and I felt my heart skip a beat. “Me too, Miguel. I just didn’t know you’d been tested monthly.”

I nodded, looking down at the small package before glancing back at him. “Still, it’s always a risk.” I’d met a couple of guys in bars who’d admitted they were positive and even though I hadn’t fooled around with them, taking guys home for a casual fuck was always a gamble. Not everyone was as honest as those guys had been. “Maybe I should have waited longer before opening my mouth.”

“Do you trust me?” Raven asked, jolting me since my mind had been drifting. His cobalt blue gaze glittered in the darkness.

“If I didn’t trust you, I’d have never blown you without a condom the first night we were together, because anal isn’t the only way to contract the virus.” I glanced away, biting my lip before looking back. “I’ve always trusted you, Raven.”

He reached out and plucked the condom from my fingers, tossing it on the table. “Then I’m fine too. I know you love me and wouldn’t put me at risk.”

I nodded, happy as hell that we’d gotten that conversation out of the way, but feeling like a weight had been lifted off my chest, nevertheless. “I’m glad that’s over and done with. I wanted to bring the subject up before but I’m glad we finally talked about it.” I reached for the lube, squeezing a healthy dollop into the palm of my hand and slicking myself up before taking hold of his cock and stroking it back to life. Both of us had softened during the heavy conversation. In seconds, I was back over him, pushing his knees up as I stared into his soulful eyes. Raven was so beautiful, splayed out on what had long ago become our bed, ready to take me bareback for the very first time.

I took hold of my cock, feeling it throb in my hand, knowing that it had to be harder than it’d ever been before. The very thought of entering him bare, feeling the inside of his body without latex between us, had me on the edge already. The idea of emptying myself inside his body was exciting as hell. “Ready?” At his enthusiastic nod, I pressed myself inside. We usually didn’t bother with a whole lot of prep anymore. Since the first time I’d ever fucked him, we’d kept up a regular routine. He got laid every night and often several mornings a week before Dolly came to get Angelica up and ready for the day. Raven was almost always ready for me, even when we managed to wake up late for work; on those days, we simply took advantage of Raven’s nice big shower.

He blew out a breath as I bottomed out and as always when we fucked face to face, he held my gaze with an intent look of his own. “It feels different without the condom, Miguel,” he said, groaning.

It did for me too. If he said it was different for him, then I believed him. “For me too, Sunshine. It’s hotter I think.”

His eyes blazed and he clutched me around the neck. I dropped his knees, letting him plant his feet flat on the bed as he pulled my head down and fused our lips together, kissing me with his whole mouth, lips, and tongue. I wasn’t going to last, not like this. Not when my dick felt like it was on fire from his heat. I was certain I could feel every muscle on the inside of him as we slid together. I sped up, moving just that much faster as he topped me from the bottom, lifting his hips as he met mine with thrusts of his own. It wasn’t long before we were both panting as I felt my heart hammering inside my chest. I started pounding into him.

He wrapped his long legs around me, hugging my body, and digging his heels into my ass as I drove into him. I broke eye contact with him as I felt my climax racing in on me, unable to stop the inevitable, and not wanting to. I hung my head, gasping for air as he suddenly let out a shout. Come jetted out of his cock, striking me on my belly, then raining down over his abs, as his body clamped down on me, strangling my dick. If I’d wanted to stop my reaction, I couldn’t have.

My climax hit me with a force I hadn’t known until now as I shot deeply up inside Raven, somehow certain the orgasm we shared had to feel as strange for him as it felt for me. I lifted up just high enough to feel the exquisite stickiness between us as he shot a second time. I pulsed through my climax, coating his insides a second time, and then yet again. As I finally came down, I realized that going without condoms wasn’t the only difference between us tonight. The absence of them had brought us closer, mind, body…and soul.