CHAPTER 4
T he man had some seriously flexible hips. The way he rolled them against her, plunging in and out, it had Hannah seeing stars and digging her nails into Cal’s ass cheeks.
Where did he learn to move like that?
Did she care?
Not really, because even if it was some other woman who taught him, Hannah was reaping the benefits now.
His tongue mimicked the rhythm of his thrusts perfectly, and with each drop of his hips as he sunk deeper inside of her, his lower belly grazed her clit in such a way she wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold on.
Or if she even wanted to.
Cal was an unexpected Christmas present she intended to leave unwrapped, and play with for as long as she could.
She’d pushed him away, been mean and snarky, but in the end, his persistence, his kindness and seeing past her veiled anger to her loneliness won her over. That and the fact that he made a mean pizza.
He was also entirely right. She didn’t have to do it alone.
She’d just gotten so used to having to.
Habits were tough to break. And she was a naturally stubborn person.
She tasted her own release on his lips, but she didn’t mind. It just turned her on more and made her claw up his back and dig her fingers deeper into the man’s very nice ass cheeks. She knew women who killed themselves at the gym daily to get a bubble butt like that.
Sometimes life just wasn’t fair.
He broke their kiss and let his mouth drift down the side of her cheek, her jaw and her neck until he found a nipple, scissoring his teeth over it, then tugging. She gasped and arched her back, which prompted him to reach down below, grab her right leg behind the knee and bend it, pressing it into her chest so he could go deeper.
“Oh God,” she whimpered, loving that new angle and how much deeper he could go.
He drove harder, switched over to the other nipple, and raked his whiskery chin over the tender nub. She moaned and arched her back again.
“I want to come together,” she said breathlessly. “Are you close?”
“So fucking close, babe. Just waiting for you.”
“I’m going to explode.”
“Then explode, Hannah. I’ll join you. I promise.”
He lifted his head, his eyes boring into hers, then he dropped his mouth, pushed his tongue between her lips, and lowered his hips so he was inside of her as deep as he could be. She went off like a rocket.
Her fingers dug trenches into the meatiest part of his ass, but he didn’t stop kissing her. Warm puffs of air from his nostrils hit her upper lip as he groaned into her mouth, stilled, and found his own release.
His cock pulsed against her pussy walls, and her clit throbbed beneath his lower belly as wave after wave of bliss rocked through her, expanding through her torso and out into her limbs. Her toes curled, her bent leg cramped, and her body hummed like a beehive.
“Fuuuuuck,” Cal groaned, breaking their lip lock and pressing his mouth to her shoulder. “Fuck.”
She grinned and kissed his shoulder, right over the beautiful octopus.
Slowly, the thrumming inside of her receded. Pulled back toward her center like an outgoing tide. Cal relaxed and collapsed against her. She enjoyed feeling all of his weight on her. She released her death grip on his butt and trailed her fingernails gently up his back. “Sorry if made your butt bleed,” she whispered.
His raspy chuckle made her pussy clench around him, and his body jostled slightly. “It’s okay. I liked it.”
“You also have a butt that women would die for. Like, do you do a thousand squats a day or something?”
“Two thousand, actually.”
She reared back and gently smacked his arm. “Bullshit.”
He shook more on top of her as he chuckled, then lifted onto his forearms and gazed down at her. “I’m kidding. But I used to do a lot of squats and deadlifts and shit when I was training. Guess I kept my butt.”
“And the abs and the arms.” She shook her head with wide-eyed fascination. The man was like a work of art. Sculpted from marble. He made Michelangelo’s David look like Fred Flintstone.
Slowly, carefully, he rolled off her and got up. She ogled his butt as he headed out of the bedroom. The sink ran in the bathroom and he returned a moment later with a warm washcloth. Then he gently cleaned up between her legs like a gentleman. But she still needed to use the bathroom, so after he cleaned up his mess, she excused herself to the bathroom to ward off a UTI, then returned to the bed a few moments later.
He welcomed her with a wide-open arm, lifting the covers until she was snuggled in against him. “That was unexpected,” she said, facing away from him as he tucked in behind her in the spoon position.
“But not bad, right?” He pressed his lips to her shoulder.
“Not bad at all.”
She didn’t have to see him to know he was smiling.
“Thank you for pushing me. I’m sorry again for being a bitch when you first showed up. I’m not used to being on a team. And it just felt like Nate and Asher didn’t trust me. That they sent you here to babysit me. I mean, they weren’t even gone an hour, and you showed up.”
He squeezed her tighter against him. “That was more so I could just introduce myself. They didn’t think you’d need any help after an hour. They just mentioned that if I was in the area, to pop in, introduce myself and let you know I was around if you needed help.”
“I see that now. But it felt like I was being assigned a babysitter.”
“I can see how you’d feel that way. But I know you’re entirely capable of taking care of this place on your own. The thing is: you don’t have to. ”
She spun around in his arms to face him, cupping his cheek. “Why are you so wonderful?”
He smiled, closed his eyes for a moment, and tipped his head down. “How is anyone supposed to answer that?”
“Nothing seems to get you down. You’ve got to have a demon hidden somewhere. Otherwise, you’re just too damn perfect.”
His eyes flashed open and a pain she hadn’t been prepared for stared back at her. She swallowed and braced herself.
“There were ten of us on the team. There are nine now.”
She pressed her hand to his heart. “I’m sorry.”
“We’d all returned home. Some of us had even retired. Like Brendan. He was young, had a wife and a new baby girl. But after what happened in Peru—I didn’t see it, but I know what they saw—he was a shattered man. Took his own life.”
Her heart ached, like it was being squeezed by her ribcage. She cupped his cheek. “I’m so sorry.”
Anger flickered in the spinach-green of his eyes. “He could have asked for help. Any one of us would have flown to Jackson Hole and gone with him to a VA meeting. Talked through his issues. Done whatever we could to help him. But he didn’t ask. He didn’t lean on his team. He took it all on himself, that motherfucker. He shouldered it all alone, even when he knew how important it was to rely on your team. To not attempt to fight off the monsters by yourself. And now his daughter is growing up without her daddy. Because he was too fucking prideful to pick up the phone and call me and tell me he was having a hard time.”
This explained so much about why Cal was so eager to help. To lighten someone else’s load.
To not let them be alone, particularly on a holiday where the rate of suicide and self-harm increased.
Not that Hannah would ever consider taking her own life, but Cal didn’t know that.
All he saw was a sad, lonely woman with a chip on her shoulder. So unlike his friend Brendan, who hadn’t asked for help, who hadn’t been close enough for Cal to see signs of distress, he was doing what he could to help Hannah. To save her.
“It’s why my other brothers and I check in on each other all the time. We have a group chat and at least once a week we all post something. Unless one of us is on a mission and has told the rest that we’re going dark. But we do it so that nobody ever feels alone. So we all know that as isolated as we might feel, when we feel like nobody around us understands what we’re feeling or thinking, that there are those who get it. We just need to send a message. And a simple 911 text is all it takes for one of us to fly to the other one.”
“That’s amazing that you’ve set up such a system between all of you. That you have that support system. That team.”
“None of us would be alive without it. Without each other. Every single one of them knows that if they texted 911, I’d be in Bella and flying to wherever they are in a heartbeat. We all would.”
She kissed his strong jaw, the rough rusty stubble prickly against her lips. “You’re a good friend, Peter Callahan. A good teammate.”
His smile was sad before he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Hungry?”
“Famished.”
He slid out of bed. “I’ll go grab us some pizza. Stay here and don’t you dare put on any clothes.”
She beamed at him, then gave him a cheeky salute. “Sir, yes, sir.”
She was not prepared to be tackled on the bed by a redheaded growling man with an octopus tattoo. But she was sure happy that she was.
Hannah woke Christmas morning with a smile on her face. She stretched her legs, pointing her toes, and reached her arms above her head, wrapping her fingers around the top of the headboard.
Then she crossed her fingers that last night hadn’t been a dream, before she finally opened her eyes and rolled over to the side of the bed where Cal had fallen asleep.
Only, there was no sexy tattooed SEAL with a ruddy five o’clock shadow and spinach-colored eyes, laying beside her.
That side of the bed was empty.
Her heart tightened, and her mouth dipped into a frown.
Had it all been a dream?
She sat up, and the pleasant ache between her legs, along with the slight chafe around her nipples from his scruff, told her that it was no dream. Phew!
So where was he?
Not wanting to jump to too many conclusions, she slid out of bed, put on her pajamas and a housecoat, slipped into her slippers, then scuffed her way into the house.
The wood stove had been stoked, and the house was warm.
And oh yeah, it was also Christmas morning.
“Cal?” she called out. There was no answer. “Bruno?”
Also, no answer.
More sadness filled the space in her chest around her heart.
She knew he was attached to the dog, but would he really take her uncles’ dog with him? Was she also too much for Cal? Did he decide in the middle of the night that he couldn’t handle another day with her, so he skedaddled in the early morning, taking her different-color eyed companion with him?
She had his phone number on a piece of paper stuck to the fridge. Should she call him?
Don’t jump to conclusions, Hannah. Maybe he just took Bruno outside for a pee.
Right. Maybe that’s all it was.
She opened the front door only to be met with an empty driveway where his truck was parked last night. The sun shone; the sky was clear and there seemed to be very little wind. It was a beautiful Christmas morning she wished she could appreciate. But she couldn’t. Not properly anyway, thanks to the overwhelming sadness that replaced the last traces of joy she’d felt last night.
And now she didn’t even have Bruno.
Did he take Macklin, too? Did he take all her therapy animals?
She was halfway through changing from her slippers to her boots when the rattling sound of a helicopter drawing closer echoed above.
She quickly threw on the other boot, grabbed her winter coat from the hook and darted out the front door just in time to see a beautiful black helicopter zoom over top of the farmhouse—terrifyingly low—and head toward the nearest field.
Careful not to break her neck—or her hip, again—she navigated the gravel driveway slowly, avoiding the divots that were now icy puddles. She reached the closest field just as the helicopter touched down on the crispy white grass dressed in frost. A bark from inside the helicopter made her laugh.
Once the rotors stopped spinning, the door opened and out came her redheaded SEAL and a very happy dog. “Merry Christmas, Hannah!” Cal cheered, running up to her.
She blinked through the tears, swallowed and smiled. “Merry Christmas.”
He ducked under the fence and lifted her up, making her feet dangle, then set her back down and kissed her hard on the mouth.
When they finally came up for air, he was smiling, and she was crying.
His face turned serious. “What’s wrong?”
“I thought you left.” She tried to smile, but it was brittle and flat. “I thought that you decided I was too much , too, and left. And took my dog.”
“You’re definitely not too much . I’m an early riser by nature, saw that it was a gorgeous morning and thought, why not take you for a spin in Bella. And Bruno loves riding in the helicopter. So I fed him, let him out, then brought him with me so you could sleep in a little.”
She blinked through more tears. “I’m sorry that I assumed the worst. I kind of have a habit of doing that.”
He shrugged. “No big deal. But just know, you’re definitely not too much. You’re just the right amount.”
She beamed up at him. “I should probably go change.”
He nodded. “Get dressed. I’ll go start opening up the farm, feed the animals, then once we’re done, we can go for a ride. I dug some blackberry scones out of my freezer that I made this summer, so we can have those and the coffee and tea in the thermos’s I brought for breakfast. And I figured turkey dinner and Die Hard marathon tonight?”
Her smile was going to break her face. “Where did you come from, Pete Callahan?”
He pointed north. “That way, about nine miles.”
She tossed her head back and laughed, but he only took that as an invitation to dip her low and kiss her.
Once they came up for air, they ran back to toward the house so she could get dressed and he could feed the animals. Within an hour, they were up in the air, headphones on, taking in the beauty of the rolling hills dressed in frost as the morning rays turned them into shimmering piles of diamonds.
It was honestly the best Christmas morning Hannah could ever remember. The scones were delicious; the tea was perfect and Cal was a great tour guide. He pointed out his little cabin on the edge of the cattle ranch, showed her Asher and Nate’s cabins on their land that they rented out in the spring and summer, and even let her try flying Bella—sort of.
They parked on the top of a hill near the furthest one of her uncles’ cabins and because it was too chilly to get out; they stayed in the helicopter, removed their headsets and just watched the day get brighter.
“I can almost feel the magic in the air,” she said, sipping her Earl Grey tea from the travel mug he brought. How’d he know she liked Earl Grey tea? Did he message her uncles and ask?
“Oh, I definitely can,” he said, taking a bite of his butter-slathered scone. He reached for her hand with his free one and linked their fingers together. “I’d like to continue helping you on the ranch until you leave. If that’s okay?”
Hannah couldn’t keep the smile from her face if she tried. “It’s definitely okay.”
“Merry Christmas, Hannah.”
“Merry Christmas, Cal. Thank you for being on my team. I didn’t know I needed a team, but now I’m really grateful that I have one.”
“I’ll always be on your team, Hannah. Because you’re just the right amount.”
She squeezed his hand. “And you’re enough.”