Chapter 2
DANIEL
Paper rustled as I flipped over yet another page in the file I was reading through, having given up on the screen hours ago when the words blurred together, and now they were doing it again. I’d been at it for hours—more than I could count easily.
The chair creaked and groaned as I leaned back, pressing the heels of my palms into my eye sockets. My back, popping like twisted bubble wrap, joined the creaking and groaning.
“Hey! Whattya doin’ tonight?”
I jumped; the chair righted itself. The voice irritated me, mostly because he planted his large ass on the piles of reports I’d spent the whole day painstakingly researching, writing, and printing, only for him to come along and destroy them.
Ignoring the question, I looked up at him, motioned toward the mess he’d made, and asked, “You mind?”
“What?” he asked, looking over his shoulder.
“Move your ass, Parker.”
“Jesus, someone needs to get laid.”
“Someone needs to move their ass off an entire day’s work before I send him to Siberia for his next deployment.”
The Texan shivered visibly, and I couldn’t help but laugh at him. He hated cold weather. On every mission and deployment I’d been on with him that included even slightly chilly weather, he’d bitched the entire trip until the guys on the team hazed him into shutting his trap.
“You would dare!”
“Try me.”
He stared at me, contemplating whether I meant business. Then the Dom in him came out, and he said, “I can always turn you over my knee and paddle your ass.”
“You could. I might even like it, but that doesn’t keep you from freezing your balls off when I scrounge up a mission to send you on to the frozen tundra.”
“You’re a heartless little shit sometimes, you know that?”
“I’m aware.”
“Go out with me.”
Parker Holt and I met at a kink club several years prior. Amazing sex could be difficult to find when you had to hide who you are. So I put up with him and his bossy, controlling ways.
“Okay. No brainer. My question is this: who will I be going home with?” Or who he would go home with.
“You know I hate limiting myself.”
Which is why I never understood his decision to join the military.
“I’m very aware of how much you like group play.”
“And I know how much you don’t. So, my offer is this: we hit the clubs, we both find a sweet little morsel to drag home…”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then we take advantage of the chemistry we have on hand.”
“So, now I’m a backup plan.”
“No, you’d be the only plan if we aligned more.”
Laughter I couldn’t stop exploded from within, covering up the “Bullshit” that also burst forth. Parker Holt limiting himself was laughable. He’d never have an only anything. The SEAL mantra of “Two is one, and one is none” lived and breathed in even the tiniest aspect of his life.
“A regular club…”
“Jesus. You’re robbing me of all the fun. Why do I put up with you?”
My mouth dropped open, only the words, “My stellar ass,” died on my tongue as Commander Turner strolled into the ops room that my office windows faced.
“I’ll go, just because I want to get laid. Now, get your ass off my desk. I need to get this done before Turner eats my ass,” I said with a jut of my chin toward where the Navy officer stood.
Parker looked over his shoulder, then pushed to his feet, his hands sliding into his uniform pockets as he let out a long, low whistle. “Fucking beautiful waste of such a fine male specimen. The gays should mourn his straightness.”
“How do you know he’s not…?”
“Because if he were, I’d have tapped that. More than once.”
I shook my head and laughed. “Go away. I need to finish this shit if I want to go out.”
I groaned, condemning myself for agreeing to go with him as he disappeared through the door with a wave. My gaze found his gorgeous ass and watched it until the man was out of sight. My cock twitched in my pants, making me thank God for the metal government-issued desk I sat behind.
Fuck me. I needed to learn how to tell him no.
The sex was amazing, yes, but I wanted a relationship, not more random, meaningless hookups.
Vowing to myself to go home alone if the plan to meet someone else didn’t work out, I turned back to the reports I’d been poring over before Parker’s interruption.
Takeout and a six-pack in hand, I made my way into my apartment and toed off my shoes hours later than I had planned. Work turned chaotic as it tended to do at the end of the day, and now I just wanted to watch the Sox game, eat dinner, and throw back a few beers.
I dropped onto the sofa and flipped on the game. I rarely had time to watch a game live, and since my head was no longer in the mood for a night at the club, this was the next best choice for the night.
At the start of the seventh-inning stretch, the tacos were just a memory, and the last beer beckoned me from the coffee table. As I reached for it, a fist beat on the door of my apartment. The thought of ignoring it barely entered my mind when the sound stopped, only to be replaced.
“Open up, dammit! You’re not off the hook!”
My head fell back on the sofa cushions before my feet fell from the coffee table to the floor. Fuck my life and the asshole determined to fuck up the buzz I had going.
“Oh, Danny Boy!”
Surging to my feet before he could break into song, I moved across the room. His smug face appeared when I yanked open the door.
“Whatever the fuck you’re selling, I’m not buying.”
“Ha ha. Why aren’t you dressed?” He asked, pushing into the apartment, his knuckles grazing my cock as he walked by me. A smirk twitched at his lips at the twitch my cock gave.
Jerk.
I glanced down, sighed, then shut the door. “Clearly, I’m dressed, and you know it since you groped me.”
The hint of a smirk grew to a grin, and his eyebrows bounced. “Not for what we have planned, you aren’t.”
“Parker…”
“Nope. Get dressed. If the intel you gave the team today is accurate…”
“You second-guessing my intel?”
“Never. You’ve always been spot-on. I’m just saying if it pans out, we’re heading out of the country, and I plan to be completely fucked out and needing a break when I board that plane.”
He had a point.
I sighed, pulled the button-up out of my pants, and, starting at the top, undid the buttons.
“Fuck yeah, I love a good show.”
I shook my head and walked to the bedroom. “Stay there,” I said, to keep the asshole from following. I had no fucking willpower around him once he got his hands on me.
In the closet, I pulled on my sluttiest club wear—black leather pants that never failed to get me laid and a black silk shirt that hugged the V of my torso.
Cologne and a bit of hair gel finished the look, other than shoes.
The black boots I’d worn to work that day were still in the other room, and I usually wore them with these pants.
Parker whistled when I walked into the living room to the entry table next to the front door. As good as it made me feel, I ignored him and filled the right front pocket with my keys, my back left pocket with my wallet, and the left front with packets of lube and condoms.
“Someone’s looking to get real lucky tonight.”
“As if you don’t have more than you’ll use stuffed in your pockets.”
“Two is…”
“One and one is none. Yes, I’m aware,” I interrupted him, stomping my feet to get my pants to fall after pulling on my boots and zipping them.
“Sheesh, you take forever. Let’s roll.”
Said the man, who had a full self-care routine when stateside that included manicures, pedicures, and facials.
Downstairs, a car waited for us. I still remember the first time Parker and I hit the town together.
He’d shown up that night in a car service.
I thought nothing of it until we left the club, and the same car and driver were waiting for us.
The price freaked me out, not that I knew what that kind of thing cost, being a poor kid from Southie, but Parker refused to split the bill.
After several more nights on the town, in the same car, with the same driver, and several drinks too many, I jokingly asked Parker if he had a service sub who liked to drive him around.
“No, that’s Marcel. He works for my dad. But a service sub’s not a bad idea.”
His response piqued my curiosity. I went digging.
Flabbergasted didn’t cover, couldn’t cover, what I found.
Money upon money, company upon company—land, oil rigs, horses, private planes, and choppers.
I thought his family was just service members, and they were, but that’s not all they were.
They were the wealthiest family in Texas, with landholdings older than the damn state itself.
“You’re not gonna be weird about Marcel again, are you?”
“What?”
“You’re acting goofy. I wanted to make sure you weren’t gonna get weird again after what you discovered about my family.”
“No, Parker. I’m not gonna get weird. I promise. And I’ll say it again, I’m sorry. I never should’ve dug into your family behind your back.”
“Good. The money…” he stopped, sighed, then said, “It weirds me out too. Except for some luxuries…”
“Like a driver that follows you around while you’re on the prowl?”
“Yes, except for some luxuries like Marcel following me around so I don’t have to worry about getting home when I’m drunk and fucked out. I live on my Navy salary.”
“I know. And I’m not getting weird about it. I promise. I’m just stuck in my damn head. The intel coming in…”
His index finger dropped against my lips, stopping the words coming from my mouth. “Stop.”
Our gazes locked. Heat flared in his eyes as they dropped to my lips. “We could always…”
“No. We can’t.”
He sighed, his head falling back on his shoulders as he stared up at the roof of the car.
A groan echoed through the car. He shifted, his long legs spread wide and stretching out in front of him.
His hand fell to his lap, as did my eyes.
His cock, outlined perfectly in his already snug pants, had drool pooling in my mouth and second thoughts running through my mind.
“This is a bad idea,” I mumbled.
“Only because you’re no longer interested,” he replied.
“I’m very interested, Parker. You know that.”
“Just not in what I’m looking for.”
“Yes,” I replied, making sure he knew where I stood. Parker was a little too dominant for me, but not so much that it was a turnoff. It was his lack of desire for monogamy of any sort.
“I don’t think we should cruise together anymore,” I stated.
He nodded, then said, “You’re perfect in every way…”
“But one. Same could be said for you.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. I’d say I wish I were different, but I don’t want to change. I like my life. And I wouldn’t want you to change who you are for me. That’s just a recipe for disaster.”
“Yeah, it is. So, one last hurrah.”
“Fuck that. We’ll figure it out. I’m not losing my best friend.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t sure we could. But I also didn’t want to lose my best friend. I just wanted to make sure we kept things in the friends column and stopped crossing the line into the lovers column. Before I could stress the need to keep that separation, the partition rolled down.
“We’re here, Mr. Holt.”
Marcel never used Parker’s rank. I didn’t know why, and hadn’t asked, but it always struck me as odd. The man was a fucking officer in the US Navy and a damn SEAL. He deserved all the recognition and respect those titles afforded him.
Parker pushed open the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk near the club.
I followed once he moved out of the way.
The thumpa-thumpa from the club lived and breathed in the air, making the atmosphere vibrate with intensity and promise.
It never failed to recharge my batteries.
I could be dragging-my-ass tired and walking into a club or just passing one where the beat thumped like this one, and all the tired disappeared.
“So, a drink at the bar, then we part ways?” Parker suggested, hesitance clear in his voice. He sounded like a shy little boy, unsure of his place in the world, instead of the dominant, aggressive, alpha male I knew him to be.
“Parker, the only change I need is you being less of an in-your-face temptation. We aren’t looking for the same thing in a partner or not a partner in your case. As long as we can get on the same page, I’m willing to figure things out by hitting the bars and clubs together.”
A deep sigh lifted his shoulders, and the little boy melted away, replaced instantly with the confident SEAL who oozed sex appeal.
“Let’s go, big guy,” I said with a smile I didn’t quite feel and a slap to his back.
“Yeah. I need a drink.”
“Me too,” I replied, giving him a shove toward the entrance.
My eyes scanned the crowd, surveying the meat market laid out before us. In the shadows, coming toward the club from the alley, a figure caught my eye. I waited, watching to see if he would step into the light and give me a better view.
“Someone didn’t even make it into the club.”
“Shut up.”
I couldn’t understand why Parker making that joke—a joke he’d made many times—irked me. I kept my eyes averted from his, so I didn’t see the questions in his eyes; what I heard in his words.
“You gonna make a move…”
“Yeah, I’ll see you later,” I said.
“Have fun,” Parker’s voice echoed.