Chapter 21 Quid Pro Quo
TWENTY-ONE
Quid Pro Quo
Hutch
“Fucking hell,” Hutch growled, the words escaping his lips involuntarily half a second before he shot his load into Mabel’s hot, wet mouth.
She kept sucking him off as he jetted, but gentled as he started to come down, then slipped him out and climbed up to straddle his lap where he sat, pillows packed behind him against her scrolled-iron headboard, his knees cocked.
He rounded her with his arms as she nuzzled under his jaw, enjoying this as he slid one hand up her neck and into her soft hair.
“Okay,” he grunted. “You win. You ruined me for other women.”
He knew this was no lie.
He also knew it was a problem.
One he wasn’t going to face right then, with Mabel’s body keeping him warm.
He felt her smile against his skin before she said, “Samesies.”
Samesies?
At that, all thoughts fell away, something with which Mabel had a knack, and his lips tipped up.
This happened not only because she could be an adorable dork, but because it wasn’t lost on him she’d come hard into his mouth earlier.
He moved his hand on her back, and it stuttered when it hit a scar.
He ignored it verbally, but he felt the muscle dance in his cheek.
She tensed.
“I hate to tarnish my reputation,” he said to move them past it, something, at one point or another, he had to do any time they were together like this because her scars were hard to avoid.
“But I’m wiped, baby. And what I had left, that blowjob took out of me.
I need sleep, and tomorrow we need a chill Sunday. ”
She angled up to look down at him, shifting further so she could use her hands to smooth his hair back while she watched them move.
He should have seen this as the warning it was.
He didn’t.
Her gaze came to his.
“My mom was messed up,” she whispered.
Oh fuck.
“Baby,” he whispered back.
“She got sent to prison. Drugs. She got hooked up with this shifty guy, who turned out to be my father, but I didn’t know that until I was twenty-seven.”
“May—”
“Anyway, no one knew it, so when she went to prison, they sent me to go live with Mom’s brother.”
She had to get it out?
And with the way she was talking, he knew she did.
Hutch would shut up.
So that was what he did.
“He had ideas about disciplining children.”
He closed his eyes.
He opened them when she continued talking.
“Now, I can’t say I didn’t need discipline. I did. I didn’t have any growing up. I was a mess. Behind in school. A lot of stuff.” She threw out a hand then put it right back on him. “Long story.”
She had many “long stories.”
“But he was…”—her eyes drifted over his head—“possessed? Damaged? Deranged?” She shook her head and came back to him. “I don’t really know what makes someone beat a child with a belt.”
He knew it was coming.
He still couldn’t stop himself when he clamped a hand on the back of her neck and his arm around her waist after hearing it from her lips.
“Scars like that, he hit you so bad, he made you bleed,” he gritted.
“He went to prison for it, Hutch. Lost his own kids. His wife was messed up too. Stood by his side. So her folks, who were not okay with any of this, because he did it to their grandchildren as well, took her to court for custody. And they won. They were good people. They kept in touch. Still do. So do my cousins. They got on with it. There were supervised visits and stuff like that, but they never went back to them.”
She paused for breath.
Then kept talking.
“But I never saw either of them again. Though, I know he’s still preaching.
She’s still his sycophant. They didn’t have more children, and he had a record and a reputation, so he doesn’t have a very large flock.
But they weren’t invited to graduations or weddings.
Maybe they don’t care. But I bet they do.
They paid. And now they have grandbabies and they aren’t in their lives. So they’ll keep paying.”
This was all said, not with no emotion, but it was still matter-of-factly.
“Therapy teach you to be this adjusted?” he asked.
She smiled. “Mostly, yeah.”
“What’s the other part that’s not ‘mostly?’” he pressed.
She blew out a breath and played with the lock of hair that always curled around his ear.
She also answered.
“I don’t want to give the man credit, that shifty guy who turned out to be my father, but he had this absurd idea that humans are animals, which of course we are, and animals survive in the wild, or they don’t.
So my early years, with almost zero parental or even adult input, I learned to survive.
And when I say that we, I mean the other kids there and I ran entirely amuck.
We ate whatever we wanted. We took baths when someone noticed we were dirty.
” Her eyes caught his. “But don’t think I was roughing it.
I had a princess room in a mansion. The man was a flake, among other things, but he was loaded.
There was plenty of food. Plenty of people around.
I had the most expensive clothes and toys you could buy.
” She grinned. “I had a Barbie dream house that was taller than me. I still miss that thing.”
With this conversation, the puzzle of Mabel was falling into place.
Self-sufficient.
Not only finding a multitude of ways to fill it but also enjoying time spent alone.
Even so.
Fuck that shit.
“I know you want to blow this off, May, but I’m not finding any of this funny.”
Her gaze turned hyper focused, and she replied, “I just don’t want you to think I’m strange. Or broken. Or…I don’t know, when I tell people my stories, they sometimes look at me like I’m something pathetic. Something to be pitied. When I’m not. Not at all.”
“Her name was Molly.”
Her gaze flickered and her body froze.
“Graduated college, enlisted in the Navy. Knew I wanted to be a SEAL well before I became a SEAL. Had a bud, his name was Teller. He got through BUD/S training, but the man was scared as shit of heights. He thought he could best it. He couldn’t. Washed out in parachute jump school.”
“What’s BUD/S?”
“Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training.”
“Right,” she mumbled.
Hutch kept going.
“I fell in love with Molly. Hard.”
She ran her top teeth over her bottom lip but that was all she did.
“She was it. The future. Babies. So sweet. Smart. Funny. Pretty.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Teller was a flirt.”
“Oh shit.” Another whisper.
“I knew that about him. I even saw him flirt with Molly. She’d smile her cute smile, find her excuse to get away from him and come right to me. Bottom line, I thought he was a brother, it was just how he was, and he wasn’t serious about it when it came to Molly.”
Mabel knew where this was going, so she didn’t say anything and just let him get it out.
“I was young, not immature, but not fully mature. Definitely not mature enough to notice important shit like the fact that Molly was not a woman who liked to be alone.”
“Oh, Hutch.” More whispering, and now she was stroking the side of his neck.
It felt good.
“She was on me a lot to get out of the Navy, even knowing a major goal in my life was not just to become a SEAL, but to be a SEAL. Hated it when I was away. I misidentified clingy as loving. And I got no judgement against people who need people. But if that’s how you are, you have no excuse to be with a man in the military who, at a moment’s notice, can be deployed. ”
“You are very correct,” Mabel agreed.
He knew he was.
He was just glad she knew it too.
“Topping that, I didn’t know Misted Pines existed at the time, but I told her when I did get out, I’d be coming someplace like here, and not to live in town.
To live like I’m doing. That was my plan, my goal, and yeah, you could even call it my dream.
She’d nod and talk about how great that was, and then she’d say shit like, ‘Have you ever thought of living in Chicago? They have a lot of sports teams.’ Somehow, I didn’t read that shit.
Somehow, I didn’t realize she heard me, she listened, but she wasn’t nodding her head to agree.
She was nodding her head so I’d know she was listening, but she was also scheming.
I know that’s a tough word, but there’s no way around it, no matter how gentle it was, she schemed in hopes of changing my mind. ”
That made Mabel’s lips thin before she stated it plain.
“In other words, she might have been with the man she wanted to be with, but she knew you two didn’t work, and she hid that, hoping to get her way and make it work, even if she couldn’t have missed she was asking you to sacrifice things that were important to you.”
Christ.
Christ.
Yes.
That was it.
Stated plain.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
She huffed out an irritable breath.
Hutch had more, so he gave it to her.
“It wasn’t that she was scared of being alone.
Had a phobia. Nothing had happened to her.
It also wasn’t that she couldn’t entertain herself.
It was just part of her personality. I get that it wasn’t a preference or a choice but a part of who she was.
I also get she had friends, family close, so if she didn’t want to be alone, she could spend time with them.
To this day, as much as I loved her, I didn’t feel it was my responsibility to provide that for her at all times.
And it goes without saying, when I was gone, she didn’t have to fall on my friend’s dick. ”
Even if she knew it was coming, Mabel appeared to be getting angry.
But Hutch kept going.
“So yeah…I was away, came back, but while I was away, I made my decision, and when I was out for a drink with another bud, I told him I was buying Molly a ring.”
“Dammit,” Mabel bit.
“He struggled with it, the whole fucked-up bro code, but in the end, he made the right decision. He told me. Both of them acted like nothing happened. Neither of those two had the balls to fess up to that shit. Someone else told me.”
“Let me guess, you didn’t buy her a ring.”
“Fuck no. Went right home from the bar and got shot of her ass. And you would not believe the fucking scene.”
Her brows winged up. “Wait. She cheated on you while you were off, serving our country, and when you were not down with that, she caused a scene?”
“Babe, don’t you know, it was my fault. I went away.”
Her eyes got huge.
Hutch kept right on going.
“So I knew she couldn’t handle being alone. I knew she wanted me out of the Navy. I asked if she wanted me out of the Navy so fuckin’ bad, why did she bang another man who was a lieutenant in it?”
“I bet she had no answer to that,” Mabel sniped.
“Oh, that was my fault too. I knew Teller had a thing for her. I’d seen him flirting with her. I should have put a stop to it.”
Definitely mad now. “You’re joking.”
“Not remotely.”
“What a stupid bitch,” she snapped.
“She learned her own stupidity when I kicked her ass out, she went to Teller, thinking he had a thing for her, when he had a thing for acquiring pussy. He’d had hers. He wasn’t interested anymore. She was very alone then.”
“Good,” she clipped.
He almost smiled.
Instead, he said, “So, we all got shit we gotta survive. When I say I loved her, I really did. Her cheating on me fucked me up.”
“Bet she missed your dick too, with the way you use it,” she stated. “I can’t be sure. I don’t have any experience. I avoid pussy collectors. But it seems the logical assumption they’re out to get, not give.”
It was then, he smiled and shared, “It wasn’t payback.
It just happened. But I found myself in one of Teller’s ex’s beds.
And according to her, Teller not only wasn’t man enough to finish SEAL training, he wasn’t man enough to make a woman finish.
She knew about Molly. She told me she was going to be sure to let Teller know he not only didn’t have a big enough dick to satisfy the Navy, he didn’t have one big enough to satisfy a woman. ”
“I hope she did that,” Mabel said gleefully.
“Yeah she did. Teller wasn’t pleased. Because, even if I didn’t say that shit to him, he came after me, and he found he also didn’t have a big enough dick to prove his point.
He wound up with a busted lip, black eye, broken nose and sprained shoulder.
I landed only three punches and gave him an arm twist to shove him away from me.
Took two minutes. I wasn’t even winded.”
“Serves him right for thinking he could belly up to a SEAL.”
Hutch smiled again.
She returned it, before it chased itself away.
“So you lost her, and a friend too.”
“Didn’t know he was never a friend,” he replied.
“But before that, yeah. He was a friend, and I thought a good one. But like your uncle, he paid. Until he got out or transferred or whatever happened to him, I didn’t keep a lock on it because I didn’t give a shit what happened to him, but he found himself lonely.
Not for pussy. He was a good-lookin’ guy who had a uniform.
For friends. Because he broke the bro code first.”
“So…quid pro quo, I had my fair share of shitty people…”
She had more than her fair share.
“…and you did too.”
She didn’t know the half of it.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“Thanks, Hutch. You didn’t have to tell me that story, but I’m glad you did, and it was sweet you did. Also sweet you don’t think I’m a reject in the scratch and dent section.”
At that, he wrapped both arms around her, slid them down in bed, and rolled so he was covering her.
Only then did he say, low and firm, “You’re not a reject, Mabel.”
“I know, honey,” she said softly. “I’m just glad you know too, because people who put me in that place because of shit I had no control over, but obviously, I’ve moved beyond it, annoy the hell out of me.”
Jesus.
What made this woman?
“So now, after sex and soul baring, we need to sleep,” she stated.
“That’d be good,” he replied.
She got out of bed, hit the bathroom to brush her teeth, and Tonks followed her (so did Moxie).
And he got out of bed, pulled on his jeans, and did a walkthrough of the house with Hannibal at his heels, making sure locks were locked, and the barn door panels that were mounted to shut her windows off from the outside were closed.
He hit the loft to see her in bed in little shorts and the Stony Bluff Sanctuary tee, before he hit the bathroom to brush his own teeth.
He took off his jeans before he got into bed.
He turned out his light.
She turned out hers.
They turned to each other.
They tangled.
Hannibal settled in on the rug by his side.
Tonks jumped up and crashed on their feet.
Moxie joined her.
And two people in a defined situationship, which was not even loosely a situationship (and how they lay proved it), settled down for the night with their fur family, and they all fell asleep.