17. Carson
CHAPTER 17
CARSON
My eyes popped open and stared at the ceiling of my room. The buzzing that woke me stopped. I settled back into my pillows for a bit. A headache pounded behind my eyelids. The guys drug me out to Top Side for drinks last night when I got back in town from my parents, and I tied one on. I didn’t know what the fuck I was thinking other than we had nothing on the schedule for today.
Well, we had a target package brewing that could be ready at any time. But when didn’t we? There wasn’t a go-ahead at the moment, and the only thing I had planned was to get shit sorted with the flip house. I hadn’t planned to do it this fucking early, though.
The buzzing that woke me started back up. Rolling my head toward the sound, I glared at the cell phone dancing on the nightstand. I lifted my wrist and sighed. I didn’t even have to look at it to know who was calling me at five-thirty in the damn morning on my birthday.
The phone quieted but started buzzing again for the third time almost immediately. I sighed. There was no fucking getting out of this, so I reached for the shittin’ ass thing.
“Good morning, Mama.”
“Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Carson. Happy birthday to you.”
“I’m all grown up, Mama. You don’t have to sing me the birthday song.”
“You hush. I don’t care how old you are. Imma sing you happy birthday on your day.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you have any plans for your birthday?”
“Nah. Not really. I’ll probably head to the range and grab some grub with some of the guys.”
“That’s not much of a celebration, baby.”
“It’s just another day, like all the rest of ‘em.”
She argued with me, pushing me to go out and have some fun. The problem was, the fun I wanted to have, I couldn’t. The person I wanted to have fun with probably fucking hated me. I’d not spoken to Roman since I blew him off in Germany. That was months ago.
The phone buzzed against my ear. Pulling it away, I said, “Hang on, Mama.”
The screen was lit up with the contact info of Alpha Team’s intel lieutenant. The LT was a darling usually, but piss her off or miss her call, and she turned feral quicker than jackrabbit on a date.
“Mama, I gotta run. I’m getting called to base.”
“What? But it’s your birthday!”
I chuckled. “Yeah. I know, but Uncle Sam doesn’t care. The Navy can’t stop just because it’s someone’s birthday.”
“I still can’t believe they’re calling you in on your birthday.”
My whole fucking family were coal miners. The only ones who’d served were drafted and way before her time, so she just didn’t get it. Not that coal miners didn’t work on their birthdays. Daddy, Papaw, and all my brothers, cousins, and uncles climbed on those coal cars and made that trip into the mountain, whatever fucking day the mines would pay them to do it. They worked birthdays, holidays; it didn’t matter. Holidays were always worked if the mines were running because that meant double pay and sometimes triple. A hundred-plus dollars an hour wasn’t something you turned your nose up at.
I never wanted that life. I’d wanted to see the world, so I joined the Navy. I shivered at the thought of what life would’ve been like had I followed the rest of my family into the mines. The only thing that could come close to being as bad as working in the mines was being stuck on a submarine at the bottom of the fucking ocean. Both of them were cold as a well digger’s ass in January, and if shit went wrong, there weren’t a lot of options.
Not wanting to argue with her, I thanked her for the birthday wishes. “Mama, thank you for calling. I love you, and I’ll try to get out to see y’all again real soon. Tell everyone I said hi, okay?”
“I will, baby. I can’t wait to see you.”
I hated getting Mama’s hopes up, but I had OCS coming up, and then our next deployment was scheduled a month or so after I graduated. Plus, we were up next on rotation to get spun up, so I knew I wouldn’t be getting back home anytime soon. I’d be lucky if my leave for Christmas didn’t get canceled.
Raising up to sit on the side of the bed, I hung up the phone and opened the message from Lieutenant Rakes.
LT RAKES
Target package has gone MIA. Enjoy the weekend.
Another solo message showed from the LT.
LT RAKES
Happy Birthday, Carson!
I smiled at the second and groaned at the first. I fucking hated being stuck in Vah Beach. Put me in full gear and taking fire any fucking day. That was my comfort zone, especially since Germany.
Dropping back onto the bed, I tossed my arms over my head, contemplating what I could get into. Anyone else would’ve gone back to sleep, but that wasn’t me. Once my eyes opened, I was awake unless I forced myself to drop off, and that only worked when we were outside the wire or in the air. Something about a plane ride did it for me.
I needed to get out of the house. Being stuck at home just reminded me I was alone in this world. Sure, I had my family back home in West Virginia and my brothers on Alpha Team, but that was it. I didn’t have a life outside the teams like everyone else. Unless you counted my books, but even those were about military history and strategy.
I scrubbed my hands over my face and pushed to my feet. Grabbing my bags, I sorted out the laundry and got it going before heading to the kitchen for a protein shake. My brain whirled with options on how to spend my day. The one that stuck out was driving out to the pier to fish. It’d been a while since I’d done that. I couldn’t go far, even though the op had been called off. That could change at any second.
My phone buzzed from the other room, where I dropped it on the bed, and I sighed. Mama was known to call back-to-back, or instead of passing the phone to Daddy, she’d hang up, and then he’d take the cordless from her and call me back.
I dropped back onto the bed and glanced at the screen. I’d been saved from another call with the family. There were texts from a couple of my brothers, though, but I ignored them.
“Yo, man, what’s up?” I asked Brock when I answered.
“What’s up is you need to get your ass up and meet me at the beach for a run. Then we’re going to head toward Foster’s for food. His old lady is cooking, and he mentioned something about a brisket he was smoking.”
“One, it’s a little cold for a cookout, and two, if Julie Holt ever hears you call her an old lady, I want to be there. Watching her band your nuts would be some funny shit.”
“She’s a sweetheart. Ain’t no way she’d do something mean like that.”
I laughed so hard and loud I choked myself. I pushed myself up onto the side of the bed so I could catch my breath. “You keep telling yourself that. She was raised on a ranch, married a SEAL, has five boys, and raises tactical canines. She’s no wilting wallflower.”
“I guess you’re onto something. So, meet you at the beach in an hour?”
I grunted and heaved myself to my feet. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”
I dropped my phone on the bed, then headed to the shower to scrub the sleep stank from my body. As I ran the soap over my skin, my cock stood up, and I sighed. I stared down at it as I finished washing myself, willing it to go down. I knew better. It had a mind of its own since Germany.
If I was honest, I was sorta shocked I didn’t wake up covered in cum. That had been a daily issue since running into Roman. It was particularly bad when I hadn’t jerked off before going to sleep. If I didn’t take care of things before bed, I’d wake up covered. It would dry in my beard and the hair on my chest and belly.
One would think being a twenty-seven-year-old virgin would mean I wouldn’t have to deal with that shit, but I wasn’t a virgin by choice. It wasn’t like I didn’t feel sexually attracted to people. I did. Just not the right people. Hell, it wasn’t even people. It was one person.
There’s no such thing as the right people.
Sighing, I banged my head against the shower wall. I grew up in a community that considered being queer nasty and wrong. And that was some of the nicer things I’d heard. It’s why I hadn’t ever done anything with anyone.
Hell, I hadn’t even done anything with myself other than jack off.
Emotions welled up within me, making me angry. Chastising myself, I got out of the shower. I reassured myself that my attractions were perfectly normal. No matter what the Navy and the people back home thought.
To say I still had issues with my sexual identity was putting it mildly.
I was so fucking confused about it all, questioning everything about every little thing.
Was it really just Roman I was attracted to or was it something deeper or a combination of the two?
Things had changed since Brock came out to us and the team rescued Adam. I’d done a truckload of soul-searching after witnessing the love they have for one another, but there were times when all the slurs and shit I heard uttered throughout my life flew at me as if I stood in a crowd of people throwing stones aimed to maim and kill.
As an adult, I wanted to punch whoever came up with the saying about sticks and stones. Because words fucking hurt. Sometimes much, much more than the sticks or stones.
For the most part, my family was tolerant, if not supportive. Not that they knew about me, but I didn’t remember them ever speaking up. Their silence had seeped into my soul next to the slurs, burrowing their way into my brain until I hated myself.
I’d lost Roman. The only person I felt comfortable with, even if I didn’t feel safe enough to tell him how I felt. I’d just buried anything I felt people would judge me for, ignoring everything but my career goals.
A year later, when I left home and joined the Navy, I thought life would be better, but it wasn’t. Not really. The Navy and DOD were just as bad as the homophobes from my hometown. I had allowed other people’s opinions to dictate my actions and beliefs my whole life until I fucking loathed myself, what felt for Roman, and what I allowed their stupid, narrow-mindedness to do to me. I’d denied who and what I was—stomping out any hint of attraction and desire until I wasn’t just celibate but impotent, suffocating my sexuality until it was a dead thing, no better than roadkill that been lying in the elements for days on end.
That’s what I thought anyway.
Until Germany.
Roman Ott unlocked the box I’d locked that part of myself away in and breathed life back into me. Now I had no fucking control over my thoughts, feelings, desires.
Or my damn dick.
If Roman Ott’s fucking face came to mind, a tent pitched in my pants, and I had to fight like hell to get rid of it. It didn’t matter what was going on, who was around, or where the hell I was.
It was all bullshit. I knew it. I’d known it for years, but I let them all affect how I felt about myself. All I wanted was to be me and have a relationship with someone like anyone else on the planet. But I ignored and blew off the one man, the one person I’d ever felt anything for. I wouldn’t have been so quick to blow Roman off if Foster hadn’t told me about OCS. I didn’t even know if he was gay. All I knew was he was it for me. All because the military’s policy on gays was just as bad as those narrow-minded assholes who spewed hate instead of love.
I’d tried looking at other men since then, but they did nothing for me. If I was stiff and tried that shit, my dick went limp as a wet noodle. But let the thought of Roman Ott dance across my fucking mind, and my cock was standing at the ready, all of which gave more credence to the thought Roman was the only man who could do it for me.
Prior to Germany, I’d not had an orgasm since I was a teenager. Now, I had my hand wrapped around my Johnson several times a day.
It was probably sick to be jerking off to a guy you didn’t even know was into guys, but there was no helping the situation. I couldn’t ignore the vivid scenes my brain conjured up. Not only wouldn’t they be denied, but they’d triggered curiosity and internet searches, which triggered a deep dive into the unknown. And it was unknown. Every blog post and webpage just compounded my confusion. I had no clue what the hell these people were talking about.
Well, there were a couple that needed no explanation. Bottom and top being the two most obvious. There was another issue with being who I am. The role I was more inclined toward. While I was curious about taking Roman and feeling him around me, what really interested me was bottoming for Roman.
I knew better than to equate role with size. At least I did now, but I loved the thought of him behind me, his big body surrounding mine. I closed my eyes, and I could feel his body against me as if he were already there, and his breath was ghosting over my ear.
The image made blood pool in my pelvis. The semi I sported swelled, and I groaned. The need took hold as it so often did when I thought of Roman, and there was nothing I could do but give in to it.
Looking down, precum bubbled from my slit, and my mouth watered, wondering what it tasted like. I wrapped a hand around the base of my dick and swiped up the drop of fluid with the other, bringing it to my mouth hesitantly.
The scent hit my nose first, and I groaned, but the sound felt like it came from someone else. The tiny voice inside me urged me to suck it, so I did. I slid my finger past my lips, between my teeth. My flavor burst across my taste buds.
A bone-deep moan rumbled through me.
My cock twitched in my hand, and I dropped to the side of the bed.
Ripping open the nightstand drawer, I grabbed the lube with shaky hands. I fumbled it open, dropping it. Lube ran over my legs onto the bed, between my thighs, and onto the floor, but I didn’t give a fuck.
I took a deep breath to steady myself, then tried again. This time, I hung onto the bottle. I drizzled slick, clear liquid over the head of my dick. I watched it run down the length of my hand. My gut churned with need at the feel of it sliding over my hot, hard flesh.
I swallowed, then moved my hand from the base of my cock up to the head. A gasp tore through me as sparks shot off like fireworks when the callouses on my palm dragged roughly over the sensitive flesh.
Moving my hand back down, I fell back onto the bed, and I let the fantasy of Roman take hold.
Fictional Roman’s voice rasped against my ear. “Stroke yourself for me. Show me how much you want me.”
He wasn’t even fucking real, and I was on the verge of coming, with just a few imaginary words.
I did as he said.
My hand moved up and down, squeezing and twisting at the end. Pre-cum seeped out of the tip with every pass. It rolled down over my hand, mixing with the lube. The sound. The feel. It all combined with the image of Roman behind me.
I longed to feel him there for real. I wanted to know what he smelled like and how he sounded when turned on. I wanted to kiss him and get lost in him.
I raised my feet from the floor, placing them on the edge of the bed so I could thrust up into my hand. I sped my hand up, and the mess I made with the lube got all over my ass and made its way between my cheeks. The slickness between my butt muscles triggered another need. One I was curious about but never tried.
“Go ahead. Touch yourself. Pretend it’s my fingers playing with your hole.”
The image those words…
“ROMAN!” I shouted, shooting off like a rocket. Cum spurted from my cock so hard, I crunched forward. It splattered over my stomach and chest. Some of it even landed on my lips and in my open mouth.
Exhausted, I dropped back on the bed, trying to regain control of my breathing. A buzzing sound came from under my shoulder. Wiping my hand on the blankets, I wiggled around until I could grab my phone. I prayed I hadn’t accidentally called someone while I got off.
Pressing on the home button, my eyes flew open, and I sat up straight.
“Holy shit,” I mumbled.
I hadn’t texted anyone, thank God, but the text message was the best birthday gift to date.
Roman
Sorry if this wakes you. The women in my life refused to let the day go by without telling you Happy Birthday. I hope you have a great day.