Page 15 of Renegade

“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 butyouneed 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, butyouhave 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 theonly 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 gottenthatconversation 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 becomeourbed, 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 ofhis 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’dwantedto 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.

Chapter Five

RAVEN

I woke up before the crack of dawn. There were still hours before Miguel and I had to go into the office to start figuring out what was going on with the stolen pigeon’s blood ruby. I had a feeling things weren’t exactly going to be easy with this case, even though it seemed very straightforward. It wasn’t like we weren’t good at what we did. The reason I hadn’t slept, had a lot more to do with John Sutter’s reappearance in Miguel’s life, somehow back from the dead, showing up at a place where we’d gone to meet a new client and her lawyer.

I hadn’t said anything to Miguel, but the timing of Sutter showing up at the restaurant at exactly the same time as we were starting out a new case, was off. Several things weren’t tracking for me. Obviously, he’d always known Miguel and his team had come out of the desert alive. Miguel hadn’t told me where everyone was in his unit lived or even if they were still in the military. Maybe he didn’t keep close tabs on them, but I doubted it, considering he thought of them as brothers. He’d named off six men on his original team including himself and Sutter which meant there weren’t a hell of a lot of guys to track down. If Miguel, Vonne, and Sutter were here in L.A., Pete in Iowa, that meant the other two could be anywhere.

Thoughts plagued me as I’d lain awake staring at the ceiling in the wee hours of the morning. How had Sutter gotten out of the desert and why hadn’t he contacted anyone in the unit to let them know he’d survived? I petted Stanley’s fur when he’d snuck into our room and crawled up between us around two a.m. IfMiguel was in the dark, maybe it meant all the other guys were too. I didn’t think Miguel had talked to Vonne since we’d gotten home from Sagebrush, even when I was busy putting Nana to bed. I might be wrong. He might have been texting him while he was busy burning our garlic toast last night. If so, he hadn’t said anything about it. I had to wonder now whether Sutter had contacted any of them. It really bugged me not to have all these details at hand.

Maybe Sutter had been captured by the enemy. Maybe he’d been held and tortured and had somehow gotten away. Surely, he couldn’t have gotten back into the country if he hadn’t gone back to the Marines for help. If that was the case, I was pretty sure Miguel would’ve heard about it. My thoughts got darker the longer I thought about it. What if he’d been with the enemy so long that he’d been brainwashed. Could a Spec Ops guybebrainwashed? Didn’t elite troops have some sort of specialized training on how to survive if they fell into enemy hands? Could he have been rescued by some elite government agency who’d found him out in the desert and had him on a secret mission for the last eleven years. Maybe I was watching too much Jack Bauer on 24. Maybe I was just an idiot.

I rolled away from Miguel, easing out of bed to go to my bookcase, using the flashlight on my phone to choose a book I’d read but hadn’t had the time to review yet. There were at least four waiting for Nightcrawler’s brilliant words of wisdom…or warning. I laughed at my own stupidity. I really needed to keep up with my reviews better than I had been doing, but I’d become addicted to Miguel’s body which had kept me busy in recent months. Bestreads was no longer my priority in my off hours, and my Nightcrawler bio no longer rang true. I’d found the man of my dreams, and we were living a storybook romance.

For a hot minute, I’d considered giving up my review blog because it was rare that I took the time to read anymore. But when I realized that Miguel missed Nightcrawler, I made sure I tried to fit reading and reviewing into my Saturday or Sunday routine. Since we both workedandlived together, we’d made the decision that the two of us should stay out of each other’s pockets on the weekends to do our own thing. It was important for couples to find hobbies to indulge in, even if they were solitary ones like reading. Neither of us wanted to become bored with each other…even though it was early in our relationship to think that way.

It was something we’d sat down and talked about at length after deciding to go into business together. We’d decided that living in each other’s space seven days a week would be a sure-fire way to burn out the relationship if we didn’t make time for our own interests. We had to give it time to get onto solid ground. It wasn’t that we ever strayed very far from each other, even on a lazy Saturday or Sunday, but we did have singular pursuits.

For some godforsaken reason I was still at a loss to understand, Miguel liked to do laundry. I chalked it up to his Marine Corps training and I had to admit really loving the way he folded my skivvies and rolled my socks. He was too fucking neat. He even folded the towels lengthwise so that I could take one out of the cupboard, hold the corners of one end, and watch it unfurlexactlythe right way to hang it neatly over the towel rack in the bathroom. I’d learned that there were ways to fold T-shirts that didn’t leave lines at all and there was something about the way everything smelled and felt so Downy soft, that I could practically sing the jingle every time I opened a drawer. So, I usually handed him my basket and let him have his way with my dirty underwear while I read, wrote, or cooked.

I liked to cook, so I did the week’s shopping, hung out with my Nana, took her for walks in the back garden, and cooked, trying out inventive meals on Miguel. After all, if he was to become my soulmate, I wanted to make sure I prepared what he liked. The rare roast beef, Texas chili, and Hungarian goulash had gone over well, but then again, everything with meat in it usually did. I still made him eat his fair share of vegetables including the dreaded brussels sprouts he swore he hated until I tried roasting them with garlic to “take the funk out” as he’d laughingly described my attempts one day.

I even fixed him various incarnations of tofu, making him try those, as if he were a toddler. Every time I set it down in front of him with various sauces to make it palatable to him, it was fun to see him screw up his face. I’d ordered him to eat his tofu like a good Marine, and he’d gotten better at finishing it after rewarding his attempt by blowing him in the kitchen while he dried dishes. Miguel swore that my obsession with stinky vegetables and soybeans meant I had a sadistic streak. But he tolerated my attempts to make him live longer, possibly because he knew I loved him, but more likely, because he enjoyed seeing how far I’d push him.

I pulled out a book, glancing at the title on the spine, before eyeing him snoozing peacefully in bed. I pulled on a robe and slipped into my moccasins before leaving the room, headed for the kitchen, book and tablet in hand. I heard Stanley pounding down the floor behind me, so I stopped midway through the living room a split second before he cut me off, zooming in front of me like an obnoxious driver. I chuckled as I continued on my way, flicking on the light, and squinting as my eyes got accustomed to it. The kitten was standing in the kitchen waiting for me.

Stanley wound himself between my legs as I reached for the coffee and started preparing a single cup for myself. When he didn’t get instant satisfaction from his human, and possibly growing annoyed that I wasn’t feeding him, he zoomed back out. The second the coffeepot beeped, Stanley ran back in, skidding to a halt at my ankles. When I looked down, his huge orange eyes blinked up at me.

“Someone has the zoomies this morning.” He instantly turned and charged back out of the kitchen, running all the way down the hall and back several times as I poured half and half into my cup. By the time he finally came to a stop at my ankles again, the little fucker wasn’t even out of breath. I reached for the cat food and the second he saw the bag, he began howling as if starved. The kitten had more than doubled his weight since moving in with us three months ago, so seeing him so tortured had no effect on me. I poured some kibble into a bowl and then reached for the wet food, plating it while his nose was buried in the dish. The second I set it down, he moved over and began gobbling it. I leaned back on the sink, ankles crossed as I sipped my coffee, marveling how Stan sounded exactly like a sow at the trough.

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