Page 58 of Justice for Francesca

Tripoli

He sat in the outdoor armchair on his rooftop patio, a crystal-cut glass of bourbon on the rocks in his hand, his head leaned back on the headrest, staring up at the nighttime sky. The only light was the reflection from the streetlights that poked through the landscaped tree line he’d placed to create a sense of privacy along the wall that looked down into the parking lot of the club.

There was a soft ding behind him, signaling someone had arrived by the elevator. Inwardly, he cursed that he hadn’t locked off the rooftop floor so that he could wallow in his mourning alone.

From the corner of his eye, he realized it was Francesca. He wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms, hold her tight, and sob out his anger and frustrations. For his fallen Raider brothers. For Mila. For Jessa. For Tilly. For her.

She was in front of him now, an expression of concern as she looked from his shadowed face to the bourbon in his hand. “Ethan?”

He continued to stare at the sky, searching for the words he needed to say, and not finding them.

Instantly, she was closer, straddling his stretched-out legs, then hovering over his lap, kneeling with her legs bent on either side of his hips in the chair. The position put her tall above him, and she ran her hands through his hair, trailed her fingertips up his throat along his close-shaven beard, and rested her thumbs at the corner of his mouth. In this position, he could see her eyes surveying his face, making sure he was aware and not out of his mind from flashbacks or drinking. “Not drunk, I promise. Not that I wasn’t trying. Just not working.” Her hands felt so comforting on his skin that he turned his head just enough to kiss the heel of one hand before looking back at her. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Staring at the left corner of his mouth, she leaned down to press a string of kisses along his lips. When she reached the end of the line, her fingers fanned across his cheeks and jaw. She kissed the tip of his nose, the spot between his eyebrows, and the center of his forehead, then trailed her lips down the left side of his face, lowering her body to settle on his lap. Once her lips returned to the place where they had started their exploration, she pulled back from him just an inch. “Why? I think I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, Ethan Ezekiel Evans.”

Her admission made him sit straight up in the chair, like a drowning man finally breaking the surface of the water. His glass crashed to the ground, his arms wound around her waist, and his mouth clung to hers. The kiss was violent and possessive, his tongue thrusting between her lips and teeth, seeking to control her mouth, only to find that she met him just as wildly. Whatever he did, she repeated to him—a stroke along the underside of the muscle, a lick around the edge, a suck on the tip.

Mouths still fused, her hands slid down his face, down his chest and abs, and began to work at unbuckling his belt. He felt the button pull tight, then release, and the zipper loosened, freeing his cock from its confines. Soft hands grasped his raging hot skin, firmly gripped his shaft, and expertly applied pressure, pull, and twist.

He unwound his arms from behind Francesca and slid his own hands to the side zip of her trousers. Before he could even process what was happening, she’d stood from his lap, gave the material a shove down her legs, did the same with her panties, then climbed back into his lap and worked herself down onto his hard length jutting from his pants. Her hands gripped the arms of the chair, using her arm strength to raise and lower herself upon him, and he felt his hips chase hers, every thrust connecting hard and grinding against her.

In the distance, the muted sounds of traffic could be heard, as well as the noise from other businesses close by as people came and went. All he cared about at the moment, though, were the sounds of their breaths mingling with their exertions, the rustle of the clothing still caught between them, and the internal thudding of his heart echoing in his mind. All the memory noises—echoes of his teammates’ screams in the ambush, the nights of holding Tilly while she’d sobbed after nightmares and the hours of tears while she clung to him, Francesca’s imaginary pleas that he’d heard in his head when she’d been taken years earlier—were gone. Her presence quieted all of that.

He heard an exclamation, felt her muscles clench around him, and his body tightened as well. A quick, powerful orgasm had his cum shooting deep inside her body. He heard them both struggling to regain their equilibrium, so out of breath, he was dizzy.

His hands grasped her hips tightly, and she gasped into his mouth. “Fuck, I lost my head. You’re injured. You’ve been onyour feet all day. You should be resting. This is the last thing we should have been doing. Our first time together should have been?—”

A finger pressed against his lips.

“Ethan?”

“Yes?”

“Just for five minutes, stop talking. Stop worrying. Stop protecting. Just be with me.”

His mouth twitched in humor at her throwing his own words back at him, then captured her lips again in a brief touch. Relaxing his grip on her hips, he rewound them around her waist to eliminate the space between them while still lodged deep inside her. She was in no hurry to leave as evidenced by the fact that she wrapped her arms around his neck, tucking his head into the space between her jaw and her shoulder, her fingers playing with his hair. Together they sat in the darkness, allowing their hearts to return to their normal rates.

Eventually, their mouths returned to one another’s, but the pace was less frantic as they spoke between kisses.

“You need to get up?” he asked quietly. “Your knees must be killing you.”

“I’m good. I like feeling you inside me like this.”

He hummed in appreciation.

“I didn’t intend this when I came by,” she confessed. “When I didn’t find you in your apartment or your office, I admit, I panicked for a moment. When I got back in the elevator to try one of the other floors of the club, I saw the roof button and played a hunch you’d be here. One look at your face and my body just took over.”

He laid his head back on the headrest of the chair, his fingertips drawing random patterns on her lower back. “I remember leaving the magic room, but a lot of today is a blur.Mostly just images. I know I called Triumph, but what I said or what he said… yeah, don’t remember any of that.”

“I saw him earlier today. He’s hurting badly, but in a weird way, he seemed resigned.”

Tripoli rushed to defend his friend. “He would never?—”

Again, a finger laid against his lips to silence him. “I know. He doesn’t have an alibi, but there’s no way that man hurt her. I can’t prove it, but I know it. What I’m more concerned about is you. I’ve got my answer on how you’re coping.”

He sucked the tip of her finger into his mouth, laving it with his tongue, then letting it go with a quiet pop. “Everything today is pretty disjointed. I spent the day trying to forget the sight of Tilly in that fucking box, but nothing was working to make the vision go away. Cosmos came by at some point, and I must have been immersed in a pretty bad flashback because when I came to, he was holding my head over the toilet as I puked up my insides.”

“Your last deployment?”

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