Page 99 of Over the Edge

The roads were crap and the driving slow, which gave Trevor plenty of time to think. Too much time. He didn’t want to think about all the things Anna had said to him. About how there was life after the SEALs. That he was carrying around a rather foolish death wish disguised as noble sacrifice…because he was afraid to face an uncertain future. That he was foolish to think he couldn’t craft a happy life for himself.

What was happiness, anyway?

He was happy now, driving into the remotest mountains on earth with Anna sleeping in the seat beside him. It felt right, being with her like this, the two of them together against the world.

His mother used to say that a lot. That it was her and her boys against the world. Was that what it meant to be a family? By that measure, the Reapers were definitely family. Was it possible to have that kind of a connection with a woman outside of work? This woman in particular?

He tried imagining a life with her. Maybe in California or Virginia, close to the two main SEAL bases. Or maybe Hawaii. A lot of the guys chose to retire out there. Could he learn how to be a husband? A father? Honestly, there wasn’t much of anything he couldn’t do if he put his mind to it. Although the idea of doing the family man schtick was…daunting.

He’d grown up without his father. Didn’t really know how to do the parenting thing. Maybe that was why the idea scared the living hell out of him.

Well, hell. She’d gotten him thinking about a future beyond surviving the next few days without him even realizing what she’d done. Clever, clever girl.

Maybe she had the right of it, after all. Particularly now that they knew a huge airstrike was set to land on Abu Haddad’s head. There would be no need to make a heroic sacrifice to draw attention to Ken.

Small problem: Kenny’s odds of surviving an all-out airstrike to level Haddad’s home and kill everyone inside were miniscule at best. Nope. They needed to pull the high-risk mission and yank him out before all hell broke loose.

With the mission morphed into, get in, get Kenny, and get out, those disastrous sessions in the training building a lifetime ago in North Carolina suddenly took on huge significance. He’d only succeeded about one time in six against the Reapers. It have been about fifty-fifty with Anna helping him.

No way could he afford those odds now. And not with that airstrike queued up to blow. Low-level panic hummed in his gut as they drew closer to Tarazan, mile by mile. Not only would he die for Ken, but he would die to keep Anna safe. He couldn’t lose her. Nothing could happen to her.Nothing.

After the meetingwith his brother, Anna was not surprised Trevor was quiet and thoughtful. She respected his silence, and besides, she had plenty to think about, too.

There had been definite friction between Trevor and his brother. As if they loved each other but irritated the living shit out of each other. Having not had any siblings, she had no frame of reference for whether or not that was normal. Based on her friends from school, the tension between the two had seemed higher than average.

No wonder Trevor was so negative when he talked about family in general. And no wonder he had no hope for happiness after he retired from the military if that was what he thought all families were like.

As the sun dipped below the mountains in the west, they pulled off the road into a clump of pine trees. This was breathtakingly beautiful country, wild and unspoiled. Although winter was coming, the grass dead and leaves dying, the mountains rose in shades of charcoal and violet tipped in white. A stream rushed down the mountain not far from them, making its own music as it went. The sky faded from bright blue to orange, then pink, then deep, deep navy, as twilight fell gently, exhaling into night.

They set up camp and gathered deadfall wood for a fire. The wood lit quickly, cracking and snapping into the chill of night. The peace of the place was complete. They munched jerky and dried fruit in companionable silence and then laid down on the ground to watch the sky and point out meteors.

She finally broke the long silence to ask, “How can you experience an evening like this and not believe in happiness, or at least not want to live?”

“I’ll admit, this is pretty nice.”

“Just nice?”

He shrugged beside her, the movement of his shoulder rubbing against hers.

She sat up and lifted her shirt over her head. The heat of the fire scorched her front, while the night air chilled her back.

“What are you doing?” he blurted.

“I’m done with nice. No more fighting fair with you,” she declared.

“What are you talking about?”

She rose to her feet, kicked off her boots, and pushed her pants to the ground. She stepped out of the circle of camo fabric. She shucked off her sports bra and underwear and stood naked in the firelight, staring defiantly down at him.To heck with nice. She was going to blow his ever-loving mind.

Never breaking stares with her, he rose to his feet and methodically stripped down to his skin, as well. She stepped forward, took both his hands in hers and sank to her knees, pulling him down to the blankets with her.

She pushed him onto his back and commenced kissing and massaging his body from chin to toes and back up. His hands lifted to her shoulders, but she pushed them back down to the ground firmly.

No surprise, his body reacted eagerly, and his erection announced its interest in no uncertain terms. She paid special attention to it, kissing and licking the shaft from top to bottom and bottom to top, slurping at the straining head until Trevor groaned aloud.

When his body practically quivered with need, she rose to her knees beside him and threw her right leg across his hips, straddling him boldly.

She reached between them and positioned him correctly, then drove down onto his heat and hardness with a groan of her own. When he was buried within her, filling her completely and shooting delicious sensations to her extremities, she began to move, sliding up and down on him. The friction was perfect.

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