Patriotic Duty (5 page)

CHAPTER 7

The
following weekend, Aiden was with his dad for Father’s day weekend so Riley and
I had the whole weekend to ourselves. I was grateful last weekend when Riley
had to go back into work Sunday morning because I really didn’t want him to
meet Aiden. Even though he was only two, I had made myself a promise when I got
divorced that my son wasn’t going to see me with a bunch of different guys.
Miranda and I had a mutual friend who was also a single mom to a slightly older
boy and we felt sorry for him, as his mom dated a lot and she always introduced
him to her dates. We agreed that it confused the poor kid and we said we
wouldn’t do that to our kids. Not that I had dated a lot, but I definitely
wasn’t introducing Aiden to any guy unless it was serious. And things
definitely were not serious with Riley, especially since he’d be gone in about
three months’ time. It was just a summer fling and I was going to have fun with
it while it lasted.

The amphitheater was
packed. Super-hot sizzling men in cowboy hats and tight jeans roamed around
with equally hot women with perfect bodies in Rockies jeans and expensive boots
that looked well worn.

The day again was hot but
Riley never let go of my hand, even when we were starting to sweat. The one
thing I noticed about Riley was that he had a bit of a wandering eye. I sent
him to get us beers and as he walked back with them, I noticed him looking
around a lot. He could have been curious about the people in this area since he
wasn’t from here, but something told me he was checking out girls. But again, I
had no stake on him so if he wanted to check them out… whatever. Just as long
as he didn’t do it while holding my hand, I really couldn’t say anything.

The rodeo was nothing like
I’d expected, but it was interesting nonetheless. I could tell the steer-ropers
and horse trainers worked hard at this and made an honest living from it. It
was good, inexpensive entertainment and I could kind of see the appeal if
someone was into something like this.

After a few hours there, we
left and went back home. We walked into my quiet house and all I wanted to do
was peel off my clothes and lie on my bed with the fan on me. I kicked off the
slip-on tennis shoes I’d been wearing sockless and flopped on the bed, my white
denim shorts and plaid tank top sticking to me. I lounged on my stomach with my
chin propped up on my hands. Riley followed behind me still wearing his beige
Stetson cowboy hat and Wranglers, with some sort of
black
country
music concert T-shirt. I thought Riley looked like a young Garth
Brooks with the hat on. I only knew what Garth Brooks even looked like because
there were posters up of him in the karaoke room at Cowboys.

He plucked the hat off and
tossed it on my dresser, smoothing down his short black hair. He had a look in
his ocean eyes that caused my skin to prickle, and keeping eye contact, I
grinned and whispered, “Get over here and do me.”

That apparently caused him
to come unglued because he ripped his shirt off and climbed the bed, crawling
toward me like some deranged panther. He grabbed my ankle and flipped me over
onto my back, unsnapping my shorts and yanking them off with force. He looped a
finger through the side of my white thong next to my hip bone, twisting it.
With his wicked lopsided smile, he said, “This needs to come off.”

I grinned just as wickedly
back at him and licked my lips. “I thought you liked my thongs.”

“I do,” he said, still
fingering it, “but this one’s in my way.” But he didn’t take it off and I
laughed.

He found my mouth again and
I let out a slight groan as his tongue snaked itself with mine, mingling like
two long, lost lovers. I ran hands over his buff chest and sculpted stomach,
its muscles and ridges caressing the palms of my hands.

He laid me down on the bed
and adjusted us so my head was on a pillow. He was propped up on one elbow,
still kissing me, when he reached down and ran eager fingers softly through the
ridge of my panties at the bottom of my stomach, brushing the top of my bikini
line. I was panting now I’m sure, and I gasped when he glided a hand down and slid
my panties off.

I fumbled with the button
of his jeans and helped him get them off as well. He bent down and nipped at
the skin on my neck, then made his way down to my cleavage. Lifting me up in a
hug, he locked eyes with me and unsnapped my white lace bra in the back
one-handed, and I laughed inside at how he surely had done that before.

Laying me back down, he
ran gentle hands over my breasts and I let out a moan. Sliding his hands down
my belly and over my hipbones, he was driving me crazy. I reached down and
could feel he was free of his boxer briefs and I grabbed hold of his hard
arousal and stroked it lightly with my thumb, tempting it to satisfy me.

I sucked in a breath when
I felt his fingers slide down into my very core and almost came off the bed as
he used very skilled movements to bring me to the edge of shattering. “Oh, God,
please…” I breathed.

I was at the point where I
just wanted him inside me and could think of nothing else. I was about to start
begging when he removed his hands and slid wet fingers over my hard nipples. I
groaned again when I felt his body on top of mine and his entire
length enter
me. We moaned simultaneously, and he wrapped
one arm under my head and used the other to prop himself up just enough to keep
from smothering me. Riley was a big guy, probably close to 200 pounds with his
bulky muscle, and it was such a turn-on.

His chest against my nipples
excited me further and after only a few thrusts I let go and crashed over the
edge of all thought and reason in a series of grunting gasps and a few breathy
shouts to God. He leaned down to kiss me and I kissed him back hard, digging my
nails into his back as my wave seemed to last forever.

I could feel him grin
against my neck and he breathed in my ear, “I want you to come again.”

Challenge
accepted.

I arched my hips up and
moved with him, and sure enough, I felt the pleasurable pressure begin to build
again. I closed my eyes and dug my fingernails into the soft flesh of his back,
and releasing a moan, warned him of my impending pleasure explosion.

This time, he stopped his
thrusts, and I began to cry out his name. I wrapped one leg around his ass and
he stopped his thrusting and groaned into my mouth. After we’d both crashed, we
fell asleep out of breath, spent, sweaty, and very happy.

***

Riley left once the weekend
was over and Wednesday at work, Miranda called me.

“Let’s go to lunch, girl,”
she said.

I was filing my short
nails when I should have been working and decided I really needed to get out of
this smelly environment for a few.

“Cool, meet you in the parking
lot.”

I drove this time to
McDonald’s and after we had placed our orders, Miranda pulled her cell out and
began texting someone with a smile on her face.

“Who’s made you all
happy?” I asked, folding the receipt in my hands as we waited for our orders.

She shook her blonde head.
“Some guy I met at this swanky bar in the valley last weekend when I went out
with
Shayla
.”

I stared at her. “Okay…?”

Her thumbs stopped moving
over the keyboard and she chucked the phone back into her monstrous red purse.
“So, nothing.
He’s cute and I have a date with him on
Friday.”

The teen behind the
counter called our orders out and we grabbed our trays, sitting at a booth near
the door.

“So who is this guy and
where is he taking you?” I asked her after I took a sip of Diet Coke.

She shrugged as she peeled
the pickles off her cheeseburger while making a face. “He’s a minor league
baseball player.”

My eyes got big. “Get
out!”

She bit back a smile.
“Seriously hot, girl. Like seriously!”

“So, did he get to first
base?” I asked with amusement in my eyes.

Her amber eyes shifted
away from me as she looked down at her untouched food. Then looking at me from
under her lashes, she nodded demurely.

“Seriously?
A home run?”
I laughed.

“Oh don’t give me that,
you and your soldier boy.”

I laughed. “Hey, you said
it yourself. Sleeping with military men is just us doing our patriotic duty to
the country, right? Someone has to take care of our men in uniform.”

We both burst out laughing
and I almost spit Coke out of my nose. People turned around and looked.

After a quickly mouthed
apology to the other patrons, I began eating my chicken sandwich, realizing we
had to be back to work soon.

Miranda took a sip of her
soda. “But you have seriously fallen for this Riley guy, haven’t you? Ditching
me on the weekends means it’s serious.”

I pointed a fry at her.
“Hey. This is a summer thing, that’s it. I’m
gonna
have some well-deserved fun,
then
he can go back to
where he came from. There’s nothing long-term about this. There can’t be. He
can’t move here, and I certainly can’t pack up and move.”

She studied me curiously.
“Yes but doesn’t your sister live in Colorado?”

“We’re not going there,” I
said to her seriously. “We need to get back to work before the inmates, or the
staff,
or both snitch us out.” I shoveled two more fries in
my mouth, and as we dumped our trays and got into the car, I could see Miranda
still looking at me as if there was something I wasn’t telling her. And there
was. But I couldn’t admit to her something I wasn’t even ready to admit to
myself.

***

“Do you have duty this
weekend?” I asked into the phone I held with one hand while I drove with the
other.

“No, I don’t,” said Riley
on the other end. “I’ll be over late tonight, though.”

I frowned. “Why late? The
ex has Aiden this weekend, so I’ll be in my house all by myself.” I said with a
baby voice and then cringed at how utterly stupid I sounded.

Riley laughed. “Just keep
the bed warm for me.”

I giggled and hung up,
then mentally went over all the reasons he was going to be late. He had to work
late? He had to call his wife? (This thought hadn’t escaped me, because really,
how would I know?), he had another girlfriend to take out before he got to my
house…

“Stop it, Cara,” I hissed
to myself.

God,
I was so pathetic.

I pulled up at home, and
as I got out of my car, I startled when I heard a loud pop. I turned around to
see a bunch of young teens playing with firecrackers in the drive of our
complex of duplexes. I think one was the boy who lived in the house connected
to mine. It dawned on me that July 4
^th
was on Sunday and made a
mental note to ask Riley what we were doing.

I went into the house, and
after changing, I heated up some leftover baked tilapia and red potatoes and
stood, as I always did, at the kitchen counter eating. I hadn’t sat down to a
meal in this house, except with Riley and a few times with Miranda, since I
moved in. Something about sitting down alone at a table to eat seemed sad to
me, and I wondered maybe if I brought my Kindle out with me and read while I
ate, if it would seem less sad. I decided it wouldn’t, and after I was
finished, I hand-washed the plate and fork and set them in the dish drainer.
The owner of this duplex didn’t have dishwashers installed in any of the units
– trust me, I’d asked a few of my neighbors.

Cheap bastard.

After being bored with TV,
I couldn’t sit there any longer. I checked my email on the laptop and
surfed
Facebook for a little bit while fanning myself with a
real estate brochure that had been left on my doorknob. I hated being bored and
decided I should take a shower. I quickly stripped off my clothes and started a
warm-
ish
shower and stepped in.

As I began lathering
myself up, I swore. I was pretty sure I had forgotten to lock the front door
because I had been distracted by the kids with the firecrackers, which led to
me thinking about the upcoming holiday on Sunday…

I was about to turn off
the water when I heard the door to the bathroom open. I gasped and tried not to
panic. The only weapon I could find was a long plastic loofa scrubber my mom
had gotten me for Christmas last year that I never used. I scrubbed the water
from my face and gingerly peeled back the yellow shower curtain and saw Riley
standing there in just his BDU pants that he was beginning to unbutton. His
brown T-shirt was already on the floor.

“Oh, my God, you scared
me, Riley!”

He grinned wickedly at me
and stripped off the rest of his clothes, and I stood there watching him from
the corner of the shower curtain like the pervert that I was. I sucked in a
breath when he was all the way down to his birthday suit. He opened the curtain
on the other side and stepped in, sidling himself up behind me. I was all soapy
so his hands slid effortlessly down my stomach, brushing my hip bones as he
kissed my neck and ear. I turned to mush under his touch and dropped the loofa
and reached my arms up behind his head and grabbed his neck. I moaned as he
continued his exploration of my slippery body and I could feel his desire as it
pushed almost painfully into my tailbone.