American Made (Against the Tides #2) (4 page)

“Ready?” She giggles and once again the sound shoots straight to my dick. Fucking hell, I’m more than ready but I know I won’t let it get that far. I don’t bother to ask her what I’m ready for because the glint in her eyes tells me she’s fucking with Knox again.

Swinging my arm out in front of me, I wink at her. “Lead the way, gorgeous.”

She steps away to give her keys to Envy, who tells her that the truck will be at her house whenever she wants it. Knox jumps from his stool the second Emerson has her back turned and crowds my space. 

“If you fuck her,” he growls. “I will cut your balls off and set them on fire while you watch.”

I grin and step away from him, ignoring everything he just said. I have a feeling that if Emerson wants something and Knox tries to tell her no, she’s going to get it anyway and Knox will be the one with sore balls.

“Aggravating him is fun.” She snickers when I fall into step next to her on the sidewalk. I steer her toward my truck and help her up into the cab so she doesn’t hurt herself.

It doesn’t take long for her to get comfortable in the truck and she cranks the radio before we’re even out of park. The sound of her drunken singing fills the truck while I drive the three blocks to McDonald’s and doesn’t stop until she’s climbing over my lap to place her order. I grab her hips when she starts to slide off the seat and hold her still.

I turn the radio down as Emerson rolls the window down and waits for the person to ask for her order.

“Yes, ma’am. I would like some children nuggets and a supersized McDick, please,” she slurs.

Oh holy shit
. This is not what I expected when this woman walked into the bar tonight. Then again, everything I expected her to do has been blown out of the water. Assumptions aren’t going to work when it comes to her I guess. All I saw when I first laid eyes on her was a smoking hot body and face. I saw lips I would love to see wrapped around my dick and a voice that could make me come just by listening to it. I didn’t expect her to be military and I didn’t expect her to be funny. I don’t know if it’s a drunk haze that she’s in, but I hope she’s like this sober too.

“I’m sorry, we don’t supersize things anymore, and we no longer carry McDicks. However, we do have the nuggets of children. I just need to know how many you want.”

“Well hell,” Emerson curses. I snort, unable to believe that the girl taking our order is playing along. “I serve the country and come home and can’t even get a supersized McDick anymore. This is ridiculous. Can’t find a super dick anywhere…” Turning to me, she grins. “You want somethin’?” 

Nothing I can order from this place…

I clear my throat. “I’ll have some nuggets and a vanilla shake.”

“Yes! I want that too. I need to drown my children nuggets in creamy goodness.”

To hell with the shake, I know what I really want in my mouth
.

Fuck,” I mutter, groaning as I drop my head back against my seat. Emerson finishes ordering and stays where she is as I pull around to pay. The woman that takes our money laughs the entire time we’re at the window. “Thank you for not telling her to shove the dick she ordered up her ass.”

The woman shrugs with a smile. “Most entertainment I’ve had in a long time.”

I push Emerson back across the seat so I can put our order between us.

“Merry Christmas,” she yells across me as the lady hands me our shakes.

“Happy Hanukah,” she replies, her chest rumbling with laughter.

I pull away from the window and back into traffic. As I weave through cars, Emerson starts pulling food out of the bags. I figure she wanted the water so much that she was willing to stand in the rain to get it, so I find the closest spot that I can to pull down by the harbor and park to eat.

“Here,” she says, shoving the bag my way. Pulling a nugget out of her box, she dips it in her shake and bites into it. “Mmm, liquid chicken parts. Oh, how I missed you while I was gone.”

“How long were you deployed for?”

Her chewing slows, like she’s trying to decide if she wants to answer. By the look on her face it’s a sore subject but I want to get to know her better. After a minute she finally chooses to answer.

“This time was supposed to be nine months, but I came back after seven.”

“This time? You’ve been more than once?”

“More than once. More than I care to talk about.”

I nod. I know I should stop asking questions but after swallowing what’s in my mouth the words tumble out on their own.

“So what did you do while you were over there?”

Her eyes drift to mine, pleading with me not to push this but I can’t stop myself. I stare until she cracks.

“I’m a sniper.” She pauses, setting down what little is left of her food down. Staring out the window, she sighs. “Was. I
was
a sniper. I don’t know what I am anymore.”

“Respect,” I whisper. She’s changing every thought I had about her when I first saw her and she doesn’t even realize it.

Emerson’s head snaps toward me. “I’m not proud of the things I did, but I was good at it so I did it. I don’t like killin’ people. Don’t respect me, you don’t even know me.”

Oh shit, I’ve pissed her off by respecting her. I should have known it was going too well.

I take a second to think before I speak again because I don’t want to piss her off any more. “If you aren’t proud of what you were doin’, why did you do it?”

“Because,” she shouts. Taking a deep breath, she calms herself down before saying anything else. “Because I didn’t shoot to kill. I shot to protect people. I killed people that were killing our soldiers or murdering the people that were just tryin’ to live their lives in those towns. I took them out on command like it was nothing so they couldn’t keep hurtin’ people. Now I can’t even do that. What the hell do I do now that I can’t?”

I ignore her last question because it doesn’t seem like something she actually wants an answer for. I think it’s something she’s trying to figure out on her own so I choose to focus on everything else. I shove the question to the back of my mind for later though because I have an idea.

“I wasn’t sayin’ that I respected you for killin’ people, Emerson. I respect you for savin’ them. I respect you for puttin’ your life on the line for this country. Even just meetin’ you a few hours ago I can tell that you wouldn’t hurt someone for the hell of it. If I thought for even a second that you would, I’d kick your ass out of my truck and tell you to walk home. My job is about savin’ people so I don’t hang out with people that wanna hurt them.”

“Oh,” she whispers, hanging her head in shame. Her hair falls into her face so I reach over to move it out of my way so I can see her.

“What you said, that thing about not shootin’ to kill, but shootin’ to protect people? That right there is why I respect you.”

Emerson rolls her head toward me as the song on the radio switches. Her eyes start to slide closed as she begins to fall asleep in the front seat of my truck. “I got shot,” she mumbles.

“What?” I ask, thinking I heard her wrong.

“You asked what happened to me. We got ambushed. I got shot.” She yawns, shifting slightly to get more comfortable. “And Taylor Swift is right. Band-Aids don’t fix bullet holes.”

I bite my tongue to keep from laughing. This sexy as hell grown woman just quoted Taylor Swift in my truck after yelling at me and I’m not tossing her ass to the curb. Something must be wrong with me tonight. Maybe it’s because I feel sorry for her because she got shot and obviously it did enough damage to get her sent home. Or maybe it’s because part of me wants to see more of her, to know more about her. I’m hoping the Swift reference was a drunk slip but at this point I don’t think I’d care even if it wasn’t.

My head throbs before I even open my eyes and I instantly regret everything I did last night. The things I can remember anyway. Four rounds of shots that were meant to be split between four people ended up in my stomach along with beer and that was all before I went outside. After standing in the rain things get a little hazy. I press the heels of my hands into my eyes as I sit up and almost cry. The pain in my arm is so intense it makes me want to throw up.

I’m still fully clothed but in my bed and have no clue how I got here. The only thing I can think of is Knox must have brought me home. Aspirin and a bottle of water sit on my bedside table next to a bottle of pain medication. As fast as I can, I swallow the pills and fill my mouth with water. I feel like I’ve been swallowing sand all night and the water is barely touching it.

Pushing to my feet, I make the mistake of wandering in front of the mirror and looking.
Death warmed over
. The mascara that I had put on yesterday is streaked down my face, making me glad that it was the only thing I had on, and my hair looks like it got stuck in a tornado. I attempt to run the brush through it but it only makes my head throb more. The smell of food wafts up the stairs and it makes me nervous because I have no clue who is in my house cooking. Tiptoeing down the stairs, I peek around the corner into my kitchen. 

“About time you woke up,” the guy speaks up from in front of the stove. When he turns around and I see his face, everything starts to come back to me. The kissing, the flirting, the McDonald’s run… the yelling. He sets a plate down on the bar. “Eat.”

“Did we?” I ask, shuffling across the tile floor. I slide onto the stool as he starts laughing.

“If I had sat on my hand until it was numb and rubbed one out it would have been livelier than you last night after you ate.”

“Fuck, I passed out in your truck, didn’t I?”

“Mhm,” he hums, setting toast beside my plate that is stacked with eggs, pancakes and bacon. “I had to text Knox for your address.”

“Shit, Knox. We pissed him off pretty good last night didn’t we?”

“He wasn’t very happy when I wanted your address, but he must’ve figured out that you were out if I needed it.”

I nod, praying that the pills kick in soon. I look down at my plate and wonder how the hell he made all this. “I hope this stuff didn’t come from my fridge because if it did it’s over seven months old and you’d probably die after one bite.”

“No.” He laughs, plating some food for himself as the sound surrounds me. I wait for the noise to kill my head but it actually sort of soothes me. “You had nothing and I figured you’d be pretty hungover and not want to go get anything. So instead of waitin’ to ask if you wanted to go to Denny’s for hangover food, I brought Denny’s to you. Now eat.”

“Good. I should have gone to the store but I got off the plane, came home and couldn’t handle the silence so I went to find Knox instead. You need to tell me what I owe you for the food.”

“Eat!” he demands, slapping a fork down in front of me.

I stop talking and pick the fork off the counter, cutting a section of pancake with it. The second my lips wrap around the fork and the taste hits my tongue, I moan. “Holy fuckin’ hell this is good. Where did you—” I stop speaking because I can’t remember his fucking name.

“Gentry,” he reminds me with a smile. I wait for him to make me feel like an asshole for forgetting, but he doesn’t. He swallows what’s in his mouth and continues talking without looking at me. “Don’t worry about it. It was obvious that you were drinkin’ to forget last night, so I didn’t expect you to remember.”

“Temporary relief of a permanent situation.” The words sting as I say them because I don’t want to believe them, but that’s what it is. I don’t want it to be a permanent situation, but it is. I’m out, and there’s nothing I can do to change that. Suddenly I feel the need to explain myself and apologize to someone who is practically a stranger to me. “I’m sorry about last night, I don’t usually drink that much. I think I remember yellin’ at you for no reason.”

“Not a big deal, Emerson. Sometimes you just have to let the heavy stuff out. And sometimes it’s easier to do that with someone you don’t know than with someone you do. It doesn’t hold a candle to the kiss on the pier or the fact that you ordered a supersized McDick from McDonald’s, so consider it forgotten anyway.”

“Oh my god,” I cry, burying my face in my arm on the bar. “That poor woman. Poor you! I used you to irritate Knox because he was actin’ like an overprotective asshat. That makes me an asshole, sorry.”

He finally turns to look at me and I become self-conscious about what I look like. His icy-blue eyes sparkle as they burn into me but it isn’t with the disgust that I expect because of how I look. It’s something else entirely and it’s nothing I’m used to seeing. It’s something I don’t let myself see because of the uncertain life that I’ve always led.

“Do you see me complaining about you kissin’ me? Do you hear me bitchin’ about you tellin’ me I have a rock-hard body? Or hatin’ the way you laid across my lap and made everything that came out of your mouth dirty as you ordered? Because I’m not.” The corner of his mouth tips up as I have to fight to keep my jaw off the floor. He reaches toward me and moves the hair off my face. Usually I would pull away from someone trying to touch me like that, but something about him makes me want to move into it. Thankfully, I manage to control myself. “Would you like to talk some more about how pissed off you are that you can’t find that supersized McDick you want so much?”