Soldier Boy Read online

  ‘You can’t trust a doctor. Doctors lie. In the army, they fill you with chemicals before you’re deployed, then they try to force you to take meds that make you ill. Then as thanks for your service, you get medically discharged by one of them, and find yourself in the world with nothing. Nothing! So you see, the only good you are to me, is out of the way. Dead.’

  The word reverberates around the room as my cry choke me, tears beginning to course down my cheek. Then, in a blur of movement, Ben slides silently through the locker room door. Still dressed for his morning run, the look of determination on his face is almost as frightening as the girl approaching me rapidly with the gun.

  His hand on her wrist.

  The crack of bone I recognise.

  The wretchedness of her cry.

  The gun flying across the room

  His knee on her back, one arm in his, the other lies twisted by her side.

  All the tension and adrenaline I’d bottled up inside explodes. My whole body begins to shake, my teeth chattering violently. My knees feel like they could give, were I not sitting, and my chest heaves, my lungs unable to inhale enough breath fast.

  ‘Hang in there, sweetheart.’ His expression is as fierce. His love, too.

  A moment later, the door burst open with a rush of people. Security guards and Mr Travers, who pulls my sad and sorry form from the bench, pulling me to the side of him as he shield me from the room with his body.

  ‘So that’s your Captain Monroe, is it?’ he says, his eyes dipping to me, concern tugging at his features.

  ‘This is—’ I inhale and start again. ‘This is Ben.’

  ‘The way he thundered into the place, I imagine he could take over small countries, should the fancy take him.’

  Police arrive next, they bring more guns. It doesn’t make me feel protected, rather the opposite. Next come a team of paramedics, which strikes me abstractly as a little ridiculous. We’re in a hospital, surrounded by medical professionals. I don’t see Samantha being led away though I try to close my ears to her cries. Pitiful outcrying’s. Despairing. Begging. Declarations of love. I don’t realise I’m being passed from one male presence to another until I inhale a deep breath full of the man I love.

  ‘You smell really bad,’ I whisper into his chest.

  ‘It’s called fear, half-pint.’ He releases a deep breath, his lips finding my head.

  ‘I think it’s called entertaining the yummy mummies by running in those shorts. It’s almost winter, you know.’

  ‘Stop talking,’ he whispers hoarsely. ‘Just let me hold you and hide my tears in your hair a little bit.’

  ‘Okay. I would like to unman you in front of policemen.’

  ‘Bugger the policemen,’ he says quite fiercely. ‘I almost fucking lost you.’ He grips me then as though he could stop my quaking by the sheer force of his will.

  ‘How did you know?’ I ask, pulling my head from his chest to look at him.

  ‘Mrs H said there was someone near your car this morning. She thought it was you, but when she waved, you took off. She also told me she’d thought you’d come back from work one day last week early. She saw you walk up the driveway and disappear into the house.’

  ‘She’s been in the house?’ Dread skitters down my spine.

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you think—No. She was, she was going to kill me, Ben.’

  ‘I know, sweetheart. But you’re okay. I won’t let anyone ever hurt you.’

  His fingers clutch my shoulders, my back, my thighs, gripping me tightly as though taking an inventory of my solidity. He bands his arms around me as he pulls my body flush against him. It’s then I discover I’m not the only one shaking.

  Chapter 25

  BEN

  I’m . . . moonlighting. Taking a sabbatical?

  We’re in Scotland, staying in the grounds of Lord Travers’ estate, who we know as Will. He’s loaned us the gamekeeper’s cottage while we’re here. It’s a beautiful spot but even with Spring on the horizon, it’s still cold enough to freeze my balls off.

  The cottage has stone walls half a metre deep and tiny windows and a ceiling so low that, in places, I have to stoop.

  ‘It’s a house made for bloody pixies,’ I grumble, bumping my head on a low doorframe again.

  ‘Do you think people were just smaller back in the seventeenth century?’

  ‘I think it was probably the weight of the many coats they had to wear.’

  ‘You’re soft,’ Nell retorts, giggling. ‘Even Will said so. A soft southern bast—’

  ‘Stop right there. I don’t want to know where that ends. The man made me a very generous off yesterday. I want to make my decision without hearing his opinion of me.’

  ‘Yep,’ she agrees. ‘It doesn’t do to bite the hand that feeds you.’

  ‘I feed you,’ I reply smoothly. ‘And you bit more than my hand last night.’

  ‘Only because you like it a little rough.’ Truthfully, I like it any way Nell serves it. But she’s not wrong. ‘Are you going to look at the grounds with Will and Keir later?’ she asks, snuggling deeper into the fluffy goose down quilts.

  ‘Yep, we’re checking out the suitability of the terrain.’

  Keir is Will’s friend and business partner. A man of few words and astute observations. They’re both good blokes. The idea is to set up a Military style camp for corporate team building exercises. A gruelling experience for which companies will pay highly and their management teams will be bullied and broken before being built back up. A bit like joining the Special Forces, without the 90% dropout rate and the threat of death.

  They want me to run it, set up the company as a partnership. It’s a tempting offer.

  We haven’t decided yet. And that’s we as in Nell and me. We’re a team. We make these decisions together. And I know how much she worries about me. She’s begun to have nightmares, and though she refuses to speak about them, I know they feature guns and death. I don’t need to know anything else. I’ve been there myself.

  ‘I love it when you talk dirty soldier to me, Captain Monroe.’

  God, this woman. Will I ever get my fill?

  ‘You love the young and thrusting in me, don’t you, half-pint.’

  ‘I can’t believe that’s an actual phrase Army phrase.’ It is. Ambitious and on the fast-track to promotion. In fact, it was me until recently. My mates laugh, they reckon Nell has taken possession of my balls, but that’s not it. I could’ve lost her, and I can barely process that. How could I have gone on without her? Without my half-pint?

  Samantha was admitted to a secure psychiatric unit the follow that day. When I think of what could’ve happened—how she’d tampered unsuccessfully with Nell’s car brakes early that morning. How she’d turned up with the gun she’d managed to get on the Iraqi black market in the course of her tour. There was no premeditation in the purchase of the gun, but the hunting knives and scalpel the police found at her home? She’d bought baby clothes and was fully prepared to rip a phantom baby from Nell’s womb.

  The strange Tinder message, the flower delivery, tapering with Nell’s mail—the lengths she went to were a peek into a truly unhealthy mind.

  ‘Do you think the Queen sanctions the phrase young and thrusting?’

  ‘No idea, but I get the impression you might be a fan of it,’ I reply, dragging my attention from that day.

  ‘I’m a fan of your thrusting. In fact, I love it. And I love you.’

  We’d broken that barrier. She tells me she loves me every day. A near death experience will do that to you.

  Despite having showered and being dressed, I throw myself onto the antique brass-framed bed, making Nell giggle as I crawl to where she lies in the middle, her sweet face barely visible.

  ‘What do I mean to you, Nell?’ I never tire hearing this.

  ‘Well, you used to be a thorn in my side. The bane of my existence. A curse laid upon me by Providence. My best friend’s pesky little brother. Bu
t also the boy who saved me from spending life as a goldfish murderer.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘But that was before.’ From the depths of the quilts, her hand reaches out to stroke my cheek. ‘Now, you’re the man I love.’

  ‘Want to get married? While we’re in Scotland, I mean.’

  ‘Go to Gretna Green?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘I don’t think they have blacksmith priests these days.’

  ‘Half-pint, I don’t care if a monkey presides.’

  ‘We do make a good team’ she replies with a small smile. ‘In fact, according to Melody’s relationship calculations, we’d be a whizz at the marriage thing.’

  ‘Dare I ask?’

  ‘According to her, the more sex you have, the better the state of your relationship.’

  ‘No worries there, then. Shall we do it?’

  ‘Will you wear a kilt?’ she asks, her dark eyes twinkling.

  ‘Will you warm your hands before you touch my junk?’

  ‘Are you really proposing to me right now?’

  ‘I can do it on my knees if you’d prefer.’

  ‘But that sounds suspiciously like you looking at my junk.’

  ‘There’s no junk between your legs, sweetheart. You’re all silk and pearl.’

  ‘And you are a sweet-talking man, Captain Monroe.’

  ‘And you, half-pint, are the other half of me.’

  ‘In that case, I accept. Let’s get married.’

  THE END

  In Like Flynn

  A SNEAK PEEK

  CHASTITY

  I’m in bed.

  With my rabbit.

  And I don’t mean the fluffy, toothy kind.

  Quite honestly, I could be in bed with Liam Hemsworth, and it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference because, queen of erotica or not, my orgasm is ruined, and it has been for months. The whole thing makes a mockery out of what I do for a living.

  Because my name is Chastity, and I run an ethical porn company.

  It totally is a thing.

  I prefer the title cinematographer. I just happen to film people having sex. I also pay them to do so—pay them very well because my market isn’t the Porn Bub demographic. Fast Girl Media produces porn and erotica for women and couples, and the images and recordings I produce are tasteful and sensual and very high end. According to my aunt Camilla, my work very much gets the job done. Though why I’m recalling my ancient relative’s enthusiasm for my subscription-based website, I don’t quite know. Because that’s not going to help me right now, is it? It really is no wonder I haven’t orgasmed in six months. Who thinks of their seventy-three-year-old aunt and her hairy chin when trying to get a moment? A moment . . . for a pornographer, that expression is probably a little too coy.

  Because my name is Chastity, and I haven’t orgasmed in six months.

  As much as I’d like to blame Aunt Camilla for my problem, I’d only be kidding myself. I am solely to blame for losing my orgasm following a recent weak moment when I slept with the cockiest, most infuriating man on the planet.

  Flynn bloody Phillips.

  We’d spent a glorious night screwing each other’s brains out following the wedding of my best friend. He’d bent me in shapes I’d thought were impossible, while whispering things that still make the tips of my ears burn. And though I’m not sure how it happened, that night, he also seems to have stolen my ability to orgasm from me.

  Bloody man. I’d both lusted and loathed him at first sight. Loathed because he’s a loud-mouthed bastard who’s far too full of himself—he knows exactly how good looking he is and seems to think a compliment and a cheeky grin will get him out of anything. And into anyone. But it’s hard not to lust after him when he looks like a younger Henry Cavill. At least until he opens his mouth. Because when he does actually speak, a cocky jerk seems to fall out. He’s so full of himself. So damned arrogant. And hell if that doesn’t do something for me! Especially with his accent. What is it about an Aussie drawl that makes the elastic of a girl’s underwear loose? I once heard him describe his accent as “true blue”. I don’t know about that, but he certainly turns the air blue in the bedroom. Yes, my poor burning ears. It’s strange how I can still hear him whispering . . .

  Come on, Chastity. Come for me. Come all over my face.

  It’s unfortunate that I both have a thing for Henry Cavill and a love of confident men. But there’s confidence and then there’s arrogance, and they just aren’t the same thing, so I’m at a loss to understand why Flynn bloody Phillips’ inflated self-worth both turns me on while annoying the shit out of me! It’s baffling.

  He looks like he could be in the movies, and I mean that in the mainstream way. Though with his looks and anatomy, he’d make a killing in my kind of movies, too. Broad shoulders and powerful arms and abs that almost make you want to get out a dirty shirt or two. Just to rub. Plus, the man is hung so he could definitely do porn. And I’m sure he has a magical tongue.

  But it doesn’t matter how gorgeous he is, or how talented his tongue happens to be because what it boils down to is that I want my orgasm back!

  How is it that I’ve been able to let my fingers do the walking quite satisfactorily since I’d discovered what fun a clitoris could be at boarding school, and now I can’t even get myself to come? Ménage à moi used to be one of my favourite pastimes—a party for one where fun was always had! But now? Now I’m broken.

  God knows I’ve tried—I’ve tried every trick in the book! Over the past few months, I’ve even acquired a drawer full of toys—a dildo, a rabbit, a wand, vibrators that bend in various ways, and something that looks like a vibrating pink rock that, though is very pleasant, has yet to seal the deal. I’ve tried lotions and potions and lube that promised tingles but delivered little more than an itch, and even bought a strange looking two-ended thing described as “the Swiss army knife of sex toys” that did nothing but rattle my teeth a bit.

  In short, I’ve been cursed since I spent the night with Flynn Philips and have been subject to more sexual frustration than any twenty-nine-year-old woman, never mind purveyor of tasteful porn, ought to know.

  I push out a frustrated sigh, another attempt at reaching climax over for another night. Pulling back the covers, I swing my legs out of my bed and throw tonight’s battery boyfriend into the open drawer. I’m so disgusted with it I’m not even going to bother giving it a quick wipe. I might just throw it away. Or maybe give it another go after a cup of calming chamomile tea.

  Pulling the robe from the end of my bed, I slide it on, conscious that I probably shouldn’t walk around naked these days. Not unless I want to give Max a heart attack. Max, my little brother, is currently staying with me after finishing his degree. Last year. At twenty-three, he appears to be experiencing a quarter life crisis and has no idea what to do with his life. Except badger his sister for a job with my company. Dipping his dick, as he so eloquently put it. Like that’s ever going to happen. Our family may be dysfunctional, but we’re not sick.

  God, I hope he’s not serious, I think as I walk into the kitchen to be greeted by the sight of him eating cereal while wearing nothing more than a pair of designer jeans.

  ‘What are you doing up?’ I flip on the light wondering why he’s sitting in the dark.

  ‘I was out with friends,’ he replies, to which I roll my lips inwards. Best to keep quiet. I don’t like to nag. Okay, I try not to nag. Too much. But honestly, it’s like having an overgrown teenager in the house. He’s not likely to find a job if he doesn’t wake up before noon!

  Max glances out at the darkened garden, maybe watching the rain slicking the roof of the house opposite or the dance of it as it hits the surface of my garden pond.

  ‘God, I hate this place,’ he grumbles. The spoon clanks against the side of the bowl as he pushes it away, propping his chin on his fist.

  Again, I don’t answer; it’s not required. He wouldn’t listen. I wish he’d just pull himself together and fin
d something—something!—to do. He doesn’t have to leave, just get out from under my feet. Our parents split when we were young, and as we were already at boarding school, I suppose we’ve never really felt like we had a family home. We never lived with our parents. Just spent alternate holidays with them.

  ‘Do you ever feel like running away?’

  His question pulls me from my musing. It isn’t the first time he’s asked, but I try to keep the notion of how ridiculous I find the question to myself.

  ‘I like my life. I like my job, and I like my house. Why would I want to leave?’

  ‘Because like isn’t enough. Because love and passion is—’

  ‘Are constructs of society. What’s wrong with just being okay? Why do we all have to strive for magnificence? Why can’t we just settle for good enough?’

  Max snorts derisively. ‘That’s a crock, and you know it. You only settle for mediocre outside of your art.’

  His words sting, but he’s right. My job might be extraordinary, but my life is pretty dull. And that’s how I like it. My work is my art. There’s a beauty in erotica because that’s what I sell—seduction, sensuality, and romance. Not sex. No really. I studied fine art at university and became enamoured with the human form. I drew, painted, and critiqued the body. Became a little obsessed, I suppose. I sort of fell into pornography, but not like the guilty husband who insists he was looking for a new nanny yet somehow stumbled onto a link showing girls being spanked.

  I saw a gap in the market and began selling stylised erotic stills. All very innocent; the art in the dip of a spine, the beauty in the contouring of a firm bicep. And then a client asked for a tasteful penis pic—yes, there are such things. As far as I’m concerned, there’s beauty in everything. I’ll admit, I was a little shocked, and more so when I discovered how much she was willing to pay. She even supplied the posing penis by way of her husband’s hard on.

  I suppose my business concept just spiralled from there. Now I spend my days filming beautiful people enjoying their own bodies and the bodies of others. But it’s not all art house fucking. I do spend a lot of time editing, and nannying the website, promotion, and all kinds of horrid admin. Thankfully, I still have my best friend, Paisley, to help some days. Since marrying, she’s taken on a few freelance makeup artist gigs, though she still makes time to come and help on set. I thought being newly married might complicate matters—men can be such territorial creatures—but I’m happy to report that is not the case with her husband, Keir.