ROMANCE: CLEAN ROMANCE: Summer Splash! (Sweet Inspirational Contemporary Romance) (New Adult Clean Fantasy Short Stories) (34 page)

Hank feels himself darken, his focus narrowing on that possessive hand claiming the ivory-skinned thigh.  He does not fully know what goes on in a place like this, but there is something so off-putting about what he is seeing that without even thinking about it, he comes over and clasps a firm hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Unhand her, you pig.”

The man looks up at him, confused.  “Sorry, friend, do I know you?”

“You’ll know what my fist tastes like if you don’t get your fucking hands off of her.”

Dark eyebrows furrow.  The man looks back at Iliana, who appears to be completely complacent at the sudden appearance of her ex-SEAL buddy in a BDSM club.  The Dom does not know her history, however, and has some questions.  “Are you with this man?”

She glances up at Hank, amused.  “No.”

“Do you know him?”

“Yes,” she replies, sipping the martini he has had refilled in her absence; he is demonstrating good care, which is important to her.

“Do you want me to leave?”

She shakes her head no.

The Dom looks up at Hank.  “It appears the lady wishes for me to stay.”

Hank’s mood is not benefitting from this conversation.  “I don’t know what you’ve threatened her with, but if you don’t get your hands off of her, I’m going to hit you.  I have training.  I wouldn’t get me angrier than I am.”

“Look, clearly you’re new here.  Perhaps you don’t know the rules—“

The man does not have time to finish before Hank takes a swing at him.

In seconds, the club’s security has rushed to the scene.  It has taken three men, each one the size of a truck, to pin Hank down, but they have managed to subdue him, however temporarily.  While he is on the ground, Iliana approaches him and kneels, making sure he can hear her every word.

“Hank,” she breathes, soft but firm at the same time, “You don’t know what you’re doing here.  I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

He looks up at her, catches the cobalt-blue eyes of supreme confidence and mild embarrassment.  It takes him a minute to realize that it is on his part.  By the time security drags him out of the club and tosses him out onto the curb, the hot rage within him has passed.  In its place lays only an overwhelming curiosity that is far stronger than it was before.  So she recognized him, then, just as easily as he had recognized her.  He supposes the scars he acquired over the years of service have done less to mar his appearance than he had first imagined.  He rubs his jaw, feeling where it made heavy contact with the floor just a few minutes before and thinks about the way Iliana looked on his way out of the club, her small, leather-clad frame at the heart of the hustle and bustle of the screwed-up fantasy of the dungeon around her.

Tomorrow it is, then.

*                       *                       *

“Whoa, looks like they sucker-punched you a good one!” George crows, almost knocking over his tall glass of ice-cold lemonade as he leans over to rub the sore spot on Hank’s jaw.  “Who was it this time?”

Hank winces as George’s hand catches on a particularly tender spot.  “Security at a club.”

George frowns and sets his glass down on the porch table; Hank watches as fat beads of condensation slide down the length of it and plop heavily onto the wood, staining it forever.  “I thought you don’t do clubs anymore,” he says to him, scratching at his stubble.

“I don’t.  I heard Iliana’s back in town, so I decided to see what she was up to.”

“So the girl goes clubbing.  What’s it to you?”

“Wasn’t a regular club.”

George’s light green eyes seem to perk up with interest.  “Old girl’s a rug-muncher, isn’t she?”

“Shut your prejudicial trap, asshole.  She’s not a lesbian.”  Is she?  Based on what he saw last night, it’d be difficult to rule anything out with Iliana; then again, she’s always been a bit of a mystery.

George raises his hands in mock self-defense.  “Truce, truce, man.  You know I’m just kiddin’ around.  I wasn’t raised with any of these new-fangled terms the youngsters use.  I’m accepting of whatever wherever.”

This much, at least, is true.  For all his blustery talk, George is one of the least judgmental people Hank has ever known.  Early on in their training, there was a scandal with one of the recruits who turned out to be gay; now it was no longer as much of a problem, but just like in the army, there was a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that left the recruit completely in emotional and, sadly, physical shambles when the other trainees found out.  It was George who had stood up for him, telling the others to back away and standing in front of the man’s shivering body, held fetus-like until the room was clear.  Hank thinks on this for a moment, wondering whether or not to divulge the truth of the night before to him.

“It was a BDSM club.”

George blinks once, twice.  “Like some of that kinky shit?”

Hank nods.  “Went home, did some research on it.  It’s all about power plays and pain, some dominance and submission bullshit.  Scared the hell out of me.”

“That because you’re afraid a little girl can control you?  Sorry, buddy, but from your past relationships, I’d say you were used to being led around by the balls.”

Hank laughs aloud.  George has a point there.  When he’s in a relationship with someone, he tries to do everything for them—cooking, cleaning, watching out for emotional needs.  The difficulty comes when women find out that underneath that bad boy Navy SEAL exterior of toughness, he’s actually a sweet guy inside.  Maybe he should refrain from laughing at Iliana’s choices.  At least she’s being honest about what it is she wants out of a relationship; Hank wonders what it would be like to stop hiding from what he really feels inside and just be with somebody who accepts that the uniform he wears is just that—a shell, a casing for the real man within.

“Greetings, gentlefolk,” comes a soft female voice laced with sarcasm.  “How have you been?”

Iliana is a sight to behold. Gone is the dark makeup, the leather-clad long legs.  She is long beige pants and a blue button down tucked in at the waist, the kind of clothing that looks good only on women of a certain body build.  George lets loose a cry of joy, heaves himself off the porch swing, and grasps her in a huge bear hug.

“Lady love!  How have you been all these years?”

Iliana laughs aloud at his exuberance and winks at George from her smashed position in the huge SEAL’s arms.  “I’m fine, George, just fine.  Working over at the pet store now, taking some weekend pre-requisites at Marymount for vet school.”

“That’s terrific!”  The conversation goes on for many minutes without Hank joining in; George’s enthusiasm is contagious, but he still feels apprehensive about speaking to Iliana.  He never fully knew her during their SEAL days and after last night, he’s quite certain he does not know her now.  Gone is the loner girl from boot camp; in her place is a shining, happy woman whose sense of self shines through her every action.

“Ever going to look at me again, Hank?” she asks, breaking through his reverie.

Hank flushes.  “I…it’s not every day I get thrown out of a public place, Iliana.”

“I know,” she says, looking at him with kindness.  “You thought you were protecting me.  But I don’t need protection, Hank.”

“He was touching you.”

Now it’s George’s turn to look concerned.  “Someone was touching you?”

“Yeah, I turn around and one of those freaky jerks is putting his hand on her leg like she belongs to him or something.”

Iliana’s face turns cold.  “Watch what you say about those jerks, Hank.  I’m one of them.”

“Yeah, about that.  How can you DO all of that weird stuff?” Hanks asks.

“Whoa, whoa,” George cuts in, feeling the tension rise up in the air between them.  “This isn’t some stranger you’re talking to, Hank.  Remember what you said about reserving judgment?  Come on now, she’s a former SEAL, man.  If she’s doing this, she has her reasons.”

Iliana considers the strong-jawed man, cocking her head to one side.  “Thank you, George,” she says, but the look on her face is thoughtful.

“Why’d you leave the SEALs, anyway?” he asks, saying out loud what he and Hank had been truly wondering about all these long years.

She ducks her head, letting the long curtain of her hair conceal her face momentarily.  The silence between the trio is long and heavy; as the moments tick by, Iliana considers the trust bond between them.  What finally decides her is Hank’s action from the night before.  Certainly, he rushed to her side because of some misguided jealousy, but there was also that bred sense of protecting your own kind; even after so many years, even after she dropped out, she knows that Hank considers her one of his own.  You always do.  Navy SEALs swim together, run together, dive together, and work together.  They live and they die together.

“Growing up,” she begins, “my daddy was mean.  A lot of people never knew because on the surface, he was a terrific family man.  Mama always looked so well-cared for.  He would open bottles for her, trim the hedges, drive me to school. In reality, it felt like we couldn’t even leave the house without him having to know everything.  When we would come back, he would have to know every single detail of where we had been and who we had talked to; he would check in with the people with mentioned, as if we had committed a crime and he was looking to see if our alibis ever panned out.   I can’t even say that he had booze to blame it all on.  He was just mean.”

George and Hank are quiet.  They have to be, since they are re-evaluating the adolescence they spent growing up next to the monster.  It’s hard to believe, but maybe that’s the whole point.  After all, there’s no doubt that men like that exist in this world, and that they’re very hard to detect, especially if they’re working hard to hide it.  But Iliana is talking again.

“So one day, my old man did all of this up until it was time for me to leave for college.  He didn’t want me to go; after all, it’s harder to control your daughter when she’s miles and miles away.  So I told him I was going whether he liked it or not, and that’s when he punched me square in the mouth and kicked me out to the curb.  I guess he figured I’d come back with my tail between my legs because I had nowhere else to go.  That night I ran, and when I was too tired to run, I slept.”

“Where?”  Hanks asks, before he can stop himself.

“Sometimes on the street, sometimes in some dude’s car.”  A pause here and neither man presses her.  “Someone suggested I join the Navy, and I figured it was the right place for my personality.  My whole life, I was this dominant aggressor living with another dominant aggressor.  Turns out the only place I like to take and give orders is in the bedroom.  Either of you know anything about dogs?”

“Some,” says George.  “Had a pet schnauzer as a kid.”

Iliana shakes her head.  “Animals have a chain of command that makes more sense than human; if you think about it, a dog that is happy is one that feels like its owner is in charge; with someone else making the decisions, a dog is free to just dog about, growing, evolving, and being happy.  That’s how I feel about what this lifestyle, you know?  I thought that being in the navy would let me work out some of my aggression, but I don’t do well with authority.  Don’t get wrong, SEALs work hard and play hard, but by the third week, I knew that I just wasn’t a team player in the way I needed it to be.  So I left.”

“George always thought it was because you couldn’t handle it,” Hank says, and gets a punch in the arm from the other man.  Iliana smiles.

“No, that wasn’t it.  It just wasn’t the right fit for me.  I will say though, that they do discipline very well.  After I left, I felt so aimless, like the whole world was against me and I had to fend for myself.  It made me so grim and angry at the world.  That’s when my weed dealer invited me to a party and I met Master Slick.”

“Fun name,” George mumbles.

“I was a virgin when I met him, and you’re none too popular in the lifestyle when you’re so fresh and new.  Some people feel like they have to train subs, but Master felt differently.  He said I had been a submissive my whole life, that I didn’t need to do a thing.  He would take care of everything.”

“Was that Slick at the club?”

Iliana shakes her head sadly.  “No.  It ended up not working out.  I wanted to experiment with being a top, and Master felt that that threatened his alpha status, so we parted ways.  It was very painful, but after it was over, I got to try being a Domme, and I found that I liked both roles equally well, depending on the changes that were going on in my life.  That definitely helped tame the aggression a little bit, and it focused me.  Now I’m going to be an animal doctor, so, you know, just a normal girl after all.”  She smiles wide.

George and Hank are momentarily speechless.  The summer wind curls around their hair like an old friend, chilling their arms just a little bit.

“I don’t exactly know what to say to all that,” George speaks up finally.  “I guess I’m glad you found your way in the world.”

“And what about you two?” asks Iliana, her smile gently teasing.  “Are you happy?”

There’s no answer, just smiles and shrugs all around.  It’s an interesting moment, hanging on the precipice of possibility so delicate that it becomes what is known as one of life’s pivotal moments.  “It’s hard being a Navy man, I know,” Iliana says, breaking into the awkwardness with her butter knife of a voice.  “Sure might be fun to give someone else control of the reigns for a minute, wouldn’t it?”