Wait: The Brazen Bulls Beginning Read online

  “How many boyfriends have you had, Mo?”

  One, counting the man sitting before her—if indeed she could count him, which was suddenly and painfully in doubt. Full of defensiveness and disappointment, Mo asked a question rather than giving an answer. “How many girlfriends have you had?”

  His chuckle nearly made her kick him under the table. “It’s different.”

  “Why on earth would it be?”

  “Because you’re nineteen years old, Irish. And I’m not.”

  She shoved her uneaten club sandwich away. “Ach, you do my head in with that rubbish, y’know? Why’re you even with me at all, then?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  Well, that broke her heart. Absolutely unwilling to beg, or to cry in front of this man, Mo balled her fists and squared her shoulders. “Right. Well, points to you for a new angle on bein’ a usin’ arsehole. You’d’ve done a kindness to’ve cut the line before I fell in love with you, but I suppose it’s another experience in my oh-so-empty basket. No need for a ride back; I’ll call my uncle.”

  She stood and walked as steadily as she could across the diner, to the pay phone in the corner. Uncle Dave always insisted she have pay phone money, for just such happenings, but this was the first time she’d ever had to call.

  The handset was in her shaking fist when Brian’s hand wrapped around hers and set it back on its cradle. His other hand came to rest on her hip, and he put his head beside hers.

  “Mo.”

  “What,” she said and swallowed back dreadful tears. “I don’t want to ride back with you. Just stop tormenting me.”

  “I love you, too. That’s why I’m so worried. I don’t ever want to hurt you.”

  “What do you think you’re doing n—wait. What?” All the words he’d said made their way into her consciousness, and Mo’s heart stuttered. She turned to face him. “Say again what you said.”

  The hand that had held the phone with her now cupped her face, and he gazed deeply into her eyes. “I said I love you, too. If I hurt you, I’d die.”

  “I’m not some wilting gardenia, Brian Delaney, to get bruised by a breath. I can take some harsh winds. I don’t know what it is you think is so terrible about you, but whatever it is, I can take it. As long as you never mean to hurt me, I’ll heal if I get caught in your storms. And I’ll try to be your shelter. I want you, as you are. All the bits, the best and the worst.”

  His only answer was to hold her face and stare into her eyes. Mo stood still and stared back.

  Finally, he said, “Okay then, let’s get outta here,” and took her hand.

  ~oOo~

  Before Brian put the key into the lock, he asked, “You’re really sure about this?”

  Mo stomped her foot. “First, you see the irony in the man who won’t take yes for an answer insisting what a big scary lad he is, aye? And second, ask again and get a kick in the arse. I’m sure!”

  In truth, Mo was a wee bit nervous. After the emotional swings of that conversation in the diner, with the capper being that they’d said the words to each other, and with the limits of her previous experiences being fairly severe and disappointing, she was feeling somewhat tender.

  But sweet mother Mary, finally they were going to make love! Yes, she was sure!

  Laughing, Brian opened the door to their motel room.

  At the diner, he’d tossed some bills on their table and left their mostly uneaten meal where it sat, then pulled her to his bike, and they’d ridden again for nearly half an hour. Mo had no clue where in Oklahoma they were, or how far from home.

  He’d seemed to know exactly where he was headed, though, and he’d pulled in here, to this little cabin motel place, and rented a cabin. He’d taken it for the whole night, but Mo couldn’t possibly stay out until morning. She didn’t have a curfew, but she’d put Uncle Dave and Aunt Bridie both in the hospital if she rode away on the back of a Harley-Davidson and didn’t return. No doubt Uncle Dave was wearing ruts in the floor until she arrived safely home.

  But they’d left early, and it wasn’t yet terribly late. They had a few hours to spare.

  As she stepped into the room, Brian held back at the door. “Hold on, I’ll be right back.”

  She’d hardly expected him to leave her here and disappear! “Where’re you goin’?”

  “I didn’t let you eat. But I saw some machines by the office, so I’ll be right back.”

  He was gone before she could protest more.

  This unit was just a wee thing, no bigger than a regular motel room, so far as she knew, though there was a tiny porch with two chairs. It was quaint and cozy, and smelled of cedar. Brian had worried that she’d feel cheap, having their first time in a motel, but considering the limits of their options, Mo thought this was just fine. Private and comfortable.

  She took off her boots and jacket, then decided to be bold.

  When Brian returned, she was in bed, with the covers tucked across her chest, and all her clothes were folded neatly on top of the dresser. He stood in the doorway, with an armload of vending machine loot, and stared at her.

  “Christ, Irish.”

  “You’re lettin’ in a draft,” she teased.

  He closed the door. As he arrayed their repast on the dresser beside her clothes, he said, “I got you Dr. Pepper, and some potato chips, and—”

  “I’d rather work up an appetite.”

  Again, he stopped and stared. “You, Maureen, are one in a million.”

  “Good. Will you please come here?”

  First, he turned on the radio and found a station that played Motown. Then he came to her at last, but he didn’t take off his clothes. Instead, he sat at the side of bed, scooting her hip over to make room, and leaned on his hand to hover over her.

  “You are beautiful,” he murmured and came down for a kiss.

  Already zinging with nervous anticipation, feeling chilled and vulnerable in her naked state, Mo fell headlong into that kiss. She threw her arms around his neck, arched her back off the bed, tried to break his balance and pull him fully into bed with her.

  But he was strong, and not yet ready to give into her so completely. His free hand tugged at the covers, pulling them down, away from her breasts, and she gasped at the cool air and at the hot need when his palm covered a nipple. Then his thumb brushed over it, back and forth, his workman’s hands like fine sandpaper, and Mo’s entire being began to tremble at the pure, unadulterated pleasure of it.

  “Oh my God,” he muttered, his lips and breath moving against her mouth. “Oh my God. I have to see.”

  He turned out of their kiss and lifted his head. Panting and strangely near tears, Mo watched his wild eyes as he studied his own hands on her body. Both his hands now; he’d sat back enough that he didn’t need the other for balance, and now both her breasts were in his control.

  And he was gentle, so gentle. His touch adored her. Any other boy who’d gotten so far had pushed and pulled and plumped and mauled her, giving her just enough pleasure to be frustrated by their ineptitude or lack of interest in how their touch felt for her.

  But Brian was no boy. He seemed to enjoy what his touch did for her, and it was a revelation. With only his hands, only there, he made her moan and writhe and ache with longing greater than she understood. How could this need be filled so simply, with only his hands?

  He bent forward, took a nipple between his lips, and began to suck. With his fingers on her other nipple, he mirrored the undulating pressure of his mouth, until Mo couldn’t stand it any longer. She twisted and squirmed until she was fully out from under the covers and had his leg between her thighs. She needed something to ease this ache, and when she ground herself over the denim still covering his strong thigh, she could feel that relief was possible.

  Mo had given herself orgasms. Certainly no boy ever had. But her self-made orgasms were expedient things, accomplished quickly in a shower, or in a few seconds in bed, when she couldn’t sleep. They were pleasurable
, but not what she’d call sexy.

  This, though—he was still dressed, he hadn’t touched her below her waist, she hadn’t yet come, and already she’d had the most intensely pleasurable sexual experience of her life.

  Groaning, he released her breasts and grabbed a hip to still her. “Jesus, Irish, you’re gonna kill me.”

  Her brain wouldn’t work well enough to find an answer. She tugged on his t-shirt and whined.

  “Okay.” There was a change in his tone, apparent in just those two syllables, that stopped everything in its tracks.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  He pulled off his t-shirt. The dog tags he’d never let her touch jingled flatly as they got caught in the cotton and then resettled on his chest.

  But that wasn’t what drew her attention.

  He had a dreadful scar on his left shoulder, and onto his chest. Thick and jagged. It looked as if someone with terrible aim and a dull blade had tried to cut his arm off at that joint. All the skin around it was dark and mottled, spotted with smaller scars.

  Mo sat up and put her hand on his chest, over the worst part of the scar. “You were wounded over there. You never said.”

  “In November, right before I shipped home. It’s why I came home when I did—though I was overdue to rotate out anyway.”

  November. Only six months ago “Oh, Brian. Why didn’t you say?”

  “This isn’t the scar that’s got me fucked up, Mo. It’s just the one you can see.”

  She bent close and put her lips on the scar. His hand came up and held her there.

  “Someday, I’ll tell you about Dak To. When I can.”

  The name was familiar to Mo, like she’d heard it on the news, or read an article about it. Maybe heard about it in a SAP meeting, though she’d missed the last couple of those of the year.

  Mo had the luxury not to remember the names of all the battles that made the news, to let the images blend together into an incomprehensible horror, but for Brian, every moment was a memory in his own life. Horribly comprehensible.

  “I love you,” she whispered, spelling the words on his skin with her lips.

  “Fuck, Irish, I hope you don’t come to regret it,” he answered and pushed her back to the bed.

  In the shadow of that moment, with their shared desire, their pent-up need, still pulsing around them in this cedar-scented cabin, once Brian finally lay with her, they were in a frenzy together. He claimed her mouth again, his lips and tongue and teeth wild as if he were truly feeding, and she helped him struggle with the rest of his clothes. His dog tags swung and tangled between them, brushing against Mo’s chest and belly, warm with the heat of his body, but she ignored them. They were his.

  Before he tossed his jeans away, he snagged his wallet by its chain and pulled a Ramses condom out. She smiled, remembering when he’d bought them, the piss she’d taken, they way he’d laughed. Who would have thought she’d be the beneficiary of his procreative caution?

  He saw her look and her smile, and he shared it. “First one from the box,” he said as he tore the packet open and rose onto his knees to put it on.

  His body was wonderful. He was lean and strong, his muscles ropy and contoured around his frame. He wasn’t hairy, but not baby-smooth, either. Just dark hair on his forearms and his legs, and a thin trail pointing the way from his navel to his—oh my.

  Apart from some of the diagrams in textbooks and in the free posters medical supply companies sometimes sent to the store, and once when she’d accidentally walked in on Uncle Dave in the bath—she tried not to remember her hairy bear of an uncle in that way, ta muchly, especially just now—Mo had only seen one penis that she remembered: that of Ronald, the boy she’d given her virginity to, not that it was worth much. Best not to think of him, either.

  In the range of her admittedly small sampling, Brian’s was overwhelmingly the best. The largest, the hardest, and the prettiest to look at. Before he could cover it in the condom, Mo reached out and brushed her hand over his tip. The skin there was soft as velvet and hot as fire.

  The noise he made at her touch had no single word to define it. It was pure lust and need and the fraying of a tether. Mo felt the power of his need for her swell through her. It widened her veins, steeled her spine, and strengthened her heart.

  Yes, she could carry anything he needed her to.

  When he got the condom on, he propped himself over her and looked into her eyes. She thought he might ask yet again if she was sure, and she was perfectly prepared to kick his arse if he did. But he simply smiled and put his hand between her legs.

  She gasped at the jolt of electric fire, and again when he pushed a finger, and then another, into her. “Oh, please,” she cried.

  “You’re ready,” he said. “Ah, sweetheart, you’re wet for me.”

  He flexed his fingers, and a new sensation coiled up from her core, like a seed sprouting. “Please, oh please.”

  He pulled his fingers from her, lifted her leg so she’d hook it around him, and pushed himself deep.

  When Brian was seated inside her as far as she could take him, his head dropped to her chest, and he went completely still, except for the heave of his chest with every breath.

  Mo wrapped her arms over his head and held him, ignoring the throb of her body’s demand while Brian took what he clearly needed.

  When he lifted his head and looked down at her, his eyes were wet. Not tears, but only because he’d fought them off. That was what he’d needed. To master his pain.

  He began to rock his body, moving inside her, but his eyes stayed on hers, fixed with hers, clinging together. Mo held on, too. She hooked her legs around his hips and her arms around his back—there was scarring on the back of his shoulder, too—and she hooked her soul with his in their gaze.

  When she came, she didn’t look away, even as her body was racked with the pleasure of its swell, even as she cried out at its crest.

  When he came, he didn’t look away, even as he went rigid and his brow drew into a knot, even as an agonized groan moved through him seemingly from his feet all the way up.

  They stared into each other’s eyes, until the moment was fully felt and truly over. Then Brian put a soft, feather-fragile kiss on her lips, and whispered, “I love you.”

  And Mo knew right then that there was nothing, there would never be anything, this man could do to ruin her love for him. There was no darkness that could quell their light. No battle he would fight without her at his side. For the rest of her life, she would love him, and she would carry the weight he couldn’t carry himself.

  This was what it was to have a soulmate.

  CHAPTER NINE

  1969

  “When’re you gonna make an honest woman of that girl, Bri?”

  Lenny loomed over Brian, blocking the sun. He held out a water-beaded bottle of beer.

  Brian pulled his attention from Mo and his nephews. She was sitting beside the little plastic kiddie pool, playing boats with them. It was Jamie’s second birthday, and this was the extent of his party: backyard barbecue, kiddie pool, a little blue cake later, and some presents. Faye had wanted to invite a bunch of kids and do games and shit like she had for Paul’s fourth birthday, but she was due to pop her third baby out soon, and Lenny had made her see reason.

  Besides, Jamie was two. He was having a grand time.

  Seeing as his girl was wearing a hot-pink bikini that showed all her fair skin, Brian resented any intrusion that took one second of attention from her, even it was coming with a fresh Schlitz.

  He took the bottle and returned his focus to Mo. Lenny pulled up a lawn chair.

  “When she’s ready,” Brian answered and took a pull from his new beer.

  “Her, or you?” Lenny nodded at the vista before him. Mo and the boys were laughing and splashing. “’Cuz I know what it looks like when a woman is ready, and yours is about to pop, buddy. That girl needs a baby, and for that she needs a ring. I know how you love her. It’s obvious how
she loves you. You got a decent job, you still got your share of the sale of your dad’s place sittin’ in the bank, and you been savin’ money like crazy livin’ here with us, so what’s the hold-up?”

  “She just turned twenty-one, Len. She’s in college. She’s not ready.”

  Lenny answered that with a disdainful grunt.

  Brian’s brother-in-law wasn’t wrong, in fact. Brian wasn’t ready, either. Not because he didn’t want to marry her. Far from it. The love he felt for that beautiful Irish rose over there in the hot-pink bikini was the most powerful emotion he’d ever experienced. Sometimes it took him over with such force he had to stop and catch his breath. Spending the rest of his days with Maureen Quinn at his side was just about all he wanted.

  But he could not get himself in gear. He was spinning in place, working at the job he had because of Lenny, living in their spare room, watching Mo learn and grow, while he himself was going nowhere. Every thought that he needed to do more, to take any step forward, choked out in a cramping burst of anxiety. He was incapable of making a plan.

  Which was ironic as hell in some ways, since that was his best skill in the Army. He was a Staff Sergeant, promoted three times in the field because he was so fucking good at carrying out plans. Leader of his platoon, he was the guy who could take the orders coming from command and make them into something that could be done. Moreover, he’d been good at figuring out how to get it done with as little risk as possible. He’d earned commendations for his skill at executing orders in ways that kept his men whole.

  And now he couldn’t look at the fucking want ads for an apartment without breaking into a sweat. It had taken him three tries to get through the showroom door to buy a damn used truck, and his hand had shaken when he’d signed the papers and the check.

  He told himself that he was waiting to propose until Mo finished college, but that was just an excuse, and in moments like this, he could admit it to himself.

  The real reason was this: he was dead weight, adding nothing to the world or to her life, barely managing a life himself, and when she figured that out, he wanted the cut to be clean. He wanted her to be able to simply turn and walk away. His only hope was that he’d figure his life out before that happened.