Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Vale

Sitting at the table with my father and stepmother with a dick that could shatter glass is uncomfortable, to say the least. There is no help for it with Lula sitting across from me, however. She’s changed into another dress, and this one is tight, short and white of all colors, as if I need a reminder I almost fucked this innocent virgin on the floor of a shower. No condom, no foreplay. I would have burst her cherry and ridden like hell. After she was kind enough to fight my demons with me. Christ. I should be ashamed of myself. I should be more ashamed that I wish to God we hadn’t been interrupted.

I can already feel this getting dangerous.

I’m a man with lethal capabilities and the ability to surveil someone unseen. I’m already planning on watching her while she sleeps tonight, this sweet, loving angel who happens to be related to me by marriage. I’m itching to get my fingertips on her things. To go through her laundry and find the panties in which she had her first orgasm, so I can drag them all over my body, tie them in a knot around my dick.

I’m almost too horny to eat, but my father is watching me closely, as usual, so I manage to chew and swallow, my attention straying to Lula’s juicy tits. That dress is tight and worn, like she’s had it forever. Molding to her soft skin and making me insane. That mouth of hers closing around her fork and dragging turns my cock into a pulsing trunk, jammed up behind my fly.

You can’t have her.

I know I shouldn’t even be looking at Lula with these eyes that have witnessed so much horror. I’m too fucked up to be in her presence, let alone lay a finger on her. I haven’t even bothered being diagnosed with PTSD because it’s obviously one of my main problems. No doctor’s note required. What is the point of addressing what’s wrong with me when I know it can’t be cured? Nothing can erase the images from my head. Nothing can rip the shouts for help out of my head. Or this feeling of being useless now that I’m a civilian again.

She makes me feel normal. When I read her letters, when she held me in the shower, the storm inside my head devolved into a tranquil lake. But that’s not okay. It’s unacceptable. I’m not going to make this girl—and that’s what she is at eight-fucking-teen—with a normal life ahead of her become my cure. I have to stay away from Lula for the next three days and hope like hell I can overcome this growing infatuation once I leave for Coronado.

Yeah right.

She’s already gotten to me.

At this point, all I can hope is that I’m as noble as everyone believes me to be. Noble enough to keep my hands off my teenage stepsister and walk away without ruining her life.

“So, Vale…” Vanessa sips from a glass of white wine and sets it down. “I know you’ve only been back for less than one day. And your father made me promise I wouldn’t ask right away, but…some of my local friends have daughters your age. Some of them slightly younger. Career-minded girls who haven’t had time to date until recently.” She winks at me and my stomach turns. “I know they’d love to meet a certain celebrated war veteran.”

It doesn’t escape my notice that the fork suddenly becomes too heavy for Lula, her hand falling to rest beside her plate. She must be embarrassed by her mother’s inappropriate timing. Even my father, who is clearly enamored with Vanessa, seems irked. “Let the man have one day of peace before ringing the dinner bell, would you?”

Vanessa winces, but there’s no remorse in it. “Excuse me for wanting to present this heroic SEAL with a lineup of stunning women. They might be professionals, but every last one of them could pass for a pageant girl. I am very discerning.”

Lula is no longer eating and it takes every bit of my willpower not to march to the other side of the table, settle her on my lap and start feeding her bites of truffle mashed potatoes. “Thank you for thinking of me, ma’am,” I say politely as possible. “But I’m not interested.”

God help me, I can’t imagine a set of hands on me that don’t belong to my stepsister.

The thought of anyone else touching me turns my stomach.

A memory accosts me. Lula mewling around my tongue, her pussy shifting in my lap and I have to reach down and adjust myself roughly, barely able to keep from panting.

Vanessa isn’t ready to quit, unfortunately, and her next comment sets my teeth on edge. “I can see it now. Someone with captivating looks to match your own. A graceful disposition. Long legs like a ballerina...” She smiles into her glass of wine. “Are you convinced yet?”

“No,” I reply, sharply, the handle of the fork digging into my palm. “And trust me, the last thing I’d be interested in is someone exactly like me.”

I’m being too abrupt. Too disagreeable. This is not how the media darling is supposed to act. I’m meant to have a humble attitude and a funny rejoinder for every question. Everyone’s ideal Captain America. Even in front of my father. Especially in front of him.

Forcing myself to swallow a bite of chicken, I search for a way to soften my irritated response to Vanessa. “Two people exactly like me would be a lot of baggage for one relationship, Vanessa.”

“Baggage?” she asks.

An uncomfortable itch forms on the back of my neck. I’m suddenly restless, but when I find Lula’s eyes across the table, the beginnings of an earthquake inside me become manageable. “You don’t leave combat without it,” I murmur.

My stepmother starts to ask another question, but she’s cut off abruptly when my father slams a fist down on the table. “None of that complaining in my house.” Once upon a time, I would have jumped sky high at one of his outbursts, but I’m a man now. A SEAL. I’ve been in countless battles and even spent a few weeks being tortured in a POW camp. Nearly had my leg blown off. I don’t flinch in the face of his temper anymore. “We show gratitude only in representing this country. If you want to take that honor and turn it into something to cry about, do it somewhere else. At least you got to live when so many others didn’t.”

I might not flinch at his anger anymore, but this rhetoric was repeated so often to me growing up that I can’t prevent the stab of guilt. He’s right. I should be grateful to be home. I should be strong and unshakeable like I was taught. I definitely shouldn’t be brought to my knees in the shower by flashbacks. My father and I hold each other’s gaze for long moments, neither one of us willing to lose the staring contest.

Vanessa clears her throat. “Um…Lula. Are you all set for camping tomorrow?”

That question splits my focus right down the middle. “Camping?” I practically shout at my stepsister. “Where? With who?”

She raises an eyebrow, clearly thrown by my reaction. “I’m going with two of my girlfriends, Santana and Jess. We’re heading up to Prairie Creek for the night.”

I’m genuinely doing my best not to spiral into a panic attack at the table. Mainly because it wouldn’t be a good look in front of our parents if they knew I’m already protective as hell over the stepsister I only met this afternoon. Doesn’t she know how many accidents can happen in the wilderness? She could misstep and fall from a cliff. She could be attacked by wildlife. Hit her head and fall into a body of water. The list goes on and on. Are they out of their fucking minds letting this young girl take off alone like this?

“You’re sure that’s a good idea?” I ask, stabbing the tines of my fork into some chicken. “Who is chaperoning you?”

Lula wrinkles that adorable nose at me. My cock swells so swiftly, I have to grit my teeth. “No one is chaperoning us,” she enunciates. “Since we’re all legally adults.”

“Yeah? Well bears don’t check ID, Lula,” I fire back.

And she laughs. It starts out as a snort. She tries to muffle the sound with her hands, but the giggle bursts out of her and the craziest thing happens. I start laughing, too. I can’t recall a single other time in my life that I’ve laughed at this dinner table. No, I’ve been lectured and shouted at and reprimanded. There was no mirth whatsoever until now.

Until her.

“I’m sorry,” she gasps, fanning the tears of laughter in her eyes. “I’m just thinking of a bear on his hind legs asking to see my driver’s license!”

She doubles over and Jesus, is that my own laugh booming through the dining room?

I mean, there is no way in fuck she’s going camping without me there to protect her. But even I have to admit, a bear checking identification is too funny for me to stay pissed. And that’s when I notice that my father and stepmother aren’t laughing along with us. In fact, my stepmother seems more annoyed than anything over Lula’s giggling fit.

Me? I’d like to seal the sound into a jar. Save it forever.

“Lula will be fine. She’s a frequent camper,” drones Vanessa. “She finds balance in nature or something. I don’t know where she gets it. Certainly not from me.”

“It’s the simplicity of wildlife,” Lula says hesitantly, as if she’s not sure her opinion will be welcome at the table. “I can’t teach people how to find their quiet place if I don’t stay well acquainted with my own.”

My father rolls his eyes. “Generation Z and their all-important self-care. Lula thinks she is going to make a career out of it.”

“Then she is going to make a career out of it,” I snap, gripping the fork until it hurts. “She’s good. And I’m pretty sure her methods are better than bottling up your aggression for decades until you’re nothing but an angry prick all the time.”

We square off, my father and I, him chewing his bite slowly, jaw grinding.

This is not how I was taught to speak to my father. As a child, a statement like that would have earned me a backhand across the mouth. But it will be a cold day in hell before anyone speaks to my sweetheart stepsister that way and gets away with it. And it feels good, too. Not saying the exact right thing. Saying exactly what is on my mind, instead of following the humble soldier script that seems to have been written for me.

My father laughs unexpectedly, slapping a palm off his knee. “Looks like the SEALs did their job and put some fire in him. He’s definitely not quiet and introverted anymore, is he?”

“No, certainly not,” Vanessa agrees quickly, visibly happy to have the mood lightened. “We have blueberry pie for dessert. Then I thought we could all watch a movie in the den. Won’t that be nice?”