I frowned and turned back to my team. One of them signalled that the targets were all down, so I walked over to the hostages to check for injuries. As I approached the group, I did a quick headcount. There were seventeen in total. I stopped. Hadn’t the reports said that there were initially seventeen hostages, but one was shot? I could see a dead body off to the side, a woman in a bank uniform. So shouldn’t there just be sixteen hostages sitting here? I counted them again. I had definitely counted right. I turned to the side and pressed my walkie, calling through to Captain Richardson outside. “How many hostages are there in total?” I asked, eyeing the group again. “Reports are of seventeen, minus one,” he answered. I quickly raised my gun, scanning the crowd for anyone that didn’t look as if they belonged. My eyes skimmed the group and came to rest on a guy who was shifting nervously and looking away from me. He definitely looked uncomfortable. He looked like he
‘Love's Train’ by Bruno Mars started blasting from my purse, and I smiled, knowing that was Jace’s song that I put on there for him. I grabbed my cell phone, wondering why he was calling at this time; it was only twenty to four.“Hey you, what are you doing calling me this early? Shouldn’t you be at work?” I asked, stopping at the edge of the road and smiling at DJ as he pressed the button for the crossing, tapping it over and over.“Hey, Ashley. Yeah, I should be, but I got sent home early,” Jace answered. Butterflies swooped in my stomach when he called me Ashley.“You did? How come?” I asked as DJ skipped along at my side, swinging my hand back and forth.“Er, it’s just a formality. It happens every time I-” he stopped talking abruptly. “Nothing, actually just forget it. I just called to say hi. How was school today?” Jace asked, changing the subject.As he spoke, I noticed that he sounded off. He’d made no jokes, no slutty comments, no flirting or pet names – something was wrong wi
Calm down, Jace. You’re doing fine. Take a deep breath. The kid is not going to hurt you, he’s just a kid! I discreetly wiped my sweaty palms on the leg of my jeans as DJ came running into the kitchen, waving the magazine I bought him, a big grin on his face. “Momma, Dory’s in here too, and there’s a bit you have to colour and amaze!” he practically shouted. I laughed quietly that something so small and cheap could make a kid smile like that. My ultimate goal was that it’d make him like me too. I looked him over as he showed Ashley the pages, talking at her a mile a minute, while she just smiled and nodded, doing a great job at faking enthusiasm. He was a really good-looking kid, but, then again, with a gorgeous thing like Ashley for a mom, he was bound to be a looker. He had the exact same shade of reddish-brown hair as hers, and her big brown eyes. His face was a different shape to hers and his skin was slightly darker, more like a natural tan. Ashley’s skin was
I raised one eyebrow suggestively, silently asking if she meant me. She laughed and slapped me on the back of the head playfully, and held her hand down to DJ, who was pouting and crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t want to go to bed. Can’t I have an early night? I wanna play with Jace,” he said, frowning and looking at me pleadingly. I smiled a little proudly that he seemed to have accepted me a little. “Do you mean a late night?” Ashley countered. “Yeah, please, Momma?” He gave her the begging face and she shifted uncomfortably on her feet. DJ turned to me. “Jace, can you ask her if I can have more time? We can finish the war,” he whined, giving me the begging face. My eyes widened. It was an incredibly cute face; I didn’t want to say no. I looked at Ashley, unsure what to say. “Er… I think Momma said it’s time for bed, Kid. We can play that another time, okay?” I offered, hoping he wouldn’t beg me because, if he were my kid, I would have given in alr
As I thought, the following day at work was me being patted on the back for a job well done. I actually took it a lot better than I normally would, probably because I was in the best mood ever. I had even woken up with a smile on my face all because I had the most amazing girl in the world, and her little boy seemed to like me. Now all we had to do was get him to meet me a few more times and then we’d be able to break it to him that we were more than just friends. DJ was going to his dad’s this weekend, and I was making the most of the private time for sure. It had taken me pulling a few strings to enable me to get a reservation at the restaurant, but Ashley was worth it. At just after four, I was in the cafeteria with the boys. We’d just got back from a call out but the other snipers and I were just there for backup today, no actual action. As I plucked my phone from my pocket, I noticed a text from Ashley sitting there, received just before lunch. I couldn’t stop the stu
By the time I pulled away and pressed my forehead to hers, we were both a little breathless. The corners of her mouth twitched with a smile as her eyes met mine. She looked a little bewildered, like she had no idea what was going on around us. “Did that kiss make you forget your own name, or do I need to keep working on it?” I whispered, smirking at her. “I know it begins with R,” she joked, playing along. “Maybe you could work on it some more later.” I moaned breathlessly. “Definitely. Anyway, let’s go eat, I’m starving.” I pushed away from her and watched as she took a few deep breaths before straightening her shirt and pushing her hair behind her ear, like she was trying to calm herself down too. I followed her into the apartment and into the lounge. DJ was lying on his stomach, toy cars scattered everywhere, a little garage off to one side. His eyes lit up when he spotted me. “Jace! I saved you the red one. Momma wanted it, but I told her it was yours.” “
She pulled her head back, resting her chin on my chest, just looking at me silently for a minute. “Why are you being like this, Jace? Buying DJ things, playing with him, offering to come to the park, and not even being annoyed with me that I had to cancel plans that we made?” she asked, looking a little confused, but very interested in my answer. Gripping the top of her arms, I pulled her higher up my body so our faces were level. “I understand you have a son; it’s different being with a girl that has a readymade family, and I never would have expected this to happen to me in a million years, but I really like you. I really like DJ too, he’s cute. I like spending time with both of you,” I answered, shrugging and not really knowing how to explain it properly. Her face softened as she stroked the side of my face adoringly. But then I had to ruin it… “And I want to fuck you so badly that my dick is actually aching,” I added. She burst out laughing and shook her head
Her hips bucked against my hand as I spoke; her breathing sped so I knew I could push her a lot further. Ashley Danvers certainly got excited by pillow talk! A proud grin stretched across my face because of how sexy my girlfriend was. I was one seriously lucky guy that she didn’t seem to just be a blushing, lay on her back kind of girl. Her body reacted beautifully to my words, so I decided to take it a little further and see just how dirty she was. “As soon as you’re in love with me, I’m going to fuck you from every possible angle. I want to take you hard and fast, and just when you think you’re going to come, I’m going to pull out and kiss my way down your body. I want to taste your climax on my tongue; I want to feel your thighs shake against my shoulders as you ride the waves of pleasure I’m going to give you.” That obviously didn’t scare her. She gasped and jerked her arms, trying to get her hands free. I held her tighter as I pumped my finger inside her slowly, be
I was shaking. No, that wasn’t right, the bed was shaking. Or someone was shaking me which was making the bed shake? “Daddy!” I cracked my stinging eyes open to see DJ bouncing on the edge of my bed with a grin stretched across his face. Groaning, I rubbed my eyes and pushed myself up on one elbow. “Hey, Kid. What’s up?” I rasped. “Momma saids I needed to wake you up,” he replied. I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Where is Momma anyway?” Yawning, I glanced around the room. I usually got a better wake up than that if I’d been on sixteen hour nights all week! He beamed up at me. “She’s going out to buys a new dress for the party tonight. You gots to look after me.” His smile told me he was pleased about it. I remembered Ashley mentioning something about having to buy a new dress. “I do? Well maybe we should think of something fun to do today then, huh? How about we go play catch at the park or something?” I offered, knowing he wanted to test ou
She giggled and gripped my shoulders, rolling me over onto my back as she sat up on top of me, holding one arm across her chest, keeping her dress in place. “You didn’t have to get me anything; it’s not a tradition or anything. I just really wanted you to have this tonight,” she assured me, bending and kissing my lips softly. When she pulled back, my hands instinctively tightened on her waist. I didn’t want to let her go, I felt whiny and needy and I just didn’t want her to get off me even if it was only to get something from her bag three feet away from me. She smiled and pushed my hands off her, climbing out of the bed and heading over to the bag. While she was busy, I took the opportunity to slip off my shoes. As I pulled it off, something white caught my eye on the sole of it. I turned it over to see I had two big letters: L and P, written on the bottom of one of my shoes in white marker. Frowning in confusion, I grabbed my other shoe and looked at the sole of that one
“I love you, Mrs Roger,” I whispered, looking into her eyes. My whole future was mapped out before me. It didn’t matter what happened from here on out, as long as I had this girl in my arms every single day I could cope with anything. Instead of replying, she just crashed her lips back to mine again in a scorching hot kiss that was seriously inappropriate for people to be watching, especially standing at the front of the church. The vicar obviously thought so too. “I think your guests are getting impatient,” he said tersely. Ashley broke the kiss immediately and stiffened, as if she forgot where we were and that we weren’t on our own. She blushed and hid her face in the side of my neck as I wrapped my arm around her tightly. “We’re just starting as we mean to go on,” I joked, winking at the vicar. Ashley pinched my stomach playfully as she giggled against my neck. That was a typical Jace and Ashley moment. In my eyes, if the wedding had gone beautifully, then it wo
I didn’t feel nervous at all. Not when Seth started talking about never sleeping with another girl again. Not when he was teasing me that half of all marriages end in divorce. Not when he was telling me that once you got married you only had sex on birthdays and anniversaries. I didn’t even get nervous when Bryson started humming the wedding march. But as soon as I stepped into the church, my legs weakened and my throat seemed to close up as my tongue felt like it swelled to twice its normal size. I was getting married today. I was actually terrified of that thought – not because I didn’t want to marry Ashley, but because every single person from my family was going to watch me stand up the front of the church congregation and say my vows. I’d heard it was normal to get cold feet, but that wasn’t what this was; I was just terrified of screwing it up for Ashley. This was her one and only wedding day, because there was not a chance I was letting her get away from me to marry som
“Are you sure it’s straight?” I asked, frowning at the homemade banner with the words ‘Welcome Home’ emblazoned across it that was now tacked to the wall of the lounge. “It’s straight. The same as it was straight before you climbed on the chair and started fiddling with it. Will you stop stressing?” Anna teased, chuckling. I hopped down off the chair and nodded, forcing myself to take a couple of deep breaths. I’d planned this day out for the last two weeks that Jace had been stuck in the hospital for, I just could hardly wait to have him home so I could fuss over him and treat him like the hero that he really was. Seeing him for an hour at a time at the hospital just wasn’t enough for me. “How much longer do you think they’ll be?” I asked, checking my watch for the hundredth time today. I could barely wait another second. Anna shrugged, selecting a cupcake from the table that was laden with buffet style welcome home afternoon tea we’d made. “Shouldn’t be too much longer, Bryson sa
After a couple of minutes of us just sitting on the bed, talking about what pictures I was going to ask Anna to draw on my casts, Ashley poked her head in the door. She looked a little nervous as she chewed on her lip. When I smiled reassuringly and waved her in, she seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. “You two okay in here?” she asked, stepping in. DJ grinned and nodded. “Momma, Jace wants to a-dot me and Woody. He wants to be my daddy,” he boasted. “We all getted new names!” Ashley laughed to herself, her eyes sparkling as they met mine. “He wants to adopt both of you? Wow, that’s nice of Jace, huh? Roger is a pretty nice name,” she said breathlessly, heading over to sit on the bed with us. She took my hand and I interlaced our fingers, grinning. “DJ likes the idea of us getting married,” I told her proudly. “That’s a coincidence, because I like the idea too,” she replied, blushing. She sighed and nodded towards the door. “My parents want to come in a
After a little while, Ashley had to excuse herself to go back up to DJ. My parents and Bryson kept me busy, fussing over me for a few hours, before they left too so I could get some rest. Once I was alone, I tried my hardest to sleep, but sleep didn’t come easy, and even when it did, I was plagued with dreams of the fire. Memories flooded my brain, images of Ashley shaking and mumbling words that I couldn’t understand while she was standing by the ambulance. I dreamt of DJ and the look he gave me when he understood that we were going to die. Thankfully, the hospital was busy, so I was woken often by talking or doctors banging around. The noises brought me out of my nightmares before they reached the climax. That afternoon, after I’d finished choking down some hospital garbage that they called ‘food’ the door opened and my beautiful girlfriend stood there with a huge smile stretched across her face. “Hey, you,” she greeted. I smiled, happy to see her again. “Hi.
I took a deep breath, willing myself not to mess it up. “As soon as you said those three words to me, I was going to drop down on one knee and propose to you.” I said it quickly before I wimped out and didn’t do it. She didn’t react how I thought she would though. She didn’t gasp and look at me shocked. Instead, she burst out laughing, shaking her head. “That’s a good one,” she replied around her giggles, settling herself back down onto the bed next to me. I remained silent, waiting for her to catch on that I wasn’t joking. Slowly, I saw it sink in. The giggles stopped, and the smile slowly faded from her face as her eyes widened. “Oh God, seriously?” she asked breathlessly. I nodded in confirmation. “Seriously. But your timing ruined that for me too. I can’t exactly get down on one knee right now because one’s busted and the other leg’s broken, so that plan’s out of the window.” I laughed at my choice of words. Out of the window – yeah, it literally was. “Jace, wh
I pulled the mask off my face so I could talk. “There goes my dancing plans this weekend,” I joked, shifting uncomfortably on the bed. The doctor laughed quietly. “Because of the burns to your legs, we can’t cast it straight away. We need to let the skin heal a little before we can cover it. We’ll have to leave the temporary one on for a few days, then see how you’re getting on after that. You’ll have to stay here for a few days, I’m afraid. The burns need monitoring, and you’ll be started on a two week course of antibiotics to ward off any infections.” I frowned. I really didn’t want to stay here, I hated hospitals. “Will the burns heal or…” I trailed off, wondering what my legs were going to look like after this. The worst of it was on my right leg, covering most of my shin. He nodded. “We’ll move you to the burns centre as soon as we’ve dealt with your other injuries. They’re more equipped to deal with it there. You were very lucky though. The dampness of your cloth