Rank & File (Anchor Point Book 4) Read online

  And with Senior Chief Curtis still firmly planted in the front of my mind, especially whenever I got myself off, apparently I needed to get naked and sweaty with a guy.

  No apps, though. No websites. I wanted to meet someone. Size them up face-to-face. Get a good look at their left hand in case there was an incriminating tan line on the third finger. With any luck, we could find someplace private, get what we both came for, and walk away happily without any disgruntled partners in our wake.

  There were a handful of clubs in town that were fairly gay-friendly, but only one that was really a gay club. All the rest were down in Flatstick, which was way too fucking far to drive tonight. So, not a lot of options. After work, I’d grab a shower, put on something reasonably hot, and take my ass over to the High-&-Tight.

  And hopefully I wouldn’t be spending tonight alone.

  What the hell am I doing?

  I looked around the club. Most of the guys here in the High-&-Tight were years younger than me. The music was geared toward their generation, not mine, though it was catchy. The beers were all right even if I hadn’t heard of most of them. It wasn’t a bad place by any means, but I wasn’t sure if coming here was such a good idea. My best friend, Noah, had sworn by this club. Anchor Point finally had a gay bar, and according to him, it was a damn good one. So if there was a place to get laid in this town, the High-&-Tight was it.

  Being close to the base, and with a name like that, it was no surprise the place was crawling with military. First termers, mostly—guys who probably hadn’t been able to legally drink for more than a few months. Guys I had no business touching.

  Christ. I didn’t know what I expected to find here. Someone barely over half my age who was game for a hookup in the men’s room, maybe. Younger guys weren’t exactly my thing, but I didn’t see many alternatives in this club. And the high-and-tight haircuts at least let me know who to stay away from. I didn’t relish the idea of being called into Captain Rodriguez’s office to explain why someone had a photo of me making out with some E-3 I hadn’t recognized out of uniform.

  I played with the label on my beer bottle. Ultimately, I wasn’t here because the men in this crowd were what I was craving tonight. They were a distraction from what I hadn’t been able to get off my mind for the last several nights. I’d given up on fooling myself into believing I could get Lieutenant Jameson out of my system if I thought about him with my hand on my cock enough times.

  I took a deep pull from my beer and rolled the ice-cold liquid around in my mouth until my teeth ached.

  You’re an idiot. No two ways about it. Getting hung up on a straight guy? Yeah, because that had worked out so well in the past. Not that getting hung up on queer guys had worked out any better. As it was, I hadn’t been laid in almost a year. Not since my ex had left with his side piece.

  What the fuck is wrong with me? Why am I so depressed tonight?

  It was probably because just this week, I’d agreed to help Noah’s boyfriend move in with him when they finally had all the logistics sorted out. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for Noah—and by extension his boyfriend—but I wasn’t looking forward to helping them unload that U-Haul. It’d be like a reverse of what Noah had helped me do earlier this year, when we’d been taking boxes out of my house and putting them into a truck. His boyfriend was coming to live in Anchor Point. Mine had been getting the hell out of town with someone younger and more limber.

  Fuck. Even now, the better part of a year later, something came along every so often and reminded me that Vince was gone. I was over him, and wouldn’t take him back if he were the last man on earth, but after six years together, it had taken time to get used to being Will, and not one half of Will and Vince.

  So that was it. I’d been raw after agreeing to help Anthony move because apparently I was more of a wreck than I’d realized, and I’d zeroed in on an attractive man. He’d been a distraction from my ex, and from how wound up I always was when I had to respond to a domestic, so I’d run with it. I’d let myself memorize him. I’d ogled a half-naked man with just enough bedhead to make my mouth water, let myself wish I could be the one messing up his hair, wondered if he liked it pulled, or if—

  Stop it. You’re going to make yourself crazy.

  Yeah, he’d had messy hair after getting out of bed with a woman. The guy was straight. End of story. That long look before he’d gotten out of my truck? My imagination. The way he’d kept watching me while I drove—which I’d noticed because the rearview had been tilted to let me steal glances at him—had also been my imagination.

  He was gone, and even if he wasn’t, he was out of my league, so I needed to get over my ridiculous fantasies and find a guy who actually played for my team. I could either spend the night hunched over the bar and staring into my beer, or I could pull my head out of my ass and start looking for someone to distract me for a while.

  So, I turned around, leaned against the bar, and—

  Froze.

  You have got to be kidding me.

  If I’d thought Brent was gorgeous in a pair of jeans and nothing else with sex-ruffled hair . . . Okay, I stood by that, but Christ, tonight he was really abusing the privilege of being sexy. His tight jeans clung to his ass, and something about the way the black belt sat made my skin tingle. He had on an unbuttoned black shirt, and under that a skintight white tee. And instead of his hair being disheveled from sex, or hastily finger-combed into place, it was meticulously styled now. Like a lot of officers, he didn’t cut his hair as severely as enlisted guys often did, and he had enough length on top to style it and give it that “neatly messy” look.

  Fuck.

  And he was here. In the High-&-Tight. A gay bar.

  I couldn’t tell myself that maybe he’d stumbled in here. Sometimes that happened. A guy had enough drinks in him, or wasn’t paying attention, and suddenly found himself in a club with conspicuously few women. You couldn’t mistake the High-&-Tight for anything that wasn’t a gay bar. The rainbow flags in the windows were a dead giveaway.

  And, anyway, Brent was standing close to another guy, exchanging flirty grins and almost touching.

  Yeah. He knew where he was.

  Well shit. That would lighten my mood—watching the man of my fantasies hook up with another man. Fucking sweet.

  Cursing to myself, I turned back toward the bar and debated ordering something stronger after I finished this beer. I was hesitant—Noah had been enough of a problem drinker to make me hyperaware of my own habits—but decided I could get away with one goddamned night of really drinking. Especially while Brent was right over there, probably charming his way into the pants of that other guy. Fuck.

  The barstool next to me had been occupied for a while, but the cute blond wandered off around the time I was ordering my second drink. I focused on the bartender, on watching him uncap the bottle, and as I picked it up, I barely noticed when someone took the blond’s place.

  “I thought that was you.”

  I turned and nearly tumbled off my own barstool. Shit. He was right there. Looking at me. Waiting for me to respond, since he’d . . . he’d said something, hadn’t he? Hell if I could remember what, so I just went with, “Oh Hey. Uh. What are you doing here?” As soon as I’d said it, I winced. God, what a dumb thing to ask. Like running into someone I knew at the commissary and asking them that, as if they might say they were buying a car or performing brain surgery.

  Lieutenant Jameson didn’t miss a beat, though. “I’m guessing the same as you—looking to get laid.”

  My new beer almost slid out of my hand. “Oh. Uh.”

  He chuckled and shifted a little, and when he settled again, he was a fraction of an inch closer to me. When I’d met him the other night, he’d obviously been subdued by his own nervousness. Now, the side of him that was probably the real Brent—fueled by the drink in his hand—was out in full force.

  I gulped. “I . . . thought you were straight.”

  He smiled. No, grinned. No, somethin
g somewhere in between. “I’m bi.”

  “Yeah, so I’m gathering.”

  “Bi, and perpetuating the stereotype that we’re all complete and utter sluts.” He winked.

  Holy fuck, this beer wasn’t nearly cold enough.

  He held my gaze. “I never caught your first name.”

  I took a deep pull to wet my mouth. “Will.”

  “Brent.” He extended his hand.

  “Yeah. I remember.” But I shook his hand anyway because I couldn’t resist. And I let him hold it a second longer than necessary because . . . fuck, why wouldn’t I? As I withdrew it, though, reality washed over me, killing the moment like someone had dumped a buck of ice-cold bilge water on my head.

  Lieutenant. He’s a lieutenant. Off-limits, idiot.

  That wasn’t to say I hadn’t fucked plenty of men back when DADT had made them all off-limits, but banging an officer took a special kind of stupid. The UCMJ did not, unfortunately, make an exception for the “Can’t you see how fucking hot he is?” defense.

  Brent had to have known that as well as I did, and he seemed sober enough to have his bearings, but he didn’t back down. “So can I buy you a drink?”

  I hesitated. “I’ve . . .” I held up my mostly full bottle. “This will probably do me for the night.”

  “Fair enough.” He paused. “So are you here for the same reason I am?”

  I nearly choked.

  You are the reason I’m here.

  Somehow I managed to look him in the eye. “Can’t imagine why anyone else comes to this place.” Damn it. Not the right answer. “I—”

  Brent’s hand slid over my leg, and I jumped like he’d shocked me. He grinned, and God, he definitely wasn’t that shaken-up guy I’d driven back to his car the other night. I could see how he’d charmed his way into the woman’s bed, that was for damn sure.

  “I’m, uh . . .” Since when did I get this tongue-tied around men? “I’m going to go hit the head.”

  “Sure. I’ll be here.” He didn’t wink, but something told me he almost did.

  I left my beer on the bar and shouldered my way through the crowd to the hallway that led to the men’s room. As soon as I was around the corner and out of the crowd, I paused to gather my thoughts and catch my breath. So much for coming to this club to get him out of my head. Now he was here, and bi, and flirting with me, and . . .

  An officer. Absolutely not someone I need to put my hands on.

  I leaned against the wall and let my head fall back. Fuck. First man to defibrillate my libido since Vince left, and he was bad news. Career-damaging, promotion-killing, court-fucking-martial bad news. Career-ending, if I was brutally honest with myself. I hadn’t busted my tail for almost twenty years just to literally fuck it away.

  Except after so long without having sex—hell, without wanting to have sex—I liked this attraction. I liked being drawn to someone and wanting to know what his skin might taste like and what he sounded like when he came. Maybe there was some cold comfort in knowing I still had the ability to be attracted to someone, but right now I was frustrated as fuck that someone had this magnetic pull on me and we couldn’t act on it.

  After a cheating boyfriend and being depressed to the point of sexual numbness for this long, couldn’t a guy catch a fucking break?

  A set of footsteps broke rank from the noise inside the club, heading my direction, and I knew before I looked that it was him. It wasn’t rational to assume that, but it didn’t matter. I knew it was him.

  And I was right. Oh shit.

  Brent stopped beside me, arms folded loosely across his chest, and pressed a shoulder against the wall. “I’m almost getting the feeling you’re trying to get away from me.”

  “I probably should be.” I tried to ignore the way that posture made his hips look narrower and his shoulders broader, but I was already looking, so apparently I was failing. I stared up at the ceiling. “I know I should be. But . . .”

  He came a little closer, almost enough to let me use his body for support instead of the cold plaster. “You should be, but do you want to?”

  Absolutely not.

  I dropped my gaze, which was a mistake. Now I was looking straight down into the narrow sliver of space he’d left between our chests. And our belts, for that matter. As if I wasn’t already struggling not to get hard just by being in the same room with him.

  I cleared my throat. “If I’m avoiding you, it’s not because I want to.”

  That brought the most deliciously satisfied grin to his lips. Like he had me right where he wanted me now. Maybe he did.

  And damn him, but he narrowed that space between us by a fraction of an inch, which made the air in the hallway a hundred times harder to breathe. Against my better judgment, I turned so I was facing him. He was shorter than me—not by much—and lifted his chin a bit as if to make up the difference.

  His expression shifted, and while the lust was present and accounted for in his eyes, there was something else too. “Listen.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I’m not gonna lie. I came here tonight because I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  I stared at him, disbelieving that my own words had come out of his mouth. “But . . . you’re an officer.”

  “And you’re enlisted. I know.” He looked down at himself, then at me. “I don’t see any uniforms. Do you?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “No.” Brent stepped closer, eyes locked on mine, and that something else gleamed hotter now. “But it’s just us. No one has to know.”

  I bit my lip.

  “Please,” he whispered, and the faint raggedness of his tone made my knees wobble. His brow pinched slightly, and his expression shifted from cocky to . . . not. Oh God. It was need. Pure, primal, irresistible need.

  My cock was definitely on board.

  Brent swept his tongue across his lips, and when he spoke again, his voice shook with desperation. “The only thing I know right now is that I’m never going to concentrate on anything again if we don’t—”

  I kissed him, both to taste all that desperation and because, damn it, I couldn’t wait.

  And I didn’t think I’d even startled him. The second our lips met, his arms were around me. A hand slid up into my hair, the other down over my ass, and he tilted his head as he probed at my lips with his tongue.

  In some weird way, I’d almost hoped he was a terrible kisser. At least then I could bow out and move on because there was no point in staying. If a guy couldn’t kiss, then I wasn’t interested.

  Dear sweet Mother of God, this man could kiss. He was forceful without overdoing it and knew how to tease my tongue with the tip of his until my knees turned to liquid and my cock was painfully hard. He wasn’t all tongue, either—his lips moved with mine so perfectly, so skillfully, I couldn’t help wondering what other talents they had.

  The best part? He kissed with his hands too. He stroked my hair. Teased his fingertips along the shaved sides of my head. Curved a hand around the back of my neck. Let it slide down my chest. They were never still, at least not for long, and left goose bumps in their wake.

  Abruptly, Brent pried himself off me and met my gaze. We were both breathing hard, and I thought he was shaking. God knew I was.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he panted.

  “No.”

  Brent pulled back, eyes wide with confusion. “What?”

  I nodded down the hall toward the men’s room.

  He glanced that way, then looked at me again, and a grin slowly formed. “You didn’t seem like a blowjob-in-the-restroom kind of guy.”

  “Who said anything about a blowjob?” I wrapped an arm around him and half growled, half moaned in his ear, “I want to fuck.”

  Brent exhaled as he wavered on his feet. “Jesus . . .”

  “Is that a no?”

  “It is absolutely not a no.”

  Will didn’t just steer me into a bathroom stall—he shoved me in. Roughly. Like he was manhandling someone in cuffs.<
br />
  As if I wasn’t already on the verge of coming in my pants.

  The stall door banged shut behind us, and Will stopped long enough to turn the latch. Then he was on me again. Kissing me. Forcing me up against the brick wall. Hell yes.

  He’d been so hesitant at first, I’d had to talk myself into following him into the hallway. I didn’t want to play games, so I’d decided to take the direct approach, and if that failed, I’d . . . well, whatever. It was a moot point now.

  And so was his hesitation. Now that we’d crossed the line and were well on our way to racking up all kinds of charges if anyone caught us, he didn’t hold back anymore. He was aggressive and hungry, kissing me and groping me like he didn’t care who caught us. Well if he didn’t, then I didn’t either, so I gave as good as I got, curling my fingers around handfuls of his shirt and grinding my crotch against his.

  Will grabbed my hair, pulled my head back, and started on my neck. I let out a string of curses and didn’t care who heard. His stubble burned my skin, which made the softness of his lips drive me even wilder. Being pinned to a brick wall by a rough, horny man whose lips and hot breath were on my throat? Oh, fuck yeah.

  Somehow, I managed to say, “Get the feeling you’re a top?”

  “Can be.” He kneaded my ass and nipped my earlobe hard enough to hurt. “Depends on which way makes you moan the loudest.”

  “Oh God.” I shuddered, gripping his shirt and squirming between him and the wall. “You got condoms?”

  “Mm-hmm. Lube too.”

  “You really did come here to get laid.”

  Will lifted his head and met my gaze. “How else was I going to get you out of my head?” Right then, he slid a hand between us, down over my cock, and I made a strangled sound. As tightly as we were pressed together, he was rubbing himself too, and his low growl was too fucking hot for words. He kissed me again, briefly, before he said, “So you tell me—am I a top tonight? Or am I—”