Unbridled. Tori Carrington

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      Chapter Four

      “I DON’T NORMALLY HANDLE military cases,” Laney had told him when they’d walked back to her office building a couple of blocks away from the restaurant.

      “Define ‘normally.’”

      “Never.”

      Carter had figured as much. He was already working with a JAG attorney and understood the way the military worked. Especially in his case, after he’d been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, essentially a rubber stamp they used to cover every personnel problem they encountered. Mouth off to a rookie captain who couldn’t tell his ass from an IED—improvised explosive device—and find yourself suspended for an amount of time to be determined by other glorified civilians who were even more clueless than the ones who had diagnosed him in the first place. Men who had no idea what it was to spend days on end in a shit-ridden sandbox without supplies and adequate protection, where everyone and no one could be your enemy, where ultimately your only friends were your weapon and your balls.

      Things were just going far too slow for his liking.

      Still, Laney had agreed to look into his case. See if there was something she could do to help expedite matters.

      Sweat dripped from Carter’s forehead, landing on the tile of his kitchen floor where he was on this second set of one hundred push-ups. Old Blue lay nearby, his head on his paws, his droopy eyes shifting up and then down as he followed Carter’s movements.

      It was after dark and outside the cicadas were kicking up a ruckus as they claimed the night.

      This was Carter’s least favorite time of day. Darkness yawned in front of him like a murky, endless ditch that no amount of dirt in the world could fill in, no matter how hard he shoveled. Shadows claimed the corners of the small, old house and lengthened, the few lamps and lightbulbs stopping them from swallowing the rooms altogether.

      Carter usually did one of two things right about now. Either he sat in front of the old television set with a twelve-pack next to one ankle while Blue rested against the other. Or he hit a nearby roadhouse, seeking temporary companionship and ultimately escape in a welcoming woman’s arms.

      Neither option seemed palatable to him just now. Mostly because the only arms he could seem to concentrate on belonged to Laney Cartwright.

      His muscles trembled as he pushed them beyond their limits. He finally collapsed to the floor, his cheek resting against the cool tile, his lungs on fire. But he paid attention to nothing outside the image of Laney’s surprised and happy smile earlier at the restaurant when she realized he wasn’t going anywhere.

      The closest he’d come to meeting his match in a woman was JoEllen Atchison. He winced. At least that’s what he liked to tell himself. It turned out JoEllen must not have returned the sentiment or else she would never have believed him capable of trying to rape her two months ago. Still, before then, he’d been convinced that they had been simpatico, two jarheads who didn’t require foreplay but went straight to the deed when the need hit, their only real relationship being with the U.S. Marine Corps.

      Carter rolled over and stared at the ceiling. Now with the wisdom that came with hindsight, he realized that what he and JoEllen had had was nothing but a handful of one-night stands that had occasionally included a weekend locked away in a seedy motel room with a box of pizza and a case of beer. And that somewhere down the line he had mistaken that for a relationship.

      Of course, it was hard to understand the difference, because he had never really had a steady relationship with a woman. When he was younger, he’d been too busy being a Marine commander’s son. There had been no real time for the usual teenage stuff outside his positions as varsity football cornerback and team captain, the roles nothing more to him than warm-up for what he would do once he enlisted in the Marines when he was eighteen.

      Girls…oh, they’d been there. Lifting up their pretty skirts and kissing him with their cherry-flavored lip gloss. But he’d never seen one of them more than three times, and even then not necessarily in a row, since he went out with other girls in between. He hadn’t fooled himself into thinking that the reason he got away with such bad behavior had to do with his good looks. As his father had liked to tell him, he looked two licks shy of a full tongue bath.

      No, he knew his status as football captain allowed him certain privileges. Liberties he hadn’t been extended in the Corps, where one Marine was treated no different than a hundred others.

      His mother…well, his mother lived down in Austin with another family. One she’d started after leaving Carter with his father when he was five, marrying another man and going on to have four more children that were no more like Carter than the sun was like the moon.