Page 1

Chapter 1

Riley

November

“Guys. Guys. ” I laughed as I nudged the three cats back so I could shut the apartment door. “Can I at least take off my boots?”

From the meowing, head bumps, and demands for attention… no, I could not take off my boots. This happened every day, so I just chuckled, tossed the mail on the shelf above the shoe rack, leaned against the wall, and carefully untied one boot, then the other. Once I’d put my boots on the rack, I headed down the hall with the fuzzy trio on my heels.

They were a hazard, to be sure, but they made me laugh. From the demands for pets and attention to the dramatic insistence that they were wasting away from starvation (yeah, right), they were hilarious and cute. Kind of made me wonder how I’d made it through my first year on this island without them.

I’d had a shitty day. Usually did—my command was toxic as hell from leadership on down, and getting stuck on traffic detail meant even more attitude from people than I used to get as a sentry at the damn gate.

“Dude, come on. That ticket is bullshit.”

“When did the speed limit change?”

“Do you know who I am?”

Or my personal favorite:

“Do you know who my husband is?”

Needless to say, it was a relief to get home to the melodramatic creatures who acted like they didn’t get any attention, any food, or any stimulation from me or my roommate.

Now I just needed to get out of this damn uniform. Though we weren’t allowed to wear them off-base, we were allowed to wear them on our commutes as long as we went straight to or from work. Sometimes I changed before I left. Sometimes I just needed to get the hell home before I pistol-whipped someone. Today had been one of those days.

After I’d changed out of my utilities and into shorts and a T-shirt, I played with the cats on my bed for a few minutes. Then I led the little parade of creatures into the kitchen so I could get myself something eat. And them, of course. I wasn’t a monster.

Arrow and ShiShi got on the counter while Velcro chilled on a barstool. They all watched intently while I made my sandwich, and they purred like machine guns when I gave them each a piece of turkey.

Then Arrow decided he was more interested in pouncing on ShiShi’s tail, which had her leaping off the counter and thundering down the hall. While they did their zoomies, I chuckled to myself and moved into the living room with my food. Velcro, true to his name, stuck close, perching on the armrest, watching me with those big yellow eyes as if to say, “But Uncle Riley, I didn’t get any.”

“Yes, you did, you little scam artist,” I told him as his brother and sister went stampeding past. They crashed into something in the kitchen, then went back the other way. I just rolled my eyes and hoped our downstairs neighbors didn’t get annoyed.

While I ate, I flicked on the TV. I’d heard tell of a time when service members on Okinawa could only get local Japanese channels and the Armed Forces Network. Fortunately, that was no longer the case, and we could stream just like we could back home.

I kicked back to watch some mind-numbing TV, and before too long, all three cats were on the couch with me. Velcro was in my lap. Arrow sprawled across the back of the couch. ShiShi parked on the cushion next to me and noisily licked her butthole.

Typical afternoon after I got home from work, and I loved it. I’d been living with Nolan for a few months, renting a room in his enormous off-base apartment for a song. My commute was a little longer now, but I had no complaints. I had this swanky ass place, cheap rent, three cats who kept life interesting, and… well, I definitely couldn’t complain about sharing fairly regular handjobs and blowjobs with my roommate-slash-landlord. Roommates with benefits? I guess. Because we definitely weren’t dating or anything like that. Hell, I barely knew the guy aside from his housekeeping routines and what his dick tasted like.

Whatever. Better than living on-base and beating off all the time because of the island’s less-than-stellar hookup scene.

It definitely made it easier to live with my high-stress, high-bullshit job and the isolation that came with living on a tiny remote island.

Beside me, ShiShi whipped around to look at the front door. Arrow lifted his head a second later. Then Velcro lazily twisted in the same direction.

And that was when I heard what they already had: boots on the concrete stairs outside.

A second later, keys jingled, and before the door had even opened, all three cats flew off the couch to greet their dad.

Nolan stepped into the apartment, and my heart did that same little flip it almost always did when I saw him.

Holy fuck, he was gorgeous.

He’d had the jarhead look when I’d met him, but over time, he’d grown out his dark hair into a high-and-tight, which was sexy anyway but looked criminally hot on him. Like me, he’d worn his utilities home, and even after living with him for a while and getting each other off with some serious regularity, I never got tired of seeing him like that. Whoever had designed the Marine Corps utilities had done the Lord’s work, that was for sure. The camouflage blouse and pants made him look even more built than he already was, and they were magic on that perfect ass.

That ass, which made my mouth water as he crouched to greet his cats.

I stole a few seconds to ogle him. Always did. There were times when it frustrated me that we never got fully naked when we fooled around—what I would’ve given to see every inch of that glorious body—but I couldn’t really complain.

There were, after all, worse things than a Marine in his utilities kneeling between my thighs and sucking my ability to speak right out of my dick.

Oblivious to me checking him out and fantasizing about him, Nolan petted and scratched each cat in turn. They fell all over themselves for his attention; as much as they liked me, they worshipped him, and I didn’t think it was entirely because he’d been the one to rescue them as kittens. No one doted on or spoiled their animals quite like he did, which was seriously endearing. I’d always loved animals, but fuck me, there was just something about a man who loved them as much as Nolan did. Especially a man like him. Here was this tough Marine, who a lot of people (including me in the beginning) found kind of intimidating, tatted up and built like he could snap someone in half, and he absolutely melted for these demanding, spoiled fuzzballs.

I managed to tear my gaze away before he caught me staring at him. I didn’t need to make things awkward or jeopardize my place in this apartment by making him think I was getting stupid for him or something.

I cleared my throat. “I, um—I grabbed the mail. Yours is on the shelf.”

He glanced at me, blue eyes as happy as they always were when his cats greeted him, and then he turned to the place above the shoes where we always left each other’s mail. Since the post office was on Kadena Airbase, which wasn’t exactly on the way home for either of us, we had keys to each other’s boxes and routinely picked up both sets of mail if we stopped by.

“Oh.” He rose and collected the small stack. “Thanks. Sorry I haven’t picked it up in a while.”

“Eh, don’t worry about it. I had to be at Camp Shields today, so I was right there. No biggie.”

He grunted in acknowledgment. Thumbing through his mail, he said, “I was going to order sushi from the place down the street tonight. Do you want—” He stopped abruptly, mouth still open with the unfinished thought, and stared at something in his hand.

I sat up. “Um. Sushi?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Sounds great.” He sounded completely disinterested now. “We’ll…” He kept staring at a piece of mail. Before I could ask if everything was okay, he shook himself and looked at me, all the happiness gone from his eyes. And when he spoke, he sounded like he’d lost all interest in food. “We’ll order something. Uh. A bit later.”

Then he headed down the hall, that envelope still in his hand, and he didn’t even seem to notice his feline entourage.

Alarm swelled in my chest. That was weird. The only thing in the mail that ever got any kind of reaction out of him was the odd piece of junk mail or political mailers. And even those just warranted an eyeroll before they were tossed.

Nolan was a closed book like no one I’d ever met. I knew how to get him off and how not to annoy him, and I knew he’d step in front of a train to help a stranger, not to mention one of his cats.

Beyond that, I knew precious little about him.

Tonight, something in that pile of mail had him off-balance.

But hell if I knew what it could possibly be.