“I’m not going anywhere, Troup. Anytime you want me, I’m here. I’m going to wait for you,” she whispered.
I felt emotion roll through me of which I’d never, ever felt before.
“What?” I asked.
“I’ll wait for you,” she repeated. “I know that you think I’m not yours, that I’m telling you what you want to hear, because for some reason you can’t admit it, but I’m always going to be yours.”
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, felt emotion burning in my throat.
“I can’t stay,” I croaked.
I felt her straddle my hips, and my cock that I’d been ignoring really well practically laughed at me.
My eyes popped open, and it was just in time to see her leaning into me, her face only inches from mine.
“I don’t want to take you from your dream, Troup,” she whispered.
“You are my dream now,” I admitted.
She was my goal.
Five years. Ten. I didn’t know how long I would be in the Air Force. But what I did know was, at the end of it, I wanted her at my side.
I knew that she was my end game.
“I want to go to college,” she said. “I want to do and be what I’ve always dreamed of.”
My eyes went hot.
“Why the FBI, though? What’s so special about that? That’s…” Dangerous.
I knew that she would be okay. I knew that she would flourish.
I just didn’t like the idea that she would be in harm’s way.
“Because women out there need me,” she said. “They need what I’ll one day become. Just like the US Military needs you.”
She was so fuckin’ confident in what she wanted to do. She had no doubt in her mind that this was her path.
The thing was, I wasn’t sure that I could handle her path.
The idea of her being hurt felt like a hot boil in my gut.
That had to be why we avoided talking about it.
“You scare the hell out of me,” I admitted quietly.
Her eyes went soft as she leaned forward and pressed her lips to mine.
I couldn’t stop myself from catching either side of her face with my hands and holding her more solidly against me.
When she pulled back, her eyes were hot.
“Your parents are probably freaking way the fuck out right now,” I sighed.
I would be, had I known that my daughter was out with me.
She grinned a secret smile. “I have friends that are covering for me. I’m going to go with you to your ceremony.”
I swallowed hard. “I’d like that.”
She leaned forward, her breasts trailing along my chest.
“I know,” she said. “Because I know you about as well as I know myself.”
I allowed my hands to drop from her face but trailed them down the length of her arms.
When I got to her hands, I folded them into mine and said, “How does this work? Between us?”
She sat up, and I couldn’t stop myself from trailing my eyes down the length of her body.
Her breasts were so beautiful. I wanted to move my hands, but she’d bit her lip, so I knew she had something important to say.
“I only ask that, if you see someone else, I don’t want to know about it,” she whispered.
My gut tightened.
“I can’t and won’t ask the same of you,” I said. “If you see anyone else, I want to know.”
She looked down at my chest. “There won’t be anyone else. You’re…”
“You’re it for me, too,” I interrupted her thoughts. “There won’t be anyone else.”
How could there be, when I was so in love with Beckham Spurlock that I couldn’t even think about being with anyone else?
“I won’t have time, anyway,” she admitted. “With college, then everything else, I’ll literally only have time to get home on holidays.”
“There’ll be boys at college,” I countered. “You’ll eventually have free time.”
She tilted her head, then bent down to press a soft kiss to the corner of my lips.
“I don’t want just any boy, Trouper Aoki.”
“What about when I can finally manage to make it back? What if I get leave time?” I asked. “What if I can get a weekend off here or there?”
“Then I’ll fly to see you, do my homework on the plane, and fly home the next day,” she answered.
She had a fuckin’ answer for everything.
“I’ll pay for that,” I offered.
Her eyes were soft.
“If we can steal a second here and there, I want that,” she whispered. “And I hope you’re okay with talking a lot on the phone. And texting. I do that a lot.”
“What about your parents?” I asked. “They’re not going to like that.”
Her dad wouldn’t, anyway.
In the last year, he hadn’t gotten any better.
In fact, he’d gotten worse.
He did not, under any circumstances, like me.
He didn’t like me to the point where he tried to make his child avoid me, but she never fell into line with that.
To the point where they had a knockdown, drag-out fight about it in the middle of the front yard for everyone to hear.