General Joe (Magnolia Ridge 2)

I smirk at the camera and pull my oversized sweatshirt over my head. My boobs bounce free as I throw it away, leaving myself in only a pair of white cotton panties. I lick my lips as my hand trails down my stomach and my fingers dip into the simple material.

In my letter I’ll tell him how I never put my fingers inside myself because I want him to be the first thing I ever feel there. I’m going to tell him that it’s his for the taking and that I only play with my clit. I’m going to complain about how I wish I had self-control to not even do this little bit, but I ache too much for him and I need something to hold me over until he comes back.

“Joe.” I moan his name as I close my eyes. My other hand cups my breast and I pull at my nipple. “Please,” I beg him, moving my hips.

I dream about him pushing me down onto the bed and taking what he wants as he tells me what a tease I’ve been. That I belong to him now.

“I need more. I need you,” I cry out as the orgasm hits me and I fall back onto the bed, looking up at the ceiling. “It’s not enough,” I whimper, because the ache is still there. “I need you,” I whisper, knowing he may never be mine and that this ache is all I’ll ever know.

Chapter One

Joe

“So you’re staying?” Chief says as he leans back in his chair. “Are you sure about that?”

I nod, thinking about that decision and how it will impact all of our lives. “I’m planning on putting down roots.” He and I stare at one another for a long moment and he lets out a breath.

“All right then, you’re hired.” He stands up and holds out his hand, and it’s probably the most formal he’s ever been with me. But this isn’t the past; this is me taking the job as his deputy at the police department in Magnolia Springs and him becoming my boss.

I shake his hand, but before I can take it back, he grips it a little harder and pulls me to him. “Having you back is a good thing. Just don’t go running out on us again.”

We share another look and I nod. There’s so much neither of us is saying as I leave his office and walk out to my truck.

I didn’t want to leave Magnolia Springs to begin with, but I had to. Every member of the Bierman family has served in the armed forces and it’s been that way for generations. It was important to me to keep this tradition even though I lost my mom and dad when I was seventeen.

Chief let me come stay with him and his kids, Kayla and Ben, during my last year of high school before I enlisted. Ben was my best friend from the time we were in kindergarten until he was killed in a car accident a couple of years ago. Chief has been through so much grief that I wondered how he was still able to go on, but I knew it was because of Kayla.

I was twelve the day Kayla was born and I remember it so clearly. She’d been a surprise for Chief and his wife later in life, and it was a difficult pregnancy. Kayla was born six weeks premature and her mom died in labor. It rocked the whole town and later when Ben passed I thought about how unfair life was.

After my mom and dad died, Chief took me in and treated me like his second son, and I loved Kayla like a sister. Ben and I were inseparable and we made our own version of a family. We always made what we could out of the broken pieces we were given, and although it was hard, I never felt alone.

I enlisted in the Marines and stayed there for nearly thirteen years. I came home after basic training for a few weeks and then I was called out for a deployment. That happened a few times, where I’d be home for a short stint and then have to turn back around for a year or more at a time. Each time I came home, things changed. Mostly Kayla changed. She went from a five-year-old that begged me to play dolls with her to a moody pre-teen that rolled her eyes at everything I had to say almost overnight. But during one of my last trips home, right before her eighteenth birthday, something shifted.

I knew that the next deployment I had would be my longest one yet and I made sure I was home for Christmas. That was always her favorite time of year and we had traditions. I knew she would kill me if we didn’t stick to them. She’d long ago stopped believing in Santa, but we still stayed up late baking cookies on Christmas Eve, just the two of us. Chief always threw a party for his guys at the station and they invited most of the town. But after everyone left and the chief went to bed, we had our cookie tradition.