“Not yet.  I’m too tired,” she whines.

I let out a soft chuckle against the small of her back before nipping her ass with a soft bite.  She moans but continues to doze.

“Mercy, baby, it’s time to go or we’re going to be late.  It’s my last weekend here before I ship out, and as much as I would love to spend that time deep within you, we have places to be.”  Even if those places aren’t any I particularly want to be.

She starts to protest, but I dig my fingers into her ribs and laugh when she starts squealing like a pig and all but falls out of the bed to get away from me.  God, she’s beautiful in the morning.  Her almost-white blond hair is a mess of soft curls, most likely from my grabbing handfuls of it all night.  Her porcelain skin is glowing, my whisker burns showing up around her neck, tits, and thighs.  Her sapphire eyes are bright with mirth.  God, it feels good to see her like this.  The last couple of weeks have left a sense of impending dread thick on my skin, but seeing her like this gives me hope.  Hope that we aren’t drifting apart. That, even though I’m leaving, we’re going to be okay.  Enough hope that I can ignore that dread that still won’t vanish.

Mercedes Hutchens has been my girlfriend for the last four years.  We were friends before that for a few years, and when I decided to take a chance, she became my girl.  And now, my fiancée.  Yeah, I’m a lucky son of a bitch.

It’s been hard on us though.  I’m deployed more than I’m home, and I’m about to leave again.  I know it’s even harder on her.  Especially since I can’t tell her where I go when I leave her sitting at home hoping and praying that I’ll return to her.  She knows as much as I can tell her.  My team, which is made up of seven of the baddest motherfuckers from all over the United States, goes in hot to the deepest pits of hell.  We have days to prepare, sometimes for months, but one thing is always clear.  We don’t fucking speak about shit.

I’ve been doing this shit since I turned eighteen and got the hell out of my house.  And more specifically, got the hell away from Diana Locke.  There isn’t anything about my mother that isn’t toxic.  She’s hated me since I was a snot-nosed brat.  Not my brother, Mason The Perfect, but me—just for being alive.  Forever reminding me that everything I touch is tainted with the blackness she sees in my eyes.

Mason and I, we are not close, and we probably never will be.  She’s made the perfect Stepford son out of him, teaching him everything she knows—including how to hate me.  Being the heirs to our mother’s family’s oil business makes them just about the most powerful assholes in Texas.

My sperm donor of a father—Diana’s words, not mine—ran out on her two months after I was born.  Ever since, I’ve never understood the deep hate she has for me.  Hell, I was a baby.  There isn’t really much I can do about her husband running out on her.  Mason was five when I was born.  The silver spoon was still attached to his mouth, and he’s so far up my mother’s ass that I’m convinced she never cut the umbilical cord.

So I got out and away from that life.  With Mercedes’s blessing, I joined the Marines, where I’ve been in control of my own life since the fateful day I left it all behind.

Sure, I can’t give Mercy a life as glamorous as it would be if I would have stuck with Locke family tradition, gotten my Ivy League education, and started working for Locke Oil.  We live in a small, one-bedroom apartment and drive used cars, and the rock sitting on her finger is about a tenth of the size she deserves.  This might not be the life she envisioned, but I consider myself lucky to have her by my side and that she is willing to settle for less.

We’re happy and that’s all that matters.  Yeah, right, that voice of dread reminds me.  You don’t believe that—not with how she’s been so closed off lately.

“Why must we go over there, Maddox?  You hate your mother.”  Her lip comes out in a pout that makes me want to nibble on its plumpness.

“Because, baby, she made it very clear that my presence is required for whatever reason, and with my trust shares in the company being turned over to me this month, I’m not crossing her in any way.  Who knows what the troll has up her sleeve?  But I’m not chancing that she takes our money.”

Mercedes smiles at the mention of my trust.  I’ve been waiting until the shares of the company, something my grandfather made ironclad, are unlocked so that I can have my mother or brother buy me out.  I know she’s been stressed about having to pick up a second job with me leaving.  I hate that she has to work so fucking hard, but at this point, we don’t have a choice.  She doesn’t have anyone other than me.