My legs start to shake with the force of my orgasm, and I almost lose my footing. Releasing the firm hold I have on myself, my cock falls, still heavy with leftover desire, against my body.

I hate this feeling. No matter how great the pleasure my body gets from picturing her, I always feel empty after. A big giant reminder I’ll never know what having her feels like. Like it or not, this is all I’ll ever have. A hollow pit inside me that I’ve only ever felt was filling up when her smiles came at me without pause. A pit that’s taken up residence inside me since the night she admitted to having the same feelings I’ve been feeling for a long time. Fighting with myself, I evaded the magnitude of fear those feelings brought with them.

“Fuck, it’s going to be a long day,” I say to the emptiness around me, stopping myself from continuing the depressing thoughts rolling through my mind.

I finish showering before I get out and start to get ready for the day, unable to shake the feeling of loneliness that I’ve had plaguing me lately.

AFTER MY MIDDLE OF THE night shower, I had given up any hopes of returning to sleep. If I was honest with myself, it was more about self-preservation than actually not being able to sleep. I worried I would be haunted with more thoughts of Ember in my arms, and I just don’t have the energy to deal with that shit right now.

Three hours later, just when the clock in my truck’s dash turns over to seven in the morning, I’m pulling into the parking lot of the security business my dad owns with some of his old Marine buddies. No matter who you ask, they all say Corps Security was what brought all of our families together. I think after the parents of our group started having us kids, there was always a hope that we would all, in some way, join the business. Unfortunately, like our parents, we had our own dreams and many of them didn’t include anything CS related.

Cohen Cage, my best friend and brother-in-law, started working here after he left the Marines himself, right before he married my sister, Dani. He followed his own father’s footsteps into the ‘family business,’ which was probably the catalysis for my dad’s desire to get me here.

Cohen’s dad, Greg, was one of the men my dad had served with before they both joined the two security businesses they separately owned to form CS. My dad brought along John ‘Beck’ Beckett and Zeke Cooper when he moved to Georgia from California. Uncle Zeke passed away a few years later, but now, his brother, Asher, works for CS. Ember’s dad, Maddox Locke, was also part of their brotherhood and the man I currently work side by side with.

I respect the hell out of my dad and the men who work here, but I’ll never be the man he wants me to be. I’ve been here for about a year and a half, but it wasn’t until six months ago when I finally put my foot down and told them it wasn’t for me. It only took one long-as-fuck stakeout with him before I realized watching cheating spouses will never be something I want for my future. Sure, they do a lot of other shit, but none of the cloak-and-dagger shit will ever be for me. Nah, not me. I’ve just been biding my time until I could do what I really wanted.

The second my dad realized how much I hated just about every aspect of CS, he decided to put my computer knowledge to work, and I’ve been doing the IT shit that no one but Maddox has ever been able to do since. Of course, when you can hack into just about anything, even Maddox couldn’t keep up with me. It’s never been more than a hobby out of boredom, or stinginess to get free porn. No matter how much fun I find the challenge of a good hack, the last thing I want is to spend my hours locked inside some dark room staring at computer screens. The plus side, though, is that the pay is ridiculous, and because of my time here, I was finally able to save enough to start living my own dream. So for the last six months that I’ve been working here, I’ve gone down to part time. Eventually, I’ll be too busy for even that and only come in when they need my skills for a special case.