by Em Petrova
She asked him for nothing—she loved him like her life depended on it and the clock was ticking.
Did she know it too? That they couldn’t possibly continue after this and could only expect a string of broken dates and missed rendezvous? She was tough, but he knew too much of her soft side to want to hurt her.
And he knew about his own now too. He wasn’t the same man who’d walked up to a downed plane days ago. He wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to be that hard, unfeeling man again either.
Driving his tongue into her entrance, he flicked his tongue through her clenching walls. Her orgasm built, and she trembled. Twisting her head left and right on the pillow, small moan after small moan escaped her. Her cry grew more insistent until she stiffened and gave a final upward shove, taking his tongue to the deepest point. He held her there and stroked his thumb over her clit.
She splintered. He rubbed at her clit in a small circle while her juices flowed over his taste buds. Need spiked in his core. His cock throbbed behind the metal of his zipper and thank fuck he could still hold on to his control.
He brought her down with soft flips of his tongue over her pussy to reach her clit. He tenderly mouthed it, and she issued a final gasp. The moment she held her breath and made no sound at all, when he saw the bliss dancing across her angel’s face…those imprinted on his mind, never to be forgotten.
He zigzagged his index finger through her folds, rippling them. Her stomach dipped in on a silent gasp. In some perverse way, he loved the thought of her holding in her cries. Maybe it was their time in the tent that first night.
Now that there was nobody to hear, he planned to do everything in his power to keep her screaming all night long.
He slipped off the bed to his feet. Holding her sex-hazed stare, he slowly unzipped his fly. When he reached inside his boxers and withdrew his cock, she darted her tongue across her lips, leaving a trace of wetness gleaming on her plump mouth.
He stifled a noise and angled his cock upward so the mushroomed tip hit his abs. Shoving his jeans down his legs and stepping from them, he lashed his balls to his body and prayed for the strength to keep from coming too soon.
Cora skated the flat of her hand over her breast and down her stomach. She still bore some bruises from her trials. Fuck, what he wouldn’t give to remove each and every hurt, to lock her up in this cabin forever and pamper her the way she deserved.
But that couldn’t be. They had tonight at best. And that was barring no calls to action. Down the road at a larger cabin, his men were kicked back with beer and as much pizza and wings as Penn could buy in this small town. If they got the orders, Penn could rally the team quickly. But leaving Cora would be like wrenching his heart out.
She crooked a finger at him.
Stepping up to the bed, he fisted his cock to stave off another minute.
“I want you bare, Angel. With nothing between us.”
As she dropped her stare to his erection and then landed it on his face again, he waited. She swung her legs over the mattress and covered his grip around his shaft with her fingers.
Flashing her eyes up at him, she slipped her tongue out to lap over the purple head leaking precum. The glistening juices on her tongue just about threw him off the ledge. He felt he was freefalling through the sky.
She licked him again. “Yes, I’m on birth control, and yes, I’m yours.”
He didn’t give her a chance to say more. Gliding his hands under her ass, he lifted her onto the bed, nudged her thighs apart and nestled his steeled cock at her entrance.
He knew damn well what he was doing asking her for such an intimacy—and he no longer gave a damn.
In one easy slide, he filled her with his cock. Tunneling through her drenched walls with nothing at all between them, tore a groan from his throat. Then he was nestled with his pulsating head against her innermost spot. She clenched around him, and they shared a moan.
He flexed his hips, dipping low in her before withdrawing almost all the way. She rocked up to take him again. Their bodies synced. She refused to look away, and he loved her even more in that moment.
Passion spiked. He kissed her with all his pent-up frustration. Damn their circumstances. Knowing he couldn’t keep the only woman he ever wanted in his life ripped all the breath from his lungs and left his heart gouged and bleeding.
But I have this moment. And I’m not letting it go.
He fucked her faster, hooking her knee high on his waist and angling deeper. He rolled her onto her side, and spooning her from behind, fucked her the way he wanted the very first torturous night they spent together in the tent.
Spreading her cheeks, he buried his cock into her pussy from behind. With each rough jerk of his hips, he yanked her into him. She tightened and went quiet again. Damn, he didn’t know she was so close. If she went over the ledge, he would be seconds behind.
She stiffened, tossed her head and came with a sharp cry.
His eyes slammed shut on sensation as the first spurt of cum burst from his cock. Knowing it hit her walls and would be running out of her fulfilled some of the primal need he’d been experiencing from the second he considered having his way with her in a cave.
She was strong, beautiful inside and out, desirable and everything Penn could ever want in a partner.
Fuck, he really had fallen in love. His brother Nash would never let him live it down.
Cora stopped in the doorway. To say her jaw was dragging the ground at the sight before her was no exaggeration.
Penn lay sprawled on the bed, a strip of sheet tossed over his groin. Sunlight kissed all the right spots as it fell across the bed to exaggerate the hard planes of muscles covering his every inch.
She gripped the doorframe harder.
Her world was upside down. She’d lost her father. She’d lived through and seen things that would send most people running to the nearest psychiatric unit.
And somehow, all those things made no difference in the fact that she was falling in love with the sleeping captain of Xtreme Ops.
What would it take before she could say she was completely in love? A few more days? Weeks? She didn’t have that much time—he would be leaving soon. She was surprised he spent the whole night with her. Also, she had her own world to fix.
Cora always prided herself on her level head. Her father praised her for it as well, and the villagers near their cabin knew her as a steady sort of person who thought before she acted. The traits made her a good pilot, adventurer, guide…and now she had no clue how to translate it to love.
Love was sticky—a mess to be dealt with, from what she knew from her short-lived experiences of the past.
I have to tell him.
Why did even thinking about looking into Penn’s deep, coffee eyes and telling him she needed to go send a sharp pang like a knife through her gut?
She dragged in a breath but must have made some other sound, because he opened his eyes. The fog cleared in the depths as he looked straight at her.
I have to go find my way. Fix my life.
She couldn’t say the words yet. Rushing across the room, she toppled into bed with him, fitting herself like a puzzle into all the angled spots that seemed carved out of granite and made just for her.
He tucked her under his chin, still breathing evenly with the lingering effects of sleep. His warm, rough fingers trailed over her spine, finding all the hollows and dips that drove her craziest and made her body spark to life.
Lifting a hand, she settled it on his chest, over his drumming heart.
“Penn.”
“Cora.”
They spoke at the same time, their voices overlapping. She raised her head and looked into his eyes. She knew her expression must mirror the one on his handsome features.
She wanted to hide from it a while longer. She lay on his chest again, snuggling in. “Tell me something about you.”
“What do you wanna know?” he asked.
She fingered the soft curls on his chest. “
Anything you want to tell me.”
He stroked his fingertip over her ribs. “I’m an uncle.”
She smiled against his skin. “Are you really?”
“Yes. My brother Nash just had a new baby, a girl. I have yet to meet her.”
“But when you do, you’re sure to be the favorite uncle.”
“Only if I bribe her. Which I’m not above doing.”
She chuckled.
“Your turn.”
She thought about what she could possibly tell him. It seemed he must know everything about her past and present. All she could share was her future.
Pushing on her elbow, she met his stare.
He swallowed hard. “Don’t say it, Cora.”
“I have to. Penn, I have all these feelings for you.”
He pressed his finger into her lips, silencing her. “Not now. Not yet. Neither of us can make a commitment right now, and we aren’t going to talk about it. When the time comes, we’ll go our separate ways. Until then, I’m going to kiss you a thousand times and pull a dozen more screams from your lips.”
He removed his finger long enough to do just that—capturing her lips in a kiss that left her breathless, dizzy and falling fast. It would be too short-lived. She had to go home and face her world, and Penn had to keep fighting bad guys.
True to his word, he loved her all morning long. He brought her a flute of champagne after their shower. And when he slept, she took the time to pack what little she still owned after this disastrous—and wonderful—trip and slipped out the door of the cabin, headed for the ride she had waiting for her in the village. Then home.
Alone.
“Do you want to give up, Hutton? Is that what you’re telling me?”
The instructor’s barked question penetrated through the crippling pain of exposure and filled Cora’s brain.
She started to nod. After ten hours in the freezing Pacific Ocean, exposed to the brisk coastal winds wearing nothing but her swim shorts and T-shirt, she wanted to sit on the beach and wrap up in a solar blanket to warm herself. She wanted to find a place to lie down and sleep.
Week twenty of her training for the Homeland Security special forces and not a single minute of it was easy. She busted her ass for each skill she gained, but now the instructors seemed hell-bent on freezing her to death and sending her home to Alaska as an ice-pop.
“Are you giving up, Hutton?” the instructor demanded. “Do you want to hand me that patch on your arm?”
“No, Instructor.” Her words came as heavy pants. Her insides were slow-moving ice like a floe through an Alaskan river.
“Then what are you gonna do, Hutton? Stand here shivering like a wimp or get out in that ocean and show me what the hell you’re made of?”
Somehow, she lifted her foot one after another, running to the shore where the few left in the training camp were jumping into the waters again.
“Get into your line, Hutton! Grab your partner and don’t let him go!”
Cold water hit her thighs, and then her backside as she dropped to a sitting position in the water. She hooked her arm through number eighteen’s, a tough dude named Pax with a tattoo of a falcon on his tanned skin and a never-break attitude that was contagious to so many here, her included.
Pax locked his arm around hers, and they held the line in a straight seated horizontal formation as the eight-foot waves blasted over them for…what was this?...the tenth time today?
She gulped in air, tasting salt water on her lips.
“Stand up, team! On your feet.” One of the two instructors trying to break them and teach them lessons on the importance of trusting their own determination to survive paraded behind them, his voice moving down the line away from Cora.
“Don’t think about being cold,” Pax said to her.
Her teeth chattered, and her muscles ached from being so knotted. She thought sleeping in a tent during a blizzard was cold. Ha! She never felt cold until this minute when they were all taken to the brink of hypothermia. Five students had already dropped out, one taken away unconscious by medics.
She would remain standing, though. She had to succeed. She was going to pass this training and become special forces. She would work for OFFAT and lead men through the land she knew so well.
Focusing on Pax’s voice, she sucked in his encouragement not to think about their body, to think of their iron will. She also thought about leaving Penn that day.
She returned home to the cabin she shared with her daddy and then drove hours to collect his ashes from the funeral home where his body had been delivered. Then she drove another five hours home—nothing was close in the state—where she spoke to him as if he stood there beside her while scattering his ashes to the wind, committing him to the world where he belonged.
The next day, she closed the cabin and stowed the remaining bush plane in the hangar before taking off for training. Now, here she stood, fighting her body’s natural urge to shiver and spasm as the wind blasted over them and ocean waves sprayed them again.
One of the only women left broke free of the line, washing up on shore from the force of the wave. From the corner of Cora’s eye, she saw her stumble from the water and raise a hand to tear the patch off her sleeve.
“Another one bites the dust. Who else wants to quit? You, Hutton? You’ve been dead on your feet for hours.”
“No, I’m not, Instructor.”
“You’re not?”
“I’m fine, Instructor.” She thought of those men trekking through extreme conditions right now, and how they did not back down—ever. She would do the same.
The instructor laughed, appearing at her side. “Why do I believe you, Hutton?”
“Because I’m good, Instructor.” She remembered telling Penn the same—and she meant it, now more than ever. Her body, already strong, had grown stronger. Her skills more honed. She would never miss that shot she’d taken to save Penn now. And her perseverance only built into a soul-deep urge to complete her task.
At the moment, surviving the Pacific was at the top of her list.
Darkness fell. Pax didn’t waver, and neither did she. Two others dropped out. They were on the home stretch—she felt it deep in her bones.
“You uncomfortable yet, Hutton?”
“No, Instructor.” From the beginning, he harassed her most. His words only pushed her to fight more.
“You’re not cold? Hungry? Tired? Are you the only person here who can feel her toes?”
She couldn’t, but she nodded anyway. “I’m fine, Instructor.”
He barked a laugh. “If you make it through this day, I’ll write you a letter of recommendation myself.”
“To whatever team I ask to be assigned to, Instructor?”
He barked a laugh. “Yes, goddammit, any team. You want to be SEAL Team Six? You got it.”
“I want to be assigned to Xtreme Ops in Alaska. Operation Freedom Flag Alaska Tundra, Instructor. Thank you.”
Pax shot her a big grin.
Penn walked through the door of the base. After two months, the place was starting to feel like home. At least he could release the breath he held each time he led the Xtreme Ops on another mission.
After Yahontov, they caught three more traffickers attempting to reach the drop-off point. By now, he knew that stretch of land like the curves of Cora’s body, and when he trekked over ridges, through valleys and the woods where he’d once shared a tent with the woman, he always felt he’d lost a bit of himself to.
He dropped his pack and set his weapon on the rack. Behind him, Lipton entered and did the same. Penn scoped the main room and saw they weren’t alone.
Bringing his heels together, he saluted the colonel.
“Colonel Reinsel, sir. We didn’t know we would expect a briefing the minute we walked through the door, sir,” Penn gave an official response to seeing his superior officer.
“At ease, Captain. All of you, at ease.” The rest of the men had filed inside, and the last to enter closed the door.
“Take a minute to get out of your gear. Shower and then report to me. I’ll be waiting for you in the office, Captain Sullivan.” Colonel Reinsel’s sharp look had Penn wondering what the hell was happening.
The colonel turned and walked into the nearby office. As soon as he closed the door, Lipton leaned toward Penn. “What do you think he wants?” he asked.
“Find out soon enough.”
“Probably giving us walking orders.”
“Maybe he’s giving us a week in the Caribbean. I could fucking use some sun right about now,” Hepburn drawled.
“Yeah, nobody told you Alaska would be cold.” Broshears’ sarcasm had them all chuckling as they headed to the locker room and showers.
Penn stripped off his gear and methodically hung it in the locker for a thorough check when he finished hearing what the colonel had to say. Then he walked into the shower and stood beneath the hot stream.
As usual, the guys bantered or played pranks on each other by turning faucets to cold. But he tuned it all out and let his mind wander to Cora. Now that he had a few free days—at least he hoped—he could call her. Or just show up at her cabin.
Would she see him? After all, she was the one to walk out on him. The worst minute for him wasn’t waking alone or finding her gone from the cabin or even knowing that he loved her beyond anything else in this world.
It was knowing from her expression the last time he made love to her, that she loved him too.
He flicked off the water and grabbed a towel. Minutes later, dried, clothed and sitting at the big table in the office across from Colonel Reinsel, Cora got pushed to the recesses of his mind. Later, when he was alone, he would spend more time with his memories.
The colonel stared at him without pause for a minute. He finally leaned back in his seat. “You’ve done a damn fine job up here, Penn. In the harshest conditions at the worst time of year, you’re making a difference. You’re to be commended.”
Penn blinked. “Thank you, sir. I appreciate the praise.”
“Well deserved. But there’s one major problem I’m seeing here in this team.”
