by Megan Crane
“Is this the part where I pretend that we weren’t having a personal conversation because you’re clearly done with it?” she demanded.
Because maybe neither one of them had their masks on quite as tightly as they normally did. Not today. Not here, where there was too much emotion in the air, like jasmine and rosemary. And things seemed to be far more complicated than they were when they were playing themselves.
Or maybe, came that voice inside her, you both stopped playing parts. For a change.
“If you can’t keep things professional,” Jonas began.
“Give me a break.” She moved closer to him, which was likely a mistake, but she didn’t check herself. She felt as unchecked, unchained, as he had when he’d scowled at her. “I hate to break this to you, Jonas, but you’re actually a person. Can’t help but get personal. It’s right there in the description.”
“Is that what you want?” he demanded, and there was heat and life and fury in his voice, which felt to Bethan like a victory. Like more than a victory. Like a kind of wild bliss, and she didn’t have it in her to pretend otherwise.
“Since when do you care what I want?”
“Maybe a better question is what you want from me.”
He moved then, and suddenly they were standing far too close to each other. All she could think about was his hand, hot and strong and low on her back, though he wasn’t touching her. All she could see was all that fire in his dark gaze and the stern line of his mouth that did absolutely nothing to conceal the sensual curve of his lips.
“You’re possibly the greatest soldier I’ve ever met,” she managed to say, though everything in her was too hot, too tight, too desperate. “But you’re a profoundly stupid man.”
His grin was so dangerous it was practically serrated. “Say that again,” he invited her. “I dare you.”
“None of this has ever been about what I want from you,” she gritted out. “It’s about you. What you want. Or don’t want. What you’re afraid of and what you think—”
“Shut up, Bethan,” he growled at her.
“Why?” she asked, a little wildly. Okay. A lot wildly. So wild it was like the words were appearing of their own accord. “I’ve already tried that. For years. And it still doesn’t help. You march around, glowering and disapproving. You’ve let our colleagues think that we have some kind of sordid history. And why? Because once upon a time, one night in a war zone, you let another person take care of you.”
“Fine,” Jonas snapped. “I’ll shut you up.”
And then he did.
With his mouth.
Ten
It was that freaking dress.
Jonas could have ignored the provocation. He’d been ignoring it for years.
But the Bethan he’d learned how to ignore was always dressed like a soldier. Even when she was off duty in Fool’s Cove, she tended toward the same kind of basic, essentially unisex clothing they all wore. Cargo pants. Tactical gear. Cold-weather staples. If he had to think about it—something he’d obviously avoided like the plague—he would probably conclude that she dressed the way she did deliberately, because she was a woman stuck deep in a job and a life otherwise populated by men. Bethan liked to outrun, outfight, and outshoot men, but she never seemed remotely interested in otherwise courting their attention.
Jonas had only ever seen her in a dress once before, at Blue and Everly’s wedding, but it had been September in Alaska. The dress she’d worn had been long and billowy and she’d worn a long sweater on top of it, so all he’d really had to contend with was the sight of her hair down around her shoulders, too glossy by far.
This was different.
He could see her strong, beautifully shaped legs. And so much skin. And he was only a man, no matter how hard he tried to convince himself otherwise.
Kissing her was like running toward a cliff, then hurling himself off it at top speed.
He knew that the impact was going to hurt. That it might even crush him.
But the falling part was almost too good to bear.
He took her face in his hands and he angled his head, and it was already a disaster in the making, so he thought he might as well make it good.
And maybe, finally, give in to the voices inside him that had been clamoring for something like this for longer than he cared to admit.
She tasted like hope and heat. Her mouth fused to his, slick and hot, and it was almost like getting kicked in the gut.
If there was a way to get kicked in the gut in a good way, that was.
She flowed into him, and that made everything worse. Or better. Because the dress she was wearing was no reasonable barrier at all, and that meant he could feel her.
Everywhere.
Her breasts crushed against his chest. The sweet slope of an abdomen he’d always known was toned but had had the opportunity to study over the past few days, thanks to her running gear. Looking at her had been torture. Feeling her was worse.
Feeling anything at all was a disaster. Ruinous by any metric.
But he didn’t stop.
Because there wasn’t a single thing about kissing Bethan that Jonas didn’t love.
The way she kissed him back. How strong and supple she was, telling him without words that she could take anything he brought her way. Take it, give it back, and together, make this fire burn even higher.
His hands didn’t stay where he put them. He ran them down the length of her back, growling his approval when she arched into him. Then, finally, he got his hands on her bottom, another object of study over the course of years. He didn’t know if she jumped or he hauled her closer, but then she was high in his arms, wrapping her legs tight around his waist.
He kissed her harder, deeper.
And somehow they staggered across the room, and he was tipping her back against the wall so he could hold her there with his chest and devour her.
Because there was nothing breakable about Bethan. He didn’t have to hold himself back. He didn’t have to be careful—and when he tried, because it was his instinct, she bit him.
“Ouch,” he growled against her mouth.
“I’m not fragile,” she replied, and yanked his mouth back to hers.
And there was no way anything should be this good.
It was asking for trouble. For fate to come in and set things to rights.
For once in his life, Jonas didn’t have it in him to care when that other shoe might fall.
Because it wouldn’t be now.
Holding her between him and the wall, he found the bottom of that dress she was wearing. It was frilly and feminine and too much for him to handle even as he pulled it up, over her head, so he could toss it aside.
And then, maybe, he died.
But his resurrection was glorious and he handled it by grinding the hardest part of him into the place where she was so soft she threw her head back and keened a little bit.
And meanwhile, he glutted himself on the view.
Because as he’d always suspected, and pretended he didn’t notice, she was perfect.
Absolutely and utterly perfect, and he thought his mouth was watering.
Her breasts were surprisingly plump and lush, and he realized as he fitted his palms to them that she must spend a significant amount of time clamping them down. He marveled at that as he dispensed with the little bralette she wore, so he could finally hold the weight of her in his hands.
And below, the expanse of her belly was a wonder. She was toned and taut, not so much sporting a six-pack as the suggestion of one, and all of it tight. Pretty, he would have said. Because Bethan wasn’t a skinny girl. She was a warrior. The thighs that gripped him were thick and strong, the way they would have to be. The way his were, too, because what they did demanded strong quads and fearless hamstrings.
He had never wanted a woman so b
adly in his life.
And for a moment, Jonas had to stop and take it in. That this was happening. That everything that had been storming around inside of him for years was real, that she shared it as he’d always known she did, and that there was only one place this was going.
He knew he shouldn’t. He knew he should step away, set her down, and try to regain his equilibrium.
But he didn’t.
He didn’t want to.
“If you stop,” Bethan said then, and there was nothing even or easy about her voice, “I’ll kill you. Not metaphorically.”
And despite himself, Jonas grinned.
Then it was a kind of race, but one where they were both going to win.
He tipped her against the wall again, and held her there. She reached between them, hooked her fingers in the panties she wore, and ripped them straight off her own body.
Jonas didn’t think he’d ever seen anything hotter in his life. His body shook with it.
“I don’t have a condom,” he managed to get out.
“I’m on LARC,” Bethan replied. “Long-acting reversible contraception, suitable for the combat-ready female, of course.” She smiled, wicked and sweet. “An IUD, Jonas. We’re good.”
He couldn’t believe that he’d had the ability to get out a sentence, and that was before he found her sweet, slick center and tested her with his fingers. The evidence of how much she wanted him almost took him to his knees.
Almost.
Then it was as if he’d done this a thousand times before. With her, only her. As if this were a simple thing after all. He reached down to work his own zipper and Bethan lifted herself up, like they’d already plotted out all the angles.
As if their bodies had been ready for this for years.
He pulled himself free, positioned himself, and their eyes locked together.
And slowly, so slowly it made his head spin, he guided himself to her entrance and she lowered herself down to take him in.
It took a lifetime.
It was a revelation, a terrible mistake.
It was perfect.
And as he sheathed himself inside her, Jonas felt completely naked. Even though he knew that he was the one who was still dressed.
“Wait wait wait,” she whispered fiercely, but she didn’t quite make it through the last word before she was arching against him, shaking and shaking, crying out the kind of pleasure he would have said couldn’t exist.
It was too real. Too raw.
Perfect, something in him said again.
When she rocked forward, dropping her head against his shoulder, she was half panting, half laughing.
And Jonas felt drunk on this. On her.
He could die right now and he would actually be happy, for once. Buried deep inside her, where she was so soft, so hot, so his. Her mouth against his neck, all of the power and strength that was Bethan Wilcox spent and sweet and in his arms.
He could hear the alarms inside, telling him to stop now. While he still could. Telling him that it was already too much of a good thing, and that always ended badly.
But instead, Jonas wrapped his arms around her, widened his stance, and began to lift her. Then lower her.
Slowly, at first.
Slowly, as she shuddered against him and flexed a little bit, as if she were going to fight him for control. He knew the exact moment she sighed, then surrendered.
He lifted her, then dropped her, and both of them groaned when the friction and sensation ignited between them, bursting into flame. Then burned, over and over again.
For a long while, there was only that fire. That friction. The look on her face, soft and intent and wild.
And that heedless, hedonistic roar inside him that he’d never felt before. He’d never let it out—he’d never let it get close to his skin. He’d never set himself free like this.
But this was Bethan, and there was no other way to have her. No other option.
Jonas built up his rhythm, prepared to carry on forever, and loving that though he was controlling the depth and the pace, she was anything but passive. He could feel the sleek muscles in her thighs as she helped lift herself, then gripped him hard on the downstroke.
God help him, but it was as if she had been built for him. Built for this.
And that knowledge didn’t strike him like a bolt from the blue. It was obvious. Hardly worth mentioning.
If he was honest, he’d known that the very first second he’d laid eyes on her on a base in a foreign country when they’d both been different people. He’d made different choices then.
This was here. This was now.
If he could have, he would have kept going forever.
But her breath started to catch. All that California sunlight poured into the room and he could see the way a flush washed over her neck and breasts, a glorious tell.
And this time, when she tilted her head back, clamped down on him, and lost it, he found himself jumping off that same cliff behind her.
Because the bottom was going to hurt, he knew that, so at least they could fall together.
He staggered with her to the couch and sat down. Hard.
And for a long while, there were only the two of them, still wrapped around each other like that. He tipped his head back and kept it there, so he could stare at the ceiling as he fought to get his heart rate back within normal limits. Bethan was still gripping him. Her arms were around his neck, her legs around his waist, and she was still holding him deep inside.
He could feel her heart and his as they both beat wildly. It felt the way he’d always imagined joy would.
Then slowly, slowly, they both began to settle.
She sighed and sat back, making Jonas hiss in a breath as another jolt of sensation moved through him. He would have said it wasn’t possible.
Bethan sat upright, a lithe demonstration of the sorts of things she could do with that body of hers. She shoved her hair back, out of her face. Jonas had no intention of making this worse but there he was, reaching over to take a chunk of it and wind it around his finger.
She did nothing to change the fact that he was still deep inside her.
Yet as they gazed at each other, he had to assume that the wariness he saw in her eyes was mirrored in his.
He remembered too much—that was the trouble.
What a gift it would have been if he’d been knocked into a coma. If the trauma had taken his memories from him, but it hadn’t.
He’d been messed up after their vehicle exploded, but not so messed up he couldn’t remember her. And the way she’d looked at him when she’d huddled down next to him and checked his injuries. She hadn’t cried, but her eyes had gone glassy. Something about the way she looked at him now reminded him of that, when neither one of them was hurt.
Or at least, neither one of them had survived a deadly explosion today.
At least not the kind that came with physical scars and six months of rehab.
Jonas found himself sitting there with one hand resting in the crease of her thigh, the other in her hair, like he’d forgotten who he was. Because that could be the only explanation, even if he had the distinct sensation that for the first time, maybe ever, he was the opposite of lost.
But Jonas knew better than to let himself go too far down that road.
The silence dragged out between them. He realized he was expecting Bethan to jump in the way she did, into anything and everything. To say something smart. To say something.
But she didn’t.
All she did was regard him as if it were the first time she’d ever seen him. As if it were that terrible day in that godforsaken desert where he should have died. And then slowly, as if she expected him to block her, she reached over. And instead of helping herself to his hair, she smoothed her fingers over his mouth.
Solemnly, as if she were learning him. Committing him to tactile memory. As if it were an act of great significance, and all of this was—
“I guess this was always coming,” he gritted out, though his voice felt harsh in his throat. And sounded worse, hanging there in the air between them.
Bethan sighed with her whole body, though notably without an actual release of breath. “Are we doing this? Now?”
Everything inside Jonas protested, but it was time for action. Setting his jaw at how little he wanted to leave the hot clasp of her body, he lifted her off and set her aside, then rolled up to his feet. He zipped himself up, ordered himself to get a grip, and it was like it never happened.
Until he turned around and saw that Bethan was just . . . naked. Kneeling on the couch where he’d put her, looking perfectly at her ease. And watching him with a kind of knowledge in those distractingly green eyes of hers that he did not like at all.
“I accept that this was likely inevitable,” he said, as coolly as he could. “I think we can both be grateful that this happened when there were no other Alaska Force members around. Easier to keep a lid on it that way.”
“And keeping a lid on it is our goal here?”
He didn’t like her tone. Because it was too much like a drawl with something like humor in it, and it took an act of supreme will to keep his hands from curling into fists.
“I’m not in the habit of sleeping with people I serve with.”
“Good news, then. We’re not serving.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“I think you know it’s not.”
His jaw ached. He stopped gritting his teeth. “That’s a debate with no end. Alaska Force is what you put into it. For me, it’s the same.”
“I’m not surprised to hear that,” she replied quietly, and he wished that she would get up and put some clothes on. That she would show any hint of the storms that were going off inside of him, one after the next, like a chain of apocalyptic events.
But instead, she just knelt there. Beautifully naked. He could see the flush on her skin. Her nipples were still hard. But while he was wound so tight he thought he might detonate, she looked . . . relaxed.
