Gifts of Honor: Starting from ScratchHero's Homecoming

by Gail, Stacy

“Now there’s a smile I can work with.” Instead of moving inside, he stared at her as if he were trying to memorize every line and curve of her face. The intensity of his attention was enough to stall out the basic biomechanics she used for breathing, and when a heated glow ignited in her cheeks she put a hand up to cover it. A blush. Good grief, the man could make her blush just by looking at her. How was that even fair?

  In an effort to hide her reaction that no doubt rivaled the red glow of Rudolph’s nose, she turned away to shrug out of her coat. “Do you need any help with that?”

  “No worries, I’ve got this.” Sully hauled the tree inside and zeroed in on the empty space in front of the windows. “Would you mind getting those bags on the landing? I’ll have this baby up in no time.”

  Now that she’d agreed to have a hint of Christmas in her personal space, Lucy was surprised to find herself smiling as she dragged in the bags. Her smile bloomed to a delighted grin when she found they were full of not just ornaments but also garland, white lights, candy canes and a silver star tree topper.

  “Looks like I’m going to have a red-and-white tree.” Looking around at all the decorations she’d unpacked while Sully wrestled the tree into a stand and filled the reservoir with water, she breathed in the invigorating scent of pine. “I have to say, I’m impressed. Most guys don’t think about being color-coordinated when it comes to this sort of thing.”

  “Don’t be too impressed. I just bought everything in your favorite color in the hope that it’d help me crawl my way back into your good graces.”

  That he was worried about her graces at all made her defenses threaten to blow over house-of-cards style. “You could have saved yourself loads of money by simply apologizing for implying I’ve been sleeping around. Not that there’s anything wrong with a healthy sex drive, but in all honesty my drive has been pretty much stuck in neutral for a while now.” Holy crap, did she really just say that?

  His brows shot up while the rest of him went still. “So...you’ve given up both Christmas and sex? Man, I really did a number on you, didn’t I?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.” She had to laugh at his worried expression, then felt her skin heating up once again when his attention wandered to her mouth. “So, are we putting this tree up, or what?”

  “If you’ll keep smiling at me, I’ll do whatever you want.” The netting still held the tree’s branches in place, and he gave her a wary side-eye. “You’re not going to freak if moths fly out of this one, are you?”

  She hunted down a pair of utility scissors and handed them over. “I guarantee that not only will I freak, I’ll also scream like I’m being murdered by Freddy Krueger.”

  “They’re moths, Luce. The worst they can do is eat your tweed.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I don’t have any. Tweed is the devil’s material, and moths are his fluttery, dusty minions that want to steal my soul.” Then she tilted her head. “Also, I don’t like them.”

  “No kidding, really?”

  “Hold on. I need to prepare for this.” Popping over to the storage closet near the kitchen, she searched through various cleaning supplies, almost got beaned by a menacing ironing board, and surfaced with a flyswatter. “Okay. Let ’er rip.”

  He watched her take a textbook batter’s stance. “Wow. Could you hold that pose while I get my phone out? I’ve got to take a picture of this.”

  “Try it and I’ll show you how pretty my middle finger is. Are you going to let the moths out, or what?”

  “Will you relax? I’m sure we used up all our bad moth mojo last year.”

  “I hope so.”

  “This year it’s probably hornets.”

  “Oh, my dear God in heaven.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun putting up a Christmas tree.” With a grin, Sully fiddled a bit with a branch poking out of the netting. “Enjoying holiday traditions while terrorizing you all at the same time. It doesn’t get any better than this.”

  “In another five seconds, I’m going to terrorize you with this swatter if you don’t get that netting off.”

  “Now, now. Just because it’s Christmas Eve-Eve doesn’t mean Santa isn’t still on the lookout for bad girls and boys.”

  “Then this bad girl is doomed for sure.” Just to make sure she landed on the Naughty list, she swatted his bottom. “Come on, I can’t take the suspense.”

  A wicked laugh escaped him as he sliced the netting open. Lucy held her breath, eyes wide-open and ready for anything, so when something flew straight at her she squealed, flailed with the swatter and skittered backward all at once. As a spaz attack, it was a doozy, so she probably shouldn’t have been surprised when she lost her balance on the edge of an area rug and tipped backward. Sully leaped forward to catch her, and they crashed to the floor together in a tangle of legs, arms and one badly wielded flyswatter.

  “It was just a branch I snapped off,” Sully gasped as they sprawled on the rug. He reached over somewhere above her head and showed her the teeny evergreen stem that had flown her way. “See? I thought it’d be funny, so—”

  “You threw that?” She gaped at the terrifying twig before she burst out laughing. “Geez, I thought it was a bat!”

  He laughed down at her, eyes alight. “You are, without a doubt, the easiest person in the world to scare.”

  “Wait, don’t talk to me yet. My heart’s still trying to beat me to death.”

  “Is it really?” Still grinning, he pressed his hand flat against her chest.

  For a second the world went quiet. It was as if every living thing held its breath as their sudden closeness hit her senses with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. His knee wedged in between hers as she lay on her back. His weight lounged with a breathtaking familiarity on her right side while his arm and hand rested along the center of her torso. The heat radiating from him was intoxicating; it flooded through the negligible barriers of their clothing to stimulate every nerve ending into hyperawareness. It was almost as though his body heat alone was enough to brand her with an invisible mark, a sensation she’d forgotten about but was brought back to vivid life now that he touched her even in an innocently intimate way.

  Though, really, there was very little innocence in the hand resting between her breasts.

  The thrum of her heart didn’t decrease. If anything, its tempo sped up to the level of stress-test madness. Her gaze jerked to his, and in that instant she saw in his eyes the same beautiful chaos—the surprise, the hunger and even a hint of resigned knowledge that this was probably the most idiotic thing they could do. In fact, if there were such a thing as a stupid scale, letting this progress any further would be on a par with playing with matches next to a vat of gasoline. They were divorced. He couldn’t remember her. And though she kept trying to turn off her heart and move on, she didn’t know how to stop reveling in his touch.

  So, yeah. This was stupid. But it was going to happen. And after a year of lonely solitude, it was going to be great.

  But first, for the sake of what was left of her sanity, she had to try to set the parameters.

  “You know what we need to do?” The moment she spoke he shifted his weight so that it lay more heavily on her, his thigh coming to rest with a sensually provocative friction between hers. It was almost as if he feared she might try to get away. “We need to make a deal.”

  “A deal?” He had somehow leaned in without her noticing, his mouth hovering over hers. Hovering—not touching. Until that moment, she never knew the anticipation of a kiss could be painful. “You have my attention.”

  And boy howdy, did he have hers. “I was thinking...”

  “Bad idea.” His lips grazed hers, while his hand slid down to dip under the hem of her sweater. Their sighs mingled when skin sizzled against skin. “Thinking should be outlawed at times like this.”

 
“You’ll like this deal.”

  “Mmm. You have the most beautiful eyes. Sky eyes. Have I ever told you that?”

  A shaft of pain zipped through her, and it was enough to clear her fuzzy thoughts. “Yes. And that’s what the deal’s about. We’re not going to bring the past into this. This isn’t Lucy and Sullivan 2.0. This isn’t trying to recapture something that no longer exists. There are no expectations or thoughts of happy endings. This is just sex. A biological urge with no emotion involved. And once we’re done, I want your ass out of here like nothing ever happened and you can once again forget I exist. Agreed?”

  “Sex with no strings attached? Sounds like every guy’s fantasy.”

  It was probably going to wind up a nightmare, but there was no turning back. “Agreed?”

  For a moment irritation surfaced in his eyes. “Ever thought you might not want me to get my ass out of here after this?”

  Yes. “No. Agreed?”

  “Dammit...fine.” And with that he covered her mouth with his.

  Chapter Eight

  Sweet lassitude sank into Lucy like a euphoria-inducing drug, and if she was honest with herself she’d admit it was bolstered by the relief of setting the rules. Not for him, but for herself. More than anything, she needed the ironclad reminder this wasn’t some sappy-sweet love story. It was the sexual equivalent of scratching an itch. Satisfying, but forgotten about by tomorrow.

  Because it didn’t mean anything. It was best to hang the heart and all its tender yearnings on the outside of this stolen time together. She was only too happy to do it; after taking countless potshots over the past year, it was past time to take that abused organ out of the emotional shooting gallery.

  But oh, his mouth...

  Maybe it was because she’d believed she would never be close to Sully again that made his kisses so extraordinary now. His lips were firm, bolder than she remembered, and the thrust of his tongue tempted hers into a blatantly erotic dance of give-and-take. Heat simmered in her veins as he moved to cover her, and the solidity of his body and the unmistakable hardness behind his zipper had her thoughts spinning in a kind of fevered delirium. A thrill flashed through her at the proof of how much he wanted her, and with a hunger that made her breathless she rubbed her hips against his stiffened flesh.

  A broken groan rumbled from deep in his chest. The sound kicked her excitement up all the more, and she arched her back to help when he tugged her sweater up and over her head. Seconds later his button-down shirt joined it, with Sully so impatient to be free he only unfastened it halfway before he too pulled it over his head. An appreciative sigh whispered out of her at the glimpse she got of his torso before he greedily returned to her mouth. Even in high school Sully had been the picture of fitness, wiry with defined muscles under golden skin that begged her hands to touch. Then when he’d come out of sixty-one hellish days of Ranger School he’d been a lean, mean fighting machine that sent her straight into overdrive. His was a body that had often made her wish she had the talent to sculpt, and even more often had her jumping his damn bones every chance she got.

  The year that separated her from the last time she’s enjoyed the luxury of having him as her lover had hardly changed him in her eyes, though there were changes. But his pure male beauty was as it had always been—raw and unashamed. The sweep of his shoulders was a sturdy expanse, and the ridge of his collarbone, now more prominent, tempted her mouth to nip and suckle. A smattering of brown hair roughened the hollow created by his pectorals, and she couldn’t get enough of that masculine texture. She rubbed a savoring palm over it, purrs of enjoyment murmuring from her before she moved on to drag worshipping hands along the ladder of his rib cage.

  The goose bumps that broke out in the wake of her touch pleased her no end, as did the shattered sound he couldn’t seem to stifle. She smiled against his lips, and that seemed to inspire him to fight for an inch of distance between their mating mouths.

  “Your turn,” he breathed, and she couldn’t figure out if it was a threat or a promise.

  The barriers of clothing were now nothing more than a nuisance and quickly conquered. Wherever flesh was uncovered, Sully’s devouring mouth was eager to explore, from the globes of her rose-tipped breasts to the subtle jut of hipbone he revealed as he removed her panties. When the last of her clothing was removed Sully drank her in as if he were helpless to do anything else, as if somewhere inside him he’d been brought to his knees. As if he’d found the one thing in this world he wanted to worship.

  Her skin tingled under that tangible, mesmerized gaze, her nipples tightening almost painfully. No woman in the world had ever felt more wanted than she did in that moment.

  “Damn.” The minor profanity that escaped him sounded more like a prayer. “You make me forget I need to breathe, Lucy.”

  She didn’t want to think about all the things he’d forgotten. “I guess I shouldn’t feel self-conscious, then?”

  The very thought seemed to leave him aghast. “You’re so beautiful I’d be in favor of keeping you this way for all time, if it weren’t for the fact that I don’t want anyone else seeing you.”

  “Not to mention it’d be a bit chilly.” She slid a hand over the strong column of his denim-clad thigh, and she wondered if he could feel how her fingers trembled. “Are you going to get naked, or am I the only one who’s going to have any fun around here?”

  For an answer he kicked off the remainder of his clothing, only to pause. “I don’t even know if I have protection with me or not.”

  “I never stopped taking the Pill, so unless you’ve been leading a wildly promiscuous life during your recovery, we’re good to go.”

  “Rehab and promiscuity don’t exactly go together.” The rigidity of his muscles screamed of the tension she sensed in him as he settled over her. He caressed her everywhere—her stomach, her breasts, the outer line of her thighs—as if he was on a mission to learn her through touch alone. He held himself on a wire-taut leash of restraint, and the frenzy she sensed building within him made her shiver in dizzy anticipation. The need to have him inside her spawned an urgent pulse within the cleft between her legs, the intimate flesh growing wet with a desire that made her squirm for more.

  He settled in the cradle of her thighs, and the weight of him was delicious, both familiar in the feel and utterly new in the way he touched her. His hands were greedy as they slid up her ribs to her breasts, filling his palms with the sensitized flesh and rubbing the peaks until holding still became an impossibility. She moved under him, caught in that magnificent space between his body and the rug, the urgent hunger intensifying the molten heat of her sex. The demand for him to fill her was fast slipping into the realm of wanton madness. She whispered his name into his mouth as his tongue tormented hers, and without a hint of shyness she guided his hand between them to the juncture of her thighs.

  “Now.” It was all she could manage, the excitement was so intense. “Now.”

  She released his hand only to close her own around his searing hot, iron-hard flesh. A harsh cry grated out from between his bared teeth even as his fingers slid through the veil of brown curls to explore her most intimate place. She gasped, a ragged sound that tore the near-silence of the loft in two when he slid between the swollen, wet folds of her sex. Urgently she rubbed the supersensitive ridge of his manhood to bring him into the world of sensation in which she was fast losing herself, and thrilled with triumph as he pumped into her hand. Her hips lifted and retreated in the same mating rhythm, both a plea for him to be inside her and a quest to get more delight out of the fleeting caress. Sparks of rapture toyed with her. When he found the blood-engorged center of her desire he stroked her hard, wrenching an agonized moan from her as she writhed with shattered helplessness.

  “Too much.” Oh God, she couldn’t be this close to losing it. She’d wanted it to last, this one-shot, never-again miraculous replay
of a life she’d once had. She wanted to wallow in this last gift fate had decided to bestow on her. The one thing she didn’t want to do was rush through it, not when every second was so precious...

  Her muscles clenched to withhold the inevitable, the ecstasy folding in on itself, deepening, intensifying. Blindly she dug her fingers into the rounded flesh of his ass and pulled him hard against her, the need for him to be inside her reaching the levels of screaming insanity. He gave her what she wanted by urging her legs wider, and without breaking the merciless cadence of his fingers stimulating her most sensitive point, thrust into her slick depths.

  Her cry was a sound of sweet devastation, her head flung back on the rug and neck arched with strain. Sullivan was all she could think, oblivious that her voice echoed his name as if it was the center of the universe, and for her it was. God help her, no matter how hard she fought it or tried to ignore it, he would always be her center.

  The rolling of his hips was an intoxicating symphony of motion. The glide of flesh against flesh, at first almost graceful, grew to a ragged frenzy with each thrust. Exquisitely impaled and accepting now that she couldn’t hold back the rapturous heights that even now encroached on the edges of her consciousness, she locked her legs around his back, tilting her pelvis up to deepen the angle of penetration.

  Shivery delirium threatened to snap both her spine and her sanity. Pleasure tightened, spinning ever downward and with such purity it was excruciating. When it shattered at last, her cries were drowned out by Sully’s, his orgasm hitting mere seconds before hers. Even as her depths convulsed on his hardness and milked him into what seemed to be another, wilder release, she knew that as a last hurrah, it couldn’t have been any more perfect.

  Lucy probably shouldn’t have been surprised that she’d fallen asleep after what might have been the best sex she’d ever had. But when a faint jostling dragged her eyes open, the loft was completely dark, save for the glow of the festive street decorations below. A heavy arm was draped over her waist and a hair-rough leg had her knee trapped in place. She shivered in the cool air and realized that was what had awakened her. Sully had pulled her closer for warmth, and for a suspended moment she drank in the peace of the moment.