by Gail, Stacy
She turned her head and traced Sully’s features in the muted light. How many times had she watched him sleep? In the past she’d often wondered if every spouse with a loved one in the military watched over them while they had the chance—memorizing the curve of cheek, where each and every freckle was, the length of lash. She knew Sully’s face better than she knew her own. That wasn’t surprising. He’d always been her truest treasure.
But she had never been his.
God, she hated facing that. Part of her would never be all right with it. It was like something vital had been crippled inside her. But at least she could now limp forward, making an uneasy peace with the reality that Sully had never loved her in the same way she’d loved him. Of course he had loved her, in his own way. This conclusion she’d been forced to come to wasn’t the result of some pathetically maudlin pity party. It was just a simple fact. If he’d loved her as deeply as she’d adored him, he never would have plunged her back into the unique hell that was the interminable wait for a combat soldier to come home. If their roles had been reversed, and she’d been the one to be so cavalier with her own life, would he have been as devastated? Somehow she didn’t think so.
It was difficult, when she was calm, to fault Sully for his priorities. He’d been compelled by his sense of duty and a passionate love of country to make a stand when so many others didn’t. She couldn’t help but admire that. It took a special strength of will to put devotion to duty over the love of wife, home and family, and to sacrifice his own safety for the sake of others. As angry and dismayed as she’d been that he’d chosen to once again put himself in the line of fire—only to have everything about her erased from his memory—she was still so in awe at his selflessness and the selflessness of those who made the same choice. No matter how it had wound up for their marriage, there was no denying Sullivan Jax was a truly great man.
It took some stealthy maneuvering, but she managed to work her way out from under his weight, fetched her robe from where she’d left it on the bathroom door hook and dragged the brilliant red comforter off her bed. With great care she settled it over him, then turned toward the open kitchen to heat some milk for hot chocolate. Before she could take a step, however, a hand snaked out and grabbed her ankle in an iron grip.
She froze. In a heartbeat she was back to when he was screaming and throwing whatever he could to make her run for cover. There had been such violence in him that the doctors had warned her to never get close enough for him to get his hands on her. His ferocity had abated over time, but she’d been warned to keep her guard up.
Too bad she’d forgotten about that whole guard-up thing until now.
“My name is Lucy Crabtree. Your name is Sullivan Jax, Sully to your friends.” The phrase came automatically while the rest of her remained unmoving, not even daring to look at him. Sudden moves had set him off in the past. “I’m a friend. You’re safe. Nothing can hurt you here. I’m going to move away from you now, and you’re going to let me go.”
“You don’t have to talk to me like I’m a two-year-old.” The fingers that held her suddenly became caressing, his thumb rubbing over the inside of her ankle. “That had a ring of familiarity to it. Did you say something like that when you’d come to visit me?”
“The doctors thought it might help calm your agitation.” It didn’t. Nothing did, except her absence. With her heart climbing down from its frozen perch in her throat, her blood stubbornly remained iced over in a shaky aftershock of adrenaline, and she didn’t know how to thaw herself out. “We fell asleep. It’s a lot later than I thought.”
“It’s not that late,” he mumbled around a jaw-cracking yawn before tickling a playful finger under the sensitive arch of her foot. “Come here and help me keep warm.”
“No, thank you.” She despaired over the brittle ice engulfing not just her insides, but her words. Dammit. She didn’t want to be like this, so guarded against any harm he might fling her way. He wasn’t going to do that now, so why couldn’t she get out from under all this ice? “This was fun, Sullivan. But you need to go now. A deal’s a deal.”
There was a heartbeat of silence before his hand let go of her ankle. In an instant she continued on to the kitchen, her movements robotic as she hit the pendant light over the island and dug out the milk and cocoa. A relieved breath eased out of her when she heard him get to his feet, only to jump like a startled cat when his strong arms, covered in her comforter, wrapped around her from behind, enclosing her in a cocoon of warmth.
“Hey.” His voice against her ear was so tender it almost shattered her. “You know what? You sound cold.”
Funny how he’d picked up on that. “I get that way from time to time.”
“Totally understandable.” His mouth moved in a slow side-to-side caress over her hair next to her ear. Gentle. Undemanding. “Do you want me to warm you up?”
“No.” Then she shook her head, torn between the instinct to protect herself and the need to get the hell out of the frozen cocoon that was slowly suffocating her. “I don’t know.”
“Okay. I get that.” The arms around her began to rock her, as if she were a terrified child. “Maybe I can help you with that. Do you like the cold, sweetheart?”
What a question. “I hate it. I hate it so much.”
“Again, totally understandable.” He gave her a squeeze, as if rewarding her for the correct answer. “When a person feels cold, they often feel alone. No one likes that.”
She swallowed hard and didn’t respond. How could she, when she was wrestling with a knot lodged in her throat that was the size of a grapefruit?
“When I hold you like this, does it help with the cold?”
She focused on loosening up her vocal chords. “Yes.”
“Excellent. That’s understandable too. There’s only one thing I don’t understand.”
Lucky him. She hadn’t been clear on a damn thing for a while now. “What?”
“Just now you said I’m Sully to my friends, and that matches what I remember.” His tone was light, companionable, even as he drew her to lean back against him in such a calm and unhurried way she almost didn’t notice it. “Even to my dad I’ve always been Sully. But from the beginning you’ve called me Sullivan. Why is that, sweetheart?”
“I don’t know.” Without her bidding, her mind went back to a time long ago at Pauline’s, when she’d almost choked on a maraschino cherry and their first kiss. “You asked me to call you Sullivan on our first date, though I’ve never known why it seemed so important to you. If—if you’d prefer that I call you Sully—”
“No, don’t. I like it.” His face dropped to the curve of her neck and she felt more than heard him breathe deeply. “You know what else I like? The way you smell. Sweetness and spice. So warm and irresistible. I don’t want to breathe unless I’m breathing you in. Every time I get near you, I’m overwhelmed by the craving to devour you.”
A shiver moved through her before she could gather the strength to stifle it, and it didn’t help that she knew he felt it. It also didn’t help that the unmistakable thrust of his erection prodded the small of her back, and that it turned both her will and her knees to jelly. There was nothing wrong with wanting him, she thought as sanity once again took a backseat to the desire his seductive touch sparked. If they were a normal couple starting from square one, there was nothing wrong with exploring the fierce attraction between them. This was healthy. This was normal. This was...
Thawing her out.
Finally.
“I’m not quite sure if your interest has to do with me or with how I smell.” A thrill of feminine triumph shot like an arrow through her as he rubbed his hardened length against her, and no force on earth could have stopped her pressing the curve of her butt firmly into him until he groaned. “Are you sure you’re not confusing what you might be feeling for me with a craving for my cookies?”
“As good as your cookies are, I guarantee I don’t get this excited over them. You’re the one who makes me so hard I can barely stand.” His breathing was gratifyingly labored as he nuzzled her hair away to capture her unadorned lobe with his mouth. His lips closed over it, his teeth tenderly holding it in place while his tongue played with it, and it was such a sensual sensation her head fell back against his shoulder before she was aware of the action.
“Oh. Wow.” Her eyes fluttered closed to better focus on the pleasure of his mouth, the last of the resistant ice melting away under the mindless bliss of his touch. “Either you’re remembering what I like, or you just happened to hit a lucky bull’s-eye in finding what turns me on.”
His chuckle was low and filled with enough sensual promise to melt the polar ice caps. “Unless you have an objection, I’m curious to see what else I can hit.” With a smile lingering in his velvety lover’s voice, he tugged at the robe’s sash.
Chapter Nine
Sully could hardly hear anything except the thunder of his heart. As much as he wanted to think it was pure desire for the woman now leaning into his chest and rubbing against him like a cat, he couldn’t fool himself into believing that was the only reason behind his disturbed pulse. Not when he was still recovering from a mouth-drying, mind-numbing fear.
This terror had struck several times since he’d been back. When Lucy left him after he’d returned her scarf, and again when she’d ditched him outside The Dirty Duck. There’d even been hints of it when she’d mentioned untying knots. Each time he’d tried to label that fear response as part of the damage he’d received, a mental crossed wire of not wanting to be alone and getting that all screwed up with being helpless and lost. But now...there was no wiggle room for interpretation here.
The alarm that kept slamming into him had everything to do with Lucy. There was just something about her leaving him that hit his internal panic button.
In a way that was understandable. He’d never known a greater perfection than when he was buried deep inside her. It wasn’t just sex. It was like poetry and a welcoming and an absolute joy that could only be equated to finally coming home. It was as though he’d at long last found the place where he belonged. When he was plunging inside her while watching her moan and writhe with feverish delight—that was his definition of what it was to be complete. To be happy. He had no clue if he’d ever known that feeling before. All he knew was that it was rare enough that it shouldn’t be dismissed.
She kept trying to do just that when she fought for distance, and while he resented it, he hadn’t lied when he said he understood. Despite what she might have expected, it was clear this was no one-night stand between two strangers who could easily part ways once the sun came up. With every pulse-tripping moment that passed, they tangled the already-complicated situation between them with a passion so hot it might not ever be extinguished. But since he didn’t have the power to simplify things by changing past events, this was how it had to be for the time being. Somehow, they’d just have to be strong enough to get through it together, and move on from this point.
The key word being together. He couldn’t do it alone, and he wasn’t about to leave her to fend for herself. That precious fire he kept getting glimpses of in her eyes would snuff out forever, buried by the coldness she hated but didn’t seem to know how to avoid.
He knew how to avoid it. And if he just kept reaching for her, he’d find a way to save her from that icy aloneness.
“It’s nice to know your pretty earlobes are one of your erogenous zones.” He enjoyed sucking on the pearly smooth bit of flesh before kissing the delicate hollow behind her ear. “But I’d be willing to bet I once had all your magic spots memorized. Am I right?”
“Hmm.” A humming sigh eased from her as she arched her neck give him better access. “I never had any complaints.”
“That’s nice to hear.” Sully lifted the weight of her hair off her nape, briefly tickling the pale skin he found there with the silky-soft ends of her tresses. A thrill of victory shot through him when her head lolled forward in an obvious sign of pleasure. “I have an idea I think you’re going to like.”
“An idea?” He had to smile at the thread of wariness that crept into her otherwise-softened tone. She knew him far too well to ever be taken completely by surprise, but that was all right. It wouldn’t stop him from trying. “Let’s hear it.”
“I have a plan on how I should go about reeducating myself on what does and doesn’t please you. I want to learn what makes you sigh, and what makes you gasp. What makes you moan, and what makes you scream.”
“Ah.” He had a feeling she wanted to say more, but at that moment he decided to see how well she liked having first his lips, then his tongue along the tender skin of her nape. Her helpless shiver spoke volumes. “That’s...ooh. Quite an idea. If it had a like button, I’d definitely click on it.”
Even to his ears, his hum of laughter sounded like sin. “Good, because my idea is very much like that. I might not be able to provide any like buttons for you, but I can offer up something similar. When you were a kid, did you ever play the game of hot-and-cold?”
When she dragged her heavy-lidded eyes open to lock on him, his heart skipped a beat. “Yes. What does a kid’s game have to do with what’s poking me in my back?”
Oh, what a naughty handful she was. “We’re going to play the adult version of it.”
“You don’t say. What are the rules?”
“Pretty much the same as the kiddie version. I start looking for one of your erogenous zones. You tell me whether I’m hot or cold.”
Her smile was so hot it nearly threatened to melt his knees. “You’re a big boy now. I think you know where the important hot spots are.”
“But I don’t know all of them.” With the sash undone, he pulled the robe’s front panels aside. The comforter he had draped over himself dropped to the floor as he drifted slow hands through the opening to splay over her stomach. “What about here? Am I hot or cold?”
For a moment he thought she wasn’t going to play along. Then she skimmed caressing fingertips over one of his hands. A sweet invitation for more if there ever was one. “Not cold. Warmish.”
“I see.” It was amazing how her touch ignited a flare of invisible fire along his skin. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the tracks of her stroking fingers glowed neon red along his skin. “I have so many directions from which to choose. Which way should I go—up, down or sideways?”
“Indecision is so not sexy.”
“Good point. Let’s try...this.” The glide of his hands over her ribs brushed the undersides of her breasts, reveling in the crushed silk feel of the skin her found there. “Is this still just...warmish?”
“You’re getting hotter.” She arched into his hands, trying to fit herself into his palms. “Definitely hotter.”
“Excellent.” Since it was a trend he wanted to continue, he palmed the pert, rounded flesh of her breasts and lifted them to test their delicate weight. His thumbs caressed the lush outer swells, fascinated by the living silk gliding beneath his touch. “Getting warmer?”
“So much warmer.” The fingers that trailed, feather light, over his hands tightened to guide him to the hard-tipped peaks. “Hot.”
“You’re breaking the rules if you guide me.” But the last thing he’d do was complain about her open sensuality, and he rewarded her boldness with tracing the puckered aureole before gently pinching the pebbled flesh. Her hands remained on his, beseeching him without words to give her more.
He’d always considered himself a giver.
Her robe was an unnecessary veil he could no longer tolerate. He threw it without looking toward an island stool, not caring if it made it or not. All that mattered was how she shivered when he again exposed her nape and trailed his tongue down the indentation of her spine. She curled
forward, bracing her weight on the island to better expose her back to his ministrations, her position one of absolute surrender. Her submission punched into his system like a drug, thundering a primitive, chest-beating triumph through his veins. Sully never would have considered himself to be an addictive personality. But just by giving herself to him, Lucy made him a hardcore junkie, forever hooked on the rush of taking her as his.
He buried his mouth against the curve of her neck while once again claiming the roundness of her breasts. Damn his brain for forgetting their feminine perfection. He’d be willing to bet he’d spent many happy hours simply fondling her and if he hadn’t, he damn well was going to make up for lost time. But even as he did so, he nudged a knee in between her legs to widen her stance, and the new position flattened her torso on the island counter, the graceful rise of her ass backing up into his hips.
In that moment she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
“Let’s see how hot you can get.” With the game now more serious than his next breath, Sully dragged one hand from the bounty of her breasts to slide to the juncture of her thighs, dipping into the cleft to test her readiness. Her body jolted beneath him at the touch, as if brushed with a live wire. Her damp heat scorched him and her hips rotated with greedy urgency against his hand when he made contact with the nub of her desire.
“Sullivan.” His mind spun drunkenly when she whimpered his name, sounding near tears. Never before had he been more inspired to make a woman cry. “Harder.”
“I asked for the word hot, not harder.” But he couldn’t blame her for not sticking to the rules, not when she was pumping against him as if she wanted to burn the first layer of skin off his fingers with the friction. He sucked in a ragged breath, a useless bid for control while his dick throbbed so hard he felt like an overblown balloon about to pop. But he had to control the rampaging need to plunge into her like a beast. When she’d still been determined to cut him off after the explosive sex they’d had earlier, he knew he had to find a way to convince her to leave the door open for him. To get her hooked was the only way he could think of, even if that meant deepening his own craving for her, the woman who was—
