Enemy Zone: Enemies-to-Lovers Standalone Healing-Love Military Romance (Trident Rescue)

by Alex Lidell

  “I don’t like who I am without you,” he said into her hair, the truth spilling uncontrolled from his lips. “I need you.”

  “I need you too,” she whispered so quietly that he could barely make out the words, as if she were admitting some colossal secret. Somewhere in the background, the sound of Addie’s footsteps approached the door, which opened and closed with a soft click. Sky turned her face up toward him, all big blue eyes and vulnerable uncertainty.

  It was all Cullen could do to keep himself from pressing his mouth over hers, but one twitch of his shoulder was enough to remind him what happened when wounds festered. A shudder of fear ran through him, the thought of losing Sky just moments after getting her back making his heart race, but he made himself speak anyway. “Please tell me what happened in New York. I need to hear it from you.”

  Sky pulled back, but he wouldn’t let her go. Not even an inch. His thumb grazed her neck in gentle encouragement.

  The story came, starting innocently enough, but ending with Cullen shaking in rage. She’d been assaulted, betrayed, drugged—a fact that she still didn’t know—and thrown to the curb to let a bunch of misogynistic assholes keep their cocks happy.

  “I’m sorry,” Cullen said. And damn it, he was. Sorry for not having listened. For not having been there to stop it. Sorry he hadn’t killed Jaden when he’d had the chance. “I can’t change what happened, Sky, but I promise there will never be a time I don’t listen. Not again. Not ever.”

  A cautious smile touched Sky’s face, lighting the room. “That sounds almost docile,” she whispered, her fingers sliding tentatively along his face.

  “I promised to listen,” said Cullen. “Not to agree.”

  She snorted softly. Wonderfully. Then paused, biting her lip. “While we’re on apologies… I’m sorry about looking through the account. Everything pointed so strongly to you being with Addie that I —”

  “With Addie?” Cullen paused for a second, looking at the door to the motel room through which Adrianna had shown herself out as he tried to work out what Sky might mean. “She’s family. Like a sister.”

  “I know.” Sky drew a short breath. “She told me. I’m sorry to have assumed without asking.”

  “We’ll both do better next time,” Cullen said. Because there would be a next time. Many, many next times, if he had his way. Now that he had Sky in his arms, he wasn’t letting her go.

  “There is one other thing.” Reaching into her purse, Sky pulled out a packet of stapled papers, the motel’s logo at the top suggesting they’d just been printed at the business center downstairs.

  “What is it?” Cullen blinked at the small text, images and graphs filling the pages with complicated-looking research into military tactics.

  “A postaction analysis on the effects of field medical hospitals for indigenous populations in the Middle East and Central Asian theaters,” Sky said primly, then softened her tone. “What all that gobbledygook says is that even though the Taliban and other bastards attacked field hospitals, the medical mission saved lives. You saved lives, Cullen Hunt. More lives than you know.”

  His breath stilled. He’d said no more than a few words to Sky about his nightmare, but she’d listened to every one.

  “Anyway…” Sky swallowed. “I wanted to leave this with you.”

  “Leave?” the word escaped him. He couldn’t help it. Did she mean leave the paper or leave? Fuck. He didn’t think he could bear it. “I… I don’t want you to.”

  Sky bit her lip. “I don’t either. But I can’t do this halfway. You have to let me in, Cullen. No holds barred.”

  “You might not like what you see,” Cullen whispered. “I don’t.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” Reaching forward, Sky put her palm against his cheek. “I know research studies won’t chase away the dreams, but we will. One night at a time.”

  Cullen released his breath slowly, his face leaning into Sky’s touch. The woman saw so deeply into him that it scared him shitless. But if there was anyone in the world he wanted at his side as he took the steps to healing, it was her.

  Sliding his grip to cup the back of Sky’s head, Cullen sealed his mouth over her lips, the energy of the connection blasting through him like a lightning strike. Like a billion volts of electricity cascading across every synapse of his brain, every nerve in his system. This was how it always was with Sky. Powerful. Magnetic. Soul-wrenchingly raw.

  36

  Sky

  Heat rushes through me, my mouth yielding to Cullen’s claiming kiss. The powerful taste of him fills my senses, rousing a deep primal need for more. More connection. More power. More him.

  My breath quickening, I meet his tongue with mine and feel the rumble of approval vibrating through his chest. My hands come up, gripping either side of his thick torso, the skin smooth over hard chiseled muscles beneath.

  As soon as my fingers close around him, Cullen takes over, not only with his mouth but with his entire massive frame. He steps into me, his hips pressing into mine, his chest brushing against the tips of my bunching nipples. Sizzles of heat and need spiral from my aching chest, heading all the way down to my sex, moisture already slicking my folds.

  “Your shoulder,” I rasp, pulling away from the kiss, my mind struggling to get a grip on reality.

  “My cock hurts a great deal more just now,” Cullen punctuates his words with a crass grunt in my ear, grinding his pulsing hardness against me in undeniable proof. His finger slides beneath my jacket and sweater, the rough skin of his calloused fingers sliding along my bare flesh as he takes my mouth again with renewed force.

  His palms skim my stomach and slide backward along my hips and spine, dragging upward until, with a single deft flick, Cullen unhooks my bra. The lacey material slides down beneath my clothes, teasing my skin and making my sex clench hungrily at the promise of what’s to come.

  Something about the bra’s fall feels decadent to me, wanton. As hot as the erection bruising my hipbone. Cullen runs his cheek along my neck, his stubble grazing my skin, and God, I want more.

  I want everything.

  I run my tongue along Cullen’s clavicle, inhaling his male musk before nipping the delicate skin right over the bone.

  Cullen lets out a noise that’s something between a gasp and a grunt. Sliding his hands from my back to my head, he grips the sides of my face firmly, holding my seeking jaw in tantalizing control of how much of him I can reach. His next kiss isn’t a kiss at all. It’s a wild possession of my mouth, deep and punishing and so hot that my sex drips moisture along my thighs. As Cullen sucks on my tongue, his hands holding my head firmly, I feel myself gladly returning the reins back to him as if I’d never attempted to seize them in the first place.

  Cullen marches into me, forcing me back until he’s plastered my body between himself and the cool metal door, his hips pinning mine in place. Unzipping my fleece jacket, Cullen slips it down to the floor, pulling my sweater and undershirt over my head in a smooth, sure motion that leaves me feeling undeniably wanted.

  With me naked from the waist up, Cullen pauses, the corner of his mouth lifting as he takes me in.

  “W-what is it?” I ask, my befuddled mind trying to work out the reason for this halt in the action, my breathing quickening.

  Cullen smirks, flicking a lock of hair from my bare shoulder—hair that used to be tucked into a presentable ponytail before his undressing. At the sides of my vision, I see other strands running untamed on either side of my face.

  “Your hair,” says Cullen.

  “What about it?” My voice comes out too high, too needy. Too lost in my want for him.

  Cullen chuckles into my mouth. “I just messed it up. And FYI, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

  Before I can respond, Cullen’s teeth graze my lips, his hands dipping into the waistline of my pants. Strong fingers lower toward the wetness I know they’ll find, as Cullen’s hardness grinds into me with rhythmic thrusts.

  Lowe
r. Lower. My pulse quickens, and I wriggle against Cullen’s hold as his callused fingers find the top of my sex. The slit of my labia. As his hand slides across my soggy panties with a righteous possession that makes me whimper against his mouth.

  Then, with a single determined thrust, Cullen has his finger up inside me, his other hand cupping my right breast at the same time. The sensations link together like a dizzying constellation, my channel and my mouth and my breast all taken with the man’s demand. Zings of pleasure and intensity meld together, and I rise on my toes, writhing and searching for relief from the sheer force of his maleness.

  Instead of giving quarter, Cullen slides a second finger inside me and pumps.

  Again. Again.

  A noise escapes me, my hands dropping desperately onto Cullen’s shoulders. As he pulls his mouth away from mine, his thumb stroking my bunching nipple, it’s all I can do to stay upright. Not that I have a choice. Not with Cullen taking charge of my body in a way that’s so wrong and so intoxicatingly right that I can barely draw breath quickly enough to gulp oxygen.

  My fingers curl desperately into him, and Cullen jerks, a shock of pain plainly jolting down his body. There’s a wince on his face as he grabs hold of my wrist, but when he speaks, his voice is filled with low gravelly command.

  “Take off my jeans.”

  My hands are at his waistline at once, my fingers flipping open the fly to let his engorged cock spring free. My mouth waters as I stare at the pulsating shaft, the tantalizing bead of moisture at the very tip of the head begging to be licked. Suckled.

  Drawing a shuddering breath, I lower Cullen’s jeans and boxers the rest of the way to the floor, and he steps out of them with the confidence of a warrior utterly in charge of his muscular body. Gripping my eyes with his moss-green gaze, Cullen brushes a knuckle from my lips down my midline. I shiver as he snakes too slowly between my breasts and stops at the top of my waistline, as if he’d not invaded it and more moments ago.

  “Yours too,” he says and, damn him, crosses his arms as he watches me strip.

  Heat rises to my cheeks, and I don’t know what’s more absurd—that after everything we’ve done, the simple act of baring my body for him still makes me blush, or that my treacherous body is aroused by it. Whatever it is, by the time I stand naked before him, my thighs are glistening with moisture, my nipples hard and aching for relief.

  The man nods in a mix of approval and admiration. “You have a gorgeous body,” he says, his hands going to the crests of my hips as he leans to whisper into my ear. “Now let’s take it for a ride.”

  Before I can protest, Cullen lifts me off my feet and lays me on his bed, my backside right at the edge of the tall mattress. The bedsprings squawk, the noise a contrast to my rapid breath. Taking my left leg, Cullen lifts it onto his good shoulder and drags the pads of two of his fingers through my wetness, making me moan. Rather than watching what he’s doing, he stares into my eyes, and I’m completely consumed by all the fire and emotion I detect in his gaze.

  Emotion that goes beyond the passion of our previous coupling to something more. Something so, so much deeper.

  For several agonizing minutes, Cullen explores my core, never once taking his scrutiny off my face. Every motion he makes elicits noises from me, and every time a sound escapes my mouth, he changes his pace. Faster. Slower. Trailing along my folds. Swirling in my wetness. Dipping his fingers inside me before sucking my taste off his fingertips. But not once—not fucking once—does the bastard graze my clit.

  “Cullen.” I whimper out my plea, but he ignores me, continuing the torment until my hips are jutting, jolting up and down automatically without my conscious permission.

  37

  Cullen

  Christ, she looked gorgeous. With Sky’s face flushed with need and her body singing with need beneath his touch, Cullen feared he might come right then and there. His body vibrated with the longing to plunge inside her, to make her scream his name as he brought her to climax over and over and fucking over.

  But he wanted more than that now. Wanted to discover all the secrets of Sky’s body—what she liked, what drove her crazy, what scared her spitless in that paradoxical way that drove arousal to new heights. Cullen wanted to take her there. Because that was what she deserved.

  “I’m on birth control,” she said suddenly, her hips wiggling beneath his hold. Her beautiful soprano was raspy, her breathing coming in short delicious gasps that hitched when Cullen lifted her hips to his mouth and traced her hood with the tip of his tongue. Sky’s fingers curled against the sheets. “Cullen, did you—”

  “I heard you.” He breathed out slowly, savoring Sky’s scent as his own pulse hammered against his chest. No condom. No barrier. He’d known Sky was on the pill back from that hospital visit when he’d scanned her chart for any medications that might interfere with each other, but it wasn’t just pregnancy that the thin latex had always protected Cullen from. It was…everything.

  A symbolic barrier between Cullen and any woman he’d ever taken. A shield that somehow protected them from the dangerous mess of the half-cocked grenade that was him. His breath still, Cullen waited for the rush of panic, the internal alarm that warned him to get the hell away before he did something stupid. Before he hurt someone. Before he let someone rake nails down his own soul.

  A wave of heat and need and trust, all heralded by Sky’s bright blue eyes, washed over him instead. He didn’t just love Skylar Reynolds, he trusted her. He trusted her to trust him.

  Placing the aching head of his cock against Sky’s tight entrance, he thrust into her hard, holding still for a moment to let her adjust to the intrusion. Then, heedless of his shoulder’s protest, Cullen lifted Sky into his arms. Holding her against him, Cullen turned them both to lay his back down on the bed with Sky straddling him, her silky strawberry hair waving around her bare shoulders.

  “Fuck me,” Cullen said, tightening every muscle in his body to keep the show from being over when it had just barely started. He wasn’t in the habit of letting a woman ride on top, but there was nothing typical about anything Sky did. “Now.” The words had left him as a curse rather than a command, but Sky smirked at him and gave a sarcastic salute.

  “Yes, sir,” she drawled, almost purring her response. And damn it if that sir didn’t send his cock pulsing all the way to his head like a desperate schoolboy.

  With her hands braced on his abdomen, Sky thrust herself along the length of him, her channel gripping Cullen’s cock, sliding tightly up and down his engorged shaft. As she looked down at him, Sky’s eyes were blue whorls of crystalline brilliance. Jesus fucking Christ. Filling her like this made Cullen’s head spin.

  A ball of anticipation tightened at the base of his spine, his sac firming and drawing up toward his throbbing hardness. He’d never let a woman ride him before, and something about having Sky do it made it even more enticing. Or maybe that was Sky herself. He craved her, and not only for the sublime perfection of her body.

  Still, having her straddling him like this was wreaking havoc on Cullen’s restraint.

  “Hold on to the headboard with everything you’ve got,” Cullen demanded, his voice hoarse as his hips undulated beneath her. “I want to see the imprints of your fingernails left behind.”

  Sky looped her hands around the maple edge above him, and Cullen bucked up into her at once. He felt himself penetrate deeper with each thrust, Sky’s small gasps confirming his cock’s report. Continuing to piston into her from below, he scooted his fingers along her silky skin and latched on to her right nipple with his mouth.

  Suckling, he thrust faster and faster, the whole bed trembling from the punishing rhythm. Sky moaned with each bump and grind, the sound driving Cullen’s thrust harder still, feeding the escalating tension between them. The motion made her breasts bounce delectably right in his face, and he ceased suckling on her nipple just so he could watch.

  Lacing his right hand into her strawberry tresses, he pulled her down and
branded his mouth to hers. She offered him her tongue, and he took it, suckling it into his own mouth until she fell forward and had to brace herself with one hand on his pillow while the other connected with his good shoulder. He inhaled her passionflower fragrance as it blended with the fabric softener scent already prevalent in the room, and decided the combination was the best smell ever.

  Lowering his hand to her clit, Cullen rubbed the swollen bud as he still held her mouth with his, his cock raking through her channel. Sky moaned against his mouth, her body jerking wildly at the triple assault. Fire roared through Cullen’s blood, his sac so tight that the lines between pressure and pain and ecstasy had long become blurred.

  Giving her one more carefully aimed flick, he felt her walls clamp down on his pulsating cock, stronger and fiercer than ever. At the same time, cascading pleasure rippled through Cullen, the feeling of Sky’s legs and channel and mouth all holding on to him desperately magnifying each sensation.

  Sky shrieked into his mouth, and he drank in her orgasm, twining it inseparably with his own release.

  As their throbs and quakes blended and coalesced into pure shared bliss, he felt something calm inside him. He’d taken Sky prior to this, but today, in this motel room alongside the noisy interstate, it had been different. Intimate. And now, lying there under her, their limbs and bodies still tangled together, Cullen felt his heart change rhythm to beat alongside hers.

  38

  Sky

  Having showered off, Cullen and I remake the room with the hurry of naughty school kids, finishing just in time to avoid me turning lobster red as Addie returns—bags of Chinese food takeout in tow. Giving me a knowing grin, the woman sets out boxes of lo mein and General Tso’s chicken on the motel’s tiny coffee table, rapping Cullen’s knuckles with a pair of chopsticks when he reaches for a wonton.