He sat on the bed beside her. “Chloe, wake up a sec. I have a nightshirt for you.”
“Wha?” She rolled onto her back, giving him a bird’s eye view of her breasts. The skin there was shades lighter than rest of her, soft and strangely vulnerable. Her nipples tightened against the cool air of his bedroom and saliva pooled in his mouth, as he remembered the sweet taste of those hard, incredibly responsive peaks. He closed his eyes and ground his teeth together. When he thought he could risk it, he opened his eyes and looked down at her, surprised to find foggy, heavy-lidded eyes staring back at him.
“I’m going to help you sit up and put this T-shirt on. Is that all right?”
She nodded.
He eased an arm around her waist, careful not to touch anywhere that would torture him more than he already was, and lifted her into a sitting position. Immediately she closed her eyes and turned into his chest. “Oh, that’s bad.”
“What’s bad?” He pulled the shirt over her head.
“Bad spins.” She let him work her arms through the sleeves and then latched onto him again. “Don’t go. You keep things still.”
“Chloe—”
She burrowed into him and sighed. “Don’t go.”
He sighed and looked down at himself. His T-shirt and jeans were worse for wear, too. Resigned to a sleepless night spent ignoring a persistent hard-on, he stripped down to his boxers, settled back against the pillow, and wrapped his arm around her shoulder while she nestled against his side. So much for not torturing himself.
…
Chloe didn’t need to open her eyes to know she wasn’t in Kansas anymore. First off, a warm, solid weight lay across the curve of her hip, trapping her to an unfamiliar mattress. Second, whatever she had on didn’t feel like her tank top and sleep shorts. Third, the rock-hard appendage poking her butt most definitely didn’t belong to Ready-Teddy.
She blinked her eyes open, squinting against the pale light prying through a slim gap between dark blue curtains. The bedroom she saw by the dawn’s bleary light was way too tidy and shipshape to ever be mistaken for hers. A glance down solved two of the mysteries. She wore an oversize white T-shirt, and a strong, muscular, unquestionably masculine arm accounted for the weight across her hip.
A disjointed image flashed through her mind…her, tossing her cookies in front of the Stars & Bars while Michael supported her and held her hair away from her face.
Oh, Chloe, nice going. She closed her eyes and stifled a groan, but the hazy memories just kept playing behind her eyelids. He’d driven her home, found her a toothbrush, coaxed a couple painkillers and some foul-tasting juice down her throat, and helped her change into one of his T-shirts. Then he’d tucked her into bed, but the darn thing had been spinning so badly, she’d clung to him and begged him to make it stop. The last thing she remembered was a strong, steady heartbeat under her cheek and his calm voice telling her everything was going to be okay.
Except everything wasn’t okay. She drew an unsteady breath and faced facts. After the debacle at the clinic yesterday, she was well and truly fucked.
The arm draped over her hip slipped into the curve of her waist, and tightened, pulling her back against a solid frame. She traced a small, light scar on the side of his wrist and wondered if he’d gotten in some kind of hand-to-hand, marine-style, combat. He murmured something in his sleep that sounded suspiciously like, “Right there,” and then his lower body shifted too. Next thing she knew, the head of his erection nudged the gap at the top of her legs. She turned her face into the pillow to stifle a moan as his shaft slid between her thighs. After the events of the last thirty-six hours, one highly frustrating irony remained inescapable. She was well and truly fucked—in every way except literally.
When a big hand smoothed up her torso to torment her breast and another slid down her abdomen and between her thighs, she pressed her hands over his, tipped her head back, and let the moan come. The sudden tightening of his hold told her she’d woken him. Screw it. Might as well accomplish the one thing she’d set out to do.
She twisted around until they lay face-to-face and admired his shadowed jaw, alluringly bed-rumpled hair, and sleepy, slightly cautious stare. “How do you feel?” he asked.
She swept the T-shirt over her head, tossed it aside, and then guided his hand back between her legs to let him figure the answer to that question out for himself.
Didn’t take him long. He closed his eyes and groaned. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“It’s the best idea I’ve had all day.”
He laughed. “Yeah, but it’s only six a.m.” Then his eyes popped open when she reached down to where he was jutting out from the flap in his boxers and wrapped her hand around his cock. “Oh…Christ. You…ah…dammit…you had a lot to drink last night. I don’t want to take advantage—”
“Fine. I’ll do the taking.” With that, she pushed him onto his back, worked his shorts down, and straddled his hips. His hands landed on the tops of her thighs. For a moment she worried he’d lift her off, but then those hands clasped her hips and rocked her against him.
Their sighs overlapped, and then his turned into a low curse when she shifted around. “Wait,” he said, but she ignored him and kept right on adjusting her position until she had him knocking at heaven’s door. He felt so good under her she wondered if she’d go off like dynamite just from the burning heat of him.
“Wait.” The word came out more firmly this time, and, to her abject dismay, he tightened his hands on her waist and lifted her until she hovered above him.
A humiliatingly desperate sound escaped her throat and she pushed down in an effort to reclaim her seat. “Don’t you want me?”
The world spun and the next thing she knew she was flat on her back, pinned under two hundred pounds of unyielding marine. “I have wanted you nonstop since the second I met you. It’s relentless and painful and bordering on crazy.” He bit her earlobe hard enough to give her a hint of the torture he’d endured. She gasped and twined her legs around his waist.
“For the last two days, all I’ve dreamed about is you. In those dreams you climb on top of me, and I slide into you until you’re so full you’re about to burst. I go as deep as I can, and then I hold still and let you use my cock like your personal toy until you’ve gotten off to your heart’s content. When you swear you’ve wrung yourself out, you can’t possibly take anymore I flip us around, bend you over my bed, and prove you wrong. I pound us both straight on through until we come so hard we can’t walk.”
She swallowed and somehow found her voice. “That sounds”—his lips burned a path along her jaw and stopped just short of her mouth—“good.”
“It sure as hell does, but we’ll have to plan better for that particular adventure because”—he kissed her fast and a little savagely, and then broke away and looked down at her—“no condom.”
She blinked while his words sank in and then groaned under the weight of her disappointment. Condom…oh yeah… That. Something they’d neglected during the near miss at the clinic, and really, she knew better after all the crap Drew had pulled. By some miracle, she’d avoided a nasty parting gift from her ex, and when she’d stared at that clean bill of health, she’d made a promise to every divine being in the universe never to test her luck again. She had a whole box of condoms at her apartment, but something told her if she walked out his door, she wouldn’t be coming back. Getting tangled up with a guy who had the power to make her completely forget her basic, common-sense rules—little fundamentals like no sex with a client and no unprotected sex—probably wasn’t the best idea.
…
Michael counted the pulses fluttering at the base of Chloe’s throat and waited for her to say something. Something like, “I have a condom in my purse,” would be ideal. Instead, she shook her head, muttered, “Twelve months and counting,” and shot him a resigned look. Then she added, “You should lie back. This position puts a lot of strain on the base of your spine.”
&nbs
p; “I feel fine.” He lifted and lowered his hips to prove it.
Her hand settled protectively over his lower back. “Don’t. I’m glad you’re not in pain, but you’ve still got to be careful until the swelling in the disc subsides.”
“Chloe, I appreciate your concern,” and since it was genuine, he shifted off her, then sat up and faced her while he spoke, “but I don’t need you to nurse me. I think the better question to be asking this morning, is, ‘How are you?’”
The muted light from the not-quite-closed curtains didn’t hide the fact that her gray eyes clouded, and she developed a sudden fascination with the wall just behind him. “I’m okay.”
He ran a hand over her hair. She looked so forlorn, he couldn’t help himself. “Did you get fired?”
She blew out a breath and glanced over at him. The corner of her mouth curved up into a phantom smile. “Big time.”
If she’d looked forlorn before, she looked downright devastated now. Normally, he was nobody’s cheerleader, but for some stupid reason he said, “Don’t worry. You’ll find another job. You’re an amazing masseuse.”
“Yeah, maybe.” She ran her hand over her face, blinked a few times, and shook her head. “What’s not a maybe is I have some packing to do.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. She got up from the bed, and he took one moment to appreciate the picture she presented, all tousled and tumbled and gorgeously, unselfconsciously naked. Then he reached out and caught her arm. “Why packing? Where are you going?”
“Michael.” She swung her head around and looked at him.
“Chloe,” he replied.
“This is not your problem.”
“I’ll be the judge. Where are you going?”
She plopped back down on the bed and shrugged. “My employer is a temp agency called Helping Hands. When they booked me for the job at the clinic, they also arranged for things like my rental car and the apartment here at Casa Clemente. Per the terms of my contract, I have to turn in the car and be out of the apartment twenty-four hours following the end of my assignment. Otherwise, they’ll start eviction proceedings and I can kiss good-bye any chance of working with them in the future.”
“Twenty-four hours? That’s a pretty miserly amount of time.”
Chloe shrugged again. “It’s standard in the traveling healthcare industry. Generally, it’s not a problem because I know the assignment end date, I have a new assignment to go to, and I plan accordingly. This time, however…things didn’t go as planned.”
“Where will you go?”
“I’ll go”—her eyes wandered to his fascinating blank wall—“um, home, I guess…until they find me a new assignment.”
A lie if he’d ever heard one. He took her chin and waited until she looked at him. “Where will you go,” he repeated softly.
“I don’t know, okay? But that’s not your problem.” She pulled away and started searching the sheets. “Where in God’s name are my clothes?”
He stayed on mission. “Do you need a loan to get home?”
“No.” Her expression reflected a combination of pride and panic. “I have to get out of here.” She abandoned her search for her clothes and started to stand.
He caught her shoulder and guided her back down onto the bed, then kept his hand on her arm to hold her in place. “Chloe, I can’t let you walk away without some assurance you’re doing it safely.” He bent his head slightly so they were eye to eye. “Your situation is at least half my fault. Let me be at least half the solution.”
The energy seemed to bleed out of her as they stared at each other. Finally, she said, “That’s very gentlemanly of you, but you can’t loan me the money to get home because there is no home. Home is my next job, wherever and whenever that may be.”
Oh, shit. “Hell of a way to live.”
“It worked just fine for the past year,” she shot back, defensiveness in every line of her body. “Sorry I don’t have the recommended six-to-nine months of emergency savings banked, but times have been a little tough here at Chloe Kincaid Enterprises due to factors I like to call NOYB.”
He ignored the sarcasm and kept working toward a solution. “You getting fired and kicked out of your apartment is my business.”
She shook her head, sending tendrils of hair dancing around her bare shoulders.
Stubborn. Fine and dandy. He could be stubborn, too. “What about your folks?”
“No,” she said firmly, and her closed-off expression told him he’d hit a dead end there.
“I could give you the money for a hotel—”
“Hell no. I’m not accepting money from you.”
“I can afford it.” True. His pay grade more than covered his needs. Plus, thanks to an investment he’d made in his little brother, Logan’s, company, he had a healthy and ever-growing savings.
“I can’t afford it,” she shot back and slapped her palm against her chest. “I can’t let you subsidize me financially because you have a misplaced sense of guilt. My integrity can’t afford it.” She broke off and drew in deep breath. “Look, I’m not destitute. I have a few hundred bucks. Hopefully that will last me if I stay somewhere cheap and if my recruiter comes through quick with a new assignment.”
“That’s too many ifs. I can’t do that.” He didn’t care if he sounded like a controlling asshole. The idea of letting her walk out his door without a decent plan burned a hole through his gut. He told himself the guilt would eat at him like acid, but a small voice in the back of his brain insisted the burn came from something more than guilt. Duty, in a twisted way—a moral obligation to alleviate a situation he’d helped to create. Fuck it, she needed a safe place to stay, and he could provide it.
“Stay here.” The words were out of his mouth before his brain fully vetted them, and as soon as he uttered the invitation his better judgment objected. First rule of combat—don’t engage without an exit strategy. Where is your exit strategy? The simple, obvious answer stared back at him. He didn’t need one, because Chloe lived her life like one big exit strategy. She didn’t have a home, didn’t want a home, and wasn’t looking for anything except a place to perch until she migrated to her next assignment. He’d reached the point in his life where staying put sounded better than migrating, but she’d run from anything remotely resembling conventional stability.
“No. I couldn’t.”
See? “You could. I’ve got two bedrooms, if that’s your issue. You’re welcome to the one I use as my office. Stay until your agency finds you another job.”
“That could take weeks.”
“Whatever.” He shrugged to convey a lack of concern with the time line. She obviously liked to keep her roots shallow and her interactions casual. He had to make her see this fit those goals.
Those smoke-and-mirror eyes of hers stared into his for a long time. “God,” she covered her face with her hands, briefly, “I can’t believe I’m actually considering this. Are you sure you want to invite a disaster like me into your life?”
No. He was anything but sure. He’d finally gotten a post he could settle into for a while—assuming he could keep his shit together, get back on flight status, and avoid a court-martial in the meantime. Simple enough goals, yet since meeting Chloe he’d put every single one of them in jeopardy. Her impulsive nature, no matter how sexy and charming, created problems for a man trying to stay on the straight and narrow. But that didn’t give him an excuse to turn his back on her. “Chloe, I’ve piloted supplies to red cross stations in areas struck by floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes. I’ve dropped aid packages at refugee camps. I’ve flown in and out of war zones. I’ve seen disaster close up, and I’m pretty sure I can handle whatever you throw my way.”
The comment must have put things into context for her, because she gave him a weak smile. “You think?”
Again, he wasn’t so sure, but he nodded with a confidence he didn’t feel and returned her smile. “I guarantee. Stay as long as you need to. No strings attached.” Laughable ad
dition, considering a minute ago they’d been one thin layer of latex away from balling each other blind, but, technically, they were not lovers and he didn’t want her to think his hospitality hinged on them changing that status.
She gnawed her lip and her eyes darted to the right as she considered his words. He followed her line of vision until his gaze hit a photo on the dresser. A snapshot of his first day on the job at Camp Pendleton, showing him in front of a chopper, shaking hands with his CO—his ultraconservative, by-the-book, CO, who did not believe in officers under his command using the government’s Basic Allowance for Housing to facilitate cohabitation outside the sanctity of marriage.
He cringed, thinking how quickly this new cohabitation development would travel from Mrs. Waverly, to his CO’s wife, to his CO, and how quickly his cleared-to-fly paperwork would get the downward shuffle on his CO’s desk. Quickly, and possibly permanently, if Sempler decided to report him for yesterday’s indiscretion. Unless… “Make that, no strings except one.”
Chapter Seven
Chloe blinked at the empty air where Michael had been mere seconds ago. He’d just offered her the answer to her prayers—a safe, free, no-strings-attached place to stay—and then bolted off the bed like his nonexistent pants were on fire.
He strode across the room and dug something out of the top drawer of the dresser. She admired the play of muscles under bronze skin, and the view of his top-drawer ass.
What the hell was he looking for? He’d mentioned something about strings and started rifling through a drawer. Did he plan to literally…tie her up? He walked back to the bed before she could decide whether the thought excited her or freaked her out. Then she let go of the quandary, because the sight of him closing in, wearing an intense expression, his dog tags, and nothing else, effectively scrambled her brain. He knelt by the side of the bed and propped his closed fist on her knee.
“Let me rephrase,” he said, flashing a smile that tried to convince her he was harmless.
She wasn’t fooled. He knew how to unlock handcuffs with a hairpin in under three minutes. He knew how to unlock her orgasm one-handed in under a minute. He was so not harmless.
Falling for the Marine (A McCade Brothers Novel) (Entangled Brazen) Page 6
