Heroes in Uniform: Soldiers, SEALs, Spies, Rangers and Cops: Sexy Hot Contemporary Alpha Heroes From NY Times and USA Today Bestselling Authors

by Sharon Hamilton

  Her fingers brushed the bare, heated skin of his chest below the shirt, reminding her of his illness, and keeping her mind on the straight and narrow. At least until she tugged the shirt tail out of the waistband of his chinos and felt a new warmth in the material there. Firmly putting aside thoughts of where that particular warmth came from, she pulled the shirt off in an awkward attempt to touch him as little as possible.

  Not letting herself think, she reached for the waistband tab of his chinos, and unbuttoned it.

  Grif jolted like a sleepwalker awakened from a trance.

  “Don’t. I’ll ... do it.”

  She relinquished the task – gladly, of course. Feeling only relief.

  He levered himself up from the bed, and she busied herself with pulling down the covers and plumping the pillow on that side.

  When she turned around from placing his shirt on a hanger, she found him with his back to her, thumbs hooked in the waistband of his pants, slowly drawing the material down. Only, the deepening view of the bare flesh of his lower back and then the top of his butt, revealed he’d hooked more than his pants.

  “Stop!” He did. And remained still. “Grif, you can’t ... I, uh, I think you’ll be more, uh, comfortable if you leave your ... your shorts on.”

  He dropped his head forward, as if checking out her assessment. She heard him mumble a few words, a curse by their tone. Then his hands shifted, and the tops of white boxer shorts appeared as he kept pushing the pants down.

  She started breathing again, realizing only then that she’d stopped.

  He tried to pull the pants free, and sat hard on the bed, instead. She finished the task, then gave his shoulder a gentle push to get him to lie flat.

  “Ellyn?”

  “Yes, Grif?”

  “I don’t feel good.”

  “I know you don’t, Grif.” She pulled the sheet and light blanket up over him until they rested under his chin, but left the comforter off. “Get some sleep and you’ll feel better soon.”

  He put his hands over the top edge of the sheet as if he might push it away, then subsided.

  His voice wasn’t much more than a raw whisper as he added, “All the times I dreamed about being in your bed ... this wasn’t what I had in mind.”

  * * *

  He hadn’t wanted anything covering him, but his nose had caught the faint trace of Ellyn’s warm spiciness on the sheet, and he’d let it stay.

  And then he’d told her the truth. For the first time in a long, long time, he’d told her the full truth.

  He turned his face into the pillow that smelled like Ellyn’s hair, and let the dreams come.

  * * *

  “How’s the patient?”

  Ellyn took the pharmacy bag from Fran. “Asleep. I almost hate to wake him to give him the pills.”

  “Sometimes sleep’s even better for folks than medicine.”

  “I don’t know.” Ellyn heard her own doubt. “I think he might have been delirious.”

  Fran gave her a sharp look. “Delirious? What did he say.”

  “Oh, nothing, really. Nothing. He was just so weak.”

  “I see.”

  Ellyn sincerely hoped not. Grif’s words had stunned Ellyn, but not nearly as much as the sensation that followed them, like a starburst in her chest.

  She’d forced herself out of the room, keeping occupied by packing necessities for Meg and Ben to stay at Fran’s. Twice she’d ventured to the doorway of her room to check on Grif.

  “I’d better get going if I’m going to pick up the kids from school,” Fran announced.

  “Have them call me when they get to your house, will you? So I can explain ... Not that they ever mind staying with you.” She raised one brow. “I’d almost suspect you did things like let them eat dessert without having their vegetables and staying up late.”

  “Me? I’m as strict as can be.”

  “If you say so.” Ellyn laughed as she gave the other woman a hug. “Thanks for everything.”

  * * *

  Grif was still sleeping when she took the pills and a glass of water into the room.

  She sat on the battered side chair she’d pulled up, oddly hesitant to wake him.

  Without reason, she told herself. His words before he fell asleep had been the product of his illness. Good heavens, with a temperature of a hundred and four, he could be babbling nonstop.

  Although ... Could she have been wrong to dismiss that kiss by the school? Could he have meant to kiss her that way? Wanted to kiss her that way?

  She looked at his face, strong and so familiar. And yet ... different. She studied him, searching for the difference. And then she had it.

  With his eyes closed, he looked less like himself and more like his stern father. The father he regarded with too much coldness to truly be indifference. As little as Grif usually let show in his eyes they still gave such a sense of him.

  She laid her palm across his forehead, smoothing back the ends of the thick hair she’d so rarely seen this long.

  She started to pull her hand away, but Grif gripped her wrist and held it there.

  His eyes opened slowly. Still glazed, but aimed directly at her face. She turned away, using the shaking out of the pill from the plastic bottle as her excuse.

  “I have your medicine here. Can you sit up?”

  He gave her a look that should have been withering, but didn’t pack half its usual wallop. He levered himself up on one elbow and took the pill, then reached for the glass of water. Once again he drank it all.

  She put the glass back on the bedside table, pretending she didn’t hear his sigh as he sank back.

  “Stay.”

  No plea, but not enough power to be a command. She made her answer carefully neutral. “Okay.”

  She sat beside the bed, one hand resting on its edge. After a minute, he pulled his nearest arm from under the covers and laid it down on top of them. His hand was less than an inch from hers as he closed his eyes again.

  The first half hour he was restless, seeming to sleep in short snatches that would end with his eyes jerking open. He’d see her sitting there, and soon his eyes would close again, only to repeat the cycle.

  Finally the medicine took effect, and he slept peacefully. Ellyn remained for another hour.

  * * *

  Twenty-four hours later, Grif’s temperature had dropped to a hundred and one. He was starting to sleep more naturally. But he continued to sleep more than he was awake, as his body battled both the effects of the fever and the disease itself.

  Ellyn had been reluctant to stray far. She called into work, explaining the situation and warned Larry she might have to take a few days off. In between checking on Grif, giving him his medicine and helping him twice to the bathroom – then having the door closed firmly in her face – she made soup. Overnight she slept on the couch.

  The next afternoon, in a spurt of domesticity, she made two batches of lasagna and some spaghetti sauce for the freezer. Fran arrived as she was cleaning up and putting together a supper tray for Grif.

  “I dropped the kids off at the home ranch. They’re going to ride with Luke while he checks the heifers that haven’t calved yet. Emily’s bouncing back. How’s your patient today?”

  Ellyn filled her in, including his habit of trying to get to the bathroom on his own, stubbornly refusing to admit his legs felt like rubber.

  “Smells great in here,” Fran said. “That should help give Grif a good appetite.”

  “I had trouble getting soup in him, much less anything else. This is for the family – for me and the kids.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It is. I make things ahead so we’ll have them.” What was she doing, explaining? Fran knew all this. “What brought you here today, Fran?”

  “I brought some of Grif’s things.” She placed a familiar-looking duffel bag on the floor.

  “You went to Fort Piney? And they let you into his quarters?”

  “That soldier thought he might w
ant to go citing regulations all over the place, but we got that straightened out. Grif needs clean clothes, and other things. But I couldn’t find that boy’s pajamas anywhere.”

  Ellyn swallowed at the thought of what that boy was wearing – and not wearing right now.

  “Ellyn? Are you okay?”

  “Yes. I’m fine. A little preoccupied.”

  “Make sure you’re getting enough rest. Takes a lot out of you taking care of somebody who’s sick, Running back and forth, toting and fetching, giving ‘em medicine, and with a fever like this, the sponge baths. You know how much easier the kids rest after one.”

  Sponge bath?

  She caught a definite glint in Fran’s eyes, and directed the conversation in another direction.

  After Fran left, Ellyn took the duffel bag to her room.

  Grif was awake, and looked decidedly rumpled, and possibly cranky. Beard stubble was in full bloom on his jaw and cheeks. His hair had lost its tame constraint and fell down over one eye. He looked both younger and rougher. Not at all like himself and yet in some strange way more like himself than he had since he was a boy.

  He ate both the soup and chicken sandwich with hungry concentration, leaving any talking until after he’d finished.

  “I don’t remember ever seeing you like this before.”

  He gave her a sour look that had the perverse effect of making her grin, since it was a duplicate of ones Ben gave her when his male pride had been offended.

  “I don’t mean sick. Although that applies, too. I mean – ” She waved a hand toward him. “Unshaved and your hair this long.”

  “I ran out of time to get my hair cut before I left Washington. I’ll go to Mike’s in town.” A sly look came into his face. “Tomorrow.”

  “Next week. You’re nowhere near strong enough to be driving into town. Besides, I kind of like this look.”

  “It’s not military.”

  “No, it’s not.” Was that why she liked it?

  “I could at least take a shower and shave.”

  “No shower. You’re too weak. But I tell you what, I will give you a sponge bath. You’ll feel a lot better.”

  He gave her a look that included an element that in anyone else she would have said was fear. But this was Grif. And this was her. And as Fran had pointed out, a sponge bath was a standard way to make the patient more comfortable. And since nothing had changed – or would change – between her and Grif, giving him one made absolute sense.

  She kept telling herself that even after she’d gathered the pan of lukewarm water, two wash cloths and a towel. Even after she’d started applying them to his broad shoulders, the lightly tanned planes of his chest, and his muscled arms. Finally, she blanked out her mind and operated on automatic pilot. Until Grif’s large hand clamped over hers as she wielded the towel in the final motions of drying him.

  “You’d better let me finish that or we’re going to start something very different.”

  Sudden realization flooded her with heat. Under her hand, the towel had followed the track of an errant trickle that had slipped under the waistband of his boxers, and headed south.

  She jerked her hand back, leaving the towel. He picked it up, but she refused to watch what he did with it. Instead, she found a plethora of tidying that needed to be done on the bedside table. After a moment he handed over the towel, and she folded it in quarters, decided she didn’t like it, and refolded.

  “Ellyn.”

  He was trying to lever himself up to a more straight-backed position, and that gave her another excuse to avoid meeting his eyes, as she fussed with rearranging the pillows.

  Only when she felt his breath across her breasts and felt a tightening in her nipples did she realize that the combination of their movements had put her chest immediately in front of his face, and that he was breathing hard and fast. It took her entire stock of self-control simply to stay still. Her nipples were taut and tender against the inside of her bra, as if they strained to meet the mouth expelling the air that teased across them, even through layers of cloth.

  At last, she started slowly to pull back. Tension rode across the hard lines of his face, the lines around his mouth dug deep. Instinct dropped her gaze to where a bulge showed between his legs, blatant and unmistakable under the smooth expanse of sheet. When she would have continued her withdrawal, away from him, away from the side of the bed, maybe out of the room, the house, and the county, he captured her wrist in his hand, and held here. His grip was surprisingly strong for someone who’d been so sick. Or maybe her resistance wasn’t that strong.

  “Are you going to ignore this, Ellyn?”

  “I thought I would,” she admitted.

  A faint smile touched his lips without removing the tension, and he didn’t release her wrist. “Maybe that would be best. Pretend I never said anything, either, and everything will go back to the way it was before.”

  Abruptly she sat on the chair beside the bed, goaded by something inside her. Something that she hadn’t known she had until the past year – the strength to face facts.

  “The question is, before what? Do you want to go back to the way things were before Dale ... before Dale died? – I don’t think that’s practical, do you? We’d all have to move back to Washington, and even then of course – ”

  “Ellyn – ”

  “Okay, so not that far back. All right then, go back to the way things were before you came to Far Hills? Well, I can do that, but I’d miss you. I know the kids would hate it. Marti and Kendra would definitely not be pleased. So, what does that leave? Putting things back the way they were before ... before I kissed you?”

  He frowned. “You said that before – that you kissed me. That’s not how I remember it.”

  “Well, we kissed each other, but I know you didn’t... I mean, you’re a very generous man, Grif.”

  “Generous?”

  She ignored his apparent disbelief. “And I love – like – I like that in you. It’s part of what makes you you, but ...”

  “But?”

  “I don’t ... Generosity might not be the best thing, Grif. Honesty would be better. So much better. Because pity, isn’t something I – ”

  “Pity? Pity!” Implacable, his grip on her wrist brought her hand to his bare chest, then drew it down his body, over the sheet covering his abdomen, below his waist, and lower. “Does this feel like pity?”

  By instinct or need her hand curled around his hot length.

  His other hand caught the back of her neck and brought her, unresisting to him. “Dammit, Ellyn.” His mouth took hers, open and demanding from the start, his tongue plunging into her mouth with a hunger that made her moan. It was as if the kiss in front of the school had never ended, but was continuing now, building on itself and their desire.

  She was draped across him. Then with a twist of his hips and a shift of his shoulders, she was beside him, lying on the open side of the bed. He followed her, one knee sliding between her legs, one hand sweeping up her rib cage. With the tips of his fingers brushing against the lower curve of her breast, he hesitated long enough to make her gasp. And then his hand covered her, and she gasped again.

  And all the while their mouths held each other, each touch fueling the driving hunger.

  She stroked her palms across his back, pressed them into his hard flesh. Tangled her fingers into his hair, then used their tips to follow the firm lines of his jaw and cheek.

  He’d opened her shirt, pushed down her bra, with a need that knew no finesse. But his capable, strong hand feathered her nipple so softly that she arched and moaned. His knee came higher, and his hips rocked against her, taking up the rhythm of their tongues.

  He tore his mouth from hers, and put his lips around her nipple, wetting the pebbled ring, then closing his mouth around her and drawing on her strongly.

  She cried out, nearer the edge than she could have believed. As if he sensed that, he sought her other breast with his hand, but the bra intruded. Impatiently, he rol
led her a few degrees toward him, and yanked loose the hooks at the back. A sound escaped him as he brought his mouth back to her nipple and stroked his hand over the other straining tip.

  She dragged her hand down between their bodies, following the same path he’d taken her on earlier. And finding him even hotter and harder and bigger. She pressed her palm against him, and shifted, trying to ease the ache inside her.

  He groaned, deep in his throat, the sound vibrating against her. His hand covered hers, holding it still, as he slid down the bed, his head resting on her ribcage.

  “Ellyn...” His panting breath across her nipple made her shudder, incapable of answering. “If we don’t ... If we don’t stop now, you’ll be washing sheets again.”

  The words penetrated slowly, but finally reached the grain of sense not drowned by her senses. She levered away from him enough to see his face. It was etched hard and taut. The lines stretched thin by the power of his self-control. Self-control that was about to snap. As if to confirm that, the flesh under her palm pulsed hot and hard.

  “Sorry, Ellyn. I’m sorry.”

  He was sorry. And she was shuddering with need.

  He was sick. And she was crawling all over him.

  She jolted away, off the bed, pulling her outer clothes together without taking time to deal with her bra.

  “You’re sick. And I –Oh...”

  She dragged in two deep breaths, staring at the dent in the pillow by his shoulder that had held her an instant ago. A flexing in that shoulder alerted her, and before he could reach for her, she bolted.

  * * *

  She had to come back eventually. She wasn’t going to leave him lying here in bed forever, not after treating him as if he were as weak as a kitten.

  Which, in the area of self-control, he was.

  Grif had been tired of being sick by the end of the first day. He’d wake up, answer the call of nature, drink more water than a camel after a dry month, she’d feed him something, and he’d drop off again, starting the cycle all over. Like some kind of overgrown infant.