Her Only Chance

by Cheryl Anne Porter

  Kell reached up and smoothed her hair back. He cupped her face in his strong, steady hands. “We can do this, Jamie. We can wake up tomorrow in Las Vegas.”

  “I want to believe that, Kell.” It was the desire talking, the thick glaze of physical want, answering for her. She knew that…and didn’t care, not at this moment. Jamie realized she was unbuttoning Kell’s shirt while he was unbuttoning her blouse. Apparently, they were going to have sex right there, on the beach. Anyone could happen by. Surprising her was the realization that she didn’t care. She was doing, not thinking. Because all she cared about was being with Kell in the most intimate sense of the word. And if what she was feeling was any indication, he really wanted her, too.

  Kell helped her shrug out of her blouse. Under his deft and practiced touch, her bra soon followed. The night breeze caressed her bare breasts. Kell’s warm hands quickly covered them and stroked their fullness. His thumbs flicked her swollen nipples. Delicious. Jamie arched her back, her face to the sky. Tiny sounds of pleasure escaped her. Kell’s hands went to her waist as he bucked his hips against her soft and swollen mound.

  He pulled her down to him. “You’re wild, Jamie, absolutely wild. I’ve never seen you like this.” His voice was deep, throaty…caressing. He smoothed his hands up her back and kneaded her skin, her shoulders.

  Jamie captured his wide, firm lips in her kiss, daring his tongue to come out and spar with hers. He accepted her challenge, giving every bit as good as he got. She broke off their kiss, felt the heat rise between them, and lost to the moment, began pulling at his clothing as she slid down him. But when she sat up again on his thighs, a cry escaped him—not of pleasure, but of pain.

  Jamie’s cry followed his. “Your wound.” She moved to get off him. “Ohmigod, Kell, I’m sorry.”

  He rose up a bit and clutched her by the arms. “Forget it. It’s okay. It’s just that the feeling is coming back. Never mind. Everything else is too good to worry about that.”

  Still, Jamie sat forward, trying to keep her weight off him. “Are you sure? I don’t want to hurt you.”

  He lay back down on the sand and threw his arms out wide. His devilish chuckle met her words. “Oh, please…hurt me.”

  “Okay. But remember, you told me to,” Jamie chirped…as she slid farther down Kell’s body…until she could reach the zipper on his slacks. Underneath her hands he was as hard as granite. This night was magical for Jamie. And absolutely heady. Kellan was in her power every bit as much as she was in his. She had only to touch him and he was ready for her. She wanted to see just how ready.

  Slowly, sensually, with one hand rubbing up and down his hard length, with her other hand she trailed his zipper down until his fly gaped open. “Hmm, what have we here,” she teased as she freed his length from the restraint of his boxer shorts. “My, my…for me?”

  Kell groaned and fisted his hands in the sand. Jamie chuckled…evilly. And took him in her mouth. She knew how to do this. Expertly. Kell had taught her. She’d never done this to another man. But she did it well. She was relentless…up, then down…fast, then slow…stroking, tasting, using her tongue to—

  “Damn,” Kell cried, jackknifing to a sitting position. “Come here.”

  Jamie did. And in an instant her wraparound skirt was in the sand, her panties beside it and she was positioning herself, with Kell’s help, on top of him. “There,” she moaned. “Right there.”

  Oh, the pulsing beat inside her body. It knew…it just knew. It sent its lubricating wetness to tell her she was ready. And she was. She was bursting with being ready. In the next instant she was sliding down on him. She’d meant to go torturously slow…but Kell would have none of that. Gripping her waist, with her hands flat against his chest, with her hair falling forward to shadow her face, Kell arched his hips and, in a flash of a moment, was deep inside her. She stilled, tensed, and cried out with the pleasure of it as he filled her. Kell’s groan of joy matched hers. For eternal instants of time, neither one moved.

  Then without a word or a sign, they were moving together. Jamie rode Kell as she would a horse…straddling him, matching his motions, feeling him all the way to her womb. Her muscles tensed around him, holding him inside her. Each stroke nearly sent her over the edge of sinful pleasure. She wanted it to last forever in the same moment that she wanted it to end gloriously. She didn’t know what she wanted. She was beyond thought, beyond coherence. She rocked them toward a climactic release. Every nerve ending in her body seemed to find its way to the pleasuring center of her.

  It was perfect.

  Kell made a ragged sound at the back of his throat. He was very close. Jamie was, too. Wild abandon had overtaken excitement. Hard against him, she worked her pelvis in a deep back-and-forth movement. The pleasure was too intense. Jamie stilled, her breath was gone. “Now, Kell. Now.”

  “Anything you want, baby.” Her desperate cry sent him into action. He gripped her waist and worked his powerful hips, pounding into her with all the strength and precision of a jackhammer, his tempo as unvarying as if he’d been a well-oiled machine.

  The moment came. Jamie cried out her release—undulating wave after undulating wave of searing bliss. It drove Kell wild. He thrust almost brutally into her. Bearing down on him, she welcomed every inch of him…her mouth open, her head flung forward, her hair waving wildly. Her thighs tensed around his sides, she clung to him as if to a wildly bucking bronco.

  In the next second…Kell met her in that place of abandonment of the senses and of rationality, and of perhaps even of a split second of unconsciousness where she couldn’t even draw a breath. They hung there…on the ebbing tide of desire.

  And then they collapsed. Under her cheek Kell’s skin was hot and slick. His chest rapidly rose and fell with each breath. His heart beat in dull, thunderous claps under her ear. The crisp and curling hairs on his chest tickled her nose and lips. She didn’t care. He held her tightly to him, a hand cupping her head, his other against the small of her back. Jamie had never felt more secure and protected—not to mention sated—in her life.

  It was beautiful. Pure and perfect and whole. Surely no other couple in the history of love had ever achieved this perfect a union of body and soul.

  “Jamie?” Kell’s voice was warm in the night, her name a caress on his lips.

  She smiled, loving how her name vibrated through his chest and against her ear. “Yes?”

  “I want a whole lifetime of this with you. Babies. White picket fence. A big yard. Swings. Fighting about the kids and money. Suburbia. Long commutes. PTA. The hassle of bills. Hot nights. A life together. I want that.”

  That got her—for more than one reason. Tears pricked her eyes. Jamie sat up and looked down at Kell.

  His gaze searched her face, and his expression sobered. “You’re supposed to jump in and say you do too.”

  “I know,” she murmured, not quite able to look him in the eye. “But I’m not sure I can give you that, Kell.”

  “Dammit. Here we go again.”

  11

  AFTER THAT, Kell didn’t say a word. He didn’t move. He just lay under her and breathed…deeply and evenly.

  Feeling as if she were shrinking inside, Jamie hated herself for her honesty. Just marry the man, for heaven’s sake, and worry about the rest of it later, her feminine conscience railed at her. But she couldn’t do that. Kell was too important to her to risk losing again. All she’d meant when she’d said she wasn’t sure she could give him the life he wanted with her was that she felt he needed to be aware of the pitfalls of her life before deciding on a life together. Well, gee, is that all? It’s a wonder that any therapist ever gets married, Jamie Winslow, Ph.D.

  Kell moved to sit up and help Jamie off him. She retrieved her panties, shook the sand out of them, put them on, then arranged her clothes while he did the same. Then she sat next to him in the sand, suddenly feeling grittiness and the heavy humidity of the night wind.

  Kell sat, looking out to sea. A muscle worked in
his jaw. Jamie felt the chasm that had once again opened up between them. “The tide’s coming in,” he said absently. “I think we lost our shoes already.”

  “If not our minds and our modesty,” Jamie added.

  “Boy, our timing sucks, doesn’t it?”

  The anger in his voice shouldn’t have surprised Jamie, but it did. With guilt pricking at her self-esteem, she picked at her skirt. “Yes. It always has.”

  Kell looked at her. “You have to give me something here, Jamie. Anything to give me a reason to keep trying with you. Because right now, I’ve got squat to sustain me. You keep telling me, in so many words, that love’s not enough. All right, I believe you. Tell me why it isn’t. Tell me what stands in its way.”

  “Our lives, Kell. The way we live them. Our differing expectations.”

  His chuckle was more of a grunt. “I was hoping you wouldn’t have such a ready answer.”

  “It’s the curse of my profession, all this analyzing.”

  “Analyze this—I love you, you love me, and everything else is details.”

  “That’s exactly right. Long-term happiness for any couple lies in the details, Kell. Expectations, goals, like that. Differing ones can make or break even the best of relationships. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “This sounds like marriage therapy before the marriage. But go ahead…give me some details for long-term happiness.”

  “All right. I’m going to get a lot of money for my book.”

  He shrugged. “So far I’m happy.”

  Despite herself, Jamie grinned. “I’m sure you are. But with that money comes tremendous responsibility. I have to travel and speak, be on TV and radio, be in the public eye, give interviews…things like that. They’re in my contract.”

  “So? I wouldn’t stop you. Hell, I’d be proud and would help in any way I could.”

  Jamie leaned over and kissed him. “You’re sweet to say that. And I believe you. But there would be nothing for you to do but stand by. I mean, you can’t help me write the book. And writing means a lot of time alone, too. Then I’d be off on those publicity tours. That means you could be pushed, emotionally and physically, to one side.”

  “Sounds like Melanie’s life. She’s left behind when Jeff is gone. She worries all the time, and there’s not much he can do about it because he signed on for the danger in his life.”

  A frisson of excitement shot through Jamie. This was new. This was different—and good—on Kell’s part. Finally he showed some understanding for things she’d been trying to tell him for years. “Go on,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound too much like a therapist.

  “Well, I talked with Jeff the other night at the hospital about how they handle his absences and Melanie’s fears.”

  “You did?” She was so proud of him.

  “Yeah, I did.” He grinned but sounded a bit defensive. “You’re not the only one who thinks and worries, you know.”

  Jamie looked down at her hands. “I’m sorry, Kell. Is that how I come across?”

  Kell wrapped an arm around her shoulders and lightly kissed her temple. “It’s not your fault. I don’t tell you what I’m thinking. And I’m sorry for that, Jamie. I’m beginning to see that my silent treatment gave you nowhere to go. And here I blew off your fear, thinking you wouldn’t worry so much if I acted as if there was no reason for you to worry. Stupid, huh?”

  “Not stupid. Just protective. It’s kind of sweet in a way, I guess.” Tears pricked Jamie’s eyes. She wiped at them and sniffed. “That must have been some talk you had with Jeff.”

  Kell shrugged. “The talk was okay. But he made me think. He said there was nothing he could do about Melanie’s fears except to tell her that we may go into dangerous hot spots, but it’s our training and physical condition—the best in the world—that makes our missions successful and keeps us safe.”

  “But then there was this last mission when you both got hurt.”

  Guilt edged Kell’s eyes. He exhaled sharply. “Yeah. Then there was this last mission.” His jaw worked and he looked out toward the water. “It changed everything.”

  “I’m so sorry, Kell.” Jamie grabbed a handful of sand and tossed it out in front of her. “Why does everything have to hit at once?”

  Kell gave her his attention. “What’s hit? What happened?”

  “I heard from my agent today. She asked me how the writing is going. I had to tell her I hadn’t even started. She was not amused and pretty much lectured me on self-discipline and told me I’d have to give up something for fame.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, she mentioned friends, family and society.”

  “Damn. That doesn’t leave much.”

  Jamie met Kell’s gaze. “That’s what I said. And I just don’t want it to be us that I end up leaving behind. It’s funny, you know. Now I’m in your position, in a sense, and I see how you feel. This is something I have to do, and all I can hope for is support and understanding. Yet, I really have no right to ask you to put yourself through it. Jeez, could it be harder?”

  “I don’t see how. But it sounds to me like I’m in the way, Jamie.”

  Jamie’s heart hurt. She put a hand on his arm. A muscle flinched under her touch. “God, don’t say that. I hate it.”

  “Me, too. But I think it’s the truth.”

  Jamie gave in. “You’re right. I can’t say it isn’t. I keep getting this picture of us as newlyweds trying to make a life together when one of us is always absent from the picture.”

  “Like movie stars.”

  “Exactly,” Jamie grumbled. “And everyone knows their success rate with marriage.”

  “So what are you saying? We should wait until all the hype with your book settles down?”

  “I’m not so sure it will settle down, or that I want it to. I mean, there would go my sales and my career. So, to make sure that doesn’t happen, I’ll be optioned to do another book after this one. Best-case scenario is…this is an ongoing thing, Kell.”

  “Ah, the life of a celebrity.”

  “Exactly. But this is what I want, Kell. Just like being a SEAL is what you want. I know you have a sense of duty. And I like that. In the same way, I’m very excited by all the possibilities open to me because I really think I have something to say through my work. But right now, I’m more worried about you and me.”

  “So what do you want to do?” He was looking out to sea again.

  Jamie drank in his profile…and the hard set of his jaw. She feared she was losing here. “I think we ought to think about what my career will mean for yours.”

  “Okay. Shoot.”

  “All right. For one thing, the publicity. You can’t afford any, being a SEAL. So let’s say this book goes as big as Highline Publishing thinks it will. There’ll be some pretty heavy media interest about whoever I’m involved with.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “‘Whoever?”’

  “You know what I mean. Anyway, say that somehow we learn to handle the media. What worries me more is the amount of, well, let’s call it traveling that you have to do.”

  He shrugged. “I have a desk job, remember? I’ll be sitting right here.” He poked a finger into the sand. The bitterness was there in his voice.

  “Do you hear yourself? You won’t sit at that desk for long, Kell, and we both know it. Say you’re back out in the field in a year or two. I’m thinking…what if I’m home but you’re gone? And then you’re home and I’m gone? It’s not like, with your military career, you could just pick up and follow me. I don’t think you’d be happy for long doing that, even if you could…or would.”

  “Great. Dueling careers. Well, you’ve convinced me. Sorry I asked for forever.” Resignation rang in his voice, but still, he reached over to stroke her back, his hand gently sliding up and down her spine.

  Tender thrills of pleasure chased over Jamie’s skin, making her words all that more heartfelt. “I hate this, Kell. All these years I’ve wanted you to settle down
. And now, when you seem ready to do just that, I can’t. My life is heating up and I’m the one getting ready to take all the chances. It’s funny, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Hilarious.”

  Jamie brushed her hair back from her face and glanced over at Kell. His handsome profile was troubled. Fine lines creased his forehead. She tenderly stroked his clean-shaven cheek. “I do love you, Kell.”

  “I know,” he said, not much above a whisper. “I guess this means we won’t be waking up together in Las Vegas, right?”

  “JAMIE, I swear I am about ready to get on a plane and fly to Tampa so I can pull all your hair out. God, you are so frustrating. I don’t even know why Kell tries with you, little sister.”

  Jamie slumped onto her couch’s cushions the next Monday morning as she listened to her sister’s lecture…again. “I know. I just want everything to be perfect.”

  “Nothing is perfect, kiddo. Get over it. How old do you have to be before you realize that? I would have thought that this past weekend would have shown you that. I thought you learned something.”

  The events of the past forty-eight hours flitted through Jamie’s consciousness. After leaving Kell, she and Donna had taken a trip they should have taken years ago. She swallowed. “I did. I learned to let go.”

  “Then act on that. Quit trying to think the future through, hon. Instead, grab an imperfect piece of it for yourself. Make the leap. Act. Don’t think.”

  Kell’s handsome face suddenly filled Jamie’s mind. “That sounds like how Kell operates.”

  “Exactly. And the man gets things done, doesn’t he? He has goals and he achieves them. Jamie, don’t let this thing with Dad hold you back. It wasn’t your fault he left. You have to know that. You may not have known it at thirteen, but you should now.”

  Jamie exhaled and shifted her position on the soft cushions under her. “I think I do, Donna.”