“My recruiter was a good man.” Kitty skimmed her fingers over the top edge of the autoclave, which resembled a super-shiny, square-shaped—rather than rectangular—microwave. “He saw I was in a bad way when I showed up one month later to sign the enlistment forms, so he put me on the payroll, but tangled me up in paperwork for a couple of weeks so I could recover a bit before reporting for boot camp.”
Steve shook his head as he picked up a frayed wire from the mechanical mess and inspected it closely. “I’ve just decided my life is boring.”
“Oh, trust me, I’d trade plenty of the happenings in my life for a smidge of boring.” Kitty looked down at her fingernails. “And maybe some better luck.” With men, ’specially.
You don’t talk to me at all, Shane! I’ve lived with you a year and I barely know you.
Pushing the memory aside, Kitty focused hard on her fingers. She had a hangnail in need of trimming. Best she get to it, else it’d drive her batty with snagging on gauze all the time. “So, uh, you think your story of joining the Navy is dull?”
“I’ll say,” Steve said. “I was studying to be a mechanical engineer at Carnegie Mellon, then went on a helicopter sightseeing tour in New York and fell in love with the sensation of flying. But honestly…” He glanced up and smiled. “I also wanted the chance to be a hero.” His smile slewed cattywampus. “One look at my face and people don’t exactly think ‘heroic,’ right?” He chuckled. “It’s kind of the same for Lieutenant Hammond—Mikey. He doesn’t initially shout hero, either—kind of more like a partying womanizer. But he’s a great stick and a fantastic boss. He’s already gone head to head with the XO of our ship to help get one of our aviation techs out of hot water for sleeping through a GQ24 call. The men always come first to Mikey, and that makes him an exceptional leader.” Steve shrugged. “I want to be like him some day.”
Kitty smiled. “You will be.”
Blushing faintly, Steve went back to sorting through the autoclave’s innards. “By the way, I’ve heard your stomach growl about three times now. Do you want to go grab lunch?”
“I guess I’d better.” She glanced at her watch. It was getting on towards lunchtime. “Do you need help getting back to your bed?”
“Well, see…” He set aside the screwdriver. “I was kind of thinking we could go to the mess tent together.” An expression of expectant hope entered his eyes.
She dropped her gaze. It was an adorable expression. Plus the way his hair was all mashed up in back in a disarming bedhead cowlick was fixin’ to melt her into her shoes. But a no trespassing sign might as well be hanging from his officer’s rank for how available he was to her. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Let me guess…” He stepped back and spread his hands. “You don’t want to be seen with me like this? And here I thought chic hospital wear was in vogue right now.”
She sniffed a little laugh. He sure could talk fancy when he wanted to. “The obvious answer is you’re an officer and I’m enlisted.”
“So? That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”
“Actually, it does.”
“I eat with Tarzan sometimes,” he countered in a reasonable tone.
“That’s different. He’s on your flight crew.”
“Well, it’s too late.” Steve stepped out from behind the table. “You are my friend, Kitty.” He moved to stand in front of her. “You know, I’ve…I’ve never been able to talk to girls. Until you.”
She gazed up into his sweet face and felt a smile building. Yes, they did talk mighty well together. Over the last three days she’d found herself at his bedside time and again, chatting about all manner of this and that.
“I think…” Steve paused, seeming to struggle to find the right words. “I guess in the past I was always trying to figure how to get close to a girl…be able to kiss her or touch her or something, so right away I got tongue-tied. But from the first moment I met you, you were touching me. It evaporated a barrier.” She heard him take a raspy breath. “I think you’re amazing, Kitty.”
She swallowed her heart back down her throat. Darn, she wished he hadn’t complimented her. His flattery was warming her belly in a manner that always brought out a lot of stupid in her.
Taking a swift step back, she bowed her head as hurtful memories started to flash through her mind. Sophomore year when she slept with Sam Faulk in the flatbed of his Dodge because he’d given her a lollipop on Valentine’s Day and told her she was the nicest girl in tenth grade. He never talked to her again afterward. Brady Collins said she had cute eyes, so she let him take her from behind at the back of the gym, her cheek jammed up against the wall. He was rough, and her lady parts had been sore for two days after. She sucked off Ron Divins in the boy’s bathroom because he was the one person who hadn’t gotten mad at her for earning the highest score on an English paper. When he climaxed, he’d grabbed her by the hair, jetted semen into her face, then laughed while he hiked up his pants.
When Clete Randall came around, she told him they’d have to go steady before she’d do any business with him. It’d been fine by him. She still made him wait two weeks after getting his commitment so she’d be certain he wasn’t fooling. They messed around a few times in those two weeks, making out and such. Every time he got his hands on her titties, he jizzed in his blue jeans. That should have clued her in on how the sex would go with him, and sure ’nuff, he came faster than green grass through a goose every time she gave him a poke, never getting more than two solid pumps in before making his baboon noises. She taught herself not to care. Clete didn’t insult her, and that was the main thing.
She’d already set her standards fairly low by the time Shane Madden came into her life, so his interest in her completely blindsided her. A Navy SEAL, liking me…?
Her first duty as a new corpsman had been as the medic in charge of taking care of trainees going through the BUD/S25 program. Her busiest time was the end of Hell Week. One after the other, the men who survived would show up on her exam table, their bodies traumatized in any number of ways. Shane had been so bad off he had walking pneumonia.
There he’d been on her table, shivering uncontrollably, his legs swollen, his arms streaked with cuts. When she’d carefully taken hold of his wrist to check his pulse, he looked up at her through eyebrows sodden with ocean water.
Somehow, as battered as he was, he managed a heartbreaker of a crooked smile. “Hello, gorgeous.”
Gorgeous had done her in. That’s all it’d taken to set her on a path to nowhere good once again. Their relationship had proved disastrous.
I want to know you care about me, Shane. Why can’t you give me that?!
Kitty took another step away from Steve, her head still down, tears needling her nose. “I think you’re amazing, too,” she said quietly. “But it doesn’t matter.” Sniffing, she glanced up. “Because I always think the wrong things.”
Her heart sinking into the pit of her belly, she turned and left.
Chapter Twelve
Kyle was doing his daily routine, lying flat on his back on his cot, his hands linked behind his head and his jaw jutted toward the ceiling of his tent as he brooded over her. Pain-in-the-ass woman was driving him nuts, sticking in his mind when he should’ve been able to exile her to the dungeons of his brain as easily as he’d banished so many others. Max Dougin was nobody, just another skirt.
Okay.
Yeah.
So she was smart, brave, cool as a fucking cucumber—which meant she wasn’t given to irrational outbursts of yelling and name-calling, and hands to heaven in praise for that—and seemed naturally to know what to say to dump him on his ass with his head spinning, trying to figure out what his next move should be. Last thing he needed was a woman like that in his life. Right?
Well, actually…
He cut off the Universe’s attempt at input, and inserted his own answer.
Damn straight.
So for the last three days, he’d made every effort to s
teer clear of Ms. Max Dougin. When he unavoidably ran into her in the mess tent, he would merely nod politely, then leave her to eat her meals with HM3 Hart while he found a table with his men and tried not to bite off the end of his fork along with the rest of his food. Outside of mealtimes, he played ping-pong, read outdated newspapers, checked every bolt and screw on his helo over and over, waited for JEM to call, shook the sand out of his boots—and again!—and jerked off, not necessarily in that order, and dammit all to crap and back. He couldn’t get Max out of his mind.
Who the hell did she think she was? No unmarried woman Kyle had ever wanted to screw failed to fall in line and get underneath him. All those others accepted the realistic truth: the female and male species never truly connected. Men faked intimacy to get laid, and women went along with the pretense so they wouldn’t feel like whores when they did the nasty. Kyle was willing to do his part and pretend with Max. But she—fucking cockeyed weirdo—wanted something real out of the impossible. If she would—
His right ass cheek came alive, and he paused his internal rant to What the fuck? the series of gyrations going off in his back pocket. Ah, his cell. Messages arrived on his cell phone so rarely here in the middle of Sand Valley—big surprise that Pakistan’s Mobilink towers provided only spotty coverage—no wonder it took him a second to figure out what was happening. Angling his body sideways, he pulled out his phone and checked the screen. He had three new messages.
His younger brother, Andy, got a raise at work, and was sharing the good news. Andy never went to college like Kyle had, and he was now a welder in Chesapeake, Virginia.
Tom from the North Island base gym apparently hadn’t heard that Kyle was deployed. He was trying to arrange a game of racquetball…for last Wednesday.
The third message was from—
Kyle’s belly went sour. Teeth clamped, he hovered his thumb over the delete button for the message from Sienna. His thumb hovered, and…fuck me. He opened the message.
What is WRONG with you Kyle? A MONTH AGO I asked u to talk to my cousin about joining the navy and u couldn’t take two minutes out of ur stupid day to help him figure this out?! Now ur deployed and what is Michael supposed to do, huh???? Ur the most selfish inconsiderate man in the world. I hope u crash out there you prick!!!!
Oh, this was fucking hilarious. Bitch was calling him selfish? Growling, Kyle shoved his phone back in his pocket. Maybe I was gone on workups for the month before deploying, Sienna, you airhead hag.
He came off his cot in a burst of energy and stalked outside, glaring down two tents to number ten. Hell if he was going to let some pointed-chin liberal ruin his record with women. Head lowered like a charging bull, he took off, stomping his boots into his eternal nemesis—sand—as he barreled toward Max’s tent. The door was propped open, and he spied her inside, laid out on her cot with a book open in front of her face. He barged in with his hands already planted on his hips. Battle-ready? Fuck, yeah.
She tilted her head around the side of her book, saw who it was, then pushed to a sitting position. Her eyebrows arched high in question.
She wanted connection? He’d give it to her and then some, make her sorry for being an asinine realist. “You get ten questions, Max. Ten”—he raised the fingers of both hands to emphasize his point—“of anything you want to ask, then we’re having sex. That’s it.” He sat down on HM3 Hart’s cot and gestured Max to start. “Go.”
Max’s lips pushed out a little and she eyed him in that curious way of hers.
Kyle grabbed the edge of Kitty’s cot and felt wood splinter slightly beneath his fingers. Why was this woman looking at him like he was the world’s most captivating specimen of dickified male and she was oh-so-psyched to figure him out? Worse, he had the prickling, alarming sensation she was excavating all kinds of secrets he didn’t even know about himself, and the hell if he wanted to be that kind of exposed.
“Do you even like sex, Kyle?”
He stared a burning crater into her. What kind of idiotic question was that? “Everyone likes sex.” He curled his upper lip, dialing up the dick-factor as he added some snark to, “Except you, apparently.”
She just smiled patiently, which made him want to toss her headfirst down the latrine. The shout rang in his ears: What does it take to rattle you?
“Why do you have sex?” she pressed. “If not to share intimacy, then why?”
“Well, last I checked, Max, orgasms feel good. If you could stop analyzing the ethology of male-female bonding behavior long enough to shut up, maybe you could make the same discovery.”
“Oh, I’ve had plenty of orgasms.” She sighed in what sounded like a stupid, dreamy way, and turned her eyes up to the ceiling. “The best was with Brian Mulligan. He was on a swim scholarship at Stanford University, like me, and, boy, did I fall cuckoo in love with him. It’s what made it so good.”
“Uh huh.” Kyle rubbed a finger along the side of his nose. Now that bothered him, thinking of her having great orgasms with another guy. Or was it her having been in love with the dildo…?
“Have you ever had sex with someone you cared about, Kyle? I mean, truly deeply liked? I’m telling you, it makes a difference.”
He thought of Sienna, the only woman who’d ever been in his life longer than a week. He’d always believed she was the one. As dysfunctional as their relationship was, he still imagined what was between them was love just trying to get better. But now, gazing into the bright blue halo of Max’s eyes, he felt the wrongness of Sienna like choking hands around his throat.
He deepened his sneer. “You’ve used up half your questions,” he informed her with malicious glee.
Max’s chin tucked in. “What?”
“You asked me if I like sex; that’s one,” he said, ticking off her questions on his fingers. “Then two, why do I have it? Three, if not for intimacy, why? Four, have I ever had sex with someone I cared about? Then you confirmed with number five, ‘truly liked?’”
She laughed. “I didn’t know we’d started. Hmm, well, okay. Would you like to have children someday?”
He rocked back on the bed like he’d been hit with a fast-moving fist. Heat slammed into his cheeks, then drained away as quickly, leaving him feeling slightly nauseous. Damn this woman. Damn her! “That’s a question you ask a person you’re thinking of marrying,” he gritted out, “not just screwing.”
“I think we’ve already established I don’t just screw. Besides my one mistake, that is.”
“Oh, so now I’m a mistake?” He was back to squeezing the edge of the cot frame, more like clutching it. In desperation…although he couldn’t figure what he was so afraid of.
She studied his expression.
He glowered at her.
“Make you a deal,” she said. “I’ll give you a blow job if you exchange phones with me.”
His eyebrows jerked up. What the hell?
She pulled her cell out of her small backpack and held it up. “I received some text messages a short while ago. I’m assuming you did, too. I show you mine, you show me yours, no more questions, and you get one of those impersonal orgasms you’re so crazy about.”
He showed her a full set of teeth. “You really know how to sell a guy on an idea.”
“Is that a yes?”
He didn’t answer. Shoulda deleted Sienna’s text. Just one reason among twelve hundred others as to why he should press the delete key. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Universe, I get it. Fuck. Off.
“I’m not asking anything of you I’m not willing to give myself.”
“Not necessarily,” Kyle countered. “I could have something juicy on my cell while yours is merely filled with all the mundane details of your sexless life.”
“True,” she agreed, a note of amusement entering her voice. “After all, before you, I hadn’t had sex in over a year. It’s why the night at the Jebel Ali Club I was so”—she winked—“desperate.”
“Oh, ho, ho, ho, thank you very much.”
“Well?” Max jiggled her c
ell at him. “Yes or no?”
“Thing is, Max, you know exactly what’s on your phone, don’t you? No risk at all for you.”
Her brows slanted. “Is that a no?”
He shifted. He was probably starting to look like a total chicken shit. “Well, hell,” he drawled, “why not roll the dice?” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it over. The text from Sienna didn’t give away anything personal about him. Mostly, Sienna sounded like a haranguing bitch. He took Max’s phone and said in a purring Southern accent, “Hope you’ve got good gag-reflex control, sugah.” He popped open her recent messages. Like him, she’d received three new ones today.
“Mom” texted a reminder about someone named Samantha—ah, that’s right, Max was Samantha—needing to give a baby shower for Cousin Joanne, and don’t forget to buy plane tickets back to DC in plenty of time.
Kevin—who Kyle remembered was Max’s younger, adopted brother—said, no! he didn’t want Max to do that, and, damn, if Kyle wasn’t tempted to scroll back and find out what they were arguing about.
Finally, a fucker named Edward Aubrey wanted to know when Max was getting back to Los Angeles so he could have dinner with her.
Face hot, Kyle handed back her phone. “Who’s Aubrey?”
A small smile played around Max’s lips, like how fun it was to play a game of peek-a-boo with his jealousy. “My editor,” she answered. “He wants to discuss another assignment.” She handed back his phone. “Who’s Sienna, and why hasn’t anyone adjusted her medication?”
He rammed his cell away. “I thought you said, I show you mine, you show me yours, and no more questions.”
“Hey, you opened the door by asking about Aubrey.”
Kyle spread his legs wide and pointed at the floor between them. “On your knees, pencil pusher. Time to pay up.”
Max rose, and he braced himself for the inevitable face slap. But she just closed the door to her tent, then lowered into a crouch between the vee of his legs, her hands lightly coming to rest on his thighs.
Wings of Gold Series Page 35
