No, she couldn’t. Not when he did that.
His tongue kept moving, encouraging her with movements not words. Relentless movements that she couldn’t hold out against—and she didn’t want to. She writhed beneath his touches, her mouth spilling the hot secrets he’d wanted to hear.
What she wanted, how she wanted, when she wanted.
His hands cupped her breasts, his thumbs circling and stroking her nipples as his hot mouth sucked on her sex. She curled her thighs around him, feeling his hot jaw press against her smooth skin. Arching up, she opened completely, throwing herself over the edge, shaking as she tumbled into his embrace.
When she opened her eyes, he was smiling, unashamedly admiring her curves.
“What are you waiting for?” Emma teased, breathing out and embracing the bright white night. “I’m ready for more.”
Hunter jumped to the floor, scooped up a handful of those twenty thousand condoms and climbed back in bed to take her every way they could think of.
CHAPTER SIX
CHRISTMAS DAY on the base was a holiday for pretty much everyone. Neither Emma nor Hunter had to work. Neither moved from her bunkroom. Not for hours and hours.
In truth, Hunter never wanted to move again. He’d never felt so at peace, never so relaxed as he was now, lying curved against this strong, petite woman.
But the second he admitted that to himself, the blade of guilt swept in. There was no future between them, but he didn’t want this to end with her tears. He wanted her to understand why it was he made no promises. He wanted her to know more about him. Hell, he wanted her to like him—to leave here and think of him with a smile.
Most of all, he didn’t want to hurt her. She’d given him the best Christmas of his life and the least he could do was explain why that was enough.
“Christmas at our place was always pretty weird,” he murmured hoarsely and then coughed to clear his throat. Hell, did he really want to go into this?
“Why was that?” she asked, her voice soft in the quiet room.
It was almost dark and cozily warm the way they had to lie so close in the narrow bunk. She was on her side with her back to him, and it was somehow easier for him to tell her it all without seeing the sympathy he knew would rise in her eyes. He rested his head on her shoulder and tightened his hold around her waist so she couldn’t turn to face him. Her skin was soft and smooth and welcoming. So he whispered old, painful secrets.
“My parents are both workaholics. They’re photojournalists.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, they spent their careers going all over the world photographing everything from royal weddings to wars.”
“Did you go with them?”
“I was in boarding school.” For his entire childhood. “I used to travel with them during the holidays sometimes. But we never spent Christmas together. One or the other or both were always working. Half the time I celebrated Christmas at school. So when I was twelve, I nagged and nagged and nagged them to have a real Christmas—all of us together. I hadn’t realized that they were living increasingly separate lives, doing assignments in different parts of the world. I hadn’t realized the problems they both had.” The way his father drank, the way both parents sought attention and physical relief from others. “So they finally said yes. I was excited about having them both home. A real family Christmas with neither of them working.”
He could feel the tension in her body now as she asked, “What happened?”
“We got through the present opening, but they’d opened the bottles as well. And over the damn bowls of potatoes and peas they had a massive fight. Worse than massive. An hour of screaming and their marriage was over.” All in that one day.
“Your father left?” Despite his grip, she rolled to face him, her green eyes troubled and sweet.
Hunter closed his. “My mother threw him out.” He packed a bag and never came back. He drew in a breath. “For once, I thought we were going to have it—a merry Christmas. But he got so drunk and she was so bitter. They fought about work, about money, about me. About the affairs they’d both had. It was just vicious. Of all the things I’ve witnessed, that one just ripped.” Right there at the dinner table—the place where a family was supposed to eat and laugh and love.
“What did you do?” She put those soft fingers to his face and gently traced his cheek.
“There wasn’t anything I could do. I just watched and wished I’d never suggested it. I’ve never felt the same about Christmas.” Stupid as it was, he hadn’t eaten a traditional Christmas dinner since.
“Hunter, I’m so sorry.”
He managed a chuckle. “I know, it’s pathetic, and it was a long time ago. But it taints it, you know?”
“My mother left me just after Christmas,” she whispered.
“Oh, sweetheart.” He tightened his arm around her, fingers smoothing the skin covering her spine.
“My father was never on the scene, and Mum wasn’t in touch with any of her family,” Emma said. “When I was eight, she decided to go to Australia. She said she’d go first and find some work and send for me. Six months later she was killed in a car crash over there.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “Thing is, she was never going to send for me. She’d left me already.”
“Left you with Bea?”
“I went to Bea when I was fourteen and had been through every foster family they had on the books.”
He was silent a moment. “No wonder she’s so important to you.”
Emma nodded.
“That’s why you want to go back and stay near her, right?”
She nodded again. “I owe her. She was a short-term emergency caregiver, didn’t want long-term placements. So most kids were only with her a week or so, usually less while they found them someplace else to stay. But when there wasn’t anywhere else I could go, she let me stay. She’s the nearest thing I’ve ever had to real family.”
His embrace tightened. She’d been through so much.
“How do you cope with the stress of your job?” she asked.
“I’m not there for the initial rescue and recovery phase. Those search guys see some…” He trailed off. “I’m there for the next part.”
Where people were homeless and desperate, living in extremely hard conditions and when rebuilding was taking forever and people were worn down by the day-to-day grind. She just looked at him and waited.
…
“Don’t look so sad. My life isn’t all awful sights.” He smiled. “I run. I run and run and then I read books.”
“What kind of books?”
“Any kind, really, anything I can get. Paperbacks when the battery runs out on my e-reader and I can’t recharge it.”
“You enjoy the work?”
“Absolutely,” he answered. “It’s my life.”
It was so impressive that he was involved in disaster response and reconstruction, but it hurt her to think that while he swept in to help other people reconstruct their homes, he had no real home himself. He’d never had one.
At least Emma, for all the hardship in her early years, had found a home with Bea. She understood what it meant. She wasn’t sure that Hunter did.
“It’s a very generous thing you do.” She traced his jaw with the back of her fingers.
“Not really,” he confessed. “It’s also convenient. Never staying in one place for more than a year or so means I don’t have long-term relationships—romantic ones, I mean.”
Yeah, she could see how it totally enabled him to avoid emotional intimacy and commitment.
“I’m a little too much like my parents,” he continued, seeming determined to explain this to her. “Workaholic, driven by wanderlust. It’s not fair to a partner to drag her around through that. It’s certainly not fair to bring kids into that lifestyle. Family isn’t a fit for me.”
She met his eyes and understood what he was telling her. “What drew you to it?” she asked, to get them ont
o a sidetrack. “The traveling like your parents?”
He nodded. “It didn’t seem right to just take a picture and walk away. To leave and do nothing.”
“But they didn’t do nothing.” Emma propped herself up and looked at him. “With those pictures, the rest of the world sees, the rest of the world responds. It’s because of pictures that those charities get donations and stuff. That’s helping, isn’t it?”
He smiled. “It’s not the same. It’s not enough. Not for me.”
“Do you see either of them much?”
“No. Dad’s retired from the travel side and takes sports pictures for his local rag. Mom’s retired and lives with a new guy in Chicago.”
“And you’re saving the world one corner at a time.”
“Hardly saving, only trying.”
“Do you find it difficult to say good-bye to people when each project ends?” She cringed inside, conscious of that wistful note in her voice.
“No,” he answered—too quickly, too firmly. “It’s normal for me.”
Really? She didn’t believe he was that cold-blooded. But she understood that having survived a childhood effectively spent in institutions, together with absent parents who’d had a bitter breakup, he’d have some strong defenses in place.
Emma made love to him then. She pushed him back on the narrow bunk and kissed him, let her hair brush his skin—knowing he loved the tickling torment of it. She ran her hands all over him—letting herself care, not letting him take over but making him lie back and accept it from her. One sentence—a threat—was all it took to secure his laughing acquiescence.
Then she carefully straddled him, her thighs wide, utterly open to him, slowly easing down his hard shaft, until her buttocks hit his thighs and he was as deep inside her as he could ever get. Heavy-lidded, he looked from her breasts to her face. She smiled at him.
“You’re a witch,” he murmured.
She rode him slowly to start, watching his reaction as she altered the pace, the angle, the tightness of her grip. Only then her own desire outstripped her control, twisting in pleasure but becoming weaker with it—her movements slowing unbearably. So he helped—holding her hips firmly in his hands, sliding her up and down his erection while he pumped as well. The effect was devastating. She bit her lip, holding back the noise building in her chest. Letting out just a hint of it in a low groan as the orgasm hit her.
Braced with her hands on either side of his head, she gazed straight into his eyes, mesmerized and focused only on him as her first orgasm went straight into the second. It was so exquisite she almost couldn’t bear it. She drowned in the rush of feeling for him as he gritted his teeth, groaning his adoration for the pleasure they shared.
She tumbled toward him, resting her forehead on his shoulder, his arms reaching around her, pulling her closer still as they recovered together. She could feel each of his ragged breaths, could taste the film of sweat on his skin, could hear the way he muttered her name over and over. And she came with him again and again.
…
All too soon it was over—that endless night seamlessly became day. The feeling of dread deepened in her belly—a cold, sick lump in her stomach.
Her plane had arrived. Avoiding his eyes, she’d packed all her gear. Now her big pack was already at the airstrip. She pulled on her subzero safety gear and was glad it hid the way her limbs were trembling—not with cold but silly heartbroken sorrow. Clinging to her daypack with freezing fingers, she finally turned to him—the last person on base she had to say good-bye to.
“You could come and visit me?” She hated herself for asking, yet she couldn’t not.
“That wouldn’t be wise,” he answered. Now he avoided meeting her eyes.
“You can put your body into dangerous places,” she said quietly. “But not your heart.”
He shook his head. “You deserve so much more than what I can give you.”
How could he presume to know what she did or didn’t deserve? How could he know what she’d ever been given?
“Now there’s a line.” She backpedaled to tease mode, pride dictating she not show how much his rejection of any possibility of future contact hurt her. She hated good-byes.
“No, it’s the truth,” he said somberly. “You’re a really wonderful—”
He broke off when she put her hand over his mouth. “Don’t start feeding me that stuff now,” she said. “Let’s just…say good-bye.”
But he didn’t. And nor did she.
He didn’t smile, didn’t tickle the palm of her hand with his tongue. He just stood utterly still.
And Emma turned and walked blindly out to the shuttle waiting to take her to the airstrip. The Hercules was ready to return her to the real world. She managed the safety strap onboard all by herself this time, which was quite a feat considering her fingers were numb.
She closed her eyes as the engines roared, wishing her heart had remained frozen while she’d been down here.
The people in her life left. The people in her life didn’t need or want her for long. Would she never learn that?
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I’m so sorry I couldn’t be here for Christmas Day.”
Grandma Bea was sitting in the ancient recliner looking very happy. “I know you are, dear, but you really needn’t worry. I had a fine day. Ashe brought me down a dinner that his mother made.”
“Really?” Emma laughed to cover the stupid stab of jealousy she felt. Grandma Bea really hadn’t minded her not being here? “You watched the queen’s message?”
“Of course. Now tell me everything.”
Emma had already shown her all the pictures, told her about the base… What was left? But there was no avoiding her foster mother when she did her impression of the Spanish Inquisition.
“There’s really not that much to tell.” At least, not much that Emma wanted to share.
Since she’d gotten back, Emma had done a search on the Internet like a love-struck stalker. The guy was hugely successful in his field—she’d suspected that. It seemed he often spoke at symposiums on recovery building. He moved from project to project, as he’d said, spending six to eighteen months in a place before moving on. He’d led all kinds of developments in needy areas. He was practically a saint. And he loved that lifestyle—more than he’d ever love one woman.
“He lives on the other side of the world,” Emma told Bea.
“So? There are airplanes, aren’t there?”
“No, he’s a wanderer. He never stays in one place for long.”
“That’s okay. You’ve always had itchy feet, too. You should travel with him.”
Emma laughed hopelessly. “It would never work.”
“Why not?”
“I couldn’t leave you.”
“Don’t you dare use me as your excuse.” Grandma Bea sat up straighter than she had in the last fifteen years. “Don’t hide your cowardice behind any supposed obligation to me. You don’t give this a chance, then I don’t want to see you here anymore anyway.”
“Bea—you don’t mean that.” Emma’s heart felt skinned. Not even her aging foster mum needed her?
“Damn right I do.” Bea tried to heft herself out of her chair.
“Don’t.” Emma stood. “You’ll fall and hurt your hip again.”
“Emma, you know I love you and I always will,” Bea snapped gruffly. “But you think about what it is that’s really holding you back from giving it a shot with this guy. Don’t hide behind me.”
“I asked him, Bea,” Emma confessed. “I asked him, and he said no.”
Bea slumped back in her chair. Emma suffered under her narrow gaze, her sharp, all-seeing eyes.
“What did you ask him?”
“I asked him to come and visit me.”
“And what did he say?”
“That I deserved more than what he could give me. A total line.”
“He sounds as chicken as you are.”
“I gave him a chance. I asked.” And he’d
refused.
“So that’s it? You try once and then you quit?”
“Pretty much.”
“That’s not the Emma I raised. There’s no such thing as fairy tales, you know. You have to fight for what you want.” Bea looked at her. “What did you want him to do? Quit the project he had on down there? Leave all those other people in the lurch? You’d have thought less of him if he’d done that.”
But the reason he’d said no wasn’t because of the project or all those other people. It was because he’d said he wasn’t right for her. That they couldn’t ever work as a couple. Their lives were too different.
So they’d only had that week and damn the man, he’d ruined Christmas for her forever. But no matter what Grandma Bea said, Emma was never, ever chasing him.
…
Hunter felt bad. He felt really, really bad. His chest hurt so much he wondered if he was having a heart attack or something. Or something was it. He suspected the cause—his heart was defrosting—and it hurt.
You can put your body into dangerous places but not your heart.
Her accusation haunted him. And he couldn’t bear to work in the same building as her beautiful mural. So many times a day he had to walk past it with the shades of green so much like her eyes—the detailed curled fern fronds, the wisps of feathers, the symbols of her native country.
She made him want different things. She made him want things for her. More than either of their lives offered them at the moment. But he truly believed she deserved so much more than he had to offer.
He worked insane hours—volunteering for extra work to try to wear himself out enough to fall asleep at night. Except night never came down here, and his brain never shut down, either.
He knew she wouldn’t contact him. She’d been too hurt in the past. People walked out on her, and the one time she had gone after someone she’d been rejected. By him. And he’d hurt her, too. He’d tried not to, but it had happened anyway—and why? Because she’d come to care about him. He’d let that happen—talking with her, confiding in her. But he’d only done that because he liked her, too. He’d been inexorably drawn and too human to be able to resist her. But it was utterly over unless he did something about it.
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