“Wait.” He fumbled for a moment with something square.
“Give it.” She sounded like him.
His shaft was thick and long. She wanted to run her hand over it, memorize the smooth skin as her thumb brushed the hair at its base, but she didn’t want to wait a second longer to be completed. The package ripped, and with the sheath they were more than ready.
He yanked her hips to the dresser’s edge. Then his tip pushed while he held her open and the first entry was as sweet as reaching the end of a race. He pushed deep and glided out until they crashed together again and again, faster each time. Now their bodies rocked so hard she bounced on the dresser, but their movements worked like one. His grunts and her moans were so loud she couldn’t separate them, but she didn’t need to categorize who shouted, who flew, who rose, who fragmented, because they both did, together.
“Oh, my.” The mirror was sticky against her shoulder blades, and she wouldn’t look at where she connected to Rey, but his pants scratched her inner thighs. She opened and closed her mouth, chest heaving, but with no idea what to say or do. She was naked, he was dressed, and they’d screwed themselves speechless on a wood veneer built-in.
His eyes gleamed wickedly close, but he didn’t disconnect.
“That was—” She noticed another way he wasn’t like other men. He had growled and stiffened and she’d swear he’d come in the condom, but he filled her enough that if she wanted to, there was still something to slide on. “Wow.”
“Yah, y’betcha.”
The imitation Dakota accent made her snort at the same time his easy fluidity startled her. “Holding out on me?”
“Must be endorphins.” His pause was shorter than usual. “Hot-wired neural pathways.”
She counted on her fingers. “Twelve syllables. And how the heck did you know that?”
“Had an A in Human Biology.” He let go of her hip, but only to move his hand to her breasts.
“Whaaaat?” Her question sounded too high and wispy to deserve an answer as she thrust her chest up and encouraged him to play with her nipples.
“I’m a high speed medic.” He complied with her unspoken orders by wetting his fingers in his mouth and then, after she lowered her chin to watch, he tweaked her nipple to a glistening point. “Know plenty about bodies.”
She arched into his fingers. “I refuse to believe my tax dollars trained you in this.”
“Better believe it, babe.”
“You sound—” She broke off because he’d started gliding again. Indeed, he was still hard. “Ohh.”
“Good?”
“Oh, yes,” she panted as he pressed deeper. “Let’s move to the bed.”
He stopped and bent his head sheepishly. “Think I’m stuck.”
“You can’t be serious?” Her stomach muscles jerked with a laugh that squeezed his cock, although to be fair her butt also felt welded to the fake wood top.
“Not there.” He proved it by popping out, with the condom covered by his hand. “Knee.”
“Oh.” She stopped laughing. “What should I do?”
“Ahh?” He scanned the room, hand still holding the prophylactic in place.
“Garbage can, right.” She wiggled and the suction sound as she unpeeled made both of them burst out laughing again. “Don’t drop it!”
* * *
It took three tries to convince his knee microprocessor that he wasn’t in danger of losing his balance and it ought to loosen itself and play, but Grace helped him totter to the bed, where he collapsed onto his back. The mattress was the best this week, the blankets the softest, and damn if he didn’t feel great.
“Now what?” She’d tied a bath towel like a sarong, but it was nicely narrow.
He raised his right leg, looked her in the eyes and said, “Would you help?” Despite five days together twenty-four seven, they’d vigilantly respected each other’s privacy. It was past time she saw his stumps. “Please.”
“Okay.” When the towel started to become intriguing, she tightened the knot over her breasts. “What should I do?”
He scrunched his pants leg high enough to show the green button on the side of his below-the-knee prosthetic’s socket. “Push that and twist.” The precision mechanics popped, and only the silicone liner remained.
“One down.” She moistened her lips as if talking to herself again.
“Now the hard one.” He lifted his hips from the bed and wiggled his pants below the bionic knee of his left leg so she could reach the release pin, and in seconds the whole mess, including his pants, came off in her arms.
“Next?”
“Peel the banana.”
Her mouth made a circle and her eyes darted immediately to where he’d intended.
“The liners.” He circled his right leg in the air. If the Marquis wore a towel and looked like Grace, therapy would have been more popular.
“I thought you meant—”
“I know.”
She looked exasperated while her first fingers slipped under the silicone liner’s grippy lip like it was a tight sock. “Do they hurt?”
“Off and on. Not now.”
She finished rolling down the second liner while he reclined on his elbows, legs stuck across the sheets. Only his boxers remained and they’d be off as soon as conversation ended. The reddened knobs at the end of his legs felt tenderized by the force he’d exerted at the dresser. He should get a purple marker and draw hearts on stumpy and lumpy. They deserved recognition.
That lip chew meant she’d gone away to think. Since the happy man was covered, and there were no marine life forms in the vicinity, he asked, “They bother you?”
“No. Although sometimes what they stand for does.” She looked into his eyes. “You were hurt. And the Andersons lost their son.” She walked to the table to extinguish the bedside light, effectively hiding her face. “It challenges me to pay attention, to think about politics, duty, America. A lot to consider.”
“Lot to put on a guy.”
“Seems like a pretty strong guy.”
“Not a...” Alone on the bed, chilled without clothes or her touch, he could sense his speech fluency fading. “Not a symbol.”
“I know that. You once accused me of flag-waving just for talking to you, remember?”
“Worried.” As she climbed onto the bed, the towel obeyed his wishes and unknotted.
“About—” she retrieved it, but not before he had a view of that dark strip of heaven, “—what?”
“Some women.” He gritted his teeth in frustration about how to explain fetish chicks. “Letters. Pictures. To soldiers.”
“Groupies?” She rubbed his thighs and it didn’t matter if she understood, because he should not under any circumstances distract her from digging into his quads.
“Uh-huh.” Damn, that felt good.
“Why? If they don’t know you?”
“Hero shit.” Holy Moly, Cruz. He could hear Kahananui’s woman advice and feel Wulf knocking knuckles on his skull. Surgeons should have given him a lobotomy along with his legs. After they’d almost banged a mirror off a wall wasn’t the time to mention skanks with a hero fetish who liked to proposition amps.
Her hands paused. “You don’t think that I...”
“No. No.” He stiffened. That wasn’t what he wanted to express. “You know me.” He’d shared his days with her, how he thought, what he read. She’d seen him cry, then something more embarrassing than crying, and she’d stuck by him. “Friends first.”
“If you mention benefits I will—”
“Spank me?” His parts agreed with that awesomeness, but her eyebrows disappeared to her hairline, which he interpreted as not.
Until she bent her head to bring her lips a whisper from his. “Will it make you talk?”
Chapter Eight
They slept so late that they were still ten miles east of Rapid City at lunch. Deep cold had settled across South Dakota, but no snow, and Grace made good time on the clear roads. With a thousand miles left, if they drove six more hours today, Cruz calculated they could pull in to Pateros as early as tomorrow evening.
He rubbed his thigh, the one closer to the driver’s seat where she couldn’t miss his action, and muffled a grunt. Never let it be said that a Green Beret wasn’t a master of subterfuge.
She took her eyes off the road for an instant to look at him. Target acquired.
He flexed his buttocks and stretched, one hand braced on the dashboard. He pushed a sigh out of his diaphragm and shifted as if the 442’s spacious seat had shrunk. “Need gas?”
“We still have over half a tank. Do you need to stop?”
Yep, he had her. “No. I’m good.” This time he dug four fingers into his thigh and pressed his lips together to appear as if he stifled a groan.
“Don’t be a martyr.” She merged to the exit lane. “If you’re uncomfortable, we’ll stop.”
The satisfaction that came after scoring a direct hit dissipated when she turned right off the exit instead of following the arrows left to a motel. One destination dominated the north side of Interstate 90, and the beds sold there inflated.
“Shop?” Billboards for the outdoor gear emporium had lined the last hundred miles of interstate. “Now?”
“Driving for fifteen hundred miles makes Grace a dull girl. I have a plan.”
So had he, and he’d been out-flanked.
Even the blue-signed spaces were full on shopping-crazed Black Friday. They parked in the corner with two football fields to cross merely to enter the massive hunting and fishing gear store.
“Chair. Please.” He’d move faster and keep his personal space open with his wheels, and his stumps deserved a rest after their stellar performance last night. Talk about the best reason to be chafed.
Grace grabbed a cart at the entrance. “Fishing gear, aisles six through nine. Get moving.”
“Kidding?” He wrapped his arms around his torso and pretended to shiver. “Crazy cold.”
“Aren’t you the tough guy who trained in Alaska?” She smiled over her shoulder but didn’t stop threading a path through other shoppers. “I promise to keep you warm and happy.”
The store was the most insane normal place he could imagine outside of Vegas. Bartenders and waitresses near Walter Reed were used to wheelchairs and amps, and people along the interstate had been too focused on their own trips, or he’d been wearing legs, so few people had paid attention to him. Here the air was too full of shopping mojo, holiday music and shrieking for many to double-take at a double-amp.
She maneuvered a value-pack with a shelter, a sled and who knew what else into the cart while he considered the possibility of frost-bite on his happy friend. The portable heater that went in next made the idea of ice-fishing more palatable, but the activity involved far too much clothing for his goal. In the tackle aisle her fingers skimmed shelves and her lips moved silently, as she read and compared price tags. She knew what she wanted.
“Didn’t know P-H-...Dees fish.”
“Sometimes, if you want a DNA sample, you have to get it yourself. I bet there are other things about me you don’t know.”
“Thirty-four B.”
She bobbled the cardboard box in her hand, but once she clutched it securely, she turned, her chest vibrating somewhere between shock and laughter.
“Right?”
“Yes, darn it, and I don’t want to know how you knew that.”
“Expert recon.”
“Well, Mr. Expert, this P-H-D has always wanted a salmonid gutter.” With her hip cocked to the side in clear challenge, she flourished a box with the awesome logo Spineless Wunder Boner. “Afraid this won’t fit in the cart. Looks like you’ll have to carry it.”
If this woman wanted him to roll through the store with a boner, she had better weapons at her disposal by shaking those tight jeans, but he set the box front and center on his lap, words facing out. “That good?”
“Yah, y’betcha.”
All $1,263.28 of gear fit onto their credit cards and into the back seat of the Perfect Ten. Filled with a wild boar sandwich, fueled by coffee and possessing two fresh South Dakota fishing licenses, he slouched in the passenger seat. Alone, he might’ve burped. Grace presumably had standards. Although the way she knew fishing gear, maybe she knew how to burp. “Where to?”
“I checked fishing reports. It’s early, but Pactola Lake has six inches of ice in places.”
“Good roads?” He stroked the wood inlay on his door. His baby had carried them this far, but a frozen lake in the Black Hills might be asking too much from her forty-year-old suspension.
“I chose it because Highway 385 is dry and clear all the way. She’ll make it.” The ignition fired, and she confidently maneuvered the clutch and gears while she twisted to look out the rear and back out of the space. The sunlight falling sideways through the window picked reddish streaks out of her dark hair and lit the line of her jaw like a church painting. He could watch her all day.
A thousand miles ago, he’d known Grace could handle pretty much anything and wouldn’t leave if the road got hard, but every day he fell more in love with her, and not only because she treated him like a man instead of a hobby kit. His emotions must be so obvious, the words should be tattooed on his neck, but she didn’t seem to realize. She didn’t make kitty eyes or giggle, or whisper in his ear to try to get him to admit it first, like other women.
He used his sleeve to wipe dust off the dashboard, but he might as well wipe his eyes. He was deep in sappy territory. Obviously, she wanted a relationship, or she wouldn’t have slept with him. She’d been clear on that from the beginning. And he felt as pumped as a twenty-year-old when he remembered how she’d screamed his name. So if his legs weren’t the problem, and the sex was crazier than full-moon monkeys, why wasn’t she hinting for the L-word?
He needed a job. If he was careful with his disability checks and his traumatic injury insurance payout, he’d be comfortable in Pateros, but Seattle was a different economic game. He couldn’t court her on her city turf and expect her to support him, too.
They reached the lake. Drivers of the other vehicles were presumably inside the handful of shelters spread across the ice. Beyond the cluster of shacks, dark open water stretched the reservoir’s length. The sight excited him. Risk—small maybe, but not the insulated life of Walter Reed or the boredom of the passenger seat—lurked close by.
“Wheels or legs?” she asked.
“Too cold.” He didn’t know what extreme temps would do to his micro-processors and hydraulics. “Chair again.”
His cold-weather pants flopped like one of those fish Grace wanted. As he knotted each pants leg, she spun, arms raised to the sky, and blew clouds of steamy breath. Her bright orange-and-silver striped coat and the blue-green knit scarf filled his world with color.
Her cheeks flushed when she stopped. “I hear trout calling our names.”
“Graaaace.” His falsetto made her laugh, his favorite sound. “Eat me!”
“Dream on.” She pressed her lips to his with the speed of a familiar lover, and the touch warmed him in ways he didn’t think even a roaring fire could.
At first he stayed close since Grace had to trudge with the gear sled, but the wind-scoured ice beckoned like a giant crystalline runway. He imitated his 442 revving and eyed her. “Race?”
“You gotta be kidding.”
“Watch!” He was off, friction so decreased that his wheels hissed when he flicked them through his hands. Then he arched and bounced on the back of his seat to pop the front wheels in the air.
“Rey!”
Better than a simple wheelie, he squeezed hard to stop the left tire, felt the sizzle through his glove but let the right one roll until he’d spun a perfect donut. “Whooo-hoooo!”
Grace reached him as he howled at the sky. “I don’t think you’re treating this expedition with proper reverence.”
“Ice, ice, baby.” He swooped her into his lap, took off again with her holding onto his neck and chest. She was a bundle of laughing woman, his laughing woman, but ten layers of padded gear would inhibit even a stainless steel fish boner’s rod. Getting the shelter raised became a highly motivating factor.
The shelter’s instructions claimed one person could set it up, so a former Special Forces soldier and a Ph.D. should be able to accomplish the task, even if they totaled only one and a half bodies. He stabilized the sides while she popped the middle pole.
“That sucks.” Grace climbed out to stand next to his chair and look at the portal’s bottom edge, approximately eighteen inches off the ground. “I bought one with no floor covering on purpose for your wheels, but I didn’t check for a raised door. I’m sorry.”
“No prob-prob-problem.” When his chair’s front wheels touched the shelter’s nylon sides, he unzipped the enclosure and locked his brakes. Wouldn’t do if the chair ran away without him. He braced on the arm rests and self-propelled over the lip of the tent, rolling on his shoulder across the ice until the far wall stopped him.
“Rey!” Grace’s head poked through the open flap, her eyes as wide as her mouth. “Are you okay?”
“Last time I-I-I jumped—” he struggled to stop laughing, “—water not...hard.”
“The last time...” Her inflection rose as she climbed in. “Was that when...?”
“Yeah.” Felt odd to realize he hadn’t had the dream in four days, not since the first night on the road. He’d attended enough head-sessions not to think it was permanently gone, but he hadn’t slept so much in months. Grace, better than drugs.
“Step one is drilling the hole. This is a manly activity—note the large, sharp tool—so of course I will defer to you. Here.” She handed him an auger the size of a rifle. “Drill.”
His Road Home Page 11
