Military Man

by Marie Ferrarella

  Her day no longer began at seven in the morning. It began when she finished her work at the M.E.’s office and Collin came by to pick her up. It began when she joined him in his work. Not very independent of her, but then, she wasn’t really worried about her independence. If she was worried at all, it was about her heart. Because she knew that no matter what she’d said to the contrary, her heart was no longer in her possession. It was in his.

  Picket fences.

  She made Collin think of picket fences. The kind that surrounded an idyllic house that had a dog and two point five children playing in the front yard. He wasn’t even sure just when it happened, it just had.

  The nature of his work kept him on the move. It was the way he’d always liked it. But for the first time in his life, part of him was beginning to wonder what it would feel like to settle down in one place. With one woman.

  The woman.

  And, for the first time in Collin’s life, thoughts about a woman were seeping into his mind completely unbidden. Lucy would just pop into his head while he was talking to Emmett, or still trying to ascertain just where Jason had gotten himself to. After finding traces of his fugitive cousin in the cave, it appeared as if Jason Jamison had somehow managed to disappear off the face of the earth.

  Maybe his cousin had gotten smart and had left the area, the county. Maybe even the country. Everything seemed to point in that direction. Except that he knew Jason, knew the way a mind like that, obsessed with the destruction of one man, thought.

  Jason, he felt, still had to be here somewhere. But where?

  Finding Jason should have been his chief concern, but it wasn’t. His chief concern, like it or not, was what he was going to do about feeling this way about Lucy. Did he act on it? Did he just enjoy it and let nature take its course, whatever that turned out to be? The last time he’d sat back and allowed that to happen, albeit unconsciously, the woman in his life had disappeared out of it.

  But, looking back, he realized that he hadn’t felt about Paula the way he did now about Lucy. Visions of Paula never intruded into his thoughts the way visions of Lucy did. She hadn’t commandeered his every thought, hijacking it away from the things he should have been doing.

  She hadn’t stolen his breath away every time he thought of her, the way Lucy did whenever he thought of her.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” Lucy murmured. She tucked her bare feet under her on the sofa and curled into him.

  They were at her place again, where they’d seemed to wind up every night for the past week. It was a ritual she knew she could easily become accustomed to. A ritual she already started looking forward to the moment he walked away from her apartment in the morning.

  Miss you already, her mind would whisper to his departing back, although she hadn’t the courage to let the words find their way to her lips. Not yet. She knew that would only manage to frighten him away.

  Heaven knew, it frightened her sometimes to feel this way.

  Collin thought of the hopeless battle in which his thoughts were deadlocked. “It’ll take a lot more than a penny to ransom them,” he told her.

  What an odd word to use, she thought. Ransom. As if they were being held prisoner. She wondered if he had a clue that she felt as if all of her had been taken prisoner by him. And that she was more than cheerfully willing to do her time.

  She grinned at him. “That’s okay. I’ve got a bank account. I’ll write you a check.”

  Just her smile seemed to open up airless, stuffy rooms within him. Chasing in sunshine and allowing a feeling to come rushing in that he wasn’t ready to examine just yet.

  Collin pulled her to him, settling her onto his lap. She assumed her new position without protest, her eyes shining as she looked at him.

  “And how do I know it won’t bounce?” he asked, his face completely sober.

  Lucy slipped her arms around his neck. “I guess you’ll just have to trust me.”

  “Trust you,” he echoed.

  There was still a smile on his face, but a solemnity had slipped into his eyes that she found a little troubling.

  Did he trust her?

  She knew that, despite all the warnings she’d issued to herself, despite her principles and vows and everything that had come before their first time together, she trusted Collin. Maybe she was being foolish, but there it was. She trusted him.

  She’d given him her virginity and her soul all in that same act. And now she trusted him not to break her heart. She refused to believe that he was capable of something like that. She’d waited so long to love a man, really love a man, she wasn’t going to ruin it by inflicting doubt into her situation.

  “Why?” she teased, bringing her mouth an inch away from his. “Don’t you think I’m trustworthy?”

  Her breath tantalized him as he felt it along his lips. His gut tightened in anticipation of making love with her.

  “Yes,” he said, “you are. It’s me you should worry about.”

  She didn’t like him saying that. It was as if he was beginning to prepare her for something. For a break. She didn’t want him to pledge his undying love or to even make promises about tomorrow. But she didn’t want him marring today with seedlings of doubts that promised to grow like weeds.

  She looked at him and quietly asked, “Why?”

  It was far too complicated for Collin to sum up in a sentence or two. Her life was just beginning. His, on the other hand, was filled with deeds he could never talk about, deeds that had aged him. He’d seen more of life—and death—than she could ever hope to.

  “I’m not who you think I am,” he told her simply.

  Her stomach quivered in fear. But she’d learned to mask her thoughts nearly as well as he did. “Do you have a secret identity, too?”

  His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “Too?”

  “Like my mother,” she explained.

  Lucy doubted if she would ever fully get over that, that her mother had led lives she would never know anything about. That the woman who’d laughed and read her endless stories when she was a child lived a life fully apart from her husband and daughter.

  She saw the wariness enter his eyes. “Don’t worry, I’m not covertly lifting your fingerprints off a wineglass and running it against some database of master criminals or super spies. I know who you are.” That really brought out a concerned expression from him, she noted. It worsened when she went on to say, “The man I made love with. That’s enough for me.”

  God, Collin thought, if she only knew the kind of burden she placed on his shoulders with her trust. He wanted to live up to it. To be the man who made promises to her and gave her if not happily-ever-after, the closest thing to it that was humanly possible.

  But leopards didn’t change their spots and he wasn’t sure if he could be anything other than what he was. And what he was wasn’t the kind of man she needed in her life. Not on a permanent basis.

  She touched his face gently. “Don’t look so pensive.” The whispered words floated along his skin. The next moment, Lucy was taking the initiative and kissing him.

  Heating his blood.

  All logical thought came to an abrupt and sudden halt, the way it did every time they came together like this.

  The way it did every time her light perfume filled his head, the scent of her body charged his blood.

  Collin closed his arms around this woman who’d made such a difference to him in such a short amount of time. He held her against him as the kiss deepened, taking them both hostage.

  Willingly hostage.

  The next moment he’d bent her so that Lucy found her back against the sofa and he was over her, their bodies sealed in a pact.

  By now Collin felt that he was more familiar with her body than he was with his own. His own was just there to take him from one place to another, hers was for exploring, for relishing, for filling his dreams, which was where she resided with a regularity he found both enticing and scary as hell at the same time.

  T
his was all new to him.

  He’d committed himself to his country, to causes, to the Rangers. But when it came to committing himself to a single human being, to this woman, well, that carried ramifications that made him feel unsure of himself and of his decision.

  But that was for contemplating when he was free to think. Not now.

  Now he just wanted to touch her again, to feel that surge that came from making love with her. From having her naked flesh rub against his, warm, pliant, supple.

  And his.

  That he was her first still humbled him. Still placed a huge responsibility on him that he wasn’t certain he could live up to. He still had to convince himself that, in the long run, he was the best thing for her. And that this wild insanity that occurred each time they came together like this would last. That wanting her like this wasn’t completely interfering with his ability to make good judgment calls.

  Eager to have her, he peeled back her clothing swiftly, even as he kissed her over and over again. He loved the way Lucy lifted her arms for him to slip the sweater from her body, the way she shifted so that her jeans would slide down her long, supple legs. It was as if she were doing a seductive dance just for him. A modern, abbreviated version of the dance of the seven veils.

  Except that he had a hand in it. A hand that skimmed along her body, glorying in the softness, the smoothness, he found there.

  “No fair,” she breathed when everything that she’d worn that day was in a heap on the floor. “You’re still dressed.”

  Even as the words came from her lips, she was doing her level best to change the situation. To pull his clothes away from him and revel in his hard, taut, nude body. From what she’d seen, Collin had the body not just of a soldier at the prime of his life, but of a Greek god. His arms and chest had muscles and ridges that gave her a thrill just to run her fingertips over them.

  And each time she passed her hands over him, caressing him, she succeeded in arousing them both a little more. She could see, despite the iron control he exercised over himself, that she could easily get to him. Had gotten to him. The sense of power and excitement this created within her was something she knew she would never be able to put into words.

  But then, she didn’t have to. All she had to do was to act on it.

  And she did.

  Their bodies, naked and wanting, tangled. She raised her hips so that she could absorb more of him against her. So that she could husband every sensation that was still a whispered promise of things to come. He’d already taken her to regions she hadn’t, even in her wildest imagination, known could exist. He’d already caused explosions to rack her body in the most delicious of fashions.

  Making love with him was like booking a tour to a wonderful fantasyland. Lucy discovered that she could react to him on a hundred different levels. That she was sensitive in so many different places along her flesh. When he kissed the right side of her neck, the inside of her elbow, the area behind her knees, explosions would occur within her.

  When he would run his tongue along her quivering belly, trailing down to the very damp, wanting core of her, Lucy finally understood what the term sweet agony truly meant.

  Climax after climax would flow through her, even as she gasped his name, even as she struggled to hold on to reality and somehow turn the tables on him.

  She’d never known it could be like this. And it only got better each time they came together.

  But even though she loved what he did to her, how she felt when he made love to every part of her, she didn’t want to be only the recipient, she wanted to do something to make him want her as much as she wanted him.

  But it was hard to act when exhaustion threatened to claim her, when the desire to experience the mini-explosions his mouth and tongue created within her all but overpowered her. The closest she came was to stroking him in all the different ways that seemed to come instinctively to her. Instincts that she’d been heretofore unaware of. Instincts that came to the fore as if he’d silently summoned them into existence.

  She enjoyed her role, loved seeing the look on his face, as if she’d reduced him to a mass of palpitating flesh—just as he had done to her. She closed her hand around him, moving her fingers rhythmically. He was hard and wanting against her palm.

  But before she could bring him up to the final moment, Collin placed his hand over hers, stilling all movement. As she looked at him quizzically, he pressed her back against the sofa again and raised himself over her.

  “Was I doing it wrong?” she asked.

  The laugh was unexpected. “No, you were doing it just right. That’s the trouble.”

  She didn’t understand.

  But there was no time to ask him to explain. The next moment he was sheathing himself within her, moving the very earth beneath her.

  The dance began, the tempo taking her to another place, another realm. Somewhere far away. She raced to keep up, her breath growing shorter and shorter as the marathon took them both up to the very highest peak imaginable and left them tottering there as the fireworks exploded all around them.

  Lucy dug her fingertips into his back as the explosion encased her in waves of sensations.

  She couldn’t ever remember being happier.

  The melody was faint.

  A call to arms was echoing somewhere distantly from his realm of consciousness.

  And then, as he struggled against the effects of a sex-induced sleep, Collin woke up.

  The second he did, he realized it was his cell phone that was disturbing the air around him. The cell phone he’d left on her nightstand between the times that they had made love tonight.

  He glanced over toward Lucy. She was asleep and curled up against him. The room had a slight chill to it, but the sheet was bunched up and to the side, allowing him to look at her. She lay there, naked and just about the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.

  The only thing that rivaled it, that rivaled the feeling inside of him right at this moment, was when he’d looked out of his plane and had seen the approaching coastline of the United States up ahead of him after an eighteen-month assignment in the Middle East.

  The word home had echoed through his mind at the time.

  It was, he realized, the way he viewed her now.

  Home.

  Easing his body away from Lucy so that he wouldn’t disturb her, he picked up the phone and flipped it open. “Jamison,” he whispered.

  “Lieutenant, I’m afraid we’re going to have to cut your vacation short. There’s a matter before me that needs your attention. I’d like you to come back to Virginia.”

  It was Eagleton. The colonel had no need to introduce himself. Collin would have known his C.O.’s voice anywhere.

  A resignation came over him. And with it, a melancholy feeling he was utterly unfamiliar with. He’d never faced an assignment feeling like this before. “When, sir?”

  He knew the answer even before the C.O. gave it. “As soon as possible.”

  That meant as soon as he could catch a flight back. Collin dragged his hand over his face, trying to pull himself together.

  Damn.

  Nothing was resolved on this end, not the reason he’d come here in the first place nor anything that had happened here since.

  For the first time in his life Collin found himself questioning his career choice.

  But this wasn’t the time to voice any objections. “Right away, sir.”

  “I’ll look forward to seeing you.”

  With that, the other end of the line went dead. Collin let out a long, steady breath as he closed his cell phone.

  Behind him, he heard Lucy stirring on the bed. He debated waking her, telling her he had to leave and why, but then decided against it. It was still very early. He needed to pack, to get ready. There was no reason to wake her yet. He’d come back just before he was set to fly out to Virginia.

  He allowed himself one last, long look before leaving the room, his clothes in his arms. Goodbyes were said more easily
if one or more of the parties wasn’t naked.

  Sleep left her in stages. Like a cloud that was slowly slipping away from a blue sky.

  She was reluctant to give it up. Last night and this morning were still very fresh in her mind, their imprint still fresh on her body.

  She could feel it tingling and she smiled to herself. Maybe, with a little encouragement, she could get Collin to give a repeat performance just before he left to meet Emmett this morning.

  Her smile deepened as her body began to throb with anticipation. He’d outdone himself the last time. The crescendo of climaxes had seemed endless. Tracking wasn’t the only thing the man excelled in.

  Her eyes still closed, Lucy stretched her hand out to reach for Collin.

  Only empty space met her fingertips. A frown curved her mouth. Was she still dreaming? She’d dreamed that he’d left her in the middle of the night, taking away all traces of himself. As if he’d never been in her life. She’d gone from room to room, looking for him, growing increasingly more panicky.

  And just when she’d come to the conclusion that he’d disappeared, he’d come out of the shadows, caught her up by the waist and made love with her all over again.

  But it had taken a long time for her heart to stop pounding.

  Her eyes still closed, a little out of fear this time, she reached farther on the bed.

  And still found nothing.

  Like an army marching over the field of battle, daylight rolled into her brain, bringing with it an awareness she didn’t want.

  She opened her eyes.

  Collin wasn’t here. Moreover, his side of the bed was cool. He’d left her side more than just a few moments ago.

  Lucy sat up. Fear instantly gripped her heart. She had no way of explaining it, nothing to point to, but she knew. Knew he had left. Not just her bed, or her apartment, but her.

  Getting out of bed, Lucy looked around in vain for a note, for something that would explain his sudden exodus.

  But there wasn’t any note.

  Neither was there any sign of the clothes they had brought into the bedroom as an afterthought. At least, not his.