by Nikki Duncan
Damn. What happened to being too raw?
Chapter Four
Jace nursed the beer he’d ordered for another hour and thirty-three minutes. Kyle had left quickly after realizing Jace wasn’t interested in conversation, but the talking armpit of Misty’s date continued to miss the clues of her disinterest.
The longer they sat, the more she glanced in the mirror, occasionally meeting Jace’s gaze. The more she fiddled with the drink she wasn’t drinking and studied the grain of the wooden bar. The more she shifted away, millimeter by millimeter.
Every shift flexed and released the fine muscles in her legs. The more Jace watched those long, lean legs the more clearly he saw her naked except for her stilettos with those legs wrapped around his waist. Her back, held erect in refined posture, would curve as she arched in orgasm.
Her taste, peaches and margarita, lingered on his tongue.
The training drilled into him after years of service kept him from shifting in his seat, but the erection pressing against his zipper increased the challenge. The bigger challenge was stopping himself from crossing the bar a second time.
Misty shifted again. Her skirt slipped a little higher on her thigh.
Jace’s dick twitched. He dropped a shaking hand to his crotch, flattened his palm on his cock and pressed.
Across the bar, Misty flattened a hand on her thigh and rubbed her bare skin.
Rather than ease any tension, the pressure of his hand, the imagined pressure of hers, amped up his arousal. His balls drew tight and without touching the woman haunting him, fully clothed and in a public place, he lingered on the precipice of release.
Before shaming himself, he slid his hand to the middle of his thigh and dug his fingers in until his muscles bellowed with pain. His hunger inched back, not much, but enough for control to slip back to the forefront.
Twenty-eight more minutes passed with him fighting for control when Armpit finally paid the tab and escorted Misty to the door. Not caring if he was obvious, Jace threw some bills on the table and followed.
Whatever it was about the woman he’d rescued that called to him—he’d identify it later—he couldn’t let her walk away and risk never seeing her again. She interested him beyond the desire for sex.
She spoke to him the same as she’d speak to anyone, as if she hadn’t been scared by his arm. Or didn’t care.
Rather than taking a car, Armpit and Misty walked along the sidewalk, close but not intimately close. Satisfaction twitched the muscle between Jace’s nose and upper lip on the left side. She wouldn’t be inviting him over for a nightcap.
After a few blocks, they turned down a side street and stopped shortly at the gate of a small courtyard shared by six town homes. The place was secured with a coded keypad on the gate. Beyond was an immaculately manicured lawn with lights hidden in the foliage that offered a well-lit security among the beauty of the garden.
Fading into the shadows across the street, Jace watched as Misty hugged Armpit goodnight and keyed her code into the gate. He couldn’t see the numbers from his position, but her finger strokes were enough for him to figure it out.
When Armpit had turned the corner at the end of the street and Misty had let herself into the corner home, Jace crossed the street and entered her gate code. Moving like he belonged there, he approached the door that stood between him and the woman of his desires. He rapped twice.
“One minute.” Her muffled call came out husky and a little breathy through the wooden panel. When she opened the door her burgundy suit jacket hung open, a lace-edged camisole in the same color peeked out.
His blood surged with heat.
“What are you doing here? How’d you get through the gate? Did you follow me?”
Driven by instinct, Jace stepped inside, grabbed her hips and backed her to the entryway wall. His mouth descended to hers. His tongue plunged into her warmth.
Misty’s hands gripped his shoulders. Her body arched against his. She mumbled against his lips. “The door’s still open.”
Taking her response as acceptance, he stretched a booted foot behind him and nudged the door closed. No longer caring about her nakedness, at least not for the first time, Jace hitched her skirt to her waist. She released him long enough to take off her thong while he stripped off his boots and jeans and pulled a condom from his wallet.
“You’re prepared.”
“A military man always is.”
“Because you have a woman in every port?”
“Some do. I didn’t.” He eased her jacket off so she stood before him in only her satin and lace camisole and stilettos. From her pale brown eyes to her swollen lips, her fist-sized perky boobs with erect nipples, to the tips of her stilettos the woman was walking sex. And she was his for the night. “Now stop talking.”
“Make me.”
A little hard and punishing, showing her how crazy thoughts of her had driven him, he kissed her. Bending a little at the knees, he used his forearms—real and prosthetic—to lift her off her feet with intentions of carrying her to the bed. He spied a library table along a nearby wall with a large vase filled with tulips in pinks and whites and purples.
Stopping by the table, he sat her on the glossy wood. She wrapped her legs around his waist, just as he’d imagined earlier. Her slender fingers took the condom wrapper from his hand and after a quick rip she was sheathing him.
His hips popped forward, driving his dick deeper into her grasp, inviting her to play. Misty needed no invitation.
She fisted him gently and worked her hand up and down the length of him. Flames ignited in his brain. Every other swipe, she’d open her hand and press against him with only her palm from the tip to the base, much like he had in the bar. As it had then, arousal shot through frontline defenses, negating any control he thought was his.
With his hook supporting his weight on the table, he flicked her nipple through her satin lingerie. She arched her body against him, shoving her shoulders against the wall and thrusting her hips to the edge of the table. With a guttural moan rolling in her throat she guided him to her.
He thrust. She moaned again and settled deeper onto him.
They didn’t know each other, but couldn’t step away from each other. The passion driving them was madness. It ran free in his head. Raced through his veins, thick and warm and erotic. It drove him beyond his typical behaviors. It freed him.
Jace pinched her nipple and thrust. Released her and retreated. She bucked. He pinched and thrust. Released and retreated. She bucked.
Again and again, with heartbeats hastened by an erotic cadence, they pushed themselves and each other to the brink where sweat-slicked bodies slid and sex filled the air before claiming completion.
A short while later, with his pulse still pounding rapidly in his ears, Misty kissed his cheek and edged off the table. “Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
She took his hook in her hand and led him deeper into her home. “To bed.”
His stomach dropped like he’d been tossed from a plane with a questionable parachute. His heart floundered in fear.
“Misty, no.”
“No what?” She didn’t look back as she walked proudly ahead of him in her heels and chemise. Maybe she was warped, but he made her feel womanly with his caveman attitude. She wasn’t ready to let the feeling, or the man who inspired it, go.
“I’m not staying.” He spoke quietly, with only a hint of the tenderness she’d guessed lay somewhere inside his rough demeanor.
“We’ve bypassed a lot of the getting-to-know-you stuff so I’ll help you with this one thing about me.” She stopped in the hall just outside her room and turned to face him. “I am the kind of woman who enjoys sex, but requires a little emotion around the act.”
“You’re a cuddler?”
She laughed at the sneer crinkling his nose and pulled him a step closer to her room. “A cuddler who likes sex, so you can join me in bed, where you’ll get more, or leave and know this
will be the last time we’ll be together.”
She’d never liked ultimatums, but preferred this one to the idea of Jace walking.
“Let me rephrase.” Jace’s brusqueness was returning. “I do not spend the night with women.”
“Then you better have an understanding wife when you manage to find one.” She shrugged, pretending his rejection didn’t sting. A man she had met only that morning shouldn’t have such power over her. Hell, he shouldn’t have the kind of power to arouse her to the point of sex on a table so fast, but he did. “You know your way out.”
She pivoted and sailed into her room, fervently hoping she appeared unaffected. She hadn’t invited him into her life, yet he’d seemed unwilling to leave. She wouldn’t allow him to ignore her emotions if he stayed.
She crossed her room and went into the adjoining bath to clean up and get ready for bed. She chose a silk negligee that normally lifted her spirits when she was down, though she doubted it would work tonight. She stepped back into her room and froze.
Jace stood just inside her room still wearing only a tight, long-sleeved undershirt.
Neither of them moved any closer. Misty didn’t know what kept him there, or held him back now, but she knew why she didn’t move. Reluctance to be rejected. “I thought you’d left.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Do you always open the door to sex with men you don’t know without question?”
“Only men who’ve proven themselves by fighting off an attacker for me. Are you always so conflicted with yourself?”
“No. You get attacked often?”
“Once every twenty-eight years. Do you always follow women home for sex?”
“Once every thirty-two years.”
She started to shoot off a smart remark, but something on his face, something a little dark and doubting, had her pulling back her words. It was another way he was getting to her. Her inability, or more aptly her unwillingness, to keep her thoughts to herself had cost her more than one relationship. She wanted to be better with him.
“Am I still welcome to stay?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“If I stay, do you mind… I’m not taking my shirt off, and I will be gone before you wake up.”
What had started out as an appeal turned into a statement he wouldn’t entertain discussion on. And she guessed the momentary vulnerability cost him greatly, so rather than dwell on it, she crossed to where he stood and kissed him gently.
There probably wouldn’t be any more revelations into what made him tick, but his staying was a victory she’d happily accept.
“I get up at four thirty.”
Chapter Five
Writhing. Undulating. Skin and muscle bubbling with sizzling pustules. Chemicals ate greedily through tissue to bone leaving only string-thin strips of tendons. And a screaming need to cry.
As the acidic burn of flesh choked his breaths he dragged an unconscious Clint toward the shelter of their flipped Humvee. Another acid-filled grenade flipped end over end. Arching through the air—closer and closer. It would burst on impact, like the one he’d instinctively tried to knock away.
A dry-ice burning sensation became a strangling pain. It was as if a deep freeze was thawing and with the thaw his skin cells burst open. The agony gripped his left arm. His flesh and muscle were gone below his elbow. Only bone remained.
He dove to the ground and covered Clint with his body almost fully behind the Humvee and prayed for reinforcements. The grenade smacked the pitted blacktop at Clint’s feet with a dull thwack. An instant later the casing burst. Then the bubbling began as the ground eroded.
He reached out, focused on getting Clint’s legs clear of the acid and fully behind their shelter. A rapid blast of machine-gun fire erupted. Bullets peppered the ground with new holes. Many more bullets splintered off chunks of the revealed bone in his arm until it looked like Swiss cheese.
Jace lurched upright with a scream in his throat and remembered agony lancing through his arm—the part still intact, the part not. Sweat coated his brow. His chest pumped with harsh, jagged breaths. He’d saved Clint and been discharged. He hadn’t heard from Clint since.
Almost a year had passed, but still the nightmare came every time he fell asleep. Still the pain whipped through him, hot and agonizing. Still he felt his missing limb.
A soft stirring drew his attention to the bed beside him. Misty.
He’d planned on slipping out as soon as she fell asleep. It would have been easier. Yet he’d lingered to watch her, to study her as her face relaxed in sleep. Her poise and passion gave way to the vulnerability of dropped guards.
Damn if vulnerability didn’t tug at him. Hers had him ignoring all his rules until he’d fallen asleep at her side. His arm spasmed. He twisted the wrist and wiggled the fingers no longer there. The hook rotated and opened and closed. The dry-iced burn from his dream shafted through him from shoulder to hook. Gritting his teeth, needing no more reminders why staying was a bad idea, he eased from Misty’s bed. Her vulnerability barely sparked a match compared to the starkness of his.
Caught in the throes of the nightmare, he could have lashed out and hurt her. Especially if a different part of his memory had played. If he’d twisted wrong in sleep the prosthetic could’ve come off. It had only happened once, when he’d been hostage to a nightmare. She could’ve woken to find him reattaching his arm and that would’ve meant her seeing his scarred stump. No one outside of his doctors saw his stump. No one had been trusted enough. No one since Clint.
She’d tempted him with her generous abandon and tantalizing body into dangerous territory, so rather than risk it again Jace didn’t allow himself a glance her way as he left. He didn’t allow his mind to dwell on the image of the sheets shifting over her subtle curves as she curled on her side facing where he’d slept. The purity of satiated desire shining in her eyes before she’d drifted off came back to him. She’d demanded nothing, but he wanted to offer…something.
Dangerous territory indeed.
In her living room, he took time to calm himself. His body released a few of the nightmare remnants until the flaming ache in his arm eased. His mind and desires…
He took a step back toward Misty’s room. Stopped. In the bed he yearned to crawl back into, Misty slept blissfully unaware. Unaware of his internal turmoil.
He wanted to see her again, but not when she woke up or when he so badly needed some time with his prosthetic off. She’d accused him of being archaic in the bar. He’d been rough, a little mean, but that was nothing compared to when his pain hit full force. And it was going to come soon.
Jace grabbed her cell from the nearby table and called himself. The thought to program his number into her phone marched in his brain. He typed in the number and hit talk. The phone rang once. A soft moan, lengthening as if she were stretching, came from her room. Faster than he’d toss away a pinless grenade he slapped her cell back on the table and fled.
Only after he’d closed the auto-locking courtyard gate behind him did he pull his cell out and power it on.
He anticipated the musical jingle that would announce the missed call from Misty’s phone. When it came, so did a second jingle signaling a new voice mail.
Walking back to his bike he’d left at the bar, with a dim light coming from his phone, he programmed Misty and scanned the other missed call number. He didn’t recognize it, but it was local. He called his voicemail and waited.
“Jace, this is Trevor Masters.” The man’s quick, clipped tone spoke of a busy man with no time to waste. And he didn’t sound overly happy. “While I do not make a habit of giving first chances twice, I heard about your delay this morning.”
How?
“Your willingness to help a stranger despite the cost to yourself speaks as loudly as your non-attempt at an excuse.”
Is that good or bad?
“I believe you would make an excellent addition to Blue Chip. If you’re still interested in th
e position, give me a call.”
Jace stumbled. His arms flailed as he fought to regain his balance and his heart leapt hopefully. Rubbing the joint where his prosthetic met his arm, he continued toward his bike.
He’d respected Masters and his reputation. What some considered close-minded, Jace had seen as good business sense. Even when the viewpoints he’d respected cost him a job, Jace hadn’t been able to cast blame. Now Masters was adjusting a personal policy for his benefit. Why? How had he heard? Who could have known about Misty’s attack and Jace’s missed interview that would have had access to Masters? Whoever they were, they clearly had some pull. Enough that the job sounded as if it were a lock if he called back. Assuming he was reading Masters’s tone accurately.
Chapter Six
“The pavilion you’ve chosen for your reception is casual.” Misty pulled a couple of square vases of varying heights from her shelves, along with some rainbow foam in cantaloupe orange, honeydew green and lemon yellow and moved to the round conference table where her clients sat. “You’re a young couple who loves fun outside. That’s why you’re having an outdoor wedding in the early summer. So you don’t want anything too elaborate.”
“Right.” Drea smiled hesitantly. “Our budget is…modest.”
“And shrinking with every new addition,” her fiancé Connor added.
“We’ve been watching that,” Misty assured. It was common for couples to hear elaborate, but miss the qualifier before the word. “That’s why I would suggest you do flowers for the bouquets, but for your centerpieces we fill vases like this of different sizes with this rainbow foam cut into cubes.” While talking, she cut off a section of each colored cube to demonstrate. “We’ll layer them in the vases with fresh fruit of the corresponding color mixed in.”
“How do you mean?”
“We’d slice limes to go with the green, lemons to go with the yellow, oranges to go with the orange. In the center of the taller vase we’d put a couple of calla lilies to go with your bouquet as well as those for your bridal party and the flowers you’ve chosen for the ceremony. And in the bouquets we could wrap the stems with something that looks like orange peel or lime rind.”
