Let It Ride

by Jillian Burns

  Good grief, Sherri should start her own detective agency. “I—I don’t know what I was thinking. I just lost it.” Jordan sat down and pulled off her sneakers.

  Sherri squealed and clasped her hands to her chest. “Tell. Tell!”

  Jordan shook her head. No way would she share the experience. It was beyond description. She’d never been so sexually aggressive. And on a motorcycle? A sweet, aching throb hit her core as she remembered.

  The wild ride with the engine vibrating between her legs, and the major’s hardening erection in her palm. The feel of his large hands cupping her breasts, his lips tugging at her nipples. And—oh—his mouth on her clit. She didn’t want to think about how he’d gained the experience to be so good. She’d just appreciate being the recipient of such talent. Even if the after-sex part had been rather awkward.

  “Sweet heavenly choir, Jordan! You should see your face. Must have been one hell of a night,” Sherri exclaimed.

  With a cleansing intake of breath, Jordan returned to the present. “Let’s call it temporary insanity and leave it at that.” She glanced at the time clock and started changing into her uniform.

  “You’re not going to see him again? Why not?”

  “Sherri, you’re the one who said I didn’t have to have a commitment to ‘get me some.’”

  “Commitment schmitment.” Sherri pursed her lips and waved a hand. “I’m guessing he’s only got a week’s leave.” She shrugged. “So, you have one more for the road, where’s the harm?” She stood and moved to the mirror to touch up her lipstick. “You got the next two days off, don’t you?”

  As Jordan finished getting into her uniform, she tried to pinpoint the reason for her second thoughts after she’d gotten home last night. Where was the harm? Didn’t sex so amazing warrant a second go around?

  No, no. She had finals to study for. And even if she didn’t, once, she could chalk up to an impulsive, hormonal indulgence. Blowing off some steam. But, seeing him again? She’d never forget his final shudder in her arms as they both slowly recovered from their shattering orgasms. Her hand in his hair, his nose touching her neck. She’d felt so close to him. As if he’d shown her a side of himself no one else saw. But that was ridiculous. Except….

  Neither of them had spoken as he disposed of the condom and adjusted his jeans. Nor as he’d helped her find her uniform top and bra while she stepped into her panties. Except for giving him directions to her apartment, nothing else had been said between them.

  No, “See ya later.” No, “I’ll call you.” No goodbye kiss.

  Just an odd expression crossing his face as she handed him his jacket after she got off his bike in the apartment complex. The look in his dark eyes had been almost…regretful. But that didn’t make sense. He’d gotten what he wanted, hadn’t he? He’d said no strings. And she wasn’t complaining. Those rules suited her fine. She hadn’t been angling for anything more. Just a good, honest, mutually satisfying night of incredible sex.

  Then why, as she headed for the casino, did she feel so unsatisfied?

  “HOW ABOUT the babe at eleven o’clock?” McCabe asked, nodding toward a lustrous brunette at the roulette wheel.

  Cole gestured for the Blackjack dealer to hit him one more time and then checked her out. Nice curves. Sultry eyes. Winked at him.

  “Nah. Too easy.”

  “What the—Ah you kiddin’?” McCabe’s Southern drawl deepened in direct proportion to how much booze he’d tossed back. He gestured to the dealer for another card and busted. Grumbling a slurred curse, he finished his tumbler of vodka and threw in his cards. “Too short. Too tall. Too thin. Too fat. Now, too easy? You’re killing me, man.”

  “What’s it to you, Mon Man?” Cole shot back. He lifted the corners of his cards again. Even twenty. He held his palm up, signaling the dealer he had enough.

  “First the voodoo lady’s shop is closed on Mondays, so Grady can’t get his massage, and now you’ve suddenly turned into Mistah Picky.” McCabe quipped and turned to order another drink from a passing waitress.

  Hughes appeared and intercepted the waitress, who nodded and walked off.

  “Hey,” McCabe complained. “I wanted anothah drink.”

  “You’ve had enough. I ordered you coffee.” Hughes crossed her arms over her chest.

  “You did what? Aw, come on. I thought you were my friend.”

  Cole gestured to the empty stool next to him, but Hughes shook her head, maintaining her defensive stance between them.

  Her eyes narrowed and her lip curled. “You’re your own worst enemy, Mitch.”

  “The hell I am.” McCabe spun on his stool and poked a finger in Hughes’s chest. “I just lost a bet because of you.”

  “What are you talking about? You mean that Keno girl actually slept with Jackson?”

  “Don’t act so innocent,” cajoled McCabe. “The only way Ms. Crash-and-Burn would have slept with Cole after only knowing him three days—” McCabe slowly stood “—is if you told her about the bet and then y’all cooked up a scheme for her to do him. Jus’ because I fluhted with her a little, she had to get revenge? Well, what’d I evah do to you, huh?” By the end of his tirade he was swaying and several people were staring. Hughes looked about ready to break a glass over his head.

  “I had nothing to do with you losing a bet, you jackass,” she ground out between her teeth. “But I almost wish I had.”

  “I thought you were different, Hughes.” McCabe’s tone changed. “I thought you were one of us.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s your mistake, McCabe.” Hughes poked him in the chest. “Thinking I’m not a woman.”

  McCabe pushed her finger away. “You’re not,” he mumbled.

  Hughes’s eyes narrowed into furious slits. “What did you say?”

  McCabe tipped sideways. Though he was twice her size, Hughes caught him. Deep concern crossed her features before she flattened her expression again.

  What had that look been about? If Cole didn’t know better…He stood and placed his hand on McCabe’s back. “Hey, buddy. Let’s see if we can catch a game on TV in the bar.”

  McCabe swung around to him, his eyes wide and unfocused. “I thought she was one of us, Jackson.”

  “I’ll take him home,” Hughes volunteered. She glanced at Cole, her arms still holding McCabe up. “Grab his keys, would you? He can’t drive like this.”

  “I can take him.” Cole reached into McCabe’s jacket pocket.

  Hughes shook her head. “You stay. I’m ready to get out of here. He can catch a ride back into town tomorrow and retrieve his car.” She looked up at McCabe. “Mitch, I’m taking you home, buddy.”

  “Okay.” He threw his arm over her shoulders, his accusations evidently forgotten. “Won’t be the first time, eh, Hughes?” He shot her an evil grin.

  Cole handed Hughes McCabe’s keys. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Hughes nodded and headed for the exit with McCabe leaning heavily on her.

  Cole glanced at his watch. About time for shift change.

  He scooped up his pack of chips and stood, scanning the room for—yeah, okay, so he was looking for her. Who said it had to be a different woman every night? That was McCabe’s rule, right? Just because he’d been hurt by his ex. So what if Cole wanted to hook up with the same woman more than once? The conditions would still apply. No strings. Just a good time.

  A hell of a good time.

  He just hadn’t gotten enough of her yet, that’s all. It’d happened so fast. This time they’d go up to his room, have space to move around. Take it slow and easy on a soft bed, and maybe he’d order some wine and a midnight dinner and they’d slip into the bathtub after, and then they’d do it all over again.

  He was hard just thinking about the things he wanted to do to her.

  Carrying his chips under his arm, he made his way around the perimeter of the casino looking for Jordan, and the more ground he covered without seeing her, the more his stomach knotted.

  A sire
n of ringing bells and flashing lights signaled someone had hit the jackpot at the slots. The noise irritated him, drowned out any other sound, and he recognized he’d have to get used to loud noises making him virtually deaf.

  Like a starving desert coyote on the hunt for elusive prey, he checked the Keno betting booths, wandered to the chips counter and cashed in, and then strolled over to the employees’ entrance. Every time he spotted a waitress in a red uniform he’d do a double take, but it was never Jordan. Annoyance scratched along his nerves as he paced back to the roulette wheel. Still no sign of her.

  A fever burned inside him. Where was she? The longer he stalked her, the more his heart pounded, the more his blood rushed through his veins and a sweat broke out on his upper lip. To hell with this. She had to be here. He felt like a desperate man, betting everything he owns on one last role of the dice, as he grabbed a chair, stepped up onto it and scanned the room.

  “UM…JORDAN.” Sherri tapped her shoulder. “Look.”

  Something in Sherri’s tone set the fine hairs on the back of Jordan’s neck tingling. Sherri sounded half excited, half frightened. Jordan gave the lady from Texas her Keno cards and change, accepting a generous tip, and then slowly turned.

  Her breathing hitched, and then failed altogether. The noise of the casino retreated, her surroundings faded. She swallowed as she stared across the room. Cole.

  His intense gaze might as well have been armor-piercing. His dark eyes sent an unspoken message: I want you. And now she knew the power in that body, barely restrained, that lay beneath his leather jacket. The passion waiting to be unleashed in those strong arms. The expertise of his mouth. As she stood there he disappeared from sight, and she knew he was coming for her.

  Her mind screamed, Run. Escape. Now, while she could. But her legs wouldn’t move. Her feet had become lead weights anchored to the carpet. She looked to Sherri for support, but her supposed friend had deserted her, strolling off into the crowd to sell Keno cards. Traitor.

  When Jordan turned back Cole was standing before her. She gasped a giant breath of air into her deprived lungs and her senses filled with the height and width of him. The musk of his aftershave, the starch of his shirt, the roughness of his jaw. And his eyes a pure, rich brown.

  “I still want you,” he rasped, then winced, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just admitted.

  “I—I’m working.” She was hot, restless.

  “After your shift.”

  She glanced down, saw his fists clench and unclench. Saw the ridge behind his zipper. She closed her eyes to block the intense feelings.

  One more for the road. Should she? Could she handle the aftermath?

  He reached up and fingered a curly lock of hair just below her shoulder. “I’m in Tower One. Sixteen-oh-two.” His knuckles grazed the skin above her breast.

  She shivered.

  “Will you come up?” He twined the curl around his index finger and stared at the ringlet as if it was water and he’d been dying of thirst.

  Yes was on the tip of her tongue. She knew how good it would be between them, rolling around on a bed, skin to skin everywhere this time. His touch would scorch. His kiss would incinerate. She sensed there were currents of emotion he kept under tight control. He might leave her burned, but he’d never leave her cold and indifferent.

  Yet she couldn’t afford to be burned again. Wanting someone this badly couldn’t be good. This kind of craving led to obsession, to disastrous decisions.

  Come on, Jordan. Use your intellect. What were the odds that this guy had the potential to completely devastate what was left of her common sense? Too high. She was smarter than that, wasn’t she?

  He ran the back of his fingers softly across her collarbone, moving lower.

  Her skin prickled with awareness. One more night.

  “Your skin is so soft.” He looked up, his brows drawn tightly together. “And you smell so good.”

  She closed her eyes, knowing she was about to give in. She still wanted him, too.

  “Hughes told ya ’bout the bet, din’ she?” Captain McCabe stumbled against Jordan.

  She blinked and looked at him. “Bet?”

  “McCabe.” Cole inserted himself between them. “Shut. Up.” He ground the words between his teeth.

  The captain tapped his temple with his index finger and winked. “She convinced ya ta sleep with Jackson so I’d lose, right?”

  A sharp pain stabbed Jordan in the chest. “What?” Her eyes stung. Cole had only seduced her to win a bet…

  “Mitch.” A petite female soldier in shapeless camos stalked up and gripped the captain’s shoulder. “Come on, Mitch. You’re wasted, buddy.”

  “I just want the truth!” Captain McCabe said loudly.

  Heads turned. Jordan backed away. Humiliation blazed in her face and gut.

  “Jordan.” Cole grabbed her arm. “Let me explain.”

  She jerked out of his grasp.

  He reached for her again but the woman soldier, a captain also by her insignia, grabbed his wrist. “Let her be, Jackson. Why don’t you take McCabe home? He won’t listen to me.”

  Thankful for the woman’s interference, Jordan drew in a deep breath and glanced at her floor supervisor, who was edging closer toward Captain McCabe. She couldn’t afford for her boss to witness another scene. Even worse, she couldn’t face Cole. Couldn’t think. She should have trusted her instincts, known there was more to his intense seduction.

  “You really didn’t know about the bet?” Captain McCabe murmured as he swayed to one side and Cole caught him.

  “Not until just now, you ass,” the female captain snapped at him.

  Her nails digging into her palms, Jordan avoided looking at Cole as she took another step back. “I have to work.” She turned and made a hasty escape into the protective shroud of the casino.

  Footsteps sounded behind her, solid footsteps, but lighter than the major’s heavy trod. Jordan turned to see the woman captain following. “I’m really sorry about all that.”

  “No problem.” Jordan only wanted to forget the whole thing. Weaving in between slot machines, she increased her stride, making her way to the Keno lounge.

  But the woman kept pace with her. “Major Jackson’s a good man, Ms. Brenner.”

  Without pausing, Jordan glanced at the female captain. “Right. ’Cause only good men have sex with a woman on a bet.”

  “Not worthy of an airman, I agree. But his recent injuries have changed him.”

  Jordan stopped. “What do you mean? How?”

  The woman stuck out her right hand. “I’m Captain Hughes,” she said, then shrugged. “Alexandria.”

  Feeling as if she’d stepped into a bizarre reality show, Jordan shook her hand. “Jordan. So, how have Cole’s injuries changed him?”

  Captain Hughes—Alexandria—narrowed one eye and drew in a deep breath, then clasped her hands behind her back. “I think that’s something Jackson would need to tell you himself.”

  5

  AS SHE SAT IN HER OFFICE on base the next morning, Captain Alexandria Hughes practically rubbed her hands together in glee. Mitch McCabe, the ladies’ man of Las Vegas, had finally, incredibly, got what was coming to him. A month of forced celibacy.

  And just to make sure Mitch’s thirty days without a woman wasn’t wasted, Alex was going to take advantage of his predicament and use it for a little payback.

  Last month McCabe had sent a strip-o-gram to her office on her thirtieth birthday. That was only the most recent in a series of devious plots and outrageous pranks that had been going on for twelve years.

  They’d been springing practical jokes on each other since they were cadets at the academy. One of the worst was when McCabe got her arrested in Guam for solicitation of a male prostitute. She’d sweated it out in that holding cell for more than three hours before McCabe showed up with a shit-eating grin and let her know the MPs were in on the prank.

  But she’d had her revenge. One night a few months la
ter she’d spiked his beer and he’d woken up handcuffed to his bed, wearing women’s lingerie. His hair had been dyed hot pink and his nails—fingers and toes—painted to match. McCabe had refused to drink anything she handed him for years after that.

  Now, Mitch’s cell phone—with all those women’s numbers he kept in there—called to her from her desk drawer, begging her to use it. In the struggle to help him to her car last night she’d snatched it from his pocket and he hadn’t even noticed.

  Oh, she knew about the stored phone numbers. Even before his marriage he’d been a ladies’ man, handsome and charming. And women would leave their numbers on whatever available surface they could find. But, he’d been different back then. He’d always been mischievous, but he’d never been malicious. It wasn’t until after his divorce that he’d turned into this new, callous Mitch. The player, the serial dater trying to screw everything in a skirt to get even for the way he’d been screwed.

  Only Alex knew everything Luanne had done to him. What the ugly divorce had cost Mitch.

  But enough was enough. It was time for him to get over it. And him losing this bet afforded her the perfect opportunity to give Captain Mitchell Lee McCabe a taste of his own medicine.

  Alex grabbed his cell phone out of her drawer, snapped it open, and began working her way through his phone book.

  MORE NERVOUS than he cared to admit, Cole strode up the walkway to Jordan’s apartment.

  He had to apologize. And, yeah, maybe he just didn’t like to admit defeat, but he hadn’t given up on the whole dinner-and-bath-in-his-hotel-room idea. Luckily, she was off today. Maybe seeing him away from the casino would help.

  He raised a fist and knocked on her door.

  It opened too fast for her to have checked the peephole and he made a mental note to caution her about opening the door without looking to see who it was first. This rundown apartment complex wasn’t in the best neighborhood.

  The shocked expression on her face wasn’t exactly encouraging.