Gwen Campbell - [Love from the Ashes 02]

by Recon [Shadowfire] (epub)

  “Please, Rick. Please,” she begged mindlessly and was just about to bring her foot down on his in frustration when he bent his knees and came back up with his cock pressing between her legs.

  Trembling with anticipation, Paige tipped her hips back, made room for him and watched as the hand that had been anchored around her, took hold of his shaft and rubbed it against her slit.

  She sobbed with need as he began to fill her. Like before, the stretching was exquisite. He made her feel worshipped and, against him, utterly feminine as he muscled his way into her, paused, and retreated slowly. In the glass, she caught glimpses of his thick pole as it pushed into her again.

  Drive. Roll. Retreat. Rick’s hips sent up a maddening rhythm that made Paige snarl and bare her teeth. His fingers continued to torment her clit by rubbing it quick and light, then massaging it in slow circles. He spread her nether lips so they could both watch him claim her. In and out, gentle then harder. Her breasts swayed with every thrust. When Paige was standing on tiptoe with her torso leaning over the gleaming, white sink, he drove into her fully, slapped her ass with his loins, then straightened his knees just enough to lift her off the floor. Quivering and crying out, she stayed where Rick wanted her and let him pleasure them both. The fingers on her clit started to rub faster.

  Sweat began to gather between her breasts and her thighs quivered. She felt her pussy tighten, heard his groan of pleasure as her body bore down on him. Instead of slowing, he drove into her harder and licked the perspiration off her neck. It was such an animalistic gesture, Paige groaned and felt the squeeze in her belly grow. Ecstasy, white hot and overwhelming, tore along her nerve endings, sparked in every part of her, held her tight and immobile as wave after wave of convulsive heat claimed her.

  With her head thrown back and Rick’s body pressed tight to hers, Paige held on as best she could. She would have fallen if Rick hadn’t been there to hold her up. As he continued to thrust into her, Paige felt every grind and flex of his heavy cock filling her.

  He looked at her in the mirror, his beautiful eyes heavy lidded, licked his lips tremulously then fastened his teeth over her shoulder. Groaning against her skin, holding her tight, he came in a flurry of thrusts. His pole jerked inside her, plunged deep and pumped in a series of rough, short strokes. Profuse wetness squeezed past the tight ring of her sheath and trailed down her inner thigh.

  When it was over, they stood there for a moment, breathing crazy fast.

  “I’m sorry. Shit.” Grabbing the cloth out of the sink and wetting it with cool water, Rick bathed her shoulder where the outline of his teeth stood out stark and pale against her skin.

  “Guess my man’s a real animal, huh?” she teased, then rolled her arm gently. “Doesn’t hurt,” she assured him then turned and drew his mouth down to hers.

  Pulling her forward so her breasts nuzzled his chest, he held her close. His kiss was a slow kind of tender as he tasted the corner of her lips, tested the seam between them then devoured her with a gentle thoroughness that made Paige’s head spin. When he finally pulled back, he laid his forehead on hers and smiled.

  “I’m an animal only with you,” he admitted quietly then kissed the tip of her nose. “You make me forget everything else when I’m with you. Nobody’s ever taken me out of myself before and I love that about you.”

  For a second, he looked away like he was embarrassed to have revealed so much. Then he picked the cloth up and rinsed her clean. Again. After giving himself a cursory wash, he ran a towel over them, took her hand and led her back to his bed.

  “Seriously,” he said as he pulled a sheet loose and wrapped it around her. “I want to take leave with you. Soon.” Opening a footlocker, he pulled out clean skivvies and a t-shirt. “After chow, we can fill out the paperwork and—”

  “Hey, Rick, you seen Winnie any...?”

  The door opened too fast for either of them to catch it. Lieutenant Ed Pembroke’s booming voice dried up and he stood there, blinking. His cheeks started to turn pink, then his gray eyes darkened like an oncoming storm.

  His lips tightened. “Guess I know the answer to that question,” he deadpanned then turned so his back was to them. “I’m standing the unit down for two weeks. We’ve got an assignment in Lincoln County, on the other side of what used to be the Georgia state line, but it’ll have to wait a few more days.” He straightened and his voice got cold. “Whatever’s going on, Rick, you fix it. You know the regs and you know what the Army will and won’t allow. Either make her your woman—legal and official—or stay the hell away from her. I won’t endanger the other members of my unit because you’re fucking around. I especially won’t have my sergeant fucking around with my medic. You fix this or she’s gone. Understood?”

  “Understood,” Rick snarled. The door slammed shut in Ed’s wake. Rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes, Rick muttered a quick, heartfelt “Fuck,” then took hold of her and held her tight. “Wait here. I’ll get your clothes from the shower. Then we’re taking off. We’ve got a lot to work through.”

  Paige nodded dumbly, still embarrassed because her CO had caught her post-coitus, wearing nothing but a sheet. “Where are we going?” she asked as Rick grabbed another sheet and wrapped it around his waist.

  “You’re coming home. With me.”

  Chapter Seven

  Rick’s father took the hand Paige held out to him. His grip was tempered. And he held on. His other hand came up and clasped hers as well. She knew David Miles was sixty-four, but he looked older. Although his hair was mostly gray, the resemblance between him and his son was uncanny.

  Rick stood next to her after he’d unloaded their luggage from the Jeep he’d requisitioned out of the auto pool at Fort Indiantown. No one said anything but, oddly, the silence didn’t feel uncomfortable. She sensed David was sizing her up, which was an apt metaphor because the man was a tailor.

  “You’re a medic,” David finally said. There was no question or judgment in his tone, merely a statement of fact.

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  When he finally released her hand, the air felt colder somehow. Again, without saying anything, he offered his elbow and led her inside.

  The house Rick had grown up in was a pre-Revolutionary masterpiece. Clad in fieldstone, it sat at the end of a drive in a shallow valley. Scattered breaks in the mature trees that lined the road showed where other such houses had stood before the crusher-tanks had rolled through the area twenty-two years earlier. Here and there a house was still standing but the land, for the most part, had reverted to its agricultural roots. Having a big military base nearby had meant that, although Harrisburg itself had been all but leveled during the Great War, the communities around it had been reclamated early.

  A herd of goats grazed in a pasture on one side of the Miles’ property. Acres of shoulder-height corn grew on the other.

  “Are you hungry?” David asked. They followed him through to the back of the house, into a sprawling kitchen. Definitely not original, the room looked like it had been put together by the best decorator money could buy back in the day. A large, comfortable family room and breakfast nook took up about two-thirds of the space. The only thing that looked original was a massive fireplace with antique hooks, handles bracketing the hearth, and small built-in baking ovens. The wood mantel, easily fourteen-inches square and darkened by age, held ancient cooking implements.

  Paige could easily imagine a row of stockings hanging there for Christmas.

  From the freezer, David pulled out a loaf of bread.

  “Dad,” Rick said, “let Paige do that.”

  She blinked.

  “It’s one of her skill sets,” he said as he took in the view of the mowed back lawn and the ancient maple trees beyond that. “Unless you mind?”

  Paige blinked again when Rick addressed the question to her. Then she smiled and stood beside David. “My pleasure. Sandwiches?” she asked and, without waiting for a reply, started rooting around in the double-wide refrigera
tor.

  “Come sit with me, Dad. Tell me how business is.”

  As she sliced vegetables and built ham and turkey sandwiches, David became more and more animated as he told his son about the third shop he’d opened, brought him up to speed on old customers Rick had known when he was a kid, and outlined his plans to expand his textile factory.

  From the front of the house, she heard a door slam, then the sound of four-legged animal nails scrabbling on lacquered hardwood floors.

  “Dad? Is Rick here already? Damn. I wanted to say hello when he got here.” The deep, male voice came closer down the hall.

  Two massive, shaggy hounds bounded into the room, took one look at Paige and growled.

  “Hold.” This came from the owner of the voice. Although he was the same height as Rick, he wasn’t as muscular and except for his chin, looked nothing like him. “That’s awful sexist you know. Putting a woman to work in the kitchen.” Wearing a broad smile, he stepped up to Paige and held out his hand.

  “David Miles Junior,” he said then jerked his head in Rick’s direction. “Everybody calls me Davey. I’m the big brother.” He gave her a wink that reminded her of Benny. “Damn. You’re even more beautiful than Rick let on.”

  Paige felt her cheeks grow warm. Davey must have noticed because he gave her another wink then stepped back.

  “Don’t pay any attention to these knuckleheads,” he said, indicating the dogs who were now sitting obediently—and watching every move she made. “Things have been good around here for years but you can’t be too careful. I keep them for protection. I’ll introduce you and you won’t have anything to worry about.”

  Rick snorted. “It’s them that should be worried.” He flashed her a wry grin then turned back to his father.

  “So how long can you stay?” Davey jumped up on a stool across from her, snagged himself a few slices of cucumber and popped them in his mouth.

  “Two weeks. The unit’s due in Georgia then. May I?” she said when one of the dogs approached her and started nosing around the edge of the counter.

  “Sure. They’ll love you forever if you feed them though, so be prepared.”

  “Oh I think I can handle that,” she said, made the dog sit then offered it a slice of cheese. The second dog nudged its way between them and looked up at her hopefully.

  “So how come you got stuck making lunch?”

  Paige shrugged and started smearing mustard on bread. “Poppa’s a chef. I grew up around food. Tell you the truth, I miss cooking sometimes. The process can be insane at times but it’s linear. Like focused chemistry. I can think when I cook.”

  “Huh. Maybe you should teach me that trick. I’m an importer and my head’s always spinning in about five different directions. There’s definitely nothing going on up there that’s linear,” he added with a grin and tapped his temple.

  Ah. No wonder he reminded her of Benny. Importers were the carpetbaggers of the wild unknown. They sussed out manufacturers the rest of the world hadn’t discovered yet, forged trade alliances, dodged crooked governments and made deals with honest ones.

  In six months, the corn growing in the field next door might be flipped into a shipload of crude oil pumped from the bottom of the North Sea off the coast of Scotland.

  Or whatever was left of Scotland.

  She cut and arranged the sandwiches, put them on a platter and set out plates.

  Davey poured lemonade and asked her where her father bought his fresh fish.

  For the most part, Rick’s father was quiet through lunch. He answered questions when asked, smiled when someone cracked a joke. When they finished eating, Rick suggested they give Paige a tour of the place. Rick and his brother showed her the barn loft they played in as children. Rope marks on the high beams remained as proof of their adolescent, somewhat suicidal habit of swinging over the barn floor two stories below. Davey excused himself to answer a satellite call. In the background, he talked about gold-based prices for dried apricots and copper ore, while Rick showed her around an irrigation pond.

  “We skinny dipped here as kids, all the time.” Grinning, he picked up a flat stone, skipped it across the surface of the water, then slowly made his way around a flock of big, white geese. The birds got real loud when he got too close, and moved with regal entitlement once he got out of their way.

  The dogs ignored them which seemed to annoy the geese to no end.

  Beside her, David Miles Senior offered his arm, laid his hand over hers and stepped her clear of the geese and wet patches of lawn. Paige was getting used to his silence. He seemed comfortable with it and she didn’t see a need to meddle with that.

  When Rick resumed walking beside them, Paige asked, “I never pictured you growing up on a farm.”

  “Around here, most people turned to farming after the Great War. Away from the cities, there were plenty of consumer goods lying around but the food disappeared quick. Before the war, my dad sold men’s clothing. Custom-tailored suits for the most part.” There was pride in his voice as he spoke. David nodded in acknowledgement. “With two kids to take care of, Dad and his brother learned how to plow a straight line with a team of horses—not an easy skill by any means—which livestock to gather up based on optimal return on feed, and when you were supposed to plant winter wheat.”

  He and his father exchanged a wry grin.

  Rick continued. “Uncle Stephen—who you’ll meet closer to dinner time—eventually got into importing.”

  “I learned the trade from him,” Davey interjected as he caught up to them. “I still work with him, though he mostly deals with the administrative side of things these days.” One of the dogs leaned into him and he cupped its ear.

  The tour of the farm took almost two hours. It wasn’t just the size of the place. Most of the time they stood around talking to workers. Two teenagers who had been picking beans and tomatoes stopped along with the older man who’d been supervising them to say hello to Rick and meet Paige.

  These days, Rick explained, the farm ran as an education cooperative. Families, many from unreclamated areas nearby, sent their children to learn efficient and self-sustaining agricultural practices. The two teenagers picking beans weren’t just gathering food to sell to the local grocery stores, they were learning about crop rotation, soil maintenance, and optimizing planting space.

  As promised, Stephen Miles put in an appearance just as Paige was coating lamb chops with ground corn and rosemary. He greeted her warmly, hugged her like a long-lost relative, and watched intently as she cooked fresh green beans in diced tomatoes, basil, garlic and black pepper. Stephen looked much like his older brother—the same blue eyes and light-brown hair peppered with gray—but an ancient, nasty scar bisected his left brow and he was missing the tip from his left pinky finger.

  Not everyone had survived the Great War unscathed.

  As they ate, Rick and the others shared stories from his childhood, complimented Paige effusively, and finished off the bottle of remarkably good wine Stephen had brought up from the basement.

  About an hour before sundown, Rick made their excuses. Saying it had been a long day and he and Paige were in need of sleep, he took her hand and led her outside.

  “Um. Aren’t we...?” She glanced back at the big house.

  “Staying in the main house? Nope.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “We’re staying in the apartment over the carriage house. It’s got indoor plumbing, including a big ol’ shower,” he added with a grin.

  Paige looked up as they approached a stone-clad building she’d noticed earlier. It sat at the end of a gravel drive, had green shutters, window boxes full of colorful flowers, and was just about the prettiest little building she’d ever seen. Big doors at ground level showed where carriages or, more likely, automobiles were parked. A broad, wrought-metal staircase climbed the side of the building.

  The door off the small second-story balcony wasn’t locked and Rick led her inside.

  Th
e fabrics and carpets were light and tonally matched, even if they were a bit faded from age. The place smelled of fresh air and flowers as they walked into a cozy living area with a small kitchenette. Off that was a bathroom, and a bedroom with a big bed piled high with a fat comforter and miles of pillows. Their luggage was lined up along one wall and Rick lifted her suitcase onto a dresser for her.

  “Thought we’d sleep here,” he said and picked up his duffle bag. “Quiet and private,” he added with a waggle of his brows then started unpacking. “Get your things squared away, troop, because your sergeant wants his back washed.”

  “He does does he?” Paige drawled, opened a drawer and dropped her underwear in it. “Since we’re on leave, your subordinate expects a quid pro quo.”

  “Absolutely,” he replied adamantly.

  Unpacking didn’t take long and Paige bound up her hair as she followed Rick into the bathroom. He stripped with admirable efficiency, pulled off her clothes just as fast, turned on the water and, holding her hands, backed into the shower.

  Paige sighed at the first touch of his naked body. It was a pleasure to finally give in to the urge to stroke all that gleaming, supple skin. “I’ve wanted to do this all day,” she said as she nuzzled his throat and inhaled his scent. “You’re lucky I didn’t jump you on the transport plane.”

  “I’m not sure I would have said no,” he whispered back and tipped his head so she could mouth his throat. Grabbing a bar of soap, he lathered them up fast then rinsed them even faster. With the ends of his hair clinging damply to his shoulders, Rick ran a towel over both of them. “Bed. Now,” he growled, slapped her butt with more tease than force, and followed her into the bedroom.

  Naked, she stood beside him while he folded the linens down. As he turned back to her, his eyes flared and he watched her loosen the clip from her hair, watched her breasts sway. He laid her down on the bed, covered her body with his, and sighed with contentment.