Willing

by Lucy Monroe

  “Besides, the guy’s brain isn’t exactly running on all six cylinders right now. For all we know, he’s had a flashback and is living in some Vietnam jungle in his head.”

  “That’s what worries me.”

  “You worried?”

  “This is Josie’s dad we’re talking about here.”

  “And you don’t want Josie hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Now, that’s very interestin’. I don’t remember you ever being overly worried about a woman’s feelings before.” The deliberately accentuated southern drawl needled Daniel.

  “Drop it.”

  Hotwire’s incredulous laugh irritated Daniel to the point of cursing.

  “Tch, tch, tch…You’ve got to clean up your mouth. You’re staying in a woman’s house now. Didn’t your mama ever tell you it’s not mannerly to swear in front of a lady?”

  His mother had been cursed at on a regular basis…every time his dad drank. “No.”

  “Then take my advice. Clean up your mouth.”

  “Josie’s a soldier, for crying out loud.”

  “Ex-soldier and her roommate is a sheltered little thing.”

  Claire hadn’t seemed all that sheltered to him. She had a mind like a computer and even the personality of one at times, but she hadn’t seemed particularly naïve.

  “Why didn’t you tell me Josie was getting out of the business?”

  “Because you bit my head off every time I said her name over the past year.”

  “You’re no shrinking violet.”

  “I’m also not stupid.”

  “You’ve been helping her with her computer studies.”

  “You make it sound like I’ve been breaking the Sixth Commandment instead of helping a friend change her life.”

  “So now you’re friends.”

  “Josie and I have always been friends.”

  “Since when is friendship an automatic by-product of working with another merc?”

  “It isn’t.”

  “But you’re friends with Josie.”

  “Unlike some people, I realized right off that not only is she a good soldier who can be counted on, but she’s also a sweet woman worth knowing.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You haven’t exactly gone out of your way to make friends with her.”

  “I don’t go out of my way to be nice to anybody.”

  Hotwire laughed. “That’s true, but I think your lack of enthusiasm for her company has hurt her feelings.”

  He’d come to the same conclusion, and it bothered him. “I don’t dislike her, damn it.”

  “Whoah…buddy, no need to go ballistic here.”

  “I don’t go ballistic anymore.”

  “That’s what I thought, but Josie brings out some pretty powerful feelings in you.”

  “Like hell.” The only feelings he allowed himself to have for women were sexual. He would never give a woman the power to tap the deeply buried root of his temper.

  “Whatever you say, but I swear if you don’t clean up your mouth while you’re staying in Josie’s house, I’m going to sic my mama on you. You’ll straighten up, or she’ll have your guts for garters.”

  “She raised you and let you live. She can’t be all that bad.”

  “She’s not, but she’s hell on your conscience if you disappoint her.”

  “Mothers are like that.” His certainly weighed on his and probably always would.

  He would never forget the sight of her, bruised and motionless, in that narrow hospital bed. He would never allow himself to forget it had been his fault either.

  “Josie said you offered her a job,” Daniel said to banish the memories and change the subject.

  “Yeah. She’s a natural with computers. Wolf and I both think she’d be a real asset to the business.”

  “So your only interest in her is because of her computer skills?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Daniel’s heart actually stopped in his chest. Women fell all over themselves getting to Hotwire. Josie wouldn’t be any exception.

  “You want her?”

  Silence at the other end of the phone.

  “Do you?”

  “What difference does it make to you?”

  “Just answer the question, damn it.”

  “Whew…Lise said she thought your bad temper covered something totally different, but Wolf and I thought she was sniffing the wrong scent.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You want Josie.”

  “We aren’t talking about me.”

  “Don’t have to. It might have taken me a while to catch on, but I’m no backwoods Georgia farm boy.”

  The temptation to drop the conversation was huge, but Daniel had to know. “Is there anything between you and Josie?”

  “Friendship.”

  He waited in silence, willing his friend to explain.

  Hotwire laughed. “This is more fun than watching Wolf forget what he is saying when Lise walks into the room.”

  “Hotwire.”

  “I don’t want Josie.”

  The relief that went through Daniel was too overwhelming to dismiss. “Good.”

  “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t want me. I am, after all, a prime specimen of male flesh and have a certain amount of undeniable southern charm.”

  Daniel’s reply was ugly and succinct.

  Hotwire was still laughing when Daniel cut the connection.

  Daniel relaxed against the overstuffed sofa back. Josie was still sleeping, and he’d decided to skim the earlier journals, hoping they held some clue because he’d found nothing in Tyler’s most recent one. So far all he’d accomplished was to get a pretty good picture of Josie’s childhood.

  When she had said she’d had no choice but to become a soldier, he’d thought she meant her dad had pushed her into it, but it had been a lot more concrete than that. Her choice had been made when she wasn’t even old enough to give up playing with dolls.

  Tyler McCall had started training his daughter in combat at the tender age of six. The same year her mother died. Some would say the man’s mind had finally snapped, and they might be right, but there was no denying he’d had his reasons for raising his daughter the way he did.

  Tyler had seen things in Vietnam that would make any man leery of raising a child, particularly a daughter, in today’s world.

  A furious yell hit his eardrums and cut his musings mid-thought.

  Chapter 4

  Daniel met Josie halfway down her hallway, his blood pumping with combat-ready adrenaline, but he could see no threat.

  Unless he counted the small, barefoot woman vibrating with rage, her green eyes shooting retribution fire at him. “I am not a demon!”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  The growl that emanated from her throat would have done a grizzly bear proud. She was royally pissed, and apparently he was the reason.

  Rather than being concerned about that salient fact, it was all he could do not to drag her body against his and kiss her until he didn’t know his own name anymore. She turned him on in pretty much any mood. However, passionate anger was too close to passionate desire not to impact his hormones like a freight train running full steam ahead without a brake.

  Not to mention her clothes, or lack thereof. If she normally slept in tiny T-shirts and short shorts like the pink ones she had on, he was going to expire from lust his first night in her place just thinking about it.

  From the murderous expression on her pixielike face, he guessed she wasn’t on the same wavelength as he was at all.

  She smacked his shoulder with her open palm. Hard. “Nor did I attempt to seduce you!”

  “Uh, Josie…Are you all right?” Maybe she had a little of her dad’s paranoia. Or a bad dream?

  “No, I am not all right.” She was back to shouting again, but when she went to hit him a second time, he moved to restrain her and found himself on his back with her
knee in his chest and her furious face above his. “I’m mad.”

  He didn’t like her getting the better of him, and he reversed their positions, his hands clamping her wrists and his bigger body pinning hers to the hardwood floor. “I noticed, but why?”

  Her body felt perfect under his—toned, but soft and warm, too.

  “You called me a succubus!”

  “I did n—” Then he remembered. “I said clinging like a succubus.” Not that the semantics appreciably changed the meaning and he’d clearly made a mistake letting his temper control his tongue, even briefly, but a man could try.

  “I wasn’t clinging at all,” she snarled.

  “No. You weren’t.”

  She didn’t look in the least mollified by his agreement.

  “I apologized already,” he reminded her.

  She glared up at him, her body tense beneath his. “That was before I knew what succubus meant. A two-word apology and instructions to just forget about it don’t cut it now.”

  She twisted unexpectedly under him, and he had to maneuver his hips between her legs to keep her flat. In her current frame of mind, there was no saying what she might do, and she was capable of doing a lot. But the new position was torture to his already excited body.

  His pants and her shorts were no barrier to the heat of her pressing against the hardness of him. Making love to her would be like taking a trip to the sun.

  She bucked, sending his temperature spiking. “Get off me, you cretin.”

  He had to keep this light. If he didn’t, he was going to lose control, and that was an unacceptable alternative. “See, that’s the second time you’ve called me that, and you don’t see me having a temper tantrum because you’ve questioned my intelligence.”

  “Cretin also means vulgar, and calling me a demon intent on seducing you in your sleep falls in that category, or didn’t you realize that?” she asked far too sweetly, her gaze still as sharp as his throwing knife.

  “It’s still a hurtful thing to call a person.”

  She laughed, the sound far from humorous, her expression one of angry mockery. “An exploding grenade under your pillow couldn’t hurt you.”

  Maybe not, but a hundred and twenty pounds of female flesh under him was doing major damage to his nerve centers. His sex ached, and it was only going to get worse if he stayed where he was. A glutton for punishment, he didn’t move.

  “The point is, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  She sighed, her body going limp all of a sudden, her expression turning sad. “I’m sure you didn’t. You can’t help the way you feel about me.”

  “That’s true, but I’m trying. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  She shrugged as much as she could with her wrists still restrained. “You can let me up now. I won’t take your head off.”

  He didn’t want to. He wanted to make love right there on the hardwood floor, but what he wanted and what he got with Josie were rarely even in the same hemisphere.

  Sucking in air, he rolled off her, then stood up and felt the pain of unsatisfied desire arc through him with debilitating force. Turning away from her, he bent at the waist, breathing heavily.

  She touched his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll be fine. Just give me a sec.” He hated her seeing his physical vulnerability to her, but right now even his formidable mental control was no match for his body’s urges.

  He’d never been like this before. No matter how much he wanted sex, he’d never been unable to curb the desire and hide his reactions when the situation called for it.

  “Did I hurt you?” She sounded bewildered.

  How was he supposed to answer that? He hurt because of her, but she hadn’t done anything harmful to him. “No.”

  “Then what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing you need to worry about.” He breathed in deeply, willing his body to calm, forcing his mind not to dwell on the memory of what it felt like to have her under him.

  Finally able to stand straight without feeling like he’d rip the seam on his fly, he turned back to face her.

  Her eyes scanned him and stopped at the hard-on that had not completely gone away. “Does that happen every time you fight with a woman?”

  Offended, he glared at her. “Of course not. I’d be a damn poor soldier if it did.”

  “But…”

  “I told you. You set me off. Not all women. Just you.”

  “Set you off?”

  Did she have to sound so clueless about sex? That in itself was another turn-on, and the way she was looking at him wasn’t helping.

  “My dick is only going to grow if you keep watching it like that.” And then he was either going to go back to being bent over double, or he was going to bend over her.

  “I’m not…I can’t…You’re wearing pants!”

  He rolled his eyes. “And you don’t know the log in my jeans isn’t wadded-up cotton, right?”

  She looked askance at him. “It’s not, is it?”

  “For crying out loud.” He’d had enough. If he didn’t get out of there, he was going to do something they would both regret.

  Josie watched Daniel slam out the front door, her heart somewhere around her toes. What had just happened?

  One minute, she’d been ready to kill him with her bare hands, and the next, he was telling her she’d turned him on. And then he’d gone. She eyed the closed door with a conflagration of emotions she couldn’t begin to decipher, but chief among them was a certainty she wasn’t ready for Daniel Black Eagle to walk out of her life.

  Impulsively, she rushed after him. Swinging the door open, she saw him standing beside his big black SUV. He was leaning against it with one hand, his back to her.

  “Are you leaving?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t bother to face her.

  “For good?” It’s what she’d said she wanted, so why did she feel so rejected?

  He spun around then, his stance dangerous. “I said I’d help you find the people who tried to kill your dad, and I will. I can control my sex drive enough to work with you. I’m not a needy adolescent, damn it.”

  “I didn’t say you were.” This conversation was getting bizarre, but then everything had been a little crazy since she went storming out of her bedroom to tell him what she thought of him for calling her a succubus.

  “I’m going for a walk.”

  “Oh. The park is peaceful. There are ducks…in the pond on the other side.”

  “I’ll be sure and look for them.”

  “Okay.”

  He sighed and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Do you want to go with me?”

  More than anything, but considering how he felt about her, she shouldn’t inflict her company on him. “That’s okay. I’ve got some stuff to do around here.”

  “Is it anything that can’t wait?”

  “No.”

  “Then come with me.”

  “Are you sure…”

  He put his hand out. “Come on, Josette. I think we could both use the exercise to clear our heads, and I want to talk to you about what I read in your dad’s journals.”

  “I…um…” She waved her hand down her body, indicating the pajamas she still wore. “I’ve got to get some clothes on.”

  He nodded, his expression unfathomable now. “I’ll wait.”

  Daniel called himself names much worse than cretin as he waited for Josie to join him. Idiot and dumbass came to mind. What had he been thinking? His body needed a break from her temptation before his dick exploded from unrequited lust.

  So, why had he invited her to join him? Was his brain even connected to his mouth?

  The problem was that when he was around Josie, logic was not the overriding factor in his decision making.

  It would have been logical to leave her behind, but he’d gone soft in the head when he looked at her. She’d appeared so forlorn standing there in the doorway, her bow lips turned down in a frown. How did a woman who was easi
ly as tough as any soldier he knew contrive to look that way?

  Especially after she’d made it clear she didn’t want his company. But she’d looked as if his leaving somehow hurt her, and he’d been unable to leave it at that.

  Idiot was right. She was the best-trained soldier he’d ever known. She didn’t need him to take her for a walk to make her feel better. She didn’t need him at all, but he couldn’t seem to keep that straight in his mind.

  When he was with Josie, he forgot she was a soldier. All he could see was the woman, a vulnerable woman he wanted to protect. Which had been the problem from the beginning.

  The trip across country together should have been another routine, straightforward mission for him, but it hadn’t been. He’d spent most of the time in the car in a state of painful arousal, fighting to keep his focus on the job of looking for a tail instead of sneaking sidelong glances at the female mercenary. The nights together in small hotel rooms with one bed in case Nemesis checked on their registry had been torture plain and simple.

  He’d taken a lot of cold showers and still woken up more mornings than not wet and sticky in his BVDs…and pissed. At himself and at the woman who seemed oblivious to what the sight of her pajama-clad body did to him.

  He’d had wet dreams about her, for crying out loud. He hadn’t dreamt like that since his voice had completed the change from tenor to baritone.

  At first, he’d thought Josie wanted him, too, and as much as he had always believed sex on the job was irredeemably stupid, he’d been desperate enough to make a pass. And been shot down, the flames singeing his temper as well as his libido.

  He should have got a clue from her behavior and not even tried.

  She jumped ten feet whenever he got within touching distance and avoided eye contact. When he’d kissed her, he thought she was responding with the same helpless passion he felt—until she pulled away and acted as if she thought it had all been part of the cover of pretending to be Wolf and Lise.

  He’d finally gotten the message. She wasn’t interested, but his body hadn’t stopped wanting her. Hell, he even craved her company. Like now. Taking Josie with him on the walk was no hardship except to his aching sex.

  He’d never craved the company of a woman outside of bed before, but he’d been disappointed to learn Josie was severing her ties with the mercenary school. Because he’d been looking forward to seeing her.