Willing

by Lucy Monroe

  Dumbass was right.

  Josie hesitated in the doorway, trying to get her heart and breathing under control. It was always like this when she got around Nitro, and the thought of him staying in her house during the mission scared the heck out of her.

  One night her desire for him was going to break its leash, and she was going to end up trying to seduce him.

  Which would be both hilarious and humiliating because she was worse than a virgin. She was a virgin who’d never even made it to second base with a date.

  She took a deep breath and stepped outside, closing the door behind her.

  Nitro had moved to the sidewalk and stood there waiting for her as if he had all the time in the world. He never looked out of place, and sometimes she envied his sense of unshakable confidence.

  She wondered why he’d invited her to come along on his walk. She’d been sure he wanted to get away from her.

  She moved to stand beside him. “I’m ready.”

  He nodded without looking down at her and started across the street. No holding his hand out to her this time. What would it be like to hold Nitro’s hand? To walk with him and know she belonged by his side. Her mind boggled.

  They crossed the street and stepped onto one of the paths surrounding the park, walking in companionable silence for once. She liked it and hesitated to so much as breathe funny to break the unusual rapport.

  Nitro had no such reticence. “I read the last year of your dad’s journal and skimmed some earlier entries.”

  “Already?” She’d been asleep only a few hours.

  “He’s a pretty sporadic writer, so it didn’t take too long.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “No.”

  Disappointment weighted her insides. “Then why did he tell us to read them? You must have missed something.”

  “It’s possible. He did tell you to read his journal, not me. Maybe there’s something you’ll recognize in his entries that I didn’t.”

  That made sense. “There has to be.”

  “Maybe.”

  She frowned up at Nitro. “But he told me to read them.”

  His expression would have done one of his chieftain ancestors proud. “Maybe he wanted you to get something else out of them.”

  “Like what?”

  “An explanation for the way he raised you.”

  Tension seeped into her until the muscles between her shoulder blades ached. “What do you mean?”

  “You can’t think it’s standard parenting for a father to start training his little girl in combat before she’s old enough to read.”

  “I started reading when I was five.”

  “And you were six when you handled your first automatic weapon.”

  “It was just Dad’s way. He never let me be at risk.”

  “I know that, but it wasn’t normal, Josette.”

  She didn’t know why he insisted on calling her by her full name, but it felt intimate and increased the sense of connection she felt with him. Though she was sure that was not his intention.

  “He was a good father to me, and he’s not crazy.”

  “No, he isn’t, but he is on the paranoid side.”

  “Don’t criticize my dad. He has his ways just like anybody else. I thought you wanted to be his partner.”

  “I do, because I respect him, but no one is perfect, sweetheart.”

  Sweetheart? She flushed to the roots of her hair. “I didn’t say he was.”

  “But he’s not crazy either. Read the journals.”

  “I’d planned to.”

  “I mean the early ones.”

  “If they don’t have a clue to finding the would-be killers, that would be invading his privacy.” Something her father had a major issue with.

  “He told you to read them, Josette, and I personally believe it had nothing to do with the compound getting blown to bits.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. Our personal relationship could be sorted out anytime.”

  “You’ve got to remember, your dad’s memories and thoughts were confused. The most important issue in his life was bound to take precedence.”

  And Nitro was implying that issue was her. She chewed on her bottom lip in silence until they reached a fork in the path.

  “Go to the left. The duck pond is this way.”

  He followed without comment.

  “How much of my dad’s journals did you read?”

  “Enough.”

  Did Nitro think she was a real weirdo now? Very few people knew of her unique upbringing, but she’d always known it made her different. She was trying to change that, but maybe she never could.

  She sighed, looking out over the pond now directly in her line of vision, so she didn’t have to look at him.

  “Josette, we need to talk.”

  “I thought we already were.”

  “I mean about us.”

  “Us?” she asked faintly.

  “What happened in the hall can’t happen again.”

  “I can’t promise that.” He was a pretty irritating guy at times and got to her like nobody else.

  She wasn’t sure she could always control her temper around him. It was strange, because before meeting Nitro, she’d never really thought she had a temper.

  He said something nasty, and she flinched. She’d heard men swearing around her all her life, but nobody had Nitro’s coldly controlled tone of voice.

  “Sorry,” he grumbled.

  “For what?”

  “Hotwire says I shouldn’t curse around you since you aren’t a soldier anymore.”

  “I don’t understand. Why?”

  “According to his mother, it isn’t right to swear around a woman.”

  She’d heard that, but she still didn’t get the distinction of then versus now. “I was a woman when I was a soldier.” Heck, she was still a soldier…in all the ways that counted. Would that ever change?

  “Too much of one.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “So, Hotwire told you to watch your mouth?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When did you talk to him?”

  “While you were napping.”

  “Oh. I would have liked to talk to him, too.”

  “There was no need.” Nitro sounded awfully surly about it.

  “I guess not. That’s sweet how he told you not to swear around me.” She smiled. She could just imagine how well the instruction had gone over with Nitro. “But don’t worry about it. I don’t expect you to change just for me.”

  “I can be as polite as the next guy.”

  She’d never noticed him wanting to. “Whatever you say.”

  “I can damn well stop swearing around you if I say I will.”

  She couldn’t help it; she burst out laughing. “Yes, I’m sure you damn well can…,” she wheezed out between bouts of laughter.

  Taking a sideways peek up at him, she saw burnished red along his cheekbones. It made her laugh all the harder. The prospect of Nitro blushing was just too much for her funny bone.

  “If you can stop imitating a hyena, we can finish our discussion,” he said with freezing cool.

  After several deep breaths, she managed to stifle her mirth. “I don’t know what else there is to say. You want me to promise something impossible.”

  “It would help if you’d wear looser clothes and more of them.”

  How was that going to help her temper? “My clothes aren’t too tight.”

  “Your jeans outline your sexy little rear perfectly, and if you’re wearing a bra under that shirt, I’ll chew boot leather for dinner.”

  She gasped, shocked he’d noticed her lack of a bra. She hated wearing them, and because she was small she didn’t have to. “I’m not that big. I don’t wear one most of the time.”

  “I noticed.” He sounded aggrieved.

  “Oh.” Her breasts tingled at the thought of him looking close enough to notice. She knew he was observant,
but he had to have really focused in on her to discern that detail.

  He stopped and glared down at her. “And it doesn’t help.”

  “Help what? What exactly are we talking about here?”

  “Me surviving another bout of close proximity to you on a mission.”

  “My lack of a bra is going to hurt you?”

  “It already has.”

  “What? You don’t look wounded to me.”

  “That’s because you’re not looking in the right place.”

  When her gaze dropped to where he was indicating, heat zoomed into her cheeks. She lifted her head to focus on his face again immediately, but the damage to her equilibrium had been done.

  “I’m supposed to be walking off my sexual tension,” he growled, “but instead all I can think is getting you alone somewhere and touching your breasts, tasting them until you almost come from the stimulation and then burying myself in you so deep, my dick will finally stop hurting.”

  She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You want me?”

  “Don’t sound so surprised. I’d say your effect on me is pretty obvious. If not, just what did you think caused my hard-on?”

  “You said…”

  “That you turned me on.”

  Several things clicked into place. Things she probably should have taken into account already, but she was so ignorant of men. On top of her own ignorance was Nitro’s confusing behavior. He acted angry with her half the time, not like a man who wanted her.

  “You mean every time you get hard around me, I turn you on?”

  His expression said that should be obvious even to her. “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are you saying you didn’t know?”

  “Men can get hard reading an ad for hot tubs in the Yellow Pages.”

  “I’m not one of them. Unless I was thinking of you in a hot tub.”

  Her jaw dropped, and her heart started galloping like the winning horse at the Kentucky Derby. Because he got hard around her a lot. He’d been that way on the mission with Wolf and Lise. She’d thought it was just his natural virility.

  “I thought you were always like that.”

  “Hard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Only around you.”

  That couldn’t be true. “You’re always mad at me.”

  “I’m always lusting after you. Can’t you tell the difference?”

  “No. I thought you didn’t like me.”

  “I wanted you.”

  “Wolf doesn’t act like he hates Lise.”

  “Lise is sleeping with him.”

  “Oh.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  “I don’t know what else to say.”

  “I don’t mean to act like I hate you,” he said through gritted teeth.

  She could be pardoned for questioning his sincerity. “Really? A man can want a woman without liking her.”

  “Yeah, he can, but I do like you.”

  She looked down at the ground, comparing the size of his big feet to her smaller ones. “You said not other women…”

  “Yeah.”

  “You mean other women don’t turn you on as frequently as I do?” She could barely believe she was asking this question.

  “Other women don’t turn me on at all right now.”

  Her head snapped up in total shock. “You’re lying.”

  He spun to face her fully, his dark skin pulled taut across his cheekbones, the muscles in his jaw locked, his eyes almost black as they fixed on her with steady intensity. The silent regard was unnerving, but she didn’t know what to say.

  She could not conceive of such a thing being possible.

  After several seconds of silence, he reached out and cupped her nape, his hands hot against her skin. “Have you ever known me to lie?”

  “No.”

  “Exaggerate?”

  “No.”

  “What does that tell you?”

  The impossible. “You don’t want other women.”

  “No.” He didn’t sound happy about it.

  “You don’t want to want me.”

  His brown gaze bored into her, and she could feel it inside as if he were touching her in places that had no name. “It’s hell on a man’s libido and ego, not to mention his mood, to want a woman to the exclusion of all others who doesn’t want him.”

  “I do want you,” she blurted out.

  His gaze narrowed. “That’s why you jump ten feet every time I touch you or come near enough to do it.”

  “I don’t jump ten feet.”

  “But you do move away. Fast.”

  “That’s because…”

  “Because why?”

  “You make me feel jumpy.”

  His face looked hewn from rock. “I scare you?”

  “N-not exactly.”

  “What exactly?”

  “I get all jittery when you get close, like I’ve had too much caffeine on an empty stomach. It makes me nervous.”

  “Nervous, or sexually excited?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you?”

  She couldn’t answer. It was as if his hands on her throat had drained her of the ability to speak.

  “You’re not jumping now.”

  She tried clearing her throat. “You’re holding me.”

  “I held you once before.”

  She remembered. It had taken all her willpower to treat the embrace like the cover move it was. “That was just camouflage.”

  “Was it?”

  Oh, man…What if it hadn’t been? “I…I thought it was.”

  Chapter 5

  Daniel stared down at Josie, trying to fathom the working of her mind and not getting very far. “Are you really that naïve?”

  “I’m not naïve. I was raised around soldiers all my life. I heard things that would make most women cringe.”

  He was beginning to wonder if she had understood any of those things, though. “You thought I got an erection to make our cover more believable?”

  “I thought you were always…I mean…”

  She’d thought it was his natural virility.

  While her belief was better for his ego than her rejection, it staggered him. “Have you known many men who walk around with a constant boner?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Any?” He had to ask.

  “Well…no, but some men do get excited when I don’t expect them to.”

  He could just bet. “But none of them acted on their excitement, so you assumed it had nothing to do with you, right?”

  She focused on something beyond his right shoulder, her expression a study in pretending to be somewhere else. “This conversation is getting uncomfortable.”

  He’d spent hours in a state of uncomfortable arousal because of her; he didn’t have a lot of sympathy for her mental discomfort right now. Besides, he thought maybe she needed to be set straight on some things for her own benefit as much as his.

  “From the time you started developing, your dad threatened to maim the soldiers who came through his school if they touched you. Knowing your dad, I think the men took it more as a promise.”

  Her gaze jumped back to his face, her soft green eyes wide. “I didn’t know that.” She grimaced. “It sounds like something Dad would do, though. He was always pretty protective.”

  Probably a lot more protective than other fathers, considering the man’s views of what it meant to raise a daughter who would not be at risk because of her femininity or size.

  She pulled away and started walking again, her movements agitated. “By the time my dad thought I was old enough to date, I could beat any of the men I met in combat and knew more about weapons and explosives than they did, too.”

  “None of the soldiers wanted to date a woman who could neutralize him.”

  “No, and frankly, I wasn’t interested in connecting with a soldier. I’m still not.”

  He ignored
that. He could change her mind if she’d been honest about wanting him, but he thought it was interesting she had intimidated the soldiers as much as her father had. “You’re not that big.”

  “You don’t have to be big or even all that strong to maim someone if you know where to hit and how to do it.”

  That was true. There were blows that required a very light touch, but had a devastating effect on an aggressor. In order to use those techniques, a soldier had to be highly trained and disciplined. Tyler had made sure his daughter was the best.

  “Dad taught me how to fight dirty, and I never hesitated to use that knowledge.”

  “Good. You’ve been in a lot of dangerous places.”

  “Yeah, I guess I have.”

  She didn’t sound particularly bothered by that fact, and right now, it wasn’t the uppermost thought in his mind either.

  “You said you wanted me, too.”

  She stumbled, and he steadied her with his hand, then kept hold of her arm. She didn’t try to pull away, and he figured that was a major step forward for them.

  “Yes.” She squared her shoulders as if she was preparing to face a major battle head-on. “I want you.”

  An irresistible smile curved his mouth. “I’m not intimidated by your prowess as a soldier or by your dad.”

  “You don’t think much of my soldiering abilities.”

  “Not true.”

  “But you said—”

  “A lot of stuff born of frustration, not fact.”

  “You said you never lie.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then—”

  “I’ve always seen you as more woman than soldier, no matter how good you are.”

  She gasped, stopped, and turned to look up at him, her eyes glowing in a way that knocked the breath right out of his chest. “You did…You do?”

  “Yes.”

  Then her face fell. “Is it because I dressed up to look like Lise?”

  “No. When I first met you, you were wearing combat fatigues and a machine gun, remember?” And he’d gotten the first boner he’d ever experienced in a battle.

  “How could I forget? Your team saved my commander’s butt.”

  “Hotwire was right.”

  “About what?”

  “Not swearing around you. You don’t do it yourself.”