“He’s a rotten creep and you’re better off without him,” Kathleen said in a deadpan voice.
Lena’s mouth twisted. “Yeah, I’m not convinced.”
After Lena polished off the rest of her salad, the waitress took their plates.
“I wonder what happened between Melanie and Matt?” Lena asked.
Kathleen drank the last of her coffee. “They looked pretty cozy. Hard to say. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I guess we’ll get a clue then.”
“So what are you going to do about Jake?”
“Nothing. I’m not making another move on him. Anything that happens from now on… The ball is in his corner.” She paused while the waitress refilled their coffee cups and left. “Maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t take it further.”
“You really believe that?”
“Hell no.”
They laughed and just then Kathleen’s cell phone sang its merry song in her purse. She pulled the phone out and saw the name on the screen. “Speak of the devil.” She answered. “Hey Jake.”
“Hey.” Even one syllable from him sounded better than a whole sentence from another man. “You all right?”
“I’m good. Lena and I are having lunch.”
He cleared his throat. “Good.”
“Is paintball already done?”
“Yep. Now we need showers and a late lunch. Can I see you tonight?”
She hadn’t expected his question and didn’t answer immediately. Did she want to see him? Was it better to say she had someone else to see or somewhere else to go? No. She didn’t lie about stuff like that, and part of her yearned to spend more time with him.
“Sure,” she said.
“Good.” He sounded relieved. “What time are you free?”
“I have a few errands to run.” She glanced at her watch. “Five o’clock good?”
“Great. I’ll meet you at your hotel room, if that’s okay.”
Anticipation sang through her veins. “Sounds good. See you then.”
“Later, then.”
She tucked her phone away and looked at Lena, totally surprised. “I can’t believe this.”
“Jake?”
“Yeah. He wants to see me tonight.”
Lena’s eyebrows waggled. “Well, maybe you’ll have another chance tonight to have your way with him.”
Undeniable anticipation danced through Kathleen at the thought. “But do I want to, that’s the question.”
Lena’s smile answered for her. “Oh I think you do.”
* * * * *
Kathleen glanced at her watch for the third time in ten minutes, her nerves pinging as she sat at the small desk in her hotel room. Jake wasn’t late. She was just nervous and couldn’t seem to stop fiddling with things in her room.
Right on time, as if he’d set his watch to it, a knock came on the door. She started, then chastised herself for being so damn jumpy. She looked out the peephole. Jake stood there with his hands at his sides, his gaze trained down the hallway. His profile was hard, strong and sent her nerves to jumping again. She drew in a calming breath and opened the door.
Jake smiled, and rather than the uncertain smile of a tentative lover, he looked maddeningly self-assured. “Hey.”
She opened the door and gestured. “Come on in. How’s it going?”
“I’m beat. Patrick knows how to kick ass in paintball.”
As she closed the door, he peeled off his coat. Her attention ran over his dark-blue sweater and the nice cut of his jeans over his butt. God, he looked hot. She wanted to lay her head on that broad, muscled chest. Better yet, she wanted to strip the sweater off him and see if his body was as gorgeous as she imagined it was.
Her gaze snapped up to his as he walked toward her and the heat in his eyes caused her to take a step back.
He came to a halt and held up both hands. “Whoa. It’s okay. You all right?”
She licked her lips. “Sorry. I think I’m still jumpy after the mall shooting. It’s stupid, I know.”
“No, it isn’t. Come on.” He touched the back of the single straight-back chair in the room. “Sit here and I’ll give you a massage.”
How about a full body massage, Captain?
She did as he said, anticipation only adding to her already spring-loaded muscles. “We’ll start on your neck. Let me know if I’m pressing too hard, okay?” He moved aside her hair so that it lay in a long rope over her right shoulder.
When he touched the sides of her neck with his big, warm hands, she flinched.
“Easy.” His voice rumbled softly. “I won’t hurt you.”
“I know.” She did know. “I’ve always been jumpy.”
With slow deliberation, his fingers moved into a slow and sweet rhythm. “Maybe you had a reason to be in the past.”
“Yeah, I did. But like I said, I’m an adult now. I need to get over it. And I am.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I hear skepticism.” Her voice held disbelief.
“I don’t think you’re over it.”
She bristled but his hands felt so good she didn’t move away. “Oh?” His massage moved to her shoulders and her muscles felt so sore she almost moaned. “Ow.”
He backed off on the pressure. “Sorry. Are you sore?”
“God, you’re a mind reader.”
“Not quite. This major I know is a massage expert. She said quite a few soldiers are having issues with a fibromyalgia-like symptoms after being under stress. Have you ever noticed this pain before?”
A stab of jealousy bit her. “She?”
“What?”
“The major. Did you date her?”
Jake laughed. “Hell no. She wasn’t my type. I probably wasn’t her type either.”
“And I find that hard to believe.”
“What do you mean?”
As his fingers kneaded away tightness and soreness, she became more relaxed. Her body tingled in places it shouldn’t—her nipples went tight and arousal warmed her between the legs.
“What woman wouldn’t find you attractive?” she asked, her face going hot.
He stopped the motion and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “You jealous of the major?”
Did she want to admit this? “Don’t stop the massage. I think I’m starting to like this.”
He kissed the side of her throat and she shivered in sweet, warm pleasure. “Oh.”
“Like that?”
“Almost as much as a massage.”
He stopped, and his voice was a raspy, delicious sound against her ear. “I needed to see you.”
She turned and looked up at him, breaking his maddening contact with her shoulders. “Why?”
“I was worried about you.”
She smiled, genuinely amused. “I’m okay. Thanks for checking on me.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Frustration made her stand. “Why?”
He moved in close and cupped her face. His hands were gentle. “Because I saw your eyes last night. They were haunted. I’ve seen too many soldiers go down hard with that look in their eyes.”
She clasped her hands over his wrists, not to pull him away but to bring him nearer. “I’m not a soldier.”
“You are. In your own way. You went through a lot when you were a kid.”
Exasperation made her pull away from his grip. “We’re back to that again? I don’t need therapy, Jake.”
“I didn’t say you did.” He sighed and moved to the hotel window. He glanced between the curtains and then turned back to her.
“I needed to apologize for all those years ago. I needed to tell you that it was one of the biggest mistakes of my life.”
Bewildered and a bit worried, she urged him onward. “What do you mean?”
He scrubbed a hand over his short hair. “Shit, I’m not doing this very well.” He stalked toward her, coming to a stop nearby. “Okay, let’s start this at the beginning. When I left after high school and headed for college and ROTC, I had a lot of reasons fo
r doing it.”
“You wanted to serve your country.”
“Yeah, but it was a hell of a lot more. I wanted to get away from you.”
Kathleen swallowed around the bitter truth. “I knew that.” Anger edged around the bad memories. “Remember what happened?”
“It’s printed in my mind. I’ll never forget it.”
She recalled the scene as if it were yesterday. Jake had driven up to Walker Point where Kathleen and Jake’s best friend Derek were having sex in Derek’s old car. Very bad, very unsatisfying sex for Kathleen but at least Derek had had a condom. Derek’s expression when he realized someone was looking into his car window had been frightening. He’d leaped off of her, zipped his pants and jumped out of the car. Embarrassed and crying, Kathleen had dressed hastily while Jake and Derek glared at each other and Jake yelled at his friend.
“You fucker.” Jake punctuated his angry words by stabbing the air with his index finger. “What are you doing to her?” Jake’s furious gaze caught on Kathleen as she climbed out of the car. “Did he hurt you?”
Kathleen’s tears flowed as misery bit a deep hole inside her. “No! No!”
Jake’s fists balled at his sides and she imagined if she could see his eyes, they’d be full of fire. “How could you let him do that to you, Kathleen? In the back of a fucking car? Don’t you have more dignity than that?”
Jake had left in a huff, screaming away from the scene in his car.
“It was wrong of me to get so upset the night I found you with Derek. It was way over the top,” Jake said.
Surprise held her still and at first she didn’t know how to respond. When he looked at her and waited she said, “We were young. None of us knew what we were doing. I sure as hell didn’t when I just let Derek take my virginity. I was hurting because my father was an asshole and beat me and my mother didn’t protect me. I was hurting because I wanted you and came on to you that one day and you said we couldn’t be together. I wanted you so much, Jake.”
Her confession hung in the air.
Jake put his hands on his hips, his expression bleak. “But you understand why I rejected you, right? I was about to turn eighteen and you were only sixteen. You weren’t jailbait, but almost.”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t fly. You were still seventeen and I was sixteen when I offered myself to you. Other than our parents going ballistic if they found out because we were teens, I wasn’t jailbait.”
Clear frustration passed over his handsome features as he walked toward her. He was within two feet when he stopped. “Technically, yeah.”
She made a noise that said she didn’t believe him. “You didn’t just reject me because of that. You’d seen me hanging around with the gang. The Diablos. Don’t you think that’s the real reason?”
Her heart leaped into her throat when he eased even closer to her.
“Your father would have crucified me if we’d become boyfriend and girlfriend, and if we’d slept together you can imagine what would have happened if he’d found out. He was friends with the sheriff, remember? Plus, you’d joined that damned gang and—” He cut himself off. “I thought it meant you weren’t the kind of person I believed you were.”
“When I found out they wanted me to kill someone, I quit the gang, for God’s sake.” She pushed her hands through her hair, her fingers trembling as she remembered how she’d run from the head of the gang, fear bright and strong and so thick she could taste it on her tongue. “I wouldn’t have done it, Jake. I wouldn’t have hurt anyone.”
“I know. You proved that by leaving the gang. You proved it by facing them down,” he said softly.
She drew in a shuddering breath, old memories suddenly as fresh as if they’d happened yesterday. “Yeah, and I paid for it.”
The girl gang had cornered her outside her house one morning when Kathleen’s parents had left the house early. Three girls had beat the crap out of Kathleen. Only a neighbor’s intervention had saved her. Cuts and a concussion had kept her out of school for a week. The worst thing had been that her parents had blamed her for the entire incident, her father telling her how worthless she was and that she deserved it.
Regret marred his face as he said, “I’m sorry. When I heard about what happened I was horrified. I wanted to come back and take revenge.”
“I know you couldn’t.”
Rationally she couldn’t blame him, couldn’t act like Jake was a knight in shining armor who’d failed in his duties. Damn Jake Frasier for making her recall the pain of those years and the confusion that overlaid all of it.
“There’s more to this whole thing,” he said. “That night I caught you in the car with Derek, I saw you go off with him and I knew he might try something.”
“And?”
“I was worried. I thought he might seduce you. I’d changed my mind about us. I planned to tell you I didn’t give a damn that you’d joined the gang. I was going to tell you that I would make love to you. It all blew up in my face when I found you screwing Derek in the back of his car.”
Her mouth dropped open. “What?”
“I was caving in. I didn’t care. All I wanted was you.”
Before she could respond to the surprising information that he’d actually cared for her more than she’d thought, he snatched her into his arms and kissed her. His mouth was hot and hungry, devouring with a drugging and delicious chemistry that promised so much. She moaned and as her lips parted wider, his tongue plunged deep. He stroked, the velvet heat of his tongue moving against hers instantly hardening her nipples and sending moisture to her feminine folds.
He drew back and the heat in his eyes sent a rush of need so strong through her she ached.
“I’m here now. You’re here now. We aren’t kids anymore. Which way are we going to take this?” His voice was filled with raw emotion. “What do you want, Kathleen?”
She knew without a doubt, despite the misunderstandings of the past. “You. Even if it’s only for tonight. Just you.”
With a groan he kissed her again. His fingers tunneled into the hair at the back of her head, his other arm tight around her waist. All the desire she’d built up for Jake over the last few days exploded to life, released by his confession. She kissed him without restraint, arching against him as he cupped her butt and squeezed, bringing her tight against his erection. Kiss after kiss, he built her need. His caresses flirted with her, touching first at her waist, then her ribs, and inching with deliberation upward to near her breasts. She wasn’t passive—she palmed his wide shoulders and searched out the rock-hard quality of his biceps and chest. God, he was built. Not bodybuilder style but long, lean and deliciously powerful. As his touch explored dangerously close to her breasts, her entire body fired to life. She writhed against him, tortured by long-pent-up need for him and everything they’d lost all those years ago. All the misunderstanding was stripped away in a blinding flash that demanded immediate closure. She could feel it humming through her veins and taking control. She heard their breathing, now rapid and urgent, drawing her second after second into a closer connection. She wanted and craved him far more than any man she’d known before. Whatever happened after this moment didn’t matter. The Earth could blow up for all she cared. At no point in her life had she experienced a deeper drive to connect, to give someone a part of her she’d never shared. Primal need roared as she tore away from him.
Without preamble she yanked off her boots and threw them aside. She paused, breath slicing between her lips, and looked at Jake. His chest rose and fell, his fists clenched at his sides. His eyes burned with a feral light. Her gaze dropped to the thick erection pushing against his jeans and her mouth literally watered.
He pulled off his own boots and the pause between them dropped away. She went into his arms and he buried his face in her neck. Hot breath puffed against her skin and she shivered in anticipation. As a teen she’d imagined this moment, designing elaborate scenes in her mind of the how and when. Of when they’d be drawn togethe
r and he’d confess his undying love before each tender moment brought them into making love.
It wasn’t like that now. Heat burst inside her as she rubbed against him like a cat and his touch seemed everywhere as he kissed her. Ecstasy was there, out of reach, anxiety mixing with a driving desire to find the peak before reality could intrude and life would prove that there wasn’t a happily ever after. She had to have him now. Now.
Now.
She wrestled with the button on his jeans and he gently knocked her hands away as he undid it himself. Before she could reach inside and touch him, he lifted her and tossed her on the bed. She squealed with surprise and happiness before he came down on top of her and they wrestled from side to side, kissing and exploring. He shoved her sweater up and expertly undid the front clasp on her bra. He buried his head in her breasts and the first lash of his hot tongue over one nipple made her gasp and arch against him.
“Jake.”
He moaned softly. “You’re sweet. God, you taste good.”
She reached between them and found his cock thick, long and hard. He was hot and she savored the silky skin over iron. Aching for him, she lifted her hips and placed his hardness against her clit.
“Oh shit,” he whispered against her breast. “Baby, don’t. I want you ready.”
Ready? If he didn’t take her now she was going to scream. “Jake, please.”
He touched between her legs and slipped one finger deep into her folds. She gasped again, her body so sensitive she thought she’d come apart at the seams any minute. She was so wet already, so aroused, one more stroke might set her off.
His attention slipped over her, eager and admiring. “I want to see you.”
An animal want compelled her. “See me later. Feel now.”
“Damn.” He chuckled softly. “Easy,” he breathed as he thrust one more finger into her core.
“Oh my God. Jake.” She shivered, trembling.
“So wet.” His voice was raw with satisfaction.
She didn’t think she could be any more aroused as she clamped around his thrusting fingers. His thumb brushed against her clit and she rose against him again, a woman slowly going crazy under his lovemaking.
He kissed her and everything changed. Her heart pounded, blood singing through her veins. He pulled away and she reached for him.
UnderFire Page 5
