Close Quarters

by Lucy Monroe

  “I know.”

  “This moment, it cannot be undone for me.”

  “Not for me either. Trust me, beautiful.” The intensity glowing in his gaze told her he knew exactly what fears plagued her and he would meet and conquer them.

  She smiled. “I can do nothing else.”

  “That’s right.” He caressed her side, and then slid his hand around to touch her back. “This is right.”

  For another woman, that would probably be an easy, casual touch, but for Fleur it was different, intimate, amazing. He caressed everywhere his hands could reach, bringing a wash of pleasure over her.

  He hadn’t been overstating the case when he said he knew how to bring the most pleasure possible to her body. He had not touched any of the accepted erogenous zones, but Fleur was already shaking with the need to go to the next level.

  “Please,” she whispered.

  He nodded and then bent to lift her. They were close to the same height, but he had no problem carrying her to the bed. This reminder of his masculine strength filled her with delight rather than the fear she’d trained herself to expect at any show of physical power in a man.

  But Ben was not other men and he would not hurt her. Not even a little.

  He laid her on the bed and then lay down beside her, his body touching hers all along her side.

  “So beautiful.” He trailed a path from her collar bone to a just barely there caress over her breast and then down her stomach, dipping between her legs to tease the curls covering her most private flesh. The sight of his pale skin against her espresso darkness only added to the magical sensations surrounding this incredible moment. They were from different worlds, but were still complements for each other.

  Was that not a miracle?

  He played a soft tattoo with his fingertips on her inner thigh, humming something with it.

  “What is that?”

  He tipped his head up from where he’d been watching himself touch her. “What is what?”

  “The music you were humming?”

  He jolted as if he hadn’t realized he’d been doing it and then he gave her an embarrassed smile. “‘Pretty Woman.’”

  She laughed softly. “You really think I am beautiful.”

  “I do. So do others, but I am the only one who gets to act on it. Do you know how special that is?”

  “Yes.” She actually did.

  His finger slipped between the slick flesh at her core and she gasped.

  “Too much?” he asked, without moving his finger away.

  “No. More.”

  He smiled and went back to humming and touching. When she realized he was touching her in tempo with his humming, she laughed, but the sound broke on a gasp as one finger slid inside her.

  Oh, my…that was so different from what she remembered. No pain. No sense of violation, only a true intimacy she could not help enjoying with this man.

  “Is that good?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “And this?” He slid a second finger into her.

  “It’s tight,” she gasped. “But good.”

  He nodded, as if that was exactly what he expected to hear. He caressed her like that for a long time, bringing her pleasure and helping her body adjust to the unfamiliar invasion.

  A sensation unlike anything she had ever known began to build inside her. Tension pulled her muscles taut, but she didn’t know what to do about that.

  “Ben?”

  He pressed his mouth to hers in a kiss that both gentled and claimed. Some of the tension drained, while a new sense of need spiraled inside her.

  “Give me your pleasure, beautiful.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to come before I penetrate you for the first time. It will relax you and you deserve all the pleasure I can give you.”

  She’d never had an orgasm. After the rapes, she’d shut off that part of herself. When she’d gotten old enough to have been willing to explore it, she’d allowed her ignorance of her own body to dissuade her.

  Now, she wished she knew something other than the clinical location of her body parts she’d learned in medical school.

  “I’ve never…” She could not admit the level of her ignorance out loud.

  “I’ll guide you through it. You can trust me.”

  She looked at him, English words too far away to grasp, and simply nodded.

  A look of the most profound tenderness came over his features. “Thank you.”

  She was sure it should be she expressing gratitude for the amazing sensations he was causing in her body, but she was no more able to speak those words than any others.

  He kissed her so softly, his lips a benediction on her, on the feelings he elicited in her, on this moment when she’d finally reclaimed a part of her femininity lost to her for fifteen years.

  The gentle ministrations of his hand between her legs guided her body on a journey she had never undertaken. It was exhilarating. It was rawly beautiful. It was terrifying.

  But all she had to do was open her eyes and see him and the fear receded to be replaced by anticipation. Ben would not take her to a place it would hurt to go.

  He leaned forward, capturing her lips again, this time deepening the kiss as his tongue slipped easily inside her mouth. Their eyes remained open for the intimate kiss, the silent communication between them every bit as intense as that of their bodies.

  And suddenly a cataclysm of pleasure washed over her, sending her body into rigid convulsions as he kissed the scream of ecstasy right from her lips.

  The physical joy lasted forever and no time at all. He rubbed her lower belly as she relaxed back onto the bed in boneless trust.

  He lifted his head, his smile filled with pure masculine satisfaction.

  She smiled back. “Fantastic.”

  “Me or the orgasm?”

  “Both.”

  He kissed her again, this time closing his eyes in happy bliss. She let hers slide shut too and enjoyed the communion of their mouths as he kissed with the attitude of a man who was in no hurry.

  She could feel the hardness of his erection against her hip though. The heat and strength of it should be driving him to impatience, but he just kept kissing her until the sense that her body was not her own began to recede.

  He seemed to know the moment it happened and broke the kiss. “Are you ready to join your body with mine?”

  “Are you real? How can you be?” He knew exactly what she needed and how could any man be that intuitive?

  He winked. “When you spend as many years as I have working undercover, you learn to read people. My motivation for assessing your reactions and feelings is stronger than it has been in any other situation I have faced.”

  “You don’t mean that.” He was Mr. Patriotic. He could not consider her feelings more important than his job.

  “Oh, I do. One of those thoughts I had about building a life with you when I thought you might be a spy included my leaving TGP.”

  “You would have left your job for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “But…” She broke off.

  “We barely know each other? It’s too soon? It doesn’t make any sense?”

  “Yes, all of that.” And more.

  “What can I say? I believe in the connection of souls, even if I’ve never known such a thing before. My soul longs for yours.”

  Her heart swelled. “You are going to make me cry.”

  “If that is what you need.”

  She shook her head decisively. “What I need is to be one with you in body as our souls have already joined.”

  She didn’t care if it made sense or if someone else would understand. This thing between them went beyond the rational into the mystical and she was finished questioning it.

  He came over her and it did not bring back any bad memories, but rather washed them clean as his body blanketed hers with pleasure-filled safety.

  He paused with his hardness poised at the entrance to her body
. “I stretched you with my fingers, but I’m going to go slow. If you feel—”

  She pressed her fingers against his lips. “Shh…you will stop if I show any discomfort. Of this, I am most certain.”

  He nodded, kissing her fingers before sucking one into the heat of his mouth.

  Oh, my…that felt…well, it felt simply lovely.

  As he began to breach her body, she concentrated on the foreign feelings coursing through her. There was pleasure, yes, but a sense of profundity too. This moment between them, this first joining, would only happen once. Her body seemed to know it as a sense of anticipation held her thoughts and even her breath suspended.

  Despite his efforts with his fingers, his hardness stretched her intimate flesh farther, but there was no sense he would not fit, rather that the fit was exactly perfect.

  Once he was fully seated within her, he stopped and looked down at her, his expression filled with an emotion she was afraid to give name to.

  He wasn’t. “I love you, Fleur Andikan.”

  She repeated the words to him in Shona, the language of her childhood, the language of love to her, the words ripped from her throat. She could no more hold back this outpouring of emotion than she could rewrite her history.

  And for the first time in her life, she did not mind that she could not. For her past had brought her to her present and it was a present worth living.

  She would never forget her family, but perhaps now the pain of their loss would not be such an acute grief in her every waking moment.

  “Can I move?” he asked.

  “You know you can.”

  He smiled, that male satisfaction flashing in his eyes again. “I thought, but in this, I want to be absolutely sure.”

  “Be assured.”

  And he started to move, showing her that the pleasure had only begun. He swiveled his hips on each downward thrust, rubbing his pelvic bone against her most sensitive flesh. The now familiar tension started building inside her again until she was on the verge of another inner explosion.

  “Together,” he said.

  She didn’t know what he meant, but then the pleasure burst inside her as he ground down against her, groaning out his own satisfaction.

  Heat filled her and she realized he had found the ultimate pleasure inside her body. The knowledge she had finally been able to give that pleasure made tears come to her eyes.

  He smiled down at her. “It was inconceivably wonderful, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded, not even laughing at his superlatives. He kissed the tears from her cheeks before carefully pulling out of her and taking his spot at her side again.

  “I didn’t use a condom,” he said, not sounding particularly worried.

  “Johari would make a wonderful big sister.”

  He hugged her and kissed her temple. “You are so perfect for me.”

  “It is the same for me.”

  “Of course, it is. We’re soul mates.”

  “Yes.” She really believed they were.

  “Tell me how your best friend died.” They’d gotten up fairly early in the day and had been walking for two hours when Tanya decided she needed a break from the thoughts chasing each other in her head.

  Kadin was in the lead, as he had been since they’d snuck out of the compound. About twenty yards ahead of her and Roman, he was not a candidate for talking to. Neil wasn’t an option either. Once again, he was following, but she had no idea where he was as she hadn’t seen him since they broke camp.

  “I don’t like to talk about it.”

  “I don’t like knowing the sex we had was all about you checking me out for stolen technology. Sometimes, life sucks. Deal with it.”

  “It wasn’t all about the JCAT.” Oh, somebody was growly about that topic.

  Good. Misery might not love company in her heart, but it didn’t want to be flying completely solo either. “Right.”

  “Hell, Tanna, how could you think that after what we did?”

  “How could I not considering what came after?”

  He growled. Honest to goodness made a sound just like an angry wolf, or something.

  She smiled. Getting under his skin felt good. Maybe misery did love company. “Your friend?”

  “We were in the Rangers together,” he said, as if making some big concession.

  When he didn’t add anything for several seconds, she prompted, “And?”

  “And we were given a kill order.”

  “I guess you get a lot of those, huh?”

  “More than most people realize, yes.”

  She’d been mocking; he wasn’t. Oh. Wow. Not sure she wanted that confirmation. “Who were you supposed to kill?”

  “A four-star general’s daughter.”

  “My gosh, why? Was he being punished for not falling in with some despicable plot?”

  Roman actually laughed at that, like she wanted him to, though the sound was dry and lacking real humor. “It wasn’t some Hollywood movie.”

  “You were ordered to kill a child. That’s pretty out there.”

  “K.B. was no child. She was suspected of exposing military secrets to Filipino terrorists.”

  Just like Tanya, except for the Filipino terrorist part. If she had to guess, she would say whatever intel she was supposed to have sold had gone to Middle Eastern terrorists. Though she had no idea if that were true.

  Regardless, Tanya didn’t like the tone of voice he used when he said the woman’s name. Not at all. It was too…intimate. “K.B.?”

  “Yes. She was beautiful, full of life, a real flirt and only a couple of years younger than me. She knew her way around men, but I didn’t realize it at the time.”

  “You had sex with her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow, this situation is sounding more and more familiar.” And less and less like something she really wanted to know.

  “I didn’t have sex with you until after I was told you were a spy,” he said in a clipped tone.

  Wholly derisive of his attempt to split hairs, she replied, “I see. That makes all the difference.”

  “It shouldn’t have, but it did. I couldn’t believe K.B. would do what they’d accused her of. Not on purpose. Not even by accident.” For a moment he sounded lost and that bothered Tanya in a way that surprised her.

  “So, you disobeyed the kill order?” she guessed.

  “I told her about it.” He went silent again.

  This time, in shock, Tanya just waited to see if he would speak again. She could not reconcile the Roman she knew with a man who would reveal his orders to the enemy. Not even the enemy he was sleeping with.

  Finally, after a few minutes of walking, he sighed. “I warned her about the operation, assuming she would go to her father and get the order rescinded.”

  That made a little more sense. “She didn’t.”

  “She couldn’t. She was guilty. She knew if she went to her father, he’d figure it out. He was a tough man, maybe too harsh, but his honor and country came first and she knew it.”

  Tanya could almost feel sorry for this K.B. person, but she sensed there was more to Roman’s story than the woman going on the run because of what he’d revealed to her.

  “He wouldn’t have covered for treason and the treason she was guilty of would have gotten her the death penalty,” Roman said, as if speaking to himself.

  “What happened?” Tanya asked, reminding him she was there.

  She was pretty sure she didn’t want to know any longer, but they’d come too far along this conversational path for Roman to turn back.

  “Her terrorist connections were there waiting for us. One of them, the man she really loved, killed Teddy. Two other Rangers were killed as well before I managed to take him and the others out.” He said it as if single-handedly doing all that was nothing.

  “And her?”

  “I used one of the terrorists’ guns to make it look like she’d gotten caught in the crossfire.”

  It was harsh justice, not
something Tanya could even imagine doing. But Roman was that man, the one who knew how to follow through on his duty, even when it tore him apart on the inside. No one would hear his screams; they were all in his soul. She wondered if he even heard them anymore.

  “You were protecting her family.”

  “Yes. Her mom loved K.B. so much, and her little brother looked up to her like she was his hero. They deserved to keep their illusions.”

  Especially when their husband and father was the hard-assed general. “You weren’t court-martialed?” Tanya didn’t doubt for a minute he’d admitted to his mistake.

  “The Atrati recruited me before proceedings could be started. I was due to re-up soon; my new boss arranged for me to be honorably discharged early.”

  “The Atrati?” she asked delicately, knowing for a certainty that this man did not let things slip anymore.

  “Super-Soldiers-R-Us.”

  She smiled at his using her term to describe the group, but then grew serious again. “I’m sorry about Teddy.”

  “Me too.” There was a wealth of pain in those two words.

  “You tried to act with honor, you just chose the wrong person to protect.” He knew that already. He had to know that.

  “I vowed never to make the same error.”

  That made sense of a few things, even if it didn’t make them hurt any less. “So, you were prepared to kill me.”

  Again silence fell and once again she was pretty sure this time she didn’t want it broken.

  “No,” he said too firmly for her doubt, but in a subdued voice nonetheless.

  “You were going to go against orders?” she prodded. “Again?” This she did have a hard time believing, no matter how sincere he sounded.

  “My orders were to plug the leak. My team wasn’t convinced you were the leak. Hell, neither was I, but emotional shit got in the way when I was determined not to let it.”

  “How can you say that when you didn’t let your emotions guide your actions?”

  “You’re so sure I didn’t? I wanted you to be innocent, so I ignored my gut when it told me you were.”

  “You still had no problem using me.”

  “I didn’t see it the way you do.”

  “Right. You figured that since we were going to have sex anyway, why not use the opportunity?” Sheesh. The man could really be clueless, but she thought just maybe he had some reason to be. And maybe, just maybe…it wasn’t as bad as she’d thought at first.