Mark Me

by Zoe Dawson

  “This is beautiful,” she whispered.

  “Savannah…” I said, intending to warn her off, but there was nothing but a pleading tone in my voice.

  “I think you’re beautiful, Rory,” she added softly.

  “Don’t tell me that, Savannah. It’s not a good idea to poke a bear,” I growled at her to prove the point.

  Her eyes widened and her throat worked. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  I reached out and removed her very soft hand from my arm and stepped away. “I think you know exactly what I mean.”

  She huffed her disappointment, but nodded. “Okay. You’re not the bad boy I thought you were.”

  My will snapped with a sound that reverberated through my flesh and bones. I stepped up against her and trapped her between the counter and my body. She looked up at me, startled and wide-eyed. “Don’t mistake my restraint for disinterest. I’m more than interested, and you know it. Don’t taunt, me, babe.”

  She bit her lip and looked completely contrite. “I’m sorry. I like getting my way. I guess that’s one of my flaws.”

  I backed off her, even though everything in me protested. “If you’re staying, then get to painting, and stop baiting me. I’m not a kid, Savannah. I’m a grown man, and I know how to handle myself.”

  “I’m staying,” she said, and I picked up the roller. “I have no doubt you know how to handle yourself,” she said.

  I closed my eyes at what she didn’t say, but intimated: and you know how to handle me.

  After a few moments, I said, “I joined the Marines because I wanted to prove something to my old man.” I wasn’t sure why I was telling her this. “I wanted him to eat his words. Once I was in, I discovered that I enjoyed the combat, the fighting. It fulfilled something in me, and I was good at it.”

  She walked over to the wall I had already taped off and started to paint.

  About fifteen minutes later she said, “Weren’t you ever afraid?”

  I rolled the color onto the wall where she’d trimmed. “Yes, a few times, but I didn’t let it overtake me. Fear makes you weak. There are no weak Marines.”

  “I think it takes a lot of courage to go into battle.”

  After that she was quiet and I was grateful. We worked methodically together and had the downstairs painted in record time.

  “We make a good team,” she said, wiping at her cheek and smearing the splash of paint already there.

  “You just…” I said, forcing my hand back to my side. “…paint on your face.” The damn plumber hadn’t finished the bathroom downstairs, either. “Come upstairs and wash before you go. I’ve got to be at the bar in like thirty minutes.”

  “All right.” She set down the paint and followed me through the back and up the spiral black iron with dark wood staircase I had built.

  When we entered my apartment through the open door at the top of the stairs, she stopped dead and just stared.

  “Ohmigod! This is beautiful! Did you do this yourself?” The appreciation in her voice fed my ego.

  I turned and nodded. “With the help of Boone, Brax, Booker some, and Ethan a lot.”

  “Ethan Fairchild. Right, you guys served together.” She walked further into the space. “The kitchen…geez, Rory.”

  I had made it open, with an island, using dark, swirling granite with all stainless steel appliances, shades of green tile to match the moss green walls, with a darker green wall facing the street, the windows letting in a lot of light. I had also used the dark hardwood up here.

  “Come on,” I said and she followed me into the bathroom.

  “More beauty. This is…” Then she stopped because we were in this small space, and I realized belatedly that I hadn’t installed the mirrors yet. Shit.

  I grabbed a clean washcloth and wet it under the faucet. “Come here,” I said softly, and she stopped peering around the doorjamb like a little kid looking for Santa Claus on Christmas and faced me.

  I slipped my fingers under her chin and tilted her face up, trying with all my warrior attitude not to fall into those deep, green, so goddamned beautiful eyes. My thumb pressed just below her full bottom lip.

  I rubbed at the paint, her skin warm and soft against my fingers. She sighed, just an expulsion of her breath, and it feathered over my chin and throat. My pulse skipped a beat. This was so pathetic, feeling this way, but there didn’t seem to be a damn thing I could do about it. She was so freaking real and sweet. How could I not want to touch her, even on a pretense?

  She stared up at me for what seemed like an eternity.

  My brain was going to fry if I didn’t let her go and get out of here. But I couldn’t seem to. My will had deserted me.

  I worked at the paint. “You’re being very thorough,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied, sounding like I’d swallowed broken glass. My heart thumped hard. I wanted to kiss her, didn’t think I could get through the next few minutes unless I had that mouth. My thumb moved on its own, caressing the very edge of that tantalizing plumpness.

  She wet her bottom lip, her tongue just touching my finger.

  I didn’t think I could get through the night unless I knew, the whole of me so jacked now. I wanted to draw her close, drop my face into the hollow of her neck and shoulder and smell her essence, to open my mouth on her skin, run my tongue all the way down every inch of her to the juncture of her thighs, then stay there until I heard what I wanted to hear come out of her mouth. My name soaked in her pleasure.

  I wondered what she was thinking, then amended that. Her awareness of me was in her eyes and the way her body strained towards me. Against my will, I absorbed her attention, dissolving like she was a blast furnace and I was melting steel. All except a very specific part of me that wasn’t soft at all.

  I finished with the paint, but I couldn’t make my hand let go of her face. She reached up and slid her hand along my arm to my wrist and took the washcloth out of my hand. “Your turn,” she whispered. I closed my eyes and prayed. Prayed that I could go stone cold. But it didn’t happen. Her other hand cupped my jaw as she used her thumb to turn my face. I only heated more as the wet cloth worked at the skin along my jaw.

  “Would it be lame to thank you for your Marine Corps service?” she murmured.

  “Things have changed with the way people react to us—their fighting force. The days of being spit at and called vile names are a blip on the historical radar. I didn’t notice it so much on base or within the military community, but when I traveled in my uniform, I learned just how much people appreciated us, and what we were doing. People might not love war, but they draw the line between who we are and what we do for this country. I’ve been touched plenty of times by brief encounters, through random acts like a guy who paid for my coffee in a Starbucks to this little tyke who gave me a sharp salute while his mom smiled at me, to care packages sent to us overseas by complete strangers. So, no ma’am, that will never be lame, and you’re welcome.”

  I opened my eyes and twisted my chin out of her grasp so I could be direct and honest in both my words and my gaze. My heart was full from being embraced for all I had sacrificed to be a U.S. Force Recon Marine. “It was an honor and a privilege to fight for you, your family, this town, and the United States.”

  She swallowed, and I saw the sheen of tears, the respect, and the emotion, and I wanted to kiss her all over again, but for different reasons.

  She swiped the cloth over my face one more time. “There. Are we all done?”

  “No.” I let my eyes slide over her, from the thick sweep of lashes dropping over her eyes, down the elegant symmetry of her nose, to her pink lips begging for my mouth.

  I’d reached it. The end of my willpower. Somewhere I hadn’t, so far, been before. My entire body was pumping. I felt hot everywhere, and the only thing that could possibly quench the fire was tasting the flames.

  I lowered my mouth to hers, just my mouth, and brushed her satiny lips. “No, ma’am,” I confessed again, l
eaning in closer. “Not by a long shot.”

  She was sweet, and as ready for a kiss as I’d been. She instantly softened, flowing toward me, touching her tongue to mine. Her sigh escaped into my mouth, and I felt the whole world shift on its axis.

  With one arm firmly around her, I pressed her back, partly against the door and partly against the wall, kissing her the whole time. She wrapped her arms around my neck, the skin to skin contact churning me up even more. Her fingers delved into my hair. I wanted her to pull it hard…and then didn’t because it would make me crazy. I pressed harder, opened my mouth, my breath uneven.

  My hips landed against hers, unable to hide how turned on I was, settling right where I wanted to be.

  I knew lust, and it was running hot through me, but there was something more. Something beyond the burning ache I felt for her. Something fierce, with an edge of desperation I was trying to ignore and could barely comprehend. It scared the bejeezus out of me. I knew what I was capable of, the way I tended to handle a woman during sex.

  I broke the kiss and rested against her. Somehow finding my self-control. “I’m not going to take this...” my voice trailed off… I didn’t really want to finish the sentence. But, damn, she turned me around until I didn’t know which end was up.

  “Any further?” she finished for me, a small smile turning up the corners of her mouth.

  “I promise.”

  “Don’t make promises I don’t want you to keep, Rory.” A teasing light lit the green depths of her eyes. “I’m not that innocent.”

  “Yes, you are. Compared to me. You might as well be a virgin.”

  She tilted her head and played with my hair, her fingers licking fire against my scalp and nape. “You’re the older, big, bad Marine?”

  “Yes. I am, dammit. This would be a damned mess. So don’t mock me,” I said, and even to my ears my voice was scary, but she’d upended me again and I felt dizzy.

  Had I let one kiss go to my head and give me so many more ideas? Wait. No. I already had those ideas long before I had her mouth.

  My cell rang downstairs and I blinked a couple times.

  Pulling away, she let her hands slip down to my shoulders and then closed them to squeeze me gently.

  “Rory, you are so noble, and I can’t help but like that, even as I’m torn. Everything always feels so complicated. Before we get ourselves into this…mess, as you called it…you should know that there’s a man…”

  “Gray Lancaster.”

  She puffed out a breath. “How did you know that?”

  I grinned and stepped back, trying to get my body back under my control. “Small town, remember?”

  #

  Savannah

  I closed my eyes, trying to think my way around all the turmoil inside me. That kiss. Wow. I had never felt such passion from any man, and I wanted more. To see where we ended up. But I felt I had to be honest. He apparently already knew what everyone knew. I had been pledged to Gray at sixteen, but I was young then, and he was the “chosen one.” Always in my life, shoved at me by my parents. He was such a decent guy, but I’d made it clear to him when he left that I wasn’t sure what I wanted.

  That hadn’t made him happy, and he called me every chance he got, but his distance only made me more restless and less committed. Then in August I’d seen Rory, and I couldn’t breathe or think.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I know,” he said, leaning against the sink and folding his arms over the powerful curve of his chest. “All the more reason to keep this…shit from happening. You should sort out your life. Mine is sorted.”

  “Is it?” I said, feeling such horrible despair. He was so confident and tough. But I’d glimpsed the emotion in him, and I wanted more—all of him, everything. The physical, too. I wanted that a lot, but Rory was right. I should really think about this. Be mature.

  He ran his fingers through his hair. It was much longer than last summer, framing his face, heavy black silk that I wanted to touch again. The stubble on his jaw only made him look even more disreputable. My God, that man’s body. So cut, his chest wide and heavy, and his abs sharp with ridged muscle, a lean, but defined waist.

  He filled out those jeans from his narrow hips down to thick thighs. One of his arms had a tribal tattoo, inked in black from his shoulder down to just above his elbow, the second one, on his other arm was the stylized words, “Devil Dogs,” with flames etched also in black, curling over the top of his shoulder and along the span of his shoulder to his neck.

  And his last tattoo was over his heart. It was the infinity symbol with the words “forever faithful to” incorporated in the symbol, and an anchor emblem with a heart over it crested by an eagle. I clenched my hands and then stuffed them into my jeans shorts to keep them from tracing over both ink and layers of ironbound muscle.

  “Do you…love this guy?”

  The way he said it made my heart turn over. “I don’t know. I’ve never really been given the chance to find out. He’s just always been there. But since he’s been gone, I feel…like I might be able to figure it out.”

  “Look, Savannah, I can’t hide that I want you. That I want more than what happened here, but I’m not the right man for you. I’ve seen too much of life, and I’ve lived on the edge of death many times. I’m a beast, a freak, and you really should stick with your nice guy.”

  “You’re not a nice guy?”

  “Fuck, no.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Somehow I don’t believe that. If it was true, you would already have taken what you wanted from me and given me a wink, a pat on the butt, and the see-you-around-babe talk.”

  He shifted his weight and turned toward me more fully this time, his shoulders filling up way too much of the rapidly shrinking space between us. I felt his hot gaze on me and was completely helpless to resist gazing directly back. My skin prickled, my breasts felt heavy and sensitive, not to mention the moment I felt his erection pressed so hard against me. He was…big.

  “Savannah, I’m not a nice guy. Don’t make that mistake.” He ran his tongue over his bottom lip, over that piercing that looked so sexy, along with his nipple ring. He was rocking those enticing tattoos, too.

  “Another warning? You act like I’m too young to know my own mind.”

  “Maybe…you should make it up first. I’m dangerous when I want something…bad. To myself, too.”

  “I’m not with Gray, Rory. I made that clear to him.”

  “Good, because I don’t like to share,” he growled and surged off the edge of the sink and yanked me against him, and I wanted it. Skin to skin contact. To be close to this man in every way.

  He fisted my hair and dragged my head back. I started to tremble at the heat in those midnight eyes. Primal heat.

  “You’d be smart to keep your distance. Go back to your life and forget about me.” He said, wearily, as if he was dredging the words up against his will. Then he buried his face in my neck and my chest got tight. In that moment this was about contact, not sex or kissing. It was about loneliness. I felt it in the marrow of my bones, and I wanted to comfort him. Hold him tight.

  I heard his cell ring again, but he made no move to get it.

  “Your innocence breaks my heart. I mean it, Savannah, I’m a fucking freak.”

  I cupped his face as he eased up on my hair and raised his head. “Right,” I said. “A beast.” I met his eyes, and they were unguarded. Totally open and unguarded, and I knew I was already a fool for this man. I wrapped my arms around him and held him close.

  He sighed and lifted his head, his arms starting to drop. I leaned forward this time. The kiss had happened too fast. I touched his mouth with mine, the press of his spiral lip ring hard but not unpleasant against my lips. He closed his eyes as I kissed him. But they popped open when I ran my tongue over his piercing.

  He moaned softly as I closed my mouth over the metal, his breathing ragged when I sucked on him. “Savannah,” he breathed. “Stop, please.”

  But I
didn’t want to, so I tunneled my fingers into his hair and pulled. His chest heaved and at the same time that he growled low in his throat, I heard Boone call out.

  “Rory!”

  He jerked back and hit his shoulder on the doorjamb. I could hear Boone thundering up the stairs. Rory backed out and shut the door.

  “Hey, man,” I heard Boone’s voice through the door. “Brax’s been calling you, and it keeps going to voice mail. He needs you early. He’s sorry about the short notice.”

  Rory said, “All right. I’ve got to close up here and I’ll be right over. Sorry, I didn’t hear the phone.”

  I didn’t have a mirror to check my appearance, but I at least fixed my hair before I opened the door. Boone’s face changed immediately, and when his eyes cut to Rory his mouth tightened. “Savannah,” he said.

  “Hey, Boone. I was just cleaning up after helping Rory paint.” I had to work to keep my voice steady. He wasn’t fooled.

  “The front looks great, by the way. You did a good job with the design. You should really think about making it your profession. I see some great talent.” I flushed under his praise. His validation meant so much to me.

  Rory looked at me and then back at Boone.

  “I thought that was your design.”

  Boone set his hands on his hips, shaking his head. “Nope. All hers.”

  Rory turned to look at me, and there was something in his face that made me want to kiss him all over again.

  “You should probably head out,” Boone said. “You still have the Jones and Carver place to do.” But I heard his subtext. Get out of here so I can kick this bastard’s ass for even thinking about touching you.

  I walked past Rory, and everything in me wanted to stay here and protect him from the impending ass-kicking I could see in Boone’s eyes. Boone might be the most laid back of the Outlaws, but there was always danger, just below the surface.

  The same kind of quality I saw in Rory.

  “Boone,” I said softly.

  “Go, Savannah,” he said, his voice as firm as his eyes.